 Wow, what's up everybody once again it's Bram and Sean and today we got to talk about the struggles of record labels versus being independent. At first I got to do a shout out to Everyday Struggle because it was the big crit interview on Everyday Struggle that inspired this video. Crit talking about his story reflected so many of the stories of a lot of artists that I know but I'm not going to go into their stories because that's not for me to share but if there's any artists watching that care to share your record label scenarios definitely put it into the comments. Now let's get into it. Now people talk a lot about 360 deals and just a whole bunch of the financial situations when it comes to being on a record label versus independent but what's the worst part about being on a record label? I think it's pretty arguable that one of the most painful things about being in a record label actually isn't about necessarily how much they take away from your money. Follow me on this example right here. In a lot of ways the artist's record label scenario can mimic the same kind of relationship with athletes in college sports, right? If you're a high school star on football but are giving you phone calls, taking you on visits, they're courting you saying stuff like we really want to develop something special. You're strong and smart, we really need you. You sign and you show up to school and the next thing you know they act like they don't know who you are. Once you're there you're in a barrel with about a hundred, two hundred other players and just like a lot of these athletes, a lot of these artists find themselves getting red shirted. But why it's even worse for our artists a lot of times is for an athlete when you get red shirted you pretty much know okay I'm good for this year, next year is going to be I'm on, I'm in it. For an artist in a lot of scenarios they don't really tell you, hey you're getting red shirted, we're not really going to try to push you till next year, they're just going to pull some strings and keep stringing you along, hey we're about to do this, we're about to do this and you keep waiting but then it keeps getting pushed back. There's a lot of different scenarios, that's just one of them but one of the big things that you're battling at a record company other than money and creative control really is just being priority in the first place. You are battling other artists on the shelf for attention. I don't care how big you are no matter what as a company resources are still limited even though it might be more and these record labels are trying to figure out who they want to divvy their resources to as artists and if you aren't one of those priorities, eh. And the next thing that you're battling at a big company like that is just this thing called bureaucracy, boy. If you haven't really experienced bureaucracy it's basically like this red tape, it's the chain of command that people have to go through to get certain things done and sometimes it could be overkill. For example, when I was in college I found myself in a situation where I landed this big internship at AT&T and in the interview the guy basically says, you got the job, I want you to have it. But he says, I don't know how long it's going to take before I can tell you you got the job because what I got to do is tell these people that you got the job, I'm going to send them the paper, they're going to finish and fill out the paper, they're going to send it back to me, I'm going to sign it, I'm going to send it to this guy, he's going to send it to that guy, that guy is going to send it back to him, him, I send it there and then bam and now I can tell you I got the job. It sounds stupid but a lot of these big companies have chains of commands that are set up like that for all kind of legal reasons, especially once things have to touch the lawyers, boy, you don't know how long things are going to take. Add on to that that every single person that it has to be sent to is busy themselves, things slow down. In the midst of it all, here you are as an artist like, yo man, I need to get out there, I need to get going, you're starting to get antsy but nothing is being done, you can't move. And that's super painful for an artist who hasn't even blown up yet and they might be living, you know, in the same circumstances that they were before they got to deal a year or two afterwards. This is why you don't see me doing a lot of why this person fell off type videos because a lot of it is deeper than the fan conversation of whether I like this music or not, or whether I like their brand or not. There's so much going on in the back end with businesses like even when I did the how designer almost fell off video, I mentioned network as the reason, nothing about his music for the most part. So does being independent get rid of these problems? In my opinion, the biggest benefits of being independent is one, you're in control, two, you know that you're a priority and three, when you do happen to win, the upside is bigger financially. But other than that, you're still gonna run into the situation of resources being a problem. Money is a huge, huge hindrance for a lot of independent artists. From a record label standpoint, they're basically like, who do I want to give my resources to? From an independent artist standpoint, you're like, I need to find and get more resources. From an independent standpoint, having to go through those dry periods when you don't have money and not being able to produce as much as you would like to, it can feel very similar to the same period of when you're waiting for your turn finally to happen at a record label and you can't do much in that time. That part really does come down to perspective because when you're an independent artist, once again, you do know that you are a priority, but when you're at a record label, you feel like you're in a relationship with somebody who spent all this time courting you, but now that they got you, you like any old body. A lot of artists at a label, they have higher expectations of what the label can do for them than they do for what they can do for their own selves. Never fall into that trap. You have to hustle regardless. Of course, when you're independent, everybody knows hustle, hustle, hustle. I got a grind, I'm building my own, but even when you are at a label, I know a lot of artists who are signed and they're still doing their own reaching out to influencers doing their own, just getting into streets or trying to do their own shows and things like that because they can't wait for the record label to finally make them be a priority. These artists are basically acting like they don't have a record label and not in the sense of they're trying to trick people into think they aren't signed, but they just have to move as if they don't have that support because at the moment, they kinda don't. Even when you look at French Montana's case, his biggest song ever is Unforgettable. Every time I try to say that song, I almost say Unforgettable. Unforgettable. He had to spend $600,000 of his own money to get that song going. And I know some of y'all are probably like, so French Montana got money, but trust me, $600,000 is a lot of money to French Montana. The difference here with French Montana, you already know he came up hustling, so he's used to betting on himself. Shoot, some artists don't even wanna risk $5 on their career. For the last time, definitely make sure you watch that big crit interview on Everyday Struggle. Every artist needs to really see that. Now, what I can't do is give general advice on whether or not everybody should have a label or everybody should be independent, but I would definitely once again like to hear any kind of comments on anybody who has a label scenario on if it went well, talk about that too, but if it went bad, we definitely wanna hear about those as well. So you know what to do, hit that subscribe button.