 Yes, welcome back to Entrepreneurship Tuesday on White in the Morning and as I said, we always have amazing interviews lined up for you guys. Remember social media handles are right there below the screen, Y254 channel on Twitter, Y254 underscore channel on Instagram and Y254 on Facebook. You can always interact with us. We have a question on Facebook that I'm going to be sharing with you guys in a few so engage us in that conversation. I have a guest in the studio and today we are going to be talking about the rollout process in the music business and I have the very best in R&B and so in the country right now, Lost in Savannah. Yes, thank you. Karim, your camera is number four. So you can introduce yourself, A.K. Zakwa Zotezikam, so we can go see. I don't have too many A.K.s. So people call me Lost in Savannah as a musician and artist, but my name is Bo James and I'm a creative from this part of the region, Nairobi, Kenya, and we do things on different dimensions. All right. I like the way your product placed that. So this is not your first time here, Bo. And that means you're putting in a lot of work. I have been. You have been. All right. Motion and bounce is a project that is very dear to you and the time has come. Yes. An ideal is time has come cannot be stopped for sure. It cannot be stopped. All right. How did you know that the time has come? Because from what I know, you finished recording this project a while back. You've been promoting for a while. You've even had events. How did you know it's finally time to release? Well, putting out music is not always easy, especially if you're going for a much bigger audience or feedback. So you have to take the time to let it go as far as possible through the available channels that you have. So for me, I had a plan that had certain stages. And after doing a couple of the things that I needed to do, I felt it was now time to release the full project and now full on the stages that come after. All right. So there's so many things that go into rolling out music and people use different approaches. Some people like to get into beefs before they release. People like to get into scandals before they release music. What was the approach for you? Well, for me, I think we live in an age where everybody is on their phone and everybody is watching things, including Y254. Yeah. So I figured that if there's a couple of materials that I can share with people beforehand and also just engage with as many people as I can, grow my networks, then it would be ideal to do a proper campaign. There's enough chatter and you'll have enough people engaging you about your content before even the drop. So I figured, yeah, that's what I would do. All right. There's a word you dropped that immediately gave me a light bulb moment. Network. So the networks you formed over there. All right. So what is the importance of networking as an artist for you? So networking puts me in the same company as like-minded people. That's really important because that way you can both generate ideas and implement them together in a way that benefits all of you. So you find that the combined effort of everyone is genuine and it actually comes through and gives results. So networking is also important because like sometimes you just need people to help you with your vision and if you don't have the networks to do so then not because you're not talented or because you don't work hard enough but you just don't have the right person or people plugging you into the avenues that you need to be occupying. All right. So the networks are very important when it comes to rolling out music. All right. So I had an artist here who told me recording is easy for him. Releasing is the toughest part for him. Is it true for you? Well, I can understand him why he would say that because artists are very critical of themselves. So before you have the confidence to release your music into the world and share it with millions of people on the internet and everywhere else. Even billions now? Even billions now. Like you need to reach a certain level of self-acceptance. So that's self-acceptance. And self-confidence with your music and your craft. That's why you'll find like sometimes it doesn't take me almost a whole year to record emotion and bounce but I had to go back to the studio a couple of times because I'd go and listen to a song like 20 times and then go back to the studio and redo some parts. So that's why the releasing process can become difficult sometimes to add on to that. I think also when you don't have the right avenues of releasing it or the resources, sometimes artists with their grandiose ideas get stuck in a state of like fear of failure or fear of doing. It's called getting lost in the sauce. This is a deeper thing because you kind of feel helpless and that can make an artist like not crash and not put out any content. So yeah I understand him where he's coming All right so the ideas are greater than what you can actually do at that particular moment. You know artists are creators so they'll always create visions. They'll always live in a cloud. Yeah they'll always live in their own kind of universe. So somebody has an idea and sometimes they do them they make the mistake of making that idea become they think that idea is who they are. I mean you have to make some steps before you get there. So you kind of you feel like you're falling short of who you are. So before you are who you think you are there has to be some work that you have to grow yeah and be that person. That reminds me of Drake's Well well said well said right there. So this is also another thing when it comes to every kind of industry every kind of business every kind of market competition is something you can't sleep on and when it comes to music I've seen people hold their projects because so-and-so is dropping around that period is going to mess us up. So-and-so is dropping we're going to hold or somebody dropping the same day as you so that they can mess up your drop. Is this something that you researched about who's dropping around this period who's hot who's not? Actually there's so many people dropping around this time like for one bootroast is actually dropping. It's buzzing for sure. You know Betty has something coming. A project to formix it. Yeah. What's his name? Muro. Muro has a full album? Yeah. Dropping. Lost in Savannah. Lost in Savannah is dropping. December 9th it's deluxe is dropping too. December 9th we're buried here and like I don't see anything wrong with that because at the end of the day statistics say that the average person has a concentration span of less than is it 30 seconds or even three to six before you get distracted. I think there's enough like attention deficits to get attention for your music. Yeah so like this competition in fact now when you look back at what we were talking about in terms of networks those amount all those people are my friends so instead of working against each other when they're dropping they shout me I shout them out when I'm dropping they shout me out like that like that so when we're dropping at the same time it's an echo system. Yeah it even echoes father because our reach joined together and something happening at the same time creates some kind of forces. I love that approach there I love your way of thinking and I'm sorry to ask is it because you're an R&B and soul artist do you think hip artists would think the same? Well there's people who think the same obviously others have different because rap is a very competitive and aggressive. I think that's a barrier for no pun intended. I think that's a barrier to collaboration and moving forward so I mean hip-hop artists like stop beefing for no reason. Maybe they can come around and tell us how the beef helps with selling their projects but emotional imbalance is done. How many tracks are on the EP and do we have a date? Yeah yeah so emotional imbalance is launching on 11th of November the 11th month 11 11 11 11 yeah why 11 11? Well at the beginning of the year I just started seeing that number every time everywhere I just look at 11 11 so it's so many times and it just subsided. So as much as Bo is strategic, Bo studies at business, Bo studies books, Bo reads books, Bo is still special. Oh you can say so yeah. So there are times you make decisions based on something else from something different from logic. Yeah sometimes you just have to go with a gut feeling. Wonderful emotional imbalance is also a genre of music? It is indeed and me and a couple of artists I mean and producers we engineered a sound like all the songs that you hear there there's no YouTube beats there's no beats that I just bought from somebody randomly. All those beats have a touch of me in them because we made them from scratch. Obviously some samples you know but in very minimal like one or two songs otherwise the rest is organic from scratch and we just made a new sound put my vocals there and I just played around with everything created something new and I think it's new because it's unique to me and I'm not the same as anyone else in the world. All right so that's why Bo is Bo. Yeah Lawson Savanna is the only Lawson Savanna we're going to exactly. We're going to find in the Savanna. See what I did. Okay so we have a date we have the title of the EP and the platforms now we need the platforms that we are going to be finding it on. Yeah so locally it's going to be available on boom play and songa music so we're gonna partner with them to do something and well internationally you can find it on Apple music, iTunes, Spotify and YouTube and just a few songs will be on SoundCloud. Okay an artist that is watching out there and is trying to figure how can I get my music on all those sites I only know about YouTube how can I get my music to all those platforms what was it what's the way that. So there's a bunch of third party apps and platforms which act as a distributor for musicians all over the world so all you have to do is pay an yearly subscription for some it's two two thousand Kenyan shillings some it's four thousand there are different plans based on your needs as an artist at that time so I have the most basic plan because I mean that's all I need right now and I use it I use DistroKid you can just check out DistroKid online they see the baby there's a bunch of others just if you search for all those things you just find them online. Do they get a cut of your streaming revenue? No I mean once you pay that subscription fee that's it you upload all number of songs that you want during that year then you can renew your contracts but your streaming revenue comes in intact all over is yours like I've withdrawn four times this year 900 shillings Kenyan shillings four times wow but that's money that's money you can count that's money you earned from your from your work from music I mean I never thought I'd make any shillings from music I've made some money from shows from selling my art from selling my services as a graphic designer and editor but music has always been just down there just down there but it's revenue is the least seen but at least it's it's only bound to grow now it's only bound to grow the fact that I made some with girls this year means like at least there's something you know wonderful yeah all right so when you talk about cutting deals with people like boom play and song how does this how does this work do they get the exclusive for a day no um well actually like for example those two sites are actually they they don't have restrictions so they're not exclusive you they don't have exclusive rights to distribute your music so when everything is dropping it will also just also drop on their platform aside from that like there's a few things they help an artist do like especially with the SOE what do you call it SEO site optimization optimization all right so like like on their search engine they put you up there so I mean that's that's the kind of deals you want to be striking with these people because at the end of the day they have a large market especially in Africa all right so yeah and I'm African I'm not trying to ignore Africa as much as my music is international the music is an international but you're from Africa and you can't ignore where you're from yeah definitely all right the next question is a kind of opinion based and I'd like to get your opinion on a few topics and uh you as you're ready all right so um which album in 2018 2019 um season the league season which album uh was rolled out the best for you which was the best roll up for you in 2018 2019 um well leave alone the sound that sounded the the success of the album just the rollout process how you came to know about the album and how you the things that were happening around the album um I could mention many people but I'll go for some of the really um underdogs who came up real quick there's a guy called saint john that guy came out of nowhere and took the world by storm and because he had the backing of a good label which made sure uh his music was being played everywhere on the on the world the right colobos yeah the right colobos tours across europe across america and all this happened off his first album but he's been at it for a while he's been at it for a while but you know it's his first major piece of work studio album all right you know I feel that and right now he's up there with all this new the a list artist so I think that was a really dope come up to watch yeah I'm a big fan you're a big fan another album that was rolled out in some way that really got him well um I could think I could uh I could think of Tori Lane's album Tori Lane's album yeah all right Tori Lane's uh what is it called love me now love me now the the the the roller was good all right because it was very engaging his very visual he's very consistent and um like his music is just dope the music is dope you can't you can't you can't these are people you're fans of as well I think my favorite was astro world man if you ask me astro world that's the adults that's uh number one actually that's number one yeah astro world astro world was that was a that was a good one and I think as an artist people should study guys like Travis Scott when you're planning to release your music just uh study somebody like Travis somebody like Kanye West and just get to understand how these guys get to connect see what they do with the people in a moment but at the end of the day it's like you've said it's about connection you just need to connect with as many people so what that when your material is available to them they care enough to you know click or watch or listen wonderful how can they find you on social media man uh so if you want to see my art see my business and what I do in terms of visuals you can find me on at at on different dimensions or just search on society or dd society yeah um my music is available online as lost in Savannah that's lost in Savannah with a double n double n no h just one word just one word yeah with a dollar no no it didn't happen it's not normal all right so lost in savannah youtube i'm on youtube you want to watch my music videos um just search lost in savannah you find everything that all right so one thing that you can tell people about emotional imbalance and the reason they should copy it when it drops emotional imbalance is an exploration of love pain and passion backed up by beats with psychedelic melodies yeah and energetically bouncing 808s and percussion that thing slaps so you need to go and use me to thank you very much just to go to my other one emotional imbalance is coming out on november 11 that is 11 11 watch out for lost in savannah emotion and bounce you can even pre-order now you can even pre-order now where can they get to pre-order it items items you can pre-order on items uh the rest boom plays hunker or and mook mook you can pre-order on on on itunes you can pre-order on mook as well mook is why you sell it you're selling copies selling copies and they'll also be merchandise t-shirts um i make art also like framed art so there's a whole theme i'll do another collection i have an i have an event um every other month called the collection series and i display art as well as music with a bunch of other artists and there's a whole collection of art which is based of emotional imbalance the album and this art you can hang in your house it looks it looks beautiful it's all right why didn't you hide that for us all right so there's a series of pieces of art you've done that are related to emotional imbalance that are going to be sold differently as much as yeah collectively as part of the whole drop of the prog of the of the next day all right so we see artists doing merchandise which you chose to do framed art pieces as well framed art there will be t-shirts the same arts are printed on t-shirts not the same different something different something different uh buttons you know the pin buttons wristbands and we're gonna go online so there's so many ways to support losses losses yeah i'm i was actually thinking today i'm gonna start a one million challenge i want you guys to help me raise one million so i can do visuals for this entire album oh and you can do that by buying my work it's not expensive it's very affordable it's very valuable so you're not asking people to donate money for you no no i don't want to raise a million but you want to raise it through selling your stuff to the people yeah yeah so buy it so a list of people a list of things you're selling yeah so there's art there's the music there's t-shirts there's buttons there's wristbands and i also provide other services i'm a vid i mean i have a company that provides videography services music production um we also do branding and marketing so if you want our services it's just i mean help me to make that one million all right so are we going to be keeping track with you are we going to be updating us we had a hundred thousand we had two hundred thousand i'm gonna do that i'm gonna do that you're gonna do that with us for sure i'm gonna do that all right wonderful and this falls right in place because we have an interview with the crowdfunding people that is coming up next and this is going to be teaching us on how we can raise cup talk when we don't have uh access to the cup tournament i salute you lost sense of honor and you've come a long way and uh the creativity i love the i love the creativity thanks thanks and i love that your projects are well thought thank you thank you yes we've come to the end of this you can find us on social media at white five four channel on twitter white five four underscore channel on instagram and one two five four on facebook remember we have a question on facebook that we are going to be sharing with you so engage us in the conversation head three to our facebook you can find it there and we'll be reading the comments towards the end of the show my name is barry mosses or it's very more social media emotional and bounce 11 11 of no but of november and it slaps for your lads don't go nowhere don't take that out