 a rich music executive broke down while so many artists are having struggles when it comes to figuring out what their brand is today versus the old days. Check this out right here. It takes more to make it today, but it's easier. It takes more thought, but it's easier. The old music business was like a supermarket. When you went to the supermarket, someone had to bring you in. That was a gatekeeper, a production company, a manager, someone who we trusted brought you in. And then when you came in, they said, this is the aisle you belong in. Oh, Tamir, you're a soulful R&B singer. You belong here. Then we will put you there. And then the other gatekeepers will shine a light on you and people will discover you. That was the old way of the music business. The new music business is an open marketplace. So now everybody can walk in the supermarket, but now you gotta decide where you belong on. I think a lot of the reason why people are frustrated because they're on the wrong aisle or they're not packaging themselves correctly. If you are peanut butter, let's find the aisle where the jelly lives. It takes more to make it today, but it's easier. It takes more thought, but it's easier. And this is why I always say people need to spend more time on the front end thinking. A lot of people hop straight into it and or they do stuff lazily. And I want to say lazily in terms of it didn't take you effort. I'm talking about lazily in terms of like the placement of where you belong, how you fit into things and how the overall creative is going to connect with people. And that's the thing that becomes an X factor. You can figure it out along the way. That's also great to avoid paralysis and analysis, but man, I think that is the struggle. Not just the saturation of the game, but now you have to be able to think about this. Where before someone was telling you where you go, there were these boxes and we're like, oh no, I don't like the box and you can't put me in a box. But guess what? Boxes made it easy. The boxes made it easy. Boxes made it easy. And people are starting to see that. Artists are starting to see that because whether or not you like the box or not, when it comes to generating a fan base and being able to monetize off of that, boxes still come into play. Yeah, bro. We as consumers love boxes. You know what I'm saying? I love a girl. Yeah, like we don't, but we do. Yeah, this is my R&B crowd. This is my underground rap crowd or whatever. And I mean too, like right at Daniel's point, the boxes also just help you figure out like how to tell it the messaging. Right, like everything you said earlier, your brand is how you speak, but what you talk about, who you hang around, what you wear, what you do, things like this. The boxes help you figure it out. Hey, I speak to the emo rap crowd. I know they like Doc Martens and they eat at Chipotle and they wear these obscure-ass underground brands. You have a clear image of who you're talking to, right? And then sometimes what gets me about artists in the boxes is when they disagree with being in the box. Like, hey, even the issues and things that you talk about, that you represent, are the people more likely in this box. Or they're in some box, you just haven't found the box yet, right? So like the boxes admit, I think artists see the boxes as almost being like disrespectful to the art. You're saying I sound like someone or move like someone artistically. And when someone puts you in the box, it's not necessarily what we're saying. We're just saying like, hey, you were talking to the same group of people that this person is talking to, right? You are trying to convert the same group of people that this person is. And these are all the things that he or she has done before you that has worked to attract this group of people. This group of people that, for the most part, all like some very similar things that we can tell you, hey, you wanna relate to the people in this crowd, go get you some Doc Martens. Next time you do an interview, wear a Doc Martens, you know what I'm saying? And if you let them catch you at your next show with a T-shirt from this obscure underground brand, the only people in that community know about, right? So if the box like hell points you in the right direction. So some artists and managers are just waiting for lucky moments when the ones who are killing it have systems to consistently take artists to another level over and over again. And if you wanna see what that looks like, we just did a collab where we not only show the system that we use that's resulted in Billboard hit, some of the biggest viral moments on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. But also we got J.R. McKee to break down how he took an artist from zero to one of the biggest hit songs of 2022 and getting a Grammy in January of 2023. This is recent stuff, not old tactics. If you wanna check it out, go to www.brandmennetwork.com slash Grammy. Don't forget the www or it won't work. Because J.R. gets into the details of looking at the data, decisions that got made, how much content got created and how they adjusted the content over time for different parts of the campaign. This is real behind the curtains type of stuff. So again, go to www.brandmennetwork.com slash Grammy. If you wanna check this out and apply it to yourself, back to the video. Bruh, and love it or hate it, that's how people think. Yeah. It sounds so trivial. Everybody loves this idea of not being superficial. Bruh, all y'all superficial. Everybody. All of us. You see, like you said, you see somebody wearing something that you recognize and now you feel like they know something that you know. And whatever made you be able to connect with that thing, you feel like they have similar values. So now you like them, you feel closer to them or it could be the opposite. Oh snap, this person's wearing that. And I hate that. It's like the perfect symbol of that over the last, what four years was the MAGA hat, right? Yeah. Perfect. There was a very strong idea of what that stood for and people really loved it. People really hated it, but it meant something. Yeah. And we're doing that with everything. It's just not as strong. So we might not communicate it outwardly, but down to how you wear your hair, you know what I'm saying? Down to, you know, whether your clothes are tighter or a baggier or do you switch it up and all these different things, patterns. People pay attention to those. And even if you don't think you notice, there's like something in you, right? There's an instinct, that animal idea. Like that just judges, bro. We have to judge. People always try to get rid of this idea of judgment. Judgment is what allowed us to survive in the wild. Judgment is what's gonna allow us to survive and navigate the wild of social media in today's society. It's just a different type of judgment. Some of it might be unfounded. We know. Yes. But nobody's gonna stop doing it. Cause nobody has time to truly understand and figure shit out, right? Like for every single person, I can't get to know everybody to know them truly. Therefore, I'm going to have to have this shorthand way of saying, oh man, he wears that shirt. Okay, bet. He likes that artist. Okay, bet. You know, that's my type of guy. Might be wrong, you know? Been wrong before, right? He was like, oh dang, man. You just threw out that word. I mean, I thought we were cool, buddy. But like, that's kind of the way to understand how much you need to do it as an artist. Like when you just extrapolated into regular society and it's so obvious that way, it's like it's no way I could be an artist and expect to like go around this system. Yeah, that's right. You expect people to just become morally pure when it comes to music? No, of course not. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, man. Because nowhere else in my life should I have to do this, right? Or I do, I have to do it. So going back to the less philosophical aspect of it, but also just the idea of regular organization in general, right? My genres and vibes that I'm going for. So less about me judging who you are and whether, for whether I like you or not. But also when do I want to experience you? Yeah, what do you fit in my life? What do you fit in my life? Is this for turn up time? All right, are you turn up Tommy? Or are we like on the romance vibes when you play your music, all right? Or are we in the family cookout when we play your music? All of those are different things, right? And people have people in their lives that they can take to these certain events and might not fit in another event, right? It's all the same. We're doing it all the time, man. And you as an artist representing yet just another human to him at the end of the day, still fall under these same type of restrictions. Yeah, that's true. Use them to your advantage though. Use them to your advantage. And that's part of what branding is, manipulating those same foundations.