Wendy Day of Rap Coalition teaches producers how to build a professional brand: formalize your business with an LLC or corporation, choose a unique producer name with a clear audio tag, and maintain consistent handles across all platforms so artists can find and credit you. She covers paid ads, studio networking, and tracking measurable wins like streams and radio play.
Chapters
Hi guys, Wendy Day here from Rap Coalition. So I'm gonna take it back half a step because some of you, um, ask questions about— I think it was the first video or the second video where I talked about producers being a brand, and some of you are a little bit newer than I thought to producing. So, um, let me just cover what you do initially when you're starting out as a producer. And I'm sorry if this is a little bit basic for the rest of you, but, um, you can just sort of like play along at home and make sure you've done all these things for yourself. So as a producer, you're building a brand. You want to market and promote yourself as a producer so that you're reaching up-and-coming artists and so that they know who you are. And the way people learn who you are is through repetition. So the first thing you're going to want to do is incorporate yourself as a company. You can either start an LLC or an INC. Do some research online, see what the difference between those two are. Most of my companies are LLCs, if that helps you, because I can pass the income through and get taxed at a— did you hear gangster sneeze in the background?— because I can pass the income through at a personal tax rate instead of a corporate tax rate. As an INC, you're going to pay taxes on capital gains, and it's a little bit different. So do the research, figure out whether you should be an LLC or an INC. Make sure you incorporate your company, get a tax ID number, and open a business bank account. The reason that you're doing this is you're separating your personal funds from your business funds. This way, if God forbid you get sued by somebody, they only can attach your business funds, not your personal funds. So if you accidentally don't clear a sample and you get sued, or you deliver, um, a song to an artist and there's some sort of disagreement between the two of you, you end up in court, they can't attach your house or your car or anything you own personally. They can only go after your corporate, um, income. So that's kind of important. You also want to have a, um, tag that's unique. Don't jack somebody else's tag. You don't want to be the person that jacked a tag that Metro Boomin was using, or Zaytoven. Don't do that. Have your own tag. Pick one, one, one, one, one, one, and stick with it. It's again the repetition. So you want to build one sound, one brand that you attach to your production so that when people hear your beats, they may all be different. You might have some trap beats, you might have some EDM beats, you might have some country beats, some pop beats, but reggae beats, but The tag is the same on every beat so people know that it's yours. Pick a name that makes sense for your production. Make sure there's nobody else with that name. The way that you do that is through the Trademark Office as well as just Googling that name. Go through Spotify, go through YouTube, go through SoundCloud. Make sure whatever name you're using is unique to you. You cannot take somebody else's name and change it. And then call it your own. For example, I can't become a producer tomorrow and call myself Digital Sunny or Booming Metro. Can't do that. I can't even spell it different and, and get on. Like, I can't be Sunny Digital and spell it S-U-N-N-Y. You can't do that. It's too close. So get your own name. You're going to set up a corporation in that name. So if my— if, um, If my producer name is Wendy Day Productions, that's the name I'm going to use on my website, all of my social media. Um, that's the name I'm going to incorporate. That's the number that my— that's the name that my tag is going to be under. Um, and it's just going to be something a little bit different, um, than what everybody else is using. I want to stand out. Also, in building a brand, I'm going to set up social media accounts, YouTube accounts, SoundCloud accounts, uh, SoundCloud account, excuse me, that's not plural. YouTube account, one. Um, I'm going to have all the social media platforms. I want a TikTok platform, I want an Audio Mac platform, um, of course Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. And I want to make sure I can use the same name on all those platforms. So if I'm @wendydayproductions, I want to make sure that Wendy Day Productions is available before I spend the money to incorporate. I want a uniform name. WendyDayProductions.com, @WendyDayProductions. My Facebook should be facebook.com/WendyDayProductions. My YouTube, my SoundCloud, my Audio Mac should all be Wendy Day Productions. I want a uniform name that I can use. It's the same name across all platforms so that there's no confusion when I get big. I don't have to send somebody to one Facebook name, I'm a different name on I'm a different name on Instagram. No, it's all the same name. And then in terms of branding, as I, as I start marketing and promoting myself, I want to do different ad campaigns. Once I start having income as a producer, I want to do ad campaigns. So I may want to do some YouTube ads, I may want to do some Google AdWords campaigns where I'm targeting rappers or or singers or songwriters to get my stuff out there. I want to attend, um, industry events under my name so that people start to see my name everywhere. I want to make sure that I'm tagged whenever an artist puts up the song. I want to make sure my @WendyDayProductions is on their YouTube page, on their, um, Instagram page, wherever they're putting the song. I want to be listed on their Spotify. I just want people to know who I am. So I'm going to reach out to the artist that I'm producing for and ask them to tag me in everything. Um, read a couple of books on branding, check out the websites on branding, check out websites on how to run Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads. Just learn as much as you can about how to increase awareness for you in this marketplace. Figure out where are your beats being spread the most. Are you doing some cool shit on YouTube showing people how to make beats so that people are tagging you from that? Put it on your Instagram, put it on your Twitter, put it on your Facebook. Um, I talked in one of these videos about how to tell stories about where you're from and who you are. You want to market yourself as a producer the same way an artist markets themselves to their fans. The difference is you're marketing to creators, to rappers, to songwriters, to R&B artists, to reggae artists, to whomever can use your beats. You're not marketing to the general public. You're not marketing to music fans. You're marketing to people that can buy your beats. Spend time in the studios in larger cities. If you come to Atlanta, spend time at the studio. See who's recording. See if you can play beats for those people. Try to become part of the music industry. Learn who the insiders are. Learn who the A&R people are. Market to them. You want them to hear your production and know who you've made beats for before and, and, and who, you know, what those, uh, what your track record is. Have your songs streamed a million times? That's something people want to know. Have your songs gotten on the radio before? That's something people want to know. All, all saying that you are a brand. Treat yourself as a brand. I realize that you're a person and not, you know, um, not an iPhone or an iPhone case, but you're going to market yourself the same way. You're going to market yourself like a brand. Get your name out there. Do as much as you can to spread the word amongst artists about your beats, and you're going to be fine. That's how you make money. We're going to teach you the rest of it here. Or maybe not teach you, but give you little glimpses of how things work and how you can make money with your music in the music industry. Okay guys, take care.
