Buying Success | Wendy Day

Hi guys, how are you? Well, since the beginning of time, people have been trying to buy success in the music industry, and, um, I think if it were possible, I would have figured out a way to do it by now. I've been in this 25 years. Um, I've never been able to buy success. I've only been able to build success. Um, I, I think sometimes one of the biggest disservices that we have in music is that those of us who work in music are fans of music, and it's the love and the passion for the music that brings us here. And sometimes I think that if, if we didn't really love music, it would probably be a little bit easier for us. Um, and I say that because when you love music, when you love the product that you're selling, you don't always take a macro view of it. Because you're, you're up in it, you're not objective. Um, when you, when you have an opinion, you sometimes mistake that opinion that you have for the opinion of the masses. Meaning, if I like a certain artist and I like a certain song, then therefore everyone will like it and everyone will buy it and everyone will embrace that artist. And that's not the case. Um, if that were the case, there wouldn't be so many failed projects and so many failed artists and so many songs that get the proper amount of work and the proper amount of budget but never catch on. Um, it's a very subjective business, and not only is the music subjective, but The artists and their image are very subjective. For an artist to be successful, the artist has to have a certain charisma and a certain appeal to fans where not only do they believe that the artist is authentic, like believe what they're saying, but they really gravitate towards them. I think it was Snoop Dogg who said that to be a successful artist, um, men have to want to be you and women have to want to sleep with you if you're a male artist. If you're a female artist, it's the opposite. It's men have to want to sleep with you and women have to want to be you. So if you're an artist and you have a modicum of success, people are going to emulate you and they're going to gravitate towards you, towards your image, and towards your story and your movement. And sometimes, because we love rap music, we think that only the music that we like is acceptable, and we think everything else is kind of garbage. You know, in, in my, in my career, the one thing that most people would say to me, and I'm talking like thousands of people inside the music industry and outside of the music industry, everybody thinks that they can be an A&R person because everybody thinks they know what a hit record is. And it's funny because if that were the case, we would have so much more success inside and outside of the music business that, you know, it would be oversaturated with hit records instead of just oversaturated with people struggling to get on. You know, it, it takes so much more than somebody just hearing your music. Um, there have been a ton of records that have had huge multi-million dollar budgets that have gotten in front of people that people just didn't embrace. And until you really get inside of the music industry and until you really have some success with hit records and some failures with songs that you thought were hit records but they never took off, you don't really understand this concept. It's not something that can really be taught. It's something that has to be experienced. Um, and, and, and because of that, I think that those of us who are fans of the music, it's kind of disservice. And, you know, the, the, the best example that I can give you is, um, when you want to get into the music business, you look at the artists who are already on because that's what you have access to. So let's just— let me use, um, let me, let me use Lil Wayne as an example. Um, when you want to get into the music industry, you see that Lil Wayne is— his videos are on BET and Revolt and Fuse, and you hear his music on the radio. If you travel out of the city you're in, you hear his music on that radio station. You maybe see a movie and you see that he has a song inside of a movie, or maybe he is on the soundtrack, or maybe he had, you know, some role to play in the film, and maybe he was supervising the music and his sound or his style is all over the place. Um, you go to strip clubs and you hear his music in the strip club. So you naturally assume that if you have an artist and you want him to be like Lil Wayne, that he needs to be playing on the radio, all over videos, he needs to be on WorldStar, he needs to be in movies, um, he needs to be in the strip club. You're looking at the success of somebody that has a, you know, over a decade long, actually over 2 decades in the music industry. You're not looking at him like he's a new unknown artist. So you're ready to inject your artist that you're working into the industry at that top level. You're ready to go like right to the top, and that's not how the music industry works. The music industry is like steps. You build your way up to success. You don't just go right for the top. And because you're not in Wayne's camp, you're not seeing everything that he's doing in order to create his song to get onto the radio, or to create the success of that record before radio will even touch it, or before video will touch it. You're also not looking at what he did back before he put out his first record. I mean, his first record, you know, back in the '90s. You're not looking at what he did to establish his career. Not only are you not looking at that, but this is a different day and time. So what one did in the mid-'90s, you know, '97, '98, and what one is doing in 2017, 2018, 20 years later, are very, very different. Um, but yet so many people look at what the artists who are established are doing, and then they immediately interject themselves if they're an artist. Or if you're the investor and you're promoting an artist, you try to inject them into that, that level of already being on and already successful. And you may not have even put out your first record yet, yet you're emulating the marketing plans of somebody who's got, you know, 10 albums in, or 15 albums in, or 3 albums in, and, and you can't do that. It just doesn't make logical sense. So what's happening is you're taking your limited budget, because we all know that it— you don't have the same $2 million that, you know, um, that Atlantic has, or Def Jam has, or Sony has to work your artist. And if you do, you're, you're certainly not spending it on the same things that the major labels are spending it on. But let's just say that, that you have— let's just say you have 10% of that. Let's say you have— you don't have a million dollars, but you have $100,000 to spend. Um, are you gonna go and spend it on the exact same things that they're gonna spend money on for an artist who already has some renown? Are you gonna go and get WorldStar, which does not work for new artists because nobody pays attention when they don't know who you are? Or are you gonna put that money towards building a foundation and building a buzz for your artist? Um, most people don't. Most people don't spend the money to build a foundation. They try to put their artist everywhere they see other artists, other successful artists. So if they see Wayne on WorldStar in the top box, they want to be on WorldStar in the top box. If they see Wayne on, you know, in the top 10 at BET Jams or on Revolt in the countdown, then they want to be in the countdown. If they see an artist being interviewed by Sway on the morning show at Sirius, then they want to be on the morning show at Sirius. If they, you know, if K. Slay is interviewing somebody on his show at Sirius, then they want their artist on his show and they're willing to pay for it. And I guess that's the whole point of this video is in terms of buying success, you know, instead of, instead of understanding or learning how to get your artist into the marketplace, people are inserting their artist into areas and buying their way in or trying to buy their way in to that mid-level or that top level where they see their favorite artists being exposed. And it, and it just, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, you know, I watched, um, I watched BMF when they were coming up in the, in the mid-2000s. And, you know, the thing about Meech is he had more money than anybody I have ever seen in my life. I've just never seen somebody with that much disposable income. And I watched what he was doing for Blue Da Vinci, and I watched how hard they were working to buy radio and video and, and build success for Blue. And they spent millions of dollars on Blue, and his career never really took off the way that it should have because they were, they were kind of doing the things that you do once you're already on. They weren't really building a foundation for Blue or for his career. They weren't testing the music and working it on the streets and in the clubs the same way you would a brand new artist. They weren't going through the struggle. They were— they, they had already struggled in other areas in their life and had made money, so they chose to go right for that mid-level and try to buy their way in. And it didn't work. And if it doesn't work for somebody that's spending millions of dollars, what makes it— you think it's going to work for you spending tens of thousands of dollars? You know, I see people in our industry doing it every day. Instead of, instead of building the artist to the level where fans will want to follow them on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, um they go and they buy the followers, they buy the likes. So for example, somebody will look at an artist and say, you know, gee, I'm doper than that artist, I'm better than that artist, and he's got 100,000 followers on Twitter and I've only got 2,000, so I'm gonna go and buy 100,000 followers so that I have 102,000 because I'm just as good as he is. What they don't realize is that artist has 100,000 followers because they've been working the streets for 8 months or 10 months or a year or however long it takes. And they've built those followers based on people genuinely liking their music and liking their, their subject matter and liking their vibe and their movement and what they're about. You know, those people came to them naturally from follow— in following them because they like their work ethic or they like their image or they wanted to be like them. It comes back to that, you know, women want to sleep with you and men want to be like you. You know, you can't just buy your way into success. It doesn't happen. You know, you can put all the records out there that you want, and then you can buy the music back yourself, and you'll appear like you're hitting the charts, but you won't have success because nobody in your area knows who you are. You just can't buy fans. You can't buy the success. You've got to actually come in, grind it out, and work the music, test different songs, see what works, see what doesn't. You know, you've got to actually be in the marketplace as the artist. You've got to go out on promo tour. You've got to reach people, shake hands, kiss babies, take pictures. You've got to do everything that it takes to get on in this industry. You can't just buy the top box at WorldStar and think that the world is going to think you're a genius when they hear your music. First of all, they're not gonna hear your music because they don't know who you are. Why is somebody gonna click on the top box of WorldStar when, first of all, they're not there to find music, they're there to watch bum fights or, you know, find out what's going on, what's the latest, you know, bullshit between Chris Brown and Soulja Boy. They're not there because they're trying to discover new music. And yet, because you're a fan of WorldStar and you go there and you click on Lil Wayne when he's there and you click on Drake when he's there, You think that if you're there alongside Wayne and Drake, that people will click on you, and they won't because they don't know who you are. They don't care about you. You haven't, you haven't done the work yet. You haven't put in the, the, the, the grind and the build that it takes to get people to want to click on you because they recognize your name. You know, it's so competitive, competitive in, in hip-hop, and unless somebody is really along and believes in you there's just too many other artists to check out. And we're so inundated with new music that we want to hear the music that we like. We, you know, as fans, we want to hear the music that we've heard over and over that makes us dance and that makes us feel good, or that is saying something that we can relate to. You know, we don't care about every new MC that comes along. And it's a fallacy that if you think somebody's going to listen to your music one time that they're going to gravitate towards you. That's so rare. I'm not saying it never happens, I'm just saying that it's so rare. So you're going to have to learn this business, you're going to have to learn the industry, you're going to have to learn what does a new artist do to build themselves up. You can't just look at the Drakes and the Waynes and the Nicki Minaj and say, okay, that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to do what they're already doing. They're already on, they're, they're multi-millionaires. You can't follow their lead and expect it to work for you as somebody that has no following at all. You've got to build your following, you've got to build your fan base, and unfortunately you can't buy that. It takes money, but the money is to build the foundation and to put in the work and pass out the music and hang the posters so people recognize you and go places so that, you know, you can interact with your fans both online and in the real world. It, it takes a lot of work. And you've got to be really dedicated. But I'm telling you, if, if you could buy this success, I would have figured it out by now, and I would have bought success for a shit ton of artists that are around me because they're deserving. And a lot of them have budgets, you know, and they could afford to buy it if it was possible. And I'd probably be living on an island somewhere drinking a drink with the straw in it, a little funny umbrella. But having said all that, guys, you're gonna have to learn this industry, and that's You know, that's why I'm doing these videos. Don't just go by what I'm saying. Go out and do the research, you know, and, and try to put your own taste aside. I know you think that you pick all the hit records, and when you hear a song on the radio, you know if it's going to be a hit record or not, but that's not what builds success. What builds success is creating the music in the studio, being able to hear a beat with nothing on it and saying, you know what, That's a hit record. And if we can take that beat and, and, and talk about something that people want to hear and put a catchy hook on it, now maybe we have something. And before you dump money into it, you got to go and test that song to make sure you really do have something, or you're going to end up spending $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 to find out that that song never had legs and it never took off. So all that to say, learn the business. Get lots of opinions other than mine, but learn what you're doing and try not to— try not to get so sucked in by your own taste and your own opinion. You're just one person. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in.