LIVE with Wendy Day August 2, 2017 | Answering Your Questions Live

Hi guys, this is Wendy Day from Wrap Coalition. Thanks for tuning in to my livestream. I'm so happy that you're here. Okay guys, I'm almost there. I'm coming, I promise I'm coming. I've got a lot of great information for you today. I'm so glad you're here. Okay guys, there's a counter there. I'm trying to beat that counter. As soon as it gets down to zero, I'll be there. Right now I'm filling up my cup with unsweet tea and extra lemon. Guys, thanks for tuning in to my live stream. We're almost ready to I'm so glad you're here. I've got such amazing information to share with you tonight. I'm so excited. I'm so happy. Hi guys, how are you? Happy August! This is my birthday month. I love August. Freddy Crooks, where can you find split sheets? You can either Google split sheets or you can, um, go to any one of my publishing um, videos, and posted right underneath is the link to split sheets. And I'll tell you what, when I post this to YouTube, um, later tonight, I will put the link to split sheets right under this video as well. Yes, Coop, my birthday's Tuesday. I'm a Leo, can you tell? Hi, Polly Foster, how are you? JC Kush, hello! Now, is it Weegee or Wedgie? W-E-G-I. Is it Weegee? I'm gonna call you Weegee. Correct me if I'm wrong. One way I would market myself through social media— why am I having trouble reading this tonight? Hmm, give me one second to get my shit together, guys. Oh, Oh, oh, I just learned how to do something new, man. I would have been done this if I'd known I could do this. Okay, so I can't really, um, properly read, so you guys are gonna have to help me. Um, how would I market myself? Um, happy birthday, Jula Fat Stash. Um, is it Hula or Jula? Anyway, happy birthday on the 24th. Dark Brothers the 19th. Yay, we have a lot of, um, August birthdays in the house. Yay, very cool. Um, how would I market myself on social media? I have a video that covers social media, but one of the ways that I would do it is I would engage people and I would buy advertising. I would do that on Facebook, I would do that on Instagram. I buy Google Ads for my artists. I do not buy Twitter ads. I find them a little bit costly, and I just don't find our world on Twitter. I think that we spend most of our time on Snapchat and Instagram. So I just gave you a bunch of ways. Thank you for the birthday wishes. Okay, Freddie Cooks, you're welcome. How can you sell more beats as a producer? Um, I'm gonna have to make this smaller because I can't read all the way to the right. Crap, it's cutting off my, um, my message. Poop. Okay, um, I have a bunch of videos for, um, producers that explain exactly that. So I'm going to send you to the videos that I have, um, rather than take up more time. You guys send me like the nicest thank yous for answering your questions, but, um, a lot of you also are getting frustrated because I'm answering the same questions every month, and you could go back through my videos and get answers rather than me kind of wasting everybody's time here. So for a producer that leases beats online, I'm going to send you— there's 5 or 6 videos that I've posted about how to sell beats. There's even an interview with Rico Brooks who manages Metro Boomin and Sonny Digital, and he talks about how he sets up his company to lease beats for the guys that he represents, that he manages. So there's a bunch of stuff that I've already supplied, so I'm going to direct you there. And thank you. And it is Jula, not Hula. Thank you, Jula. Beautiful. Look at that big smile. Money Baby, how are you? Hector, how are you? Freddy Crooks, that's funny. Um, Tony is an Aquarius and I'm a Leo. We do okay, you know. Polly Foster is thanking me for advice last month regarding getting my artist unlinked from another similar artist profile on Spotify and Apple. We now have a separate, separate profile. Yes, you know, that happened when, um, Interscope uploaded Trouble's, um, interim release that came out, um, at the end of June. It somehow got linked into a rock group and it was just kind of a nightmare. So we— Tony, I didn't. Tony went through the same thing that you went through, and I know that's, um, frustrating. How did you not know that Metro Boomin has a manager? Freddie Petrucci saying, I need a Gemini. Yes, I do. No, I don't. Yes, I do. No, I don't. Hector's saying, I don't live in a big city like Atlanta. I live in a small town of 35,000 population. That's like— there's 20+ towns around me that are 50,000+ each. Um, will I have to spread this out so I can read it? Will I build a buzz faster with street promotion? Um, yes, you absolutely will. I mean, definitely market yourself online as well. Don't just do the streets, but, um, do, um, you know, do, do all the little towns around you. Why not? You know, they're all within driving distance, right? I, I always draw a circle around wherever my client is based, wherever the artist is based, and then I work like a 3-hour driving radius. If they have a bigger budget, I go 5 hours. If they have a bigger budget, I go 7 hours. So, um, I think that, I think that makes great sense. Freddie's asking me, is Tony the manager of Duct Tape? Um, Tony is Trouble's manager. Um, does he manage Duct Tape? No, he, he helps the guys from Duct Tape, but he's not, um, Duct Tape's manager. Coop is saying, what do I think about the SoundCloud situation? Um, SoundCloud has a lot of value to me, so I really hope that they can work this out. Um, we need SoundCloud, you know, as independents. Why can't I move this down, man? I need a YouTube hacker to help me. There we go. Okay. Um, but I think it's— I think, I think that they'll work it out. I mean, the last thing I read in the news was this morning where, um, there were two, um, was it hedge funds? There were two, uh, venture capitalists. Two companies were trying to— or two groups of investors were trying to step in and help SoundCloud. Um, I'm a little concerned about that because the goal of an investor is usually, or VC, is usually to sell the company off within 5 years and, you know, double, triple, whatever their money. Um, and I think SoundCloud needs to be run based on, um, kind of the system they have in place now. And I, I don't see them making money, so I don't know. I'll be sad if we lose SoundCloud though, just on a, on a selfish personal level. That's where my podcast gets the most views. Is on SoundCloud more so than Apple. So, um, I, I love SoundCloud. Tip Daly is using a lot of the things I say, trying to stay independent. Yay! I'm a big fan of independent. I'm a big fan of you guys owning 100% of what you do. Polly Foster saying, I think it'll be easier to build a buzz in smaller towns in Atlanta because of less competition, in her opinion. I agree. We always do better. We do far better in smaller towns than we do— even with Trouble being based in Atlanta, we always did better in like Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Charlotte, you know, places that are smaller. Great Brilliance is saying that ran into Tony a couple weeks ago. Good dude, especially since we have the same last name. I assume we have to be related somehow. I think Guidry is one of those names like it's the French version of Smith. He has one of those names that so many people out of Louisiana and that whole Delta area seem to have. Weegee saying, will it be smart to pay someone $5,000 to put me on a college tour? Are you paying NACA the $5,000, or are you going through NACA? Um, I can't call that because I don't know what your buzz is. I don't know what they're spending the money for. Do you have to pay them $5,000 and then you also you also have to pay all of your travel expenses, um, in which case that sounds a little expensive. Um, I think a college tour is going to benefit you mostly when you have a buzz. I don't know if you have a buzz or not, so it's very hard for me to say. Um, if I were working Coley P, for an exa— for an example, who has like a really strong buzz in the Southeast, yes, I would pay the money to put him on a college tour. If he— if it was like a legitimate tour and if it made sense for the amount of people that he'd be reaching. If I had a brand new artist that nobody had ever heard of, um, let's say, um, MC Styrofoam Cup, um, I would not spend $5,000 to put MC Styrofoam Cup out on tour. Um, yes, I realize that's the most ridiculous name that I have ever come up with in doing any of these videos. But I wouldn't spend the money to put him or her out on tour because there wouldn't be enough recognition. And a tour by itself doesn't build recognition. You've got to really be doing everything. You've got to be on the blogs, you've got to be dropping videos, you've got to be dropping music regularly. Um, you really need a little bit of awareness as to who you are before you spend money on a college tour. It would be different if they were paying you. But if you're actually going to come out of your pocket because you've got to eat, you've got to bring somebody with you, you need a place to sleep, you need transportation, it's really more than just $5,000 that you're investing. And I have yet to see somebody go on a college tour that completely broke them, right, their career. Great Brilliance is asking, are there videos on how to do street promotion correctly? I've got marketing videos and I've got building a buzz videos. Um, I think there's an interview that I do with Tony in one of the videos where we talk about street promotion, but I don't actually have a video that teaches you how to hand stuff out to people. Um, but basically street promotion is building a large amount of people, going where people hang out and introducing them to yourself as the artist, or if you're out with your artist, to your artist. So that there'll be enough excitement in meeting your artist that they'll want to go check out the music, right? I don't know that I have any videos on how exactly to do street promo, um, but I do have videos that talk about where to go, like where we place flyers on cars. We don't put them on windshield wipers, we actually put them in the door, like between the window and the door. So that as somebody's getting in their car, they can just remove it easily. Because if you put it on the windshield, when they get in their car, they put the windshield wipers on and your flyers go into the ground. They don't see them, they don't care. So we put them like in the door jamb or in the window, um, when we're handing out flyers. But again, it's, it's sort of like promoting online. You need to build engagement. Like if you're an artist, you can't just walk up to somebody and hand them music and walk away. They're not going to care who you are. There's just too much out here. They're being, you know, hit by a million artists a day with, um, listen to my music, listen to my music, listen to my music. You know, the best way really to get people to listen to your music is to engage with them, have a conversation, create enough interest that they will want to, um, hear your music. And you can't always do that. Like, if you're promoting at a college football game, for example, and there's 100,000 people there, you might not be able to talk to all 100,000 people. So you might have 10 people out there passing out music hoping that, you know, 1 out of 10 people listen to it, or 1 out of 20, or whatever. But sometimes when you're in a smaller area and there's not the pressure of a big event, people will talk to you. You can be on a college campus and strike up a conversation, and the goal is to have somebody think, wow, this is really a cool, a cool person. Let me, you know, let me see what their music's like. JS Thompson Productions is asking, how do I find the directory of all college radio stations? Wow, if there is a resource like that, I don't know that it exists. Um, I wonder if NACA has it. Probably not because they're more of an entertainment resource. I don't, I don't know of a directory that lists college radio stations. Wow, that would take a lot of work to put that together. I don't, I don't quite know. I'm gonna do some, I'm gonna do some research, and if I find one, I will post it below this video. So if you'll come back, maybe give me like a week and then come back and check the, um, post under this video and see if, if I posted one. But I don't think that there is. If there is, I don't know of one. Freddie Crooks is saying, my artist J Po just joined Duct Tape, but I'd, I'm really rather him be in the hands of Tony. He has incredible music and is young but needs that guy that can network and push. Um, Tony only works with artists that already have a buzz. He doesn't work with brand new artists. Um, remember, managers make 20% of the income of artists, and new artists don't make money yet. So he's already— like, you're probably 2 years too late to get him to work with an artist who's brand new. I mean, you could certainly have a conversation with him, but, um I can't imagine that he would do it. 20% of nothing is nothing, right? Great Burlington saying, I haven't ran into too many Guidrys, but you're in Cali, right? Kanye shrug. Yeah, it's, um, most of the Guidrys— it's a French name if I'm not mistaken, so they're like in the Delta, Louisiana type area where there were a large settlement of, um, people from France and the more French-speaking islands. And Coop is suggesting that everybody put your Instagram in the feed and, um, and go for it. Muhammad Malcolm is asking, what's the name of your podcast? It's called Rappinomics. And on what day and time does it come on? It's not, it's not a regularly scheduled podcast yet. I haven't devoted the time to it that I should. So there's only 5 or 6 episodes that are up, um, but it's called Rapinomics. I chose to focus more on videos than on podcasts because I think that more artists are visual than oral. Weegee saying, if you were putting out a mixtape, how long would you promote that before dropping another one? Probably 3 to 4 months. It really depends on the budget, um, and it depends on the response to the mixtape, right? So if the mixtape is getting a really great response on the street, I wouldn't stop working it and go to something new. I would, I would keep working that mixtape. But if the response wasn't as strong or was declining, after 3 to 4 months I would drop another one. But I'm a big proponent of putting out, you know, 3 to 4 releases a year. I know that sounds like a lot, and you've got to have money to be able to do that, right? Because you got to be able to market and promote them and record them. Shanga is asking, um, I plan on eventually releasing a mixtape and I want to use a big artist instrumental for a track that would be very important and meaningful to me. Would you recommend doing this because of of potential legal issues. Um, the real answer to that is that you can't use somebody else's track without the permission of that artist, the producer, and their record label, whoever put out the original track. Having said that, everybody does it all the time. Um, I would hate to think that you'd be the first person to get sued for doing that. Um, It's a gray area. I would probably err on the side of doing it if it means that much to you, but just understand that when you're rapping over somebody else's track, you're showcasing your skill to that track. If it's not better than the original rap on that song, you're kind of setting yourself up to look less than. But if you're gonna rip it and you come correct and you like own that track and you're so much better than who the original artist was, then people will come away thinking, wow, that's a really awesome artist. But remember that people don't always gravitate towards an artist because of their skill. There are still a lot of purists out here that do, but a lot of people see music as entertainment and they want to dance to a song or they want to um, listen to a song because it takes them back to another day or time of something special that happened in their lives, or they're depressed so they listen to songs that make them happy, or songs that make them cry, or whatever. You know, it's more than just skill today that create a financially successful artist. So just make sure that you're giving everybody like full range of what they're looking for in music, not just ripping a track. Although lyrics are important, just saying. Jazz Thompson, you're welcome. Um, it doesn't matter if the mixtape is free or not. Um, it matters that you don't own that beat. So legally, for copyright issues, you can't use it whether it's free or whether people are paying for it. If people are paying for it, it just means that they can sue you and get something for it. They can sue you either way. Pipeline TV, yes, busy is good. Me too. Freddie Crooks is saying, how does a brand new artist build a budget with no job? You need an investor. Um, I don't know, I don't, I don't suggest anybody do this without having money, you know. Um, Ouija's asking, when an artist says he's getting $100,000 for a walkthrough is, is all that their money? Um, it depends on their deal. If they're signed to a major label like Future or 2 Chainz, it depends on what their agreement is with their label. A lot of artists today have what's called a 360 deal. There's a video on that. You need to know what that is. Um, and a percentage of that money might be going to the label, so I don't know if all that money is going to the artist. Um, also remember, when they're doing a walkthrough, they probably have security. If they're at $100,000, that means they're pretty well known. That means they're pretty big, right? They're a major artist for $100,000 for a walkthrough. So that's like a Nicki Minaj or, um, Future, or that's like a superstar, right? So they're gonna have transportation costs, they're going to have security with them in the club, they may want to buy bottles if they don't have that in their contract. They may be spending money in the club, but for all intents and purposes, yes, that is all their money. Again, depending on their deal. Aaron Reed, I just lost you. Aaron Reed, where are you? I'm going the wrong way. I'm having supreme, um, YouTube issues tonight. Aaron Reed was a former club promoter and built a lot of relationships in Southern California with the clubs. Because of this, I was recently approached about managing an artist. What are the pros and cons of managing an indie artist? Um, the pros are that you actually get to build somebody from scratch, um, that they're going to listen to you because they really need the help. And if they're indie, you don't have to clear everything you do through a record label, right? Um, the cons of managing an indie artist is it's a very slow build. It takes a while for money to come in. Um, the fastest I've ever been able to get income coming in for an indie artist is about 9 months, but it usually takes somewhere between a year to 18 months for money to start coming back in, um, from them doing shows and from streaming, etc. You've really got to build their buzz and make people want to give them money before they have money coming in. So that's a very big, um, that's a very big con, you know, um, reason to not manage an indie artist, right? Freddie Crooks: I often see an engineer selling verses or hooks of major artists for various prices. Is it cool to grab them from them, um, even if they have a contractual agreement signed by an artist? If they've got an agreement, just make sure the agreement is legit I've seen a lot of people selling shit that they don't really own, and when you present the contract to the label that the artist is signed to, they don't honor it, um, or the artist hasn't signed off on it, um, to be like— they signed off on it for whoever they sold it to, but the contract is not transferable. So just make sure it's real. Great Brilliance is saying, with the mumble rap stuff that's out there with dope beats, you can possibly flip those beats with some dope lyrics and concepts for a mixtape. Um, believe it or not, there's actually fans of mumble rap, and you guys have probably heard me say this before, I think it's not actually mumble rap. I think we have a drug problem in the South, and it's codeine rap, it's opioid rap. A lot of the artists here take different types of drugs that slow them down and make them less articulate, because a lot of the mumble rappers, when I talk to them face to face, I can understand everything that they're saying. They enunciate, they pronounce words properly. Thank you, Freddie. Freddie's telling Aaron that I've got videos on the pros and cons of managing. I do, it's true. Oh, Dark Brothers Entertainment, thank you. Radio-locator.com, this will give you a list of college radio. It gives you the call letters, frequency, and if they have a website, you can link on it. I forgot about Radio Locator. Radio Locator also locates radio stations, um, that are terrestrial, like not necessarily college, like FM stations as well. Um, Dark Brothers, does it also now list internet radio at Radio Locator? I don't know the answer to that. Darkness Bros on Instagram. Ouija, how far can an artist take himself without a manager with his own budget? Um, it depends on how well-versed that artist is. With how the industry works. Um, I don't think anybody really needs a manager until there's something to manage, right? Um, sometimes having a manager can slow you down because they have an idea of how the industry works and you have an idea of how the industry works, and sometimes they're diametrically opposed. Like, a lot of managers want artists to get signed to a label because then there's an advance and they get to commission the advance, like 15 or 20%. So sometimes the manager has, um, reasoning for wanting to do something that benefits the manager, not necessarily what's in the best interest of the artist. Aaron Reed, you're so welcome. Freddy Crooks is saying, well, Yachty doesn't do drugs, but I understand. And even Lil Uzi did some really great underground hip-hop without all the mumbling before he blew up. You know, I think that— I think that's kind of the key. Like, if you're going to be an artist that's doing whatever is the popular thing of the moment, um, you got to be good at everything, right? Like, if, if you're going to mumble words the way some of the artists that do do drugs mumble words, because you think that that's what's cool. You also have to be able to rap, and you want to be able to showcase your skill. It comes back to, um, I can't remember who asked me, but somebody in the feed had said, you know, um, about rapping over somebody else's beat. Like, if you're gonna do it you're showcasing your skill, and anytime you showcase your skill, just be really good at it, right? So guys, I wrote, um, an article for the blog at, um, songtrust.com that explains the basics of publishing and how to make money through publishing. It's a topic that I don't talk about very much Um, not because it's not important— it's really important. It's just that there's so many different angles to publishing that it's really hard to talk about in a video. Um, on a happy note, on Friday I'm going to interview somebody from Songtrust about publishing and ask him a bunch of questions that, like, you guys would want to know the answer to, and I'm going to post it here. But, um, you can check out that blog. It's at songtrust.com on their blog. Freddie Crooks is saying the key to all of them is the fact that they are so different in style and fashion and everything. I agree. You know, um, the sound of rap is changing. The types of artists that exist are changing. And the great thing about rap is that it's always changing. You know, I started listening to rap in 1980. A lot of you weren't even born yet. And the rap that was, um, hitting then is so different from what's hitting now. Like, I've noticed every 5 to 7 years the style of rap changes, you know, like, and, and fashion, you know. When I was coming up in rap, everybody wore super baggy jeans. Now Everybody wears skinny jeans. I haven't seen a pair of baggy jeans in so long, it's not funny. In fact, if I saw them, it would look odd and out of place, you know? It would look retro. So, um, everything changes, and it's not bad that rap changes. The great thing about hip-hop today is there's so much of it that you can find whatever style you like. If you're somebody that likes what you're calling mumble rap, there's a shit ton of it and you can find it on the internet. If you like really lyrical rap, like I like lyrics, right? So I listen to the stuff that's real lyrical. I listen to a lot of Teen Backpack stuff because that's what I like, you know. I also like trap rap and there is a ton of trap rap. So whatever you like, you can find, you know. And it This is the first time in the history of music that you can find tens of thousands of artists and whatever you like. You know, it's no longer being dictated to us by a handful of TV stations and a handful of radio stations. You know, we can find whatever we like. Pipeline saying rap should evolve just as dances do. They go hand in hand. Exactly. Deo, take care. Thanks for tuning in. Great Brilliance is saying there's room for the mumble rap. Some of it is really dope. Hell, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Twista are amazing and were hard to understand for many. Rap purists got to get over it and just do them. You know, if you don't like it, turn it off. You know, I managed Twista in the very beginning of his career and, um a lot of people didn't like the fast rap. They thought it was horrible. You know, it was Bone Thugs, it was Twista. Um, Busta Rhymes used to rhyme fast, uh, Tech N9ne would rhyme fast. So some people like it, some people don't. The great thing about Twista, I felt, was that I could always understand what he was saying. With Bone Thugs, for me, it was the melody. It was like, Uncle Charlie. Like, I could only understand one or two words, and I didn't mind that. You know, because it was different at the time, and I like that. Freddie Crooks is saying, like Nate Dogg, the great dies, and now that lane is open, but you have to build a buzz with it. You have to build a buzz with whatever you do. Um, Maria Garza, thank you so much. You're very welcome. I'm so happy to do this. Freddie Crooks says, no one, no one is singing like Nate Dogg anymore. It's because the music has changed. You know, I really like Bloody Jay a lot. He's, um, a guy out of Atlanta. Um, I call him Atlanta's Nate Dogg because that's the easiest way to explain him. He's incarcerated right now on a gun charge, but he'll be out in about a year or so. But I love listening to him sing. I think it's amazing, you know, just my own personal opinion. Jersey Club: When approaching a credible artist management agency Should you send an email from a personal or stage name account? And should you first— your first email be short for easy responses or packed with info? The problem with sending emails is that 99% of the time no one will respond to you. It's very, very, very, um, difficult to get somebody to respond to you until you have a buzz. Your best bet is to build a buzz and then when managers start coming to you, that's when you know legitimate managers, because you know the bottom feeders come first, right? There'll be a ton of people that step to you that say, 'I'm a manager,' but they've never managed anybody, they've never built a career, they barely have a business card that says manager. So you got to be careful about the pseudo managers versus the real managers, right? But once the real managers start stepping to you, that's when you're at a point where you can start reaching out to the managers of other artists whose careers you admire. Not the music that you admire, but the careers that you admire. Like, if you really think— I'm going to use Lil Yachty as an example because, um, somebody mentioned him in the feed, right? So if you look at Lil Yachty and you think, okay, I'm not crazy about his music, but man, I really like the way his career's being handled, then you may want to find out who his manager is and see if that person will manage you as well. But remember, you're going to be most valuable to somebody when they can just step in with their connections and take you to the next level quickly, because a manager gets paid a percentage of your income. They don't just arbitrarily pick somebody and put their relationships behind that artist and build a superstar overnight. Um, most managers choose artists based on who's already bubbling, and they see that they're kind of at this level, and they know that with the relationships they have, they could take them to this level. And that's what you want. You want somebody to step in and get you to the next level. You don't want somebody to step in and do everything for you. That sucks for both parties, right? So I don't know that I would approach them by email. I think I would let them come to me. Oh, I'm spitting when I talk. AKW Beats said, did you hear that hip-hop is 25% of all listened to music in America? I absolutely do. Um, and, um, I posted that— I posted the study when it came out. It came out, um, at the end of June. It's, it's in my Instagram feed. I forget exactly, um, where they— like, where they base that from, but I do know that On Spotify, I think 66% of the music that's listened to is hip-hop. So it depends on what platform you go to. Um, Jula Fat Stache is saying, why isn't Trouble so popular? Like, why isn't he more popular? Ask me that in a few months. We just saying, did you manage Trouble earlier in his career or later on? Um, Trouble was managed by a guy named White Boy D. For the first year or two of his career. That's when he put out December 17th, um, 431 Days, uh, Green Light, I think it was called Green something, um, and then he kind of stopped rapping. Um, White Boy Dee moved on to do film, and then, um, when when Trouble came back out, that's when I started working with him. I have never managed Trouble. I'm a consultant. People hire me to help them build their careers and make money with their music. And, um, now, uh, White Boy Dee is back, and Tony co-managed Trouble together, I believe. I haven't worked with Trouble since he signed to Interscope. Great Brilliance: Is it important in your opinion for an artist to build an email list? Absolutely. And what's the best way in a streaming world? Giving away songs for a download seems archaic and out of touch. Um, yeah, it is a little bit archaic, but as an artist you've got two things you can give away. You can give early access to a song or early access to a video. Um, I wouldn't give away a song because I don't think people care about downloading, and I think that's exactly what you're saying, is that it seems archaic. Um, but sometimes I will give somebody 24-hour advanced access to a song or a video, or a week access to a streaming song. You know, maybe they get to see behind the scenes about how the song was made or how the video was made. In exchange for their email address. Um, also we collect email addresses when we go out on the road. So whether we're on promotional tour or at a performance, there's always somebody there that's collecting email addresses for people. We don't badger people to give up email addresses, um, because you don't want a list of 100,000 people that don't care. Um, I'd rather have a list of 5,000 people that give a shit about the artist than 100,000 people that don't really know who he or she is or why they're even there watching that person perform, right? But I think giving access early is a great way to get email addresses. Ouija, what is one major key factor in marketing a brand or product in one word? Image. If you're, you're asking me to use one word, image. Image is a major factor in marketing a brand. Jula Fat Stash, can you ask Trouble to do a verse for me? I have a sick song on a dancehall beat, it will get radio play in Holland. I think Trouble is now at $10,000 for a feature. Um, he's made over $2 million in the music industry. Um, even though you guys asked how come he's not more known, um, in the Southeast, he's very well known and, um, he's kind of making a lot of money. It would be very hard for me to ask him to do a verse for you for free. Tech Monkeys, what's the best way to reintroduce an artist to an area and introduce him to B areas? I think you mean new areas. He has dope music, just needed a good starting point. Um, I think a good starting point is right where the artist is located. What better place to start than right where you are, right? You're saying reintroduce an artist to an area, meaning he came out and now he went away and he's back. I think you just work it as if he never left, or she— oh, you said he. Yeah. You work it like you never left. Hector, how many download cards can a solo artist without a street team pass out in a day? Not in a big city, but in a smaller town. I've never really counted how many download cards because for me it's not about how many, it's about the quality of the handoff. So if you have to stand there and talk to somebody for 5 minutes in order to get them interested enough in you to not just take that download card and drop it in the next trash can. You really want them to go and check out who you are or pull you up on their mobile phone while they're talking to you. Um, that could take a bit of conversation, and I'd rather see you do that than just, you know, like hire an airplane and drop 50 million business cards with your information all over the streets, right? So just handing a card to somebody isn't the goal. So I don't want to tell you that you need to pass out 1,000 a day or 100 a day or 10 a day, but I can tell you that the quality of that interaction when you pass it out, or that engagement, is what's going to spark the interest in somebody checking out your music, either when they go home or even right when they walk away or as they're standing there talking to you. Hey, Jula, the best way to get an artist to do a song with you, like, if you're not looking to pay them to be on your track— and I'm not a big fan of paying people to be on a track because if you've got to pay somebody, it means that your buzz isn't big enough. When your buzz is, is large, people want to do songs with you. Like, Trouble has a song with Drake. He didn't pay for that. Drake saw his buzz when he came to Atlanta and said, I want to do a song with this dude. That's the kind of position you want to be in. So if you can build a relationship with somebody when they're coming up instead of waiting until they've already made a couple million dollars and already have a buzz, when they're going to be less interested— it's obvious that you're trying to use them to make a come up yourself. Why would somebody want to help you for free then? It's better to interact with people as they're grinding and as they're coming up, because then you can exchange. Like, maybe you have a beat to give an artist, or maybe that artist, um, wants to work the area that you're in. So maybe you do a song together and you work your neighborhood and they work their neighborhood, and then you both kind of grow together in both of those neighborhoods. But once somebody's on, to come to them and say, hey, get on this song with me, you know, it doesn't make sense for them. You're basically saying, you know, do something for me for free and help me out, even though you struggled and built your own buzz. You know, help me build my buzz for free. It doesn't make sense. The thing about the music industry is it's very logical. Like, when you kind of think stuff out and you put yourself in the other person's position, You know, like, if you really want a song with Drake, you got to stop and think, why would Drake want to do a song with me? Like, what value is there for Drake to pick me out of 100,000 artists out here? Why would he pick me? And the answer, because I'm talented, isn't enough, because everybody's talented, everybody's dope. If you're really that talented, you're gonna raise to the top. And once you're raising to the top, that's when there's value in for somebody that's already built their own buzz to extend a hand and help you, right? And by the way, they don't see it as helping you. They see it as you've got a buzz, you've got an audience. They want your audience to like them even though they're already established. Every mainstream artist wants the underground buzz. And it's funny because you guys on the underground want the mainstream fans. It's— nobody's ever happy. Interesting about the Spotify stats, Pipeline TV. Thank you. Um, yes, um, Spotify hit 60 million recently. That's amazing, right? Tech Monkeys, you're, um, so welcome. Freddie Crooks is saying, please lend me your brain, I need all that Rapco Intel to be a pro. I've been following— wow, you've been following me since Rapco Intel Pro, that's awesome. That was the '90s, um, obviously you were 5 years old then because you're still young just like me. Weegee's asking, in the midst of dropping your second tape, when do you want to resurface the old single or tape in general? When do you want the old stuff to resurface? In the middle of dropping your second tape, when do you want to resurface the old single? I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. Um, when you're working a single, and let's say you're working a single for a year, right? Let me exaggerate this. You're working a single for a year, but you also heard me say earlier that you should drop 3 or 4 projects in a year. So what do you do with that single if you're working it for a year? Shit, put it on every single release. You know, it may be old to some people, but it's new to other people. And you've got, you know, if you've got 11 other songs or 9 other songs or 15 other songs on there besides the one that's repetitive, so be it. Your goal is to build your career as you please your audience, right? I don't think they're going to get really pissed off if you have the same single on different releases. I think people that really care about you are going to overlook that. So I would, I would put— I wouldn't put a bunch of songs and, you know, like repeat 4 songs on each release, but one, I don't see the problem with that. We did that with, um, we did that with Trouble. We had one single that we worked for, um, 8 months on 2 releases. I don't know any Spotify playlist promoters, um, Jewel of Fat Stash. Um, I used to, I used to use two different companies that were both located in Nashville, and then once everybody got caught on to them, they were no longer effective. So I don't have any Spotify playlist promoters anymore. Um, the distributor that I utilize does and we've been using their playlist promoter, but it's not, it's not good enough. I, I need my own. I need my own. Great Brilliance is asking, how important is an artist website and should artists blog? What should be on an artist site? Um, I have a video about building a website for artists, so I'm gonna send you there because I think I rambled on for like 30 minutes about that. So it— I still believe that websites are important. I think that when somebody Googles you, they should be able to find your social media and your website. Your website's going to house all of your videos and all of your music. You're going to sell merchandise there. So I do think that websites are still very valuable. Should an artist blog? I don't know the answer to that. Um, I'm trying to think of any artist blogs that I really check for, and I can't think of one offhand. I know that Rick Ross kind of does video blogs on his Instagram. I think Instagram and Snapchat are today's version of artist blogging, so I'm leaning towards Instagram and Snapchat instead of like a written blog. Odd Man Out, it's okay to be late. These are recorded and then posted, so you didn't miss anything. Um, Jersey Club, I'm not familiar with the DJ industry, unfortunately. Lux Scott is asking, is it a feasible idea for new artists to release 2 to 3 projects at once through streaming services, retailers, websites to push for 2 to 3 years and work projects? Um, 2 to 3 years to work one project? No. It, it's a very fast-paced world today, and stuff is old like in 5 or 6 months. So I think 2 to 3 years to work a project is too long. Can you drop 2 or 3 projects at once? My clients spend about $150,000 marketing and promoting one release. I don't know that you'd want to spend half a million dollars in dropping releases all at once. I think you drop them one at a time and you work them. You focus in on them. Be a sniper, not a shotgun. Work that project, get it buzzing. When it starts to decline in buzz, then you drop the next project. I think that's a much better way to do it today. Um, Jersey Club, no, I work solely rap. I don't work, um, EDM or electronic music. I'm sorry. And Pipeline saying, yes, stories are the new blogs. Absolutely. Instagram and Snapchat. Um, Ouija's asking what do I think about artists using automation systems to boost awareness online. I think it depends on what that automation system is. Um, I don't know if you're talking about like using, um a service— I'm trying, I'm trying to be delicate here because I don't want to necessarily send you to a service that you're going to pay for and not be happy with, right? But are you talking about like a service where you go and you post all of your Twitter posts or your Facebook posts and then it automatically posts for you? Um, everybody I know uses them, so I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But make sure that you are engaging with people as you interact, right? You want to interact with people, not just put your stuff in a service that just posts arbitrarily. Not arbitrarily because you're dictating when it's going to post, but if somebody reacts to a post and asks you a question, you want to be there to answer them, right? If you're talking about another system to boost awareness, um, I'm not sure of any that have value. There are none that I use. I do advertise on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube, and Google Ads. I don't use Twitter ads. I find them a little expensive. Muhammad and Malcolm is asking, is there a going rate for sampling someone else's music, or does it vary? It varies. I've got a couple of interviews with Deborah Manus Gardner on video, and we talk exactly about sampling. She's who I use to clear samples. Great Brilliance, the things that, that we spend $150,000 on are videos, promo tours, publicists for blog placements. We buy a lot of ads. We do internet promotion. We get onto Spotify playlists. We promote the videos, um, radio promotion tools that we hand out to, um, I'm in the Southeast, we still use CDs, so we still hand to hand with CDs, less than, than before. Um, we buy MP3 sticks. If you go to helpfulangel.com, there's a list there of Basically what we do and what we spend money on. Freddie Crooks, what should an artist's schedule look like daily in order to progress? Um, your schedule is going to be different depending on what phase you're at, whether you're recording music or promoting music, but you should be doing at least one thing every day, 365 days a year, in order to move your career further. So either promoting yourself, interacting with fans recording, shooting a video. It just depends on what aspect of your career you're in. Um, I— but something every day, right? Do something every day. AKW Beats, do you have any suggestions for books or programs for email marketing for music artists? I got an email list of about 1,000 people and I have no idea what to send them besides when I release new music. Yeah, you should definitely have a monthly newsletter. Um, there are a ton of sites about email marketing. I use a company called LeadPages for to build my list. It's leadpages.net. They have a whole— I'm not saying that you should go out and buy LeadPages because I think it's like $300 a year, and that's to build pages so that you can attract email addresses. That's not necessarily what you're trying to do as an artist when you build your email list, um, unless you're giving away songs. And again, I have a problem with giving away songs because most people stream. Um, but they have a whole bunch of resources at their website that you can read about, um, email marketing. And there's a lot of companies— there's Sumo, um, S-U-M-O. That's another great company. I'm trying to think who else I use. They're probably the two that, that, that spring to mind, but they've got resources where you can go in and read a lot of their handouts that they have on how to better email market. For my email list, I store it at Mailchimp. I think Mailchimp also has a place where you can go— mailchimp.com. They have a place where you can go to learn how to better email market. Most of the email websites have that though, because they want you sending out more stuff. The more stuff you send out, the more you become dependent on them and the more money they make, right? Because the bigger your list gets, the more money they make. So there's a lot of people out there that will help educate you. I don't know of a book, just the websites. I'm sure there's a ton of them though. TNA Network, my boy Five Star Hero has created a New Orleans Saints anthem and the team is showing interest. What type of legal route should he take for that one-on-one creation in New Orleans? He should definitely have an attorney, um, an entertainment attorney help him when the, um when the team takes on the song, if they want to use it, he should definitely have an attorney negotiate that deal for him. He shouldn't negotiate that deal himself. Any entertainment attorney can help him. He might want to utilize one in New Orleans since, um, the Saints are based in New Orleans and that's where the contractual agreement will occur. Hey Mike Woods, how are you? Great Brilliance, what blogs or playlists do you think are most important for driving artist awareness? It's different for every type of music. If you're a trap artist, you're going to want to be seen wherever the trap fans go. If you're, um, more of a backpack type rapper, you're going to want to go where people that like that kind of music go. There's not really a list that I can just give you of blogs and playlists that you should hit up. You should hit up everybody. Um, what I do is I hire a publicist to hit the blogs, and then like I mentioned earlier, our distributor hits the playlist. But I am looking for a good playlist promoter, um, to help us get on playlists. But it's not like somebody can just— it's not like I can just say, oh, you need to be on Hot New Hip Hop, because the chances of you getting on Hot New Hip Hop without any buzz is slim, right? Like, you've got to start at the, at the bottom and build your way up. I've got an— do I have an interview with a publicist? No. I've got a video on how to choose a publicist that talks about the importance of getting on blogs. I have nothing yet on playlists. Mike Woods, what is the recommended time set aside for online networking and face-to-face networking for new artists? As much as possible. If you can, if you can do this all day every day, that would be ideal, right? You need to make a list of all the stuff that you've got to do and then put it into your schedule. Figure out, you know, how, how can I best allocate my time? Because if you haven't recorded a project or single to release then networking isn't really doing you any good. You need to have a project completed so that you have something to share with the world, right? Whether that's a single, whether it's a mixtape, whether it's an album, like whatever you're working, you need to plan in your own schedule how to allocate your time to get done what you need to do. And the best way to do that is to put together a plan for what you want to release, how you want to release it, and when you want to release it. TNA says the song will be played during, before, and after the Saints game. It's going to be, um, a deal that the attorney is going to do that gives them the right to use that anthem if it's an anthem. If it's just a song that they want to play, um, there wouldn't be an agreement. They would just play a song, right? And then the artist would get paid through ASCAP or BMI. Because it's a public performance. Maria Garza, I see a great question coming. With all the devices like Amazon Echo— I can't say it out loud because mine's sitting right next to me and it responds when I say that name, I noticed last month— and Samsung refrigerators, cars now with internet radio, do you see FM as being relevant in the way music is discovered? You know, I just read a study about that. And how is music tracked for royalties? I just read a study about FM radio because I had always heard that it was dying in relevance. And I read a study and it was not by a radio station. I think it was Nielsen that talked about— it was Nielsen that talked about how radio still matters as a discovery method. It's like the number one discovery method between people I think it was 24 to 34 years old. Um, for the younger generation, it was YouTube. Um, YouTube and Pandora were the number one, um, discovery tools for like people that are like 18 to 24, 16 to 24, something like that. But if you Google the Nielsen study that just came out, I think it was around June 30th that it came out, and it talked exactly about that. About, um, FM still being relevant. I think it's becoming less relevant, but it's surprisingly still relevant. And how is music tracked for royalties? Um, I just wrote an article. I'm gonna send you to songtrust.com because I just wrote an article about the money in publishing, and it talks exactly about how music is tracked for royalties. There's many different ways. There's PROs their sales royalties, their mechanical royalties. So if you go to, um, songtrust.com and you find their blog, um, or go to my Twitter page or my Facebook page or my LinkedIn page, they all link to that article. The last post on all of my social media except for Instagram, um, links directly to that article. Weegee says, I'm in Atlanta, so do you guys go out and pass out flyers? To the colleges and high schools? You bet we do. Mostly download cards. Flyers— flyers aren't great for driving traffic unless your visual is so compelling that somebody actually stops and look at— looks at it. I prefer, um, a little bit smaller, not quite the size of a business card. I have none sitting on my desk, but I prefer something that's not quite this size, maybe something that's more like this size to hand out, because it's small enough to put in a pocket but it's big enough that I can make it artistically attractive and still get all my information on there. AKW Beats uses LeadPages for landing pages and AWeber for email list Excellent. I use LeadPages and MailChimp. I just started using Sumo, S-U-M-O, and I'm kind of anxious to see like how well that works. Weegee, I'm not familiar with that company. Um, you're asking me if a publicist is any good. I'm not familiar with them, so I— it's not somebody that I've used before, so I can't speak on that. Great Brilliance, how does a playlist promotion work? You pay a promoter and they get your song on a playlist. Exactly. You usually pay them for a 2-month period. The guys that we used were around $2,500 to $3,000. They're no longer effective. They kind of burned out all of their connections with all the clients they took on paying to get songs on playlists. Best way to get on a playlist is to build a buzz for your song. Imagine that! Um, look, Scott, I can't answer that. I haven't worked a New York City artist, um, in, in over 10 years, so I, I don't know what the budget for a New York City artist would be. I know to work somebody in the Southeast, we spend about $150,000 on marketing and promotion, and that's over about a 9-month period of time. Yes, AKW Beats, um, I believe that you can. Um, Songtrust is a— Maria Garza, what do you think about internet radio promotion and is it the next movement in breaking new music? Um, the next movement in breaking new music is going to be wherever the fans are because your goal is to reach as many fans as possible. Um, I use internet radio promotion but I don't use it a lot. I'm a big fan of Digital Radio Tracker to see where my artists are getting spun at internet radio, and we will back up whoever's showing love, but we don't initially start out promoting on internet radio only because I can't tell how many people are actually listening to the internet radio station. You just never know. So guys, I am at an hour and 5 minutes. I'm a little tired, so I'm going to stop here. Thank you for tuning in. Be here the first Wednesday of every month at 7 PM. I really appreciate you guys. I love you to death. And if you email me questions at thisiswendyday@gmail.com, um, I would be happy to, um, answer them on the first Wednesday in September at 7 PM. Thanks guys, take care, have a good night.