 What's up, what's up, what's up, I'm Brandman Sean and I'm Corey and we are back with episode number 19 of No Labels Necessary. Catch us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen to the podcast, watch videos, all that good stuff we there, so go check for us. Now, No Labels Necessary, what do we mean by that? No labels are necessary for us to do what we want to do, build our dreams, make happen what we say can happen. Artists, it's not an excuse, but also, No Labels, you can't box us in. We're going to talk about multiple topics on this podcast. So some of y'all get a little, little itchy when we don't talk directly, but trust me, it all comes full circle because when you really have these industry talks, this is how they go. So let's get into the first topic. It's advice, baby, rate that advice. I want to play an old school clip, old school player, player coming with some advice that is still relevant today. He's speaking to y'all kids in the future and I'm one of them kids. Now, Jacory, you have not seen this yet, so I want you to comment on it first. Check out these words of wisdom from none other than Barry White. Very lucrative business. It's the only business where a man can go to sleep tonight, pour and wake up tomorrow, rich man. What is going to happen to the new artist coming in? They're going to have to come in with a different philosophy. They can't just come into this business as a singer. They got to come in with the intentions of becoming a great singer, becoming a great songwriter, becoming their own record producer, becoming, learning what the management business is, learning what engineering is, if it's possible, they can become a musician. Fine. We are dealing with your life. A lot of people play with this record business, man. They use this glamour as a beautiful little bubble to flash in front of the outer world. But that bubble is very dangerous. You should come in very serious. Knowing that this is my livelihood. What about business administration? What about publishing? What about accounting? What about managers? There is many, many lucrative entities in this industry. The record business is... Man, he called it, bro. You know where your clip is from? Hey, bro. I'm so glad you asked me that question, man. I literally looked up. When did this man pass away? Unfortunately, just to get a context of when this clip could be from. All right. So Barry White died in 2003. All right. Now, no, I don't know where that clip is from. But if I pull this clip back, look at that glow. People didn't stop glowing like that in the 80s. So I think it's probably 88, something like that. Niggas ain't out here glowing like that no more, bro. Oh, man. That's funny. But I mean, it's funny that in 88, he already saw it, bro. He was like, yo, artists in the future in order to compete, you don't have to learn how to do everything or at least have a vested interest in trying to figure out how to do everything. Yes. And it's funny that he saw that coming because... Yes. I feel like we really only saw it coming because of the... Internet. Yeah, the internet and like the burst of artists, but it's funny that he saw that without any of that. You know what I'm saying? Bro, that's my first question. Yeah. I would love to be able to speak with him and say, what are you seeing that's making you say this? Yeah. You know what I mean? And I'm sure he had the context of before and then the advancements that was happening in the 80s and 90s, whatever, but like, what were you seeing that made you say this? Yeah. Because we know, we're aware that a lot of these things that we think are new like phone texting your fans or calling your fans and those personal relationships and some of these things are not as new as we think. All right? Yeah. There are people who are doing a lot of similar things back then, building a fan relationships through different pop-ups and all that cool stuff. We just rebranded how we market it, right? Yeah. But still, I'm just like having to do everything in the way he was promoting it. Like, I mean, it's like low key. He was going harder on doing everything than we go. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And I mean, we collectively today. Like, I think he said, if you could be a musician, do that. Like he said, it's like a math after thought. You know what I mean? Like, if you could be good at music too, like, or I won't say music being a good musician, like actually playing music too, like that's fine too. Yeah. But that wasn't a priority. And a lot of times when we think back to those times, we kind of assume all those things were a must. So yeah, man, I think obviously the advice is obviously key and more relevant than ever. But but she's going to apply to so many other things. Yes. So many other things. I like that it's a clip of someone like him saying it because I think that the misconception is that a lot of the artists would be like Pierce. If we like brought them here today, right? They'd be fighting the great fight of like artists just staying artists. But no, bro, it sounds like Barry White would be right on the front line like, hey, bro, you're going to have to get up and make that TikTok. It is what it is. You know what I'm saying? Like get your ass out of the bed, bro. I'm going to do what you got to do. Yeah. I like I like I like having I like having proof that I would think that way. Yeah, man. And I love that he just said this is your life. Yeah. What are you going to say to that? Yeah, exactly. Right. All that. This is how music should be. I'm an artist and I should just be able to make it. All right. Bump that like people may care about your artistry, but you definitely should care about your life. Yeah. Because that's all it is. Like when we dissect all this stuff, all our decisions, it comes down to the fact that it is our life. Do I want to work at all? If I get a job, what type of job do I want? If I have a career, what kind of career do I want? What type of artist? If I am a musician, do I want to be? Yeah. It's still essentially a lifestyle that we're building for ourselves and the way we want to go about things. So not are we going for that or not? And the energy he gave is nobody giving that to you here. Yeah, we go for it around here. We go for it for you. Now, I really love that energy brother he was giving in this video, but even more so, I felt like, I don't know, man. I just felt I don't want to say inspired or anything. It was just, it was like a reaffirming, but on a whole another level because of the context of where he comes from, how old this clip is. And I still like, we got to get some old schools on here, man. When we start actually talking to people doing interviews and stuff like that, we got to get some people who are around back then, you know what I mean? And see what that looks like, what they were complaining about. Like I want to talk to Patty and LaBelle, you know what I mean? Shout out to Patty. You want to give us some free pies. You know, I would love that. You're cooking. I love to eat. I eat too much, but I'll still break my diet for you, Miss Patty. But, but yeah, man, he was he was giving the game. So I mean, those my thoughts are pretty short because it was just so perfect. But I just realized they wrote new advice, new artists. Oh, okay. No, no, I get is advice for a new artist. Okay. Okay. Okay. Never mind. Never mind. River, I recant what I was about to say, but yeah, man, the importance of looking at this Azure life of business and all of those elements being a part of your responsibility, whether you become the person who can do it or you at least being the short ensuring someone know, Godly, I messed that up. Either whether it's you being the person who does it or you ensuring that someone else does it or you hiring and somebody else that insures they do it and you insure that they do their job. It's still your responsibility at the end of the day because this is your life. Period. Period, period, period. No matter how you slice this shit, who's doing wrong? Who's doing right? I don't think there's any greater responsibility. Just look at it. This is my life and then how do I want to build my path? So I love that. That's not even like super music tactical. It just kind of is what it is and leave it at that. Yeah, I agree, bro. This is exactly that. It is what it is. This is what you got to do. Go do it. Hey, so what are you going to do in terms of the rating? Rate that advice. We want to know what y'all think out of 10, you know, 7 out of 10, 5 out of 10. But Cory, what you got for this advice? I mean, you know, he might be, he might be potentially family, man. So I'm going to give him a 9. Potentially family. Oh, my dad saw my last name white over there. Y'all got some whites over there? Y'all got some whites over there. So, you know what I'm saying? Maybe, man, you know, maybe, but no, it's all the advice, bro. No, it's scary how much it translates to today. Yeah, it's like, like it could only have been scary. If he was like, no, tiktok, you got to make me tiktok. That's all that was missing. I would have lost it, bro. I was like, oh, shit. Oh, man. Hey, well, shout out to the whites, man. You know, got a barrier in your family. You got the Barclay. You got Charles in your family. I'm not here, bro. I'm an industry player, bro. I'm trying to tell y'all, bro. Industry player. And he hid it in plain sight. Y'all think he's playing. Y'all think he's playing. He's serious. All right, next topic, man. We got some sauce from the Brandman Network community. Just another great conversation, again, for y'all who do not know Brandman Network is a community that's free for the artist out there. We have these conversations here, but this is where we get into the details, not just through conversations, but through what I'm about to talk about right now, but also through legitimate classes, information that walks you step by step. So when you want to step by step, the exact strategies we use as an agency, all that stuff's free inside of here, but you got to join. And we're not letting everybody in, so it's better to try to get in sooner than later. Now, what is the question? I don't know how to say his name. I want to shout you out, but I'm going to just call you Jay Cuedo. You know what I mean? Now, the question is, what to do when labels reach out? And I want to get into this conversation. Let me pull up the right tab. There we go. Hi, guys. I have some labels reach out to me to have a meeting and possibly get signed to them. I'm pretty new to all of that. I was wondering if anybody else has advice on what to do when labels reach out and are there any red flags I should be looking out for? All right. Todd Townsend says, hey, don't have advice, particularly on the above, but what do you say I'm feeling what you did for what you mad for? That's one of his songs I assume. Shout out to, dang, I wish I could say a name, but what you mad for? Shout out to you for having a dope track to people in a network mess with. Now, Albert Johnson Jr. says, I was approached by an indie label back in 2020, but it was such a wild situation. They ended up breathing their, I think he meant to say breaching. They ended up breaching their own contract because they were harassing me about switching all of my previously released work under their publishing with BMI. Well, I would say, because I didn't know anything or had anyone to have anybody talk to at the time, make sure that they're not trying to get credit for everything you've already released, right? So he's saying, you've done things before you got in the agreement with them. Make sure that they're not trying to get ownership of all of that stuff as a part of your agreement, or at least if they are, y'all need to talk about that, right? Next thing that Albert Johnson Jr. said, and if they're asking for your master's off rip, that's a red flag, right? Might be obvious to some of y'all, but just wanted to say, now, let's stop there because we know there's more dope conversation in this space, but with that alone, Jacory, what do you think about the advice that Albert gave and then are some other thoughts and signs that you feel like people should take into account when labels reach out? Yeah, I think Albert's, Albert, let me read it real quick. Yeah, Albert's comment was legit. I think it's about breaking it down into steps, right? And I think that if a label reaches out to you, one of the first things you should do is research. And one, just look into that label and make sure, hey, is this label legit? Yep. Is the person that's reaching out to me from the label legit? You can do this through a number of ways, right? Like LinkedIn, like look up people on LinkedIn, Google the person's name and the label name and see if any articles, any references come up that are around that person. But like just do research and make sure that this person, this entity is someone that's worth you talking to and they're offering you a serious situation. So with that being said, we're going to move through the rest of the conversation assuming this is a legit label that's reached out to you and talked to you. I think the very first thing you need to do is just take the call, like have a conversation with them because every label person is different. The way they're going to kind of approach things is going to be different. But I personally believe that you don't start to see how seriously someone is thinking about you and their situation until you get a chance to actually have a conversation. Right? Not saying you have to go into it with any expectations that there'll be something that happens at the end of it, but like just having it just to see how this other person talks to you or talks about you or just kind of what their head is at. Right? Why did they even reach out to you? XYZ and we thought you were cool. Right there, bro. Like that's the biggest thing why I think everybody should have a conversation. Yeah. Right? Because when you talk to these people, you're going to learn what they look at. Right? What they find to be interesting about you and just hear other elements in the game that you might not be accustomed to or you might have heard on paper but you don't see how it's executed in conversation. It's a completely different flow of the game to get used to. And then you talk to multiple people if you are in a position where multiple people are calling you, then you can start looking at commonalities between conversations and piecing things together and involve your perspective on things from there. Yeah, exactly. I feel like that's the biggest key. Like even if nothing comes out of the situation, you have a better understanding of how these people move for the next time you get into the situation or the next neighbor that reaches out. So it's like every conversation you have strengthens your defense to give them finesse. You know what I'm saying? Ideally because either you're taking enough information to at least know the right questions to ask the next person you talk to, right? At the very minimum, you should learn enough from call A that by the time you get to call D, you already got a list of things you're going to ask the kind of I feel the situation out, right? Right. But then on top of that, I think also too just like being normal in the situation is very underrated, right? Like I see artists give these label calls and I just throw every fucking thing out the window. But all the rhetoric they've been talking for the last couple of weeks goes out the window. They're talking about doing things that would never typically do. Well, hold on, hold on. I need you to be detailed because I don't want people to miss what you're saying. Like what do you mean when you say like they're talking about things they never would talk about or do things they never would do? Are you talking about the label side or the artist side? Artist side. So I remember we had a situation with a client where the label was telling them to like they might have to take their music down or something, right? And like this person was seriously considering doing it because the label told them to do it and we were like, well, bro, you ain't even signed nothing yet. One, you know what I'm saying? Like so that's crazy. And then two, like no, they're wrong in the situation for how it benefits you. They're right for how it benefits them but they're wrong in how it benefits you. You know what I'm saying? And so, but I think a lot of artists are just willing to be super compromising out the gate without even like one, just saying if they're serious and then two, like understanding like what could happen if they do follow the direction of this person who to be fair does not yet have your best interest at heart. There's no reason to have your best interest at heart. You ain't signed nothing yet. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, I can sell you a dream and it sounds good but like who knows that this is the dream I want to sell you once the ink drops, right? That dream might completely switch up. I got you. Now this is real shit that's about to go down. You know what I'm saying? So I think just like being normal in those situations not switching up too much but then just like talking to them like they're people. You know what I do also think as artists, you go into a lot of these conversations looking at the other person is almost like a savior especially A&Rs but A&Rs, managers are into some degree of marketers. We get that but we all get the starry eyes but they staring at you and you just see all their hopes and dreams being projected onto you. You know what I'm saying? That's a scary feeling to be on the other side of. You know what I'm saying? No superstar exactly not but that's a scary feeling to have those eyes looking back at you. So I think even going to this situation like hey this is another human being like we mentioned on another call where this is just a person doing a job and understanding that and knowing that like I'm not going to treat this person any differently because they're tall necessarily. I think one is empowering in a sense because people can smell like desperation on you. You've been too nice you move in a certain way like I can smell desperation or two which I think is worse smell that you have not been in this situation before. You've been too friendly on the call you've been too talking oh I've been looking at you for XYZ amount of years and I think right like you like moving in a way like if I'm a A&R it's how a hundred conversational artists as we who are maybe a little bit higher than you like they all go a certain way very concise you know what I'm saying maybe to the point you know what I'm saying not too much sugarcoating maybe versus newer artists it's going to be a lot of sugarcoating because I can tell this is your first time being in this situation I'm not trying to scare you away from what could be my career change maybe you know what I'm saying I'm going to stream your long blue lines the way that I know people like you can be can be strong along you know what I'm saying this will be real you know what I'm saying just be a hundred percent so I think yeah like one thing is just like not to get out of the habit of that but yeah the first up I said like take the conversation like talk to them see what they want from you ask them what made them reach out to you like you said get an understanding of what bread crumbs they follow to get to you somebody might say like man yeah bro I wanted to reach out to you because like bro I think you're I'm like yeah you too content strategy is like killer bro like should you doing better than all the new acts we've talked to this week you didn't know that you know what I'm saying so they said that bro and now you know like okay they really like my content infrastructure that seems to be a selling point and apparently I'm doing better than the new motherfuckers coming in right new information that you would not have had a conversation set it up as fast as you can there doesn't have to be any stipulations there doesn't need to be a specific outcome but it's like just try to have a conversation as fast as you can have a conversation with that 100% yeah 100% and we can get into another comment in a space Adrian Melanio says I have had labels reach out at every stage of my career 1500 followers 10k followers 30k etc the types of deals and interest are two deals where labels have provided advances marketing support and exchange for royalties percentages in my opinion I think it's better to keep building until you don't need a label and can leverage better deals now just with a little context I'm not going to go too deep into Adrian's situations but on one occasion alright he had a singles deal and I only mentioned a singles deal I understand that yo man there's so many different variations of deals so a lot of times we think signing to a record label means a 360 every single time giving up the whole damn shit or giving less of the ship because you really negotiated well but there's so many variations of where income can come from what's owned you could just make up some shit I don't know or you could say you get 20% of my merch and 50% of my masters and I don't know 0% of my touring or 5% of my touring like all of this stuff can vary and it's up to you to get creative and it comes both ways from a standpoint of what's the value of these people in my eyes and of course what value do they see and you or can they bring to you a skill still from your perspective that's what a singles deal I think is a good way for many artists to see how much labels don't do often times right and it's lower commitment because you're not fully in that relationship it's only one song locked up you still have an entire catalog if that song continues to move and takes off then you now have new attention as being brought to your other music your brand etc right and that's ideally though right the reality is they can get locked up they can lock you up for that one song and not do shit 100% and that just suck that's the reality of it but the whole dream is oh I'm only giving ownership of one song or partial ownership of one song or sharing my royalties for this one song and when it blows up I'm gonna have a big name and the rest of this goes into this catalog that I got so much attention for that is the ideal scenario right but both sides of the song actually got zero gains only my work that I've continued to do has brought attention to it but what they've done hasn't really done much for me right so you know it's an ebb and flow to that and how you approach it so I'm not saying hey just because someone's offering you a singles deal it's a no brainer you should do it you still have to get into stipulations like my marketing budget what is that if I do get a marketing budget and what does that mean you have a marketing budget but when you actually go to work with them you don't get tapped into any of that budget right oh yeah we have a 50k marketing budget for you but we have to approve every little thing and every little bit of spin for this marketing budget right so whatever your system was beforehand I have to approve or maybe you have to be scrutinizing maybe I'm more flexible to the stuff that is actually paying me cause you can use my studio or use my content creator use my agency whatever that looks like and then I'll say don't do any of this other stuff right or maybe I'm just super tight with the purse strings of how I spend the budget and I don't have enough of a vision of understanding of current marketing I'm not approving things you should do and I've seen many times where artists will have a 50k marketing budget and they don't see 10k of it right 200k marketing budget and they only see 100k of that 200k and the agreement's over and they just never see it ever but they come in with this idea this is my marketing budget this is how much money so there has to be additional stipulations one of what actually getting that marketing budget right not oh y'all just spend it but hey how much of that do I get to take and spend based on my own discernment but then too what are the specifics in general like again not just what I get but how does getting it look period right not what you're going to do or can do but under what circumstances you're going to give it to and then the last thing is that vision again alright how close can y'all get in terms of the vision that you want to achieve alright and how much are they not only aligned with that but understand the type of marketing that makes sense for you as an artist because if y'all are on the same page there it's still going to come back to the same thing y'all are butting heads and look both ways could actually be something that work but they want to go about it in a different way so I know it sounds like way more detailed than you would think when it comes to what should I do when the label reaches out but that's all the type of stuff that you're actually looking for and the more detailed that you're asking some of these questions the more people start to understand like oh this person is somebody who's serious and we're not we can't just throw shit at him just can't fuck him over so look at that bruh like have the conversation ask some questions have another conversation get some terms get a lawyer get a lawyer get a lawyer bruh like literally just that's what the four or five step process alright hey well look get a lawyer is probably number one advice however make sure that lawyer is not the labels lawyer make sure that label is not one of the lawyers not one you know a homie of somebody in some kind of way all those things you know we think it's obvious but you know there's people who are at different parts of the ladder so make sure that lawyer is you know fresh and fit for you one is needed until like terms are presented but the moment like it's like if we just have the conversation yeah you don't need one right we just talking but once like terms are presented hey I think you would look great in this deal lawyer lawyer don't even know I once had one of my manager homies I remember they was doing negotiating with a label and he I always remember like cause I always thought I would understand it and that was about to get a lawyer they didn't get a lawyer so it worked out but I remember he told the label he was like send me this contract like you're sending it to a third grader and if my third grader doesn't can't read this I'm not reading I'm not sign another and they did but they went back and took this like 30 page document condensed it into like four or five pages but it was very serious it was crazy but you know so I was like bro you know you can ask for shit bro that's really it bro ask questions have the conversations and then lawyer up and what I like about that last part that you just said cause yeah that was always funny to me that that happened but this is real you want to make it as simple for you to understand as possible and I think growing up you tend to think when it comes to contracts you almost expected to be so complex and out of your league then when you encounter a complex contract you think something's wrong with me cause I don't understand this shit not something's wrong with them yeah but you need to be thinking something's going on there how can I simplify this as much as possible again still want to get that lawyer at the end of the day but how can I get this to a point where it makes as simple as sense to me as possible so 100% anything like that okay can you simplify this explain this what's going on here your lawyer's going to help but I love the just hey you'll take the whole contract and shorten this shit make this shit simple I've heard the other like this shouldn't be longer than X number of pages when people do stuff like that anything that helps you out cause a lot of times there's a lot of superfluous information and these things that sound trippy over words and perpetuity for continuity of the universe you're like what are you talking about universe bruh the universe that's the bruh the universe shit is why I didn't sign that contract when who reached out to me I don't know if it was NBC or Wall Street Journal so they were doing a Dominic Fike series New York Times was right and I don't know who the company was them specifically or the company doing the doc or whatever they hit me up they wanted to use part of my Dominic Fike video in there and you know I'm like oh that's a good look I ain't trying to make money out of there and none of that I just couldn't at the time with the perpetuity and the universe aspect of it I mean I'm like I don't know where my career is going to be in 20 years I might decide to become a politician or something you know what I mean like a run for election whatever and then all of a sudden they had the ability to use this and all these different platforms it might flip it somehow I told the lady I would just like it to say y'all can use it for this show for this series and any formatting of this series I understand that whenever you use it anywhere else in any other way you still want to be able to use that because you don't know what you're going to do with this series but nah I can't just have it language where you own this content or can use this content for anything beyond this series and I don't know what that is to me that was just a weird thing and you know she was like oh man you know yeah I'll send that back but people end up going a different direction you know it was just a different creative direction you know people who were less resistant possibly you know what I mean we don't need to have these problems or potential problems which I get I respect that and I was like dang you know that sucks but I don't know you know you kind of just had to take that shit on the chain and I actually say that same thing when it comes to labels if you feel you trying to be diligent you just got to take it on the chain and let that feeling ride because it might feel weird for a second and you might feel like oh when's the next one coming but you good you'll be alright you'll be alright more opportunities they're coming they're coming out let's see the germane gum say depending on if you have any leverage if you do keep your masters and if possible you're publishing if possible big on that if possible they're like they're like they're like the company publishing we know that's where the money is ooh there's a clip I want you to see but if you don't have any leverage you most likely won't even get a 50-50 deal most likely you'll only get around 15% for your music for example which most people don't know Bruno Mars when he had the hit out called that's what I like he was only getting around 15% off that song I found that out when I was being taught in Berkeley College of music in music I mean that's a nice comment that's a nice comment I didn't know that about Bruno I just realized I corrected that because he wrote Bruno but let's let's read a couple of other comments let me see Nate James said just be wary of label execs bro any label that would throw 10k at an artist to see if they go anywhere okay he said anybody any label will throw 10k at an artist just to see if they go anywhere and if they don't then they can just dump you and move on make sure you're ready and then hire a good music lawyer to make sure you aren't getting taken advantage of now yes it is a part of many labels business model 100% to put in a small investment pump and dump pump and dump 100% see that bad boy go if it don't go hey we keep moving and I think this is the catch of two of these artist friendly agreements that we see today we're like oh yes six month licensing deal one year licensing deal or whatever with an option what we basically saying is hey I'm going to give you 10k 20k whatever the number is and that's the number already worked out in my investment strategy if it worked cool if it don't work it's not great but I'm good right so this is the money I'm going to put in an opportunity here if things pop I have the option that's the biggest thing people are to be saying you know I got an option in my contract no this ain't sports bro like and even in some sports is different but you don't have an option they got an option to say do you stay do you go alright so they have that option oh if this works let's keep working right or if I for whatever reason want to keep you locked down even as a screw you over let's keep keep working quote quote keep you under but other than that you lose whatever period of time on your end what else do you have to lose I mean the deal if it really does work out it's great you know depending on what you have but let's just assume you're only a royalty agreement you don't have to give any up up your masters anything like that and you did a let's say well be a number like maybe 50k for 20% and that's that's very please don't think that's a standard that y'all should need to like sit by making sure I'm just making I'm making shit up that I know someone who's done who's done that or whatever whatever but here's the thing being locked down really matters right and I know it doesn't seem like it because it is again it is more friendly than what existed before but like I know an artist that drops his song song takes off and they promise him so much money and marketing budget let me see I think it was 30 or 40k right and then all this other money that will come after they drop the music video and things really get popping let's say song drops in January and his manager got into combative moment with basically the label manager was kind of like flying off off the top ends up having a breakup with the manager but then the manager says I still own all this stuff or like he was he was playing some weird game with him and they end up being in court for six to eight months right there yeah and the label wouldn't do anything at all until they figured this whole situation out so now he had a song that was popping moving this is like soundcloud but it's moving crazy ridiculous numbers but now he can't drop the music video until 12 months later basically it drops in the middle of December like nobody's checking for it you know you already know what December looks like with zero marketing and they made this entire they had this entire argument that it should be dropped on the specific YouTube page and I told them I told them along along the whole way along that this shit didn't make sense you dropped on a YouTube page that wasn't here that wasn't popping itself I'm sure that I was probably like their homie or something like that or whatever like so the strategy is all bad so you can get caught up in a situation with a label even if it's a short time agreement where you end up following such bad advice or power over you that they manipulate your moves and they can suppress what you have going on maybe not intentionally that's not what they're trying to do but they're so worried about whatever their personal incentives are at the time and for their strategy you just get undercut as like a stray you know you catch a stray bullet and there goes a huge moment in time it could be a career so I've seen this multiple times like to artists especially even with these short term like contracts and they fuck an artist up and it sounds like oh yeah short term that's a great thing 10 months is nice that it's a short term agreement per se but in music 10 months it can be long too yeah it's fucked it's fucked it's crazy let's see if there's a one last comment that every label isn't bad every label isn't good let's go with that that one last statement I'll say this it's all people always people it's all people that's all it is alright so you might have some good people you might have some bad people and no oh here's another thing that happened in that time with that artist the people he came in with the entire organization got switched up and that's that's a risk that's a risk it's a high risk he wanted to change things up there was a whole new guard so now all these people who believed in you and saw you in the first place were no longer there those type of things happened right so at the end of the day it's people he went from a good situation to a bad situation literally because of the people and also the management situation and that legal people so some people have a luck of the draw some people are good in the sermon but however you can praying you know rolling dice blind luck whatever it is man like try to find the right people you can in this industry part of the interruption I have to take this quick commercial break to let you know that we are sponsored by me because I signed myself we signed ourselves it's this brand man network that's why we're calling no labels necessary because no label nobody else is necessary for us to get the train moving so if you could just subscribe to show appreciation back to the program alright now last topic but this is our deep dive we really want to get into this because we think it's going to be valuable for you y'all when it comes to this new year where is it where is it do you want streams for free be nice you would like streams for free it would be nice I'd like streams for free are a good thing I would even say a great thing and there's plenty of ways to get streams for free that are not scams and that's what we're about to talk about right now so let's get into it the first way matter of fact I want to say this not only are we going to say the ways to get streams for free that are not scams but we're going to give you the deep dive within each topic on how we've gone about it seen it helped artists do it themselves so you can apply it for yourself so make sure you stay all the way through because it's coming from real experience and you know it's free check this out Corey tell them why content is one of the top free breakdowns and how we will go about it going into 2023 like today not content that's you know that's already been out there in a way people have been moving before yeah yeah I mean content is the great equalizer because I mean one for the most part is relatively cheap to free depending on your initial investment to be able to create the content like the equipment most of us got phones so we have the ability to at least create something you know what I'm saying even if it's not amazing but I say it's a great equalizer because that one TikTok that you shot could hit a thousand new people could hit a hundred thousand new people right and so it has a chance to offset the cost of other things that you maybe would want to spend money on or even get you attention for free that you have to pay for a great example is everybody watching this YouTube video right now right all this free we could have paid for it which all of here because we put this podcast episode out right and so you need to be looking at your pieces of content the same I'm gathering people for free I'm building people up for free now the way that we typically explain the clients to go about it is one just pick somewhere between one to three platforms to focus on I think I would say maybe two at least because I do think that one is just power one is just power numbers two you're able to learn a lot faster about cultural differences of platforms and things like that because you can compare the stuff they act this way when I post on YouTube or when I post on my TikTok or whatever so I do think that's important and then we believe in omnipresent building so trying to hit the same person or group of people on a couple of different platforms in a couple of different places so because I say pick one to three platforms commit everything you can to just learning the ins and outs of that platform how the algorithm works what content creators not just music artists but just content creators are doing on that platform in order to stay relevant and also what music artists are doing I'm a firm believer in every platform you commit to go find like three to five other artists who you just like the way they do things and just like study them and like watch them and see if they're doing things that you could copy or emulate to some degree that's the big thing right there behind the people that you want to emulate yeah, yeah that's coming behind adding your own style and like characteristics to it so really big on that and then the last thing we always tell them to do was like make sure you actually use the platform like use it at least like 30 minutes maybe an hour a day scroll through TikTok scroll through Twitter whatever the platform you've chosen to master is you need to be using it pretty consistently because we talk about a lot there are a lot of times cultural things that you do in your content that determines whether or not it goes not the content itself you know what I'm saying in order for you to understand the people you are culturally trying to tap into you have to study the way they culturally move on the platform you know what I'm saying there's no getting around that and the best way to do that use the fucking platform bro you know how many people I meet I want to blow up on TikTok do you use TikTok hell no I don't like TikTok so I was like bro you just you just walking in this country language all confusing and even took the time out to try to speak it and you wonder why you can't order order some shit off of me you like you lost bro you lost get your shit together and TikTok lame as fuck bro that shit ain't for me but it's like you got to use it bro but literally we just start people there man pick a handful of platforms that you're going to commit to one to three like I recommend at least to find some regular content creators that you can study find some music artists who use that platform whether you can study and then just use that shit use the platform every day 30 minutes to an hour at least just to get a feel for it and I guess the fifth tip would be just start making shit you know what I'm saying start experimenting because there are going to be a lot of things that we could say and maybe even other like social media gurus might be saying to you that won't really click for you until you start creating things and you get why we're saying what we're saying right oh this is the reason the hook is important because I noticed my watch time keeps falling off in the first two seconds oh that's why Sean keeps saying I need a hook on my videos to hold people's attention right like those are things that you don't understand until like you posted some content and you kind of see how things are moving but it's like that shit hits every piece of attention you get from and from then on out it's free and it can be massive facts bro facts now the emulation aspect of things I want to go back to when you talked about the fact that artists should find people they want to look at as an example on the platform yeah now there's some specificity to that and then there's one thing I want to add don't necessarily look for artists who are big on the platform because they're already a big name a household name they might be doing some cool stuff and it might be but they might be winning because they're already winning yeah you get what I'm saying so find somebody who's new and they're upcoming and you like what they're doing and there's things that you could pull from them because they're probably winning because they're good at using the platform yeah which is very very different especially when you're starting up and all you're trying to do is trying to figure how to use the platform again and it's about what you like you like how they're moving about it and you can see yourself doing the type of content that they're doing right because you might not be somebody who's going to go outside and come up with these weird locations and shoot these beautiful shots or anything like that you might just be a bedroom person and so you're like oh yeah they're making the bedroom work or I like to move outside and I would keep doing that because I hate being in the house and just creating in this space so maybe you like going into different locations so that's something you might want to do all those things matter and then the creators that are doing shit that you feel like you can apply to yourself so now you know you might not be able to do it exactly the same way because you want to figure out how to make it matter to an artist alright but you can still find that inspiration from a couple and I don't know if you said how many you would recommend that people like five to seven is somewhere in there yeah I would say seven max seven max especially if you're talking about artists and non-artists and then that whole idea of life and the things from them that you would like to repeat so that means you aren't taking anything wholly from anybody yeah alright I just need to find oh that one specific format I like that they do that and they're winning with that format this one specific format I like that they do that and then I want to flip that because the entire game when it comes to content is about stacking formats it TikTok really brought that to a head but now people are copying it so you know it's going to become more and more relevant that format where you find a format that works and that format will kill but that doesn't mean I could just drop any type of content now that format will be the only thing that's doing well on your page and you're trying to figure out well should I only just do that now no you do that format you exploit the hell of that format and that format might become the 80% that you're doing at the moment but formats are starting to find the next format and the remaining 20% so you got this 80 80 20 20 20 oh snap I got a second format so now I just had added a second format and now I'm doing these two formats 80% of the time possibly or maybe it's like a 60 20 between those two but in the rest of it I'm trying to find another format oh snap now I got three formats most people find themselves in a position where they got one that format start popping and then it dies and they don't know what to do and they feel like oh my page just stopped working forever and now I might need to start a completely new page because I'm shadow band or something like that it's a life cycle that happens with these formats and if you don't exploit formats you probably don't even know why it worked and why a format's working before you even maximize the platform to its fullest so format stacking is a huge key in how you should look at your approach to your content as well yeah you asked too what are we saying content-wise is going to carry over into 2023 and really scale I mean really the two things I think are going to stick the most is just one the emphasis on short form content like tiktok is pretty much made that the new the new standard the new normal right you said that need to find some old clips of us talking about that shit yeah facts bruh so it's like we got instagram reels tiktok is tiktok youtube has blatantly come out and say like hey we about to focus on this shit and take over the game and you know whenever the giants are shifting their direction the spillover is going to hit everybody you know what I'm saying so it's like if they're emphasizing short form in such a way trust and believe other platforms to start emphasizing which is why I argue and I think you said before like short form content just the new content language you know what I'm saying we got to all get used to it so if you've been ducking it for the last year or two because you didn't want to make tiktok 2023 and up it's going to hurt you know what I'm saying so short form content been emphasized and then live stream like we talked about that briefly right like tiktok has been making certain changes to the platform to emphasize live stream content youtube has been emphasizing it doesn't get twitch is twitch instagram has started adding certain tools to their live streams to be able to make it more credit friendly so I think 2023 is going to be the year we see like every platform try to compete for like the live streamer space and the artists that can figure out how to take advantage of it is going to get that kind of like first movers that manage in the arts world that we were talking about you don't have to you won't be amazing to streamers but in the arts world you know what I'm most bullish on when it comes to live streaming for artists tiktok and youtube because discovery is already built into it twitch to me is good for the artists that already has an audience and has a grasp on like how to push the audience over to twitch if you want to be able to stream learn you understand like how to be a good streamer and also potentially bring an audience in for it yeah that's going to be youtube and tiktok yeah that's going to be huge because live streaming is is great on tiktok but you said the discoverability is there I mean people are literally going live and the live itself can be discovered mm-hmm same thing is happening on youtube right you can go live and it pop up on somebody's home page right let alone all these other types of content that pull people to your page in the first place so it's not just lives which twitch is instagram lives it's just not a threat man I'm nowhere near instagram competing with those two yet and I think lives what people have to understand are a great way to bring in money as well yeah right so when you go live there's so many people now in today's culture that are donating that is the culture that has been building in America for the last I don't know 10 years slowly maybe maybe a little bit longer than that starting with twitch right and this culture was over in Asia long before it really became a thing in America so what you have now is a time where you can go live make hella money matter of fact the lead attorney he's a youtuber this guy has the best breakdown of what I've seen when it comes to making money on youtube live when you stream just do this like five hour streams and just off rip like talking he's dope he's hilarious and he breaks it down scientifically you know a lot of people they just do some shit right where they'll just say some shit and it'll be some more inspirational but he has a course so y'all can go to his page if I get paid or any affiliate for him but the lead attorney so he actually was an attorney I don't know if he still is but he breaks down like there's all these elements where even giving appreciation to fans and people who donate you how it creates more donations and then the different types of appreciation and ways of addressing people who donate X amount of dollars versus another amount of dollars there's all these small elements and then he'll play it back of him doing it in real time which is even crazier thing because you really have to be like good at it to like execute it in real time live you know what I mean it's one thing to be like theoretically this is what you should do because this is going to make them more willing and this is going to make them folks come around when you get that collection plate it's going to you know you drop a little money into collection play at first so then they see the money and now they're going to drop some money you put it in there so now they're like oh people dropping hundreds I might go ahead and do ten instead of five right like there's that psychology and stuff that you can kind of dream up but then when you see someone doing it live and they're actually evermending you know that they're a master and it's where people are masters at teaching and executing and I think like what I said in terms of seeing his course he's one of the few people I've seen I have a quality course so check out that dude's course because lives are only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger like for real for real and look the money that people are making from it like this dude was making I think he got like 300k his first year on YouTube period and he was nowhere near the biggest YouTuber like and a lot of people this is a funny thing about lives too that's been interesting so people are not yet adjusted to it there's a lot of these YouTubers that we know that are big but the live game is not their game it actually is a different game right so how often do you see Mr. Beast go live I don't think he does does he I haven't really seen I'm sure he might have done it at one point in time just like for a pop-up thing it's hard to imagine him not doing it but it's not his thing right and there's so many other people who are not that's just not their thing so you got this guy sometimes being number one right when he has 100k subscribers or maybe even less than 100k subscribers at one point being number one for the week and how much money he's made on YouTube and all of YouTube all genres right but when you have the tactics right it can go and we're just in a space where that's going to become more and more and more and more of a thing so content is great now the second thing though when it comes to streaming for free actually last thing on content the beauty if you want to sum up content is today we post content and we get paid yep now what are you trying to do in your content you're marketing yourself good lord if you can market yourself and get paid for it there's so many people like just old school people their mind, their brains will be broken by that concept like wait what I can get paid to market myself and then make money from that versus just throwing out a shit ton of money and then hoping to make my ROI back it's ridiculous so once you hit that scale and now you're getting paid let's just make up a note let's just say $1,000 a month off of YouTube like be super reasonable you're getting paid $1,000 to try to convince people to pay to help you make $50,000 you know what I'm saying that concept is crazy but it's real that is what YouTube is about so content is beautiful it unlocks everything in that regard now the second thing that we got it down was communities right now when it comes to communities there's two ways to say it so we could talk about communities like starting a community and we could talk about communities in terms of the communities that you can hijack and get into and I think the second one is far more important at this point because we're talking about growth so the first thing is if y'all saw our episode number 17 where we talked about overrated music marketing tactics trying to start a community before you have a legit fan base overrated don't do it so we're going to keep that short but I would love to hear you talk about communities from a standpoint of the platforms and how to use them so we know that Discord Reddit my YouTube has its own segment of communities there's all these communities that exist but let's kind of dig deep into those so people can understand how communities are so powerful but how you can use them in a free way to get to back to your own music and streams yeah yeah so I look at communities as free well usually well put together parts of potential listeners for you right depending on type of music you make so when I think about communities the ones I do think about the most are Reddit Discord and then I consider the comment section of certain influencer and influencer accounts to be like their own communities if you've ever looked at let's say like a DJ academics comments and you scroll through it like that feels like a community you know what I'm saying like people interacting with each other under the guise of DJ academics so I do consider those those comment sections to be in the same umbrella so the way that you use these communities and I'm just going to keep it Discord and Reddit because the ease of the map it to but the way you use these communities is one they all go about the research like find ones that actually speak to your demographic right I think artists have a really bad habit of assuming that there's a community of music listeners they all like your music it's not true right as a rapper you go into fucking a country artist Discord group post my shit they get me the fuck out of there out out and vice versa brother that country artist came into like Kodak black Discord group promoting his music they getting that motherfucker they might laugh at me and get that motherfucker out there right so like make sure you're actually looking into and researching communities that you feel like embody the type of people that you're looking to go after or you think will like your type of music so once you found those spaces and you know what those spaces look like the next step is easy brother just engage in the community and this is but this is the step why I think most artists fuck up right I find I was a artist find a Discord group oh shit Kenny beats got a Discord group it's 20,000 people in here right now I'm just going to drop a link until everybody go check it out you know what's going to happen one they got a good mod system they getting you to fuck out of there yep hey same for our community people coming in for the music and try to drop music if people listen that's not what it's for thinking about getting in brandmannetwork brandmannetwork.com check it out it's like yeah it's like get out of here you vulture you leech you know what I'm saying so they're going to get you out of there but then the community has lost trust and respect in you because you are a person that try to come into this community space and siphon value before you presented any type of value back and so that's the part of community interacting what I think most artists fuck up your natural instinct is oh this shit hard there's a lot of people in here let me let everybody know about this shit whereas like your first real instinct should be hey here's this community of people how can I build their trust what type of value can I bring into this community space that can build their trust up and that changes from space to space but sometimes it's as simple as just interacting in conversations that the community is already having you join and they were talking about what's their favorite anime opera go and drop your favorite anime and join the conversation while I don't be the guy to come and say hey guys I know y'all were talking about this shit but my album just came out y'all should go y'all should go get into that because they're not going to respond well to it but the easiest way to bring value to the community is to engage and interact with things that the community has already been building value around you know what I'm saying man look you mentioned something that made me want to pull up a clip from black TV right now why do I want to pull up a black TV clip all I did was go to YouTube search black TV now the reason I pulled up this is because if you go to black TV you type it on YouTube look at the first couple of videos start scrolling down eventually you're going to see a comment from none other than TK Kirkland and the crazy part about that is this guy is a comedian and if you watch black TV you look at black's comments you will know he's in video all of these comments were commenting commenting so much so you will see people in the comments saying here before TK you know what I mean or sometimes saying TK will say he literally made himself a face within this community literally just by being someone who's commenting on all the videos however let's be clear we want to talk value right Jacory mentioned value you can't just be talking about anything right he's not here trying to drop his music or saying go check out my comedy special or nothing like that right what is he saying in this particular video I told the marketing team don't scare the audience into not eating taco bell by hiring big perm get some slim attractive actors to do the commercial to fool people now context the whole clip is about face on love they told me because I'm fat I can't do a taco bell commercial right so he's talking about him he's making a joke and that's his thing he's a comedian so adding value for him is one of course being funny but two making these comments consistently and they're contextual it's not just some random knock knock joke in the comments it's contextual to the videos right so let's see what these comments to him and say TK people already know who he is and they're like stop just because they've seen him so much let's see 10 years from now I can envision this man still writing these cheap I told you so and so and to do it such and such ok type comments so under the TK handle this person is basically addressing how long TK has already been making comments and I can see this dude doing it forever sounds like he's trying to like roast him a little bit but the point is he worked right yeah that's all that matters you've gotten out of obscurity by doing it again and again all he did was comment on a lot of stuff so maybe there's some somebody's YouTube page as you watch a lot might want to comment on it comment bro a lot until people recognize you it's like there's one dude on Instagram bro could be ours by the way I cannot you saw what could be ours comment drop a like it's a dude on Instagram that does the same thing I cannot think of his name but he'd be like is it is it DJ Flip maybe maybe not DJ Flip there was a producer who did that a while ago too I did yeah he was on Twitter though okay man but it'd be everywhere bro it's always one per platform like doing that shit but it's like like you said like just having that visibility in the community so it's like great example bring it back to music artists while it's like 69 in the academic community right like he's always in the comments he's always like it's like it's like a free pop-up in a sense right to see him in the comments so even just like engaging on certain stuff and this is a little bit outside of the context of what we're talking about because I do think that works more for artists as they get a fan base but even just engaging and leaving your opinions on things like would start to help you grow at some point right because we're so intrigued with wanting to know what our favorite entertainers think about even like little shit and a little Taco Bell commercial thing but the best way to bring value to any community is to just come and engage in the things that they're already talking about because that is where the value currently lies you know what I'm saying for that community in particular and so once you've built the trust of the community you've interacted for a while now you can start dropping your music and asking for feedback in certain ways most communities tend to have a space for that anyway but the difference between the people who get listened to or the ones that get listened to provide value to the community to where people are listening not even because they necessarily think you're going to be amazing or not but because they just fuck with you and that goes such a long way bro hey I fuck with you bro so yeah I go check out your new songs you want feedback on right and so like you do that enough and you build up enough trust and enough Reddit is important but Reddit some threads won't even let you post promo clips without building up a certain amount of points to engage and be a part of the community not just spam promo and deal and so as you build up enough trust in these different communities you give yourself the leeway you give future you the ability to be spamming and promotional in these communities with an actual return on it being promotional spamming in the beginning that's the complete opposite you're killing off future you because at the first time you might get some people that click over right okay maybe you call somebody somebody else was new and I really know that you ain't been here doing shit or just cause people keep doing that the more people are gonna just look and say hey this person only ever comments when they want me to do some shit they're not really here taking part in the community so I'm never gonna listen to what such and such wants me to listen to again you're hurting future you versus if you just took a couple post your first 10 20 days in the community you know what I'm saying just hang out in there and just talk just become one with the space if you would truly sit down and do that from that point or not just block you at that point you become a face in that community in that space so that's right and something that goes hand in hand with community that also adds to a free way to market yourself is networking network network network network now the beauty of network right like Jacory said you get people to fuck with you then they'll support you just offer the strength of fucking with you matter of fact you're king my king yes you're king my king Lil Yachty Lil Yachty something he said earlier on was I just got a bunch of influencers to fuck with me and that was at a time when people weren't as game on influencers and all that stuff but you got cool influencers and taste makers to fuck with them and then they supported him and obviously that helped create a career and image that he could capitalize off of right same thing still applies today it might not move as quickly because the game is a little long-send of what they post and should they get paid for it or not but still getting people to support you just by building direct relationship and that's some real-world stuff it's harder to do that sometimes for some people but then you also could do it online but once you do that then it still shows honestly still a huge part of the game right is just having a large amount of people rock with you I'm talking on the industry side the friends and family and friends of friends and business associate side not fans that's obvious right just having those people fuck with you getting that support is what helps you stay in the game yeah yeah I agree and I mean like you already said networking is free bro it's free to shoot off a DM it's free to walk up to somebody at an event well I guess you have to pay to get into the event but you know beyond that it's free to walk up to them and talk to them and you just never know what a relationship can turn into even to the right thing I would I would make the argument that now because there are so many so much more influencers than there were back then like the likelihood of that happening is a lot higher now you know what I'm saying maybe not to the degree because back then it was like it'd be like a handful of influences and they all had like real impact on the platform right now it's like a bunch of influences with a smaller impact on the platform but it's more than that you could get in contact with you know what I'm saying to make things happen you know what I'm saying like in the ones that you see that are able to do that really well and they have good music like they just grow you know what I'm saying because it's like the word of mouth factor kicks in like really quickly it's like oh yo I mean I've been in the shows before where I meet an artist and like he's nice or something you know what I'm saying cool guy, cool girl and we chop it up and then later I go listen to that music and I'm thinking about that while listening like damn that dude was cool and it shit as far yeah I play a couple more times and I go put people on to it people naturally want to do things for people that they like right like it's just something and you just like forces you to do it that's it and so like the more of these people you network with that you get to like you the more they just start like doing things for you without you even asking for it you know what I'm saying like that artist is gonna ask me to put my friends on but I did it you know because I was like bro you're cool bro people will witness some type of scandal publicly and they will say oh well you know I met the person and they were a nice guy they were a nice girl mm-hmm right but they just met him one time mm-hmm and that positive interaction that they had with him that one time because they didn't act like a higher than thou celebrity or something and they were so cool that one time makes it difficult for them to just hop on the bandwagon yeah of you know whatever scandal is going on in the moment I got him ignoring the head in the freezer my head my mind with someone else but we're gonna go straight to the next one collaborations artists, producers and influencers you can collaborate with so many different people when it goes hand in hand with the networking but obviously it's y'all doing it together there's nothing like like collaborating and giving a little right and getting a little in return yeah I think that's the beauty of collaborations yeah I think we gotta give context with this one artist artist on your level are slightly higher because if they're too much higher it's not gonna be free yes 100% so they gotta be what is it horizontal or like slightly vertical like you got 20,000 they got 30,000 month listeners yeah because this is a free list this is a free list right and of course you want to do those collaborations with people who are relevant and we're talking about artists right and you want to be able to do it to the extent that you can use the feature on Spotify to actually have access to the audience not you just have their name in the title so you could try to cap off of their name and you just have to spend money to market it no you want to leverage their audience and you can literally build a relationship after the relationship with artists who have audiences and that's all of your marketing and you just do that over and over again now you have to be good at building relationships it's harder to do this if your music is only but so good right so you know 100% artist collaborations but of course you might not want to work with a billion artists every single year we get that that there's difficulty but that is a very valid route and a very strong strategy that we've seen multiple people use or been a part of people using where there's strategically say I'm going to do a bunch of collaborations this year and watch my numbers go up it works it works so at front end you get the attachment to the other artists and then back end you got this whole new group of people and so yeah collaboration is super underrated and I think too it's a good way to kind of like train the algorithms around you kind of give them an idea of like who what direction that should be pushing you in and it's like stock bruh it's like if you go collab with ten artists and three of them take off all that's coming back to you you know what I'm saying and one way or another so yeah collaboration is super underrated growth strategy too many artists want to be just me like I did this just me it's weird to me I get wanting to be dope at your crab and have credit for that especially people who have enough of it out where it's like yeah we get it you can do your thing I don't understand the not collaborating yeah bruh it's like even Michael Jordan had to pass the ball bruh you know what I'm saying pass the ball every now and again you got to pass the ball I think that's a great analogy man thank you appreciate that it's a good one right there can't even be on the spot appreciate that man influences also are on this list as people to collaborate with and it's a little bit different obviously the trade isn't exactly the same you might have to judge them a little differently in terms of their following on whether they'll be willing to respond to you because you might not have you know 100k followers but still might be able to land 100k a fluencer for free the networking is a little differently but one again starting with good music and having a concept that might bid well for them but I think it goes it's interesting because when we're talking about that type of content it has to really really make sense usually for the other person like why am I doing this idea and we might collaborate from a standpoint of we're in the video together but maybe I'm not the person posting it on my platform yeah right there's different ways to do it or you here's a great way I've seen influencer collaborations approached I go to your house you go to my house right and when I'm in your house I eat your food you in my house you eat my food what I mean by that is I go to your house on your influencer page your the influencer I'm going to fall into your vibe so I might not be there as the artist alright I'm just somebody who's having fun with you or executing this idea that fits your specific audience yeah right and then when they come in my page I might work them into something musical whether it's a pointer or something that makes sense right the benefit is it's almost like a cameo of this artist it's like when Biggie Smalls and Snoop Dogg were on Martin back in the day right it's like you're there you get this cameo effect but you're not even pushing your music which in a sense almost begins to start making you feel even bigger over time because you're so important that you can be in places and not have nothing to do with the thing that you're selling that's how it begins to be received over time so if you do an influencer collaboration don't be afraid to do something that's not music particularly when it's on their page and also knowing that you don't have to limit who you reach out to or who you can collaborate with based on whether you feel like they're willing to do some of your music on their page specifically or if it makes sense for your music specifically there's a lot of ways to tweak it yeah I agree now what if you're not in a music entertainment type of city in terms of collaborations what are your thoughts the internet bruh Instagram, TikTok Discord the internet bruh the internet's killed all that off bruh for a long time I've been seeing kids in Atlanta collaborate with kids in Sweden Denmark New Zealand and shit like that so I think the barrier has been crossed I think the argument for events and things like that more conferences come to Atlanta and LA and come to probably like Milwaukee or something like that that is an argument in itself but one I think that goes back to just the content aspect of it if you build your online persona it is easier for you to network online you know what I'm saying like I mean over the last X amount of years I would say at least 60% of my network is coming from the internet you know what I'm saying at least 60% if I'm being completely honest and that came through the persona being built up right so I think that if you are doing the content stuff it will be easier for you to network online people will trust you a little bit more there will be people that have seen you that you just didn't know were aware of you and it becomes easier to kind of like flip that but yeah outside of that man it's like yeah bruh you can network with anybody anywhere at this point that whole excuse in my head is gone like 100% gone I agree is that several for me the last thing is shows right that's what we have listed and shows are a little different right because doing them for free if you're hopping on somebody's showcase right you know what I mean that works for free cheap right you could hop on a showcase with people that you know or whatever or create something with people you know so then now all the artists pitch in less money and now y'all have this visibility because y'all also pool y'all's resources and friends together maybe there's something like that and that's cool not only in the city the physical presence but if you can then translate that online because now they're all sharing you and your face and y'all work out a way that actually translates well yeah right like hey we are going to share each other's music every day for this week right and help each other so let's just say seven artists we're going to do a show with the showcase of seven artists and yeah everybody's going to bring out all their friends but also as a part of the marketing campaign we're going to invite people to the show by introducing a new artist every single day and show their music or we're going to introduce a flyer with everybody but we're still going to show and highlight an artist every single day from this and you're one of them right and now y'all are sharing that online so you got an extended reach beyond the people who can actually show it physically little things like that when you're early on they make a big difference I don't know if you have anything for shows but I think that's a a perfect segue to the fact that the expectations are different right when we talk about all of these free methods or super super cheap methods if you're not spending a lot of money you're probably going to have to spend more time right but be patient that's a part of the process and it's a part of that momentum right so you will build slowly 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 2 plus 2 plus 3 plus 3 plus 5 plus 5 plus 5 then next thing you know you add plus 100 and then you start multiplying right that's the way you have to look at it but you have to have faith to move into it that long yeah I agree I mean the only thing I guess I would have to add to the show thing is you know upcoming promoter you know what I'm saying get cool with that guy go to other artist shows but artists be so weird about going to other art shows and like how are you going to meet the people putting these shows together if you're not going to support other artists yes because you can't do it while you're on stage at your show exactly right great point right so it's like go to other art shows man like and this could also tie back to where you are but if you in any type of city that has a music scene or a music culture and there are underground art performers there's a reason why you shouldn't be going to at least like one show a week you know what I'm saying like something bro like just to keep yourself in the atmosphere and kind of see who are the power players and who you maybe even just need to kind of like sort of pay attention to that could put you on the show at some point yep so yeah that's really all I gotta add to wasn't that yeah you said everything goes that well look those are some of the methods that you can build your fan base for completely free especially if you're building from ground zero yep and again these things will compound over time and even when you have money you can still do them for free and they help they'll just work even better yep and when you get money you can actually invest money behind some of these things to just amplify their impact for a less physical effort so these things work all the way around they're super relevant hopefully y'all got value from this podcast today make sure you like, subscribe share this thing I didn't mention before but we will mention it in the future we are going to get to one million subscribers we're only at 123,000 right now but we set our sights on one million subscribers and we're serious about it we're happy that y'all are along for the journey but don't keep this sauce to yourself share it with your family friends and whoever so we can get there that's all I ask I'm Brain Man Sean I'm Kory and we out peace