 The music industry is known for people taking advantage of other people over and over again. And one music executive actually describes it as hazing. And he says people should stop hazing in the music industry. We're gonna talk about why that is and what could maybe change it. But first, I wanna play this clip from the executive. The music business is huge on hazing. When you come up in this business, someone would know that this door is the right door for you to go through to get success. Cool, talk about it, sir. But they're gonna send you to that door. Here's the crazy part. If you come out that door and end up at this door and get it right when you come out, the guys that sent you to the wrong door are laughing. Ha ha, you figured it out. I'd never forget I was in a room with some very, very, very powerful people. And this is after going through hell to get in the room. And I finally got in the room and they had the nerve to tell me, Ray, calm down, you're one of us now. You know, my response was, no the fuck I'm not. Come on. Because I'm not gonna put nobody through which I'll put me through to get here. And then laugh, I think the worst thing that could happen to a... Let's just leave it right there. Artists, big eyed, young, coming into the game, they're like, oh snap, I wanna be successful. Somebody comes into their life, this powerful record executive in his nice car with his nice watch, showing him a girl that could all be his, right? Signs him, music starts moving. Things start looking good. Fans, stadiums. And then at the end of the year, he looks at his money. And it's like, damn, I thought I made more money than this. Yo, what's up, exec? Oh, yeah, man. X, Y, Z is why you're not getting that money. Remember when you did that? When you did that? Remember when we were meeting? You know what I mean? I charged for my time, you know? That was a little, that was off hours, man. I only talked for free from nine to five, man. You called me when I was at my kid's game, man. So that was a $500 right there. And then you use the record label studio, da, da, da, da. Things going, oh, let alone the contract you sign, we get the far majority of your shit, right? Then artists are like, yo, this sucks. Working hard, trying to get themselves out of this position. Some get themselves out of it fully. Some of them get themselves out of it just a little bit. But even still, the ones who get themselves out of it, feel like they lost valuable time in their life and they should have more money at this point. Oh, there goes a new young artist coming out into the game. They got potential. They remind me of myself and to get where I am, they need to go through the same shit I went through. If they really are about their life. So I'm gonna sign them to the same horrible deal and then put them through the same circumstances and oh, don't let that motherfucker call me during my kid's game and never settle. If I gotta walk out, that's about $500 for that 30 minute call. No, really, it's a ban now because this is a popular artist. It's a ban now, you're right. Because I got a cloud up under my name. My presence is a blessing. My name is associated with you. So I'm putting you on, right? And that repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats. That's just the artist specific example we see this throughout the music industry over and over again in so many different ways. And I think the core issue is people collectively not saying I don't want the future to be like that. Because if I feel like I lost my money though, right? How, this is what somebody's gonna say. If I feel like I lost money, I lost time, how am I going to get the value? I deserve to have gotten a certain level of value and I'm just doing what the industry standard is. But if the standard is fucked up, that doesn't change the fact that what you did is fucked up, right? That means the worst. Yeah, it does. If you recognize that it's messed up, that shows that you're off your ethics. That's what I talk about like the selling out thing. It's like it's only selling out if it's against your ethics. Like one person could do something and you could be like, yo, they selling out? No, not if that's them. He just might be a fucked up person and he's completely in line with who he is. It's you, if you go over there, it's gonna be a problem. You have to deal with your soul and shit. But I honestly think the more I look at it, the music industry reminds me of multi-level marketing. It's a fucking Ponzi scheme, bro. And I'm gonna go deeper into this at some point. I'm gonna like figure out all the lines, research. I'm gonna have to do a video or something. But I heard something the other day where a guy signed up for like a multi-level marketing program, right? And he brought his auntie on. So his auntie telling the story. It might have been insurance. And he asked her to go to this presentation, all right? And she's like, yeah, I'll go to the presentation. I want my nephew to make some money, get some commission, I'll even buy maybe a policy or something, right? But at some point she asked her nephew, well, you're getting commission off of this, right? And he says, no. And to me, that was like, wait, what the hell? Because the little I know about multi-level marketing, I know a decent amount, but one of my assumptions is, yeah, part of everything is you bring people in, you get the commission, right? Now it's slightly different for every company within it, but there's some base models. What I was made to understand in that case is, because I'm like, bro, how do you keep people in if they're not winning off of their own commission? Like that doesn't make sense. How does a model of it? One, they're always focused on more recruiting a lot of times than actually selling a product. Two, it's shared trauma, passing it down in the same way the music artists do. So what happens is, Jacory, hey, bro, come on in here, sell this insurance with me, help me. Like you can get rich, man, because you're gonna make money off the product and you're gonna get paid when other people bring themselves in, but actually I'm insurance. So I'm not actually going to sell you into the multi-level aspect of it, but if you wanna sign up, you have to buy this insurance. So it's still the same thing, right? But what I need you to do is I'm gonna do this presentation and the part of your job first, as you're being trained, is to go tell everybody that you know about this meeting, this sales meeting, call it something else fancier, right? It'll be a sexier name, just presentation, whatever. Yeah, it's watery, we're meeting with drinks, you bring everybody in, I get the commission off of your people, right? First of all, you're young and dumb, you're not even thinking about that right now, like how much that doesn't make sense. But two, yeah, you're just looking at it, it's getting trained. And if you just literally gave me all of your main contacts, your first thought of friends and family for your training process, how the hell do you start to make money? Yeah, you draw it out. You know what you do? Hey yo, Chirante, bro. If you could bring people to this presentation and you give me all of your first contacts, it's just like I rob you of your contacts, he robbed somebody else, you rob him of his contacts and then he's gonna rob somebody else of their contacts, right? It's the same type of idea, right? Let's like rob and rob and rob over and over again, right? There's a lot of other weird things that I think actually fit more than we would like. We know it's hard as hell to be at the top, right? It's very, very few people making money and getting those sales in the first place. But that'll be another day. My point of bringing that up though is music is already hard enough. The fact that people are misdirecting, I feel like primarily is an old mentality. Music doesn't have to be so akin to multi-level marketing. It doesn't have to be this whole game is meant to be so not told mentality where you feel like every detail that you share is going to threaten your career because, but at the same time, if so few people are making a lot of money and so many people are struggling, how do you break them out of that mentality? Because that's a poverty mentality. Well, if it's a poverty industry, then what do you expect from people? Let's take a quick second to talk about the elephant in the room. If you're an artist trying to grow, we already know what your goal is, a thousand true fans. Everybody talks about it, but how do you actually make that happen? How do you get those fans? It's not just about getting views. You gotta push people further down the funnel. So let's talk about it. Number one, do you have these people's data, right? Do you have the ability to text and build highly engaging relationships with these people? Can you boost your Spotify plays to actually have engaged users, not those surface level play-listing plays? Well, guess what? Fever Fan is a platform that allows you to do all of those things in one. So it's not overwhelming. You don't have to switch and have all these different logins and switch all your LinkedIn bios. You have even a LinkedIn bio tool that you can do. So everything is done in one place. So not only do you grow your fans, you do it for less work. How about that? Check out foreverfanmusic.com because we know it's not about views for the day. It's about getting fans who will be there forever. Foreverfanmusic.com. Let's get back to this video. You said something that I think ties all together where it's like the industry itself is already hazing. You know what I'm saying? Because if we think about the sheer amount of people that want to be artists or work in music, I don't know what the number is. Just say it's a lot. A lot of millions, right? Mm-hmm. I just met an artist a couple of days ago who was telling me about this video that he had going viral on Facebook. I was like, yo, man, like that's fire. You know, what's it doing on Spotify? He's like, oh, it's not on Spotify yet. I'm like, why not? He's like, I don't know how to get it on there. I think that's crazy. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. You in 2023, you could have Googled that and had answers in a couple of minutes. But I have to recognize that there is a vast amount of people who are kept out the industry just from sheer lack of information. So that's the first level of hazing of the music industry. Can you find the information that will help you move forward? And then you find the information. And then the next step of hazing is is that all the money you've got to spend to even make this shit go. $20 to put your song on Spotify. $100 to get the cover art made. $400 to get a mixed message. Not just expenses? Yeah. But the expenses are hazing. You know what I'm saying? Like there are certain businesses and certain hobbies that are more expensive than others, right? I can't go, you know what I'm saying? I don't know. I can't go fucking fly a plane because I ain't got the money to buy a plane. So I don't already get kept out of that hobby right there. You know what I'm saying? Just off of sheer finances. And I don't know. I think that when you meet an artist or an aspiring music industry worker, right, that's even made it to the point to where they know the right questions to ask you. Or, you know what I'm saying? Even to some degree, like know the right things to do. They've already went through a significant amount of hazing to get to that point, you know what I'm saying? They've went through some closed doors. They've spent maybe hours researching money going to certain events and things. Just to even get to the point to where I can say, hey, Sean, how do I optimize my Facebook ads? Took a lot from them to even get to the point to even know to ask that question. You know what I'm saying? You're like, the industry itself is going to haze and keep people out. Well, I was thinking about this with, because I have a homie that works in publishing. He tells me all the time about what goes on in publishing. I'm like, that's crazy because what percentage, like we would just assume that 10 million people in the world want to work in music, whether that be artists or whatever. What percentage of people will we assume even know that publishing is an option to take to be in the music industry, right? I would say maybe two, three percent of people that aspire to be in music, maybe aspire to be in that world. So it's already a small pool of people that want to do this. And then you're going to haze half of that percentage of people out of wanting to do it. You limiting your own pool of talent, you know what I'm saying? That you could work with. Just off of I went through this, I have to put you through this. And then what's crazy about it is if you talk to those same people about when they went through it, they haze it. They wish that it didn't exist. They wanted better, you know what I'm saying? They think back, I remember my first time paying internship. I remember thinking like, man, this shit is crazy. I'm out here working 10, 12 hours a day for a subway sandwich and like a pat on the back. Nah, bro, at least throw me 500. You know what I'm saying? Life for the job, well done. Yeah. I don't know if I would ever put an intern through that. I haven't gotten to that point yet to know what my morals are. You know what I'm saying? In terms of, I don't know where I fall in the spectrum yet, but I like the thing that I wouldn't do it. You know what I'm saying? I like to think, hey, intern doing this work that you really under qualify for, but you pushing through, you checking through and figuring it out. He goes something, you know what I'm saying? Either whether that be in the form of information, right? Cause I do think there are instances where the information can be way more. I can't pay you. Let you sit down, Tom. Yeah, exactly. I'll let you call me, you know what I'm saying? When I don't, usually other people call me and ask questions I wouldn't ever answer for you. There are other ways to make it valuable, but I don't know. I always think that, man. I feel like if you want to be, and I'm just music entertainment in general, the industry itself just by the way it works and what you got to do is going to haze you on the way up. And there's nothing you can do about that part of it, but then when the individuals do what you're talking about, that's when I'm like, what's the point? You know what I'm saying? Like what's the point? Did you tell buddy how to get his music on Spotify? I told him to look up distributors and he'll figure it out from there. All right, fair enough. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, right? What I'm about to do, you know? He probably didn't even know what distributors were, so yeah. And I was kind of pressured, bro. It was like a, I won't even tell the whole story, but it was like a friend of one of my cousins. I was at a family event. Oh, one of those type of things. Yeah, so it was like, I was kind of stuck because I'm like, I might as well. He ain't got nothing else to do. I'm here. Okay, okay. Yeah, I mean, look. And again, when we talk about industry, you know that, you know, I started tech and there's like a more of an abundance mentality. So much money being thrown around. Please take some. Yeah, in comparison, it's so much more. So people think that way. So when the model is messed up, I think you're gonna have a lot more of the poverty mentality, but when people are in abundance, people are giving up information. I can't tell you how many executives that had no reason to talk to me, just like sat down, not just like answer my question on LinkedIn, but like, like, hey, come to my office and sat down and I'll go give them presentations like week after week as I improve working on tech and things like that. And they'll be giving me advice and say, hey, if you get to this point, I'll show you to a group of investors and shit like that. Just off of that, right? Off of like literally just cold LinkedIn and somebody. Yeah, that's great. Completely different mentality and all the information. I remember I showed you that, like, I think it was at Stanford or something, but it was like this class of, it was like maybe nine videos of these executives like giving all this information, like teaching the class and it's just free on Google, all the game they have out there. Crazy, right? And that's the way that industry thinks. So when I came into industry, it wasn't even music first, it was just entertainment technically. Cause the first time I had the experience, I was reaching out to somebody over a popular festival. Somehow I don't even remember how I found the person existed cause it wasn't like the owner, but it was somebody who ran the operations for like this popular festival. And they got like three different festival locations worldwide, Atlanta's one of them. And I'm asking her questions and this woman was so like resistance where I'm like, why did you even meet with me? And I would have never guessed that some of it had to do with like, yo, the game is meant to be so not told and I feel uncomfortable cause I feel like you might be a competitor and overcome me until she said like, you know, well, like this is like our secret sauce and we get, you know, and I get paid to do what I do and all that kind of stuff. I'm like, bro, the festival and events that you do are in such a vastly different category. Like literally it's not even like close, you know what I mean? It's just so not close, you wouldn't even think. But she still had that mentality of I don't want to get somebody any sauce because they might take it and then maybe somehow take away from me. And this is operations, by the way. And it's festival stuff, by the way. So it's not even like something scalable. It might be some information like where'd you get your toilets from? Where'd you get your toilets from exactly? Like how many toilets do you need per person? You know, like per person in the event, like little stuff like that we're talking about. But hey man, I'm so resistant because I'm so insecure in my own position and I don't make enough to feel like I can take that risk. That's the reality of it. And that's how a lot of people act in this industry. It's hard to see it changing as long as artists are complaining about the money they make because executives are gonna still be complaining about the money they make and hustling and trying to figure their way out. The only way you're gonna be making like that decent and more stable income is if you're doing something with something like the majors and people who are attached. Most people are attached to that tree. You're an indie, possibly, but still working through a major, whatever, whatever. The vast majority of the industry are not those people. Yeah, and it's crazy because I have conversations with artists and different label people. I forget that that mentality exists because we don't move like that. Like, I was having a conversation. Two conversations I'm thinking about. One, I had with an artist the other day, he has a trend moving really well on TikTok. And I was just like, he was telling me about how his distributor hasn't really tried to make any connections with TikTok. I said, oh, I'll connect you with our TikTok rep. I'll just CC you on the email so you can take it from there. He's like, oh, worry, you will give me a TikTok connection? I'm like, yeah, it's a person, you know what I'm saying? It's not gonna change what I gotta do, you know what I'm saying? Like, if I hit her tomorrow about some shit we're working on, she's not gonna be like, oh, you're connecting me with this guy, so nah, fuck you. You know what I'm saying? Plus, I don't wanna do that work. I much rather just make the intro than you do it, you know what I'm saying? That's how you live, man. Now I gotta keep maintaining this shit? Like, nah, man. Nah, but you got it. You and your manager can handle it. And then I was talking to a, I had a exec hit me up about wanting to do a campaign with one of their artists. And it's like a seeding campaign. And they're asking me questions about like the difference between us and another agency. And I'm gonna be real with you, like, you know, kind of seeding, probably not much. You know what I'm saying? I feel like a couple pages we don't know and that's their advantage, but I would assume, and this was a rapper, so I was assuming the rap space, there's only so many pages, so like they gotta know about them. And I was like, yeah, you know, if it doesn't work out with them or, you know, whoever you go with, like I fuck with the artists, I can just give you like two or three pages that I think makes sense for them. And you figure out what you wanna do from there. And I was like, oh, you would give me connections that you're an influencer base. I'm like, bro, these are pages that are live on there. I'm not the only person that knows they exist. You know what I'm saying? Like, I will be shocked to learn that I was the only marketer in the world that knows about these pages. So like, if I give you this, one, they don't even know I did it. So they don't know you have any tile to me, which means you're not gonna mess up what we got going over here. And then two, if I did feel like you're doing some shady shit, I understand it's initially enough to know how to go find people to replace them. You know what I'm saying? So if I did feel like you mess up somehow, it's whatever, you know what I'm saying? Which I think is what, back to your point, the competition thing is they feel like if I put you in this position, it would somehow put what I do in jeopardy. And in music, I still don't think I've yet to see a position that would truly be threatened in that way. I've never seen anything where it's like, all right, if you connect me to this A&R, they're gonna start servicing your stuff. If you connect me to this influencer, he gonna start working your campaigns. If you connect me to this ad guy, you're gonna start running your ads like, this shit don't make sense when you say it out loud. They're still gonna want your money, it is. Yeah, exactly, exactly, but these are business people, but if I had an influencer who would connect, he charged 500, he like, thanks, bro. You just brought me a band as we appreciate that. Now we all win, you got to connect. I got some good will, he or she got some money. We all win in this situation, you know what I'm saying? So that, and I think it's because we came the indie route first and I do a triple out of it to just like, you too, right? Like we're so used to just giving the game out and then people giving this game back. I just always assumed that how this shit would go. And then once you hit the major aspect of it, you start working with people. I wouldn't say high tier, let's say like mid tier and up. That's when you started to realize like, oh no, like everybody's trying to hold onto that shit tight. And it's like, you tell me about this one page that you know about is gonna impact your campaign. It's crazy to me. It's like, I don't think like that. I'm like, if anything I want you to know about it, you go spend your money first. So I can look at how your post does and then decide if I want to spend that money to do it. That's how I look at it. To me, to summarize it all, that's poverty and then incompetence. Yes, I don't feel like I can make up for the information I lost to giving you. And like when Jay-Z said, everyone's scared. Now Tosh has said, everyone's scared. I'll talk to you soon. I'll talk to you soon. But like the reality is, yeah, you don't, one, you feel like you can't risk something because it risks your money. And two, it's your ability to make money. If you're confident that you can continue to make money, figure out ways to grow and that the way you do things skill set wise, it's harder to replace than you're more willing to give out things. But if you don't have that confidence and you don't have it, the people really don't know how the hell they got here. They just happen to be next to somebody or if somebody likes them, they have a relationship and the relationship is all they have. And the information is the margin beyond the relationship that they have. So I can't get rid of that margin because that's really the only real value that I have some level of intellectual property beyond the fact that someone just likes me. If that person don't like me anymore, we fall out for whatever reason, then I'm gone. Or they find out that I'm incompetent and they gotta get rid of me. It's like, I gotta at least be able to cap off of this little information I got. And that's just how this industry moves, bro. Yeah, I agree, I agree. This is another No Labels clip. I'm Brand Man Sean. I'm Corey. And we out. Peace. Appreciate you for watching. If you like content like this, you'll love seeing our music marketing strategies that we use as an agency to actually blow up artists to millions and even billions of streams that are available for free at nolabelsnecessary.com. And the cool part about it that's gonna really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some use that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success. And you have the ability to have communication with us. We get on live talks, a lot of cool things for members and it's free just to hop in. So check it out right now at nolabelsnecessary.com.