 Bawl, what's up everybody once again it's Brandon Shawn and today I got a very special guest for you guys Damien Ritter. Now if you don't know him by name Damien was one of the co-founders of funk volume, a label that was making millions in revenue including artists like Hopson, Swizz, Jaren Benton, quite a few more. I'm not going to go through their whole roster but we talk about really what it takes to build a record label and there's a lot of great insights for people who want to be managers and on the business side but if you want to build a record label if you want to build a brand this is the guy that's worth listening to so there's going to be a lot of things he talks about for now let's just go ahead and hop into it. So Damien tell everybody how you got into the music industry and what you were doing before that. Sure, so prior to 2008 I had no experience in music industry whatsoever outside of just being a fan of music. I went to UC Berkeley I was a business major when I graduated in 2002 I was an internal auditor for Wells Fargo then I got a job with Goldman Sachs in London so I was all financial services and then in 2005 I decided to go to business school press the reset button went to business school at Stanford got my MBA you know so still no music and then when I graduated from Stanford I took a job with Deloitte Consulting in Chicago so I was a management consultant for Deloitte Consulting in their strategy and operations group so I worked with them for about a year and some change and then that's when I got laid off this was around 2008 so 2008 the economy was kind of going through a rough patch got caught in the first round of layoffs I wasn't actually that mad about it because I wasn't that happy I realized that you know each job that I had I just kept finding what I wasn't that passionate about so I was going back to the drawing board and my brother hit me up he was at a college called UC Irvine here in Southern California he's an artist he said that he was kind of wanting to drop out and do music full time so it just so happened that it coincided with me being laid off I was like okay let me see how I can help him out he had a friend at the time that was equally as frustrated but in a different position he was signed to a label at the time things just weren't going that well he had the idea for funk volume which eventually became the label his name's Hobson a lot of people have kind of seen or know part of the story of the rise and crash and burn of funk volume but the three of us got together we I said you know I'll be responsible for the business and you guys be responsible for the creative and I kind of just jumped in it and we figured it out that's how I got into the music industry got it so I mean obviously there's no one way into the music industry I'm sure you know a lot of different people at this point and who have came in completely different ways what you say is pretty much safe to say there is no one way to get in the game there definitely is no one way I mean everybody comes to the table with different resources different relationships you know I had some money saved so I was able to invest some money into the label but obviously I didn't have any relationships or anybody nobody that I knew of off top I mean I eventually realized that my network was I had network for quite some time I was part of fraternity so there was different pieces I didn't never look for anybody in the music industry so I didn't know who was part of my network so there was but there was nobody that I could turn to and be like help me grow this label or help me start this label but looking at it looking at the industry just knowing that the fans were the crew the most crucial piece you know if you have fans you can tour if you have fans you can sell music fans you can get sponsorship so the more fans you have the more opportunities open up for you so that became our focus is just how do we get in front of people how do we build momentum how do we get more fans because I knew that all the opportunities will be unlocked once we had enough fans I got you make sense so when we first got to the label what were you saying all right this is you're in the mindset I started this label my brother he's here obviously you have a family on the line and you don't have a job so I'm sure it's kind of like back to the wall then you got hops in what would they like artists wise what kind of fan base that they already have at the moment you guys decided to start the label my brother didn't really have much of a fan base I mean hopson had a little bit of a fan base you know at that time my space was still popping so his my space was was was fairly decent but nothing to build a career on just yet you know what year was this again 2008 oh man yeah that's that's hella early because he wasn't that big like 2010 he wasn't really blowing it right yeah so it took us it took us about two or three years for it to even be an actual business so you know for two and three years we were just putting out content uh really we released a project called haywire that was like a joint album where half the half the songs where my brother half the songs were hopson and then there was actually a third where my brother a third were hopson and a third with them together we released that for free we started just doing anything and everything that could interact and engage with fans so obviously it's releasing music and videos but we also did like use a use stream show that we did weekly called punk volume tv the guys were doing like local um like contest performances where they would you know win money so we were just doing anything and everything that we could to get to get in front of fans heavy engagement on social media you know we made a very crucial decision early to really adopt facebook and really take advantage of the facebook community even though the artists were a little reluctant at first because it didn't look as playful it didn't look as colorful as my space you couldn't really change your page up and make it look crazy um but if that was definitely one of our smartest decision was was jumping on facebook early okay so being early to a platform being early to a platform is always like an advantage and it's so so would you say that was one of the biggest things that helped move you guys audience yeah for sure i mean because back then facebook didn't really have the restrictions on the reach that it does now so it's a lot it's a lot harder i mean i definitely think um artists should be on facebook still because there's a lot of people there and we do a lot of paid paid social media marketing on facebook but it definitely was easier to grow a fan base on facebook back then um than it is now for sure got you so you said in those three years before it was a legitimate business a lot of people that are watching this are going to be watching this are in that space right mm-hmm and i know you said you were doing a lot of things can you go a little bit deeper into details of the mentality you had and what y'all were trying to do system-wise and like what the and what the artists were kind of tasked with doing what you as the business person was tasked with doing just to give them in depth idea sure so i tried to give them the opportunities just kind of focus on music and focus on video content and um you know put out having having dope visuals is crucial um you know we're constantly competing for people's attention and there's so much video content out there now you know i'm so very good he was very good at presenting his brand you know the lane in which he was in very controversial uh you know he turned a lot ahead with his visuals so you know while he was doing that i always encourage encourage them to just heavy interaction on facebook if people reached out to you and say they love your stuff you know say thank you you know uh we basically turned our initial hardcore fans into kind of a street team and we did develop a street team um an internet street team in which we had like different um you know different different facebook groups for each city so we really mobilized our fans to to support and get involved and just be a part of the funk volume energy that we were building so we would also do like contests there was there i came up with the idea of doing a contest it was four artists but it was mutually beneficial it was called the don't fuck up our beats contest because hopson hopson and my brother they also produced beats so on our web on our website you can go to the to the site download a beat record a video of yourself rapping to the beat post it back on youtube and we would have this contest and the contest itself grew because we would do it every year so we held it probably six or seven times actually maybe eight times uh so that was a that was a dope way to get other artists involved to to to promote the brand to promote our beats to promote the projects that we had dropping around that time because we noticed that every time we ran this contest there was just a lot of traffic you know so anything that we were doing that time it was good it was it was good promotion for everybody and it was also a good platform for artists to participate because you know artists coming up they're looking for places to to showcase their talent and i noticed that every time an artist would submit um and video through the don't fuck up our beats contest i would go to their youtube page and that would be the most viewed video on their page so it was working for it was working as great exposure for them as well so it was it was just a good idea is mutually beneficial that was one of the things we did eventually i started doing like virtual conferences like fun volume virtual conference i always wanted to do things that helped us solidify us as like a reputable legit label and while the artists continue to do their thing too i felt that those those things were important from a label branding perspective oh man you roll right into that man because i'm i was definitely wondering to make fun volume even though this is all of now there's is definitely one of those labels that actually did start to create a name of its own where there's a lot of labels where they just have some artists but the label isn't known or doesn't have much credibility in itself so when you say you did conferences were you talking about like more business type conferences no we did a conference just like so using a platform similar to this so just add just imagine you know a panel type by where i would have two more people and you would be not not just asking me questions but asking well i was the moderator i would ask i would set up the panel just like a3c you know there would be a schedule there would be um you know different topics so it would be held over the course of the day it'd probably be four or five panels and people would just tune in just like this and and and listen to the panels and have an opportunity to to to ask questions so i did that a couple times um i was just constantly just coming up with ideas because a lot of artists look to us because you know we were super independent i mean we eventually signed a label services deal with warner um but we literally built it fan by fan and we were just i just wanted to show artists how we did it how much effort it took and how we were thinking about things so that they could benefit from our experience as well okay that and i'm thinking were there any hacks though would you say there was something that was a hack i know you said you built fan by fan but something that really boosted what you guys did um i don't think there's any hacks you know you just never know like what video is going to go crazy um but i think it's it's always important even if you do have a video that goes crazy because i think around the time hop drop ill mind for that was like the first video that kind of went super crazy uh that was one in which you kind of went it Tyler the creator um so i think that one really yeah that one that that one really caught a lot of people's attention but you i think it's always best to to be prepared for that moment if and when that happens so that you have a foundation to support it and you know some people have one viral video and then like people look to see what else they're doing and there's really nothing there we had we had put out a couple projects we were super active so if you if that viral video caught your attention there was already kind of like some momentum brewing they're like oh this is not just a one-off thing this is a whole kind of energy um and i think we were able to really um keep a lot of that attention when i when hop got it with some of those controversial videos yeah man you definitely had to nail on the head i'll always tell people like you have to have some sort of catalog for people once you have their attention you got to make the most of it because you're not guaranteed to get that attention again yeah yeah so it's just important to to build a solid foundation and not just you know try to bank on something going viral just be prepared for the moment if and when it does happen for sure and when you say preparation i know there's the fact that you guys dropped a lot of music right you had a catalog but in terms of preparation what other things would you say people would need to be building and getting systematized for preparation when that moment actually does come well we were just we just had a a team i mean our team was was was building over time i mean we didn't like we didn't start out with a booking agent we didn't even really start out with a lawyer but we added as we were learning the business just trying to add the proper components um to support growth right so we eventually got a booking agent we eventually hired a publicist we eventually signed more artists so we were prepared we were learning but i feel like we built a pretty solid foundation and it wasn't just kind of like an internet thing even though we didn't have a building in an office like we had we were pretty well organized but so what did that team look like because i know that you were running your team pretty lean in the beginning and kind of being super efficient what does that look like when in terms of going from just you how did you handle it when it was just you all the way to the standpoint of saying this is how i know i need to add this person and another person for sure i mean you know we weren't really making much money and it were any money it was really just all my money going out for the first two years so i always tell cats you know cat it's important to know like how to manage money and things like that but you don't need an accountant if there's no money around so when we started making money we got a business manager that handled our handled our accounting helped invoice cats helped with some of the budgeting and things like that we always had a lawyer on boards for for different things whether we are confronted with a sponsorship opportunity or our negotiations with the label but we definitely ran we ran it all we we operated very lean and we were lean on purpose because i never put any pressure on the guys to create music you know hopson or my brother like neither one of them make a lot of music and when you don't make a lot of music or when i don't know what's coming out every year it's very hard to plan it's very hard to budget so yeah so it was it was difficult to bring on people because i didn't really know what we were going to be doing that year so i didn't want the fixed overhead that was one of the reasons that we decided to sign the warner because it was a label services deal and they earned a percentage of our music sales and we were able to work and kind of cherry pick some of their services so we would not only get distribution we would get pr we would get some marketing support but that wouldn't be fixed overhead i wouldn't you know that because i didn't know when we would make music you know the percentage of sales deal just made a lot of sense because they would get paid when we got paid so from my standpoint it kept the artist happy there was never any pressure to um well the warner deal didn't make the artist happy that but for another reason um but from a business standpoint in terms of how your structure in the business it makes a lot of sense because if you go through a year where you don't really make as much money or you don't put out as many projects and now you've got a full-time marketing person now you got a full-time publicist you still got to pay those people and it would have been more painful on the business got you that makes sense so why did you um well why did the deal not make the artist happy what happened well they felt that i think it was just like different expectations right you know when you when you say you're working with warner i think you have the expectation of okay they about to really blow some things up they about to put us on tv they about to put us on the radio uh and that didn't happen right away um and we didn't really make radio music but they did uh we did go on a radio tour where we at least got the introduction to a lot of different radio state we were definitely planting seeds so i understood what warner was doing you know we we did a lot of things like they helped our relationship with serious radio we started getting regular spins on serious that was big for us and we started developing right relationships with radio um the relationship with radio sometimes it doesn't happen overnight you plant those seeds and eventually it develops when you have the music um but if you got the music and you got the relationship then you know it can it can really work um so i saw a lot of the things that they were doing it just wasn't materializing as as fast as the guys would have liked so they didn't understand that they they interpreted it as them not doing much i interpreted as them just planting seeds um and they just yeah they was just weren't happy with what warner was doing um so how do you think how important do you think that concept of plant seeds is for you and and just even an idea of building those relationships because you mentioned serious and i saw that you were just as serious with slay what like a few days ago or last week or something yeah that's another project that we did i brought nine nine cats together flew them to austin put them in a house for a week and they they were tasked with creating an album in a week we called it one week notice and we were doing the press for that last week and we stopped at sway and and they dropped some bars off so that was pretty dope but i was that that was i don't think that wasn't so so warner didn't initiate that relationship but we did we did go back to sway during the time um when we were on warner and every time you see people it just helps build on that relationship helps solidify that relationship how did you get closer to cats so um you know every every time i go to new york it's always try to make my rounds and just you know be face to face with people and um you know just drop off some genuine energy and build but that makes sense and i want to think i'm thinking about a question that somebody had and they were talking about just the artist right so this is a business person and they were thinking how do i cut a deal with an artist today that's good for the artist what is a good deal for the artist and um look like for you well it just depends every artist is different it really just depends on where the artist is and what you're contributing to the artist so i can't even say what a good deal is right because i know labels and and and you know even with the way the hops portrayed me it's like a lot of times the business side gets a really bad rap for different deals that are proposed like you know or even just in general the 360 deal gets a bad rap well some cats that make sense for them because they're they weren't anywhere before the label put you know a lot of money into what they were doing you know um so i don't bash 360 deals i got to really look at each situation in isolation and go okay what has the artist done prior to this deal and then on the other side what is the label committing to what is you know what resources do they have how much money are they committing to the situation how long is the deal for you know i probably wouldn't sign a deal of any great lengths unless it was you know a lot of you know unless we're talking about a lot of money but every situation is different so that's what i'm not trying to to cop out of the question it's just a tough it's a tough one to answer there's just too many variables you mentioned not signing for a long time why wouldn't you sign for a long time um it's just a lot of a lot of things can change um the industry is constantly changing the way we consume music is constantly changing there's different revenue streams that are opening up or that are open today that we didn't have you know we did i didn't know what patreon was you know 10 years ago you know when we first started we didn't we weren't monetizing youtube um you know there's there's a lot of weight there's and i don't know what's going to happen this year i don't know what's going to happen next year it's just it would just be tough to to sign for a lengthy period of time i know that back in the day it was normal for cats to sign for like seven eight albums um to me that would be kind of crazy yeah at this point got you that makes sense especially since things are evolving so fast when you um talk about the label being built funk volume has i mean it had a considerable level of success considering what a lot of people just aren't able to do what were y'all doing in terms of nearly revenue by the time y'all um y'all dissolved it was definitely a i don't really i don't typically like to go into but it would it was definitely a in terms of revenue and especially when you throw revenue numbers out there because there's so much cost involved like cats don't understand oh my god there was a multi it was a multimillion dollar business but you know there's a lot of cost to go into running a label and investing into the future so um you know i understand how numbers can get misconstrued at times bet that's a perfect um point right there because i know all right like you said millions of dollars but then you have all these costs what are those costs that actually what do they actually look like when you're making and running a full machine like that sure so like i said before we didn't have an actual building so we went we didn't have any any any rent or you know utilities and stuff like that you know most of the stuff that that we invested in was went back into the artists and the artist projects um or we did a documentary that you know we had to put money into the documentary um a publicist cost lawyers cost um our business manager costs what else what else to make our merchandise that costs a lot of money um insurance tour insurance when you go on tour there's a shitload of cost there's travel there's gas there's you know it's it's it's a lot you know shipping the merchandise out it's i think a lot of people underestimate all of the different moving parts when you're even if you're just one artist money like us because essentially as a as an artist you're a small business that has you know five or six different revenue streams they're kind of like five businesses in one when you think about you know the touring the merchandise the music the publishing it's it's a tough thing there's a lot of moving part even if you're just one artist so imagine running a label where you have four different artists and you have all these these things going on for for various artists it can get you know it not overwhelming i think we manage it pretty well but you just got to be organized and understand kind of you know how to run things got you and well by the time i mean you guys basically had a public spec all right things were kind of behind the scenes pop scene came out and you know made a song painted your character i'm pretty tough right yes as a there's a there's always community miscommunication a lot of times when it comes from business people to artists that's just a common thing right what do you think that you could do differently in terms of going back and maybe how you build a label to make certain things clearer and how you deal with artists or what did you just learn about your process just as a career as a whole not even that particular particular i think it's primarily it's all it always comes down to communication you know communicating more clearly um you know even when you think you're you're you're being transparent and being clear that's your perspective you know you learn that some people don't receive it the same way uh so you know for for example like one of the things that i broke down to the cats on tour that that wasn't understood until i broke it down to him after the fact is when i was doing the budgeting for a tour right we have the revenue that comes in from the show and then we do meet and greets so there's revenue that we get from meet and greet tickets as well so when i'm doing when i was doing the budgeting i didn't really um i looked at all that revenue was kind of one and i didn't separate so when i was just figuring out what we could pay some of the artists i would say okay we're going to give you 500 a night right in my mind that's for the show and the meet and greet i could i should have said you know 300 is for the show 200 is for the meet and greet it doesn't change the amount in which you're going to be given it just makes it more clear that you're being compensated for both things and you can't because because it was thrown out that somebody wasn't getting paid for the meet and greets and i had to tell them that's my bad i should have told it wouldn't have changed how much they made but i would have just made it more clear you know but it was clear as day to me because i'm in the excel spreadsheet i'm the one budgeting it's just stuff like that you learn along the way that you just have to communicate better you know you always got to communicate better and more clearly because you're not dealing with i have a different background right i come from a corporate environment um i understand excel i'm in my power point and thing most artists aren't like that so i have to learn how to kind of communicate in a way in which they understand it's a hard thing to do um so you built a label you had you end up making all this money right or well her say you know however much but you as far as successful successful business you're making all this money right that ends what does that look like just from a career wise how do you decide what's next because in my my mind now knowing more about your story you kind of went through this before right you were successful in the financial services industry and then it kind of ended and now you kind of found just so back in that exact same situation right yeah well i mean you know i've i've done enough to always i've been blessed to have done enough to always have options um you know it was a huge blow just being honest with you it was a huge blow to have something that i invested in not just financially but that was something that i i put my life and heart into for you know eight plus years so for it to go away in the most ridiculous fashion it took me a while to kind of get back to this point where i'm where i'm actually feeling good about things um because one of my initial reactions was you know i wanted to just run as fast as i can away from music like this is like just some bullshit um you know so it took me a while and i'm still got kind of going through the process but i'm doing a number of things i started the music entrepreneur club um i'm talking with a couple companies about going back because as much as i talk about structure with these artists i feel like i've lost some of mine i feel like it's always important to have structure um so i might i might take a job with with a with a music company and leverage a lot of the things that i've used a lot of the things i've learned over the past eight years in addition to my more strategic strategy stuff that i was doing before and kind of merged those experiences to help out some of these new music companies um so well i'm i'm still figuring it out but i luckily i'm i'm back to feeling good and i'm excited about 2018 so i'm looking forward to getting getting getting my hands dirty this year so we talked about mint music entrepreneurs club describe what that is how do you come up with that idea in first place well like i said before we we had done some virtual conferences so i've always had like a toe in education and i just know how important it is just being through the ridiculous situations that i continue to find myself in with artists because i just feel like if if artists come to the table with a certain level of understanding of the business it will really minimize a lot of the tension with the behind the scenes or the business people um you know even some of the things that i see get blown out of proportion online is like people don't even understand the business they their their heart is with the artists because you know the artist has the connection with the fan so whatever the artist says the fans are going to rock with it but i always look at the different situations people in are online and i'm just like you know people have no idea what that situation could have you don't know what their deal look like you don't know nothing you're just taking the artist side and run with and i get it but the music entrepreneur club is i think is important it's a place where you can come network with other artists other producers other manage i'm in the process of also merging the club with kato's beat club so kato is a producer who i've worked with a lot um in the past he has his own beat club is primarily for producers and we've recently agreed to merge the two groups and just make it a bigger community a more supportive community because there's also tension between like rappers and producers you know producers always posting these memes about not getting paid um so i we're just hoping to bring it all together and you know there is some shady stuff that happens in the music industry but i feel like more often than not it's just misunderstanding um and just a lack of knowledge so you know i want to break that all down so that if you do get in a shitty shady situation you know what you're dealing with um at the end of the day you don't got to sign nothing like nobody's forcing you to do anything so if you want to navigate the industry with utmost confidence all you got to do is equip yourself with some knowledge and you'll be straight okay no so i mean that's that virtual reality i mean the virtual conference set up people log in do they have to pay anything monthly yeah so right now it's only ten dollars a month and right now we're meeting twice a week but we're changing the structure where we're just going to do one one session a week and i'm constantly bringing in guests so it's not just me i bring in i i tap my network and i bring in i've had last last year i've had tumor from Spotify come in people from empire come in i got people from Warner coming in like these are legit established professionals and i don't think this experience is being offered anywhere else online and it's only ten dollars a month um so you can't this ain't a money grab for me but i feel like it is important to separate people even if you're paying ten that lets me know you're a little bit serious you're not gonna just come in and start fucking around so you know it's ten dollars a month um the the merge should be done we're trying to figure it out but it should be started in february where we're also going to incorporate like some some music critique sessions throughout the month uh and i think it just build build a solid community ultimately i want the the the the biggest value to be from just being part of the community so if we grow the community to a point where you're traveling in new york and you can just post in the group be like man i'm looking for a videographer in new york or producer in new york everybody could just be supportive and collaborative and just you know makes a dope music without all this shenanigans yeah okay dope man and i know you guys have been running that um just to let you guys know i've been i sat in in some sessions and they're definitely dope but the the main last session i sat in was the bitcoin session um that was an interesting perspective of how that technology the block tank technology will be affecting music so you get all different types of um views at the industry from a business side and obviously from more of that artist producer side looks like you're about to go very heavy on the producer side because you're adding the beat community and the merger so it's definitely worth it just from continuous knowledge from more people who are knowledgeable about the industry yeah i think it's i think it's real dope that you're doing that man no thank you thank you i gotta have you on at some point you gotta join in and as a guest i gotta get you on here yeah man hey i i'd be glad to you gotta make that happen eventually um before we get out of here i uh want to ask you a few questions just from subscribers make sure i get those in okay so i'll do at least three so one how can you keep a modern customer interested with you enough to build a core fan base so what's your perspective i think i heard that answer a little bit already um you know you got you gotta have a unique story a unique brand um you know i there's a lot of artists out there you gotta figure out you know how to stand out from the pack um and and i always believe that you gotta make quality music i know that there's music that comes out that that kind of comes out and then it you know then it dissolves a lot of one hit wonders still there's people that were hot last year to nowhere to be found i think it want to you have to have the unique story and i think you have to have great music but you also have to be good enough at music to understand how to continuously reinvent yourself over time um that that's a challenge that i don't think a lot of artists are prepared for because your fan base is going to mature your fan base is going to grow and it's going to be hard to keep them engaged with the same type of music um and i think that's the challenge that hobson's going to have you know a lot of his fans were were young when they first caught on to him so that's like 14 15 you know fast fast forward seven years later some of these cast are 22 23 that's a huge change um so you have to just just be able to have your unique story unique messaging and your content that supports and communicates that but also be good enough in music and have the mindset of just being able to grow as a man or a woman and continuously reinvent yourself as an artist to keep yourself interesting over time it's a super tough task and only like the the best of the best i believe we're able to do it like your conyes um you know i think obviously jay and i mean the cast that have been around for a minute i think you know have the team around and and are smart enough and talented enough to do it got you i think that was a great answer man um how would you say well what's your opinion um this is another question from a fan what's your opinion on building multi genre record labels is it easier to build one genre or start off building multiple genres um multiple genres well the way so it wasn't i i eventually wanted to get into under other genres of music but i felt it was important especially because within hip hop there's so many sub genres of hip hop um one of the things that made funk volume successful was just a cross promotion and the support of the of the all of the guys right so even if somebody had finished their album cycle maybe jaren benton just started his and but but hopson and jen and dizzy were still on his record so they still there was still a reason to share what they were doing there was just always something going on i know that that has nothing to do with like different genres but so this is a separate point in terms of building a label i feel like it's it's it's it's great when you guys are really taking advantage of the cross promotion and just doing a lot of stuff to keep the energy going um in terms of different genres i don't think it's a i think it's probably easier now because i feel like there's a like a lot of shared fan bases i think that a lot of brison tiller fans are also hip hop fans you know or scissor fans are also there's like a lot of mixture of the or like ty dolla sign is kind of in the he's kind of hip hop but he's r&b cat well as long as you're not all over the place you know i wouldn't have like a country cat and then like a you know a gangster rap cat like there that would be confusing and there's probably not as much of a benefit from the cross promotion those are probably like that's one fan base and that's another and your identity as a label is confusing as shit um you know as i was building funk volume and if we were to continue to build every time we added another artist i wanted i wanted them to be way different than who we already had so that we tapped a different demographic but still within hip hop you know but there's just so much variety and hip hop alone you know that that i think that's a that's a that's a smart strategy at the end once we had 10 artists i wanted to be able to kind of satisfy everybody's hip hop needs so that if you told me you were a hip hop fan there was somebody on the roster that you were walking with that was like the vid that was like the long-term vision if we were able to keep going and have like 10 cats on on the label like see even if you i don't know if we would ever just have like a like straight mumble rapper like that wasn't like all of our cats could spit yeah like even though they were different but we would definitely pick up somebody that would that was more melody driven natural but still able to hold their own in a cypher that would probably be like the yeah that'd probably be like the common denominator yeah because i can't see those guys respecting the mumble rapper in their particular group yeah yeah so that yeah that we we were actually gonna sign a cat name on cue white dude um if you listen and he's he's definitely drift he's still a rapper but he's definitely drifted more towards especially recently like singing and more melodic stuff and i felt like that would like he would have been a dope addition to the team because he respects hip hop he's he's definitely in the lineage of hip hop and and you know he even works with just blaze and stuff like that so it was true to being a hip hop cat but his his music is definitely more melodic and he even sings sometimes so i thought that would be kind of a good pickup for us no so i guess the the answer to summarize just multi genre labels versus you know uh just one genre it's really when you're starting off there's a lot of benefit in that ability to cross the road because you can't build if you're going in a lot of different directions so even though we're kind of melting down these ideas of certain genres because of the way these distributed these days you still want to think about maybe not necessarily the genre but still the consumers skip over the genre but think about the end consumer so the people who will be interested in it make sure there's crossover not between necessarily the genre but the people who are interested in the artist right yeah well yeah because just like the the artist has a story in a brand and a message like we still have a brand and a message as a label um you know even though it houses multiple artists you know for what funk volume represented you know it's still whatever artists we did bring is still have to be in line with what the overarching theme of of the label was and you know it was really true true artistry um being true to yourself those are the broader things because it needs to encompass all of the artists but we still have an identity as a label as well a brand as a label so you can't forget that if you're the one kind of building the label building the brand right so I'm gonna kind of inject my opinion with a question and ask a question too because that made me think of the fact that if you're building a label especially from indy on up these days the way it's guerrilla style and you really want to build those communities around it the label is going to have to be a lot more in the front um as opposed to let's just say inner scope right back in the day where I mean the artists were from Tupac to I can't even think of some of the Gwen Stefani all these different things but they're really just a corporation funding it the fans really have no investment in the label but today since you're building a community around not just the artist but also trying to capture around the label so you can use that leverage to build you know yeah more artists you need to make sure that even the label itself speaks to the fan right for sure for sure that's one of the advantages I think independent labels have over majors I mean you don't really see fans wanting a sony shirt or like but we actually have a connection with the fan we created a community um and that's definitely whereas the majors have more money than us and probably more relationships and stuff like that we actually have a connection with the fans and it's real um and that's actually one of the a powerful advantage of independence over over a major record label for sure take advantage of that so a last question from a subscriber and I'm going to get you out of here what are you looking for when you're searching for a new talent for a label um well I'm no longer I'm kind of tapped out like working with artists at the moment like I'm we're gonna be working on one-off projects and things like that but when I was running the label um obviously talent um gotta be just just great at making songs not just rapping um so you gotta be good at making songs um you gotta have a good live show touring is a big part of the business model when you're an independent or when you're any artist really um you know you want to be able to put on a good show you got to be comfortable on camera the visuals like I said before is super crucial to you know your marketing campaign um a strong work ethic um you know takes feedback well easy to get along with it took us a while to sign like when we signed jaren and dizzy it took us some time to really kind of get to know them before you you pull the trigger you know back in the day label signed a shitload of artists and they're not doing that as much these days where you're not because because they're trying to get a return on the investment but as an independent label like we can't sign cast that we don't plan on really working with and really trying to grow because you know we can't just throw money away signing people here and there you know unless we're really serious so um it takes a while to to to learn the person get an idea where their heads at you watch how they move too because if they're not moving at all by themselves then they probably won't move with us right because we're essentially doing the same thing just on a few steroids right you still gotta you still gotta move like an independent artist even if you team up with an independent um machine or an independent label that has some momentum going so I look for that too like if an artist doesn't have that mindset and they're not moving on their own then I don't I don't feel like they understand what it takes to continue growth even within volume so that's crucial and that's big all right and if you drop it on you mentioned it a little bit but uh tell them a little bit more about that not um that one week notice project I want to make sure they check that out why why we have their attention yeah the one week notice project again and I flew nine cats there was um seven artists two producers but two of the artists were also producers so we had dizzy right jaren ben audio push demrick amelio rojas reese kato dj hoppa um threw them in a house in austin we stayed in a house for a week they really did make the project in a week less than a week actually it's probably like over the course of five days they made about 20 tracks um and then this was in december and then we we got it mixed and mastered over the next couple couple weeks and we dropped it on january fifth it's a really dope project i always like i've always wanted to try this experiment because i just think it's dope when cats get together and let their creativity clash and and you know sometimes you might get some shit that's just terrible um but sometimes you get some great stuff and i feel like the music that they made um was awesome you know it doesn't sound like just it's not just like cypher songs with cats throwing verses here and there there's there's concepts it's actually a pretty cohesive project um especially being put together in such a short amount of time so check it out it's everywhere it's on spotify it's on itunes it's you know all your digital distribution platforms um and if you like cats that rap most of them are or all of them are pretty much spitters i think i'll spit i think people would appreciate the project it's dope um so i look forward to doing a similar project with other artists this year like i think that'll be a way in which i can tell you to work with artists just bring different artists together have them create something in a short amount of time and you know capture the process and try to make that bigger put that on a bigger platform every time i think that'll be a dope project to be a part of all right i hope that interview was as helpful for you as it was for me definitely check damey and now on social media at dame.still moving to ask him some questions i'm sure he'll be open to answer check out music entrepreneurship club it's a great source because hey i sat on on a few um of his sessions listening to things like bitcoin and blockchain and music and a lot of different random things that could be worth you checking out as well he's a credible source and i think you should have as many sources as possible that are actually willing to give real good information out there we'd love to know what you guys think in the description below let me know other than that if you like this video hit that like button if you like it might as well share it and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe button