How Indie Artists Can Make a Living From Music ft. Tim Weber (Grouped)

Tim, if you only had one minute to give music artists the best advice you possibly could, what would you say? One minute. >> Man, that is uh that's tough for me because I like to talk for an hour and I just spent the first 10 seconds talking about how much I like to talk. So, the thing that I would say first and foremost, even if you end up being the biggest artist of all time, you end up with Michael Jackson's Thriller album, 99% of people will not value your art. enough to buy it or do anything. So, you are not making music for anybody else's opinion, the greatest of all time. 99% of people don't like it. Number two, you chose the craziest career path in the history of the world. You do something that's subjective. There's no right or wrong, good or bad, but you're supposed to do it every day, honestly, and there's metrics next to it. So, it's super important to surround yourself with really good people, take care of your mental health, take care of yourself, and create art because you love it. If you love the moment you leave the studio and you listen to that song, you've won. That's it. >> Heck yeah, man. Yeah, you you you couldn't be more right about those two things. A lot of artists uh take it very personally when people don't like their music, but it's most people genuinely are not going to like what you're doing. And you you can't you definitely can't expect your friends and family to be your fans either, right? It's not like for them in my opinion. >> Yeah. I think I think you can have supporters that can support the fact that you're doing the thing that you love and then you can have people that you respect. their artistic vision and stuff that you bring in in a collaborative way. But you can't make music and take your parents and your girlfriend's feedback if you don't also just as equally respect their taste in music and they inspire and they do everything else. So like that's also where I think the yesmen come into in the in the music industry is like you start listening to people because they either have an influence over your mental health like family in the beginning or opening doors but it has nothing to do with the actual song or the art itself. And then eventually you find the people you collaborate with, which could be an engineer, could be a mixing engineer, studio engineer, could be so many different people. But like bringing somebody in in the collaborative part of how do you create it? That's way different than being like, "Yo, I'm proud of this and I'll support any of my friends that are proud of anything doesn't mean I love the song." >> Yeah. Yeah. Ryan, well, so you you have a you have a crazy career and experience set. Um, nowadays people probably know you as being the guy behind grouped, which the easiest way I explain it is is it's like a Patreon that's even more suited for music artists. So it's it's you got a bunch of features that are just like the things that artists are looking for. Like for example, back in the day, Patreon never had free tiers and you guys had that, I think, from day one. >> From day one. >> Um, and they eventually copied you because it was a great idea, right? And so and then you have a lot of other things there. So uh we're going to talk a bunch about group because there's a lot of really cool things about the platform and um but like before that you you know 11 years ago I think it was or maybe it was actually uh even longer like 13 14 years ago you had a blog called good music all day which was kind of your accidental entry into the music industry I guess. So, what what's the kind of I guess give give us kind of like a couple minute kind of quick hits backstory on like your entry to take us from person not in the music industry at all to like founder of one of the coolest like tech platforms for artists. >> Man, I will I will try to do the abbreviated version, but uh yeah, stumbled into it was the right idea. Um, that was freshman year of college. And up until that point, I had done I had tried everything. I was in all the musicals. I had taken voice lessons. I had taught myself guitar. I had learned like uh uh talk box. I had tried to do mashups. I realized I'm just not good at any of that. I'm not good at the music side. Um, and then at college, uh, Notre Dame was the first time I was independent and had free time and I missed my high school friends. And I spent most of my time listening to music. So, I started a website, really, a WordPress website, tb90.wordpress.com, to share with my high school friends to music I'm listening to. And I'm dating myself because back in 2009 there wasn't streaming platforms, but there was legally free music. So it was either you bought it on iTunes, you ripped it illegally from like Lime Wire, or you got it legally for free from like Dap Pit or like mixtape websites or DJ websites. And I knew I couldn't be the only 19-year-old that liked electronic music and hip-hop music and pop music, but all of the different blogs and websites that existed at that time were genre specific. So, I started it just draping all the different blogs, listening to music, and by the end of my freshman year, it was at a spot that uh I went my summer semester to NYU's Clive Davis School of Recorded Music. The head of that program was a man named Jeff Raband. Shout out you, who uh actually told me to drop out because he said, "The reason that you go to college is to get opportunities." And at that time, my website, I think at Notre Dame, it went from zero views a day to 10,000. At NYU during the summer, it went from 10,000 to 100,000 unique visitors a day. Um, and then my mom couldn't believe that, that somebody would tell me to drop out of school. So, she flew there, said, "I'm not going back." Went to Belmont's uh entrepreneurship program, lasted a couple weeks, and then it really took off. And uh yeah, I did every single mistake that you could possibly make. I hired all my friends, didn't pay taxes, uh got a bunch of lawsuits, didn't understand financials, um did everything wrong. But more than anything during that time, I just realized one, I like all of my friends became artists. I relate to them a ton. to most of the times when they think they have a problem, the thing that they think is the problem isn't really the problem. They just don't have people that talk to them through it. And three, most of the times the solution to their problem is just a text away or an email away. It's normally just a person or a platform. And so for me, for from that moment to now, I just call myself a middleman in the music industry. My goal has just been listen to my friends problems, figure out how to help them. And unfortunately, every now and then, I can't find the solution. I can't find the person, which means I have to build the solution, which means I have to raise money and hire a CEO and do all those things because I don't want to do that. Um, so sold part of Good Music All Day in 2015, 2016. sense that did a couple other businesses um out of necessity to help my friends and that was also the genesis of groups but more than anything I'm just a middleman in the music industry. >> Yeah. Wild. It's so true about like the amount like the mistakes that you you make in business because like there's not like a manual for like starting a small business and like sure there's books and there's things online but there's so many little things that can happen and you know one example of that like like I just got a I got a bill like the other month from from the IRS that like I owe 10 grand from like six years ago or something. So, like somehow I messed up my taxes like five, six years ago on something and maybe I didn't. My tax guys checking to see if maybe they made a mistake, but like they'll come they'll come after you six years later to be like you messed up this thing. I didn't know what I was doing back then. I was like I started this online business and like I thought I was paying all my taxes correctly. And maybe I did, but I wouldn't surprise me if I find out that I actually did mess something up with how you declare things and how you write it off. And um you know, it's it's a wild world out there. I know so many people who have accidentally broken the law, accidentally gotten sued and um you know, there's there's no manual for it, unfortunately. And I think the best thing you can do if you're getting into music is um or really anything is just find someone who's kind of been through it. Um, like you and you and I learned we know some of the same people before this call and like you know that saved me a lot is just talking to someone who's like just a couple years ahead or a lot of years ahead and they're telling you about this horrible thing that they went through and you're like cool not going to follow that those footsteps, right? And that's the best thing that I've used to kind of personally avoid problems is just having making friends with people who are a little bit ahead or a lot of it ahead. >> Yeah, totally. And I mean like realistically time is the most valuable resource whether you're broke or you're rich. But when you're broke, use your time. You're trying to use it to make money. When you're rich, you're trying to typically use it hopefully either to help change the world, spend more time with loved ones, or um a combination of the two. But like to me, especially when you're an entrepreneur and you're starting out, you can spend time researching legal and financial stuff or you can spend time growing your business and deal with the ramifications as they come. And like the big thing is not getting the paralysis of like, oh well, I don't know how to do that, so I'm not going to do it because I need to learn how to do that one side. And so like the curiosity aspect, I mean, I'm not the first one to say it, but I really think the age we're entering with AI is all about curiosity. It is all about like find the person that is curious about the legal [ __ ] Surround yourself with them if you're not. And like you got to try it all to realize what you're not curious about. >> Yeah. So what you you mentioned a couple times that um you know you you would you would try to help your friends with something and then eventually realize that you couldn't help them and so you had to go start a company to to solve a problem and so uh what was the initial problem that grouped was created to solve? >> Yeah, great great question. So, um, I was helping a lot of my friends sell their cataloges, uh, right around COVID time, like starting probably 2019 to 2022. >> Um, company called catalogmasters.com that I was doing with my wife. And, uh, a large part of that is if I sell my catalog, I'm now going to be void of one of my three main revenue streams. I'm not going to make money off of the DSDS or my masters or publishing or both or whatever. Um, at that time I was helping a friend uh who went by Mike Stud and now goes by Mike just shop his catalog around, not even sell it. Um, but just to see what it could get appraised for. And he was the one that wanted to start a subscription community. He was kind of like the guy. That wasn't my idea. Um, but me as a friend and of a decade uh with him, I signed up for it and I wanted to support and the platform he was on was just not good enough techwise. It was literally every 30 seconds I would get logged out, it would crash, it would kick me out. Um, and so then I went to him and asked him why he was using it and he was telling me why he wasn't using the other platforms. So my first thing was let me go meet with Patreon and Substack and Only Fans and let me meet with the ones that are the leaders in this space and tell them hey I think I know I know all the artists and I know why they're not using you. Can we like white label your tech and make a version of this for artists and I couldn't get anyone to bite. Um, so that was kind of the genesis with group was I knew hundreds of artists that were like Mike because of the blog days that had been artists for over a decade, had loyal fan bases to benefit from a subscription community. Um, so when I decided to start it, the very first thing was I found uh somebody that had built a very basic version of the tech for um his wife. That guy's name was Finn. He built it for his wife and nobody else used it. So I was like, "Hey, let me come in. Let me see if artist will use this." Took about a week. He agreed to be 50/50 partners and my one thing was with my 50%. I get to do what I want with my equity until we raise money. The very first thing I did was go to Mike and Kilmer and say, "I'm going to give you guys a piece because I'm only doing this because of what you guys are the pioneers for." And I didn't even ask them to come over. And then I went to another one of my friends named Nick D and thought, I need somebody that's an independent artist that thinks for themselves and is businessminded and smart to help me with this. Um, and the one thing I don't want to do is build a tech platform and sell it to artists. Like, I'm building it to solve a problem, so let me have the artist help. And so, after I brought Mike, Nick, and Kilmer in, the first year was just, let me get 30 of our friends on the platform that are big enough that they have fans, but good enough friends that they're not going to complain when there's bugs or when there's problems with the platform. So, um, that first year was lucky enough. Those kind of artists were like Forest Frank and Michael Minnelli and Anise and Somo and we just had a really good group and uh, that was a crash course that first year and then made the platform. Slowly started to realize this isn't just a Patreon alternative. There's a bigger problem that we need to solve and it's going to require a bigger team than just me. And also, I'm not a tech guy. like I'm a relationships and artist guy. Um, so that was a crash course in and of itself, but yeah, really just started because I wanted to help a friend. I wanted to support him and wanted to find somebody else that could do it better. >> Yeah. And I would I would imagine a lot of people watching probably have heard of Nick D, right? because like he's a he's a decently big artist in the you know in music but also um he started at some point giving giving advice about how he his music marketing strategy right like he published a book he started his YouTube channel frist >> ready for artist >> ready for artist >> and um uh so I imagine a lot of people are are familiar with him and I think that's actually how I found out about about group was I saw him talking about it and I didn't even know he was a like kind the co-founder coowner of the of the platform then it just seemed like something that he used. Um well that's what we first heard of that was >> and that was actually how it happened was he was one of the first 30 artists there was nothing about it um >> that he started using it because of it and to me that's the beauty of our platform is like one of our largest investors was somebody that used it loved it and wanted to invest Nick started using it called me asked me about it within two hours launched two days later it was like yo this is the future uh So, it was never like, "Oh, I'm going to like bring you in as an equity partner to make you use the platform." It was always, "I only want people that genuinely see the same problem that I'm trying to solve," >> right? And the I know some artists who do really good with the membership model and you know, they there's a million there's a million different solutions people can use. So, I know people who are using different ones, but the membership model as a whole um can be like a really good thing for artists because, you know, as an artist, you have your streaming income and you have your physical media, you have your touring, you have your touring, merch sales, maybe you have some sync and some publishing, whatever. But like I know an artist that makes a solid like 15 grand a month from their membership platform. >> All right. >> And they don't have millions of monthly listeners. They have less than 100,000. They do have a lot of followers. They have like a million followers online, but you know, the money you get from streaming, right? Everyone knows streaming doesn't pay a whole lot per thing. But it's it's the way fans fall in love with you. Like fans find you. They don't have to buy your music. They just go to the place they already paid for and they can consume your stuff. They fall in love with you. And the way you the artist makes their money is they I mean sometimes the streaming is enough alone. I do have plenty of people who just live off streaming but in most cases there's a next step for like the artist takes a fan from a listener to something whether that's like they come to their shows, they buy the merch, they join their membership platform. Um, and I think when we talked last time, you had you mentioned like kind of your your methodology about like how how you guys view it as like, you know, if someone's just streaming your music and they listen to you a thousand times, you're getting like $3 or something, but if they join for just for a cheap amount, like five bucks a month, you're going to make way more from that person than you will ever make from a streamer. And you're you're still not charging that much. Um, so I guess like how do how do you view like subscriptions in the overall uh you know side of like the money side of of an artist career? >> Yeah, I mean that's uh honestly I think probably my take will surprise most people and probably be controversial as a founder of a platform like this. But realistically, I think the main value of Group is that it grows those three existing revenue streams that an artist cares about, whether they're small or big, which typically is touring, mainly ticket sales, merch, and your music, whether it is masters or publishing or sync or streaming or whatever. If you use group, realistically, those three main revenue streams grow. When you're really small, it seems really hard to add a fourth one. And when you get really big to arenas, why add a fourth one? Even if you make an extra million dollars a year through a fan club, you get paid a million dollars a night for a show. So like I think it's actually really hard to justify the subscription model for artists which is something I had to like reverse engineer why is it working for the artist on group >> and to me the reason that it was working especially with Mike is like a case study like he makes more than the number one artist on Patreon. Well why is that? That's because he has a decade of every time he asked his fans for something, he overd delivered in value. And every moment for a decade I asked you to buy a ticket to my show for 20 bucks, 20 people show up. So I go to the bar next door and I buy everybody's drinks and I hang out with you and take pictures and make you feel like your best friend. Well, now that person the next time the tickets are 30 bucks, they're going to bring all their friends and be like, "This is my dude." And so that repeated history of it then leads to the subscription community. But to me, I actually think the struggle in the music industry right now is like you can have a moment, which is beautiful. That's the beautiful thing about social media and about the DSPs. the algorithm can just catch it while you're sleeping >> and millions of people find out about it. That's awesome. >> But the the struggle all 17 years I've been in this industry is if that happens typically 17 years ago was super phone with Ryan Leslie. Then it was like community uh text numbers. Now it's Lelo. But like everybody rushed to get the phone number while you're having the hype. And then because it cost me money to send you a text, I'm only going to sell to you. I'm only going to ask you for more [ __ ] And you forget the whole nurture process of like, I need to build trust with you. I need to make sure that you gave me your phone number, so I need to give you value five times more before I even ask you to buy merch or buy tickets or buy anything else. And so to me like I talk about like the group ecosystem the end is the subscription model but if you think about if I'm an artist if I'm an artist the very first part of a fan journey is I need to make you aware that I exist. That's the very first part which is being consistent on social media and consistently releasing music. Better chance at making somebody aware. Second part is after you're aware I exist, I need to be entertaining and good enough that you're curious enough to want more. So that typically means you got to put in your 10,000 hours on the music side and on the content side. You got to be entertaining. The music's got to be good enough. Okay, now I got you aware and curious. Can I get you to take an action that's not just go to Spotify and stream where you already are? And that action is, can I get you to give me your email or phone number? And if I can, can I immediately give you a reward that seems way more valuable than just an email or phone number? And that is where I think the current music economy is like broke. Is like, hey, RSVP for tickets. I put in my number and then as a fan, the journey's done. It just says thank you and two weeks later you sell them. like that. That was not a mutually beneficial versus I put in my number. Now I got a personalized thank you video and got told I'm entered into a giveaway and next week I got early access to your song. Like, oh, I'm getting all this stuff because I gave you my phone number. So now when you asked me to buy tickets to tour, I'm way more inclined to buy tickets. So like the beautiful thing with group to me is like it makes the layo or the communities or any of these other ones open rates on your text continue to go up. >> It doesn't actually force anybody to have a fourth revenue stream. That being said, if you think about that diagram, awareness, curiosity, action, the next one is can I get you to buy something? Oh, I can. The next one is can I get you to buy something again? And the very end of it is, can I get you to pay me something monthly? Because if I can get you to that point, I never have to ask you for anything again. You're giving me money every month. The the cycle is I no longer have to sell. So, you get everything. I'm going to give you everything. And somebody like Mike that can have 5 million monthly listeners and be in this for 15 years. He only has 10,000 people paying in his community. And he's been doing the community for 5 years. He's been an auditor. He sells out red rocks. He's massive. But he only has 10,000 people. People talk about your top 5%. That's2%.2% of his fans actually after five years decided the subscription was worth it. But that 2% bring him a million dollars a year and that 2% sold out Red Rocks two nights in a row. They paid money to make sure that they could get there. So like there's nothing wrong with having the passive fans and focusing on the three main revenue streams. that is everything. But like the artists that typically crush at the subscription model are ones that have been able to tour, build the trust, have VIP meet and greets, the same people come out and then they get to be like, "Yo, instead of paying $110 every time we I do a tour, would you just give me n bucks a month? I'll give you free VIP when I tour, but I don't want to have to keep touring. I don't want to have to keep doing that to make my living." So it's like the the goal of group is like we're not going to help at right now with the awareness or the curiosity part. That's on you to put in the out. But if you get somebody curious enough, we're there to make sure that they continue to get rewarded and brought to the cycle. >> So that way when you're ready to monetize, they're ready to support you. So that so that the free section of group to where where you know someone joins a group and they there's like a free area where people can communicate and interact they can get content and whatever um that exists as part of that and I don't remember the exact terminology used but that exists as part of that like reward cycle where they give you a thing their email or phone number they immediately get rewarded with something in introduction video to the community maybe some unreleased music and then now every time you drop a song you're just dropping it a little bit early on your on community. Um, even if even if you don't want the pressure yet of like I wanna I'm gonna have people pay me monthly, so I need to have something to deliver monthly. >> And and even that >> Exactly. And even for like the free tier, the idea is not that the fan is joining a free tier of a community like my example that I'll give like right now is let's say you do uh like we do have a partnership with Feature F forever pre-saves and stuff. So, like let's say you do a forever pre-save and you give me your name, email, and phone number and do that and you unlock early access to the song or the demo version or whatever. My call to action on social media to tell people is if you want to hear the song early, click here. So, they go through the steps, they get to hear that. Next week I announce a tour and I'm going to do a ticket giveaway for the tour. And in order to be entered into the ticket giveaway, you have to give me your name, email, and phone number. So as an artist, I'm coming to group because I want to do a ticket giveaway and I want to share that with people and that's what you share. the magic of group. Every single fan that's already given you their name, email, and phone number just gets a notification that they're entered into a giveaway. So like they don't have to reopt in. They already did the thing. And the artist doesn't have to think, oh, I have to today go take care of my existing fan. We are just like, we're going to make sure everybody that's ever supported you is always recognized. then whatever you need today, the people that already gave you that are gonna get it. But if today I decide, hey, I want to drop my album early. You can pay what you want or be in my paid tier, well then anybody that's already in the paid tier gets an email that says, "Hey, you got early access to my album." And if you're in the free tier, hey, you can pay what you want or join the paid tier to get early access, but you don't have to. >> Yeah. like I'm just offering ways for you to support. So it takes like artists, you don't have to be the the salesman anymore. The sale is can I get your data because the algorithm and the social medias and everything else aren't the solution. And you are like one of the geniuses in this space of the marketing. If everybody believes like direct to fan is the future, artists owning the data and owning their spaces and communities, it's like there's two problems. How do you get a new fan? And two, how do you actually retain your existing fan? Because that's the part that like realistically the 8020 rule should be 80% of your time should be focused on super serving your existing fan. But no artist is going to buy into that. Every artist is like, I deserve more fans. I deserve more. So for groups, we're like, we'll just be the magic. You go out and get the new fans. But we're going to make sure that we take care of that yourself. >> Yeah, it it is hard to to one to know what to do to even re-engage your fans. Like artists ask me very regularly, I know that I should have an email list, but I don't know what to do with it. And and they might some cases they already have hundreds of people on the list, but they're like I like what do I do? How often do I reach out to them? And when do I reach out to them and what do I give them? and and um a lot of times it does just turn into a whole bunch of asks back to back especially in SMS because of how expensive it is. I know someone that pays hundreds of dollars a month for community text platform and they love it and they make a killing from it but every message is very strategically based around how much money am I going to make from this? Um, and uh, you know, Dustin on the podcast at one point was talking about how one of his like SMS strategies is, um, he'll just text the fans with like a social media link of like a cool post to get like the post one, the fans get it and they're like, "Oh, this is just like a fun thing I'm being sent by an artist." So, they actually open the artist text messages more because it's it's not like, "Hey, go buy my stuff." Uh, but then sometimes that engagement can actually then cause that post to like do pretty well algorithmically and then end up causing an increase of streaming or maybe even increase of tour sale or ticket like whatever it is, right? >> Yeah. >> And you know, if if you're thinking about every time you send a text that you're spending $75 or because you have a big text list, it can be kind of a problem. It's a good problem to have, but it's it's still a problem. Oh, I mean it's a it's a hu I mean I have an artist friend that's on group that currently to send a text to all of his subscribers is uh almost 50 thou $48,000. >> And like if you think about that means every time I send a text I better be able to buy a brand new car from this. But like that that's also why even with my other companies like products and platforms that are built to serve a lot of industries will never be good enough for artists. And that was like why one of mine was a link bio tool. Like if it's good enough for podcasters and solorrepreneurs and influencers, it's not going to work for artists. It's not going to work for musicians. They're a different breed. They need different things. And in the CRM space of what we talk about with like email on SMS marketing, nobody in the music industry really takes the time to understand how valuable it really is and why it's valuable. But the biggest reason that I personally to this date and I actually be super curious to hear your thoughts on this. I believe that like the reason it's valuable in every other industry is like roots and other stuff. You raise money because in the beginning you lose money. Like in the beginning of building a company you need to be able to get the people hire the people and you don't have the funds to do it. So you raise money. In the music industry typically you sign a label deal or a bad deal to get that money and you lose control. But if I am a DIY artist listening to this and I'm like okay I'm starting to build my SMS list. What's the message? If I look at like Best Buy as an example, I went into Best Buy for the first time and I bought this microphone. By the time I'm home, in my email, there's an email from Best Buy. Welcome to our reward program. Here's $10. They just gifted me $10 even though I already spent money. Then I redeem the $10 gift card. As soon as I do, I get another email. Here's 50% off your next purchase. Oh, wow. on my birthday. Here's another five bucks. Because they know if they get you four times, they got you for life. And that's called like the loss leader. I'm willing to lose a little bit right now to win in the long term. And the problem in the music industry is one, artists don't have money to lose. Like they need money. So like they can't afford to [ __ ] send those three emails and texts and pay for it without making the money. And two, the people that are now the gatekeepers are the people with the money. Whether it's a label or distribution company or an artist development company, like they tout it, but they don't have the CRM expertise. They're they're going to give you 50 grand, but they're not going to use any of the money and resources they have to do the lost leader campaign. So, like either people don't know about it, can't afford it, or don't care. But if realistically, if it cost me 50 grand to send a text, the way that the marketing and CRM of other industry would teach you is that the fourth text should make $200,000 or more. But the first three texts, you just got to bring value. Just bring the value. Whether it's your time, send a text to everybody. Hey, I'm going to be jumping on this private live stream link just for y'all right now. The next week, send another one. Here's a song just for you guys. The next week, yo, I you guys tell me which one of these merch things should I drop. Then the fourth one, be like, "Hey, I just dropped that merch thing you wanted about the song that you wanted that we premiered on the live stream. Do you want to buy it?" And all of a sudden, your merch sales go through the roof. But like, you can't rush that part. It it requires that trust and that building. And that's why with RP like I always say like it's all about moments. It's like what does the artist need and what does the fan get and that repeated cycle builds trust and the result is community. The result is a career. But it's not going to happen overnight. There there's kind of like two two types of artists who the way they think about this is there's a lot that expect that everything they do should have an immediate return financially. So every dollar they spend like if they spend $1,000 they should make back the $1,000 now when not only does that not work in music, it doesn't really work anywhere, right? Like no business just starts and is immediately profitable. And there's a lot of statistics online that are like most businesses take x amount of years to to, you know, actually become profitable, whatever. You could look that up and see the recent ones. But that's a common thing, right? You talked about how you raise money so you can start a business because your business is going to burn money at first. And for for most artists, the way they do that is either they start only marketing with free methods, right? With their time on social media, or they're self-funding from their career, right? they have a day job. Maybe they're a software developer or they're a dentist. Um, which I've only met one dentist artist surprisingly. I've met a lot of engineers and software developer artists. Um, or they're a lawyer. >> You remember his name? >> Uh, no. Unfortunately. >> Oh, man. I Well, we'll put it in the description. So, >> if I can find him, but there's one dentist and I was like, you're the first dentist I've ever met. It's a music artist and and uh yeah, I was like, you don't you just don't see it very often. But >> um they're selfunding with their career, you know. Um, and they know that like this is something I have to kind of build momentum to reach um, you know, escape velocity. You know, like you have to burn a certain amount of of energy, whether that's time or effort to kind of get into orbit. And once you're in orbit, like you know, you might have to keep you're going to have to keep doing stuff to keep yourself in orbit, but um, there's this kind of like a snowball effect in in that way. And a lot of people don't realize that. they assume you're like, I'm not going to spend anything unless I'm immediately going to make make it back. And most of the time, no matter what you try, you're not going to immediately make it back. The the fruits of your effort now might take years to fully pay off. Um, and >> especially especially in the music industry, like just DSPs are net 90. And if you want to sell your catalog, that's a six months due diligence. You want to land a sync deal that doesn't nothing happens overnight. You could literally go viral tonight and your song could get a million streams tonight and you could gain a million followers and you have zero more dollars to show for it, but you're in a scramble to figure out how to monetize the moment and like >> you have no more capital to be able to do it. Yeah. So, I'm I'm curious. How do you think uh artists either are solving it or should solve? >> Well, I I kind of think of artists being in like two two camps. There's the people following the industry path, and there's people following what I call the indie path. And the industry path is where you're mostly focused on social media and streaming platforms. You're trying to get a bunch of fans, but more at like a shallow level of engagement, and maybe you're trying to eventually get get on a get on a record label or or whatever. Then there's the indie path where you're from day one you're kind of mostly focused on like the depth of relationship with your fans where you're doing a lot more stuff in merch and you're touring and you're not necessarily maybe you're still doing social media, you're still doing streaming, but you're not spending your money on growing that. You're spending your money and effort on like getting people on your list on coming out with offers and cool merch items to close them on. And >> yeah, breath breath versus depth. So like there's the indie that's like let me go deep with the thousand true fan method and then there's the breath method which I would say like a Nick D or somebody or Connor is way more in which is they just started touring really the past year but like if you have 5 to 10 million monthlys and you own 90% of your masters you're going to make millions of dollars you're going to be good like but that's that's a large breath that's a huge huge window versus probably like your friend who has less than a million monthlies so I can make 15 grand a month is more worried about the depth of how do I get those thousand people to actually care and like nurture them. So yeah, >> totally. And the um you know I've met people who make um a full-time living off their music with less than a thousand monthly listeners just because they they monetize the hell out of everything. They have people in memberships. They do great at merch. They do live streams and they sell a lot of vinyls in those live streams and they tour all the freaking time, but like they just don't do well in streaming. So that's like the extreme example of the indie game. But what ends up happening is a lot of times the artists that follow the industry path eventually start doing a lot of the things in the indie path. And then what can also work be funny to see is like the artists who start in the indie path because like I don't care about streaming and socials. That's dumb. eventually they they they make money first to for the people in the industry path and then they start actually caring about the streaming because they're like like oh man like I'm making pretty good money with my music but like when I go to book shows I'm like having problems because like I look like a joke online like behind the scenes I'm crushing it but publicly you think I'm I'm like a nothing burger right in terms of what what I got going on. Um, but one thing I thought of that I want to bring up before I forget is like the you were talking about like the um the the the kind of self-lquidating offers and like the um you know you're just to get the people in the door. One super common funnel that that people who are doing that indie path will do is the good old free plus shipping and handling CD funnel which >> love it and I love that. I love that funnel. >> Yeah. So you you know for anyone that doesn't know it's you typically do with a CD because CDs are one basically the cheapest thing you could possibly do. Yeah. >> Right here that I supported my friends with. Yep. >> So you can make >> Elijah writer's block and Alex. Yeah. Yeah. >> You can make these things for less than two bucks a pop and you can ship them for less than two bucks a pop. So um this is $185 to ship anywhere in the US and I think I paid less than $150 to make it. So, it's roughly $3 all in to make it ship, but you can charge eight bucks for shipping and people will pay it. And so, it's a self-liquidating offer in that like you're going to spend money on ads and you have to spend money to ship and make it and you'll probably lose money every customer. Um, but let's say you're losing $3 to5 per per customer. If you were to run ads to grow your mailing list, you're probably also going to lose three to five dollars. Maybe you'll lose two to three instead of three to five, but you're still going to pay to do it. But now you're paying to acquire a paying customer instead of paying to acquire a non-paying customer. Um, and I don't think that's always the right answer because you know your point about you don't necessarily have to go right for the sale. >> But no, but I mean Oh, wait. I don't I don't mean to cut you off. No, go on. >> It's all good, but like the the the last little bit is like you don't necessarily have to always go right for the sale. Like sometimes the move is to bring people into something free and then over time warm them up and then have them convert to other things. But this is one way to to kind of skip a few steps to where like I'm going to give you something that's like a stupid good deal to to get that paying customer instead of having to like bring them in and then warm them up for as long before they turn into a paying customer. >> Totally. Totally. And uh I'm so glad that you brought up this example and I couldn't agree more with you and I actually in this example I don't even think you need the free tier and the free part. But the thing that I would preach to that is overd delivering value to the people that bought it. So like you actually got people that were willing to pay the eight bucks for shipping and handling. Those people, when you talk about a,000 fans giving you a h 100red bucks in a year, those people were clicking on something that they thought was going to be free basically and they still went through the checkout process and paid eight bucks. One thing, they have some disposable income. Not not a ton. They could live paycheck to paycheck, but they have eight bucks to spare. Not a lot of people in America have that, first of all. Two, they bought it. And like your goal now is not to try to rush to get more money from them. Your goal is when they open that CD, not only is the CD in there, there's a handwritten note. If you have a paid community, they don't get a free week trial, they get a whole year, and you ask them to fill out a postcard and send it back. And you're going to send a personalized selfie video to them like you bring overd delivering value for that $8 even though you didn't see it and you lost money because it's about having a career. Like so many artists I think act like they want a career. I want to be able to support my family, retire my parents, do all of this off of music, but they look for it now versus Yeah, >> there's ways to hack looking cool now. You can 100% labels do it. Everybody does it. You can fake any metric in the world that you want. You can play politics and surround yourself with the man and fake moments and have a million followers and millions of streams. None of that helps. The person that's going to be here in 101 15 years is going to be the one that is going to retire their parents. The one that signed the $3 million deal today and then gets dropped three years later is going to be bankrupt, probably end up in a worse place, not be able to do anything with their art. So, like that idea of the CD to me, I love when artists do it because it also shows like I'm willing to lead with, hey, I'm going to lose money here. >> Yeah. >> But like if you're willing to go through this checkout process and you're willing to actually get this CD and Lord knows nobody's putting a CD, those are all stolen the rappers. I'm not I don't even know what I would put it into. used it. Like I have vinyl players and like yeah I don't even know if I have something that has a CD player handy. Like >> yeah I I literally bought a external CD player on Amazon just so that I could test my own CDs when I got them. And also when you get a CD you have to submit it to um Grace Note so that like if someone puts that CD in a car you know it it can read >> registers. Y and the crack screen >> and you need a CD because I could read the CD up to submit to great. So I you know years ago I bought an external one but like my my car well actually sorry my one of my cars does actually have a CD player but like that's it. I don't my computer doesn't and it hasn't for 10 years. I have a record player here >> but CDs >> but also that's why you have such a big podcast and why you like I've got to give you your flowers. Andrew, you are I appreciate what you do for artists. I appreciate the mentality that you have, but like you wanted to figure out how to do something. I guarantee an artist listening to this had never thought about what Greystone was or the fact that oh yeah, you do have to test it to see if the metadata shows up on digital screens or whatever. But like you you could either spend time be either being like I don't know how it works or you could spend time being like it's not important or you could be like yo I'm gonna buy this $100 thing off Amazon and test it myself and see what it is and I'm going to share with the rest of the world what I find out. So, like you are one of the rare breeds in the music industry, which is why I'm honored to get to take time to just have a conversation with you. Like that type of stuff that you make sound trivial and oh yeah, I just did this thing then to share it with everybody so they don't have to do it is such a beautiful thing. So, thank you. >> Oh, well, thanks, man. I I appreciate that. But but like you know it's it's a thing that I think a lot of artists should do more is like be willing to get scrappy and just like do stuff right because a lot of times they they don't right like I I at one point I wanted to figure out like what are the economics of print on demand merch versus printing myself. So I bought a heat press and some heat printed transfers and you know that's a very not everyone can afford to buy buy a heat press right uh so very fortunate in that regard but like you know for like $350 buy a heat press and then buy some screen printed transfers and then I started uh I did that so that instead of selling t-shirts for $30 on my store I could sell t-shirts for 15 and not lose money and I would press each one. So, I would wait till some orders come in and I would, you know, press the thing and the transfer on the shirt and um and ship them out. And in the process, I learned a lot about the economics of of merch and and specifically t-shirts and what types of fabrics do I like and um and also the shipping of stuff. And you know, all that stuff takes time, but all the all the artists I know that are like on the more successful side, they're they're willing to like get their hands dirty and try stuff out, even if it's just for a moment before they go and outsource it, you know, because they want to understand it. >> You don't you don't I heard somebody say it within the past week, honestly, it may have been the guys from the other pot, but like you don't hire for a job that you don't understand. So like, you got to try it all. And it's the reason for me, even though technically I'm an entrepreneur, I relate way more to artists because most entrepreneurs are driven by the graph and the revenue and the numbers and like showing off on LinkedIn and being able to do all that. And mine is just like I just want to solve problems for my friends. It's I'm a passion entrepreneur just like an artist is creating music because you're passionate about it. That being said, I agree with like the title of Nick D's book. Realistically, you don't want a bad enough. That's the very first advice. That's probably how I should have started that that minute question is like realistically you don't want to bad enough because one, if you do and you're working an 8 to five, you're working one job and you are telling me that you don't have time to do the other thing. if the other thing goes well, you're going to end up working 16 hours a day. You're going to end up working the two jobs. So, like, you can't make an excuse that you don't have the time. And Nick was a great example of that of like, I'm going to support my family as a wedding and video photographer, and I'm going to be able to make a full-time living. I have kids, but I'm also once the kids go to sleep and I do my job, going to record music every night in my van. and like continue to do that because he's gonna continue to show up until he gets to a point that he's gonna make more money in his music than he does with that one. Like that's great. And the other side to what you said, I bring it up all the time because of the Nick one, but like there's a million ways to make a million dollars in the music industry. And like you look at a chance to rapper versus Nick D, and people a lot of times look at them as like two independent artists that pave their own way. Realistically, Chance the Rapper chose after mixtapz were out and stuff to still put out music for free to download. Not even on streaming platforms, nowhere to monetize. I'm going to put it out for free. And it's so good that everybody knows it. And the Grammys change how the Grammys define an album in music. Like they now allow a mixtape to be in there. And he makes zero dollars off of any of that. But he makes millions of dollars off of a number three hat because he wears it all the time and it's part of who he is, but he hit like mainstream pop culture. And then you have somebody like Nick D that is not mainstream pop culture at all. You either are on TikTok and know him as the funny guy or you're an artist and you look up to him. But realistically, that's about as far as he got for four of the last five years. Doesn't even have a merch store. He can't make a dollar off of it. But he makes millions of dollars off of his music because he drops a song every week. They're really good and he owns a lot of it and he's entrepreneurial. So like Chance makes no money on his music and millions off of merch being a pop icon. Nick D is not a pop icon. makes almost no money off of merch, but millions of dollars off of the music. So, like, >> yeah, >> tell me that either one is more right or wrong. The idea is like you're as an artist, if you want to be the biggest artist in the world, nobody's still going to care about you. If you want to make more money, there's never going to be enough. If you want more streams, more accolades, there's not going to be it. So, like realistically, what do you want to do and how do we make it efficient and fun? And that's it. That's what you boil down to. And then it gets to be really fun with like, oh man, we could make a million dollars a year in a subscription community. We could make a million dollars a year by inventing a board game that has a soundtrack to it that I made. And like I just love gaming and like there's so many ways to do it, but that should be fun. It shouldn't feel like I have to do this stuff. >> Yeah. The uh what you said earlier about, you know, in Nick's book, like you don't want it bad enough. It's it's surprising how often you'll see an artist that says like, "I want to do this more than anything in the world. This is my passion. This is my dream. This is what I was born to do." Uh and then you you ask them how often they're posting in social media. It's like, I don't know, once every couple weeks. how often you releasing music. I release about two or three songs a year and you know it's it's this it's they're willing to do like they say they're willing to do whatever it takes into their dreams they want more than anything or else what they were born to do and then you tell them what they have to do and they don't want to do any of it because the only thing they want to do is make music and I understand the desire to just want to make music right like obviously I like making music for the teeer I have right um and not every part about being a musician is fun necessarily Like I know a lot of artists, in fact, probably half the artists I know who are full-time touring artists, actually hate touring. They do it because it's the part of their their their livelihood that makes the most revenue. Um, and they still enjoy it to a degree, but like they want to be home with their families and write a music in the studio, but they do it because it's what it's their dream. It's their passion. It's what they want to do. Um, but there's a lot of artists who just they're not they're genuinely like they think they're willing to do whatever it takes, but they're actually not. When when it actually comes to what you have to do, they just they don't do it because they have some arbitrary like mental barrier on like, well, that's not being musician. I don't want to be an influencer. I don't want to post on social media. I don't want to sell out. I don't want to ask my fans to do something for me. >> Um, and it it ruins a lot of people's chances. I I couldn't agree more with most of that. And I'm not going to say this in like a way that I'm disagreeing with, but I do think it's way easier to listen to an artist and the things that they don't want to do and listen to where they want to go and then get creative with ways to figure out how to help them get there without doing the things that they don't want to do. So, for instance, an example of like an artist that only posts once or twice a week on social media and drops a song every 3 months, but is in the studio every day because they love making music. Twitch, live stream it. >> True. Like, like there there's ways to find your tribe that are not forcing you to be somebody you're not. And if you're being consistent behind the scenes, we just got to show that. Or like an artist that is personable and they're not like the music's not great or something, but like they genuinely love the like MLS soccer team in their city. Well, then like let's start making content around the soccer team and use your music for it. And maybe the soccer team's going to end up reaching out and maybe they pay you to be an artist ambassador. But like I don't know where the money is going to come from, but it's way easier to not tell an artist you have to post five times a day because like you don't you really don't you could live stream. You could be active in your community. You could blow up in Discord or Reddit or other parts of the internet. Doesn't have to be social media. Realistically, social media is the lowest hanging fruit because while you're sleeping, you can get new eyeballs and go viral. Like that is valuable, but I understand why people don't want that. But the second part is like what is the goal? Like like the goal, if your goal is 10 million monthly listeners, first thing I'm going to tell you is wrong goal. [ __ ] that goal. Like I do not give two shits about that goal. I'm not going to help you get there because that is so easily fabricated and is not worthwhile. The real goal is I'm going to keep pushing you to be like, "Why do you want 10 million? Oh, I want to be able to collaborate with this person." Oh, okay. You want to be able to collaborate with that person. Are you making music that you love? No. I'm making music that I think will get me big enough to get in the room with that person. Is that why you want to even get in the room with them because you made music that you thought they were going to like to play the game or did you just want to make music and end up in the room with that person? Like so everything to me is like whatever the goal so many of times the goal and the problem is just not identified >> and the people that say this is what you need to do discount that like realistically the only thing you need to do is show up every day when you're not getting results when you're only getting nos when nothing is growing are you showing up every [ __ ] day and if you are eventually you're going to blow up because in my opinion the only two ways to blow up in the music industry are proven time and time again. One is you outlast the like 10year period of nobody caring because you put in your 10,000 hours, you prove that you're not going to give up and it's in your DNA and eventually it works. And that could be the Sabrina Carpenters. That could even be Nick D who submitted to my original music blog. That could be a jelly roll. That could be anybody. But the 10 plus years or blow up for anything other than music and be the guy that also makes music. And that could be the Alex Warren of the world. That could be also like a Nick D that blows up for the Freddy Show comedy podcast and does it or a Connor known as a child actor entertaining content. then is able to be like and I make music. Like all of those those are the only real two hacks is like outlast the decade plus of getting [ __ ] on and not getting recognition or find out who you are as a human being. Market that first and then be like and I make music. And neither of those artists want to hear. They don't want to hear I need to wait a decade. And they don't want to hear well why do I have to be somebody other than the artist? But it's like realistically outside of that the only thing you can do is show up every day. >> Yeah. I mean there are outliers of people who like you know blow up really fast or whatever but it is very much a rare thing. You know it it also depends what your definition of of success is too. Like there's people who you know who within a within two years they're at a place where they're very happy with and there's other people it takes 15 and they're still not. It just it kind of depends on what what your goals are. But um >> yeah, I mean I in my 17 years personally I like there's like Jared Benjamin and a couple that I know that like within the first two years of actually picking up an instrument or doing music also got offered like a million dollar record label deal or something. >> Yeah. Most people to me were doing music from a kid or had some moments before the moment that you know them for. But also like the success metric of like who we know as household names like uh even like uh you know Tate McCrae or something like that or like Katy Perry you know like pop icons. People may think I want to be like that, but have no idea who Billy Strings is. And Billy Strings sold out Bridgestone Arena here in Nashville three nights in a row without even having to spend a dollar on advertising. And Tate McCrae and Katy Perry, Tate McCrae sold it out one night, not the second night, and Katy Perry didn't even sell out the one night. So, like, do you want to be famous and everybody knows your name, or do you want three arenas full of people coming to see you without you having to batten up? >> So, when you say you want to be big, >> do you want to be Barry Strings who can walk down the street and nobody knows who he is so I can sell out that arena, or do you want everyone to just know who you are, but not care about your music? And that's that like little ego part, which is why artists, you guys are effing insane because you're told not to have an ego and yet make music that is only about yourself and the most personal thing. It doesn't make any sense. Yo, do not worry what the world says. Don't be full of yourself, but go out and make songs that are like therapy sessions of your inner self and put them out in the world for the world to judge and then don't care what they say. Like y'all are y'all are crazy. >> Yeah, it's I mean you you you do have to in a way be somewhat you're kind of forced to be somewhat self-absorbed to do a lot of things you kind of have to do as an artist. And there's ways around it, like as you said, like if there are ways you can work around things you don't want to do, but in most cases, it's you're going to be like recording videos of yourself singing your songs, talking about your songs, and talking about your life, right? And you you have to get into yourself a little bit to do that. Otherwise, you're going to just going to be a cringe fest the whole time. You you have to try it like we said earlier because once again the guy that tries 30 days in a row I'm gonna record myself and do Tik Toks and tries it and realizes he hates everything about it >> may be incentivized to go in like his local Facebook like marketplace or whatever find somebody auctioning off a camera for five bucks and be like yo did you used to like film? I [ __ ] hate filming. Is there any chance you want to film me and I can just like be weird and be me and they end up being friends? Like you find other things, but you have to try it first and you can't tell me, "Oh, if only I had this." And the one thing with artists, I know you hear it time and time again is like, "Yeah, I'm not posting enough on socials cuz I just need like a videographer and an editor >> and they have an iPhone 16 in their hand." >> And it's like, >> "No, that the problem that you think exists is not the problem." >> So like, why are you not putting your phone up and doing? >> Oh, you don't have the ideas. Oh, you don't have the ideas. Do you have friends? Have your friends over, put up a whiteboard, get drunk or high or whatever, and just write down every social media idea. >> Yeah. >> Anything that you can do, you you got to push beyond the, "Oh, if only I had this, then I'd be there." >> Yeah. I mean, I know people who have said things like, um, I I don't post on social media because I'm It's just like I'm posting to no one. It's like, well, you that's that's how you get the the people there in the first place is by posting. And why would they follow you if you never post? And then certain people will say like, well, I want to run ads to promote my social media because I need more followers. Why do you want more followers? It's like, you don't post. So, what are you going to do when you have more followers? You going to start posting? And a lot of times they say the answer is yes, but the real answer is no. Like, they want the followers because they're supposed to have the followers. And when they have the followers, they're still not going to post because they're not coasting to no one. And even if they did, they're not going to be good at posting because instead of being able to practice in solitude, you know, like posting a hundred times and having no one watch it because they suck, now you have to practice with 10,000 people watching you and you you still suck just as bad. Um, and so like someone else I know described um I think it was Troy Titley who I had on. Um, I think his his interviews airing before yours. Um, or maybe it's vice versa. depends. But >> regardless, shout out Troy. >> Shout out Troy. He he has this thing he calls the valley of despair where on social media it's um it's the period of time where you're posting to no one. Like you're posting over and over and over again. You're being consistent. You're putting the work in and just no one gives a [ __ ] You're all your videos are getting 100 views, 200 views, and you feel like nothing's happening. And but you you have to put in a certain amount of that work before the algorithms activate, before you figure out the content, before you get enough data to know what you're doing. Um, and you just have to do it. You have to put the work in. And then like first to your point, like maybe you find that you hate it, but then you still have to do something. It doesn't give you permission to quit entirely. You now you have to find a new thing to take the place of that thing that you you're saying, "I'm drawing a line in the sand and I'm not." >> Totally. Exactly. You have to be willing to have somebody else follow you around with the camera and be willing to hire an editor and a social media manager. And like you don't even need to talk to the camera and even know that social media posts are going up. But it you can't complain about it. But like it's the same way like if I anrr on albums or like my friends ask me for feedback or advice is like really understanding the why. And I won't work on an album with an artist unless there's mutual respect of like you're asking me to be in the room because you know that I have an ear that has resonated with the pop culture for the last 17 years and like I I have that ear and I have a network but also the mutual respect of I'm going to give you my feedback when you ask for it but I need you to be able to say I hear you that may make the song more pop or reach more people, but I'm not going to do it because I love that part of the song. And like, you got to put your foot down and just be like, "Yo, that's me. I'm not compromising that part." And the same with any part of an artist's career is like you can either make it so you love making the social media content and you don't care about the result or you can make it so you never even know social media content is being made, but you also have to outsource it and somebody else has to do it. So you got to make extra money. So drive Uber Eats on the side like but there's only two options. If somebody is saying that they don't want to do the content or it feels like they're talking to no one is like enjoy talking to no one, >> enjoy life. Enjoy making the thing. Just the same with the song. Like the Rick Rubin aspect, the reason that people that have found success know that success is the moment you're done listening back to the song in the studio. That's when you pop the champagne. You don't pop the champagne when the song goes platinum because that's out of your control. That is everything else in the world. That's out of your control. The same with social media content. If you enjoyed this hit that you did or the hook that you did or it was better than the last one, celebrate that. It's got nothing to do with the number next to it. That's just a byproduct. The numbers, whether it's streams, followers, play counts on videos, they're byproducts of showing up every day and loving what you do. And they're never going to be big enough. Even if you get super analytical, they're never going to be, oh man, hit that threshold. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as as a as a numbers guy who definitely obsesses over a lot of the metrics, it it can be very hard to not almost worship them in a in a way. But like when it comes to me setting goals every year for what I'm going to do, I I try not to set any goals that are based off of uh like results. Like a lot of the goals I set are I'm going to do blah blah blah in this time period. It's it's not like I'm going to get a million subscribers. I'm not going to make a million dollars or get a million streams. It's it's I'm going to post this many videos. I'm going to write this many newsletters because those are things you can actually control. Like you can you control advertising and marketing, but like I and I think it's nice to still set targets for what you want to achieve, but like the goal I think the more important goal is I'm going to release this many songs this year. I'm going to post this many times per week or per day consistently. Um, not is that you can you can 100% control that. You can if you can you can set a goal for next year. I'm going to release a song every month the whole year. I'm going to post once a day for the whole year and that everything is in your control. You can't control you're going to have a million streams in one of your songs. You can take steps to make that happen, right? Like you can say, I'm going to advertise every song and put this much money into each song and post this many times for each song and my I'm still going to set a goal, but I want to have one song with million streams, but you can't. You're right. You can't actually control that. >> Amen. And I'd much rather work with that artist that set the goal of one song a month and one video and at the end of that year, they still have less than 100 monthly listeners and they still have less than a thousand followers, but they actually did that. like >> that to me is the best thing in the world. I'm curious for you because I'm also very analytical, logical, numbers oriented. I have to imagine whether it's like your channel or an artist that you're working with. If like your goal was 20% like I'm going to grow your Spotify followers by 20% over this three-month campaign. If you hit 22%. I guarantee you feel okay, but you're also looking at like what happened and how do I get it higher? And like >> yeah, >> to me >> as an artist, what the whole point of being the artist is is not being sucked into that. Because just like you said of what's out of your control, no matter how analytical we are, there are things that are intangibles that just can't be measured, especially in these days of like, hey, I I dropped a video every day at 5:00 p.m. for a year and I dropped a video the next year every day at noon and I saw that noon did better. Yeah, but you had a 2-year window. the algorithm product changed during that time. Also, what were the videos that you posted? Maybe people's taste changed? Also, was the song good? Like, there's so many other things that are outside of like in little intangibles, which is why if you look at social media as an art form, hey, I made this song I love. How do I get to have fun telling people about this song that I love? Or to me, I'd much rather work with an artist. Hey, I make dope music, but I want to be your friend. So, like, who am I outside of the music? I'm going to start with that. Like, Lewis Kopaldi is a great example of like somebody that like while he's going through his rise, just posting videos in his whitey tighties, like doing the ticks on the videos being like, "Sorry." Like, nobody even really knew that about him, but he just full on embraced it and was like, "Yo, this is this is me. This is what I'm doing. I don't I don't [ __ ] care. Like this is who I am. And then all of a sudden it lasted to a career that the amount of people that have blown up since Lewis Kopaldi did but also couldn't sell a tenth of the tickets right now because they tried to be cool. They tried to play the game. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean the um you you're right that the start of what you just said about like you know if you set a target for 20% and then you hit 22 and you are kind of thinking about the next what's the next milestone and of course the milestones always bigger and in our like you know very capitalistic world the number is always supposed to keep going up right but there there is very much a world where like things can stay the same and you can be very happy because of like the actions you took right like in in like the you the every company if they're not showing growth right now, their stock starts tanking. It's like, well, they're they're still making a ton of money. They're just as valuable now as they were six months ago. >> And and maybe that's why you don't go public. So, you don't have the public trade on your value and you stay privately owned. Because I know I'm doing good. If I stay plateaued forever, I'm going to be a billionaire. But as soon as I go and try to appease other people, oh, now all of a sudden you guys don't think I'm good. That could be the same for artists or anything else. I'm I'm curious in in your history, whether it's working with an artist, whether it's the four cents podcast, whether it's this one, whether it's you as a human being, are there a couple numbers that like you still remember or like you still feel and like you're like, damn, that kind of changed me? Yeah. Well, I mean, overall numbers that I look at that, you know, give me that I still kind of obsess about even though I try not to. There's there's always like release a song. There's just how many streams it getting the first day, the first week, the first month. How many streams it end up overall is like do you remember like a first day or first week or first month where you actually felt the happiest? Like was it 100 the first time the first day hit 100 and you were like damn I never felt more optimistic like >> that's an interesting point >> like happiness not like oh I look at these things like the time >> back and you were like yo I'm doing it >> I I can't I don't know I can't think of any specific time where I've like seen a metric that off the top of my head and then like I remember that moment actually no there is one. There's actually there is a couple I can think of. Um, and very arbitrary, but like the first time I ever got paid from YouTube, I remember just the first like dollar was was kind of life-changing because to me that proved that like you and remember I've been doing music since 2007. So like I was in the partner program from the very beginning as soon as they opened it up to people. >> Um, before they had no they had no subscriber requirements. So basically the moment they opened it up, I instantly got it and I got my first dollar and um I was like, "Wow, you can like you can make money on the internet." Like it seems obvious now, but this was like 2009 or something, I don't know, 2011 when they opened it up. And I I kind of started a little bit of a tirade in me where I was trying to find ways to like like can I like make money on the internet? I remember one of my friends in particular kind of mocked me where where he was like, "So, like, how's your making money on the internet thing going? Like, you know, are you making anything?" And I was like, "I made like $17 this month from YouTube." And he kind of was mocking about it. And I just think back now like a 100% of my money is coming from the internet. >> Crazy. But also because to you, you didn't look at that as crazy. You looked at that as like it's real. >> Yeah. It was like if if I can make a dollar, I can make 10. If I can make 10, I can make a hundred make a and and it's just like let's just, you know, and I didn't care. Like I had I had a job. I had a career. I was going to call it like all all that through the stuff. It was always this supplemental thing. But I viewed it as like well maybe I can make it up to pay my phone bill. Maybe I can make enough to to pay my my car pay, right? Just kind of even if it's a little thing, it doesn't matter. I'm happy with that. And it was this kind of thing like every time it grew, it became a a milestone. Um >> and that's and that's the artist thing. That's like you did one baby step at a time. What if it could replace my cell phone bill? What if it could replace a cart bill? What if it could do this? Not how do I become Mark Zuckerberg tomorrow? Like >> it's true. One thing you made me think of when you asked is there like a a number that you remember? And at first I was saying no. It kind of made me realize that um with the exception of those few big ones, like the the numbers you hit aren't like generally aren't very memorable. Like I don't remember how I felt the first time I had a song hit a million streams or 100 thousand streams. In the moment I'm sure I was like stoked like wow. But like I don't actually remember it. A lot of the those cases I do remember um the positive feedback from from fans, the DMs, the nice things people said or the act of finishing a song. So like you were talking before like celebrating the moment that you finished the song. Celebrate the moment the thing that you were passionate about >> resonated with somebody like >> yeah number milestones. It does it can start to feel like just a number on a screen. it's not as impactful as someone reaching out and um you know like I remember this guy that um sent me like a a vocal cover of one of my songs, right? And I I remember the first time I got noticed in public for my YouTube channel, right? And like the the things that are a little bit more of like a human interaction and not just number go up on screen are a lot more memorable in my opinion. What about um in anybody that you've worked with, whether it was a number, an achievement, a moment, can you think of like a really happy moment for you of watching somebody else hit one of those milestones or being happy? >> There's one one big one. um someone that that worked for me a couple years ago. Um we we hired him to help out of the ad agency to do like uh running campaigns and also do email support. And at the time I think he had I 10,000 monthly listeners, maybe 30,000, something like that, you know, doing doing well, but not like doing anything crazy. And um he he quit nine months later because he had grown to a half a million and he felt like this was his like shot to go and like go all in and make it happen because he was working I don't know for us like 30 30 to 40 hours a week. I think it was it was kind of like almost full-time pushing and um while he was working for us like he would ask me questions about how to run his campaigns and I think he learned a lot in the process. I don't want to take credit for his success at all because like you know he has great music. He released it regularly. He ran his own campaigns. Um but like through the journey of kind of starting with us and then finishing with us and all the stuff he learned about running really good campaigns, he applied the heck out of it and was able to see because of all the campaigns he was seeing like what worked, what didn't for different artists and 10x over the course of nine months to the point where he can do it all in his music. And then last year um he and he was touring. He's doing like a nationwide tour. I think it might have been an international tour, but like he invited me out to to the show and um I just remember think he had he has over a million monthly listeners now. And I guess I'll give him a shout out because he shouted me out of the show. So And Sher, this artist name is Sher, but he goes his name is Andrew Sher. Um, you know, it was very much a moment of like, holy [ __ ] like, you know, again, don't want to take credit for anything he built with, you know, but like it was first name Andrew >> other than the first name, >> but like um it was just cool to see like because of the things that he learned from like from me for my videos and then eventually working for me. It kind of enabled him to to be a full-time touring artist. Like I'm in this soldout show in Cambridge and it's not a huge show but like there's like 200 people there. I'm packed and people are like super stoked to see him and um some lady flew in from like Georgia to Massachusetts because like she wasn't coming to her town. So she flew in to go to that show and I was talking to her like before the show starts and she's like I just love his music so much. It changed my life. I'm like I can't like I can't [ __ ] believe this. Like that was one of the more like kind of impactful moments was like this dude like made it happen and I feel like I helped you know >> dude even even hearing the tone of your voice as you describe that like that was a 200 person show that you went from the whole journey a million monthly listeners 200 person show one person flew in and you felt like you had a part and that was more that I saw you light up and like genuinely get excited to talk about than you trying to think about your own numbers and like when you are proud of yourself. And to me that's like that's such a beautiful part and why like being a Beck or somebody is so hard to be able to write, produce, do everything yourself. And then you look at artists that are like, you don't need a label or manager or anybody else. Like you do because there is nothing better from my experience of having people that genuinely are proud to support you because their happiness level is going to be happier than yours at any time. And the amount of artists that I've been lucky enough, whether it's Red Rocks or Madison Square Garden or whatever, that when I start working with them, that's what they say they want to do, and I get to be backstage with them when they do it. And they are not present at all. They are already worried about the next thing, the movie that they're going to do. Oh, dude, I'm about to do football stadiums. [ __ ] the basketball arenas. Like, there is never that point. That's like enough for yourself. But getting to watch your buddy sell out the first time they ever sold out a room and it's a 100 tickets is way more gratifying than you selling out your first stadium. And like that that scale to me teaches something about us about like enjoying the process. And it's way easier to do when you're proud of somebody else. And it's really hard to do when it's your own journey to like look and be like, yo, I'm proud of like what I've done right now. I set the goal of 20% growth this year and I only hit 16%. But you know what? I showed up every day and I'm a better husband or father or best friend or son and I've done all these other things. Like I'm [ __ ] crushing it. You never say that. It's always like what are the analytics? How can I do better? What's working? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're everyone I feel like is definitely more hard on themselves than they are on other people. Um, which is, you know, in some ways good because that's that's how you how you grow and improve, but also it's probably a little unhealthy. But it's, you know, it's I would imagine you you're very much in that above that too because like your whole career is basically been around helping other artists. Um, but like for a couple years I like forgot I like stopped working on my own music and it wasn't because I stopped writing music. I just stopped kind of like working on our music project because I realized I had I just get so much I get just as much fulfillment off of working on other artists, help them like, you know, get their stuff out and promoted and everything like that. Um, and I don't think it's a thing for everyone, but but clearly it's a thing for you. Like not everyone enjoys that act of like being like being part of a team and supporting someone else's kind of vision, but it's a very cool it's a very cool thing to be part of if it's like your cup of tea. It's clearly your cup of tea because every business you've done has been that. >> Yeah. I mean I'm I am definitely an extreme of it and it's one of those like your biggest strength is also your biggest weakness. like um I know that I have everyone else's best interest before my own, but I also know that that's at a detriment to my own best interest. I don't I'm not the healthiest person. I don't have the best I don't make the most family time like I should for my family. I don't have a lot of date nights with my wife. um like there there's so much that I could do better about like I'm very aware of the pros and cons on at least to me that side but the one thing that I do think I think it's just part of the human element and I believe when I was in my mid20s and I sold good music all day I got sued for breaching a non-compete when I started my next business and I couldn't work in the music industry for two And I thought I completely lost myself. It was like the lowest of lows. I don't know have any idea of who I am. And then you slowly start to find yourself. And one of the things that I thought was going to find myself was let me go be in nature. Nature is my happy place. I'm going to go to state parks and get an RV and go find myself in nature. Realistically, all that did was bring out my own ego more. What are my problems? How do I fix them? Whatever. The thing that brought me out of like my midlife crisis and stuff was as soon as it was like, "All right, I can't work in the music industry, but what can I do to help somebody else?" Because I'm a piece of [ __ ] right now and I'm sad. And as soon as I made one other person smile, all of a sudden I'm happier. And like it's why I say like nobody realistically loves the idea of volunteering or going to a soup kitchen or something. Like we all think we'd want to, but we all go home and go to Netflix. >> But there is a real high after you leave a soup kitchen and you've done it. >> That like is part of being a human being. It is so much bigger of a dopamine rush and part of being a human when you feel like you contributed to other people's happiness and something outside yourself and being an artist so much is my music. How do I get you to follow me? Look at me. Buy my [ __ ] It's so look at me all the time that like having that thing that that you can be proud of and give back to without expecting anything. I don't need a stream. I don't need a like and then you watch that person be happy. You volunteer at the SPCA and you watch that dog get adopted. I guarantee if I talked to an artist that hit a million monthly listeners from 1,000 in a year, but volunteered at the SDCA, they would be able to tell me every dog's name the moment that they got adopted. And they wouldn't even be able to tell you the week that they hit the 1 million month. Like, >> yeah, >> you just you put things into perspective so quickly. And part of the reason they probably hit the million monthlys was because they were living life and wrote better songs because they got to see the hurt in the dogs that don't get adopted. They got to see the joy that did. They were doing something outside of themselves. It translates to the art. But the worst thing to do is wake up at 8:00 a.m., go to sleep at midnight, and that whole time be like, "How do I make numbers make me look good?" like that's that's just going to be a a negative rest. >> Good piece of advice. Well, anyways, Tim, this has been an awesome chat. Um, what do you want to leave the people with as your final words of wisdom aside from aside from that? Um, obviously we're going to have links down in the description and everyone should go check out group. Um, I think in my opinion, like if you're looking for a home to have your community, I I don't for most people, I think group is probably the best spot. Um, there's like, you know, and there's a lot of there's a lot of good options out there nowadays. The reason why I like groups is just because a lot of the features are specifically tuned for artists, as you said at the very beginning of this chat, um, things that aren't specifically built for artists often don't work the best for artists. And ironically, Patreon was started by someone for to be for artists. But over the years, like I think they realized and like Jack Jack Ki, is that his name? >> Uh, great dude, great business. Like he does a lot of things. I'm like, "Wow, like good job for not selling out and and like being still being a genuinely good dude." Um, I think at some point he realized like this is bigger than just music and there he can help a lot of people with being creators, which he also is, but there's a lot of there's so many things when you're using it where it's like, oh, I wish I could do this. Oh, I can't because it's not it's not designed for artists. So, I think for most people looking if you're looking for a home for your community, um, grouped is a very good option and I highly recommend people check it out. So, now that I've pitched everyone on grouped, uh what what what is uh what what's your last words of wisdom for people? >> I mean, if you made it this far, first of all, you better be following Andrew on Instagram, YouTube, everywhere else. Uh I appreciate what you're doing. That's the very first thing. Um thank you for the hard work and the educating. That's the most important. Uh, second of all, I take a deep breath. First of all, if you're an artist, just take a deep breath. That's it. If you made it this far in this, your mind's probably racing. You're probably thinking about the next thing you need to do. You're good. You made it this far. You're right where you need to be. Take a deep breath. Second of all, understand that the goal of being an artist in the biggest success is being able to support your loved ones off of your art. And that will not happen overnight. And it will not look like whatever you think it looks like right now. But if you show up every day, you try to bring value to other people, you try to not make excuses, and you continue to repeat the idea of failing and learning and showing up, you will end up having a career. Like I I guarantee each and every one of you, if you made it this far, you will make a living off of your art. If you show up every day, try to be curious, learn something new, try to bring value, and make [ __ ] that you love. It may not happen tomorrow. It may not happen next year, but it will happen. Don't give up. And if you do give up, there's nothing wrong with it being a hobby. Be on the pursuit of happiness, not success.