 People talk about all the different shady characters in the music industry that you gotta watch out for, the managers, the label owners, but there's a couple of characters that they don't mention to you. And a lot of artists get shocked by this when it happens. There's an artist that we have a lot of respect for that actually shared his experience. I think it's gonna be eye-opening for you. And right after we talk about that, wanna talk about an insight from a highly respected manager in the industry that will change the way you see it all. But let's start here with this tweet from none other than Piff Marty, really dope artist. Y'all gotta check him out. But there was a tweet that somebody shared, Cruiser 3X shared, judging musicians by monthly listeners before listening to their music is weird. That was the tweet. Now think to yourself, do you agree? Judging musicians by monthly listeners before listening to their music is weird. That was the initial tweet. Piff Marty responds, I kid you not, in 2019, I met an artist that had some motion. We related on the fact that we both made music and why we did it. And it was a very vibrant combo. She then asked me if I'm on Spotify and once she saw that I had under 1000 monthly listeners, the energy completely shifted and the conversation ended abruptly. Their songs from that time that now have millions of streams and are in people's top songs on a rap in 2023. I say that to say, cut the bullshit, man. Good music is good music. Now this is the big reveal that most of y'all artists are not prepared for. We talk about the managers, we talk about the labels, but there are artists that are moving shady. There are artists that are gonna see you as competition. There are artists that are gonna look at you and objectify you the same way that labels are gonna objectify you. And it's gonna throw you off at first unless you're already somebody on that type of time. People are looking at your numbers because they're looking for what's gonna benefit them. All right? They wanna see if you're worth their time or not. And you can think about this in a positive way or a negative way. So I'm first gonna start like on devil's advocate side, all right? Positive and assume all as well. There's some people that are like, yo man, I got a lot going on. I just gotta make sure that somebody is worth my time, right? Before I give them that time, give them that energy, collaborate with them, work with them in whatever way. But this is where I come back to the other side of things. What, and I got one more argument for her side in this case, but I'm gonna go back to Piff Marty's side because artists, I don't get it. Like why are you judging another artist off of anything but their music, all right? Outside of them doing some weird, wild stuff. The music is what you should be judging off of. Isn't that what y'all say y'all want? Like it's already bad enough that other people don't. I look at the artist's music first and then I look at everything else and say, okay, well, there must be something missing. They have great music, but eh, things aren't hitting like they should. Maybe they don't have a good marketing team. Maybe they don't know what to do. Maybe they just don't want it like that. There's other reasons, but I am first and foremost trying to understand if the music is quality or not. Cause if I see your numbers and I'm like, oh, you're popping. And then I see your music and it's not good to me. Then I'm kind of questioning well, how did those numbers come about? Am I missing something? All right, so for one, I think all of y'all have done this and many artists are guilty of this and y'all want to admit it to yourselves. So that's one thing that you need to stop and think about. One, do I objectify other artists and look at them more for their numbers and things like that other than their music? Have I done that in any kind of way? And I got a couple of questions that might ring a bell that you might've done it without realizing it. But truly think about it. Have you done that? Because if you're trying to be a good collaborator in an instance like this, Piff has already talked to this person. They've made a connection. So they're cool, they're vibing. At that point, it's one thing if you're like looking at a dude on the internet and your DMs and didn't see enough streams and didn't talk to them. But y'all been in real life. That's kind of crazy to me. So here's what I see artists do in a roundabout way. A lot of y'all will say, this artist is only successful because they had this resource or that resource, that person on their team, they grew up rich. That's the same thing. This industry plant conversation is the same thing to me. Kat Williams brought this up recently saying that Kevin Hart was an industry plant. Here's my thing. This is what I don't like about that conversation. I don't care if you feel like he was or not. Some people have their argument saying he's not. I don't care if you feel that way about an artist. At the end of the day, calling somebody an industry plant is not about the art. You're distracting from the quality of the art. If this person sucks at singing, if they suck at rapping, if this person isn't funny, now we're talking about the craft. That's all that matters. But to try to discredit somebody because they had help in one way or another now is saying that the help is more important than the music. The music should be the end product. And you as an artist falling for the industry plant conversation is falling for the same thing that everybody else is. Numbers, what's cool, what appears not to be cool or not, except you're falling on the hating side of it. Once you start focusing on that. Tell me this. Can somebody get it out the mud, grind, hustle their way up the ladder and suck? I think so. There's people who got it out the mud in their trash. There's people who got it out the mud and they off the chain, right? And then you got people who had a lot of help in their trash and there's people who have a lot of help and then they're good. It exists on both sides. That's irrelevant. What is the end result? Is the art good or not? That's all that matters, right? If not, either you're hating or you're getting distracted from the fact that the music, the craft, the art form, whatever it is, it's supposed to be the most important thing or not, right? It's just like telling somebody who, it's like complaining about somebody for helping their kids out and they got money. When you want to get money yourself, you're telling me you won't get rich and never help your kids out in any kind of way? Like that's just stupid. It doesn't make sense. Or be mad because some friends are helping each other out as a circle and not necessarily helping you out. I was like, well, you're not their friend. You're outside of that bunch. Of course they're going to help each other out. To some extent, this stuff just falls into the category of hating and distracts from the result. So artists, please pay attention. Don't let these people throw you off your square. Is the music good or not? And if you meet an artist who has dope music, collab with them. We need more good music. We don't need more people looking at numbers. To the second suite. This tweet is by none other than Barry Heffner. Shout out to Barry. He's the manager of JID, Irv Gang, Sofego over the, the so since the 80s management group was Z. Shout out to Zeke. Now his tweet. We're going to be sharing a few of Barry's tweets, you know, in these comment episodes because he got a lot of good stuff. Y'all follow Piff. By the way, y'all follow Barry. But Barry in this tweet, he said, artists should understand. And today's streaming business, music is just one portion of it. Every day you are up against streamers, sports, content creators, podcasters, video games, audio books and the enemy of this all is time. And how much one has to give to such face. We all have a limited amount of time. We can't spend it on everything, right? More than ever, you and your team has to build a strong brand to weather the streaming storm. Brand, that's the big thing about all of this. Because I think more people are accustomed to the idea that you are competing for attention. Simple as that. Not attention versus another artist, but attention versus everything in somebody's life. I think more people are accustomed to that idea. And Barry went on to say, without that connection or engagement, without your fan base brand, that attention and interest goes elsewhere. It's not that fans won't wait, but what keeps them engaged while they wait? A artist responded to this in the comments. T Mason, shout out to T Mason. Been a long time since he spoke, but that's another dope artist. He said it's easy to draw fandom from sports versus music. Because a lot of people identify with where they were born or raised, which translates a lot into their hometown team since it's locally based. Is he right about that? What do you think? I think he's right about that. However, it doesn't matter because that is an artist's job to figure out the keyword that he just pointed out. A lot of people identify with where they were born, there's an identity that comes with sports teams. There's this tradition and the advantage is typically people are gonna have an identity built around where they're from and a sports team representing where they're from is going to lean into that identity 100%. You go back to what Barry said, engagement with your fan base and brand, connection or engagement with your fan base or brand, T Mason said identity, the brand identity is the key thing when it comes to connecting with fans. A lot of people engage, engage, engage, they drop content, they get views, but they don't understand how to represent a specific brand, have an identity that fans can see themselves in you. Here's the trick that you need to understand and we talk about this in our 1,000 fans in 30 day system. So your fans, hear me out, are looking for something in you. You're either feeling a void, right? They're missing something. You might represent the hero, the confidence that they wanna have. Kanye represents that for a lot of artists and a lot of people who lack security in a lot of places. Kanye's boisterousness, right? His bravado helps them, right? Cause they like, you could tell Kanye's insecure but he's fighting that insecurity, you can sense that. And that feels like, yeah, yeah. Like I don't wanna be humble either. I feel beaten by this world, always asking me to be humble when I already need more confidence in myself, right? So he represents that for some people. There's some artists that might be talking about some heavier topics, depression and things like that. So you're either the hero for them or you're the friend for them in a place that they can go to talk about these subjects or relate in these subjects. That's typically what you're representing for a fan, right? Let alone like somebody just might be attracted to you and those level of things. But typically they need to see themselves in you in some form or fashion or want to be saved by you in some form or fashion, right? But that identity is important because why am I picking you versus another person? Why do I connect with you in your voice? Your point of view as an artist is your gold. That is what makes an artist your taste, the choices that you make and the way you see the world. It's the same reason that I will literally, when some news breaks, watch one person say something and if I watch another podcast, I was like, oh man, I can't wait till they drop a video because I wanna hear what they say about it. I wanna hear what this other person says about it and this other person says about it. I have my few people that I go to cause I want their perspective on something. So when you have a fan that relates to how you see the world, you're there. There's more work for you to do but there's nothing for you to do at the same time because they value the thing that matters most. Nobody can get them off of being a fan. Nobody can get them off of that train. Somebody else might come and they might go ride that train sometimes but they're never gonna replace you unless you do some wild funky stuff that they gotta get you out of here, they gotta cancel you because they're gonna want and value the place that you feel for them. That's the game. While I'm on this, before I finish this tweet, those of you who wanna have some conversations with me understand what your personal brand identity is and see exactly how we map this out so you can connect with fans directly. For $1, you can get access to our 1,000 fans and 30-day system where we walk through this. It's not, hey, I'm about to get it from literally the day I sign up to 30 days from now because everybody's not prepared although we do have that. Go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days, www. Make sure you hit that part.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days. I'll also have a link in the description somewhere and you can hop in that while we have space available for this and it's been a beautiful experience helping artists and talking to them, helping them understand their identity so then you can understand what strategies that you should be choosing. You have to understand your identity, you have to understand your audience and then you can pick your strategies that'll work for you. There's a lot that are available, there's a lot that work. We've, I can't even count how many times different ways that we've blown up artists these days but back to the idea of understanding, right? Your identity, connecting with fans because Barry said, think about it like this. If Coca-Cola decided to stop making Coke for a year, would you just not replace it with a Pepsi or find something else that similar? Question for you to think about. If your favorite team stopped playing for a year or it was a lockout, wouldn't you fulfill that slot with something else? That's the reality of what happens, to be honest. I don't know if you would exchange a Coke for a Pepsi. You might, some people are religious about that but they might just get used to not drinking a cola at all, right, which could be worse, right? You can take a break from not watching sports from a year and realize, oh, I can get along with sports, without sports and I never watch as many sports again, right? I've done that in my life, personally. So if you give people this massive break, especially before you're a certain level of figure in their life, then there's a high risk of losing them. But how do you understand, right? What do you do to engage with them that goes back to the brand identity? Barry kind of says it like this. So developing a multi-level strategy to keep your fan base engaged with your brand is critical. You should really think of it in the manner of having a sports team. You have mini-camp. If y'all don't know what mini-camp is, that's like prepping, right? Like your break is over, all the team is back and they're kind of like getting back into flowing things. Then there's pre-season. Then there's the regular season. Then there's the playoffs, the championship and then the off-season. And build content to fit into a year rollout and repeat. What do I love about this? Because there's different phases, different types of content. What do you do when you aren't in game time, when you aren't pushing a project, right? And rolling out that music over and over again. Because everybody's not doing a song a week. Everybody's not doing a song a month. And even if you are doing a song a week, News Flash, you still need to find other ways to connect beyond just the music. If you're trying to build a legitimate fan base, not people who just like your song, but they like you. But what does that look like? Now we go back to understanding the brand identity. What is your fan base like? Right? Do you know what your fan base like? What TV shows they might watch? What you represent personally in their life? There's so many different ways that we've had people engage with their base from playing video games. I remember one of the guys that Gary V was about to do like in 2020 because of the situation. I don't know if I can say that in the videos, but y'all know what happened in 2020. So it was gonna be this big tournament that happened. This gaming tournament that happened between a bunch of dope artists. And we had artists that fit that mold perfectly. Right? It was like, oh yeah, a lot of their fans are gamers. And this artist is a gamer. He plays a couple of games. But there's certain games that their artists didn't play. That didn't fit their particular identity. Right? We had another artist who sold bonnets because that fit who she was and how she represented in her brand. There's so many ways to represent your brand and show your identity. But again, it's not just about you. It's about understanding how your fan base sees you. And if there's a gap there, the way you wanna be seen and how they actually see you, then there's work that you need to make happen to make that connection. And again, that's what we do in our workshops, right? Working with artists and helping them understand what does that path look like? One dollar, hop in, www.nolabelsnecessary.com. Why do I say that? I wanna make this very clear, actually. Cause there's an artist who asked me about this. The reason that we pitch ourselves our stuff is because a lot of artists are so afraid to pitch themselves. And when we work with them personally, we have to be able to be like, look, bro, I'm not scared to talk about my stuff. It's about knowing your worth, understanding who your base is and who you're looking to connect with. Whenever you pitch one of your products, if you don't understand who you're trying to talk to, it's gonna make it really hard. So artists who try to sell their merch, right? Who try to sell their shows, we find have a hard time doing it because they don't even know how to talk in a way that's specific to the people that they're trying to connect with. It goes back to the brand identity. So you just say something weird in general, like, hey, I'm on tour now, on sale now, or go check out my strength, but you don't understand how to tell a story that connects with them specifically to then make sure that the right people will connect. And now it just feels weird cause you don't know who you're talking to. It's like going in the room and I just yell at everybody, hey, buy my whatever versus, oh, I know exactly who I'm talking to and I'm not going in the room yelling at everybody. I'm walking up to the woman or man that looked like the person that connects with me. And because we look on the same type of vibe, it just feels like starting a casual conversation. That's what it should be like. And if you are not there yet in building your fans, boy, do you have work to do, but it's achievable, right? We've helped people do it over and over again. We've seen some horrible all the way to, you know, now your beautiful things are smooth. So don't be afraid to go through that process. Every artist starts there at some point in time. I think that's enough for today's episode. Those of y'all who are wondering where jacquory is, the reality is we recorded some episodes and boy, we've had struggles back in the day with audio, but we left those struggles for a good amount of time. And they returned recently because we had to reset a whole bunch of stuff. And long story short, we recorded one episode and lost. No, we didn't lose the audio. The audio did not occur for that episode. It was not picked up. Then the second episode at the beginning, I said, oh my gosh, I just realized the first episode, audio did not record, but we're at the beginning of this episode. We just recorded the intro. I'm gonna catch the whole episode and go back and re-recorded the intro. Guess what happens? We listen back and it only records one of our mics. Then you got the other person getting picked up on the other mic and it sounds horrible. So in the name of being consistent and make sure we get the value that we always promise to give on this consistent basis, here I am. And then when we can link up and do the schedule how we're supposed to next week, me and Cory are gonna be back in the same flow. For those of y'all who are wondering, now I'm not gonna repeat that every other episode that occurs in this time period, but much love to y'all. Best of luck to y'all in understanding your audience, building your brand identity. When you build your brand identity, when you understand who you are, please know that your brand is not just about the decisions that you make, it's about the decisions that you choose not to make or better said, it's not just about what you do, it's what you don't do. And it's easier to make those decisions quickly when you've already understood who you are, because when you understand that, you're basically making a bunch of decisions ahead of time that you have no idea, right? When you say, oh yeah, my aesthetic is black and white, right, for whatever reason, just making something up. You have opportunities to have color, right? Like, oh, do you want that jacket? No, it's not black and white. I'm not going to wear it. Or if I drop the photo in that jacket, I got to change it to black and white. It's just a small little thing, right? Small thing. I wanted to use an example. I'm going to use an example anyway, and then I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to get out of here. A perfect way to think about this, and I didn't want to use because there's so much craziness around Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith lately, but this is still true nonetheless. I remember seeing them say this, priorities, they set their priorities ahead of time where they, for instance, knew that family came first. So it basically went like this. We could be in an award show. The Oscars, biggest award show there is in the industry. But if we find out that our daughter isn't doing well, it's nothing to think about. We made the decision ahead of time that this is a priority. But when you're in the moment, you have the opportunity to play yourself because, oh man, what's going on with the kid? Oh man, well I got the award show, and now you're thinking back and forth. You're slow to action because you haven't thought through that this is the thing that's already important to me. So now you're trying to figure out, well, how can I make both work, or do I need to leave immediately? No, it's not a thought at all because I know that this is what's important to me, family. So I think something actually happened like that, and then they just left, and it was what it was. Your brand is the exact same way in so many ways, but it's hard to see the decisions that you're making ahead of time until you get to that moment. But trust me, understanding your brand identity will make your life so much easier. All right, so with that being said, this is yet another video. Make sure you check out any of our videos that pop up, whichever one EJ decides to put up there. And again, www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days, if you want to hop in and join a movement, get some help from us personally. I'm in there every day talking and chopping it up with artists. Peace.