 It's a video on St. John talking about the fact that he really get paid that much for his song with Usher. But I think there's some important points that I don't see people talking about enough. Check it out. The song came out at the time the song streamed 70 million. That's a lot. That's not 70 million dollars. And here's the. That's a song that he do with Usher. That's what he's referring to. And it did 70 million streams. Mathematics. 70 million streams. I own 25% of the songs and it's $3,000 per million stream. It's 3,000 times 70. So $210,000. All right. It's math. The numbers got to make sense. I'm waiting on the song for two years based on the royalty rate that Spotify pays the publishers. There's two types of money in records. It's publishing money. That's writing. And then it's performance money. That wasn't my voice. I'm just on the publishing side. So that $210,000 that that song made had to be bust down. My take on that $210,000 was $1,500. And if I to put that song out myself and only had 3 million streams out of me $10,000, I said I'm done. I washed my hands. I was like, this is done. You know how hard it is to get these songs on these people who put it out on their own time. The artists who have their own vision for it. So your livelihood to be dependent on somebody else that you don't control or influence impact or have a relationship with. And it's not even your worth. You're not even getting paid. You're waiting salt. I wrote a record for us. Whew. That thing was moving because he's talking and he hit so many points that people aren't addressing. Like people keep going back to the $1,500 for 70 million streams. We know that. We know that. Look, the stream rate, it ain't that much. Yeah. Right. Especially when you look at the percentage of the percentage. So one, I do love that he smartly was like, look, man, I could get less streams and make more money. That's the basic indie concept. Any artist been telling y'all that forever, man. Like I could not be signed, but get a higher percentage and do quote unquote worse, but make more money. Yeah. Right. That's something that I feel like people understand for the most part. Right. Now, still, I think the generalized thinking of, I wrote a hit with usher, even though 70 million isn't like a usher usher hit, you know what I mean? But saying I wrote a song that did well with usher and I only made $1,500 off of it. That's mind blowing for, I know, like a lot of consumers and just people in general. Yeah. Right. Cause we're not even talking about, oh, it was a work for hire. He actually was participating in the back end, right? True credits, et cetera. And he still didn't get paid that much. But when you look at two years, I got $1,500 after two years, golly. Yeah. You know what I mean? And now this is how you know, you could always tell like the artists that are like older, right? It's just like, I can't live off of that shit. Yeah, bro. $1,750 a year? What amount, $1,750 a year, right? Exactly. You just bust that down into the hourly raise. That's probably like worse than being a waiter who didn't get tips. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So I mean, he even made that point, right? Like he's like, I would most rather just like take the bet on myself and make less there. So I mean, I don't know, man, this is always such like a thin line for me because like the split conversation and just how micro those breakdowns can get. $20 a month. That's what they came down to. It's crazy. Oh, you just did the math on it? Yeah. You can find that shit on the ground. You can find that shit on the ground. But it's just because I feel like it's safe to say he's probably locked in some like crazy club situation. You know what I'm saying? For it to come down like that, but that's why I go back to it. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. But 10 K isn't that much either. Right? Yeah. Do 10 mil or three million get 10 K. We know that's not all that much either, which is something that artists are struggling with. But to me, the biggest thing out of all this is what the writers are dealing with. Remember, I talk about me not necessarily wanting to manage artists early in my career because I'm like, I can't depend my whole life's success off this individual, right? Yeah. Him from a writer standpoint in this time, he's not even talking about individual that he's personally dealing with. It's one thing where I'm like, bro, yo, Jacory, you're the artist and bro, I got to like wake you up. You're not inspired enough and I have to deal with all this. And it's like, bro, you being lazy, but at least I feel like I got direct line of communication and I feel like I might be able to influence you a bit, right? Yeah. So I'm just talking about as a songwriter, just throwing your music out into the ether and sometimes and just hoping that it gets picked up, you pitch it to somebody and then like he said, the artist has their own vision. So they might like the song, but then it might not be in this project because it doesn't fit this project. So I have to wait just like any artist does, right? With their own music. Oh, if it's here, better than there. So he's talking about after two years getting 1500. I don't know if that's after it came out or whatever, but let's just pretend, which has happened in many songs. It took like five years for the song to come out, right? Or whether even worse, you wrote the shit for Dr. Drake and never came out. We know how shit go with him, right? So it might be like five years before you start to see that money. You add in like the amount of time to get them to accept it. You don't know if they're going to accept it at all because you don't have much influence over the situation in many of these situations. It might take a certain amount of time to get accepted. If it does get accepted, which is a probability to work with there, then you have the amount of time for it to come out. Then hopefully it performs well, right? Because that's not guaranteed. We know how hard that shit is. Even the biggest artists have songs that don't do well. Yeah. And then we know how slow music payouts come and how sometimes music payouts don't come in the way they should. And somebody might end up having to audit and do all these other things for $1,500 over an extended period of time. He said, too, it could have been longer. So a lot of this in terms of artistry speaks to why, especially in today where the opportunity is there, control as much as you can. Just point blank, control as much as you can because it's already hard enough to win this. And the further away from the control that you get, you're dealing with not only increased probability of failure, but you're also dealing with lower percentages if you succeed. So the risk factor is high as hell. Let me take a quick second to say if you're an artist trying to blow your music up or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free, step-by-step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free. But the thing is, we're not going to let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com. Check it out. Back to the video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do say it from his side too, where it's much easier to get three million streams and 70 million, you know what I'm saying? Like three million is not a crazy goal to hit, especially for like an artist of his caliber. But I would, devil's advocate a little bit and say, Of course, of course. And this goes back to, I would love to know what his situation was like then, but I would imagine that having the credit for that song probably opened hella doors for him. Right? Yeah. Something that maybe wouldn't have happened if he put it out under his own umbrella. And I think just like, because, because what I don't want every artist to hear this and say is like, oh, this is why I never would song write. I'm never giving my shit away. Because I know a lot of arts that feel exactly like this. Like one, I don't want to give someone a hit that I feel like could have been for me. You know what I'm saying? Now I'm a little salty about it. Or two, like you just say like, no, like this is my baby. This is getting too far away from my hands and my throat. You know what I'm saying? Those are the two main reasons I hear RSA don't want to do it. But then I think about like all of the prolific artists who started out as like song writers, you know what I'm saying? And we're willing to give away that shit and probably go through similar situations like this because of the doors that open just from being able to say like, hey man, I got an usher song. It got 70 million, right? Well, I got a whoever, a Beyoncé, some walk or whatever song. And then, you know what I'm saying? But now that I've kind of built that cloud for these situations, now I'm taking the rest of my shit and hoarding and doing what he said. So I do think like, the other thing I do kind of wish he would have bought a little clarity on like what part of his career, what point in his career was this? You know what I'm saying? Because I don't know like, do you know if you wrote that song for us before? Like he started popping as a solo artist? Or if it was like in the midst of it or? I think it was before he was starting popping and that was kind of why he made a point. I could try to look up what song it might have been that he's referring to specifically. Yeah. But who else did he write for? I remember, we were working with some people when they were like, St. John used to write for... I fight hella people. Oh yeah. So the song, he worked, Kaiser, he worked with her, which is like he had all these random credits that people didn't know him for. Yeah. Right? And you would never expect the artist. He might have had something on hideaway. I know a lot of people might not even know that song or whatever. But like he, St. John has some credits like for real, for real. Yeah, like he out here. Yeah. With different types of artists. Know what? It's not on hideaway, but it is with that artist. So I think the happiest medium that I can think of, and of course everybody do their own thing, like whatever makes sense to you. But like me, I would probably just strategically, if I was an artist, compartmentalize it. Like, am I writing a song for Usher? If I was in a position, right? And I had somebody connected where I could truly say, hey, I'm trying to write one and pitch it for Usher, Rihanna, whoever, whoever. So I'm not writing this for me anyway. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. Because I know some writers who actually do that, right? They're writing in somebody else's voice, but then their music is their own voice and is their own experience. Right? Yeah. So like that probably might help some of the dissension between like, oh man, I could have just kept this for myself. Yada, yada, yada. Beyond that, yeah, I think it's a fact that yes, there have been people who have been songwriters who have transitioned to artists. However, there is a grave of songwriters who, you know, never made it to that artist side. However, there's also a grave yard of rich songwriters who never became artists. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's not the worst fail if you are a successful songwriter who just doesn't happen to find your wings as an artist. I mean, I'm chasing that up, man. 20, there was $20 a day, man. You get about 30 of them, you know what I'm saying? All they does is remember what it was all about. We talk about $20 a month, by the way. Yeah, I know what I'm saying. You get about, you know what I'm saying? Maybe about 300 of them, you know what I'm saying? Like 300 of them at 30. Yeah, like 300 of them, man. You know? Okay. You collect them over the years like, you know, like a Quincy Jones, Seeking Infinity Stones, you know what I'm saying? Like just be out here collecting songwriting credits. Production credits. Quincy is a different animal right there. That's a different animal. That's why he has some of those, people will be saying that kind of stuff, like Bob Puffy, old school type of shit. We're like, man, he didn't even do nothing. All he did was, you know, push the button, one button, and were to say turn it louder, and now he on the credits. You know, I don't have no stake in that horse. I don't understand what officially qualifies as production. And I, and I wasn't there. But that, but even if it was that, I can now understand, right? The incentive to do that. Let me get my hands on as many of these things as possible. That shit might be perfect, but now I'm going to just throw in some feedback that's unneeded, but I'm going to put myself on the credits because I'm just trying to make all this add up. One ain't enough. I'm saying, all the residual checks, but 2% of everything, bro. You know, that 2% started stocking up. Hey, that's a fact, bro. All I need is 52% and I'll buy that honey. All right, next.