LIVE with Wendy Day #007 | Answering Your Questions Live

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 We're 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. On 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. Hi guys, I'm sorry I'm late tonight, man. We hit traffic coming from the city. I think Atlanta, um, is like LA. It took us an hour and a half to get to Alpharetta. From downtown, and Tony was doing like 90 the whole way. And I kept saying, I'm supposed to be live. One of y'all's gonna have to teach me how to go live from my phone so that if I'm ever late again, you won't know. Happy Thanksgiving Eve. Thank you, Triumph, I appreciate that. I need to move my screen around so that I can actually see. Oh, there you guys are! Ron Flip the Jumpman, hey! DeAndre Williams, hey! Dark Brothers Entertainment, hi guys! No, Ron, I was just late. I was in traffic with Toadie. Toadie was driving like an idiot to get us home in time. You know, my biggest fear was that he'd smash my car. Isn't that silly? I was so worried that, um, my car is my baby. I have my dream car, so I was worried. Okay, Young Diddy is asking what label do I think is or have is having a run like No Limit or Cash Money has had. Um, I think TDE is doing a great job out on the West Coast. Um, I think Think It's a Game— I'm assuming you mean like an independent that is kind of doing it big. And maybe that's not what you mean, um, Young Diddy, but Think It's a Game is doing great. You know, they went number one with, um, YFN Lucci this past week. They hit urban, uh, the urban radio charts at number one. DeAndre is asking me what do I think about Kanye. I don't. Um, I, I think he's having a breakdown in front of all of us. Young Diddy is saying yes, that's exactly what he was asking. I think TDE is doing a great job. I think, I think that I'm saying the same thing over. You already know what I think, I'm sorry. Greg is asking me who is Think It's a Game. Think It's a Game is an independent label based here in Atlanta. Um, the first artist they had was Trinidad James, All Gold Everything. Um, at the same time they dropped Rich Homie Quan and he kind of blew up. They now have YFN Lucci who's doing his thing. Um, and they have, um, uh, Forte Bowie, I think, is an artist that's coming up from Think It's a Game. Ron is asking me, uh, do I think flyers are still needed to promote Um, yes, I do. I, I do use flyers. I'm actually— use postcards more than flyers. And if I'm attending an industry event, um, I use a shape other than the 4x6-inch postcards because I want to stand out. I use circular ones or I use square ones to stand out. Um, but yes, I, I still find that flyers are helpful They're great to put on counters at retail stores. They're great to use at high schools because the artist can autograph them with a Sharpie and they can hang inside of a locker for somebody that's in high school or middle, middle school. Um, so yes, we still use fly— we use postcards. We also use download cards, which look like business cards, but they have all of the artists' social media links and all the download links, like any place where you could stream or listen to the music. DJ Triumph is asking if the music industry can cause someone to go crazy. I can cause me to go crazy. Um, yes, I do think the music industry— I think that artists especially are emotional beings, and I think that emotional people feel things more passionately than average people. And I think that when things go really haywire in the music industry, that it's very stressful for artists. I also think that, you know, artists, um, artists can hit their peak when they're 19, 20, 21 years old. So it's possible for an artist to feel like there has been at 23, 24, 25. Even though they're not, I could see where they could feel that way, and that's got to be really stressful. So yeah, I think that, um, I think we have mental health issues in the music industry. Um, was it Kid Cudi that just said that he was battling depression? You know, good for him for battling it, good for him for coming out on the other side, and good for him for talking about it live. I know sometimes folks tend to keep their emotions in and not share, so good for him for being open. Um, Kwavia Feti, and I hope I'm pronouncing your name right because I will butcher a name, um, unintentionally. Um, Kwavia is asking, do you need an EPK? Um, an EPK is an electronic press kit. Um, yeah, I think an EPK is a good idea. It shows um, footage of your shows. It shows who you are and what you stand for. It's sort of like a bio on film, right? Um, I'm a big fan of EPKs, and the more of a buzz you have, I think, um, the more necessary an EPK is because you want to get the blogs and media talking about you, but you also want to control what they're saying about you. You know, you want to make sure that you're getting your image out there accurately. Douglas is asking me if I'm in Atlanta. I am. You're asking what are some good events in town to showcase talent. I don't know. I'm not at that level in my career, so I really don't— there's a shit ton of showcases for newer artists. Um, I don't go to them, so I'm not familiar with them. Um, so you're gonna have to ask somebody that is involved more with the showcasing portion of talent. Um, I know there's a bunch of them, and I know that they're downtown. Um, Tampa Mystic is a great person to follow to find out what's going on. Um, P. Brown is another great person to follow to to find out what's going on with showcases in Atlanta. Also the bigger Rankin team. DeAndre Williams is asking me why I don't start a label. Um, because it's not my mission. I wouldn't enjoy doing that. It's, it's certainly not what I would want to do for a living. Um, not to mention the fact that all of you would, um, try to get signed to my label and you drive me crazy. Young Diddy is asking another question. Is there an independent label? Oh, is this the same question? You're asking if there's an independent label out now that you have taken to another level like I did with Cash Money? No, no, no, I'm not looking to take an independent label Um, I'm not looking to take an independent label to the majors. I, I just don't think there's a need unless you don't have an entrepreneurial sense. I just don't think there's a need for independent labels anymore. I do have clients that I'm working with, like right now I'm working with an artist here in Atlanta called Trouble. He's from DuckTape, um, and he's doing really well. He's starting to explode, you know. It's always cool when you've got an artist that you're working regionally, it's always exciting when they get to that next level and they branch out of the regional, out of the region, and become more of a, you know, like, um, semi-national artist. And that's where Trouble is right now. Um, he's doing shows in St. Louis, Dallas, like he's really starting to branch out of, um, the Southeast, and I think that's really awesome. I'm working with an artist named Flawless He is based in Rhode Island. He is super lyrical, and we're just getting started with his project, so I'm excited to be working with him. Julian Murphy is asking me if I think it's better for independent labels to pay for major— a major distribution deal, or get a buzz first before considering a major distribution deal. Um, first of all, I don't think any indie label should ever pay for distribution. You don't have to pay for a distribution deal. So why would you? But I do think you should get a buzz first before you do any kind of major distribution deal, um, because you need to have leverage in order to negotiate a good split. In a perfect world, you want as close to 80/20 as possible, and without, um, a track record of success, it's going to be really hard to get that. Um, most of the artists that I work with, we start at TuneCore and we put out the music on TuneCore and build the buzz. We also put it out through the mixtape sites like DatPiff, LiveMixTapes, MyMixTapes, Spinrilla, and get the artist buzzing. But in terms of making money on streaming and sales, we start at TuneCore and then we work our way up. Trouble is currently at Empire Distribution, but we're about to move him from Empire to 1RPM because we need a little bit more personalized, um, attention than we're getting at Empire. Empire is a great distributor, um, but we just need a little bit more attention, a little bit more help with getting him like on the front page of iTunes and stuff like that. Um, Dark Brothers Entertainment is asking me, how do you protect intellectual property when dealing with t-shirt companies and graphic artists. Um, your attorney would prepare a release that would give you the rights to use, um, whatever your logo or your design is. Um, but I know that's not what you're asking me because I think you sent me this in an email, um, that I have in my stack here tonight. Um, so I'm just going to answer the one that I think that you emailed to me. Um, you asked, how do you protect yourself to stop a graphic artist from stealing your idea for your t-shirts? And that's a little bit harder to do because even if you, even if you have copyrighted the image, there's no way to stop somebody from bootlegging you, right? So you need to be first to market, and you need to make sure that you've got the proper funding to market and promote so that even if somebody does bootleg your shit, um, you can still collect the lion's share of the money. But sadly, there is no way to stop somebody from bootlegging you. Um, I utilize graphic designers that I've got a relationship with, and I'm very comfortable when setting up designs with them. I'm very comfortable in the fact that they're not going to bootleg us. DeAndre is asking me if I think the Illuminati is part of the music industry. Um, and thanks for the Trouble Trouble shoutouts, um, Quavia, that's cool. Um, no, I, I don't think the Illuminati is, um, is in the music industry. I, I know that a lot of you think that. You know, one of the things that I've noticed in my 24 years in the music industry is that it almost feels like every time a person of color succeeds, that the world has to take their success away from them. And it's not that Jay-Z can be successful because he is a talented businessman or a really skilled artist. It must be that he sold his soul to the Illuminati. So I am not on that bandwagon. I, I really don't support the folks that say that, um, the Illuminati control the music industry, um, because then I'm taking away from people that really put in a lot of work and a lot of effort to pop. And, um, I just don't support it. Um, Quavy is asking, do you need an EPK when you send the music to blogs to help? Um, no, not necessarily. You just need the music, you need a great bio, and you need a photograph of the artist. Um, and it would really help if you had a buzz because the music industry is so oversaturated right now that the blogs are getting inundated with music and with artists and they've so many times in the past posted an artist who only had 1 or 2 songs and then stopped rapping or stopped singing and decided to, to move on, um, that they really want to make sure that when they post somebody, they've got a little bit of a buzz and they've got some sort of a track record going for them in their area. So once you build a buzz in your area, it's going to get much easier to get the blogs to post you. Um, we had a really hard time getting Trubb posted, um, so we bypassed the blogs completely. And I'm not telling you to do this because the blogs are important, but I am telling you that we had a really hard time, um, finding a publicist that would work with Trubb and getting him the early love on the blogs that we just chose to spend money building his buzz, and then we got him to a level where they couldn't ignore him anymore. And, um, they started reaching out to him to do interviews, and they started reaching out to Tony, who manages Trouble. Um, they started reaching out to Tony to, um, to start, um, getting the interviews and posting information about him. And now he pretty much puts something out on his SoundCloud, and the blogs just pick it up from there. Or Tony will send it out to, you know, 10 or 15 of the different blogs, and all the other blogs, it's like a feeding frenzy. They'll all pick it up from the other, um, blogs. Adam is asking me about streaming. Why do artists still promote and ask fans to stream their music if it pays crap? Then why do they keep telling fans to do that instead of buying it? Um, first of all, Adam, with an indie artist, they don't really pay crap. Um, I wrote an article on my blog, which is industryreport.com, that breaks down what the streaming services pay. Um, and I've seen artists making $10,000 a month across all the streaming platforms, a relatively new artist making $10,000 a month. I just, I, I don't think that's bad, you know. The industry's changing and people are changing the way they listen to music and the way they consume music, and it's going to streaming. And we can fight it and we can try to force people to, you know, buy music and store it on their phones, but that's not how most people buy music. Right now it's 1/3 CDs, 1/3 streaming, and 1/3 downloading MP3s, right? But the streaming is increasing and the downloading and the CDs are decreasing, they're declining. So I like to— I give people music every way that they want to listen to it, but we promote streaming because that is the portion that's gaining. You know, research has told us that people are going to streaming. People prefer streaming. You don't need as much memory on your phone if you stream music because you don't have to save music on your phone, and you don't have to save it in the cloud and then have gaps in your listening if you're trying to listen to music on your phone that you have saved to your iTunes in the cloud. Um, with Spotify or with Apple Music or with Tidal or whatever streaming service you prefer to use, um, you can pretty much listen to anything you want anytime you want. And my concern would be if you're a new artist and you bypass the streaming services, then people just wouldn't hear your music, those who prefer to stream. And I wouldn't want to lose, um, a third or 40% of the marketplace. But, um, take— read that article that I have about streaming on my, on my blog. It's industryreport.com, and it shows you what each stream is worth. But I just don't think $10,000 a month for a new artist streaming is, is bad. DJ Triumph is asking me what made me decide to work with Trouble. Um, when I work with artists, they need to have 3 things. They need to have, um, marketable music that fans will like. That doesn't mean that I have to like the music, it means that fans have to like the music. Um, they also need to have a proper budget for me to be able to market and promote. Um, for what I do, I need at least a budget of $150,000, um, and then I charge for what I do. So on top of that The artist needs to have a budget to be able to pay me. And then the last thing I look for is the work ethic. And what I looked for in Trouble, he met all three of those, um, um, things that I require to work with somebody. And I watched two people work with him prior to me and not get him to the level that I felt he could get to. So, um, that's actually why I chose to work with him. I just felt that, um, I saw his, um, authenticity. I saw his fans and how people reacted to him. I saw his charisma. He's got that it factor. And to me, he looked like a young T.I., somebody that could start out at that street level and then as they grew in their career become more mainstream and more commercial, and I saw that in him. So I was able to look at him and kind of see and project where he would be 10 years from now, and that was very attractive to me. Um, so that's why. Caden Brands is asking me, how can you tap into the college market to take an artist on the road? Um, when we do promo tours we market and promote on college campuses. It's part of what we do. So for, for my artists, the colleges already know who they are because they've already been on the campus promoting. So it's relatively easy to find out who is in charge, um, either at the, um, sororities or the fraternities. You know, you can either go Greek or you can find out who's in charge of the student services, the people that put on the concerts. The organization that puts on— there's an organization that supports student government and the student services organizations, and they do a conference, a convention, annually in February. It's at the end of February every year and I think it's called NAFTA, N-A-F-T-A. Um, I will, I will find out exactly. There's actually two organizations, one is bigger than the other. I will find out the name of both of them and I will put it, um, underneath the, this video once it goes live. Just, um, probably Friday, I'll do it Friday or Saturday, but I will put the link for you so that you can join that organization, attend their regional events and attend their conference. You can have your artist perform at their convention at the end of February, and everybody will be in attendance at that convention that chooses who to bring in and pay for shows. So it's a great, it's a great place for you to start in terms of getting your artist accepted into the colleges. Also, there's some people out here that are doing college tours. I noticed that Young MA is going on a college tour starting in February, so you may want to get your artist onto a tour from somebody that already, um, somebody that already, um, has a tour set up. Just make sure you have enough of a buzz to have benefit when you get on that tour. Like, that's not how you break an artist. Is by touring, right? You break an artist by building buzz, and then once you get them to the level where they're popping and people know who they are, then you put them on tour. Um, Jose is asking me, um, I missed your question last week. I'm so sorry, Jose. As you've noticed, I really suck at answering questions and reading them at the same time, so please forgive me and be a little patient with me. Um, what is my perspective on radio broadcast considering that podcasting is in now. Um, they're very different. Podcasting is really somebody's curation of music, whereas a radio broadcast plays whatever is popular and whatever they're paid to play, basically. Um, but they're two very different extremes. Um, podcasting is extremely popular. Right now. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I don't listen to music podcasts though. I listen to, um, podcasts to help me like get better at social media or get better at marketing. Um, but from my perspective, they're really two very different things. Radio broadcasts are what I utilize to get an artist more mainstream, whereas a podcast is something that I would utilize to reach a, a niche, a certain niche market. Um, yes, Ron, um, the Lump that I mentioned is the guy in Houston that used to do promotion. That's who introduced me to the guys from, uh, Cash Money back in the '90s. Thank you, Quavia. It is good to see him grow. We're talking about Trouble. DJ Triumph is asking me, do I believe reality TV can hit an artist, new or old? Um, are you asking if you think it can make an artist, like rebuild an artist? Um, here's my problem with reality TV. Reality TV exists to show the really negative sensationalist side. So in order for your reality show to be a hit, I feel like it's got to have a lot of confrontation and ratchetness and things that make people look in almost like a train wreck, right? And sometimes showing too much of your personality can turn people off to who you are. So if you're thinking about doing a reality show and you know that you've got to be negative in order to excel at your reality show, and you know that people choose artists based, based on who they like, not necessarily who they dislike, I just don't see that those two things um, working well together. Um, no, DJ Triumph, um, Bumpy Knuckles did not make sure Birdman paid me. Um, I sued them. That's how I got paid. And how is this even news? Like, it's 20 years later. How, how are people on the internet even still talking about this? It's, it's so fucking funny to me. Okay, Ron is asking if there's a way that I can put him back in touch with Waka so they can shoot a video for a single that was produced by Sunny Digital. Um, you've lost contact with him and you don't want to call his mom. I don't think his mom manages him anymore. Um, I don't know how to put you back in touch with Waka. I haven't spoken to Waka in a couple years. King Peavy is asking me if, um, he should use a promo tour to test music. Um, I don't think a promo tour is a good way to test music. Because it's so costly. When you go out on promo tour, you're gonna spend somewhere between $200 and $300 a day in your travel expense, your food, your hotel. It just seems a little costly to test music. I test music either by using focus groups where I pull together a group of people in the age group that my artist is reaching and get feedback. They're usually people that I don't know because I'm looking for honest feedback. I also get feedback— I test music on SoundCloud. It's a great place to test. Audio Mac is a great place to test music. And sometimes we put artists— we put music for— from artists out into the marketplace. We'll put out different songs and if they start to grow some legs a little bit, then we'll put a little bit of a budget behind it. If the, if the song grows a little bit more, then we'll put a larger budget behind it. If the song starts to take off, then we'll usually take it to radio. Hi Julian. Um, Julian's asking me if I think TuneCore is better than CD Baby for independent artists. I think they're pretty much the same. Somebody asked me this last week as well. So you might want to go and rewatch the live number 6 that I did last week because I went into some detail about it. Um, my personal preference is TuneCore because they pay on 100% of the income. And Ron is saying that there's a YouTube video that breaks down TuneCore versus CD Baby. Um, thank you so much for, for sharing that. And Julian, you should definitely Google that and then talk to some people that use TuneCore and talk to some people that use CD Baby and ask them, you know, what they think. Um, Quavy is asking me what are some places we spent money to get his buzz. I'm assuming we're still talking about Trouble here. Um, with Trouble, we hit mostly the streets because he is a street artist. Um, every time he puts out a mixtape, I press anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 CDs because here in the South we still listen to CDs and we pass them out. Um, we focused on Northern Florida, Georgia, Alabama, uh, North Carolina, South Carolina. Did I say Georgia? I did say Georgia. Um, in building his buzz, we focused on a 5 to 7 state area. We're now increasing that. We're going towards Virginia. We're going north as far as Virginia. We're going west into Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. We believe in, in starting regionally and expanding out as the buzz grows and as the music— excuse me, the money comes back into the company. Thank you guys for all these comments on Trouble. I'm skipping over them though, because I don't want this to become like Trouble TV. I love him dearly, and he's an amazing example of what you guys can do, but most of the people that are here aren't at that level yet. And I just completely lost all of my questions. Wow, that really blows. Okay, so I'm going to go to some of my printed out because I just lost my chat room. Wow, that sucks. Okay, a bunch of HTML just appeared on my screen. I don't know what I pressed, but oh my God. Okay, so, um, I live in a rural area and I don't know producers or have access to original beats. Is it better to put out tracks with famous beats, or should I save my best rhymes for original beats? Even if it means delaying the release for a while. Um, you definitely need to meet producers. Um, I see that you live in a rural area, but the internet, the internet, the internet, um, it doesn't matter where you live anymore. What matters is your ability to reach out to, um, producers anywhere that you are. Yeah, I have my screen back. Um, to reach out to producers no matter where you are so that you can interact with people, build a relationship. And it comes back down to that building a relationship thing. Get to know some producers. Do a search on Twitter, do a search on Instagram, hit hashtag producers and see all the people that come up. And start building relationships with some of the newer producers and ask them to send you some tracks. Explain to them that you don't have a budget. If you're somebody who is really on top of your game and you're marketing and promoting yourself properly, producers are going to want to work with you because as you're out there promoting your songs, which are half their songs, right, because they're the beat as you're promoting your music, it's building their name too. I'm guessing you probably can't go to Zaytoven and pitch him to give you free beats, but why not pitch some of the, um, producers who are up and coming looking for artists? So many, so many people, um, are in my feed saying that they can't find producers, and there's producers saying they can't find artists, and I just don't understand that. Because if you hit any #rapper, #producer, #songwriter, #singer, if you hit the hashtags, it brings up so many different people that are doing what you do or are a perfect fit for what you do. So, um, do some more research. Find folks out there. When you're on an artist page, look through all the people that are following them. You're going to be able to find some producers in that, in that, um, in that stream, right, of people that follow. Shit, go through my feed, look at the people that follow me. Look at the people that follow me on Twitter @rapcoalition or follow me on Instagram @rapcoalition and see how many of those are producers or artists. Follow them, start talking to them, build relationships. Sir Big Head is asking me, why does radio only want Drake-type music? Can you explain the thought process of that, and do you think they're manipulating what they want to hear? Okay, Sir Big Head, this is a good question. Um, radio exists to make money. Radio exists to play commercials, advertisements, and they get paid a lot of money to play those advertisements. So they want to play music that the masses want to hear. Um, if you look at the breakdown of the people that listen to radio, it's mostly women, and it's mostly women who fall between the ages of 14 to 36. So the music that they're going to choose to play is going to fit within that demographic. In addition, there's a thing called payola, pay to play. That's where the record labels will be working an artist in a certain demographic, and they will pay the radio station to play that artist. The way the labels choose who they're going to spend the money on is by determining which of their artists has the most likelihood of succeeding and making money. Labels don't back artists who don't make music for the masses, and Drake just happens to make music for the masses that a lot of people, um, want to hear. I'm not a Drake fan. I don't listen to, to Drake, so, um, I can't speak personally on why people like him or why they don't, but, um, there you have it. Ron is saying that KE on the Track keeps reaching out to, to, to him, but he keeps asking what his budget looks like, and he feels like if, if he reached out to him, then he's got the platform already. Um, KE on the Track is a very aggressive self-marketer and self-promoter, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But his goal is to make money as a producer, and he's built enough of a reputation that people know who he is, so his tracks have value. So if you want to record to some KE On The Track tracks, you're probably going to have to pay him. If you don't have a budget to, um, if you don't have a budget to pay him, then you should probably look for some other producers that are willing to share their beats with you. DeAndre Williams is offering to send beats. He's at rawbeats2000@gmail.com. He is in the feed, so if you guys are looking at the feed on the side— Jose is asking me, why is it that artists or producers are reluctant to help or work with someone with the thought process that you can take their shine. I don't know. I, I have truly never understood that because, you know, the thing about building success is that there's enough success for everyone, there's enough money for everyone, and there's enough shine for everyone. So just because you help somebody to succeed, does that— does not mean that you're going to fail. If you help people succeed, I even think that it's good karma. I actually, um, built my career on helping artists, and I think that I have benefited profusely from that. Ron saying he loves meeting producers, he collects their contacts like a kid collects baseball cards. Maybe that's what we need, maybe we need producer baseball cards. And we can all share them. Wouldn't that be cool? Julian, you're welcome. Jose, you're welcome. King Peavy, you're welcome. DJ Triumph, you're welcome. Yeah, I've been doing this 24 years. King Peavy's asking me, what are the important events that indie artists should attend? Well, I think that you need to build a fan base, so the events that I think you should attend aren't the industry events. I don't think industry events help you, um, when your goal is not to be part of the industry. And I think that block parties are great events to attend. I think, um, anything that's going on within your market area. And again, for my artists, what we do is we draw a 3 to 5 hour driving radius around where the artist is based, and that becomes our target market because we can access it pretty easily. And we believe that going into that market and working it until people are sick and tired of hearing about the artist or have received more CDs than I can possibly give out. That's when, once we've saturated it, we know that we've done our job and we go a little bit wider or we go in a different direction, you know, a physical direction. Like instead of north, we go south, right? So our focus is always to build the fan base. So we attend events that occur within that market. Um, in the spring we do all of the radio festivals. Whenever— even if we're not performing, I make sure that the artists are there to hand out their material and to interact with the fans. Any place where there's a large gathering of your potential market, you need to be there. And I can't sit here from my house in suburban Atlanta and tell you where that is because I'm not in your market. That's your job. You're going to need to find out what's going on in that 5 to 7 state area that's around you. You're going to have to build relationships with people. You're going to have to go and Google the different cities and what radio stations exist in those cities and What events do they sponsor throughout the year? And then you're going to be able to start to build a, um, a, uh, list for yourself that you can use year in and year out of events that are occurring. You know, most of the artists that I work with, um, are at the Bayou Classic. You know, they, they attend all of the homecomings within the states of the areas that they're— that they're— that's their target market. So it's up to you to find out what events are popping off so that you can, um, market and promote at those events. I have a sneaking suspicion though that you're asking me what industry events should an artist attend, and while I don't think that there really are any that you need to attend because promoting yourself to the industry is not building fans. It's basically having you interact with people that are going to try to make money from you. Um, but the events, if that's what you're asking me, A3C, which happens in Atlanta every October, is a great one. South by Southwest, which is in Austin, Texas in March, is a great place to go. And these are good for networking. Um, the panels are exceptional if you've got the budget to be able to get a pass so that you can attend the panels and learn how this business works, I recommend that highly. If you don't have the budget, um, I would heartily suggest that you offer to volunteer at something like a South by Southwest or an A3C, and in exchange for the time you spend working at the event and meeting people and networking with people, um, you will get a free pass so that you can attend events and panels when you're not working. It's just kind of a smart way to do it. It's how I started when I started in the music industry. I love Sunny Digital. DJ McGrath is asking me what the darkest side of the industry is. Um, I think the darkest side of the industry are the people who want to take ownership of somebody's music and art form so that they can make the lion's share of the money. I suggest that if you're trying to not get sucked in on the receiving end of some fuckery in the music business, that you guys study publishing and study it really deeply. It took me years to really grasp what publishing is. And all the different aspects and roles that it plays in, um, in how somebody makes money. Study what your masters are. Anything that's ownership in this industry is where the money is. Douglas is asking if I'm taking on new clients. I absolutely am. But Douglas, understand that you may not understand exactly what it is that I do. I set up independent labels for people And because of that, they need to have a marketing and promotional budget. They need to have a really strong work ethic, and they need to have very marketable music. That doesn't mean music that I have to like, but it has to be music that fan— that a large amount of people, that a large amount of the population, um, will gravitate towards. And you can go to helpfulangel.com to see exactly what it is that, that I do. DJ Triumph, you must be in Miami because you're asking me if Miami is the next city to blow and what my take is on Kodak Black, Zoey Dollaz, and some of the other local artists in Miami. I don't, I don't necessarily think that that there is a next city to blow. Um, I think Miami has a lot of independent artists that are doing a pretty good job at marketing and promotion because people spend money to market and promote in, um, in Miami. And that's why you're seeing guys like Kodak Black and Zoey Dollaz. You just happened to mention two artists both of whom have, um, marketing and promotion budgets. So they've been able to build themselves to a, um, a level where they're noticeable now. Greg, yes, I have worked with Suge, um, with Suge Knight, um, when he ran Death Row Records. Um, I spent a lot of time with the promotional team at Death Row learning how to market and promote. That's one of the places I never worked for them, but I have gone out on tour with them. I spent a lot of time with Kevin Black. Um, I've spent a lot of time with actually the whole team at Death Row. They did an amazing job in, um, marketing. And, um, I have nothing but great experiences with Suge. Suge was always, you know, good to me. Okay, I've answered a lot of these. Yay! I'm just going back through the feed to make sure that I didn't miss anybody because I know last week I missed a bunch of you. Okay, I think, I think that's where I started. Okay, now let me make sure I didn't miss any questions when, um, when I lost access to my feed. That was the craziest thing, guys. Like, it just went into HTML. I don't know what I pressed. Obviously it was me. Um, shit happens, right? That's funny. And I don't know if you guys want me to read some of this stuff outside out loud, but this is sweet. Ron said, um, he wished he had met me back in the day when he was getting a bag because he would have hired me. You know, it's funny, I met Meech from BMF after, um, he went to prison. Um, I befriended him actually after he went to prison. I noticed everybody kind of like exited, they ran away from, uh, BMF, so I decided to befriend him. I thought it was shitty how everybody just kind of like bounced once he went to, to prison. And that's one of the things that, that He always says, man, if I had known you. Okay, who are my favorite entertainment lawyers? Um, wow, that's a, that's a great question. Um, I don't know that I have favorite entertainment lawyers. Um, I utilize Tim Mandelbaum a lot. Um, I like Aaron Rosenberg. He does a great job. Um, he's Justin Bieber's attorney. Um, I'm drawing a blank on, on other, um, entertainment attorneys. Michael Reinhardt is an amazing entertainment attorney. He's doing a lot of film stuff right now. Um, he was the attorney for Universal when I negotiated the Cash Money deal, so he was on the opposite side of the table from me, but I always felt like He was a class act. He always, like, he was always respectful. I asked for some crazy shit in that deal, and he never made me feel like an asshole for asking for something, even when he couldn't do it. He never, he was, you know, not, he was not the kind of guy who would belittle you for doing what was best for your client. He understood. DJ Triumph is asking what a music contract looks like that will benefit the artist the most. I can't answer that, um, in a video. That's something— first of all, you should hire an entertainment attorney to negotiate any contract for you, because it's not always what's in the contract that can hurt you. It's, it's sometimes what's missing from the contract where you can get screwed. But I would have to have a contract in front of me and break it down for you, you know, clause by clause, line by line. And, um, I'd rather stick a stick in my eye than do that on video. Ronnie is asking how much, um, Tony's digital marketing firm is. Tony's my husband. Um, you can go to ascratchythroat.com and, uh, reach out to him through there, or hit him up. He's @iamthekonnect on, um, Instagram, on Twitter. And he'll respond to you. Hey, Ronnie Lee. Okay, Ron is suggesting that everyone should join Google+ because there's so many communities that are large on there and there's so many people to meet compared to Facebook, which is like a stuck-up chick when it comes to people reposting. Um, you guys should hit all social media in looking for, um, in looking for other artists. So if you're a producer looking for rappers, you should hit all social media. If you're a rapper looking for producers, you should hit all social media. Um, I've been talking to different, um, I've been talking to different folks about setting up some sort of a database for producers and rappers so that you could— you guys could meet each other. Um, but I haven't, I haven't figured out quite how that's going to work, like how to get— because there's got to be somebody in there to kind of moderate it so that you guys don't just like go for on a free-for-all and start like beefing with, with each other, or people that are whack producers go in there and start posting their music all over, um, and you can't escape them. There's got to be, you know, there's got to be some sort of system of checks and balances, and I haven't figured that out yet. Coop the Trill is asking me to go into depth about scammers in the industry. What are the signs of someone trying to finesse you out of money? Um, I think the number one sign is somebody who is, um, is too good to be true. So if I come to you and I say for $10,000 I can get you signed to a record deal, um, that's probably some bullshit, right? If I tell you that I can take your song that nobody's ever heard before and for 30 grand I can take it to radio and get you played at every radio station all over the country. That sounds like some bullshit to me. So the best way that you can prevent somebody from scamming you is to learn how this business works, learn how the music business works, learn what's fair and acceptable. Once you're educated, you can't be scammed. It would be very hard for a radio promoter to come to me and sell me something that I don't want because I know exactly what I'm doing. If I can learn about the— this industry, then you guys can learn about this industry, right? In fact, there's a ton of free resources, not just from me but from a ton of other people out there that are trying to give you knowledge so that you don't have to get jerked. Like, why would you want to bump your head when I've already bumped my head and I can tell you how I bumped my head so that you don't. Um, and the last thing that I'm going to say about getting scammed is get a contract. Anytime that somebody is offering you a service, they've got to be willing to put it in writing and sign it. That way, at least if you do get scammed, you have the opportunity to sue them for not delivering on what they promised. And guys, I'm gonna answer one more question because we've been at this for an hour and I'm tired. Yeah, Ron, I know TJ Chapman. He's awesome. He's actually one of the people that I mentor. He's an amazing, amazing human being. BMO is saying he's a producer and he's an artist from Chicago, but he doesn't really know who his audience to target market should be because he can't categorize his sound. We touched on this a little bit, um, we touched on this I think when I went live last week. We talked about how to figure out what your sound is, and until you've got a fan base or somewhat of a fan base, it's a little bit hard because you really don't know what people are reacting to. I use SoundCloud, I use AudioMac Um, I put all of my artist music up onto Spotify, and then I go into the dashboard, you know, the back end, where I can see how many people are liking the song, where are they from, who are they, what age are they, are they male or are they female. There's so many different statistics that you can get today, like data is just everywhere, and If you're testing music to see what you have, just make sure that it's music that you want to make. Don't make music because you think it's what somebody wants to hear. When you make music, it's got to be inside of you. It's got to be— you got to be talking about something that you have some knowledge of and some understanding, because if you don't, it's not going to be authentic. And if it's not authentic, then the fans are gonna not embrace you. You know, the one thing, um, you had asked me, um, I think it was Triumph— somebody had asked me earlier why I started working with Trouble. And the one thing about him that had me floored from the first day I met him— and I met him, he was like maybe a week out of prison when I first met him the very first time. He was working with my friend Derek Sklar, White Boy D, and his authenticity was amazing. Like, he has always been exactly who he says he is. Um, and, uh, Caden Brands— Caden Brands, I see you're asking if Trouble has a deal with WorldStar. No, he does not have a deal with WorldStar. Um, Trouble has a deal with Trouble. It's an independent label. Um, but that's funny, they, they do seem to pick up everything he does, don't they? Yeah, I've noticed that too, but you know, I'm thankful for that. Um, but until you know exactly who your audience is, it's going to be hard for you to market because you're going to feel like you're all over the place. So BMO, I totally get what you're saying and I totally understand, but you're just gonna have to keep putting music out and then seeing what people embrace and what they like. You know, don't be afraid. You're in Chicago. Don't be afraid to put together informal listening sessions and get feedback from people that you don't know. Um, you've got Columbia College right there, which is a really great arts college. They have a great music business program there. Why not spend some time at Columbia College and get some feedback from people there. You've got a ton of, um, college radio stations in Chicago where you may be able to get people to play your music. Any internet radio stations, you know, put your music out there and then listen for the feedback. And again, this is people who don't know you. Don't ask your boys, don't ask your family, don't ask your friends, because you're going to get a mis— construed answer on what you like. People who love you are going to want you to be happy, and they're going to want to give you the answer you're looking for instead of the answer that you need. And if you're going to spend money on any record, you want to make sure that it's a record that people like and that people genuinely support because you need to make money at some point. You need to monetize this, you know, and if you're gonna monetize this, that means somebody's gonna have to vote for you with their dollars, right? Guys, thanks for tuning in. I'm sorry that I was 15 minutes late today. We got stuck in traffic. Um, it was hellacious out there today. It is the day before Thanksgiving. So that explains why traffic was an all-time, um, standstill. But thanks for coming in, thanks for being here. I've got more people viewing than ever this week, so I'm hugely thankful. Have a great Thanksgiving, guys, and I will see you all next week. This should post to my YouTube page, um, within the next hour or so. Okay guys, take care. Happy Turkey Day.