 You know how we have a lot of post-humance releases like when artists die? Instead of only relying on the songs that they made before they died and even just the rust and all of that type of stuff, I think they're gonna take it a step further of making records with the AI voice and the fans wouldn't know. What up, what up, what up? I'm Brandon Sean. Over. And we are back with an episode of No Labels, Necessary Podcast. You can catch us streaming on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, all those great places talking about music money and the content creator economy. Just entrepreneurship in general. We are a podcast where I like to just sum it up. It's about artists, entrepreneurship and just overall rule breakers because of the industry that we're in the way things are moving these days. That's what the No Labels really means to me at the end of the day but we got a very special guest for you guys. This is Patrick Emboimena, Director of Influencer Marketing at Def Jam. Now, this guy right here has been moving, I mean, Director of Influencer Marketing at Def Jam. That's a, you know, that's a big boy title. You know what I'm saying? That's a big boy title. Are you pretty young, you know what I'm saying? You know what I mean? Like I don't consider myself old but you pretty damn young. So I would love to really get into the story of how you got to where you are. Some of the things that you see from inside the building and just as a whole in the game. So one, you know, my, how old are you? I'm 25, just turned 25 like two months ago. Just turned 25 from where? From, what you mean? Where are you, Atlanta? I'm based in LA, I'm from Atlanta though. From Atlanta? Yeah. Okay, so 25 years old Director of Influencer Marketing at Def Jam. How does that happen? How does that happen? So a long story short, I'm gonna start back like in college, like take it back there. So we, in college, I really was trying to make some money in college but I didn't want to work any of the kind of like traditional jobs like the Chick-fil-A jobs, stuff like that. So I started doing drop shipping and make some money. And the three main like keys that you got to focus on in drop shipping is marketing at that time. You couldn't, this wasn't like in the TikTok age. So it is before then. So I was learning like Facebook ads, Instagram ads and influencer marketing. So those were the three main things. And from there I started working with a bunch of influencers. And then I started managing an influencer by the name of King Imprint. And he does a lot of dance content and a lot of labels and artists would pay him to do dances to their music. And this is before TikTok. So this is like YouTube, Instagram. He would go viral on those platforms. And so from there I did that for like a year or two. When it was time like I was about to graduate college I wanted to work at a label. I wanted to be more in the music industry. So I hit up a bunch of labels. I was applying a lot of labels. And finally after like so many months somebody from StreamCut hit me back about an internship interview. Did that interview, they hired me the next day for the internship. A week later they hired me for a full-time position. I worked there for a couple of years at StreamCut artists like Saucy Santana, Saw Baby, Jakari, Likes Gankisha, et cetera, et cetera. And then Dev Jam came around with Toonji. He was looking for an influencer marketing person. And so one of my friends, Dan, you connected me with Toonji. And the rest is history. He hired me at Dev Jam. Now tell me this, right? Things came together, right? You knew some people, you got to meet some people from reaching out, right? But you still had to be somebody that they were worth, that they wanted to put on, right? Yeah. So what were you doing? Like what were you doing that you got talked to one day, hired the next day and then basically promoted and hired for real after a week? Yeah, so when I came there, that was actually like, they were, that week that was the, they were doing like the rollout for Saucy Santana song with Lotto up and down. And so they were gonna be doing like a party bus and having him go to a bunch of different clubs. And they wanted to get influencers on a bus. And so the funny thing is, this was like, they already had plans for like that Friday. And my interview was on like Tuesday or something. And they were like, I was in an interview with the head of operations and he was talking to me about my background. And so I had this whole influencer marketing background of working with a bunch of different influencers. And so he had actually ended up bringing in the co-founders into our interview. And like talking to me and they were talking to me about everything and also interviewing me and then telling me about what they're trying to do. And they asked, could I be able to get influencers on the bus? And at the time when I was sitting there, I was like, I really don't think I could pull this off cause a lot of the influencers I was working with at the time were like younger. And like for a club thing, they had to be 21 and older. But I was like, yeah, of course I can do it. And so they said, come in tomorrow. And so I got it done. I got influencers on a bus. They made a bunch of content. A lot of them had posted like YouTube blogs of the event. They had posted IG stories, all of that good stuff. It was a great event, great turnout. And so yeah, they ended up hiring me there that next week. And so they really, at the time, they wanted to hire me more so like for marketing, but they asked me kind of just what I wanted to do. And so I wanted specifically at the time to be at A&R. So I was like, I can do both cause I also wanted to do marketing. So I was an A&R marketing manager there. Got you, got you. So what I'm hearing is, I don't know, you got yourself into music really not with a full plan of getting in music cause you like found your way into it at first, right? But then you had a vision or did you, cause it didn't sound like you like came out of college specifically saying I wanted the music cause you did drop chip and all that other stuff, right? Nah, so I mean the interesting thing, there's like this quote from like Steve Jobs where he's like, you can really only connect dots looking back. I had saw like a year, so I think it was like while I was in stream cause I was looking through my notes. I like type everything in my notes, things I want to do and all of that. And I saw like a note that was like super old that I put, it was like look for a apply for music label internships. But this was like the semester going, like the summer before I was going into college. Mind you, I was going to college like to be a lawyer. Like I was an econ major, sociology minor. That's what I was in college for. But I think in the back of my mind, I always wanted to be in the music industry but I didn't see it as a real thing at that time cause I really had zero connections into it. But as I got into like the whole drop shipping thing and then the influencers and kind of got more into that space, I could see it for myself. And that's when I tried to like really go hard after it. And so yeah, that's how that kind of came about. Have you always had that drive and look to do something different because we got a little information. Someone was saying that in high school, you were a go-to smart guy. If you wanted to get some info, you know, you wanted to get your homework right. You were somebody to talk to. And apparently I think you might have had like a merch brand or some clothes or something you sold at some point. Did I? I did a lot. I always did things like to make money. Like that wasn't the like, oh, I did actually though. I mean- He hasn't sold much. He went from there in the process. I think that was also the whole round, like college. But I did sell a bunch of, so I started this nonprofit organization like a 501C3 and everything like that while I was in college. And I wasn't necessarily doing that to make money, but I did sell like a bunch of, I made some, I had my brother, actually he's a designer. I had him design some sweatshirts and then I sold those to like raise money for a lot of the different stuff that we was doing. But yeah, so that was one of the things that I did. And yeah, I think that's what it would be talking about. But yeah, I mean, even in high school, like I was always very planned out with everything that I wanted to do. Like when I decided in middle school that I wanted to be a lawyer in high school, I did like three different law internships at like law firms. Like I was like on that path. That's what I wanted to do. So I was gonna figure it out. So whenever like I kind of set my mind or something, I'm like it's all done on it. That's what's up, which is why that director of influence and marketing at Def Jam has happened at such a young age, right? And you still got more moves. You still got more plans. Quick second, have you ever seen an artist catch some traction and then they start to move? The numbers start to grow. They might even go viral, but then fast forward a year from now, somehow their numbers haven't really grown that much. They dropped back close to the same monthly listeners they had before the traction and viral moment. Well, that's because you have to know how to convert those moments into careers. And we've done this again and again with not only songs, but artists. And so has J.R. McKee, who's been a part of helping artists like Lil Durk, Rod Wave, Justin Scott and Money Long. And we just did a collab where J.R. McKee does a step-by-step breakdown of how he took Money Long from zero to millions of monthly listeners and winning a Grammy over Beyonce, Mary J. Bly's and Jasmine Sullivan. Check out this breakdown while we still have it up. You can check it out at www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Don't forget the www or it won't work. Again, that's www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Back to the video. I wanna ask you a little bit more about the inner workings of the marketing department of the label. All right, just so people can understand. What are the general departments and what are their, what are the things that they're controlled of? Yeah, so you have like, you have your digital marketing team. And so your digital marketing team is gonna have people that do like CRM email marketing. They're also like doing like me, influencer marketing. You have your digital marketing managers and they kind of had the artists like full-on digital marketing that's getting them different activations to do with their releases and kind of helping on the digital side of planning their rollout. And then on the main marketing side, you have the product manager who's like the overall product manager and oversees everything like all of the different departments with also just helping the full-scale rollout. You have press who handles like the different like getting them interviews whether it's with like the breakfast club or podcasts like drink champs, different things like that or even just like written press and online press. You have radio team. You have that's called promotions and labels. What else is there? It's a bunch of different departments basically just covering everything to like give every project the like right rollout and right release and also just to give that kind of artist development that's needed. Do y'all use all those things for every artist project or is it really touch and go? I mean, it depends on where the artist is at. When you have like a lot of developing acts it wouldn't make sense for like to start out with trying to get certain high level interviews. You might work with, you'll definitely like still use press but it's going to be what makes sense for the artist. You might use a radio but it may be what makes sense for the artist. And sometimes if it's a really like early act it doesn't make sense for them to be on radio at that time. So it really just depends on where the artist is at but like if it's a really priority artist it's all hands on debt. You're definitely exhausting every resource but it just depends what the goal is to get them to that place where it's always gonna be all hands on debt. Do you think artists understand what it takes to become a priority in a label? No, I don't think they do. I think every artist assumes that they are a priority at the label because of what might be told to them when they're signed or something. What does that conversation look like, right? Like like walk us through the, what is it just taking the artist through that realization? Like what does it look like? I mean, I think with labels you can only like, especially when you only work in certain departments it's like it's not necessarily even your job to say certain things, but I think with certain artists and even sometimes their teams just be able, they have a problem with being realistic of where they're at. And like the problem is because they're looking at other artists get certain things, right? And like be on certain platforms and they're like, well if this artist is doing a, I'm not gonna say a specific thing cause yeah, but if this artist is doing this thing, why can't I do it? I'm bigger than him. Or I feel like I'm on the same level with him. Or if this artist is getting this certain interview look, why can't I get it? Or like that's kind of a lot of what happens and people don't understand certain times. It's like it just might not make sense for you and where you're at. And like you're gonna get there. Like it's a marathon not a sprint. And sometimes even just with what I do with influencer marketing it and putting people on blogs and stuff like that, you might not want to have that look so early cause they're gonna be negative in the comments. And I've seen a lot of times where it's like a team or artists is super advocating to get a certain post on a certain blog, right? And then they get that post and it doesn't do good numbers or everybody's being negative. And I'm like, I kind of knew that was gonna happen. So it's like sometimes, but sometimes you just gotta do it just so they can see. And sometimes you know, you just like, we're just not gonna do it at that time. It just depends. Yeah, and that's even what made me ask cause I feel like once an artist gets to the stage where the label is ready to spend marketing dollars, that's usually when they learn, right? Oh, I got five K and this other artist got 500 K or y'all are down to get him 10 academics posts. Y'all won't even get me one and say cheese post, right? And I mean, we do the same thing. Like usually if it's something where we feel like the artist is sensitive, we'll let the influencer say it, right? I'm like, this shit kind of mid. Hey bro, access kind of mid. You know what I'm saying? Too much you can do about that. I was just kind of wondering if y'all were seeing the same thing, like those with the same conversation kind of coming up. It's definitely those conversations that come up all the time. And I think people like lose sight of like, what a label is supposed to be doing? Cause they assumed that, and what they're supposed to be doing on there. And they assume when they sign it, okay, the job is finished and now that's really where it gets started. You got to make sure that you're a priority at the label and you shouldn't really just be relying on them to push you. Cause I tell a lot of people all the time, it's like, if you're not even posting about your music, why do you want us to be spending so much money on other people to post about your music? Like, that doesn't make sense. You need to be like making us feel like you feel like this is the best thing in the world. And if you're not even doing that on your end, you can't really be expecting us to be trying to spend this much money to do this type of campaign or that type of campaign. Like show us that you actually care about the music first. Yeah, that's a good point. So what's the most you've seen me spend on an influencer campaign? That was, and where it kind of came from it? You don't have to say the artist. Okay, cool. Yeah, you don't have to say the artist. We did a campaign for our artists and that gave me a very large budget. And we did like everything. We did like Instagram sitting. We did a Twitter campaign. We did set up a Discord. We try to do like a Reddit campaign. And then also of course like a TikTok influencer campaign. And with the TikTok campaign, it was a successful campaign. The sound has like over like a billion views on the sound, over half a million creates on the sound. I think last time I checked, it was like super successful. Like the more you spend on TikTok has become super saturated, but you can still have successful campaigns the more money you spend on it. But the less you spend now, it's like it's a toss up if you're going to have a successful campaign. But if you get a lot enough money, you can definitely like make something go viral on TikTok easily. Like if you've ran so many campaigns, it's like not that hard if you have a lot of money to do it. Yeah. And so in that, to your point, like in that campaign where you had this large budget, do you feel like, well, actually, before I even ask someone to ask, was that artist like active making content? Like did y'all have like, were they a super active artist? I mean, when you're at the same level, you don't have to be like active can mean a lot of different things depending on where you are in life. So like you're active, maybe making one post and that post is going to do way more than somebody who needs to make 20, 30 posts. Yeah, that's true. So like if you even get one post out of a person at a certain place, that's even more than you need, you know. Yeah, that's true, that's true. Okay, because I was going to ask this, like saying to, could you make the point of like sometimes you feel like it's weird that they are willing to spend so much money on getting on other people's platform. When they're not even putting the work in to build their own platform. And this is something that I'm trying to talk about a lot. And we get into argument for clients about a lot. Yo man, you'd rather spend 10K to get on these pages versus saving that 10K building your own platform into your point doubling back when people know you wouldn't make any kind of hit. So I guess what the question I want that to lead into is do you guys kind of have a bar for when you start introducing influencer campaigns into an artist marketing campaign? Or, you know, I know what influencer tends to be very like, a lot of times like moment-based or kind of like, you know, ideal-based, but like at what point are y'all looking at y'all Ross is insane? Like, okay, now it makes sense to do some type of influencer campaign. I mean, we took, we're kind of, I think this year I'm taking like more so kind of a different approach with it. I mean, everybody has their like respective budgets for when it's, when they're releasing something. And so like for me, like the budget I'm giving for the release is either going to go towards like seeding it out on blogs, it's going to go towards doing like a TikTok campaign or Twitter campaign or whatever I think makes sense. So like I base it off of what I think is effective for this release. And that's kind of what we do, but also what they have to spend on it. And then if I feel very more like adamant about something like I really think we should spend more on this or do this type of thing here and we don't have enough in that budget, then we like figure it out on what exactly we need to do. But it's really just about the specific release and seeing what we need to do as far as if it's like just the more so like a developing artist and there's like limits. If it's like a bigger artist, we're going to do like multiple of those types of things and have the room to do it like effectively. So it just depends. Okay, got you, got you. You want to stay on that same subject cause I wanted to pull up a clip real quick and just get your opinion you know, for our regular format. Here's a clip of DJ Khaled caption. Some of these artists have it confused. You don't work hard enough. Let's hear DJ Khaled talk. I just got it confused. Y'all don't work hard enough. I got people coming to me talking about, I work, work. Boy, I ain't have Instagram. I ain't have Twitter when I came in the game. I had the word of the mouth. When I came in New York, funk flex cypher and Ebo let me on the radio and let me DJ for 30 minutes. And guess what? I woke the shitty up. People recorded that show to this day they talk about it. I'm risking my life to get my name out. But guess what? I wouldn't stop. They said, you see that boy DJ Khaled? We have Instagram or a blog for them to see it but the word of mouth in the streets talked about it. That's how I came up going city to city. You heard that boy Khaled? That boy Khaled crazy. That boy Khaled got a talk game. That boy Khaled rips any club down. These new artists, they got Instagram. They got the morning show that the minute the interviews done it's on the mother in internet. The biggest promotion. So you got the outlet to be great and you out here thinking you cool? Y'all crazy. I would love to know your thoughts on that clip. Nah, I totally agree with him. And I feel like people have it easier now with so much social media like you have access to. One of the things I see with a lot of artists is that they like to do this must speak thing where they're like, I don't wanna post anything on my page and I just wanna be like mysterious. And I'm like, one, it's a different age too. Nobody cares about you, nobody knows you. So it's like, it's just not gonna work like that. We're like more in a time where people wanna know so much about your personal life and all that stuff. It's like, unless you're already at a certain stage it's near impossible trying to use that as a marketing strategy and thinking that you're gonna just get people to care about what you're doing. Like you have to like literally be active on the TikTok, on Instagram, on all of these platforms even like creating a Discord or just being a Reddit community, whatever it is but you gotta even be on Twitch. It's like, there's Twitch streamers who are putting out music who have like more monthly listeners than actual artists. So like you really just gotta, people care more about like what you're doing in your personal life sometimes more than the music and it just helps supplement it. But we see a lot of artists that don't wanna do that work. They just want the label to do the work or them and post about them. What do y'all do about that when y'all feel like an artist is in that place? I mean, it's a case by case basis. And I think sometimes it also depends on the music because some artists, it's like they have really good music and it could make sense. And it also, they might have more of like a personality where it's like, I could see this working and some artists is like, no, you're gonna need to really actually like lean in on these platforms and make it work like it really just depends on the artist by artist cases but we still like harp on them that they gotta put out content. They really like, and we help them with like making those plans and like helping them with ideas of what to post, it really just depends. And like even with me, if it's a certain artist I really like fuck with and I think that they could really be like successful and I really just like have that like dedication or feeling like, okay, I really wanna like help them out. I'll like literally like personally like, and it's not in my job that I have to do it but like directly like talking to them and like helping them and like giving them these different like links of sounds to do like weekly or whatever just like whatever they need, whatever questions they have just like making the process easier for them so that we can get that done but I really don't have the ability to do that for like every artist because I worked out all of the artists at our label. So how, no, I'll say this way. So what percentage of the time do you think an artist is genuinely lazy versus just doesn't get it? Like what it actually takes and what it actually looks like? That's a good question. I think it's both though. And I'll say like, I think how I answer this though, I think 70% of the artists are just like lazy but I also think that comes in not understanding what it takes to because it's like you also, one thing I've seen in general with working with artists is that they don't realize what actually like goes into like putting out records and like what goes into making records like really like successful and big. They don't really see even with like people who have records that go viral on TikTok, they don't see that this person had to literally be making two, three, 400 TikTok posts before when it's an independent artist like not like doing a campaign that organically weren't viral. It wasn't just off this one post that they made on their page. They had been on TikTok for like a minute and they were trying out a lot of different stuff on their sounds and really like trying to put it together and figure it out. But some people just see a bunch of TikTok sounds come up and be popular and think that oh, this happened overnight and it's just really not the case. But I think they just don't really get it what it takes to be honest. To me, I find oftentimes laziness is a lack of understanding in any way. Just like we can all get to it in different things like, hey man, business, a lot of stuff and to do what I got to do for work I get right on top of it. But then you tell me there's like a little bit of leak at the house somewhere. It might take a little bit longer to get to that. It's just not my area. And I think for a lot of artists, it's just not their area. You got to take time to get it because that leak could create a big issue, right? And so it's on me if something explodes or something like that. But once I understand that that can happen and that might and it could happen within a week's time then I'll start to take the right level of action. And I think a lot of artists is just, how do you get this understanding? Because we create an environment where everything feels like magic anyway. Like that's kind of what we're supposed to do. So we actually don't want you to have that understanding. At the same time, you kind of get into this space. Well, now you don't have the benefit always. So you don't got the benefit of thinking like a fan no more. And seeing the world the way they do. Now if you want to be in this. I mean, because it's just a totally different perspective. So, I mean, with all that in mind, I actually want to transition in something. Can I add on to that real quick? Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Okay, yeah, let me add on to that because that kind of reminded me of something to that point of like the laziness and sometimes not understanding. I think even with some artists, their understanding of me doing what I need to be doing is like being in the studio every day and like making a bunch of music and perfecting my sound and doing all of that. And I think that's cool enough. But I think the person that goes farther is the person that's like, okay, I'm going to work on this one song, make sure it's a hit song and then spend so much time on like YouTube and all of these different things, watching marketing videos and figuring out how I'm actually going to push this song effectively and like pushing this one song for several months if you feel like it's that hit song, if it's not the right one and you like exhausted really like trying to market it in so many ways. And I'm not even talking about paid marketing but you've exhausted everything and it's just not connecting maybe moving on to that next record and trying it with that. But I think that person goes a lot farther than the person who's like, I'm just going to put out a bunch of music and be in the studio and think that somebody's going to eventually hear it because it's like that's in today's day and age with so much music coming out. That's usually not the case. So sometimes there is a lack of understanding of where I should put my time and how to do it but we have so many free online resources like YouTube and like even y'all's platform where y'all talk so much about how to effectively market stuff. So I think that's part of it knowing where to put your time. Yeah, yeah. That's a big statement. So I mean, we'll actually kind of broke it down like knowing where to put your time even just focusing on that one record. Did you have to learn that? And if so, what made you realize how time gets best allocated towards the artists who make it to a certain level versus the ones you see struggling? Yeah, I think the beauty of when I was working at StreamCut I got to literally do everything from literally like I was doing like even like typing in the metadata to submit it for all of our different releases but like of course signing artists, being in the studio, helping develop their sound and like working with producers, getting them to our artists to write records literally to being on set with our artists making sure they're like making content, getting the behind the scenes stuff, making them make TikToks while we're there like having all this stuff set for our releases. And then I was also working on all of the marketing rollouts for all of our artists at the label. Even doing like the pitching for play listing like writing up those type of stuff I literally like and even also doing publishing. I did every kind of different things. So I knew all that it kind of took and the artists that made it farther at an independent label like that were the artists who were willing to actually just put in the time and do it. One of the things that we focused a lot at StreamCut was on TikTok and it was at a really good time. I started there March, 2020. So that was like the beginning of the pandemic. And that's when TikTok really spiked a little but spiked a lot actually. But we forced that on all of our artists so much beyond just like us doing campaigns but like literally having them post on their platforms. And I think you'll see with a lot of the artists that came from StreamCut that they're super active on TikTok at this time. So it's like the young baby tapes of the world the lottoes of the world saucy Santanas of the world, Jakari likes Kankisha. There's like a lot of those people who have a lot of like different viral TikTok records because that's one of the things that we kind of pushed heavy was like posting literally consistently on TikTok. And then we got to ourselves basically more chances of making things go on TikTok. And just also at that time I was running a lot of the campaigns myself as far as like in the early stages of like from ground level I would be like doing a lot of the TikTok campaigns and if anything kind of like broke then we would scale it to like bigger agencies at that time and stuff like that cause I have my own agency. And I got to spend a lot of money on like seeing the effective ways to like one TikTok campaigns at that time. And because it was early, we had a lot more success. I think even at that time we ended up having a lot of our artists on the end of the year TikTok list cause we were just heavily focused on that. Okay, especially, I mean, you're talking about 2020 that was the time, that was the time for real for real. Okay, so I, with your role, right? And looking at the, what do you call it? I mean the executive suite, when I look at the labels I've noticed the way people move in the music world is a lot different than a lot of traditional corporations in terms of like going from label to label team to team. And then they might end up back to the same team. But I think a good example would be Amber Grimes, right? Like I remember she, I don't even know all the different positions but then she back at LVRN, right? And it was within a short period of time. But how do you view the label navigation system for the people who are in it, right? And the young professionals depending on what they're trying to achieve in their career? I think it really like the label game in general first. It's like one thing to even get in it and it's hard to even break that barrier of getting in the music industry. But to be honest, it's harder to stay in the music industry. If you're not really like consistently like having wins and really building relationships, you're not gonna really get too far. And you don't want to, you know what I'm saying? You're not gonna get too far but you really gotta, if you're trying to navigate to a different place, right? You wanna have like recent wins. You wanna have like good relationships because that's what's gonna get you that next job. Especially if you're in a place where it's like you could be, if you get fired, right? Let's say you get fired because sometimes that happens and it's like sometimes it's not even like your fault. There might be just like mass layoffs and stuff like that. If you don't have like these recent wins or you don't have like this good network, it's gonna take you a minute to find a job because I don't really, what I've learned is like, it's very, at least to me from my perspective, it's very impossible to get a job by applying to them. Like on there like things really, that usually to me it doesn't happen. It's like more so a thing of where it's like your connections and relationships are letting you know, okay, somebody's looking for this or somebody's looking for that or you see this posted and you know people that work at that level and then you hit them up about it and that kind of gets you more of a better positioning in getting that job. You might still of course have to, you will still of course have to do those interviews but you already got that like one up on the other people who might be more qualified. And I mean, yeah, I think the, as you continue to build your resume though, you have more recruiters and people hitting you up for like different positions and stuff. But in that like stretch of like first getting into it, it's more about relationships. It's interesting you say that, especially the recent wins because as I learned more about sports, I got some homies that work for sports teams and then hearing about the label systems and how y'all work is very similar where let's say the team wins the Super Bowl this year. And then the reason it gets so hard to get another one because half the damn team leaves because they get promoted, right? Oh, the office of coordinator and now a head coach over here and now this person got picked over to be the head of recruiting over there, right? That type of thing happens because those are those moments where you get those advancements. If you don't get a win like or there's no big wins within the company, then like nobody's really getting promoted like that. It's often going the other way. So like it sounds very similar because I started to learn that when we had some major wins early on. And you know, we weren't anywhere near label systems those relationships. And we found out like a year or so later, like for one in particular, Corey knows I'm talking about where they were like, man, like we were trying to figure out who was responsible for that. Because we knew nobody in the label was actually like behind this artist at the time but we made the artist go crazy, right? And it's like, dang. So that would have been the time where we probably could have escalated a lot of different, yeah, we could have capped a lot of different relationships and things like that. But we were just so, I don't even want to say just anti-industry. We just doing our own thing. Yeah, you know, moving. I mean, it's not a problem of being anti-industry because a lot of the times the industry can make you want to be anti-industry, especially when you like are really like really in it. And you, even for a long time, I didn't feel like I was a part of the industry. But I mean, that's another story. But I feel like when you get into it and you kind of see how it is, you don't like it as much as you would think. Honestly, sometimes it makes you want to leave and get out of it. But I think also it's too, it's just about really just when, like to your point of like when those big wins happen, a lot of people leave. It's like, it just depends on what makes sense for you at that time and really what your goals are. Like even like just like a couple months ago, a label hit me up about another major label hit me up about a VP position, but that's not necessarily like something I'm like really pursuing or anything. But it just, it really depends on like where you're trying to go and what you're trying to do with where you're at. And if it's like put opportunities don't come like just flooding all the time. So if it's like, this is what I want to do at that time and it's the right time, go for it. Hopefully you have your blessing from your peers and usually you should, but it just depends on what it feels like at that time. Do you find that most people are pretty supportive? The general culture is like, hey, you get yours, I'm trying to get mine. Because I feel like, I mean, I don't know because this music and it's like a different type of weird interpersonal friendship mentality that kind of gets assumed and exists in music more than like a general corporation. But I know like the corporate world, all my people I know who work in like regular corporate they is almost like, hey, get yours, get whatever you can. Cause it's like we all just trying to get ours from the man down there. You know what I mean? Like is it that type of mentality of music or is it sometimes people feel like, oh no, you leaving me or how does that go? I think it really depends on how you move and like the relationships that you build because everybody has their own like agenda in the music industry sometimes it feels like, but like for me, I value like relationships more. And so like I'm never like, if something isn't just the right time to do it, I'm not going to necessarily do that or if it just doesn't feel right with my relationship with certain people I'm not going to do it at that time. Or I'm going to be specific about how I do that and doing it in a way that it makes sense. But I think a lot of people don't do that in this industry. And I think a lot of people just kind of more so do what's best for them. And I mean, you know, that's not a longterm. That's not a great longterm thing to do. But you know, everybody's different, you know? I'm just playing. All right. Now with that being said, I want to play this other clip. Nah, I don't want to play that one. You guys see that Instagram is going to be charging $11.99 a month. And Twitter already charges it. Elon said the precedent. You want that blue check? No problem. Eight bucks. It's not just Instagram. It's Facebook too. It's Meta. In order to get your account verified, the name on your Facebook is going to have to match the name on your ID. Lil Ricky spelled with the number one and a three. It's not on your identification. So that's problem number one. No businesses. So all that paying for your business to get verified to get impersonators supporting all that out the window. So all them different pages you created where you didn't know if you were a business, a creator, an entrepreneur, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, all of that's going to come back to bite you in the ***. You're going to have to provide business information, which means you're going to have to link a bank account to it, which means that you're going to have to ultimately get an EIA, which means that all in days of freeload and hanging out and all these days of people just running ads up on you and taking all your money and all those days are done for. Done skew. Now, they said a lot of different things here. The part I want to focus on actually is first, since you do so heavy in the influencer world, is do you think the value of Instagram, Twitter, Twitter, doing these purchase verification is going to mess up the idea of being verified, period? Yeah, I think it waters it down a lot. Like even just a lot of influencers and celebrities like been posting on their story about how they don't like it in general. I think it definitely waters it down. But I think honestly, shout out to Elon Musk, because everybody looked at him crazy when he rolled it out for Twitter and now Instagram is following it. So it must be working on their side. But yeah, I think it waters it down. The funny thing is to me about the whole verification thing is that, and I know y'all know this, of course, but a lot of people pay for verification. You just didn't know it because it was more of a behind the scenes thing. And they paid way more. They pay thousands. People pay thousands of dollars for verification. And so like it's funny now that it's like a whole thing of all you paying for a blue check, you paying for a blue check and just like people didn't know it. And honestly, they're paying like, I mean, I would never really do that. I really don't. People have different reasons for why they do it and cool shout out to them. But yeah, I mean, it's not a thing that's never been done. Like people were paying a lot more for it. Actually, I'm glad you brought up that point. I hadn't even thought about that one, but I've heard situations of like 30 bands for verification. But it's funny because you're like, I'm mad somebody, I'm mad that they're making me pay $10 a month. I'd rather pay that $30,000. So what you're telling me is that gap between that $10 a month and that $30,000, that brand equity and brand perception is so strong that it's worth it. Now maybe it is, but that would have to be the argument. That's the only reason you would be mad about it. Yeah, but it is worth that. I think if everybody's verified, then nobody's verified. So like, if you, I would be heated if I just paid like 10K, 20K, 30K, or blue check and now like people paying for it for $10. The good thing though is that you still have like whatever username that you have. So people know that it's, you had it before this, but at the same time it's still like watered down now. You know what? That should happen so fast. Now I think about it. That was like three weeks ago, I feel like like a month, when I felt like it really got rolled up. Twitter? Twitter was like two, three months ago. And they announced it maybe, only like maybe four weeks before max. So this happened so fast, that had to fuck a lot of people business up. Cause you know, you know, there's a lot of people that that was their business. That's one of the services they offered. Yeah, that was the one that was bringing them up. Hey, I'm just saying. A lot of publicity is in pain right now. A lot of herd publicists. I mean, the support feature they've added to it has been pretty interesting cause Meta or Instagram at least never had like a real like true support system, right? And they have like the whole hacking thing now you can hit them if you got your account hack. You just asked them general questions. Like I was hitting my Instagram route. That's just to see if they'll give back to me. Hey, what's the best time to post a stupid question? See what it's like. No, it's funny about it. Cause they said they respond within at least 24 hours. They got back to me within like 15, you know. Oh, that's not bad. Look at our Instagram tips about posting. Here's the link to it, which I feel them. You know what I'm saying? I would have done the same thing, but I was like, oh, should they actually respond it back? You know what I'm saying? So I think like it's a, it's a couple of things about it that I do think are valuable that it does not give and talk about it. Everyone's kind of focusing on like the social capital aspect, but it's like, but what about all the other things that Meta would have never done if they didn't figure out a paywall for it? I think the best one was like that I heard was the engagement. They gave you better engagement on it. I think that's the main thing that, cause Instagram has really been like kind of cutting back on the like how they push out your content. So I think if anything, that's the best thing to kind of use it for. Yeah. I keep forgetting that part. And that's the only reason I would go ahead and pay for one. Obviously, cause of how, what we do, how we move. But they're in the support room. I ain't ever worried about it. You know, they done made fake brand new profiles like twice now. So, all right. So, all right, this verification thing, I think one is a good thing from a standpoint of it's actually returning to the actual reason they started it, right? Which is just literally verify identity. And if I was Elon or somebody and it was like, wait, people are paying for this anyway. And we not getting the money? People making money on your block and yelling I get the money while y'all struggling to capture revenue. Like, come on. So now we got this revenue stream. We can be more of a controller versus just waiting on advertisers and things like that. So they're like, there's that. And then like, I wish I've thought about where we didn't go too deep down this hole while Sam was here, where he was just talking about like why the advertisers pulled out. And it's like, it doesn't make sense either. Cause I'm not gonna stop giving you money cause you fired your team. And cause if you still gonna be the same service and I'm getting the same results, I'm gonna be like, I mean, shh, that was cool. Tough, tough for them. You know what I mean? But anyway, so the thing I hate the worst though of all this that I feel like they didn't have to do. They could have brought all these things, you know, these benefits. This hole that I've been hearing from Jacory and others that they're sending in other vacations to other people that you got, Twitter, Facebook, Metaverify or whatever, that part. That's a little bit too much, man. You ain't have to tell my business that I got this. I don't, I didn't even get it, but I would feel, I would feel, you know, revealed, man. You know what I mean? You know, I wouldn't say full on embarrassed, but it would just be like, why you gotta do that? Right? I don't like people knowing that I like something. I was like, I wanted those to be right. Like, you see what you see. So they really, they really aren't killing that off. And it seems like there's no, there's no qualms about it. They're like, all right, this is the direction we're moving. This is how things are going. And the fact that other platforms are, are like taken after Twitter. Now we got Meta. Do you think that there's gonna be more platforms that do something like that? Yeah, I mean, that's just how it always works. Everybody tries to steal everybody's thing. Like everybody, like, you know, of course we like TikTok. You have YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, Snapchat spotlight. Like everybody's gonna do everything that's working for somebody else. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm sure TikTok would like to do it, but they got a lot of other stuff to worry about right now, so we'll see. I'm sure they gonna roll it out before the end of the year. I don't know if I'm going to make things work, but it's gonna work. True, at the beginning for a period of time, I know that when we were doing those campaigns, heavy like 2020, because it just made you feel too, like it was like you're an older official and everybody wanted to feel like they were building it themselves, you know? Because that's why TikTok was like a better platform. It was like more influencer based. It's like growing influencers rather than like focusing on celebrities. Like it was more relatable. People like to follow influencers. Yeah, I agree. For sure. Do you think that's changed? Like has the culture changed much on TikTok to you? As far as like, what? Just from, let's say from 2020 to now, what are the changes that you've seen in terms of how the culture interacts with content in general? It's like super different from, I think people in like the 2020s and stuff like that, they used to like champion influencers and like those people, they really wanted to like, they last on to them and wanted to see them grow. I think TikTok has now become, it still has those people that's like finding their way and it's like more relatable and a lot of the content that you want to see, but it's a lot more saturated than people like, especially with these big creators focus on like the drama that they would focus on, unlike the Instagram places and stuff like that. It's not as bad, but it's still becoming one of those things where the influencers that are super big are now looked at kind of as celebrities and have those same problems that those Instagram celebrities have. Okay, okay. And yeah, it's interesting how you said they champion influencers before or like champion people becoming influencers. Like we're going to help you grow and become this thing. It seems like now, like that culture has been set and it's matured where, I don't know, people are low-key jealous, right? I want to be that influencer. It's no more competitive where I don't want to let anybody else be as big as me. It's more, it went from everything's free to now, all right, we're in the other platform, like you said. So with that being said, how do you view independent labels versus distribution companies? I think distribution companies are more trying to be independent labels now. Independent labels are more like trying to be labels now, if that makes sense. I don't think independent labels are actually independent anymore. Like they're just not, like most of them are all in joint ventures, at least the ones that you, as most artists want to sign to and then distribution companies, they like to call themselves distribution companies, but they offer label services for the artists that they actually want to do that for. So it's like, it's technically like an independent label because it's like, you have the resources there, even with an independent label, you're not giving those resources to somebody that you didn't. All you're really doing for them is distribution because you don't have as much money as a label to give everybody a certain amount of budget. Usually with independent labels, it's like, okay, if you're really like growing and really like early, we're going to give you a distribution style deal. And so like that's the same, it's a distribution company where it's like, but majority of the people get, I mean, honestly, even at independent labels, majority of the people get distribution style deals unless they're a bigger artist. And if they, and that's if it's a independent label that cares more about like maintaining your rights, cause some people will give you a 360 deal and like a major label style deal where they take ownership of your masters but still not give you really any money. So it just really depends on what you negotiate. You might be lucky and get a distribution deal if they really want to work with you or if you don't really have like good lawyers and stuff like that, you get that major label style deal where they take ownership of your masters but still don't give you any money. But yeah, like distribution companies essentially the same thing as independent labels. Yeah, I've definitely noticed that. And it's like the way I describe it is, it's like the new finesse, right? Majors realize, oh, they look at us as bad. So we're going to send out these other soldiers literally and bring them back home undetected, right? And it's interesting knowing that, right? And seeing that from inside and outside at this point. How do you view, let's just say you had your own artist, right? Whether you're a manager or his label, you have your own artist, are you in favor of one type of agreement or one type of system over the other? Or how would you build infrastructure? So for me, I'm gonna give you three different, I wear a lot of different hats, right? So if I were to like have a label, I would do more like the master style deals cause I would be trying to like invest in the artists and break them and do all of that stuff and be spending a lot of my time and resources to make that work, right? S-A-N-R, and plus like on the label side, it's like you're making an investment. It's like, and if you're investing a lot of artists, you really want to see that work. If I'm especially like, if you, let's say you do a joint venture with a major label, it's like you have to like report to them and make sure like you're having wins and making money and they're not just throwing away money. And if you're spending your own money as an independent label, you don't have that much money to spend. So again, you need to make sure that there's money coming in. So you have to structure types of deals that you give out in a certain way. At StreamCut, they were, our co-founders used to be like, they're still entertainment lawyers, but they were entertainment lawyers for like 10 plus years or so. And they created their independent label favorably for artists, whereas they didn't take ownership of any masters because they saw artists getting into like really bad deals and labels doing a lot of these like horrible deals. So that's why they created StreamCut. And so to benefit there, we did more of these like distribution style deals or like on profit split type deals. And as a A&R makes you feel a lot better about having these conversations of signing artists and it makes you be able to sign the artist you want to work with and see them grow and everybody's finding you don't have as much issues in those earlier phases. So as a A&R, I kind of prefer that model, but it doesn't make sense for like, as far as like a major label to do that because they don't have to do it. So it just depends. I mean, for some artists, they give like those deals where they do like profit split, which you have to be really like big, but I get it. If I'm in like the hat, like if it's my label, I'm going for a major label style, but that's like an A&R deal prefer that type of style. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we demonize certain models, but either way it goes, it just has to make sense all the way around, right? It's like, oh, well, if I don't have a percentage of this or I don't have a piece of this, I don't have a piece of this and you want this much money, right? Then you can't expect that much money actually. Or you can't expect this much effort, like the incentive isn't there. The way my life is set up and the way the deal is set up. Or okay, I have a greater piece. Well, man, if you want a greater piece, let's say you want a piece of the master, well on the outer side, well then I'm expecting this much money or effort right here prioritization in your life, right? So if that comes, then great. Just like any other business, right? Oh, you actually do grow the business from, you know, 500K to 50 million, then all right, that might make a lot of sense, right? But if I'm only getting a certain piece and I don't actually own any of the main thing, shoot my incentive to grow it from 500K to 50 million, shit as hard as it is, I could go make that money somewhere else. Exactly. And I don't think artists see it that way. I think the problem with a lot of artists too, when it comes to having these conversation deals, they always think that somebody's negatively out to get them, but they don't think of the other side. You haven't really built leverage. So like you're looking at, oh, I'm supposed to get these type of deals because it is what I see on the internet, but how much money does your music actually generate for you currently? Like what do you make in a month off of your streams? What are you making a year off of your stream? Now, why would I pay you X amount of dollars? Why am I paying you a million dollars and give you ownership to your masters when it doesn't even make you a thousand dollars a month? Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense. So I mean, it's really about kind of thinking about that. And like before you even try to get towards a major label deal, building that leverage to where you can really come in there and ask for what you want. I think a lot of people should really like, build some leverage, go to an independent label or a distribution company that's like, better than the average. Like, because you start off with like a tune core or whatever or digital kid, right? Cool, you build your leverage. Maybe you then look at distribution companies or independent labels to take it to a next step. And then from there, you can look at like a major label and there you're gonna get the best possible deal, I think. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess it comes down to this era having the advantage of hearing so much information but the problem is all this information doesn't apply to everybody's situation, right? And it really should always just be about the deal that makes sense for you at the table. Not a problem only becomes when the deal that makes sense for you in your mind is just based off of like lack of education. So it could sound like it makes sense. And then it's like, ah, no, you actually got into a bad deal. All right, that's a whole another thing. Or on the other side, you're judging the wrong way where you don't think it makes sense for you and you think somebody's trying to get at you. But like I said, you don't understand the other side of the table and why it makes sense all the way around, right? Because there are people who do get into those deals that are highly favorable on paper but then they are unhappy with the work that they never get split behind them, right? And that's another thing that people don't realize with a lot of these labels. It's like, if you get this very generous deal towards you a lot of the times, and it depends again on who you are and where you're at, it's like, why would I invest so much into you if like we basically are in a 50-50? Like I'm gonna just do as much work as you do or I might not invest that much because I don't see as much return as I might get from an artist that's in a 360 deal. Like if I blow this artist up, we getting nice checks. If I blow you up, it's like, that's cool but I'm not really seeing much return on that. Because it's the same shit. It's the same shit that artists are trying to advance and build leverage for, right? That same idea of why would I go to a label when I cannot have a label and make less money on top line but still take home more, right? It's the same thing. Well, why would I get in this deal with this artist when I can make less money over here with this other artist and still take home more? It's the same concept. So you should just think about it that way. Keep it simple. Everybody's trying to make the most money they can with the least amount of effort. Doesn't mean that nobody wants to work hard but if I know that I'm going to work hard regardless I wanna make as much money as I can for that hard work. And if you're worth it. Hey, exactly. Exactly. So, like, I would like to hear just kind of like closing things out with you. Like where do you think the industry is going like more so with AI? AI is gonna have some massive impact on the music industry for real for real over the next year or do you think it's a little further along? Personally, what I think with AI, and this is gonna be kind of a problem more so for the fans and labels. I think that like, you know how like we have like a lot of post-humans releases like when artists die? I think instead of only relying on like the songs that they made before they died and even like just like the rust and all of that type of stuff. I think they're gonna take it a step further of making records with the AI voice and the fans wouldn't know and they would just be allowed to make. Now, I don't know, I wouldn't say allowed but they would just put out more projects and make more money off that artist and probably try to renegotiate deals with that artist's state to put out more projects with AI voice but making it to where it's like you really think it's this artist. Like it really sounds like the music that they make cause the voice is already there. It just gotta like sound like how they sound. I mean like as far as like the lyrics and stuff and the melodies and stuff. And I think that's what labels are gonna do cause it's gonna make them more money but it'll be bad for fans. Bro, I'm glad you said that cause I hadn't heard that perspective yet. Like, obviously we know that there's a lot of situations with these records that I'm gonna be created for sure that fans don't know, right? If it's somebody, cause it could just be a random kid in the room, I make this record that sounds like Kendrick Lamar and then people don't know that it's actually not Kendrick Lamar, right? But if you have a situation where everybody is in on it all the official people, the record label, the estate then truly, yeah, I might, the lie will never be revealed. That's crazy. That's crazy. And, you know, knowing how these labels move, I do not doubt that one bit. And knowing how, you know, some of the states might be like, hey, well we might as well cause we own the likeness, right? We own the like whatever else is required to be able to do that. And it would technically be legal. Exactly. But if it was just the fans who would be mad about it. And they wouldn't even be mad about it cause they wouldn't really know, but Right. It just comes down to, does anybody care enough? Like, or what do you like kind of value more? And I think just generally speaking with businesses, it's a business, so if it makes money and you can get away with it, cool. Bringing life back to the IP? Yeah, yeah. That's all it technically is. It technically is just bringing life back to the IP cause we do that with movies and other type of images, cartoons and things like that. Technically, it would just be that, right? Cause all of them are art forms. I think we associate music a little bit more personally, but technically it's just that. And it's just an uneasy thing that we're probably gonna have to get over. Cause I mean, when you kind of even think about it and look at artists like Juice World, it's like, I think he's at this point, they've released like three or four projects after like he's been dead. And I know like there's been the stories of how he's like, he used to record so much music. So I know like he's probably like had so much music like go from, but at one point do you be like, like, you know, let's say down in the seventh, eighth, ninth project of like releases, when do you kind of think about it? Like, is this still like his drafts? Yeah, see, that's the whole thing. That's when you get into conspiracies. Like, oh yeah, they're gonna, they starting to build it. He works all the time. So it could be believable. They trying to create it, make it seem. Yeah, nah, I don't know. Wow, wow. Yeah, man, that's a great take. That's a great take. And that would be interesting, very interesting to see. Is there anything that you feel like we should look out for going on with you going on this next year? Oh, no, I'm just gonna continue to work. Just continue to work, that's all I can do. All right, I feel it, I feel it, man. Appreciate you stopping by, Patrick. Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. Should I tell everybody where to follow you? Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram at Patrick.mgb. Patrick.mgb, y'all check them out. Yep, this is yet another episode of No Labels, Necessary Podcast. I'm Brandon and Sean. I'm a cower. And we out.