 And so the same thing with Spotify. I'm like, you don't even honor the people who are driving free attention to you. You know, so not that everything needs to be monetized. And I guess we could say the same thing for social media. But I think the difference is that I don't believe they have a discovery algorithm. So the difference is if you upload to YouTube, you could be discovered. If you upload to TikTok, you could be discovered. You know, where is the other platforms? I don't think they're designed like that. I think you brought up a really interesting point though, right? Like Spotify's biggest selling point right now was being a discovery engine. And to your point about them, I guess possibly not truly being that you look at something like Discovery ads, for example, which is a new main discovery method they're pushing, you have to earn access to that. Like every artist doesn't start with access to Discovery ads. Why either your distributor has to have the connection to it or you have to get like a certain amount of streams or listens before you get access to it. Release Radar, you know what I'm saying? Discover Weekly, the algorithmic playlist. A lot of times these things don't trigger unless you've pushed enough positive traffic over to it to finally get the algorithm to like pay attention to you and start to push you out. So that's actually a good point I never thought about. It's not it's not truly a discovery engine in the sense of like YouTube. You can upload a video and do nothing for it. And like at least a hundred people might see it right. Spotify, as we've seen with the however many songs with zero streams, it's proven that, hey, it's not really a discovery mechanism, unless you put a little bit of work in to move the needle. And then it's like, OK, we've seen you do work. We've seen you be willing to sacrifice some of your brand equity or your sweat equity or your capital. Now we'll help you out, you know what I'm saying? Which I so that even makes me feel like with the monetization model, like the the smoke has always been there. You know what I'm saying? If you look at it from that way, like it's always been signs that like, hey, Spotify is going to force you to work for some of these things that you assumed you were getting by putting your music on the platform. Yeah, they they've looked. They've definitely used that language discovery a lot, especially earlier on. But to me, that became apparent when TikTok came around. Like if they were a discovery engine, they were nowhere near the best. Yeah, at the very least, right? Because we saw what TikTok did and just being a marketer, like looking at the data, like we see what a discovery engine looks like. And there's a there's pros and cons, right? So just to kind of tell you what we see from our side, Corrie alluded to it. Like you do literally have to bring traffic from the outside to really become a success. Like there are artists that and this is older, right? You really don't see that much these days where you talk about getting on playlist and the editorials and the editorial triggering it on the platform. And then that goes up. But that's even depending on getting on these other you know, editorials and things like that. Pretty much everybody who gets going, it's because of traffic that came from ads on social media or organically somewhere on social media that then again triggered. So if you can say, incentive, you know, look at the incentives, I was like, all right, we give the best incentives to people who are bringing traffic from the outside. Whereas a tick tock is isolated. You just have to do work on tick tock and eventually it'll work, right? And you can get discovered. You don't bring traffic from anywhere else. And what that looks like on the data side is on tick tock. The large majority of your views will actually be from people who are not following you, right? So if you look at someone's data, they'll post and it'll be like like 85 percent non followers and 15 percent followers. And then the fact that they index so heavily in that direction also becomes part of why some people don't value the amount of followers on tick tock so much, because literally you are not getting seen by as many followers as you are on even an Instagram or a YouTube. There's a pros and cons to all of it, but discovery especially is Spotify is not built for that. Is literally just not built for that. So I love that you that you called that out to even remind people for who might for those who might not have keyed up on that already. So I think a good place to start is first, the fact is Spotify. All right, just did an update. It's so recent, I do want your opinion on it. Spotify just confirmed that it'll be 1000 streams per track per year before you're able to profit from that and get paid out for it. And let me say that a little bit differently for those of y'all who aren't aware of this news at all. For a single track, you need at least 1000 streams in a year before they pay you any money out on that. And the way it got presented, by the way, because we haven't talked about this on an official like episode because we literally just read the article. It seems like it doesn't roll over. So it's like per year, right? If so, you can get 1000 streams that first year. But in the second year, if you don't get 1000 streams, you're not going to get paid on it for that year. I'll leave it at that. What do you think about that model that they're shifting over to? Yeah, let's step in the mindset of a Spotify CEO. If I wasn't making money and I said, how do I make a quick lick? Quick. How does the music industry work? Sony, Warner and Universal are at the top of a pyramid. So when we think of it like a pyramid, it makes a lot more sense. And so I say, OK, I make Spotify the platform. I partner with these companies who own this platform truly, which means they will always keep their interest at the forefront. And so I go, how do I, you know, as a businessman, you have to be a killer. And I know on the street, it goes crazy where I just was talking about to my fiance about this is that in the streets, and I don't condone this at all. I'm just saying is that sometimes they believe that they have to kill or they'll be killed. So the things we call murder and criminal crime is really somebody trying to protect themselves. And so if I'm the Spotify CEO, the warlord, so to speak, I'm going to try to take out my competition. If I can't buy them because I can't control TikTok. I can't control YouTube. I can't control all the social media that we teach these folks. How do I take out my competition? I lure them in to the platform called Spotify, the distribution platform. I use my celebrity to make people want to come in because they're like, wow, celebrities are making money. This guy is, you know, financially free, passive income. All the keywords we heard in all those business conferences. And then once they get us with the celebrity and trying to be like the celebrity, they get us on the platform. They take our likeness. Did you see Curtis King couldn't even cancel his Spotify account? Did you see that? No, I didn't say that. So I don't I don't want to put this on Spotify. I might be incorrect. But according to what I heard from Curtis King, he couldn't take his likeness away from Spotify, which means Spotify owns his branding power. Curtis King was on the platform. That's what they could show all the time without his permission. Or, you know, I don't know the terms and conditions. But my point is their goal is use celebrity, pull people onto the platform, monetize the middle class and then how do we use all their likeness to get to the bottom rung of that pyramid? Because in order for a pyramid to keep growing, you have to create a lower and lower rung. And so they say, how do we bring the next wave? OK, we'll we'll make the monetization threshold a little bit higher so that they have to work harder. And now we bring in more people because more people feel like, you know, that they have a chance. So to speak, this is what happens with short form content. Everybody felt like they could be a creator. What did that do? It expanded the bottom rung of the pyramid. But I have a short that did two million views and it earned sixty five bucks. I have a YouTube video, a long form that did a couple thousand and it made a hundred and something bucks. You know, so it's like the the pay scale to attention is not paying is not making sense. And so long story short is that with the Spotify deal, in my opinion, I go, how do I grow this company? Oh, I up the threshold, so I don't have to pay out, which means we can have cash flow for the next couple of months. And then I'm going to track this next class who feels like they can compete. And then on top of that, I'm going to introduce AI, which is going to be another rung to the pyramid. And then after all that, I'm going to go to my what do you call them? Shareholders and say, look, the company is growing. It's growing, guys. We have ninety two million, you know, people on the platform. We have a hundred million people on the platform. It's growing. So they keep getting real money for this fake stuff, I'll say. And then they trade that fake stuff for the real money. And then that's how they cash out. And that's how Warner Universal and Sony stay at the top of the game. They kill their competition. It's just that, you know, there's a principle by somebody. I forget, but it says death by a thousand cuts. It's like social media. I literally just did this the other day. I promise your audience, I swear on everything. Try this, put screen time on. I know you guys heard of screen time a million years ago. Put screen time on and put it to where it's like five minutes. So if you use any app for longer than five minutes, it will shut it down. Then you'll realize how subconsciously driven your day is. The subconscious mind controls 95 percent of our day. So truly my conscious mind thinks it's controlling stuff. But really, it's just the press room, whereas my subconscious mind is like the Oval Office, if we're talking about the United States. And so all I'm here to say is try this technique, turn screen time on, put it five minute max and I guarantee you your your brain will shift to seek dopamine spikes in other places. It will get to a point where I was literally about to play a video game and I'm like, this is boring. I want to go build something about my business and products became fun, you know, merchandising became fun. Talking to my audience through email marketing became fun. Facebook ads became fun. And I was like, wow, I forgot, sell the drug, don't use the drug. You know, if we're talking street terms and I forgot that these death by a thousand cuts, social media gets us because it doesn't feel like a drug, but it literally robs us of our dopamine. And so it's the same thing if I know I'm going on and on and on. You going straight from the Spotify commentary into like the entrepreneurship side, I'm glad you're saying what you're saying. And I definitely want to get deeper into that side, too. We definitely do. But when you're the Spotify side, it's a pool system, right? So there is a limitation to the payout. So some of that money being repurposed for lack of better words, right? Because they're killing off competition when you say on the bottom side of it, they're giving out more money to the people that might be the stakeholders they care about. Like I think of it as a qualification method, just like any other business. A lot of times there's people on the outside complaining. I want to apply for a consultation with game, right? And I go to your website and I you have a price or something that turns me off. And then I go to Instagram and complain about all you have this that there is not worth it. And in my mind, I'm cutting you out and I'm talking bad about you. And your mind, you're like, OK, good, my my application funnel is working. It's kicking out the people that's not working with a worth working with. Right. So I feel like there's also something on that side on the Spotify in where they're clearly saying, you know, I think part of it is the micropayments and the cost of micropayments. I think we're all kind of familiar with that. Or is this like this is more of a headache net than is worth as well. I was in addition to appeasing my my stakeholders that do matter the most. And you kind of touched on some of those. OK, so one of the most important things that artists have to realize if you truly become a brand, then everybody that buys from you no longer has to be a fan. I know that sounds mind boggling. You have people buy from you who support your career, who support your movement that aren't even fans. But the truth is regular businesses do this every single day. And that's how we had this realization that we then began to capitalize off of with our artists. And if you want to see this for yourself, I'll show you for completely free. If you go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize, you have to put in www and if you're on YouTube, you can find it in the description somewhere. So just go there and I'll show you the massive paradigm shift that we had that allowed us to start to help our artists monetize their audience way faster while increasing the amount of people that they can monetize at the same time. So basically a lot more money, you know what I'm saying? So check it out. www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize while it's completely free to check out back to the conversation. I think it's really, you know, they want to pull a bunch of people in, use their likeness because the thing about it this way, let's reframe it a little bit because I had software that I had to develop and I was going through Native Instruments, which is a popular company and they only let me have, let's say 2000 licenses. So in order to sell those 2000, I can just blast everybody and say, buy my thing. But I said, let me just do influencer marketing. I'll hand out, they call them NFRs, not for retails. So you get certain licenses that are free. So let's say out of the 2000, you order, you get 100 for free. That you can give to creators, content creators. But the problem is I can only give out a certain amount before I can't earn the amount of money back. Does that make sense? So if I have only 2000 of something, I can only give out, let's say, max 100 before I max out the the outwardness to the inwardness ratio, if that makes sense. So there's a there's a sweet spot where it's like, where do I profit the most? And I think in this case, I think they're using our likeness in my opinion. This is all busy works, bees opinion. I don't want to put this on anybody else. You know, our traffic, because think about it this way. I don't believe that these platforms, I don't care any of them. I don't believe unless they're YouTube, TikTok or maybe Instagram, that they truly have the mechanisms and the algorithms for discovery. I just don't believe it. I think that there's a lot of artists that, you know, go on these platforms expecting to like build the house and they will come. And it's like, no, you're going to have to drive all your traffic to that platform and now they own that traffic. And my problem is, even with marketing, is that, you know, I've built company or not built companies. Pardon me, I've helped companies image line who made FL studio. Do you guys know FL studio? Yeah. And I've made them millions of dollars from influence, content, 5,000 videos of free content on their software, millions of dollars. Now, I was not what's the word attributed. OK, the energy that went behind their brand. So I could be like, OK, y'all owe me a bunch of money. Or I could say, hey, at least owe me respect. You know, I helped your company grow and they did a recent update recently where they added a bunch of creators in their new update in FL studio. And I didn't I didn't get a word, not an email, you know, about that new update. So it wasn't more it wasn't that I was jealous. It was that like, wow, these people don't even value the hardest workers that made their company successful by bringing them traffic. And so the same thing with Spotify. I'm like, you don't even honor the people who are driving free attention to you, you know, so not that everything needs to be monetized. And I guess we could say the same thing for social media. But I think the difference is that I don't believe they have a discovery algorithm. So the difference is if you upload to YouTube, you could be discovered. If you upload the TikTok, you could be discovered, you know, where is the other platforms? I don't think they're designed like that. And my last two keywords I wrote in my notes is that, you know, I think of. I wrote inflation and traffic. I forgot the inflation metaphor. It'll come back to me. But when you were speaking, it made me think about Spotify, like it's inflating itself, you know, the same way we hand out a hundred dollars. And if I go print more money, your hundred dollars is worth less. And so the same thing here is if they're sharing a pool of income and I go attract 10 times more competitors, that pool, you're basically you're diluting the money that's going out to the people. And so it looks like the platform's growing. But in reality, if that pool of money doesn't grow, everything's diluted. So we're truly inflating the platform. So I guess you can make an argument to where they're trying to deflate, you know, but at the same time, they're embracing AI. So you can't say I'm going to embrace AI and then say I want to deflate the platform at the same time. In my opinion, I think a Spotify is truly going to use AI to because they can't fight back as far as not being paid. And so that's going to cause that chasm of likeness to always go to the top. So I know that was a lot, but that's what I feel. Wow, what's up? It's Brian man, Sean. And if you like this clip, you can listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple or wherever you stream your podcast. But if you want to keep watching, we've placed a video that will be so useful for you conveniently above. Go ahead and click that link.