 The thing that has been most beneficial for artists has not been artists standing up for themselves as much as we like to push this narrative of the Indian that's what's bringing the leverage. The thing that's been most beneficial is the advent of the internet bringing on social media and these things that literally change the landscape where you can do more without the label. And because of that, not only does that mean you can go longer without the label, but it also allows the label to look at things different too. It's like, oh, I don't need to invest in somebody early on. I can just wait because I can see them build up in real time so I can lower my risk. And with that lower risk, that means I'm going to do less work and I want to take a more favorable deal for you but because I didn't have to do that work that I would have had to do before. Not because I care about this indie stuff, right? Like I could be somebody great at this company again. It's about the people, right? I could be one of these great people at the companies and say, yeah, I want to give you this deal because it's favorable. Go back to the accounting department and they're like, hell, you talking about, bro? We don't do that. Those numbers don't work out, right? So you're only able to do the deals because the accounting department who cares less about your wellbeing individually approve this at the label, right? Has nothing to do with this concept of us taking a stand, right? Let's just leave it at that, right? Us taking a stand or having that mentality is really using the space that's already in the room, right? Because the problem is most people are moving, they're sitting in this chair right now, right? And they're only taking advantage of everything that you can in this chair where the reality is there's a full room here, I can get up and I can go this corner, that corner, that corner, that corner, and now I'm taking advantage of the full space in the room. I'm not expanding the room. I'm not innovating the room, you know what I mean? I'm not building anything in the room. However, I'm now taking advantage of every part of it. So I have a deal where this is the max that my accounting department as a record label is willing to pay you, but you agree to what you can get from this chair, the mentality that's stuck in there, that's your fault. But if you have enough education, you pay attention to these conversations of value and understanding how things work, you can at least get up in this chair and get all of the money that comes with this room as a whole, right? But that wasn't, was that necessarily your leverage or the record label wanting to do good or was that just the record label finally saying, oh, okay, yeah, it was in our budget. Usually we just let you, you know, this job was budgeted for 120K, but you only asked for 100K, so why would I say no to that, right? Oh, okay, you asked for 120K, cool. That was in our budget anyway. And it just gave you what we already had set aside for you if you actually had the audacity or knowledge to ask for what you were worth. Yeah, or to your point about them already being there, it's like, hey, would it took us a million to get you to this point? We didn't have to do that. So yeah, man, take this extra 200K, 300K, something like that. Take it? Yeah, it's like why not? Yeah. Would have taken us that amount of money and we didn't have to take on the risk because we could have put that amount of money and nothing happened. So why not, right? Let me take a quick second to say if you're an artist trying to blow your music up or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free step by step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free, but the thing is we're not gonna let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com, check it out, back to the video. This is just basic risk assessment. And again, to me that always goes back to just understanding the landscape that we're in, the way their labels work today versus yesterday. You know, I'm big on distributors. Are the new record labels, that is the deal? Why is that the deal? Because what do record labels control? Traditionally, primarily the marketing, right? And the distribution, which is a part of marketing, right? The marketing department, individually that left. Many of them can still take hold of distribution. They can't from a standpoint of like getting on Spotify, but we already know that it's more than that, all right? So we can control some distribution in some way. That's still our way of like keeping leverage in the game. And then upstreaming you to other services, because that's what it is, right? Yeah, we're gonna put you in this distribution service. And if you happen to be successful, now you're already in our system and we can do a better deal, which is beautiful for labels. To me, like this is a better fucking model for labels. That's the thing, people talk bad on labels. This is a better like time for labels than ever in my opinion. Like you look at one, where the numbers are going. So if you look at why they are investing so much money in the catalogs of these artists, based on streaming, yes, the numbers are tough now, but we also have to look at what I said earlier in the conversation. The most of the population has not adopted streaming yet, but these old people are gonna get older and then you know what happens when you get older enough times, right? But these young people are gonna get older too. And that means more young people. And these young people are all gonna come into a streaming consumption mindset, which means the whole pot of streaming gets bigger. So right now we're still in a trough. Like people are like, oh, music is so amazing, it's doing so awesome. We're not making the money that we were making in 2020. No, not 2020, in 2000 yet. I forgot the number that it was around, maybe like, I don't know, maybe like 30 billion or something like that, right? Last year people were happy that it grew to 10 billion, like that type of thing, right? We're still at a low, but by like 2030-ish, they're projecting this shit's gonna hit like 55 billion, the industry, based on streaming, right? So I'm getting in these catalogs because it's a great time for me to own these catalogs long-term. I'm an investor, I could do that shit, right? And it's also a perfect time. And because on the artist side, there's this tax bill that was going to like, fuck them up anyway, where they weren't able to cap, right? So that's why you're seeing this stuff, but it's great to be that because now not only can I do that as a label, right? And well, not as a label. Like that as an investor taking this music in the long-term, but as a label, I also understand this industry's gone crazy in the long-term, if you're willing to wait that out. So I'm in an age where as a distributor, I get partial control of your shit without doing shit in comparison to just signing you. That's a lower effort agreement. And you're happy with it, I'm happy with it, right? You're like, hey, okay, I only get 15% of your shit and I don't charge you anything to distribute this or I get there's all kind of other agreements, right? There's some people who you got distributors who say, hey, you can just pay $20 a month or $50 a year or whatever, we're not even talking about those, but you got the ones who say, I want to get a little percentage. Most of them are percentage actually. So let's just stick with that. The ones that are worth it down. We said what? Especially the ones that's worth it down. The ones that are worth it and they're a little bit more boutique. And then what varies, the percentage varies, right? 10%, 20%, whatever that looks like. And then I have all these tools, right? Because I'm here, you're now having somebody that might have more relationship. CD Baby's not really gonna move any room around to make some playlisting culture happen for you. But who do I want to name? Let's just say Empire Mike, right? Empire can, let's put it that way. Whether they do it or not, they can, right? In comparison to what a CD Baby or somebody like that would do, right? So you come into agreement, it's based off percentage. You're happy with it because you own far more, it gives you more flexibility, but that also gives me less responsibility. But the moment you start to really take off, I have the resources to be able to treat you like a record label. And those agreements change. They don't say the exact same. Like, oh, shoot, you take it off and now you're about to be the next Drake. Okay, I got all these other resources. I'm gonna approach you and say, hey, okay, we kind of giving you some of these resources, but we could take this to the next level if you let us do this, that, and the third. That's what many situations are having occur. And it makes the most sense for the label. Low risk, you're already in agreement. I just did my ANR-ing, but I still did have to do heavy investing because I didn't know if you were gonna win or not. You, good agreement for you. So it's a closer to a win-win because I don't wanna make it sound like I'm just saying, hey, distributors are trash. I'm just saying that's a far more fruitful agreement. And then the indie culture is the same because I got the distributor right here and then what are labels doing? They're in bed with a lot of distributors. I'm owning a lot of these distributors as a background. So there's some sort of subsidiary or maybe I just have a ownership stake. Cool. On the other side, you just said it earlier, right? If you want a little bit more individual attention on what you do, you go to an indie label. So those indie labels are the ANRs and that's where you get more attention. They can put more effort and energy into creating more of a star, right? But then you get upstream to the label. It's still that machine. So these labels, instead of being that major that people just go to and they say, hey, everybody wants to come straight to me, I create all of these new vehicles that eventually all leave back to me anyway. And they're just structures that lower my risk. So I think artists need to not get caught up in this marketing idea of or propaganda. That's why I think it's propaganda that we're destroying labels, overtaking labels. We're just in a completely different climate, right? And labels have adjusted to the client and it's actually better for them just like it's better for you, right? Cause it gives you more flexibility in decision-making. Now it's not a one-on-one model, a model game. Better for you might not mean better for another artist because it's also your decision-making along the way. I'll leave it at that for right now. But it's crazy and it's interesting to observe from just the way these numbers work and how the game really maps out if you pay enough attention. Yeah, bro. It's like you can really see where the future's going. You can see where the future's going, bro. And I'm gonna find that a report when we hop off, because it was a golden sex that did the projection. It was in one of their reports. I think I was gonna talk about it. Yeah, and I remember looking at it before but it wasn't until I looked back at it another time where I looked at the projection of where music was going. And when I saw that, and I saw the whole curve, I'm like, ah, ah, it's coming together, you know what I mean? Cause you know how you'll look at something one time but it's not with a certain context and then you go through some experiences and then you look back at that saying and you read the same book or you listen to the same song and this shit hits different. Damn, this shit makes so much sense, bro. It makes a total different level of sense at the moment. So, you know, that's...