In this 2019 YouTube monologue, veteran music‑industry executive Wendy Day expands on a July 13 Instagram post by Atlanta rapper Lil Donald that warned the scene is riddled with scams. Day cites the post’s 1,100 views and 140 comments as evidence that emerging artists struggle to identify trustworthy partners. She outlines how low barriers to entry allow anyone to claim titles such as manager, PR rep, radio promoter, or playlist curator, often without the expertise to deliver results. Day explains why success with one artist does not guarantee competence with another, emphasizing the need to match services to an artist’s career stage. She critiques SEO‑driven firms that rank high on Google but lack real placement results, and warns against hiring based solely on online presence. Throughout, she stresses personal research, networking with seasoned insiders, and asking nuanced questions rather than relying on reputation or superficial metrics. Day directs viewers to her Instagram @rapcoalition for deeper statistics and encourages them to use her insights as a starting point, not a definitive solution, for navigating the music business safely.
Chapters
Hi guys, Wendy Day here. So I'm going to try something a little bit different today. Um, I'm taking this from my Instagram post in the middle of July, I think July 13th to be exact. I reposted something that Lil Donald had posted. Lil Donald is a rapper here in Atlanta that I work with, and he made a post that said majority of this Atlantic music stream scene is a scam. He, he said, find out who the real industry connects are and people who do good business before you work with them. And I reposted that and 1,100 people viewed it, and more importantly, over 140 people commented. So that tells me that, um, finding legitimate people to work with, um, is challenging because a lot of you basically said that. So, um, one of the things that Donald said was find out who the solid artists with real relationships and a real platform— find out who the real directors are, find out who the DJs that really break records are, find out who the honest managers are, find out who isn't just chasing the cash, find out who the good PRs and not the ones finessing you, find out the real street teams, find out before you start working, do your research before you do business. #FreeGame. I went through it and I'm just trying to save up-and-coming artists. And I loved so much that he posted that, that I chose to repost it and got so many comments. Like, um, somebody— and I'm not gonna embarrass anybody or, or give kudos to anybody— but, um, somebody said New York City too. Uh, somebody in Dallas said, for real, for real. Somebody here in Atlanta said, sad, but it's true. And then somebody commented on his post saying, very true, a guy tried to scam me using your name actually. Too bad he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. Laughing my ass off. Um, here's a DJ that says, damn, it's gotten really bad down there. And, and the thing is, it's so oversaturated here in Atlanta, and it's not just an Atlanta problem. I mean, there have been scammers in the music industry for the entire 27 years that I've been in the music industry. And while there are people here in the industry, not just Atlanta, but in the music industry, who are out and out just trying to finesse you and, and get you for your cash, there's also a lot of people in the music industry who think they can do the job but they can't really. They believe that they can, and they may have done it part of the way for other people, so then they think that they can do, you know, the entire job. Like, there's a lot of people who can help you sign up on ASCAP or BMI and get your SoundExchange and help you get your copyrights, and they think that they can manage a career because they can do that little piece of it. Um, so they advertise themselves as a manager. And in the music industry, there's such a low barrier, um, to entry. Like, you don't really have to be great at what you do. You just have to have a business card that says that you do it, or you just have to network with other people and say that you're doing it. Or you could intern for free for a successful rapper and then turn around and say, oh, I helped build this successful rapper. And while that's very much true because you did play a small role in their career. You may not have been the person to take them all the way across the finish line, and somebody that is a little bit less educated on social media might see you working with that person and think that you're the person that orchestrated their success. They hire that person only to find out that they can't do the same job for that newer artist that they did for the successful artist, to find out that maybe what they weren't saying was true. Um, you know, there's people here talking about how, um, they do the research. They'll go to Google and look to see if the person that they're trying to hire is legitimate, and they can't always find the information. Um, and Google's built on algorithms, so it's very difficult to find the pro and the con of somebody, you know. Um, to find out if somebody's legitimate, you're going to have to be somewhat entrenched in the music industry and turn to people like myself or people that already have some success and ask them, hey, what do you think of so-and-so? What do you think of this person? What do you think of that person? You know, and you also have to be careful how you ask somebody. You know, there's a lot of people that I like very much in the music industry that I would never fucking hire. There's also people in the music industry that I can't stand. I think they're incredible douchebags, but I would hire them in a minute to help with the project because they're good at what they do. So liking or disliking somebody is not a, a good way to ask somebody what they think of somebody else in the music industry. You also have to be careful that you don't ask somebody who's a Supreme hater, and you've got to be able to ask somebody that's actually hired people to work with them because just looking in, somebody might look really great at what they do and be terrible at it, or vice versa. I've seen people hire my radio guy to get them radio play, and it hasn't led to success because they hired that person to get them radio play, and they did what they were hired to do— they went and got radio play. Um, or they hired somebody that I use for playlisting, and because the artist had a little bit of buzz, they were able to get a lot of playlists. But a newer artist might hire them to do the exact same job, and they can't get them on any playlist because they don't have a movement yet. Nobody knows who they are. So just because somebody is great at what they do for one person doesn't mean they're going to be great at what they do for another person, because that other person might be at a different level in their career. I mean, there's, you know, there's a lot of levels to this. So here's somebody that's saying, I've gotten scammed so many times. That I've got to stop this stupid shit. And, and that's true. Like, if you keep losing money, you're not gonna succeed. And then there's other people giving advice like, find you somebody that can register your music. I've seen people hire a radio promotion person, but their music isn't even on BDS or Mediabase yet to track it. So the radio guy has to go in and add it to make sure the music's getting tracked. Like, You've really got to learn how this works before you start hiring people that you think can help you, right? Here's somebody saying they have fake blogs, they charge to add you to a worthless service, and, um, it doesn't help. And that's true. Like, there's a lot of people out here that will charge you to pay for performances, and you might be past that stage in your career where a performance can help you, or you might not be at that stage yet where a performance can help you. You've really got to learn the steps and what works and what doesn't. You know, here's a DJ saying, it's bigger than an Atlanta issue. This shit's so out of control, people have literally cried when I've helped them and even questioned why I'd help them because they've been screwed over so many times. I have found that to be true too, you know. I've also found that people will come to me after they've lost a shit ton of money in the music business and now they don't have the budget to be able to do what really needs to be done in order for them to have success. And it's so sad because had they just done the proper research prior to hiring folks, they, they wouldn't be shit out of luck, you know. Um, and you got to be careful about hiring people on the internet because there's so many companies today that know how to blow up their company on the internet, but they haven't really built success for any of the artists that are out here successfully, right? There's one PR firm that comes up all the time in my office about how people have hired them for anywhere from $5,000 a month to $30,000 a month, and they've gotten no successful placements at any of the blogs. But these folks still— when you Google, you know, hip-hop publicity, these folks are still coming in at the top of the, of the Google list because they've got great SEO and they know how to place ads and they know how to get their articles posted on other people's blogs, which are all the things to make the SEO happen. You can't just come to the internet and look for people that are successful at what they do. You've got to really be out there and interacting with people that are successfully doing this for a living to find out like who, who's great at what they do and who's not. So If you want to find this post and you want to go in and read some of the comments, um, my Instagram is @rapcoalition, and this was posted a couple weeks ago. Um, it looks like July 13th, so you'll have to go back in my feed a bit to be able to read all the comments. Also check out some of the statistics I have there. I know that I'm kind of a geek, but I do post a lot of research based on what works for other people and what doesn't, so that it's a starting place for you to learn. And I'm certainly not the end-all be-all it, you've really got to go in and do the research. Like, this is not an easy industry to be part of, but I hope this is a good place for you to start. I hope this has been helpful, and thanks for tuning in. Peace.
