 what you think about the play listening? Are you going to overrated with that one or no? Yeah. Talked about it with. Yeah, it's overrated, bro. OK. So what we were talking about pre-show is I was saying that it's still a relevant conversation for artists at a certain level. If we go back to my zero to 10 example, I'll keep using super relevant conversation between people from like a zero to like a three. You know what I'm saying? I think the higher you get, the more you start to either have discernment for play listening or you start to understand more about how it fits into the overall marketing infrastructure. Right. And so what I've come to see play listening as is it is one just a social proof builder. Right. Hey, this thing was going to do 50,000 streams. Let me put an extra 100K on it. So I look nicer to my investors or to that booking agent I'm talking to or to that, you know, that I don't know that product guy that wants to maybe give me a sponsorship. Let me do things that make the numbers look big to people who are not able to get full context in this space. Right. Right. And then on top of that, it's a bragging moment. Like once you talk about like getting into like editorial playlists, right? Not like the necessarily running the meal like third party players, but like your most necessary or you know what I'm saying? Like those those editorials, those are more like bragging moments. One within the industry, but then two to your audience because their audience typically doesn't understand what hoops you have to jump through or somebody around you had to jump through to get you on those. So it's cool to say, hey, I got almost necessary. Great. You know what I'm saying? Go listen to it. That's great. Great for you. Right. So good celebratory moment within your fan base. Outside of that, those two things, it doesn't hit. It never hits like people needed to. And I'm talking about all levels. But I was telling you off camera, one of the biggest things that changed the way I looked at playlists and was I had a Ari's homie get into a really big playlist, it might have been like teardrop or something. Like it's huge. And like they let me look at their backhand looks and what came from it. And the the string spike to drop off looks exactly the same as when you get in an independent playlist, right? So I'm like, oh, this issue isn't even a bot playlist issue. It's not an independent curator playlist issue. This is just an issue across playlists thing as a whole. Because teardrop is a massive playlist. You know what I'm saying? It's a pretty big playlist, especially in that space. So I was like, you literally can see it, the spike, then the curve drop off. And then it's back to probably just his core audience, maybe a small bump in the floor from new people coming from the most part. It didn't go back to things didn't go back to exactly as they were before the playlist, but the increase in the floor was very small compared to what they saw during the spike. And so that completely changed the way I looked at the playlist. And I was like, OK, but I watched everything else in the moment. Yo, he's on it. I'm watching him get these people reach out to him and congratulating them and offering all these things, a social proofing aspect of it, right? Hey, this big platform thought you were important enough. So maybe I should see if you were important enough with some shit I got going on. You know what I'm saying? So I saw that aspect of it. And I just saw the social proofing part of it kind of get put into play. And then looking at the analytics, it's like, OK, this is the fan aspect of it, bro. Like they came in. It's cool. They drop off and go about whatever. I don't think you ever got crazy, like other platform engagement from being on it. Could be wrong. I actually do remember seeing one comment on one of his YouTube videos that mentioned seeing him in the playlist. So that was pretty cool, right? Like, but even that goes back to the fan brag moment, right? This is got like, oh, shit. This is my favorite artist, bro. He's an XYZ playlist. He's the cover of XYZ playlist. Like those are typically the only two moments where it seems like playlist and cares. Celebratory moment, if you're trying to be a social proofing or something. Other than that, shit does not matter. Overwrite it. Stand on it. I'm going to go 100%. And I think the problem is the lack of culture with playlists. When I say that, I mean, if you look at a brand as a playlist, brands have trouble scaling and maintaining culture and taste. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I mentioned this earlier on another episode. And if you're not really looked at as a true curator, why will people continue to follow? Most playlists, people get into because of convenience, not out of a cultural pool, you know? So if I see the R&B playlist on Spotify, A, R, E, and B, you know, how to flip titles and stuff, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm in an R&B mood today and I want to check that out. I'm going to follow that playlist, right? But it's not because of true culture. And I'm not looking at it and checking on it repeatedly like I might with somebody who's a taste maker that I like on TikTok that says, oh, this music is good. And they're already putting me onto new artists, all right? And there's an association in context of telling me why I like it, right? Like Sean C saying, I like or don't like this because X, Y, and Z, all right? So there's that element that's missing from almost everything as you scale up, it becomes really difficult to maintain that with artists, right? That's how people always graduate into selling out in some way. But then on the other side of it, it becomes even more difficult when you're a faceless brand, all right? So you're just a, you're really a graphic. That's what you are to me on Spotify. 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 gonna 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. I don't really know anything about you anywhere else. I probably don't even follow you on Instagram, anything else like that. There's no lifestyle I associate. It's just a fucking graphic, all right? So why am I gonna keep checking up on this playlist? So it makes it difficult. And if you talk about these editorial playlists, you look at the benefit on Spotify side. The benefit is there for people to continue to go to the playlist, cause it's like, yo, this playlist is really powerful. So we can keep churning and adding to this playlist and focusing on building this playlist because it's bringing us more activity on the platform and that's exactly what we want. However, Spotify finds benefit in that, but they aren't limited to benefit from just that. What if that doesn't work? What if that's too hard? What does Spotify also get benefit from? Well, you following another playlist on the platform, right? So, yeah, there was this general R&B playlist, but now it's Valentine's. So I'm just gonna pop up this Valentine's day photo and it's gonna have some other same artists possibly and you're gonna follow that playlist. And it's still my playlist and I'm still getting the listenership, right? So I don't really care as much about building a culture around a single playlist. Spotify is in constant sales mode, right? That's why they're always changing the covers, right? Changing these names with something clever to constantly attract you in because they know the user can get a little lazy and they're gonna find the thing that pulls their attention in at the moment. So they have to recapture attention again and again, refreshing these headlines. That's what you see now on Netflix and these other platforms too where they'll have five, six different covers. It's like, oh, okay, he's seen this cover like five times. Let him see a different character and think it's a different movie for a second. You know what I mean? Because we're still gonna get the benefit as long as you stream, period, you know? So that culture is in there, which makes me think the stronger culture I've seen around a Spotify playlist editorial specifically was the rap caviar. That was what I was aware of, right? I feel like it's kind of weakened. And that was what I was about to ask you, what is your insight or thought on the power of rap caviar today versus what it was before? Yeah, I'd never thought about this before but just thought about it because of what you said about the faceless brand thing. Yeah. At the time when rap caviar was really popping was when, what's his name? Tumah Basa was the one running it. He was the one Spotify curator that we knew was over it, right? You were right. And then he leaves and then it goes back to every playlist on Spotify's faceless now. Yeah. So I think that's what happened. You are right. Now, of course, a lot of the consumers don't necessarily know who Tumah is, but he was such a strong face in the industry. He built up people, he has so much face card in the industry that 100%, he was a curator and influencer within the industry that in many ways influenced the outer industry. Yeah, it was the same way with the Carl Sherry and Apple. When Apple was up and now he's at Spotify now, right? I think so, yeah. So it was like that. These were the two playlist brands where I could go find the person that made it and follow them on Instagram or meet them at a conference versus like today. I don't know who updates Teardrop, you know what I'm saying? I don't know who updates most necessary and maybe some intern, you know what I'm saying? But we'll never know. And so yeah, I think that's what kind of killed it off. It was like that cultural tie just kind of like fell by the wayside because they were like, artists want to partner with a person, not an entity, you know what I'm saying? People want to partner with a person. Yeah, people want to partner with people. Yeah, exactly. Like be able to have a face attached to it. So yeah, but I've never thought about that till you said the whole like people thing. And then today, I mean, there are individual curators that are front facing, maybe they're like TikTokers or YouTubers and things. And usually those players are the best playlist. Like they have the most engagement. You see like high scale or impact relative to like whatever you may have had to pay or do to get onto the playlist. You can see the impact carry over into their audience, right? So you could very much so hit a TikToker for a promo post on their page, getting their playlist and then see the effect that that whole line is having on that fan that found you from them. I saw your post, when his post listened to it, I thought it should have fired and boom on back, right? And so I do think like, playlists thing still has its place in music. Like I do think if we could literally graph out all of the music marketing things you could do, like I would put it on there. I do think there's a time when it makes sense. I just think for most rising artists, it doesn't make sense. One, because you probably are not getting on the playlist that can have that type of impact for you. And then two, the biggest one to me is that it fucks up the rest of your marketing infrastructure build. Because now you're getting all this traffic in so fast from this like relatively unreliable source that you can't accurately fine tune like the other parts of your machine, right? It's like we had a campaign once where I remember we were building out the artist's ad funnel, nothing crazy, maybe like a $500 ad budget. And then in the beginning it's easier to see because like you've got zero streams and you go to doing a hundred streams a day. It's very clear to see like where that's coming from, right? But then the artist gets into a playlist and then it just jumps out to doing 10,000 streams a day and now I can't see where the ad phone is having an impact, right? I can't see where my influencer strategy is having an impact. I can't see where my content strategy is having an impact because you overrided it with all this playlisting traffic. And so I think that playlisting for a majority of artists makes sense when you have other legitimate parts of your fan funnel built out, right? Like you have your content influencer, whatever that looks like for you, if you can see a very clear correlation between you doing this thing or A thing in Z output BMA and you have tried and done enough to see that it consistently works, at that point I can understand when the artist wants to do a playlisting. Yeah, I equate that to constraints and marketing. That's how we look at it, right? When we think about scaling the company, yeah, we marketers, right? We can market our ads off, create all kinds of viral campaigns, cool campaigns. We can do that. But what does that matter if our infrastructure isn't built out and there's no business set in place that can capitalize off of the marketing that occurs, right? And then there's no operations within that business that truly can fulfill to the scale of the marketing. So we're constantly at this ebb and flow, oh, let's build the infrastructure to a certain place. And then we can scale using all types of tactics, playlisting would fall as a part of that, like one of the top layers of scale in what your analogy is, right? Because you have your infrastructure just enough in place, the initial marketing, and then you have the marketing that's like, I'm gonna go bigger, right? But when you think about those tiers, it's always starting with, well, hey, do I have enough infrastructure in place? And if I'm marketing, is it overrated to start it now or is it overrated to start it later? Because that's what this whole list comes down to, right? Like it's not, none of these things are useless, right? But their usefulness comes down to when they're executed. Yeah, I understand context. Context is everything. That's like my motto, man. That's like my life motto for real. Like I hate things out of context. I hate being taken out of context. And those nuances make a massive impact. But...