 There's this announcement that Meek Mill wants to drop his album on Cash App. You want to drop a Cash App album? Cash App album? That would actually be fine. Because he don't want to get paid a dollar every 1,000 streams. Now, the math might not be exact a dollar every 1,000 streams. However, the sentiment is very clear. He wants to get paid where he feels like he's worse than he feels like it's not worth the money if I'm getting paid very little for streams. And we're going to see this continue, right? There's too many artists that I'll say this. There's a lot of artists that existed before streaming popped, right? So they saw those numbers, right? Even Meek is like right before streaming went home. Yeah, he remembers. He remembers, right? He's old enough to remember. That's that gap, right? So when you have that memory, you're like, nah, I shouldn't look like this. Granted, streaming has saved a lot in terms of a macro for music in some ways. And it's a lot helped. It's been a part of the revenue growth in the music industry. However, if I'm a established artist already, I'd be offended, right? If I saw those numbers, which is why all of them are acting like they're offended. Like all of them, like I ain't mess with that. Taylor Swift was like, nah, I don't want my stuff to be on here. Well, Jay-Z was like, OK, I'm going to create my own platforms. I can get more money from my and some of these from the from these other artists. Like no one who existed before is happy. Like our clients who were existing before nobody. I've never known any artist who existed before streaming that was happy with the numbers and don't still talk about it to this day. Everybody who's just trying to get in the game or this is just what they used to. You're either not worried about it because I'm not there enough to worry about it. You know, this is like your parents complain about stuff and it just is what it is. And then all of a sudden you got your own rent to pay. And you're like, dang, you got your own house and like, dang, that light bill did change relative to how much I had the lights on. Well, maybe I should turn the lights off. That's that's what I be thinking about now. I'm like, damn, I never said I want to turn the lights off. But now I got to my girl and I turned that shit off. So you got that. And then you got the people who this is all they know. And Spotify has been God's sin for them. Because all I know is I wasn't making no money from this music. Now I'm making five K a month from this music. Three K. I'm making something. I'm making something. So it's hard for the newer artists to truly see it that way or be as aggressive about changing the game and some of these other routes. But, you know, you've got the little rustles out there that are playing that game. But but I don't even think he's doing it just from what I see from a distance. To be like anti Spotify is just like, hey, I got to get my money in other ways. And how can I make this a part of my community and do it better? That's what it seems like from him. But like the newer artists don't really seem to have that same revenge approach to to what Spotify and DSPs are doing. Because I think I think the smart artist is thinking about DSPs differently because you brought up a great point, right? Like Taylor Swift left Spotify at one point, Jay-Z left. A lot of major artists have left, but they all came back. They all came back. And I think that's because it it can be argued that DSPs are probably the greatest music discovery tools to ever hit music. Consumership, right? Yeah. Because it truly has democratized the playing field. Like you could literally shoot up into a whole field of music that no one is necessary, like pushing you to to like. I guess you can argue the algorithm, I guess. But there's no there's no entity that's like pushing you to like like something, right? You can there is a degree where it's dictated by consumer tastes, what they like, what their friends are recommending and things like that. So like, I don't I've started to train myself to not even look at Spotify, as I said, like a viable monetization tools. I know this is just a marketing tool. This is the way that that's what they want you to do. You're right. You're right. It's working and they're winning. You know what I'm saying? But it's not the worst thing. Because it's like it kind of makes me think of the TikTok model, right? Like, we talked a lot about how their TikTok creators who feel a type of way about the money they're being paid from TikTok. And I'm like, I can understand why TikTok is like, now, we're literally bringing you to audience and mass numbers with relatively little to no work on your end compared to other social platforms. But like, yeah, there's work. But like, compared to YouTube, you know what I'm saying? Getting 100,000 followers on TikTok, compared to getting 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, nothing. You know what I'm saying? It's not the same amount of work. So I can see TikTok going like, hey, man, like we're bringing you all this attention that's giving you the ability to monetize. Yeah, we're going to give you 50%. You know what I'm saying? Like, so I kind of look at Spotify the same way with Spotify. Like, hey, we're probably like, hey, we're the ones building the algorithm that's introducing you to these new people. Like right, like these new people will have never known you existed without our platform and our setup. So yeah, we're going to not give you certain opportunities to not give you certain money. Because yeah, you could argue that this is your IP that drives the platform. But for you guys who is much harder to monetize for the discovery could literally be life or death for you. So that's why you're not going anywhere else, because as much as you hate this shit, there isn't really too many platforms or tools that compete with us in terms of discovery. TikTok has gotten, TikTok is probably the closest. None DSP app, you know what I'm saying? To being something heavy like that. But I just think like ours just need to kind of fold and look at it that way, bro. I was like, yeah, like it should almost be like your streaming money is just a part of like your breakeven, your breakeven phone, right? Whatever your growth phone looks like for yourself, this ad setup, this influencer setup, your DSP money should be like, hey, I spent $5,000 I made back, you know, $4,000 in streaming revenue. You know what I'm saying? To help me get enough people that I now go to try to sell a 30 KM merch, you know what I'm saying, too. And that's where my real money is going to come from. See, I think the thing about that is. It's not just a discoverability, because. That's the new age tech version of, hey, bro, it's going to be a good look. You know what I'm saying? That's all they're saying. And you know how people feel about that. After a while, I was like, bro, come on now, I need some substance. So you're giving me good looks to avoid really giving me what I'm worth. Now, the new artists, again, you're looking for some kind of look. The older artists, I think the leverage that the platform has for them. Isn't necessarily a good look because they already have those good looks. They already have that leverage. It's about survival, right? At some point, you're losing your audience's attention and you have to be where they are. That's where they are listening to music. And as much as you would like to say, hey, I could just bring all these folks over here and now they can blast my Taylor Swift and my Beyoncé on this separate in this separate space. We know that many people aren't going to do that. They already got your behavior. That's how they win. That's why these tech platforms scale so quickly. It's like, we want to get big enough where there's the network effect and we have such a large audience that they aren't going to want to go anywhere else, right? Because I can listen to X, Y, Z here and if they go to Beyoncé app, all they can listen to is Beyoncé. As much as they love Beyoncé, everybody also want to listen to somebody else too. Nobody is a fan of one person. Yeah. So you start losing that advantage of what's one of the marketing elements, placement, right, being placed in the right position. So that's why the tech platforms have been so good. And not only doing it to individual artists, but doing it to the labels. The labels will be like, ah, dang, man, all right, we got the IP, fortunately, so we can prevent you from doing it to a certain extent and figure out how we participate. Right. That's their leverage. Like they're like, we got the IP. If anything, if all else fails, we got IP. The tech platforms, though, they because they can't like the labels can't compete in terms of attention. And understanding that tech platforms, like as long as we get the people, we get the eyes, they're going to have to negotiate with us for the IP because you can't just build another one of these. Like how many of these social media platforms have not hit the threshold where there's enough people on there and people care for long enough? It's hard to do that. Yeah. All right. So they know, you can't just do me overnight, man. Like, so go ahead and figure out what that deal is going to be. That's why they violate so much too. How many times he is, oh, man, TikTok owes this amount of money to the record labels and TikToks like, nah, we don't want anything yet. But we'll make a deal at some point. It'll be like a year later. Still haven't made a deal because they know and all the time they're just growing and growing and growing, growing, knowing that they're getting more and more leverage throughout the way. That's why I've been saying for years, it's just like. Tech is in a space where they're finally going to be the ones who take the labels down. It's not going to be, you know, artists. It's just going to be a tech platform. And this is before TikTok. It seems like it's going to be TikTok outside of, like, you know, America kicking it out because they, I don't know if you're familiar. They're bringing those, those conversations back, by the way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, especially if a Republican gets an office, yeah, a lot of them are pretty big on that as far as the politician side. But, but yeah, like TikTok is seeming to be that one. If it's not them, it's going to come. They're just showing you what's possible through a tech platform. We control the awareness. We control the artists from ground zero, pretty much have all their content on our platform, blow them up, have a distribution platform that they can now get on. We participated in that. We know, you know, we got our puppet stuff going in the background where we can boost the followers. Yes, that's the thing on TikTok, right? And get them more views, but legitimately advertising data. We got all of it here, bro. Like we got it here. So 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. Now, you just said something I didn't think about. The same way the label is how the music catalog, the stream, the well, the social platforms have that content catalog. I never thought about it that way before. Damn, that's crazy. Yeah, which I actually think about the content catalog, something that we didn't weren't aware of. Y'all should be aware of shout out to Damien. Ritter almost said Lillard. But, you know, we were in LA and we had that conversation with him. And he was telling us how people are buying YouTube content catalogs. The same way people can buy your catalog on, you know, for Spotify music, well, not Spotify music, for your music catalog. Same way people can buy that because there's a value to it. There's people who are out here buying your YouTube catalog because it's content, it can be monetized. We know that your YouTube content continues to be monetized. You have old content is getting advertising, but also YouTube videos, the length, there's all these platforms that are popping up that are actually looking for content on their platforms. I don't know if you've seen like there's something on my TV called Free V. There's like to be they're all looking for some type of content. Yeah, it's always be it's always, bro, always. As a matter of fact, over Thanksgiving with my family, all the kids were around. There was one through one of those channels. It was basically a YouTube channel, but it wasn't YouTube. I don't want to say YouTube channel, but it wasn't YouTube. It wasn't YouTube, but they were showing a show that pretty much was a YouTube show. It was these kids running around the house and they had all these skits going on. It was some brother and sister and maybe like two of their friends or something. And it was just showing on regular TV through one of those channels. And I can imagine, because I can tell I know a YouTube video and I see it. It's like it probably got licensed, right? So that whole catalog situation makes sense that they're purchasing that. But it goes back to the idea that everything you're creating now can be monetized as different ways, right? But it's beyond just how much do I make from the advertising on my video? And I think artists start to start realizing that, like get creative with what you what you actually build because it is desirable. Even if even if it's not getting a lot of views on YouTube or something or TikTok or whatever, there is the opportunity to license to these other spaces and places. Yeah. Or figure out your own monetization off around it. Like what? Like an in-house set up. Like we're talking about doing, right? Like, I mean, he's he's essentially asking for, like, Patreon and Bandcamp models without the Patreon, you know what I'm saying? Bandcamp platform. Yeah. So it's like, you know, there's always an option. So I think take the risk and just see what I do think is something that every artist said, especially at his level, should do at least once in their careers, like just do a temperature check, brother. Like, see where your audience is at without all of the label set up, right? Like, see what you can get away with. I'm going to put together this unique merchant experience or this unique product experience or show experience, whatever, just to just to have an understanding of where you are in the marketplace. Because if you go like, man, I got 20,000 active motherfuckers ready to buy some stuff, you know what I'm saying? That changes the game versus, like, you know, you learn, like, hey, I only got a thousand, like, man, I got to, you know, maybe I do need to get into fan building mode, right? Or like I said, you say, hey, I got 50,000. Shit, fuck all that dropping new music. I might just need to take the next year to figure out how to get these 50,000 people to spend some money on me, you know what I'm saying? Like, and put something together that gets me excited about that. So I do think every artist, especially his caliber, who is recently going indie or like attempting to tackle the indie model needs to do like a temperature check. See, let's talk about that, the different ways to monetize and just some of the history of, like, demonization fan base capturing because you talk about Meek Mill doing a cash app thing 10 years before, roughly speaking, that's kind of similar to the Jay-Z Samsung deal. Remember that? Magna Carta Hurley Grill and it was launched on there exclusively for a period of time, something like that. Yeah. All right. All of these platforms are always looking for some type of marketing advantage or promotion to do. So, like you said, it doesn't have to be through the traditional content on social media. If I could just figure out who do I need to partner with? If I'm a big artist, you should take that risk because there's going to be somebody who says, hey, we're trying to bring attention to our tech platform. You do the deal, especially, you know, if it's a super risk and it's new, you're not trying to make it exclusive in perpetuity or anything like that. But hey, you might get you a half a meal, a whole meal. Two eggs, whatever that is for the first month. And then it goes on the Spotify and all these other things. All right. And that would be interesting because then you'll probably see people develop like these two tiered rollouts. Right. It's like to make that initial launch. And then what is the available everywhere launch look like? Right. Yeah. So almost like the release. I'm trying to release strategy. What was it like last year when everyone was doing like the regular albums and the Lux albums? Yes, it was basically exactly that type of thing. Because this reminds me of, too, you know, how people have been doing this stuff for a while. I was listening to Will Smith's audiobook, which was good as hell. I didn't think it was that good. I was bored at first and I stopped listening to it for a minute. He did a little slap moment with Chris Rock in about three moments later. I said, did it with Chris Rock? Like they like, hey, like they did it together, right? Here's my hand. Here's my face. Three minutes, like three months later. So probably like August, I started listening to it again. And then once I got into a certain period, she got really good because it started getting around his actual music career and stuff. Yeah. And one thing he mentioned was. They had this phone line where people would call in and he was getting, I forgot how much it cost for the phone line. But when you did the math, I think it was like five or $10,000 a day that he was making, maybe it got up to 20,000, but it was some ridiculous math of people just calling in, calling in, calling in to talk to him. All right. And, you know, you bring that into the future. Oh, that's that same type of personal experience. Oh, and by the way, when they were calling in, they were called in just to hear a voicemail, a special voicemail from him. So it's not like he was there talking to everybody because it was like a minute long and some people want to play it back again and they had longer messages and all that type of stuff. So people are literally calling in just to hear this special voicemail. So you can give them an update. It was like social media. They'll be on tour. Hey, yo, I'm out on tour. It's the Fresh Prince. We're about to go to this city and the show is live and da, da, da, da. Hey, yo, we're in Miami now. Jazzy Jeff just heard his head on the on the on the floor or something. Last show because it was so crazy and giving those updates and they're tuning in just for that, which is like social media almost. It's like a tweet, an audio tweet that they're calling in for. So I was like, that's crazy. And they were paying for it. And now we hear like, oh, well, now we hear about text message marketing. Right. And now we got social media and stand update up to date. It's like, so all these elements and when you study far back enough and look at more and more things, it's like they always existed. Yeah. And the value was always there. So sometimes we like to just talk about the game now. This is messed up and da, da, da, da, or this is far more accessible. Overall, things have gotten better, I would say. Like it's hard to argue that things haven't gotten better overall in terms of like opportunity, quality, but the tech stuff is like, yeah, the the the opportunities to do it might have been harder back then. And the game might have flipped where you're focused on one thing or another, but every single error is an artist who thrives on one and they struggle with the other. So I was like, you might have been a good recording studio artist. Right. There's some artists these days who suck at shows and performing. Back then you could build an audience off of just putting on like great shows. And that was the thing. And the next thing you know, you level up and get more attention from that or you get opportunities from that just from killing the show. Today, artists still the impact is still there. But artists don't get enough credit for their show game. Right. Or no, they don't get enough. What's the word I'm looking for? Punishment for a bad show game. That's what's not happening. She's going way under the radar, way under the radar. They just let it be. It's kind of one of it's tolerated. But back then that shit was not tolerated. Right. So, you know, there's the ebbs and flow today. Looks are I don't want to say they matter more like they never they never matter. But looks can get you further or like personality can get you further without the music than before, before you had to leave with music. Right. And of course, looks can always elevate you or be a part of the image. But you also had some of those periods, especially especially like Jim Crow or like, you know, in the more racist times where you go far back enough where they'll have black artists writing and singing. And then they'll have like white artists lip syncing for the white audiences. So they don't even represent their own music. It was also Millie Vanillie type of shit. All right. So you literally didn't have to look the part, be the part. Now, obviously that was a bad situation. That wasn't like, hey, I don't want to be seen. That was like my image or my music is taken from me. But the point is there's all the the game has different ways to tweak it in every era that benefits or hurts somebody. Now, if you don't like the game or you can play about it now, either you're not seeing it correctly and taking advantage of the things that are there or you just chalking it up to the the lottery game and said I was born in the wrong place in the wrong time and, you know, find another career. I guess it was one of artists from other areas ever said that. Like it was an artist in the 70s. Like, man, I should have been an artist in like the 50s. You know what I'm saying? Like back when they was, bruh, you know, I bet I 100% because that's like a thing that everybody does, right? I wish I was born 10 years prior or whatever. But you know, who would have been lit as fuck today, bruh? James Brown. Yes. But that's not who the hell that was a great statement. You're throwing me off with the accuracy. I wanted to say no, but I couldn't. I was thinking similar enough, though. I was thinking a little richer. Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. Bruh. 100%. This dude was a star dog. I saw this interview of him. I'm going to see if I can find it, actually, of him just talking. And I'm like, oh, this dude was a startup, bruh. Like it was just a quick interview in the way he talked. That shit was like, OK, if he was in this era, bruh, he just he'd have social media followers. He was a legit musician and all that great stuff. But I'm like, oh, he would have a following just off of his talk. Let me see if I can find that joke real quick. Absolutely. To somebody I know. But that that'd be the the the cool show. And it goes back to the wild. I think ours have to pay attention to all the artists of some degree, because you see exactly what you just said, man. How much of this shit that I think was new today that really is just a variation of some shit that we're doing back then. Exactly. And it's just like we talked about in that clip. About the Travis Scott box. Most of music, a lot of the times if somebody finds an opportunity and takes advantage of it before somebody else does, right? It's like you learn about this opportunity day one and it takes the rest of the industry 90 days to catch on to it. And by the time they catch on to it, you've already capped on it to a massive degree and it's becoming normalizing. That doesn't work the same, right? That doesn't work like there's a batch of artists that always come along and that happens for. And I even think about times where it probably happened on accident. You know, like we talked about artists like J Cole and Kendrick coming up during the early YouTube era. I think about them thinking about what I know about YouTube back then and about how a lot of those YouTubers talked about how much the algorithm would just like flood you with attention back then, right? It's like, damn, they just were like right place, right time. You know what I'm saying? We're good music and it kicked off in this thing. Or even like Russ with the SoundCloud stuff. Like the first time I ever heard about the song a week strategy, I was always like dropping a piece of content consistently that just keeps triggering the algorithm of a platform. So he just kept hitting the SoundCloud algorithm so much that eventually it took off. He probably wasn't thinking of it that way. But that's how that shit hit, right? Like there's this technology or this space that hasn't been taken advantage of yet. And then everybody does that shit and it doesn't work. It doesn't work the same, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, I feel like that is one of the hardest parts of staying in music is that you are 80% trying to figure out how to build a system within a framework that is already put together while spending 20% of your attention and trying to like look out to what's going to be next. So you can try to cap on it as soon as it hits. And it's like that, like your eyes really cross trying to like look at both sides of it at the same time and keep up with it. That's perfectly fair. That is the nature of fast moving culture that music has to present itself within. It's cultural based and culture moves so fast within those trends. And then you got the tech that culture moves on moving as fast as well. So then you triple that, it only increases.