 there's something that's been bringing a lot of damage to artist careers and it's still doing it and you gotta make sure you don't get caught up doing this because i knew it was happening but i didn't know it was happening as much as it is and man the level of damage that is about to do is crazy because it's only getting worse and that's drug dealer playlist now what do i mean by drug dealer playlist everybody's probably familiar if you're watching this video you're probably familiar with playlist right but what do drug dealers do if you know anything about street culture drug dealers they give a little sample out all right and once they give you that little sample you get hooked once you're hooked now you're coming back for more and they're charging you the premium right and that's how they build out their business samples now why is that related to playlist you might not have experienced this but a while ago it's been a minute i remember the first artist told me they were just like i saw my streams go up out of nowhere and i was like yo this is crazy i thought i was catching like an organic space in an algorithm and then i got hit up by somebody in my DMs and they were like yo you like that don't you and they were like what do you talk about and i'm that was such that just that story sounded crazy to me but anyway they he was like yo that was me do you like those streams i can give you more right just pay me put you on some playlist right and this guy did it and i was like what are you doing bruh that makes no sense why would you hop on this dag on playlist that's that this dude just came out of nowhere gave you a pump and now you're buying into the program makes no sense and i thought that was like a one-off situation then i heard it again cool but i still didn't hear it as like a frequently from most of the people that you know i work with why probably because we keep everybody highly educated in this mix but some recent conversations i found out that many people have actually been plagued with this issue they're making a lot of money these people who are actually doing and running this strategy and when you add on top of this this is where it could bring damage and i i'm sorry to say i don't know if you can do anything about it because we're in the day and age where Spotify is cracking down extra on playlist we've talked about this for and then the distributors are like yo okay we don't want to have to pay the money so um you know artists you're gonna have to pay up as a matter of fact we're just gonna get you off the platform we're gonna disassociate ourselves so we can stay in good standing with the dsp right see dsp we aren't on their side but here's the thing how do you stop it when somebody comes to you and they put streams on your profile they come and put you in a playlist against your will and then try to sell you something but then Spotify distro kid or whoever swoops in and says yo you have straight fake streams on your profile get out of here right they call you out do real damage to your profile suspend your profile when you literally had nothing to do with it and how are they supposed to just guess right honestly like there's no way i think this this the complexity of this this uh botting and these businesses is actually a lot more than most people understand when they wonder like well how come Spotify doesn't figure it all out how come um distro kid or all these companies figure it all out well something like that that's just not is it bots or not well hey i can see there's bots but how am i supposed to believe right random small artists in in the middle of nowhere that you didn't put that song on that playlist on purpose right oh somebody just came in and gave you some free streams why would somebody do that can you can you see why that doesn't add up or it's hard to believe that right it's just easier for me to close up on my side and say nah i'm just going to wipe all of y'all off now that's an issue we know that's that's an issue but it's something to one look out for pay attention to if you ever see something like that please please do not participate don't fall for the trap and then pay for the drug right that's that's crazy and then two also like the best thing you can do is try to alert a distributor or somebody like that in that case if you see something like that happening because i end up having somebody say yo man i don't know what to do this guy reached out and he tried to pump up my streams and i didn't want him to i said no and i told him to take it off and he said he couldn't take it off and now he was stuck right so we're in this weird space where we don't just have the danger of some of the decision making that the dsp's are making but we have a legitimate danger on these people who are making good money by tricking enough people and still damaging right people who aren't being tricked i hadn't seen this before before it's usually you know i present you with the trick box and then if you fall into the trick box cool and if you don't oh look you you just dodged you know a bullet nah man you're not dodging the bullet people are getting shot like up front and you really have no choice it's just whether you survive or not all right so it's an interesting space but the other side of this the other side of this has to be the accountability of the artists themselves right you yourself and this is something we promote on our channel most people don't promote thinking to be honest right most people say hey this is what you should do you should be indy you should be on a label you should go direct you should stream or you shouldn't go direct or you shouldn't stream or you shouldn't be indy or you shouldn't be on a label all right people just tell you this is exactly the only way to go versus giving you a way to analyze the whole process and the reason that most artists get tricked over and over again or people get tricked over and over again because they have trouble analyzing the actual business and the model and what works strategy wise and not in a given case situationally from one to the next and since they have trouble doing that they just fall for the next type of propaganda that gets pushed down the rabbit hole it becomes the next trend and everybody's doing it everybody says this is the way and you're just gonna fall for everything else that goes down that way right that's what's happening to most people versus understanding every single situation like there's a lot of online courses that are scams right but i've had some of the biggest benefits in my life from some online courses or consulting that we used in our own business like actually paying people and the things that they've taught us have been impactful for years on right but we had plenty of opportunities to buy things that wouldn't have benefited us so how do you decipher that's something that look most people aren't aren't even interested in figuring that out in this space most people just want to hear how do i grow how do i get more streams or how do i make more money of a music that's what most people want to hear so i only kind of drop the nuggets here and there in videos and those are usually when you see the artist say oh he's he's um i don't know like an industry or plan or something because he's asking people to think for themselves but the important thing is like if you can be accountable to yourself and realize all these strategies work right adds content right streaming there's great money to be made in streaming for some artists and done in the right way there's um what else a direct to consumer there's money to be made just selling direct for some types of artists and a group can work for some type of artists right all of these things have benefit and there's i could go on and on and on in terms of strategies but all of these things don't work for everybody or don't work for everybody based on where they are at the moment and that's the part that causes you to have to think for yourself situationally versus dating one person and then saying up ain't no good people out here right because you are bad at picking that's your fault right so that's what we have to get better at because we have new trends coming right everybody's saying oh direct to the consumer direct to consumer look that's been out there already right bandcamp has existed for years the platforms to do like all of these things have existed for years we have artists that are making hundreds of thousands every single year off of Shopify selling merch right none of this stuff is new right if you have fans right and you make sure you do that first they're going to go to where you need them to go right so don't fall for the idea that's being pushed and just because everybody's riding a certain wave think that it's time for you to hop on a wave you might not be ready for the wave and then you're going to call the wave a bad thing right even though no the wave is good you just weren't ready for it right or you might try a strategy or a platform that might not suit you and that's cool but it might suit somebody else right but you have to be able to analyze these things from a situational basis and that's where the accountability lies and that's my biggest point of this video here yes this situation with the playlisting and the scams yo that's that's crazy but playlist work right in use in the right way for the right reason not looking to think oh i'm gonna break my entire career by just getting one playlist all right rap caviar had its moment in time but that is not the the norm and that area error is even done for rap caviar okay right but there's real utility to even playlist done correctly but when you do these things wrong then you should expect a bad result or if you don't understand how to analyze the situation then you should expect the result that comes along with not understanding how to implement something that is all you you you pick the wrong partner that doesn't mean that marriage is bad do you get what i'm saying that's all hopefully hopefully you know you can hear this and rethink just how you're looking at these situations analyzing the strategies to platforms these trends again there's a lot of trends you hear everybody talking about these things at once right and indy that mean when you hear things being marketed heavily heavily heavily at once it's no different than when crypto got pushed out there to everybody in the world you end up with a lot of people who they get knocked out or knocked off why because everybody's just chasing the wave they're drunk off of the idea all right why is the idea sounding so popular i don't know right like but doesn't matter we don't have to go that deep all we have to do is analyze does this work for me does this work for me where i am right now maybe i will implement it later and if i decide to implement this which is the best way to do it does this platform work for me all right does this person that i'm trying to hire make sense for me all right doesn't look like they run their business legitimately all right and maybe i did make a mistake but i need to be able to hop out of that mistake as soon as possible right test all of this stuff but the principles don't change the idea is to make great music when you make great music the idea is to then get it seen by as many people as possible and out of those groups of people who see it the next idea is to turn people into real fans right and after you turn people into real fans the next idea becomes engaging these people and monetizing these people and mobilizing these people right that's the way you do it right you can skip to try to monetize and mobilize but when you don't have anything to monetize and mobilize what are we really doing here don't forget about the basics the paths still exist don't fall for the new hype and forget where the hell you are right now like that artist is already down the road let them do what they're doing they're selling you an idea right but what did they do when they were where you are right and is the thing that they did something that's going to make sense for you are you the same personality do you look like this woman do you look like this guy do y'all have the same audience is your niche even as big ask yourself those actual questions do you have the same talents do you have talents that they don't that you can implement ask yourself these questions and that'll help get you down that path again my whole thesis is not to give you one specific thing that will work because i'm talking to a general crowd out here right this is a video all right not a phone conversation so it's not to say this is the only thing you should do what these videos are all right with this channel hopefully is and inspires is to give you multiple different ways of seeing situations so instead of looking at one situation in shoe one d we're talking about 3d 4d 5d 6d as you get more and more ways of looking at a single problem so you can make a better decision that's it hopefully this video is helpful subscribe to the vibe this is yet another saturday video and look at y'all want to uh hop in no labels necessary we got our free community where we you know we had conversations every once in a while that's no labels necessary dot com other than that watch the next video if this is your first saturday video by the way we've got a playlist of it now check those out too peace