Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guests today are Ursus mcgona and Raf Lousey of
Speaker 1: twenty five to seven Media. Gentlemen, what is twenty five
Speaker 1: to seven Media?
Speaker 2: Whose place to work? Man?
Speaker 1: Okay, just so people can distinguish the voices, this is Raf.
Speaker 3: Hello, guys. Twenty five seven Media is a company that's
Speaker 3: entranced in digital and internet culture. We work with influencers, musicians,
Speaker 3: and we try to create different moments on the Internet
Speaker 3: than now. We're starting to spill over in real life,
Speaker 3: and people like Bob and people in the music industry
Speaker 3: have taken kind of interest.
Speaker 1: Too, versus something to add to that.
Speaker 2: That's second all that, and I'll say it again, it's
Speaker 2: the coolest place to work. And yeah, I'm really happy
Speaker 2: that best friends just really believed in each other and
Speaker 2: believed in the Internet.
Speaker 1: Well, how long have you guys known each other?
Speaker 2: We've known each other for about five six years now.
Speaker 2: And then the other founder, Andrew, I've known him for
Speaker 2: twelve years. So yeah, it's it's a trio. But right
Speaker 2: now it's just me and Raf.
Speaker 1: Okay, you guys are experts on social media. Let's talk generally,
Speaker 1: what do people not understand about social media that you guys.
Speaker 2: Know, I think people are trying to overcomplicate it. There's
Speaker 2: kind of three different people that don't get it. It's
Speaker 2: either unfortunately an agism thing. There's people that don't think
Speaker 2: it's a tool that they can use. They think it's
Speaker 2: only for celebrities or for people that have a nick
Speaker 2: on it. And then thirdly it's businesses that aren't really
Speaker 2: implementing it correctly. But in reality, every generation has a
Speaker 2: tool or a way to connect with people, and this
Speaker 2: is the best way to connect with people at the moment.
Speaker 2: And so with that being said, we constantly look for
Speaker 2: new ways to make sure that whether it's an artist
Speaker 2: or a creator, finds the newest way to connect with
Speaker 2: people so that they can interact and obviously eventually monetize.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go through the varying social media platforms. Snapchat,
Speaker 1: to what degree does that mean anything in terms of business?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure that they're looking at that billion
Speaker 2: and they might have want you know, they might have
Speaker 2: wanted to take it, but Snapchat is actually very underrated
Speaker 2: right now. It's very underrated, and we actually have experimented
Speaker 2: a lot with it. I'll let rap talk about it
Speaker 2: a little bit. But the way that I see social
Speaker 2: media platform when it's dying is people tend to think like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's no longer there, da Dad, Like, let's
Speaker 2: move away, let's move the ad dollars away. But until
Speaker 2: that platform is completely dead, there's a lack of competition.
Speaker 2: And so what that means is that when there's a
Speaker 2: lack of competition and the lack of content, the platforms
Speaker 2: will actually pay more dollars for you to have high quality,
Speaker 2: engaging content there. So there's kids that are making a
Speaker 2: killing on Snapchat. They're making one hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 2: month on Snapchat because Snapchat has a functionality that allows
Speaker 2: you to pay creators through a lottery system when they
Speaker 2: gain a certain amount of views. So the less competition
Speaker 2: there is there, the people that are crushing it on
Speaker 2: Snapchat are actually making a ton And Snapchat is actually
Speaker 2: a little bit more intimate than your normal platforms because
Speaker 2: it feels like you're actually texting someone. It feels like
Speaker 2: you have someone's number, and it's a little bit more intimate.
Speaker 2: And gen Z is actually very very into Snapchat more
Speaker 2: than millennials because millennials want to show you their beautiful
Speaker 2: feed and their beautiful life. That isn't really true, but
Speaker 2: gen Z wants to connect with people on a one
Speaker 2: to one level and Snapchat provides that for them. But
Speaker 2: you want to talk a little bit about some experiments
Speaker 2: we've done with Snapchat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Snapchat is it's more in an authenticity tool.
Speaker 3: So every platform has its own thing. Instagram is a resume,
Speaker 3: so you have to cheat your Instagram like a resume.
Speaker 3: Snapchat is about authenticity. TikTok is about a lot short
Speaker 3: form videos that we're supposed to be on YouTube, but
Speaker 3: you're doing trailer videos on TikTok to then hopefully take
Speaker 3: themto YouTube, and then YouTube to this day is still
Speaker 3: the holy grail out of really all social media. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 3: that's where you find music, that's where you find long
Speaker 3: form content, that's where you find short form content. Is
Speaker 3: just YouTube was so late at creating the playlist and
Speaker 3: the user generated experience that Spotify and Apple did. That's
Speaker 3: why it didn't overtake in music as well. But until
Speaker 3: someone is able to kill off YouTube and their long
Speaker 3: form their long form video with Spotify, try to do.
Speaker 3: They just didn't execute at a high level. YouTube is
Speaker 3: still the king of all media. That's where you want
Speaker 3: to drive all your traffls.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get back to YouTube, Twitter and thread Twitter
Speaker 1: X they mean anything in your world.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well Threads Unfortunately it doesn't. But I think, like,
Speaker 2: what was the statistic they released the other day, like
Speaker 2: eighty two percent or something of the people that created
Speaker 2: the threads account and no longer using it. It's dropping
Speaker 2: off even more. I think the point of threads was
Speaker 2: just for Instagram to show the world that, like, hey,
Speaker 2: if we launch a product, people are going to sign up.
Speaker 2: I think that that to me, that's what the statement was.
Speaker 2: But no, X is still very relevant. Again, it's a X.
Speaker 2: It's it's a hybrid between Snapchat and Instagram where people
Speaker 2: want to express their authentic opinions. Uh, it's more of
Speaker 2: a texting like texting posts. And also the discoverability on
Speaker 2: video is becoming a priority for X, so discoverability for video. Eventually,
Speaker 2: I think it'll move a little bit more into live
Speaker 2: streaming as we saw what they did with FIFA, but
Speaker 2: it's a different type of audio I think right now. Uh,
Speaker 2: some platforms are separating not only for usability but also
Speaker 2: for audience. So you know, if you're on X, you
Speaker 2: don't mind, you know, a controversial take here there, you
Speaker 2: don't mind, you know some of the things that are
Speaker 2: not necessarily shown on on other other platforms.
Speaker 1: Okay, but conventional wisdom and I'm talking to the experts.
Speaker 1: That's why. One of the truth is younger generation is
Speaker 1: not participating on X. Is that just untrue?
Speaker 2: No, that's untrue. A lot gen Z is participating on
Speaker 2: X because the memes are just really.
Speaker 3: They're they're they're participating, but they're not spending time on it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're not spending So they're reading headlines on X or
Speaker 3: they're creating headlines which then they can use on other platforms.
Speaker 3: So all the all the platforms where there's video is
Speaker 3: pushed insanely like Instagram and uh YouTube and TikTok, that's
Speaker 3: where the young generation is spending their most time.
Speaker 2: That's where they're spending the most time. That's huttering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, correct, But the headlines are created at X.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, just to be clear, that's where you're harvesting things
Speaker 1: as opposed to starting things.
Speaker 2: You're no, you're discovering things on the video platforms, because
Speaker 2: the video platforms have the most discovery reach. Right now, okay,
Speaker 2: all platforms, including X, they're all adopting video more and
Speaker 2: more because watch time is king, so not views anymore.
Speaker 2: A lot of people, you know, probably five years ago,
Speaker 2: views mattered a lot, Subscribers mattered a lot. Followers and
Speaker 2: subscribers and views don't matter as much today Today. What
Speaker 2: matters is the watch time, how much you can actually
Speaker 2: have someone watch a video and spend time on your platform.
Speaker 2: That's what matters the most. The platforms don't necessarily care
Speaker 2: about people's feelings or the way that the algorithm is
Speaker 2: working that. They just want to optimize their platform. They
Speaker 2: want to optimize the algorithm and show you content that's
Speaker 2: going to keep you there as long as well.
Speaker 3: And X's video has not gotten to that level where
Speaker 3: people are sitting there and consuming video on next they
Speaker 3: are consuming though though the means the title of the.
Speaker 2: Titles, the memes, the articles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, you know, that's a word we've heard for
Speaker 1: over a decade. Not everyone is sophisticated. They might ask,
Speaker 1: what is a meme? Can you tell us.
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I mean, well, you know, let's say the need let's
Speaker 2: say the meme has blood, has nudity, has something that
Speaker 2: is against the guidelines. On the traditional platforms, you're going
Speaker 2: to find the worst memes in the in the planet
Speaker 2: hilariously on X, you know, so, that's where you're going
Speaker 2: to find that. And also gen Z loves the edginess
Speaker 2: about it. You know, they love how edgy it is,
Speaker 2: how they can share something with no repercussions. If you
Speaker 2: say a curse word or two on the other platforms,
Speaker 2: you are going to get dinged and censored. And so
Speaker 2: I think that's what gen Z loves about X. But
Speaker 2: it's not for everybody. It's it's so weird. I feel
Speaker 2: like millennials feel like it's not for them. But gen
Speaker 2: Z and late millennials, especially political millennials, are on X,
Speaker 2: you know so.
Speaker 3: And then a meme is just the inside jokes that
Speaker 3: you have with your friends, but made into a public
Speaker 3: that other people can consume and understand.
Speaker 2: Another way that I like to explain memes is that
Speaker 2: they're hieroglyphs. If you think about the Egyptians, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you go to Egypt and there's a bunch of hieroglyphs
Speaker 2: on the wall, their images, but each image represents like
Speaker 2: a huge story, and that's what a meme is. It's
Speaker 2: basically an image that you can attach to a headline
Speaker 2: and it's an inside joke, whether it's from a movie,
Speaker 2: whether it's from something that you and your friends were discussing,
Speaker 2: or something with pop culture. And that's the thing about
Speaker 2: gen Z is that they're not afraid to say what's
Speaker 2: on their mind. And then, obviously, as we all know,
Speaker 2: especially if you're in the in the entertainment world, if
Speaker 2: if you say something that's on your mind, there's probably
Speaker 2: a million people thinking it too. So I think that
Speaker 2: that's what attracts, you know, the meme world, the and
Speaker 2: the fried memes to gen Z.
Speaker 1: Okay, to what degree is Facebook important or is that
Speaker 1: just boomers and gen xers.
Speaker 2: It's boomers in the United States, but Facebook is really
Speaker 2: important in Mexico and Europe and in other Third world
Speaker 2: countries because Facebook is beta for what China is currently
Speaker 2: now with we Chat, and so Facebook is incorporated more
Speaker 2: into a lot of different apps and utilities and games
Speaker 2: and video games that people use. Facebook groups are also
Speaker 2: very very popular in Mexico and in Latin America. They're
Speaker 2: used almost to the popularity of Reddit threads here in
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 1: And Reddit is a cornucopy of information. Does that figure
Speaker 1: in your world?
Speaker 3: It is Reddit. Reddit is basically Twitter on steroids steroids.
Speaker 3: If it works on Reddit, then it will take the
Speaker 3: world by store. Those people spend a lot of time
Speaker 3: on the Internet, and it's a lot of people that
Speaker 3: have a lot of pool on the Internet. So they
Speaker 3: start the joke or the meme on Reddit and then
Speaker 3: they use every other platform to spread it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about Facebook being like we Chat. We
Speaker 1: Chat is a super platform with payment and everything. This
Speaker 1: is what Musk's vision was with PayPal, and they squeezed
Speaker 1: them out and it is still his vision at X.
Speaker 1: Do you think Facebook has a chance to be that
Speaker 1: super app?
Speaker 2: I think that Facebook is already ten years ahead of that,
Speaker 2: more than X. But I don't think that. I don't
Speaker 2: doubt that Elon can do it as well. Facebook is
Speaker 2: already fifty percent there. I mean Facebook has your age,
Speaker 2: it could store your payment settings. If you've seen the
Speaker 2: shop function on Instagram, Instagram is meta and if you've
Speaker 2: bought anything through the Instagram function, you've already made a transaction.
Speaker 2: If you've submitted your information to get a bonus when
Speaker 2: the reels came out. You're already in there right now.
Speaker 2: We may not be using Facebook, like I said, like
Speaker 2: other countries, but there are apps that are enabled through Facebook.
Speaker 2: There are groups that are enabled through Facebook, Facebook, Marketplace,
Speaker 2: these things that are connecting us. If you think about
Speaker 2: a group, a Facebook group that connects you, if you
Speaker 2: think about Marketplace to compete with Craigslist, they're already fifty
Speaker 2: percent there. They just need. What they don't have right
Speaker 2: now is they don't have the hardware.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's what I was going to think exactly, Like
Speaker 3: they've tried. They just can't get the hardware exactly, and
Speaker 3: I don't think they will. It doesn't seem.
Speaker 1: Well, let's snap our fingers and they get the hardware, right,
Speaker 1: what would the hardware be? What would that look like?
Speaker 2: It's an AR it's a it's an AR tool. This yeah,
Speaker 2: it should have been the phone. I think it's too
Speaker 2: late for the phone. I think it's too late for
Speaker 2: the phone for everybody. But the if it gets integrated,
Speaker 2: it's going to be an AR tool, correct, and so
Speaker 2: that well it's yes, so like right now, the cost
Speaker 2: for you know, the hardware, if you want to dabble
Speaker 2: into the metaverse or into ar The hardware cost for
Speaker 2: you to even experiment is going to run you anywhere
Speaker 2: from you know, five hundred to maybe fourteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: You're talking about a headset here.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so in a world where you get the
Speaker 2: headset for fifty dollars, well, you're gonna get that headset
Speaker 2: for fifty dollars because it's going to come integrated with
Speaker 2: a bunch of tools that you are going to be
Speaker 2: using for your everyday life. And so that's the way
Speaker 2: that they get the hardware to be adopted by, you know,
Speaker 2: essentially the masses.
Speaker 1: Okay, will we eventually get there or is it going
Speaker 1: to stall out?
Speaker 2: That? That's something that we ask ourselves every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's the that's the tough that's the tough question.
Speaker 3: I mean, we had a chance to get there quicker
Speaker 3: with COVID, just because people were inside they had nothing
Speaker 3: to do, and then the moment the world opened up,
Speaker 3: it almost people just threw away a lot of those habits, right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't think we're going to get there.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think we're getting there my lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, just to be clear, when we had Pokey
Speaker 1: Mond augmented reality, that was missed like the first video
Speaker 1: game leading into something, or it was just an anomaly
Speaker 1: and means nothing.
Speaker 2: No, people are still obsessed with Pokemon Goo. My brother
Speaker 2: in law plays plays that every single day. There will
Speaker 2: be pockets, and there will be hobbyists and there will
Speaker 2: be early adopters, the same way that for the last
Speaker 2: five years people have been playing with VR headsets. But
Speaker 2: I'm talking you know. When to answer the question, when
Speaker 2: does Facebook actually turn into a competing we chat? I
Speaker 2: think that Facebook is ten years ahead of X. However,
Speaker 2: if X focuses on that, I don't doubt that they'll
Speaker 2: figure out a way. However, I don't think that we
Speaker 2: do that with phones. The only way to do that
Speaker 2: is if you have a better product than the iPhone.
Speaker 1: Okay, just moving on through the platforms. Instagram. Instagram had
Speaker 1: its moment for about ten years. It became the platform
Speaker 1: of those who were image based. Then they said they
Speaker 1: were going to go to video. They have reels. Reels
Speaker 1: is a competing product with TikTok. How do you assess
Speaker 1: what's going on at Instagram?
Speaker 2: Love reels? Man?
Speaker 3: No, I mean, the the what they did initially is
Speaker 3: they put it on the main feed and people got
Speaker 3: really upset. Now that they have an extra tab for it,
Speaker 3: so you're specifically just looking at reels. It's it's performing
Speaker 3: well for our creators and for their platforms. More and
Speaker 3: more people are using reels and they already they already
Speaker 3: got it right with with stories. When Stories came out,
Speaker 3: people are like, I already have Snapchat, I don't need
Speaker 3: I don't need Stories. And they took about a year
Speaker 3: and a half and then no one's using Snapchat to
Speaker 3: the to the level that they started using Instagram, I feel.
Speaker 2: Like, until gen Z came around. But that's because so.
Speaker 3: Like TikTok though, is filling the pressure. That's why they're
Speaker 3: going very heavy on live video and they're trying to
Speaker 3: take the market now. So and the numbers are swinging
Speaker 3: it again towards Instagram.
Speaker 2: That's correct, and again it goes back to the conversation
Speaker 2: about utility. Different platforms have different utility. Snapchat is more
Speaker 2: authentic because you can be more authentic because your older
Speaker 2: sister and your dad is not on snareat and so
Speaker 2: you know they're not gonna add you on Snapchat and
Speaker 2: see you drinking at nineteen So you know, I feel
Speaker 2: like with reels though, it goes back to the conversation
Speaker 2: of watch time. If watch time is king now and
Speaker 2: you realize that you can get someone to loop a
Speaker 2: video for a minute, if you can get someone to
Speaker 2: watch a twenty second video, you know, multiple times, then
Speaker 2: you can get a minute out of them then rather
Speaker 2: than seeing a square photo. And that's also why we
Speaker 2: introduce carousels. So when you introduce carousels, there is more
Speaker 2: of a chance for you to go next, spe swipe,
Speaker 2: and it keeps the person engaged and creates more watch
Speaker 2: time when you're watching photos.
Speaker 1: Okay, YouTube is hyping their short form videos to compete
Speaker 1: with TikTok in reels, how do you assess that?
Speaker 2: To answer that question, we have to ask a question. So, Bob,
Speaker 2: what's the biggest search engine?
Speaker 1: It depends on your age. If you're an older person,
Speaker 1: it's Google, If younger person is TikTok, might be Amazon.
Speaker 2: Love it's what's the second biggest?
Speaker 1: Well, I mentioned Google, Amazon, TikTok. Uh, you tell me.
Speaker 2: The second is YouTube because it's integrated with Google. And
Speaker 2: so even though TikTok has an interesting search function. It's
Speaker 2: nowhere near the traffic of Google, and the second biggest
Speaker 2: search engine is YouTube. So what does that mean for
Speaker 2: us as people in entertainment, Whether you're pushing movies, whether
Speaker 2: you're pushing artists or whatever it may be that you're
Speaker 2: pushing good luck, you know, typing in you know, Bob
Speaker 2: Interviews twenty five seven media on Facebook or on Instagram,
Speaker 2: And unless we optimize the tiktoks in a way, then
Speaker 2: they'll show up. But if you if you search that
Speaker 2: on Google, you're gonna get the YouTube video first, because
Speaker 2: YouTube still follows all the traditional SEO laws and it's
Speaker 2: also the much the much better way to manage an
Speaker 2: inventory right now. Now there are more capabilities on YouTube
Speaker 2: to organize playlists, to organize the way that you can
Speaker 2: have your audience consume the content, where on TikTok, not
Speaker 2: even every creator is allowed to make playlists. Where on Instagram,
Speaker 2: you know, not every creator even knows the difference between
Speaker 2: you know, saving your lives for long form content or
Speaker 2: using reels. They some of them don't even know that
Speaker 2: you When you post a video on the feed, it
Speaker 2: instantly turns it into a reel. So YouTube is the
Speaker 2: best way to share long form content now shorts because
Speaker 2: it comes with the searchability, because it comes with you know,
Speaker 2: the integration with Google. It that's why it's been able
Speaker 2: to explode in such in such a cool way. And
Speaker 2: so if you notice your phone is optimized in a
Speaker 2: vertical way, and so when you open the apps, they
Speaker 2: are going to let you know what they're prioritizing. The
Speaker 2: middle button on Instagram is reels. The middle button on
Speaker 2: on your YouTube app right now is shorts because it's vertical.
Speaker 2: So they are pushing this because seventy percent of the
Speaker 2: consumption in the United States is mobile.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Okay, yeah, I was gonna say that YouTube is
Speaker 3: getting shorts wrong because they're trying to fight two battles
Speaker 3: at the same time. So they're fighting the livestream space.
Speaker 3: YouTube live is becoming a very big thing. YouTube TV
Speaker 3: is going against every cable company in the world right now.
Speaker 3: And then on top of that you have the shorts.
Speaker 3: Instagram introduced reels and just focused on reels to try
Speaker 3: to attack TikTok and it's the same thing they did
Speaker 3: with stories on Snapchat. YouTube is trying to fight three
Speaker 3: battles at the same time. Yep, and they're just not
Speaker 3: They're just not They're just not doing it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think that shorts have the power of
Speaker 2: TikTok yet however.
Speaker 3: Because they're not improving the design correct.
Speaker 2: But they are searchable, which is crazy because now TikTok
Speaker 2: is learning how to be a searchable company, where YouTube has,
Speaker 2: you know, all the years of experience and it's easier
Speaker 2: to integrate. Like just the other day, I was we
Speaker 2: did a campaign for one of our friends, Suweko. I
Speaker 2: was able to find that right away. I looked it
Speaker 2: up on YouTube and I found we found it because
Speaker 2: I know when we did it, and it was a
Speaker 2: really easy campaign to find. Where if I type in,
Speaker 2: you know, Suako sound on TikTok, I'm gonna be sitting
Speaker 2: through like hundreds, you know, like hundreds of thousands of sounds.
Speaker 2: So anyway, it is what it is, uh, And I
Speaker 2: agree with raf. They YouTube just has more opponents. YouTube.
Speaker 2: YouTube's opponent is Twitch. Twitch is the most interactive live
Speaker 2: streaming platform right now. It's not the best quote unquote,
Speaker 2: but it's the most interactive. YouTube has far more video capabilities.
Speaker 2: They just can't get the marketing right on how to
Speaker 2: get more people to stream on YouTube, which which you know,
Speaker 2: Raft is right about that they have the best technology
Speaker 2: for vertical video. In my opinion, they just don't know
Speaker 2: how to market it, to create, to create the users trash.
Speaker 1: It's so bad.
Speaker 3: How do you create? How does your platform a certain
Speaker 3: color scheme and then you roll out of feature in
Speaker 3: a different color scheme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see that hurts your eyes. See the raff is
Speaker 2: really good at finding friction. No, I'm I'm sex, I'm
Speaker 2: just sort of no like this. These are the types
Speaker 2: of conversations. But when he finds friction, it's like, how
Speaker 2: can we make this frictionless? So I agree with him.
Speaker 2: The magic of TikTok is that your cousin can go
Speaker 2: viral tomorrow. That's the magic. And so the platform is
Speaker 2: designed for the consumer and is designed for the average
Speaker 2: person to basically feel like they could do a trend
Speaker 2: or create one and they can go viral tomorrow. You
Speaker 2: try to upload a YouTube short on your own right now.
Speaker 3: You actually need to go to YouTube. Need to go
Speaker 3: to YouTube to learn how to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And so that's that's Raff is right. Raf
Speaker 2: is right. So you know, a nerd like me. I mean,
Speaker 2: like Bob before we started. I mean, look, look how
Speaker 2: many things I set up. I set up a GoPro timer,
Speaker 2: got a camera over there, got the camera floating, Like
Speaker 2: I'm a nerd. This guy knows that YouTube is the
Speaker 2: superior platform for technology. Raff is just like, who cares
Speaker 2: if you know how to film all this? If you
Speaker 2: can't even get the message across I get it.
Speaker 1: Let's stop for a second. You said watch time is
Speaker 1: the most important to the ultimate platform. It's important. Whereas
Speaker 1: we've been told how many views, how many subscribers? Are
Speaker 1: you talking that watch time is the best in terms
Speaker 1: of compensation? Why is watch time king?
Speaker 2: Watch time is king to the platforms I'll talk about too, right,
Speaker 2: So from the producer of the content to the platform.
Speaker 2: It's king to the platforms because you can't fake watch
Speaker 2: time as good as you could fake views. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, even ten years ago, people were talking about
Speaker 2: like those like playlist farms and stuff like that. So
Speaker 2: you can buy a view, you can buy a click
Speaker 2: that's been around for a long time, but actually have
Speaker 2: a human being interact with their device while they're paying
Speaker 2: attention to your content is something you can't fake. And
Speaker 2: the tools and the tracking tools are getting better and better.
Speaker 2: So you know, these tracking tools are tracking when you know,
Speaker 2: people hire like a big render farm, like those render
Speaker 2: firms that Hollywood used to use to render graphic design.
Speaker 2: Those render farms are being used now to fake watch time.
Speaker 2: But these platforms are getting really good at identifying when
Speaker 2: this is a fake interaction because there are natural retention rates.
Speaker 2: And if you listen to some of the biggest creators,
Speaker 2: you know, they always talk about their retention. They talk
Speaker 2: about three things. They talk about their thumbnail, which is basically,
Speaker 2: you know, the first message you sent to the world
Speaker 2: when they are encountered with your mass awareness, which is
Speaker 2: the platform putting you in front of their face. They
Speaker 2: talk about their hook, which is what drives you into
Speaker 2: the video, And they talk about their retention. Those are
Speaker 2: the three biggest priorities right now for the platform.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait just one second, Yes, are we talking about
Speaker 1: retention of one video or retention con assuming multiple videos.
Speaker 2: Well, it's both, but it starts with one. You know.
Speaker 2: If so, if you a healthy playlist, this this statistic.
Speaker 2: You know, it's been a while since I've been at
Speaker 2: full screen, but this statistic maybe a little outdated, but
Speaker 2: a healthy playlist is if you get like one point
Speaker 2: eight one point eight videos watched, so that means that
Speaker 2: they they saw your video, they watched one more video,
Speaker 2: and then they watch, you know, point eight of another.
Speaker 2: So who knows what it is now. Maybe it's bigger
Speaker 2: because you know, mobile and everything's a little bit more attractive.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's two now, I don't know, but that the
Speaker 2: point is that it starts with one. You want to
Speaker 2: make sure that your content gets that retention so that
Speaker 2: you can hope to you know, to live another day.
Speaker 2: But anyway, that's the answer for the platforms. The reason
Speaker 2: it's king it's because it's the thing that can't be faked,
Speaker 2: and it won't be It won't be faked for a
Speaker 2: long time. And another another reason is because you, as
Speaker 2: the producer of the content, you want one hundred fans
Speaker 2: that have seen the thing in completion rather than you know,
Speaker 2: ten thousand fans that have just maybe heard your name
Speaker 2: or saw you in a meme or you know, saw
Speaker 2: your thumbnail.
Speaker 3: Okay, the elephant in the room advertising dollars where the
Speaker 3: consumer is spending the most time on yep. So if
Speaker 3: I'm watching a show for twenty minutes and I'm watching
Speaker 3: another show for ten minutes. As an advertiser, I want
Speaker 3: to go to the one that they're consuming more slower.
Speaker 1: Are you saying the viewer is more valuable or because
Speaker 1: they're watching so much video they're seeing more ads.
Speaker 3: The viewers more valuable because you can get your message across.
Speaker 3: You're a more valuable asset than someone that's making ten
Speaker 3: second videos. Because if someone's spending an hour listening to
Speaker 3: this podcast, you have the more hooked.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pull the lens way back. In the pre
Speaker 1: Internet era, people got their information from traditional newspapers and television,
Speaker 1: magazines and books, but there was a hierarchy. Then let's
Speaker 1: just say there are many places to get your information today.
Speaker 1: So if we are talking about the younger demo, let's
Speaker 1: just call it under twenty. I don't know where you
Speaker 1: want to break it. Under twenty one, under eighteen, even
Speaker 1: under eight fifteen? Can you reach them with any of
Speaker 1: the traditional tools. The newspapers mean anything, does television mean anything?
Speaker 1: Or really, is this the only way to reach the audience.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna think on that, man, I got it, go
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: We use traditional media to validate where you've already put
Speaker 3: on social media. So we run a company. Right, the
Speaker 3: Wired article came out, we could do a million views
Speaker 3: on digital, but everyone that was under fifteen s physical
Speaker 3: magazine and they matched the views that we do on
Speaker 3: digital to that magazine has said, these guys are legit.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you guys are out of the demo. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So the La Times, which a rockstar referred to me
Speaker 1: as a pamphlet today, has very little information and seeming
Speaker 1: I get it, but seemingly almost nobody I know still
Speaker 1: gets it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I see these articles and you might feel good
Speaker 1: at home. Okay, But if you're under twenty and there's
Speaker 1: an article on you, other than trying to reach a
Speaker 1: different audience, the older demo might give you a movie deal. Whatever,
Speaker 1: does it help your audience at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Let's let me answer the question. And I didn't
Speaker 2: want to recycle an answer, but since it wasn't published
Speaker 2: in the Washington Post, I'll say it here. What I
Speaker 2: told them when they asked about traditional media is I
Speaker 2: said that traditional media has a very good opportunity at
Speaker 2: just completely owning live And I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at me. I don't play sports. Right.
Speaker 2: I don't know about sports, but I don't know anything
Speaker 2: about football, but this dude loves football, right, so the
Speaker 2: the primetime coach guy, right, Like, I just got hooked
Speaker 2: on his YouTube videos and uh what do yeah? And
Speaker 2: what he was doing with with Colorado and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is this is brilliant, Like why don't why don't
Speaker 2: all the teams do? And I got hooked on on
Speaker 2: the energy and you know, in order for me to
Speaker 2: actually watch the game, it had to be TV. And
Speaker 2: so the production, you know, the machine has the opportunity
Speaker 2: to make the best live content ever. So when you
Speaker 2: have kids that are you know, live streaming I r
Speaker 2: L on Kick, they're live streaming I r L on
Speaker 2: on Twitch with I r L is in real life.
Speaker 2: So what this is a this is a content category
Speaker 2: that's actually the biggest content category on Twitch right now
Speaker 2: and on competitor of Twitch, which is Kick, where people
Speaker 2: are setting up go pros or dslr's actual cameras with
Speaker 2: a backpack and they're using converters to be able to
Speaker 2: live stream a very high, high production quality compared to
Speaker 2: what we're used to live streaming. When you know your
Speaker 2: grandma or your live streams horizontally on Facebook Live and
Speaker 2: so yeah, this is this is like good stuff. However,
Speaker 2: what's stopping a network from getting Gordon Ramsey Live to
Speaker 2: you know, go into a restaurant and Save the Day live. Well,
Speaker 2: they're just not doing it. But they have a really
Speaker 2: good opportunity to do that right now, other than just
Speaker 2: the traditional award shows and sports. I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: if you have a production experience, if you treat production
Speaker 2: value with you know, with that level of caliber and respect,
Speaker 2: I think that there's a really big opportunity for you
Speaker 2: to do that. So I think that, you know, it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily gone. What I told the Washington Post is
Speaker 2: that you know, it's it's about learning a trade, you know. Uh,
Speaker 2: social media, if you if you want to do it, well,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to learn a little bit of you know, filmmaking.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to learn a little bit of cinematography.
Speaker 2: If you want to take it to the next level.
Speaker 2: You want to you know, you want to make content,
Speaker 2: you have to learn sound. You have to learn all
Speaker 2: of these tools and disciplines from production. And you know,
Speaker 2: social media's been around for ten days at ten ten years,
Speaker 2: you know, so now you're encountering the fifteen, seventeen, eighteen
Speaker 2: year old that their dream was to go to USC
Speaker 2: and not not anymore. Their dream is like yo, like
Speaker 2: I can do this at nineteen, and I can shoot
Speaker 2: an ad from my living room, and they're adopting these
Speaker 2: disciplines and that's going to wash all the millennials that
Speaker 2: just got good at posing and good lighting, because these
Speaker 2: nineteen year olds that are coming already equip cinematographers that
Speaker 2: have done campaigns for brands because brands are paying them
Speaker 2: close to nothing because they have a million of followers
Speaker 2: on TikTok and they don't know what to charge. These
Speaker 2: kids are coming out, they gate with commercials, they've done,
Speaker 2: they've done for ads, they've done music videos, they've they've
Speaker 2: gone viral themselves. So you know, I think it could
Speaker 2: be done.
Speaker 3: And that's why TikTok was able to take off right
Speaker 3: away because you didn't need experience. But now all there,
Speaker 3: the real create are coming in and it's turning like
Speaker 3: every other platform where you need to be able to storyteller,
Speaker 3: you need to be able to have production value to
Speaker 3: even compete.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk entertainment outlets let's talk specifically the
Speaker 1: music business. Music business was controlled by distribution. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get your record in the store. And even if
Speaker 1: you got in the record store, unless you had a
Speaker 1: continuing line of product, you couldn't get paid. Then there
Speaker 1: was terrestrial radio. Needless to say, there are many outlets today.
Speaker 1: If you are let's just talk one of the three
Speaker 1: major labels in their subsidiaries. This is a two sided question.
Speaker 1: Can they make it without social media? And b if
Speaker 1: they want to use social media, how might they employ it?
Speaker 2: Oh raft takes a stand ins set of the guillotine.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it all depends on the genre. So yeah,
Speaker 3: look at a country right now. Country music is having
Speaker 3: an enormous rise. That doesn't happen without without TikTok and
Speaker 3: social media being involved. But all the artists that are
Speaker 3: doing well right now, they also have a huge touring history.
Speaker 3: There's only one breakthrough country artist this year, which is
Speaker 3: Zach Bryan. He told his story on social media, got
Speaker 3: a couple million views right away.
Speaker 2: He hit the road.
Speaker 3: So country, you still need to hit the road. You
Speaker 3: still need to touch the fan base and then from
Speaker 3: there use that piece of content on social media. Now,
Speaker 3: if we're talking about hip hop or pop music. All
Speaker 3: you need is that iPhone, make that song, put it
Speaker 3: out there, and they'll they'll find you, especially if you
Speaker 3: know exactly the fan base that you're going after, because
Speaker 3: you can find the type bet that you want to
Speaker 3: get on, you can find the type vocal that you
Speaker 3: want to sound on, and you go from an artist
Speaker 3: that's at zero to seven right away and you have
Speaker 3: a product worth selling. As far as the big major
Speaker 3: labels and the Citi aaries, what's happening there is they're
Speaker 3: using it as a way to sign artists, but they're
Speaker 3: not going back to the platform and educating them on
Speaker 3: who the artist is. They're just like, we just signed
Speaker 3: this really cool record and we're just gonna throw money
Speaker 3: at it. But they're not going back and saying, well,
Speaker 3: this cool record was made by this and this and
Speaker 3: this type of artist. They're not going back and educating
Speaker 3: the artists because there's so much supply and there's so
Speaker 3: much product out there that they can make money from
Speaker 3: that they don't need to go and tell the artist's
Speaker 3: story like they used to have.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's focus on hip hop that you just mentioned.
Speaker 1: You say you can look at what's happening and recreate it.
Speaker 1: We live in a world it used to be prior
Speaker 1: to fifteen years ago or so if you did something great,
Speaker 1: it would surface. Not today. I can point to things
Speaker 1: that are phenomenal in everything, whether it be streaming, television, music, whatever.
Speaker 1: There's just so much product. Are you saying? With hip hop,
Speaker 1: there's a way to analyze social media such that you
Speaker 1: know you will get attention.
Speaker 3: Same thing with the same thing with the sound and
Speaker 3: hip hop as well, because in hip hop there's they're
Speaker 3: typebat producers, so they can create exactly the sound of
Speaker 3: another popular artist, and then they can create the exact
Speaker 3: vocal chain in your house. So you can go from
Speaker 3: I've never made a song to I just sound like
Speaker 3: my favorite artist. And the consumer on the other side,
Speaker 3: they're like, if I listen to I don't know a
Speaker 3: little TJ, I'm also gonna like this artist as well
Speaker 3: because they sound alike.
Speaker 1: Well, let me let me ok, I get all that
Speaker 1: you have the successful artists. I'm at home, I've replicated
Speaker 1: and I've made something reasonable.
Speaker 3: How do people find me easy? You just the exact
Speaker 3: artists that you're replicating. You hit up their fan pages
Speaker 3: and let's.
Speaker 1: Be a little bit slower. Okay, you are the new artists.
Speaker 1: How do you hit up their fan base?
Speaker 3: You open up Instagram, say hey, I also sound like
Speaker 3: the artists that you're a fan of, as you have
Speaker 3: three thousand followers, here's my snippet of this song. Are
Speaker 3: you open to posting it on your story? That story
Speaker 3: gets two hundred, two hundred new listeners, right, so that
Speaker 3: story post is going to give that new artist from
Speaker 3: zero to two hundred new listeners. Now that algorithm is
Speaker 3: created that shows Spotify and other platforms that this artist
Speaker 3: sounds exactly like this big artist, so you should recommend
Speaker 3: them more.
Speaker 1: Okay, a little bit slower. I'm doing everything you can.
Speaker 1: I see the followers of the big artists. I reach out.
Speaker 1: How many do I have to reach out? How many
Speaker 1: are gonna play with me? And what do you have
Speaker 1: to do to incentivize them to play?
Speaker 3: Well, you're not reaching out there to the artist directly,
Speaker 3: I understand the fans. Yeah, you're reaching out to the
Speaker 3: fan page. And honestly, it's very easy because they're used
Speaker 3: to always engaging. Because a person that's running a fan
Speaker 3: page online is also probably online twenty four to seven
Speaker 3: so they're going to see it. It's all about I
Speaker 3: can start this project with you today, Bob. We can
Speaker 3: make your favorite artists happen today, and we could probably
Speaker 3: have a million streams within a month.
Speaker 1: Okay, just a little bit slower. I've created the snippet.
Speaker 1: How many members of the fan base might I reach
Speaker 1: out too?
Speaker 3: I would reach out to fifty pages if those remember
Speaker 3: the artist that you're replicating has to have enough of
Speaker 3: a fan base to have a fan page too. That's
Speaker 3: the elephant in the room. So it has to be
Speaker 3: a big enough artist that has a bunch of fan pages.
Speaker 3: I'll reach out to fifty. I would tell let's say
Speaker 3: twenty of them reply back. Pay twenty bucks per story post.
Speaker 3: Then I'm getting my first ten thousand listeners. Then the
Speaker 3: algorithm will just serve me too.
Speaker 1: Okay, but ultimately, you were compensating these people.
Speaker 3: If you want to get a quicker, if you want
Speaker 3: to get a quicker.
Speaker 2: But we've also been in a position where we had
Speaker 2: no money to pay anybody, and it's just a matter
Speaker 2: of See, that's the thing that see. I think the
Speaker 2: reason why Bob keeps zooming out is because we have
Speaker 2: to go deeper. And deeper into the core. Check this out.
Speaker 2: Raf said something very important, which is, you know sometimes
Speaker 2: people sign a song, but they're not signing the artists, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: so let's start there. When you have the money for it.
Speaker 2: We might not even use the money. This is just
Speaker 2: an opportunity for you to take your artist to the
Speaker 2: gym and say, hey, Miho, you got to reach out
Speaker 2: to three hundred people. You have to do it from
Speaker 2: your page because and you have to do it with
Speaker 2: your voice notes because I'm not you. Do you want
Speaker 2: it more or do I want it more than you?
Speaker 2: It's a very beautiful opportunity, and I think that every
Speaker 2: if this is what you do, if you help artists,
Speaker 2: if you help creators, it's very important for you to
Speaker 2: be able to find these assignments that also get results.
Speaker 2: So these get results. But okay, now the other zoom
Speaker 2: out question from Bob Okay, I've done that. No one's
Speaker 2: posted it. Cool. Now you go back to the gym
Speaker 2: and you work on your product, the problem that we've
Speaker 2: had for the last you know, thirty years or whatever. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: you might have a good song, you might be in
Speaker 2: a good algorithm, and honestly, like labels aren't signing bad things,
Speaker 2: and they're also not putting out bad things, like this
Speaker 2: is good stuff, it's just that it's not good enough.
Speaker 2: And so okay, let's say that your product or your
Speaker 2: song is not good enough, then what do you have?
Speaker 2: Are you very attractive? Okay, you're not attractive. You're like me,
Speaker 2: all right. So that means that you have to build
Speaker 2: a community and interest around what you want to do.
Speaker 2: And so that's why when you zoom out in, zoom outain,
Speaker 2: zoom out, it starts at the core. Man. It's like, look, dude,
Speaker 2: do you do you want to be a musician because
Speaker 2: you want to hop into a scene and have a
Speaker 2: blast and have an amazing youth and maybe put that
Speaker 2: money in real estate? Cool? Do you want to start
Speaker 2: a community? And do you want to start a movement?
Speaker 2: Because you're passionate about this genre. You're passionate about this
Speaker 2: Da da da da da. We've seen it and you live.
Speaker 2: You live during the time that I wish I was alive.
Speaker 2: I wish I was alive when a dude came up
Speaker 2: to me in an alley and was like, yo, you
Speaker 2: look like you would like to get punched in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night listening to Metallica. Who's Metallica? You
Speaker 2: don't know? Here's this cassette. Come back tomorrow and I'll
Speaker 2: show you where the show's at. I wish I was
Speaker 2: alive at that time.
Speaker 3: And in twenty twenty, we did that with an artist
Speaker 3: and we did like we did it in a hip
Speaker 3: hop yep. So we you talk about in real life
Speaker 3: and real yeah, yeah we So basically what he's saying.
Speaker 3: I had the artist message three hundred creators yep, and
Speaker 3: I was like, the artist that you're mimicking also is
Speaker 3: followed by these specific creators. These creators all play this
Speaker 3: specific video game, which is for Day. So I had
Speaker 3: him message every single creator. We had about a twenty
Speaker 3: percent response, right. We flip that to about eighty million
Speaker 3: streams within a year. The artist was at zero.
Speaker 1: Okay, we signed to learn clear why does this work
Speaker 1: in pop and hip hop and not other genres?
Speaker 2: It works in every genre and not in country because
Speaker 2: in country music they did they were slower to get
Speaker 2: on social media.
Speaker 1: So it's just a matter of when.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bingo, yeah, okay, this.
Speaker 1: Is all general. You guys represent talent. How many people
Speaker 1: do you represent today? Eight that's not very many. Okay,
Speaker 1: of your overall time, how much is focused on those
Speaker 1: eight as opposed to whatever.
Speaker 2: That's a tough question. It's it's pretty tough to scale.
Speaker 2: But we divide and conquer. So we're three founders and
Speaker 2: then we have eight managers. Well, we have twenty seven
Speaker 2: people in staff first of all, so this is impossible
Speaker 2: to do without a fucking big ass team.
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody's on a weekly salary. What do you mean
Speaker 1: as opposed to you work and I pay it two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars when I see the work?
Speaker 2: Oh r no, no, we well, we have vendors for
Speaker 2: different things.
Speaker 1: All twenty seven know that they're going to get paid
Speaker 1: every week.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah yeah no, but yeah, we
Speaker 2: have vendors for different things like marketing that will will
Speaker 2: hire some of whatever. But no, like we have twenty
Speaker 2: seven employees, not all of them are managers, some of
Speaker 2: them are coordinators, some of them are just specifically social
Speaker 2: media people. You know, my brother he's nineteen, runs the
Speaker 2: editing team. Like you know, we also stratboot and we're
Speaker 2: also immigrants, so we know, you know, we make sure
Speaker 2: the family works. But no, how we scale it is
Speaker 2: pretty tough, but we divide it in three.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, different question. You have these
Speaker 1: eight artists, he.
Speaker 3: Said, fifty eighty eight. That's why I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's why I got confused. Fifty eight. Let me let
Speaker 1: me go to the other half of the question. Anyway,
Speaker 1: at twenty five seven media, is all your work and
Speaker 1: income based on those fifty eight or is there another
Speaker 1: business of consulting and doing what it is?
Speaker 3: So we we've done marketing for every major label in
Speaker 3: the book for the last three years.
Speaker 1: And are you still doing that?
Speaker 3: No, because we still do it for like very few
Speaker 3: friends here and there, but we like to do it
Speaker 3: in the house because you know, you own the asset,
Speaker 3: like you own the music that you're putting on with
Speaker 3: the artists, so that there's a higher return there than
Speaker 3: getting someone else's record to move on the chart.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, for whatever reason, you don't want me to
Speaker 1: be your fifty ninth artist. Is there somebody like you?
Speaker 1: Guys who I could say, well, I didn't use twenty
Speaker 1: five seven, I use three six media. Are there other
Speaker 1: people out there of your caliber?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I would it would be ignorant to say they're not.
Speaker 3: And there's also and you know where they are.
Speaker 2: They're a group of friends on a discord that don't
Speaker 2: even know that they're twenty five to seven yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like before we got in the space, we well,
Speaker 3: I was a song promoter from labels years ago. So
Speaker 3: what I would do is I would get specific records
Speaker 3: moving in specific territories on Spotify. I didn't know that
Speaker 3: was an actual talent like they. I just thought I
Speaker 3: was just a kid making Spotify playlist, driving traffic. And
Speaker 3: then you see the song number one of the Philippines
Speaker 3: and you're a part of it, and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: I got paid like five hundred bucks for this. So
Speaker 3: then as I got older, I was like, oh, this
Speaker 3: is where the ball is moving towards digital. And then
Speaker 3: I became empowered. And then when Covid hit, it made
Speaker 3: us even more empowered because all that all those ad
Speaker 3: dollars that they were going to put everywhere else, They're like,
Speaker 3: we have to give it to these young guys. And
Speaker 3: there's a kid right now that's learning a platform that
Speaker 3: we're ignoring in this conversation that's gonna crush us in
Speaker 3: three to four years.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is a side note, but now since we've
Speaker 1: had social media influencers in excess of a decade, you
Speaker 1: have incredible burnout because on one hand, you have to
Speaker 1: post every day another land that becomes very tedious no
Speaker 1: matter how much money you're making. Has this been your experience.
Speaker 2: We deal with burnout in different ways. I think that
Speaker 2: actually all three of us have different ways of dealing
Speaker 2: with it all. At Raf kind of talk about the
Speaker 2: way he deals with burnout when it comes to creators.
Speaker 2: But when they if they come to me, it's because
Speaker 2: they've already tried, you know, all the conventional things that
Speaker 2: I've already put out there on the TikTok that they
Speaker 2: can watch, right, they've already tried all the all the tutorials.
Speaker 2: But if they come to one of us and they're
Speaker 2: honest about it, first you have to make sure that
Speaker 2: they're honest about it. And it doesn't mean that they're
Speaker 2: lying to you. It's just so that you can identify, like, hey,
Speaker 2: is this truly, you know, burnout or is it that
Speaker 2: it's just the wrong song and you just don't like
Speaker 2: the song, you know? And I think that by the
Speaker 2: time that they come to us, what I like to
Speaker 2: do is I like to take them through, you know,
Speaker 2: the steps of breaking it down honestly, Like, look, dude,
Speaker 2: sometimes you just have to tell them like, hey man,
Speaker 2: maybe you're just not passionate about, you know, the the
Speaker 2: lyrics that you're saying. Maybe you don't believe them, maybe
Speaker 2: you outgru them. You know. Sometimes people, I mean, people
Speaker 2: have been with us for four years now. There are
Speaker 2: worlds where we signed someone at you know, nineteen, and
Speaker 2: now they're in their twenties and they're a different person.
Speaker 2: Maybe their fan base wants them to be that and
Speaker 2: they're not. And so, you know, burnout can increase and
Speaker 2: the candle burns from multiple ends when there are these
Speaker 2: things other than just doing your job. One of the
Speaker 2: things that I notice is that when the artists or
Speaker 2: the content creator is actually passionate about their work and
Speaker 2: they're passionate about what they're putting out, it's a I
Speaker 2: don't want to say that it doesn't happen, but burnout
Speaker 2: is rare.
Speaker 1: It really well, you know, we go back to one
Speaker 1: of the original influencers, Jenna Marbles. She gave up people
Speaker 1: who feel that there's so much pressure to post every
Speaker 1: day sure that they they just you know, spiral out.
Speaker 3: Well, here's here's a couple of things. So to avoid burnout,
Speaker 3: you need a team that's always pushing your content without
Speaker 3: you click and upload. So we have one of our artists,
Speaker 3: he walks around, he goes shop, he would that would
Speaker 3: be a normal day that he would do. Doesn't have
Speaker 3: to interact with the camera at all. We shoot that
Speaker 3: and then that's what we post. He doesn't have to
Speaker 3: do anything different. He ate a burrito when I was
Speaker 3: with him, I took a video of that. Two million
Speaker 3: of you. He doesn't have to open up his TikTok account.
Speaker 3: That's him right. There's other artists that need to create
Speaker 3: content for their music or whatever they're making. That has
Speaker 3: to be more personable. And then the elephant in the room,
Speaker 3: what's your why? If you came to me three years
Speaker 3: ago and your why was to be a superstar, and
Speaker 3: their superstar level expectations, you have to do things that
Speaker 3: you don't want to do. But if your goal was
Speaker 3: to make become a self sufficient business or you know,
Speaker 3: be a six figure, seven figure business, and we hit that,
Speaker 3: go to Japan, shout out to ninety three. If she took.
Speaker 1: Okay okay, you said to become a superstar, you have
Speaker 1: to do things you don't want to do. Give me
Speaker 1: two examples of things I might have to do to
Speaker 1: become a superstar that I don't want to do.
Speaker 3: Okay, so right now, the live feature is massive. A
Speaker 3: person with a huge platform that wants to keep their
Speaker 3: fans engaged needs to go on live at least once
Speaker 3: a month for an hour and talk to fans, almost
Speaker 3: like you're doing a meet and greet. A lot of
Speaker 3: artists have social anxiety. A lot of artists don't want
Speaker 3: to be on live. They want to have more of
Speaker 3: their videos, you know, edit it a certain way. But
Speaker 3: a superstar needs to have a meet and greet on
Speaker 3: digital with the artist sadly nowadays at least once a month.
Speaker 1: Okay, pull back for a second. What do I need
Speaker 1: for you to sign me? You got fifty eight people
Speaker 1: you're working with. You're always calming for new talent. What
Speaker 1: are you looking for?
Speaker 3: Depending on who you ask?
Speaker 2: Depending on who you ask? Like he's all about music. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll finish. I'll finish the concept. And I'll even touch
Speaker 2: on Jenna Marbles because that's close to home, because I
Speaker 2: love her. So the reason she stopped is because she
Speaker 2: loved comedy. That's what she loved. And in the world
Speaker 2: and the climate that we're in, you know, being you know,
Speaker 2: a white woman making jokes, it's something that you know,
Speaker 2: there are jokes that she regretted. But then she just
Speaker 2: had so much anxiety with the platform as big as
Speaker 2: she had and with making a mistake that it crumbled her.
Speaker 2: And so again that's when we go into are you
Speaker 2: actually burning the candle from the other end us as
Speaker 2: the team, I make sure that the flame is burning
Speaker 2: in a controllable way, but if it's melting on different sides,
Speaker 2: then we have to be honest about it. Hey, dude, like,
Speaker 2: maybe these lyrics are not it for you anymore. You
Speaker 2: can't you can't rap about suicide anymore. Maybe you can't
Speaker 2: do that, and maybe that's what's stopping you from from
Speaker 2: from going deeper and being honest about you know, why
Speaker 2: it is that you procrastinate, why it is that you
Speaker 2: push it, why it is that you're not executing. And
Speaker 2: that's when the candle burns on both ends of the sticks.
Speaker 2: And that's why people like Genna Marbles have that big
Speaker 2: of a platform also big expectations from their fans to
Speaker 2: be funny. Now, the climate is very anti funny, you know,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So let's slow down there. Yeah, tell me more about
Speaker 1: the climate being the anti funny.
Speaker 2: Well, that's funny, but see that's funny. But with her
Speaker 2: there are jokes that didn't age well, plain and simple.
Speaker 1: I know that, but I'm trying to say. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: at home, I want to make it. Are you telling
Speaker 1: me that you know? Today generally speaking, we're not looking
Speaker 1: for funny. We're looking for something else.
Speaker 2: Man, It's just that funny is it's just a dangerous
Speaker 2: territory man whatever, especially for gen zers, Like there's gen
Speaker 2: zers that I'm telling you do not care, like these
Speaker 2: kids are scary, like some of the things that they
Speaker 2: share on social.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's what he's The anti funny thing
Speaker 3: is if a comedian set a joke or an individual
Speaker 3: set of joke, we would allow that. Right nowadays, you
Speaker 3: can't come in and thinking you're Seine Seinfeld earned the
Speaker 3: right to say that joke, and with social media they
Speaker 3: will make sure to let you know right away or
Speaker 3: whoever your boss is that hey, so and so is
Speaker 3: a teacher at this school. But it is also trying
Speaker 3: to make this type of content online. There was a
Speaker 3: teacher recently.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear, it's not that the audience
Speaker 1: doesn't want funny, it's just if you specialize in funny,
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous territory.
Speaker 2: It's a dangerous territory because you're going to be criticized
Speaker 2: in the same way that if you think that you're
Speaker 2: a good battle rapper and you start making rap music
Speaker 2: instead of mumbo hip hop, you're gonna get cooked by
Speaker 2: the people that know how to rap.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, let's just say you got fifty eight clients,
Speaker 1: what genres? What are those fifty How many are in music?
Speaker 1: How many are only fans? What are the fifty eight?
Speaker 2: Oh man, you're gonna have to help me with that. Well,
Speaker 2: how many music people do with?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it gets complicated. So it's fifty eight exclusive,
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty non exclusive that we work on
Speaker 3: social media with. So you're overall three hundred. Music is
Speaker 3: about twenty four and then the rest would be a
Speaker 3: hybrid between YouTube and.
Speaker 1: Only fans, between what and only fans, you.
Speaker 3: Tube creators and only fans. But it's kind of everybody
Speaker 3: has kind of similar goals. Believe it or not. Everybody
Speaker 3: has to create a community. So on music right now,
Speaker 3: a big thing is a broadcast channel. So there's specific
Speaker 3: members that join there and they can either subscribe or
Speaker 3: join for free that a musician can just give them
Speaker 3: snippets or music that won't hit all platforms. And that's
Speaker 3: exactly how it works for the YouTube creators and only
Speaker 3: fans as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's focus solely on only fans. Is it one
Speaker 1: hundred percent pornography or is anybody making money without taking
Speaker 1: their clothes?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, we have a ton that are making money
Speaker 2: with say about like forty percent of the roster doesn't
Speaker 2: take their clothes off at all.
Speaker 1: And what are they selling? Are they selling sex?
Speaker 2: Some of them are, some of them are selling bikini photos,
Speaker 2: some of them are selling connection, connection, and also just
Speaker 2: live streaming like watching watching anime together, like it's all
Speaker 2: kinds of Okay.
Speaker 1: Let me be very specific. How much are sexually oriented?
Speaker 1: That could be sex conversation, that could be bikini photos,
Speaker 1: that could be taking off all your clothes? Yea, what
Speaker 1: percentage of the people you represent are in that category
Speaker 1: as opposed to another category?
Speaker 2: There's different levels of boundaries, I'd say, But yeah, of
Speaker 2: course it's it's risque, but there there's an art to it,
Speaker 2: like there are people.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I just want to know, is
Speaker 1: anybody making good money not in that riskue territory?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are they doing?
Speaker 2: Uh? They're the ones that are that are doing bikini
Speaker 2: pictures and watching anime with their fans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, let's say I'm not wearing a bikini, I'm
Speaker 1: wearing a hoodie and ben sweatpants. Can I build a
Speaker 1: business watching anime with my fans?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can, and that's called being a live streamer
Speaker 2: on the just chat on Twitch is just not the
Speaker 2: right platform.
Speaker 1: Okay, but on only fans talk about only.
Speaker 3: That's that's the issue with that's the issue only like
Speaker 3: the way the way you only fans, there's going to
Speaker 3: be a sexual component somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah. For for us at least, we're not in the
Speaker 2: business of, you know, going up to someone and telling
Speaker 2: them that they can make a million dollars by doing
Speaker 2: like a cooking show, which is what OnlyFans is trying
Speaker 2: to do. Right, But it's I know that it happens
Speaker 2: for them. I don't have the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand you answered my question. Yeah, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: assume I am making sexually oriented content and only fans.
Speaker 1: Is that the end? Or are there any opportunities that
Speaker 1: only fans might lead to?
Speaker 2: Yeah? See, that's the cool thing about what we do
Speaker 2: is what what the only fans side of the business
Speaker 2: and digital One of the mottos is that you know,
Speaker 2: no digital girl is going to die doing OnlyFans. So
Speaker 2: the point really is to build a platform. That's the
Speaker 2: number one priority, and then to monetize on it. Once
Speaker 2: you have that money, what do you want to do
Speaker 2: with that money? Do you want to start a YouTube channel, streaming?
Speaker 2: Do you want to launch brand? Which we've done all
Speaker 2: those things.
Speaker 3: Look at Kim Kardashian, that should I just.
Speaker 1: From Oh, we all know Kim Kardashian and that was
Speaker 1: made on television primarily there was a sex tape before that,
Speaker 1: but then television. But let's not talk about Kim Dartian.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the people you represent, right.
Speaker 3: No, that's the modern day version of course, someone who
Speaker 3: is making content sexually oriented on only fans that you represent.
Speaker 1: How much is the biggest gross per year of someone
Speaker 1: who does that?
Speaker 2: I mean, don't want to out because everybody knows our
Speaker 2: top three. But it's it's pretty, it's worth their while.
Speaker 1: Is it seven figures?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah?
Speaker 3: Is it eight figures?
Speaker 2: It could be, It could be.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I have a deal. We're making money twenty
Speaker 1: five to seven. What is their cut?
Speaker 2: It depends on the creator. There are some people that
Speaker 2: are legacy that have been with us from the beginning.
Speaker 2: They're people that you know, just start. It depends if
Speaker 2: we launch the If we launch their career.
Speaker 1: Well give me the lowest to the highest.
Speaker 2: So in general, what we do when we launch someone's
Speaker 2: career is we do fifty fifty on the only fan
Speaker 2: side and it's a it's a three month test. And
Speaker 2: if they because this this is the thing man like,
Speaker 2: you don't want to uh commit to something that you're
Speaker 2: not one hundred million percent sure that you're going to
Speaker 2: be able to do. And part of what we do
Speaker 2: is we don't really this this sounds hilarious, it's kind
Speaker 2: of intuitive, but we don't make them do anything. We
Speaker 2: don't tell them what to do. What we do is
Speaker 2: we provide strategy, and we provide decks and presentations where
Speaker 2: they can choose and pick and choose whatever they're comfortable with.
Speaker 2: From proven trends that work, and then we also consult
Speaker 2: them on producing the right tiktoks, and we also produce
Speaker 2: the YouTube videos for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Where the traffic source? Yeah? Where the traffic source or
Speaker 3: that platform.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say I'm in business with you. We have
Speaker 1: great success, but I think I can do it alone now,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to give up my fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Who owns the content?
Speaker 2: They do? The creator does. Uh, the creator has to
Speaker 2: own the content because they are the ones that are
Speaker 2: producing the content in California. That's just the law. And
Speaker 2: we also represent people all over the world. But we
Speaker 2: we go.
Speaker 1: Actually, I don't want to get into the legal elements
Speaker 1: actually being a lawyer, but you they own the content
Speaker 1: is good enough for me. Let's switch the gears to music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before we switch gears, I'll discuss like what leads
Speaker 2: to that. So the point of building a platform first
Speaker 2: beef before even getting an only fan, especially when we
Speaker 2: launch someone. If we launch someone, we do it three
Speaker 2: month tests. After that three month test, we give them
Speaker 2: the option to stay, and then we do a long
Speaker 2: term contract for less percentage. That percentage is determined based
Speaker 2: on you know, the outcome of the business, but we don't.
Speaker 2: We don't stay fifty percent forever. At fifty percent is
Speaker 2: just the launch because in the launch phase we put
Speaker 2: in a ton of money for the traffic, We invest
Speaker 2: a lot in their in their in their content, We
Speaker 2: help them with everything. And so that's what the three
Speaker 2: the three month test this far. Now from there, it's
Speaker 2: really important to build a TikTok because actually the way
Speaker 2: that we build the community around digital is through music.
Speaker 2: So you know, when it comes to pushing sounds, you know,
Speaker 2: when we.
Speaker 1: Look at who waha a little bit slower, Huh did
Speaker 1: you switch gears? Or are you saying only fans is
Speaker 1: driven by TikTok?
Speaker 2: Uh? It is.
Speaker 1: And it's if I'm only fans and I'm taking my
Speaker 1: clothes off, I'm selling on I'm baking people to wear
Speaker 1: on TikTok. But there's a musical component.
Speaker 2: There's a musical component for being being a creator. When
Speaker 2: you're a creator and you want to monetize, whether it's
Speaker 2: YouTube or only fans or whatever, you need the most
Speaker 2: amount of awareness right now, it happens to be ig
Speaker 2: reels and TikTok. And so that's why for us, the
Speaker 2: priority you know, maybe maybe you you flunk on OnlyFans
Speaker 2: and this has happened. Maybe you flunk on OnlyFans and
Speaker 2: you or you find out that it's not for you.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, you have a conversation with uh, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe you got a boyfriend, maybe you get a girlfriend
Speaker 2: and it's just not for you guys anymore and so cool.
Speaker 2: But you know what, you built a platform of one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand followers, doesn't mean that you can't work with us.
Speaker 2: Do you want to do marketing for us? Do you
Speaker 2: want to do the marketing campaigns? Do you want to
Speaker 2: be involved in the community of twenty five to seven
Speaker 2: still be part of the talent like that's happened before
Speaker 2: and it continues to happen. So that's why the priority
Speaker 2: is building the platform because from there they can launch streaming,
Speaker 2: they can go on Twitch and monetize there, they can
Speaker 2: monetize on YouTube.
Speaker 1: But just to be clear, let's say I'm successful on
Speaker 1: only fans, I'm going to TikTok to build my OnlyFans
Speaker 1: traffic or it's brand extensions.
Speaker 2: Going it's both. You're going to TikTok to build a
Speaker 2: brand but also to get the most amount of awareness.
Speaker 2: You convert those people over to your Instagram. The Instagram
Speaker 2: is also now a really good way of discovery because
Speaker 2: of reels. You convert them ideally to your YouTube and
Speaker 2: then if they really want to monetize, they buy your
Speaker 2: merch or they continue watching your videos, or they go
Speaker 2: on your only fan.
Speaker 3: That's why we Hugh was trying to say earlier, like
Speaker 3: people are getting away with bikini pictures and sometimes I
Speaker 3: even talk anything sexually because they've built their tiktoks and
Speaker 3: YouTube to such a large number and such an intimate
Speaker 3: level with their following that they'll just pay just to
Speaker 3: get a message back exactly, which is like, it's it's insane,
Speaker 3: Like people are paying five hundred dollars just to get
Speaker 3: a hello back, and we're sitting there like how is
Speaker 3: that possible? But that's the way of them knowing that
Speaker 3: their favorite creator or that person on the other side
Speaker 3: of that phone will talk to them.
Speaker 2: And also imagine being one of the first five hundred
Speaker 2: girls to dance a dojakat song on TikTok. You're gonna
Speaker 2: get numbers and you're gonna get traffic. So the advantage
Speaker 2: that the digital girls get is they know when we're
Speaker 2: gonna heat up a song, and so imagine, you know,
Speaker 2: you're you're an artist, your your song drops on Friday.
Speaker 2: You know, by the next Sunday, you're gonna have thirty
Speaker 2: girls from digital which is twenty five seven media that
Speaker 2: have hundreds of hundreds of thousands of followers, some of
Speaker 2: them have millions on TikTok that are now doing your
Speaker 2: song instant traffic. It's all synergy, which is actually a
Speaker 2: term I learned from Brendan from Wired, who did the
Speaker 2: article on this. He brought up the you know, the
Speaker 2: Simpsons had this episode on synergy. Ever since he said
Speaker 2: the word synergy, I can't stop saying it. But it
Speaker 2: truly is just, you know, like like a really good
Speaker 2: environment that we build for launching music.
Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, harp on only fans,
Speaker 1: but there are many people participating on only fans who
Speaker 1: are really not making any money. What works on only
Speaker 1: fans the.
Speaker 3: Other platforms and other platforms, and that's why we're right.
Speaker 1: But there are people, let me put it differently, there
Speaker 1: are people who are basically selling sexual content of whatever
Speaker 1: stripe on only fans. Does it have to be a
Speaker 1: certain level of sexual content or is it how you
Speaker 1: monetize the people.
Speaker 2: Paying no again, and it's it doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: sexual content. It's about the traffic you bring in and
Speaker 2: the quality of traffic.
Speaker 3: And that's why we're able to and that's.
Speaker 2: Why we're able to do it because a porn I'll
Speaker 2: go deeper, a porn start, for example, does not make
Speaker 2: what a digital girl makes because some of their content
Speaker 2: is already out there and there's some you know, the
Speaker 2: guy already saw it. There's no need for them to
Speaker 2: engage with the talent further. And so when you get
Speaker 2: the traffic and you built an interest in an aura
Speaker 2: around you, you're bringing that traffic in and you're monetizing
Speaker 2: on the traffic by simply being a part of their
Speaker 2: community that you can't see. So there are pictures, even
Speaker 2: if they're just bikinia, non sexual stuff. If the girl
Speaker 2: doesn't post the bikini picture on Instagram and the guy
Speaker 2: he needs to see the bikini picture, he's going to
Speaker 2: see the bikini picture, and he's going to pay for
Speaker 2: the bikini picture. So just like the rapper that is
Speaker 2: pushing his EP in the McDonald's bag and sending his
Speaker 2: EP to everybody in the drive through, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people that yes, they had that harsh reality when
Speaker 2: it's like, hey, I made my only fans and no
Speaker 2: one gave a shit because now you know what it's
Speaker 2: like to be an independent rapper, and it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's you're pushing this traffic and how do you make
Speaker 2: people care?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's switch to music. Someone signs with you, guys, Hey,
Speaker 1: are you looking for numbers before you sign someone? Or
Speaker 1: will you sign with someone totally raw based on what
Speaker 1: you hear in their identity?
Speaker 3: Well, we can't at the number factor. We can't compete
Speaker 3: on that just because all the majors and all the
Speaker 3: distribution companies. If you're doing about thirty five thousand streams
Speaker 3: a day on a cross your catalog, you're on every
Speaker 3: radar and every label is moving towards the data. So
Speaker 3: what we have to go towards is I go based
Speaker 3: off brand. So if I'm sitting in the room with
Speaker 3: someone or I'm talking to that artist, am I actually intrigued?
Speaker 3: And that usually? And if the music is about a
Speaker 3: six out of ten, I'm like, can I actually add
Speaker 3: value to that and get it to a seven, eight
Speaker 3: or even a nine? I go based off brand. Fully,
Speaker 3: so can that artist move me? When I'm in the
Speaker 3: room with that he goes based off only music.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, but you're in, we're in. How many people
Speaker 1: are hungry have whatever you're looking for, but really have
Speaker 1: almost no numbers at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we've done that and and again, like like
Speaker 2: Raff said, well, you know, we signed for different reasons.
Speaker 2: But I think that that's why we're a really good balance.
Speaker 2: Like he has just it's just such a good eye
Speaker 2: for talent, not only like music talent, but staff. Like
Speaker 2: I I won't hire someone unless unless I get his
Speaker 2: opinion on it. Okay, okay, But but he also sometimes
Speaker 2: coaches me to not be too caught up in the
Speaker 2: music and how good the music is.
Speaker 3: Bob, it's the why. Like one of our biggest artists
Speaker 3: right now, he's a Mexican artist, grew up in the US,
Speaker 3: grew up in Mexico. Has that duality is figuring out
Speaker 3: himself through you know, both cultures. He's intriguing the music. Well,
Speaker 3: we'll getting there. He's had four or five songs on
Speaker 3: the Billboard charts for dance and electronic, but that started
Speaker 3: off because of his story so unique. His fans got
Speaker 3: invested in him so that when we put out the music,
Speaker 3: if the music was decent enough, he was gonna win.
Speaker 3: There's other artists that we have to lead with the
Speaker 3: music and then kind of go more old school and
Speaker 3: create the persona of an artist. But he was already
Speaker 3: an artist. He just needed the music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, okay, there's there's there are there are true
Speaker 2: I know this sounds cheesy. There are truly people that
Speaker 2: are born stars. He's good at finding those people. But
Speaker 2: I'll come in and say like, hey, this is this person.
Speaker 2: Can He'll be basically, does this guy haven't shot at music?
Speaker 2: And I'll be like honest about it. With the artists
Speaker 2: that he mentioned, Loumiatina, obviously I had a sop spot
Speaker 2: for him because he's Mexican. On Mexican, we instantly bonded.
Speaker 2: But I was honest with with Loomi. When I talked
Speaker 2: to him, was like, hey, dude, I only really like
Speaker 2: two of your songs, and you know, will this work?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I mean we like you, and
Speaker 2: I think I think what I did tell him and
Speaker 2: what I was honest about, I was like, look, I
Speaker 2: don't understand your genre. I'm a fucking boomer out. To him,
Speaker 2: I'm thirty, so to him, I'm done. It's over for me.
Speaker 2: But I was like, I don't understand this genre, but
Speaker 2: it's fucking groundbreaking and experimental, and I told him that
Speaker 2: it reminded me of like when I lived through Scrillics.
Speaker 2: So to me, Skrillics was one of the most groundbreaking
Speaker 2: things because he was in my world, in the metal world,
Speaker 2: and you know, he went from metal core screamo to dubstep,
Speaker 2: which was basically the electronic version of a breakdown spot
Speaker 2: in a song. I gave him that whole spiel, in
Speaker 2: that whole background and the way that he digested it
Speaker 2: and took it in. And then he became friends with
Speaker 2: another one of our artists, Psycho, who one of his
Speaker 2: favorite artists is Scrillics, and then Psycho gave him all
Speaker 2: his intel on Scrillics and then the way he digested
Speaker 2: and I saw the gears turning in his head. I
Speaker 2: was like, we strike now, we strike now, and so
Speaker 2: it ended up working out. But we'd be lying if
Speaker 2: we said, like, even though I'm the music guy, I'd
Speaker 2: be lying if I said, like, when I heard, you know,
Speaker 2: crush club, the genre he created that I was like
Speaker 2: all in on the genre. I was just all in
Speaker 2: on the fact that he was so brave and willing
Speaker 2: to be so groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have signed an act. Let's just say for
Speaker 1: the sake of discussion, their talent lies more in the
Speaker 1: music than the charisma and personality identity. Obviously, whatever is
Speaker 1: there is good enough for you because you made the deal.
Speaker 1: But you're a ground zero. How do you get the
Speaker 1: music heard?
Speaker 3: Well, first you gotta make the music genre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're working now, that's a different f.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're working shoegaze right now. Shoegaze is gonna is
Speaker 3: gonna come back to the big, big numbers. So from
Speaker 3: there we have to start off with the right mix
Speaker 3: for the new shoegaze sound that's being created a lot
Speaker 3: more muneier. So you get that mix right, you get
Speaker 3: the storytelling right, then you're like, okay, cool, what then
Speaker 3: you start doing market research? What does a shoegaze fan
Speaker 3: look like in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Right, because they they are calling it shoegaze, but the
Speaker 2: music that they are portraying a shoegaze now is not
Speaker 2: necessarily shoegaze. So see, that's where you get into the
Speaker 2: old head vitality where it's like, oh, this isn't a
Speaker 2: real shoot, you know what I mean? Right right, right, like,
Speaker 2: but Raf is like, dude, I don't care if it's
Speaker 2: not real shoegaze. Just fucking teach these kids chord progressions
Speaker 2: and then we'll make it work, you know. So that's
Speaker 2: so Jella who's filming actually right now. He's a really
Speaker 2: skilled engineer. He just had a really good session with
Speaker 2: one of our new shoegaze acts that you know needs
Speaker 2: that engineer. She has the brand, she has the music,
Speaker 2: she has a beautiful boy voice. Now we just got
Speaker 2: to tweak the engineering so that it could it could
Speaker 2: match the sound of today.
Speaker 3: So once that record is done, then we're like, we
Speaker 3: identify the market and then we don't just put the
Speaker 3: music off saying this is a good shoegaze record that
Speaker 3: you should listen to. Let's say that same fan is
Speaker 3: also a fan of this streetwear brand. Then we start
Speaker 3: attacking it through the fashion.
Speaker 1: So the slower Slowerka, you've created the track, Now you're
Speaker 1: talking about the fan. How do you decide how to
Speaker 1: reach out?
Speaker 2: And well, how we talked about the genre and then
Speaker 2: the fan, right so yes.
Speaker 3: So then I I'm a consumer. I look up shoegaze,
Speaker 3: I look up similar artists. I look at people making
Speaker 3: videos to shoegaze songs. So I'm like, if you're doing
Speaker 3: this and you're not getting paid, that means you're a fan.
Speaker 3: I look at their fashion, I look at their age.
Speaker 3: Then I look at what they're also following on social media.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, if these twenty people are following this
Speaker 3: same fashion trend, I'm gonna hit it through the fashion lens.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna put the song in those fashion pages. So
Speaker 3: now they're thinking they're looking at a T shirt, but
Speaker 3: the music is in the background.
Speaker 1: Okay, slower, you have these people who are making these videos.
Speaker 1: You have the song. Hey, the point of connection, you say, hey,
Speaker 1: I love what you're doing. I got a new artist.
Speaker 3: No, I don't say that. I don't do that. No,
Speaker 3: I look at that person make I look at that
Speaker 3: person making those videos. I look at their interest. And
Speaker 3: then let's say they're into this T shirt brand, right,
Speaker 3: I go to that T shirt brand and say, here's
Speaker 3: the song for free, put it behind your T shirt ad.
Speaker 3: And then that fan that's been making videos is just
Speaker 3: scrolling and just sees the things that he's interested in.
Speaker 3: That song keeps popping up.
Speaker 1: Okay, I get it, like just a little bit slower.
Speaker 2: You remember Bad Religion, right of course? All right, so
Speaker 2: I never told I gotta now after this podcast, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna text him and give him as flowers. But like, uh,
Speaker 2: it's the name of Brett epitaph. So Bad Religion. One
Speaker 2: of the things that they did that was so genius
Speaker 2: is uh Bro went to the surfers and the skaters
Speaker 2: and he was like, yo, like, uh use, you know,
Speaker 2: use use Bad Religion And they wanted to pay him,
Speaker 2: and he was like, dude, like, don't pay me because
Speaker 2: back then, remember where they used to do those tapes
Speaker 2: where every single skates would be playing. So he he
Speaker 2: just got every skate shop to be playing Bad Religion.
Speaker 2: When you know, you get all the waves and the
Speaker 2: and the skate videos. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, but my only But even though Bad Religion was
Speaker 1: the punk era, di I y, there's much much more
Speaker 1: product today.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So you're saying you can always go back
Speaker 2: to the isdlead No, yeah, but you.
Speaker 1: Can always go find someone you say, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: it for free and they're gonna say yes, as supposed
Speaker 1: someone say hey we got twenty people are gonna give
Speaker 1: it to us for free.
Speaker 2: Oh all right, yeah you can.
Speaker 1: Okay. So there's always someone who's gonna use your music always, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the reason I brought that up is because you know,
Speaker 2: that is a subgenre, right, and this will always always
Speaker 2: be alive for subgenres because your subgenre is a smaller community.
Speaker 2: And if it's a smaller community, you can target. It's
Speaker 2: a smaller target and.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, it has to be good.
Speaker 3: That's why the miss.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're there, have you picked out a specific element
Speaker 1: of the song? When you're making the deal with the
Speaker 1: T shirt company? What are you actually sending them? What
Speaker 1: do you want them to use?
Speaker 2: Well, they're not even a company most of the time.
Speaker 2: It's just a kid that's posting his big his most
Speaker 2: favorite outfits. And that's just one example of I'm not
Speaker 2: exaggerating hundreds and I mean hundreds of algorithms that that
Speaker 2: we wait.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait once again, we have
Speaker 1: to slow down. You do this every day. My audience
Speaker 1: is doing this area.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I thought, wait wait, I thought, I so
Speaker 3: we'll go to the T shirt. No.
Speaker 1: Now, I understand everything you're saying, but I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure I have it stripped. You find someone
Speaker 1: who's a fan, you see what they're interested, their algorithm,
Speaker 1: the T shirt and whatever. Blah blah blah. I thought
Speaker 1: you said you contact the T shirt company.
Speaker 3: Correct, So there's he's looking at it a different way.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at it right, But yeah, you contact a
Speaker 3: T shirt company. There's two ways. So I run a
Speaker 3: campaign where I fully control how, what part of a
Speaker 3: song they're going to use, how they're going to put
Speaker 3: it in the cat. That's one part of the campaign.
Speaker 3: The other campaign, I let the T shirt company or
Speaker 3: another company similar to it, do their own thing. So
Speaker 3: one is I I call the other. The other campaign
Speaker 3: called don't play God because a lot of the times
Speaker 3: there's parts of records that I think it should be
Speaker 3: the hook, but ends up being the first part of
Speaker 3: the verse that goes viral. So so the first campaign
Speaker 3: is exactly what I want it to be. The second campaign,
Speaker 3: I just let the space take over.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've done all that. You guys have a lot
Speaker 1: of expertise in algorithms. You're just not sitting at home
Speaker 1: waiting to see what happens. No, how do you make
Speaker 1: it happen?
Speaker 2: So well? What he just said is actually very key
Speaker 2: the don't play God method. In traditional marketing, this is
Speaker 2: called a B testing, which is, you know, raps don't
Speaker 2: play God method, and there's a reason he calls it.
Speaker 2: Then I'll get there. You're going to make the best description,
Speaker 2: The simpler the better, because the simpler means that more
Speaker 2: people are willing to do it, And you're going to
Speaker 2: pick a part of the song that you think makes
Speaker 2: the most sense for them to post in an easy,
Speaker 2: frictionless way. Sometimes you give the most simple instructions and
Speaker 2: they don't do it, and you want that because sometimes
Speaker 2: they're the expert of their audience and so what's happened,
Speaker 2: which is why he says we don't play God anymore.
Speaker 2: We don't give them like multiple options. We just give
Speaker 2: them one and then we let them run. Is because
Speaker 2: sometimes the kids the audience will pick not only the single,
Speaker 2: they'll pick the part of the song, they'll pick the lyric,
Speaker 2: they'll pick the thing that makes it the it moment.
Speaker 2: They will be better suited to make that decision because
Speaker 2: they're living the algorithm every day.
Speaker 3: And that's what we learn when you're asking them about
Speaker 3: our business. Earlier, when we were three years doing campaigns
Speaker 3: for other labels, we learned a bunch of patterns of
Speaker 3: communities that are hyper consumers. But we also learned that
Speaker 3: every time the label would tell us they have to
Speaker 3: deliver the message like this, it would never work.
Speaker 2: It would never work.
Speaker 3: So we were like, oh, this is awesome.
Speaker 2: We we'll just let the creative, which is why we
Speaker 2: chuckled when you said, like, okay, so you go when
Speaker 2: you said, uh, okay, so you say I have a
Speaker 2: new artist. Now you never say that, like you know,
Speaker 2: uh some but but you'd be surprised how many you
Speaker 2: know labels would tell us okay, so you're gonna have
Speaker 2: the fan say hey, guys, I just listened to you.
Speaker 2: Da da da da da da, and make sure you
Speaker 2: do the trend just like me. That's never gonna happen.
Speaker 2: It's never gonna work, right, And so that's why you know,
Speaker 2: through trial and error and honestly, by doing so many campaigns,
Speaker 2: we've determined that the simpler the better. And sometimes when
Speaker 2: you make it so simple, uh, the kid is gonna
Speaker 2: be like these guys know they're.
Speaker 1: Gonna pick up right. Okay, but let's say you do this.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna work every time.
Speaker 3: That's the beauty of it.
Speaker 2: As the beauty of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say it didn't work.
Speaker 2: Then are you gonna do Then the song's not it,
Speaker 2: the products is not you start.
Speaker 1: You're gonna start the same process all over again.
Speaker 2: And we have to and we and and sometimes what's happened.
Speaker 2: I'll give them the example. We spent thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: on an artist one of his first campaigns. He's trap metal,
Speaker 2: that's the genre. It's like metal but like kind of
Speaker 2: hip hop. And we poured it all in on some
Speaker 2: anime edits and for whatever, which is usually the genre
Speaker 2: that works really well for this type of music. For
Speaker 2: whatever reason, it didn't work. And uh, you know, we
Speaker 2: were in the process of picking a different song, and
Speaker 2: we were like, well, maybe we'll try a different song,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, We'll just whatever. Two weeks, I think
Speaker 2: like three weeks went by, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: these Japanese wrestlers, female wrestlers are blowing each other up
Speaker 2: like I like blow with with like fireworks. They put
Speaker 2: like they put barbed wire around a chair and fireworks
Speaker 2: and they're being each other with fireworks, and they put
Speaker 2: the song with that video and it went viral. So
Speaker 2: then what we did was, you know what we did.
Speaker 2: We didn't even know that there was a niche of
Speaker 2: Japanese female wrestlers. So what we did is we then
Speaker 2: lit that whole algorithm up, and then we and then
Speaker 2: now the song is.
Speaker 1: Okay, you use the magic word algorithm to what degree?
Speaker 1: Let's stay with TikTok because that's run by an algorithm
Speaker 1: that no one seems to be able to one hundred
Speaker 1: percent nail. To what degree do you study the algorithm,
Speaker 1: try to figure it out, and then try to game
Speaker 1: the system.
Speaker 2: It's not about gaining the system. It's just about identifying communities.
Speaker 2: That's all it is. Like to bring it back. The
Speaker 2: purpose of at least the mission statement of Facebook is
Speaker 2: to create technology that brings us all closer together. And
Speaker 2: so what that means is that you know, you're not
Speaker 2: gonna actually bring the whole world together, but if you
Speaker 2: can identify enough communities, you can bring those communities together.
Speaker 2: So the algorithm is always going to change of anybody
Speaker 2: tells you like, oh, I know the secrets of the algorithm.
Speaker 2: They may know them for a week, but it changes
Speaker 2: every three months officially, so that means that it changes
Speaker 2: every every month and a half. And so no one
Speaker 2: actually knows the algorithm. But what we know is we
Speaker 2: know how to identify fan bases. We know how to
Speaker 2: identify subcultures, and we know how to create them, and
Speaker 2: we know how to ignite them in ways that for example,
Speaker 2: like how the Wired article mentioned in ways that maybe
Speaker 2: some of the majors are just not interested in doing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you say it changes, they say in three months,
Speaker 1: one and a half months would be more like it.
Speaker 1: What literally changes? What do you observe? What changed in
Speaker 1: the algorithm? Talk about the past.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the past. Sure, So, I mean everybody
Speaker 2: knows the famous ad apocalypse, right, Okay, So if you are,
Speaker 2: you know, a prankster and that's your bread and butter,
Speaker 2: and you have a Lamborghini and you bought a house
Speaker 2: huge mortgage, you know a lot of people who gave
Speaker 2: it back because pranks are no longer suitable for monetization
Speaker 2: to the level that they were on YouTube guidelines because
Speaker 2: of like you know, the harassments reports and all that
Speaker 2: stuff that was going on in the streets, and so yes,
Speaker 2: that is true that the platform itself, the algorithm can
Speaker 2: literally sweep you under your feet. Sometimes sometimes it's just
Speaker 2: a matter of words that are no longer suitable for
Speaker 2: hashtags or trends. Sometimes it's just the matter of hooks.
Speaker 2: So now the hook is more important than ever on TikTok,
Speaker 2: where back then it was just so awesome seeing something
Speaker 2: vertical go viral on TikTok. Now even a viral video
Speaker 2: has to have a preview of the most enticing moment
Speaker 2: of the video, put it in the intro so that
Speaker 2: it can hook people in. So it's not only the algorithm.
Speaker 2: A lot of people get caught in the algorithm. They
Speaker 2: start blaming the algorithm or they think that they can
Speaker 2: gain the system. No, what you need to consistently understand,
Speaker 2: because humanity is always changing, is you need to consistently
Speaker 2: understand human behavior. And if you know what happened on YouTube,
Speaker 2: and if you know what happened on all these other platforms,
Speaker 2: and as these other platforms are adopting more of an
Speaker 2: official content creation mode and model, then that's where you
Speaker 2: need to That's where you need to head. And then
Speaker 2: there's also a counter movement of overproduced content to underproduce content.
Speaker 2: So there are people that are actually gaining more views
Speaker 2: for overproducing their content, like we mentioned, like being more legit,
Speaker 2: learning filmmaking tech tactics and techniques, and there are people
Speaker 2: that are gaining more views by looking raw, authentic and
Speaker 2: uncut and unprofessional.
Speaker 3: Well something that's I mean, I don't know how when
Speaker 3: you get this podcast out, But the reality is if
Speaker 3: someone wants to go viral right now, the videos that
Speaker 3: are going viral right now in this current algorithm is
Speaker 3: videos that are within a loop. So with at the end,
Speaker 3: it finishes the sentences the way you start the video correct,
Speaker 3: and as long as it's in a loop, it goes
Speaker 3: viral and ig and TikTok as of right now, what
Speaker 3: is it November thirtieth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: And the reason for the loop is because the platforms
Speaker 2: realize that they get more watch time instead of see
Speaker 2: so some platform in the beginning with beta testing and
Speaker 2: see that's so it's like no one actually knows how
Speaker 2: to gain the algorithm. No one dominates the algorithm. It's
Speaker 2: just who's paying attention and who's paying attention to human behavior.
Speaker 2: If you paid attention. You remember this and you're like
Speaker 2: a nerd like us. Do you remember when TikTok would
Speaker 2: swipe up on its own after you watch the video?
Speaker 2: You remember that? Okay, well that's because someone somewhere was
Speaker 2: ab testing something and they thought, hey, we will get
Speaker 2: more retention and more views if we instantly show them
Speaker 2: the next video right after. And you know what they realized, No,
Speaker 2: you actually get more retention by looping the video because sometimes,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, even though it's a thirty second video,
Speaker 2: the person didn't pay attention for thirty seconds. So what
Speaker 2: RAF is saying, it's not necessari you're not gaining the algorithm.
Speaker 2: The algorithm does not say, hey, this person here used
Speaker 2: a loop techniques, so I'm gonna give them more views. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: All that's happening is human behavior. The world is so chaotic,
Speaker 2: and like I said, you know, your shit's just not
Speaker 2: good enough. And if it were good enough, it would
Speaker 2: be getting the attention to something. RAF just gave you
Speaker 2: the sauce. If you're a noticed trying to get signed
Speaker 2: right now, every single label knows you exist. At thirty
Speaker 2: five thousand listeners, period streams, not less streams. Streams period.
Speaker 2: So that's it. But if it's maybe it's just not
Speaker 2: good enough to get sign maybe it's not good enough
Speaker 2: for someone actually reach out. But anyway to finish, to
Speaker 2: finish the loop, to finish the loop, it's it's not
Speaker 2: necessarily that, hey, I added a loop, so the algorithm
Speaker 2: is going to favor me. No, no, no, It's just that
Speaker 2: if you constructed your argument and your video in a
Speaker 2: way where it ends in a loop so that someone
Speaker 2: can watch it again and again and again, maybe five
Speaker 2: times for them to really get the point across, then
Speaker 2: you've done a very successful you know, transmutation of human
Speaker 2: behavior right there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so to what degree do you leverage certain signed
Speaker 1: acts to gain traction for other side acts.
Speaker 3: We have an example. We signed obviously Loomy Athena in
Speaker 3: December January, and then we found that he had a
Speaker 3: friend that made music. I have two hundred and seventeen
Speaker 3: listeners that act now became the feature on a bunch
Speaker 3: of other songs that loom he has, and he was
Speaker 3: able to get his own platform and now he's a
Speaker 3: top forty electronic Dance Artist of the Year and he
Speaker 3: has close to five million monther listeners. But he has
Speaker 3: to be good.
Speaker 1: I understand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his voice is incredible, and also yeah, so's I
Speaker 3: want to make sure people know that we've done it
Speaker 3: for other people and it hasn't got the same success level.
Speaker 3: You still have to be good. You can only get
Speaker 3: someone else's algorithm, but if you're not good, it will
Speaker 3: wash away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And also I do want to say one thing,
Speaker 2: so when we interviewed kid, when we interviewed him to
Speaker 2: see if we would sign him, out of all the
Speaker 2: years that we've been doing, this is the first kid
Speaker 2: that's ever told me, yeah, Prince is my favorite artist.
Speaker 1: Okay, what I assume I sign with you is leveraging
Speaker 1: me with other talent you have signed dere girl. Can
Speaker 1: I expect you're gonna do that like a feature on
Speaker 1: a rap song in the old days? Or are you
Speaker 1: basically saying, well, you got to hit a certain amount
Speaker 1: of status. It's got to work for you.
Speaker 2: No, it has to be. It has to be the
Speaker 2: community in the genre, especially with these gen z. Are
Speaker 2: they're brutal man? Like I know, I keep saying like
Speaker 2: I'm so afraid of them that I am, Like, they're brutal, dude,
Speaker 2: Like if you tried to introduce like a kid that's
Speaker 2: just not in the community, like that kid would get
Speaker 2: slaughtered and cooked.
Speaker 3: So what we do to facilitate We facilitate it, but
Speaker 3: we don't execute it. So the way we do it
Speaker 3: is we plan recording trips for artists are on the
Speaker 3: same hime. So a we just had a meal together. Oh,
Speaker 3: you guys like each other, play video game together? Oh,
Speaker 3: randomly a song. Now you guys are making together. Ah,
Speaker 3: let's get you back in the studio together and then
Speaker 3: finish it up.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pull back the lens halfway. People who are
Speaker 1: not of your vintage, they will say, oh, the TikTok kits,
Speaker 1: it's just a fragment of a song. There's no real
Speaker 1: artists there.
Speaker 3: They're right, They're right, They're right. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 3: only been three years and they haven't proven themselves. Remember
Speaker 3: Vine Vine, who came out of Vine Lou Combs. Is
Speaker 3: that a fragment of an artist? I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Shawn Mendes, is he a fragment of an artist? I
Speaker 3: don't think so. All those Bieber doing covers wait wait.
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait wait, that's that's the upside there's always
Speaker 1: going to be some talented people playing. Let me let
Speaker 1: me pull it back a little bit. The record companies,
Speaker 1: the major labels, you still published players. The old tricks
Speaker 1: don't work. As you say, as soon as someone hits
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand streams, they're in. But you can have
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand streams and you have traffic, but there's
Speaker 1: not much there. So to what degree are they signing
Speaker 1: things that have no future or are they good at
Speaker 1: what they do and they only sign the stuff that
Speaker 1: does have a future.
Speaker 2: Well, like Graf said, I mean, we're not saying, you know,
Speaker 2: we're not saying that kid didn't have a future, but
Speaker 2: you know, kid didn't have the platform, but we believed
Speaker 2: in his voice and we also saw that he was
Speaker 2: daring enough to sing on a genre that had no singers.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait wait wait wait wait wait, Raf, go for it.
Speaker 3: Well, Bob is saying to that, are label signing stuff
Speaker 3: because it's just making money?
Speaker 1: Yes, But the question is if there's something that's trafficked
Speaker 1: and you can get more traffic, maybe you can even
Speaker 1: cross over to Spotify, but there might end up being
Speaker 1: only one song.
Speaker 3: That's fine because the deal sizes are so small nowadays,
Speaker 3: and they're already proven. See, there's being music right now.
Speaker 3: It's the best time to be in music. A lot
Speaker 3: of people are complaining about the payoffs from platforms and
Speaker 3: all that this is the best time to be in music.
Speaker 3: A kid is doing one hundred thousand streams a day,
Speaker 3: you already know how long how much money that kid
Speaker 3: is gonna make, and you have about a sixteen month
Speaker 3: window of that song hitting its peak and then it's
Speaker 3: gonna decline, So you can do the calculations of what
Speaker 3: that song, of what that artist is worth on paper.
Speaker 3: There's no more guessing in the music business. The guessing
Speaker 3: part is is that kid a superstar now? Which goes
Speaker 3: back to the conversation we were having earlier. You have to
Speaker 3: sit in there in the room with them. You have
Speaker 3: to find out their why. And a lot of people
Speaker 3: are not finding the artists.
Speaker 2: Why and they're not interested in doing that correct.
Speaker 3: And not just at the major level, at the independent
Speaker 3: level too. There's people signing artists and they're not finding
Speaker 3: that why.
Speaker 1: But is your experience you're in the trenches every day.
Speaker 1: Are they doing the math correct and saying one hit
Speaker 1: sixteen months blah, blah blah, or are they truly believing, Hey,
Speaker 1: this guy's got this, I'm gonna blow it up.
Speaker 3: Something that it would be silly to say you're not
Speaker 3: doing the math when there's so much data.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much data.
Speaker 1: A different point.
Speaker 2: No, I okay, I understand your point correctly. My answer
Speaker 2: is me and I hope they're developing people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, let's go all the way back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: So we're we have the old school players, pre internet players,
Speaker 1: pre social media players. What have we established? You said,
Speaker 1: despite all the new players, YouTube is still the most
Speaker 1: powerful platform. You talked about legacy media. You say, well,
Speaker 1: you want to cross over. It gives you attention and
Speaker 1: it pays dividends. We talked about traditional networks whatever, they
Speaker 1: got a lot of power. They just have to go
Speaker 1: to live streaming. So at the end end of the day,
Speaker 1: to the traditional forgetting the platforms themselves, the tiktoks, youtubes, whatever, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe not YouTube. Do the traditional players the first movers,
Speaker 1: et cetera? Do they always win in the end or
Speaker 1: is there going to be someone who independently says I
Speaker 1: know more about it than those people. I can make
Speaker 1: it work for my talent. I'm going to establish my
Speaker 1: own monolithic business.
Speaker 3: Well, it's been happening in Latin music for the last
Speaker 3: fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Give me more.
Speaker 3: So in Latin music, there's obviously everybody's familiar with Bad Bunny.
Speaker 3: The Bad Bunny deal only happened two or three years ago.
Speaker 3: That was a project that has been developing for about
Speaker 3: seven eight years. It's happening in traditional Mexican music. Those
Speaker 3: artists now are getting acquired by the major labels, but
Speaker 3: they're already doing eighty billion streams before the major label
Speaker 3: comes in comes in. So Latin music has been happening.
Speaker 3: It's been happening in a lot of other genres outside
Speaker 3: of the US.
Speaker 1: Now I'm asking the first question, Yeah, you've established something.
Speaker 1: The traditional player comes in, I'm gonna lay a lot
Speaker 1: of cash and power. I say, yes. Are there people
Speaker 1: who are saying the traditional outlets are clueless. I'm building
Speaker 1: it myself and my goal is not to sell out
Speaker 1: or to make a deal with the traditional players.
Speaker 3: There's companies like ours that exist, and there's other companies
Speaker 3: that are constantly being created. Funding is a big issue, yeah,
Speaker 3: and so they are now third party people. Do you
Speaker 3: do you want to take money from a music company
Speaker 3: or do you want to take money from a venture capitalist.
Speaker 3: That's that's the conversation that's being had right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear, because exhibition is free, these
Speaker 1: sites are all free. Why do you need so much money?
Speaker 3: So you catch her record on TikTok. Let's go back
Speaker 3: to the basics, right, you catch her record on TikTok,
Speaker 3: that streaming check, you're not seeing it for four months
Speaker 3: right on the master recording on the publishing right even long.
Speaker 3: So how are you operate? So you're at you're an artist.
Speaker 3: That's a million, two million, three million month of listeners
Speaker 3: that you're constantly supposed to be feeding your business. But
Speaker 3: there's no you have no money.
Speaker 1: Okay, But my question becomes everything is so diy. Everybody's
Speaker 1: got a laptop, we're shooting video. Where is the requirement
Speaker 1: for any significant money, especially because no one gives you
Speaker 1: money for free. If they're giving you the money, they
Speaker 1: want something in return.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why we sell the artists, and that's why
Speaker 2: we partner up with them in the business because.
Speaker 3: The reality is once you catch that one record pop,
Speaker 3: you're supposed to have a music video done, right, let's
Speaker 3: say the music video is even a thousand dollars, you
Speaker 3: shoot that music video. Let's say the moment you start
Speaker 3: getting streaming, a lot of artists are not clearing their records, right,
Speaker 3: the elephant in the room, right, they're they're dropping all
Speaker 3: these records. And then the producer comes back, it's five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. So you have to go back.
Speaker 2: You have the millions right now. Now your first check
Speaker 2: is not going to be five that'sn't right.
Speaker 3: So Cade went from two hundred and seventeen listeners to
Speaker 3: five million now. But when he was a two million
Speaker 3: monthly listeners, one of ANRS came back to us and said, hey,
Speaker 3: this bees ten thousand dollars. We hadn't seen a check
Speaker 3: because he just went viral. And then we went back
Speaker 3: to him and said, can we go back to like
Speaker 3: a reasonable number because he just went viral. There's really
Speaker 3: no money here. Yeah, he said, he has two million
Speaker 3: monthly listeners.
Speaker 1: Okay, but I.
Speaker 2: Go back to my point, So why do we need
Speaker 2: the money? It's because, like we here signed the artist.
Speaker 2: So if we signed the artist, that means that we
Speaker 2: have to invest in the brand, and we have to
Speaker 2: invest in their career, and that costs money. At the
Speaker 2: end of the day, you can't you can't escape that.
Speaker 3: But I'm looking at it from just I'm just an
Speaker 3: artist that went viral. Yeah, and then you also need
Speaker 3: a follow up record. That's what's happening too. No one's
Speaker 3: in investing, okay, but let's say all in, I'm in
Speaker 3: ten k.
Speaker 1: Okay, if I take the ten k from somebody, they're
Speaker 1: gonna want a lot more than ten k back.
Speaker 3: That's why distribution companies on their eyes. That's why a
Speaker 3: lot of the stigma used to be that not stigma.
Speaker 3: I mean, the reality is artists didn't get fair deals.
Speaker 3: Right now, artists are getting extremely fair deals to the
Speaker 3: point where the other side does not care enough and
Speaker 3: they don't do anything. They don't do anything. Hence why
Speaker 3: there's no superstars. Because your partner is used to eating
Speaker 3: at a certain rate, they're not eating at that level anymore.
Speaker 3: They're not that invested in you as an artist.
Speaker 1: Okay. But okay, your company twenty five to seven Media,
Speaker 1: is it self funded or are you taking money from
Speaker 1: somewhere else?
Speaker 3: We're self funded right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you're self funded and you sign talent,
Speaker 1: are they going to third parties for money.
Speaker 3: They're not. No, but it gets uh, they're not going
Speaker 3: to third parties, but there's always a major Daniel.
Speaker 1: Okay, but hold that for a second. So in this
Speaker 1: particular example, you're considering yourselves to be the.
Speaker 2: Money or the label.
Speaker 1: Okay, but it's certainly not a traditional situation with the
Speaker 1: three majors in their tentacles. Let's stop there. And you
Speaker 1: said in the Wired article that you contemplated doing a
Speaker 1: deal with Mike Kieren, I have certainly known for decades,
Speaker 1: has a long history in the music business, but ultimately
Speaker 1: you did not. Why did you not make a deal
Speaker 1: with Mike Kieren in the.
Speaker 3: End, Well, Mike, Mike is a tight end in music.
Speaker 3: Let's just let's just start there. And Uh, when we
Speaker 3: met with him, I was super impressed how he knew
Speaker 3: so much about a and just the future of music
Speaker 3: in general. I'm like, at this level and at what
Speaker 3: you've accomplished like that, it shouldn't be that in tune
Speaker 3: he was really so the reason why we didn't do
Speaker 3: a deal with Mike and a bunch of other people
Speaker 3: is you've ever been in those email chains and there's
Speaker 3: like thirty people in the email chain and you don't
Speaker 3: know who's actually supposed to do it. We wanted to
Speaker 3: avoid that while we were growing the company because we
Speaker 3: had that issue as artist managers, because we had artists
Speaker 3: signed to Virgin we had ourtist signed and Warner Records,
Speaker 3: we had o artist signed to Geffen, we had artissigned
Speaker 3: to a bunch of other companies.
Speaker 2: On top of that, we're doing the marketing for these majors.
Speaker 3: So we noticed the bigger the email chain, the slower
Speaker 3: the process was. So we're like, we're on the rise
Speaker 3: right now, and we like Mike, but I'm like, we're
Speaker 3: not working with Mike every day. We're working with everybody
Speaker 3: else in that building. We're not working with Todd at
Speaker 3: Alama every day. We're working with everybody else in that building.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's kind of hard to recreate those
Speaker 3: type of guys. So we were like, while we're on
Speaker 3: the upward trajectory, we want to do it on our own.
Speaker 2: And another honest answer that we that we gave people
Speaker 2: was just the truth. I mean, like, you know, sometime
Speaker 2: at the time, music was really only one third of
Speaker 2: our revenue and we have so many other aspects of
Speaker 2: the business. That we wanted to keep developing, and so
Speaker 2: we basically looked at it like, well, are we going
Speaker 2: to partner up with someone so that they can tell
Speaker 2: us what staff to bring in and how to do it,
Speaker 2: or maybe we could take a swing at it for
Speaker 2: a couple of years and kind of you know, build
Speaker 2: it out ourselves in the way that if it ain't broke,
Speaker 2: don't fix it. And I think that that's what we
Speaker 2: want to try, you know, for a while.
Speaker 1: Okay, but this has been going on since Napster. People
Speaker 1: have said there's going to be disruption. Professor at Harvard
Speaker 1: who wrote a whole long article the New Yorker magazine saying,
Speaker 1: ultimately there isn't disruption. What strikes me here is for
Speaker 1: all of this new technology, new platforms, you're always coming
Speaker 1: back to the traditional players. But hang in there for
Speaker 1: a second. Is your goal to sell at a certain
Speaker 1: number or is your goal to never sell?
Speaker 2: We talk about that.
Speaker 3: Every day when I'm when I'm done having fun with
Speaker 3: my two best friends.
Speaker 1: That's a different issue.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, that's the biggest. But that's the real,
Speaker 3: that's the real. I mean, with the numbers that we've
Speaker 3: got offered for our company, overall.
Speaker 2: Not just the music.
Speaker 3: So we we we would have been fine even before music,
Speaker 3: even before I genuinely enjoy working with my two best friends.
Speaker 1: This is you know, you're not at that point. Okay.
Speaker 1: Usually when people sell out, either they're done or the
Speaker 1: money is just everything's for sale. If I come in
Speaker 1: here say I'm gonna sell you. Yeah here, let me
Speaker 1: open my wall. Twenty bucks for your company, No twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: no twenty million. Well, all of a sudden you saying, well,
Speaker 1: let me let me think two hundred million. We're in
Speaker 1: and sold. Everything's got a price. But there are companies.
Speaker 1: The music business started really didn't become consolidated to the
Speaker 1: late sixties early seventies. Prior to that it was all
Speaker 1: independent labels, which ultimately most of them went by the wayside,
Speaker 1: but a number of them survived. They ultimately sold at
Speaker 1: a huge numbers of hundreds, well for hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. A and M Records, Island Records, but for
Speaker 1: decades they had operated independently and when they sold, the
Speaker 1: founders were not young. So the question is, are you
Speaker 1: building a business to compete with traditional players with a
Speaker 1: new paradigm, and are there people like you doing that
Speaker 1: or in reality, are the traditional players always going to
Speaker 1: win in the end.
Speaker 3: They're going to win in the end. I mean, look
Speaker 3: at right, they're going to win in the end.
Speaker 2: Where Yeah, because there's also people like us that the
Speaker 2: moment they even know that they could sell they.
Speaker 3: Say, yeah, correct, So that's that's that's the thing, Like
Speaker 3: there needs to be a unity in the independent space,
Speaker 3: right But what happens is there the big companies are
Speaker 3: getting very smart, like in Grooves merging with the Virgin Music,
Speaker 3: it's still a UMG company. Is that is that considered independent? No,
Speaker 3: that's the You.
Speaker 1: Don't know, but I ask you, as I say, even
Speaker 1: in the tech space forget music. Yeah, the guys started WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: the guys started Instagram.
Speaker 3: We ultimately got squeezed out.
Speaker 1: They took the check and the big guy said, hey,
Speaker 1: this is where it's going to be. Wasn't that way
Speaker 1: they were out?
Speaker 3: Well, just to give you we've done this is our
Speaker 3: first year as operating as a label. We've done management
Speaker 3: and other stuff. We've done a couple of billion streams.
Speaker 3: Right right now, we're just a little fly in the room.
Speaker 3: We're the little mosquito. Let me no one cares.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let maybe pull let me pull it differently
Speaker 1: from my perspective. Hey, we're in an era where streaming
Speaker 1: television is the most vital art form to make. That
Speaker 1: kind of streaming television is expensive. You can shoot on
Speaker 1: your iPhone, but really you can't compete on The other
Speaker 1: extreme is music. You and me. We can cut a
Speaker 1: record right now and have it up on Spotify almost instantly.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean anybody will listen, but the barrier to
Speaker 1: entry is very low. Okay. So ultimately, in music, and
Speaker 1: this hasn't happened now significantly in twenty years, a new sound,
Speaker 1: a new genre comes along and replaces what came for before. Okay,
Speaker 1: we had hairband music, we had the Seattle grunge. Then
Speaker 1: we had a hip hop that we had different types
Speaker 1: of hip hop. Okay, for the last seventeen years ago
Speaker 1: we had If you're a real fan, you could say this,
Speaker 1: but it's not like there was a new Beatles. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at Beyonce, Taylor Swift. They've been in the business
Speaker 1: a long time. By today's standards.
Speaker 2: That was Latin music. Yeah, and they're all telling okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it's Latin music.
Speaker 1: Okay, but it is very disheartening to hear from people
Speaker 1: like you that are on the cutting edge of this
Speaker 1: that ultimate because let's say, I am talent, okay, it
Speaker 1: bothers me that the talent sells out for two reasons,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, I hear every day from people who say,
Speaker 1: you know, streaming payouts are bad. Let's forget the people
Speaker 1: who are just delusional, who are never listening to But
Speaker 1: there are people who make deals with major labels, talking
Speaker 1: to the experts. Maybe at a blue moon you can
Speaker 1: get fifty five percent of the net. Most people are
Speaker 1: way below that thirty percent of the net, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have one hundred and four
Speaker 1: hundred million streams. That adds up no lil nas X.
Speaker 1: The advance was so heavy it says, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't give a fuck about what's happening. So at the
Speaker 1: end of the day in this sphere, is everybody going
Speaker 1: to sell out? Look at the Titans, Okay, jobs, he
Speaker 1: gets squeezed out of the company. He comes back after that,
Speaker 1: all the founders wrote contracts where the stocks are. You
Speaker 1: can't squeeze me out, Mark Zuckerberg, you can't squeeze out
Speaker 1: the guy at Snapchat you can't squeeze out, but you're
Speaker 1: telling me when it comes to the creative end of it,
Speaker 1: everybody's just gonna sell out.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we're we're on your team. Yeah yeah, right
Speaker 3: right now. Well we're championing. Even the land companies were like,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't do that. We're we're trying to partner up
Speaker 3: with other entrepreneurs similar to us, and we're like, let
Speaker 3: me help you catch a second third record with your artists.
Speaker 3: We're on your team on that end of it. However,
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of people fighting that fight. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it does get lonely the other a lot of
Speaker 3: people are going for that check.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another like, like I said, I'll return to look,
Speaker 2: there are going to be more twenty five seven medias
Speaker 2: and there probably are, and there were, But what I
Speaker 2: smelled is that the moment they could they even know
Speaker 2: that they could sell, they sell too early. And then
Speaker 2: the other thing too that he said, we're honest about this,
Speaker 2: like right now we're in the very tip of the
Speaker 2: iceberg of like what we're going to build, and we
Speaker 2: would love to build something like Island, something like Deaf Jam,
Speaker 2: Like we I mean we're gonna we wear deaf jam jackets,
Speaker 2: like on the low, like when we're not in public,
Speaker 2: when we're just alone and we.
Speaker 3: Just we're fans of like that gritty story.
Speaker 2: However we want to build a story.
Speaker 3: There's there's other people that are not like that are
Speaker 3: our peers. I'm constantly talking to my peers in these
Speaker 3: big buildings. I'm like, you found the artist. The deal
Speaker 3: was twenty thousand dollars, thirty thousand dollars in pocket because
Speaker 3: they're signing. Our majors are signing artists very very early
Speaker 3: now because they know there's other companies similar to us
Speaker 3: willing to, you know, develop. So I'm like, you could
Speaker 3: do that same deal on your own, but no one's
Speaker 3: actually doing it. Everyone's afraid.
Speaker 2: Everyone's afraid of making their own move.
Speaker 3: And it's scary because because you want to empower people to,
Speaker 3: you know, take the next leap in music and just
Speaker 3: be music entrepreneurs. But then when you see all these
Speaker 3: big mergers happen with Virgin and INgrooves and all these
Speaker 3: big distribution companies just buy up everything, You're like, who
Speaker 3: is the last true distribution partner out there that's not
Speaker 3: owned by a major label.
Speaker 1: Okay, two things. Distribution is king. The talent is not king,
Speaker 1: because if it can't be bought heard, whatever doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how good it is. But unlike anytime previous, let's just
Speaker 1: stay with the music business, distribution has been institutionalized and
Speaker 1: available to all. Okay, So therefore there is more emphasis
Speaker 1: on the talent than there has been. Now getting noticed,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of steps along the way. But you
Speaker 1: can't say, at the end of the day, well, I
Speaker 1: can't play. You might say I can't get interrestrial radio,
Speaker 1: but it's this audience you know, listening to interrestrial radio anyway.
Speaker 3: No, No, you can play, make a lot of money
Speaker 3: and it and it also costs a lot of money,
Speaker 3: and you can make a big impact. You could do
Speaker 3: all that, but until we see an artist truly fully
Speaker 3: do it independently. H Ghazi and Empire are an independent
Speaker 3: company that you know champion artists, but a lot of
Speaker 3: artists just haven't taken that h that leap. Everyone just
Speaker 3: at the end of the day sells off for that check.
Speaker 3: Everybody thought bad bunny and that company was never going
Speaker 3: to do a deal with a Sony or UMG. They
Speaker 3: did it. So it's when you're telling me like, are
Speaker 3: you guys going to be the one to be the difference? Hopefully,
Speaker 3: hopefully we could be an alternative.
Speaker 2: And we and we talk about this every single week.
Speaker 3: But the reality is when you see other you know,
Speaker 3: colleagues and counterparts, uh not doing it, it gets a
Speaker 3: little lonely, okay.
Speaker 1: But also historically the traditional purveyors don't want something to
Speaker 1: If you look at the history of talent entertainment, yeah,
Speaker 1: to begin with, from beginning to end, it's always the
Speaker 1: independence that push the envelope.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think that's changing. And so here's here's
Speaker 2: a take. I mean, you talked about the barrier of entry, right, right,
Speaker 2: I mean SoundCloud. I mean there's no barrier of entry.
Speaker 2: You don't even need a distributor for soundcland or for YouTube.
Speaker 2: You can just upload an asset. Now you know, this
Speaker 2: is a whole other podcast for another day. But AI
Speaker 2: is going to change that level of entry as well.
Speaker 2: Like we're talking skill wise, right, So if you're an
Speaker 2: artist that doesn't know how to work with producers, but
Speaker 2: you can tell an AI to make you a beat
Speaker 2: that sounds like this, like, now, the barrier of entry
Speaker 2: is even less, right, And so What that means is
Speaker 2: that like a lot of people are scared about that,
Speaker 2: A lot of people think we should regulate it. Da
Speaker 2: da da. All that tells me is that, I mean,
Speaker 2: I already saw everybody by a DSLR and think that
Speaker 2: they're a YouTuber and they didn't make it. All that
Speaker 2: tells me is that there's going to be an other
Speaker 2: flood of just garbage out there, and the majors are
Speaker 2: going to depend on independent nucleuses, whether they're management companies
Speaker 2: or independent labels, to identify the quality and those subgenres
Speaker 2: because it's too hard to mobilize that machine. When you
Speaker 2: mobilize that machine to uh for visual representation holding a
Speaker 2: little bottle cap you if you mobilize the whole building
Speaker 2: to really dive into that, it's really hard. But if
Speaker 2: that's but if you invest in an independent you know, label,
Speaker 2: it's it's much more easier for you to mobilize and
Speaker 2: and and capitalize on that moment. Here's the thing when
Speaker 2: I said, we're not exaggerating, we're pretty much experts in
Speaker 2: like hundreds and hundreds of different algorithms and types of
Speaker 2: fans and types of content that exists and how it
Speaker 2: can be repurposed and how we can re you know,
Speaker 2: use it for different genres and what applies like that's
Speaker 2: also what gives birth to different subgenres of music, and
Speaker 2: also different ways that people play video games and how
Speaker 2: that ties into the lifestyle. And so that was a
Speaker 2: long wind the way of saying that because music and
Speaker 2: the technology and everything is moving so fast, you're going
Speaker 2: to encounter these subgenres in a very very fast way.
Speaker 2: And the machine is simply not equipped to identify or
Speaker 2: even play in such a high frequency. And so you
Speaker 2: are gonna be seeing distribution companies as well as labels
Speaker 2: partner up more with independent labels. So I think that
Speaker 2: now there's a space for independence to not get crushed
Speaker 2: or swallowed, but to be able to kind of coexist
Speaker 2: with the machine.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just go back a little clean up work.
Speaker 1: You have a musical artist, yep, they have traction, yep.
Speaker 1: How do you cross it over to a traditional streaming outlet,
Speaker 1: not YouTube, which is visual, Spotify, Apple, etc. How do
Speaker 1: you draw consumption there whereas there so much low hanging
Speaker 1: fruit money elsewhere that you don't care.
Speaker 3: Uh, well, you got to start off globally first. For
Speaker 3: a company like ours. We have to focus globally because
Speaker 3: US marketing is expensive. The three majors in the subsidiaries
Speaker 3: are controlling the biggest influencers, so we have to start
Speaker 3: off globally. So the way we identify a sub niche,
Speaker 3: we have to also identify subcreators or micro creators to
Speaker 3: you know, get the ball rolling. If then it starts
Speaker 3: working internationally, then we bring it to the US.
Speaker 2: UH.
Speaker 3: And then this way we're able to no, not put,
Speaker 3: not go all in on just one record. We can
Speaker 3: do multiple records because the cost is a lot less
Speaker 3: in the global.
Speaker 2: Markets, which is also why it's such a cool and
Speaker 2: useful tactic to do ab tech.
Speaker 3: So let me stop there. The reason why I kind
Speaker 3: of gave almost a pessimistic outlook on like the machine
Speaker 3: is was gonna win because what's happening globally now is
Speaker 3: those companies that were vendors or like third party for everybody,
Speaker 3: they're getting acquired by the big companies as well, or
Speaker 3: the small indie label in UH, you know, Sweden, Germany, whatever,
Speaker 3: they're getting acquired as well. So it's it's UH. And
Speaker 3: then the even the big majors are focusing more of
Speaker 3: their money and add dollars over there as well. So
Speaker 3: we always just have to be first, first, first, because
Speaker 3: if we're at the same level, they're always gonna beat
Speaker 3: us with.
Speaker 1: Okay, just go back to the very specific question. You
Speaker 1: have some success, how do you drive play on streaming outlets,
Speaker 1: not YouTube?
Speaker 2: Just an influencer, an influencer push, Yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 2: an influencer push or also have the creator. Like here's
Speaker 2: the thing, like, either either you do sweat equity or
Speaker 2: you pay for it, or if you really care about
Speaker 2: your music, you do both. We're fortunate that, uh, we
Speaker 2: work with talent that we're very honest with them and
Speaker 2: we tell them that they also have to push their
Speaker 2: own music, and there they lend themselves to being coached
Speaker 2: on how to do that. Obviously, we have some tactics
Speaker 2: like he shared where like, you know, we'll create a
Speaker 2: page where we document their life so they don't feel
Speaker 2: like they are producing the tiktoks. But the truth is
Speaker 2: that nobody fucking cares man, Like, nobody cares about about
Speaker 2: your music, about your product, nobody cares about your video,
Speaker 2: No one cares about what you're selling. People go on
Speaker 2: TikTok and social media out of habit now. But no one,
Speaker 2: no one picks up their phone and says, I'm going
Speaker 2: to see what great song I find on TikTok to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we were driving in We were in the
Speaker 3: Uber and Ursus points to one of those Hollywood buses
Speaker 3: and he goes, man, you know what's a funny rap?
Speaker 3: I was like, what is it that he goes, No
Speaker 3: one cares about fame anymore because their cousin can get
Speaker 3: fifteen million views on TikTok. That's why that bus is empty.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just stay on that for a second.
Speaker 2: But to finish that, it's it's the truth, man. No
Speaker 2: like these platforms, you know, the monolith is so beautiful,
Speaker 2: beautifully designed, and it fits in your hand and it's
Speaker 2: a habit for you to look down for hours that
Speaker 2: no one picks up their phone and says, yo, I'm
Speaker 2: going to find my favorite song today, Like no one
Speaker 2: has a goal saying like, okay, I'm gonna go on
Speaker 2: TikTok right now and I'm gonna find my favorite song
Speaker 2: where I'm gonna go to the show where I'm gonna
Speaker 2: meet the girl in my life's of my life and
Speaker 2: get married after I meet her at the show, Like,
Speaker 2: no one has that in mind.
Speaker 3: But they are looking to shop. They are looking at
Speaker 3: video game clips, they are looking at wrestling clips, they
Speaker 3: are looking at other stuff.
Speaker 2: They're looking at interest because it's the feedback, it's the
Speaker 2: feedback machine. You put out, you put out what you like,
Speaker 2: the machine gives you back. So music is an accessory. Accessory, accessory, yeah.
Speaker 3: To the content correct, and then if your music is
Speaker 3: good enough, it becomes primary to that person.
Speaker 2: Exactly and asked mentioned in the magazine, we're true believers
Speaker 2: of like the nine touch points, which is like someone
Speaker 2: needs to see something nine times in order to buy it,
Speaker 2: and then obviously the ten percent role, which was also
Speaker 2: covered in the Wired article. So it's just a matter
Speaker 2: of volume, but it's also a matter of how you
Speaker 2: can connect. So if you're one of the lucky ones
Speaker 2: and you're working with an artist that can get coached
Speaker 2: on how to create content themselves, it's the easiest way
Speaker 2: to connect because people actually like the person. Right, So
Speaker 2: you've probably heard this before, but it's like it's it's
Speaker 2: an argument that music people use all the time, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, why why does someone listen to Beyonce? They
Speaker 2: listen to Beyonce because they feel like a badass. Right.
Speaker 2: So there's different lifestyles and feelings that an artist can
Speaker 2: can can like communicate with the way that they make content,
Speaker 2: the way that they make their music videos, the way
Speaker 2: that they are and so does that music fit the lifestyle?
Speaker 2: Because you are the lifestyle, you are the product because
Speaker 2: these platforms are free, and so the feedback loop and
Speaker 2: the agreement that you have with the platform and with
Speaker 2: the mountolift is that when you use this device, you're
Speaker 2: constantly looping your feedback and vice versa and that and
Speaker 2: as it refines, it knows how to sell you things.
Speaker 2: It knows what to put in front of you so
Speaker 2: that you could stay on the platform as long as possible.
Speaker 2: That's how everybody makes money. That's how we make money.
Speaker 2: That's how the platform makes money.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to be very simple, you're representing an artist,
Speaker 1: musical artist, other than streaming revenue on YouTube, Spotify at all,
Speaker 1: where's the money and how much money is there?
Speaker 3: The merch business is business is crazy? Is incredible, It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Okay, But just in terms of x number of views
Speaker 1: deals with the platforms, is that a business or is
Speaker 1: that very rare? And not much money.
Speaker 2: We've only had deal with Yeah, we've had We've had
Speaker 2: three deals with with Twitch.
Speaker 3: Oh you're talking about artists.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, there is money with with platform exclusives.
Speaker 2: But see, sometimes, man, I don't want to misspeak. I
Speaker 2: mean something right now, doing an exclusive deal with a
Speaker 2: platform is only for the big dogs in my recommendation,
Speaker 2: you know, because we've done it where we have a
Speaker 2: deal with Twitch and they were great and they're awesome partners,
Speaker 2: but you know, the exclusivity is just something that you know,
Speaker 2: then you can't livestream on anywhere else. Right, So I
Speaker 2: think that if you're a rising artist or a rising creator,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't make it your goal to make an exclusive
Speaker 2: deal with a platform. I think that you should be
Speaker 2: willing to experiment all types of different social media. And
Speaker 2: for example, you know, there's some people that made a
Speaker 2: deal with meta with Facebook and now they can't benefit
Speaker 2: from the incredible, incredible discovery from TikTok live.
Speaker 3: Like like Rapp said, I mean, let's let me bring
Speaker 3: it back to music, because now I understand the question
Speaker 3: a little bit more. TikTok has its own distribution, That's
Speaker 3: that's true, and we've been approached a couple of times.
Speaker 3: Why why would you do TikTok is the hot platform
Speaker 3: right now, but why would you do a deal with
Speaker 3: the platform itself? It's like all those people that deals
Speaker 3: with Apple Music. Okay, well what was the benefit of that?
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, Let's say I send both of you to
Speaker 1: Tahiti for four months without your phone, no computer, no phone.
Speaker 1: You come back, how much have you missed and how
Speaker 1: much of you behind?
Speaker 2: See, that's the beautiful thing about Like I know the
Speaker 2: way that when content is consumed, and even the way
Speaker 2: that the magazine, the underdog story of the magazine, and
Speaker 2: how was portrayed. Like, no one, I promise you, no
Speaker 2: one actually knows how to gain the algorithm. No one
Speaker 2: knows how to manipulate the algorithm. Like, like, what we
Speaker 2: do is we just pay attention to human behavior. And
Speaker 2: as long as you go back to the core of
Speaker 2: human behavior, you will always find your footing wherever you
Speaker 2: are right because the playing field changes all the time.
Speaker 2: But as long as you can study all I all
Speaker 2: we really need is a week. If we study something
Speaker 2: for a week, we know exactly where we are. And
Speaker 2: the reason I know that's true is because rap said it.
Speaker 2: I think this is the first time we've even mentioned
Speaker 2: it in public. Yeah, we work different territories. Like you
Speaker 2: still have to work the road, my boy, but you
Speaker 2: have to work the road in different ways. There's different
Speaker 2: talent in different places, in different countries. Different talent does
Speaker 2: different trends. You have to work different territories and guess what,
Speaker 2: everything that you think is cool here in the United States,
Speaker 2: like how I say it, how I said in the beginning, Yo,
Speaker 2: my cousins love Facebook. Mexico loves Facebook. If you think
Speaker 2: Facebook is dead, you're wrong. You're so wrong. And especially
Speaker 2: if you think Snapchat is dead and you're not using Snapchat.
Speaker 2: That's where gen z is. If you're ignoring X just
Speaker 2: because you may not like the founder or you know
Speaker 2: you heard something that the founder said that you don't
Speaker 2: like about him, you're missing. You're missing learning the experience
Speaker 2: of every platform in different regions. And the beauty of
Speaker 2: working with international talent and working with international creators is
Speaker 2: that we've proven time and time again that the reason
Speaker 2: why we can ride the wave of the algorithm is
Speaker 2: because we can be in different footing and we just
Speaker 2: need to analyze it. It takes us no more than
Speaker 2: a week and we know exactly what to do.
Speaker 3: And I'll be a lot of that was really good,
Speaker 3: by the way, But I'll add onto that I used
Speaker 3: to be a song promoter, like I said earlier, for labels,
Speaker 3: and everything was SEO based, So I would make the
Speaker 3: Bob playlist and everybody that would just.
Speaker 1: For those who might not be up to speed search
Speaker 1: engine optimization correct.
Speaker 3: So I would put Bob's playlist and every time someone
Speaker 3: would look it up, I would have put all those
Speaker 3: songs in there that you would recommend, and then I
Speaker 3: would sneak in a label song in there as well.
Speaker 3: When that went away, it was like the worst thing
Speaker 3: that happened in my life because I was like twenty
Speaker 3: two and I was like, I have no other hack.
Speaker 3: This is my only hack. But then I realized, how
Speaker 3: did I build that playlist? I built that playlist through
Speaker 3: creating these other pages that had authority in different spaces
Speaker 3: that would recommend music from that playlist. So it goes
Speaker 3: back to the basics. If TikTok goes away, there's gonna
Speaker 3: be another platform that I just need to transfer my
Speaker 3: storytelling ability to in a similar manner. Well, how you
Speaker 3: edit a video change. Yes, it's changed from Vine to TikTok,
Speaker 3: but it's still the same storytelling premise. It's still the
Speaker 3: same people winning, it's still the same concepts. There's just
Speaker 3: the editing or the way it's filmed it's a little
Speaker 3: bit different.
Speaker 1: So twenty five seven media, what's the annual gross?
Speaker 3: Now, well, it's one more role to daddy. I don't
Speaker 3: want to put that out there, but over eight figures
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you zero it out, you have twenty seven employees,
Speaker 1: and you got to share the money with the creators.
Speaker 1: Are you in the black or in the red?
Speaker 2: We're doing well, Yeah, we're doing well. I'll actually talk
Speaker 2: about that a little bit. So this is something I
Speaker 2: just talked to my brother about, my little brother. So,
Speaker 2: you know, the stereotype of the agency, record label or
Speaker 2: whatever social media guru person is like here's my Lamborghini
Speaker 2: and here's like the you know, like, I'm really glad
Speaker 2: I had these guys and we all check each other,
Speaker 2: like we don't flex any of that stuff, Like I've
Speaker 2: never posted my car anywhere.
Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna say what kind of CARDI drive?
Speaker 2: Not gonna say, but it's awesome. I mean, we'll take
Speaker 2: you to the to the range and then you'll see.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, like, I like actually making a
Speaker 2: difference in someone's life and employing them. I think that's
Speaker 2: our flex. One thing that we've always flexed since we
Speaker 2: had one employee to now having twenty seven, is we
Speaker 2: always say how many employees we have, because I think
Speaker 2: that's the only thing we flex, and we're really proud
Speaker 2: of that. And I'd rather flex our employees. I'd rather
Speaker 2: flex our talent and show how happy they are than
Speaker 2: to like flex a car and be like the social
Speaker 2: media group. Guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned a number of times you're a Mexican,
Speaker 1: you're an immigrant. Is there something about that you reference
Speaker 1: this but a little bit longer that makes you successful,
Speaker 1: has more drive? And how do you feel about the
Speaker 1: immigration situation in America today? And how would you saw
Speaker 1: everyone's anger about what's going on?
Speaker 3: Oh man, well, well start, okay, let's take it back.
Speaker 3: So what I'm proud of I'm an immigrant as well.
Speaker 3: I retired my parents. He retired his.
Speaker 1: Parents, And you're an immigrant from.
Speaker 3: Born and raised in Greece, but I'm from Albania. So
Speaker 3: we both retired our parents. When twenty five to seven
Speaker 3: started doing really well. So that's probably our flex that's
Speaker 3: our our Leamborghini, right, And that's actually the reason why
Speaker 3: we're winning because the way we invested in our families,
Speaker 3: we invest in people that work for us and just
Speaker 3: our talent. As far as the immigration issue, there's so
Speaker 3: many different levels of immigration that we need to talk about.
Speaker 3: Are we talking about high skilled immigration? Are we talking
Speaker 3: about what's happening because immigration in the East Coast where
Speaker 3: I'm from, and immigration in the West Coast.
Speaker 2: We had, we had a completely different, complete culture shock
Speaker 2: when we were when we were just beginning, when we met.
Speaker 3: And he was talking about immigration like low skilled or
Speaker 3: low skilled workers. I was like, oh, I see the opposite.
Speaker 3: Like these kids get educated in America, they get off
Speaker 3: for this huge compensation, and then they can't work here.
Speaker 3: I'm like, that's completely different than the experience that you're
Speaker 3: talking about in California. So I wish I could find
Speaker 3: a big answer to that. I think it needs to
Speaker 3: be in phases. I think if people are getting educated here,
Speaker 3: they need to get addressed if you want them to
Speaker 3: pay a fine. But you can't educate people and then
Speaker 3: let them go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know the fact that the high tech worker
Speaker 1: and the factor limits that's just nuts. But you were
Speaker 1: going to say something urseless.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think when when Rap and I started becoming friends,
Speaker 2: we had a huge culture shock. I didn't know the
Speaker 2: East Coast people aren't just open about their immigration status.
Speaker 2: I think that's a very La Mexican thing, Like we're
Speaker 2: just we wore our heart on our sleeves and we
Speaker 2: connect right away when we let people know, like hey man,
Speaker 2: like I'm you know, like I speak fluently, like let's
Speaker 2: talk in our language. And you know, he educated me
Speaker 2: in a lot of like the Eastern European traditions, like
Speaker 2: hey man, you keep that shit to yourself, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, like all that stuff. And and then I
Speaker 2: told him about, like you know, how open it was here,
Speaker 2: and you know, I told him about sanctuary cities, and
Speaker 2: he was just blown away. He was like, what is that?
Speaker 2: You know? And and so yeah, the the to answer
Speaker 2: the question about what makes us different, I mean, uh, look, dude,
Speaker 2: like uh, Raff and I just have amazing parents and
Speaker 2: we were really really lucky. And if you want to
Speaker 2: leave the immigrant thing to the side before I bring
Speaker 2: it back, just with that alone. It's it's such an advantage.
Speaker 2: And in the art in the articles mentioned that sometimes
Speaker 2: we do take a you know, a mentorship role. We
Speaker 2: do take like a like a like a fatherly role
Speaker 2: in and that's true. Man, Like we're big brothers. You know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when we have to address an emergency, we could
Speaker 2: we we we are the fathers, like we broken talent
Speaker 2: out of hotel rooms, peel them off of balconies, helped
Speaker 2: them in very serious situations, you know, with their family.
Speaker 2: And sometimes we do have to wear that. But we
Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to do that if we didn't have,
Speaker 2: you know, the foundation that we have. Now on top
Speaker 2: of that, you know, imagine having super superhero parents. And
Speaker 2: then on top of that, you know, they have this
Speaker 2: this challenge which is being an immigrant in a completely
Speaker 2: different country. Right, So pair that with incredible expectations for
Speaker 2: your kid because they made him go to medical school.
Speaker 2: And my parents didn't talk to me for years because
Speaker 2: I didn enjoy the military, right, So.
Speaker 1: What happened with medical school.
Speaker 3: Well, he added Sauce on that I was a biotechnology
Speaker 3: major where with the University of Connecticut with the premise
Speaker 3: of going to medical school. And that's when I came
Speaker 3: out to La was doing the song promotion stuff, met
Speaker 3: him and then didn't think.
Speaker 1: That did you finish college? Yeah, okay, I think at
Speaker 1: this point we're going to close it. I want to
Speaker 1: thank you guys for being so forthcoming, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot to chew on here, even for those of us
Speaker 1: who thought we knew what was going on.
Speaker 2: Well, I do want to say thank you to to
Speaker 2: Brendan from from Wired for first of all for connecting
Speaker 2: us right and then also obviously we're humbled, you know
Speaker 2: by his story. I didn't have to go to therapy
Speaker 2: for a whole year because he just he just interviewed
Speaker 2: me for like once once a once a week for
Speaker 2: an hour and uh and yeah. One of the things
Speaker 2: that the story didn't mention that I think, you know
Speaker 2: we're on this press tour four is we want to
Speaker 2: harp on the fact that, you know, although yeah, we
Speaker 2: are the underdogs, we spent you know, three years doing
Speaker 2: marketing for all the majors and so raff and I
Speaker 2: are also including that in the message when we start talking,
Speaker 2: so that you know, our talent also knows kind of
Speaker 2: like a little bit more of the background, and we honestly, like,
Speaker 2: because it's our life, we don't know what our talent
Speaker 2: doesn't know. And then until the article came out, we're like, hey,
Speaker 2: we should probably be more vocal about you know, all
Speaker 2: the things that all the things that we've done.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, I just want to I just want
Speaker 3: to say thank you to you, Bob for allowing us
Speaker 3: for your platform to be heard. But I really really
Speaker 3: want to go back to the the premise that we
Speaker 3: were talking about earlier, where you were talking about are
Speaker 3: still independent companies trying We definitely are, and we're looking
Speaker 3: for more people to try it with us. And if
Speaker 3: we if this interview inspires another kid that's spending all
Speaker 3: his time on the internet to create a company like
Speaker 3: ours and retire their parents, that's all you need really.
Speaker 2: And let us know, like literally, let us know right now, Hey,
Speaker 2: I want to retire my parents. I manage artists. What
Speaker 2: do I do? I want to start a label? How
Speaker 2: do I do it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Reach out a raph and I because that's that's part
Speaker 2: of the message and that's why we're.
Speaker 1: Doing about a bing Until next time. This is Bob
Speaker 1: left sets.
Speaker 2: M h m hm