Running a 7-Figure Record Label with James Rhodes of FiXT Records

James, if you only had one minute to give music artists the best advice you possibly could, what would you say? One minute on the clock. >> So, it's to show up and be in the game consistently over time. And I don't know how many times we have worked with artists that get something going and then they throw in the towel and things fall off. But the ones that show up consistently over time, I don't even mean just, you know, monthto month, year to year, but artists that I've seen now over my career from decade to decade where if you just stay consistent, you may not be the biggest, flashiest thing at any given moment, but you stick around for 10, 15, 20 years [music] and you are so much further down the road than artists that they try it for a few months [music] and just throw in the towel. So, even if it feels like it's very incremental progress, if you're showing up consistently for the long term, it's going to pay off. And I think I did that in under a minute. >> You nailed it. Under a minute. So, yeah. And and I've heard that repeated a lot from from artists, labels, whatever, like people that you would consider like have made it or whatever that means, but people who most people I think would look at and say like they have made it in the music industry. they're living off their music or whatever criteria you have. Um, one person specifically I remember saying they don't know anyone who has been doing this for over 10 years that hasn't achieved either whatever they defined as success or some fraction of what they would have wanted who was actually honest with themselves. And and the kind of message there was like if you're if you do this for 10 years, as long as you're honest with yourself and try your best, you're going to succeed. Because like most people that don't succeed, it's not that they worked for 10 years and then nothing happened. It's that they didn't do what they should have been doing or they just gave up too fast. >> Yeah. Yeah. So many times I remember when, you know, early 2000s there were some bands that uh like Cell Dweller was kind of comparable to. Um, but they then they got bigger and it was like, oh man, like we were kind of at the same level and then that artist got bigger and then didn't really think about them for a bit or keep up with them and then like you know 10 years later I went and looked and I was like, "Oh my gosh, they did like two albums and then fell off the face of the earth, disappeared, broke up, whatever happened and we're like 10 times further than where they were because we just stuck in the game. Totally. Totally. And and you never know who's going to stick around too. Like I'm sure you you've seen a lot of artists get be kind of clout driven with who they work with in music. Like I don't want to collaborate with that artist because they're smaller. It's not going to help my career along. But I talked with a guy who like released a song with Joiner Lucas like a decade ago or something. and his success like back then they were equalized artists and then that dude like exploded and he got a lift from that because they like worked together in the past and I've met so many people it's like that where like we're this bigger band we collaborate with a smaller band just because we like them they're good people fast forward 10 years that little band is way bigger than this band that was the big band >> and it it's you know you never know what's going to happen in in the music industry is it's >> it's you know there's so many factors at play and trends come in and out and and like you can control a certain amount but there's there's also the kind of uncontrollable aspects you know >> yeah there's I mean there's also some strategy and trying to even if you were with the bigger artist to collaborate with artists that are on the upandcome you know fresh energy newer artists and yeah I mean if you're just making one bet maybe it's a long shot But if you do a handful of those in your repertoire, you know, one of them might hit really pay off. >> 100%, man. Well, you are the I believe vice president of Fix. >> President of Fix now. >> President of Fix. Oh, I I uh I gave you a demotion. My apologies. So, you are the president of Fixed. Um which which is a is a record label. And but you have a crazy journey of how you get into it because it seems like you went from from fan to leader of the artist's label. Um, which is kind of wild because you're actually the second person I know who did something crazy like that. Um, I I forget her. I think it was Cassie Petri. Maybe I'm mixing her up with someone, but she was like the she ran like a Nync was I don't remember if it was Nync or Backstreet Boys actually. So, someone's probably going to roast me for this, but she ran the fan club for one of those boy bands and then eventually got into like marketing and stuff and then eventually like they became clients of her marketing agency which was kind of a crazy from fan to music industry person working with the artist. Um, which is your story in a nutshell. So, I guess yeah, if you could go through your background and how you ended up in this crazy place. [laughter] Yeah. So, in the uh in the mid 90s, I discovered a band called Circle of Dust, which was this '9s industrial metal project, and picked it up based on the artwork on the cover of a cassette in a bin in a in a store in my local mall. Just thought the art was cool. Ended up being a genre that I ended up thinking was cool. And then eventually figured out it was by this guy, Clayton. started following his career. Uh he was in a bad label deal I found out later. Uh horrible deal in the early 90s, like a single% uh royalty split. And >> then he started a new project in the late 90s called Cell Dweller. So, I followed over from the Circle of Dust website and email list to this new project and joined his street team, was a fan, uh volunteered on his street team, got a chance to meet him in the studio. He did a studio invite for the first 16 people that responded uh to this email could go meet him in the studio and hear new music uh in a Detroit studio. So, I drove to Detroit, got to meet him, met his manager, and was super inspired getting to meet him. Like, I had never been in a real recording studio before, seeing all this gear, and so I was like, I'm just, you know, I might have been like 19 at the time, so I'm like, whoa, this is amazing. Uh, then >> I got to say that's like a brilliant like fan engagement strategy on on Clayton's part to be like I'm just going to email my my people and say like the first 20 or however number you said that respond can just come to my studio and hang with me. It doesn't get more grassroots and indie and like fan like that's some epic kind of stuff especially back in the day. the street team strategy back then, you know, I feel like it's this was kind of before online marketing really became I mean this was like 2000, so 25 years ago. Um, so I got involved on the street team and then kept showing up to things, kept volunteering. He announced he was going to tour and I booked like the second public show that Seldweller ever played was at a venue in Iowa City uh called Gabes Oasis and I didn't know what I was doing to promote a show. Uh but I figured it out and you know had enough people at the show that we we the venue got their fee, the band got their fee and and I didn't lose money so I was like that's a win. Um, but then I was I was just an R, you know, any other fan showing up at any show he played within like an 8 hour radius. I was just a mega fan going to shows all over the place. And then eventually his manager uh they knew who I was from from meeting and and seeing me. They're like, "Man, you should give this kid like a shot to do something." Uh, so I started and it was all volunteer work to start with, but I started helping with the newsletter and the website and then eventually managing the street team and getting other people involved. And then at another level, he's like, "Okay, well, we need to give you something that I can like pay you for." So then I took over his online merchandise e-commerce business. And when I inherited that, this again is like early 2000s. It was like a terminal that you had to punch in a credit card number and dial up over dial up to like process their transaction and then come back and batch all of this stuff. Um, there was like 20 steps involved to run his an order through the system and get a label printed to finally ship it and take it to the post office. And I had no idea how e-commerce worked, how credit card systems worked. But I'm like, this is an awful user experience to manage it, let alone the customer experience on the other end. And so I just was passionate and was like, I need to improve this. Figured out how to set up like automated credit card processing and quicker shipping times and better mailers. And I just wanted a better experience cuz as a fan, it's like I knew what I wanted to get and I wanted to give a better experience to other fans. So, >> this was still like early 2000s, >> early 2000s. >> E-commerce was kind of this crazy thing that like I mean I think Amazon existed back then for books exclusively, but like e-commerce was a weird thing that a lot of people thought was kind of silly. I remember my par like growing up I was born 91 so like or I would have been like you know 10 11 12 around this era and um I I I remember like older people around me >> thinking that well who's going to order stuff online you go to go you want this you go to a store right and it's just crazy that now it's like we can't even imagine life without >> being able to go on on a fixed website and and buy >> copy of [clears throat] the Browning there having to go to a physical record store like >> it, >> you [laughter] know, >> and back then it was very much like mail order Amazon now with Prime instant shipping overnight everything. Back then, like as a fan before I got involved, I was placing orders on the Sell Dweller website and would wait 6 to 8 weeks for something to show up in the mail. It was like early mail order service. So, I was figuring out how to get it to where, you know, within a day or two of an order coming in. It was turning around in shipping. You know, within a few days or a week, people were getting their items. So, it went from 6 to 8 weeks to getting something in a week. And that increased order revenue and people were coming back and buying more. And then Clayton's manager uh lived in LA running a successful uh music company in LA, offered me a job to join the management team. So moved from smalltown Iowa out to LA, joined that company, only lasted a year in LA. Uh just wasn't a huge fan of LA and and how big of a culture difference that was from smalltown Iowa. So moved back after a year and you know wanted to stay in the industry but didn't know how to completely do that. But at the same time Clayton had just come out of kind of a bad record deal for Cell Dweller that really wasn't super public when the album the debut Cell Dweller album came out. It came out independently, but there was like a three-year uh delay in that album coming out because it had got signed to a label and then the label closed its doors, but didn't want to give him the rights back and it was a legal battle and a whole bunch of stuff that happened behind the scenes. But eventually he released the album independently had figured out uh through the management company Position Music in LA which also did film and TV sync licensing. He started landing movie trailers and video games and that became a revenue generator and then the online merchandise and touring. He started figuring out how to build up multiple revenue streams and then we were like well we could systemize all of these things that we had figured out for him. we should start a label and do this for other artists. So that's when in January of 2006, I just moved back to Iowa and we co-found and started fixed and you know 20 years later now um you know we've done a lot with the company but it was extremely humble beginnings. you know, uh, it was just the two of us for the first couple of years and, you know, I was just doing it part-time while I had a day job somewhere else and I was, you know, in the bedroom in my house, uh, an extra bedroom, just had a tiny little office and and doing things. But eventually, we we've really developed it into a full company and, uh, you have a, you know, 4,000 track plus catalog and have worked with a bunch of artists now. >> That's great. I didn't realize you had 4,000 tracks in your catalog. That's crazy. Well, because I guess now you you guys have a roster of six artists, but >> currently you had way more, right? >> We've had eras where we've had as many as, you know, 25 to 30 artists um at a time. So, we've had some es and flows of like expanding our team, expanding the roster, realizing we might have stretched ourselves too thin. Let's contract and focus. Okay, we're having some success. You have success. Oh, let's expand. Uh maybe we expanded too far again. So, you know, over 20 years, we've had kind of this inhale exhale of like expanding, contracting, and figuring out each time kind of what's working, what's not. Um, and as the music industry has evolved, every few years, we're constantly kind of pivoting our systems, our processes, you know, how big do we want to be, how much overhead do we want to carry? Um, so we've had to be nimble to kind of stay uh, you know, able to pivot with reality of of what's changing in the industry from downloads to streaming to, >> yeah, >> you know, everything that's happening right now. A lot of people give labels a bad rap and I mean sometimes they deserve it, right? Sometimes they are the big bad boogeymen, but a lot of people don't realize that uh the the independent labels are typically not the ones that are that reason that reputation exists. Um like you're not signing people and giving them singledigit splits in their music. You're not. >> No. No. We we from day one our entire business model has been on 50/50 profit split deals. Um so you know we want to it's an artist owned label. we understand the artist side and you know sometimes probably uh overextend ourselves in service of the artist because we're so artist friendly that we end up doing things that I'm sure a lot of other labels wouldn't do um for what it means for the label's bottom line. Um but we're very artist focused artist serviceoriented um but we want it to be a 50-50 partnership at the end of the day. I would imagine that as you you you grow and then realize you spread yourself too thin and then you you have to shrink which means unfortunately like dropping artists I would imagine. Um I have to imagine that's a very difficult conversation to have with those artists that like they're so excited to work with you guys and being labeled and you're like >> you know whether it's because you guys are trying to strip back or if there the financials aren't there to justify it. >> Yeah. conversation to have, but if if you guys don't make money, >> if you lose money, the business dies and then every artist on the label loses. So, you have to do that. >> Totally. sustainability. I think, you know, for for an artist in their own career, for a label, um that's something we've really taken to heart is like, hey, we could make short-term decisions that, you know, take us down this this path, but we want to be here tomorrow to continue doing this. So, we have to make decisions from a sustainability standpoint. And if we overextend ourselves with, you know, a group of artists and that are we're running at a loss, which we have done because we're passionate, like we love this artist, this music is great, but maybe it wasn't as commercially viable as we would have wished it could have been. And so sometimes we have we've had to make those uh tough decisions and prune some things for the sake of the company overall continuing to exist and serve all of our other artists. Um yeah, those are not fun conversations. We've we've had, you know, lots of them over the years. Um but, you know, I we hold we hold our head high with the relationships we've built that even when we've had those tough conversations, we're never burning bridges. A lot of artists that we have parted ways with, we do so on good terms and then we come back and do collabs or remixes or artists are, you know, might tour together and, you know, we're still in business with them. Even if we're not actively releasing new music, we're accounting to them every quarter, their address changed, their bank account changed, like we have to maintain a positive relationship. And I mean, a, it's the right thing to do. Uh, but you know, we want to have a good reputation and so we we behave in a way that upholds a good reputation. >> That's a good point. Uh, I I'm on I'm on very few labels SMS lists. Um, but one I am on is Sumerian because they're just one of my favorite labels of all time. >> And so they texted me about their Sumerian 12 Days of Christmas sale or whatever. And I'm looking at some of the bands in there and I'm like none of these bands are signed to Samrian right now that they're doing this Christmas sale for. Um they're all former artists, but like they they've been around for a while, right? And like they had Periphery when they were initially and I mean they still have Warren Osiris, but they had Animals as leaders at one point. So they they have this huge history of artists that they still sell. But that's a good point that like they even if they're not currently working with those artists on new music, they still own the masters to a lot of their back catalog and like that would be really awkward if every quarter you have to talk to someone you you hate you. So, [laughter] [clears throat] and it's bad for business and it's bad for life and and all that, but like it's something that I think a lot of people don't think about. It's not like a one and done. It's, hey, we're kind of in business forever to a degree, at least in the realm that we have to talk like quarterly to transact some wire transfers or whatever. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And life is long and I think taking a long-term approach, you know, there's artists that uh we've worked with when they were smaller and got them to a certain point, parted ways, and then they might go have some other crazy career arc and then it comes full circle where we have the opportunity to work with them again or word gets around, you know. So, I always, you know, we want to uphold a positive reputation and relationship cuz they go on and [clears throat] are now friends with other bands that we're talking to and, you know, I never want us to be in a situation where somebody's like, "Oh, no, you don't want to work with them." Um, and we're proud that we we get that those positive recommendations and and >> yeah, >> the positive word of mouth benefit. I'm wondering in terms of what revenue sources you guys interact with. Um, obviously there's like streaming and digital sales and then there's your online store which is physical music and also merch items. >> Um, what's like the biggest categories and if you want to give percentages that's awesome. Like in terms of what brings in the most bucks >> for the label and also therefore the artist. Um well I guess the artists will have separate revenue sources you guys aren't involved in but what's the breakdown look like? >> Yeah so digital whether that's you know downloads or streaming is is actually probably our biggest bucket. Um and streaming is bigger than the the download side of things. um physical, whether that's CD, vinyl, apparel, um is another meaningful bucket. Uh but the other one that uh some labels don't fully go after or set themselves up in a way to do that has been really key for us is publishing and sync licensing. So we have uh you know so there's a master side to a license and a publishing side and we've built our catalog with master and publishing rights under one roof so that our catalog is quote unquote one stop which makes it highly syncable easy clearance and there's a lot of sync opportunities where [clears throat] unless it's a big song where the client wants that specific song and is willing to go clear through multiple companies to get the master and the publishing cleared. A lot of sync opportunities. They want easy quick turnarounds. These editors, these music supervisors sometimes have, you know, hours or or a day or two they're down to like we have to clear a song in the next 24 hours and they they want to go to one company to clear it instead of having to go clear it with multiple. And so we found that to be extremely advantageous for us and and kind of a strategic advantage. Um, and we so we've done a lot of sync licensing. >> Nice. Nice. That that makes sense also, especially in your style of music. Um, which is weird because this the genre you you work with is is kind of eclectic in a way, but but I can imagine a lot of what you work with would be very good for for video games or like more like cyberpunky or sci-fi films and stuff. Definitely. >> You're not going to get anything in like a romance movie or something. But >> no. Um, no. Typically, it's Yeah. action, sci-fi, comic book movie stuff. We've had like Iron Man trailers and uh, you know, there was there was an earlier Marvel era like The Punisher, Spider-Man. Oh, >> yeah. Spider-Man. Several comic book movies we had quite a bit in. Um, and then lots of video games, action sports, high energy, aggressive stuff. We've been getting a lot of WWE. Uh, >> oh, that makes sense, too. I remember back in the day like uh like Tony Hawk and the the NFL street and the different like NHL games they had like back in like PlayStation 2 era, PS3 era. Um they had like Powerman 5000 and yeah, you know, [clears throat] like that kind of that that world of of music like aggressive kind of electronic rock. >> Yes. >> And a little bit of metal mixed in. Um I feel like video games are boring nowadays with their music. >> We've had uh you know quite a few racing games. Um so like some Need for Speed, Forza, um a few different racing franchises. And then music rhythm games have has also been something that we've had a lot of and >> like a like a Beat Saber. >> Uh so we we've not had anything in Beataber. Um but we there's a there's a couple other VR music rhythm games that we have had a lot of music in. So there's one called Synth Writers. I think we've got around 20 songs in Synth Writers. We even have a label pack where sometimes the there will be a label that'll have a whole pack of music. So, we have a label pack inside of Synth Writers and then there's an drumming VR music rhythm game called Smash Drums and we've got 15 or so songs in that one. And then we've had we've had some Dance Dance Revolution years ago. Um, and then going way way back, there was a free online uh music rhythm game people would play with their keyboard called Flash Flash Revolution. Uh, so not Dance Dance, but Flash Flash Revolution and >> before uh they killed Flash games. >> Yeah. But it was so it was a free game and some of our songs were in there uh specifically Cell Dweller and we had at one point there were probably thousands of people that signed up for our email list just because of that one game. >> Wow. Huh. Actually, interestingly, um, the reason I brought up BeatSaber is because there you can do what's called sideloading that game on your Oculus and then you can download a user generated library in addition to the paid packs and right there are some Cell Dweller tracks and probably other stuff in your catalog in there. >> I'm sure there are. Yeah. [laughter] >> And it's all fan-made. So, like even stuff like that, even if you're not getting paid for it, it's like from like a fan perspective and like finding new fans for free. That was actually the I think the first time I became aware of Cell Dweller like as I've heard some of his songs for interested in in passing before, but that was the first time I saw the name with a song that I knew was by him was in Beataber. >> Oh, wow. That's a new one that I haven't heard that specific path, but that's awesome. >> Right. >> We we we have had a couple other games that had community maps like that where it was the community make it, but um there have been some games that have had, you know, rights holders not be happy about that and fight it. We've had a couple of games pay a license for community maps so they could tell their community these are pre-clared even though their community and tell their community you can make maps with these songs even though they weren't the official you know levels in the game. Um so that's also been yeah just a lot of cool music rhythm games have have found uh our catalog. Now, when it comes to like the how the sync licensing works, uh, typically there's some type of upfront payment and there's the backend royalties you get every time it's like performed, so to speak, right? So, you're you're collecting the publishing half or the publisher half of that publishing royalty, and the artist goes in and they get the songwriting share of their publishing royalty. >> Yeah. So there's uh you know under a sync license they have to clear a master use and a publishing use. So typically they're equal. They could be different amounts. Um so say there was a a $10,000 license, 5,000 on the master side, 5,000 on the publishing side. The 5,000 on the master side through the label deal, 50/50 split with the artist, 5,000 on the publishing side. We do half to the publisher, half to the artist on the fee, and then if there's any, yeah, if it's being broadcast and there's performance income through an ASCAP or BMI, um, or, you know, whatever society internationally artists may be associated with. Um, artist collects the artist side, we collect the publisher side. Um, an interesting, you know, caveat to that could be a cover song where say our artist has a cover and they have to go clear for a sync license the original publishing which we don't have a piece of and the publisher might be like we want a h 100red grand for you to, you know, clear the publishing of our original song and we may not be able to get them to pay 100 grand on the master side. So sometimes in cover songs, publishing may be significantly lopsided to the publisher and we may take a smaller fee, but typically it's usually an even master and publishing side of the fee. >> Gotcha. Gotcha. And that's all just negotiation, right? >> Yeah. That's all negotiation and um you know depending on if it's TV or film or uh you know and and credit in a film or video game and you know what platforms it's coming on. There's lots of rights things that can get uh diced into is it theatrical, is it all media? There's a there's a lot of uh kind of catchphrases for all these different media rights. Um and of course the more rights they want or if they want exclusivity uh then yeah definitely negotiating that fee up higher and higher >> kind of pivoting a bit but you know let's say uh the Browning gives you a call says James I got a new album I just finished it and I got these singles that I want to do um what are you guys doing next like essentially he's like I got this album done recorded everything ready like in terms of promoting it for an artist like the Browning um who is let me pull up Spotify here. See what >> Yeah, he's at peak alltime monthly listeners right now up in the uh should be in the 470s range. >> 474. So about a half a million monthly listeners. >> Um he last dropped an album actually this well last year but he dropped an ultra version of that album and it looks like he's got some singles coming out. >> Yeah, we're working on an album right now that comes out in February. >> So I guess this will more so just be the playbook for that. But you know, so a few months ago or whatever, a year ago, Eats You Up, I get this material ready. How do you guys approach like how many singles are we going to drop leading up to this album? How are we going to roll out this material to the fans? Where are we going to spend money promoting the songs andor album? Um, and what kind of tactics you're going to use to promote it as well? So we we are very much pushing more singles as a label and I think I've shared with you previously we have a lot of data that supports uh you know hard data not just our subjective opinion but that if we release a song as a single on Spotify it immediately gives that track like a 2 to 10x at a minimum up to sometimes even like a 100x more streams over the life of that song cuz you're pushing it out with so much more uh momentum into the algorithm that it just has this long-term benefit of spinning up more and more in that algorithmic ecosystem when it's an album only track if it doesn't hit your release radar especially if you have like uh like the Brownie has almost I think about to hit or just hit 200,000 followers on Spotify. So that is a that is a huge amount of audience to hit with release radar. So we know any single that we're hitting there's kind of a a minimum push that we're going to get that sets it up. But there is and you know from artist to artist um we have these discussions with okay but I I want the fans to have just this huge album experience on album day so I only want two or three singles. So there is some friction between more singles, less singles. We have data. We're always pushing for more. Uh but in this instance, so uh you know, there is actually a tour happening around this next Brownie album cycle. And I'm actually wearing uh uh the t-shirt from this next cycle. Uh, so this is a re-record album of an album, his debut album early in his career, uh, that he, you know, didn't have the rights to, had an old label deal, um, that that wasn't a particularly, uh, great deal and there was some public, uh, you know, that was made public over the years. Um, but now signed with fixed, um, we supported him going back. actually pulling a you're pulling a Taylor Swift >> a mini Taylor Swift. Yeah. So, this is Johnny's version. >> The whole album, re-releasing it in a bad deal. >> So, uh so Burn This World and uh the evolved version, he completely re-recorded it. Um so, we would have pushed for maybe five or six singles. I think we're only going to have four on this one because we had a timeline uh to fit with his tour. So, he's doing a North America and a European Burn This World tour. We want the album with CDs. Uh vinyl is going to be slightly delayed because the vinyl manufacturing times um but to have physicals of this album out on that tour as well. So slightly less singles than we would have preferred. Um but the other thing >> does this album actually have 24 songs by the way? >> It does not. No, the >> It says tour edition. So I I'm guessing it's different than the regular version. >> Yeah. If you're looking at the one from uh like 2010 or 12 back then there was like an expanded version. Um I think that I think the version with us is 13 tracks I want to say. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I want to say like how are you even filling fitting this thing on vinyl with 24 tracks. Like you'd have to have like three three four discs. Um >> but but we have you know we have artists um that are are into the as many singles as we can put out model and you know sometimes it's just a visualizer or a lyric video with it. Uh but for the Browning bigger more established artist he you know one of the challenges to putting out more singles is to feel like there's a piece of like powerful media with it. And so music or or a more elaborate lyric video. And so sometimes budget or things, you know, can come into play with, you know, how much more we can put into some of the singles. And and really actually more than that is timeline. Just having, you know, lead time to put uh more into that creative. Um so he's been touring heavily um from when he, you know, had this album finished uh finished it while on the road in in his tour vehicle. uh to turning it in to what we have to turn it around. I think we're getting four singles out and then the full album drop. Um but it's hammering those singles, you know, hitting all of our DSP relationships and editorial. Um which you know, we we've been successful in in really being able to get more DSP support. Um and then yeah, you know, advertising, it's combination of meta ads. Um, but for music videos, we've been really leaning into more uh YouTube ads, pre-roll, um, you know, through Google ads. So, we've been able to find, you know, some really good ad combinations that are getting, you know, really good, uh, views per uh, you know, per whatever percent you're spending or whatever. Um, >> and then >> you know he's got an audience so his socials and engaging them and he has really been crushing it this year with uh some of his video content and has had multiple videos you know go viral with like millions of plays on Facebook on Instagram on Tik Tok. He had the same clip for a song Wake Up that went, you know, the upload on Tik Tok. Tik Tok, the upload on Instagram, and the upload of the short video on Facebook each had, you know, millions of views on them. And just a social moment on those drove huge spikes of increase on the song on streaming uh across multiple platforms. So having that social video component um you know press is still something as a label that we're going after and you know so we're making sure all the biggest metal outlets are covering his news. Um and he's grinding on tour so we are really seeing uh artists being out grinding on the road. The lift that gives on their catalog cuz you think there are artists or their fans that are like I'm about to go see this artist. I'm gonna listen to their album and their songs a bunch to kind of get ready to sing along with the songs and know them when I show up. And then when they leave the show, they're pumped. I'm gonna listen to this like I'm coming out of the show listening to it. So the artists that are touring, there really is a lift that is visible um you know, at a certain level. You can see it uh in their streaming numbers and then when they come off tour, you can kind of see it taper off. Okay, they're not on tour. Um, so all of these things kind of contribute to that overall lift and strategy. And I'm sure I skipped, you know, a dozen other things that we're doing. There's lots of other pieces and cogs in our marketing and promo wheels, but, you know, there's a few of the touch points that are that are probably the obvious ones. Um, >> yeah. So essentially like on the on the marketing side there's he's got video content on YouTube either lyric video, music video, visualizer, whatever. He's got social media content for all the short form places like Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook. He's he's you guys have digital ads running on on Meta and Google for for either for streaming promotion or for music video promotion. Um and then press and then touring. And you're right about the touring thing. Um, I can also double down on like there's been so many artists we've looked at their Spotify numbers and you know they were just on either doing one-off shows or doing a tour and we'll look at you know because you you can filter by country. So like filter the US, look at like the the active streams that came in because like that would mean someone was looking up the artist and you just see like bloop tour date, bloop tour, bloop, like it just all kind of matches up to a degree. And >> I do that every time I go see an artist like on the way to the show I'm listening to them and usually the openers >> so I kind of know what I'm getting in for or to know like >> yeah that's the band I'm going to go and get a hot dog and hit the bathroom on. Right. if if they're not your cup of tea. Um, and one thing I think a lot of bands have been doing that I've seen that's I think is brilliant and it's so simple is [snorts] they make a tour playlist for the whole roster of of show. So like >> I saw Breaking Benjamin who was co-headlining with Stained and they had Chris Dory and Lake View opening for them >> and they made playlists for it. So, I just went right to one of their pages and there was a pinned artist playlist for this is the whatever that tour was called um playlist and [snorts] yeah, I listened to that whole thing on the way to the show and we listened to it again on the way back from the show and some people might say that kills the fun of it or whatever because you know what music's being there, but what they did is they they put on some extra songs too and they so you kind of had like most of an idea of the set list without having an exact copy of the set list and the order was also switched up and >> I go on set list FM anyways and I always look up a set list before I go see a band. I mean small band that stuff doesn't go on but like every band of reasonable size there's someone that goes on their phone and uploads the internet. >> Yep. [laughter] >> But yeah and all that stuff like can make a big difference in in streaming especially if you're not the headliner because like you're you're an opener. you're kind of getting exposure on this tour to new people you otherwise may have never heard you. >> And another thing to throw out there, especially for artists that, you know, to to not put all the focus on Spotify, um, you know, find if you have a DSP that you've got some some other traction on that you can lean into where maybe other artists aren't as focused on. So, there could be opportunities to get a playlist feature, a playlist cover on a title on a Soundcloud, uh Pandora, there's there's, you know, there are still listeners and followers there, but it might not be the most coveted places. So, while everybody's focused on Spotify or Apple, sometimes focusing on some of the the more the smaller or or nicher DSPs could bring an opportunity that others are overlooking. Um, we've had success on, you know, some kind of non-traditional DSPs that has started to become quite meaningful and and then if you find that, lean into it. What what distributor do you guys I don't even know if that's the right question because like you might have your own custom partnership or whatever but do you have a certain distributor that you you guys use as a as a label? >> So we it's a good question. We have uh a complex distribution setup but essentially we have taken on the burden of becoming our own distributor. So we have direct deals with some of the DSPs and then we are uh members of a of a company called Merlin and they negotiate deals with major DSPs on behalf of their members and then empower them with a better deal than the the company could have negotiated independently. So, like if we we're in a Merlin deal with Spotify, um we you know, if we were to approach Spotify and be like, "We want this in our deal, like we're not going to have the leverage to get it." But Merlin has like 800 labels and collectively they are the the fourth largest rights membership behind the three majors. So, collectively they get deals with the DSPs that are really good, have better terms than you could go get on your own. Uh, but then you as the label, if you're in these Merlin deals or or a direct deal, you have to have the infrastructure to deliver to their spec through your own feed. So, there are companies that you can pay a software as a service fee just to be your pipes to distribute to them. not they're [clears throat] not taking a percentage of your revenue as a typical distributor but just to handle the delivery and then you get paid back directly from the DSP or through Merlin but then you not only need to the infrastructure to deliver to them which does cost something but you need the infrastructure to handle all of the raw royalty statements back from all of the DSPs. So you need a robust accounting system, software, personnel. Um, but if you're at a scale where that makes sense, you you can you can gain a lot more control over your digital business and you can do things that um become a strategic advantage for us uh over labels that are, you know, labels but going through a very turnkey distributor where we're doing uh you know, three versions of a release to optimize the delivery to this specific platform from this platform because we know how the platforms display things and we want it to show up natively better on this platform versus this platform versus sending the same release to all of our platforms. Um, you know, waterfalling things on Spotify differently, then we deliver the release to another DSP. Um, like there's lots of So, sometimes we'll have three, four, five versions of a release because we're customizing it. Um, but it ends up being a benefit to us. Well, this has been awesome. Um, you over at Fixed have something called Fixed Academy where what originally started as um something to kind of educate the artists in your roster, which which is great because like um a lot of people might think that, oh, hey, you're signed to a label. Either one, that means the label does everything for me, which is definitely not the case. Um the artists have to still do stuff, right? um because it's a partnership at the end of the day. It's not like a we're owning you and doing everything for you. It's a it's this business partnership. So, you started this thing to educate your artists and help them do things better because a lot of artists, they don't know about how social media works or how to run ads or or how to roll out things to their fans or whatever it is. And um now you guys roll open this up for anyone to attend. And you had me on a couple months ago, which was which is a great time. Uh, but yeah, anyone here could go and watch some basically like behind the scenes label educational content from Fixed at Fixed Academy. Um, so I'm sure that's one of the links you gave me to throw in the description, but um, what's your pitch for for where people should go next to learn more about learn more about what you guys do and learn more from what you guys do? Yeah. So, we're Fixed Academy started earlier this year and has been, you know, a fun journey opening us up from kind of behind closed doors education we were doing with our artists and our team. Um, you know, whether it was sharing tips and, you know, educational things or more inspirational things. We want to empower our artists. um to now, you know, making it a a publicly accessible uh you know, platform for people to come watch content or or interact in our Discord community and be able to yeah have access to myself and some of our team. Um but we're just passionate about sharing education and inspiration around the music industry. So fixedacademy.com, uh you can find out about what we're doing. Um, you know, we we've kind of been pivoting the business model as we've fig trying to figure out what really works to put this content out. Um, so we're making most of it free now and and then have a Patreon if you want to support um get access to, you know, on demand videos that we've done in the past. You can get our whole catalog in there. I think we've got you like 12 hours of of recorded content from conversations like this or with panelists um to just kind of webinars and presentations that we put together um and we share yeah some some things that you know are are kind of the nuts and bolts of like how we operate and if somebody wants to benefit from that they can go dive into the resources. >> Heck yeah man. Last question. Who's your favorite artist on fixed? >> Uh it's uh I don't think you want to answer that, but [laughter] >> Well, it all started with Cell Dweller and uh and yeah, [music] we're we're we're still we're still there. >> Nice, man. Well, thanks for coming on. This was awesome. >> Yeah, man. Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate it.