Wendy Day explains what a music consultant does: a hired gun who oversees distribution, marketing, radio, touring, and monetization for independent artists. Success requires a unified team where everyone, including the manager, follows the same plan. Day warns against spending big money on features or publicity that don't generate real income.
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Hi guys, thanks for tuning in again. And by now you know that these videos appear on my Instagram page and then I post them the following day on my YouTube TV. Um, I want to talk about hiring a consultant today because so many of you guys ask me what it is that I do. You're emailing me and asking me to manage you. I'm not a manager, I'm a consultant. I am a hired gun. I am somebody that you or your investor hires to help you build your career in the music industry, or to help you get to the next level, help you monetize, help you build an independent record label. Whatever it is that you are doing in music, if you've got the proper budget What my company does is we help you get there. And let me preface all of this by saying I am not looking for clients right now. I'm solely doing this because you're asking me what it is that I do and how I fit into the music industry. So I'm now going to expand this from what I do to what all music consultants do. A music consultant is somebody that has a lot of experience in helping folks get to the next level in the music industry. Industry. They have— in a perfect world, they have helped build a lot of success. They've helped rappers, singers, songwriters, producers, whoever get to the next level, meaning they're monetizing their income. They're the person who— either quarterbacks or coaches— they kind of see the whole 360-degree aspect of a career, and they help you achieve whatever your goals are. There are managers who can do what I do. There are record labels that can do what I do. There are many people out here that can do what I do. Most people choose not to do what I do because I have a little bit of a different mission. With the knowledge that I have in the music business, I could sign people to like Wendy Day Records and make 92% of the money, pay you guys 8%, be like what a real record label is. I'm not willing to do that. That's not what my goal is in the music industry. Instead, my goal is to build as many successful independent record labels as possible out here so that you guys can make the bulk of the money and have the bulk of the control in the industry and get to the next level. So that's really what drives me. That's my motivating force. There are other people out here that do what I do. If you're gonna hire somebody to consult your career, they need to have experience in distribution, in marketing, in promotion, in radio play, in, um, an A&R administration, in setting up a record label, in setting up a management company. They really need to have an all-encompassing, all-encompassing view of the music industry. It's not just one aspect of this industry that is going to create success, which leads me to another thought. There is not one person that's going to be responsible for your success as a rapper. You need to have a team of people behind you, and everyone's going to play a role, and everyone is going to ask for different things in order to help you become successful. And let me give you an example of that. Um, a publicist, their job is going to become far easier. And if you don't know what a publicist does, please go back and watch the video on what a publicist does. Um, but their job is going to be far easier if you've got a, um, verse and a feature on your song from somebody who's famous. It's going to be much easier for them to get press if you're featuring Lil Uzi Vert or Young Thug or Future or whoever. But as somebody that sees the overall picture of your career It's not necessarily going to help you up front to get a feature. Yes, you can spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a feature to make your publicist's job easier, but just getting publicity for the fact— from the fact that you have a famous feature on your song is not going to bring you instant success. It's not going to take you across the finish line. It's probably not going to even put that much more money in your pocket. In fact, it may even hurt you more than help you. When you're relatively new. And if you don't understand why, go back and watch the video that I made on having a feature. All that to say that you can't just do whatever makes the job easier for your team. You've got to do what's best for your career. And that is what a consultant brings to the picture, to the table. They're gonna, they're gonna set up a plan and bring on the team that can best enact that plan based on a series of success that they've had in the music industry and based on the research that they've done that tells them the best way to move forward with your career. So a consultant is sort of like a manager in that they oversee your entire monetization of your career, but they don't oversee all of the day-to-day. They don't oversee everything that you do. And for what I do as a consultant, sometimes it makes it a little more difficult if you've got a manager, because there are some managers out here that focus solely on the income that you're making, because they're trying to make 20% of whatever your income is. So they don't necessarily want you to stay independent. They really want you to get a record deal so that they can commission 20% of your advance. And that's not necessarily right or wrong, it just is. So for what I do, when an artist has a manager, that manager has to be on the same page as the whole team, or they can really throw a wrench into the plan if their goal is to get you a deal but everybody else is moving forward like, we just want to monetize you and make you as much money as you can possibly make. Those are two different directions that you're going in, and your team is going to be disjointed and not moving forward in a cohesive manner. So you've got to have everybody on your team stepping on the same foot at the same time so that you can get to the destination as easily and as fluidly and as successfully as possible. Okay, that's what a consultant does. A consultant makes sure all of the working parts are moving together at the same speed. They make sure that all of your paperwork is correct, all of the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed, and they make sure that the plan is in place to get you to the next level. And you just need to make sure that when you're hiring a consultant, that you're hiring somebody that can oversee all aspects of your career. They have put people out on tour before, they've done promo tours, they've done marketing, they've done promotion, They've set up distribution deals. They've done the paperwork. And if they haven't done that themselves, they know who to go to in order to achieve successfully that part of your career. Okay guys, that's what a consultant does. I hope this has been helpful. Um, you can see exactly the aspects, um, at helpfulangel.com. I've laid out exactly all of the different, um, components that go into building a successful career so that as you're interviewing consultants for your career, you can go down that list and find out who they've successfully consulted for and what areas on that list of what gets done in order to achieve success, what areas they've been super successful in, and maybe what areas they haven't, so that you can hire other people for their— for the weaknesses of the consultant and let them just focus on their strengths. Okay guys, take care.
