LIVE with Wendy Day May 3, 2017 | Answering Your Questions Live

Hi guys, this is Wendy Day from Wrap Kolish and 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 go. 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. Yeah, I couldn't remember how to go live. It's been so long. Hi guys, man, I've missed you. How have you been? Are you guys doing okay? Hi. Yay, I know, right? Tony is, um, Tony's killing it on Facebook Live. Hi guys, how have you been? I have been gone for a month. Please tell me you noticed. Please tell me you noticed. Please tell me you noticed. But it's good to be back. I've missed you guys. I've been so busy. I have 2 new clients, and man, just like setting up all the basics and the organization and the structure, it's just, it's just crazy. How are you guys? Oh, Pipeline TV, thank you so much. Joshua Sneed, how are you? Emily, I knew you'd be here. You emailed and said you would. So, um, I hope it's okay that I moved this to the first Wednesday of the month. I hope you guys will remember. The next one's going to be on the 7th of June, and if you send me questions, I will answer them, or you can just put them in the feed. Um, yes, yes, yes, I'm back. I haven't been posting videos for the past 3 or 4 weeks. Um, I don't even know how long it's been. That's how long it's been. So I'm really happy to be back. And guys, I've been good. I've just been really busy, which is good. You know, busy is— it means I'm making money, which is good. And thank you, Pipeline TV. I'm so happy to do this. Manny Fuentes, how are you? Demond Graham, yes. Yes, yes. So do you guys have questions for me? Um, I guess you're all seeing the Fyre Festival thing that went horribly, horribly wrong. Yeah, you know, the thing about, um, being an artist is not all money is good money. I know that Ja Rule was paid, you know, over 6 figures to be the face of Fyre— not the festival, but the app. It's actually an app um, for people to book shows. And I'm, and I'm not sure how I feel about this. You guys can kind of weigh in on it. Um, I know it's convenient for people that don't already have a booking agent or people that don't already have relationships because it means somebody can go to an app and they can scroll down and they can see you on the app and they can just, you know, press for you and see your calendar. But for artists that are pretty well connected. It just seems that— why aren't messages showing up in my box here? I know you guys are talking. You've got to be talking. You're always talking. This is, this is not good. I can't see any of your comments. There we go. There we go. And I know that Fire, like, the, the idea for the app, they decided to market the app by throwing this giant festival in the Bahamas that was just priced like crazy. Like, you know, you could buy tickets for 10 grand and have like a real, um, adventure, an experience, I guess they're calling it. Um, but crazy. Yeah, it didn't work. Um, they were in over their head. What I don't understand is why did they wait till the last minute to tell people that they were in over their head. Like, why didn't they know a week before that they couldn't pull this off? Why did they wait till people actually flew in? Anyway, it's, it's just ugly. Manny! So Manny won a contest with, um, Makin' It Mag, and they flew him up to Atlanta, and we got to have lunch, which was really a wonderful experience. Um, I don't feel like I, I, I could have sat with for 8 hours. I don't feel like I got to give Manny enough, um, information. But it was really cool and I was really happy to do it. I, I like making it. I think they're really genuine in their love for artists. But in the, in the, um, comments, that's what Manny's saying. He's saying that he remembers us speaking about it at Power Lunch. Yeah, it was, it was, it was real bad. So the 13:55, can an artist start with a smaller budget and make enough money to reinvest in their career? Like, if you have $50 grand, can you turn that into $150 to expand what you're doing? Yes. Um, it just takes, um, a long time, but yes, you can do that. Um, here's the thing, you're going to want to promote your mixtapes, your whole projects. I mean, you're always going to work a single, um, but the last thing you want to have is like a hit radio single. And I don't know what type of artist you are, so this might not even be helpful to you, but, um, you're going to spend like $30 grand at radio, so I wouldn't work radio songs. I would work club and street songs if I only had $50 grand. Now somebody asked about features, and I don't see it now. There it is. Joshua Sneed, how do you go about paying artists for features? I'm not a big fan of features. Because until your fans know who you are, um, features aren't really a good investment. There's just better places to spend your money. It's not like if you put, um, YFN Lucci or, uh, who else is relatively affordable, the Migos or, um, Young MA or Remy Ma on a record that it's going to get you notice to the point where you're going to be making money or you'll get signed to a label, whatever your goal is. It's better to build a little bit of a buzz, get people to know who you are, and then you can feature somebody and it's worth the money. But since you asked me how it works, I'm going to tell you. In a perfect world, and it's very rare that it goes perfect, but the way that you're supposed to do it is you pay them half of the money, then they do the feature, and usually they do it and send it to you. It's very rare that somebody will go into the studio with you unless they're in town doing a show or something, um, and then you can probably get them to go into the studio. And then when they're finished, then you pay them the back end after they've already signed off on the song. Now bear in mind that when somebody gives you a song, even, or a verse, or whatever they're doing for you, even if you're giving it away for free you need to get permission from their record label, whoever they're signed to, in order to use the feature. And it's very easy to get artists to do features, but it's very hard, very hard to get the labels to clear it because the labels don't have the same incentive of their artist being on a song with you as you may have. Once you have a buzz, it's a little bit easier to get it cleared because if you're hot on the street, the established artist wants that heat and they want to be seen as being in the know and they want to be on whatever's popping, you know, in, in, in at the street level in the clubs. So when it benefits them, it's a little bit easier to get a label to sign off on it. But that's actually how you buy a feature. You usually have a relationship with the artist or with the manager of the artist or somebody on their team, and they usually hook it up. Guys, when you buy features, be really careful. Like, if somebody says to you— somebody you don't know says they can get you a Lil Wayne feature, or they can get you a, you know, whoever— let me just use the same examples I used before— Young MA or Remy Ma or the Migos or YFN Lucci Um, just make sure they're legit. Go into the artist's Twitter page or Instagram bio and reach out to whoever's name and email address or even phone number is attached to that artist and just make sure the person's legit. I know a lot of people that pay for features that never get them because they just don't know who they're talking to or if it's real. And don't buy a feature that isn't exclusive. Um, somebody out of Chicago called me yesterday and was asking me questions about buying a feature for an established artist, and they were going to be one of 5 feature— one of 5 people buying the license to that feature. And that just didn't make sense to me that you would buy a verse that somebody else is going to put out and have the same verse. I think it makes you look stupid. Emily saying, I've been talking to friends here in New Jersey who are in college. They don't know any street teams. I've been considering forming my own. Absolutely. What's the best way to do this? Um, the best way to do this is to get everybody together, especially on college campuses. Anybody who could be your spokesperson, or, or street— I guess street team is, is a good word. Um, I, I like to call them street ambassadors. It just sounds a little bit nicer than street team. Um, but you can always find different people at different schools. And don't, don't find people at the same school, but, you know, pick one or two people from each school that kind of know each other and let them be your, your ambassador. Um, don't pit people against each other so that they're trying to compete against each other. What'll happen is they'll both end up doing nothing and you'll be really upset. But yeah, I definitely think you should start your own street team, especially where you're based, because you want to own your area. So if you're from Atlanta, you want to be the biggest thing in Atlanta. If you're from New Jersey, North Jersey, you want to be the biggest thing in North Jersey, you know. So that makes perfect sense to me. I have a guy here— I have a guy, I have a guy, everybody has a guy. I have a guy here in Atlanta that I send out on the road with my clients when we do promo tours. And he's a street team guy. He's just got really great connections all over the country. So in the areas where we don't have a good street team, like Mobile, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, um, we use our guy and we send them out with the artists to handle the streets. It's just a lot— it's, it's a lot more productive to have somebody that's got the relationships and that I know is actually going to do the work and not just take the money and run, which a lot of street teams do. You gotta, you know, I guess, I guess that's kind of a running theme in the music industry. You got to be really careful, um, you got to be really careful for— and Joshua, I just saw that, um, you got to be really careful who you give your money to in any aspect of this industry. I find there's a lot of people out there that just take the money and run, and then I find there's even more people that think they can do it, but they haven't done it before, so they have no clue. And people will tell you with the quickness that they can do something in order to get paid, only to find out that they can't. Um, so Joshua just clarified he didn't mean, um, he didn't mean, uh, featuring, um, national acts. He meant featuring local acts. So, um, I'm big on the unity thing. Like, if you can work with other people from your area. Um, find out what they charge to get on a song with you. In a perfect world, you want to do a swap. You want to give them a verse for one of their songs, and they give you a verse for one of theirs. But you've got to kind of be at the same success level in order for that to happen. But the best way to work with other artists is to build a relationship. Don't just randomly walk up to somebody and say, hey, want to get on my song? You know, get to know them. Talk about the industry. Talk about your struggles with them. Find out, you know, who they use that works for them, um, that you could hire. Find out, you know, what they've done that hasn't worked for them. And the best way to get that information from somebody is to share your information first. You know, I'm very quick to tell people, you know, who I've hired for radio that wasn't productive, and I'm not shy about that, you know. So if you want people to be real with you, the best way to do that is to be real with them. And then they usually open up to you. Siobhan, everything is great, thank you. I've been a little busy, but I'm good. Hector, can I use postcards as download cards, or does it have to be a business card size? I feel like I can fit more info on a postcard. Yes, it can be any size that you want. It can be business card size, shit, it can be an 8.5 by 11 if you want. The reason that I use, um, business card size is because it's very easy for somebody to put that in their pocket So if you're going to do a postcard, don't do like a giant postcard, but do one of like the 4x6s where somebody can fold it in half and slip it in their pocket. Um, that's the only reason that I don't use a bigger card is a lot of people aren't gonna— when you, when you approach them, they might be in the middle of something like a show, or they're at a picnic or a barbecue and they're talking to people. Um, they may not be in the mind state where they're just going to pull out their phone and check out your music right there on the spot. So I try to give them something something that, um, that they may use. Um, you could even on the back side of the postcard, you know, leave it blank or put like a frame on it and, um, put like something funny on it, like, you know, a list of hot women or something, so that you can get phone numbers, names and phone numbers on there. Because, you know, if somebody's getting, um, a chick's phone number, they're not going to throw the card away. And on the flip side is all of your download information. So you can be as clever with it as you want to be. Bubble on deck! It feels like forever. You know what, you know what's funny though? Like, it does feel like forever because I haven't been in front of you guys for a month now, but it went so fast. It went like bloop, gone. Just crazy. I have been to New York 3 times since you last saw me. I've been to the Bay Area once. I'm headed back out there tomorrow. So that'll be twice. Um, where else have I been? That might be it. Oh no, I was in Alabama too. It's just, it's been crazy. It's just been crazy. Good crazy though. Pipeline TV is also a Making It Mag member. Yay! Misi, how are you? C5MU12, um, I don't know if Trouble is releasing any new music soon. We've been trying to get him to release music for the longest, and he's at a point now where he can go this alone. In fact, there's— you're gonna, you're gonna hear some trouble news very soon in a very good way. Some great things are happening for him, but I've actually picked up a new client or two, so this is very exciting. But he's at a point now where he can— you know, I get artists to a certain point, and then once they've learned everything they can from me, I off they go. And we're at that point now. I love him dearly, he's doing great, right? But he absolutely needs to release, um, new music. And you know what's funny is when I look at his numbers, like, I can really see the decline in his numbers based on him not having new music in the marketplace. You know, like, his streams went from like 10 million a month down to 5 million a month just because he hasn't put out new music. Um, I know they dropped a song called Brick, uh, somewhat recently, and, um, his numbers just went bloop right back up again. It's just, it's, it's really interesting. You can really see the, you can really see the difference having music in the marketplace makes. So my best advice to all of you is to keep dropping music. So Nathaniel's asking me, do I think artists still need managers? Hmm, yes, I think that when you get to the level of Chance the Rapper, you need a manager. I think when you get— okay, even a little bit before he blew, um, I think when you're at the level where you're kind of bubbling you absolutely need a manager. Um, but until you're really like ready to tour and your money is really coming in strong, I, I don't think you need a manager. I think you need a team. I think you need people that can help you to move forward, but I don't think you need a manager per se, because when you get to the level where you're making, you know, a quarter million dollars a month, then you're at a point where you can start to get sponsorships and you can get on a tour. And that's when you need a manager's connections. And the level of manager that you're going to be able to attract when you're making that kind of income is much better than the level of manager you can attract when you're just making like $7,500 a show or $10,000 a show. You know, you can really attract the superstars and the people that can, you know, get you into movies and on TV and all sorts of cool shit that will advance your career. DJ Sincere, Dark Brothers Entertainment, how are you? Bubble still drops music weekly. Bubble, I liked your last, um newsletter that was really cool. It really caught my eye. Bubble's looking for tracks, beatsforbubble@gmail.com, so, um, hit her up. Um, Pat Ron's asking me how it was working with Pac. Um, I kind of talked about this to death, but it was amazing. Like, he, he was my friend more than he was a rapper, so it was, um Thank you, Pipeline. Um, it was cool working with him. He had an amazing sense of humor. He also attracted a lot of drama everywhere he went, so it wasn't fun to go out with him in public. Um, therefore I didn't. It wasn't fun. Just everybody, you know, everybody used to, um, love him, so they would just kind of like just pounce on him, you know, wherever wherever he was. It was just crazy, and it would always be loud and raucous, and, you know, it just— his whole vibe was fun, and, you know, let's have fun, let's party, let's have a good time. You know, I, I like the Pac that was more quiet and reserved and thoughtful and planning and organized, and let's build this label, let's do this, let's do that. You know, he wanted to, um, he wanted to start his label but he also wanted to build community centers in the hood, and he wanted to build, um, childcare daycare centers. So he, he had so many things he wanted to do outside of music, and that's the part of him that I really enjoyed. Bubble saying she's trying to get better at the email marketing thing. Gotta be a jack of all trades when you're indie. Enjoying the process, man. That's so true. You gotta, you gotta be able to like do everything when you're, when you're indie. But it's such great, it's such great experience, you know, because you really, when, when you're working on your email list, you really know who your fans are and you know like where they're based and where they're located and how many are men and how many are women. Like, there's so much value in in you controlling your own email list. And, um, you, you get to know like who opens your emails and who doesn't, you know. It's just, I, I think that you guys all really need to do that, like collect email addresses and start your own email list. Um, you can do it on MailChimp for free up to, I think it's up to 1,000 or 5,000 email addresses. So it's not really it's not really costing you anything to have your email list. And then by the time you get to the point where you're paying for your email list, you should be big enough that you can— and by big I mean in terms of popularity, right? You should be popular enough to be able to sell t-shirts or to leak new music to the people on your email list. Like, those are your hardcore fans. You know, they're the people who really care about you, and, and, you know, that's a blessing. So, Tamara, are you finding that most of your fans are all over the world, or are you finding that they're wherever you've been collecting email addresses? Like, are you getting like random folks from Italy and Russia and South Africa, or are you mostly finding that your fans are coming from wherever you you are physically. That's the great thing about, um, email is you can really get a feel for your fans and you can target them. Like, if Bubble is doing a show in Atlanta, she can break out her list to anybody who's like in a 3-hour driving radius from Atlanta and just email them So she might— let's say she sends out a newsletter every Wednesday, right? And she's going to be in Atlanta on Saturday. In addition to that Wednesday email, she could send out an email like the Monday before the Saturday she's going to be there and say, hey, this is for those of you that are on my special email, you know, I'm doing a meet and greet, um, during sound check at 4 o'clock. My show's at 10, um, I'm doing a meet and greet at 4 o'clock for $10. So come on down and hang out with me for an hour. So it's a way for her to make more money. And instead of sending that information to everybody on her email list, because somebody in, in LA doesn't care that she's doing a meet and greet in Atlanta, right? But she can target locally, and then she can back it up by ads on Facebook. She can break out her fan base on Facebook of the people that are just like in a 3-hour driving range of Atlanta and run ads saying the same thing, you know. And she can, in those ads, she can mention, hey, sign up for my email list. So what she's doing is she's, she's kind of filling her email list so the next time she wants to do this, she's got it. Or if somebody sees the ad and they're really interested but they're in Indiana, for example, you know, they can join her email list, and then when she does this type of event in Indiana, you know, they're golden. Although I don't know why they would be seeing it in the Atlanta— maybe they go to school in Atlanta. I don't know why they'd be singing in Atlanta if they lived in Indiana. But yeah, you can be really, you can be really targeted. So Tamara's saying, yeah, all over the world, um, Germany a lot lately, and her first website purchase was from somebody in Spain. Yep, it's cool, right? But it's because the advertising I do is so broad. I'm going to narrow it down to Southeast region to match the street promo. Yes, we do. We're very targeted. And let me tell you, the downside of being targeted is when you're working an artist— like, there was, there was a time where Trouble was super hot in just Atlanta and South Carolina, and my friends in Houston would be like, yo, Wendy, you're not doing a really good job with Trouble. We're not hearing about him, you know? And it's like, well, if you come to Atlanta, he's getting 12 grand a show. You know, that's the downside of working regionally, but it's what you do when you don't have a lot of money. You can't afford to reach the whole US, you know. Also, you can't afford to chase, to chase shows. Like, if you have a show in Miami on Friday night and you have a show in Seattle on Saturday night, you've got to fly between the two shows. And that money, when you're a newer artist, can eat up your entire fee to perform, you know. So, and you can't really get up there to promote ahead of the show because it's so expensive to fly from wherever you are to Seattle or from wherever you are to Miami, you know. But if you're just focusing on the South and you've got a show in Raleigh, North Carolina on Friday night and then you need to be in Valdosta on Saturday, you can do that. That's drivable. That's about, you know, maybe 10 hours, but you can do it. Thank you, Bomb Productions 205. I've just been busy working. I've missed you guys too. So Emily is saying, I have my website being hosted and made by Bluehost. I'm happy with them. I was with GoDaddy, but that didn't go well. You know, I have been with GoDaddy for probably 20 years, maybe as long as they've been in business, and I really don't like them, but I've got all my domains there, you know, and they all renew at different times throughout the year. I'm slowly moving my domains from GoDaddy to Google. Google now houses domains. They're a little more expensive, they're $12 instead of $8.99, but the thing about GoDaddy is I just don't find them easy to work with. Although, having said that, there was something wrong with the email address on one of my real estate websites. I invest in real estate, and there was a problem with my email address. The email wasn't coming through. So I called the guy at GoDaddy, and he just— he was like, hey, sit back, I got this. And he went in to my website and he completely fixed my email. He set up my email address, Tony's email address, and like he really, he really just did it for me, and, and that was a blessing. I can't just call somebody at Google and do that. But yeah, I like Bluehost. I, I think that they're a good company. Um, I like HostGator too. HostGator is somewhat easy to work with as well. Joshua is asking, how much does it generally cost to get a DJ for a show? It really depends on the show, um, and I don't know if you're asking me what it costs to book a DJ for a show, like if you wanted to book, I don't know, DJ Drama to come through, or if you're asking me how much you pay a DJ to like DJ for you. And, um, sadly they both kind of have the same answer. For a rapper, okay, um, it depends on who you have. So if you get a relatively new DJ, he's probably going to want you know, travel money and food, maybe $25, $100, whatever. But if you get a DJ that's got some renown, you're gonna have to pay him whatever his going rate is. I also think it's a little cheaper when you have a tour, right? So if you have a tour and you're paying a flat fee, like maybe you're paying $10,000 for, you know, 40 shows, I I'm making that up, but if you're just paying somebody to do one show and they're traveling with you, it might be a little more expensive just to do that one show. Like, maybe they're gonna want a couple hundred bucks to do just one show, whereas they would take $100 a night to do a bunch of shows. But you can ask DJs. It just really depends on, you know, who they are, the type of DJ they are. And what they normally make. If they can stay in their own city and they're making $500 a night to spin, they're not going to want to go out on the road for you for less than that, you know? And remember, when they leave their night, if they have a night at a club, their night can drop. And if their night drops, then their money drops, their reputation drops. Yo123789 is saying Namecheap plus Bluehost is the best bet. Jesse Parker, I've missed your lives and uploads. I know. On a happy note, there's almost 100 videos there that I've already, um, posted, and they're going to start up again. Give me about a week. I'm trying to, um, I'm trying to get out from under all the work that I have right now. I've been going through and taking notes on all of your videos. Who is your new artist? Where can I follow? Dirty Cash and I are working on a new investor. I love Dirty Cash so friggin' much, it's not funny. He's just— I love his work ethic, I love his music. I love Dirty Cash. He's out of Houston, and he had an investor who really kind of got behind him, and then he was also a little bit of a control freak when Cash wasn't like jumping at every little thing this guy was doing. The guy got frustrated, and Cash got a little frustrated. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, because the things the guy was having him do weren't advancing his career. Like, he put him out on tour with Yo Gotti, and as a new artist, it's great to have that experience, but people don't discover new music at a Yo Gotti concert or a concert of any artist that they're there to see. They're not there to see the opening act. They really don't care. You know, you might pick up a handful of fans, but you're not going to come away with enough fans to warrant the cost of what you're going to spend. So they were kind of really frustrated with each other, and it didn't go well. It didn't end well. Jerry Mana, um, how do you go about getting a publicist? I have a video about how to find a publicist and what they do, um, but the way that I do it is I take a look at who's out there working different artists that are getting a lot of press, and then I find out who is the person that's doing all that work getting them the press. And you'll find that, um, it's, it's like a handful of people. The same names keep coming up over and over. I also call the people that I know with the blogs, the editors, to say, hey, who are you dealing with right now that's just really on point and that you like a lot? Because even if it's somebody that isn't well known as a publicist, the fact that the editors and the bloggers really like them means they're likely to open their emails and they're likely to post the artist that they're working. DJ Nope, if you open a business management firm, I will work for you on the CPA. How are you? Yes, um, you know, we need, we need great business managers. I still like You know, I get a lot of articles sent to me, um, from the music business, and there's still people that are getting robbed by their business managers. Like, this is 2017, how is this still happening? It's heartbreaking. Um, DJ Nope, yes, we need, um, we need business managers. We need great business managers. Um, you and I should talk because I'm working with an artist in North Jersey, and I know that you guys asked me, um, who I'm working with so you can follow them. I'm not ready to tell you yet, but give me a minute and I will. Let me, let me get their foundation set. Let us start working, um, so that you can then follow and look in. Because right now, I really, I, I don't want to— I don't want to have everybody I know like rush in and follow him because it's going to give us a false idea of what his market is. His market's going to be like Wendy Day people, you know what I mean? And I need it to be like real fans, so give me a minute and I will let you know. You know you're all going to go and just like pounce on him. You already know that. I know that. You know that. Emily, I'm going on a TV show, a local TV show in Staten Island in 3 weeks. How to leverage this for more followers and fans? Ask people to follow you when you are on the show. Give out your social media address and have people follow you. Julio R, how are you? Julio says Cash Money hasn't been the same since I left. I left in 1998. Trust me, they were fine without me. They did, they did great. I'm so not worried about them, but thank you. Um, Hector's asking me, how is the social media influencer marketing working for your clients? We were using it— we were about to use it for Trouble. Um, we didn't need to because of the direction that he has chosen to go. I know I'm being cryptic. Um, but we haven't started yet. So with the new clients I have, we probably won't be to the level of influencer marketing until the fall, realistically. So I can't give you an answer to that yet, Hector. So you guys are seeing all the, the music that's dropping. Did anybody pay attention to the, um, to the Met, to the, to the ball that they had, the gala on Monday? Did any of you guys care about that? Um, I'm not going to talk about it very long, but it was amazing to me because the level of star that we have in rap that was invited to that, it just shocked me. Like, the Migos were there, you know, Lil Yachty was there. Um, it used to be that you had to be a superstar to be there, like Drake or Kanye or Jay-Z. So it was a little surprising to me to see that they invited, you know, the new generation. I thought it was cool. I'm not complaining about that. I thought it was really cool. And they were also a little bit more daring in the outfits that they chose to wear, which was kind of cool. So, you know, hip-hop is really breaking through into mainstream, you know, more so than ever. Um, in the '90s, it was like at its height, and I used to see hip-hop in, you know, like the Flintstones cereal, or Flintstones vitamins would use hip-hop. You know, it was just kind of everywhere. It's not quite as prevalent as it was then, but it's nice to see more mainstream events kind of accepting, um, rappers, especially Southern rappers. DJ Nope is saying, how do you feel the music industry will be in 5 years? Do I see major labels staying around or more independents? We're always going to have more independents, um, and, and here's why. Um, it's oversaturated, and the major labels, there's only 3 of them now, you know, and each of the majors has different departments. But like, I've noticed that Epic has signed so many fucking rappers, like, like they could— they couldn't put out everybody on their roster in a year with what they have right now. So I know they're not going to be able to sign new stuff. For, um, for a while. So I think that just based on opportunity, there's going to be more independents. Also, as you see more independents that actually stay independent, like the Chance the Rapper type artists, I think they're going to inspire an entire generation of people to follow in their footsteps, you know. Um, right now we've got a lot of artists who are independent and then a major comes along and waves a couple million dollars at them, and instead of staying independent, they kind of get excited and they jump on the major bandwagon, which I'm not complaining about. I think that's a great thing. That's the goal, you know. The goal is for you to be as successful as possible. But I just think right now you can make more money independently until you're ready to kind of cross over into that pop lane. And then once you cross into the pop lane It makes perfect sense for, to me, for somebody to sign to a major label. I think also in 5 years from now, it's going to be all streaming. I guess that was kind of obvious though, but I've been saying that for a couple years that it's going, you know, to all streaming. Downloads won't exist, CDs won't exist, you know, except for, you know, just like kind of the way vinyl exists today. You might have some people that, you know, want cassettes and they want CDs and they want downloads for the you know, for the novelty of it. But for the most part, we're going streaming. I think that the streaming sites will all start making product. I think Apple Music will become a label. I think Apple will have like Apple Records, whatever they call it. Um, I think Spotify— I don't think just with music, I think they'll do this with, um, videos as well. They'll start their own shows. I think that in order to compete they're going to need to have their own in-house content. Um, I don't know how that'll work yet. I don't know what that looks like because if you signed to Apple, why would Spotify ever add you to their playlist? There's no incentive, right? Um, but I think at some point the content providers are going to become content makers. Kind of what YouTube did. They kind of gave people budgets and said have at it, and then the ones that were the most successful, they scooped up and profited from. Just Notice: As a new producer, what's the best way to get your name out and work with artists? Honestly, the best way to build your name as a producer is to have hit records. And, and that, that's a fucked up answer, I realize, because how do you become, you know, how do you get the opportunity if nobody works with you. Um, I have a couple videos with— of interviews with producers, and Deborah Manus Gardner did a great interview for producers. You know, she talked a little bit about how to expand your brand. Um, but I would do music for as many people in my area as I could, um, but I wouldn't necessarily just do the artists that are super talented. I know a lot of times producers really just want the most talented artists on their beats, but the artists that have budgets and the ones that can market and promote usually go further than the ones that have talent with no marketing and promotion budget. So just, you know, keep in mind that if you're trying to build your name, when the artist becomes successful the producer becomes successful. So go for the guys that can market and promote, and the guys with the grind. Emily, I agree. I think that music and fashion are very intertwined, you know, and that, that comes back to the, you know, to the Met Gala. Like, you know, I looked at Future and I'm like, oh my God, he looks like, he looks like a model. Like, like He doesn't look like a model. He doesn't have that look, but he's dressed like a model. Like, he's dressed like a fashion icon. You know, one of my friends pointed out that he has a stylist who's just really well connected and has a great eye. And, you know, in the past couple of months, he's just, you know, he's looked like a million dollars. So LOL LOL, that's funny, um, is asking, did I ever think about going into the pop genre or always hip-hop? Hip-hop is my passion, so I stand— I tend to stay in hip-hop. I have worked with a couple of rap pop artists. I'm working with one now. Surprise. The thing about pop is it's quite expensive to buy pop radio. If, if a rap artist wants to go number one, it's gonna cost maybe $200,000, $250,000 depending on the time of year to get to number 1 on urban radio. But at pop radio, to get to number 1, you could spend $1 million to hit the same spot. So it's a lot more expensive to work pop. And with pop, you know, you've got to come through some genre, you know, either you have to come through country like, um, Taylor Swift, or you come through rap like Nicki Minaj, right? Or, you know, Drake came up through hip-hop. But when you think about it, like, the pop blogs are like Entertainment Weekly and ET and TMZ. Like, it's hard to get on the pop media until you're a superstar. So it's just a little easier to come in as a rapper or to come in as, you know, like Taylor Swift did. She came in through country. DJ Note, radio too. I forget what we were talking about. Um, oh well, radio. What do I think about radio in the next 5 years? Um, you know what's weird about radio? I keep saying that it's gonna die soon and it doesn't. Like I don't, I don't know why I thought it would be drastically reduced by now, because if you can pay $10 a month, so you're paying $120 a year for either Spotify or Apple Music, why would you ever listen to the radio? You know, like, you have commercials, you're listening to music, you're not programming. Why wouldn't you— why would you not want to be your own programmer, right? But radio, it's it's declining, but it's declining slightly. Like, you hear me talk about CD sales, which are declining like this, like it's a super sharp, um, steep, uh, super sharp angle. When you look at MP3s, they're declining like this. Radio is declining like that. So it's, it's declining, but it's declining ever so slightly. And I've noticed that digital radio, um, like, like internet radio is growing. A lot of the cars that came out in 2017 are internet radio capable. I've noticed that in Europe— and we tend to follow Europe and Asia, you know, they had streaming long before we did. Spotify is, is, is from one of the Slavic countries. I can't remember which one. Is it Finland or Sweden or Norway? One of them. Anyway, um, they have only digital radio. Like, they're switching. They're leaving FM radio and going to all-digital radio. So, you know, it's, it's a hard call for me what's gonna happen to radio. I've been saying that it's gonna go away, but it just doesn't die. Tamara says, what do you think about platform-specific exclusive for indies? Is a waste of time, like a SoundCloud exclusive song until you reach 10,000 plays? I, I don't mind exclusives as long as you've got other music in the marketplace. Where exclusives get a little funny is that song that's on SoundCloud, you're, you're going to have difficulty getting it on Apple Music and on Spotify. And what if it could stream 10 million times on those two platforms, you know? Um, so if you're gonna do a SoundCloud exclusive. You might want to do a SoundCloud exclusive with one song, an Apple exclusive with another, and a Spotify exclusive with another, and just know that they're probably not going to move further beyond where they are. That's my problem with exclusives. I think if you do an exclusive for like, um like 2 days maybe as an indie. I think that that makes sense because you're making friends with SoundCloud, but then you go full out for everybody else after a day or 2. Um, you know, we did that all the time with Trouble for WorldStarHipHop. They always got Trouble videos for, you know, either a day, um, for their platform, or 6 hours, or 3 hours. Like, they always got it first because they showed so much love in the beginning. C5 MU12, what is play MPE? You mean MP3? Where's that from, play MPE? Because I don't know what that means. Rajaveli, how are you? Yeah, you could, um, Temer, you could, you could put a number on it, but I think a time limit might be better than a number. Because what if you— what if your agreement is 10,000, um, streams on SoundCloud and you get that in an hour and a half? You know, maybe, maybe you give them a little bit longer of an exclusive than an hour and a half. I could see like why Katy Perry would do that, but as an indie, I'm not sure I'm not sure the benefit to them, um, to have something for a short amount of time. So I guess it just depends on how long it takes you to get to 10K. And then, you know, the, the reverse of that— if you're a very, very, very new artist and it takes you 3 months to get to 10K, you know, now they've had it exclusive for the life of the song, you know, because if it's only there, how do you work it and not be on other playlists? Like, playlists are so important today. I'd rather have playlists than radio. Playlist. I'd rather have playlists than blogs. I'd rather have playlists than anything except the streets, because to me the playlists are like the streets. Hector's saying, for Facebook ads, is it better to promote a YouTube video, SoundCloud link, or Facebook video? Um, it depends on what your goal is, right? Like, if you're trying to attract people to your video, then you want to, you want to have a video. And, and, and by the way, you don't promote a YouTube video on Facebook because they'll throttle you. Whenever you have a link to an outside site, wherever you're driving somebody away from Facebook, they throttle you for that. They don't, they don't— if they normally expose you to 1,000 people, now they're exposing you to like 200 or 300. They really throttle you for, for having YouTube links. So you're gonna want to upload your video onto Facebook. I mean, you're gonna want to have your YouTube page as well, but you're gonna want to upload your video onto Facebook so that people see it there. And then you're gonna have your other, you know, in your information, you're gonna say that it's available on YouTube as well, it's available, you know, on your website, it's available wherever.. And you can use a YouTube player on your website and it still counts as a YouTube spin if it's just embedded there. Ditto with the SoundCloud link. Now there are times where you're gonna want to do that because you want to drive people— like let's say you're trying to build up your SoundCloud page, right? And on SoundCloud you're doing all your trades with other people on SoundCloud. Like, you like my song, I'll like yours, you're doing all that kind of stuff. You might even have a promotion going with a company that helps you with SoundCloud. Not, not a bullshit company that, you know, gets you fake plays, but like a legitimate company that does promotion on SoundCloud. You may want to advertise that to your Facebook fans, you know, just know that they'll throttle you, but maybe you want the 200 or 300 people out of 1,000 to see it. Or I'm making those numbers up, it might be 500, it might be 600. I just know that they, they throttle you. But I use Facebook ads, Google ads, and YouTube ads for whatever our purposes, you know. It might be to advertise a performance, it might be to sell t-shirts, it might be to get likes on Facebook, it might be to get, um, to build the numbers on Instagram or Twitter. You know, whatever you use your ads for is how you measure it. It's what you're do— you know, what your plan is. It's not that it's better to promote a video or your Twitter account. It's whatever your goal is you promote. King Vega, how are you? I just lost your question. Damn it. There we are. How do you correlate merch with music as an independent artist as far as making the merch you sell show up with your numbers as a business or a brand? Um, it doesn't show up with your numbers. You sell merchandise to make money. So on your website, which is where you'll probably start selling merch first, you might want to use a company like, um, CafePress, or, uh, is it called Zazzle? Um, Printful. You might want to use a company that will do the printing and the shipping for you of whatever you're selling. You make less money, but you don't have a bunch of overhead. You don't have to run to the post office twice a week or 3 times a week to send stuff out. You don't have to worry about having, um, a credit card machine to, to run people's, um, credit cards in order to pay. It's just, it's a lot easier for you You'll also be able to see what type of merchandise sells best so that when you're ready to go into the merchandise business, you'll know whether t-shirts sell better than hats, or maybe bandanas sell better for you because of your fans, or water bottles, or, you know, whatever, you know, um, lighters, whatever, whatever your fan base embraces. And it's just better to find out without having to sink thousands of dollars into that lesson. Yes, I knew you— I'm sorry, Tamara, I knew you meant temporarily exclusive. I gotta scroll down faster. Pipeline is saying MPE is the new music distro online company. There are a million online distributors, guys. When you, when you deal with the distributor, find out what their splits are. With the, um, with Apple, with Spotify, because if they're giving you 100% of the money but they're only getting 0.0004 cents, and another distributor is giving you 80% but you're getting a bigger split, um, the person giving you more money is the better deal, right? Just saying. Really, for a distributor online, they're putting your music up on a store and they're collecting the money. It's not hard, it's not rocket science. Nick Kent: I am a producer and have an artist. We have an offer from a growing indie label. We feel like we should wait and continue to push out some new records to raise awareness. I'm a big fan of staying independent as long as you can. If you're at a point where you need that label to help you get to the next level, then that's a different conversation. But the more leverage you have, the better deal you're going to have. So if you're able to, um, keep pushing yourselves and you're getting to the point where you're making $1,500 a show, $2,500 a show, $5,000 a show, $10,000 a show. Now you can put the money back into your career. You know, you can get up to $100,000 a month or $150,000 a month and decide, okay, you know what, we're making over a million dollars a year. If I go get a deal from whatever label, you know, I want at least $3 million a year to sign because I can make a million myself, or I can make $1.5 million myself. It's leverage, right? Got it. Pipeline saying it's been around for a while, but with the new streaming push, it's helping it grow. Streaming is, um, it. I guess you already know that. C5MU12 is saying I heard about it on Billboard. You can Google them. Daily Play MPE. 'in an article on Billboard that said they were instrumental in pushing an artist's song.' Okay, I guess my advice would be to do the research, test them out, see how you like them. Jerry Manna, 'Did I miss my question?' I know nothing about the Christian hip-hop market. I'm sorry if, if you asked a question and I missed it. Nick Kent is asking, 'How do we—' Wow, I missed a bunch of questions here. Um, Nick Kent is asking, how do we get in touch with curators of playlists? You find out who they are, um, and then you reach out to them on social media if you don't already know them. Um, you can find them on Facebook, you can find them on Snapchat, you can find them on LinkedIn. Um, but you can Google, like, if you want to know, you know, who is the person that does Rap Caviar, you can Google that because he's done a shit ton of interviews. Yeah, I'm sorry, I know nothing about Christian hip-hop. In fact, Jerry, I just found out that when Chance the Rapper first came out, he considered himself a Christian rapper. I didn't know that. I read that in an article, in an interview that he did. Raja Belli saying, I'm doing well, hope you're good also. I am, thank you very much. Um, how many songs is ideal for a mixtape? Um, and the real answer to that is as many as it takes. It's better to have like 10 great songs than 20 mediocre songs. So I would put on, um, somewhere between maybe 10 and 18, but I would only put my best shit. So if you've got 18 bangers that's awesome. You might want to break it into two, you know, maybe put in another two songs, do two 10-song releases, um, 3 months apart or 4 months apart, you know, so that you've got, um, the hype coming with the, with the, with the releases. I'm, I'm losing my words today. I think I have too much in my head going on. I'm like searching for words. Does that ever happen to you? Knight Rider Films, how are you? I think whatever genre you're in, the game is about finding fans. So, um, even if you were like a metal hardcore death rapper, as long as you could find fans in that, I think it would be wonderful. But I don't, I don't know enough about it to be helpful to you. Emily Gerard likes Printful. They also have a great costumer service. She uses them. I use Printful too. I like them. Pipeline TV is saying money over popularity. You are singing my song! Yes, money over popularity, money over fame. Yes, this is a business. It's about making money. Jess is saying hello, Wendy. Hello. When you collaborate with other artists as a new artist, how do you draft contracts without a lawyer? Um, I don't. I actually use a lawyer because songs make you money, and anything where you've got money at stake, you want to make sure that you've got it correct. Um, I don't use template contracts. I actually hire lawyers. If I don't have a lot of money, I use a newer lawyer that's a little bit cheaper. Um, but when I started, I built a relationship with the lawyer because I didn't have the money to pay them, and I promised them a percentage of any of the deals that I did. So they ended up making quite a bit of money. I did some pretty cool deals. And yes, you can contact a lawyer specifically for, um, a contract to collaborate with another artist. Sister Whirlwind, um, I, I like influence— influencer marketing. Um, I haven't tried it yet. We were just talking about that a little bit earlier. Um, I haven't tried it yet to see if it works. Um, but I'll tell you this, it really worked for the, um, Fyre Festival that was such a huge fucking failure. But it just seems like everybody that found out about it found out about it from an influencer and bought tickets, and people actually went to that crazy thing. So, um, it tells me influencer marketing worked for a brand new festival, so it might work for a new artist. Um, I would build up a little bit of a buzz on social media and on the streets so that your name was just ringing a little bit, um, before spending the kind of money that it's going to take to buy some influencer marketing, at least influencers that, that matter. Um, and make sure that you get influencers that matter to your fan base, not people who matter to you, right? You, your, your goal is to build fans, not to be, you know, not to be like, oh my God, Kim Kardashian just tweeted what I said. Yeah, okay, um, find out who your fans look up to, and then somebody that's an influencer to them is who you want to obtain. Money over popularity. Yes, I'm gonna have that made on a t-shirt, I think. PMP, thank you. Um, Rajaveli, Instagram cannot be monetized yet, but you can advertise on Instagram and drive people to whatever you're selling. And it's working pretty well for, for my artists and my friends. Joshua Steed, yes, when you do a percentage with lawyers, it's for the life of the project they work. Yes, it's usually— you usually do a a deal when— I mean, their goal is going to be to get you to a major label so that you'll get a chunk of money, and then they'll get, you know, 5% or 10% of that chunk of money. Um, but yes, and you should cap it. So let's say, um, you do a deal with your lawyer where they get 10% of your income, right? Or 5%, which is probably a little bit better for you, but somewhere between 5 and 10% is what it usually is. You want to cap that at a certain price level, like $50 grand or $25 grand or $100 grand or whatever you feel is fair. Because if you were going to pay them by the hour, they wouldn't make as much as they would make as a percentage. And like, as an artist, you've got a lot of people to pay. Your manager is going to take 10%, your business manager is probably going to take 5%, right? So, um, that's 20— 20— 20% for the manager, 5 for the account— did I say 20%? I meant to. Um, that's 25% right there. And then if your lawyer is taking 10, that's 35%. Then of all your show money, your booking agent's taking 10%, so there's another 10% on top of that. So artists don't make a whole lot of money to begin with. Um, and, and those of us behind the scenes in the industry know that. So if you want to cap it at a certain point they're going to understand that. They may not do it. You might have to negotiate that a little bit. LOL saying, at what age do you think is suitable for an artist to make big jumps in the music industry? Um, okay, everybody who is over 25, your feelings are about to be hurt right now, and I apologize, but my experience tells me that the artists that are between 15 and 25 are the ones that are embraced most by fans because most fans are 13 to 28, roughly 13 to 26. So if— and that doesn't mean you have to be 25 because you might be 30 and you look 25, but it's very difficult as an older artist to get on once you are already on, like Jay-Z or 2 Chainz. Um, not to say that they're old, it's a little bit easier because they already have fame. But if you're a brand new artist, the older you are, the harder it is to build a fan base. At some point, the, um, the fans look at you and you look like their dad, and that's not a plus for you. Just saying. So that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try it, right? Like it, you know, fuck what I say. Go get it and go do it. Prove me wrong, and then I'll be talking about you in here saying, hey, here's somebody who's older than 25 that's hugely successful. So guys, we've been doing this for, um, an hour and 5 minutes. I'm going to go eat dinner. I'm gonna go find Tony and, um, have some dinner. We're traveling tomorrow, we have to be up early. So thank you for tuning in. I will be back The first, um, yes, monetization is the income that comes in from ads, from shows. Any monetization means any income that you get from music, from making money with your music, right? That's the goal, is to monetize, make money. So, um, guys, thanks for tuning in. I love you all, and I will see you on June 7th, right? You'll be here at 7 o'clock, and if you email me questions, um, I'm happy to answer them. And if not, just ask me in the feed. And yes, you can monetize Facebook, but only in that you can advertise. You don't get paid for views on Facebook the way you do like on YouTube or Apple Music or Apple Connect or Google Play or any of the other services that monetize. Um, SoundCloud doesn't monetize yet. They're, they're trying to, they're trying to figure it out. Guys, thank you. Take care. Have a great month. I miss you all, and my video should start up again, um, give me about a week. Okay guys, take care.