 There's a lot of statistics out there that artists need to pay attention to, but it's hard to keep up with all this information. So today, we're gonna consolidate it for you, make your life a little bit easier, and we're gonna talk about three surprising stats that could change the course of your music career. But first, I'm Brandman Sean. And I'm Cory. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. Let's get it. All right, so first and foremost, all of these stats shared today are gonna be courtesy of none other than Wendy Day, because she posted a lot of stats on her page. And when I had the idea for this episode, I said, you know what, let me see what Wendy's posted. And now, matter of fact, I love Wendy. So let me just use stats off her page and shout her out. So shout out to Wendy Day. And this first stat that I think y'all are gonna love to hear or hate to hear based on your genre is the trajectory of earnings per stream depends heavily on your genre. Per stream payouts decline most in Latin and pop and increased in Christian. The boost in Christian is driven by a relative rise in Apple listeners. The big decline in Latin is driven by geographic shift towards lower cost markets that are adopting Spotify and focusing heavily on Latin. Pop's decline is driven by a surge in international YouTube streams. Now, let's expand on all of this because when you just look at the bar, it looks crazy, all right? You got this average that they're working off of and then Latin is negative 21% below the medium they have set. Then you have pop is the second lowest earning per stream. Then you have jazz, then you have dance and electronic, then you have rock, and then you have country. All of these are below the line. Country is negative three. Then again, Latin was negative 21%. Now to get above the line, we'll straddle in ironically with R&B, 0%. And then 2% for hip hop and 8% for Christian. Interesting stats. And I think the cool part about this though is it really does force you to understand the different nuances of what your fan base is consuming, how they consume, and why your money looks different to everybody else's, right? Because like they said, the boost in Christian is driven by a relative rise in Apple listeners. So you might not necessarily do anything different. You just have a lot more people listening on Apple just because that's where your genre happens to listen. I don't know why Christian listeners are tending to use Apple. That's interesting. But the benefit is to the artist. So that's pretty cool. But on the other side, when you have the big decline in Latin, now we have to zoom out. When we say big decline, I think that can be taken the wrong way because we're talking about earnings per stream, but that decline is being driven by, it says a geographic shift towards cross-cost markets that are adopting Spotify and focusing heavily on Latin. I think that geographic shift qualifies as expansion, right? So it's not like they lost whatever the core is. Now you're expanding and there isn't an extremely low cost for a stream that you're getting at these other markets. So now your balance is putting you on a decline, right? Once you average all of that out, at that point it's just a matter of the numbers. If you're all in a emerging market, you know you're not gonna be paid much per stream. That's just the nature of it. But if you're expanding to emerging markets, but you started in a market that pays a pretty solid share, it's nothing to be concerned about. Yeah, exactly. I think that is what stood out to me too is you can really see how the different genres are expanding, right? So Christian music has seen an increase in popularity over the last two years or so I would say, right? So I think you're now starting to see even like a really strong subculture formed within that music genre that I don't think has been as apparent in like older years of Christian artists kind of coming up. You've had a handful of them like breakthrough and like kind of like the delineated other, what am I trying to say? There's been like a couple of like Christian country songs that have taken off, you know something like Christian rock songs that have kind of taken off in the last year or two. Christian rap has been building like a really cool space for itself on like TikTok and things. I think what we're starting to see with Christian is like that community is starting to get a lot louder and a lot more active. Cause you know, typically genres like that aren't as interactive in some of these things as genres like hip hop and pop may have been in the past years. And then like we're saying with the other genres, right? Latin and pop being two of the music genres that typically have to expand beyond the US and in other top markets, the quickest, right? Cause those genres are about damn near about global takeover. So it makes sense to like, hey, if I have to go in order to expand my market share I have to now go expand to Indonesia. So I'm picking up more people that may contribute to my overall growth or maybe these other developments or areas of monetization but my streams are going to take a hit because of expansion happened in a country that is a lower tier country when it comes to streaming royalty payouts, right? So it's like on one hand, you could say for streaming that's a bad thing, right? But then in terms of the overall impact on the artists and their global career is obviously a good thing. You know what I'm saying? So like even the new ones between what the numbers might seem to portray on paper and what it may actually signify for the genre in real life is very different. Facts. Facts and that last note about pop decline being driven by a surge in international streams on YouTube, that makes me wonder like just how reliant pop is on YouTube. Just the fact that they said YouTube specifically not reliant on YouTube, but I don't know pointing it out in that way, it makes it seem like oh yeah, their music videos do way better than other music videos, right? So this is where my brain went with it. I could be wrong about this as a peer speculation, right? But for those of you that don't know YouTube views and streams count towards album sales and billboards, right? Now it has to be views and streams from still within the particular country to count towards the billboard or the chart of that country. So it's only so much gaming that can kind of go there. But what that said to me is that they are probably running a lot of YouTube ads to these international markets in an attempt to break them because YouTube is typically the go-to platform for emerging markets, right? A lot of countries will get access to YouTube before they get access to Spotify. India is a great example. India had access to YouTube for a very long time. They just got access to Spotify like three years ago, you know what I'm saying? Three, four years ago. So I feel like it's more of a reflection of where the label and pop artists tend to be 99% major labels driven, like 99%, right? It's probably the only genre that's damn it like that. Or one of the few genres that's like that. So to me, it's a reflection of where the marketing dollars are spent, you know what I'm saying? Like, oh, we're gonna spend a lot of money on YouTube advertisement and partnerships and things that build you in these markets. And because that's where our energy is going, once again, this is where they hit. It's starting to come back in, right, we're getting a lower per stream payout. But my thinking is like I said, it must be paying off in other ways because they're doing it, you know what I'm saying? They're putting so much money into it. YouTube is definitely a part of going global, right? Yeah, everybody. Damn it, it gotta go through YouTube to go global. Hey, YouTube and TikTok, those are the two that are like must. All right. And by the way, this is by Duwetti. That's the name of the investment company who did this report. Here's another interesting stat. The average indie artist spends 26% of their income on distribution fees. 26% of your income artists on distribution fees. I don't know how y'all feel about that or if y'all thought about it in that way, but it says paying low fixed fees to nearly free services like DistroKid and TuneCore would enable artists with rev share deals to earn 26% more on average. So what are they saying? A platform like TuneCore, DistroKid, you know, you pay this amount per year or whatever, or some of them are free, obviously. Well, there's people who are doing rev share deals and it's 10% for me to go with this company. Why? Because I want access to label services in some sort, right? There's different levels of label services, but the biggest one that we know that people want is what? Playlist them. Playlisting, playlisting, playlisting. All right. As I said, still for many artists, this rev share is the only way to access value at services like Advances and Playlist Pitching. I forgot if I did. Yeah, those are the two. People want money still and they want help getting on Playlist and that's where the labels still, not the labels, the distributors kind of still got things on lock to an extent. I think, what is it called? Oh, Discovery Mode has helped take a lot of that power back there, but they still got money, right? They can still front cash and they're willing to give out those loans without artists having to go through all the things they would have to go through to do it with a traditional bank or a credit union. So I think that's gonna stay a thing. It's hard for me to see a lot of artists not being willing to do those deals for that extra 26% until that 26% becomes such a big number that now you have resources to start thinking about cutting costs like that. You know what I mean? Yeah, but even then it gets harder because then they start throwing bigger advances at you, you know what I'm saying? And more support. It was like, oh, you were only thinking about Spotify and Apple, we can also get you on Amazon and YouTube and now you're like, damn, I ain't even know y'all could do. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? That's what that looks like at that level. They start being like, oh, you've unlocked the next level of what we can do for you, you know what I'm saying? Well, yeah, like that. You should see what's behind this wall. Exactly, exactly like that. You like that Spotify campaign? Wait till you see our title of department. It's gonna blow your mind. You know what I'm saying? It's gonna be all over that bitch. Said no one ever, bro. Come on. Like, a quarter of it is- Wait till you see our title of department. Yeah, wait a second. The title of department is crazy. Like, but a quarter of every dollar going towards distribution and fees is interesting because I misread this when we were going through it during pre-production. Now it clicks a lot better for me than I got time to think about it. So it really is speaking more so to the people that are on more of the real-life models than necessarily the whole pie. Cause I don't get it, but if you're paying 999 to put your album out, like it's 999, whether you made 10 or 100. But now I get it. Like, if your artist is going through, I don't know, a wall or like a stream cut or something. And it's like, this is about what you're looking at on average to procure the resources of that type of establishment. And, you know, we always talk about, there's always the fee, you know? And the fee, the weight of the fee is always going to be determined by how much you want them to do. Or you don't want us to do anything or a little, yeah, pay your 999, you know what I'm saying? Pay, you know, give up your 10%, but you want these resources that make you competitive? Not like you said, that's 15, that's 20, that's, you know, on average, 26, you know? So it's, but I've never seen it broken down that way. And I can't believe there isn't more outrage about it, especially considering this is on the tail end of the Spotify thing. And this goes back to that comment that we had when the Spotify numbers came out, bro, like distribution companies always escape. Middle man, man, they the middle man. Just ducking, bro. Them rocks going back and forth. Distros are, they are the beautiful place. An artist say, I want to read this quote at the bottom for those who are just listening. I always do distro deals because I want a little aid on the back end for play listing and stuff like that. But then I end up losing a cut of my streams. And most of the time, they drop the ball. That's a quote by King Shelter. I don't know if that's a band or an artist, but that's the thing. Again, he said, I always, he's like, they always drop the ball, but I always do this for that little bit of hope. And I wonder how many of these deals do they get off of hope, you know? Just knowing they're not going to deliver or do they truly try to deliver? Cause it's not a guarantee. Nobody guarantees that we know we can't go guarantee play listing. Yeah. And it's interesting cause it's like in that, right? The distribution company is basically paying you to have faith that they can do it. The service that like you said is not guaranteed. And it's probably one of the, not the few music industry services that's like that, but it's definitely probably at least top three, you know what I'm saying? Whereas like, hey, it's not as simple as me just like spending some money or talking to my guy. Like it's a lot more that goes into, you know what I'm saying? There's 20 other of us plus the majors also talking to Steve in the editorial department at. You know what I'm saying? Like that's just kind of how it goes. So it's like, and I feel what King Shelter's coming from, but then you think about it from the digital side, they're probably gonna like, man, we spent this money for not to move because we couldn't do it. And in our eyes, that's not that great of an investment. You know what I'm saying? Like damn, this shit only would have went if we were able to do it, we had to do 100%. That's not a good investment on my side. You know what I'm saying? I want the one that's gonna move whether or not, you know what I'm saying? If I go 100%, this should be 100 on top of this shit already in a thousand percent. I don't expect my 100% to be the thing that brings it up to 80% or 90% or whatever. So it's interesting to see, I guess we don't know that's what the distribution company is thinking, but I'd be willing to bet that's what they're thinking. You know what I'm saying? Like that's out of their rebuttals that would be like, well, we were hoping this was just icing on the cake. We didn't expect to bake the whole cake. You know what I'm saying? And my rebuttal, what do you mean this is icing on the cake? Because if I can get distribution and get put on these platforms without the placement, the only difference that this percentage came in for was playlist pitching. Oh, yeah. You gave us an extra 10% for a little bit of- Especially if I didn't get in events, right? Or if I did get in events, and that's I think where they still can like, skirt pass that responsibility as well. It's like, well, we gave you an event. So that was the primary guarantee of this listing isn't a guarantee, which it literally isn't. So that part you can't fault them for is just about, in a lot of times, the artist more so misunderstanding and mismanaging expectations. So this is how I look at it. I'll just tell y'all how I look at this playlisting situation as of today. It's a new year and I know you wanna go to a new level in your music career. And luckily for you, that's what we do here. Help artists grow, get more streams, grow their fan base, do shows, get connected with people who can help them and have direct conversations to help you build out your strategy. These are the type of opportunities that we provide for free at knowlabelsnecessary.com. But the thing is, it's not always open to new people. But at the beginning of every year, we get a little loose. We say, all right, let's go ahead and let a flood of new people in. And once we hit our new registration cap, it gets a lot harder because we gotta slow down on letting people in off of the wait list. So apply now at knowlabelsnecessary.com because the faster you apply, the faster you get in. Absolutely free, back to the video. All right, now if y'all are losing 26% and you're doing a decent amount of streams, the reality of playlisting is, as your Corey said, you have the majors trying to get on these playlists, you have every indie artist trying to get on these playlists and there's a bunch of indie artists who are signed to distributors in these rev shares who are trying to get on these playlists. Every level that you're competing with, the signed major artists, the indie labels, the distributors, then you got the indie indie artists who are trying to find their way on their pitching to Spotify like their tool, right? Once you go into the editorial playlist, you are creating limited shelf space. We go from this infinite to now limited like we're in target, right? We're walking through the store again. And there's only a bunch of people, a few people who can be there. So odds are, you're not gonna be able to get on. Like odds, straightforward. What a one you want. You said what? What a one you want. I've seen that where it's like, we got you on a playlist. You want an anti-pop, but we got you on, you know what I'm saying, pop, new hits, you know? So that's a whole nother situation, right? You might not be able to get on it. If you do get on a playlist, it's not a playlist that you want or care about. All right, cool. Once I know that, the odds are very low. Am I willing to give up this 20%? But whatever that number is for me, 15, 10%, whatever that number is that they're trying to make a deal for. Next, the fact that they can't guarantee this. And then I'm looking at Spotify basically confirming that most of their activity comes from algorithmic playlists. The greatest power on Spotify is on algorithmic playlists. And I assume something similar, right? Not exact, cause everybody else isn't as transparent as Spotify is, but something similar to many of the other DSPs also still knowing that Spotify is the biggest one. So the editorials aren't even hitting like that. And it's not necessarily a guarantee that I'll be on the editorial. Matter of fact, it's nowhere near a guarantee. And the things that have the most impact I can get on without being on an editorial. Well, I can get on. I mean, the impact that I want from playlisting, the best playlist and that actually come from not being on an editorial, it just comes from getting the algorithm to move. Release radar is actually massive in terms of impact. And then beyond release radar, how things continue to move throughout the algorithm and getting on the old playlist is massive in terms of impact, right? To the point they've downsized, you know, a little bit on that editorial side, you know? So now is it even worth it for real? For real, because it's not, the odds say I'm not gonna be successful in this thing and I can get a better result from a similar thing and algorithmic playlists versus an editorial playlist. What am I really giving away this money for? And I think that's an important thing you touched on that does, in my opinion, give a little bit of leeway to distribution companies, right? I can only imagine what it's like when the two cores of your primary service, right? Or the things that distribution companies wanted for years is access to these platforms and access to editorials. When it comes to access to these platforms, I mean, it's much easier today than it's ever been. I mean, I feel like I see a new distribution company every month, you know what I'm saying? I have people in my life that I know personally that have started distribution companies, you know what I'm saying? And I'm like, they... Like, bro, we all get these. It's like, bro, you were just... I know you, bro. How you having a... How you putting this song on Amazon, bro? Like, how do you do that? People be starting... Bro, people be starting distribution companies in the basement like they used to do BBLs back in the day, bro. I'm saying, bro, so it's like access is easier, more people can do it. So now it's become a game of capital, which basically has now made us major labels, because that's the major label game is a game of capital resources. So now we in the fight, we didn't even want to be in, and the vast majority of our clientele is fighting for a dying service. Dying in terms of the platform themselves are trying to kill it off. Like you said, Spotify's been on a very aggressive campaign over the last year or two to deep-prioritize the editorial platform. It's like very, very aggressive, you know what I'm saying? And then there are other platforms that never really made it like a thing like that. So I can imagine that once the hype kind of dies off with Spotify, the others are gonna kind of be like, all right, well, we never really put a stake in this anyway, so it's not gonna hurt us to kill this thing off, you know what I'm saying? And so there it goes. The vast majority of our clientele doesn't know that. They're not keeping up with those reports, they're not. Like you said, who has the data to see that algorithm tellers work better than editorials or distributors does, right? So I can imagine the things that they see the value at how we can get you on Discover Weekly, well, you can't promise, we can get you on, not Discover Weekly, the servers we talk about, the ad servers we get you marquee, these things that to them would be the big value ad, but then the average artist doesn't know about it because they haven't gotten themselves to the point yet to where they get that information. So they don't even know that that's the value, you know what I'm saying? So I can imagine that that's a frustrating position to be in, you know, it's like the- Who could be an artist or a distributor, which one? I don't think it's right, don't get me wrong, man. It's not me capable. I'm saying, I can, there's a little, little pool of compassion in my heart for them when I think about those variables being included in it, but I don't understand, I think you're right. It's like, all of that considered, to me, de-justifies the 26th thing. It's like, when y'all figured that out, the competitive edge and that within your industry, hey, take it, you know what I'm saying? But until y'all figure it out, knock it down. That point, I think it's just like, all right, we're gonna hold it down until the jig is up. All right, like- That's exactly what it's like, but we're gonna ride this ship until this bitch bursts into flames and the last piece of wood is sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor, bro. That's all we can do. Before we transition to this next step, let me please implore y'all to subscribe to this channel. If y'all wanna see more videos like this, casual conversations about stats that can help your creative career. And then we get into all kinds of other cool stuff, but of course, if you wanna hear more of these, subscribe, subscribe, and one more time, subscribe. Now, TikTok, boy. People would like to say TikTok doesn't matter, which, you know, man, now TikTok, I feel bad for it. You talk about distributors, now TikTok, I feel bad for it, because I feel like TikTok is that person in the relationship who has done all this stuff for you, but now they're trying to treat you a little bit normal, right, because they don't have as much time. I got a job now. I can't just do everything for you. All of a sudden people act like TikTok isn't worth it at all. Like just because I'm not giving you the most streams in the world, I'm not giving you a thousand X like what they were doing before, but now I'm still giving you a hundred X, 10X, at least on average, in other platforms. You act like I'm doing nothing. I ain't nothing now. I'm just cast away. That's what's happening. People really have convinced in their mind that like now IG Reels is better than TikTok for artists. Like there's a lot of artists that have like convinced themselves in that just because, you know, they were frustrated with TikTok for a minute. And then now once IG Reels started moving, they wanted it to happen, right? I didn't want to have to get on TikTok in the first place. And then when Reels started feeding those fake views, then everybody started feeling good. Now Reels is a little bit better. I will give it that. But the truth is TikTok is never gonna be a TikTok's peak again. And Reels is never gonna get to the peak that TikTok was. But, you know, Reels should continue to catch up to where TikTok currently is. It's not there yet. If it was there, I wouldn't talk that way. But it's just not there. With that being said, still we gotta get back to the reason TikTok exists. And it's going to explain why a lot of these stats matter. Because nearly all users on TikTok, right? Use music streaming services. 89% in the US, right? Stream music on DSPs compared to 74% of music listeners overall. Let's get to some other cool stats, right? You're more likely to use pay for music streaming. Why does that matter to the artist if the customer pays for their streaming or not, Corey? Because they get a higher per stream payout. Because the artist gets a higher pay per stream, right? So you're gonna find better customers, quote unquote. More dedicated customers who can pay you more money if you're popping on TikTok and finding customers through TikTok. Now it says for those of y'all who are in the UK, 70% of TikTok users are more likely than average to use paid. 79% is a high number. And then 91% more likely in Germany. That's a huge, huge, like who am I looking for? Good luck. Deviation from the standard. So the most important stat that I really wanted to touch on though was this section right here when it came to TikTok. TikTok users are higher spenders over a variety of music purchases. This is what y'all want to hear. Like streaming money is nice, but this is the sauce right here, all right? TikTok users higher purchasing power goes beyond concert tickets and artist merchandise. Compared to the average music listener, TikTok users spend significantly more money per month on music related purchases, including physical music formats, gift cards and premium music subscriptions. In the US, TikTok users on average spend 22% more money on music related purchases compared to the average. So let's get into like what a couple of these things could be for instance, in Germany, they're 58% more likely to spend money on music festivals. In the US, TikTok users are 15% more likely to have purchased vinyl in the past 12 months. In the UK, TikTok users are 18% more likely to have purchased vinyl in the past 12 months, all right? I'm gonna do these last two and then we're just gonna open back up for conversation. In Brazil, users spend nearly twice as much money on music gift cards. It's not so big in the culture here, but twice as much to double the amount. That's a big number. TikTok users in Indonesia spend 37% more on music gift cards. So again, this goes back to, you're trying to find your best customers. I know you're like, what platform shall I use? But you should be thinking about where customers exist. And then what are your best customers exist? Because what happens in a normal business is, all right, yeah, you're trying to get out there, figure stuff out, oh, I've got all these customers. Dang man, it's hard to keep serving all these customers equally all the time. So who are my best customers that I can just super serve? And I know they're gonna love my music. They're not just gonna stream me one time and I'm making a video and doing this crazy dance just for them to like, but they're never gonna swipe past that and stream my music, purchase anything. How do I keep getting to those people specifically? TikTok is starting to lean towards that direction in general for people, but that process can go a lot deeper than TikTok in general. It can apply to a lot of stuff. But this is what I think immediately when I see and hear these type of steps. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it also speaks to the maturity of the TikTok audience. Right, a lot of people were very worried that this was gonna stay a platform just for kids and we assume kids don't have any money. So it seemed bleak for people that were viewing it as a real commerce platform. And TikTok has made some, whether you like it or not, some great changes over the last two years or so to really put a lot of monetization power in the hands of artists and creators and to make sure that that bridge from TikTok to music is very strong and very tight. And I think like now we're starting to see a lot of that culture that they built up actually hit the music landscape, you know what I'm saying? And you can feel it across it in a way that like, like I said, you're not really seeing it on other platforms. And you said it earlier in the talk right where it's like, hey, other platforms have in some cases the same chance as a viral moment as TikTok may have from a number standpoint but when you talk about the actual impact of it, right? Like, and we said it for a million views on TikTok looks different in a million views on Instagram which looks different in a million views on like Facebook or YouTube or something like that, right? There's a difference in each of those millions that if you experience them, you can feel it and see the difference. And, you know, and something like that you also get the chance to see the difference and the people that are coming through each of those million views and how they kind of like, you know, not reciprocate, but I guess interact with you and the things you kind of put out for them. And this is something that we've seen for a minute just through back end learning that, you know, we have the big numbers to quantify the same way I did, but you could just feel it. And so now it's interesting to see how I actually put in numbers, you know what I'm saying? But if anything, you know, this would encourage me to want to use TikTok more personally if I was an artist. I think artists need to understand about TikTok. And you said this earlier, right? Is that TikTok is no longer the magic push button that it was in like 2018, 20 or 2019, 2020, right? It's not like this magic go button that can just instantly start a career like it used to be. But it has more than proven itself to be something that's possible of building a career for you over time, which is something that as much as we all liked about the virality aspect of TikTok in the beginning, it didn't seem to do that. Now it's traded it, right? We're no longer the instant gas button, but we've given you a higher chance of longevity through the platform. Yeah, job is a good trade-off if you ask me, you know what I'm saying? How are people actually be able to make it using the platform? I agree, I agree. And it's helping you transition to things beyond the platform in general. So it goes back to kind of like how I thought about the distribution situation and whether I would do a deal or not, right? Whether it makes sense for me to do it or not. Well, when you look at TikTok, doesn't make sense to do it or not. I always like to say TikTok, their actual logo is a music note. They are literally built off of music in their DNA and knowing that they have to serve artists and make it useful for artists one way or another. Otherwise that DNA gets lost. It doesn't mean that they haven't developed far past music as well in some ways. Don't try them too much. However, like it's something that they clearly would like to stay. Also, TikTok's parent company, Bite Dance, owns part of Spotify. So they don't mind pushing you over to streaming, right? Cause that's just my other bucket, man. That's my summer home. Go ahead, all right? So cool. Y'all's incentives are aligned there as well. Great, TikTok. The way TikTok is developing in terms of their shopping experience, if y'all have not seen it, cause I know some of y'all do literally just aren't on there for the people who have seen it. And no, you know, when they start to add the features that are gonna be specific for artists as well, is you're gonna take the fact that people are already more likely to buy from an artist on the platform and then add some artist specific ways to do it. I only imagine those numbers to be through the roof for many artists and with ease because you're doing it all at the same time. As a matter of fact, y'all, it's not like y'all can't do it now. You can still use it like a regular person who's selling their clothes like they're a brand. You can still sell your clothes and all that stuff and a lot of different type of merchant products. But when they create a smoother way to put it under the artist umbrella, it's just gonna make it that more obvious and easy to use for fans and artists alike. And you're gonna have fans going specifically to the platform to buy artist merch, right? Thinking about like, let me just buy a bunch of artists merch today and knowing that I could just go literally look at these artists per pages and find some merch. And then it's gonna become so many artists offering merch, I'm just gonna assume you have merch. And if I'm on your page, you could be brand new almost and you don't have merch for me to buy, I think it's weird because I just might be like, I'll start to say, oh, I like this artist. Let me check out their merch and see if they have something I like. No different than going to a store. I'm not a store, going to like a tour and you know, you see an act and it might be my first time seeing you but I'll go buy your merch. Cause I saw you in person. You're gonna start seeing more culture like that on TikTok cause they've already got people primed to buy stuff on a platform like in a split second, right? Like I will buy something, I can save something, add it to my cart, right? And without losing my TikTok experience, you already got people used to tipping, right? And doing things like that do streaming. It's all there. And the hardest thing you can do is train your consumer to do something, right? So the fact that they're training your consumer for you and the fact that they're based off of music in general and the fact that they're invested in Spotify, they are so ingrained in this music thing, I would have something going on TikTok. Yeah, 100%. Like I don't think we've seen a platform as focused on figuring out monetization details for artists since Bandcamp. So I think it's pretty interesting. Bandcamp is the last platform I can think of that you could feel that they really cared about that and wanted to implement changes to help that. And TikTok has a massive advantage over something like a band, it's like you fuck with Bandcamp or you did fuck with Bandcamp. This is Bandcamp on steroids, you know what I'm saying? It will be for sure. Oh, yeah, it will be, yeah, exactly. So it's like, I don't know, like I think it's, that's why I look at like the trade off as being really interesting because, you know, being the weeds of it, we had discussions before about not being sure where it's going to go because you could see the virality back to dying off. And it was like, oh, how are they going to save themselves if they can't just push start careers every two weeks? And it's like, they figured out a really good work around that and then a really good way to, to your point, cement themselves as an integral part of the artist journey and artist monetization process. And yeah, I don't expect to see it get stronger too. And so like TikTok in 2020, like eight is going to be crazy, you know? Bruh. It is because right now it's like watching the infomercials in the morning. Everybody's pitching me something when I hop on. But people are used to the experience too. Like what can you do? When they can normalize sales, you're winning. That's what TikTok did with music first. They normalize music being in your face and people actually being cool. Before that, like, Bruh, matter of fact, artists need to be thanking TikTok so much, Bruh. I gotta give them a kiss on the cheek, kiss on the forehead. Cause even if you never get on TikTok in your life, do you not realize the benefit you got from the fact that before TikTok, artists were always like, how do I put my music out there when I post on Instagram? I don't want to feel like I'm trying to sell myself just posting, I don't want to have it out there. And then TikTok came and normalized it to the point where people expected to hear music in the content. It almost felt weird to not hear music in content sometimes. So you never have to worry about feeling salesy and pushing yourself out there again, because TikTok came out there and made that a thing. So if anything, please give TikTok that love. But now they're taking that right from we're helping people sell music organically, it feel like a good user experience on the consumer side to then elevating to, we're going to be helping people actually sell things for dollars and it feel like an organic experience. It's just up to you to not make a trash video, but we're going to help them be open to pitch. Oh yeah, I'm looking for something. When my wife goes in a target, she's expecting to buy something, stuff pops up. She didn't know this product existed on the end cap, but man, they set it up beautiful and nice, nice pitch. All that is is a post that I didn't expect. People are going to be on open when they go on a TikTok to buy, find and discover artists. They're going to be open to so many things. All they need to do is see the right end cap and display waiting for their purchase. And that'll be your job. Yeah, 100%. 100%. I am curious to see TikTok 2020, man. I thought it was going to be crazy, bro. It's going to be a different beast. For good reasons, I think, though. Yeah, hey, by the way, y'all, I don't get paid by TikTok by what, you know, how people like to say, man, you know, act like you a man in the system just because you're talking about something. Oh man, it was, they were coming so hard on Dame. Shout out to Dame. It was some conversation where it was about like the Spotify stream when they made the royalty changes. I know what you're talking about, yeah. Yeah. And they're acting like he was a tool at the label system. I'm like, yo, this man built his whole career building, you know, a once prolific indie label and everything. And y'all, y'all just, somebody just trying to make one logical argument. All of a sudden, you for the man, you bought. I mean, the eyes of some people, man, everybody will sell all you know, ain't nothing you can do about it. Hey, that is a fact, sir. And by people, you mean Cat Williams. That's crazy. I ain't said that. If you see this Cat Williams, I ain't said that. Oh man. I mean, I'm just saying, he just laid it out like all them people are. I don't know none of those people, but the timing just have to be perfect. Oh, Wendy. No, the last postal that I want to share from Wendy Day's page is YouTube continues to be top platform among teens followed by TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. Not gonna spend much time on this, but just want to lay it out for y'all really quickly. US teens ages 13 to 17, who say they ever use the following apps or sites. 93% of 13 to 17 said they use YouTube and the second highest is TikTok. And it's only 67%. That says everything you need to know right there. If you're trying to reach that age, you gotta get on YouTube or also understanding that if that age is a part of your demographic, you're never gonna fully touch them and I don't want to use that word, but you're never fully gonna access that audience. If you don't put your content on TikTok, but most importantly, YouTube. And now that I think about it, YouTube out of all those platforms is actually the most accessible prior to that age. You got kids using YouTube for kids, right? Watching cartoons and things like that on YouTube. So it probably makes sense that it's a platform they've already been primed for for probably years before this criteria. So Snapchat, eight-year-old shouldn't be using Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, where we're getting deeper and deeper, WhatsApp, et cetera, et cetera. But YouTube is something that kids are watching other kids play with toys on at like four or five years old on YouTube. So it does make sense. Yeah, and I definitely, because I mean, for a long time, I've looked at YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as the big three. I think a vast majority of people probably do it, especially in music. Interesting to see Snapchat, isn't that good? Snapchat, if y'all can see it, is slightly above Instagram. And Snapchat for a long time has been a sleeper app ever since it kind of like declined from its peak. A lot of people have discounted it, but we've even heard through the Wheel Works, through just other markers we know in ours running campaigns, they were always telling us, nah, bro, Snapchat kind of lit, like I ain't gonna lie, you know what I'm saying? I know some people that do very well with Snapchat ads and things like that, you know what I'm saying? So it's cool to see that technically, the big four right now is YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, especially if you want to hit a younger demographic. It's like, you damn near got to be on, of course, at least one of those, but ideally all of them in some capacity. And I think the most interesting thing about this stat to me is that Facebook is top five. The fact that Facebook beats out Twitter, which I guess is a hard beat out when you think about just from a content standpoint, I can't imagine a lot of teenagers that just want to read all day every day. So it's like, even Facebook, Facebook got shorts too, you know what I'm saying? So you can still get on there and do your thing on there and it's more personable. What staff is interested in to see because it's growing, but yeah, I just want to have to expect that Facebook to be like a top five. And this, you know what I'm saying? Is that a hard fall off but still hasn't fallen as far as I thought it would fall off of that demographic? I think the other part about that is the fall off, right? So from 14 to 15, 2014 to 15, they went from 71% of people 13 to 17 being on a platform all the way down to 33% today, which they've actually had a bump from 32 to 33% over the last year, right? So that drop off to me says, generally speaking for Facebook, they're in an age where they're just preserving their relationship with the older audience, right? Those people are stuck on there. We're gonna ride y'all into the wheels, fall off. There's probably not even much expansion into the world that they can do because, I mean, they've hit a lot of different countries. So I mean, they're already over a billion for sure. They've been that for a long time. So yeah, there's not much they can do there. And now we're just saying, hey, we own Instagram mode, right? And we're gonna own and build on other things and think about the future through a different brand and packaging, which, you know, makes sense. Yeah, 100%, I agree. Well, bet y'all, if y'all liked this episode, y'all let us know. This is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary. I'm Brandon Shine. Cory. We out. Peace.