 There's an artist that left the biggest record label in the world. Why did she do this? Why did she force her way out? Well, go ahead and play this clip so she can speak for herself. I signed to the biggest record company in the world still is it's Universal Republic and I just got lost in the shuffle. You know, they had Post Malone, Drake, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and I wasn't on that level. So they were just like, okay, we're going to shelve you until something miraculous happens. But it was so incredibly difficult to not be able to release any music and still just be like spinning my wheels. So I ended up asking them to let me go and they graciously did because by that point I was about $2.5 million in debt and they did not have to let me go. They could have kept me there and helped me there. But luckily they did let me go. And then I started building out an independent career and licensing my songs in different territories and really seeing more connection and success that way. So if you are an artist, a new artist, I really strongly encourage you to build everything you can on your own until you just need them to like, you know, put you on SNL or something because if you expect a record company to take you from zero to ten or even five to ten, you're really putting all of your control into their hands. Also, I just want to stress that you don't need to be at ten. Like you can have a very fine career out of five or four or six. And Julius, she preaching, man. She she's saying a lot of stuff and it's coming from real experience like two two point five million dollars in debt experience. You know what I mean? But it's a lot of wisdom, a lot of wisdom. This is one of the biggest problems that I see artists do, though not I'm not even saying her, but it just reminded me that artists get so caught up in going to majors and going to teams that have all these dope artists there. When you don't realize if you're not on those artists level, the incentive to work on you and for you is not necessarily there. Those are our roadblocks. You got to bow that room and artists, if y'all don't know artists, if y'all haven't looked in the mirror, artists are selfish. They're like, yo, what you doing? Doing all that work for him? Why is he on that playlist? And I'm not on that playlist. They started looking at other people on the label trying to figure out that y'all making moves, y'all making progress, but you still haven't responded to me or my project or my single just didn't. It didn't hit the way it needed to. All this is happening. So if you're feeling that way and you might go through something like that, imagine the artist that has ten times more leverage doing that. And then there's multiple of those artists that are doing that. But hey, I'm in this system and they got all these people on the team. So they should be able to get a feature from you with these different types of artists or they should be able to help me with all these moves. If the incentive isn't there, a lot of times you're better off going with a team where you are their primary priority. Yeah, that's what any labels and stuff started. Exactly. That's where any label started to shine because you being their priority is what's going to help you and your career. And I know it looks tough. Oh, you got to build something up. Versus I could join something. They have all these different resources, but what's the outcome at the end of the day? Even if you if you hit and you see some progress, if you're not the main priority and they want you to be the biggest thing possible, because it's also incentivized for them to make you the biggest thing possible, why wouldn't I just be happy with just taking you to level six? Because I already got some teams and the work I would have to do taking my attention off the ball. It's easier to keep this 10 at 10 than it is to go take you from six to 10. Yeah, but I like you being in the six. You know what I mean? Six makes me money. Yeah, six makes me money. We're in the space. I'm good with that, but you are good with that because you want to be a 10. So it's really about finding a team that has the abilities but are not in a place where they have that much going on for whatever reason. And that looks different. There could be there's like these execs that leave a label and they're now they're just starting. So they've done this before plenty of times and they have all kind of relationships and they're in some kind of partnership and they do this. But because of where they are, they're focusing on somebody new and you could be that first like project for them. Right. It's like early on when Jay Z became president of Def Jam, the Rihanna. Yeah, it was a really, really big deal for him. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's not that. Obviously, Rihanna wasn't Rihanna and who she became anyway. She didn't have that in her, but it was really priority in comparison to what that would look like after having Rihanna in those things and Jay Z not being a new person. Right. Yeah. Again, him being new, I'm trying to prove myself. I'm starting up this new company looks way different. So if you all could find teams and people like that in the industry, that's something to look out for. I'm not saying never do any of these companies that have somebody on their team because maybe they're just one person or two or maybe even two artists. And then you can fit in some other way somehow. Right. But especially if you have demographics overlap. Right. Yeah, competition for resources, competition for resources. There's all these different things where people like to look at people winning. That's the biggest thing. People, everybody wants to be on the winning team, but don't understand what being on a winning team looks like. Third string, third string, baby, because they already got a pack roster. You go to Golden State Warriors and you're going to have to give up something. All right. You you might not have the ball in your hand as much because they got Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Clay Thompson. They had KD for a period. So like, you know, you go to a team like that. I got the ball less in my hands and I might win more. But the difference is in the art side, that doesn't mean you win more. On the sports side, that means, yeah, I got a ring and I probably did less work to get it on the art side. That just means I didn't get a ring. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the problem. You can't take them entirely everywhere per se. You want competent people. You want good people, people who did shit, but going to a pack roster is overrated. Yeah, I think the other big thing she touched on, too, which was I know was a huge opening experience for me when we learned it was that these smaller artists that assigned to major labels have to do the same amount of work that artists who aren't assigned to major label are, right? So I know I personally learned that lesson in like 2019. I think 2019 was when I first ever got a major label client and we had a we had a good amount that year, right? And I remember us working with this one, like smaller, I don't want to say the label, one smaller major label act. And I just remember like being on the calls every week, like listening to their marketing manager and, you know, having the budget conversation is like, man, like you artists that signed to this major entity, you look no different than this 3 p.m. call I have with this artist from backfuckin' nowhere with, you know what I'm saying? X amount of dollars in his bank account. And so what that taught me was that for newer artists, well, for established artists or artists that maybe have some momentum already, what the label does for you and what that building looks like for you is much different than the artist that has is new that just signed to that label. When you are new and you just signed to a label, the only difference between you and an unsigned small act is that if something magical were to happen for you, there's a building of people that can help you take advantage of it versus the small artists, let's say, let's say both artists got a viral moment, artists at the major label, label gonna ideally kick into motion, start putting things together, right? Right. Artists without a label, he or she has to start figuring shit out, right? Well, what do I do without the next? But until that happens, everything else about the process is exactly the same. Look, man, if I'm a label, like if my record label can talk, right? The record label would say, we don't make magic, we channel it. Yeah, that's fine. You make the magic. We just help that magic go into places, channel it into new places because, one, you're the artist, you're the product, right? And two, no one ever believes me when I say this because obviously comments, labels cannot create momentum. Yeah. We cannot create momentum. This is me still speaking as a label, right? We can't create the magic. However, we know what to do with the magic. Yeah. All right? We know how to make that shit go to another level. Another level, key words. 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 GoViral 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. And the moment artists get that and it starts to make sense, especially when you look at things today. There was a time, I think some of that's the dissonance where a label did control so much part of the process and they even were more a part of making the magic, right? Or at least creating the infrastructure for that magic to be made. But now we're in today. And that problem is, people, we say that. And I think every time we say that people hear like all labels don't do nothing or labels don't do nothing for you in a completely bad way. But when you look at some of these agreements, it just makes sense as well, right? Like that's your partner. A problem only comes when you expect me to do that and I don't do it. But my assumption is you understand what this actually is. That's the problem. It seems like with a lot of these labels because they're like, well, this is what we do, right? And this is what we always do across all these situations. I didn't tell you I was gonna do that. I think that gap though is the reality is, no, that is what labels do. That's how they're supposed to function. In today's age, however, there are people that are selling the dream so hard, they don't make it clear that that's not what they do. That's a part of it. Yeah, I think some of it too is just like, like an adaption, right? Like if I'm a label and I don't know, let's think of the artist of yesterday year, right? 1950s, some smooth singing and young book that I found on the streets of Mississippi or some shit. This motherfucker probably don't know. Nothing about music more than likely not had any serious formal training. So I think at that time development was part of it because like we had to walk this person through the route or they just wouldn't be able to do it. You fast forward to today. Now, only are there is that information and resources on the internet that artists can take advantage of. There are also different entities in between ground zero and major label that will also help you figure all this stuff out. So I'm looking at like, if I'm a label and I know that it's possible that by the time someone gets to me to where it makes sense, I don't even have to do anything. And I know that because I've seen it. I've signed artists that already came in with a content team and had a booking agent and had toured, you know what I'm saying? 20 different cities, you know what I'm saying? I already had artists come in that already had a million subscribers on followers on TikTok. Half a million subscribers are generating 50K a month. If I now I'm a label saying like, oh, shit. We don't even have to develop people one on one anymore because if we just cast the net wild enough, we'll collect all the people that figured it out before they got to us. And now we can just focus on, like she even said it, putting you in places you can't get to. I can get you on Jimmy Kimmel. I can get you on this thing, this thing that like, you need crazy resources to get access to, right? I would have did the exact same thing. You know what I'm saying? And I know like labels still sign artists. They aren't popping. They still sign artists who are at zero. Like I said, we've worked with some of them. But I think that is kind of like you said, one that just still kind of sell the dream. Like we still do that rather. Hey, we don't pick you up obscure hearts and help you go from, you know, since zero to 10. And then, you know, most labels even still are works on by people who are passionate about music, but people who are passionate about music are gonna find people they like and believe in for whatever reason and finesse them into the system. Right? This leads to the other conversation, the Ray conversation. Oh yeah, yeah. So for those of y'all who don't know, she's an artist in the UK. And my first encounter with her was back in, I don't know, like 2017, because I would use all these song snippets as a part of my promo and she was one of the artists I found. I was like heavy A&R back then, because a lot of people that I shared early on became big, man. So they got the approval from Aventure ATL, Sean early on, man. Now with that being said though, like I didn't hear from her after that. I was like, oh yeah, she gonna be it. I saw it and I didn't hear from her. And then as of recent, we were just in our meeting and this information comes out about like her label kind of holding her back. And you said you had been seeing some of that conversation too, right? Yeah, like over the last like three, four days. I'm gonna let you like go deeper into it because I didn't realize any of y'all were telling me about how I was holding her back. No, I was saying I had never heard of her as much as I heard of her. I thought she was like, I thought she was a completely new act. I saw a little bit of that narrative but I thought she was completely new. And then you know, like Sam dropped in our group chat and I went and looked up and I was like, oh she got like 20 million monthly listeners. I didn't even see that one when you dropped that. Okay, so here's basically the breakdown. Her label wouldn't let her drop music. Yeah, pretty much. Period, right? She was signed to Polydor back in 2021. She took on her record label Polydor back in 2021 to basically say, hey, y'all gotta let me out of this thing. And she won. She had more than 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Now she's at like 30 something. Yeah, like 20 something, 30, yeah, somewhere in there. She's popping, right? And she even has top 20 hits to her name. Like she got seven of them with like Beyonce, John Legend in terms of like songwriting skills. Oh God. So yeah, so she got some skills out there. And in the end of it though, she took the Twitter and used Twitter as leverage to say, hey, I need to get out of this agreement. And that's what multiple artists have done. But as you said, some artists are doing that and not coming out. Not coming out. They're not coming out of that situation, right? Which is a whole other conversation. But she went out on Twitter to vent about being trapped in this deal of songs not being able to be released or simply being passed on to other artists because her pen game was so strong. So they were taking her music. Shit that she wrote for herself and passing it on. I don't know how that happens. That's one thing that I personally haven't known of an artist going through where they're writing stuff and your record label has the right to say, no, we're going to give it to somebody else. I personally, you know, I'm hearing a new different finesse and scenario every day of music. It's crazy. But that's, that sucks. I can imagine. It's like, dad, you wrote this shit for yourself. And then they have the right to say who it goes to or not. So. If you like, thanks for that Beyonce hit, you like what? Right, exactly. Cause they'll pass it on, but then tell her it's not good enough to be on her album, right? So, but we're going to steal a cap in another way. So in mid July, she got released from her contract. And there's been so many artists that have been sidelined for periods of time, which we can get into for another conversation. But what happened with her? Which is what made me think about her when you said the statement of the industry still has people at these companies who are all for the art. So you might get this artist signed early. Her situation was the person that signed her or was her primary advocate ended up moving on from the company. That happens so much. She's locked down in this scenario. And your main hero, your main, you know, supporter is no longer there to support you and it happened so much, right? The company gets reshuffled, reorged, or somebody gets another opportunity. And then next thing you know, these other people don't even believe in you. They don't see the vision like you. Yeah, they didn't believe in you like Steve believed in you. Right, exactly. It is one thing to be a two-phase company and we just pushing this line of two-phase. Cause I owe the new person that comes in, they know that they're pushing this line of two-phase. But this art is more particular. You'll even have people have more traditional companies like that say, well, I don't get credit for pushing this two-phase. I want to come up with a whole another one just so I can get credit. So you already have that type of ego that might come into it. But then literally we're talking about art. So it's specific. Even if that person was a nice person, it was trying to like help deliver on some of the things the label had for you. They might not see the vision or understand the vision. And that's the thing that sucks about being at these companies when people move on. And that's something that can happen that you name it, any label, any of these organizations. And that's when it comes down to the reality of it. These companies, the industry as a whole is made of people. It's all people, right? So we'll say labels this, label that, the music industry this, music industry that, but it's people. So she had a person that would have done right by her. Apparently I've seen this at many labels. I remember when I think LA Reed left something, one of whichever label we left and a lot of artists on the label were like, oh shit, man. You wanna go? Yeah, I gotta go. I gotta figure out how to get out of here since he's leaving, right? So you have that advocate, you have that person on your team. And a lot of the times it's really about finding the people and connecting with those people, getting deals and relationships with those people, not necessarily pursuing a label in itself, right? Because it might look like, oh, they're in a good position to handle every single part of my process because of their resources. But do you connect with those people? Do those people see your vision? Are they incentivized? Because again, you are still competing with other artists on the label and none of that leads back to the exact same business. Not your business, right? That artist doesn't increase your business. There's a lot of different factors to consider. But yeah, I find it so interesting when you hear about those especially, because it really sucks when you, it's like you did actually make the right decision. Yeah. The person just left though. Yeah, yeah. And I just learned this last year actually that you can negotiate in your contracts with certain entities that this person that brought you in leaves, then you can go or they can restructure your contract. I don't remember the exact name of the clause of the thing that lets you do that. I'm not a lawyer, you know what I'm saying? But I learned this a couple of months ago because like that happens, but we're going through that right now with TikTok, right? Like, you know what I'm saying? So we know the pain, bro. You don't build up all this trust, this relationship, finally got a good flow going then. If the email such and such has been let go, some new person taking up your account. We've been through that 50 times with TikTok, like not literally 50, but we've been through it probably five to seven. And a lot of it's like a year and a half. Yes. Like changing new people, changing new people. Every time you get cool with one person and have a little flow going, literally it's somebody else. And it takes you three months to even have that first meeting with that new person. And then they're all going to be gone two and a half months from then, 100%. And there's the other company, not going to put the company name out there, but you know, we got our main advocate. And you're like, hey, hey, connect with somebody else before you need to build it, you know? So, yeah. Which they are about to do, so shout out now. They shout out to them. Shout out to them. That's literally a part of it. So, that's why you see some people move and shake so much in music though. Cause like, hey, bro, it's all a moving target. Let me just try to know everybody. Yeah, bro. You really never know, bro. Like it's nothing, you check in. Hey, bro, once again, congrats. Oh, I mean, I looked at that place like six months ago. What? What? But yeah, music jobs have a crazy turnover rate. That's a conversation about another day. But the turnover rate in any music position is wild. Or a lot of, it's like sales. That's the only one of the main places where I also see that type of like turnover. And it's not all looked at as negative. You can see people going from company to company, especially like within tech. And like, oh yeah, I was a SDR over here. I was a SDR over here. And just trying to find a way. But yeah, now music, look again, always remember is the people. So all the people can be bad. You just gotta find those people instead of just looking for, hey, I want to be on this label. Who are the people who are over there? Or I want to be on this management team or I want to be a part of this artist collective, whatever it is. You can't just look at how the situation is going good. Yeah, look at it. How can it go for you? Yeah. Yeah, fine. Period. And look, can't just be from your perspective because you know, you having them rosy eyes like, oh man, yeah, this just happened and that just happened and that and they got this so they can do that for me. But did they say they're going to do that for you? Do they see that happening in that way? Is that shit in your contract? Is that in your, oh, yes, I'm glad you said that because I thought about this when you talked about negotiating the person in the building being there or not. Yeah. Every single thing is negotiable in these contracts. Like it gets very, very specific and what you negotiate just becomes better based on what you know, right? Because that might not matter for some artist for whatever reason, but people who get it and have been through that they're going to like, oh, I'm going to negotiate that next time, but there's some artists who never end up hitting that particular issue in their career, right? But so it's not always about trying to get over on somebody or not is literally just having the experience and being able to play chess to know that certain possibilities might happen and how do you guard yourself contractually if this thing happens? Because they might not know they're going through the real or the people you talking to might not know like, oh, shoot, bro, we, you know, we are damn near just in the imprint. We don't really have control control and now they said they don't like the way we perform it. So, and it's not necessarily on this department. It's the other side. So they just said they going to put a new CEO in place and that dude's going to get rid of all the people he don't know and he going to, you know, bring over all his homies. All the buyouts, the buyouts. The buyouts, there's so many factors where it's not straightforward and it's just on you to observe, talk to people who know to then begin to think about some of these things that will protect you even when you aren't necessarily being done wrong. You just find yourself in a constantly changing environment. That's the best way to say it. A revolving door. A revolving door for sure. For sure. Now, with that being said.