 What's up everybody, once again, it's Brandon and Shawn and we got to talk about four things that are super helpful for artists to know and keep in mind. It's from one of the best breakdowns that I've personally seen on what an artist should get done to get something happening in their career, whether it's from a label or make brand deals, all that good stuff. So where's this breakdown from? It's from a label of sorts called AWOL and ironically it's actually an acronym A-W-A-L standing for artists without a label. Despite how you define them, they have a lot of artist services but this article that I'm about to talk about, the link will be in the description below for you to get really into the details but basically they title the article what we look for in an AWOL member. Why that's important is because you can submit your music to become a part of the label. One is quality, highly subjective blah blah blah but we all know that there's a sense of what quality is. That's a part of it. You can submit your music. They'll have A&Rs and other type of people I guess. Listen to your music. I'm gonna do a video on them by the way from more of a service perspective but for now let's just move on. Second is fan engagement. Reading straight from this article it says the ideal AWOL candidate should already have an engaged fan base. Our A&R team quantifies this by checking the number of streams or views an artist has on popular streaming sites like SoundCloud, Spotify and YouTube. The level of engagement the artist has on these platforms in terms of followers and subscribers. Now I've seen people who only have 18,000 Instagram followers. People who have 30,000 Instagram followers. People who have over a million, 700,000 and over a million Instagram followers all signed to AWOL. So it handles people at every single level but keep in mind if they don't have an Instagram following they probably have a good amount of Spotify followers. Well listeners if they don't have a good following on Instagram they probably have a lot of listeners on Spotify and Apple Music that listen to them. But outside of just straight up fan engagement they say that they also look at your tours. Things outside of straight up music consumption online. Again reading from the article it actually states that the ideal candidate will have a track record of bringing in crowds to venues and maybe even considering slag gearing up for the next step which would be touring. So you actually wouldn't have had to tour before but it would be nice for you to at least have brought out quite a few people to a couple of shows. Now number three they call breaking through the noise. They say they really do appreciate people who appreciate their public perception meaning that if you've gotten quite a few PR articles written about you they would like to see those as a part of your submission or they researched that and see if you've done that about yourself. They show an example of other people who have made articles and gotten articles out there about themselves but it's something to keep in mind and it's not only just having articles out there they didn't really say this specifically but what are the people saying in the articles just some random post on a blog you know those $75 blog posts that they talk about in those random PR emails that you might get as an artist that probably doesn't impress them when it says hey this album out now and then it has three or four sentences that you might have written and submitted yourself there's no narrative there what narrative are you creating about yourself there's an appreciation to that part of your brand and are able to promote and distribute that perception now last but not least they say a supportive team and this is when it gets really interesting because they actually note some specific roles they think are helpful so again it says being an independent artist doesn't mean you have to do it alone and the ideal AWOL candidate recognizes that while AWOL will always play a primary role in your development other relationships which can prove beneficial are 1. a manager 2. a live agent 3. a PR slash publicist 4. radio or club promotions company 5. a music publisher and 6. a lawyer and the cool thing about it is all these things that they list have hyperlink so if you don't really know much about a live agent or a radio slash promotions company you can just check it out again read this article I think it'll be super helpful for you guys oh and number five of course a strong brand now if you guys have not paid attention to your brand at this point I don't really know what to say to you but here are some questions that they have for you has there been time and effort put into the aesthetic layout of your website does your website properly connect to showcase all your other social pages do you have press materials and a biography readily available this whole packaging is actually walked through in the build a brand kit I created so I'll add that in the description below a link to that or the pro music branding package where you really get an understanding of the brand possibility strategically and how to pair that brand with an actual packaging that makes sense from a PR perspective that makes sense from just a branding professional perspective those are the things they look for because they have to scale your brand your brand needs to be calcified down into something strong and understandable so other people can easily replicate that brand for you and that's it once again still go check out that article save that article in your favorites in your bookmarks wherever you save information it's already written down into perfect notes check it out and click on the hyperlinks again I'll also do a video on a wall at some point other than that though I want to know your thoughts and if you like this video go ahead to like button if you like your mouse well share it and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe