 What up, what up, what up, I'm Brian Manchiong. And I'm Corey. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. And today, we have a special episode. Artists, we have a Ask Me Anything episode. For those of y'all who do not know, we have our private space. And any of y'all who come into our free private space, we do these sessions where artists can literally ask us anything a couple times a week. And we have some great questions that we think are really going to be impactful for y'all. We're going to cover topics like merch today, super fans and doing shows for those super fans. We got topics like LinkedIn. That's like a whole nother beast, but there is value to it. So we'll tease that as well. And last but not least, a small tip to get more shows. Now, let's get right into it. And by the way, we answer these questions in the network as well, but on these videos, we're going to give even more information than we do in text. So Elijah Cole asks, you ever see a time where you guys teach strategies to bypass the DSPs for the most part and concentrate on spaces that we can better control? I'm looking forward to strategies on making money early on. It takes a lot of streams to have anything left. He ain't lying, man. You ain't lying to Elijah to do take a lot of streams and making money. A whole lot of streams. About 1,000 streams just to get a happy meal, bro. They work out like that. Do we teach that? Yeah, I feel like that's... Most of our strategies aren't really platform dependent. We may talk about them in context of certain platforms, but that's because y'all have asked about the same platform. There's really more on y'all than on us. We teach growing an audience. You can put the audience wherever you want to put it using really the same couple of strategies. Some ad strategies here, some influencer strategies there, and a nice little well-rounded content strategy that go on top of that. That core strategy can be directed at anything. Like I said, most artists choose to direct it at DSPs and streams, but if I run, what's the difference between me running ads pushing people to my Discord and me running ads and pushing people to my Spotify? On the top level, there's no real difference. There's certain things you have to think about at the bottom of the funnel, you know what I'm saying? Like in terms of how they might be thinking about converting them being the people on the other side of the ad, but up until that point, it's really exactly the same. Yup, it's just a call to action. Just like you can make a YouTube video and I could say, go to knowlabelsnecessary.com in this video, or I could say, go to knowlabelsnecessary.com slash monetize, right? By the way, go to www.knowlabelsnecessary.com slash monetize, cause we do have a video now speaking specifically on this monetization. I'm working on that series for y'all who don't know to help y'all understand how to monetize through completely different ways from DSPs, but most of the stuff that we talk about to Jacory's point is literally, what are you saying? Where are you driving the traffic to? We teach you how to drive traffic in a plethora ways. It's up to you where to put it. We speak on the platforms that we speak on because y'all ask for those specific platforms, but the people who go deep, they already know. They already know it's there because we got people who are making tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars using the information that we've put out on the other thing. So go to www.knowlabelsnecessary.com slash monetize. I think for the people who are looking to make money, that'll be a good rabbit hole for y'all to go down. Thea Shea, she asked, considering the interview we did with Justin Phillips, how you can build a million dollar clothing brand. Go check out the interview we did with Justin Phillips. I'm curious on your opinion on merch releases for emerging independent music artists, especially in the context of establishing a long-term brand as your music gains traction, right? So here's a question. Would you recommend starting with basic merch and gradually moving to higher quality pieces or do you believe investing in quality items right from the start as discussed in the interview? Which one is a better approach to Ujikore? I believe I gave the other advice of 80% basic pieces, 20%, you know what I'm saying? More well thought out, custom pieces as the base builds. Cause the reality of it is, man, like custom pieces are expensive. Like to get somebody a high quality hoodie or shirt or jacket is gonna be a lot of money. Money that you might not have out the gate and might not even have the fan base to really need to care about that. But what I've seen in the emerging stages is they usually just want to like buy something, you know what I'm saying? So I'm not saying like go get like a shitty gilding tee. You know, like there are ways to give decent quality merch items at a pretty good price. But that's why I would start like, hey, let's maybe POD, a print on demand, some decent merch, some tee shirts, some things like that. And then as the base builds, then we can do these special high quality drops every now and again. Yeah, cause high quality merch sounds great until you see how much it costs. Until you sitting on that shirt. And you sitting on it and can't sell it for sure, for sure. So I'm all for that strategy of, yeah, let's one do print on a man. It's a lot more than you think it is, trust me. Like we already knew that it was a lot more than we thought it was. And then we did it. And it was way, way more than we do. Still got shocked. Right, still got shocked. Shout out to Justin for telling us to slow ourselves down in that direction. You know what I mean? One thing I will say too is I think, like she's asking about quality in terms of the actual material. Actual material, yeah. Yeah, but I think you can do high quality ideas. You know what I'm saying? Like I gotta add the other day for, it wasn't an artist merch, but I think it could be cool artist merch where this company is selling car air fresheners that are in the shape of like vinyls. And so you get different album vinyls. And so I'm looking at it, I think it's probably like 10 cents of air freshener if you do like an order of a thousand more. So you can get a hundred dollars worth of a really unique merch item. You know what I'm saying? It is quality because of the idea and you still don't have to break the bank. So like, I think that's another way to think about it too. If you're wanting quality of materials, yeah, that shit gonna be expensive. But you can find a good middle ground. But if you are willing to stretch your brain and think about some shit, yeah, you can have a very unique merch drop that still doesn't really cost you a lot. Because as we've learned, man, these Chinese vendors, man, if you can dream it, they can make it. If you can come up with it, it'll get done. Just don't know when you'll get it. Oh yeah, no bullshit. But with all that being said, so I like to think of it like this, right? People know that you are not big popping, big pimping. You know what I mean? And people are willing to grow with you. High quality design, right? Like actually be thoughtful in how it looks and then hit that messaging on point. Like whatever your message for your audience is, connect with them there. And then yeah, improve your merch over time. Nobody is expecting the highest of quality. Now, if you're building this brand on some type of high quality, like fashion driven approach, then that's a whole another thing to consider. But most of y'all don't need to do that, right? So yeah, I think that's really it. It's straightforward. Don't overthink it. Do what you can afford. And then as you get bigger and bigger, then you can take those bigger risks because it is a risk as well. Yeah, facts. Amy said, I have an artist who wants to focus on doing more college shows. He's planning on mass story viewing colleges and having a virtual assistant pitch his EPK to organizations at schools. Is there anything else they should be doing to get more college shows? First of all, first of all, beautiful, beautiful. I love when artists take these, you know, interesting hacks of getting attention and building leads, right? They're basically doing a real outreach to these college shows, right? These college organizations. It's a sales funnel. Sales funnel. I'm going to send the EPK and then I'm going to create some social level of relationship by interacting and engaging with your organizational line. And these organizations, by the way, a lot of these organizations, the organization pages don't necessarily have that much engagement usually. They might have a little bit for the people who are there, but like an extra bump in engagement, they will definitely notice. And they're going to see that comment. Somebody's going to see it. Somebody's going to see it. The person managing it will see it, right? We had a whole talk with some organizations, right? And they were thirsty to figure out how to get people more involved. So, yes, engaging with these organizations is a beautiful strategy for anybody who wants to do shows with the college organizations. There's a nonprofit organizations, any of these people, like there's a full strategy. You just have to find the ones that make sense for you. And with that said, because I happen to know this individual and this strategy, my biggest thing that I see with shows, and I've told them this, is most artists don't do a good job of capturing the experience of their shows. So, yes, getting your streams, bam, puts you in a beautiful place, right? And getting some followers and real fans, beautiful place because it makes you look more attractive and more realistic. All that's great. But a lot of these college shows and these organization shows, one, they're looking for somebody who just can perform and can entertain their employees, right? They're members of their program. They're not thinking like, I'm gonna bring Drake, all right? Because if they did, it would just bring Drake. And they use different budgets for different events when they're trying to use get marketing to actually get those type of artists sometimes. But they're smaller events. They're not looking for that type of thing, right? Because to that point with colleges, they're usually trying to keep it in-house anyway. So sometimes having an act that might attract too much of the community is a bad thing, right? Like I'm in Georgia State, you know what I'm saying? I just want Georgia State students to come, but this shit reaching all the way out to people at Riverdale and then people, folks trying to come up from Riverdale. There's a little bit of a conflict there, right? In terms of safety and things like that. Like to your point, we're not looking for max bang for buck in terms of draw. We're looking for max bang for buck for entertainment value. And an office party is different than a concert, you know what I'm saying? So make sure you show the experience of your show, right? Do a really good job of highlighting that experience and the vibe of it. Not just you performing on stage where you literally be any different type of event. Like capture audience interactions, maybe talking with people in the shows at the end. Maybe people giving a review of your show like was it dope? Was it not? If you're, well, you don't want that. Was it not? We're not putting that in there. But, and like what can you do experientially even though you're not maybe controlling the entire environment with production value, how can you make it feel unique, right? So like capture that, put that experience in footage, right? That is very much so worth investing in a high quality reel. All right, people think about music videos know a high quality reel that's gonna make you money directly by pitching it to an organization and they're able to see you and the experience of you versus the next artist. That's gonna help you get that extra money. And this artist that we're talking about has already gotten, he's probably at least made 30,000 around college shows over time at this point, right? So capture y'all's experience. I know it might not seem like it's worth it for some of y'all if you're already getting shows but once you start to get shows you will get more shows and more money by doing that. All right? Now, next we have Melissa Kariuki, I think I said that right. How many super fans do you think artists should have in a city prior to organizing a live show there? A range would be appreciated. This is even for a small show of let's say 70 people. 70 people, you should be able to get that off of friends and family and a couple of fans and my fans. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. She wants a number. If we had to put a number on it, I was like 30 to 100 people in that city. To do a seven, but here's my problem. She said super fans. I don't think you need super fans to hit 70 people. You need mildly interested people. Yeah, you just need good people who rock with you enough. Maybe you got five of those who are like fan fans but you need enough people to rock with you and then you need to create the experience in a way where they would bring their friends. Once you do that, you really only need 35 people to bring one more person and then you break it down from there. And I think the problem is, and this is when we go to www.knowlabelsnecessary.com slash monetize, that will also be in the description below for those who are watching on YouTube. The whole paradigm shift that artists need to have and that's what I'm spending pretty much the next six months leading people down is you can create concepts in ways that will attract people who aren't even fans of you. And I think we spend too much time looking for super fans of just your music when the reality is if it's only relying on your music, you're at a deficit. But there's people who start brand new events every day and bring out hundreds of people when they don't have a known name, they're not a known promoter and they don't have any music, they just got a DJ. Yeah, in the building. A DJ in the building, yeah. I agree because I understand why she's asking about it from the super fan perspective. She's probably been watching a lot of us talk about conversion, racing, things like that. But to your point is if I, one, if you have good timing with it, right, which kind of goes into market research, I'm playing this event at a time where it seems like there's not much going on that could pull away from me. I'm like, yeah, you can get the lukewarm fan to come out just as easy as you could get the super fan to come out, you know what I'm saying? They both need something to do that Thursday night. You know what I'm saying? They both are aware of you and at least interested in you and at your point, ideally they got at least one or two friends, you know? That's it. And if you can create an experience, because this is where the big brain comes in, you're not crafting the experience to necessarily attract the super fan. The super fan gonna come regardless. You're crafting something that's interesting enough that the super fans are cool with going. Perfect. You know what I'm saying? That's exactly what it is. Like, hey, I know you gonna go, but your friend might be like, I ain't really feeling it. And then that could knock the whole operation out. And it goes back to the same reason I talked about building that video reel of what your experience looks like, not like what it looks like you performing on stage, the experience, because your job is to make it easy for people who already love you to sell other people to come down your rabbit hole. That's it. Now, that's it for this video. If y'all like episodes like this, we will do more Ask Me Anythings where we use those questions from the No Labels Necessary Brown Network community. If y'all wanna go there, it's just www.nolabelsnecessary.com. Make sure you do the www. This is yet another episode. I'm Brian Manchin. I'm Corey. And we out. Peace. Appreciate you for watching. If you like content like this, you'll love seeing our music marketing strategies that we use as an agency to actually blow up artists to millions and even billions of streams that are available for free at nolabelsnecessary.com. And the cool part about it that's gonna really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some views that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success. And you have the ability to have communication with us. We get on live talks, a lot of cool things for members and it's free just to hop in. So check it out right now at nolabelsnecessary.com.