 More streams, more views, more likes, more comments, numbers, numbers, numbers, that's all you hear people talk about in music these days but all these numbers don't necessarily matter as a matter of fact some of them can trick you completely. In this episode I'm going to talk about two very important ways of looking at the numbers to help you out starting with the fact that and A&R revealed the huge problem with signing artists solely based on numbers and artists. Keep this in mind because it's a bad thing for labels to look at it this way, which they're discovering, but some of y'all are getting caught up at looking at A&R's own numbers the same way a label would look at you. You object to find yourselves. Eww, just nasty. The problem with solely signing artists based on the numbers. So there was an article, I think it was in Billboard and it says, why is distilled the challenge facing contemporary A&R departments? The people that have been able to catch things in that well of TikTok and data and research are all the ones that have been getting promoted. He explains, now the research well has essentially run dry. Everybody's kind of looking around saying, okay, how do we go back? That's words from Mike Weiss, head of A&R for United Masters. So first we're going to stop here before we get to the rest of this commentary. That's really important. But just so y'all hear it, right? People have been watching TikTok. This is what it sounds like to me. People have been watching TikTok doing research, looking for something that's popping, right? What's happening next? We want to catch the wave because we see that it's moving. We're watching the numbers. But TikTok's not moving the same way anymore. I got to repeat for artists that TikTok is still relevant, TikTok does still work well, but it's not just a rocket shipping artist every single day, five times a day like it was. So now A&R, sir, what's your research? Because before you were just watching numbers, pretty much waiting for them to start moving. Do you even have the talent to find an artist beyond numbers that just start moving on TikTok? So when he says, that's what I think when he says, how do we go back? People are like, so how do we even find an artist based on an old system? How do we even find an artist based on something other than their TikTok views in that specific space? And maybe some started looking at reels, but pretty much we already know those short form videos. And then it goes on to say, in reality, managers in A&R say few of the data-centric signings that landed big deals in recent years have been able to make even two tracks that stream. A number of these artists have been quietly dropped from the labels. A former research focused A&R acknowledges that the data-driven process surfaced a lot of duds. I was getting frustrated because of the sheer amount of stuff coming up on research and then seeing it not really pan out a year later, he says. So keep in mind, every time they say research, they're just referring to people finding artists online. And researchers, I was scouring the internet and then or I was looking at these numbers because there are actually softwares that people use now these days to look for numbers that are moving in a certain way. Just like that going on watching stocks. Yeah, exactly like that. So, and they like really, really want you all to understand like it's really not just an analogy. They really have that these days, right? So again, what he's saying here is like, yo, we're signing people based off of the data, but we're not getting another hit from them, right? They're not even able to make two tracks that stream. Now, my question is, is he saying we signed them after they pop and then they can't make two tracks? Or is he saying we signed them off of one track that popped and now they can't even make a second track that could stream? I feel like it's that one. I feel like it's that one too. And they're not even painting out a year later. Now, I'm awake. Let's get this last slide out the way for now. Still, there is a concern, the most pronounced among veteran and ours and managers that the pendulum has swung too far towards analytics. I have a saying to the A&Rs who focus all their time on data. You would be the first people to be replaced by a computer algorithm. As Mike Karen, who built up APG, his own label and publishing company and served as a major label A&R. He councils younger employees. Don't take the easy and short term route being 100% data reliant. Mike Karen is a legend in music, done a lot, ushered a lot of artists in. So he's telling young people, yo, don't just look at the numbers. Why? You're relying on the numbers. Well, what are you doing other that a computer can't do? You're not building your own talent, your own eye, right? Your own sense and instinct, that thing that a computer can't do. And that's going to be not only the thing that allows an A&R individual to be able to find and help support an artist. On the other side, you can't, you're going to be able to find an artist that the data can't quantify. And that's the issue. Real artists, data can't quantify. Data can only show historical representation of a real artist. But it can't give you, but it can't project what a real artist is. Yeah, man, it makes me think it is LaRusselon. Or he's like, uh, data only told you what I could be, couldn't tell you what I would be or something like that. That's what it makes me think of, right? Like there are certain traits of successful artists that like you can't really see in numbers. Like you can't, you can't gauge work ethic by viral video. You can't. You can't gauge professionalism by a YouTube video. Wheel power. Yeah, like creative ear, you know what I'm saying? Like so many things that like don't get brought up in data. And like that's what I feel like went wrong with the data driving market is that I've always felt like data was supposed to be supplementary to traditional A&R methods, right? Or just traditional methods of finding talent. But then it completely overtook it because to your point and probably the point Mike was making is that it was the easier route. Let me just scroll through TikTok. Okay, this guy got 10 million views. This one got 5 million. This one got 2 million. I'm just going to go talk to all of them. But then we talk about doing that at a time where one, these platforms were inflating data. You know, so I'm pretty sure that fucked up a lot of A&R. They didn't even know. You know what I'm saying? They got hit by that. Two, you don't completely understand what you're looking at. So you default to whatever the bigger number is and just assume that that's the most important thing. Oh, they got 2 million views on it. This shit must be filed not even thinking about like, yeah, it got 2 million views on it, but it got 30,000 comments talking about how terrible this shit is. You know what I'm saying? And one that likes it, you know? And so I agree with the general sentiment of like, I don't think data should be the main driving factor of A&R and discovering music. And I'm saying that as a marker. Like, our whole job is numbers and data, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, no, I feel like that should be thought about, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. But I do think it's important. It helps you see things that are important to the digital landscape. I'm in the new, the new now for artists, but it shouldn't be like the main thing that makes you go like, yeah, this person is for sure, like, gonna be it. Because man, I feel it, man. Like, I've seen viral videos from creators that I've never went back to. So I can assume that they're artists that have made viral songs that those people never went back to. Of course, man. Like, this is the thing. If data could quantify your highly limit period. All right. So artists don't concern yourself with the data. Of course, I got a stress. Like, yes, the data can reflect what you do or literally document what you do. But very, it's very unlikely for data to early on be able to project correctly, especially in a field like art. Yeah. All right. So, you know, cultural influence, like all these other intangibles that you can have that it cannot quantify. Like, you know, you say as a marketer, but like, to me, what I had in my head on brothers, like, what makes me better than other people at marketing and doing what I do is because I don't just use data. Yeah. Like, I don't need that. I have an instinct and the data usually goes where I know is going to go based off my instinct. If I'm familiar with the data, I actually know, oh, when this artist does this, the data is going to look like that over time. So, like, I'm projecting data off. I'm projecting the data off of the artist versus using art data to project the artist. Yeah. I think I'll let me make sure I said that right. I'm projecting what the data is going to look like based on the artist instead of projecting what the artist is going to look like based on the data. That's what I'm doing. Because I'm working with an artist early on and we do the same thing. We had these conversations. We were like, oh, yeah, man, when he do this or about X amount of months, it's going to look like this before an artist is showing any numbers. We had these conversations all the time. It's like, oh, yeah, man, about a couple months, man. Like, oh, yeah, we already know that's going to go up. Like, we had these conversations at the top of the every single year. And that's the same thing that that instinct is the same thing that allows me to tell artists, yo, your videos. Are dope. Keep doing exactly this because eventually it's going to pop and all the numbers are going to catch up. You're ahead of the numbers right now. Tiktok's algorithm doesn't know what to do with you right now. The Reels doesn't know who to show you to right now. But once they figure out how to show you to the right people, which I can help you with when things take off, they're going to be great. But an artist gets frustrated because you're posting, posting, posting. And the content, they don't, isn't getting views so they can think, oh, I'm not doing the right thing. And that's what happens when you only allow the data to validate where it's like, nah, bro. Sometimes you're actually doing the right thing. The data has not caught up, but you need an instinct in the eye. And as long as you rely on numbers 100% of the time, you're never going to be able to develop that shit. Yeah, man. Numbers only told you who I could be and tell you who I would be. Stop what you're doing. We've got to interrupt you to let you know you can win $20,000 by submitting your music to tulost.com slash collab for The Crown. We're looking for the best songs and we're partnering with Tulost. So if you think you got some great music, if you think you got the goods, go to that site, tulost.com slash collab for The Crown. Check out the instructions for the contest. Win up to $20,000 and make sure you put in no label when you create your profile on Tulost so you can make sure you get three months completely free. That's tulost.com slash collab for The Crown. And again, when you sign up, put in the code, no label, all one word, and you will get three months completely free. Go win that $20,000 because you know you got the goods, you got the talent. You just got to make sure you submit. Peace. I would, you know, I give us another pat on the back and I would like to say that I feel like we were paying attention to data points that other people weren't paying attention to very early on. I can give the audience our most notable example, which is strings for listener. You know, that's been a recent data point on the Spotify dashboard for maybe a little bit over a year now. Yes. I've been playing strings for listeners since 2018. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Manually doing. Yes. Not fans. Clowns would be like, what are you talking about? Oh, we just did the math on it real quick. You're doing. So, you know, I think that was the other thing too. Like the easy data point is views, right? Just like in music, the easy data point is streams, right? And so we all assume a lot of views equals good. A lot of streams equals good. And that's not always the case. I've seen scenarios where an artist will have a lot of streams on the song outside looking there and shit looks peachy keen. And then you look at their inside analytics and I won't even use a scenario where it's fake, but you look at the inside and you can tell like, okay, there are a lot of people coming to this song, but they're not sticking. They're leaving. So this song got 100,000 plays on it in a day and only got 230 saves on it. A player's ass. And you're like, damn, that's shit. Crazy. Because the only thing I could deduce from looking at these numbers is that people are finding it, but they hate it. They hate it once they get to it. But outside looking in, you'd be like, man, that artist went up 100,000 streams in a day. And it's like, yeah, but the grass ain't all green over there. So, and I think that was even a point somebody made earlier in this article right was like, if we are, we either can't be as data driven as we have been. For the last three years, well, we need to find new data points to base this on because the ones that we've been basing this on haven't been working out for us. And that's, like I said, I will argue that's because the big data point has been views and streams and how quickly the views and streams have been accumulated versus like you said, certain intangibles. What's the control on culture or certain culture? What's that work ethic like? And then there are certain like, you know, hard analytics that I don't think is looked at a lot. You know what I'm saying? Like I said, the streams per listener, that just became important enough for Spotify to put on the dashboard a year ago. But like I said, we thought that was important back in 2018. And I can show you that this song is getting three streams per listener and this song only getting one per listener. We need to go with this song, bro. It's so much stuff that we got like that. I saw somebody, what they're notable, but they were talking about how first week numbers don't really matter anymore or whatever. I was like, yeah, I've been saying that for a very, very long time. They have the platform, cool kudos to them. But it just goes back to that point of if you pay attention to the right things, eventually everybody else will catch up and y'all who have followed us, y'all have seen us rise relatively quickly in a truly independent fashion, not connected to labels and other entities from ground up because we've been able to help artists consistently from watching the right things. And what I hear when I hear people just focus on the numbers in this superficial way or just looking at ads and not understanding how to do cultural marketing or just paying a couple of influencers but not understanding and thinking about paying the right influencers or not understanding where ads can come into play. And then we take it all the way to the surface or you're just talking about numbers. I think about you the same way. I think about somebody who might be arguing who's to go to basketball and all they can talk about is straight stats. It sounds like you don't understand basketball. All right. Because you can't see past the sheer numbers so you don't understand the nuances and things that go beyond. All right. And then plus you also have deeper stats. That would be a deeper step which you talked about in terms of streams per listener at that time versus just views, right? There's all these other things and everything can't be quantified. All right. It's just hard to quantify. So even if it could be, we're nowhere near that. So I just keep that in mind, man. Like, what's his name? Mike Caron said, you, if you are relying on straight data, you're pretty much a computer. All right. And we're in the creative industry. We don't really need that many more computers. Exactly. Got a lot of software for that. A lot of software. Now this other thing, this other number that I want to focus on. Shout out to Barry since the 80s. Artists and management teams, these numbers should mean more to you and your business on Spotify and Apple end of the year reps, in my opinion. The top 10, five and one artists for how many fans and how and where those fans shared your music. What is he referring to? All right. How many are your top five? What was it? The top percentage, right? Like, for instance, we had for our podcast, it was what? We are the top podcast, the number one podcast for 238 people. Shout out to y'all. All right. We are the top five podcasts for 746 people. Also shout out to y'all. And we're in the top 10 for 1,000 people. Of course. Of course shout out to y'all too. Right. The number that people should pay attention to more than just the superficial streams. That's what he's referring to. The information is right there, but most people focus on the ego of how many streams they actually got because of the digital social media posts. I can say I got 10 million streams versus how many fans you actually have. Man, you artists are not looking at the right numbers and the information on the Spotify Raps. Y'all thinking that with the party all brain that controls your ego, not your business. And then Dan Runcy said the same thing of capital. Shout out to Dan. Now, what I'll say to this is at the end of the day, when you look at your streams, you got to remember there could be a lot of people who only heard your song one time. It was on a playlist. It was passive. I was curious. Right. They were curious. So that is nice for your income. Some could shoot it at least counts. It counts. But when it comes to your career, right, the longevity, it doesn't really have too much weight over there. So pay attention to those numbers because that's going to give you a real instinct of who you are, where you are. And in many cases, it's inspirational. Like when you were talking about it earlier, it's like, oh snap. Like it feels good. It's like we're the number one podcast for some folks. Crazy. It's kind of wild to think about. Shout out to y'all for real, for real. Whoever y'all are. Jocelyn being one of y'all. One of them out there. Shout out, Jocelyn. That's what makes it crazy. It's like, dang, that means that she's definitely going to hear this. If you think about that. Yeah, unless you, that was a fake post, you know what I mean? Jocelyn, we need to hear this addressed. If you don't DM us about this, then you ain't real. But that's another number, right? That really matters. And like as we talked about this entire episode, maybe she only listens to half the episodes. Damn, I didn't think about that. That's crazy. I mean, it would count. It would count. It would count. But like we talked about at the beginning, right? You have numbers that you can misuse them and they can cause you to make the wrong outcome if you don't develop the right instinct to see beyond the numbers, right? The numbers are not enough. But then when you do see the numbers, you also have to be able to recognize what matters within those numbers, right? Because you can get a long list of it. But who cares if you can't take it, turn it to something actionable or you're going to waste your time focusing and building your whole plan around something that's not really going to have any impact. Yeah, I agree. The story is no artist any longer has the luxury of just looking at vanity metrics. There was a time where you could get by just looking at views and likes and comments. But we are long, long, long past that point. Now you have to look at, like you said, I mean, this Spotify feature is pretty new. So that's actually pretty game changer. I'm not going to lie. It is. But most analytics platform has data points that you probably are not as excited about. It's not as sexy to you. It's not as sexy to look at your saves as it is to look at your streams. Just like it's not as sexy to look at your shares as it is to look at your views on a social post. Certain metrics feel better or can make you feel bad for looking at them. But to your point, one data driven marketing should never be the primary way that you are identifying talent. It should just be a tool and helping you to identify it. But if you are going to be data driven, you have to be committed to that shit and be looking at all of the data points and also contextualizing what do they mean? Like I just had a conversation with a client earlier and I was just like walking him through his Apple analytics and this was actually a great example of data almost going wrong. Looking at his ads, you know, I'm not going to give up the ad funnel, but the ad essentially is pushing the Spotify and Apple. He's looking at his Spotify analytics and he's like, man, this shit ain't moving. Man, I think we're wrong. We need to jump ship. I happen to see something and be like, man, let me look at your Apple analytics real quick. He pulls up the Apple analytics, shit going crazy over there. And I'm like, okay, so you were wrong. People ain't going to where you want them to go, but they're going. And then I'm showing him, I think I look at the numbers. I'm like, oh yeah, that's crazy. People are finding that song and then going through the rest of your catalog. You're like, how can you tell that? I'm like walking him through the different data points that I'm looking at to say that. And he's just like, damn, I would have never thought about that if you didn't say that. He's like, but I just log in and look at my plays and I log back out. And I was like, bro, like no, bro, like the plays is meant to, but when he said that, that's exactly what they want. Like it's like, there's enough stroking ego and get you out of this bitch so you don't start asking no tough questions. You know what I'm saying? For the average artist versus like, you know, marketers and you know, the professionals, the people who usually are asking the tough questions of these platforms, they're the ones doing the deep dive and doing the manual math to figure out what X, Y, and Z means. And then you start to really be able to read the context behind the numbers. Like there are times where I can look at numbers and I can visualize what the people that made those numbers were doing or you know what I'm saying? Like what their thought process was at when they did the thing that produced or didn't produce the number that I'm looking at or looking for. Like it's times where I can look at a smart link and be like, man, like, yo, you got a thousand people on this joint, you know what I'm saying? Nobody clicked over to the music. Man, I hate to break it to you, man, but I think they clicked on it because you had a bad bitch in the ad. I don't think they really came here for you, you know what I'm saying? I know that hurts to hear, but you know, you might want to go redo an ad and take her out so you can figure out if it's really the music or not. Stuff that like, if you just looked at solely the numbers and the vanity metrics of it, you would never get to some of these nuanced conclusions because data-driven marketing is, for the people that do it right, it is almost a social science, you know what I'm saying? It can't see the content. It can just tell what the content is doing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I think like the initial article is like, most of the people who do data-driven marketing are doing it wrong because the people that really, really do it right very rarely want to be A&Rs. That's the weird thing about this space is like, the data guy at the labels, I think I don't want to be A&R. He liked looking at numbers all day. He ain't trying to be out in a studio session nodding his head to the fucking drum loop that's been playing for the last 15 minutes straight. He want to look at his analytics chart and watch shit go up and down, you know what I'm saying? A&Rs have been forced into a position to where they have to care about data in ways that I'm pretty sure the role has never had to before, but it's very rare have I ran into one day really data-driven. Like they know about all that shit. They usually know about like the basics, you know what I'm saying? Like we said, the basics only gets you so far in 2023. So that's my thing. I don't think data-driven marketing is pointless. I just think it's been done wrong in most cases and it's being used as the fucking fork when it really should be the butter knife, you know what I'm saying? If you get what I'm saying. I feel like you're getting what I'm saying. I do get what you're saying. Yeah, I appreciate that, man. I was worried as I thought about it in my head. I was like, man, I don't know if it's going to hit the way I kind of hear it in my head. No, no, no. I'm with you. I'm with you, man. And I mean, look, I think that's enough, man. If y'all don't get that, ask us some questions. Give us some detailed questions and we'll explain in the comment section below or figure out we need to have a deeper conversation. But hopefully y'all understand where we're coming from. Like, and this kind of goes back to something I always like to why I've been wanting to really push to artists and help them understand about us, man. Like, there's the art, there's the science and the greatest art is putting them both together. And a lot of times when artists hear us talk about the science, they don't understand that we do highly value the art. What? They don't know. They don't get it. I get mad, man. Like, that'd be, you know, that'd be some of the other markers I think in the game. I get offended when people be like, aw, man, like, you're just a marker, you're just a numbers guy. I'm like, nigga, this shit is colors and swirls and you know what I'm saying? Music to me, bro. Like, I'm seeing shit you ain't seeing, man. You know what I'm saying? Don't lump me in with the other person that gave you a little data report, bro. We own two different playing fields. It's just like you killing it on piano and someone's like, oh, yeah, man, you're just pushing buttons. What? Or you're just flicking strings on that guitar. Like, nah, nah, like, you know what you're doing. Excuse me? Exactly. Exactly. Just because you don't know what I'm doing doesn't mean that it's not valuable. Correct me. And we'll leave it there. This is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. I'm Brandon Sean. And I'm Calvary. And we out. Peace.