 What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm brand man Sean and I'm Corey and we are back with episode number 33 of our necessary podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, whatever you stream, podcasts, talking about the music industry, music business, entrepreneurship, but also the content creator economy as a whole. Now, as always, you know, we like to kick off the podcast with a little advice, at least observing some potential advice and give y'all our opinion on it. So check out this right here because the new way to break out in content is creating bad content on purpose. I'll show you exactly what I mean when I play this clip right here. I hate my TikToks. I don't like that. I mean, I maybe have like five that I really, really like. I've yet to delete them all. I have no process. I just kind of, I think of something bad and then I do. OK, did you hear that? Doja Cat just revealed a mindset shift you need on TikTok, especially if you're feeling burnt out or you're feeling like you're putting in a ton of effort, but you're not growing. I've grown viral TikTok accounts and I also design creative content strategies for national brands and influencers on TikTok. Right now, it's becoming clear that there's one strategy that the most brilliant marketers do that you can do here on TikTok. Kanye West has used Doja Cat strategy to market himself and his products to make billions of dollars. Trying to be good or come up with good ideas is often boring. Kanye, Doja Cat and other marketers take a good idea and do the opposite. With the Kanye West gap collab, the good, boring idea would have been to display his clothes and gap beautifully on the shelves, but instead he put them in the worst idea possible in trash bags. This was brilliant because it made him viral. People would have been bored if he had just put the clothes on shelves. And here's how this is going to help you grow on TikTok. On my viral account, I was feeling stuck at about 150,000 followers. While my videos were getting about five figures, 10,000 views, 30,000 views, 60,000 views and out of frustration one day, I just kind of woke up and I was like, you know what? I'm not going to try on this video. I'm just going to have fun. I'm going to try something I haven't done before. And I made this video, my 15 million view video. Being good and being perfect is the enemy. Try to be bad. Try to be bad. What do you think about that, Corey? I think it's contextual advice, right? I think it is good advice. It kind of goes back to the conversation we had about just create more so to learn like who likes you, what you're good at, that type of stuff, right? I think for the artists of Doja Cat or Kanye, caliber, it's more about humanizing them. That's the marketing, right? You are now this larger than like entity. We need you to do things that make you feel relatable, regular, right? And so what do we typically associate with high level acts, artist brands, really hot quality content? What do we typically associate with regular people? Much lower quality content, right? Creator A, who was a mega superstar. Creator B, who was a guy with 10,000 followers. Creator A might be using the red camera to make his or her TikToks. Creator B might be using the iPhone 8. It's only different. So we tend to associate lower quality execution of ideas and content style with like regular people. So we watch Doja Cat very geniously use that to submit her brand, right? Like if you looked at Doja Cat really early on on TikTok, all her companies always said, hey, she's just like me for real. She seems just like a regular person, right? So that was a part of her game plan. Let me, even though I don't think, I don't know, now watching that, I don't know that. I always thought she was intentionally going for that. Now it sounds like it was an accident, you know what I'm saying? But I always thought that was a game plan. But that's why I worked. Hey, we can make this larger in life figure, look like a regular person. And it's different because if you just did some super hot quality stuff, people, it wouldn't be as exciting because people are expecting that from you. Same thing with Kanye. Like he said, be easy for Kanye to go set up some massive display in like a gap store or a mall. And that will be the norm for someone of his size, but what's different, what's gonna draw a camera session? Let's put this shit in trash bags and throw it in the middle of a floor and let people dig it out the trash bags, you know what I'm saying? However they want to. So like I said, I think good advice contextually, but the key part of it is like, like I said, like being bad will either lead you to your eventual genius idea. I do agree with that. Or being bad will create something that other people like that you don't like. You know what I'm saying? Like you do something. I mean, we've seen it, right? How many times have we just thrown up a video or a piece of content? Oh, we gotta make the deadline. And then, you know, you go read the comments and you're like, that's the best shit I've ever seen. Sean, like, yo, Sean, you was in your bad today, bro. Like you ain't never gave me no advice. Like this, you like, bro, what? All this shit I don't gave you. All this shit I sat down and tried to perfect and research and think about it. You liked this video that took me two minutes out through it because, you know, EJ was young and that's about giving some videos on time. So people are interesting, man. That's the one thing I thought I would remember. But people are interesting. People are fickle. You would never truly have a gauge on what people like because people's tastes will literally change overnight. And, you know, like I said, to this point, the best thing you can do is create, even if you feel like it's going to be bad and just put it out there and see how the marketplace feels about it. Let that guide where the rest of your process goes. Hey, man, you use one of my favorite words, which is context. Like that really does dictate how to go about this advice because talking about Kanye, yes, you obviously could do it in this high-end type fashion, but doing it in a trash bag is something that's less expected for people at his level, right? So you're always getting view through the context of how people view your world, right? Or your peers, right? Your category is a better way of saying it, right? If I look at you as a top performing, clouded artist, then I'm gonna judge you by everything that I think comes with that. But if I look at you as an indie artist, right? Different. It's different, right? An indie artist that doesn't have anything going for themselves, you only have a thousand listeners. Like I look at you as smaller, I might judge you for based on your music, but looking at your marketing, I'm not gonna say, oh, just cause you do the trash bag, it makes you amazing, right? Without you building the story. Kanye can just do the trash bag, not tell the story and the story, be the trash bag itself. Everybody else will create it for him. You would have to push that story just to make me feel it anywhere near the same and I still wouldn't view it exactly that way. So yeah, the bag, good, I don't know, but one thing I can say is, especially when you're in a Kanye space where you have the ability to give a lot of visibility to whatever you're doing, it becomes almost easy from a standpoint of people get used to one thing and then you just do the opposite, right? That's what bad is essentially coming down to. You're like, oh, I'm just gonna give it this other, I'm gonna do it differently. And because of who I am, it brings validation to it where someone else might have to do it differently and then also convince you while it's still good. But people are gonna assume, oh, this is Kanye, this is genius, just because he did it. Yeah, and like Perception plays a huge part in it because like you said, if a smaller artist were to do the trash bag thing, we would, first place that people's mind would go to, oh, cause they're broke, they don't have money to do. Right, it's not a concept. It's a concept that you got money, you broke when you don't. Yeah, exactly. It's like, just like, it's no different than, have you ever seen artists that you were watching since they were like small? You could tell they were like really grounded. And then you remember the day they post like their first like hot quality music video, something like that. You feel like they leveled up, right? It's like, they'll tell us with drops of hot quality video every time she drops one, but it's not special because we expect tell us with the drop hot quality videos. But for this new artist who we watch shooting videos with iPhone, this new HD video that he dropped is cool because it feels like a level up moment, right? So even in that context, the marketing might be like, oh, it's genius. This artist finally is able to X, Y, Z, writing that narrative is much different for them. So that's why I say like perception plays a big part into it, positioning of the artist plays a big part into it. And it's also why I don't knock the way he gives the advice because he did mention like as a marketing himself, he mainly works with national brands. So he is mainly working with people who are on that level, probably trying to seem more reliable, you know what I'm saying, trying to, you know, to your point, take what would be your regular idea and make it seem more genius because we as this big brand are doing it. So the audience of people that he's probably talking to, like I said, it makes sense for their audience. For, like you said, those smaller artists who might be listening to this, like I said, to me, the value in creating bad content is more about getting yourself into the motions, getting yourself comfortable being on camera. Cause there are a lot of things that we do look at from artists. Shit, I just said it about Doja Cat, but there are a lot of things that we'll look at from artists sometimes and be like, oh, that shit was genius, how they think of that. And it was genuine accident, you know what I'm saying? There was just fucking around and like it happened and that came to be, you know? So yeah, that's what I want people to take away. Well, I'll say the other thing for me is just the perspective that comes with saying I'm going to do something bad, right? Because you force yourself, right? Just as an exercise to get out of your box and say, what would make me completely uncomfortable to do? Not just like, oh, I don't like speaking to people, right? Cause that's one way of saying, oh, I'm uncomfortable doing this and I got to get better at that skill. So not that, but hey, I'm cool. I'm good at posting videos. I'll post plenty of videos, but what would make me uncomfortable cause I think it's a bad idea and it would just suck. Well, how do I take that thing that apparently would suck and flip it on its head and just going through that exercise and putting yourself in a different space causes you to come up with something creative. And a lot of times we get anchored based on what we already like. If we don't go through some exercise that starts with the perspective shift, then we start to lose that punch in whatever we post. So just creating a starting point, even if it's just mentally as that exercise is going to pick you down a different path. And I don't think people use mental exercises like that enough, but companies, content teams, many of the artists that I know who do it well and do it consistently, it's actually always these types of exercises cause you can't just like churn out creativity again and again and again without it starting to become dull and it's not coming from a new perspective. So it's two things, right? There's, hey, I'm going to continue to experience and consume new things. So I have new information to work with and creative raw material to build something from. And secondly, I'm going to strategically make myself think about something from a different perspective, all right? So it was like, well, what if I had to start with a letter? Or what if, you know, I would do something that all my audience hates? Like, who does my audience hate? And what if I did the same thing that they did, but I did it in a way that they liked it? But it's just weird exercises that literally just forces you to think differently. Just as simple as that. So that's my biggest takeaway, right? Do the exercise and consume new information. Those two things will put you above most people in general. Yeah, I understand. A lot of times your most genius idea will come from you stepping out your comfort zone. One thousand, one thousand. And with that being said, cause this is a TikTok special episode today, by the way, we played that TikTok clip for some advice, but now we got to talk about TikTok and the heist that they're pulling. They're about to run some game on the industry. That's probably crazy. Directly labels that they're about to come for TikTok. They might want to shut TikTok down. Let me tell you why. Imagine being the TikTok star and next thing, you know, 57% of the sounds on your videos has been completely muted. You don't have no sound on your videos. Most of your videos at this point, your back catalog. So now, once you know you don't have sound, the videos don't really get watched like that. We've all seen those videos on TikTok and they're muted and it's like, I'm just gonna go to another video. It's awkward. It's awkward. It's real weird. You don't know what's going down. And sometimes you're like, I can tell there's a good video, but I will, right? That's the type of experience that's happening on TikTok right now being tested in Australia. And why is TikTok muting sounds? Well, music business where why did an article on this, and it basically breaks it down like this, right? So one, the test involves limiting access to songs for a select group of users in the market when they upload new videos. So they don't even want certain sounds to be available from these major labels because TikTok's trying to figure out, can we survive without major record label music? Can we get popping? Can we stay popping without music from the record labels? And obviously the record labels aren't feeling this. So they're muting all these different sounds in the Australia territory where you use those songs before, oh well, can't use them again. And now if anybody else wants to use them in the future, they can't. So what's TikTok doing on the other side? They're also generating music with AI. Trying to see, can we just generate music with AI and users not even notice or care and they still create successful unborrowed content instead of us having to pay these record labels because these record labels keep complaining and wanting new things from us day by day. That is creating an issue. And that's why they're calling it a highs for TikTok because one, TikTok use record label music in the beginning and the record labels are like, hey, y'all need to pay up. TikTok said no for a long time, a good amount of time. And then finally they agreed to a fixed deal. When they agreed to that fixed deal, the record labels, many didn't like that, but they got a fixed deal. They last, well, two to four years, whatever that term was, right? And by the way, when I say the record labels didn't want the fixed deal, they wanted to be based on the amount of streams and activity that actually happened, right? So they had all this happen, got record labels to agree to a deal that the record labels didn't even want to do. And then they get to this point where they're testing. All right. This agreement's probably going to start in in pre-sum. Yeah, I mean, I see the writing on the wall. Instead of having to negotiate with these pools, let's see if we don't need these pools at all because that takes away leverage even more. So they see us winning in this territory and things are popping through this music made by AI. Why do we need labels? Cause we got our indie artists. The indies are always going to be creating new music anyway, day by day, trying to pop. Cause then the labels don't own that yet. And then secondly, AI, oh, that'll fill in the gaps in terms of the quantity we might need. TikToks, pulling a finesse. I don't even know, we should talk about how it might affect the consumer side of it and the artist side of it. But overall, if they pull this off, recollect was going to be angry. Like different type of anger. Like, oh, another level. I mean, it really is some mafioso shit in terms of the way this whole thing has been going back and forth. So like, here's the stat. According to TikToks, end of the year recap, 13 out of 14 billboard hot 100 number one songs in 2022 were driven by significant viral trends on TikTok, a lot of leverage on TikTok. So, you know, the labels, they need TikTok or they really, really, really want TikTok. Why? Cause we weren't seeing us a clear engine to drive music streams like we were and like we have seen since TikTok came about. Yeah. All right. So we know they want it and the record label's problem is they don't do well at innovating and bringing attention to their music, especially at scale at a price that they can't, that they actually can't pay. So what do we do? We keep waiting for new technology to pop up and then try to utilize our rights that we hold to leverage a deal in our favor. We can't create TikTok. We can't create Spotify. It's just not in our system and infrastructure to have the mental capability to do it well and manage it and continue to grow it. That's just not their expertise. So Spotify gets leverage. Oh, well, let's try to own some of Spotify. TikTok gets leverage. Let's try to own some of Spotify or I mean, let's try to own some of TikTok or let's try to do a deal with them early enough on. But these tech companies and TikTok is like, like the indie artists, like the new age indie artists, they know their value, bro. Yeah. And they're trying to own the whole thing themselves. They don't want to bow down to the label at all. Yeah, it's going to be crazy, bro. Because I was just thinking about this, right, too. Because TikTok has sound on, which for those of you that don't know, sound on is TikTok's distribution company. And what do we just, you vaguely touched on it last episode, episode before, right? Where distribution companies are a lot of them times by the new regular levels, right? 100%. Now, this is how I'm seeing it with TikTok. Why I think this shit is evil chance, right? So no major label, artist music, can be used on the platform in Australia for now, assuming everywhere if there's hits. Now, let's think about, because you said how would this affect consumer artists? This is what I see, bro. Think about the Trigodon effect, right? I'm a major label. I can't go to this platform that has, you know, significantly benefited me because the music isn't available there. So not only do major labels lose a large chunk of their promotional assets, they lose everything that comes with that, right? But then on top of that, if I'm an artist who has been finding significant success on TikTok, then now I don't even wanna go sign to a major label because it's gonna completely cut off my priority engine, my priority vehicle, you know what I'm saying? And so who picks up the slack of that? TikTok and their sound on distribution, right? We're not a major label. So we don't violate our own rules. We have the growing leverage to provide a lot of things for you that, you know what I'm saying? These labels can provide outside of maybe capital, because I don't have a sound on it. It's giving out like deals or anything yet, but I'm pretty sure they have DSP relationships. They're giving out some money. They have? Okay. Yeah, I know some artists. Right, so we can do for you what a major label can do. We can, you know, of course, help you do some backend things on the on to help you grow. And you can keep this whole funnel within the TikTok ecosystem. So now we can go out there and we can push the narrative, hey, artists can be successful on TikTok despite major labels or artists can be successful in music despite major labels. All they need is to help of your friendly neighborhood, distribute like a sound doing or something. So that's what I think is gonna happen is it's gonna take this whole generation of artists who value the ecosystem of TikTok more than they necessarily value the ecosystem of a label because a lot of these artists will come to understand TikTok before they ever come to understand the label system because it's easier access. So I can go download TikTok today, read the terms and community guidelines and know what the fuck I'm getting into is not the same thing with labels, right? Yeah, you've been in a relationship early. Yeah, so that's how I look at it. It's like almost like, hey, we're going to use this influence we have to train the next generation of music artists and music stars who already see us as the way out to only fuck with us and think about what you'll be given up by accepting help from people that we are at war with. Yeah, because if you think about most artists, but the most artists with the pop and TikTok presence is a hundredth of something that's going to pick TikTok over the label any day. Most, sure. Okay, yeah. It's the very least by TikTok has first rider refusal. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then like they also, they are the A and R, right? I can see this creator when he's first hopped on and see when he first asked about our video and I'm like, hey, this guy only got a thousand followers, but he just caught a 10 million view TikTok last week. Let's reach out to him to give him some crazy deals to sound on because we can also just leverage more visibility on the platform because we know that's what they want. Saving us some money, saving us some dollars, helping us build our narrative because TikTok is a narrative building law right now. I don't think a lot of people realize it, but we talked about it on, I think maybe on another episode where like, you can tell a lot of the moves they're making right now aren't necessarily because like, they think it's going to like cap immediately. Like they're setting the stage for the future. You know what I'm saying? Like they're setting the stage so that in two or three years when the conversation can be who's competing with major labels? TikTok, you know what I'm saying? Who's competing with blah, blah, blah, blah? TikTok, you know what I'm saying? And like we have been very vocal over the last six, I've only been doing this podcast and saying that, hey, TikTok is competing with YouTube, you know what I'm saying? YouTube has been for the most part, the only real social media platform with a direct pipeline into the music industry. From what I can tell, Instagram doesn't really seem to have one like that. You know what I'm saying? Twitter, most of them don't really seem to like have as deep of a relationship or be as deep in bed with the music industry as YouTube is. You know, TikTok has put themselves in the position to be like YouTube in that same sense, but in a different way. And I mean, both of them are probably scary to labels, you know what I'm saying? Because like I said, if I'm an artist and I know I can go pop on TikTok and sound on it, get me right, I'm gonna make some money on YouTube, you know what I'm saying? YouTube would get me right if I played the rules right. Why would I go over there and jeopardize half of my promotion engine? You know what I'm saying? Like why would I jeopardize this platform no longer fucking with me because you offer me what seems like a cool deal when I could just take this decent to pretty good deal with them and then still make everything I was making because I still at least have access to my platform and people have my fans have access to me on their platform. They'd like, like... Do you think that it'll get to that point where TikTok's straight up saying, hey, if you're using a record label, we're not gonna have you on here? I think so because I mean, because the individual artist can't control how the licensing agreement goes, right? Like TikTok isn't able to negotiate something that the labels find fair and the label's not able to negotiate something that TikTok finds fair, then the relationship is gonna dissolve. And so either way, those artists are gonna kind of be left in limbo. So what's the difference if that happens? You know what I'm saying? If that happens, then yeah, TikTok is not gonna fuck with these artists because that's signed to a measure. Do you think the consumer music will matter? No, I'll say it like this. Do you think that AI music will fail in the test or it'll win? I think it'll win only because instrumental music and electronic music and things like that have been pretty popular on TikTok. So it's not like every single viral song on TikTok is a song with words and lyrics to it, you know what I'm saying? Sometimes it's just instrumental and things. So it kind of makes me think of when Spotify saw that whole in their system where people were like, what was it like sleep music and things like that? And they created AI to create those type of playlists and music to fill in that gap. I see TikTok doing the same thing. Hey, electronic music and this type of instrumental does go viral on the platform. Cool, we're gonna hire some AI creators to make that type of music. And then for the other genres where it is, people or lyric focus, we're just gonna look internally in the platform and look for who to turn up and be represented as that part of music. That's what I think is gonna happen because you're not gonna be able to completely remove major label music from the platform because fans aren't gonna let that happen. Like fans are gonna always find a way to push them shit on that they like, right? Push it on there that they like or complain because shit that they don't like, that they do like is not on the platform, right? So I was like, how do you navigate that? And that's why I wanna ask you like, how do I discover music as a fan, right? If I'm not gonna have an artist pushing this music on his page that then goes viral or somebody paying for it in Florence as a part of my artist's campaign for me to discover the music, how are they gonna get the AI music out to new people that even discover in the first place and compete? I mean, I think traditional stuff, they can get influencers to use it. They can still get influencers to do the influencer campaign. They can still do advertisement. I've seen TikTok leverage other social platforms for marketing their own brand. So I'm sure they would do it for the artist. So like the AI side of it, I'm not like the most worried about, I almost think like that part was just for like, to like flare up the headline a little bit, you know what I'm saying? Like to make the argument a little spicy, even the AI is kind of high right now. I look at it like the only way that going to, from a general music artist perspective, the only way they could get around that narrative is to highlight artists that are indie within the platform, right? So, and like massive artists too, like which we know they exist. Like we've seen like the Nick Dees and you know what I'm saying, people like that who compete with major label artists, but all that main thing is TikTok, right? So like they're going to have to kind of step back and pay a lot more attention to that, which I know TikTok doesn't pay a lot of attention to because we've had instances where we've had clients go viral on the platform and they had no idea that it was happening. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh shit, this guy did this, oh yeah, thanks for letting us know. And then they'll move from there. So I think there's going to have to be a bit more of a developed like internal A and R team for TikTok or they build something in the algorithm. But I think for them to completely get out of this narrative and make people go like, hey, here's the reason we need you to be cool with us taking away your Drake and your Taylor Swift and your Beyonce sounds. And which I know TikTok could do this because Liam is narrative heavy is they could say, hey, because we want to continue growing the community of TikTok and giving shine to the TikTok stars. And we feel like that's more important. They play that narrative, it'll work. They don't lean to that narrative. I don't know if it'll work. And like I said, fans are always going to find a way to put some shit on there. That was happening even before TikTok had licensed, right? I remember TikTok before that happened. It was all like generic music and like rip sounds floating on the platform. You just kind of had to like find one and favorite it and hope it lasted until you got to make your video. So it would just go back to that. But I think it'd be a cool peg in TikTok like overall narratives of trying to be creator friendly. And we're here to help the creator and take them to a new level. It would be an amazing narrative as a part of that. I think I can see how they might find it or find a way to make it easier for people to find the AI music within the platform experience too. As a part of your posting, find ways to push it on there. Yeah, cause they already got like the main sound tab where they have like the playlist and things. They do, in your analytics, you can look at, you can see your recommended sounds. You know what I'm saying? So they already kind of been like building towards that. So they have their playlisting editorial culture of their own. So I could see how they could work that in. Something I also think about though is the question, right? Did they need major label music to pop in the first place or not, right? And we know that major label music did have a part in the blow up of TikTok, but did it have to? Was it a primary driver? I'd argue no, because so much of it, label side has been, hey, here's these artists who are popping on TikTok, let's sign them, all right? So those are indie artists that are popping and creating culture. And then the labels are signing them. So it's not their music. And then we knew what we were saying early on is why we went so hard on TikTok in 2019. Cause they're like, man, we got maybe like one summer and the labels catch wind. The labels catching wind and coming hard. So that gave us maybe about six months, nine months max. So let's get it now. And it started to happen in 2020. Label started to kind of catch on, get in the bag and saturate the market. And you would start to see some of those bigger artists drop their stuff. And I remember one thing that you specifically said, and you were like, yeah, it's going to be a rap. It didn't fully work out in the perfect way, but it still marked that time step. You remember what you said it was going to take? Was it that, oh, what I said was going to take? So was that Lil Nas X that? No, no, no, no. You're like, all it's going to take is one Drake song. Oh, yeah. And then Jay did Tuesday's live. You're like, Jay's going to come with a song for TikTok. Because about four or five months later, that shit happened. Right, it was a sense. Yeah, I know. You know, that song was, you know, oh yeah. He did what he had to do. Yeah, he did what he was for, I guess, you know. But yeah, but that's a good point. And think about it like labels would kind of psych me because I do think the narrative of TikTok being the savior of the music industry did do a lot for TikTok because it made the artist community more interested in it, which then brought over like other creative communities. And then, you know, like music is an integral part of TikTok. Just major level music isn't necessarily an integral part of TikTok, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, they're probably looking at like, hey, like if we were to take you out of the equation, we will maybe our dissatisfaction rate goes up 30%. You know, maybe our quality of the after some people go down about like 10%. But eventually they'll get over it, you know what I'm saying? Or the people that come in behind them won't even remember that time, you know what I'm saying? And they'll just be so used to all, because not like it's, they're not like this and like, hey, we're going to push terrible music, right? Like you said, there's still lots of amazing acts who get their star on TikTok. And so that's why I was saying, I think the narrative is going to be like, hey, let's just double down on making these acts stars in whatever capacity we can control because this is a better narrative for us as a platform. This is a big middle finger to the industry. You know what I'm saying? That they don't want to work out a deal with us. We know at least in the US, our culture love middle fingers. Yeah, they love middle fingers. So we're a big company, right? Yeah, yeah. We love some middle fingers. So they can always put that narrative. Hey, we're doing it to give more shine and light on the India. That's what they're going to do, bro. That's a hundred or something like that. They did the same narrative when the Crater Fund came out, bro. Like we knew what it was about. Hey, you see a revenue source, but how they flip it? We want to make sure our creators have a legitimate way to monetize their audience that's fun and blah, blah, blah to the audience. It's like, bro, no you don't. You want 50% of this money you see sitting on the table by not offering them this thing, right? So I think that's what TikTok is going for story. Like, okay, we're probably not going to like super cap on these artists in the next year or two. You know, it's going to take time for us to even build that trust with this artist community and make us believe in, to believe in us over the major label system. And then three years from now, we are propped up in a position where we are seriously competing with labels at least with for the attention of rising superstar talent or possible superstar talent. And then they're thinking of us as much of an option as they're thinking of you Atlantic, you Columbia, you Sony, you whoever, you know what I'm saying? Like that's going to be crazy because that to me, I think TikTok is leading a really interesting fight against the labels that I always thought you two was going to lead. I always thought you two would be the one kind of doing this stuff. But I think they got too deep in bed with the labels. No legal code and console music. So it's like, yeah, we had war in the sense but like I still fuck with y'all. Like I built up all this history and work with y'all these decades, right? So TikTok doesn't have any of that traditional connections and stigma, right? They just see pure competition, see pure dollars. And so they're leading a fight that I always thought you two would lead. That I think if they are successful in it, every platform is going to look at it that way. Like, oh, shit. Like how can we build some pipeline where we can be the main ones monetizing our top percentage of this type of creator instead of them just using us as a platform for the audience to then go give away IP to somebody else, you know what I'm saying? Like all of them, man. Like I said, I think TikTok and YouTube could get away with it the most. But I do think every, like Twitter's gonna start going, like, damn, how can we help? Like the Twitter monetization thing, right? Like how can we help these writers start monetizing their tweets? So I'm assuming the conversation's gonna go at some point. Like, okay, how can we all get a bigger percentage of this because you built your audience over here and we help you monetize them? But I'm like, no, I don't go to this, don't go to Amazon and sign a book publishing deal, right? Come to Twitter and like, maybe we sign a distribution deal for your ebook, right? So I think they're gonna open that door for other platforms or something like that. If they haven't already. And that is person what I'm interested to see what comes out of that. You know what I'm saying? Like I'm interested to see like, is the battle three to five years from now I'm gonna be major label versus indie artists or is it gonna be major label versus social media platforms? You know what I'm saying? And social media platforms that are now because they can all go open up a Tumacore account. They can all go open up a Dishoke account. They can all leverage their corporate way to get in bed with some of these music corporate people. You know what I'm saying? These social media platforms that might be moving like Brecca labels just in a more traditional sense is more favorable to the new artists that came up watching people like us and all these different creators talk about and this year we talk about and like they're just gonna win like a battle of attrition. You know what I'm saying? Like how can we wear people down over time to make them believe in our vision because we keep pushing this creative family narrative and y'all don't, you know what I'm saying? And like we know how much the artist community especially loves a good narrative about what company is for the people versus the company that's not for the people. You know what I'm saying? I see the vision for it, bro. And I think it's genius. It was like, personally. Look, because they use music and if they didn't need, if they kind of need major label music at the beginning, they don't need that a little bit now. I don't think. Yeah, 100%. Because culture is established. People are already used to going there for their music. People already have the habit of going on TikTok. There's tutorials. There's things beyond music itself. Kind of like with YouTube, right? Yeah. They're not just there for music, which is why they had more leverage with Spotify. TikTok is like, yeah, music is an arm of this leg. Or, you know what I mean? Yeah. Arm of this. But it's not the full body because we got so many other spaces and places to pull when we want people to come over just to consume content. So it's going to be really interesting to watch, but, you know, it's like, hey, we riding together. And then once we got to the location, it's like, man, I don't need you. I never needed you. That's what it feels like. The record labels are feeling. Yeah. And, you know, nobody's going to feel sorry for them because they're record labels and record labels already have a stigma. All right. There's already been a bad PR campaign for record labels for like 20 years now. We even watch old movies, right? Where the record labels is the bad guy. So people's mind, record labels have been horrible for, you know, 60, 70. My grumble with time. Yeah. You know, it's like a storied history. They probably think, oh, you know, they need to be also where a reformed and shit like that. Like that's that's the kind of mindset people have yet. Tiktok has a brand name that people respect and recognize these days. Instagram, people still respect and recognize. You, too, respect and recognize Facebook's struggling, you know, and everywhere, but there's many other social media apps that people respect and recognize and have a relationship they're building with on a daily basis before they even entered the music industry, where Atlanta records don't really mean nothing on these streets. Just the name of it. Because I say a lot of record labels and, you know, the your friend or cousin might be like, oh, OK, I think I might have heard of them before, but it doesn't mean anything to them. It's like telling your mom, I got a job at Amazon. They know what Amazon is. You know, I mean, that job might be working, making less money than you were at a different company. But mentally, your mom's head, oh, he's secure. He's doing it. Maybe Amazon. Yeah. Maybe Amazon. You know what I mean? So it's a that brand name, that value that these tech companies are building with the app specifically is something that I don't know how labels are going to be able to overcome. Until they I don't know, they figure out the model, man, because you can't just rely on the catalog, the old catalog forever. To continue to give that leverage. Most of this and their survival through this era has been the control of these older forms of music, because you still got to go through us if you want to get this. But hey, if everybody says, hey, we're going to take away access and then we're just going to keep pushing new music and then get everybody used to that. We're basically rewriting history or writing your old records out of history. Yeah. You know, so that's that's interesting to see. And I 100 percent am going to be very curious to like stay stay on top of this one, see how it goes. I'm going to hit up some of our Australian people. You know, see what's up over there, see what's up. See, see is it really going like it sounds from over here? Or is this just a little propaganda, you know, to get some clicks on the article? Because it's really it's believable, but it's also hard to imagine at the same time. I mean, they do it, bro. It's a it's a strong right hook, bro. Like it's a it's a it's a wild job to take, man. But as I said, it's to your point, it's like, if this was maybe two, three years ago, the labels had a point. But now it's like, like it's like, hey, bro, like we help you get those billboards. You know what I'm saying? Like you didn't you didn't really help us. And like we're still a viable marketing engine, you know what I'm saying? So even if you not what I think is going to happen is like Tiktok is going to start charging labels for promotion, like a typical marketing campaign. I'm saying like, hey, you didn't want to license this to us for whatever. So now you want us to feature this Taylor Swift song on the platform and X, Y, Z have the half a million dollars, a hundred K, right? Like now we just a marketing expense. The same way you would drop this PR expense if you wanted to get on complex or get on Billboard or whatever. And it's like, hey, now we're going to make money off of you. We was willing to break bread with you. If you was chill about it, but you didn't want to. And now we've got to violate you, perception wise and pocket wise. Crazy, bro. That's what I said. It's such a such a bold ass move to take by Tiktok, which is why I fuck with it, bro, because I want to see where it goes and what it inspires, you know what I'm saying? It'd be funny if they go that far with it. That'd be that'd be funny as hell. But they would essentially be treating them like any other corporation. All right. If you want us to market because, you know, Tiktok of course can be used individually with all the content creators who exists on the platform. But as you know, you know, they work directly with some of these major corporations like, you know, when we first started working with them as an agency, they had some pretty expensive. I didn't want to say pretty good. They got some expensive ass package big enough. They got some packages that they compete with those numbers. Y'all are here with radio and how expensive radio gets. Say some of those numbers, if not more. Craily, it's some numbers out there. You know, I mean, it's numbers out there, but we got we got NDAs and stuff. So you can't get all this specifics and slap it on the screen. So yeah, man, it's going to be interesting to watch. I hopefully y'all find this as interesting as we do. But but like, trust me, that impact on that and how the outcome of this is it can literally change the landscape by out of nowhere for indie artists. You know, always being affected by the top level of the industry, even if you aren't participating. Think about that. They will make TikTok the only platform with any art song competing with major artists that go out of the way. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Possibly negatively impacted there. So this is yet another episode of No Labels necessary. Episode number 33. Make sure you share it with your folks, man. Don't keep this information to yourself. Don't keep this sauce to yourself. Go ahead and share the pie so we can continue to grow. I'm Brandon and Sean. I'm Corey and we out. Peace.