 Pow! What's up everybody? Once again it's Brand Man Sean and this is the very first episode of Ask Brand Man where I answer you guys questions and even just respond to some comments that I think are worth responding to and I'm always going to try to answer the questions that I think pertain to the most people or provide teachable moments or some more context. So make sure you ask questions below and give me feedback if this is something you want to see more of and I'll do more of it. But let's go ahead and hop into the first question. This was on the video where I was saying why artists will suffer when it comes to playlists. I'll put a link in the description if you want to be able to see that video. I don't want to go through why too much. I'm just going to explain and answer the questions directly. So, Q Benjamin said would you still recommend using Submit Hub? I tried the playlist or option you guys recommended in one of your videos and some charge to get on. Which is like uh is that a red flag or nah? And I don't know how I say this. Clancy I'll just say also ask so should we pay for promotions? This is my answer to those. Yes you should pay for a promotion and yes you should get on playlists that are free if possible. You can do both of those options. It's nothing wrong if someone owns an asset which could be a playlist and they charge people to get on. Especially if they spent that work specifically to build it and it was something they wanted to be able to leverage and pay have people pay to get on. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem comes if the play listing is not a real playlist. If there's not real people, real listeners because then you're getting you're getting scammed at that point. You're not getting what you were hoping to transact for. Or if you're just overpaying that becomes an issue as well where you know you're paying $5,000 and there's only 500 real fans on the playlist and the things like that. That's something to consider. So all these things are strategic whenever you hear me speak on videos. I'm talking about things in the context and what I'm talking about. I'm not saying necessarily for most of these things don't do them at all. It's when not to do them or why not to do them which brings me to another one of these. Playlist push said ads don't scale anywhere near what quality real playlists do both and have but have a limited budget and keep releasing new music. All love man keep the vids coming. I've actually interviewed playlists push and put them on a channel. Now first and foremost, before I get into even answering this question, this comment is from playlist push. And if you look at my video that I talk about five strategies that music millionaires leverage to build, well they leverage to build strategic leverage then you'll see and I put a link to that as well that one of the primary things that you have to consider always is what is the business model of the person that you're speaking to of the company that you're dealing with, the label, whoever you're partnering with and the business model of playlist push is to you know connect people with playlists. That is their business model. So keep that caveat in mind. Now there's somebody who already responded saying I've seen people to get 50 to 60,000 streams from $100 worth of ads. If you target your audience and retarget, you can definitely scale with ads. You can definitely scale with ads. And again, I want to make very clear I'm not saying don't use playlists at all. I'm making it very clear right here. Use real playlists, which means be far more discerning than most people are at this time when choosing your playlist. Now here comes the difficulty which we talked about in one of our whole breakdowns of playlists and courses and things like that, that it is extremely difficult to determine if a playlist is real or not. It is, right? And it's extremely difficult to really determine the value of that playlist. You have to have a lot of experience to be able to do well and some of the indicators Spotify has intentionally taken away, indicators that we would use in the past to more easily be able to determine how real the playlist are. So even when you do take all the methods that we recommend like Corey talks about a lot of the video you've seen some of his videos or just talked to him before. He's really, really, really adamant about specific methods that he constantly use to break down playlists. However, at the end of the day, there's an omission that but we still don't know for sure. And that's the problem with playlists. Even the experts, people who do it all the time have issues, which is why we don't even recommend playlists anymore. We've recommended giving playlists out for free in the past saying, Hey, these are some playlists that work well, right? And they've had real followers from all of our experience at our agency and all the customers we've seen real feedback. And we don't even recommend playlists anymore. Because one, we're not in business with these guys specifically are getting paid to recommend or any of these things. And what we'll find is sometimes playlists that are working very well at one time because of some of the difficulties sometimes even because of Spotify, these people will go rogue, right? They'll all of a sudden start to do some tactics that aren't as aren't as ethical. And now their playlist isn't something that we would recommend. So we stop using them, but we can't always go back and update people on those things. That's why we opt more to help people figure out how to discern quality playlists than to just throw free playlists at people these days, because it just doesn't make sense. And then there are some people who literally are popping and are killing their playlist and they never do anything wrong, but they just stop updating them where they're not as relevant, right? But the playlist game is a difficult game. So when we go back to, let's say, playlist push, who said ads don't scale anywhere near as much as a playlist. Let's address a couple of things. One, what's the business model that they work with in, right? Playlists is their primary business model. But two, that doesn't take away any of the validity of playlists. The issue is playlist are hard to find quality playlists. And a part of their business model, at least to what I, you know, up to what I know is finding quality playlists. So if they're actually consistently delivering on their business model, it means it's a company that's worth at least trying out for yourself to see if they're connecting you with playlists that are quality, because they're putting in that work themselves to hopefully go through all these playlists. They have a lot of massive amount of customers that should help them be able to determine playlist quality a little bit faster than most people, right? And with more playlists than most people know. However, when it comes to ads not scaling, this is what we recommend. We recommend ads, right? And then we recommend a combination of influencers and PR, right, to boost that. Ads, we look for more for consistency. It's not that we haven't seen exponential growth because ads have multiple times trigger the algorithm on Spotify, gotten people on other playlists, right, that have then exponentially helped grow just from ads. We've done that plenty of strategies all the time. But we look for ads more for consistent growth, all right, that's something that you can control. And then you have PR, you have playlists and other things that help the exponential side of it help a little bit more for the vi, virality. But if you don't have that core foundation, you might find some difficulty, especially when things spark up, you don't have that net to start catching. You don't have a consistent system in a way and something that you truly control when it comes to getting out to your fans, knowing how to retarget them, knowing how much money it costs and putting in an exact amount of money to get an exact output. You aren't able to do that with these other forms. Everything else is a gamble and you're not in control of it, right? Ads, I can control it, playlists, put it in there, let's see what happens, right? Even PR and all these other things. Put it in there, let's see what happens. There's ways to go about it, not for this video right now, but there's ways to go about each of those things to make them lower risk in a higher reward. So that's my approach and thought process between how I've talked about playlists in that last video and understand. Now this guy right here, TJ Music TW. Bro, submitting Spotify directly, submitting to Spotify directly and uploading early enough works. I got 10k streams on my new song just from getting on the release radar. The best way is to make quality music and to learn how to pitch it, get in front of the right ears. Congratulations first and foremost, TJ. And then also G-Stand Records said, I believe you. I think this video is a red flag talking about the video that I created. Well, congratulations to you as well, G-Stand. But this is one of the issues that I take where a couple of things happen. Create a video, someone takes something that I said completely out of context. Then you start having people agree with the, with that angle as if that was an angle that I ever stayed in the first place. I never said that submitting to Spotify directly is not something worth doing. I've never said that submitting to Spotify directly does not work. It does work and it is worth doing. However, one, kind of like TJ said, your music has to be of a certain quality, but two, it is a gatekeeper process. And if you know anything about what I push, what Corey push, our contra brand agency push, our agency and, and brand man network, we focus heavily for indie artists specifically on methods that you can control. You can cannot control anything except for your submission. So it's not something that you want to rely on as a part of your strategy in terms of the results that you would get from it if it actually does happen. This is the, you have your things that you focus on and a part of your strategy can be submitting every single time to Spotify, but you don't know if they're going to accept it for every single song. And you don't know what playlist they're going to put it on. And if they do put it on playlist, what did I just say in a prior question that I answered? Playlist, they can, they're a gamble, right? You don't know the level of result that's going to come from it. And well, Spotify in this particular case will have at least quality playlist. So that part is an issue here, but it's not something you can control. So build your own system, right? Always around things that you can control. So you can get those results. And then you have level two, the things that you might be able to control part of it. And then the other part of it, you don't know, but it, but at least you can control that first part. Let's, so let's just say ads, for example, I can control that. I'm just going back to this example because it's easier in every body. I understand it. I understand ads. I could go out into the street and know that I go hand out these flyers at colleges. I can control those, how many flyers I have or how much money I put in the ads and how many people see it. I can control all those things, right? And there's all other, there's other types of things you can add into your system. We'll do that in another video. Level two, I can control pitching, but I can't control what happens after the pitch. I can even put myself in the best position of pitch, but I cannot control what happens after that pitch. So it's not first tier core strategy, it's second tier core strategy. And everything that happens after that is a gamble. And the Spotify aspect, you don't have to worry about quality playlist or not. The other playlist, right? You have to worry about quality of playlist. One of our methods that we like to help you guys just keep really simple for yourselves is, Hey, if you find some third party playlist, right? Don't just keep pitching in new ones and trying to go bigger and bigger all the time. You find a couple that could be in your system that hopefully y'all have a good rapport. And you know, at least if I pitch to them, there's a high chance that I'm going to be on this playlist. And you can add that into your system and have a higher expectation, right? That's like tier one and a half, because you have a good chance of being put out on that playlist and getting a certain level of output. So keep that in mind as well. Playlist are something you can do, but you only have so much control, even if it's quality, right? You only have so much control. So it's not the core part of your strategy is something else that you add to the, to the next tier of your strategy. So keep that in mind. And why direct them to Spotify? This is by song, songwriter concepts. Why direct them to Spotify when their payout is the least of the DSPs. And I like to shout out Jersey Demick. I don't know how to say your name, but actually he had a solid answer to this question that somebody else did. But here's the perspective. Why would I put people to Spotify if they're payout is low? Well, the answer is simple. You are not expecting to get your ROI directly from Spotify. That's just not how it goes. The music business in general, almost every single person, right, is moving off of a loss leader strategy. So if you understand a loss leader strategy, you see my videos, you get it. But if you do not ensure a loss leader strategy means, hey, my music, I'm not expecting to make money from this in this way, in that way, not directly. I'm expecting to bring attention to my music, my music to create an asset, which would be a fan base. And then my goal is to monetize the fan base, not the music directly in that particular case. Now there's sync licenses and things like that, where you're monetizing the music directly. But anything outside of those type of strategies, right, or selling a CD directly to somebody, you're not looking at music as a direct ROI. You're looking at your music as more marketing, right, to build an asset, which would be a fan base. And then you're going to monetize that fan base through shows, monetize that fan base through all these other routes. Yes, at some point Spotify, when you have an organic amount of fans and things keep growing, you are making a decent amount of money from Spotify. I know a lot of people who are living completely just off of Spotify alone, right. But, and from the beginning especially, you're investing in your career. So you're looking to grow, right. You're putting in for a long term output. You're not saying, hey, I get this many streams and I'm going to get that much money after I put ads in for X amount of dollars. That's not what you're doing at all. You're not doing that for any DSP. I don't care if it pays 10 or 100 times Spotify. You're not looking to get your direct ROI because none of them, to be honest, pay anywhere near enough to justify that. Your ads aren't going to get that low, right. Just to be real, right. Your ads aren't going to get that low where you're going to say, oh, I put in $5 in ads and get $20 from my DSP P is in a payout. Now, of course, in some ways it can happen when you trigger playlists and all these organic things start to happen and flow where, you know, it starts to create far more than a direct output of whatever your ad is or something like that. But that is not the mentality you should be coming in to this thing with. Period. You are not looking for a direct ROI from your music in that way, not through ads or any DSP. That's just not it, right. So keep that in mind. Anybody want to debate that, have any questions in the comments, put that down there. And the last question we have for today, this is from mega bang F. He said, why doesn't Spotify do something like daily unique streams or create calculate, recalculate royalty payments? This is instead of taking people's music down because of fake streams and things like that. It makes more sense for them this way. They can probably lose a lot of users if they realize their favorite indie artists are no longer on the platform. So here's a few unfortunate truths mega bang. First and foremost, they're going to determine, you know, what makes the most sense for them. Right. For that part, they're going to determine what makes most sense. And there's a lot of other factors, just other than just recalculating your royalty payments and things of that nature, because there are other things like people using music that's not theirs. All right. And uploading and profiting forward or using other names or profiles being misrepresented. There's all types of things when it comes to the situation and when we come to fake streams, if they can't recalculate if they do not know for sure. And once a certain amount of royalty payments come out, you can't retroactively go take it from other people. It's just not how it works. It's far more difficult and complex. And I think you want to give credit for it. But the second point, which is a harsh truth. Users might like a user users might have artists modify if they realize their favorite indie artists aren't doing there. It's not going to happen. Right. Because they have more than one artist that they love. Right. And unfortunately today, artists have been reduced in value in so many ways. I mean, music is so, so free and so frictionless for people to have access to. It's going to take more, far more than one artist. And it has to be super fans built off of an artist engaging and mobilizing those fans to get off the platform. Like Dave Chappelle saying, hey, don't watch today's Chappelle show. Right. It has to be a scenario like that. And it has to be someone who has enough of a fan base engaged and caring enough with a lot of relationship built for them to even act on that. The chances of that happening, especially with something, somebody of a large enough size to impact Spotify. It's not even worth calculating. Right. It's not big enough. So artists don't really hold that weight, particularly as individuals for the most part. Right. Particularly indie artists, since that's what you're addressing. Also to the point of you saying they can probably, Spotify could probably lose a lot of users. Right. If their favorite indie artists are on the platform, please do not underestimate how ignorant the average fan is, how ignorant the average consumer is. Right. And I don't mean that in a insulting way, but ignorance is bliss in so many ways for them because they're not aware of so much of what goes on in the music industry. I remember maybe two, three years ago, right. Artists were so heavy on this whole conversation of this person's an industry plant, that person's an industry plant. They are only big because they had an investor or a label behind them. Guess what? Average friends not only don't care because the whole goal is, Hey, I don't care how this music got to me. Right. Is do I like it or not? Not only do they not even care how the music got to them. It's all about whether they like it or not. Most of them aren't even are completely unaware how it got to them. Right. Like in terms of all those back end nuances, if you go acts, most people, what an industry plan is, they will not know what that is. They will have never even heard the term. So what's happening a lot of times is artists getting these comments sections with each other, right? Or in these forums and y'all are in an echo chamber where you're hearing stuff and adding importance to things that do not even matter. And now you're psyching yourself out and you're limiting your chances of success, trying to be perceived in a certain light that only your peers care about who are not your fans that would actually be funding your career. All right. So make sure you don't get caught in that echo chamber because you're going to be moving in a way that is not to your benefit and not only not to your benefit, it's in a way where you, where it's taking away your opportunities that are right in front of you and easy and accessible. So things like industry plans, things like thinking fans are going to respond in a certain way because they've been wronged as an artist when most fans don't even hear those conversations and all your algorithm is different than their algorithm. And out of algorithm means out of mind. All right. So keep that in mind. All right. You as artists, they don't see these videos. They don't, they don't know who Brain Man is. They don't know who, whoever these other music channels are, or, or, or billboard and all these, they don't need to check any of this stuff. None of it. All right. So keep that in mind. That's it for this particular video right now. I would love to hear any questions that you guys have. Please put them in the comment section below like legitimate questions. Um, and I'll do my best to answer the ones that make the most sense to answer. And that'll also let me know if these type of videos are worth doing. Other than that, as always, share this with somebody that you think that will really benefit from this share with another artist, another music professional. And of course, like and subscribe because if you like these videos and you subscribe to them, you'll see some of the notifications when we drop things like free courses or free conversations in our community tab on YouTube. And you only see those if you're subscribed and you got that notification bell. So make sure you hit that thing. Other than that, have a great one. You know what to do. Hit that subscribe button.