LIVE with Wendy Day #004 | Answering Your Questions Live

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 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 live stream. 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 going to get some great information today. I'm really excited about this. 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. 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. 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 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 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 Hi guys, thanks for tuning in. Yay! Well, I don't have Tony here tonight to read questions to me, so you're gonna have to bear with me. I'm gonna talk and read at the same time, which I'm really not good at that. I can walk and chew gum though, I will have you know. Um, Tony is at some sort of a meeting with the good folks at Spotify, um, and I'm going to use this as a teaching moment For those of you who want to sell your own merchandise on your website, or if you want to set up a website just for merchandise, um, it's what we did for Trouble. Um, and I think his website— and this is not an advertisement, right? Um, I think it's scoobzilla.com, and it's a Shopify account, and we use Printful to print— Printful, P-R-I-N-T-F-U-L— to print. That way, when someone orders a t-shirt, we place the designs, the sizes, the colors, um, and, uh, pictures of what the t-shirts look like. We put that up on the website, and then as people order the t-shirts, um, Printful actually fulfills the orders. They ship them out. They even put a sticker on the package that says it's from Trouble as opposed to being from their company. They've done a really great job for us so far. Um, when Tony and Trouble started the merchandise company together, um, Tony actually went and had a bunch of t-shirts printed and turned our garage into a storage facility, and it really became very cumbersome because as he was trying to fill all the orders, um, just like everything in life, they kind of come in cycles. Like, he'd get a whole lot of orders and then nothing would come in, and then a whole lot of orders and then nothing would come in. And with our busy schedule, his and mine, it's really hard to be a t-shirt company, right? It's really hard to just stuff packages and send out mail, stand in that really long line at the post office. And no matter where you are in America, there's a really long line at the post office., and it just became really cumbersome. So, um, we asked around to a bunch of our industry friends, you know, who was doing what, how they were doing it, and, um, this is what Tony found. And I think that they've been using, um, I think they've been using this system for about 2, maybe 3 months now. And, um, aside from people asking where the shirts are, um, It works nicely. And, um, you know, everybody wants everything in the— in this internet generation, everybody wants everything right away. You order a shirt on Monday, and we're not Amazon, it doesn't arrive by Wednesday, and people are like, where's my shirt, where's my shirt, where's my shirt, where's my shirt? Um, but basically it takes about a week to 10 days to fulfill, but they seem to do a really good job. So I just wanted to share that with you guys for those of you who, um, want to start your own merchandise company, and I think it's a really great idea. So, um, I'm gonna answer some questions from email. You guys were kind enough to send me emails this week. Um, I stopped taking the questions for this week on Saturday, and the stuff that's come in since Saturday I'll answer next week. Um, I might have to expand this to 5 hours every Wednesday night because you guys have really been sending in a lot of questions, and they're really good questions too. Um, I, I'm gonna start, um, pulling out the ones for the topics that I'm going to talk about at length. Um, if you guys haven't noticed, I drop videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11 AM. So for the topics that I'm actually going to cover Um, I'm going to, um, hold on to those questions and try to answer them as I do the recordings so that I can kind of kill two birds with one stone, because I'm gonna have to go live every night for the amount of questions you guys are sending me. Okay, the first question comes from Lady Tiga, and she has a question regarding a musician with no fan base promoting a first single. And man, I, I know how hard this is. When working your local market, meaning you're handing out music download cards, etc., should I place only the single on the promo material, especially meaning the CD, because, you know, in the South we still hand out CDs, or should I say— or should I add, say, 4 songs in total while still promoting the main song? Also, do you mind recommending any good sites to order promotional materials from? I can do this. Okay. So when you're handing out material, um, especially if you're going to press CDs to hand out your single, you're going to want more than just one song on there. Um, I usually suggest that my artists put 4 to 5 songs on there. And of course, with the single, you're going to want the clean version, the dirty version. If you want an instrumental and an a cappella, you would need to put those on there. I no longer do a cappellas and instrumentals For me, they're kind of a thing of the past. Once the artist's single gets bubbling in the marketplace pretty well, I will then service instrumentals to the radio DJs so that when they're coming into a segment or going out on a segment, they can play the instrumental to the hot song. Once the song is playing at radio, I mean. They can, they can use that as an intro or an outro, and the music kind of, you know, goes on and on and on, which is great. I have found that when I do that, the song actually gets more love at radio when we offer that. But that's the only time that I do instrumentals, and I'm sorry to say that to you rappers who really like rapping over a hot instrumental. Yes, you should always promote one song Lady Tiga, and, um, you asked for some good sites to order promo materials from. Um, we get our CDs from a manufacturer in Orlando. Um, his name is Manny. I called him right before I went live and I asked him if I could give out his website, um, in my, um, live broadcast. He asked me not to, so I will not be calling other people ahead of time. I will just do it. And, um, I will beg their forgiveness afterwards, but he has specifically asked me not to because he just can't handle, um, more work. But I will tell you this, we pay about 30 cents a CD, so if you're paying more for CDs, you need to shop around, okay? Um, our flyers, posters, inserts, we print at clubflyers.com or miamiflyers.com. Um, they're both very similar in price, but where they seem to differ is in the shipping. So if you're, um, and this is for mostly for people in the Southeast, if you're not in the Southeast, you're going to need to Google and check out the prices of some printers in your own local area. But for us, Clubflyers.com and MiamiFlyers.com, um, they offer different sales throughout the year. For example, example, Club Flyers just had, I think, 30 or 50% off on postcards last week or the week before. So they, you know, they, they run these periodic offers where you can save money. But again, check both sites because the shipping differs on both. If you need stuff very last minute, you're going to pay a little bit more. And both of them ship via Delta Dash for $80. Meaning if you need something, um, shipped out right away, they can put it on a Delta flight into almost any airport in the United States. And you pay extra for this, obviously, but you can, um, you can pick up your printing almost within 24 hours of when it was printed, sometimes even the same day, which is kind of amazing. Um, for stickers, I use Jakprints, J-A-K-P-R-I-N-T-S. .com. Jack Prints, I think, is out of Ohio somewhere, but they seem to have great prices on stickers for those of you that print stickers. For download cards, I use Vistaprint. For my business cards, I use vistaprint.com. I also use moo cards, moo cards.com, because they have some really cool funky shapes. They have these really small rectangular business cards My business cards right now are square and they're really thick, almost as thick as a credit card, which I like a lot. I think it's really cool. And we— Tony and I get our USB drives from a place called Premium USB. This is not an advertisement, I'm just telling you where we get them from, premiumusb.com. But I got to tell you, I'm in the process now of printing my audiobook on a USB drive. I'm gonna get the USB drives that are shaped like a credit card, you know, with the little USB flap that pops out that you stick into your computer. Slick Rick was kind enough to voice my audiobook of How to Get a Record Deal, and I want to print them on credit cards. And right now I'm getting prices from about— and no exaggeration— from like 25 different companies, and I'm getting 25 different prices. It's not like they're all within the same price range, you know, like 20 cents different difference here or there. In some cases I'm finding like $2 and $3 difference. So I would suggest you get as many price quotes as possible. Google is your friend. Lady Tiga, did I answer everything that you asked? Um, when I press promotional CDs, I press them 10,000 at a time. Um, when I hand out, uh, promotional like your album, your mixtape, if you're giving it away for free, we give those out 10,000 at a time, and I usually do 2 to 3 pressings of that per mixtape, just so you know. We usually work like in a 5 to 7 state area, and if you don't understand that, you can tune into one of my other videos where I talked about how to do that. The next question is from someone who did not ask to have their name, and again, if you guys don't say it's okay for me to mention your name, I'm not going to. Because I don't want to embarrass anybody. You know, we're real funny in hip-hop, we want to act like we know everything, um, and this person actually doesn't want to be embarrassed. He or she is a little bit shy, um, but, um, the question was, how much is a publicist and do I really need one? Um, yes, I did a whole— I did a whole video on how to choose a publicist, um, and I answered some questions in my first live episode about how to choose a publicist and what a publicist does. So I'm going to be very brief in answering that, or, you know, as brief as I can be. Um, I'm pretty long-winded. Publicists run on the low end $1,500 a month, on the high end $8,000 a month. So you figure it out, you know, at the level where you are in your career, what do you need to spend? Many artists don't have $1,500 a month Um, so in order to be your own publicist, I suggest that you go to the blog sites where you want to get coverage and start reading the articles there, start reading the reviews there, get to know who the people are there, get to know the folks that review music that seem to like the type of music that you make., and those are the people that you want to reach out to. In order to get in touch with them, I suggest that you find them on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook and start a relationship. Build up a, you know, build up a relationship. Start a conversation. Find out where they're from, who their favorite artists are, why they started, you know, writing for a blog. Tell them about yourself, you know, build a relationship. It's just like what you would do in real life. You wouldn't just coldly reach out to somebody and ask for a favor if you didn't know them. And believe me, they don't owe you any favors. This is what they do for a living. They built their career just the way you're building your career, and they've worked really hard to do it. So let me start to answer some questions. Alex Shorter, you should email me directly at thisiswendyday@gmail.com. Alex is asking me how he can get a meeting with me or a phone conference. Um, thank you, Ben, who loves my spirit. Thank you, I appreciate that. Um, thank you everybody for all these really, really nice things that you're saying. I appreciate that. Um, how can our organ— this is Alex Shorter— how can our organization find independent distribution and publishing deals? Um, until you've built somewhat of a buzz, it's going to be really difficult to get either. A good place to start for distribution would be TuneCore. I use TuneCore a lot for my clients, and publishing deals come when a publisher feels that they can make money from your music. So until you're really starting to make— until you're starting to really make money with your music, it might be a little challenging to get a pub deal. And keep in mind that when you're doing a publishing deal, you don't necessarily have to get a 50/50 split, right? You could do an administration deal where you keep 90% and you, um, you give the administrator 10% to basically collect your money for you. Okay, um, am I from Chicago? No, I'm originally from Philadelphia. I moved to New York um, when I was in my early 20s. I spent, um, God, I spent like 20-plus years in New York, so I really feel like I'm a New Yorker. Like, when somebody asks me where I'm from, I secretly want to say New York, but, um, I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I feel a little bit like, um, Lil Dicky right now. Um, he went to my high school many years after I graduated. Okay, um, I have spent a lot of time in Chicago though. And yes, you can ask questions in the chat, El Bookman. Um, and forgive me, I'm a little blind, it's an age thing. So if I'm pronouncing your name wrong or if I'm reading it wrong, please forgive me. Um, most people have emailed questions in at thisiswendyday@gmail.com. And, um, what I did was I printed out some questions, and those are the majority of questions I'm going to answer tonight. Um, but yes, I am trying to keep up with the questions in the, um, chat room. Somebody's asking me a question. It looks like Baltimore Swagger, you asked me a question about, um, a not-for-profit production company. I actually answered that question late, um, in the video last week. So if you go back to my live video 003 and you go towards the end, you will hear the answer to that. Should a music producer join a songwriter's organization such as ASCAP and BMI? Absolutely. Um, and this is Desmond Quick. Desmond, um, this is a great question, but ASCAP and BMI are performing rights organizations. They're not necessarily a songwriter's organization, but I see why you call them that. Um, they pay you when your music is played live in a club or on the radio. So whenever it's performed, like performance rights society, right? So performance rights organization, excuse me. So ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are the 3 PROs. You join one of those 3, um, you upload your, uh, split sheets there, you put in your information as to what your ownership is and it's for the songs that are about to get radio play or that are going to be performed live. Wow, you guys are asking great questions, um, and what's really cool is there's like 4 people here that asked the same question and I answered it. Do I advise against in-house production? Um, hi Courtney Jackson. Do I advise against in-house producer deals— like I do record deals for artists. Um, you just tuned in, so you're not sure if I already answered. I didn't answer that. Um, a production deal is a producer deal, right? It's a production deal, is a little bit different than a record deal. The benefit of a production deal is that usually when you sign one, you get to record in a studio for free. So if you don't have a studio at your house you're going to need to do some sort of arrangement in order to be able to make beats. Um, and the best advice I can give if you're going to sign to somebody is make sure that they've got like the top-notch studio for you to use, that you can use it as much as you want, whenever you want, and that they've got the relationships in the industry to, um to actually shop your beats and sell them. Um, and Bomb Producer is asking me why I use TuneCore more than CD Baby. Um, CD Baby is just, um, you know, it's funny because I just spoke at their conference in Chicago, um, a couple weeks ago. CD Baby, when I was coming up, was more of more of a place to go to sell CDs. And the thing that I like about TuneCore— and, and you're gonna have to correct me because maybe CD Baby is the same— but TuneCore gives you 100% of the sales from your music. They don't take a 20% distribution fee. If CD Baby does the same thing, then it probably doesn't really matter one way or the other because the, the job of a distributor, whether it's a digital distributor, right, whether it's TuneCore or CD Baby, is to get your music into the digital stores and to collect your money. And not trying to be disrespectful, but neither one is rocket science when it comes to, to digital music. So you really want to work with somebody who is legitimate and has a good payment record, of which both of those companies do. They're both extremely legitimate. They have thousands and thousands of thousands of clients, right? So they've got great relationships with, um, the stores for getting music in. They just don't do anything extra, like if you want to be, um, in a Spotify list, they're not going to place you in Spotify list. You're going to have to do that yourself. There are some distributors out here, and for the share that they take, which is usually 20%, 30% if they're putting up money, Um, what they'll do is they will get you onto some Spotify lists. They'll use their relationships, or they'll buy you some front page love at, um, Apple Music so that, you know, you get into their lists, you get onto the front page so that people know that you've got a release coming out. And again, it's all, it's all about your buzz. Like, it really just depends on how strong of a buzz you have in the marketplace as to how hard somebody's gonna go for you. If, if 20% of your sales is gonna make somebody a lot of money, they're gonna really go hard. If 20% is not, then, um, not necessarily. Yes, Greg B, I promise I'm going to answer your question. I have them sitting right here. I'm just trying to clean up my little inbox here. So that I don't have to keep coming back and reading. It's very hard for me to, to do both, and Tony's not here tonight to read the questions to me. And what are your thoughts about starting an independent record label where you do everything in-house like Cash Money and No Limit? That's actually the question that Greg B asked me, and you know what, let me get to it right now. Okay, um, Andrew Hewitt Production asked me why don't I start a record label and sign artists. Um, because I'd be miserable. It's so not my goal to start a record label at all. Okay, so Greg B is asking me a question very similar to La Monica Tolliver, so I'm going to answer both of your questions at once. Um, LaMonica says that she and her husband have a record label called Money Swag Music, and our publishing company is the same name as well. They've been in business for 2 years, and her husband is the first one that they've signed, Little Versace. Her question is, would it be better to try to get a business loan from the bank for a startup business or to shop for a joint venture deal? And I love that you asked that. I think today I posted a video about how to find an investor, LaMonica,. And if you've got, um, about, uh, 15 minutes, you should definitely go and watch that because I talked about how some of my clients have found, um, their investors. Um, should you get a bank loan or a joint venture deal? The thing about getting a joint venture is you don't just wake up one day and you say, oh, I think I'll go get a joint venture deal. The label— the major labels give joint ventures to the people that are already in business that selling music. There has to be some, some incentive for them to do a deal with you. No company is going to wake up one day and say, oh, let me do a joint venture deal with this wonderful, um, Versace artist because he's really talented. They're going to say, what are your numbers? How many, how many streams do you have? They're actually looking for how many million streams you have. They're going to be looking for, you know, um, how many um, views does your YouTube, um, videos get? What is your social media following? Is it in the hundreds of thousands, or is it more like 25,000? Um, is this person performing outside of their home market, and are they getting paid for shows? So they're looking for somebody who's basically really already making money. And I know how much that sucks, because really you just want to enter into an agreement with somebody where they will fund your label and help you get to the next level, but they're not gonna do that if you don't already have some music in the marketplace and you're showing them that you can already make money. So, um, I suggest that you definitely watch the video about how to find an investor. Um, if you had to do a bank loan, you could. The problem with going through a bank to get a loan is that the music industry is very risky. It's, um, it's very hard to get a loan for something that is high risk, and they see the music business as high risk mainly because you're unable to predict— all of us are unable to predict what the reaction amongst customers is going to be to your music until you actually do it. So it's not something that you can really do a lot of market research for and find out, you know, am I going to be successful before you jump in and spend the money. You almost have to jump in and spend the money to see if there is a fan base for your type of music. So it makes it a very high-risk industry. Greg B, I know you've been sitting there waiting going, come on, come on, come on, come on. Um, Greg B, your question is, what are my thoughts on starting a record label? The reason you're asking is because you want to start one But because everything is so easy for everyone now to do on the internet, you're not sure if it would be wise. Okay, so, so Greg is asking me, um, because he knows some of the best young talent, they can't afford studio time in terms of buying beats or artwork or video shoots, and he's able to, to assist in this. He's asking me if, um, if it, if, if it makes sense for him to start a record label. He sees that, um, the average length for a label to get a deal is about 6 years. Um, 6 years is what it took for Cash Money to get a deal. Um, that's not average, actually. Um, the average— I can't speak nationally, but here in Atlanta it takes anywhere from 9 months on the short end to about 2 years on the long end. For somebody to build enough of a buzz to attract a record label. But you're asking if, you're asking if it makes sense to start a record label today. Absolutely it does. The thing about, the thing about the music industry today is it's really not just about music. So I'm, I'm hesitant for you to call your company a record label because really it's all about content, right? You're building a content company. Music is content, video is content, anything that you're putting onto social media is content. Um, so it's really more than just music today. And you kind of alluded to that in your question. You were talking about how difficult it is for artists to get production and video shot and find studio time. And it's true, like, for the most part most artists are broke, right? They don't have the money to invest into their own careers, which is really frustrating and kind of a shame. So they need to sign to some sort of a deal or some sort of an agreement with somebody who is going to put up the money and the know-how for them to, to do what they need to do. And the reason that the majors aren't Let me say this a better way. The reason that people aren't excited to sign to a major label anymore is because they take such a large piece of the pie. When you can go out and you can secure an investor who will put up anywhere from a quarter million dollars to a half a million dollars to, to work with you, and when you have the ability to hire someone that's very knowledgeable in the music industry that has a lot of experience in putting out music, why would you need to sign to a major label and give up 88% of your money and give up 100% of your ownership, 100% of your control, and be beholden to somebody who can put out your music when they feel like it? If you're working for yourself and you've got an investor. And yes, you might split your company 50/50 with somebody who puts up the money, but the bottom line is that you're calling the shots. You're able to hire the people that you think are best at what they do, and you're your own priority. So you're, you're not going to have to be shelved while you wait for yourself to put out another artist, right? Which is kind of what happens at major labels. Major labels have a team of people that are devoted to building your career and gaining success for you. But as soon as your project starts to lag a little bit, because of how expensive it is to run their company, they are trained to jump from one project right to another. So when there's a little bit of a lull in your project, they're going to jump to the next artist. Also, if there's another artist who's got a bigger buzz than you, they're going to come out first because you go where the money is. And it's just— it's, it's, it's a natural business decision, and you would make the same decision if you ran a business. You know, obviously you're you, so you think that you should come out first, but the reality is that when you're signed to a label, they're going to do what's best for the shareholders and what's best for their business. So do I think that there should be labels out there? I absolutely do. Um, I would say that, um, 99% of my clients are single artists or groups that are signed to themselves, that have started their own label. So really their, um, focus is on building their own career, but their goal is to sign more artists once they become successful. And, um, and become a real independent label, you know. I have some clients whose goal is just to get themselves on and make money, and they're not trying to sign anybody else. They just want to build their own company. And then I've got one client who is an independent record label and are doing really well and making money for They have 6 artists signed, 3 of which you know if you're a rap fan. Okay, Tamara Bubble, see, I missed her question last week. It got stuck in my, um, spam folder, so I apologize greatly, but she was kind enough to resend it for me this week. Now, this is a little bit long, guys, but it's going to really benefit you, so Hang in there with me on this one, okay? Because it's really a great question. Um, she's asking about what I think is a scam that's going on out there right now. Um, so let's talk about it before anybody gets sucked into it and loses some money. And then I'm gonna go back to the chat, I'm gonna read some more, answer some more questions, and then I still have more questions over here for email. I wasn't kidding when I told you you guys sent me a lot of Okay, so Bubble. Lately I've been coming across lots of channels and content providers asking for video content rights in order to publish your content. Red flag, red flag, red flag. For example, UNILAD has a submission platform for all video content, and they do get lots of traffic on their Facebook page, but they want exclusive rights to publish your video. And she put crazy. It is crazy. And, and Bubble, you're absolutely right. Tamara, this is crazy. Also, there's a website called SubmitHub that has labels and bloggers on there that you can submit music to. You can submit for free, but it's limited, and bloggers don't have to provide a response or any feedback. If you go the premium route and you pay less than a dollar per blog submission, the blogger must listen for at least 20 seconds and provide feedback whether or not they select you or get you your money back. They have legit blogs on there like DJ Booth and Fashionably Early, etc., etc. Anyway, I've been selected by several blogs and most just post my submission. However, there are quite a few blogs on the site who are not really blogs in my humble opinion, but just have created YouTube channel and select any and every indie song they come across so that artists can sign away non-exclusive rights to their music or video content, as well as allow them to monetize the video on the channel. Another huge red flag. The blog that's selected has tens, maybe hundreds, of indie bands and artists' music, all of whom have signed the agreement, probably because at first glance the channel has over 27,000 subscribers. I did a little research and the subscribers don't seem real because the videos hardly have any views. So I think they're just monetizing a ton of video content and not really helping these artists. I was wondering what your thoughts or advice on these new video contracts, because I see it becoming a much bigger problem down the road with so many artists competing for the same attention and buzz and chance to go viral. Would you advise artists to stay away from these kinds of offers or attempts at a little exposure, or attempts at getting a little a little additional exposure. I've said no and refused to do anything like this, but I feel like other desperate or naive artists may jump at the thought of going viral. Or maybe I'm being petty, but I wanted your opinion. Here's my opinion. And, and first of all, thank you for this because I wasn't aware that this was going on. And let me preface my answer by saying that, um, the question that I just read is Tamara's— Tamara Bubbles opinion, and now I'm about to give you my opinion, and you're gonna have to go and do the research on these different companies so that you can decide for yourselves whether it's legit or whether it's a scam, whether it'll help you or whether it won't. I have a problem with any website, whether it's video or audio, that asks you to give up the right to your song. So if you have to license it to them and they're not paying you for that license I have a tremendous problem with that. And in the contract that Tamara sent to me, um, she actually sent me the physical contract that they had sent to her. It states plain as day that they can use your content as licensed, and they don't have to pay you royalties, they don't have to pay you in advance, they don't have to pay you anything. So basically, you're giving them the right to make money on your video for the chance of some additional exposure. I'm not sure what your goal would be in that. If your goal is for somebody to see one video of yours and then spend money on your music and come to your shows and buy your merchandise, I think that's a stretch. I think you're— you need to reach people in as many different ways as possible, not just through video. But you need to reach them with your music. You need to, to reach them, you know, face to face. You need to reach them on social media. You need to reach them with your show. It's not like you can just do one thing and it's going to impact your career. You have to do everything in order to impact your career. So if you're willing to give up content and ownership in order to have success in this business, I just don't think you're going to be successful in this business. Because the whole point of, of this business is to monetize. And yes, I have a problem with mixtapes, and yes, I have a problem with all of the different sites that we put our music on in order to take ourselves to the next level. But some of the sites that we work with, like the YouTubes and the SoundExchange— the SoundClouds, excuse me, the AudioMax— they're legitimate and they have a real subscriber base and they have fans that come there Um, I think SoundCloud is probably the best example of that. I love SoundCloud even though it's not monetized yet. I'm excited because I can go there and I can look at my artist's music and I can see how many people are listening to the songs. I can see how far they're getting. I can see feedback like right there in the song. I can see what part of the song inspired somebody to make a comment. Either negative or positive. So in research capability, I feel like I'm getting something in return by posting music on SoundCloud, even though, even though there's no check attached. But if I'm gonna be on somebody's video platform and it's not a platform that millions of people are going to, like a Spotify or a YouTube or Apple Music, if it's not really well known I just don't see the value in having my music there, you know. It's, it's, it's— there, there's a point where you want to stand out, but there's also a point where you kind of have to go where the fans are. And I guess it's up to each and every one of you to decide if that makes sense for you or not. Um, I'm with Bubble. I wouldn't do it, you know. I love that she sent me this. I think it's— I think it's— I think it's awesome. And thank you, Tamara, for sending that in. Okay, you guys are talking to each other, so our music lawyer is very expensive. Not having one is more expensive, so I guess it's all relative, right? You're asking me An entertainment attorney— and by the way, Friday's video is how to choose an entertainment attorney— they're going to run anywhere from $300 an hour to $1,000 an hour. You'll hire one when you have a contract for them to look over or you need some paperwork. Um, yes, they're probably a little bit expensive, but I think not having one, like just signing a contract without having them look it over, is even more expensive, personally. Thanks, Tamara. Is the best way to grow a fan base to collaborate with a higher-ranked entity or be posted on a blog? Is it better to grow a platform organically? And how important is consumer psychology in this? Wow, lots of great questions. And your name is Yo and a bunch of numbers, so I can't shout you out. Well, I just— I guess I just did, didn't I? Um, No, I don't think the best way to grow a fan base is to collaborate with a higher-ranked— and they're in quotes— entity. Um, if I were to go and do a song with Young Thug and no one knew who I was, would it benefit me? Absolutely not, because nobody knows who I am. If I were to build my buzz to the point where people in my own region knew who I was and then I were to get a feature, yes, it would help take me to the next level. But when you're a brand new artist and you're trying to use somebody that's already on to get exposed, it won't do it. You know, either, either people won't care because they've never heard of you, they'll think you paid for the feature and that you've got money, and a whole bunch of people will come at you trying to get you to hire them to do some god unknown service that they say that they offer. Um, Also, if you're going to use an artist who signed to a label, like a Young Thug or Rick Ross or a Meek Mill, or, you know, anybody that's signed to a record label, you have to clear the rights to use them on your song. And that label can tell you no, and you won't hear the no until you submit the song. It's kind of a catch-22. So, um, you could pay Bootsy, right, to be on a record with you, and then you could go to Atlantic and say, hey, I want to use this And Atlantic could say, no, we don't want you to use our artist, but you've already paid Bootsy. So now what do you do? You've got a song that you can't really use, and in your mind, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, I'm gonna put this out on my mixtape because I'm not gonna waste this money that I just spent on Bootsy. But they have every right to sue you for utilizing their artist on your song. Okay, I'm gonna answer a couple of these and then I'm gonna come back to your questions. I see you asking about ISBN numbers and everything. Um, ISBN, by the way, is for books. I think you mean IRS code, and I might be even saying that backwards myself. Okay, this is from DJ Lighter. He saw my copyright video, and you're welcome. Um, here's the scenario: everyone offers the advice of make sure you have a good lawyer. My questions are, how do you go about finding one? How can you judge the quality of a lawyer? And is there an industry resource that could help show a lawyer's ability? Well, Shane, here's the cool thing. Your email inspired me to make a how to choose a lawyer video. So, and that's going to drop on Friday at 11:00 AM. So I'm going to let you watch that. Um, but I am going to answer the last two parts of your question because I did not put them in the video. Um, there is no resource that tells you the quality of a lawyer, unfortunately. The great thing about attorneys is if they're shady, they risk getting disbarred, and if they're disbarred, they can't make any money. So there is an incentive for lawyers to not be complete and total douchebags. You asked if there is an industry resource that shows their ability. There's not. When you choose one, you should definitely ask around. To other people. Um, what I do whenever I'm looking for a new attorney is I find out who they represent, and then I reach out to those people or their camps, first of all, to find out if they're still working with that attorney, and if they are, how they feel about them. And the cool thing about the music industry is that people will be relatively forthcoming with you if you ask them. Um, it's very hard to get somebody to share something that they have that's really great and working for them. I don't know why that is, because I readily share my contacts and my connections with folks, um, but I know most people don't do that. So it's going to take more than just you sending somebody an email saying, hey, I see you work with, you know, Attorney Bob Smith, what do you think? Um, you're gonna have to really reach out to somebody and say, hey, can, can we have a phone conversation? I'm thinking about hiring Bob Smith. I know that you've worked with him, you know. Could you— could we please have a conversation? You want to get them on the phone because you're going to want to hear the tone of their answer. There's two ways to say that you like something, right? Like, um, I went to Chick-fil-A today— tonight, and I got unsweet tea. I fucking love their unsweet tea, right? I put lemon in it, no sugar, It's awesome. I love it. Okay, that's one answer. Another answer is, Wendy Day, how do you like Chick-fil-A's unsweet tea? It's good. I like it. But if I were writing those two answers, you may not see the difference in my tone if I just say, man, I like it. Yeah, I like it. They're two very different answers. So reach out to folks, ask if you can have a conversation, let them know why you're trying to have a conversation. And then, you know, also build a relationship with, with people in the music industry. You know, don't just need something and come at them. You may want to build a bunch of different relationships with people that are successful so that when you need an attorney, you can come to somebody like me and say, hey Wendy, who's your lawyer? You know, it would be awesome if you could call TJ from TJ's DJs and say, TJ, Who's your lawyer? You know, I know that you're working with B.O.B. Who's B.O.B.'s lawyer? You're working with Kevin Gates, you and B. Rich. You know, hey, B. Rich, who's Kevin Gates' lawyer? The more relationships you can build, the more questions that you can get answered legitimately without having to worry about whether somebody's giving you a real answer or a bullshit answer, and whether they're trying to hoard their connection or whether they're sharing and forthcoming. Okay, I've kind of, I've kind of, um, ran that one into the ground. Raycio Shelby, and I hope I pronounced your name correctly. Hi, how are you doing today? Who can I send my music to to get a good mix and master? If it says free beats on YouTube and you use it when you load your lyrics up, and if I put the producer's name on it, can I get sued? Okay, these are two great questions. Mixing and mastering. For mixing, for most of my clients, I use Corey Moe, who did all of UGK stuff. He owns Country Rap Tunes with Bun B. Corey Moe does a really great job. He mixes and masters. I usually have him mix, and then I usually send my music to Big Bass Brian at Bernie Grundman for a master. Yes, you can have the same guy do both. But for me, I like to have two different sets of ears on something. I just feel like if my mix guy missed something, then the mastering engineer will catch it, um, and I just, I prefer that personally. Um, there's another really great, um, mix engineer. He does all the Future stuff. His name is Seth Perkins. Seth is a little bit pricey, um, when you're making music and you're selling millions of copies, he's not expensive, right? But if you're a brand new artist and you're just starting out, Seth is probably going to be a little bit out of your price range. Um, we used Seth on Trouble's first, uh, like 5 or so singles that we put out. Um, and then Trouble started working with an engineer who does a really great job of mixing his music because he's gotten to know Trouble so well. Um, he does a really great job of mixing his music. Um, this is another answer that kind of comes back to build relationships, because if you're listening to somebody's music and you really like the mix on it, you're going to want to find out who mixed and mastered their music. For, for me, when I first started working with Trouble, that person was Future. I really liked the sound that Future had, and I had the ability to call somebody who works with him and say, hey, you know, who, who mixed and mastered this music? Because I want to have them do Trouble's music. And because the guy had a relationship with me and he really loved Trouble, he was like, you know, here's the phone number, here's the name, call this guy. So, um, this is a great question. Free beats, it says free beats on YouTube. Unless you have a contract from somebody, um, no, you don't have the rights to use it. If there is a website that says specifically on there, there's a disclaimer that said you— that says you may take this beat and you may use it and you don't owe me any money, I suggest you screenshot that. I suggest you screenshot it, print it, save it in 25 different places. And then put it out, because you run the risk— without a contract, you run the risk of getting sued by any producer. You need to have paperwork. This is where that lawyer question kind of came in handy. Okay, um, oh, let me come back to here and then I'll answer this last question over here. Oh yeah, I wanted to answer the question about the IRC code. You can Google, um, is it IRS or is it ISRC? Um, Google both of them, figure out which one it is first, and then, um, you can purchase that. Um, we get all of ours from the distributor that my clients use. They supply it, and we make sure that we have ownership of it. I have an independent label with 5 artists including myself, ages 14 to 18, and I'm 16. We seem like a joke right now. No, you don't. We seem like a joke right now, but I say that by the time I'm 18 to 20, we will be what majors want. Can you give us some pointers? Yes, the best pointer that I can give to you is to prove to the majors that you are what they want. Go out there and build your social media following with real social media folks. Um, I mean, with real fans, excuse me. Don't buy likes, don't buy views. Um, and build a real buzz. The, the more real fans you have, the more money you can make, and the more attractive you will be to the industry and to everyone. Oh, I'm sorry, you are asking me, please educate all children every day. You are talking about books, you are talking about ISBN numbers. Forgive me, love, I'm so sorry. Um, where did I get my ISBN number? When I put my book out, um, I used BookBaby, which is the sister company to CD Baby. And when I put my book out, the ISBN number was assigned to me by BookBaby. Um, what is my strategy for book distribution? Um, do I use Nielsen? Um, no, I don't. Um, CD Baby puts it out there. My goal was never to become a bestseller with my book. Um, in fact, when I put it out, I think I had it at $5 for 4 years, right? You could buy my book for 5 bucks. You could download it and read it. Um, I wanted to make it as cheap as possible. I made it only digital because this whole world is going digital, and I wanted you guys to get used to reading stuff on your smartphone, your tablet, your laptop. Um, so I only offered it digitally. If you didn't— if you didn't want to read it digitally, you didn't get to read it. And I was cool with that because my goal was not to be an author. My goal was to teach people how to get a record deal, Um, it's the number one question that people ask me even today. I get very tired of answering the same thing over and over and over again, so I wrote a book for $5 so that I could say to somebody who said, Wendy, how do I get a record deal? I could send them the link. It's— that's really why I wrote the book. Um, on average, how long does the popular sound last in the game until the next shift? It really depends on the sound. Um, I have found that it can be anywhere from 3 to 5 years. Um, for those of us that have been in the industry a long time, we've even noticed that the speed of songs is constantly changing. They'll go faster, then they'll come back slower, then they'll go faster, then they'll come back slower. Um, and that cycle usually takes somewhere between 3 to 5 years. Um, that's why a lot of you will see artists come out and then they'll last for like 1 or 2 albums and then they'll disappear. That's why they haven't been able to change with the time and change their sound and reach a new fan base. Okay, um, thank you, JC, for answering the question about Lander. Um, I know that Tony uses Lander and it's spelled L-A-N-D-R. Um, he uses that for mixing and mastering. Um, I don't. I still do it the old-fashioned way and I send it out because I want human ears to, um, to tweak the, the artists that I work with. I work with almost all new artists, and most new artists don't have the experience that the mixing and mastering guys do. And they can fix a lot of, um, mistakes, if you will. So that's why I use real people. Um, Curtis Bracefield— Brassfield is asking me, is, um, Big Bass Brian— wasn't he DJ— didn't he do DJ Quik's early stuff? I don't know. I would need to look at the liner notes to tell you that. Um, but I can tell you that I got Big Bass Brian from Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre uses Big Bass Brian to mix and master. All of his stuff. Um, he gave him to me very early on in my career and very early on in his career. He still uses them, I still use them. No disrespect, but when Dr. Dre tells me who to use to get the best sound, I listen. How much does a regional campaign cost after you've done the legwork in the streets. I think you're asking about radio. Oh, there you go, you're asking about regional radio. Okay, thank you. Um, it depends, it depends on the time of year. The fourth quarter is always more expensive. Right now it's more expensive to work a radio record. Um, radio this year got very, very crowded around May, so this whole summer and fall have been really costly at radio. If you've noticed, we haven't worked a Trouble record at radio in a minute. That is why. He's on Key to the Streets right now, which went— I think it's at number 2 or number 3 at urban radio. And I think Fly told me that he spent around $200,000 to get it there. It's national. When I do a regional campaign, to directly answer your question, I usually spend somewhere around $25,000 or $30,000 to see what I have. If the record grows legs, then I'll spend a little bit more, but I spend really slowly because I'm always afraid that a record's not going to take off. I have a client, we worked his record at radio in the spring. The first guy that I hired did not do a great job. Things were very tough at radio at that point. I wasn't sure if he was lying to me or if it was true. So halfway through, I hired another radio guy. I guess what I'm saying here is I never give the radio guys all the money at once. The second guy did a far superior job. He's the guy that I usually use for radio. He did a good job, but the song still didn't take off. It was very frustrating. We ended up spending $30,000 at radio and we had very little to show for it. It was really frustrating. Um, so Brian Hendershot is asking me if I'm suggesting to put music only on sites that pay you for streams, or both paid and free streaming sites. Um, you're gonna have to put your music on sites that don't pay you in order to reach the fans that go there. And, um, you know, you probably wrote this before, before I answered that last question, so forgive me. If I'm beating a dead horse here, but SoundCloud is a great example. You've got to be on SoundCloud. There's so many fans there that you want to be there. You know, of all the streaming services, YouTube pays the least in terms of streaming. And I wrote an article, it's at industryreport.com. It's— I forget the title of it. I wrote it back in August. It has the word streaming in the title. It's probably called something like How to Succeed at Streaming or Getting Paid Anyway. In that article, I broke down what each streaming service pays per stream, and I used a real artist as an example. And you may want to take a look at that just so you see where artists are getting paid a little bit better than other places, so that those are the links that you put up. If you get paid to have a song at Spotify a little bit better than YouTube, you may want to promote Spotify links in with all of your other links. Not, not exclusively Spotify, but you may want to drive people to Spotify and iTunes because you make a little bit more money than you do when you drive them to SoundCloud. You got to drive them everywhere, but you may want to focus a little bit more on the ones that where you make a little bit more money. Okay, yes, I'm on top of my, my questions and answers. Okay, this is, um, also from DJ Lighter. Thank you, Shane. Um, at what point is a song or a beat owned by the creator? How can the creator prove that a song or beat is theirs? And then he sent me some links to YouTube and he said, below is a producer claiming that he created a song for a very well-known artist, um, from Louisville, Kentucky. You guys can figure out who it is. Um, he's attempting to use the creation date on his music software as proof of ownership. Is that possible? And, um, DJ Lighter, I, I didn't know if you wanted me to use the example and actually say who it was. I didn't really want to put you out there, um, in case you, um, you, you didn't want me to to, to mention who it was. Um, but when does an artist own the song or the beat? As soon as it's created. The second you finish making it, you own it. How can you prove that it's, that it's yours? Um, yes, he can absolutely use the creation date on the software to prove that he made it on that date, but if he doesn't copyright the beat, or if, or if the song isn't copywritten um, copyrighted. If he didn't apply for a copyright for the song, then he can prove that it's his song, but he can't sue for damages, um, for somebody who took the song from him. And my guess is that the record label— because the artist who you used as the example is signed to a major label— so my guess is that that major label has also applied for the copyright, maybe not of the underlying beat, but of that song. And whoever created that beat is going to be listed on that copyright. So if I were, um, this producer who said basically that this artist stole my song, um, the first thing I would do is hire a lawyer. Um, the second thing I would do is I would find out who owns the copyright on that song and find out if the date was prior to the creation date on that producer's music. The way that lawsuits work for copyright, when you feel that someone has taken your song, um, you have to prove that it's yours. You have to prove when you made it, and usually a copyright, or like you said, the date on your software would prove that. And then you also have to prove that that artist had access to your song. Nothing is unique, right? Nothing is unique. Everything has been done in music. So it's possible that there could be a producer sitting in Atlanta, Georgia, and another producer sitting in Portland, Oregon, and they both make beats that are very similar to each other. That's very possible. So if I rap over the beat from the guy in Atlanta you know, can the guy in Oregon sue me for, for stealing his beat? He absolutely can, but it's up to me to prove that I didn't take his beat. If he can't prove that he got the beat to me somehow, he cannot prove that I stole his, his beat. Additionally, um, again, the way the law works is the beat has to be similar enough to the average ear, not to a musicologist, not to somebody that does this for a living. But if the average fan were to hear this song and this song side by side, would they say that yes, they're the same song? And basically you got to take it to court, which means you need to have the money to be able to sue somebody so, you know, to hire a lawyer so that you can sue somebody and let it get to the point where the average listener can say, yes, this beat belongs to this guy, or no, we don't think that this beat was stolen, it's not similar enough. And, um, there was a, um, there was a song, and you guys can go back and you can, um, listen to one of the last live episodes that I did where I talked about this where the lawsuit went on forever. And then, um, I think it was— it was Marvin Gaye, it was his estate, I think. I can't remember, but the estate, um, won the case and then it was appealed. So it's going to be like 12 years before anybody sees any money on this song. It was a huge song and it made a ton of money for the artists and the producers and the labels, but it was, you know, it was very contentious, and it's something that's going on and on. That doesn't mean that if you get jerked out of a beat that you should just roll over and take it, but you should definitely seek legal counsel and follow the advice of your lawyer, because your lawyer is not trying to drain you financially in order to file a lawsuit. You've got to do what's best for you given what you have and what, and what is available to you. Okay, so guys, how long did I yammer on? Oh my God, over an hour. Okay, I'm gonna let you guys get on with your night. Some of you are probably watching a baseball game. Thanks for tuning in. I'm gonna drop videos Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11 AM, and every Wednesday night at 7 o'clock I go live. If you want to send me questions, thisiswendyday@gmail.com. Um, put in that email whether or not you want me to mention your name, um, live or not, because if you don't tell me I can, I won't. I'm gonna be respectful. I'm gonna default to respectful. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. Thank you so much. This will post, it'll be up on my page. Um, I think it takes about an hour to process, but it'll be on my page. So if you missed something or you came in late, um, you can check it out. And thanks for tuning in. Okay y'all, bye.