 Baw, what's up everybody once again, it's Brand Man Sean and today we're going over part two of Music Is Not Your Product. It felt like I could have went into a little bit more detail the first time, so by the end of this you'll have two ways that you can use this to your advantage and apply it. A reminder of what it means that music is not your product as an artist. It's a reminder that in today's environment that music is not a product, it's your advertising. It's people's way of learning and getting to know you and you think about somebody like Future. Future releases all this, all this, all this free music. Why? Because, one, I mean he's very productive and he just likes to put out his music, but then also number two, what the artist at the top of the game have realized is it doesn't matter if you charge for the music or not because so many people obviously are going to get it for free anyway and then on top of that when there's so many people competing for attention, people are more likely to go to what's free or easier to get to than waste time trying to pay for something that they don't even know they won yet. Quick example. I'd always liked Prince growing up, but about five years ago my dad really had me going deeper and deeper into Prince, but then when I would go on YouTube and just places online I could barely find his material except for having to actually buy it. There were like a few videos on YouTube and literally those didn't last long because they were taken down because Prince is super strict about control of his music and people having to purchase it, well he was, rest in peace. The point is, do you think that made me say well let me just go purchase all this music? Not at all. That just made me move on to other things because there's so much other music that I wanted to listen to anyway. And most people in this generation think exactly like me, they think like that and you probably think like that yourself. Think about your own behavior towards things that you're using by. So what do you want? You want as many people to hear your stuff and get exposed and be aware of your music as possible so then they can know of you. You're getting yourself out of some obscurity and then once they know you they can decide they like you and then support you. And how do you really get them to support you? You significantly increase your chances if you relate to the audience. That doesn't mean that you have to try hard and say what you need people to say, but you can relate to people simply by putting your experiences out there to the people being transparent. Because most likely there's somebody else who's had similar experience to you and they'll relate to that. And then there's number two because there are some of those artists that don't necessarily put a lot of personal, personal sounding things into their music. However, people relate to them somehow and that's because they create a relatable environment, create a relatable world, whether that's through their videos, sonics, et cetera, et cetera. But those two ways are easy ways to start to begin to relate to the audience because the deeper you connect the more likely people would want to support you. And this isn't completely new because there's always been those songs where you know the song but you have no idea where the artist is and those artists obviously don't last incredibly long. But the difference is today the entire game is built off of really, really needing people to relate to you to create a sustainable career, especially as an independent artist. The golden standard of this right now is probably somebody like Chance the Rapper. Obviously because he engages, he relates, he always puts his struggle with his big moms out there. He puts his journey to God out there like he has people relating from so many different directions. But then even when you talk more about that sonic, right, and just competing that world, somebody like Young Bugs, although he doesn't get super, super personal a lot of times, he creates this very just dark and trap-y type world that people in a certain environment do really relate to if they come up from a similar environment, like me. So if you take anything from this, understand that one, this is the new wave and it's going to be like that for a very, very long time in music. You have to have people relating to you, the artist, not just the music. And two, music is your foot in the doors. So make people hear, see your music. The more opportunities you'll get to tour and have people come out to support your tour, sell merch, but then also go into these creative things like acting and art direction, signing deals with people like Pullman, things like that to create your own product. You see more artists doing that these days because literally just look at the landscape. So many artists are doing this, even big ones, because there's not that much money in music. So you have to realize, music is your advertising to get in the door creatively and build a fan base to support you. That's it. Y'all know what to do. Hit that subscribe button. Click it.