 People talk about, oh, you should give your artists, you know, their masters. No, because that's how I make my money. How would you feel if a music executive said they would never let you own the music that you created? Well, a legendary music exec, Irv Gotti said just that, and I'll let him explain why. People talk about, oh, you should give your artists, you know, their masters. No, because that's how I make my money. Like Jha Ashanti, millions of dollars they make every year. I don't get a dime of that. So you want to show money? Yeah. Okay. I don't get one fucking penny of that. All right. So the only thing that I have that I could sell to get me a check is those masters. And you want to take that from me? But do they get pieced off after you sell them? Oh. How pieced Jha? Jha got a seven-figure check. That's how I make my money. That's what he just said. So let's start here. I know some of y'all might be upset hearing this take, but let's hear him out, right? Is he right? Is there some angle where you could see his side? Let's play devil's advocate and dig this whole situation out because it can't all be bad, right? I know everybody has heard this story before, but like maybe, maybe some of the things that he's saying is true, right? So do you think there's any validity to what he's saying? Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think the art versus equity conversation is always an interesting conversation, right? Cause we always see artists fall on the side of art, executives fall on the side of equity. But I understand, I get what he's coming from, right? It's like, hey, you have all of these different opportunities to monetize that are based off of the work that we have done together. Like they have shows, like he mentioned, I'm sure they both have done brand deals. I know they both have done brand deals. They both have been in movies as a result of the success from their artist careers, all of these different bags that- I don't get none of that. Yeah, the herb guy is rightfully, right? Like not entitled to. So there is this one vehicle that I legally do have ownership to and legally do have a right to and I am justified in, you know, in feeling this way because, I mean, we talking about 2000 brother, shit ain't cheap now. Shit definitely wasn't cheap right now. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Let's have a real conversation because I would love to see the artist, right? Who take this level of investment in another artist and let's see how they feel the same way. Most people who are talking this talk, right? Don't necessarily feel that way, right? Or they don't have the experience. I haven't seen anybody who's made that level of investment and then also has had this change of heart and been like, oh yeah, I don't deserve anything. So if you look at... Anything's the other way around. I've seen new executives come in with the mentality of like, oh no, the artist shit, whatever, and they get deep into it and get more seasoning. Like, oh yeah, no, fuck that. I should own a little bit more than I thought I would. This is a lot harder than I think and I'm actually betting my whole life and I'm just taking a percentage. It's not like I'm getting paid like a salary year on year. So I'm taking a massive risk. And I think sometimes that part gets understated. You could say you're interchangeable but then there's cool, then interchange the executives. Cool, but there's also multiple artists that are successful. So I feel like people need to have the real conversation and look at the real investment because I don't know anybody who uses independent and artist ownership as their branding employee that they're using. And then they also make that level of investment to artists. So it's cool if I build my business model around, yeah, artists y'all should be independent. You should own your masters. And then I build a business model around that. So I'm cool. I can stay congruent in that conversation. But if I make that level of investment, I don't think anybody who makes a significant level of investment to the degree that like a herb didn't allow them back in the day. I feel like I don't see anybody who's doing that and saying, oh yeah, artists are on their masters. I mean, look at Russ, right? Russ like has kind of signed and helped some artists. And I think it's a really artist friendly deal from what I hear and it's dope, right? But he's also not taking that level of investment also because he's an artist and he's doing his own thing, right? He makes it friendly. Hey, I got resources that are available to you. Take advantage and do your thing like loosely speaking. I don't know all the ins and outs, right? Steve Stout stands on, you know? Like, yo, artists y'all should own your masters, right? Independence, all that. But he also has a platform that can benefit around that model, right? I don't see anybody, I don't see Bert, man. You know what I'm saying? Like making an investment he's making and then coming out with that same take, right? And that's what I would like to see because nobody has addressed the real. You don't see anybody who's truly being that level of involved, putting that level of money and moving in that type of business model that's also saying, you know what? I see the like, I really shouldn't own any of this even though I just put that much energy into it. Yeah, cause I think the dark side of it is, and we've talked about this on other episodes, is there's so many stories about artists getting finesse over by executives that that's kind of like the, that's the norm. You, we now go into these situations expecting it to be one-sided in that way. But there are lots of executives and even non executives, people who work in like service-based portions of the industry that have been finessed by artists. Hell yeah. Probably more, you know what I'm saying? To be honest, like the stories just don't get out there as much and they're not as compelling. Like, oh, executive gets finessed by artists, we champion them, artist gets finessed by executive, it's the pandemonium. Executives, we gotta say space to y'all. Y'all wanna come on the pod and create this propaganda, you know, push the campaign and let people know that y'all have been hurt too? Yeah. Cause like, like, like they all have been like, for every executive, like I said, every person in the music industry has a burning story. Like artists, artist executives, creatives are like, every person has at least one burning story. Certain ones get more light showing than the other. So I understand coming into it like, hey, like this artist may be someone, like maybe now things are sweet, but I do need to protect myself to a certain degree in this situation. And I can't stress this enough that we talk about the early to mid 2000s, there was no TikTok, there were no cheap alternatives to break artists back then. Like now there's a case for sure artists be able to own their masters and such because the channels of distribution and marketing are much more accessible and much cheaper to get access to versus back then. I don't even know what the cost is to be to distribute music back then, but let's just assume a couple of tens of thousands just to get that shit out. And now we're talking about the era of the million dollar music video, you know what I'm saying? And the era of the million dollar marketing budgets. Like, so we're talking about like, like serious money going to like back then it's probably taking a couple million to break a ours where today it might take a couple hundred thousand, you know? So the magnitude of investment out the gate was expected to be crazy, you know? And any same person, if I'm putting up a hundred dollars or something, I wouldn't start talking about what I'm gonna get back and return for this, you know what I'm saying? What's my ownership gonna be? I can imagine putting up a hundred million or whatever the figure might have been and then the person at the end of it being like, oh yeah, this is my shit, right? It's like, come on man, you know the answer to that question, you know the answer to that question. I had somebody break it down to me, like I had a conversation with an executive recently that straight up said to me, he's like, man, like, you know if you want more ownership except less resources and money from the label, he's like, simple as that. If you want more ownership except less from me. That's all it is. And I think that's fair, right? Like if you want me to own less then you have to naturally expect that I'm going to do less. That is a simple equation. And that's why I said, I don't see anybody who's putting in that level of energy and investment that's also saying, nah, yeah, you should just take everything and own the master. All right, so I wanna give a reminder that being independent, it's not just about not being signed to a label, it's actually making money without being signed to a label, being able to have a sustainable career. And for those of y'all who actually want to be able to make money from your fan base, you're serious about figuring out how to monetize. I have a free video that you can check out. I don't need your email. I don't need your phone number. I don't need any information. All you have to do is go to www.nolablesnecessary.com slash monetize. And I'm gonna show you the lies that artists have been told that have been keeping them, probably you too, from monetizing your fan base and how shifting that perspective has allowed one artist we're working with to be on track to make over $500,000 this year. This is a different era. Don't fall for that trap saying artists can't make money. Artists do not have to be broke. So if you wanna escape that trap, go to www.nolablesnecessary.com slash monetize. You do have to make sure you put the www in the beginning when you type it in your URL and watch this free video again. You're not gonna be asked to put in your email. You're not gonna be asked for your phone number, but it won't be up forever. Check it out. Think about this yourself. Artists who are out there listening, right? If you gave somebody $5, how much are you hurting for that return? How much? All right, cool. You're not really hurting properly. I hope so. You put in a million dollars, all right? You probably really would like to make that money back. Now, since you would really like to make that money back, you're probably gonna do as much as you can to help get that money back. That $5 is like, I really want that $5 back, maybe off of principle alone, but it's not worth me sacrificing my whole life and how I'm moving because there's other opportunities out there, right? And you could take that number higher, right? $5 is hella low, obviously. Like you could say $1,000, $100,000. And for some people, $100,000 is only like $1,000 and the way their life is set up, right? So it's literally the amount of investment that you have in something, that's how much you're gonna be willing to like put into it. Cause even if you were making 5X, right? 5X on a million is 5. 5X on $5 is $25. 5X on $1,000 is $5,000. Like the needle doesn't move as much in your life, so why would I put that energy? I could put it somewhere else. And then you talk about the risk and the difficulty of making an artist pop. It just doesn't add up. It's not attractive if I already got this money. I could do things and make decent money with far less risk. Yeah, and I think that's a big part of it too. Cause I mean, these arts would come up in the era where artist entrepreneurship wasn't really a thing. Like I'm not gonna say, you know, they never put anything up cause I'm sure every artist reaches a point where they sacrifice something on the business side to make things move. There might be your own money, there might be you finding your own resources. Like they've all been there, but we are talking about an era where a lot of them didn't have to really do much except be artists, you know what I'm saying? Like they're kind of living the dream that we're living a dream that a lot of artists they want to live. And what we're seeing now are the consequences of being able to live that dream is sometimes let's say in certain things regarding your brand, less equity and less ownership and things that you may have created. Like these are the sacrifices for it because on the other side, you do more or you do everything. But you know, to the point of the executive I said I talked to, nobody owns anything. You know what I'm saying? So like it's like, what are you willing to risk? Like the labor capital that comes with it or the equity of the thing that you're creating. And you said something earlier, right? I think it really speaks to sometimes the artist mentality and ownership is like artists, y'all are interesting, man. Like y'all will expect, sometimes expect your team around you to like sacrifice like their health, their life. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes there are other businesses, their families all in the name of your art. It's a very selfish ass, you know what I'm saying? Because you have to understand like it takes a lot for everybody to be able to continue moving forward. And there also has to be a shared in destination that we all would like to achieve for us to even wanna continue pushing forward. So if the only light at the end of the tunnel is you becoming successful and I still don't know where I might stand and all of that, there's no real reason or incentive for me to keep pushing forward. Even if you have this idea in your head of everybody winning, but you haven't been able to properly explain like what that looks like in terms of numbers and equity and payouts and things like that, then you can't be mad when the people around you start either making other deals outside of you that now take away their time from you or start demanding more from you in terms of what you guys are putting in work to create together. So like it's a very natural outcome of it. Like either they're gonna ask for more from you or they're gonna wanna go get more from other spaces outside of you. Two things that a lot of times artists are not okay with. Artists usually want their teams to just be focused on them. I've heard that so many times. Man, I wish my market, I wish I was my marketer's only client. I wish I was my graphic artist's only client. I wish I was my videographer's only client. You know what I'm saying? But it's like, there's a lot that comes with that. You know what I'm saying? Like you have to now take care of that person's life and that person's dream in order to make that a reality for you. And if you're not in a position to be able to do that or have the resources to be able to do that, then you are going to have to give up certain things to just even keep those people around or make those people wanna keep doing the work. And in that era, that was ownership, 100% ownership. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Bro, you see it on Shark Tank all the time. They'd be like, oh man, 5% part of the business and they'll just... $20 million, you get 2.5 and a free franchise. And they'll be like, look man, did you come in here even wanting to deal? Cause 5% is not even enough to get me out of bed, right? Like I'm not gonna put any energy into that. Like even if I did take this investment you wouldn't get much from me because that doesn't excite me. Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing. Yeah. Bro, I could sneeze and sneeze out a 5% deal, you know what I'm saying? Or something that's equivalent that maybe I do all the work for or less work than what you asking me for, you know? And I think that's the thing of it too is the risk assessment, the risk assessment and risk evaluation from both sides are usually different. Like executives, service people, they tend to do risk assessment based on numbers and past experiences. Artists from my experience tend to do risk investment that are rooted in, what's the one looking for? Possibilities. Like possibility and ideals, right? Like, hey, like I've seen it happen, I know it can happen, like I believe it can happen, versus the executives like, well, you know, it's nice, but you know, over the last six years, history has proven that the average artist is only gonna do whatever the numbers look like, right? So they're making risk assessments from two different points. Possibilities, you know what I'm saying? Versus like what kind of seems to be the real and be the now. We've seen plenty of artists be right. You know what I'm saying? Like there's always the story of the artists that we see all the time on the internet, bro. I believe in myself and nobody else did and I made it and I became the anomaly. Most of them are wrong. Yeah, most of them are wrong. And even bigger than that is we see the stories of the ones that are possible, we don't hear the stories of the ones that also thought that and it didn't happen for them. Exactly. So you're being bombed with all these positive messages where there's nothing wrong with that. Find your motivation where you need to find it. But I think motivation without a kick of reality is dangerous, you know? Because it's going to make you make decisions that don't really make sense for either party and you're going to feel justified in your delusional requests and responses because you really feel like you might be that anomaly. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with that. We all got to wake up and feel like we that got to keep it pushing. You know, there has to be at least 10% of delusion in you to even want to continue doing this. You know what I'm saying? You kind of crazy. All of you listen to kind of crazy and kind of stupid for staying in music, bro. That's the reality of it. We kind of crazy and kind of stupid for staying in music, you know what I'm saying? It's the reality of choosing to stay in the game. But if you push the delusion too far with no kick of reality, your future in the game is bleak because you're never going to make proposals and offers to people that make sense. You know what I'm saying? For both parties and motivate both parties who are all parties involved who want to put that work in for you. And you're going to feel like you got screwed over because you thought everything was sweet and now somebody's moving on to a better opportunity doing all these other things because you didn't have a sense of grounding in reality. I'm not saying take a bad deal. I'm not saying sign away your masters. I'm not saying none of that. I'm just saying understand based on what the exchange is that should be a clear representation of what you want their incentives to be, right? Like give them something based on the effort that you would expect of them. If they don't have that hanging over their heads or that opportunity ahead of them, then you can't expect. Now you might get even better and you might then be able to say, okay, yeah, you help me down. And I'm going to hopefully reward you even bigger and other new opportunities that might come from it. Great. But again, expectation, throw that out the window because this is just the business. This is just the numbers. This is literally economics and it's finance, right? Social economics, how people move based on these incentives. And I don't know, man. Like, yeah, Irv, obviously he's very brash with it. And like his situation, all the ins and outs, this isn't me standing up for him and his situation. But it is like a reflection of, again, like a lot of artists, they don't even want to hear something like that. And I think they need to at least consider something like that. You got this dude right here, Philly Fresh UFC. He said, what people don't understand about the music industry is 99% of artists don't solely write their music, especially singers. So they should get 100% of their masters when it took a team, label investing ideas, music, lyrics into them. So that's another point. That's why Bowie was like, I didn't expect all my masters. I ain't need my masters. I was just performing the songs and I made money off my touring, but I wasn't writing my songs and none of that, right? When he was with JD. It's not that simple. I have friends in the music industry and it's not what people think. Of course, there are artists who make hits themselves, but the vast majority don't. You'd cry when you find out your favorite artist was just a vessel and literally you wrote none of their own records. There's a point right there. And we always keep it, I mean, well, not we, but the creative community always keeps it to the music creation, which is a great point, but he also touched on something that comes from the label's resources, like the ideation around things like the marketing, the creative assets that come with it. Right, the things that branded and cemented to the audience. A lot of times, there are some artists who are very involved with that stuff, but there are a lot of artists who aren't, you know what I'm saying? And they just, to the point I meant earlier, they just want to just be the performer, like you said, but want all the benefits. I don't know, that was a great point. I think that was a great point. Really great point. Boom Man said, which we need to have, if you want to park at some point, if you've never invested in an artist or spent hundreds of thousands, you shouldn't speak on this. Your opinion doesn't matter until you've done it and been burnt by one of these artists, then give your opinion. If not, your opinion doesn't even matter. There it is. Someone knows his thoughts. Let me see, let me see if there's one more good one. I wouldn't give the masters up, either they made a deal and they got to stand on it. That's also another aspect of it. If you make a deal, you make a deal. That's why you sign contracts and have an agreement. I think it's interesting, this whole idea doing deals just to be able to negotiate. I understand that things can be renegotiated for sure, but to come in and expect someone just to want to renegotiate just because, that doesn't make sense. Unless they're incentivized to have you wanting the best physician, incentivize to give you more and better opportunities in some way, I don't know, it would depend on the deal and how things are set up. I feel like it shouldn't be this whole thought of, I'm just gonna take a million dollars from these people and as soon as I get any kind of poppin' and then I can argue I have leverage, then I wanna renegotiate. Because niggas never wanna renegotiate when they don't have the leverage. So you at least acknowledge and know that at some point you did not have the leverage and you are in some way admitting that you are not the sole reason that you got here. Yeah, I'm gonna shut up long enough for you to put me in position to make an argument. Right, to then make an argument. You weren't having that argument a year ago, but now you're the only reason this thing is poppin'. It's like, that's like telling your parents or something, you know what I mean? Dad, oh yeah, you poppin' and whatever your job is and I'm here not because of you. Now, there's some people who got some crazy backgrounds. That's different. We're not talking about that. We're talking about a pretty average. Your parents at least raised you, fed you, put you in school and then you figure it out when you got older. Yeah, you figure it out. You poppin', you standin' on your own right now. However, you can't deduct everything that I did. I kept you alive long enough to figure it out. I kept you alive in this game long enough to figure it out for you to get enough invisibility to then have that shot to become who you are. At least not acknowledge that. Now, you want me to, you want me to like, damn, make no money? You just want me to just make my money back? I don't wanna just make my money back, that's stupid. Why would I have done this? Just just make my money back. Or make my money back times, you know, maybe 3%. Like, no, I would've went to the bank for that shit. You know what I'm saying? So I think there's that argument that y'all gotta sit in y'all's selves and the more you sit in that argument yourself, the easier it is for you to make a deal that makes sense on all sides and benefits you or helps keep you out of just making that deal cause you're like, yeah, based on what I wanna give up and what they would be incentivized to do based off of the little I am willing to give up, it doesn't make sense. So I need to figure this out myself. The problem is y'all not wanna figure that shit out yourself and go without. You're trying to dip in both ponds and sometimes you can't do both. Well, again, hey, no label's necessary. No investors or whatever, necessary. However, it's an option. And if you choose that option, you need to take go in with the right mentality. Yeah, know what you're getting into. Know what you're getting into. Pose in the cons. Yes, yes. This is another clip from No Labels Necessary. I'm Brandon Shawn. And I'm Corey. We out. Peace.