 There are three popular lies about labels that artists have to get out of their head if they want to make sure they understand not just labels but the industry as a whole because labels really control the behavior of most of these other characters as well. So let's get into lie numero uno and that's this idea of all label artists have huge budgets it doesn't exist. I promise you it does not exist to the level that you think. This is what I mean and please understand this is coming from insight working with multiple label artists probably hundreds at this point and not only working with multiple I'm talking about some that are significant in terms of name and then I'll tell you why as well. All right so first you will commonly see a four thousand budget all right five thousand budget for a label artist that's what you will see and I'm not saying that's not a lot of money at all because for many of y'all that is a lot of money but most people are assuming that every single label artist has like a hundred thousand dollar budget all right or fifty thousand dollar budget all right and that's just not a thing and then you hear like these million dollar budgets and things like that that is so rare I promise you it is so so rare and a lot of it comes from the bigger thing which is number two even if you have a big marching marketing budget right understand the lie is the marketing budget that gets presented to you when you sign these label deals distribution deals all right and even in some case management deals depending on how things are creatively set up all right and you need to know this this lie why because this is how it usually works I've seen this happen time and time again to artists that we've helped get into a situation with the deal or just homies pretend that you just got a deal right and this deal was for a hundred k for your marketing budget that's a nice little amount all right especially your indie artist you have been grinding it you know doing a hundred dollars at a time a thousand dollars at a time great amount but imagine when it's time to get to marketing they say all right cool we'll let you know if we agree with this marketing of campaign or not you have all these ideas but the label is only going to do it if they agree I don't care that you think that this idea to pay this influencer is a good idea we don't believe in that so now you find yourself selling the label to spend money that you think they should spend you understand your vision and how it might help you navigate to where you want to go but they still aren't opening up the purse strings because they don't believe so it's not really your money it's money you have access to that's the biggest lie that artists don't quite understand oftentimes it's not your money it's money you have access to because we just hear this whole thought in this common story of oh well yeah you do have all this money you have a million dollar deal and you're just spending it poorly we talk about artists spending it poorly no no no no a lot of times artists aren't even spending this money poorly they don't even have access to it in the first place all right one someone might have to agree to actually run the campaign here's another scenario that might happen there is two okay you have a hundred thousand marketing budget but i'm going to let you only have access to ten to spend however you want to right and then if like we like how things are going we're going to spend the other ninety thousand dollar on some things that we think will help out some things that we improve on possibly our marketing team um or our ads team spending the budget you get what i'm saying so that's the second scenario where you actually do have access directly to a chunk and you can spend it because you kind of have it even though it's still them giving um access to it they might not just send it over to your account that's the second scenario but here's here's the third one to keep in um to keep an account and this is the bigger picture why it's a lie in terms of your marketing budget um for deals so let me walk through it again number one you have to pitch for every dollar that gets spent scenario number two you have to pitch for dollars to get spent but you do have access to a certain portion that you don't have to do that with right and you might even be able to do something with that initial bit right get a little spark going and then knock it out of park and then convince the label to like pour more money in that's a lot of scenarios and it's unfortunately maybe the most positive scenario you typically see but here's the third one the third one can actually still be a part of either of those scenarios and this is the biggest lie i swear to you let's pretend you have a 300 000 marketing budget i've seen artists after artists go into a deal where they might have that amount of money and when the deal is over all of that money didn't get spent you had a 300 000 dollar deal and only 50 000 dollars got spent on your marketing right and i'm talking about 300 000 marketing budget i don't want to say like that the rest of that money was accounted to um to go for other stuff i'm talking about scenarios where you only got access to a portion of your marketing budget that got spent whether it was the label or you throughout the entire process and now it's a year later two years later the deal's been over and you're just never going to see that 300 000 dollar number that actually sold you on going with them in the first place whether it was a distributor or a label i gotta really continue to emphasize that because like i said labels right dictate how people move in the rest of the industry other people just become versions of labels because the services kind of are are the same and now when people decide well how do i build my leverage or add more to what i'm doing well then you start doing oh well marketing services or publishing or admin like people become versions of labels and everybody starts to see the game similarly right so do know this you can have a deal and not only don't get the opportunity to spend it poorly right and and but people will blame you how did you not get successful if you you know oh he must have wasted all his his money he had a big deal and he's still not popping no you didn't even get a chance to spend it poorly all right and you might have ended the deal and not spend it all of your own uh all of your own money period it's kind of like being like a more incorporate a lot of times and again it doesn't have to be a corporate label situation so please be aware of that one i spent the most time on that one because that's like one of the biggest ones that artists just you just don't see until you go through it it's like bro i just had a 70 000 dollar deal for this single and now the the stuff is over and i only got to spend 5k of it and i don't understand by the way how that happens maybe i could have a lawyer on because i still don't understand how that happens it's like bro but i thought that was his money how can he how's it so common that artists just never see their money at all all right the third lie that i want to discuss here is most labels aren't as predatory as you think but the ones that aren't require a reality check what do i mean by that hey just want to drop this quick mention if you're looking for help in blowing up your music and your career as a whole this year at the beginning of every year we open up to find new artists that we want to work with and continue to grow throughout the year which has resulted in many of the big moments that you hear us talk about so at this time we've opened up where you'll be able to see how we approach things from ground zero digging into your brand identity translating that into content advertising and full-blown campaigns that result in streams and real fans and it's only one dollar at www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days i'll put a link in the description below but beyond that process we actually have ways to speak get to know you watch you grow throughout your process so we can lean in and offer extra advising on how to navigate what you're going through in real time so if you want some real help without having to sign your life away check it out at www.nolabelsnecessary.com 30 days either way goes best of luck to you in your career the third lie that i want to discuss here is most labels aren't as predatory as you think but the ones that aren't require a reality check what do i mean by that why would the non predatory labels require a reality check and by again i'm just going to use labels as uh catch all term but there's so many other people you can do deals with the reality check is you need to understand business to do business with people and what happens oftentimes with artists this is a lot more on the artist side than label distributor whoever side when you when an artist has business with somebody they don't quite understand the incentives on the other side of the table that hurts you when you're making a deal but also hurts you in terms of being a good partner for a deal and managing your own expectations for a deal and what the partner should do what do i mean by this well a lot of the non predatory labels right or scenarios they might just do a deal based on your music and your music alone right they're profiting from all the different types of royalties that come from your music directly all right cool what's wrong with that nothing's wrong with that but y'all know how little Spotify pays right y'all know how little Apple music pays right Deezer Amazon music so imagine if i'm a label right a company and i'm investing in somebody and i know how little these streaming platforms pay and that's one of the primary ways that artists make money and if i don't have a piece of your touring if i don't have a piece of your merch right if i don't have a piece of your publishing if i have no ownership of your masters think about it that's a tough equation to get your money back because even if i start getting you popping and i invest this money and you and you go from 100 thousand streams to five million streams five million streams is how much money right how much money is that think about it do the math you can depend on the streaming platform that you're looking at but that could easily only be what 15 thousand dollars or something i don't like it's not much more than that and if i put 100k in you and like money in you to get there what am i waiting on now i'm banking on i made 15k um what in three months and hopefully i can keep making that money back right and at some point i get to profit it's a hard deal now why am i walking through this because i'm only involved in this one part of the deal that leads me to say if i'm a label right and i'm not being predatory and i'm not just taking so much of all these other pieces that i'm not involved that in it also means i don't care about that other stuff like that i would love the best for you i want you to have like a great brand and i want you to sell all the merch in the world because all that comes with being a bigger artist which hopefully means you stream better but from a business on the paper standpoint i don't care about any of that stuff because i don't get any of that stuff all right and the problem becomes well yeah you as a manager might want to focus on increasing the the show rate right increasing the amount of people who pop up to your shows you as a manager might want to do something that increases the merch sales all these things are valid they make sense right and i'll say you as a manager but of course you as an artist too but just know me as a label i i want to invest all of the money or most of the money that i'm giving you and something that's going to impact streaming the thing that i actually make money from get that and here's an example right homey of mine and this is when it first like super clicked he's arguing he wanted to target a different country right um to to boost the streams of the artists because there were so many people that were loving him and i mean the results were crazy in terms of the targeting from that country versus the primary country was for us right so he wanted to triple down in that space what was the issue with the person who gave money in that instance said bro i don't care about that like you're trying to do that because you see the ability to go out there and do shows you're trying to build a strategy that might bring in more merch and really lean into those fans but one i'm not making money from the merch i'm not making money from the shows but check this out in terms of ROI the US pays out way more per stream on the streaming platforms in that other country so pouring money in that and that makes it way harder for me to make my money back it makes sense all right it just does it doesn't mean i don't want the best for you as a whole but with the dollars that i'm giving you all right i need to make sure that the highest chance is there to get the money i need back just from that money alone i'm trying to get the ROI of that money spent not hey i got you to this level and then hopefully somebody else gives you some more money and then i can make my money back i'm trying to get my money back off of the money i spent on you all right so that's the lie um the artist i understand that yes there are predatory labels with most labels distributors and these companies aren't anywhere near as predatory as it used to be it's not like that but what does become a huge divide is the mismanaged expectations that they have artists have for a label or partner situation because you're thinking about yourself as a whole at all times as you should but they're thinking about the part that they benefit from the worst scenario i saw this i'm not not the worst not the worst but another scenario i saw this um but it was kind of bad and i'll tell you why the manager had an artist the artist actually came to us first and then brought the manager on the call and i'm talking to the artist and manager and i realized the manager came from like publishing songwriting sync type of world right cool it's nice to have a manager that knows that game it can make that money but the artist didn't want to just make sync money didn't want to just you know do songwriting type deals and things like that the artist wanted the whole dream they wanted the the image they wanted the fans they wanted to be on stage ha all that stuff manager didn't really care about that and i could tell that from the call and i was just like i don't know if she knows or or if the manager knows yet either but there's a little conflict here this ain't gonna go too hot unless one of them change in terms of their goal about a year from now i'm not gonna be surprised if they're not working together maybe two years hopefully the sooner the better because they had two completely different goals this manager to achieve their goal with that artist that artist didn't need to be big didn't have to have a front-facing brain at all that um damn near but for the artist yeah that's what they wanted and the manager was moving completely different and you saw that in terms of the type of campaigns they wanted us to run so just know those three lies do exist just a quick review a lot of label budgets are way smaller than you think for a big artist i could go in way more detail but i'm not label deal numbers are a lie that number that you get when you get a deal right a marketing budget it's not necessarily that but there's a lot of things that we can do to help move that along i'll make a separate video about that possibly um and then lastly most labels aren't as predatory as you think but the ones that aren't require a reality check if you like this information right videos like this please subscribe please subscribe i really appreciate it and i think the other artists appreciate it because it just inspires me to keep making more videos and putting these out there so that is it and watch the next video we're doing a whole playlist for those of y'all who don't know this is what i'm doing every saturday this year and i'm now collecting a playlist of saturday videos peace