His Band Grew To 70k Monthly Listeners For Free feat. Troy Tittley

Troy, if you only had one minute to give music artists the best advice you possibly could, what would you say? One minute [music] on the clock. >> Oh, let's do this. Okay. Um, you can't do everything. So, only do the things you're in control of. [music] So, this means you can't depend on things outside of what you want to happen. So, maybe you want to get signed. Maybe you want to be the biggest artist in the world, but if you don't have a path [music] to what you can actually achieve, then you're going to be disappointed. So, work backwards from your goals. My goal is always as lofty as I can possibly make it. The first one was get from 0 to [music] 10,000 monthly listeners. But instead of thinking how is that going to happen, I worked backwards from the goal. Realized that the only thing that really worked for artists right now was organic content, at least from what I could [music] see. So I researched what that was and then went all in on that. So I'm a big believer in basically like the 80/20 [music] principle. The idea that 80% of your actions is wasted time. And especially if you're busy, like if you've got a life, and you know, musicians these days aren't flushed with time or money. So, what can you do that is the 20% that actually gets you results that doesn't require lots of time or lots of money? The answer for me was social media. The answer for you might be different, but run that equation in your head before you do anything. [music and singing] >> Heck yeah. Well, on a very related note, what do you say to all the people that complain about the vast amount of time it takes to post on social media and say things like, "Well, I don't want to be an influencer. I want to be a music artist. I want to do music and write music and play live. I don't want to be spending all my time recording silly dance videos for Tik Tok." Which I'm sure you get this question hundreds of times a week. >> Yeah. But, you know, that's probably the first comment people are furiously typing into the comments below. So, let's just hit that one right off the bat. >> Hell yeah. First of all, I completely agree. Um, one of the things that I think is most important is to remember that you are an artist and you aren't an influencer. You didn't get into this to become a personal brand or a creator. Both of these things are awesome to do. If you want to be an influencer or a personal brand, it's really lucrative, but it doesn't really help your musical career, right? So, I want you to make that distinction before you go any further. And if you actually do want to invest your time into making your music work, don't be under the illusion that it's ever just been all about the music. No artist in history has been able just to write a song, able to just write a song and then forget about the marketing, right? You look at the Beatles, amazing marketers, right? You look at Nana, they had one of the biggest labels in the world backing them. So they were lucky enough to be able to say it's all about the music man because they had all of this ANR and the PR and everyone else doing all of this dirty work that we then have to do ourselves now. So, you got to get rid of the idea that you can just be picked up and plucked and everything's going to be great because that's just not the case. But at the same time, I completely understand that you do not want to be making dance videos or hot takes or get ready with me. And I completely agree. So, what I would tell you is that there is a ven diagram of what you want, you know, what you you wish you a ven diagram of stuff that you're willing to do, a ven diagram of stuff that helps your music. And in between there is a slither of content that actually helps you long term and that's what I major in. So by that I mean that there are ways to make content quickly. There are ways to make it still viral worthy without um it burning you out. So for instance with the people I work with, one of the first rules I impart on them is we call it the 5minute rule and that's if you can't make a Tik Tok from start to finish in 5 minutes you're not allowed to post it. So that completely destroys any like, oh, you know, where does the font go or like am I happy with the copy or is the shot okay? It eliminates all of that and it forces you to do a wreck, right? And then all of a sudden, um, you know, you could spend like an hour making a TikTok. I'm sure you've done the same where you're like deliberating about it. Um, this is from Parkinson's law. It's like the idea that like a task will take as long as you allow it to complete. So if you only allow it a shorter time, then that means that if you follow that and stick to it, you will actually complete the task in a smaller time frame. And if a 5minute Tik Tok bombs, it doesn't doesn't sting. An hour one, that stinks. But if you can condense the time, when you get really good at researching what works, why it works, the song section that works, the aesthetic that works. So you can bosch them out in quick succession and then you only need to spend 20 to 30 minutes tops a day on social media and make a meaningful change to your life. So that's the middle ground that I'm trying to mesh together. You don't have to be an influencer. You absolutely don't have to spend forever on social media. That's the sweet spot that we're all aiming for. It's it's hard to hit. It takes work, but it is possible. So that's what I say to them. It is possible. You don't have to be an influencer. >> Totally. Um, I said something similar recently and I wonder if I just accidentally ripped it off from watching one of your videos. I I said something on that like uh if you spend more than five minutes making a social a post for social media, you're doing it wrong, which I think I might have just indirectly ripped from my subconscious watching one of your videos. I'm pretty sure you said that what you just told me. I'm pretty sure I remember you hearing hearing you saying it now. Um, but it's I did a video recently where for my band's album came out, we posted like 450 times in the first month. >> Amazing. >> Which was a lot. You know, it was a lot of work. But it it wasn't all, >> you know, I'm counting if I posted 30 times on our Instagram. Well, is actually then 30 on Tik Tok and 30 on Facebook and 30 short. So like 30 one post a day is actually >> 120 a month alone. But then we had all this like Tik Tok fan page, theme page, alt accounts that we were doing too. We had like six different accounts posting one to three times a day. So that's how it all like multiplied out to be 450. The videos we did on our actual band page. Um, I very much modeled off of um, essentially what what you preach in regards to like keep it keep it quick and then just from my experience seeing on TikTok the types of stuff that works >> is very often not time inensive, right? It's it's >> there is like the uh, what's that guy who's been going crazy viral lately with the with the fancy a citizen citizen is name stuff. Yeah, >> content like very very beautiful, very time inensive a lot of it, I bet. >> And there's certainly a place for that, right? But like so many times you'll see a video of someone just literally looking at their [ __ ] phone [laughter] with a block of text on it >> and it got it's got like 15,000 views, which like is that viral? No. Will that make a meaningful impact in your trajectory? Yes. and it took two minutes to do. [laughter] >> Um, and there's like all these Tik Tok pages that do have like tons of followers that doing that. Like there's this uh I'm I'm forgetting the name. Um, there's this Tik Tok account that you've probably come across a whole bunch and her name is Ellie Barker. >> Ellie Barker. I can actually like a blondish girl that stares at her phone and just like puts a block of text on it and she's not an artist. She just shares other music. >> Oh, I see. Right. >> Millions of followers, tens of She posts 20 times a day. >> Um, crazy volume. Every genre in the world, too. And it's there's like there's thousands of pages like that that are I don't know what to call them like >> slow motion staring at the camera pages. >> Um, and that does it does shockingly well. Like, and then on my fans thing, part of our experiment was me just looking at I did a bunch of those and like >> sometimes I get 800 views, which again doesn't sound like a lot. until you're like, I'm going to post every day across four platforms. >> Yeah. Then it adds up. >> 500 views becomes 2,000 and then that actually kind of significant. >> Yeah. It's a meaningful difference. And it's I I think it's really interesting when you think about this in um in terms of scale as well because what I find when I work with people is the one tweak in these incredibly simple videos can be the difference between 300 views and 300,000 views. Um and it's actually mental. Like it can be like I work with this one guy called um Connor Walsh who's gone just mental on Facebook of all places by the way. Facebook is an absolute cheat code right now for organic content. Don't know why, it just is. Um, but like he realized that if he smiled at the start of the video, that was the unlock for him. As soon as he started smiling at the start and walking away from the camera, almost as if he, you know, in like the movies like um when the wife dies and they have that sequence where they're all happy together, it's like they press the button on the camera and everyone looks really happy as they walk away. He's almost doing that motion um in these beautiful landscapes because he lives in a van and it really suits his acoustic music. But once he had unlocked that, >> like I wor with this dude for a couple of months, but once he' unlocked that, the videos just exploded. >> And I think that people wrongly think that you have to make massive dramatic changes to your content to make it work. But what I've I'm learning is that it's iteration. It's like, okay, so this did that well. What happens if I, you know, as the beat drops add like a slow motion just just a zoom, you know? There's an artist as well called Vicky Sinani who worked out that if she plays in front of a mirror and then as soon as the beat drops and she does a slow zoom and adds some aesthetic like filter over the top, millions of views. And she messaged me saying like, "Oh, I used your uh the algorithms blessed you with an underground band thing and it got me a million views." And that was the unlock. was just the the the words on the screen with the difference between and I think this is what people don't quite fathom yet which is fine because it's it's all it's it's so counterintuitive because I think we're so grind culture led and we think like more input equals more output but sometimes it really isn't that it's like authentic as much as you can like if it seems like you couldn't wait to post it then there's this like urgency to it and a realism to it when everything's AI and polish like puts our backs up and we think I'm being advertised to the less you can be like that, the more you break through that first filter, that first I'm going to swipe away because this is clearly an advertisement. Then before you know it, they've accidentally listen to the song, you know, and that's kind of the game. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And you you show a lot of examples of hooks that aren't necessarily about the song itself directly. for for example, the >> you've just discovered an artist who blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah or um you know uh this video will probably only get pushed out to 200 people so if you're seeing it you're part of an elite club. >> Yeah, >> there's you've shown countless examples on your on your Tik Tok page about that kind of thing where it's not necessarily about the song. Like there might be an element or two in there that's about the genre of the artist type of artist where they're from. maybe something about the lyrics, but um I I brought that up on the our on the pod once. I think it was Dustin is his all sticks almost the opposite end of like he wants every hook to be kind of tailored about >> the song and he's not really a fan as much of the that the type of content you're talking about. Like he refers to it as like lower lift content and then he refers to higher lift content being more like brandable storytelling, whatever. And let me know what your take is, but my take is that you know the types of hooks that you show um they attract a different type of person. >> Yes. >> Than the storytelling things um which are you know like you're going for kind of like lowhanging fruit with those hooks of like if if you're seeing this I'm an artist with 210 followers and blah blah blah blah blah. You're going for people who are uniquely interested in finding >> indie artists they can brag to their friends about finding >> 100%. Yeah. Um I could speak at length about this. Um so I'll try and keep it relatively brief, but I think there's so much interesting psychology behind all of this. Um first of all, we are a herd mentality species, right? We we follow what other people do. It's very rare that people will go out on a whim and do something without any social proof or any clout that it's, you know, the right thing to do. And it isn't because, you know, everyone's shallow. It's because, our brains are constantly trying to reduce cognitive load. And if someone's already made a decision, that removes the cognitive load of a decision being made. So, when there's something with no like hype around it, then it's very easy to say, "Oh, this is cool." Like when a friend recommends a song to you or there's like already a million views or this artist already has a million followers, it's very easy to say this is cool, right? But >> if you're an artist and you have none of these levers to pull, which is where we all start, you know, you know, and you you look at these things and you think, well, I I'll try and market like them. I'll try and market like these bands that have this hype. And then it doesn't work and you think, well, social media doesn't work. But it's actually a disconnect. you are trying to act like you already have brand awareness around you. It's like if Taylor Swift does something, it doesn't matter what it does, it's going to go viral. If you try and it doesn't work, it's because you're not Taylor Swift. So, it's the same with that kind of content. You can't just decide you're going to make all of this content that looks amazing and then for it work to work for you cuz you don't have the social hype around you. So, you need to target um the term that I've heard that I like is niche within a niche. So, like instead of it being like, you know, my band under the Tundra, I'm looking for alternative desert rock music fans, right? And they exist, but it's not just the genre cuz like say here's everyone that likes alternative desert rock. Um, here's the people that are willing to listen to new music of alternative desert rock. It's a tiny slither, right? Everyone up here is probably going to say, "I love new music." But what they really mean is like, "I love new music that has some kind of hype around it." when it's socially acceptable to like this slither down here are the only people I care about when I'm posting and those kind of posts that we're talking about are targeting these people specifically. So when we say, "Oh, you know, no one's heard my music before. This is underground desert rock." We are specifically targeting that niche within a niche of the people that don't need the social clout around them. Who are the people that go like, "Oh, Andrew, have you heard this new band? They're sick." Right? We are looking for those tiny percentage of people, which is also why you get loads of discourse around the dislike of these things because by definition, if we're only targeting a slither, we're going to upset all of these people. And I saw like two posts today and one of them had like 69,000 likes on Instagram making fun of these kind of posts and it was from like um an artist. It was from a musician and like I [ __ ] you not I'm not going to name names or anything but like I was like okay this guy's got 70,000 likes on this. God knows how many views that is. How many people have actually translated to listening to his music, right? He had 71 monthly listeners even after going viral for a post like that. So he's kind of not understanding that by making fun of all these people that actually is doing that something that's actually working. He's just becoming he's he's he's the noise. He's the noise and he's attracting the noise and it's also evidence cuz if 69,000 people like this post that means it showed up on 69,000 people's feeds. So it also works. So >> that's also just a like count. Never mind. There's probably 10 times more views than that, right? So >> 100%. So this is the thing. I think there's like one thing I always like to think is it's actually what Stevie said to me. Um Stevie Red McMmin um he was like whatever is frowned upon culturally you should be attacking hard. He said his band broke when everyone was [ __ ] on the idea of Spotify playlist as a thing where he went hard on that before it was like cool but as soon as it was cool and known then it was too late like the bus had left the station right it's the same with this. We're in like a gold rush of [snorts] social media organic content that is hated by so many people. But that's the gold rush because if you are on the right side of this like my band, the only reason we managed to chart in the UK was understanding social media, right? The people that I work with, the only reason that they've managed to get this music that is amazing music finally heard after years upon years of trying is from being okay with annoying all of these people and finding this niche within a niche that actually care about their art, you know? So, it's it's kind of just it's that mindset thing, isn't it, of like being okay with being annoying and being okay with being like public enemy number one, you know, and then but you actually get the the fans that you want, those early adopters. >> Yeah. Also, with the thing about, you know, being being annoying, it's like the people who don't like you, it it's like who who cares? [laughter] They will probably they're probably never going to like you. No matter what you did, they were never going to like you. >> Oh, yeah. This annoying post that you consider as cringe or you spend 10 times the time on it and make something that's more artistically satisfying, they're going to think you are cringey no matter what because they're just douchebags or they're just not early adopters or what whatever whatever the reason is. >> Yeah. Um, [clears throat] and you know, I I one of our social media posts, um, uh, someone commented like, I can't believe that you guys are getting more views with shitty content and shitty music like this compared to this other band that I love. And they mentioned some band and I was like, well, maybe because our fans aren't douchebags or go around harassing [laughter] other fans. They were like all salty about it. >> It's like the hate the hatred of it's like just ignore it or just block them or whatever. It's like the people who like you will like you >> and the people who don't are probably never going to like you anyways. And like in my opinion, you >> when you start getting hate, that's the first kind of marker that you're actually getting some traction and success. >> I completely agree. Um, we have um in we have a discord for for the group I run and we've got a channel called Haters Gonna Hate and like whenever anyone gets hate we all go and laugh it in there because it is hilarious. Like some of these people like you say are complete douchebags. Some of them are so funny. Um, some of them be like, "Oh, well, you know, I've listened to this and I know it's [ __ ] but I'm not going to go and listen to you on Spotify." It's like, well, how do you know it's [ __ ] if you've heard 15 seconds of a song, but you've decided that everything's [ __ ] Do you know what I mean? There's always this little dissonance around it, you know? And I and people say like, "Oh, I've heard the song section so many times on your on your account." I'm like, "Okay, cool. Here's a link to my Spotify. Go listen to everything." And then it's like radio silence because they don't actually want the help. They just want to complain. >> Yeah. And [clears throat] in my experience, even if you post five times a day, maybe people are seeing one of those a day. Maybe. >> Maybe >> they might be seeing that one. And if they're seeing all five, it's probably because they're watching >> Mhm. >> a decent percentage of each one. So like I have had people tell me like, "Oh, I'm getting like people are like leaving me bad comments about like I'm seeing why are you still posting this song came out two years ago or whatever and you're posting like three times a week about this song." Um, and I'm just like, they're seeing this. They're seeing all the content because they're engaging with the artist, >> which means they must enjoy it. Otherwise, the algorithm would stop showing it to them, right? Like that's So, it's almost at that point that like my theory is that person just likes being annoyed. >> Yeah. Yeah, >> it's got to be. I mean, like I find that so much on um Facebook is the worst for it. Um one of the best posts we've ever we ever had was because the comment section was an absolute car crash. You know, it was just arguments, people [ __ ] on us, people liking us, people like saying that it was the worst thing they'd ever [ __ ] heard in their lives. And it was great because then the the arguments would start, the comment section would get massive and then our videos just got pushed and pushed and pushed and >> yeah, and it was funny. The the boys in the band, we we weren't even paying attention to Facebook. We noticed this like 2 weeks after we gone viral and I messaged them like um has anyone seen Facebook? We've got like a video with over a million views and none of us had even clocked it. Um and then we looked back at it, we're like, oh my god, what has happened here? It's like you know that scene in um uh what's it called? Community where like walks into like um the party and everything's on fire. Oh, you should watch Community. It's awesome. It's called um >> I'll Google it so I can find it later. >> Um officially in the Wait, is it called Community? >> Yeah, I think so. There's like a college show, isn't it? Community college. >> It's a show. Okay, that's why I was coming up. >> Ah, yeah. Yeah. >> Nice. Well, actually, you mentioned Facebook a couple times, and [clears throat] >> what platforms are you seeing work the best now? Because I did a video last month or something where >> I posted like seven or so videos across the main four social platforms and then measured >> views, likes, comments, and calculated like rate, comment rate. >> Wow. >> Average views per video, and then compared them all. And for for my band's case, and I did this before our big like 400 test thing, um Instagram and YouTube were pretty close in terms of being the highest for average views. And then um Tik Tok was like I think actually in last I think Facebook actually went out. >> Um it part of it wasn't perfect because like Tik Tok was our smallest platform in terms of every metric. Like we didn't really ever post there and we didn't have many followers there. So even like fa our Facebook followers were 10 times higher than our Tik Tok followers. So not a perfect test but um I see this all the time where different people do different different performance at different places. So like what are you seeing most often in terms of like the platforms >> new artists are winning on like if they have an >> existing Yeah, that's a great question. Um so like I'm quite lucky in that I get to kind of see a lot of artists and they tell me what works and what doesn't. So from that broad perspective, like I don't have like great data like like that, nothing like concrete, but the amount of complaining I see is mostly about Tik Tok, right? It's going to be like I used to get views there, but I don't. Ever since the Oracle buyout, things just haven't really been the same, you know, ever since that shift. Um, and there's been more algorithmic shift since. It's doing better now than it was. Like there are artists within my community that are finally going viral again on there, for instance. But it's definitely more um the biggest wins we see like for actual uh meaningful growth happen on Facebook. So there's there's nuance to all of these. I think Facebook everyone is used to like taking larger actions like they're used to seeing a link to click. That's kind of the user behavior. So for instance, >> you know, you say Facebook as well. Are you talking about Facebook reels or Facebook like posts? >> Facebook. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So all of this is like real shorts, you know, the discovery stuff. Um, so when you go viral there that the best thing to do is push something bigger, right? So instead of saying go stream my music, it's like what's more meaningful change you can make? And it's like email signups or tour. And this is actually how my band sold a lot of tickets for tour was just on the back of a real that went viral in the comments would be like, "Hey, we're touring. Here's a link." Because people then showed intent. if they if they click on the comment section, they're either there to argue or they're there to like it, right? So, by placing a call a call to action outside of the reel, so the real stays call to action free. Like, it doesn't look like an ad, but then they go in there and they see it. That worked wonders. And it's actually what got um I don't know if I mentioned Connor already to you, but Connor Walsh, he got >> he went to um I think it's over 10,000 email subscribers. He was getting, this is going to sound so stupid, but one day he got 600 like for two days in a row I think 600 to 800 signups a day for email list and the rest he was getting 300 to 400 a day because he was doing this. He was going viral on Facebook and then in the comments he was saying I'm going to talk I'd love for you to tell me where signed up to my email list to do it. Because of the the scope of his virality on that platform and doing a big ask instead instead of wasting it on goes through my music that actually converted to meaningful change. So that's that's kind of like how I define Facebook as different and trial reels is obviously that's more like Spotify is better on trial reels. More people are going to respond to it and unless you have like an automation like many chat it's hard to actually get people to take a meaningful action. Um but I would say that like at least in the communities that I run it's probably like a 50/50 split of like Facebook virality and trial reels specifically virality. That's where the big wins are happening. And then, you know, in last place is Tik Tok. But again, to add some nuance to all of this, one artist that I'm working with, um, the artist's name is Testaments. They're like a romantic jazz band, and they're killing it right now with, um, you know, these these cringy things that we talk about. He's holding up a sign. He's saying, "Please share with a friend." Works great for the Instagram algorithm cuz that works very well with shares. Um, so he's getting like, you know, hundreds of thousands of views over here. And then he got like one video on Tik Tok that I think got about 150,000 views. And he gave he showed me some data which was like a comparison of like 150,000 views on Tik Tok is worth 10 times the streaming amount of a video on Instagram that got like 500,000 views. So even though Tik Tok gets less views, >> the user behavior over there is more used to going to streaming. So there's all of this other nuance that comes with these platforms. So I always think of it like Facebook is like the best because if you go viral there you can get those meaningful asks but obviously only if you've got the infrastructure prepared >> 2026 you would not expect this to be something that you're saying is Facebook is the best social media platform. [laughter] Do do you see that being like different for different genres at all like different demographics? Cuz I know someone who and one artist who crushes it and they're kind of like adult contemporary, another one that crushes it, it's kind of like classic rock. So those ones make sense. But are you seeing that also be the case for >> hip-hop artists, EDM, pop, singer, songwriter, metal, like stuff that you might think would have a younger demographic than something that has an older >> uh let's see. So, I've definitely seen um it skew more towards genres that are um more familiar with the older generations on Facebook. Definitely. So, that's definitely to do with the demographic, you know, of the platform. Um but not enough for me to count anything out, you know, cuz again, like I don't >> the amount of evidence I have is still, you know, I I run a community that isn't massive. There's like hundreds of artists in it, but it's still like I'd say pretty anecdotal, you know, like I don't have a wide enough net to tell you for sure, but in my experience, >> if you're an artist that's like like we are 30 plus, Facebook is like a gold mine because that's just like the the kind of people >> I'm 23. Oh [ __ ] me too. >> My my label thinks I'm 27. Yeah, [ __ ] I forgot. [laughter] But yeah, I I have definitely seen that like if you're an old if you're an older musician, your audience is just waiting for you on Facebook. And if you're a singer songwriter, >> um someone I work with recently called Wendy Luca, she's like an alternative singer songwriter from I can't remember the state, somewhere in America. She got her first million plus view video and she has awesome music. She's been trying for ages. She finally cracked it and it was trial reels out of all the places. And I think that's because she's like she's young like it makes sense. Singer songwriter like solo artist with a band behind her. That's where that's expected to be. But again, I don't want I don't want anyone watching this to then count themselves out of anything because >> yeah, >> that's the wrong mindset to have. Like, oh, Troy said I I wouldn't go viral on Facebook, so I'm not going to try. I'd rather you try and be the exception than the one that counts themselves out. Yeah, I think everyone should just post everywhere. >> Yeah, >> I think the only thing that like once you know what platform is your best platform and you have like considerable data across hundreds of posts, it's at least six months or whatever, then like you should like that's the platform that maybe you're you're you're posting on first or that's the one you're replying to comments on and checking every morning, but you're still posting everywhere. it's just that's the one that you check, you know, and maybe the one you film natively in or whatever, you know, like different things like that might actually make a difference because um if you're super active in the community of a social platform and you're commenting and liking and replying to stuff and sharing, reposting, whatever, uh that does help and you can't do that on four platforms. It's just too much for one person. [clears throat] Even for a whole band, it's really too much to do. So, um, one thing that you said that I'm going to back up is, um, you mentioned how Tik Tok views are almost worth like 10 times more when it comes to streaming. >> Um, I I did a a video, I don't know, a month or so ago on um, how many what percentage of Tik Tok views translate to streams. >> So, I distributed a song for a brand new artist. So, it's a brand new artist slot, brand new song, no ads, no playlisting, no dedicated social media page. The only promotion the song got was through five or six different like burner all Tik Tok accounts that I had hosting in the genre. And so that means I could I could count 100% of the streams on the song. >> Yeah. >> Being from Tik Tok videos. And um it came down to five 5 and a half% of the views were on Spotify streams. And when you included Apple Music and YouTube, it was about 7 and a half%. Um and still climbing. I haven't checked it in like two weeks. So it's most likely higher now that more time has passed as people listen again and again. >> Yeah. >> Um and so I did that video. People then I wanted to do a stage two. So the stage two was like, "Okay, I did this for like kind of a new metal song. Maybe new metal is just better." So, now I'm doing it with a synth wave song. And so far, after um four videos posted on one page, we've gotten like 15,000 views or something. Or is it was like 700 streams from 15,000 views. >> I might be doing thinking it wrong, but I when I did the math a few days ago, it came to 12%. >> Yeah. Wow. >> Um whatever the number came to. So 12% just in Spotify, not including Apple and YouTube because we don't have Apple Music for artists yet. We don't have >> any YouTube analytics set up. So like in a couple months we'll see the distributor reports and see all the streams. Um but it's 12% so it's even better. And I'm running it on Instagram now with another burner song also new metal. So I can compare New Metal Tik Tok to New Metal Instagram. The new metal Instagram is less than 1% conversion rate. >> Wow. Yeah. >> So it the 10 10x rule you mentioned. Um, I basically have concrete data to back that up. >> No way. >> We're doing we're launching another wave of five or six more songs across different genres that we're going to track. So, the idea is like every Tik Tok page that we have, we want to be able to validate with like what's the translation to >> does this actually impact streams? Because people kept saying like I got two million views on Tik Tok and I got less than a thousand streams. So clearly your whole thing is [ __ ] Well, what types of videos did you post? Making like memes or whatever. And it's like, oh, so >> might as well be posting, you know, anything. It doesn't make sense, does it? >> I'm so glad that you weren't like, actually, Troy, your data is horseshit. So, I'm very glad that you got the same outcome as me there. That's cool. [clears throat] >> So, like part of this next wave of tests we're doing is like, okay, let's do another thing on Instagram with a different genre. to let's either try I was going to do YouTube next, but based on what you said, I might actually try Facebook next instead. >> Um it's just a matter of like, as you can imagine, it's a decent amount of work. >> Yes. >> Doing that test. >> Yeah, >> big time. >> And um the quality of your your Facebook campaign is going to be down to like that just that simple thing of like the the self- comment thing. So, this is honestly like this is the cheat code for Facebook right now. We um we teach one of the things we teach is just to have like your notes app ready with the ask. So like you know have it like you know make sure it's a big ask is whether it's email or tour or Patreon have like you know we're going to be touring these is the dates let me know if you can come sign up here for like early access to the tickets get them on the email list but like because it's it's one of the thing you can kind of forget about and obviously you don't know which posters if any are going to go viral. So, a really good habit to get into is like automatically posting on every single Facebook reel that you put out that call to action so that when something does take off, you've got all of these eyeballs coming to it. And that's going to make like, you know, a million view video actually worth its time. because again to add to this conversation we're having that video I told you about where we went mad viral on Facebook got our first million plus video um I I hadn't thought about this comment rule you know I hadn't thought about it at all at that point and I didn't even know what had happened so all of that attention the the million the million views I didn't see any any movement on our on our Spotify like it's insane like at all >> um compared if I got a million views on Tik Tok [ __ ] [ __ ] me, man. That would have been that would have been so many more more listeners. So, it's all about making sure that like if you are going to tackle Facebook, make sure you have those asks ready cuz that's where the real leverages. Um, but yeah, this was really interesting how they all work. >> Have [clears throat] you seen like it matters like directly uploading this to a Facebook page or just having a crossost Instagram or using like a metricool or later scheduling app? Like does it matter at all or is it really just good video posted? Um, one thing that we have noticed, not necessarily on those platforms, but if you use a scheduleuler on TikTok, we've seen signs of suppression. So, like I probably wouldn't use schedulers, at least on that platform. Um, the the workflow that I recommend is that you make the video on Tik Tok first and then download it without the watermark. And this is because the font on the Tik Toks, for some reason, tends to do better than the fonts on the other platforms. It might just be recognition or like association with other viral posts, readability. I'm not sure. But like my workflow is make it on Tik Tok first, then go over to Instagram, upload it as a trial reel, and cross post it over to Facebook. So that way you're doing, you know, it's only two things. Tik Tok first, download the video over to Instagram, try real post, cross post it over to Facebook. That's that's the workflow that I recommend um and tends to do the best >> and yeah, that's what I would do >> when you do the trial reels on Instagram. Uh so you just let it trial reel post directly to Facebook. So it's a trial on Instagram, but it's actually just posted regular on >> Yeah. [clears throat] Yeah. Correct. So you do get more posts on your Facebook page than you would on your Instagram, you know, like actually on the on the feed. Um, but I don't see that as a problem because people don't look at your Facebook as like an aesthetic thing, right? A lot of artists, you know, some rightly so, are precious about how their Instagram feed looks. Um, and that can honestly hinder their progress a lot because, you know, the post we're talking about that actually made the difference are usually very ugly. You know, they don't look on brand a lot of the time. They're really [ __ ] and fast to make. So by hiding them all in trial reels and then only cross posting when they have like a number that you're happy with showing as social proof. That's kind of the workflow that we work with and then Facebook we just don't care how it looks. Um because no one does. You know that's that's how I think about it. >> Is there any kind of secret sauce to trial reels? I've seen a lot of people say that they post on trial reels they get like a 100red views whereas if they post a regular reel they might get >> a lot more. And I'm guessing it's because it's only getting pushed out to new people where their other posts are doing better because of their audience checking them out. So when that audience doesn't exist, the post just they just die immediately. >> Yeah. >> Um is there any secret sauce there with like what types of content that works good or like do you do any split testing on trial reels where like because it's trial reels and you could you could theoretically be like I'm going to change the hook. There's two like I could get the same video and try three different hooks, right? >> Precisely that. So, um yeah. So, I think you can get almost get like a false positive when you post it to your own page, right? Because if you've got a very um active fan base, they are going to inflate those numbers at the start, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good post, right? So, if you've done a very good job, which I hope you do, of looking after those people on your page and showing them content that they wouldn't see in the discovery platforms because the discovery stuff we're putting out is by definition pretty repetitive, right? But if you do a good job of posting to your feed interesting stuff, your story is interesting stuff, then that audience is going to be very engaged when you post reels. That actually might hinder your results because you might think that you're doing better than you are. Trial reels gets rid of that. Like, it gets rid of all the armor, right? You're completely naked on trial reels. So if a post gets 100 views, you probably [ __ ] deserved it, right? So it is about kind of working out those like um the iterations like you say trying the different pieces of copy on one piece of um one piece of say rehearsal footage. So to give you a real life example, um I was doing all of this on TikTok first for my band because it wasn't really a thing on the other platforms. They're just kind of catching up. Um that was back in 2020. I started December of 2023 and by you know some point in 2024 I got the the workflow down and I'd worked out that like you know these five videos did great. This rehearsal footage for some reason just kills it. So I'm just going to keep reusing that. So I went over to trial reels or I don't know even was trial reels at that point. posting to Instagram reels before it was even a thing and I would just be changing the copy of this one rehearsal piece of footage again and again knowing that this one iteration was going to work because the rehearsal footage had um what we call the flagship as in the 15 to 30 seconds of music that is the best piece of music in your whole library are bringing in new attention and I'd done all the research on Tik Tok to make sure that this was the thing right and once you find it in one platform it works on all the platforms so taking that over to Instagram just changing one thing at a time. >> Eventually, that's where the virality came and now things have moved on even further and trial reels is now the place to do that >> and you will get [ __ ] views at the start. And there's also this thing about consistency with the meta platforms. They love to see the consistency before they start feeding you actual results. And I see this across many people I work with. They'll be posting and then all of a sudden they'll come back like a month later and be like, "Yeah, I'm getting mad views now for the same content." So, at the start there is this kind of awkward phase where you're just posting. It feels like you're not doing anything, but really you're just it's like burying through the mud to get to the diamonds. You just have to do it, you know, otherwise you'll never get to them. So, you've got to stay consistent to get to that point. But then once you do, the iteration kicks in. And um like I said, I think I mentioned Vicus and Tani earlier about like the the mirror shot that she does. Um, so she'll set up the mirror, she'll change the change one element, change one piece of copy that she uses. She messaged me saying that she did it all on trial reels. She changed one element at a time. And um, she, okay, this is a great case study. I messaged her saying like, "You've got to tell me a secret." She goes, "There is no secret. I just iterate just like you say, right?" And she went from, when I first checked on her, when she first messaged me, about 100,000 monthly listeners, she's now on, last time I checked, 800,000 monthly listeners. And that's from that's from trial reels. pissing off for her. So, she's just really worked out the right aesthetic, the right framing, and that's from understanding how to iterate on trial reels. So, >> to answer your question, yes, trial reels, iteration, that's the secret. >> Uh I I feel like a lot of these uh platforms um none of them are really inherently fair in that a piece of good content will necessarily do good because it's good content. Like these platforms all kind of factor in the history of that account in some way. Whether it's that like because they all they all do this kind of similar thing where you post a video, it gets pushed out to a small seed audience of whatever it is a couple hundred people and then based on how those people respond, it gets pushed out or not. So if that seed audience is wrong, the video >> goes viral or dies. And so like one video that maybe could go viral could get trapped and get like 200 views or it could get 200,000 and the only difference could be you posted one a month later. >> Yeah. >> Right. Yeah. And I I've had this times where like I'll post a video that you know I don't know the first time I posted it just it just died and I like believed in it. So I like a couple months later I just like reposted it and then like the first time I got 300 views the second time I got 5,000. Nice. >> And so it's my conclusion is like these platforms are they're not inherently fair. >> 100%. Yeah. 100%. Nothing about social media is fair. But I think what you've seen there is evidence that like when you believe in something or you can see the potential, once you once you get one instance of it really working, the way I see it, if you can make 5,000, you can make 500,000. Like that's that's kind of how I see it. It's only like a couple of tweaks away from from really hitting those high numbers. But the other side of this is the fact that like you said, a lot of this is random. So the best way I can really like frame it in a way where it doesn't seem so unfair is that if you have a lottery ticket, which is what this is, but you understand your song section, right? The song section that does the best, that's one number on the lottery ticket uncovered. you understand how to write a good hook or you've researched what hooks work for other artists that's another right you found the aesthetic that matches like Vic is entirely with the iteration then all of a sudden instead of nine numbers you only have to guess five and then if you only have to guess five you then know that it's a game of frequency and consistency so I like to think about it I heard this from um I don't know if you know he's a marketer called Tom Noski um he's not in he's not in music he's just in marketing in general but he told me about this idea of a grid of 365 five dots and you can't tell which one of those dots is going to light up and be one of the viral videos. But if you don't show up every day, that dot will never illuminate. And then he overimposed the three dots on this map of 365 dots that changed his life. Um, and now like he's he's he's making bank, right? This this guy's absolutely like killing the game. Um, but he was like if he didn't post every day, he would never have uncovered those three dots that changed his life. And I reflected on I was like, that's exactly the same for nuns and for my personal account. I didn't know which post was going to go viral, but I knew that if I kept iterating, then it would happen. And it did. And then overnight, just one random day, we went from like 400 monthly listeners to 25,000 just overnight from getting one post. And then our lives changed from that point onwards because we were getting offers and all the rest of it. So, but we if we didn't show up and play the lottery every day, then that wouldn't happen. So, that is the game. >> Yeah. >> Let's say someone is watching this because they're a new artist and they they've never done the social media thing. They're like, "Cool, I want to get started." >> What um how much should they be outputting per day? Like, is is it one post a day? Like, they're like, "I want to do >> the best recommended path. Okay. Is it one post a day? Is it more than once a day? Is it less than once a day?" So, I'm going to take it like one step further back. If you're a brand new artist and you're posting on social media, don't guess. Don't go on there and start posting random [ __ ] just sections of your music without understanding what makes a good hook or why people stop and you know why people actually stop on social media. You know, you have to play the attention game. This is an attention economy. So, what I recommend before you post anything is spend the first two weeks building up a folder on your phone of posts of other artists that are breaking right now that you don't know the name of. So instead of like filling it up with like Foo Fighters or Queens of Stone Age or Bringing the Horizon post that do well, fill it up with bands that are just breaking that you don't recognize the name of that broken in the last year tops and look at what their content is and then work out which of those you're actually comfortable with posting yourself and mirror your content on that because as creatives we want to be creative in the space, right? We want to do whatever our brains, you know, abundant creation, great. keep it to the music for now. Try not to let it spill out onto social media because it's all [ __ ] algorithms and parameters and it's analytics. >> It's just not going to fit and you're gonna get frustrated. So once you've done the research, you can actually give your music the first chance. That's first because if even if you post once a day or 100 times a day, you're still going to bomb if you don't understand that. Then I wouldn't post that much. I used to say post a lot, but since the Tik Tok algorithm has changed, you can definitely get suppressed for posting a lot and not getting results. So, make sure that you're posting the stuff that already has like evidence that it's worked for others with your music being the variation, right? Try different song sections underneath proven systems to try and find those outliers, like you said, like that one that got 5,000 views. Those those outliers are the ones you then go, "Okay, that might be my flagship. That might be the song." And then you can go harder and like up the frequency or you know um on trial reels. I'd say that you could go as hard as like five a day without suppression. On Tik Tok I'd be I'd tread lightly right now just because no one really knows what the algorithm is doing. And I'd be a liar if I said that I understood the algorithms cuz it's kind of like [ __ ] witchcraft isn't it? Like we're all just guessing, you know? We're it's like we're praying at the altar of the algorithm a lot of the time. So these are just best guesses from what I've seen. But try if you know if if nothing's working, change the frequency. Change, you know, change one element at a time and realize that even if it doesn't work for 6 months, I'm I'm serious. That I've worked with artists that just explode at some point when they finally work it out. And I actually enjoy working with artists that haven't worked it out yet cuz I know it's coming. So, it is just a game of sticking it out and understanding the science and fusing that with your art. So, I can't give you a number. In other words, [laughter] >> well, it seems like when you say on TikTok, treat it more sparsely. Like, does that mean three times a week or does that mean once a day? >> Oh, yeah. I Yeah. Um, sparsely is once a day in my book. A lot would be like >> kind of >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At least once a day >> for Instagram. >> Mhm. Yeah. Four or five a day on Instagram. Do do you think there's any like viable path for an artist nowadays that's doing it all organically and only posting three times a week for example? >> Yeah, I mean there's always there's always outliers, right? So if you were to focus more on the highquality content and it hits then absolutely the the danger the only thing I'd say about like going straight to that is I think it's what we all want to do. We all hope for like high quality content to kind of come in and work and sweep us off our feet. But kind of like what I said at the start, like if you do something that's really high quality and it and it bombs, it really sucks. >> Yeah. >> So that's why I kind of go for the easy content first. And like I'm thinking of like this band, I'm not going to name them that I love. They're really good. We've supported them at a couple of gigs now a while back like before we kind of got a bigger following, but they haven't moved. Their music is amazing. Like it's amazing. This guy's voice blows my head off every time I hear it. But they haven't moved. They've invested in highquality content to the point where like if you watch one of their videos on on reals, they start their video with a fade in that says, "Please turn your phone so you can watch the music video." That's a huge ask. A huge ask for someone that's just scrolling social media. And of course, it bonds. >> The amount of work that went into that video. It's beautiful, but it's just misaligned with what the platform actually represents. So you can, but you also have to understand algorithms and you have to be okay with failures with much higher states than what we're talking about. So that's the nuance. And I think if I were to really tie all the ideas together, it would be that the the the foundation that we're talking about, the easy posts, they pave the way to these lower posts, doing three a week. You know, when you understand the song section that works and the copy and you want to go harder, you want to make cool ass [ __ ] videos with your music, that's when you can do that. Once you've graduated understanding algorithms and you've got the reps in yourself, that's how I see it. >> That makes sense. So, it's like you you've built up enough foundation to know the winning parts and what works and what doesn't and what like what your hooks work and what types of videos work. So, now >> you can justify with a bigger investment per post. >> 100%. Yeah. Where do you think fan pages, alt accounts, burner, like all the different other accounts someone might make that everyone's been talking about for the last couple years, honestly, >> but more so this year? Um, where do you think that fits in the mix? Is that something that a new artist should do early on? Is that something they should wait a little while for? M see um so the reason I don't I don't really talk about these on my platforms is because I try my best to get into the head of like the version of me that doesn't have free time that was an artist that was dying out who you know like when I first started doing this I had a full-time job um two kids a dog a partner 100 like and to say like hey dude you need to be posting four times a day on this account and five burners otherwise you're going to fail I don't think that's fair um to say to anyone who's just starting out. So, and it also feels like such like a title wave, a mammoth task to to do. So, I steer away from that because I also take into the equation burnout and and the fact that like also if a post really kicks off on like one of your five burners, then that audience is harder to access and then you've got five or six silos of followers. But really, it'd be nicer if it was all on your main page. Um, but I also understand the benefits. I know labels have label farms. From speaking to people that own labels, I know this is happening behind the scenes. The odds are always stacked up against you as a as a as a smaller artist, but if you actually want to make a meaningful difference, learning what actually works will demolish 20 [ __ ] pages that don't know what they're doing, you know? Um, I've seen people that do this as like a paid thing. They're like saying, "Oh, if you pay me a,000 a month, I'll post a five bonus for you." but they're [ __ ] posts, right? They're getting 200 to 300 views and their the whole stack is just volume. But if you understand how to go viral on one, then that changes the game. So that's kind of how I think about it. I've never gone down the multiple accounts route. I know artists that have that it has worked for though. So again, personally, I steer away from it. >> Yeah. From the people I know who who use it for their music, there's a couple value points. I mean, one is that they can be more free to try things [clears throat] >> because it's completely not tied to them in any way. Like, some people will spin up these accounts for a new song. So, like, not only is this account just posting like burner content for a band, but it's like, oh, this new song's coming out, so this whole account's just about that song. >> Interesting. >> And it'll be like that. Like there's one I saw recently where it's like this new upcoming song and a very specific video game that the artist identified as being a good fit >> and it does really like every video gets around a thousand views and they just post three times a day on that account. >> Sure. >> And then after the song cames out they kept they kept it up. So I think like the from that like getting to test more and do things you can't do on your account because like you want your account to be more branded. Um so the kind of account that is is a kind of against the brand goes off platform. Um and then secondly um just just if you can like um find things that would attract the right people in that. So like for example um posting clips of certain animes or whatever. >> Yeah. >> Right. if you have an inkling that like maybe my fans are anime fans, like there's certain genres of music where it just kind of makes sense like for for whatever reason like this would fit well with this dark anime. This would fit well with this this particular comedy TV show. This would fit well with this video game. Like for example, if it's like a synth wave song. >> Yeah, >> probably a good pairing would be Cyberpunk, you know? >> Yeah, that'd be cool. So, so like and you're not going to post cyberpunk video game footage on your page. Although I have seen some artists where on their page they post branded performance content and like nostalgia content too. Um, and like there's one artist uh Ezone. Do you know him? >> No, I don't know. >> Some of his posts made made their way into your like viral posts. >> Oh, what was his name? >> Product. Erosone. >> Arosone. >> So, I know you've come across his content at some point, even if you don't know him by name, but >> yeah, >> he does like new metal, but instrumental new metal. >> That's cool. >> And there's a lot of traction. But, for example, he'll get clips of like the top half of the screen will be like the Matrix and the bottom half of the screen is him playing guitar. >> Sure. >> In front of a Mesa Boogie ant wearing kind of like a new metal outfit or whatever. And then he's the guy who I don't know if you've seen this but like he he has a a riff and there's like this lady screaming at a cop at a traffic stop and he like synced the lady scream. >> Oh yeah, I have seen that. >> Went crazy viral. Yeah. Yeah. Um but like a lot of a lot of the stuff on his page it's like he's really diving into the like nostalgia element of it. [clears throat] >> Uh and I've seen a few other artists like there's band Overgrown. I think that that a lot of their posts are very just heavily leaning into the nostalgia. >> Yeah. >> To the point where some of these pages will even just straight up be like a montage of movies and TV shows from 2000. Stuff that you would normally think of being on an alt account. >> Yeah. >> But it's just straight up on their page. Um >> Yeah. Um >> I think their argument for that would be what you said where they want they just want that to be on their page and they don't they don't give a [ __ ] that it's off brand. >> Basically that >> they're just making that. Yeah, this is this is kind of like a lot of the tension um where a lot of like you know the the real formats are by definition kind of disposable content and I think when you bring brand into it too much it can actually hinder your results like you're saying like if you're a bit less precious about what you're putting on your page as long as it's actually still central to the music then it's up to you how much you're willing to do this kind of thing cuz I know that like the industry likes you to be on brand for everything, right? You know, they're going to want you to look differently to what these early adopters are going to care about. So, there is nuance to this and it depends on who you're trying to attract at different points in your journey. Like, but I remember like when Nuns was first getting traction, people would say like this would go hard in a Doom edit and I just made loads of Doom edits and posted them to the page. It was fun. None of them really took off, but it was fun to do. Um, and like kind of going with that kind of like tying to a subculture thing, one of the posts that did the best for us was um, Mighty Bouch based. Do you know the Mighty Bouch? >> Oh, it's like this >> Mighty B. >> It's this random like UK cult comedy thing. Um, it's I grew up with it. It's hilarious. Um anyway, like we we used images of the Mighty Bouch, just images of them underneath a slideshow that says, "Bro, no one's going to listen to Desert Rock in 2024." >> And then the next slide was like, "You sure about that?" And that was like the main character is like backing you up. So it's like the villain on the start and then the main characters. So it's like tying in a fandom to the music, just giving that extra opportunity to stop. Cuz I think as well like when you concentrate too much on your brand like we said earlier like without a brand existing yet without any brand awareness then it's kind of like you're not actually giving them anything with your brand. I mean, I get it. You're you're telling a bit of your story, but like when when content is so disposable, which let's be real, it is on these platforms a lot of the time, then if you can just get more people to just click on and listen to your music, especially on TikTok, then I think just hopping on to, like you say, like a a movie, a video game that represents nostalgia. Now, nostalgia is so powerful. So, I did um a whole audit onto like you said earlier that that list I settled the post inspiration mega folder thing and I went through and analyzed all the different hooks and nostalgia was like >> I think it was the second highest performing kind of hook in the whole thing. As soon as you hook on to nostalgia that's going to go incredibly viral compared to a lot of the other ideas. So, if you can associate your music with a time that people miss, that's a cheat code. And I think it would be a shame to miss out on that just because you want to keep a certain color scheme or, you know, your brand perfect. So, there's so many things to think about >> when it comes to that. But I'm very much like, you know, whatever. At least on nuns, I don't care. Whatever. And then when it comes to like the Facebook um the emails and the Instagram post to feed, I I clean it up a bit there knowing that that's where people are going to be looking a bit more. The industry is going to be caring about. But like on these disposable things, I just pump out whatever I think might work. >> Um but yeah. >> Yeah. So like on Tik Tok, it's just disposable Instagram feed. uh curated Instagram reels like all the stuff that's not kind of curated will either be in trial reels or it'll be posted the reels without going to the feed itself and then Facebook the reels are kind of buried under a submen as well you only see the posts >> exactly on desktop I don't know it looks like a mobile >> YouTube is also hidden um yeah actually you haven't mentioned YouTube shorts at all which >> interesting thing like a lot of people I know have said that for them YouTube shorts has been like almost like a cheat code really >> like I think in our in our situation, YouTube Shorts was it was like nearly tied with Instagram for having the most views. >> Oh, that's interesting. >> despite having a significant amount of less followers and it had like really good translation because you can tag long form videos directly from the short. >> Yes. >> Um, so for us it was really good. It was one of the best ones, but you haven't mentioned it once. [laughter] Guessing you haven't seen much in terms of like outliers on YouTube. There's just been nothing to write home about. Like when um you know when I look in the community to see like the big achievements, I couldn't point to one that's like a breakthrough YouTube shorts video. And honestly, it's kind of frustrating because like you said, the infrastructure there is so good for artists, you know, it it hooks right onto long form for music videos or behind the scenes or interviews or all the rest. But it's interesting you've seen some different data. I've just like never been the one that's really wowed me in any way. I know the bands do braid there, but I just apparently I don't know, maybe my strategies just don't work as well there. It's possible that's the case. >> I've noticed on YouTube that the content that does best has to have a face, >> right? >> That's a broad, you know, very broad thing to say, right? Because that can mean a lot of things. But um for example on uh Tik Tok the kind of like the content we were talking about where it might be like a TV show or video game or just vibe footage I found like on at least for our stuff like in Tik Tok it was kind of a crapshoot. Sometimes the the stuff of me in a cool studio with cool lighting and stuff did better. Sometimes just like the kind of slow-mo selfie stuff did better. Sometimes just like stock footage or movie clips did better. YouTube very consistently. It was not like copyrighted content like it was like me on camera was consistently the best. Me on camera with the text hook on top. >> Um the the looking at the camera stuff didn't do as good. The TV show movie stuff didn't do as good. The stock footage stuff didn't do as good. >> Interesting. >> I don't know if that's because of how they want to handle copyright or because they they want more like unique stuff from the other platforms, but >> it's definitely something to dig into. Yeah, it's this is the thing. They're all different. Um, so it does take work to really get any of them. YouTube has just kind of I guess eluded me. Like we, you know, we post there. We still post there, >> but there's never been like I can count the breakthroughs on Instagram, Facebook. Um, yeah, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok, you know, as being quite meaningful, but, you know, I'd love to see some other people with really break um big breakouts, but I just haven't seen them. Yeah, [snorts] I mean I've never seen anyone with a big breakout. So I mean that is one thing worth noting. It's just been like the people who are getting you know they're not getting a slam like a vi like a viral video or like a huge outlier. >> They'll just be like very consistently doing better on a certain platform like for example YouTube. So it's like not that necessarily they had a breakout video. They have had people m maybe like they were getting 500,000 views a video and then randomly one got 50k. So, like I have had seen that, but nothing like crazy where oh, we got a million views. >> Yeah. >> On this YouTube short, but like some examples of like, you know, we're we're getting like 2,000 on Instagram and we're getting like 10,000 on YouTube shorts. >> Wow. >> So, just consistently better um for certain people, not all of them. >> Yeah. I mean, that's that's a meaningful thing. And if it's consistent, it works. Um but I I wonder if that's part of it. I wonder if the reason I don't hear about it is because, you know, when people talk about achievements and wins is is very often not I stayed consistent and I got this many views. It's like I got a massive video, right? Maybe YouTube shorts just isn't doing that for artists. I don't know. But it's interesting. It is interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and also like you haven't seen you said you haven't seen as many on TikTok. Um, I I feel like what I've noticed is from the before, you know, before Oracle era or whatever, BOE and AOE, [laughter] >> um, it's like I feel like videos are slightly more evergreen on TikTok than they used to be. So, I I'll [clears throat] see videos kind of pop off a couple weeks after they're posted sometimes and then have a fairly long tail in some cases where Oh, this video is not getting a lot per day, but it's getting like I'm getting consistent views from it for several weeks. Whereas I feel like before it was kind of like pop die. >> Yeah. >> You know, like one day done, maybe two. And now I'll have like a video that's just like doing consistently well for a week straight and then I'll get to a pretty high like I had a a one in like the the alt accounts get like 150,000 views. It didn't happen in one day. It didn't happen in three days. It happened over the course of like two to three days. Um, which I feel like before that wasn't a thing for me at least. >> It's funny. I've I've I haven't really experienced that on my band account, but I I have experienced that a few times on the personal account, this one. Like I did a post that was um it's my highest viewed post and it didn't go viral for like two months until obviously like creator search insights or something decided that people were curious about um it was some it was some like really broad [ __ ] like how to post a how to post a slideshow and then all of a sudden it got picked up by the algorithm a long time later and then it got 2 million views and I got like an influx of people that did not care about music marketing at all like you know asking about this broad stuff but I don't know if that's relevant to this. I think that's probably just like it was trending and I got picked up as one of the creators that could help with that. But with music, it is very much um yeah, you're right. When something does take off, like when something does go viral on TikTok, you will see like a good two to three to 4 day spread of of intense viewership. And what's cool about like, you know, all these, like we said, the reps we're talking about, those ones that didn't do well, they actually come into their own then because, you know, if someone sees a viral video of you for the first time and you watch it all, Tik Tok's very aggressive with the algorithm. You're going to show up again and again. So all those like duds then become ammunition for repetition and embedding your art in their heads. Cuz I think, I'm not sure if this is even true anymore, but it used to be you need 21 touch points with a piece of media to really embed it into your skull. So all of those duds then become ammunition to really rack that up. Um, so you'll see like an influx of like views across many videos when you go viral on Tik Tok, which is a nice little boost on everything. >> They seem like they do a better job than other platforms of recommending you videos based off of what sounds tagged in them. So, like it I've seen that a bunch where like if you know one video using a sound or rather if you're consuming a sound in a video and you watch the whole thing and then save it and then like it or whatever, you're going to start seeing more videos from different creators using that sound in addition to potentially more stuff from those creators. >> Yeah. >> But it almost seems like the sound thing is stronger than the creator thing. So, like >> if you engage with a video tag that's like music forward like I don't know I interact with like a a c like um a Breaking Benjamin song or something like on a post. I feel like I'm more likely to see other people posting stuff with that tag Breaking Benjamin audio than I am to see stuff from the initial creator I interacted with. >> Yeah. >> And if that creator has more content for it, I'll see it. But it doesn't have to be their content. supposed to be anyone using that audio. Um, so like if you have either a bunch of stuff in your page, it's now getting reserved to those people or if it's on alt accounts or whatever, it's getting served to those people because it's by tagged audio. >> That's a really good argument for the multiple page thing, isn't it? Because you're right that that's definitely how it's working. I don't know about you, I'm getting served loads of like AI music right now. Like a lot of it. I don't know why, but I think >> what what what's Yeah, I don't know. I've never seen that before. [laughter] Yeah, every time I open up Facebook, it's like or not Facebook, uh, Tik Tok, like half the music posts I get recommended to, I feel like, are AI generated music. >> Yep. I'm getting a lot of like Viking hiphop queen videos. Have you seen those? Oh my god, it's crazy. >> I get a lot of metal ones. Uh, like the kind of like almost bring me the horizon, but AI, I'd say that's the common one I get. And and and some of these some of the creators that are really like doing wild directions with it. Like some of them are just doing the lazy route, which is viby footage and some lyrics, which is cool, whatever. Some of them are like generating AI fake AI videos of people singing the songs. And what shocked me the most about that is how how convinced people are that it's a real person. >> Yeah. >> Like they're like, "Wow, >> you you have such amazing vocal control." I'm like, [laughter] >> this is this is impossible for any human to sing and it's so obvious that the video is is not real. Um, and then other people who the creator who's making the AI music um is just open about who they are where they're like they're in the car like lip-syncing as if they were like a fan lip-s syncing a song, but they're just fully advertising the fact that like, hey, this is my song that I made and >> yeah, >> um, go check it out. which honestly I feel like is the most honest option. But that that was one that kind of shook me. I was like, "Oh, there's this guy who's like himself using his real name, using his face on camera, lip-syncing to songs he made with Suno that he uploaded on the platform." >> Yes. I I think I've seen the same dude >> and they were doing really well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. He's like you older millennial, I guess. >> Yes. I think he's got glasses. Yeah. Legos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty pretty sure it's the same guy. It's like hard rock or something like that. >> I've seen um >> um but that kind of surprised me cuz everyone before that's been faceless and anonymous. >> Yes. Like there's the shame of it. I've seen a few accounts that have gone pretty popular now exposing fake AI artists cuz like the people pretend that it's actually them and then it's like clearly not. So I' I'd say it's kind of like that's the danger now, isn't it? If you're going to go down that route, don't pretend it's you. You know what I mean? like just just be up upfront with it if if anything, you know, it's um a huge stigma attached already. You don't want to also be found out to be lying at the same time. >> Yeah. Yeah. There there is a definitely a huge huge stigma attached to it. There's been a bunch of like EDM producers uh go like getting crazy numbers and it turns out they're just on you can download the MIDI now, >> right? So they'll download the MIDI and the stems and they'll import that into their DAW and kind of make it look like it's all real and then record videos of them like showing their production file, >> right? to make it seem >> reality. And then you look at the video real close, it's like, oh, like there's no automations on that and like the MIDI is not really perfect and that so like there all these little little piece of evidence that if you're like an artist and you're slowing it down, you'll figure it out and realize it's [ __ ] >> Um, but before it got to that point, some of these producers like millions of monthly listeners >> Yeah. >> and brand deals and like money and Yeah. >> It's mad. And I I think this is just it it's it's a whole other conversation. Let's be real. Like we could talk about this for ages, but um it's just something that I remember Stevie again, Stevie Redmond Ming telling me about like how it's just so prevalent in the big labels now, like in the big three, like especially when you're making like pop or something, you know, like stuff that is very structured and and safe, then having this this this thing to write for them is obviously a cheat code if if your whole thing is manufacturing artists, right? Like it's probably like Simon Cow's wet dream to have something like this and just like pump that out with, you know, four pretty boys and then just have all the music written for them. So there there is like >> I don't even know, man. Like in a few years I have no idea. Like if it's if it's this good already. >> Um I don't even know if we're going to be able to tell in 5 years time, you know? Is anyone even going to pick up a guitar anymore? You know, it's mad. Like it it's crazy. My potentially overly optimistic view is um it'll make art better. And here's why. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Um so uh right now there are tons of talented people in music who just make cookie cutter garbage because it pays the bill. >> Sure. So whether that means they're they're turnurning out generic pop songs, which maybe they're impressive from a pop song perspective, but at the end of the day, they're generic and cookie cutter because that's what does good in pop. They might be creative for pop, but they're still just mainstream pop. Um, and there's also talented singers who will then sing those pop song, and there's talented writers who will write those pop songs, and they're all doing it because that's what pays the bills, and that's what gets the money coming in. And then you could do the same thing when it comes to um you know writing certain film scores and video game scores. Some of it's very creative but a lot of it's not. It's just repetitive and like lowfi hip-hop beats and sleep music and stuff. Um there's a lot of talented people working all those things. And what happens when all the generic music is now being gobbled up by Sunno? Um, and if you make generic music as a human, everyone listening to it is like, "That's just AI." Even if it's made by human, it's like, "Well, the AI is so good, you can't tell from." So, like the only way for those people to like do anything that is is like distinguishable from AI is to do something AI can't do. >> Oh. >> Which is means be more creative. And since they're talented as hell, so like now the mission becomes like how do we make music that AI can't do? And um that means like you're there's more of a motivation to make unique music that's never that's not inso. >> That's why Angie Deatrine is so big right now, right? >> Cuz no one can make that. >> Yeah. >> It's just so wild and it's like they had to make a custom instrument to play their freaking music. >> Yeah. >> And I don't know. I I That's my like optimistic thing. >> I like that. when when when there's no motivation to make mainstream pop, like what do all creative people start doing? Do they start just making stuff that's genuinely creative? >> That's dope. I love that cuz you're right cuz like AI outside of music, like when you use it for creative tasks, that's not that's not the thing. You shouldn't be outsourcing creativity, but for like admin and backend stuff. So, it's kind of the same thing. It's like that that music that is like that backend kind of like elevator music or whatever. Take care of that. And then maybe I I love that idea if there's some kind of like renaissance like you know we're getting like the new 60s and we get like the next Pink Floyd emerge you know like that you know cuz we haven't had that in ages >> you know um >> and it'll probably be it'll be devastating right like you know right now it's not replacing much of anything. Um, it's replacing like lowfi hiphop and sleep music production or whatever, but even that it's not really even doing. But and film film people won't touch it with a 10 foot pole because of the potential licensing and legal issues with it. >> But like let's say it did like it'd be devastating because like there'll be tens of thousands of creative people all of a sudden just lose their jobs. >> Um, so it'll completely [ __ ] up the music industry in the meantime, but like I kind of think it could also usher in the renaissance of >> Hell yeah. I mean, it's been quite [ __ ] for a while. So, if that happens because of AI, that would be a twist, wouldn't it? >> Need a great big reset or something. >> Yeah. >> I mean, like, I do like the argument that it's going to force people to come and see live music again because that's the only place you're going to see real musicians, right? Like, is this real? Is this fake? Well, you'll have to come and [ __ ] see a show, won't you? You'll have to see real music and experience like one guy with an acoustic guitar again. You know, >> I saw a band live and and they had um they had a song that before they played it, they were like this, we only play this song live. If you want us to hear the song ever again, you have to come to our >> Wow, that's so cool. >> They were like, you know, they started like a [ __ ] AI chat or something before they played it or whatever. So, they really just lean into the fact like we're going to have some of our music that's only live. and um it made it kind of special and I I I I shared that on threads or something and a bunch of other people started talking about different bands they've seen where they only do stuff live and um there's other people who were like only certain songs are exclusive to vinyl, >> you know, which is is not perfect or whatever in the same like there's many downsides to it, but it kind of makes it like >> special. >> Yeah. >> Like oh is this real or not? It's like, well, right now AI artists aren't pressing their music to vinyl, you know, like you can you can hold my album, so it's it's real. It's not just like written by a real person, but it's physically real. And typically AI artists aren't spending thousands of dollars to put all that effort into making a physical product yet. I'm sure that'll eventually happen, but then it's then it's like what's the last bastion of that? It's like a live. It's like, well, >> you can come see me live or a live stream. even a live stream probably very convincing to people like you have to come to this thing to to experience this or whatever. >> I think that's such a cool concept. Also, just the idea of AI music being on a vinyl makes me feel really gross. I don't know why that just feels so wrong. Uh but I love I love that exclusive idea. >> I haven't heard of anyone doing it. Like, you know, we we're an ad agency. We don't we don't like discriminate if with the music's human like we'll promote anything as long as we think it can work. >> Um and like you know one of the artists we work with has got over three million monthly listeners with their AI. >> Wow. >> So like so good where they were considering finding an actual human to be the new like singer and face of the brand and spend the money to do all that. Yeah. >> Um, and you know it they if anything they would be at the point of doing I don't know if that came through with my daughter in fact um but the uh the uh even they weren't even considering doing >> interesting >> right because like they're mostly doing it because they're for financial reasons they're >> marketing this music heavy budgets to make a return. Um, so the to them the idea of doing vinyl like wasn't even on the table. So I feel like if anyone would have heard of it, it would have been me and I haven't heard a peep from any of the AI artists. >> Interesting. But yeah, that that's kind of the thing, isn't it? Like the the whole financial gain as the as the centerpiece of that. Like that's the productization, which in that circumstance makes a lot of sense. I get it. And hopefully you're right in the fact that then that means yeah you know commercial music fine over there and then like anyone that actually wants to make anything that's that's real creates like a separation. Um honestly though who knows like even a couple of years ago we were like ah no one's going to lose a job to AI and now claude code exists you know like it's mad. >> It is mad. Yeah. I don't know. I'm sure you've built some crazy stuff with clock. >> Oh, yeah. I'm having a great time. I've um >> Yes. [laughter] I I use codeex, which is like the same thing by but it's by Chachi. >> Yeah. >> Um I made a video last week of like making a band's website with AI and I had it programmed like a Windows 98 operating system website. So, you go in, it looks like a like a Windows PC with like apps open and a start bar and you could like navigate around and it even had a music player and you could like leave a a message on the note or something and >> it was from done in 15 minutes with a with like a one paragraph prompt to check. >> It's just insane. It is. Yeah. I'm I'm using it a lot to like just kind of automate all the annoying processes that I have to do. Like for instance, like with the um the post inspo folder thing, it's like a subscription and I don't like having to manually cancel them when people So I've set up that, you know, it's all those little things to make my life just that little bit easier. Um that's what I'm using it for and it's just really interesting like whenever I'm like, "Oh, this is going to annoy me." I'm like, "But wait, I reckon I can solve this." You know, it's it's just an interesting way to look at it instead of like, "Oh, this is going to annoy me for the rest of time." I'll just ask Claude like, "Hey, is this possible to solve?" And 99% of the time it is. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My new website um I redid it from scratch. It was on WordPress and it was always kind of slow. So we we built a custom one from scratch. And one thing it does is every time I post a YouTube video, it automatically every day checks my channel, see if there's a new video, uh, makes a new post on my website for the video, embeds it, grabs a transcript, makes an AI summary for the top of it, and then embeds the transcript under it automatically without me touching a finger. >> Before that would mean spending like 20 minutes >> making a new post, copying the thing, go get the transcript, make a little summary, post the post. Um, now it just happens, which is [laughter] >> I love that. Yeah, it'll be coming from my job next, I'm sure. Like posting Tik Toks. That'll be the next sometimes. [snorts] >> Yeah, man. Well, um, any last minute words of wisdom to leave the people with before we call this a wrap? >> Good question. Um, >> all your links will be below as well. Um, if someone hasn't noticed them and you want to go check more out from Troy, we'll have links down below to your Tik Tok and I forget what other link you put in there, but um either way um you know he has great content so go follow him there. A lot of good advice. I watch not all of your videos because you post a lot but a good amount. >> I appreciate that, man. >> I think I saw two videos of you today. [laughter] So >> I'm staying in the algorithm. Yeah. Thanks, man. Honestly, thanks so much for inviting me on. Um I said before, but like I've watched your videos for years, dude. So, it's really cool to kind of just be able to chat with you. Um, so I appreciate that. Um, I guess if anything, if I was going to say anything to anyone, it would just simply be that it's all it all comes down to mindset and being okay with failure after failure and just realizing that if you really want it, it is there to be taken. Um, but you just have to be okay with annoying people, okay with no results for an extended period of time. But if you're really passionate about your music outside of, you know, just making it and actually want to grow a fan base, then it's actually probably one of the best times in history for it, like like it or not, like as long as you actually put the work in, you know what I mean? You get that as well. You know, it really is like completely democratized. Success is democratized. It's just up to you. So yeah, that's what I leave on >> 100%. before you you would you the only path forward was going through a bunch of gatekeepers and that stuff still exists but like there is a path without them now and and there's also there's a middle there's a middle class I guess if that's a good term for it where it's not just major artist or nothing. >> Yeah. >> Um you can be this like middle class artist that like makes pretty good money for music and is happy without selling your soul in your catalog to to a major or big label or whatever. So >> 100%. >> Thanks, man. Appreciate it.