 Yo, yo, what's up, folks? This thing is finally working. We're just gonna do a real quick meeting today. I wanna add, answer some questions. In the future, we're gonna have some topics. We're gonna make this real interesting. Folks, in the future, we're gonna have some topics. Mix vision, what's up, man? What's up? Let's see how we can get this thing going. Get this thing going. I-O-D, what was that? I appreciate that day most music. The general, Gabriel, I see y'all, I see y'all. We're gonna do a good 15, 20 minutes, man. I just wanna be able to answer questions. If there's some topics y'all are interested in, there's so much we've, I've learned. All right, just working with all of our clients over the last three months have been ridiculous from TikTok and advertising from breaking artists through all platforms, working on some NFTs with some people. So many different things going on. Elos, what's good with you, man? Good to hear from you. So there's any topics that y'all are interested in. Just drop them in the chat and I'll just riff on it. That's how we're gonna do a lot of these sessions. I'm gonna actually start bringing some topics when I do these YouTube lives and make it more of a show. I'm gonna experiment, see how it goes, just for the fun of it. But hey, right now, like I said, I just wanna see if there are some topics that people are interested in. But here's, while people are still hopping on, here's one big thing that I really want people to understand who are getting interested in NFTs. NFTs, I've seen a lot of artists try to just hop into it and think, oh man, I'm gonna be able to make a lot of money. And if you don't have a fan base, it's still a hard thing to do, right? What you're gonna have to do is create a project which is the thing that you want to sell. And then you're gonna have to market that project and create some value for that project in the same way you would as an artist trying to create value for you and your brand. So you're gonna still have to market and build some type of hype and excitement, first and foremost. I remember I was talking to a guy who said some people said for $600, we'll get you minted as an artist and we'll release your project and you'll be able to make your money back. I would not believe that, all right? I would not believe that. The guy told me this and I advised him not to do it. I don't know if he ever went and did it, but people reaching out to y'all as artists like, yo man, I'm gonna help you drop an NFT and make a lot of money because a lot of people are making a lot of money on NFTs. Nah, you still need a fan base. If you don't have anything, if you feel like you aren't in a position where you can sell five T-shirts, you probably shouldn't be worried about selling an NFT. So, yes, NFTs music by Jellison. I hope I read that right. NFTs 100% benefit artists from five, so many directions. So one of my clients, she's dropping NFTs and she's a legacy actor named Macy Gray and she's dropping an NFT on, well, actually went on to March 15th and another one March 31st. And one thing she talks about a lot is the creative aspect where now they have a more direct relationship with their fans again where there's more of a feeling of ownership. All right, back in the day, people would buy CDs, but that disappeared when they start consuming through streaming. So now when you have an NFT, if you release your music as an NFT, artists still feel like, the fans feel like they own something, right? There's a deeper connection with you because I own this thing. They don't own your streams. There's no relationship there. So that's one way, just a fan relationship. Number two, the labels have made it so hard to make money. I'm talking about even for big acts, like a lot of the big acts that I've been around or even worked with, still talk about, yeah, we have a fan base, we can tour, but to actually make money on music is very difficult. But what you get to do with an NFT is when you drop your music, one, you directly can now make money from that again, just like you were selling a CD, but two, you have this tangible thing that actually can go up in value. And this is why a lot of artists mess up. They think, I'ma just drop an NFT and then when, if you dropped an NFT and sold 100 of them, and then nothing happened after that, it sounds exciting, oh, I sold 100 NFTs, but you're missing out on the value of NFTs. The value of NFTs is you sell that 100 and then you continue to build value. So then that 100 becomes worth three times, whatever it was when people initially bought it. And now people are interested in it just like a collector. So now let's say I bought your NFT at $5, you became bigger as an artist and now that $5 NFT is worth $100. So I just multiply my money times 20 and this other guy says, yo, I really liked that artist and I wanna buy your NFT. I'm like, ah, I don't wanna sell it, but I've been holding onto it for a while and I think I might want the money. So let me go ahead and sell it. That $95 difference, you get a split of that $95 difference too. So you're not just getting money one time, right? This is why it's important to understand you're not just trying to make one time sales. Artists are selling themselves short and they're not creating value. When your community continues to see value in you, you'll be able to keep selling as they trade among themselves, you're still getting money from that. So that's the biggest part of NFTs, all right? That's one of the biggest parts. There's a lot of different nuances but we'll like go deeper into that. I'll start going deeper into that stuff on this channel because I'm still on my NFT journey, I'm still learning. I'm still learning myself. We have best way to utilize, maximize a thousand dollar budget towards a single. The best way to utilize a thousand dollars towards a single is first, actually make sure you got your content getting strong. And what I mean by contents is you need to be posting on TikTok, posting on Instagram, primarily TikTok. If you figure out TikTok first, the rest of your marketing becomes so much easier. We can do things with a thousand dollars, right? But when you have strong content, all of our clients that have their content together are doing three to five times better with the same marketing budget as people who don't. So I would advise, especially if you know, like, hey, I'm not gonna just have another thousand dollars after I get rid of this thousand dollars. My money doesn't grow in trees. Push that down the field, take your time, get your content system together and get good at creating organic content that gets used on TikTok around your brand and then start marketing. That's the way I would approach it because also after outside of that a thousand dollars being spent, you'll have a lot of organic attention being brought to your audience and your music as well. Those are my thoughts. Hopefully we have a conversation. We can go even deeper than that. Are we taking on new clients? You can check out contrabrand.agency. We might have some openings, but you have to apply first and we have to go through that process. So that's www.contrabrand.agency, apply there. On that side of things. Is it a good strategy to become an influencer who does nothing about music and then become an artist? Yes, that is a good strategy. Cal Her beats or Cal Her. I don't know if I said that right, but this is what people get wrong about content. People believe in this idea, oh, I got known for this other thing and now people won't pay attention to my music because they've known me for something else. That's not how it works. There's literally, there's a girl named Bella Portch. She blew up on TikTok just doing POV videos that I don't understand why those videos were so fascinating that they blew up, but they did, right? They did, all right? So she blows up on the platform, literally just doing these POV videos as point of view for those who don't know and it's just showing your face and she's like acting to something or making funny faces. She blows up on the platform. That's like the first three to five months probably of people even knowing her and understanding her on the platform. And then she drops music and the song was called Build a Bitch or something like that. And I mean, let me look up the streams. I'll look up the streams right now. Let's see, Spotify, I'm gonna see what Bella Portch's streams look like. Then I'll get into some details. So Bella Portch has 6.3 million monthly listeners. She has two songs, Build a Bitch, which has 294 million streams and Inferno, which has 101 million streams. She literally blew up just doing a face to chest type style video, having nothing to do with music. It's what you do when you get that attention and understanding what to do when you have that attention. There's a way to go about it. And that's what artists run into, right? They don't know how to translate that attention over or you're working with a quality of music that's not good or there's another thing, sometimes your music isn't as good as the thing that blew you up, right? Maybe your Cardi B is always my go-to example for this. She was known as this great personality. People loved her and that was cool. It was amazing actually. Her music that she was dropping was okay. It was okay music until she dropped Bodak Yellow. Bodak Yellow was so undeniable of a song, the way it was hitting culture that it actually superseded how good people loved her for her personality. So if you have, let's just say great comedy or you're great at, I don't know, karate, right? You're really great at something to translate into something else, you're getting judged off of that measure. So you do something okay, all right? Or trash, then it's not gonna hit as that thing that we already knew you for that you were great at. Stick to the thing that you were great. So sometimes it takes an artist some time to develop and now, oh, I've got a great song or I have great music that's as good as the thing they already know me for or maybe even better. That's one of the problems that artists go through but it's, it's a, there's other nuances as well as well but that's a go-to explainer overall. Happy Thursday, Brian. Who you calling Brian? Thanks for the info. I'm not Brian, man. You mean, Brian, man? Hey, Sean, what are your tips for growing Instagram engagement? I didn't post for a long time and now my engagement has dropped a lot. One, use reels. Two, ignore reels and use TikTok first. If you can figure out TikTok, reels become so much easier but if you just want to use Instagram, use reels, use reels, literally Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, right? CEO of Facebook, as many of you know, literally said, we're ignoring everything else to just focus on reels and everything else will suffer. The performance of everything else will suffer while we're focusing on reels in this phase. Mark Zuckerberg said that like straightforward. It's not an assumption how, you know, we have all these conspiracy theories or just theories in general on what's going on on the platform. He literally said that. So reels is the only thing you should be focused on because everything else will suffer especially if you don't already have momentum in that brand space. Reels, but if you really want to figure out the formula because reels is copying TikTok, YouTube shorts is copying TikTok, Twitter is testing some things copying TikTok, Snapchat is releasing features that have copied TikTok. Just figure out TikTok first and translate it to everything else to become so much easier from there, all right? Cool. Now, how long should an artist spend time creating TikTok content before releasing anything? I just finished the TikTok course, by the way. Which one? Was that a 21 TikTok post to boot streams or are you in the boot camp? But how long? I would like to... I need more nuances on that question, right? Because I would think less about lift of time but also established audience, all right? So you want to have a certain amount of audience that you build and get good. Not just say, hey, I've been posting TikTok content and I feel like it's time to release some music but you have 200 followers and you actually haven't gotten good at creating TikTok content that people love. So once you get good at creating TikTok content that people love, like you're sure of that, one, double down on the momentum that you're with that. And from there, it becomes relative in terms of when you drop music, especially relative in terms of, I'm just speaking to the general public and not knowing your specific situation. But once you know how to create content that people love, you understand it. You are sure that you understand it. You keep seeing great performance, great performance. Now you can focus those learnings on how to do that around your music. Because it's not just, hey, drop music and say I gotta post out. That's what a lot of artists are doing in big thing. Oh, I've got followers on TikTok and then they drop a video that's not even a TikTok style video saying, hey, my song is out now. No one cares. You still have to post it in a format that gets attention and drives viewership on TikTok. So that's what I'll focus on. Know the skill set and then translate that into marketing or music. Of course, you can learn the other way around how to market your music from the beginning on TikTok, but that's hard to train. I can't give that advice right here. We work with artists personally for that. I meant how long as far as should I be stockpiling content before I release anything. Aha, stockpiling content. Again, time is arbitrary thing. It's more about how many. So if you had 20 songs, then I think you're more than ready to start releasing. All you need is one song, right? So I wouldn't even think, oh, I gotta release a song a week. TikTok is a different platform. That song a week thing was great for hacking SoundCloud and Russ did a great job with that and sharing his narrative and now so many other people have copied that. But it's not necessary for TikTok, right? I would say, no, I'm not saying don't drop a song a week, but what's more importantly when it comes to marketing and bringing awareness is drop a song and then give it time on TikTok. Maybe at least three to four posts within a week. See how that does. And then drop another song, three to four posts within a week. See how that does. And these might be three to six posts over two weeks. Once you do that for a period of time, you should have an idea of what good engagement looks like for you. And based on that, you should start noticing if a song is doing better, has a better type of engagement. You should get a feeling based on the comments. And then you don't say, hey, I'm going to move on to the next song. You say, I'm going to do maybe, yeah, I'm going to do 15 posts for this song, probably over two months. Again, it's hard to just talk generally, but two months. And then you're still dropping other stuff in between the way it works. We're talking about TikTok content. Now, in general, if you just had 20 songs and you start releasing, I just say drop one song every two weeks, but you need some type of marketing. Dropping music without having a marketing related to it is just doesn't make any sense. It's not worth it. That's why I say TikTok, because you can do that for free. No one has the, a lot of people don't have the budget to run ads for every single song they release or get influencers for every single song they release. All right. Now, how do I answer two more questions? Bro, watch your channel grow like crazy. Appreciate it. God battle. You got a lot more growth to go, man. We got a lot more. How do you feel about letting a larger platform post your music videos until you build a fan base? Starting from zero. I would, I'm not against it, but a lot of times these larger platforms don't have the benefits that it looks like anymore. But, and also music videos aren't as beneficial as they used to be. Content, social media content is what people care about more than anything and getting that relationship and engagement. Music videos is like a special packaging that you do every once in a while to mark up a period of time, to mark a brand that you wanted to express along with the song. But I wouldn't focus on music videos heavily and because music videos are less valuable than they used to be, dropping them on other people's platform is not much of a problem. I wouldn't think about it one way or another. If you want to try to use their following, go ahead and do that for, you know, why you build momentum for yourself. But ultimately, of course, the goal is to have everything on your own page. Because, you know, why not? You want to have control of everything. But yeah, now go ahead and drop on other platforms. Um, let's see. Got time for two more. I'm gonna try to do it quick. How do I boost my Spotify and stuff? All the people listening to my music, just watch the YouTube visualizer or on SoundCloud. You might have an audience that doesn't have Spotify like that. That could be one thing. What I would do is focus on ads at the beginning for you, just so you can see, like, can I run ads and get decent conversions in the amount of people to actually translate it over to Spotify? Like, it does my audience tend to have Spotify and interact that way. That's what I would check on. And if that shows, then we can go to another level. Like, are the people who listen to your music, do you consider them fans? Can you follow up with them and just hardcore engage the unskillable stuff? Like, hey, can you check out my song on Spotify? Check out my song on Spotify and actually DMing them? For someone in a box like you, to get out of that box, which is like just my fans aren't listening in this category, but they are listening in these other spaces, you just need to see are people even willing to go who are currently listening. That's one thing. But the biggest thing is still run some ads directing specifically to your link page, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, Apple Music, see where they go naturally. Because if you have Spotify at the top and still most people are going to YouTube and SoundCloud, it tells you something about your audience or where you are right now. So I check that out. I check that out. Last thing, any tips for making TikToks? People for TikToks feel more genuine or authentic. That's hard because genuine and authentic, that's such an abstract thing, but just makes something you think is dope like that you actually care about. That you think, oh, this was actually funny or you actually think that if you saw it, you would love that somebody packaged their music in that way. Like, oh man, I know that he wants me to listen to his song but he did an acapella version and he made it unique and he brought me in. What do you like? What draws you in? That's the biggest thing when it comes to authenticity. Because a lot of times, like talking to y'all, I'll see people get in their heads. All of a sudden, when you decide to be the artist side, you start to do all these things that you would never react positively to as a fan because you think that that's just what it is. Or you're so desperate to get people to listen and just take the action. You're not willing to do the smaller in between actions that ultimately are gonna get people to where you wanna go. You skip those steps and you can't skip those steps. So that's my biggest thing about being, I think, like be the guy that you would like to see, period, and whatever you create. All right, so I gotta hop off. Right now, I see someone says that we help create content. Yes, we help create content and we do market music. We do both of those things. If you go to BMN, matter of fact, I'll type it real quick. So if you go to this site that I just posted, www.bmneleague, make sure you type in www.com slash grow on TikTok. We have a streaming training, free training session that we hosted. So you can watch that free training session while it's still streaming. You can pick a few times and which one you wanna watch. And we break down everything and approach the way we think about content strategy. And at the end, we also talk about how we help people personally on TikTok. Where we work with you, coach with you one-on-one, all of those things. So you can check that out for anybody who's interested in that. Big Bang, good to see you, man. Can't answer your question because I do gotta go. Appreciate y'all for hopping on. Maybe we'll do more of these more often. Just wanted to hop on today's been a while and we're gonna get back to this content. Make sure y'all put recommendations in the comment section when that appears after this because I always read those and we'll probably make some cool content because of it. All right, y'all be cool.