 What's up everybody, once again, it's Brandon and Shawn and this video is brought to you by Brandonnetwork.com because I signed myself. Now I got to talk about something that a lot of artists you might not be familiar with because a lot of people are losing money on music and I'm talking about the people that are winning from music, are losing money from music and it's a standard of the industry that most people don't really talk about. Now what do I mean by that? Well there's something called a lost leader and what a lost leader business model is is essentially when you have a product that brings people in the door and when they get in the door you sell them that product and you lose money when you sell them that product but then once you sell them that product you also try to upsell or bring them into another world where you can actually make money on that and that's what music is today. So what I'm saying is when you look at streaming and the money that gets made on a lot of these categories a lot of artists are not only breaking even but actually more so losing money on the music but the music is just the front end. It's marketing for them and then they're trying to sell other things so even if you're making like $50,000 off a Spotify or something like that I don't know. Most of the time a lot of these artists are losing money on that though. All the money you're investing in that but then really trying to capitalize through two big categories today, merch and tours. So if you want to think about this business model in a different way let's say gas stations. So it's common that I've heard that a lot of gas stations are making money on the gas. They're like I don't know if they're breaking even or they're losing money on the gas but where they're really making that dough is the actual little quickie mark thing right? I sell you some candy, I sell you some coffee or whatever chips all that good stuff. So if you think about gas stations not making money off of gas then it's not too far fresh to actually think about musicians not making money off of music. That's just the model we are in today especially when we're not selling those hand-to-hand copies it makes things a little bit more interesting not to mention deals that might be taking additional cuts of your music. So why is that important to think about? Understand that we're bringing people in the door with the music that's the marketing that's the communication and we're getting that message and the same way you pay for a Facebook ad to be put out there. You're paying for your music to be put out there and that music is an ad for your brand. This brand is something that you can flip to make other types of money right? You are the product or the artist is the product and that needs to be flipped to actually make money through tours, merch, other types of products, other types of partnerships where you might leverage the asset of your fan base that you built with that brand with that music into the brand and then get partnerships that way and make some direct money. That is how music is being looked at today. Again that is called a lost leader. A lot of these people out here right the industry standard so many business models are built on losing money purposely on music to bring people up into the rest of it right? It's almost like a sample or just giving some kind of sale. I'm trying to draw you into the store in the first place so I can sell you other stuff. Some of y'all might be losing money by mistake you know like now let's just try to flip that into a mentality where you can understand why you lose money in certain places and once you look at it that way you aren't so focused on trying to get this quick flip off of the music immediately but then the other thing you start to realize is yo I need more money than I thought I needed because if I'm put paying all this money just to get this music out there and that money from that music I shouldn't even expect to make back directly from the music after flipping into something else and it still costs me some money to make sure I can go on tour in the first place then numbers like Wendy Day's $150,000 for music monetization actually starts to make sense because it's like yo isn't it different than just blow up a song make it go viral on social media or something like that which costs money it's another thing to say yo okay now I gotta produce this merch yo now I gotta go on tour or be able to get to this country to capitalize off of this or get to this state to capitalize off of this and make the money back that's where the big opportunity is that's why music is the loss leader but that's why you need so much money to make money in music keep that in mind of course there's other situations and scenarios where you can make the money back in music through sinks and and whatever kind of deal right publishing all that good stuff but this is the general business model that so many people are building on it becomes so much powerful though when you know that you're building on that model and you're not chasing somebody else's model and don't understand that aspect of it so loss leader if you never knew that term but you were doing it anyway at least you can sound smarter and use it and explain it to people in that way other than that as always if you want to have a deeper conversation on something like this and if you want to get help actually building your marketing campaigns building and developing your brand and check us out at brandmannetwork.com because I signed myself if you like this video go ahead and like button if you like it your minds will share and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe