 Artists, the fact that you have to be so involved in the marketing and business side of your career is frustrating. We get it. But hopefully we can reframe how you think about this and bring you a little inspiration. And today, all right, we're going to give you some points that you might not have thought of, starting with a clip from none other than Corey the Savior. He was on a podcast called One More Time Cast. Shout out to them. Check out this clip. And then hopefully, again, we can inspire you to see it differently and build for yourself. Marketing is a marathon. The things that you do today, you're not going to realistically see the results of until like seven months or a year. You've seen clients take like two years of like doing the same thing. You start to run into issues of patience, budget. It's understandable. You spend the money and you want to see the results. So it's frustrating. You decide I want to play the guitar. You don't think that after three hours of YouTube videos and three hours of practicing the guitar, you're going to be amazing. You understand that, hey, this is going to take me two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight months, maybe a couple years before I get good at this thing to start producing the sound that I want to produce. Artists give themselves the benefit of the doubt in creative aspects. They don't give themselves that same benefit of the doubt or the process, the same benefit of the doubt when it comes to the business side of things. Shout out to them. Brother got game. Look, the whole point that I got out of what you said was have patience. Marketing is a skill set to build out and you shouldn't expect to get this quick return just because you decided to partake in a marketing activity no different than you shouldn't expect to be Jimi Hendrix just because you decided to pick up a guitar and strum a few strings today. Yeah. I've always told clients this where the things that you are doing today really benefits future you more than it's going to benefit current you. So you decided to run those Instagram ads, that's going to be great for you six months from now. You're now going to be hurt by it. You spend the money, you know what I'm saying? You're learning something. Sam will learn the skill. You decide to pick up the guitar today. You six months from now, I'm going to be the one that's good at the guitar. I'm not you today. So yeah, it's having the patience to actually stick something out and see yourself get good enough at something to actually start getting a result from it, which is something that I do think a lot of artists lacking, especially with marketing, because marketing has been pushed as like this magic push button thing. And I always argue the playlist and game fucked it up for marketers everywhere. Once I already saw I could spend $100 and get 20,000 streams in an hour and a half. It was over with the game had been the same since they stopped marketing, stopped thinking and they invested in junk food basically. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that's that's that's the point I was trying to make. So this is what we got to talk about. Because we know again, this is the artist's perspective. So it's time to debate an artist by the name of 301 young, at least that's his IG name. He responded in the comments saying any artists find themselves marketing on the same level as an artist who have capital backing them. These videos, Chikori, you are gaslighting, sir. Sir, sir, you gaslighting, the therapist would not approve the wrong use of that word, but it's not, you know, trendy terms. Everybody like to just throw them out there, no matter the proper usage or not. She ain't about patience. When the goalpost keeps moving every year, the promo model will likely be outdated by the time you should see results. Also, regular people making music, indie artists, quote unquote, can afford to live, create high quality music and market. That's his point. Number one, brother, man, brother, man. When you partake in marketing, this is what a marketer does. And this is actually a part of the game. When you are learning these different models, you're learning these models to be better and move faster when future models come up. Yes. That's what's happening. So just because you were late behind one curve doesn't mean that it was wasn't valuable for you to at least learn and be a part of that wave. So now you know what a wave looks like in the future. I think somebody that many people know these days is Gary V because he marketed his butt off the social media and really put content creation on the map. And if you listen to him enough, one thing he will say oftentimes is he took, he was early to email marketing back in the day and help grow his dad's wine shop. And he was early to marketing on Google ads when it was super cheap, early internet before people even really understood internet marketing like that. And he said that he took his dad's wine shop from like $4 million a year to $60 million a year. But you know what he said later? He said, if he really understood what was up back then, he could have made so much more money because he started to see some growth. But he thought he was winning. He didn't realize now this opportunity, this isn't the norm. You're coming in at this time. So now you know what happened? And this is why he hit social media so hard. Early social media, he realized this is the opportunity. This is like back then. And I know these pockets come and they go. So when TikTok is going crazy, I got to hit now. When social media advertising is cheap on Facebook and nobody really understands it like that, I got to hit hard now. But he only understood that from past experiences, past wins and past losses. He talked about hopping off of YouTube, even though he was winning to get in a different company called like Vittler or something, just so he could try to build a presence on there because he was invested in making money. And then he realized, well, you know, Vittler didn't work out and he should have just stayed on YouTube. He now understands what these opportunities look like and you will build that muscle, right? Being a part of these waves, even if you aren't the top level of capitalization, you're so worried about this short form, short term result and only winning in this binary way in the short term that you're not, that you're forgetting about the investment in yourself and how you think and see the world. Stop what you're doing. We've got to interrupt you to let you know you can win $20,000 by submitting your music to toolost.com slash collab for the crown. We're looking for the best songs and we're partnering with toolost. So if you think you got some great music, if you think you got the goods, go to that site toolost.com slash collab for the crown, check out the instructions for the contest, win up to $20,000 and make sure you put in no label when you create your profile on toolost so you can make sure you get three months completely free. That's toolost.com slash collab for the crown and again, when you sign up, put in the code, no label, all one word and you will get three months completely free. Go in that $20,000 because you know you got the goods, you got the talent, you just got to make sure you submit. Peace. He said it right. You're competing against artists who have a capital backing. So there's already this thought process that you aren't going to necessarily be able to win to the same degree as they will, which is wrong. I do want people to understand that that is wrong. Plenty of artists without capital backing to that level, killing it, killing it, killing it. I'll just say kind of price is going stupid crazy. I'll be, that's a specific situation. Every artist is in a situation the same, but he is killing it, just content damn near and he's not signed to a label and he's doing way better than most capital backing label. Even on the label artists, most label artists, I know the capital backing is not being put into that content. It's usually maybe put into song creation, maybe tour support, maybe marketing campaigns, getting the content seen, but most artists that I know, even the ones that are signed to labels, they still are the ones that have to go figure out how to get the vision executed. Now, some of them can convince the label to come out of pocket for it. Some of their stuff, a little bit, but you might get, let's say, if you need to shoot content 12 times a year and you're the average budding artist on the label, you might convince them like three times out of the year to actually pay for it. Other than that, you got to figure out. That's point number one. Point number two is we have to stop interchanging indie artists and broke artists. I've had this gripe for a long time because I've been in music for 10 years. I will argue successful for five. And in the five years that I've been doing it well, I've met a lot of independent artists who are far, far, far away from the trope of the broke artist. So we got to stop doing that, guys and gals. Can't keep interchanging the two because they are two completely different things. Problem. Problem is the artists that have money, especially to any ones, it goes against their brand or they don't want to be looked at as a certain way. They feel like they lose credibility. So they're letting these other artists think that they're operating under the same duress that they are or that they didn't go get the bag somewhere else and spend that time to then be able to fund their own career. Yeah, bro. Artists, y'all are elitists. Yes. Y'all financially shame of the artist's good and bad. You broke bad boo boo boo. You got too much money, bad boo boo. It's like, damn bro, I can't win either way here. Now, the one thing I will say that 301 Young is right about is the promo model will likely be outdated by the time you say I should see results. He's right and he's wrong. There are certain elements of music marketing that are foundational and are not going anywhere. Advertising, influencer marketing, and I will argue now content marketing. Those are three things. Advertising was here long before you and I decided we wanted to be marketers. Influencer marketing has been here long before you and I decided we wanted to be marketers. Content marketing and its current iteration is new, but I will argue even that has been here long before you and I decided we wanted to be marketers. So the core foundations of marketing will always stay the same. That's why to your point, Gary V could learn how to run Google ads in 2015 and in 2023 still do great at Google ads because he's had eight years to start sharpening the skill set around the core marketing foundation that isn't going anywhere and hasn't went anywhere since he's been. Or we could quickly translate TikTok ads because we understood Facebook ads. The tactics change, but the strategies don't. The strategies always have specific things that matter and don't matter and once you know those things, then you just figure out, oh, what's this version of that? How do you say chips in French? How do you say chips in, you know what I mean, like Patois or whatever? I don't know. I'm just making some bullshit. The point is I'm trying to get, I know I want to get chips here. I just have to figure out how to say it here, right? So there are certain elements of marketing where they may not hit as hard. So to your point, right, if we could go back in time and run Facebook ads in 2016, we'd probably be millionaires. You know what I'm saying? Because the fact of the matter is I didn't know Facebook ads existed in 2016. You know what I'm saying? So that's dead. That's not happening. But I can use that skill set to continue building a solid foundation for myself today and probably in the future. Facebook probably isn't going anywhere. I'm waiting for that next moment. Exactly. If it does, something new is going to come along that will model it because like I said, a lot of these core marketing concepts don't really go away. They get modified. Now there are quick licks and music that 100% come and go, right? Every year there's a new thing that's hot that the people that are first to it and take advantage of it do get an unfair advantage over the rest of the marketplace that get first moves advantage. Sometimes they get over amplified results for the work that was put into it just because they were there first. And a lot of times when you see these things, and to his point when you start learning about it, most new strategies that pop up in music that are like that, you probably have somewhere between six months to a year and a half before that thing becomes ineffective. And so you can assume that by the time you learn it, you might be on month two of 16 months of this thing being effective. You might have just learned about it on month 12 of the 16 months of this thing is going to be effective. You never really know where you fall into it until it just dies the fuck out. Until you get good enough that you know how early you're identifying things. That's right. You can pick up the signs like damn, I didn't believe into this platform until I seen 20 motherfuckers go viral from it. Now I want to use it. You're probably too late because you and everybody else is seeing the exact same thing and thinking that. So you're wrong and you're right. You know what I'm saying? Three out one young, you know, good point. The goalpost does get moved, but that goes back to our point of if you learn the foundational stuff, like the boring aspects of marketing that probably aren't going away. If you get good at those things, you will always be okay. If you dedicate yourself to learning like the quick hacks and the little small windows of opportunity that open up, then yeah, you're going to always be on the time clock. Bro, I remember August, September of 2019, I was going crazy starting these TikTok campaigns, testing them for our clients. It's like, yo, this junk is crazy. Cory, we got to go hard on this thing because I see enough of the result. Like I ain't seen no mess like this. Like, you know, let's run it. Right? We start running it up after two months. All right. So this is like December. We started to have some conversations. You know what conversation I'm thinking about? We said something's going to come. The ads? No, but we did know ads were going to come and all these other things were going to come because we know what the trends look like and the waves look like and how to identify the different periods of the system because we've just been so ingrained in it, right? Which that came from the past. That's why we were able to take advantage of the TikTok wave the way we did because of past waves. But what I'm saying, we took, we talked about only a couple of months in of being on TikTok, understanding how it works and knowing what's going to come. If this continues the way it does, we're like, by next summer, the labels are going to start going crazy. Because we're always ahead of the labels because we're smaller than nimble and like, we're really, really ingrained into this stuff. Like our fingers are entrenched into the ground, not just the boots. Like our fingers are entrenched into soil. You know what I mean? Dirty fingernails. And we knew like, all right, yeah, we only got about six months to get the lead that we're going to get because labels are going to come and mess this thing up. So you also begin to build that skill set as well when you not only can understand a trend or identify something and take advantage of it, you take better advantage of it because you know what your window looks like realistically, which takes away the complacency. That's a great point that you would have otherwise. That's a great point. Like, we're talking about doing a new thing, you know, that we feel like we're ahead of the curve on. You got something coming. Yeah. You know, and our little conversation was like, no, we got to have this shit going by like January because if not, we might fucking miss the window and it'll be too late. So are you writing that fear that we have is because we've seen it happen with other things before. There have been good things that we were early to and took advantage of. There were things that we were early to that we didn't take advantage of that we looked back on was like, damn, we should, we should have ran that shit up. You know, so yeah, like the experience stacks, it's like, it's like a game, bro. Like it's literally like a video game, like the experience stacks. And if you stay in it long enough, you stay looking at the right things, there will always an opportunity will always come where you get the chance to reuse that skillset. That is a fact. Now, let's read something else. He said, oh, yeah. Also, most, I got to rewind remind y'all, this is the comment from 301 young speaking from the artist perspective and artist perspective. I don't want to put all y'all in one bucket. He says also most music submissions don't want songs that aren't new, quote unquote, that means if they're not dropped within the last six months. So your seven month to one year model invalidates its own self with the market we're advertising to with growing requirements. These videos are just to gaslight you into invest more money into them because when it comes to the marketing, you guys are the only ones to essentially stay rich, whether it goes up or down. Now, I do want to say he is not wrong. The marketer in my opinion is the most consistent and stable person one of across the music industry. And a large part of it is because of the things that we had just talked about marketers are usually the ones that understand trends and waves and they have all these seemingly ancient skillsets that fit right into today. How many fucking email marketers have you met that are killing it? Still doing email marketing. But you hear all these reports about email marketing being dead and damn being nonexistent in the age of social media and text messages, right? But there are some 60 plus marketing out of this that still kill it with direct mail marketing and all this stuff, right? So marketers. I want to say though, but rich is an overstatement. Yeah, rich is overstatement. Yeah. Okay. It's a good rich overstatement. Yes. The average marketer in the music industry may not experience the load that you have for as long as you have because they receive money to do their service and it takes longer for an artist to eventually begin to make some money from their music. However, the average marketer in the music industry doesn't make anywhere near as much of an artist at the peak. Facts. Yeah. That's the same way I was telling you. It's like I will be stable a lot longer than you. If you hit you, you are going to exponentially do better than not us because we're in a unique position as marketers, but we also double is like social media personality. But for like just the average guy or girl with an agency doing good work. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of things going on, but the average for sure. And you know how the average successful music marketer is getting along in the music industry. They got a job, something that you don't want artists. So that's a whole different scenario. They're not like dealing with indie artists like y'all might think out here praying on like most marketers in the music industry are up there at insert label name. So we'll leave it at that foot. Yeah. No, no, no. The invest more money into them also offends me because I feel like I do a really good job of trying to convince artists not to spend that money with me. Like I literally sometimes would just be like, no, keep it. Go learn it. Go learn it yourself and you do it. Like leave me out of this equation. Yeah. That's a whole other thing. I'm not going to get into that because you know, like people only are going to hear from us what they want to hear from us. But I think time will continue to tell how we move versus other people or whatever their personal skepticism is. However, most this seven to one year model, basically he's saying that music submissions like playlisters and things like that editorials, they don't want music that hasn't been dropped within the last six months. So if it's taking you seven months to one year to get good, then that invalidates the model you're talking about, jacquory. That doesn't make any sense. But I think what he's missing is one, again, we're talking about the overall strategy. All right, so you learn one specific trend and you're taking advantage of it. Yes, it might change, but you've been, but in terms, so you seven to one month in as a marketer, you're stronger. That trend might be dead, but you are stronger. All right, because of it. And when you apply the next trend, you're going to be able to wield that one a lot, a lot harder. Like you can have the same axe and you have a little kid wield that axe and you have a big slow dude wield that axe. All right, the axe ain't changed, but boy, you got somebody who knows how to apply it differently and has able to apply it differently. Now, the other thing that I want to say to this is you're talking about music submissions. And a very specific type of music submission. That, like who cares? Like you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be worried about people who only want to market your music if it's new, especially when most of the value of your music comes after the first six months, comes after the first year. If your music is something that's going to find like legitimate success, you, most artists, right over the lifespan of your catalog, you're going to continue to see jumps, continue to see jumps. You're going to have so many more moments if there's somebody there to take care of it and make sure it gets the full value that can be extracted from it. Yeah. And that's what kind of kills me about that point is it's speaking to an old model, right? There was a time where if you submit to IG pages, playlists, yeah, they would turn it down if the music wasn't super new. But that was at a time when new music was enough of a pool, right? The fact that this thing was smoking hot off the griddle was enough to be enticing to a majority of people. Now what is enticing to a majority of people is not if the song is new, but if the song is new to them and they like it, right? Those two things that play together. And so with that change in the marketplace coming, you know, being ushered in, I've seen a lot of platforms. A lot of platforms make changes to their process, right? So that's why I said it's an outdated model, because the only types of platforms that really still kind of hold that are like playlist pitching, like you want to pitch the Spotify editorials. Yeah, that should got to be brand spanking new. However, if you pushed a song long enough and it gets enough momentum, you can go back and repitch old songs, maybe not necessarily through the Spotify portal, but this magical thing called a connection opens up as you start to grow. And there will be people who will be like, damn, bro, you put the song out last year and this shit going crazy. Yeah, we will put it on most necessary. We will put it on whatever. There's an artist that I'm working with now. Pretty big artist. I remember he dropped the project like, I don't know, maybe six, seven months or so at this point. And we pitched a song to TikTok. They turned it down and we came back five months later once the song was moving well and repitched it again. They took it. It was like, okay, whatever they didn't see in it five months ago, they see now and they take it. And, you know, so like I said, even on the editorial side is changing, but then once you leave outside of the editorial world, you talk about influencers or Instagram platforms or YouTube platforms or TikTok platforms, they damn sure don't care if the song is super new or not. Unless that is like their thing, which like I said, there are a lot of platforms who have moved away from that because they've seen that it's more about is this new to the audience and is it actually new? You know what I'm saying? So yeah, bro. And that also makes me think about how artists will fight for things that have, that fight for a part of the game that they really have no business playing. It's like the game of this music is new. You should listen to it. It's not a game for rising indie artists. That is a game for established acts that already have built a solid dedicated massive fan base and acts that have a lot of either influence over mainstream culture or have the capital to put themselves on top of mainstream culture. Those are the people that can play, hey, this is new, go check it out games. Everybody else can play those games. So if you're trying to play that game, you already put yourself behind. Quick getting caught up playing somebody else's game. I learned that early in life, man, you can get caught up playing somebody else's game and lose when you should have just been playing your own the whole time. Exactly, bro. You're out here getting dunked on, you know what I'm saying? Meantime, you four six, what you doing playing basketball, bro? Go play soccer or something, man. You're the best jockey in the world. And that's another episode of No Labels Necessary podcast. Hopefully you guys enjoy. Make sure you check out the next clip and leave any comments if you're watching on YouTube. Peace.