 Aw, what's up everybody once again it's Brandman Sean and this video is brought to you by Brandmannetwork.com because I signed myself and now I gotta talk about something that's kind of wild. I don't know if y'all seen it yet, but Rolling Stone actually came up with an article and they reported that it seems that record labels are signing two artists a day. That's a lot of artists and I'm going to get into some of the details or some of the thought process around that but then really the takeaway for artists or at least what the takeaway should be for how you approach dealing with labels in the industry because you know for artists that is a very real thing everybody's not trying to do the indie route and if anything it's you know it's a good thing to know or think about. So first of all this reflects the fact that labels are playing the numbers a game they're shooting craps right it was like nah I'm not really trying to do this quality over quantity thing that's for the bird is that causes me to do a whole bunch of work I'm gonna just look at this spreadsheet check out these numbers and when I look at these numbers I'm gonna say okay how many artists do I need to break even and then possibly become successful it's the same way that a lot of investors look at tech companies right it's like nah I don't want to have just one company or two companies I need to have a portfolio of companies and I just need one of these companies to make up for the rest of them right and that's the same with artists and actually labels have pretty much always looked at artists that way so I don't want to act like that part is new but that thing is being ramped up and put on steroids because of the streaming era what does that mean why does the streaming era affect things that way well essentially we're in that era where we know content is king right the more content you have the more you can feel the consumers attention and we're looking for market share that's what the industry looks at right we want to be able to feel as much attention as possible I want to be able to take over Spotify have as many songs on Spotify for fans to check out and consume and I don't want to give that up to another label because if my artists aren't dropping stuff or if my labels not dropping stuff that means other labels have those fans attention because they're just putting out more stuff so if I just put out more stuff then I'm gonna have more of your attention by nature if I just had one cool drop or like two or three big artists I don't care how successful the artist is and how talented they are at the end of the day you can only listen to but so much of them and I don't care if this artist drops this one project and it's the greatest project you've ever heard you're not gonna listen to that entire project but for so long so we need to put as much stuff out into the marketplace as possible streaming allows that to happen because things are just different these days fans can just continuously infinitely consume verses the days where you have to buy it all separately of course we had to in between the stealing era but that's that's a whole another thing and bringing it back to what matters right the artist what does this really look like well we already know that means from a label standpoint you're probably not gonna be able to get the care that you need to maximize your career everybody's not necessarily meant to be beyond say but everybody has different levels of maximum and let's just say there were 10 levels and your level was number eight right your maximum level could be number eight at the end of the day you might stop at level three just because a label has a short intention span if you're not working immediately they're gonna move on to another artist because they have so many options just hoping that somebody hits and they're always gambling for the 10 they're not even gambling for the 7s and 8s as much because we have so many options we can kind of afford to really hit those 10s 8s are nice but we really want to just try to get the biggest number possible as a matter of fact there was a perfect example in the Rolling Stone article where a manager by the name of Ian Montone actually cited being in record label meetings right where a song was dropped and the next day record labels will be like nah bro like we got to move on from this it's not working and it's like yo this thing just dropped tomorrow yeah but we looked at the numbers is not working how many people do we know that did not blow up immediately like even the big stars the people we really care about how long did it take Kenji Lamar to hit certain numbers how long did it take J Cole to do certain things and have certain output the consumers microwave mentality is resulting in businesses having that same microwave mentality in terms of how they look at artists could that lead to a deaf march of a artist bubble popping it's something to think about but what artists should really consider is if you still want to deal with some sort of label the best route that you should probably go in is going with an indie label that has a lot less artists that's putting a lot more intention to you as a matter of fact you are more likely connected with their success so that way they'll be able to nurture your career they'll be able to help you do development I know a lot of artists don't really believe in this whole developing myself they think they're hot right now they think I just need this music to blow but the ones who are really doing it they are all still going through development even if it's in real time they're going through development so being independent or going with the indie label overall is the way to go because these labels want market share man and I understand it from a business standpoint it makes sense and numbers are the way to do that because here's a perfect example right there's Apple and then there's Android yeah we know that you know Apple so much cooler right but if you look at the real market share the actual numbers Android has 75% of the market share versus Apple right the iPhone having like 22% of the market share and there's like these other companies in between the reason that is is because the Android operating system works on Samsung phones it works on Motorola phones or some of these other random phones that I came to think of right now that exists outside of just Samsung because I'm been in Samsung for so long personally but there's a lot of different phones there we go Google LG phone there's a lot of them and because their operating system works on all those random things they're able to have more of the market share even though iPhone just has these one set of phones that you can have access to and that one phone does have the most market share as an individual phone I believe it's still competing with all these other phones are out in the marketplace well from a label standpoint it's the same thing right yeah you might have some dope artists right like two or three really dope artists and they have huge fan bases they might even be the biggest artist in the world however there's still all this other time for people to listen to music right there's still so many other type of people who won't even necessarily be fans of those huge artists right everybody's not a Cardi B fan everybody's not a Nicki Minaj fan Jay-Z fan Kendrick Lamar Taylor Swift whoever these people are right so you feel that up with a whole bunch of other artists and you still got most of the market share once again business at large isn't always in alignment with you know what's best for you as an artist so keep that in mind getting into those environments where the odds are a little bit more in your favorite right there's a little bit more attention to you and then from there you can see what happens but I'll leave that at that I'll make sure I put a link in the description to the Rolling Stone article that I've been referencing in this video and of course once again this video is brought to you by brandmannetwork.com because I signed myself if you like this video go ahead like button if you like it might as well share it and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe