LIVE with Wendy Day #002 | Answering Your Questions Live

You're gonna get some great information today. I'm really excited about this. Pond 5. Hey, I'm almost there. Bear with me, it's gonna get started in a minute. Hey, thanks for tuning in though to the livestream. I'm so happy that you're here. I've got some great information for you today. Hang in, I'm almost there. Pond 5. Thanks so much for tuning in. Make sure you share this with your friends, and you know what, hit that little subscribe button. I'd love to have you subscribe. Hey, this is Wendy Day. Thanks for coming to my livestream. We're gonna get started in a couple of minutes, so just chill out, kick back, and we'll be right with you with some great information. I know you're anxious to get started and you're saying, where is she? But I'm filling up the cup with Diet Coke. I'll be with you in a minute. You're gonna get some great information today. I'm really really excited about this. Pond 5. Hey, I'm almost there. Bear with me, it's gonna get started in a minute. Hey, thanks for tuning in though to the live stream. I'm so happy that you're here. I've got some great information for you today. Hang in, I'm almost there. Thanks so much for tuning in. Make sure you share this with your friends, and you know what, hit that little subscribe button. I'd love to have you subscribe. Hey, this is Wendy Day. Thanks for coming to my livestream. We're gonna get started in a couple of minutes, so just chill out, kick back, and we're gonna be right with you with some great information. Pond 5. I know you're anxious to get started and you're saying, where is she? But I'm filling up the cup with Diet Coke. I'll be with you in a minute. You're gonna get some great information today. I'm really excited about this. Pond 5. Hey, I'm almost there. Bear with me, it's gonna get started in a minute. Hey, thanks for tuning in though to the live stream. I'm so Hey, thanks for tuning in, guys. Look, I'm right on time. I love when that happens. Outstanding. So it's Wednesday night, it's 7 o'clock, I'm broadcasting live. You guys have asked me some amazing questions. Feel free to type some into the little chat screen. I will try to answer them as I can. Meanwhile, um, for those of you that sent me in your questions, I am going to start by answering those. Um, the first one is from Denise Hendershot. I hope I pronounced your name correctly. And you asked, what is the best way to go about lobbying for an opportunity to open for an industry act that comes to your area or even outside of your area? Okay. So you want— and first of all, huge shout out to Denise because she is the mother of a young rapper, um, and it's so rare that parents support their kids, um, in this field that I'm just always amazed when a mother reaches out to me or a father reaches out to me. I just— kudos to you. I love that you're supporting your son in being a rapper. I think that's great. Um, so you asked about how to get an opening spot, and let me start by saying that you should never pay for an opening spot to open for somebody. The thing about doing shows as an artist is people need to know who you are. You need to have a fan base. There needs to be a large amount of people that will be willing to come and see you perform at a club or a venue and pay money to get in. So to open for somebody, let's say Young Thug is in your area and you want to open for Young Thug, but nobody in your area really knows who you are yet. It's going to be really hard to convince the promoter of that show to put you on the bill unless there's a benefit to him. And by benefit, I mean you giving him money to perform. And what did I just say about that? Never pay money to perform. Or you bring enough people that are willing to pay whatever the ticket price is, and you build on the show that he already has. So as a promoter, he's looking to make money, he's looking to put people on the bill that will bring out an even larger crowd than the artist that he has booked. So if you're trying to open for an act, the best thing you can do is build your buzz in that area so that people in that area know who you are, and it will benefit the promoter to put you onto the show. Um, and you're going to find a lot of the questions you ask are going to are gonna— the answer is gonna be build a buzz, build a fan base. That you're gonna hear that a lot, um, as we go forward, because without having some renown as an artist, it's going to be very hard for you to make money doing this. People need to know who you are. Also, once you start to build your buzz and people are aware of you, you want to start building relationships with the promoters in your area, not just so that you can open for other acts, but so that you can get paid to do shows in your area. You know, most artists are going to start doing shows for free, then they're going to start getting a little bit of money, maybe $250 to perform. Then the next step, they make it $500 to perform. So as you build your, um, fan base and you can attract a larger and larger crowd it's going to benefit the promoter to know who you are. And if you can build a relationship and you're likable and you're dependable and you return calls and you're very professional, that's going to really do you— that's going to really do you more value in the long run than being an asshole. You know, we all know who the assholes are in the industry. We don't want to work with them. So be somebody that people can get a hold of easily and readily and build a buzz that's big enough that they want to help you out. They want to see you win. Okay, um, Denise asked me a second question. She wants to know the best avenue of making money at your craft. Um, as a new artist, it's extremely hard to make money, but as you start to bubble and build your buzz the first money that comes is show money. Um, you're always going to be able to get paid for performances before anything. You may be able to get paid for verses, um, around that same time. Um, as you become more established, um, and I can only speak for independent artists because that's my focus, um, as you become more established, the money sort of spreads out between um, income from streaming and sales, income from merchandise, and income from performances, from shows and touring. I spoke with Tech N9ne last year, and I asked him how his income at Strange comes through, and he said a third of his money is from touring, a third of his money— and, and part of that third is merchandise as well, selling t-shirts and stuff. Um, excuse me, no, a third is from shows, a third is from merchandise, and a third is from his income from streaming and from sales. So it's a third, a third, and a third. Um, so you want to get as close to that as you can. I know it's hard as a new artist until somebody really knows who you are. It may be difficult to sell t-shirts. It might just be your friends and family, but, um, better to sell a few t-shirts than none. Okay, um, Denise also asked a question about BMI and ASCAP, and I'm gonna get to that in a second because, uh, J— Tony Banks— hey Tony, how are you?— is a hip-hop artist from New York City, and Tony is asking me, how does a rapper get paid regarding performance royalties if they didn't create the beat they are rapping on? So let me explain, um, a performance organization like ASCAP or BMI or SESAC. And at some point I'm going to interview folks that work for ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC on here so that you can really get a true understanding of how they operate and which one to choose and what they do. But a performing rights organization, they're called PROs for slang in the industry. What a PRO does is they collect your money that they— that is out there for radio play and for performances. So clubs have to pay a fee, almost like a tax, to ASCAP and BMI and SESAC in order to have live music or to, or to broadcast music within their club or their venue. And then of course radio stations do the same. So what they do as a PRO, they each collect the money that they earn from those fees. They go into a big pot, and then there's a mathematical formula that I don't even care to know, nor do I know, where they figure out the amount of spins that— or amount of plays that each artist has received, and they split that money proportionately based on how many plays you've gotten as an artist. So for example, I work with Trouble, and Trouble gets less spins at radio than Young Thug or Nicki Minaj. So they would get larger checks than Trouble would, but the money is based on performance. It's based on how many times you're spun, and it changes from year to year based on the amount of fees that they collect from venues and radio stations. So the pot is, is, um, emptied every year and paid to these different artists. In fact, it might even be emptied every 6 months and paid to these different artists because you get paid twice a year from the PROs. You get paid in June and you get paid at the end of December, and it— they have 90 days to pay you. So really, the checks come in March and September. You didn't need to know that. What you need to know is that there is money there, and you have to join one of them when you're at a point where you're performing live or your music is on the radio. Um, you guys should also all sign up for SoundExchange. SoundExchange kind of sort of does the same thing, but they pay based on music that's played on the internet. So anything that streams, like Pandora is handled by, um, by SoundExchange. Any internet radio station is paid through SoundExchange, so make sure you sign up to SoundExchange. But getting back to ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, once you, you pick one of the three to join, and you can go to their websites to see what they offer and how they're different and exactly how they each get down, but you sign up And when you make a song that you feel is going to get some radio play or that you're going to perform live, you fill out a split sheet on their website and it says exactly who made each part of the song. So for example, a song is 50% production, the beat, and 50% lyrics, right, the written part, the rap. So they pay out based on those two facts. They pay out based on who owns the rights to the music and who owns the rights to the lyrics. So you're gonna fill out a form that has the splits as a rapper, and then the producer is gonna fill out a form at his PR, which might be the same as yours, it might be a different one. They're gonna fill out the same form, and it's gonna go into a computer, computer database that's going to link up that information and see whether or not it's accurate. If it's not accurate, they're gonna kick back the information to everyone and say, hey, fix this, get it right. But as an artist, when you record, you should have split sheets in the studio with you anyway. And you can go to my Twitter feed to find split sheets. I post them there pretty often, actually. You can just go through my feed and find split sheets. In fact, when I come off— when I come off of this, I'll go do it. So When you get off, you can find it too. The split sheet is actually a piece of paper that everyone agrees to in the studio who owns what. And the best time to get people to agree to what they contributed to a song is right after they do it. Because if you wait a couple of weeks or a couple of months, or, or even worse, if you wait until the song starts making money, people have selective memory. And they tend to remember that they did more than they really did. And the last thing you want is to be in a situation where you're arguing with somebody over what percentage you own, because nobody gets paid at that point. The PRO just holds on to the money until you guys figure it out and you can enter the information that's correct, um, in both of your accounts. So I always suggest that you do that when you record, everybody's happy you've just finished making the song, you just— everybody agrees what percentage they, they added. Did you add a hook? Did you do all 3 verses? Did you produce it? If you produced it, are there any samples? Do you have to split it with anybody? Were there more than one producer there? It's very easy to just kind of jot that down on the paper, everybody signs it, and it's a done deal. There's no confusion later. And when you're ready to fill out the information and upload it to your, um, to your account at ASCAP or BMI or SESAC there is no argument, there's really no issue. Let me take some questions over here. Wow, here's a question that I cannot answer well at all. It's somebody asking, it looks like Harmony is asking me about songwriting. How do independent songwriters get their records or demos to major artists? And that's not something that I do or have done, Harmony, so I'm very leery to answer that. I do know that it comes down to relationships. You need to build relationships with the people in the industry that actually buy songs. And I think somewhere in the future I will ask Ray Daniels to join me in, in one of these, um, because he's somebody who both buys and sells songs, so he can really give you a better answer, um, than I can. It looks like Mike Doe is asking me, why are PR groups not used, not used as much as they once were in the prime of rap? There are groups. I'm not sure what you mean. Okay, if you're asking me why are there less groups in hip-hop than there were like in the '90s during the prime, the golden era, um, it's because everybody kind of figured out that the money gets split. So if you're a solo artist like, um, I'm going to keep using Young Thug as an example. If you're a solo artist like Thug, you keep 100% of the money. If you are in a group with 5 or 6 people, you're going to split the money with those 5 or 6 people, and it becomes even less. Okay. I hope that's what you're asking. I really didn't understand the question, so forgive me. I'm not sure what you meant by PR groups. Did you mean public relations companies? Ask me that again. If I answered it wrong, ask me that again. Um, Supreme and the New Experience is asking me how I feel about buying onto tours, which is a big thing now. Um, He doesn't agree with any pay-for-play. Um, I don't see the value of that. If, if you're not hot enough to get your own tour, or if you're not hot enough to be invited as an opening artist on that tour, I just— I, I don't see the value. People do not discover new music live. People do not go to see their favorite artist perform so that they can find new groups that are opening for them. I, I think as fans, most of us have had an experience where we went to see somebody live and we sat there like this through the opening act because that's not who we were there to see. We were there to see whoever the main act is and whoever we bought tickets for. Um, and, and again, it— to me, it comes back to building that, um, building that, buzz so that you can attract a fan base and you can start performing at your own venues. You might only have, you know, you might only perform in front of 100 people or 300 people or 500 people, but that's an excellent start. If you can sell out a club that has 500 people, that promoter for an event that might have 2,500 people they'll be more apt to book you onto that show because they know that you're selling tickets. They know that people are coming to see you. And again, the promoter is there to make money. The promoter is not there to help new acts get on. And I know that's heartbreaking, and that's what you want them to do, but that's not what they're there for. I think that rather than buying your way onto a tour, which doesn't necessarily help you grow your fan base, If I were an artist, I would take that money and I would start doing my own shows, meaning I would become the promoter. So rather than pay like 10 grand to open for Yo Gotti, I would rather find an artist in my area that charges around 5 grand that I know will sell out the, the spot and book them for a show, and then I would open for that artist. And oh, by the way, I'm the promoter too. So I'm gonna collect the money that's made on that. So I might put up $10 grand to do a show, you know, because you got to rent the club, you got to promote it, you got to have security, um, you want to buy some radio spots, you know, you want to make sure that your show is a success. So I would take that $10 grand and flip it into maybe $20,000 or $30,000 and, and then put that money into my career. That's what I would do with the money rather than buy an opening spot, you know, opening for Snoop or Yo Gotti or Rick Ross or whoever. Um, and again, that's, that's, this is all just my opinion. Um, let me go back to here while you guys add some more questions into my feed. Okay, this is from, uh, Classified Sick, and Classic is asking me about approaching— okay, he's talking about, um, there's a, a list of urban ANRs a record company list that you can purchase at rap-resources.com. It's rap-resources.com. And he purchased this list, and now he's wondering the best way to approach that list. What's the etiquette? Because he wants to be taken seriously. And what a great question. And, um, I love, I love that you asked that because The one thing you don't want to do, and the fact that you asked me tells me that you're not going to do this, the one thing you don't want to do is just mass spam all of those A&R people your music. First of all, they're not going to listen to it, and second of all, you're just going to burn out the list. They're going to end up changing their email address. So the best thing that you can do whenever you're trying to get your music to anyone is to build a relationship with that person. And hooray for social media because you have the ability to kind of stalk them a little bit, and I mean that in a positive way. If there's an A&R person that you feel would really appreciate receiving your music, you can follow that person on Facebook, you can follow them on Twitter, you can follow them on Snapchat, you can follow them on Instagram, and you can get a feel for what's important to them and what they're talking about and what they like and what they don't like. And then you can take the things that you have in common with that person. And, and of course, you should never pretend to feel a certain way just to gain a relationship with somebody, but there's certainly going to be something that they're talking about that you're going to feel some sort of kinship with, and you can then reach out to that person based on that commonality that you have. You know, as much as we're all joking about this election, um, it's been awesome for me because there have been so many people in the music industry that I haven't met yet that I really want to know that have been spouting off about Donald Trump, myself included, And that has given me a commonality to reach out to people. Like, they'll post a meme that's really funny, and I'll make a comment like, oh my God, that's really funny, or I'll repost it on my Instagram feed, you know. Or there's, there's a way that I'm connecting to them over something as silly as, you know, an orange guy with funny hair. And it's really kind of a blessing. And, and I guess that's what I'm telling you to do, is get to know who they are and find out you know, what, what their interests are. You know, I'm somebody that reads a lot. I read a lot, um, every night before I go to sleep, every morning when I get up. I, I read a lot of these different, um, news apps that talk about the music industry and that talk about business, and I post a lot of information. And there'll be people that will interact with me based on that information that I'm, that I'm posting. And very often somebody will see an article that they think that I'll be interested in. Denise, the first person that reached out to me today, the first person whose question I answered, she sent me a Nielsen report on African American listeners and, you know, report that Nielsen had put out. It was called 360 African American. It was a study anyway. On African American millennials and how best to reach them. And that fascinated me. Like, to me, that was like handing me a million dollars because I hadn't seen it yet. And when she sent it to me, I was like, oh, goody! And I got really excited, you know. And I shared with her how excited I was. But she will forever have a relationship with me now because she did something as simple as sending me a, you know, a PDF of something that she thought I would find interesting based on what I post on my social media and based on, you know, what I do here at YouTube and talk to you guys about, you know, on my, on my post, which are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11 AM, by the way. So build relationships with the folks that, that you want to reach out to. You've got their phone numbers, you've got their email. I certainly wouldn't cold call them on their phone. You're probably not going to get through. Um, there are the names of their assistants. You might want to start building a relationship with their assistant and find out the best way to submit material. There are some A&R guys who will ask for music, um, that's attached as an MP3. There are some guys who don't want attachments. They will only listen to SoundCloud links. The reason that list has the assistant's name on there is so that you can call and find out the best way to interact with somebody. And again, get to know them on social media, start talking to them, reach out to them. Don't reach out to them once and if they don't respond, get offended. It doesn't work that way. If you have to reach out to them 100 times before they acknowledge you, then do it. Why not? You know, it's not kissing ass, it's not sucking up to them. You're developing a relationship with somebody who does for a living what you want to do. And at this point, you're, you're not at their— you're not at their level. You're asking them for something. You're asking them for their time. And I gotta tell you, in this industry, time is more valuable than money. I would rather give you money than have a meeting with you because you can't pay me to meet with me. My time is valuable. I know that sounds arrogant, but my time is valuable. I could be working on something and have a deadline, and if I have to stop and answer a question for you it takes time away from what I'm doing for a living and what I get paid to do. So I hope that helps you a little bit. Um, again, that's rap-resources.com. Um, and I hope I, I answered that. Okay. Oh, I love this question. This is from a rapper who did not tell me what his name was. Okay. Assuming I have access to a studio, how many tracks should I put out a year? What is the drawback of too many tracks or too little tracks? And that's a very difficult question to answer because it's different for every type of music. If you are a street rapper, you're going to want to put more music into the marketplace than if you are a pop rapper. You want to release music the way your fans consume it. So if you have fans that would be happy to hear a new song from you every week, and you have enough music where you could put out a song a week, I see nothing wrong with that. Your goal is to build your fan base when you're up and coming. Once you're to the point of some renown, you're not going to put out a song every week. I'm going to keep using Thug. I don't know why I picked on him today as my example, but let me keep using him as an example to keep in the same vein. If you're, if you're Young Thug, you're not going to release a song a week. It just doesn't make fiscal sense for him to do that. He, he's going to release maybe 2 projects a year or 3 projects a year. If you're a newer artist, you can stand to have more music in the marketplace because you're really trying to attract fans to you. That doesn't mean that you just throw them out there and let them sit. You've got to actually work this music, you know. You've got to, um, shout out to Trouble, I love you, babe. Um, you've got— I'm reading my posts. Um, you've got to make sure that, um, you've got to make sure that you're delivering music in the way that your fans want to, want to receive it. So if your fans are all on SoundCloud, for example, if that's where they're listening to music and discovering music you gotta make sure that your SoundCloud account is tight and you're posting your music there. If your Facebook is where people discover your music, then you want to make sure that you're posting your videos to Facebook and not posting them to YouTube and linking them or embedding them in Facebook. You actually gotta upload them to Facebook directly so that you have a bigger reach. If you, if you upload um, content from another provider, um, they kind of stunt you so that you, you don't reach as many of your followers as you think you're reaching. Um, but you want to reach your fans wherever they expect to find you. If you're a super, super, super street artist, you might want to hand out CDs. You know, there's a portion of the population that still listens to music and gets their music from CDs. If I worked with an artist in New York, I would not hand out CDs. I'd probably hand out download cards. Um, with Trouble, we gave out a ton of CDs all through the South. It was the best way for us to distribute his music and reach as many people as possible. You know, with him, we try to put out as much music as we can. Um, I think we released 3 projects in the past year, may even be 4 in the past year. Because his market demands that from him. They want his music, you know, they fiend for it. Let's see, what other questions have you guys asked me? Okay, thank you, Mike Doe. You're talking about public relations. So why are PR firms— public relations firms, thank you, um, why are they less prevalent um, in music than they were. And my guess is that, um, it became really oversaturated about 10 years ago. All of a sudden, it seemed like anybody who was trying to get into the music industry either came in as a street team person or came in as a publicist, and I think what happened was they couldn't make enough money to survive. This is just my guess. They couldn't all make enough money to survive, so they— so the ones who were really great at what they did kind of shook out and went into other areas where they could make more money, like publicizing small businesses, film, sports, you know, different areas where they could utilize their skills but get paid a proper wage. I know that real publicists in the music industry— and there's still some amazing publicists left in the music industry— are charging $3,000 a month, $4,000 a month, $5,000 a month, $6,000 a month, $8,000 a month. So there are the public relation firms that are the big, well-connected corporations that can be part of your plan and help you get to the next level. But then there's also some smaller publicists that can get you blog posts and that can get you, um, you know, into different events. The thing about blogs is they really replaced, um, magazines, right, in, in, in the world. Everybody started to go to blogs to find music and to, and to read about the, the news and hip-hop. And we kind of burned that out, you know. We found the blogs that we could pay to post music. And instead of them posting music that they felt was good and worthy of sharing, they started posting music from anybody that would pay them $100 or $500 or $50 or whatever they wanted to charge. And the problem with doing that is you lose your fan base as a blog when you do that, because the music becomes tainted. The it becomes a mix of great music that you believe in and a bunch of bullshit that you posted in order to collect a check. And when people go to a blog and they start seeing a lot of bullshit music that they don't believe in, you lose their eyeballs. They go elsewhere. And there were a lot of publicists who were pitching blogs, and these blogs were getting payments to post. So they would say to the publicist, okay, $50, $100, And rather than pay a middleman, a lot of artists just started going right to the blogs and saying, okay, I don't need a publicist anymore. I'll just pay, you know, this blogger $50. I'll pay that blogger $100. I'll pay that blogger $1,000, you know, whatever, whatever the cost was. And I think that people couldn't make money anymore. It's, it's, it's supply and demand. It's survival of the fittest. And I don't know that that's a bad thing. I think all artists should build relationships with the bloggers anyway. You know, you should know exactly— you should know exactly who's writing, who is the person most likely to write about you at a blog. You know, bloggers all have different tastes in music, and if you get to know the bloggers really well, you're going to know which one likes the down south music, which one likes the gangster shit, which one cares about lyrics. And once you get to know who is most likely to write about you and has written about artists that are similar to you, you can start to develop a relationship with them. You can read what they write, you can give them feedback. You know, don't tell them if you, if you think they're an asshole, certainly don't tell them that. But if they write an article about somebody that that you're also a fan of as an artist, you know, why not reach out to them on their social media feed and tell them, hey, great article that you wrote about, you know, Kendrick Lamar. Man, that Young Thug piece was awesome. You really caught a glimpse of him that nobody else gets to see. You know, don't lie, but, you know, tell them exactly how you feel. So I'm gonna answer one more question before I let you guys go. Um, Wendy Day And this looks like Lince Leroy. I hope I said your name right. Um, has an awful lot of N's in there. Um, I make beats. Do I need to set up a production company to sell beats? No, you don't need to set up a production company to sell beats. Um, you can just sell beats as a producer. We covered this last Wednesday night when I was answering questions, so if you'll go back and watch that one, that'll sort of talk a little bit about, um, how you sell beats, but definitely you want to build a relationship with artists and with anybody at the labels that, um, that actually purchases beats. And that's the A&R department at a record label that purchases the beats. Okay, so guys, we made it to the end. Thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure you subscribe to this so that you know when I am live. It's going to be every Wednesday night at 7 o'clock. I tried to do this for about half an hour. I went over a little bit tonight, but, um, you guys were asking great questions and I appreciate it. Thank you everybody, take care.