TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

30 Aug 2016 · 3 min

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3:01

A live-stream commentary by TJ Walker reflecting on Frank Ocean’s independently released album reaching number one, using it as a broader example of how traditional media gatekeepers (record labels, major distributors, TV networks) are losing relevance. Walker connects this shift to podcasting and independent content creators (e.g., The Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger, Tim Ferriss, Malcolm Gladwell), and urges creators to build audiences through time, work, and quality.

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The singer Frank Ocean has a new album out and it has soared to number one on the Billboard charts with more than a quarter of a million sales and albums and more than 65 million downloads. What's the significance of this? This is apparently the first time someone has done this without any major label, major distributor, major media company of sort of simply made his album, he released it right into itunes, and it started selling. Now, if I were a major media record executive and I hadn't already pulled what remaining hairs are out of my head out, I would really be panicking because this truly shows the almost utter irrelevance to traditional gatekeepers. Now, Frank Ocean was already well known, already respected, already had a huge fan base, and they were wanting more of his music. He hadn't put out a new album in four years. Now he had a record label, Def Jam, but he was only obligated to give them a video. He gave them a video, it wasn't even for sale, and then released the audio on his own. Why is this significant to those of us who are not musicians? To me, it really symbolizes what's going on in so many sectors of the media world these days. You have people nobody has ever heard of and they start a podcast and next thing you know, they have tens of millions of downloads. The people over at the Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger is one of those. Now, he's been at it for a decade, but somebody not famous like Tim Ferriss, not already a New Yorker, big time best seller like Malcolm Gladwell. Those two also have wildly successful podcasts. But the Art of Charm podcast, which I do recommend, if you're looking for a great example of someone who does a podcast quite well, and it covers issues like influence, persuasion, speaking, goal setting. To me, that's just a fascinating example of how the gatekeepers are not relevant. If you can create content that people like love, you can reach people and you can reach masses too. Now, unfortunately, I don't have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of viewers on my YouTube channel or my itunes feed yet. But I can't blame big labels or TV networks these days if you're not building an audience. And it doesn't have to be an audience of millions, if you don't build an audience, an audience you care about quite often it's just a function of a little more time and a little more work and a lot more quality.