 What's up everybody it's Brand Man Sean and I'm back with episode 3 of AXE Brand Man where I answer questions that you guys asked in the comment section below or somewhere else on the channel but make them most below and don't forget the golden rule the quality of your answers is dictated by the quality of the questions you ask so make sure you ask some thoughtful questions not good questions right thoughtful questions right so we can be specific and go into detail wherever you need business music however you want to get it we I can answer them I want to go ahead and hop into question number one oh my bad I forgot to let you guys know again I'm trying to drop these every single Wednesday so be on a lookout for these on these episodes on Wednesday so question numero uno I'm play a tone I'm gonna mess these names up a lot but uh I'm play a tone said I bought a feature from a rapper he said he were promoted Ruchi but if he don't know how I'm assuming is don't know how can I promote it so it does get out there yes 100% this is your track all right you can promote your track you have the license to however when it comes to collaborations there are quite a few politics to be honest that you do have to consider so I'm gonna try to run through a few scenarios because I've been through these with artists in the background where you know I'm number one artist he he was signed to asylum he got a track from this guy that was popping and in New York and the dude is big he was telling me yo brand man just do this don't take off I'm telling you bro he's getting high I want to get on this song we'll go great together but the problem what happened was they said they were gonna promote it they said they were gonna be in the music video all these things and artists is popping now hey he told me he was right but a lot of people heard the song and actually thought that his verse was better right the artist that I'm talking about was assigned to asylum then the guy who was already popping and what happens is ego a lot of times right so all of a sudden artists wasn't excited to promote it you'll hear this do the manager a lot of times but a lot of times you understand the manager really speaking based on the artist fit how the artist feels so in those scenarios that they feel showed up they might not be able to put that out there right it's a it's a it becomes an entire thing so now is what happens I paid the money these people said they were gonna do that now they're not promoting oh they they went from I'm gonna put this on my feed so I'm gonna put it on my story and it's not gonna be permanent or they went from hey I put some ad budget around or I'll do a music video but now I'm super busy had this actually happening on multiple occasions where the artist don't show up for the music video and never happens but it's politics so you could you you have to manage it right and what that looks like is in some scenarios you got to put that thing out yourself that I'm always for that right at least put that thing out yourself because you put you put your money up for you pay for a feature I'm not gonna let this be a sunk cost just because you don't want to put something behind it and you can you can you can play up the fact that other artists is in there as much as possible maybe even do a cartoon video or do something unique and experimental and in the music video to make it seem like there's a reason that the other artists isn't there you can get into all type of create creative concepts which I've seen done to to manage how another artist might feel but to protect yourself from that number one is have a contract I've seen people straight up violate the contracts but number one at least have a very clear contract that y'all can reference and stick to and in situations where they're they're violating that you honestly have to play the politic game where you got to get a feel for you put pressure on them and say hey hey when does it happen when it's happened when it's happened but it's if it's not happening depending on where they are in the game and certain things there are moments where artists you know you either sue right or you kind of say I'm gonna take this short-term L to keep moving long-term and keep hustling and maybe they got to acknowledge me in the future and maybe they feel bad they say I'm actually popping now and I say yo that give me two or three songs free who knows but it can become a weird situation and while we're talking about collabs make sure if you can the best scenario is honestly to work with artists on your level look at people who are similar on Spotify not some big artists because it's gonna become a thing where they have that leverage over you and unless the relationship is right there and it's strong you probably not gonna get what you want out of it in the first place just to be honest so work with somebody on your level where y'all can trade audiences share audience and create a moment for people together and right it'll benefit both of you guys because trust me you will see right the most benefit from those scenarios the most engagement and and commitment on both sides right so make sure you do that and look to do that more than finding a big artist and paying for that but yeah if you got a song I'm play its own promote that thing promote that thing all right next we got to reach trees what's up man haven't talked to you in a while he said for smaller artists is it worth hyping up each single track right track release with a full 21 day plan or whatever your time scale is or pick good ones to hype up with a 21 day promo that way in between big heavily promoted singles they're singles that you spend a fraction of the energy on in terms of marketing but release still to keep feeding the fans so I get a sense of what you're what you're going I'm at so let's say this the answer that you always have to consider is number one guess the word I don't know if you gonna if you have an idea what I'm gonna write so guess actually I wrote it wrong resources I don't care how big small you are everybody has to face the fact that there's still a limitation of resources at some point and what you have to decide is where do you want to focus your energy on all right if you only have a certain amount of money you can have a whole bunch of ones right I got let's just say these are 10 ones at some point what if this one goes up to X what do you have you have two but if I just have two tracks right and then I distribute five tick marks within those two tracks five elements of energy within those two if one of those double all right that five goes to 10 so that's what you have to think about when you're distributing your energy because at the end of the day you only have a finite and you need to get an ROI so just putting that energy everywhere to get no real results not even give a chance you have to take a risk at some point especially when your resources are limited and you're just starting out it doesn't make sense to be on trying to be on every single platform and post every day on every platform or to to push every single song with the same amount of money or the certain amount of posts and all that stuff doesn't make sense so whatever your 20 weight one-day plan is I don't know what you're referring to there whatever that is don't do it for every single song right apply it to the right songs and what I look at is are you pushing a song right that song's going up at some point that song might mellow out a little bit right and this is when you can start to say well maybe I release a next another track all right so now you try to get another boost that's one way to approach it or you can just say I'm gonna post weekly I'm gonna post bi-weekly monthly however you want to do it in that case but let's say we're following this path the thing that you want to do is say all right after this post happens and then after the next post happens and I started to get enough data which one is worth continuing to push more than anything else but even within that I got my focus tracks these should continue to get 80% 80% of my energy right whenever I'm doing focus tracks and if I'm releasing that much music though and I still want to try to give a little blip then you have that final 20 right and there's four tracks within that maybe all right so you have let's just say five elements if we're working with money you can divide by five you can divide that 20% so let's just say money actually $5 work with Facebook ad you put $5 towards your four tracks and then you have two other tracks so that's six tracks in total that you get you're splitting that $80 that's left with so that's $40 for these two tracks and then you got $5 giving a little blip of energy to the next tracks and we're just talking strictly Facebook ads now you can apply that and energy towards whatever you know your post your Spotify playlist and however you want to approach it but think about it like this so what tracks are you all are you gonna put in that 80% and this 80% should probably be two times a month if you're if you're going super high clip and you're and you're dropping like all the time right but at least right give two weeks to these two tracks at least all right and then even if you aren't dropping tracks frequently but it's a money limitation again 20% of your resources whatever that looks like goes towards these additional tracks all right that's a starting point that's just a starting point but I want to try to get it specific as I can with the question because of course I don't know everything going on with with you reach trees but most people can operate off of that 80 20 right you have a priority you know the prioritized and these could be one this could be one track in this section where it's all 80 and everything else I don't really believe in as much because what I would do is 80 test 80 test keep that other 20 right find something else based on how this reform keep testing within the 80 the songs that I believe in most and then when something responds in this 80% where it's performing better then all of these other tracks they drop to the 20 and I'm putting 80 towards one one track all right and I might kick out some of the the ones that were in 20 before so now they get no action at all all right I hope that makes sense maybe I'll do a separate video trying to make it even clearer but I think it was decent enough next we got Tamara Williams she said eggs brand man would it be more beneficial for an artist to release the song and music video at the same time particularly if this is the first time an artist is releasing music the answer I say is yes yes release both of them at the same time now the reality though is you still have to answer to whatever your resources are are you advertising it like there's a lot of people it where they'll get just some views on their let's say they're Spotify they're play listing it but they don't know about the YouTube video at all all right and that's gonna not gonna be their behavior so you still have to put energy towards pushing both of them if anything what I would do in that scenario is I would run some YouTube ads for the music video and then run some Facebook ads that is running through an intermediary link you know smart URL you know there's a list of them all right out there toned in is what we use at our agency and they can click through to hear a track and they can click through to see the video right so they know that they'll both of those options are there period right and in the video you get the commentary if people are more likely to click and provide comments if they came over from a Facebook Instagram but then on top of that you still get that top of the funnel awareness from running the YouTube ad so those that would be what I would do I would drop both same day it's not that it's honest and to be real it's honestly not that big of a deal because nobody does know who you are at this at this point nobody's waiting for one or the other to come out so to maximize attention same day run a Facebook ad through intermediary link that shows yes I got a video and then you can listen to Spotify Apple Amazon music however you want to roll and then also put a little money in that YouTube video to boost those those views as well I will put more money especially when I'm starting off in the Facebook Instagram ad right then I would put in the YouTube just a little bit right just a little bit to kind of start the pad views hopefully and to find an audience that you see responding well when you look at the view time of the video from your placements that you target with all right so good question Tamara a seal GG right a seal GG a seal GG says ask brand man so when should artists pay for promotion from third party accounts on Instagram you can start from day one honestly now there's been tracks where literally the entire campaign was just Instagram posts and it went viral and when I say track there's been tracks I'm not even talking about theoretically but tracks that we've ran campaigns like I'm thinking about this one Corey spearheaded where that it was just a few viral posts went crazy crazy viral posted by celebrities and all this stuff million views all right just from Facebook posts but every I meant Instagram posts but the thing is every single track doesn't marry the type of our rally or have a video associated with what that kid did so the reality for most people is this you start here and then you start to give it attention through something consistent and controllable which nine times out of ten what is that going to be ads all right so this portion right here is all ads and once you start to see that there's feedback positive feedback from the ads you're finding a good click through where you're seeing real engagement where people are saying they're rocking with the song and a little bit of transfer ability over to a Spotify or something like that the next step then becomes how can I make this consistent boost hopefully there's some organic especially you know there's some organic already being already happening from the ads not just direct then that's great but the next step now becomes how can I start to make it take off virally and from that point you want to look at posting on third party Instagram accounts maybe some other influencer activations that make sense for your song right so you have the controlled right the ads the sustainable right all that's that that that initial and then you get into the viral where you're playing the odds there's been a million million brilliant videos that have been done at this point that still haven't necessarily one super viral right you have that one video might do well but nobody else copies it nobody else posted somewhere else so it's always gonna be a gamble you can have five pages posted but you don't know if it's still gonna go viral from those five pages but it still can help pad so I wouldn't look in most cases doing at a beginning but to even merit if it's worth doing cuz those other pages can be expensive and to just spend $200 or even $75 right just on one and not get any results when you don't even know if you would like the song when you can find out people like the song within five ten twenty dollars do the ad thing first right or whatever you can do right that you have control over and then start to look to pad it in different ways creative ways we're not we're not gonna get into you know what you can do on third party accounts and viral campaigns here but you can you can do it immediately most people knives out of ten they need to do some of this first all right I mean let's just have access to somebody and it's easy for you to go ahead and start with them all right and the last thing I'll add on to that is you can actually nah nah nah we'll say that for a whole another episode it's gonna end up being a whole number of videos so let's go ahead and skip to the comment of the day that is zero leeloo 22 I'll be killing these names zero leeloo 22 says the greatest common denominator I've noticed in each video that's watching a lot of my videos in particular is understanding the concept of context context for when you are on your music journey is the most important aspect to understand there are many routes to take on your music journey but every one of those paths involve is involves understanding your role in music so I'm gonna answer her or add on to this very very quick right one two three four five there's levels to this right here right everybody has to understand that there's levels to this and sometimes you might watch a video that I wrote did and you're like yo brain man you're not talking about nothing I don't quite get this this ain't clicking well I might be talking to this guy right here right now and you're right here right or you might be like yo I already know this is basic well maybe I'm talking to this guy right here so it might not apply to you so there's certain times a certain advice applies to you there's something that you might hear when you're at level one that might take you to level two right and then when you get to level four all of a sudden that day you learn a number level one is clicking again and you're hearing it totally different because now right you're in a different place right it's like when you listen to a track when you're five years old then you rewatch let me listen to that track when you're 10 or 20 years old and now it clicks in a whole another way because you've made progress you gain experience so what most artists get stuck is they're staying on this level most of them are a level one or you're staying at whatever level you are so either advice get stale because you can't you don't have a new perspective you're still at the same point on the hill instead of you climbing a mountain right or for whatever reason they're your backsliding but that we're not gonna get into the backsliding so why is this important in terms of what zero looch 22 said if you don't understand there's there's levels to this thing you know you're not taking in the fact that everything that I say on this page everything that Corey say or whoever we bring up onto this page says on this page requires context so we might be talking about something we've done in supply directly for four artists but it might not apply to you right now right it might not work for you might be a mysterious artist this artist might be a personality base this artist might never post on social media this artist might post on social media every day and everything has a strategy contextual to what that is that's why it's important that you watch these things to get additional frameworks of how to think right but at some point you have to sit down and say where am I right now what makes sense to apply right now I can't do what Drake is doing today I can do a drink possibly did ten years ago maybe right or maybe I need to do what some other artists did that's how you have to think about it so one sit down figure out where you are and what's gonna get me to the next step right I'm on level two I need to know when gets me on level three some people get caught up on all this level five stuff and all that sounds cool and or you know level one stuff no all I need is the level one I mean the stuff that gets me to level three so what gets most artists and honestly I can say people caught up is you take in information and you're wondering why people are passing you by right how this person get here so fast to level four even though I have all this knowledge and I know more than them and I have a better music than them but what happened was this person came in said yo what's gonna give me a level two I don't even know nothing else what's gonna give me level three I don't even know nothing else what's gonna give me level four I don't need to know nothing else it's nice to know to feel smart all that stuff but you don't need to know it so context is everything and also over information is a thing you don't need to know everything you don't need to watch every single video or every single one of these videos but figure out where you are at that moment what what does it take to get to that next up and if you need to talk to somebody who does this you know me many there's many people out there right who do this find somebody that you can trust and has contextual advice and experience to say yo where am I personally I get all this stuff where am I personally how can I get to my next up that's it had to cut it for a second because before I close this out I want to make sure you guys also check out episode 2 where I did something called the $5 feedback challenge I want you guys to check that challenge out and participate in it if you don't know what I talk I'm talking about go check out the $5 feedback challenge for people to give you quality unbiased feedback to your music especially if you need that check it out and other than that yes this is episode number three of acts brand man looking forward to you guys questions put them in the comment section below because hey your question might end up on the next episode have a great one hit that subscribe button