Music Entrepreneur Club

Hi guys, Wendy Day here. How are you? I have a friend here. This is Damien Ritter. Damien, how are you today?

I'm good, how are you?

I'm great, guys. Damien has started this amazing thing called Music Entrepreneur Club. You may remember him from Funk Volume. That's where I first met him. Um, Damien, can you give us a little background on you and how you got into the music industry?

Sure, sure. So I got in the music industry in a pretty unique way. Prior to 2008, I had no music experience. I was a corporate guy, so I worked as a management consultant for Deloitte Consulting in their strategy and operations group in Chicago. Prior to that, I got my MBA from Stanford. My favorite school. Prior to that, I was still— I worked at Wells Fargo as an internal auditor, worked for Goldman Sachs. I worked in the financial services businesses and consulting industries. But I ultimately got laid off in 2008 from Deloitte. And that's when my little brother reached out to me and said that he wanted to do music full-time. He was going to college, but he was frustrated. He couldn't really find a major that suited him. He felt he wanted to pursue music full-time. So he said, Dame, can you help me with this? At the same time, he had a friend of his at the time who signed to Ruthless, that was Hobson. He was equally as frustrated but in a different situation. But he wanted to start his own label, so we all kind of came together and started a label which became Funk Volume. So I jumped in and just kind of tried to figure it out, you know, just understanding that it's all about the fans. And with that understanding, we just came up with a lot of cool stuff, a lot of creative stuff to kind of build the label. Eventually, just over time, just building that foundation, we eventually signed a couple artists, signed Dizzy Wright and Jaron Benton, had a very successful run. Then it came into a crash and burn about a year and a half ago when Hobson and I had a disagreement, which I thought was a very small disagreement. It snowballed very embarrassingly. A lot of that coming out of that is how I came to be so passionate about music education because I just felt like if there was more education involved, then maybe Funk Volume would be around today. And then I also see, I've come across thousands of artists that I continue to see get in their own way and kind of prevent their own progress just because they don't understand certain things or they mess up relationships. Uh, so, you know, I felt it was important to have a platform or develop a platform like the Music Entrepreneur Club. Uh, so that's what I'm doing now.

I think it's so important, you know, um, I've been in this industry for 25 years now. And first of all, nothing prepared me for it. You know, I've got 2 undergraduate degrees, I've got 2 master's degrees and nothing prepared me for the music industry. When I first came in, I, I, I went to the school of hard knocks. I kept banging my head, and that's how I learned. And I'm so passionate about educating artists, and you've started such an amazing thing, not only because you're as passionate as I am about it, Damien, but you've actually done it. Like, you fucking have done this. And so many people that I hear speak on panels or that are, you know, having YouTube channels right now to educate artists, they haven't done it. They're sort of looking around and assuming how the music business works. And you can't do that. You can't assume this, like you can't watch some music videos and figure it out.

I think, yeah, I think that's the unique perspective that I have in growing this, this club is kind of, I know what artists are challenged with. I know how difficult it is. I know what challenges they're going to face, so we can kind of meet them where they are. I know a lot of times, young artists go to conferences and the information that they receive, it's either, it kind of misses them because they might not be ready for certain, I went to the Revolt conference the first year and it might have changed, but I went to their social media panel and they were talking about how Beyoncé uses her social media and I was sitting there like, how does that, makes sense for these artists to hear. For a big artist. Yeah, she can use her social media any kind of way. It's gonna work regardless. Yeah, it didn't meet them where they are. You know, these artists need to learn how to make fan one and turn fan one into two, two into four, etc., etc. So, you know, I take that approach in developing the curriculum for the Music Entrepreneur Club so that it's information that they can use right away. I think that's important.

It is. So what exactly is the Music Entrepreneur Club? How does it work?

Sure, so the Music Entrepreneur Club is an online education and networking platform for aspiring artists, managers, I would even say producers as well. There's not specific things geared towards producers, but I think producers these days kind of need to develop their career just like artists in terms of branding.

They're a brand.

Right, in terms of network to be successful. So even, even for producers as well. So it's all online, it's live, it's interactive via webcam. We meet 2 times a week, there's a topic every single week. So let's just say, for example, we're covering management. I will do a lecture/discussion, and either myself or I'll bring in a guest, and then you'll be able to ask questions. So you'll be able to ask questions right away. And make sure you get a thorough understanding of whatever topic it is that we're addressing that week. And there's tons of topics to cover when it comes to the music industry because artists, you know, when you're trying to grow your business, I mean, you need to understand management, you need to understand publishing, touring, merchandise. So there's a never-ending list of topics that we can address every week. And also because the music industry changes so much, the marketing session today is probably not going to be the marketing session in 6 months. So that's what's cool about the music industry too. We're going to have a topic to— a different topic to address every week that's relevant. And then the follow-up session, the second session of the week, is a little more informal, but it's on the same topic, but it's an opportunity to address more questions if you thought about a question a couple days after the initial session. And then if you— and if we run out of questions and everybody got a thorough understanding of whatever the topic is that, that week, then we'll address current events as well. So, okay, we'll break things down, like, like news that comes out, like Lil Uzi Vert. There was an article about, about him receiving $900,000 of $4.5 million that his songs made via streams. And, you know, when you see those headlines, people make assumptions with very limited information. So we might take that story and break it down.

Break it down.

And some people might say, hey, that, you know, he's in a shady deal, but then, you know, other people might think otherwise if we had more information, because a lot of times we're reading those headlines with very little information, and that causes us to make an opinion, which is a probably negative opinion about major labels and the music industry. You know, we just want to break down, you know, some of that, uh, or just make it just make sure people understand what's actually happening as opposed to going off of headlines and just negativity and skepticism of the music industry, which a lot of times can be shady. But I think, you know, but, but, but for the most part, I just think there's a lack of understanding. There is a lot of things, and, but, and then when people don't understand, they're just quick to say something shady. So I think it's important to break down some of these stories and or just talk about changes that are happening in the industry that might apply to them. I mean, Spotify might, might announce a new tool that they can use to better reach their fans on their Spotify profile, so we'll talk about Spotify ads that they're beta testing right now.

Yeah, you know, I think, I think informed decisions are so important, you know. As long as you understand what something means, then you can make your own decision. You know, I'm, I've been very very vocally outspoken against record labels, you know, the major labels, but they, they have their assets too, you know. And it's okay to say that whether you like something or you don't like something, as long as you know what that all means, right? Tell me about the networking aspect of MEC, because you've got like a really cool component more so than just the education.

Sure, so everybody that joins the MEC has access to a private platform that we use, and I'm constantly going to encourage artists to engage with one another, to share resources, to share information, to hopefully work with one another. I think, you know, the hip-hop community or the music community, a lot of times we don't do that enough. You know, we don't help each other out enough. I encourage competition when it comes to music. I like to see competition, but I like to see collaboration more. And I think in the long run, it helps us more. And this is not an industry, we're not selling refrigerators, right? If we sold one refrigerator, our consumer's probably only gonna buy one refrigerator. Our industry's not like that. They're musicians, so they can be fans of a lot of different musicians. If I was a musician and I put out an album, album, you know, and then you put out and I can share, you know, your, your music as well. And hopefully we share fans and grow together. So I think there's a lot, there's gonna be a lot of opportunity for that. I'm going to encourage, you know, people to reach out to one another and lift each other up. So I think that's going to be a dope aspect. Ultimately, when the club has a decent amount of artists in it, I think that's actually going to be the biggest value of being part of the club is just them, you know, having this kind of this community, this supportive community. And I hope that at some point, like, they're answering more of each other's questions than I'm answering of theirs. So I think it's good.

Right. I love that aspect of it too. You know, one of the things that helped me build Rap Coalition was we had monthly meetings when I first started, and it was wonderful because it would be a room full of anywhere from 100 to 150 artists, and they would talk to each other like, hey, who do you use for street teams? What do you think of this guy? Oh, he's shady, you know, he got me for a couple hundred dollars. Or, you know, this guy's great, he does a really good job. It was a way for us to share information that you couldn't get anyplace else, and it just felt like it was an easier grind. And back then it was not an easy grind because there was no internet, so it was much harder. But it felt like— it felt like people bumped their head less. And, and I think that for, for what you're doing, this is that, you know, it's going to help people not waste money, not waste time. And there are two things that most artists don't have an endless supply of. They don't have a lot of time and they don't have a lot of money.

Right, and neither do I. I think it helps the quote-unquote business people as well. You know, I'm tired of seeing, you know, artists that have to make their own mistakes. You know, it wastes our time as well. Like, we don't want to work with artists that continue to have to make their own mistakes. We want to work with artists that, you know, want to learn and can get out of their own way, because we don't have an endless supply of time either. So hopefully it helps kind of— theoretically it lessens the tension between everybody and we can all move forward without any of the bull, you know. So that's, that's what I'm hoping.

I think this would be, this will be great for industry folks too, industry people who really want to learn the business. You know, I know so many DJs that know so much about DJing, but they don't understand, you know, how a record label works or how, what, what happens when somebody gets a record deal. I've got friends that work in publicity that don't understand how A&R works or how marketing works. So I think this has value so far beyond just artists, you know.

Yeah, I, you know, I constantly see producers complain about artists and why they're not getting paid and why they're like the low man on the totem pole. We'll have a session that, that talks about that, you know, that talks about how to build better relationships with producers, how to be more transparent with your negotiations. What, what should be in your contract, how producers should get paid. Because, you know, a lot of times it's not the artist not wanting to pay the producer, it's just they're not, they're not sure how to work out that relationship. So, you know, I don't ever want a lack of understanding, or a lack of understanding shouldn't get in the way of putting out some dope music, you know. I want that to be as easy a process as possible so we can get to the fans, you know, get the music out. And everybody be happy without somebody tweeting or making a meme about an artist that, that doesn't pay. So yeah, so in theory, every, you know, it's all gonna work so that, you know, people can navigate the industry with less skepticism and lower the tension. So we'll see. Well, that's the goal.

And is it for all genres of music?

Yes, I believe so. I mean, my, my experience is in hip-hop, but I see no difference in, you know, pursuing R&B or country. I mean, we're all trying to— right, we're trying to grow a fan base, and I would say 99.9% of it is gonna be the same, you know, if you're trying to do this independently or just build a business around your career. So publishing for a hip-hop artist is the same as publishing for a you know, a country star. So I believe that all genres will benefit from it.

Awesome, thank you. Do you want to talk about pricing at all?

Sure, sure. So the pricing is currently set at $49.99 a month, and then if you buy the whole year, you get a 2-month discount. And I know that a lot of artists will come back to me and say, hey, that's really expensive. And I understand that artists You know, there's some artists that don't have that money available. But I would— to that, I would say a few things. You know, if you look at that price relative to pursuing or acquiring information, access to information in another industry, you're going to pay a lot more than that, like a ton more than— even if you want to cut hair or be a plumber, you know, you're going to pay thousands of dollars to do that. And then I also looked at pricing relative to attending a conference, right? So unless the conference is in your city, you're probably going to pay for a flight, you're going to pay for a hotel, you know, travel. Yeah, South by Southwest, those badges are not cheap. So if you go to South by Southwest, you're going to be paying over $1,000. And for a whole year of this club, you can, you know, you can be a part of it for, for, for $500. So, you know, I think the pricing is reasonable. I do need to get artists to understand the value of information. In my lifetime, getting my degrees and going to seminars and training trainings and things like that. I've probably spent over $300 grand trying to get access to information, and I understand it's a little bit different, but you know, the information is valuable. Good information is valuable.

Yes, good information is about— well, all information is valuable. It's, it's what you do with it. But good information is— it's hard to put a price on that because it's almost invaluable, you know. There's so much incorrect information in the music industry.

For sure. And this is a very— I mean, I bring very solid people to the table, such as yourself, but I got, I got really dope guests. And these aren't, these aren't people that just started working in music. These are people that have been in the game for quite some time. So just, just an example of a few of the guests that I have initially, I got Crooked Eye, who's a 1/4 of Slaughterhouse. He's gonna come in and share his experience. I got my guy Lee LaRue. He's a senior vice president at Warner Brothers. So this— he's not an analyst, you know. These are people that have been in the game for a long time. They can talk about a lot of things because they've had their own path as well. You know, he's been a radio guy and he can break down radio and all the myths around how that, you know, how to get a song on radio. I got my guy Justin Hunt coming through. He was the former chief editor of HipHopDX. Now he's head of video at Ambrosia4Head. So these are, these are heavy hitters. You know, so I think, you know, people have to understand the value of that and the value of their time, my time. And it's gonna be— I think it's gonna be worth it, you know, $50 relative to what you have to spend to kind of get your career off the ground. I assure you, you're gonna save more than $50 listening to me and the other guests that I bring in.

I guarantee that. I can guarantee that without even— without even going there, I can guarantee do that for sure.

I mean, yeah, so, you know, I think it's a very fair price, but that's, that's— and then if you use the, the Wendy Day code, you get, you'll get access for $40 a month. So use the access code Wendy Day and you'll, you'll get access for $40 a month. So that'll be awesome.

Awesome. Thank you, Damien.

No, my pleasure. I appreciate you having me on this platform.

So absolutely, you know, I, I reach people that want to learn about the music business business, and I'm always frustrated because I make one video about a topic and, and I go live once a month, so the networking opportunities aren't there. Um, I don't have the time to devote to this. This is your whole thing, like, this is your whole life. So I'm so supportive of what you're doing. There's— there are no words for this.

I appreciate it.

You know, I'm gonna join too, right? I'm gonna—

I'm gonna— I was about to say, I was gonna— I'm gonna pull you into as many sessions as possible, and I'm gonna fucking pay for That's not necessary.

But I know it really is, you know, in the industry, we don't support each other. And I'm buying a membership because this is your business.

I appreciate that. I think other people's perspective is so necessary. Because, you know, there's not one way to do this anymore. You know, somebody might opt to sign to a major record label. And a lot of time major, major deals don't work out. But there's some people that are happy in their situations that we need to understand What's the difference? Like, what was a happy person's experience versus a pissed-off person's experience? And then even when you operate independently, you know, there's a difference between, you know, there's a huge gap between like Chance the Rapper and like people that are, you know, just kind of making it check to check, you know, their Spotify check might just be clearing enough for their expenses, you know, versus Chance the Rapper who's on the Forbes list. You know, how do we understand, you know, how one person got here, the other person got here, and everything in between? There's a ton of ways to approach music these days. So we need as many perspectives to join as possible. Because I'm constantly learning. I mean, things are constantly changing. So we got to stay up on everything that's going on.

Absolutely. That's how we stay relevant. Mm-hmm. Wow, Damien, this has been really great. Did I leave anything out? Is there anything that I should have asked that I didn't?

Um, no. So our first session starts October 2nd. That's Monday, I believe. October 2nd, Monday, might be October 1st. I'm not sure. Anyway, Monday. And like I said, we're gonna meet twice a week. We're gonna jump right in, right into it. And I think it's gonna be— I think it's gonna be really cool. My vision for this is to be eventually be that go-to platform for real information. I know that you're going to continue to give artists information on your YouTube channel and things like that, but in terms of touching the surface, it's not the same. Yeah, so in terms of the community, I want people to eventually, you know, just be able to turn to the MEC for— I want that to be the first thought. Like, if they're, you know, if they're about to get a manager and they're not sure how how that's supposed to work, they bring that question immediately to the MEC, just like they would probably be quick to Google something. And we can talk about, you know, what a manager does, how a manager typically gets compensated, so we can sort through, so people can understand, you know, how to successfully negotiate these things. So I'm looking forward to— Cool.

I love it. So October 2nd is Monday, and I'm gonna launch this right away because I didn't realize it was starting that fast. So we're on it.

Yeah, and I'll be out in A3C next week to talk about the Music Entrepreneur Club. I have the support of A3C. They're gonna be helping me push it. DJ Booth has been a great partner. They're gonna be helping me push it. Some real credible platforms getting behind. So I'm trying to, you know, get, get credible platforms behind, credible people behind, so people understand, you know. Yeah, that is real. So I'm excited.

Outstanding. Damien, thanks for your time today. Thanks for doing this. I know how much work it is, and I really respect that you're doing this. This is incredible.

My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. My pleasure. Bye-bye.

Bye, Damien.