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How to get started as a new artist | Episode 001
95 Plays1 year ago
The Blue Stones talk about starting a music career as a new artist today. Topics discussed:
- how we find new music today
- the importance of short-form content in today's music industry landscape
- how we found our audience as The Blue Stones
- modern music marketing techniques
- following trends vs. giving your audience what they want
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Jokes
00:00:01
Speaker
And here we are. Here we are. All right. Let's just start off with the quick intro, okay? Okay. What's going on, everyone? Today's episode is brought to you by Cialis. I was like, where are you going with this? I actually thought you were going to do an intro.
00:00:24
Speaker
We didn't talk about one. Cialis. Sick and tired of how Viagra fucks with your heart. Dry Cialis. Oh my God. Sellout Supreme. Getting that podcast money. Actually, the one thing I remember... Oh, I can't remember what the name of the company was, but it's genius. It's called something like Frankie or Fred or something like that, and it's discreet.
00:00:52
Speaker
whatever that type of medication is called, erectile dysfunction. Yeah, sure. Discrete ED medication and you sign up and it just mails it to you. I think it's only available in the States. It is smart. And US listeners look into it. But what a great way to just use promo code the blue stones at checkout.
00:01:16
Speaker
No, that is a smart business idea. It is that shit because you don't want to have to go through the like go talk to a doctor and yeah, I know if you don't have to like why why do that and then go to and then go collect it. That's the funny thing is when you get medication like for something that you maybe feel embarrassed about and you shouldn't feel embarrassed, but maybe you do.
00:01:37
Speaker
You have to go talk to seven different people and explain your situation. Maybe the receptionist doesn't know, but you got a receptionist, a doctor, maybe a nurse, and then you got to go to your pharmacy, talk to a pharmacist. There's so many people in on your
Navigating Personal Medical Conversations
00:02:00
Speaker
uncomfortable condition.
00:02:01
Speaker
Yeah, you have to just hope that they're all are abiding by the oath that they took. Yeah, like privacy. I always hated the whole thing where it's like when you do any kind of intake form, it's like reason for visit, like I'm not gonna write it down. Yeah, like, yeah, reason for visit, no bonus anymore. Yeah. Like, that's so I don't know. It's just now it's on paper. Like, I just I don't know. There's just something weird about doing that. Like,
00:02:26
Speaker
So it'll just be like, take me behind the door to one person and I'll tell them a hundred percent, you know? Yeah. A hundred percent because it doesn't matter. It's not like if I, if I put a reason or not, I'm going to see the same person.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I'll just tell them when I see them. They don't need to know before they come into the room with me. I'm going to look up what it is. Felix, that's what it is. Okay. Felix. Oh, wow, Canada too now. There you go. There you go. Amazing. If this podcast, because of this,
Podcasting During the Pandemic
00:03:00
Speaker
is sponsored by Felix. Oh my God, I'm mad. I dug ourselves a hole.
00:03:05
Speaker
The podcast number one. The ED guys. The ED guys. Oh my God. The band that's into the ED podcast. Oh my God. But I don't know, I guess, yeah, we're doing a podcast now. Yeah, we are. We are. And I think, well, that's just to touch on why, not even why, but so when I think about the Patreon that we did over, you know, the COVID, the pandemic,
00:03:35
Speaker
We weren't playing any shows. No, we weren't playing any shows. And this was kind of our way to obviously stay in touch with everybody, our tightest fan base. And I remember a lot of the tasks for Patreon were a slog. And this was one of the tasks that I actually looked forward to is doing this.
00:03:56
Speaker
So I'm glad that we're doing this again. And hopefully we can kind of focus on doing this and the only other things that we enjoy doing. And I feel like that did in part lend to our Patreon, maybe not being the best that it could have been, or people maybe being disappointed. I mean, like those meetups, man, they're so
00:04:13
Speaker
It's kind of difficult to organize. Maybe not so much organize, but to participate in it. I don't know. It felt really weird when we were doing those. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was like we were jumping on a call with not really anything to do. There was no ... It was just kind of like, how's everyone doing all at once? Yeah, in these squares. It's different when let's say we have a VIP.
00:04:40
Speaker
You know, there's people that come to the show and there's obviously the show that we can talk about, but we see people face to face. It was just so much different doing it. Like week to week. And I think I really, I don't know. I was kind of anxious to do them every week, not necessarily because I don't like talking to our fans, but because I just didn't like the format, you know, that was what turned me off of it. Yeah. Versus
Music Discovery in the Digital Age
00:05:00
Speaker
the thing when we do VIP, it's that's usually a good time. Yeah.
00:05:03
Speaker
That's because it's a lot more normal. It's a lot more organic. Yes, totally. But the podcast was definitely something I think that was really good. And I wonder how many people actually listened.
00:05:20
Speaker
to the podcast on the Patreon. I think most people did. I think so. I think most people did because they would comment on them and talk about them or even bring them up in like future VIPs that we had. That's right. You know, years later, I'm some people, I remember there was somebody who was like, Oh, I remember you guys talking about, we did like a podcast about like,
00:05:40
Speaker
I think it was like, not flash per se, but like suave versus swagger or something like that. And then they brought that up in person. It's like, yeah, actually, I kind of think about that now when I do marketing for my man, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Wow. Really nice tips. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. I promise you, I pay attention to what you're saying.
00:06:14
Speaker
I thought it was nice that they had a callback to that and I think that makes this worthwhile doing. But I was thinking earlier today,
00:06:23
Speaker
about talking about new artists and what their path is versus what we did. It's so different. It's funny. I was also thinking, okay, I got to come into this with at least one topic. It goes into this.
00:06:42
Speaker
And I was going to be like, I was going to ask, you know, what are, what's some stuff that you're listening to right now or whatever. But I realized if you were to ask me that man, I don't really have a good answer because I haven't, I have just been like all playlists. I haven't really like tried to find new music from, you know, some of my favorite artists or like really paid attention even on to like a release radar.
00:07:10
Speaker
in so long. I'm just diving into like just the algorithm playlist like give me my house mix, give me my rock mix, give me my indie mix.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah. And it's kind of just on for you. Like when you're doing something and that's just on. Yeah. Like if I'm driving or if I'm working on the computer or if I'm doing anything around the house, it's all just like just an algorithm playlist. I'm not really thinking about like what's new music from or like what's a new artist that I've discovered or anything like that. It's all just like, this is a cool song and I add it to a playlist or skip it. And yeah, it's, it's not,
00:07:42
Speaker
Unlike how I feel too. I think Eddie the other day was like, man, did you hear the new Catfish song? And I was like, fuck, I didn't even know they had a new song. Didn't even know. I had no idea. I thought they were done. Well, I thought so too. I remember because I remember speaking to Jesse about how they were coming back together. But I did not expect this to happen for another year at least. I thought it was going to be 25 and beyond.
00:08:07
Speaker
But yeah, they just dropped a new song. I want to say last, last week, either that or honestly today. Okay. I got to check it out. Yeah. Cause I think he, no, it must've been last week. Okay. Um, but it just kind of goes to show you like, I haven't really been paying much attention to release radar either. No. And I don't know why, like I don't, I think it's just so easy to go. This was kind of something that Rick Rubin said, uh, on someone's podcast was like,
00:08:37
Speaker
when Spotify came out and I think we all felt this way in 2014, it was like, I have all the music at my fingertips at all music that has ever been made. I can just boom and play it right now. And that's amazing. And then you start curating a bunch of playlists and you start kind of going through and like saving the music that you love to listen to. And then he was saying very quickly,
00:09:04
Speaker
I realize I didn't want to be a DJ all the time. Like, I don't just want to like, curate stuff for myself constantly. Right. And that's why it's easy to slide into like, this person already put together a playlist or Spotify just does it for you based on the shit that you like to listen to anyway. Okay, that's just what I'm going to put on instead of like, sit there and think about like, Oh, what do I need? What do I want to dive into right now?
00:09:32
Speaker
Which sometimes you're going to do that, but most of the times you're just going to jump into like something someone else has already made for you. That's true. Right. I wonder if that has this like flattening effect to a bunch of different artists because I don't know if I can now.
00:09:47
Speaker
deep dive into any one artist so much that I like want to go to all their shows and want to, you know, go to any festival appearance that they have because you listen to so many different types of music from these curated playlists that
The Rise of Short-Form Content Platforms
00:10:00
Speaker
it's like everything sounds kind of good. Yeah. And no one thing is like so standout. Like I remember hearing mute math for the first time on the radio and I was like, holy shit, this is so good. And
00:10:16
Speaker
Although I've had those moments in the last six months, it hasn't been to that much of an impact. It's always been like, oh, I'll throw that in the queue of all the things I need to listen to now. Yeah. There's more steps to it now.
00:10:36
Speaker
I totally agree. What I've kind of found is any of the artists that like my kind of artist discovery journey is like if I have a song, come on one of those algorithm playlists often enough to like my rock mix or house mix or whatever.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I'm like, yeah, this is a pretty cool song. And I save it to my songs or save it to different playlists. And then if, from another source, I see that artist talked about again, so if I'm on some kind of social platform, TikTok, YouTube, whatever,
00:11:13
Speaker
and someone's like, here's a cover of this artist's song. Then I kind of get this validation of like, okay, so like other people do listen to and like this artist as well. Maybe it's worth me doing a bit of a deeper dive into who this artist is. Yeah. Makes sense.
00:11:34
Speaker
And so the last one for me was this electronic artist, Fisher. And I was like, he's kind of got a cool style that I'm kind of trying to emulate. And then on my YouTube page, it was like this production channel that's like,
00:11:51
Speaker
how to make tech house drops like fisher and i was like oh so he's actually like a thing that like he's a someone that people pay attention to and people really look up to then i guess now like his status has been elevated for ya like little bit of. Yeah exactly cuz i got exactly so.
00:12:10
Speaker
Um, I don't know, but you heard about him first in one of your Spotify playlists. Yeah. Okay. I was like, this song is sweet. The song goes hard. And then from there kind of like started to dig into, but then, uh, you know, I mean, I wouldn't immediately go in and start listening to his other songs the way that like you would have for mute math when you heard, I'm guessing typical on the radio. And then I was the one who the fuck is this band? I'm going to start looking into all this shit, probably download a bunch of their stuff.
00:12:37
Speaker
and then eventually get into that DVD, the Tokyo DVD or what was it? I forget what performance that was. That was huge for us back in the day. That was big. Yeah. I don't know if it was honestly New Orleans or... Oh, no. The Tokyo one was for their sophomore album. It was. Okay. Yeah. But the first one I think was Florida or something like that. Right.
Empowering Independent Artists
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, it just, it's because you're always, you're finding so many new artists that it's like, just because you have a good song doesn't really mean I'm going to deep dive on it. But then it's funny because I think it, for some people it does happen that way. Like, you know, when you think about the beaches, it was all because of Blaine Brett and that song just popped off on Tik TOK. And then everyone was like the 30 seconds of this song that I've heard, I really like.
00:13:29
Speaker
And now I'm going to follow them on Spotify, listen to everything they've ever made and buy their ticket. Yeah. And that's the one thing for us too that changed our opinion on the whole TikTok thing. Because remember for the longest time, we were told, do TikTok, do this and that. And we were like, no, I don't want to fucking spend time doing this. Because we saw that there was a huge disconnect between bands who did TikTok and their actual metrics that mattered, like ticket sales.
00:13:58
Speaker
streams, monthly listeners, things like that. Not that that matters to everybody, but at least the things that we usually use as our anchors. And I mean, ticket sales being the biggest one. If you've got millions of views on TikTok and you still plan half sold to quarter sold rooms, what did that really do for you? You can't make money. Generally, you don't make direct money from TikTok views or meaningful money. Exactly.
00:14:24
Speaker
But then with the beaches, it was like we saw it actually work for them in the way that I think a lot of people had hoped for or even were scared of it working where it was like, no, this actually translated to their monthly listeners skyrocketing, all their followers on any platform you can think of like doubling. And then
00:14:46
Speaker
Being added to all these festival lineups now and their shows being sold out like that's that's the tick-tock magic I think that a lot of artists chase And it was because of you know, a catchy song good song Yeah, that's and that's always the base right? And so I think this is kind of getting into your original topic like where the artists go and
00:15:06
Speaker
these days. And I think it's changed so much. Yeah, and I think it's the path. I think for a while, and this kind of goes back again to the beaches, their manager Lori Lee, she was on a podcast where she was kind of like going through what the process was a little bit.
00:15:28
Speaker
and she was saying when she was working for Universal Canada the name of the game was blogs and it was like you need to get on a blog and they are going to write about you and then those smaller blogs are going to influence bigger blogs to like start to talk about you because that's how like people were finding music back in the day was they had a few music blogs that they read they had
00:15:53
Speaker
these recommendations made and then people would go buy the album and go see the show. Then it became Spotify official playlists which were
00:16:02
Speaker
Like there was no algorithmic playlist. There was no, it was all just editorial playlists. And if you could convince someone to get on a playlist, then you were good to go and your career started to be set. And that's kind of what happened for us, right? We made, um, Allison Hagen-Dorf, she liked our music in the beginning. She put us on a bunch of playlists and we got a lot of attention.
00:16:24
Speaker
Now it's this short form content that's where people are discovering music from. So in the same way that we got our start from playlists and maybe the Black Keys got their start from blogs, you now have to focus on short form content
The Role of Major Labels Today
00:17:03
Speaker
And it's like, who would have ever guessed that that was going to be the thing that people latched onto the most? Usually people think of, oh, you need to think of a great top line for this chorus, because that's what's really going to catch people. No, it's just not that anymore. Got to hit the chorus within 45 seconds. Doesn't matter as much anymore. Which is nice. It is. It is nice. I will say the two things that are really good about this short form content revolution is,
00:17:03
Speaker
to get your music
00:17:32
Speaker
One, the format of the song structure doesn't matter as much anymore. Those old adages of like, you need to get to the chorus before 45 seconds and the song can only be this long and you have to repeat the chorus every so often or whatever. It doesn't matter as much because you're only putting the music into 30 second clips that live on their own. So unless you're hitting through a verse and a chorus within that timeframe, then it doesn't really matter.
00:18:00
Speaker
you know and you can the general arrangement of the song doesn't matter because I can start the video at any point in the song right so I can just like start start a video I can go viral from an outro of a seven-minute song yeah if I if the if that's what happened yep
00:18:17
Speaker
I think that's really cool. It allows for more artistic arrangements. There's been times in the studio where we felt a little constrained with like, this song could do something for us and so we have to fit it in this box a little more. I felt that way for Primo is for a lot. Okay. There you go. I remember being in the studio and
00:18:41
Speaker
I remember seeing the segments in my mind and being like, you know, pre-chorus is this and bridge is this color. And I think looking back, that's probably the last time that I want to look at it that way.
00:18:57
Speaker
I know, you know, um, not that like
Strategies for New Artists
00:19:00
Speaker
you, those, those things will always be like, I'm sure you can honestly, I'm sure you could dig up like some kind of music from like the 1200s and there's like a pre-chorus, you know, or like some kind of course, you know, imagine they're all do like 30 seconds until, until now should drop 30 seconds. That's it.
00:19:19
Speaker
Literally written on a fucking scroll. Yeah, on a scroll somewhere. This needs to happen in 20 seconds. Yeah, producer notes. Producer notes. The king is literally going to fucking behead you if you don't get the chorus. Harp solo, ditch, ditch, harp solo. Nobody listens to harps.
00:19:37
Speaker
Harp solos are so 1100s. But yeah, I think those those structure or that structure will always have somewhat of a hold on music because you know, it's it's also a little bit of order, which I think any song needs like you can't just have a chaotic dump of music into you know, in three minute.
00:19:54
Speaker
thing and then upload it. I mean, maybe you can, I don't know. At least not for the genre we're in quite yet. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But that being said, I think you can blur the lines a lot now between like, what is a pre or post? What is a verse? What is going to actually be the part that people hook onto? And I think that was
00:20:14
Speaker
One thing from the most recent notes that Paul gave us, and for anybody who doesn't know who I'm talking about, Paul Meaney produced Hidden Gems. He was the lead singer of a band that we both adored years and years ago called Mute Math, but he is producing our upcoming album.
00:20:32
Speaker
I think one of the notes for the demos that he gave was just focus on moments, more sections that sound cool. Just get parts of songs that sound cool. It doesn't necessarily have to be a chorus or a verse. It's just a part of a song that just sounds good, 8-16 bars or something sounding really cool. I think that's because of what we're talking about. I think it's because any part of a song can be your hook now.
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah. It's like any part of a song can be extracted from the rest of it and be its own focus. Its own focus. Yeah, which is cool. But then we're in a weird time because you still do want some songs to conform to the old structured format of how the industry has accepted songs for a long time.
00:21:30
Speaker
you know, want to be on a TV show or if you want to play a late night show or if you want to, you know, be considered for awards or any of that stuff. It kind of like you kind of still need to fit in the industry and you also need to appeal to this new discovery method that the old industry hasn't fully caught up to yet. Yeah. Yeah. Radio all that stuff, right? So like that's the whole thing of the 45 seconds to the chorus. That was a radio format. Yes, that's true. So if you want to have
Singles vs. Albums Debate
00:22:00
Speaker
You kind of have to fit both now. It's like if you want to be on the radio and you want to have this artistic freedom and this TikTok, you know, ability, you kind of have to find a way to blend both, which is just kind of weird. But that kind of leads me into the second, the second piece that I really like about this whole new short form content revolution is like the gatekeepers are gone.
00:22:24
Speaker
For the most part, anybody can upload, you know, you can create music in your bedroom and then create cool videos around it and go absolutely viral and have a huge fan base without having to convince anyone that your music is worth being a fan of.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yes. And that was a thing, because we played that game for a long time. And we finally broke through when we had Allison kind of adding us to playlists. But that was always an issue. It's like, I just don't know the right people. And it's kind of stupid that I need to know people in order for people to like my music. It just doesn't seem like that makes sense.
00:23:10
Speaker
Um, and so you have to appease these like small few people who, you know, I can slam the gavel down on whether or not your song is going to be populated. Yeah. Yeah. And it was fun. The funny thing was there were so many people in the beginning that were like, I really like this, but I don't know if anyone else will. It's like, fuck men. Yeah, I don't take a chance. How many people do you think are different from you? So different from you. Yeah. Yeah. Or what's the, the, the shaking off the rust thing where like,
00:23:41
Speaker
You know, we had our managers play it to all these radio heads. Yes. The coordinators. Yeah. And a lot of people were like, I just, I don't know where the chorus is. I just don't know. I don't think people are going to like this.
00:23:53
Speaker
They fucking did anyway. What did they know? It was a number one in Canada, at least. It was a number one in Canada. I can't remember what it was in the States, but it was definitely on the Brock chart. Yeah, charted there too. Yeah, exactly. It just goes to show to your point that they didn't want to take a risk, number one, and they gate-kept a song that probably would have been fine if they were to help promote it.
00:24:21
Speaker
But it is cool how TikTok could do it. I'm watching this one guy right now on TikTok. It's funny. He came across my feed. The artist's name is Flawed Mangoes. And it's just like this sort of looped guitar, almost like...
00:24:41
Speaker
I can't remember what the artist is. It'll come to me. But it's just like a looped guitar and it's just instrumental. That's it. I think maybe one or two songs have vocals on it. But I've been watching him go from 100,000 monthly listeners. Now I think he has 750,000 monthly listeners. Wow. Wow.
00:25:00
Speaker
Really over the course of a month, I've been watching this guy because I have him on my Spotify and I literally just checked this morning gets 779,000 monthly listeners. Oh my God. And he is completely independent. He's like, when I look at his song credits, which I'm going to do right now, like it's actually kind of funny. Like source, he just wrote, it's no big deal.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's no big deal. And then it's no form by, you know, Vlog Mango is written by Evan Lowe, which maybe might be him by him. So yeah, like this is the perfect example. And his like his Spotify header is just what I can imagine is his bedroom with all of his shit and like a bottle of Gatorade. Like, and honestly, there's I'm looking at it right now. There's a I have to look at this. Yeah, yeah. Type in flawed mangoes.
00:25:56
Speaker
That's a lot of mango Spotify. Yeah. And then you can see his, his banner. There's like a pump of lotion. Oh my God. He's got the Jackoff station right there. Yeah. Like you can, you can see it. Oh my God. Yeah. It's like, you see what I'm saying? Kind of chaotic. Yeah, it's chaotic. But like, look at his monthly listeners, man. I think we're at that right now. We're around this number. Yeah. We're around that number. The first, the first number is definitely a seven.
00:26:22
Speaker
And I would bet that this is purely because of TikTok, is this. It's got to be. I look at what he appears on. There's a Chill Hop Essential playlist, which that probably got him a few listeners. It looks like he's written for maybe a couple other people. But yeah, TikTok.
00:26:38
Speaker
alone by himself has done this. And I think it goes to your point where the gate is kind of gone. His fourth most streamed song is just called Riff 2.
00:26:55
Speaker
Riff 2. It's like the audio note that you make when you're like, it's not even a song yet. It's just a cool idea. Man, his number one song has 9.7 million listens. Yeah, that's insane. Or streams. That is so crazy. Wow. That's so crazy. And I found it purely because of TikTok. Nothing else. It was just TikTok video. This is a cool song. What is it? Oh, there we go.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's crazy. I think that's so cool that someone who like back in the day would never have had a chance of getting sort of like a mainstream look because it's so hard to market that person. So what does he do now?
00:27:44
Speaker
First of all, somebody is bound to start trying to scoop them up now. He's kind of ready for like even like mid-tier management or even a label, indie label or something like that. But let's say if you were to just kind of go at this alone, what does he do now? Like I don't know how to, like where does he capture the fans that have now, like me, who have now listened to him on Spotify and get them out to a show?
00:28:09
Speaker
Yeah, I guess if he wants to, that's part of the problem of Spotify in my opinion is like the only way to do that is to hope that someone signs up for song kick and they have the thing where they're like, yeah, anytime I have a followed artist. So basically for anyone who doesn't really know what's going on here.
00:28:34
Speaker
Songkick is this app where you put in, you connect it to your Spotify and then any artist who you are following on Spotify
00:28:47
Speaker
If they are playing a show in your hometown or close and you can kind of like choose how close is close for you. If you live in a major area, you would just keep it to that city. But if you kind of live in the woods, it'd be like, oh, whatever my closest city is. Yeah. You would get an email notification that like flawed mangoes is coming to the city that you're tracking. Hopefully people are paying attention to that and then they come out.
00:29:11
Speaker
If that's purely just through Spotify, right? If you're doing it through TikTok, the nice thing is then you would want to push people into an email list or push them into some other way where you can have one-to-one communication with them and let them know that you're going out on tour. That's the thing. It's still always a funnel.
00:29:32
Speaker
I know like, you know, there's people like you, I'm sure would never sign up for his email list. No. Right. But it's, that is kind of still his best way to get you out to a show is to, to let you know, like to take you onto some other platform that he can control the narrative. Yes. Yeah. And make sure you get the message. Yeah. I mean, I didn't even follow him on Tik TOK, you know, I just, so there you go. It's, I guess for me, it's the best way to capture me for him would be on Spotify.
00:30:01
Speaker
Because if there was, and I think Spotify does do this where they will send you a notification of him playing close. Like, I don't even know if you need song kick anymore for that. Do you think you, I think you need to upload them onto song kick for Spotify to know. Like I don't think we can go to Spotify for artists and just, just plug in shows there. We have to do it through song kick and then you can definitely have to do that. So it's so he, let's say he does have that connected. Then that would be the only way to get.
00:30:31
Speaker
to get me to know that he was even coming close. But then if Spotify were to, and I have my push notifications on for Spotify, if that were to come up on my phone, like, hey, an artist that you follow, Flawed Mangoes, is playing at, I don't know. L Club. Exactly. L Club. On this date, I would then look at my calendar and be like, yeah, I can actually go to that show. So I guess getting them from TikTok to Spotify is enough.
00:30:59
Speaker
It should be. It should be enough. Yeah. As long as they click follow and it's just, there's, there's so many little steps of friction. Um, but I mean, there's no, there's no way to get around that. That's just what it is. It's going to be that way. Oh, or I think the other way to do it is once you have them in your ecosystem, then you start to sort of.
00:31:22
Speaker
promote your show as being like an event that you really don't want to miss. Yeah, you know, like if I were to see and I think that's what kind of works for us because we do take care of our live show so much like we want it to be really good.
00:31:40
Speaker
And I think that we kind of have this thing where people want to come see the show. And I think if I were to see another artist performing live on TikTok or Instagram or wherever and be like, wow, that's like that's something I actually really want to see in person. Yeah. You know, that's another way to get people out is if you're you're focused on what the live show is like. So if I saw a flawed mangoes clip of him playing live and like people were completely just like so enthralled with what he was doing or like the light show was crazy.
00:32:10
Speaker
Then I would be like, okay, I'm going to just on my own go seek out tickets. Right. And this is again, for anybody who's like just starting out mid tier, um, obviously it doesn't apply to high tier things cause you know, it's just kind of shoved down your throat anywhere you go.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like promoting the live show for him would be another cool angle to get people out. Yeah. And the interesting thing about TikTok too, is you don't even necessarily need to do live shows, right? So one of the, one of the like music marketing guys that I've been paying attention to a lot is Nick D. I don't know if you've seen this guy. I think we've sent those with his videos. Yeah. Yeah. It's either one guy, like it's like the cool lighting in the back.
00:32:54
Speaker
He's the one who was talking about how you're supposed to reuse the TikTok sounds. No. Not him? No. Oh, shit. Not the British guy. OK. No. Nick D is he's like this rapper. He doesn't play live. Oh, yeah. I remember. Yeah. He's like on a ranch or something like that. Yeah. He's like owns a farm. Yes. And he does not play live. But the reason why I was like so
00:33:20
Speaker
engaged with his stuff was because he was, he starts his videos being like, I'm an artist with give or take 4 million monthly listeners at any given time. And so it's like, okay, this guy's gone. It's just proof is in the pudding. Tell me how you did it. And his kind of method, um, is just creating short form content for all of his songs. And he makes so much money, dude. He makes three grand a day off Spotify.
00:33:46
Speaker
Dude, this is crazy. I'm looking at almost 5 million monthly listeners. I haven't heard a single one of these songs. I know. It's crazy. Nobody knows who he is, but he's gone viral a number of times on TikTok. Part of the thing that he does say is important is he has so many songs.
00:34:04
Speaker
that if someone starts streaming his stuff, it just streams, streams, streams, streams, streams, and he's just getting money every time that someone's streaming a new song. That is a nice thing about fucking hip-hop. Yeah, you can just bang out songs really quickly and easily. But yeah, so he just makes three grand a day. So to go on tour, it almost doesn't even make any sense because if he can only sell, let's say he can only do 500 tickets a night,
00:34:32
Speaker
then his guarantees are never gonna be worth it for him when he can just sit at home and make three grand. That's so true. And he's yeah, he's independent artists. So so he's getting everything. And it would take it would honestly take an insane deal to get this guy to to not be indie anymore. Yeah, like I just don't even that's kind of the thing. The only thing that I've been puzzled with and I haven't had a good answer for yet is like, why?
00:34:58
Speaker
Do all of the bigger artists still do deals? And that's the thing.
00:35:04
Speaker
I remember we were talking to Mikey about this when we were on tour in Europe and even he didn't have a good answer because he was saying the way that their deal was set up was they just do a 50-50 deal with the record label, which is nice because you still get it in advance and all that stuff because they're still making big records that you have a lot of cost for, right? Right. But why did Taylor Swift even do a deal with Live Nation?
00:35:34
Speaker
What she would have paid Live Nation, she doesn't need Live Nation to sell out every show she ever does for the rest of her life. So she could have paid someone to build a ticketing platform just for her music, announced that she was going on tour, and sold everything out and kept all the profit. I just don't understand, why even do a deal? Is it because they own the venues that she wants to play?
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that is it. Maybe like, maybe they won't even let you play their show. You gotta be live nation. That's a good point. Yeah. That probably is it. Yeah. And I mean, she's always at a point where she can just build their own venues. Like fuck it. Yeah, whatever. I will build one. Yeah. But I think that that probably is what it is. And they're like, my nation is like, uh, they're promoters, right? Yeah. Um, yeah. And the promoters by the venues.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, that must be it. That must at least like get a get a get a license or like a right of some sort where they're like, no, you can't have a concert here unless it's us. Yeah. But then they'll fund the tour too. Like, you know, they'll
00:36:46
Speaker
They'll obviously they take the cut of the tickets, but they put a bunch of advanced money, you know, like promoters will advance all the shows so that your production is, is, is on point. It's everything that you want and stuff. They're not going to say no to Taylor Swift. Like no one is going to say no to Taylor Swift. They're all going to fight over getting. Yeah, obviously. Right. So, but is she, can they say that she's a live nation artist? I don't know.
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, I guess. Maybe not. Maybe not. I'm not sure how they would be able to bring it. They used to buy the tour, right? Yeah. So like, does Live Nation, I don't even know. I'm going to look this up. Does Live Nation own the Aeros tour? Yes. Every show was a Live Nation show. OK. I think. Because that was the whole thing. That was the whole debacle was
00:37:41
Speaker
people were so pissed about the ticket gouging and the pricing and all that shit from Taylor Swift. That's when Live Nation had to like go to like a congressional hearing and explain why are you adding so many fees to a ticket, like justify this, which is funny. Wow, it has its own. Yeah, the heiress tour has its own wiki page.
00:38:06
Speaker
Wow. That's how big of a tour it is. It was massive, right? And the movie spin-off was so smart, too. What do you think it gross at the box office? Gross? Man, I don't even know if I know how to count that high. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like, I know it, man. It's got to be. And disclaimer, this is Wikipedia. I don't know if this is right, but it's probably a pretty good guess. OK. My gut says 100 billion.
00:38:35
Speaker
No, that's, that's crazy. No, you're right. No, you're right. Honestly, I hate when people do that to me too. Sorry, I even did that. If somebody's asked me to guess something and you're like, I don't know. And then they're like, Come on, guess. And you say something like fucking idiot. I hate that. You just did it. Yeah, I just did. No, it's $1 billion.
00:39:01
Speaker
That's so much money for a tour. That's so much money for a tour. A billion. A billion. But it seems even like AG is involved in this. Okay. So maybe they didn't have the whole tour then. I wouldn't be surprised if they're just like, you know what? We don't even have to buy the whole tour like we normally do. We'll take anything you give us. Yeah. Wow.
00:39:24
Speaker
Crazy. But even then, so okay, so even the live side, put that aside. Her music was distributed by Universal. Why? Yeah. Why even do that?
00:39:38
Speaker
unless Universal was like, we will literally do it for free just to say that we do it. That's very possible. Give me money just to say that you distribute my music. Yeah, that's very possible. Instead of an advance and then you get paid back. Because then why? I just don't know why she would ever do that either.
00:40:01
Speaker
doesn't make any sense. She could be an independent artist for the rest of her life. Yeah. And because this is the thing now with the universal is like now their music isn't on TikTok. That's the thing. Yeah. And I know even if you did sign that thing of like,
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, sure. You pay me $20 million to distribute my music just to say that you are the one who's distributing my music. Yeah. And then they have this thing where they're like, yeah, TikTok's not giving us enough money. So we're pulling your music off of the biggest discovery platform that has existed yet.
00:40:40
Speaker
and you're like, what? I just don't know that any deal is worth losing the control. If that is not the biggest sign that you shouldn't really be with a major, then I don't really know what it is. I know. Because they're going to decide for you where... I just think that's so crazy.
00:40:58
Speaker
If people were on the fence about labels before that, then this really tipped them over the edge. Because I'm sure there's a bunch of Universal artists who aren't as big as Taylor Swift or whoever else who are like, what am I supposed to do? Imagine we signed with Universal now. And we're still at a point where we're at this middle, we're still trying to grow things.
00:41:26
Speaker
And now we can't do the strategy that everyone is telling you to do. Yeah. You can't even, how is that? Like, I feel like there's almost like a, like a legal challenge that you can bring up to that. Yeah. Like you're kind of like, you're like saying 10 years ago, like we're going to sign you, but we cannot play your songs on the radio. Yeah. Or like, you can't, you can't reach out to any blogs.
00:41:51
Speaker
You're not allowed. You can't. You can't. You're not allowed. We're pulling it off. No blog coverage. I think it's so stupid. And it's obviously all because of money. TikTok didn't want to pay Universal enough for their music, right? Yeah. And that's the thing. This was always the balance of power between Spotify and Universal or any of the three majors was Spotify needs those three majors to be on the platform in order to exist because
00:42:21
Speaker
if Universal did the same thing to Spotify, if they were like, okay, we're pulling all because we're not you're not giving us enough money per stream, we're going to pull our catalog. Now Spotify is screwed because now you don't have Taylor Swift, Post Malone, like every major artist, including all of the
00:42:40
Speaker
all of the legacy artists that were on universal. So that was even an even higher percentage of artists back in the day are now no longer on Spotify. Then why would someone, they're going to be like, why am I paying 15 bucks a month when I don't have like half of the artists I like to listen to on here? Now I'm going to move to title or Apple music or whatever. So Spotify does need them, but TikTok doesn't because it's
00:43:04
Speaker
Yes, music is a big part of it, but it's so much more than just a music platform, right? People are doing like...
00:43:11
Speaker
I don't get that much music discovery on my TikTok. I get a lot of other kind of content. None of the duoids. None of the duoids. So that's the thing is you don't necessarily need, TikTok doesn't need universal as badly as the universal artists need TikTok. Yeah. I think. I agree with that. TikTok could exist without that for sure. People are just going to get served different kinds of content.
00:43:36
Speaker
And that's why Spotify would care to preserve Universal on their platform, but TikTok would not. They would be like, okay, go somewhere else.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah. And that's what I think all of them are like rushed to reels to make like Instagram reels. Yeah, exactly. And TikTok. So like, whatever. Sure. Yeah, it doesn't matter. We have the users. Yeah. Yeah. So it's yeah. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how this I think Universal made a bad move because they they took off their music. And now I think the only way that this ends is Universal somehow coming back and be like, we made a mistake.
00:44:14
Speaker
and we want to get it back and now you have to accept an even worse deal because you're coming back to the negotiating table in a kind of like a lesser position than you had before. So you're probably going to have to say yes to a shittier deal. Sucks. But for all, again, for all, so taking this back to like being a new artist, man, I honestly like, I don't even know who you have to chase as far as like,
00:44:40
Speaker
Like you almost don't have to chase anybody anymore. Just nice. Because before we would say, yeah, find yourself a good manager. And I think that does still apply because at least a manager is like keyed into the music industry and can help guide you. I think it's nice to have a culture, a source of guidance. Yes. But if you are really doing this DIY,
00:45:02
Speaker
you can and you can be very successful doing it because of TikTok and because of distributing your own music. You don't need a label. You don't really need a manager. I think at least when you're first starting out, I think maybe an agent has now even become more important because they can book shows for you.
00:45:26
Speaker
you know, they can they can do something for you. If you don't necessarily need the guidance, let's say you're just like you're, you know, scrolling through YouTube videos and you're, you're managing yourself, then probably an agent.
00:45:37
Speaker
would be the first step as far as like member. But even then I think, you know, you're still going to have like, yeah, you're still going to need to like build the following on your own. Yes. But then ideally, you get to a point where there's a bunch of people who want to work with you.
00:45:57
Speaker
And you don't need to try and convince anyone, you know, people, it's the same thing as Taylor Swift. Like people are fighting each other to work with you. Yeah. Yeah. If you, if you focus on developing yourself, your music, obviously your, your live show, um, and really developing your image through all these things that are like free to do, maybe aside from, you know, what's the distributed tune core, let's say, um,
00:46:24
Speaker
then you better position yourself to receive a lot more offers that are a bit more favorable for you. Work hard so that a lot of people are knocking at your door and you have
00:46:39
Speaker
you know, eight to 10 options to go with and you can sit back and be like, okay, versus being independent. What is the best option in front of me? Yeah, you're gonna get the best deal that way to like, you're gonna get the best deal. Yeah, the best right if people are if people are bidding over you, then you in because this is a percentage based business, you can negotiate whoever wins gets the lowest percentage. Yeah.
00:47:04
Speaker
For sure. And if they're smart, they will start with a little percentage knowing that they can develop you, you know, to be a bigger artist and take a larger cut. And I hope that's what this flawed mangoes guy does. I'm going to get like tracking and seeing, you know? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Cause what are like, what are his Tik TOK numbers all about right now? I don't know. I actually don't know. Good question.
00:47:30
Speaker
I mean, 4.6 million likes, 224,000 followers. Okay. So it's great. I wish, man, I wish I could see his like, his man, seven months ago, seven months ago, he posted a video. 20,000 followers on here is crazy to me.
00:47:50
Speaker
He has 10 times that now in seven months. Good for him. Way to go. Flawed man. Good for him. Shout out to flood mangoes, man. Yeah. Shout out to flood mangoes and like.
00:48:03
Speaker
I would love to say that he's a genius, and I'm sure his music is very, very good. But his method is not genius. It's not. I'm sorry. He just plays the game that is so public to everybody, and it works. It's not like he was sitting in a boardroom being like, how do we piece together the perfect strategy? Now he just played his music, put it on TikTok, and he's popular. Yeah, I like that.
00:48:32
Speaker
You know, the consistency game is a big thing for it. And that's kind of definitely been an ingredient for our success too. Just in general, not necessarily, like sure, consistency in this case with putting out TikToks and playing the game and doing the content, like that's definitely it. But just consistency overall, like we
00:48:54
Speaker
have seen people, we've been at this kind of since 2010, in varying capacities and effort levels. But we've never really stopped. And that, I think, is an important piece. We always just put one foot in front of the other. And we've seen people race by us. And then those same people crash and become nothing.
00:49:24
Speaker
anytime that I've seen success or failure, it's it's been because of consistency, a lack of consistency, or staying consistent and just kind of like doing stuff and being active and writing and playing shows and just keep going and it eventually if that's the thing is that it's there's so many small steps that it's important to take a step every day. Yes.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah. I think the whole thing of people taking breaks for years and then coming back, how Tool used to do for albums, it's not going to work anymore. No. If you take a break from everything for a year or maybe two years and be like, got some stuff in the works, guys, nobody's going to care at that point. I know. No one's going to care. And I do think the single game
00:50:16
Speaker
is smart for younger artists. Well, that's how Nick D does it, right? Yeah. But even for a rock band that wants to do good production level and stuff, I would probably do 12 songs every year and release one a month until one takes off. Yep. And then if it does, then you piece together your album. Exactly.
00:50:46
Speaker
It sucks because I know, I know you're like this and I'm like this where like I do enjoy. That's how we used to. We grew up listening to music was like, and the album is out and I'm going to listen to the album and they're going to go away for a few years. And then when the next album is announced, you get super psyched, but it's just not like that anymore. And that's kind of like actually career suicide now. Yeah. For younger artists. The thing is, I still like it for my, I still like it for my older artists.
00:51:11
Speaker
I like when My Morning Jacket has an album and it's got a feel and a sound. I like that format. It just feels a little more evergreen instead of spur of the moment. I don't know. I think an album is still a bigger event than a single.
00:51:29
Speaker
I hope so because I love that. And I love the whole, like, you know, every time back in the day that Coldplay would release a new album, it was like a completely different feel. And yeah, it looked different. They sound different. Like, it's like, whoa, this is new. It's like listening to a new band. Yeah. And I kind of I hope that still does carry over. And I think it can. It's just your breaks have to be shorter.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You know, exactly, which is harder than it's harder to get a new sound and a new look and all that stuff when it's only been six months since the last one or, you know, even a year is kind of difficult. So yeah. Yeah. But I, um, I think it's that what you're saying worked. I think that's what the beaches did was they,
00:52:17
Speaker
They released a bunch of singles on TikTok and they waited until one took off and then they pieced together, blame my ex. Yeah. You know, the image was there. Like everything is there. So I wonder. It's nice because you know, what's going to work. You know, it's like, you know that that's going to be the theme and that's going to, people are going to connect with that.
00:52:36
Speaker
And now you have one thing that's driving the one song is driving the rest of the album, the feel for it and the look of it. And you can kind of then create a universe based off that, which is cool. So if you were to say, what is the best single piece of advice you can give a new artist in 2024? I would say that would be.
00:53:05
Speaker
Yeah, I would say doing like releasing a song and then putting out a bunch of short form content behind it, running that for a while. And if it doesn't connect, move on to the next song. And again, the thing is you don't even have to put the song out. That's like the thing that I think is the coolest is like you can you can record a song
00:53:32
Speaker
and then shoot a video for it and go into CapCut or whatever editor you want and put your song in there as the audio for the video, release the video, and then you do the thing, tease this, like, should we release this? When should, you know, thinking about releasing this song? People are like, yeah, man, this song's sick. It goes viral, and then you drop it the next week.
00:53:56
Speaker
Wow. And there you go. And so you're not even really revealing anything because that's, I think, another reservation some artists have is, I'm going to put all my songs out there before the album is out, and I'm going to spoil it. And my answer would be, you're not spoiling anything for the 200 people who saw your video and then swiped to the next one. Yeah.
00:54:22
Speaker
If you put out a bunch of content for a video and it doesn't do well, delete them. Now no one knows that that song exists now. And then move on and just wait until one hits and then when one hits, now you have all the old songs.
00:54:38
Speaker
in the bank still. Yeah. And you can still, and you can drip feed those. And I think the nice thing about all this is that it still matters to make good music. That still matters. Yeah. You know, like because matters more. Yeah. It matters more because
00:54:56
Speaker
a shitty song isn't going to really take off. I don't think. No. Obviously, there's a lot of different definitions as to what a shitty song is, but for that one specific artist, they still have to put work into developing songs that they enjoy and that are listenable and that other people enjoy too. It's still important to do that.
00:55:19
Speaker
So I think to your point of short form content and that's how what your piece of advice I think what my piece of advice would be in addition to yours would be like still focus on your songwriting ability and making good music. Don't sell that part out because I feel like a lot of people are going to sniff that out.
00:55:38
Speaker
and be like, this is just so generic, whatever. More now than ever, because I think people like that authenticity on TikTok. They don't want the fake stuff, like the fucking stomp, clap, like that stuff. It's just, it's not. Chevy Silverado commercial. Oh my God. It's like thoughtless. And people now are like, they're smarter consumers of music and they're going to be like, whatever. Yeah. 100%. So focus on that songwriting ability.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yep. I agree. Songwriting ability and the con I mean, and the nice thing is that's almost the only things you have to do. Yeah. That's it. It's like, it's, it's really not that crazy. And I think the, the thing that turned us off of tech talk in the beginning was we felt like we had to make.
00:56:27
Speaker
videos in a certain way and following a certain format of like, yeah, you know, what's really popular right now is singing into your bathroom mirror. Who the fuck wants to see either of us doing that? I tried. Oh my God. I'll never forget that. I can't even believe you tried. I applaud you. I applaud you. I felt as the same way that someone would feel like holding a gun up to like shoot their first person.
00:56:58
Speaker
Like that's what it felt like to me. Like my hand is shaking and like it's focused on the mirror on myself. And I'm like, do I pull the trigger? Did you do a take? Did you? Did you try it? I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it.
00:57:21
Speaker
And everybody's like, you gotta do this. Why do I have to do this? Oh my god. Yeah. And oh my god, it's it definitely works for some people, you know, like, like Luella. Yeah, totally. Like if she were to do that, I wouldn't even think twice.
00:57:38
Speaker
No, because she's not a grown man. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's not a good one. And then the other thing that that we were always saying was like, I don't think our fans are going to like this either. Like, it's not it's not like.
00:57:56
Speaker
I understand why there's certain artists that this will work for and it will also work for their audience, but like it won't work for us because of who we are and it won't work for our audience because that's not what they want to see, you know? Yeah, it's like the whole thing about like the tribe thing, right? Like you can't
00:58:12
Speaker
bring something that's not part of your tribe. People are going to just be like, what the hell are you doing? I would not ever want to see a video of Jack White singing a song into a mirror. Never. No way. I would never want to see that. That would ruin what he is to me. Why would I go and do that? Even sometimes, and this isn't nearly as cringe to me, but
00:58:35
Speaker
you know, because I've done a video like this on TikTok. And I've seen like other bands do it where it's like the lead singer is singing in like a space, you know? And that for me is like the tipping edge. Like that's as far as I will go to like the vocal glamour that people want to see on TikTok is that right? And yeah, like singing in like a warehouse, you know, or like a parking garage or something like an empty sort of like hallway. Yeah, because
00:59:03
Speaker
I don't know I just feel like it's...
00:59:05
Speaker
I don't know. And I, I know there's like the whole thing about like, you know, you've heard a lot of influencers say like, stop caring about what you upload. Yeah. Right. They say, I think there's been a few people that say it that are like popular tick tockers. Like that video that's just sitting in your drafts could have been something like you just upload it all and see what works. But like, I don't necessarily agree because I think images is important. And if you have an idea of like, or a vision of what your artistry is, don't just do things that don't connect with that vision.
00:59:33
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think what they're more saying is like, it's in your drafts because you at least thought it could be something for you. Versus like the fucking bathroom mirror thing is like, you're not even going to shoot that. So that's like totally off the table. But if you recorded something and it's in drafts, it was because you felt like this could work. And so my counter to that would be,
00:59:58
Speaker
If you could like see a parallel universe that that video got uploaded to, and then you did go viral off of it. Would it, would it be worth it? So you have a, you have a video that you, you are right now, you're just like, I don't think this is going to work for us. And so I'm not going to upload it, but I have the power to press a button and see what it would do.
01:00:27
Speaker
if I did upload it. Yeah. And then you see that you went viral because of that video. Would you then upload it? Yeah. So I think what they're saying is kind of a, it's, it's almost like what that's a little bit of what I'm saying too is like, it might be on the edge of what you are comfortable with. And if it doesn't work, you can just delete it. Yeah, that's it does work. Then it, you got the result that you wanted, which is,
01:00:57
Speaker
You know, you got a lot of success and money out of it. So yeah, that's kind of the way that I'm starting to see it is like, that's one of the best things about you are about TikTok and, um, this, these short form things, especially like even reels. The nice thing about reels is you can post reels without them being on your wall. Yeah. True. Which is the coolest thing about that. So no one, no one sees it. The only thing is if they're following you and they happen to scroll by it, or if it gets into the discovery algorithm, then they can see it. But.
01:01:25
Speaker
What I kind of like most about this is there's so much room for experimentation because if something doesn't work, you just delete it and no one knows it ever existed. Yeah. Whatever the hundreds of viewers, let's say that maybe watched it once and swiped. Those are the only people that saw it the one time. And they won't even remember you if they see another video. They won't even remember.
01:01:45
Speaker
So that's kind of what I like about this. It's the benefit of being anonymous when it doesn't work, and then you can keep it and leverage it when it does work. It's kind of the best of both worlds. Yeah. So I like that. OK. All right. That's an hour. We're at an hour. That was episode one.
01:02:06
Speaker
episode one, I guess the blue stones podcast. I'm guessing those podcasts is going to be called might as well, might as well decide it. Cool. All right. Thanks everyone. Bye. Cool. So I'll just like