LIVE with Wendy Day #010 | Answering Your Questions Live

Just chill out, kick back, and we're gonna be right with you with some great information. Pond 5. I know you're anxious to get started and you're saying, where is she? But I'm filling up the cup with Diet Coke. I'll be with you in a minute. You're gonna get some great information today. I'm really excited about this. Pond 5. Hey, I'm almost there, bear with me, it's gonna get started in a minute. Hey, thanks for tuning in though to the live stream, I'm so 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'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. Hi guys, I Well, I snuck in there a little bit early tonight. I can only do half an hour because I've got a meeting. See, I'm all dressed up. You can't really see, but I'm all dressed up. I've got a dinner meeting at 8, so I need to leave here at 7:30 so that I'm not late for it. So I know I started about 3 minutes early, but I figured that y'all forgive me. Fat Boy Bands! How are you, Zico? Right, I should have looked at that before I pressed send. I'm like, what does that mean? Hey, Meezy, I'm back, bitches! Oh, Pipe, how are you? Welcome back. So right before I came live on here, um I actually went over, um, S. Lewis, um, I actually went over to Facebook Live and went live on Facebook for 2 minutes to tell folks that I'd be here and that they could ask questions if they wanted to. Um, so guys, I'm only here till 7:30, so let's get started. Let's not, let's not, um, let's not miss any moments. I've got my alarm set, so when the alarm goes off, y'all will know that, um, I've got a meeting and I've got to run. And you know, I never schedule stuff on Wednesday nights because this is too important to me. And these folks are flying in from Florida, and I don't know what made me schedule it today. Probably because they're flying in from Florida, but, but that's okay. They're taking me to dinner. I like dinner. I like food. Okay, so Ralph DeJohn is asking me to break down payola, and I'm happy to do that. On Friday, the video that's gonna drop is about radio, mainly because people keep asking me about radio. But there's so few people that tune in that are really ready to go to radio, so I was a little nervous to cover it this soon. But since people keep asking me, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to like keep pushing you guys back and back and back and back and back. You're welcome, Maid Law. It's my pleasure. So, um, thank you, Pearl. Welcome. Um, Paola, so when you— when you're ready for radio play, and, and you're ready for radio play once you've got a decent buzz and you have worked your single on the streets and in the clubs so that it's getting some reaction— and, and I really mean some reaction, not the kind of reaction where somebody plays it once and you get all excited and say, hey, my record's reacting. I mean the kind of reacting where people in the club are coming up to the DJ to request your song, the kind of reacting where when you go out publicly people start to recognize who you are and talk about your record, where you're out someplace and a car drives by and you hear your song pumping in that car. So I mean like, like it's really starting to react, it's really starting to grow legs, and it's really starting to get a buzz. And again, Friday I'm dropping a video all about radio, so if I lose you here, just watch that video on Friday and you'll be, you'll be straight. So once you're ready to go to radio, you're going to hire an independent radio promoter. You never ever ever ever ever go to radio and offer somebody money. It's illegal. They cannot take it, and you'll really piss them off. There's no better way to let somebody know that you don't know how the industry works than to offer somebody a radio money to play your record. So you hire an independent radio promotion person. They tell you the stations that they feel they can secure with your song, and then you pay them. And then what they do with the money is kind of on them. And what they do is they work out deals at the radio station so that your record gets into rotation. And then once it gets to radio, if it does really well and it starts to grow, and people start calling in for it, and I mean really calling in for it, not you paying people to call or, you know, calling your cousins in another state to call in and request your song. But when fans really start to request it and it reacts and it starts to test well at radio, then what they'll do is they'll increase the spins. And this will happen both naturally and through the promotion that the Indie Promo Guy is paying them. And that's what payola is. It's very much illegal. Radio play depends on the relationship between the independent radio promoter and the radio decision maker. In most cases, that's the program manager— excuse me, the, um, yeah, the program manager, the music program director, or the music director, PD or MD. They're the ones who usually make the decision as to what's going to get played. Most DJs do not have the power to choose whether or not to play your record. Okay, thank you, Measy. I was just called YouTube mom. Thanks, water. I am the YouTube mom, you know. Thank you for not calling me the YouTube grandma, because, you know, I'm kind of letting my hair go gray. I'm gonna have to put it back to red because I think that I look older than I am. But I let the dye grow out— not that you need to know this— I let the dye grow out because I wanted to see how gray it really was. I've been coloring my hair since I was in my 20s, so I just didn't really know what it looked like. So for the past year, I've let it grow out just to see. Hi Dave from DC, you're looking for the ISRC codes. You're gonna want to Google them. There are companies that actually sell them, but almost all distributors will give you an ISRC code as part of what they bring to the table. And if you're gonna monetize your music, you're definitely gonna have a distributor, whether it's like TuneCore or DistroKid, or whether you step it up a notch and you have like Sony RED or ADA, which is Warner Brothers Distribution, or Universal's, I think, is— I think they're doing all their in-house Wendy Day's Distro through Capitol. Now it's either Capitol or Caroline. I don't use Universal's Independent Distribution. I think they're a great distribution system. I just think that Sony is a little bit stronger. RED is a little bit stronger. RED is owned by Sony, right? And you know that because you've read my damn book. But yeah, you can get your ISRC code and your UPC code from your distributor. If you want to own them yourself, and I don't really see a reason to, but if you do want to own them yourself, you can certainly buy them. Google ISRC code, Google UPC code, and you will find the main company that, um, that sells them. Thank you, Alex. I dress up nice, huh? Um, I don't have a— hey, Bubble— I don't have a promoter list for shows. I have never put one of those together because they change so often. Um, and also I feel a little bit like sometimes when I put a list together that I'm co-signing people, and there's so many janky promoters, I couldn't leave them off the list, or, or you'd be like, how come you don't have all the promoters on here? But then on the flip side, I don't want to co-sign somebody who's a douchebag, you know. So, um, no, I don't have a list of promoters and I probably never will. Alicia is asking me, should you pay to get on the radio? Um, in my experience, the only way that you can get on the radio is to hire an independent radio promotion guy. Um, but I've got a video coming on Friday, so Alicia, if you would check out that video Um, it's going to drop Friday morning at 11, and it's a basic primer on how to get radio at a beginner's level. Um, but no, I don't— I don't go for— like, radio is the last thing I go for, guys. I put my clients out on promo tours before I do that. I make sure that they've saturated the 5 to 7 state area that they're working. It— for me, the very last thing I do is go for radio because you're going to spend $30,000 to $50,000 to get radio. Thanks, Alex. I hope that wasn't to me. Um, Feel Good Vision is asking, when is a good time to get a publicist? Um, a good time to get a publicist, and I'm not being flippant with this answer,. But a good time to get a publicist is when you've got something to publicize. Um, a publicist is a megaphone, and there's a video that I posted about, um, how to choose a publicist and what they do. So you might want to check that out because I feel a little bit like I'm repeating myself. Um, but you want to hire a publicist when you've got some stuff going on and you just need a megaphone, because really they're just kind of a megaphone. They can only talk about what it is that you're doing. They can't make a blog write about you. They can't force a magazine to get write-ups about your interviews. Um, they're a little bit better connected than you or I with the blogs, so they have a better chance than you or I do of, of getting stuff posted. Um, but if you don't have a buzz and you don't have something going on in your marketplace it's going to be really hard to get one of the blogs to post a brand new artist who's just like right off the streets, you know, and hasn't really started yet. So you really need to have some, some stuff under your belt. You need to have a fan base. You need to have some movement in your area so that when the blogs— um, hey Joshua, I'm good— um, so that when the blogs look up who you are, there's something there, there's some traction there, and it makes them say, oh, okay, you know, this person's really doing their work, so they're putting time in. Let's support them and let's post their video, let's post their song, let's do an interview. Um, your first interview will probably be like a paragraph or two because they're, they're not gonna put a lot of their space into talking about you when you're not hot yet. Um, but you need them because they're going to help you get hot, right? Um, Tamara Bubble is saying that she thought the reason to own the ISRC code is because if you change distributors, you don't get to keep those codes. Um, I've actually kept the codes when I've changed distributors. And, and that might be because I had a good relationship with the old distributor and the new distributor. But most people aren't going to be changing distributors. You should— it's, it's sort of like changing a marriage, right? Like, it's a lot of work. You've got to take everything down off of every platform, and then the new distributor has to put everything back up on every platform. And it's just, it's It's a nightmare, and I'm actually doing it right now, and I'm not happy about it. Hey, Sacred G, um, I love that you said that. I'm not going to say that because I don't want to get sued. I can't prove that, um, that they're fuckboys. And I'm sorry you got jerked. This industry, man, sometimes it can just be really hell. Especially like on the radio side. I've seen people lose more money trying to get radio play. And then on the show side, like promoters, like there's just so many janky promoters and there's so many middlemen, um, there's so many middlemen that get like in the middle of stuff that just screw stuff up. Dave Vids is asking me, um, if you're putting out your records yourself, do you need the ISRC codes? Yes, you absolutely do. You don't need them for SoundExchange, BMI, or ASCAP in order to get credit. What they do is they, um, they monitor a certain amount of clubs and stations, and then they do math in order to pay people. And, and no, as far as I know, you don't need that. You might want to Google to check on that. Zico is asking me what's the first step I would take towards building a new artist fan base. Um, the very first thing I would do is have great music. Um, I mean really great music. I would test the marketplace. I would probably set up either a focus group with high school kids or college kids to get feedback on my music. Um, or I would have a panel of DJs that I have a relationship with, and I would send them music and get their feedback. I prefer to do it that way because with the music that I work, I work music that can go to radio. So I'm looking for mainstream, and the DJs are on the first line of resistance. So I want to make sure that the music that I'm working the DJs are liking and reacting to. So I tend to go through DJs. Um, other people tend to hold focus groups. I know, uh, Think It's a Game, before they put out Key to the Streets, um, for YFN Lucci, they held, um, I think 3 or 4 focus groups. And, um, one was with high school kids, one was with college kids, one was with people like off the street that are rap fans. And when they continually got great feedback to Key to the Streets, they knew they were going to put the money behind it and make it a single. But, um, that's what I would do. I would— hey, H702, that's what I would do. I wouldn't spend money until I knew that I had something worthy of spending money on. There's just too many ways to, um, there's just too many ways to lose money in this industry, you know, uh, and having a bad record or a record that's not worthy of putting your whole wad behind it is one of those ways. Joshua Evans is trying to get your GED but you want to still rap. Um, absolutely. I don't— I don't— those two things aren't opposite. Um, why can't you do both? Hm? You've got time. Go get your GED. I think it's, I think it's awesome to learn as much as you can, and I don't think a GED is a bad thing. Meezy's asking me, are record deals as bad as they seem, or is it based on what kind of deal you can negotiate? Bingo. Um, you get what you negotiate, and a record deal is only bad if you have no leverage and you have no team and no power at the label. Thank you, Pipeline TV. Yeah, you can't skip the DJs, they're still on the front lines. I mean, you could skip the DJs, but how are you going to get spun in a club without the DJs, you know? Oh, thank you, Feel Good Vision. Yeah, I drop, um, videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11:00 AM. And then I go live, um, every week at— every Wednesday at 7 PM. I usually go live for about an hour. Tonight I'm only going to do half an hour because I've got a meeting at 8 o'clock and I don't want to be late. Um, Joshua's asking me if you have to sound perfect to be a rapper. No, you don't have to sound perfect. Um, does Future sound perfect to you? Does Young Thug sound perfect to you? You don't have to sound perfect. You just have to have a fan base. You have to make music that pleases other people, and, um, and that's kind of important. Um, there are some people that only like lyrics, and they call the rap that's coming out of Atlanta right now mumble rap. Um, and then there's some people that like the melody and the music that's in rap, and they don't really care what the rapper's saying. So there are enough fans on both sides of those coins that you should be able to build a fan base whether you're lyrical or not. Um, and there's two schools of thought on that, and people are really passionate about the side that they're on. It's very funny to me. And, and by the way, I've been doing this 25 years, and that argument has been since before I got in the music industry. So all these guys who are in their 30s saying that the new rappers are whack, that has been happening since I got in. I started listening to rap in 1980. Most of you weren't alive yet, but that argument has been going on since time began. So I don't even, I don't even listen to it anymore. Alicia is saying she's working with an artist who gets referenced to Bryson Tiller. However, he's been working for years before Tiller popped. How do— how, how to separate the two? You know, that's a hard one because if there's already somebody in that lane and you put your artist out and he sounds like a little Bryson Tiller clone designer, um, it may be challenging for him. That doesn't mean he won't succeed, designer who sounds just like Future. Um, but I— he gets a lot of flack. Like, do you want a career where a ton of people love you and a ton of people hate you and just attack you at every step of the way? I, I don't know that I'd want that. I, I— it's a, it's a lot of work to be hated. I look at these WWE guys and it amazes me You know, it just amazes me because they're so hated and they stand in the ring like— and it's just, I, I, I don't know that I'd want that life. Not that it matters what people think, right? You want to live your life to please yourself and to be happy. But I don't know that I could live my life with people throwing tomatoes at me everywhere I went. H702 is asking me if I have any tips before recording in the studio. Um, for example, picking your engineer, having tracked out files, practicing lyrics. Absolutely. I think you should get all the pre-production out of the way before you start spending money in a studio, because studios aren't cheap. Um, I think we pay, I want to say, $40 or $50 an hour. Um, and I'm not going to tell you where we record because I know they charge more than that and you're going to be pissed off that you have to pay more. Um, but we record a lot with Trouble. A lot. We've got like 180 songs, no exaggeration. Um, but before you go into the studio, you should definitely have everything tracked out. You should have your lyrics written. You should have practiced them if you're somebody that needs to practice. I know a lot of rappers, um, don't practice their lyrics. They just go in and hit it. Um, so however you work best I know you hear a lot of rappers saying that they don't write down their lyrics. I think that when you're newer, that's a really bad idea, because when you write them down, you have the opportunity to make changes if they're not perfect— or perfect to you, not perfect to, you know, anybody else. If you're freestyling and you slip up, you're going to let it go and you're just going to keep going. But yeah, you should, um, in terms of picking your engineer, when you pick the studio, um, you kind of pick the engineer because studios usually have one guy that's working when you book that time. I pretty much give every engineer a chance, um, and if they're just somebody— Aqua Black, oh my God! And if there's somebody that, um, if there's somebody that doesn't work out and you have to replace them, and that's, that's— I think that's happened to me once or twice in 24 years. Most studios, um, that are legitimate studios and pretty good at what they do, they have pretty skilled engineers. I know with Trouble, he has his own engineer that he works with, um, just because he knows him and he knows how he records. But Trouble's been recording for 7 years now, or 6 years, so maybe even 8 years, so he kind of has it down to a science how he wants to do it. Too slick. You have your own lane. That's a beautiful thing. Martyr Chic, you're taking notes. I love it. You know, I still take notes whenever I go to an industry panel, or even stuff that you know, um, you still want to take notes because there are things that you forget. Like, there's so much to know in the world, right? There are things that I'll hear somebody say on a panel and go, oh man, I used to do that. Why don't I do that anymore? I love that you're taking notes. How long did it take to break David Banner? Um, Kaden Brands, and I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. I said that last week too, didn't I? I should really find out how you pronounce your name to make sure. Um, it took— I met him in 1998 and we tried to salvage Crooked Letters, his project that was at Penalty records through Tommy Boy. So we spent a couple of years there, maybe 2 years, trying to work that situation out. Once we realized that that situation wasn't going to work, it was probably 2000, 2001, and he made Like a Pimp in 2002. He dropped it at Thanksgiving here in Atlanta. It started bubbling, it caught on at the clubs. Um, the All-Star Game was here that year. Was it the All-Star Game or was the, um, Super Bowl? I don't remember which, but the entire industry descended on Atlanta that year in, um, either late January or mid-February, and that song was the biggest song in the clubs. So there was a bidding war for him. So it took until 2003 to get him that deal, and then it took me 9 months to get the paperwork done because in addition to his advance, I wanted him to be able to put out his own music independently, um, in case something happened with his deal at Universal. How do you divide money between an artist and a manager and make it so that they both pay taxes on the earned income instead of one party bearing that burden? And whether it's money from shows, endorsements, or appearances, and that was Franz Boo the Business. The way you make sure that the artist and the manager split is done properly is you hire an accountant, a music industry accountant, an entertainment accountant. And what they do is the money comes into them, they split the money, they send out the 1099 from the artist to the manager stating that his or her 15% or 20% or whatever, whatever percentage the manager is getting They make sure that the 1099 form is sent, and then usually the manager will have either his own accountant or he'll use the same accountant as the artist, and that accountant does all of the taxes for both, for both parties. So the money comes in from the shows, it's given to the accountant, the accountant splits it He keeps a record of everything. And then during the year, 'cause you have to pay your taxes when you're self-employed, you have to pay your taxes 4 times a year. Every 3 months you've gotta send them money. So the accountant will know how much to send. And at the end of the year, by April 15th, that accountant will pay the taxes for both or fill out the, you know, the forms. For both the artist and the manager separately, and they charge for that. That's obviously not a free service. You can pay your accountant a percentage of your income, like 5% of your income, or you can pay them on an hourly basis. When you're relatively new, an hourly basis is probably the better deal than, um, 5%. And I know you're all sitting there saying, I hate that, because you're not making money yet. But once you start getting paid from shows you're going to be able to pay your attorney and your accountant, and the money is going to start to come really fast. So they may not be doing a lot of work, and if they're getting 5% of your income, you might be overpaying them or underpaying them depending on how successful. Um, I didn't work with, um, Lil Jon— Josh. I, I know him Um, but I, I, I've never worked with him. I've met with him many times, but, um, Martha, I got your name right! Yay! Thank you, Kevin Brands, I appreciate you. How important is image to stand out as a rapper? Um, I think it's very important because your image is a reflection of what you're talking about, right? Like, if you're super soft and you're singing love songs and you stand up on stage, you know, in a ski mask like you're a bank robber holding a, a carbine, you know, it doesn't really fit your image, right? Um, and maybe you'll stand out. Like, maybe that's what you're doing in order to really stand out. You're being like opposite person. Um, but yeah, you want— your image is very important. Like, one of the things that made Cash Money so larger than life was because they were so over the top with their spending. Their name was Cash Money. They were all about money. They had just gotten a $30 million deal, so their image was, you know, buying the best of everything and having 37 vehicles and, you know, platinum diamond grills and all sorts of nonsense. But that's what, that's what, um, that's what their image is, you know. And image is what catches on. Um, Nicki Minaj's image is being very like— she stands out fashion-wise, so that's why she wears wigs and, and, and, and costumes, right? Um, Hopsin wears the contact lenses. Um, are you asking me about a gimmick? To stand out, or are you asking me about image? Like, um, Tech N9ne wears masks and face paint to perform, right? Um, MF Doom, he wears a mask too, right? So it, it just, you know, there are gimmicks and then there are images. Like, Busta Rhymes' image is he's, you know, um, super energetic, right? And that's not a gimmick, that's how he is in real life. There are times when he's super laid back, and then there's times where he's just really animated. And just really up. So, you know, that's an image. A gimmick is when you do something to stand out, you know. Um, what's the rapper out of Florida? Stitches, right? Who has the, the, uh, tattoo on his mouth. Like, he's never going to work at a bank, right? Um, to me, that's a gimmick. That's not an image, you know. I think an image is something you have that makes you stand apart from everybody, but it reflects what your lyrics are about. You know, Wiz Khalifa's image is he's the weed head. You know, we all know guys like Wiz Khalifa, we hang out with guys like Wiz Khalifa whether we smoke weed or not, right? I mean, I don't smoke weed, I have a ton of Wiz Khalifas around me. Um, Killer Mike's image is he's the activist, so You know, he's always— if I'm gonna call on somebody to ask questions about politics, I'm gonna call Killer Mike and ask him, hey, what's this guy about? What's that person about? Because that's his, that's his image, and that's what he's into, and that's what he's all about. Um, I'm gonna answer one more question over here, guys, because it is 7:28 and my alarm's gonna ring at 7:30, and, um, I need to be out of here. Um, so let me ask, um, Daniel Zimenez, um, Mad Strange is asking me— I just butchered your name, I'm so sorry, I get all thrown with X's as names, right? Um, you run an independent label and you have a hip-hop store and brand, and you have a recording engineer who also produces half of your beats with his own equipment. So he's asking, um, how, how do I pay the producer? Well, first of all, if somebody is mixing and mastering your music, they should be getting paid for mixing and mastering your music. That's separate from them doing the beat, right? Um, when a producer does the beat, he owns 100% of the beat, which is 50% of the song. And the way the producer gets paid in most cases, um,— and this is more so with major labels than indie labels, but the way that the producer gets paid is he gets an advance against his royalties. Now, a lot of indie labels don't have the money to give a producer, you know, $1,500 for a beat or $2,000 for a beat or $10,000 for a beat or whatever it is that they charge. So very often what they'll do is they'll sign a contract where they agree to pay the producer for the beat, and the producer will get 3 points on top of, you know, the sales. So if a song is selling for, um, for 10 cents— I mean, excuse me, for, for, uh, a dollar. Oh, I'm tired. Um, for a dollar, and the artist has a 10-point deal, then the artist is getting 10 cents for every dollar that comes in after they recoup, right? So if the producer gets 3 points, then the producer is going to get 3 cents off of every dollar that comes in for that single that is sold. Um, it's a little bit different with streaming because streaming is a publishing play, so the producer is going to receive 50% of any income that comes in on the publishing side because he owns half of the song. So guys, I gotta bring it to an end tonight. I know we usually do this for like an hour to an hour and a half, but I've got a meeting. I can't be late for it. It's 7:30. It's going to take me at least half an hour to get there, and I got to be there at 8 o'clock. So thanks for tuning in. This will be posted on— for any of you that tuned in late, this will be posted on my page probably in the next 10 minutes or so. And then if you come back on Friday morning at 11:00 AM, or if you subscribe, it will, it'll automatically buzz you to let you know that the radio video is up. And a lot of you guys have asked me for that. So thank you all for tuning in. It's always awesome to see you. If I didn't answer your question tonight, I will answer it next Wednesday. Um, I, I am not able to save the chat, so if you put a question in the chat and I didn't answer it, you're either going to need to email it to me or you're going to need to ask me in the chat, um, next week. Your best bet though is to email it to me. thisiswendyday@gmail.com. Thank you guys for tuning in, and I will see you soon.