FINN MCKENTY & DAN TSURIF: The myth of buying success, the truth about buy-on tours, lessons from DIY rappers

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by tele Funken Electroacoustic Tele Funken. Electroacoustic has been following the tradition of excellence and innovation set forth by the original tele Funken GM BH of Germany that began over 100 years ago with one foot rooted in the rich history of the brand and the other in new microphone innovations for both stage and studio applications. Telefon Electro Acoustic is recognized as one of the industry leaders in top quality microphones. For more info, go to tunk.com. This episode is also brought to you by Fascination Street. Mastering Studios have your songs mastered by Jens Boian and Tony Linn. The engineers that mastered bands like Pec dmu Borg, gear Arch Enemy creator, Sura Amman Marth, and many more. By using the coupon code UR M1 eight in the online Mastering configurator, you'll receive a 15% discount on your order. The code is valid for the rest of the year. Visit www.fascinationstreet.se to learn more and book your mastering session today. And now your host, Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:01:14):

Welcome to the URM Podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and I just want to tell you that this show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. Every month on Nail the Mix, we bring you one of the world's best producers to mix a song from scratch, from artists like Lama God, Ms. Suga, periphery The Day To Remember, bring me the Horizon Pec many, many more, and we give you the raw multi-track so you can mix along. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of bite-sized mixing tutorials and Portfolio Builder, which are pro quality multi-tracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out [email protected]. Also, I want to take a second to tell you about something I'm very, very excited about and it's the URM Summit. Once a year, we hold an event where hundreds of producers from all over the world come together for four days of networking, workshops, seminars, and of course hanging out.

(00:02:07):

This industry is all about relationships and think about it, what could you gain from getting to personally know your peers from all over the world who have the same goals as you, the same struggles as you, and who can not only help you with inspiration and motivation, but also with potential professional collaborations? I've seen a lot of professional collaborations come from the summit in the past, and speaking of networking and relationships, there's no other event where you'll get to learn from and hang out with some of the very best in the production business. You could go to something like Nam, but good luck getting more than five minutes with your hero at this. You actually will get to hang out, hang out, hang out. Just a few of this year's instructors are Andrew Wade Kipa, Lou Blasco, Taylor Larson, Billy Decker, Canan, Kevin Charco, Jesse Cannon, and more seriously, this is one of the best and most productive events you will ever go to. So if that sounds like something that's up your alley, go to urm summit.com to find out more. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. The reason we were going to talk today, or the topic we're going to talk about is the idea of, or the myth of buying success.

Speaker 3 (00:03:14):

If only it was that easy,

Speaker 2 (00:03:16):

If only it was that easy. This is a real personal one to me because I got accused of that a lot growing up because of my dad's success in music. A lot of people who were jealous of stuff that I achieved, they would say that he would buy me my record deal or things like that, which is obviously bullshit. I mean, if he had bought me a record deal, I wish he would've also kept me that record deal. You know what I mean? He have at least had them keep us a little longer or something. So I've heard that a lot throughout my life and it's really pissed me off. So my thought has always been that you pretty much can't do it, but then you do hear about dudes who do get quite the advantage because of it. So my personal take on this is that you can buy an open door, but from that point on, well, and first of all, you can't open just any door with money, but there are some doors you can open with money, but whether or not you actually walk through the doorway or stay there, once you're inside, you can't buy that.

(00:04:41):

And with that, I want to know what you guys think.

Speaker 4 (00:04:43):

I think first you got to figure out what do you call success? It is just being signed to a record label. Is that enough for you to consider that you're a successful band or do you need to have a gold record or go on tours and be able to tour internationally? I think to me, you need to figure out what your definition of success is and then see what if you're saying that money can get you there, figure out exactly what it is. In your scenario, the money couldn't buy you a record deal. If it did, you'd just be putting it out yourself. Why even go through someone else?

Speaker 2 (00:05:21):

And my definition of success doesn't involve getting the chance to work. It involves the fruits of your labor after years and years of doing something. And it's still kind of hard for me to define, but I mean, what do you think Finn?

Speaker 3 (00:05:40):

Well, I mean, we can see there's empirical proof that it doesn't work that way because if money could buy success, then movies would never flop and products would never flop and bans on big labels would never flop. But all those things happen all the time. I mean, as one example, Proctor and Gamble makes, I don't know, 50 billion a year or something like that, but they have products that flop, even though they spend tens of millions of dollars on marketing for 'em. So clearly money does not buy success. All other things being equal, obviously having financial resources is a good thing, but it's not enough to make something successful. I mean, that's just a fact. And you can tell yourself all day long that the reason you failed is because someone else had more resources than you do. And there may be some times in which that's true, but I think those circumstances are very rare. And actually I don't usually hear people say, I failed or my band or whatever failed because we didn't have enough money. Usually what they're doing is discrediting someone else's success. They're usually pointing the finger and saying, so-and-so only succeeded because they had money, which is even worse than making an excuse for your own failure. It's discrediting someone else's success, which is even more gross to me.

Speaker 2 (00:06:59):

Yeah, it is pretty gross. You know what a good example was? Do anyone here remember Metal Army?

Speaker 3 (00:07:05):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:07:06):

For people who aren't familiar with what Metal Army was, and it's been 10 years, so I feel like we can talk about it.

Speaker 3 (00:07:13):

God damn, I can't believe it's been that long. That's horrible.

Speaker 2 (00:07:16):

I know, man, it's awful. But basically about that time period, 10 years ago, metal sucks.net was fucking crushing the internet as far as metal press goes. I think that they had at that point in time surpassed Blabbermouth in terms of daily page views and were just the biggest thing. And it was also a shift. There was a shift on the internet back then. That's when blogging became big. It's no longer big, but back then blogging was becoming a real thing. Much like podcasting is a thing now, and a lot of people wanted to copy the Metal Sucks thing, and they figured that they could just write some blogs and put some money into it.

Speaker 3 (00:08:10):

I actually wrote a couple things for 'em,

Speaker 2 (00:08:12):

So I, but I was pressured into it. So yeah, so what they did, this label decided that they were going to start a site called Metal Army that was going to rival Metal sucks, and all they had to do was grab a few. They're going to try to poach some of their writers, me and Finn, and get Doc too. I believe they tried to get Doc as well and that they were going to get a few of the musicians on their own label to become bloggers and just throw a bunch of money into this thing. And lo and behold, you would have the next Medal sucks. But the thing failed. I think it failed real hard. I don't think it lasted more than six months. And what was funny too is that everyone who wrote for it hated it, felt really, really pressured to do it, and the whole thing felt very ingenuine.

Speaker 3 (00:09:08):

I didn't hate it just for the record, but I'll tell you what, I only wrote a couple things for it because, so I was writing for Metal Sucks at the time, and every time I wrote something for them, it would get a pretty big reaction. I would get a couple hundred comments and people would be hitting me up about it and stuff, which is cool. I wrote similar stuff, the same kind of thing, but on Metal Army and it was crickets. It would get literally three comments instead of 200. And even though they were paying me, it wasn't enough for me to do, unless they're paying me a ton of money, I still would've quit because it's just no fun to put your creative energy into something that just kind of gets eaten up by the void and there's just crickets.

Speaker 2 (00:09:53):

That's exactly how I felt too. I never got, the amount of response that you got on Metal sucks. I mean, you're way better than, your blog was way better than mine, but mine was fairly popular still out of the guest blogs. I do think mine was fairly popular and it got a pretty decent response on Metal sucks. And then the same thing happened. If I'm used to 100 comments or something to suddenly get two and I feel like I'm being real pressured to do this. The metal sucks, guys never pressured me, ever. They just let me do my thing. So anyways, I feel like if you felt that way and I felt that way, a bunch of the other writers probably felt that way and everyone anywhere but point being, they could not put enough money into that site. There was no amount of money they could have put into that site would've saved it in my opinion,

Speaker 3 (00:10:47):

Or without naming any particular names. Think about the various different fads that have popped up in music over the years. There was the vampire trend around that same time, and there were a couple of labels that tried to have vampire bands that just went nowhere. And you can try as hard as you want to make it work. If people aren't into it, you can throw all the money you want at it and it's not going to take,

Speaker 2 (00:11:14):

It would not refute, but I'm going to do exactly what you said was gross earlier, but this is because they told me this. The label told me we're not going to really push your record because of this vampires band. It actually did happen. It wasn't something I just made up verbatim. This vampires band is going to be as big as Blackville Brides. And so your death metal band, sorry,

Speaker 4 (00:11:46):

I think that was actually in the press release,

Speaker 2 (00:11:48):

Is that it was going to be bigger or as big as Blackville Brides,

Speaker 1 (00:11:51):

Right? Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:11:55):

But yeah, exactly. You could not put enough money into that band to even get it arrested or something.

Speaker 3 (00:12:02):

Well, that's not what I said. What I said is it's gross to discredit somebody else's success. Not as much. I mean, this is a fact that if the label decides not to push your record, that hurts you. I mean, that's a fact. What I think is gross is to say, oh, well Behemoth is only big because their label invest so much marketing dollars in everything they do. If they were an indie band, they'd be nowhere. The label gets all the credit. That's what I think is gross.

Speaker 2 (00:12:34):

Got it. Yeah, I agree with you.

Speaker 4 (00:12:36):

I think the people that say things like that, they don't really understand what advertising does or not to get too far into it, but just because you are in a magazine doesn't mean someone's going to buy your concert ticket.

Speaker 3 (00:12:50):

It means shit.

Speaker 4 (00:12:51):

Yeah. What was it? I think Justice League, that movie was the most heavily advertised movie ever, and it didn't even recoup its budget, the production budget, forget about the advertising budget for it. I mean, that was on every bag of Doritos. It had its own cereals, anything you can think of. And I mean, I liked that movie, but you couldn't pay. You did. Yeah, whatever. But I'm a fan, boy,

Speaker 2 (00:13:18):

Wait, I'm just impressed. Someone like you, yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:13:21):

I am a definite DC fan boy, but you couldn't pay audiences to go and watch that movie. And again, this is not just a regular movie. This is one of the most heavily advertised movies to ever be in existence

Speaker 2 (00:13:35):

Following suicide squad, which isn't that also a similar situation where so much money, insane money went into it and just crickets.

Speaker 3 (00:13:47):

Well, anyhow, so we've made our point that money does not guarantee success. I mean, we could list a million examples of it and anybody that isn't convinced by now, you should just probably just smash your phone and go jump off a cliff right now.

Speaker 4 (00:14:03):

Cool podcast done. But I think we do need to address some things that money does. Buy money could get you good production quality. It could get you a good artist, good packaging. And Finn, you've gone over a lot of this in some of your previous videos that all this stuff is important. It's important to have good promo photos and have a good graphic designer making your advertising material. This is stuff that money could buy, but just because you land your picture in alternative press doesn't mean that you're going to take off. You're going to become a bench sevenfold.

Speaker 2 (00:14:43):

But there's a prerequisite though, I think, and it's kind of the same way as when people think that all they have to do is use Facebook's marketing platform, throw some money in, and suddenly everything's going to work. The prerequisite for all of this that you throw money into is that before you even get to that stage, what you have, what you're going to put money into is something that people want and it's worth putting money into. I think that's the real rub with the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (00:15:20):

If people didn't like it before, they're not going to like it when you start advertising it. I mean, advertising doesn't make people like something. It just makes them aware that it exists and maybe gets them to pay attention to you for a minute, but it doesn't change the nature of your product and advertising a product people don't like. I mean, look at the comments of any ad on Instagram for a shitty product, and really all they're doing is digging themselves deeper by continuing to advertise this thing that everyone's roasting in the comments. It's not magic advertisements and marketers are not magicians. We don't have the power of mind control to put money into this machine that magically makes you like something that's not how it works.

Speaker 2 (00:16:04):

It's very similar to the myth of great recording gear,

Speaker 3 (00:16:08):

Right?

Speaker 2 (00:16:09):

I mean, there is great recording gear that, I mean, it does legitimately sound great. If you put a great source into it,

Speaker 3 (00:16:19):

Plug me into Pru's rig at NRG and guess what? It's going to sound like shit.

Speaker 2 (00:16:27):

Yeah. If you use a U 87 through a Neve board on a really horrible singer, you're just going to have real high quality, horrible vocals. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:16:39):

I mean, it's the same thing. Recording money can't make good recordings, can't buy good recordings or gear, I should say, doesn't make good recordings and advertisements don't guarantee success. I mean, it's as simple as that. Again, I wish it was that easy. If it was that easy, we could all just max out our credit cards and we'd all be fucking Bob Rock, but that's not how it works.

Speaker 2 (00:17:02):

What do you think about these ideas that we hear a lot? So yeah, when people are trying to disparage somebody else's success or discredit it, I mean, this is society wide, but let's specifically talk about the music industry. You do hear a lot about this person had a rich parent, or like you said, with behemoth, not that I've ever heard that about Behemoth, but the label paid for it all. Have you ever seen anything even remotely close to true like that? I mean, have you ever seen a success story that's had any real longevity where you honestly could say, yeah, dad funded it.

Speaker 4 (00:17:55):

How would you even know where the money's coming from? I mean,

Speaker 2 (00:17:57):

Exactly.

Speaker 4 (00:17:58):

You know what we can say black fellow brides. Yeah. Andy's parents paid for their first music video. They gave him a $1,500 or something to make a music video and it took off on YouTube. I mean, if that counts, but it's not.

Speaker 3 (00:18:12):

Well, so did Rebecca Black's parents.

Speaker 4 (00:18:14):

Yeah, so I mean there's examples like that, but the beer sacks weren't funding the career of Black Phil Bride. They paid for their kid to have a music video when he was a teenager. It just happened to take off on YouTube because people cared about this kid and what he had to say.

Speaker 2 (00:18:34):

Well, this is exactly what I've noticed is whenever there is that situation of a family that does help out someone in a band, that's what it is. So like say Trivium for instance, that was a band. They came out super young, and Matt, he's dad did help them out at first, I think he bought some ads in Guitar World and threw in on the marketing budget actually for the label, and a lot of people gave them shit for it. But dude, it's been almost 15 years and that band keeps on grinding. They don't stop. Dad did not create that.

Speaker 3 (00:19:15):

I just don't see the point of even if it's true that let's just say that Matt's dad did buy their success, which I don't think he did, but let's say he did. So what does that have to do with you, as they said back in the twenties? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? You know what I mean? Why would you bother spending one second of your time worrying about the fact that someone else's success was potentially bought? That's just time. You're not spending investing in your own project that'll make you successful

Speaker 2 (00:19:52):

Because it's easier than taking a long hard look at why your own project's failing. I think

Speaker 4 (00:19:58):

Something that I see very frequently in just about any comment section, you have these musicians that they're asking for help, but they think that they just need someone to push them. They just need one thing to happen for them to become big, they need a manager, they need a booking agent, or if just they can get signed to a record label, they know they're going to be huge. And all this is based on the assumption that people just need to hear your band for you to become massive. And the three of us, we know that's not the case, and I would hope most of the listeners know that that's just not the case. If it was, then anytime you make a Facebook post or an Instagram post or whatever, you would see thousands of new streams. You would see this happening. So when people aren't getting these streams, when they don't see the traction, they're automatically assuming, oh, we're not spending enough money.

(00:20:58):

And it sucks to have to look at yourself and say, Hey, maybe my song just isn't resonating with an audience. Everyone wants to assume the world is their audience, but it's not. If we're talking about metal, there's a very specific type of person that listens to metal and even more specific type of person that's going to spend money on anything with metal music related. So instead of figuring out how to create a song or create a music video that's going to connect with that person, it's easy to say, oh, well, we didn't have the $2,000 it takes to put out a music video or whatever and say, trivia did this and that. To me, it seems like a very easy way out and a very easy excuse.

Speaker 2 (00:21:45):

But then the question is, if we do agree that spending money on certain things can help, obviously we wouldn't do it if it didn't help. What do you think the limits are? How far does it go? I mean, Finn, we spend thousands of dollars a month on Facebook ads. So I mean, they do work

Speaker 3 (00:22:07):

Well, not always true, sometimes

Speaker 2 (00:22:09):

True, not always.

Speaker 3 (00:22:09):

There's certain things that we have tried to sell that just people were not fucking buying it, and we threw money at it, and eventually we just were like, well, I guess people just don't want this. So we stopped spending money on it.

Speaker 2 (00:22:23):

And I will say that when that happened, we didn't blame the marketing. We sat back and asked ourselves what it is about the product or the offer that didn't resonate.

Speaker 3 (00:22:35):

Yeah. Well, let me unpack that a little bit because I think there's something to be learned from that. So first, let me just quickly deconstruct how this works for us, and then you can think about how it works for you. So think about what happens here. There's basically three pieces. The first thing is that, so let's say we're advertising the current nail the mix session. So somebody sees one of our ads and then they either decide to watch it or not, and then after they've watched it a little bit, they either decide to click or not. So there's two things that happen there. First, did we catch their attention? Second, did they click Once they click on the page, do they go to click the buy button or not? So there's three different things happening there, and we can judge the success or failure of each one of those if they didn't even watch the ad at all, well, maybe that means we need to make a better ad if they hit the landing page but they didn't buy, and if they didn't click, well, maybe we didn't use the right words, or if they get to the landing page, but they didn't click on it, they didn't click buy, well, maybe we didn't do a good enough job of convincing them on the landing page or maybe the product itself just isn't good.

(00:23:48):

Or once people buy it, do we get a bunch of complaints immediately afterwards? What the hell? This sucks. This isn't what I wanted, which has never happened to us, but I have seen it happen in other businesses. So my point is, if you are wondering why you aren't getting traction, try to figure out exactly where it's not working.

(00:24:09):

So in some cases, throwing money at it will help. So if for example, every single person that hit that landing page ended up buying our shit, then I would say, well, we should just throw money at this and try to get as many people as we possibly can to that landing page because everybody who sees it loves it. That's rarely the case, but if that was the case, on the other hand, so for a band, what happens when people hear you music? Or is it a case where everybody who hears this song flips out about it and tells you it's amazing and shares it with 50 of their friends? If that's what's happening, then I think you should consider spending money on getting it out there because clearly the problem, clearly you have a good product here, and what you need to do is just spread the word, which is what advertising is good at. But I think that's rarely the case. I think people, to your point, Dan, I think people oftentimes believe, well, if only more people knew about it, then it would be a hit. But I think usually it's not the case. I think usually the issue is that you do not yet have a product that people really love.

Speaker 2 (00:25:13):

Yeah, it's a hit. It'll be a hit before a hit, meaning

Speaker 3 (00:25:18):

Yes, you'll know

Speaker 2 (00:25:19):

A hit within its circle of friends. A hit on, I forget which rapper said that, until you can control your own block, how can you even think about going national? Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:25:33):

You'll know. And so I have a YouTube channel, which just recently has started to take off in the way that I was hoping it would.

Speaker 2 (00:25:40):

Congrats on it, by the way. It's doing great.

Speaker 3 (00:25:42):

Thank you. And so just for anybody who listening, so for a long time, my videos are getting a couple hundred views and I kept experimenting, kept trying this, this and this, this. And then recently I put out a couple that now have 50 and 40,000 views. So clearly I figured out what people wanted and I had tried spending money on ads before and stuff, and it just didn't do anything because the problem was my content. And then once I figured out what the right content was, they just organically took off. So I guess I'm just saying the same thing we've already said, but if you're not getting traction, instead of thinking that money is the answer 99 times out of a hundred, the answer is that you need to keep working on your product just like I did. And it was frustrating. It took me a year and it was embarrassing and frustrating to put shit out and have nobody give a fuck about it, but it took me a year, but I figured it out.

Speaker 2 (00:26:35):

I think that's the real problem, is that it is frustrating and embarrassing at first when you're testing this. And I got to say, there's quite a few people outside of our market who have noticed what we're doing, who are constantly ask me for advice on this kind of stuff, and they'll hit me with some super detailed questions about ad strategy and sequence and all this shit, and I look at their content and it's garbage. And so I'll be like, look, first of all, I'm not the one who does all of that, but I have some knowledge of it. But your questions are so far beyond what you need to be asking or worrying about right now. None of what you're asking, even you're not even a year away. You're maybe two years away from that even being something you should be thinking about right now. You need to worry about your content. Your content is horrible. Stop focusing on what exact sequence of events your ads need to go on, and

Speaker 3 (00:27:51):

What seasoning should I put on this turd? Do you think it should be nutmeg or cinnamon, or what do you think would be best on this dog turf?

Speaker 2 (00:27:58):

Dude, it is hard for people to get that because that embarrassment if we're talking about YouTube. Yeah, I can tell you, I know it sucks with a podcast. I've gotten comfortable with this, but the first year or two of doing this hearing my own voice made me want to hide.

Speaker 3 (00:28:19):

Oh, it's awful. Dan, I have a question for you. How often has it happened that a band has asked for your opinion on their music, whether it's one that you work with that's demoing stuff or just some random band, whatever? How often has somebody asked for your feedback and then they came back weeks or months later or something with something where they took your feedback into account and actually tried to make adjustments to their music based on what you said?

Speaker 2 (00:28:55):

The answer to that,

Speaker 4 (00:28:57):

That is very rare. I did have an interesting situation happened a few weeks ago, so I'll talk about that a little bit. I was part of a mentor group at a local musician's college, and one of the bands that I was mentoring was like this pretty good band, and they were a little short on their budget to complete their album, and they were trying to figure out what to do, but the songs were good. They were good competent musicians. They kind of figured out a way to highlight their best attributes on Instagram, which they were pretty good at, and they made a good music video that really shows off their strengths and minimizes a lot of things that they weren't excelling at, but it was a very good kind of package. So I just suggested, Hey, maybe instead of self releasing and worrying about that, maybe now is the time to start talking to labels, which is something I never would usually say this was just an outlier situation.

(00:30:12):

But they did, and they kind of worked more on putting everything together to where the music video was complete and pristine. The audio quality of the songs that they had finished was perfect and it was perfectly mastered, and they basically had this completed album to serve on to a record label, and they did. They got two hits from real top shelf record labels that are now they're talking to them, and hopefully these guys will come out to see their show when they start playing again later this year. So people that really want it and people that are there at that level to make the leap to the next level, they understand, they take this advice and they take it seriously, but with this particular band, it's a band that had already spent $10,000 more investing in themselves over the course of the five or six years that they have been a band.

(00:31:16):

They continually invested in themselves. And it wasn't just, oh, if I talk to this manager, he can break my band. Or if we just had this one other thing, it was none of that. It was a good package. I think with them, they just need a little bit more encouragement. So yeah, it was easy for them to take my advice and fine tune a couple things and jump right in, and it worked. But again, that's a very rare situation. Most bands that I would talk to that, and I'm not saying the ones that I work with on a management level, but if somebody were to hire me for a consultation and I was playing, Hey, your songs are cool, but they're not memorable. If I was a fan of this style of music, I wouldn't buy your album over another bigger band that you think you sound like. And people don't want to accept it, and it sucks. And I've had lots of people get very angry with me and fire off shitty emails to myself or my boss or whatever, but that's a good move. Look, man, it's the truth with these consultations,

Speaker 3 (00:32:32):

That's the break their career needed firing a shitty email off to you.

Speaker 2 (00:32:36):

So they'll send Blasco an email saying that Dan doesn't like our song or something.

Speaker 4 (00:32:43):

Yeah, who the fuck? Fuck do you guys think you are?

Speaker 2 (00:32:46):

Bet that goes over great.

Speaker 4 (00:32:47):

Yeah, I've had some people complain that I didn't give their music the respect that it deserved. And look, I'm not here to disrespect anyone, but if they're coming to me, I'm a professional manager, so if they're coming and sitting down with me, it's like they want advice on how to be a professional touring band or how to sell their merchandise online on a professional scale and make a living selling their band. And yeah, so sometimes you have to understand, I'm going to be real with you. If you're paying me, I'm not going to sugarcoat the opinion. And sometimes it is, your song isn't good or your merch design suck and look, that's just the nature of the business. It's better you hear it from me than you have metal sucks. Put you on blast to tens of thousands of readers a day.

Speaker 3 (00:33:38):

I'm just imagining behind the music with this band, the segment where they're asking, what was your big breakthrough? And they're going, well, one day we went by a mercenary and we played our demo for Dan and Blasco and they gave us some pretty harsh feedback. So the first thing we did when we got back to our studio was write a furious email telling Dan and Blasco to shove it up their asses, and that was the day everything changed for us. As soon as I hit send on that shitty email, then suddenly it was like the floodgates opened and just the world was our oyster.

Speaker 4 (00:34:16):

You know what though? I just want to add one thing really quickly. My opinion does not matter.

Speaker 3 (00:34:25):

Yeah, they don't have to take your opinion seriously. You might be wrong.

Speaker 4 (00:34:29):

Exactly, and you, I've been wrong plenty of times. No one's opinion matters unless it's the music buyer, unless it's your fan, their opinion matters. Mine I can work with whatever is put in front of me. And I was reading this interesting story just a few days ago, which is why I'm bringing it up, that kiss, the first time they auditioned for Epic Records, they were shot down, which is pretty interesting considering what Kiss ended up becoming. So a music industry professional, their opinion on your music isn't always the end all be all.

Speaker 2 (00:35:11):

Well, my point is, I guess Monty Connor's shot down corn.

Speaker 4 (00:35:14):

Wow, really?

Speaker 3 (00:35:15):

Well, my point I guess is that I think there's a fundamental difference between rejecting somebody's opinion because your butt hurt and defensive and your ego is bruised and rejecting their opinion because you thought about it, you considered it and you don't agree with it.

Speaker 2 (00:35:32):

Yeah, that's a huge difference. I find that when I have to give people advice or a mixed crit when people disagree and get furious with me, it's usually not the latter. It's usually not because they gave it some very heartfelt thought and came to the conclusion that the advice is just wrong for them. Usually it's just a fit of emotion. But I think that if I'm paying somebody, that is something I would like to buy an honest opinion from someone I respect. I feel like that that is something money can buy you, and that's a very valuable thing actually, that money can buy you, and that's something that can actually help you in your career a lot. In many ways, that's one of the best things you could do if you're looking to spend some money on advancing yourselves is pay for the opinion of someone. I agree. Individual opinions on music don't always matter because people get things wrong, but to get some honest introspection and feedback and analysis from a serious heavy hitter or someone who's far along that's worth paying for, and that actually can help you advance.

Speaker 3 (00:36:59):

That's where I was headed with it, is I think there's a resource out there that people are really just not taking advantage of, which is exactly what you just said. Go find people whose work you respect and pay them for their advice. And then as we said, you can choose to take that advice or not, but I bet if you do that enough times, then there will be some extremely clear patterns and it will be, I think it'd be pretty clear what advice you should take.

Speaker 2 (00:37:30):

I actually used to pay Blasco for his advice back, and he did the consultation thing, which he stopped doing because bands are horrible customers for that sort of thing. But he gave me great advice and there's no way that back then he would've sat there and talked to me for an hour or an hour and a half on what my band needs to do to get its shit together.

Speaker 3 (00:37:55):

Why would he do that

Speaker 2 (00:37:57):

For free? Exactly. No reason.

Speaker 3 (00:37:59):

Just to use an example again for myself is when my YouTube channel started to work is when, so we all went to Joey's wedding a month ago or whatever it was, and Fluff was there. Ryan Bruce, who as anybody listening to this, probably knows, is a very successful YouTuber. I asked him for his suggestions. I did exactly what he said, and that is when the switch flipped.

Speaker 2 (00:38:26):

Funny how that works. I used to have a word for, and I forget, I don't have the word anymore, but this was actually what made me start charging for advice long before URM or anything. This was possibly even before my band was signed, but even before my band was signed, I was pretty well known in my area because I recorded lots of bands in the area. So there were a few guys who would hit me up on a OL messenger and be like, alright, this amp or this amp or this or this, or I'm having trouble with this, what do I do? I'd sit there and help them, and then 99 out of a hundred times, they do the exact opposite. You sit there and take, I'd spend two hours working through a problem with them and they would do the exact opposite. It felt almost like spite me or something. It was such a predictable thing, and that's why I started charging for it, but I forgot what the word is for that, but it's a very common thing. I think that people, when they're not paying for advice, they won't take it as seriously and they're much more likely to just take it and not run with it, and then Doley have ended up wasting the other person's time.

Speaker 3 (00:39:51):

Well, my word for those people are ask assholes.

Speaker 2 (00:39:54):

Yes. Okay. That's a good one. That's a good one. Yes. Dan, do you do any consulting for bands, like anything like that outside of your management?

Speaker 4 (00:40:05):

I mean, yeah, was in, I just wrapped up my second semester as a mentor at a musician's college, and over there I mainly worked with musicians, but typically probably since 2013 or so, I kind of limited how much consulting I do to bands. I still do consultation, but I work with up and coming managers and marketers just for my own sanity. I've noticed that somebody that wants to be a manager is more willing to pay for their education and work towards advancement. Then a band who's probably struggling and doesn't really have that much money, and maybe that's a shitty thing to say, but if I'm putting up my time and helping someone along, I would want to be compensated for it. So that's the switch I made. I do still work with bands on occasion. It hasn't been as fulfilling of an experience for me as it is working with somebody that wants to become a manager, wants to get some sort of job within the music industry.

Speaker 2 (00:41:20):

Got it. I want to loop back to something we were talking about before because I think that we didn't totally finish it out, and I do think it's important. I think people get confused about this a lot, and I know that even sometimes I get confused about it. So the idea that when do you know to put money into something you're advertising based on the following or situation or thought process, maybe I need to put some more money into this because it's not being seen enough. If it was seen more, I'm confident that it would pick up. It just needs more awareness and organic reach sucks. So why don't I put more money into this thing that's not picking up. However, the wisdom, and I know that this is true, is if something's not picking up, that's the kind of stuff you drop. You put the money into the stuff that already has a natural life of its own, but there becomes a chicken or the egg kind of thing with it. What I'm saying, so where is the line with that? Where do you decide when something is actually just dead in the water or what is something that really just does need a little bit of a push?

Speaker 4 (00:42:49):

Well, I think if you're talking about something like let's say a YouTube video, if you organically got 2000 views and you have 500 thumbs up, then you're onto something. In my opinion, I would say, okay, maybe it's time to throw some money at it, because if 25% of the listeners are engaged and they're giving you a thumbs up, there could be something there and you have to look at the numbers.

Speaker 2 (00:43:14):

So even if it's 200 views and 50 thumbs up,

Speaker 4 (00:43:17):

I think 200 is too low. But once you start getting into thousands, you can start playing around with it. I mean, there's really no one right answer. Once it starts getting into the thousands of views and you are pulling 25 to 50% thumbs up and positive comments and positive reaction, and you sign into your analytics and you're seeing that you're getting hundreds of shares and people really like it and they like it enough to tell their friends and family about it, then you're onto something. Then there's some sort of momentum, something to tell you that now's the time to put money behind it because it could be a situation where more people need to hear it, but if you're pulling 2000 views and you have two thumbs up and it's kind of a ghost town, it's not that Not enough people have heard it, it's just they don't care.

Speaker 2 (00:44:09):

Yeah, I agree with that. What do you think, Finn?

Speaker 3 (00:44:12):

Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I think it's just some of you guys will know the term product market fit, which basically means does the market like the product that you are putting out there? And to me, the time to pull the trigger on marketing spend is when you believe that you have product market fit. And there's, as Dan said, there's no real hard and fast rule to know when you have that, but I think if you are honest with yourself, you will know when you have it and when you don't, if you put out a new song or a new video or whatever, and the reaction is basically more than you expected, you're like, wow, this is going over surprisingly well. I'd say that's the time to potentially invest in it, but if the reaction is kind of lukewarm, then I wouldn't throw your money away. And I think Dan said something, which is a really good way of thinking about product market fit, which a lot of people in the startup world say is, do people like it enough to tell their friends about it? So if you see people tagging their friends in the comments or sharing it, whatever, on whatever social network, that's a sign that people like it so much, they're telling other people about it. Maybe you pour some fuel on the fire again, not for sure, but consider it. Maybe that's time.

Speaker 2 (00:45:32):

Okay. Then maybe you can help me unpack this situation. Maybe it's just an oddball or maybe I'm not seeing how it fits or whatever, but help me here. So nail the mix. Definitely product market fit. It was obvious from the moment that we did that. It was just an instantaneous rush, and some months are obviously better than others three years in, but I mean that has product market fit, and it was obvious, there was no question about it. However, we did this podcast for nine months leading up to that. The podcast never became a viral hit or anything like that. It's not like the Tim Ferris podcast. It will never be because of the niche that it's in.

Speaker 3 (00:46:26):

Well, the standard isn't viral hit. It's just like, is the pop kind of surprisingly good given wherever you're at? So for Tim Ferriss, if he gets 50,000 downloads of a podcast, that's a flop.

Speaker 2 (00:46:39):

Yeah. Well, I guess what I'm getting at is that the podcast was always a very slow trickle, especially at first, but it seemed very important to keep pushing and obviously it was the right decision to keep pushing. It led to now the mix, and once now the mix was there, there was this established base of supporters who immediately jumped on it that the podcast had formed. But if you look at the podcast objectively in terms of views or whatever downloads back then it was very, very low. It could almost be so low that if we were hindsight 2020, if we could be looking at that now at that same scenario and be like, let's drop it. So where does that fit in? Or do you think it's an anomaly, or do you think that it actually was showing promise in its own way? Well,

Speaker 3 (00:47:46):

I don't ever remember what the numbers were like, so it's hard for me to say, but was it a hundred for, was there zero growth or was it slow growth? And do you think that spending money, do you think spending money on it would made a dramatic difference?

Speaker 2 (00:48:04):

It made no difference when we did,

Speaker 3 (00:48:06):

So there you go.

Speaker 2 (00:48:08):

The growth was kind of slow and steady. We would add from month one, we added maybe 80 to a hundred subscribers every month, very slow and putting money into it or doing deals, any of that stuff, any of those marketing tricks, none of it really worked. The only thing that really worked was putting out more episodes and bringing on guests, people cared about and just not stopping. And then it all changed with nail the mix, but, but the advertising didn't work.

Speaker 3 (00:48:45):

Yep. Well, Dan, how often have you seen in your career, either a band or a release that seems lukewarm out of the gate, but then to everybody's surprise picked up months or years later? I mean, I know it happens. How often do you see that happen?

Speaker 4 (00:49:05):

I don't think I've ever actually seen that happen. I know the closest I could think of was probably the first asking Alexandria album, standup and Scream, I think first week, this was around 2009, 2010, and sold like 2,500 albums, but they were a brand new band. I don't think they had even toured at that point yet. If they did, it was only one tour, and it slowly started growing to where we were doing 1000 units a week, 5,000 units a week. It's like big leaps. And so that happened as the band was touring and making the rounds and we were putting out music videos. But I think that's a very rare occurrence. You typically kind of know whether you have a hit on your hands. And we knew with Asking Alexandria back when I was at the record label, we knew that asking was going to be big. That was a situation where this band just needed to go out and tour more and be heard, because when we put out a compilation, everyone was talking about their track.

Speaker 3 (00:50:13):

So that's exactly what I'm talking about. It's like you go, oh, there's something here.

Speaker 4 (00:50:17):

Yeah, so I mean, you have it figured out, but there's been bands that have taken us by Surprise too, or Taken Me By Surprise. I think that band Vain put out one of the best albums this year, and at least for me kind of came out of nowhere. And the first time I heard it, it was like, this is great. And I mean, I think they did a huge number first week and really built up a lot of traction for themselves. I don't think somebody was expecting an unknown or not as popular band to be putting up those kind of numbers in their first week. I think it was like 8,000, 9,000 sales. Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:50:58):

That's fantastic for a hardcore band.

Speaker 4 (00:51:00):

Yeah, so I mean, it's rare, but it happens. But I feel like if I was more connected with that scene, I'm sure people knew that this band was going to be awesome and

Speaker 3 (00:51:12):

They were hyped and the hate five, six kind of scene,

Speaker 4 (00:51:17):

The people that were involved probably knew that they had hit on their hands.

Speaker 2 (00:51:21):

I will say this about the podcast is even if it was small, it was loved from day one. So there was that, which I guess like you're saying with asking Alexandria, you just knew even if the sales weren't there immediately, you knew because there was enough positive reaction from the people who had heard it.

Speaker 3 (00:51:47):

The context that we're talking about here is money and advertising and buying success or accelerating growth with money. And there are times in which, so in the podcast, what I would say is don't spend money on it because especially if you try it and it doesn't seem to make a big difference, but that doesn't mean you should give up either. Oftentimes the right answer is don't spend money on it, on promoting it, but keep doing it. You know what I mean? It's not like something is either worth spending money on or garbage. It's not one or the other. There's lots of times where the answer is just like with asking Alexander, just keep going out on the road and it's going to build or just keep making podcasts. It's going to build, but don't think that money is necessarily the answer.

Speaker 4 (00:52:36):

Well, actually, I think to what you just said, over time you refine your product with a podcast, you learn things to do, you figure out what to do differently, your product changes over time, and it could just be something as simple as you need to find the right groove. You need to find where you're comfortable and where you can do your best. So it's no different for a band or a YouTuber or a professional gamer or whatever that's trying to build a Twitch channel. You just need to find a lot of times where you fit in and what works for you. And it could be that's all that's needed to make your product something awesome that people are interested in.

Speaker 2 (00:53:22):

Yeah, I mean much like Finn's YouTube.

Speaker 4 (00:53:23):

Yeah, exactly. When's YouTube, I don't want to be so negative as to say, oh, if it doesn't take off immediately, then you should scrap it. You shouldn't just refine your product, man. It takes time. How many people are recording a song and get it right on the first take? It's a process With anything creative, you're going to have a million different revisions, and it takes time, man. The days of a band breaking overnight are, I feel like they're dones in the past,

Speaker 2 (00:53:59):

And also that's actually more in line with the traditional music industry. I think that back in the day, like Bruce Springsteen Day or whatever, bands usually took a few records before they had a hit they were allowed to develop. That happened a lot. If you look at lots of the bands from older years that are mega bands like Pink Floyd, Beatles, Springsteen, mega, mega, mega bands, sometimes they have two or three albums or more. Before anything even happened, albums of crap. I do think there's some merit and just keeping on going. I got some questions here from, here's an interesting one from Aaron Austin, is it worth to pay for LinkedIn or pay for sites like mandy.com or Production Hub when looking for jobs and or projects?

Speaker 4 (00:55:00):

I mean, I think with LinkedIn, doesn't it put your resume to the top, but I don't know. Probably not.

Speaker 3 (00:55:06):

Yeah, I mean it depends on the specifics of how your industry works. Do people look for your type of, I mean, in the example of producers, do people look for producers on LinkedIn? I don't think they do.

Speaker 2 (00:55:23):

I don't think

Speaker 3 (00:55:23):

Do, do people, I don't know about these other sites. What were the other ones they mentioned?

Speaker 2 (00:55:28):

Mandy.com and Production Hub. Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:55:30):

Production Hub maybe. I don't know. That sounds like it might be LinkedIn for producers or something. So I guess my point is the question to ask yourself with any of these things is what specifically do I think will happen when I spend money on this? As we've said a million times, money doesn't just magically turn into the results you want. What specifically do I think is going to happen? Are the kind of people I want to work with looking on production hub for people like me? If so, if I spend 50 bucks to get my name to the top of the list, will that help me? Sometimes the answer is obvious, sometimes it's not. But I mean, I think probably pretty simple if you're listening to this. I've never heard anybody talk about Production Hub before In Al. If you're not familiar with it, I would say it's probably not relevant. And a lot of time, I think people want to, I mean, we see this all the time when people ask about Facebook ads for their studios, lots of times people think about advertising because they don't have any other ideas, and it's just not usually the answer.

Speaker 2 (00:56:41):

That actually seems like the worst reason to pay for advertisement is if you can't figure out how to get things going without it.

Speaker 3 (00:56:49):

I mean, in creative fields such as producing music, I think 99% of the time things happen through word of mouth or networking. As I've said before, have you ever heard a producer when you're doing a podcast with him, you're like, well, so machine, what was your first big break? Well, I did Google ads and then Chris Adler was Googling for recording studios and he found my ad, and then the rest is all downhill. That's not how it works. It's always like, well, I did this record and people really liked it, and then I met so-and-so at this show, and one thing led to another. That's the way it works. We are in the professional services industry, not selling toothbrushes. This is not product marketing. So I mean, that's my opinion is I think it's very rarely going to help you to spend money. In fact, a lot of times it might even hurt you because it looks weird and desperate and corny, and it makes it seem like you're doing things differently than everybody else is doing things in a bad way. It makes it seem like you don't get how business is done, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (00:57:59):

The only time that I've really heard of it working using one of those sites for your studio or whatever is for odds and ends bookings. Some guys will get on some of those sites just to fill in a few dead spots in their calendar.

Speaker 3 (00:58:22):

Some local author wants to do the audio book version of their self-published book for 300 bucks,

Speaker 2 (00:58:27):

And

Speaker 3 (00:58:28):

If that's what you want to do, that's nothing wrong with that. But is that the kind of work, so you just think about, if I spend money on this and it works, what is going to happen? Am I going to get calls from local rappers? If you want to work with local rappers, then great, but that's probably not what you want to do.

Speaker 2 (00:58:47):

Yeah. Or do you want to record audio books all day long? But that's exactly right. That is the kind of work you get and it's, I've never met a single person who says that it's that steady. They always say that it's like 5% of their year or something. So, alright, here's one from James Kirsch. I've got interesting opinion on this, but I want to hear Dan's opinion first. James Kirsch says, I'd like to hear their take on ions for tours, please.

Speaker 4 (00:59:17):

Well, I guess there's a lot that goes into making this decision. I think it really depends on where your band is and what your expectations are For this, you would really need to assess why this liner is taking on a buy on. Is it because they know they're going to sell out every single venue and they just want to add extra money and nothing wrong with that? Or is it because the tour is doing so poorly that they're taking rate reductions and they're not able to stay on the road without this extra money? So you need to figure that out for yourself and then also keep in mind that you're never going to recoup that money. I see this thrown out a lot online ideas for how buy on bands can try to recoup that cost. It's not going happen. If you can sell 10, $20,000 worth of merchandise on the road, you wouldn't be a buy on band.

(01:00:12):

You would, you'd be headlining, you know what I mean? Or you would at least be getting that tour offer normally without paying to be there. But yeah, there's certain instances where it does make sense. If I'm a band from Australia and I'm doing well in Australia, but it's my first time in the United States and I just put out a record out here that's seemingly that's getting some traction on Spotify or YouTube, then yeah, it could make sense to throw some dough at playing with a bigger band within that genre, assuming the shows are going to be sold out and the package makes sense that if I a ion band, I would want to be maybe first of three, not first of six. There's a lot that goes into it. So the short answer is yes, sometimes it makes sense, but it's definitely not what most bands think is it's not just write a check and then you're going to be a rockstar. Writing that check to buy onto a tour is the very first step and you're probably going to be spending double triple that because you need to figure out ways to get momentum on that tour. And things like publicists are not cheap.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):

I would just remind people too is that you can't buy the other band's fans, so you can buy onto the tour, but you're definitely not going to buy their fans. And beware of the big headliner that takes no real direct support and five unsigned bands with ions. Just beware of that situation.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):

I know nothing about this, but I'm curious about it. Is there a level at which bands no longer do ions? Is that thing that only baby bands do or are there bigger legit bands that also do it?

Speaker 4 (01:02:12):

That's really just baby bands. I mean, the only time it makes sense for a more established act is if it's international. Got it. Because there's something there, and I mean, I dunno, I've never managed a Buyon band, but I've had other bands buy on to my Acts tour and it's usually been an international act that had some hype in another country and some success and it was their first time over in the United States. So things like that, so you can't just say one way or another, but yeah, I think most bands that are trying to tour in the United States, once you're able to pull in a hundred people on your own or so you shouldn't be buying on tours, you should be getting those tour offers or you should be figuring out ways to book your own tour.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):

I guess in the case of that international band that's doing well in, I don't know, Europe or whatever, and they want to get traction here, why wouldn't they be getting those offers through a booking agent? That's a good question. I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm genuinely curious.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):

No, I've gotten buy on offers through a booking agent.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):

No, I mean why, if the band is doing really well in Europe, why wouldn't a booking agent work with them to get them actual,

Speaker 4 (01:03:30):

They may just not have a history in the United States or they could be aiming wanting to take a bigger tour than they would normally be qualified for, but again, these are rare scenarios. The most common scenario is there's some local band or regional band that wants to tour with their favorite band from their hyped label and they're going to pay 20 grand to do it and it's not going to go anywhere. The band on that international level booking agents probably talk and there's like a I'll scratch your back, you scratch my back kind of deal with the bands helping each other out. There's things going on, but again, these are such rare occurrences. The overwhelming, vast majority of the time, it's a band that just can't get their own show and so they think they only, if they just buy onto this whatever tour that all this band's fans are going to love them, which is never the case.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):

Is there any stigma attached to that? If you're a buy on band, does that make people respect you any less or do people not care or how does that work?

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):

Definitely care.

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):

I think people respect you way less. Promoters aren't going to take you seriously. I feel like in 2018 with such great access to the internet and information fans can figure out that you're paying to be there. If it's a band that they've never heard of that has no streams, no relevant traction online anywhere and yet they're opening for this big band playing to a thousand people a night, they can figure out that you paid to be there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):

The bands will treat you differently too. If you're on a package and you're the Buyon band, they will say things like, who are the real bands on? If they're talking about the package like tour manager to tour manager, they'll talk about the real bands and then the buy on bands.

Speaker 4 (01:05:27):

Yeah, I mean it's rough. I mean I understand sometimes you need to do it and yeah, if I was a big headliner and I knew I was selling at the shows and I didn't need some support for ticket sales because I can do it on my own. Yeah, I see nothing wrong with taking on a buy on band and helping them out, but yes, you're going to be treated differently and it's going to be much more difficult for you to cross over from being a buy on band to a band that gets tore offers and that's something a lot of people just don't take into account when writing these checks is how are you going to cross that threshold and no longer do this? Well, it is very difficult and there's bands with bottomless budgets that buy onto every tour and years later they still have to buy onto tours because the promoters and booking agents don't see them as a real drunk.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):

You know what the hard thing is? I've had good and bad experiences. My band did buy onto some tours and other tours we were offered some tours we bought onto Dragon Force and Cynic, which was right around when an album came out. It was only $3,000. It was a very small buy-on and it was a great tour and everyone treated us great. I don't even know why they needed the $3,000, but that was the price and it went great for everybody. It was a great decision, but there's been other tours where it's like you put pay way more and get treated like shit and you're still playing 15 minutes after doors and it's a pointless investment. And then the problem is one of the reasons that I think it's hard to switch over for a band mentally, it's a tough move. If you're buying on, you're going to get used, you're going to get spoiled by playing with bigger bands, bigger venues, and then when you get your own tour offers, you might get direct support for if you're buying on for bands to play it to 1,015 hundred people, you might get a direct support offer than non buy on for a tour that's going to do 400 or 500 a night, and it's a hard transition for bands to sometimes make.

(01:07:41):

I think there's that too. They get spoiled. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):

Look, it's tough. It's always going to be some weirdness around the idea of ions and it depends on where the band is at. I'm really surprised to hear about your a's experience with Dragon Force and Cynic

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):

That it was good or that it was that low, that

Speaker 4 (01:08:00):

It was that low. I mean, right now, right now, if some name bands are charging 20, $30,000 to be first of six and they're only bringing in 200 ticket sales total for the night,

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):

We have paid more. We've paid 15 grand once.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):

Tell me what you think about this. This is my reaction, and tell me if I'm stupid. Seems to me that for $20,000 you could make several videos that would, if you did a good job of them, would probably do more for your band than that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:36):

Yeah, dude, totally. That's a without question and I don't want to keep talking shit about these ion bands because again, some bands do it very well and they have a great strategy and they're able to jump from, yeah, we did two ions, but now we're doing real tours. So there's always exceptions, but a lot of these people just want to write on their Instagram page, share the stage with so-and-so band and something very common. And it goes back to that mentality of, oh, if only people heard my band, then we would be big. We would be just as big as the bands that I look up to. It's never the case. A lot of it's wishful thinking with tour ions. It's such a weird gray area that unless you know exactly what you're doing and you have a record label that's guiding you along and foot in the bill for it, it's almost never a good idea,

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):

Dan. It's sort of like I told the cops when they caught me outside her house, I said, no, you don't understand. As soon as Demi Lovato meets me, we're going to hit it off. That's a great way to put it. So please just let me hang out here in the bushes for a couple more hours and you'll see that I was right all along.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):

Three examples just to show how different it can all be and how you got to be smart. Went in all overseas, went overseas once with Unearth in 2007, no buy on great experience. We grew from it. It was expensive of course, but no buy on. We paid 15 grand once to buy on a chimera tour overseas. Lost our ass. It was stupid. It was just a bad thing and there was no way to know that. We figured if it was cool with Unearth, it would've been cool with Camer two years later. No, it was a big mistake. There was this one tour, we were offered Dimi Borg gear and a on Marth, but it was 25 grand and we got rejected for the money and that one I wish we would've done.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):

So wait, you tried to buy on and they said no,

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):

No, the label wouldn't. The label didn't believe in

Speaker 4 (01:10:57):

What year was this?

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):

This was 2007.

Speaker 4 (01:11:00):

We should note that even as not too long ago as 2007, the music industry was a totally different world. There was a major festival that actually a lot of them that, I can't disclose the name, but every side stage was a buy-on and we're talking about huge national acts buying onto these side stages for six figures almost, but the record labels knew that they would recoup. This was back when people were buying albums. It certainly changed a lot now that you don't have these record labels financing everything and the idea of a buyon has very much shifted.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):

So this tour was like, look, we know how valuable it is to be on this tour. You're going to need to pay us. And the record labels were like, ah, okay, fine.

Speaker 4 (01:11:48):

Yeah. But yes, exactly, but the bands that they were cranking out were becoming gold selling artists.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):

It worked for everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:11:56):

Yes, but this was back when people were still buying albums even 11 years ago, the music industry was totally different. Five years ago the music industry was totally different. So what used to work doesn't always work now, and if you were to say five years ago we're only going to release a YouTube exclusive album, you would've gotten laughed out of the room, but now that's the move.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):

But you can almost see how it could make sense to put that kind of money into doing a European tour with those two bands in that time period.

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):

It doesn't seem like a totally stupid thing, whereas fast forward to now, the other example I was giving, if you have a headliner that's maybe has a name but not a huge draw, and there's six local bands footing their tour bill, that's not so cool, and I see that all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):

I think we've said what needs to be said about tour ions. Again, for the people listening, you just need to take everything into account and what it is now isn't the same as what it was in 2007. I mean, I would think in your specific example, going international with KY and what, two thousand six thousand seven, that's pretty awesome. If that was an early attempt at international touring, it makes sense. Not everything's going to land perfectly, but in this day and age, I think there's better options.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):

Yes. Alright, here's a question from James Kirsch, which is Spotify playlists, can spots be bought Paola style, and is it work?

Speaker 4 (01:13:44):

As far as I know, you cannot buy spots. It's against their terms of service or something along those lines. Who knows if behind the scenes deals are happening? There's a lot of independent curators and there's curators that work for record labels and curators that work for Spotify. And then I think there's even algorithms. I mean, is it possible? Sure. Do I think it happens that often? I can't say, I don't know. I would guess probably not.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):

There's no official above board way of doing it.

Speaker 4 (01:14:18):

Yeah, I mean I think I've seen some people just tweet at Spotify or tweet at popular curators. There's songs. I mean, I don't know. I wish I had a better answer. I don't know how my band's songs end up on a lot of playlists that it's possible there's an algorithm that tells these curators that this song's getting traction, it fits in with this playlist or whatever. Sometimes we know the person, we can hit them up, but other times it's just playlists that I didn't even know existed. But on my end, we've never written a check to anyone at Spotify to play our song.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):

Got it. Alright. Here's one from John Mac sale, and this is a good one. I'll explain why I do think that you should pay for this stuff. Events like Nam, a ES, even URM summit. Why do these types of events even matter when people are of Facebook pager? Instagram hashtag away, and just for listeners, the investment here with these is a ticket in some cases, but definitely airfare, hotel, even an event like NAM where you don't buy the ticket, it is expensive to go to. So he is wondering why does it even matter when you can just hashtag somebody?

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):

I mean though, if I was talking to somebody regarding business dealings, I wouldn't message them or I mean maybe I wouldn't message them, but I wouldn't leave them a comment or something. Like if I'm going to Nam, it's because I'm talking to sponsors, people that pay me or my bands to do a thing or because I'm trying to book some business there or we're demoing a product, whatever, there's certain things that just need to be done or in a more formal setting, I have something like 2000 people on Facebook, but that doesn't mean that anybody can just hit me up to listen to their song or what have you, and I wouldn't do that to somebody else. I think NAM is a great situation for someone like myself to meet the people that we email with all the time. And I don't know about the other two, but I think these scenarios are worth paying for because you need the face-to-face interaction. It's not like Nam specifically is not open to the general public. You're meeting with people within your industry that are relevant to your interests, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):

I think it's important to say that with these, you're not buying or attempting to buy relationships, which you can't do. All you're doing is buying yourself the access to an event or the plane ticket to get there or whatnot. You're not trying to pay for a friendship or something like that or pay to make your band bigger in a way that you can't and nothing beats face-to-face in my opinion. There's a reason for why in the real business world people still fly to meetings.

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):

There's nothing quite like a face-to-face meeting or introduction or anything. It's very easy to ignore a message or a comment. It's a little bit more difficult when they're standing a foot away from you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):

So definitely worth investing in

Speaker 4 (01:17:50):

My

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):

Opinion. Yes,

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):

I know you agree, Finn.

Speaker 3 (01:17:52):

I do. I mean, well, there's a couple of things I would poke at. There is one, as Dan said, online relationships and IRL relationships work together. They reinforce each other. So if you meet somebody at nam, then you follow them on social media, you exchange contact information and you grow that relationship online. Or if you meet somebody online, then you say, Hey, are you going to be at nam? Let's meet up. And either way, as Dan said, the fact that you've met that person face-to-face makes that relationship so much stronger than a digital relationship ever will be. That's just the way human beings are wired. Just to be really specific about NAM in particular or the URM summit tickets are still available, anything like that where there's a barrier to entry, whether that's financial or just the pain in the ass of getting there, whatever, like the VIP section or award show or something that might be free, but you still got to find a way. Well, okay, so all the private shows at nam, so for anybody who doesn't know, there's a number of shows that happen around NAM that are all free, but you got to find a way to get a ticket and they go fast.

(01:19:09):

If you have jumped through whatever hoops to put yourself there, that says something about you. You're in the same club as the other people who are there and that doesn't guarantee anything for you. But I don't know if you're at the same party as fill in the blank people that you admire, what do you think? And somebody sees you there, what do you think that does for their perception of you? Definitely doesn't hurt it. So to me it's just like all these things are just like people looking for shortcuts and why would you not do it? What do you think? Do you think it helps to be at these industry events or do you think it hurts you? I think it helps you. I mean, it's just people want to hear what people want to hear is no, you don't have to go to these.

(01:19:52):

You can do everything from behind the computer. Just pay, put money into the Facebook machine and success will come out the other end, but that's not how it works. So get off your ass and go to these events and get out of your shell and go meet people. I don't think, Dan, maybe you're different, but I don't think anybody on this podcast necessarily loves being around crowds of people and talking and shaking hands for 15 hours straight. But we do it because without exception, it's always worth it. Even if though it's tiring and exhausting and frustrating and annoying, it's worth it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):

I just learned it again yesterday when I went to this Facebook event and I had that same dread I always do when going into a crowd of strangers, but as always so worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:39):

Nobody likes going to NAM after the first one,

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):

And if they do, they probably have a Coke problem.

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):

So nobody likes doing it, but everybody does it anyway. So what does that tell you?

Speaker 4 (01:20:52):

Actually, I've got a question for you guys. Was this question in regards to networking at these events or just attending in general?

Speaker 2 (01:20:59):

I mean, aren't they one in the same kind of Well, they are for me,

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):

No, don't get an AM for any reason other than networking, I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:21:06):

Well, if we're talking about these three specific examples in terms of networking, they're great, but there's lots of other networking opportunities that totally sucked.

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):

Okay. I wanted to get into that because of that post you made about networking events since we're on this topic. But first, let me just say real quick that my career has grown, I guess immeasurably from good networking and there was, I don't always go to every Nam I go maybe every other year, but there was a time period where I went every single fucking year and I'd go to Golden gods whenever I possibly could and every single industry event I could go to, I would go because is my survival at that point, I felt depended on keeping those relationships going or building new ones. I mean, I still think it's really, really important, but I also have a super busy schedule, so I can't do it like I used to, but minimum of every two years I'm going to go to these and I think it's fucking crucial. However, I do remember you made a post about networking events being total bullshit, and so I want to, let's talk about that. What did you mean?

Speaker 4 (01:22:41):

So again, we need to draw a distinction between the events you are going to where music industry events, where there's people there that can actually help you move your career along. Yes. Myself also, when I was starting out, I would go to most of the parties, all of the shows. I have still never missed a NAM or a Warp tour kickoff party or anything like that, but that's because I knew that there was people that I do business with that would be there. And yes, I understand that they need to see my face and I need to keep those relationships going because if you're out of sight, you're out of mind. But again, this is when I'm starting out even a little bit more into present day, but these are not the networking events that I'm talking about. Those happen every once in a while and when there's a golden gods happening that yeah, you should probably go, or a Revolver Awards or AP awards, it is a good idea to attend if you can. But I get emails all the time for the music industry happy hour with a bunch of people who I don't know that their jobs and what they do, it's totally irrelevant or it's an opportunity for, they pitch as an opportunity for me to meet local musicians and things like that. And I'm not putting,

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):

Oh, yay, what a treat. Sounds

Speaker 4 (01:24:11):

Fun. Yeah, it's like I'm not putting it down, but it's lame and I know that, yeah, sure, I get the free invite, but these musicians that are going to meet trying to meet me or other managers or book agents or whatever, they're paying to be there and they're not going to get anything out of it. No manager booking agent I know is going to pick up a band based off of meeting them in a bar that they paid to be there for. That's not how this business happens, or at least not on any sort of legitimate professional level with people that you would want to be working with.

(01:24:48):

So yeah, I guess I should have been more clear in my post that there is a distinction, but most of these events where people are paying and it promises you success and all these things are going to happen, it isn't true, man. Basically they're stealing your money and the promoter of it may have some connections or whatever, but just because they're promising that certain industry people are going to be there that can change your life, that doesn't mean that they're going to be there. Or even if they are, they're probably not going to change your life. Man, I hate sounding so negative on this podcast, but there's, there's so much clutter and fluff out in the music industry world, and this is just one of many examples of things out there to take advantage of up and coming bands that just don't know any better, and again, this all goes back to them thinking, oh, if I just meet the right person, everything will happen for me,

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):

Which is true or could be true with you, but it probably won't happen at this event,

Speaker 4 (01:25:48):

And I just want to put it out there. Bands listening. When you have an awesome product, we will find you. There's a Los Angeles band that I am heavily courting and going after and bugging all the time. They weren't the ones that pitched me. A friend told me about them and from watching them play a local show and it's been on ever since, and that's how a business happens. Somebody tells you about a band, you check 'em out and you're blown away by it. It wasn't them paying to meet me at a brunch.

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):

Yeah, there was this conference in Atlanta, which really used to bug me. I don't think it goes on anymore. It was called the Atlantis Music Conference. It was kind of like a wannabe, so by Southwest, probably before South by Southwest. And they took over a couple clubs, three or four clubs and bands had to pay to play the Atlanta's Music conference with the idea that industry professionals were going to there and get them somewhere that they were going to make their career. And not a single band ever got signed out of Atlantis Music conference. I remember one year they put my band on it. They just falsely advertised us. I sent the owner a really angry letter to don't fucking advertise this with this shit. But if that's the kind of event you're talking about, I wholeheartedly agree. That's just a ploy to get bands to spend money.

Speaker 4 (01:27:30):

You can't compare stuff like that to your URM Academy or to Nam or things that have a high level of respect that these professionals are going to be there and that things happen from people attending.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for clarifying, and I totally, totally agree with you, man. These events should be avoided like the plague as far as I'm concerned. Nothing happens at them except for musicians, wallets getting lighter. So Robin Diamond says, I have never bought Facebook followers before, although I know people that have and they become very successful with their social media platforms. Also, it's been very clear in some cases where bands who've just been signed by a major label, then their fan base increased by 20,000 within a day. Is it still relevant to buy fans to increase your overall reach?

Speaker 4 (01:28:31):

I'm going to say no, and I don't think that has happened. Buying Facebook followers hasn't really been a thing probably in like eight years. But let me unpack all of this as best as I can on the idea of buying followers. Your follower number means nothing, especially now if you're putting out a post, the algorithm is going to dictate who sees it and who doesn't. And you're going to want to get in front of live people that might actually like your band, not a bot or some click farm somewhere else. So you got to keep that in mind. You're going to want 4,000 real diehard actual fans, then 4 million bots that do not exist. And years and years ago, once the social media companies started picking up on this tactic that some people were buying likes or views or whatever, they started deleting them like Facebook, Twitter, they killed off these accounts and they still do. YouTube had a huge purge, and I think they got rid of 2 billion fake views in just a couple of days going from the major labels. It's like, dude, that's not, if this is part of your marketing strategy, you need to hit the restart button and come up with something else. Your numbers don't matter. What matters is how those numbers interact with you.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):

I have a very hard time believing that whatever band he's thinking of that bought likes developed a really successful social media career because of those likes.

Speaker 4 (01:30:07):

Right. And actually, I have the perfect example for this. Going back to asking Alexandria when I was working with them, when I was at Sumerian Records, they blew up after a South by Southwest showcase. There's a video footage of it on YouTube, people that couldn't get in started Riot. It was massive. And every media publication that was there started covering this band. And we were doing over a hundred thousand new Facebook ads a day, or new Facebook likes a day. And this happened for quite a few weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):

Did you say a hundred thousand a day?

Speaker 4 (01:30:47):

Yes. This was like 2011.

Speaker 2 (01:30:48):

Jesus Christ. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):

This was huge. But again, ask Alexandria, that year was the most talked about band at South by Southwest. The videos of their showcase went viral, and there were people that couldn't believe that this band that they didn't like was getting this kind of coverage. So yeah, it must've been fake. We must have paid whatever OC Weekly or alternative press to be talking about this band, or we must have bought these Facebook followers. There's no way that they can be doing this. But I'm here to tell you that was real, and I wish there was a way to throw money at it to recreated, but it's just not, this audience was really that into that band, and the writers were that impressed by what was happening. So you may think like, oh, a band had 20,000 followers after a big announcement that it must be all bought, or it must be the record labels doing No, I mean, you don't know where unless you're auditing everything and looking at the trail and seeing what it is, you don't know where they came from. It could be 20,000 YouTube listeners that discovered their music video.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):

I think he's got it backwards. I think he thinks that the band got huge because of the announcement when in reality the announcement happened because the band was getting huge.

Speaker 4 (01:32:08):

Oh, yeah. So that's a much better way to put it. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):

Well, he's got it backwards. I think that's really what it is. And I want to clarify something too about buying likes on Facebook. You can't, Finn, correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't buy likes if you're promoting your page in order to get likes. All you're doing is paying for an ad that shows up in people's fees, that shows them that your page exists. And either they like it or they don't, but you're not paying a like,

Speaker 3 (01:32:41):

Well, there are people who will sell you. They have a bot that does it, but that's against the TOS that could get your page shut down. It's a really bad idea. You should not ever do that.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):

I meant through the official, when it says promote this page,

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):

It's not like you can just give Facebook a thousand dollars and they'll give you X number of likes out of it. The other thing is if you're asking this question about Facebook, and I mean this with all due respect, so I don't mean to be harsh, but if you're asking about buying Facebook likes in 2018, I think that you are a couple years behind the times in social media. And so I would encourage you to do some research on where things are at in social media now, because I think you're thinking about things that were relevant a few years ago. So if you want to use social media to market your band, I think you need to do a little bit more research

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):

And punk rock, MBA has some really good stuff for this.

Speaker 3 (01:33:45):

Yes, it does, by the way. And so specifically, the reason I'm saying that is because Facebook is not as relevant, not nearly as relevant now as it was even a couple years ago for anybody. The larger point is social media changes all the time. I mean, at URM, we revise our tactics and strategy on social media, I would say every couple months because it changes a platform that's hot this year may be irrelevant next year, like Snapchat for example. And so if you want to use social media to promote your stuff, which for band you probably do, then you need to invest some time in staying on top of where the action is and how to be part of that. And Facebook followers are not where the action is right now.

Speaker 2 (01:34:35):

And I can tell you that we do spend a lot of time studying this with different parts of it, but we all do spend quite a bit of time learning about where shit's going is crucial. Stuff that even last year worked doesn't work anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:34:53):

For example, if somebody made a comment about this on our page, I'll just mention it here, is, so you may have seen we post clips of Nail the Mix and other stuff, other video clips on our Facebook and the performance

Speaker 2 (01:35:08):

A great example.

Speaker 3 (01:35:08):

Yeah, the performance of those is like 10% of what it was, I don't know, six months ago. It used to be if we posted a Kurt Ballou video six months ago or a year,

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):

You're talking about Facebook

Speaker 3 (01:35:20):

Specifically? Exactly. Specifically Facebook. If we posted a Kurt Ballou video on Facebook a year ago, it would've gotten, let's call it 300 shares and now it gets five. That's what I'm saying. So my point is to use social media effectively, you need to always be aware of what's working, what's not working, and adjust accordingly. And if you're asking about buying Facebook followers in 2018, that means you have some work to do to catch up with where things are at.

Speaker 2 (01:35:49):

Lemme clarify one thing. The person who left the comment was basically saying, what happened to all the quality free content you guys used to put out? You just put memes out on this page. Now I thought, what happened? Do you guys not care anymore?

Speaker 3 (01:36:09):

Yeah. And the answer is no. The answer is the videos were no longer performing. And as of now, the memes we put out get way literally 10 or 50 times better engagement than videos do. And that's not our choice. That's just what the Facebook algorithm and the audience currently favors. If that ever changes, then we will adapt accordingly. I would actually prefer it. I would prefer to post educational stuff and get the traction from it. Personally, I would prefer to put substantial content out there, but we all just have to play by the rules of the game. And right now the rules of the game are favoring the memes over the videos. So that's why we are doing it. And if you are in a band or you have a project of any kind, the name of the game is just figure out what's working right now and do it.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):

But the beauty of the situation though is it's not like we stopped putting that stuff out. We just moved it to YouTube.

Speaker 3 (01:37:10):

Exactly. We are now putting out probably almost 10 times as much content on YouTube, and we're getting a lot of traction there because that kind of content is currently working great on YouTube and working badly on Facebook. So whereas before it was the opposite, we used to put more time and energy and money into Facebook. Now we have sort of moved that time and energy and money into YouTube because that's currently working better for us. We have never really been able to get Instagram to work great. Maybe that's because we don't have the right idea. Maybe that's because Instagram just isn't a great fit for the kind of company that we are, as opposed to a fashion business or something where Instagram is going to work great and YouTube isn't going to work Great. So I guess this kind of gets back to what you were asking Al about people, or you mentioning earlier about people asking extremely detailed questions and missing the big pictures.

(01:38:00):

And I don't mean to beat up whoever asks this question. That's not my intent at all. What you need to do, rather than worry about these tiny little details, make sure that you understand the big picture first. And the big picture is understand where you can get the most return on investment of your time and money and energy on social media if is that. And so is that even on Facebook at all? These are the questions need to be asking before you worry about extremely specific detailed questions. That's like, that's for a mixer asking, Hey, what's the best widener? And you're like, well, hang on a minute. You don't even know how to EQ a guitar. Let's not worry about the Widener yet.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):

Thank you. That's a great way to put it. That's a great example. Here's a question on the punk rock NBA page for you, Finn from Cameron. Ken, and I want to ask this because he actually asked if it was relevant, and I actually think it is, and I know that you're very opinionated on this. He says, I know Finn's opinion on college, but what does he think about the cost benefit of graduate school or other advanced degrees provided they're not for something like law or medicine or some kind of hard science where it's required for a career?

Speaker 3 (01:39:22):

Well, what do you guys think

Speaker 2 (01:39:24):

For recording? Don't waste your time.

Speaker 3 (01:39:26):

What would you think if, let's say you were a studio owner or a band or whatever. Well, let's say you're a studio owner. Let's say you were a successful, well, I mean you are a successful producer, but let's say that was your gig that you are a machine or a Will Putney or something like that, and someone said, I would love to work for you. My qualifications are I've done this and this. I don't have a lot of accomplishments, but I do have a graduate degree in guitar performance or composition or something like that. What would your perception of that be?

Speaker 2 (01:40:03):

Neutral, I guess because that still doesn't tell me much because I've known plenty of people who have gotten music degrees or horrible musicians. Now, if they had an advanced degree in business, that might take more seriously even if they were coming for a job for me at the studio. But if the only criteria was I have an advanced music degree, it'd be like, okay, I still need to hear the goods. Nothing would change. You still need to go through all the exact same steps and they'd have no advantage with me. Unfortunately, I've met plenty of people who have gone to school for music or audio who are total dead weights and plenty of people who are brilliant where I just don't think it makes a difference. Now, like I said, if they graduated with some advanced business degree or John Douglas went to Georgia Tech and did something very brainy, I forget what it is in computer science,

Speaker 3 (01:41:18):

So clearly it's very relevant if you don't even remember what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:41:21):

It was computer science. But that impressed me actually, and it gave me confidence that he would be able to handle, I guess, the technical computer shit that I was going to be throwing at him.

Speaker 3 (01:41:37):

So a master's degree in computer science means that you believe he's capable of doing vocal edits.

Speaker 2 (01:41:42):

Yes. So there you go. I don't think that's a great RO. I think you can just learn how to edit vocals.

Speaker 3 (01:41:48):

So Dan, how about if somebody wanted to work with you and they laid their, well, I'm exaggerating a little bit, and one of the things on the resume that you saw was that they say had a master's in education. How would you perceive that?

Speaker 4 (01:42:01):

Yeah, I think it would be neutral also. I mean, there's certain ones that would definitely pique my interest. If somebody had an accounting degree or a law degree, something that can either make us money or save us money as a company, then that would be a positive. But if someone just comes in wanting to work in social media and they have an English degree or something, that's cool. I would think

Speaker 3 (01:42:26):

Graduate degree, that's what he's asking about specifically is about graduate degrees, not even just undergrad.

Speaker 4 (01:42:33):

I would maybe think this person is at least motivated,

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):

Maybe, dude, you know what? It might work against them.

Speaker 3 (01:42:42):

That's how I feel.

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):

I might think that they're the perpetual student type

Speaker 3 (01:42:47):

A Dante

Speaker 2 (01:42:48):

Who are not willing to jump in the ring and risk what you need a risk in order to make it in music. So honestly, I might be thinking that.

Speaker 3 (01:42:59):

I noticed a pattern at the last company I worked at, which some of you will be familiar with that, a large, so at that company, the people who are kind of at the entry level are the production assistants. So the same as a PA in a studio would, I don't know, grab that cable and bring it over here or whatever. Those people had the highest percentage of master's degrees other than the engineers, and they were always in humanities and film and stuff like that. And it's exactly what Al said is I think a lot of those people, and I'm not trying to throw them onto the bus, but I guess I think a lot of those people, it's easier in some ways to sign up for two years of school than it is to face the very real possibility of failing by actually trying to do the thing. If you are in school, the expectation is always that you're learning, not that you're doing it. So I think a lot of people hide in school to avoid the pressure of trying to do it. And I'm not anti, I'm probably more college than both of you guys put together, but graduate degrees in the humanities, in my opinion, are almost a red flag unless it is somebody that works in that field. Meaning

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):

You've done more college than both of us. No,

Speaker 3 (01:44:26):

No. Put

Speaker 2 (01:44:26):

Together.

Speaker 3 (01:44:27):

No, no, no, no. That's not true. I mean, just I probably have a higher opinion of college than both of you guys do.

Speaker 2 (01:44:34):

You've got a pretty healthy opinion of it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:36):

Yeah, I think college is great, but I have an extremely, so just to frame this, but I think graduate degrees in humanities, so in others graduate degrees in anything that isn't like technology or business or anything else like that, that would have a hard, where you would learn a hard skill is almost at best neutral and probably leans a little bit towards negative to me for all the reasons you guys said.

Speaker 4 (01:45:00):

I think for me, would that degree come with internship? What kind of relevant work experience do they have? Thinking on myself, that's the first thing I look at is what have they done and what can they do?

Speaker 3 (01:45:13):

Yeah. What does a master's degree in Russian literature tell you other than the fact that the person might be able to chat with your relatives?

Speaker 4 (01:45:22):

Yeah. See,

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):

They might be able to chat with Joel,

Speaker 4 (01:45:24):

See not much, but if they had a one year long internship at Metal Blade records, then that's probably going to move the resume up to the front of the pile.

Speaker 3 (01:45:35):

And you don't need a graduate degree to intern at Metal blade.

Speaker 2 (01:45:37):

No. As a matter of fact, if they had zero college and a one year internship at Metal Blade, they'd probably be ahead of the pack for me ahead of someone with an advanced degree, unfor, sorry to say.

Speaker 3 (01:45:51):

Yeah. So I guess again, it's like college and Facebook. There's so many of these things that people are always looking for a cheat code. And I have done the same thing. I used to think if I got an MBA that somehow the doors would open for me. And I asked my old boss about it, and I was like, what do you think if I get an, and he was a successful entrepreneur and no bullshit kind of guy. And I was like, so Matt, what do you think if I got an MBA? And he is like, well, you can do it if you want. Just don't expect anybody to give a shit. I was like, wow,

Speaker 2 (01:46:22):

That's great.

Speaker 3 (01:46:23):

Yeah, okay, you're right. And I didn't do it. And so I just think there's all these things that people are looking, they're always looking for this thing the same as in recording. Well, what's the secret to good recordings? Well, there aren't any. You just got to learn the craft and it's going to take a long time. And there's no real shortcut other than listening and asking questions and stuff. And it's the same thing for any of these things. No, there are some things in which there are a necessary condition to, if you want to be a doctor, you have to go to medical school. But for most things in creative fields, you just got to do the fucking thing and get good results. If you do it, and you have, as you guys both said, if you can throw your portfolio down on the table and say, here's what I've done, and your work is clearly good, then that's going to open all the doors you want.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):

Based on what you were just saying. Here's a question from Kirk Wells, I think it follows nicely. What's one of the biggest mistakes you see entrepreneurs making when starting out their businesses?

Speaker 3 (01:47:26):

Well,

Speaker 2 (01:47:28):

But I know you have an opinion on this

Speaker 3 (01:47:30):

Lack of focus. That is what I would say. And I'm not the only person that says, this is a very classic thing because entrepreneurs,

Speaker 2 (01:47:36):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:47:36):

Entrepreneurs by nature, they get excited about new ideas and they are risk seeking or risk tolerant people who will get excited about an idea and throw themselves into it, which is great. But that same personality type also means that they probably are more, they get easily distracted by new ideas rather than finishing the ones that they've started. And so you see a lot of entrepreneurs get halfway through one idea and then take on another one and then do the same thing eight times in a row, and now they've got eight halfway down projects and none of 'em are getting executed very well. So that's the biggest thing I see is just the, and it's hard, I understand, but the unwillingness to say no to an exciting idea and focus on executing the one you already have.

Speaker 2 (01:48:30):

I got to say, Finn, that's one of the things I appreciate the most out of having you in my life is that lesson because it's huge and I see it much more now that people are asking me for advice. People who are starting their own entrepreneurial ventures and they have minor success or medium success with one thing, and they're ready to do the next before their main ideas even

Speaker 3 (01:49:00):

Halfway cooked,

Speaker 2 (01:49:02):

Super solid, they're ready to start the side hustle. And it's like, what are you doing? And I can see it clearly. Now you hammered that into me, and I know I still do it, but I think I do it way less than I used to. I'm way more aware of it.

Speaker 3 (01:49:18):

And it's not like me shitting on anybody telling you to not trying to reign on the parade. It's just that it's such a common pattern that think about it this way. It's like it's hard enough to fight one guy, let alone to fight four guys at once. Focus on knock the first guy out, then you can start the second fight. But just taking on another fight, you're just setting yourself up for failure and you're going to be unhappy because execution is everything, as we all know. And just don't set yourself up for failure by taking on more than you can actually execute.

Speaker 2 (01:49:55):

Yeah, exactly. Bobby Ballow asked a few questions, and I'm going to rephrase one of 'em here because Bobby

Speaker 3 (01:50:02):

Is long-winded. I want to

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):

Make it relevant, and I feel like he deserves at least one answer.

Speaker 3 (01:50:10):

Yes. But we love Bobby.

Speaker 2 (01:50:11):

Yeah, we do. In terms of determining the ROI on something that you are investing money in, and in terms of marketing campaign, online ads, whatnot, or in just judging the overall ROI or success of a campaign, do you think that there's some metrics that are overvalued or misleading? And if so, which ones?

Speaker 3 (01:50:37):

So he's asking just like how do you value the ROI of any idea in general

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):

More what are the metrics that are stupid to be paying attention to when you're trying to determine overall

Speaker 3 (01:50:52):

R-O-I-R-O-I means what are you investing

Speaker 2 (01:50:56):

Money? I think

Speaker 3 (01:50:57):

So then how much money, if you put in a dollar, how much money just comes out the other end is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. Now, there's lots of other metrics in between that will determine how much money comes out the end, but that's the only thing that matters in an ROI. So there's like, you can look up how to do a net present value calculation. That's at the end of the day what it's all about. If I spend a dollar on this, will I get more than a dollar back within whatever period of time I deem acceptable? That's the only thing that matters. So to be specific, I think the place where people go wrong is by setting a goal. So let me just be super clear, set a goal. If you were an entrepreneur, if you're a producer or something like that, all your goals should be expressed in terms of dollars.

(01:51:47):

Your goal should never be get 5,000 Instagram followers or get four new clients or anything like that. It should always be in terms of dollars because everything else is just a means to get to that end of making money. So your goal should be, rather than get 5,000 Instagram followers, it should be make $5,000 or whatever the number is off of engineering or make $3,000 off of vocal editing or whatever it's that you do. Or if you're in a band, it should be sell X number of T-shirts or well, no, it shouldn't be a sell X number of T-shirts. It should be make X dollars off of merch in the next six months, and then you can figure out how to get there or X dollars of profit, whatever. Because everything else, everything other than money is just an abstraction. Just like a proxy to get there. So that is my answer. I don't know. Does that answer the question?

Speaker 2 (01:52:43):

I think so. And just in case he's unaware, a lot of those are referred to as vanity metrics. I mean, just think about what that means. And then he says, so the metrics don't look great for a marketing campaign. Do you abort and redesign the targeting strategy or let it finish and then collect and analyze the data?

Speaker 3 (01:53:05):

Well, as I recall, Bobby does something, what does he do? He does something technical. I forget what it is. I'll answer it in his terms first, which is you want to establish statistical significance,

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):

National research council, postdoctoral research fellow.

Speaker 3 (01:53:20):

That's right. So if you have a PhD, he does, then you know what statistical significance is and why that's important. If you don't know what that means, the answer is that it's a good question to ask. That rarely has a clear answer, but so basically that's just the question you need to ask yourself is, should we let this thing play out a little bit longer or is it dead in the water? And do we just cut bait and move on? And I think it rarely has a clear cut answer or oftentimes doesn't have a clear cut answer, but that's just the question you have to ask yourself. You just ask yourself, we let this play out another week or whatever. Is there a reason why it would change? If it's still possible for this thing to turn it around, let's let it play out. If not, then let's just kill it and save the money. But it's tough. Question to answer.

Speaker 2 (01:54:13):

Last question. We will end this thing from Danny Wallen, and this is for both of you guys. Do you think business cards are still effective to invest in or do paid ads do a better job knowing that ads can't be left on the floor? Like business cards?

Speaker 4 (01:54:31):

I mean, I don't buy ads for myself for the Dan manager, so don't what?

Speaker 3 (01:54:38):

Oh my God, that's why you're such a loser.

Speaker 2 (01:54:41):

God. Yeah. I was wondering why, but now

Speaker 4 (01:54:44):

I know. I mean, look, well, on the topic of business cards I've got with kind of generally an unpopular opinion, I have them, but I don't giving them out. And my typical excuse if somebody asks me for one is like, Hey, go green. We don't do business cards.

Speaker 2 (01:55:01):

I think there's a common theme with these questions and something I've noticed in general, which is that a lot of people are searching for, it's not just that they're searching for the quick fix, which they are, but deeper than that, they're searching for something outside of themselves to solve this for them. I feel like we break it all down. I feel like the majority of these questions are coming down to someone wanting to be handed a solution, which they don't have to personally create. And unfortunately, every single one of these things pretty much has a solution, but you need to create it yourself. Okay? So it's now two days later after the original conversation that myself, Dan and Finn McKenty had about what you can and can't buy in terms of success. And we were talking about it and we felt like the episode was maybe a little incomplete because while we did cover a lot of things that you can't pay for, we wanted to also talk about what you can do even if you don't have money, what actually does work these days? So Finn, you were telling me about a lot of these DIY wrappers that are kind of paving their own way.

Speaker 3 (01:56:33):

So I've been kind of interested in that scene over the past year or two as it's emerged as to me, it's obviously a different genre, but to me it encapsulates so much of the same attitude as DIY, punk and hardcore, which is what I grew up on, and I think largely where Dan grew up. And so even though it sounds different to me, it just instantly resonated with me because they operate the same way as the bands that I grew up on did. And back then, in the hardcore and punk world, nobody thought about getting signed or getting a booking agent or anything like that because it was just like, I mean, I didn't know what a booking agent was until I was probably like 29 or something. And so nobody worried about that stuff because it just wasn't even in our frame of reference.

(01:57:26):

And nobody ever thought that it would get anywhere, but it did. As for example, bands like Converge and Dillinger and all the other bands, black Dahlia, murder, all the other bands that you can think of every time I die, that came out of that scene that became very successful without ever intending to play by the rules. And we've seen, so you can look at what all those bands did. You can also look now, but that was of course, pre-internet or pre-internet as we know it. But now I think the place to look is what all these DIY rappers are doing. There's the SoundCloud tattoo, white guy wrappers, and then there's more of the ASAP Rocky kind of scene as well. And to me, there's just so much to learn from all of that, that I guess my takeaway would be rather than focusing on what you can't do, and I feel like as you said, maybe we were a little bit negative earlier, maybe it'd be good for us to talk about what some of these people are doing that's so inspiring and what we can learn from them and how we can do things, focus on what we can do instead of what we can't do.

Speaker 2 (01:58:33):

Well, what do you think is working about what they're doing and what are they doing?

Speaker 3 (01:58:37):

Well, one thing is they put out a lot of fucking content, just like nonstop. And so for

Speaker 2 (01:58:45):

Example, I have noticed that,

Speaker 3 (01:58:46):

Yeah, there's a YouTube channel, I think it's called Demon ao or Demon. Basically, they put out a new video literally every day from some SoundCloud. I call 'em MySpace rappers because they remind me of the MySpace kids. They put on a new video from one of those kids literally every day. And they're so fresh and creative, and I can tell their budget. There's one of 'em where he's in a parking garage and he's just kind of dancing in this parking garage with a cool edit, and there's literally a frame that flashes up that says, we shot this in 10 minutes, and my girlfriend edited it in iMovie, LOL, and it's a fucking cool video. And that's an example of, to me, that's so inspiring because it's just proof that if you have a good idea and you have passion and you're excited, budget is not a factor. And the video has, I dunno, a couple hundred thousand views. It's not massive, but it's not nothing. I think most of us would be excited to have a couple hundred thousand views.

Speaker 2 (01:59:54):

Why does the parking lot work for him? But a metal band can't get a break in a warehouse or a parking lot.

Speaker 3 (02:00:02):

They could if it was done in a cool way, that it's not just him wrapping in a parking garage, it's him wrapping in a parking garage with a cool edit, and he's dancing in a cool way. You know what I mean? So I think that's the twist. I mean, this is what I always talk about is what's the twist? Dancing or playing in a parking garage on its own is not enough, but playing in a parking garage and you're all wearing horse costumes, well, that's a video. I mean, I always talk about these examples in these gimmicky ways. I'm not saying everything should be a gimmick, but my point is what's the twist?

Speaker 2 (02:00:41):

Yeah. One thing I have noticed about the amount of content they put out, and I've just noticed this from what you've shown me, is there'll be hundreds of songs that have a decent almost to low end of decent play count, and then there will be three or four that are just like

Speaker 3 (02:01:03):

10 million

Speaker 2 (02:01:04):

In the stratosphere. Yeah, it definitely seems like they're putting as much as they possibly can out in hopes that they do get those few tracks that go crazy.

Speaker 3 (02:01:13):

There's another thing that I guess I should mention specifically about videos, and I've been talking a lot about videos lately. And by the way, I'm sorry if I'm talking so much, but the reason I've been focusing on videos so much is because I think for musicians, whether you're a rapper or a band or whatever, I think that's the single, in my personal opinion, and I'm talking out of my ass, Dan actually works, manages band, so he knows better than I do. But to me, as a consumer and an outsider, to me, music videos seem like the best way to really put yourself on the map. And I think right now these rappers are making the best music videos. And so you asked, and it was a good question, why is it okay for him to have a parking lot video? And I think what they do really well is they capture a vibe and that's why it works.

(02:02:00):

So I am looking at this video right now by this artist. You guys can Google it if you want. It's a rapper called Global Dan, like Dance of, and the song is called For a Reason, and it's them like rapping in, it's like a abandoned house, basically, the most cliched setting you could think of. But they capture a vibe so well of being that kind of disaffected 19-year-old that's like, well, what the fuck am I going to do with my life? And if you can capture, ultimately that's what it's about, is connecting emotionally with the audience. And you don't necessarily need a big budget for that, right?

Speaker 2 (02:02:41):

You absolutely don't need a big budget for that. I'm looking at this video now. Definitely not high budget. It's so weird though, man. When you see, I guess it is down to the idea, you see some metal videos that are extremely low budget and it's just like, God, I guess you're right. It does come down to the idea. You see so many zero budget metal videos where it's like, why do you even make this

Speaker 3 (02:03:07):

Right? But do you see what I mean about, I'm sure you personally don't identify with this vibe, but you can see why somebody else might.

Speaker 2 (02:03:16):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (02:03:17):

You know what? I want to jump in and just add a little something to this. I actually haven't thought about that scenes music videos until this very conversation, but immediately the idea that it's authentic comes to mind. This rapper kid can probably pull off that garage music video because he's probably doing that. He probably performs in a garage that's his Friday night. He's probably having these battles or whatever with his buddies. Whereas a lot of these metal bands, especially the ones that are worried about the topic of buying success or how to land a booking agent or whatever, they're not hanging out at the street level. They're not doing anything to promote themselves with their project on that gorilla level, and they're not connecting with audiences or kids or whatever the same way that these underground rappers are. I mean, this scene, the backbone of that scene is like house parties and backyard parties and skate parks and the shit that I grew up on. That's how I discovered so many of my favorite bands, was going to hardcore shows in the back of a skate park or in the back of a record store, whatever. And that's what these guys are doing, these metal bands, they're worried about pay to play and buying onto tours, and these dudes just want to perform in front of five people.

Speaker 3 (02:04:45):

You remember the ZBA video for that song cold?

Speaker 2 (02:04:48):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (02:04:49):

So I don't know if you saw this came out maybe five years ago.

Speaker 2 (02:04:52):

I did not, but I'm going to look it up now.

Speaker 3 (02:04:54):

It's Z-I-B-A-L-B-A. It's basically, they're Mexican dudes from Pomona, so it's them fucking having a rager at one of their apartments in Pomona. And aside from whatever the damage deposit was to their that they lost to that apartment, it didn't cost them a penny. And it's a fucking awesome video, and it has a lot of views for a band in their genre.

Speaker 4 (02:05:22):

And Al is the kind of band that plays at that level that you could catch at a backyard party.

(02:05:32):

Very strange to say this, but I am in Los Angeles, there's a killer backyard party ska scene out here, and whoever said, sky's a popular genre that hasn't been culturally relevant in probably at least 20 years. But you go to these backyard shows and there's 200 kids there to see some random third wave ska band or some specials cover band. These scenes exist. It's underground stuff. It's all underground movements. But again, these are other examples of people that don't care about a manager. They're not impressed when someone like me walks in the door, they don't care, not the person that's going to stream them on YouTube or whatever. But

Speaker 3 (02:06:24):

I mean, yeah, I think that's a great point actually. And everything's underground until it's not, right.

Speaker 4 (02:06:29):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:06:30):

To say that a ska band couldn't get big, they can, and if they even want to,

Speaker 2 (02:06:35):

But let's hope not, but let's hope they don't.

Speaker 4 (02:06:37):

But I'm saying they don't care. They're just performing because they love performing. And that's kind of the point I was trying to get at is they're going to be doing it whether it's the biggest genre in the world and they've got a ton of fans, or they're just doing it for fun as hobbyists. And it seems to me like these SoundCloud rappers are these very niche genres. That's exactly what they're doing. And again, this isn't trying to be disrespectful as scum music. I'm using that as an example of something that people wouldn't expect to be at that popular at that kind of party level. But it is,

Speaker 3 (02:07:16):

Well, the authenticity thing I think is a super important takeaway. And for whatever reason, I think that in the punk and hardcore world, I think authenticity tends to just come naturally in a way that maybe it doesn't in metal, and I can't really explain that because I grew up in hardcore, but I think you're onto something,

Speaker 2 (02:07:37):

But it still makes all the difference in the world.

Speaker 3 (02:07:39):

It does. I mean, the authenticity, I think that's what people connect with more than anything else, more than production values. That's why production values don't matter on podcasts or videos or anything else. As long as if the emotional connection is there, it catches on.

Speaker 2 (02:07:57):

So how do people find out about these parties? Because if we're talking about marketing and not spending any money, if there's a whole scene of this shit in la, how does the word get spread? What are they doing?

Speaker 4 (02:08:12):

They text us. Yeah, it's word of mouth. I've never even seen a Facebook invite or anything like that. I mean, maybe there's a flyer that goes up on Instagram, but yeah, dude, it's word of mouth. And it's the same thing with the punk shows that I go to. Maybe I'll get tagged in something on Instagram, but it's usually just my buddy hitting me up so-and-so band is playing this warehouse, come hang out.

Speaker 3 (02:08:41):

Right? Yeah. I mean, that's how I always found out about shows is exactly the same way. Hey, this band's playing in Pittsburgh next weekend. Let's go. Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:08:52):

So much in the same way that any underground show has ever been promoted or any rave or anything like that. It's just people find out about it somehow.

Speaker 4 (02:09:02):

Yeah, you tell your friends, yeah, I am sure this stuff ends up on the internet, but in my field at least, it's being drowned out by pictures of cats and whatever other stuff I'm looking at that's not music related. But if my friends want to invite me to a party or whatever, they're going to text me or there's that immediate kind of communication or more direct communication. But I mean, that's even how I found out about most shows, unless it's some huge show at the forum or something.

Speaker 3 (02:09:34):

Well, even then you find out about a lot of those through word of mouth, right? Hey, are you going to go see such and such band next weekend? You're like, wait, what? They're playing. I had no idea.

Speaker 4 (02:09:43):

You're right.

Speaker 2 (02:09:44):

That seems like such a scary prospect. If you're an artist that's just starting out and you have no fans and all you have is a recording and you hear us being like, yeah, it's all word of mouth, but if it really is, it really is. So how would they get that started for themselves? How do you even break in the first place?

Speaker 4 (02:10:12):

Well, I think Finn's got a very interesting article about it on the punk rock, NBA, which is really just do newsworthy shit or be somebody that people want to talk about, right, Finn?

Speaker 3 (02:10:25):

Yeah. I mean, and what that means, I can't tell you because that depends on the specifics of you and your situation and what your strengths and weaknesses are. But it's like I said, I always give the example of a gimmick because it's just so easy to come up with off the top of my head, but if you were the band that always played in horse costumes, that's how you, I mean, that's noteworthy, right? People would talk about this, I saw this band last night and they play in Rainbow Horse costumes. It's crazy here. Look at their video as an example. And I guess I keep focusing on YouTube just because that's, I think sort of the new MySpace when it comes to music discovery. I think that's where a lot of people discover music. And so there's the word of mouth angle of getting people to show up to see you play live, which is, I think important.

(02:11:18):

But I don't feel comfortable telling people what to do there because I'm not in a band. But think about on MySpace, I don't know if you guys ever did this, but I found out about a lot of bands by, I would listen to one band and then I would look at their top eight and I would listen to all those and I would just go down that rabbit hole forever. And I found out about tons of bands that way. And YouTube works the same way. I mean, there's that discovery mechanism built in, which is sort of a word of mouth thing, and it's going to be a slow build at first. But if people start watching one video in your genre, and if they're the type of person like me who really wants to go down the rabbit hole, eventually some portion of those people will find their way to your video. That's how it happens over time.

Speaker 2 (02:12:03):

That's actually exactly how it happens. That's how I find things.

Speaker 3 (02:12:06):

Yeah, we've all gone down the YouTube or Wikipedia rabbit hole, but the YouTube rabbit hole and you're like, how the fuck did I end up here watching this?

Speaker 2 (02:12:15):

I honestly find much more stuff that way than people sending me links, even people I know and trust, which I don't know if I'm unique here. I kind of think I'm not, but I think that word of mouth is great, but it's almost like word of mouth puts an idea in my head. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to act on it, but then once I'm in that YouTube rabbit hole and I hear something I like, and then I'm like, oh, that's the band they have been mentioning, then it starts to form a bigger picture. So that's actually probably why it is important to have videos and to try to get yourself into those suggested video feeds. Because even with word of mouth, man, I don't know how much people actually listen to each other about stuff to check out.

Speaker 4 (02:13:15):

Well, if you see all of your friends wearing a particular that you've never heard of, chances are you're going to look at that band

Speaker 2 (02:13:23):

If it comes up in my feed, but I might not remember that. They were like, say, I see all my friends wearing a shirt. I note that they're all wearing that shirt. I note it next week when I see them, but that doesn't mean that between those two social events that I remembered that that even happened. However, if it then surfaces in my feed, then I'll remember that I saw them wearing the shirt. Maybe I should check it out.

Speaker 3 (02:13:47):

So for example, that's how I just found out about this band called Slaughter to Prevail the other day. So I posted a video about Death Corps a while ago, and in the comments, everyone kept mentioning this band again and again and again and again. I'm like, well, I guess I should check it out. And I never did. But then I saw one of their videos come up the other day and I clicked on it and I listened to it, and that's exactly how I discovered it. And if I was to start a band now, that is the template of how I would try to build audience is, as you said, we've talked about this before, Al, like the surround sound effect. Have people hear your name a bunch of times in a bunch of different ways, and eventually they're going to check you out just because they've heard your name so many fucking times. They're beaten into submission.

Speaker 2 (02:14:30):

But again, I think a key detail is, I mean, again, I could be wrong, but I do really think the key detail is that they're not going to actively seek it out. A feed is going to show to them and they're going to recognize it, and then they're going to check it out.

Speaker 4 (02:14:46):

Here's the thing, you're using adult logic on what should be teenagers. No, I mean, let's keep it real. The listeners here are professional recording musicians and nothing sounds better. No music will ever sound as good as it does when you're a teenager. You're highly emotional. You really connect on so many levels with whatever you're listening to. That's just the reality. That's who consumes the most music

Speaker 2 (02:15:15):

I know. But I don't think that that pattern has changed for me in literally decades. I mean, even though the mediums were different, I don't think there were always people recommending bands, oh, you got to check out this band. The mediums were different, but there's always that voice in your ear about what bands to check out. Back in high school, the way to consume them would've been with the, I guess the college radio thing that happened Friday nights from midnight till six that only played metal. That would be where I would come across the bands that everybody talked about, but six people would mention Emperor, and then I'd go buy an Emperor thing. Six people would mention Emperor. Then I'd hear it on the Friday Night Radio, then I'd buy it, which is the exact same pattern I'm describing now. So at least for me, it hasn't ever really changed. Just the medium's changed. Well,

Speaker 4 (02:16:13):

I mean, in that scenario, you would need to rely on, let's say Spotify, playlisting for Emperor to come up for you. But what I was talking about, I don't mean people telling you to check out this band because somebody just saying that is what our people recommend for me to listen to some atrocious bands all the time. But if I'm at a show and I see six people wearing a t-shirt of a band that I've never heard of, I'm checking out that band as soon as I get into the car, and that's me and my adult logic when I was 13, 14 years old, it probably would've been right there on the spot. And that's how I found out about a lot of bands growing up. The punk scene, I was just looking out the patches that the older dudes were wearing, and I don't think that it's changed.

Speaker 3 (02:17:02):

Are the stickers on their guitars? Yeah,

Speaker 4 (02:17:04):

No, yes, totally. The stickers on their guitars, this is how people found out about bands, and it showed that this band is good enough for people to promote or whatever to spend their money on. And as a kid, I wasn't thinking that way, but now as an adult, I understand that pattern and how I was thinking as a teenager and why I made the decision to check out one band as opposed to another. I didn't check out every Crust band that would hand me a cassette at a show. But yeah, if I see a bunch of people wearing their t-shirts to me that says that that band is worth my time.

Speaker 3 (02:17:44):

An example of that is I would always see TSOL everywhere when I was a kid and I had no idea who they were. I didn't know anything about 'em other than I saw TSOL in every Thrasher and on everybody's guitar, and it was exactly that. I'm like, man, I guess I should check this band out. And I did, and I hated them, but I did check him out.

Speaker 4 (02:18:03):

Maybe you got the wrong album.

Speaker 2 (02:18:05):

The way I discovered Behemoth is it comes to mind because I became a fan in that I bought shit by 2003, but for two years I had seen all the cool kids wearing behemoth shirts to every show and just be like, what's this behemoth band? Whatever? Forget about it, forget about it, forget about it. Finally, we met a show where behemoth was third of five, so I was like, okay, this is that band that everyone's wearing the shirts of, and they fucking God annihilated everything. They were so much better than every other band. It was just like, okay, alright, I'm buying everything now.

(02:18:49):

And I guess if I hadn't seen the shirts for two years, I wouldn't have even stayed inside for the band for the third of five band. So it does work. I mean, I know everybody's different, and I guess it doesn't really matter whether or not people see a name a bunch of times and then go actively look for it or see a name a bunch of times, then get it served to them and then go actively buy it. I guess it's pretty similar. The point is they need to see the name a bunch of times,

Speaker 3 (02:19:22):

So then you're probably wondering, okay, well how do I get people to see my name? Well, I think people try to boil the ocean, if you've heard that phrase. And by that I mean they're trying to put themselves, so let's say you're in a rock band or a hard rock band and you're like, well, how do I get to be five finger death punch? Okay, well, that's like 900 steps ahead of where you're at now. Don't worry about that. Just worry about getting to the next step. Get 50 people to show up to your show, and then once you can reliably get 50 people to come see you every night, then worry about getting a hundred and then worry about whatever. Just keep one step at a time. I guess that's the thing that I would see, whether it's building a band or any other kind of businesses, I think people psych themselves out by just sort of setting a goal that's so impossibly huge that they just don't even know where to start and they just get paralyzed.

Speaker 2 (02:20:21):

And I mean, we're doing a similar thing even with the URM Summit. My goal, and this is a crazy goal, but I have crazy goals, is for it to be an event that gets about a thousand people a year. That's far off, but year one it was like, let's just get a hundred people in this room. Year two, we're going to have around 150, 160, which is exactly what we're looking for next year. I hope to have 200 and so on and so forth. And it's not like year one, let's fucking do 500 people at this premium event, and then we'll go to a thousand and then 15,000. It's like we're trying to add tens more people.

Speaker 3 (02:21:05):

I want to mention one thing also, which I've said before, and this is sort of changing the subject, but not really. I think that a lot of producers believe that they need to market themselves in the way that bans market themselves or the products market themselves. And I don't believe that is true because those are fundamentally different things. So for one, bands are in the entertainment business, and by definition they need to have at least a sufficiently large audience. That's what they do, is they play to large numbers of people or sell products to large numbers of people. So if a band doesn't have at least whether it's 10,000 fans or 10 million fans, they got to have a decent sized fan base or they're a failure. But that's not true of producers or any other creative professional like a photographer or an illustrator or something like that. It does not matter if all you need is 10 people who know who you are that give you work on a regular basis and you're good. So I think that is, maybe we've talked about this in the context of bands a lot, but for anybody who's listening who's a producer, keep that in mind. You do not need a big following to be successful.

Speaker 2 (02:22:20):

And actually producers with big, big followings like Joey Sturgess are a complete anomaly.

Speaker 3 (02:22:27):

Joey doesn't have a big following anyway, following 25,000 people. That's a lot for a producer, but it's not actually a lot, and I'm not putting him down. I'm just saying there's just, yeah, and that is an anomaly even in itself.

Speaker 2 (02:22:39):

Fair enough. It's big. It's definitely big compared to most producers though.

Speaker 3 (02:22:43):

Yeah, but it's not needed.

Speaker 2 (02:22:45):

No, absolutely not. It's funny, we know so many guys that are crushing it with their studio business crushing it, and they have 50 Instagram followers or something.

Speaker 3 (02:22:58):

I've shown this slide a couple of times at the summit and in webinars and stuff like that. But a good example of this is there's a guy named Sam Hollander, who's one of the most fucking successful pop producers on the planet who's produced to Katy Perry in One Direction, and everyone else you can think of, and last I looked, he had 800 followers, and the guy's got to be a multi, multi multimillionaire. And I bet the people who follow him are all bad asses. But that's exactly my point is it doesn't matter. He doesn't need more than 800 people to follow him.

Speaker 2 (02:23:32):

Yeah, well, they make a lot more money off of much fewer people. Producers do.

Speaker 3 (02:23:39):

And producers are also not selling a product like say, waves or URM. You are in the professional services business, so you should think of yourself more like an attorney or a surgeon or something like that than a band or a company that sells widgets.

Speaker 2 (02:24:00):

The thing is though, I think that for producers, word of mouth is also pretty damn important. It's just important for I think any line mean any of the fence that you're on with the creative stuff, that word of mouth will make or break you.

Speaker 3 (02:24:18):

It will. But I mean, that's my point is how do you find if you need a surgeon, if you got to get heart surgery, you're not going to Google for heart surgeons, I hope. Nope. You're going to ask around because it's important when it comes to professional services, which is what producers do, I believe that word of mouth is the biggest way of finding new valuable clients, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (02:24:45):

I guess it's like when you're driving down the street and you see the lawyer, the injury lawyer, right? Would you call that guy? I generally wouldn't. I'd probably call a friend of mine who got through an accident and was really taken care of.

Speaker 3 (02:24:58):

And it's true for managers too. I mean, Dan, has a band ever told you that they contacted you because they Googled artist manager?

Speaker 4 (02:25:08):

No, never. No. Most of mine are, the bands I get connected with are referrals from buddies at record labels or attorneys, sometimes like a booking agent. But yeah, no one's going to find no a good manager just by Googling artist manager or I mean looking at Yelp reviews. I don't know if that's even a thing.

Speaker 2 (02:25:31):

Okay. So back to the, I guess the whole chicken before the egg thing, which is, and actually Andrew Wade said this on a podcast when I had him in 2016 or 17, and no one's going to care about you until you've done something worth caring about. When he was talking about getting studio business, how once you do something worth caring about, people are going to care about you. And it's similar to what you guys are saying about word of mouth isn't going to spread until you do something worth talking about.

Speaker 3 (02:26:03):

Isn't that a great quote? I think about that quote from him often. Actually,

Speaker 2 (02:26:08):

It is a great quote. It's really tough though.

Speaker 3 (02:26:10):

It is.

Speaker 2 (02:26:11):

It's tough because it forces you to really think about what it is you're going to do, and then it's hard to come up with an answer. I think

Speaker 3 (02:26:18):

It is

Speaker 2 (02:26:19):

The best thing to do is to just start doing things. And as vague as that sounds, the reason I say that is because, and I know this from being in a band, anytime that we tried to come up with a plot or something, it just didn't go over that well, now it's totally different if you're a big band, if you're like behemoth and you do that website and you have great ideas and a great team, and your audience already expects certain types of things from you. And so there's already this agreement, I guess there's an agreement between behemoth and their audience that a website, like the one that we were talking about the other day where you chant the words in

Speaker 3 (02:27:04):

Works with behemoth, if I made that website, nobody would give a shit because it's me not.

Speaker 2 (02:27:09):

Yeah, exactly. So I think once you're a lot bigger, actually thinking about these things makes a lot more sense. But I think the problem is when you're at the Nobody Knows You stage, you can think of the most elaborate press getting plot, but almost nobody's going to care. I'm not being negative. I'm being real. What I want to do is discourage people from trying to plot. Yes, exactly. And focus more on the authenticity.

Speaker 3 (02:27:38):

Make the video and song that you want to watch. Don't make the one that you think other people want to watch. Make the one that you want to watch. That would be my advice. Make the one that you and your friends will go, man, that's the fucking coolest thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (02:27:52):

Yeah, I would agree with that because I think that, I guess just watching what your heroes do might not be applicable to where you're at and most likely isn't. However, like you said, or we've shown even with Zero budget, if it's something that's awesome, people will probably catch onto it.

Speaker 3 (02:28:16):

Dan, you've mentioned something earlier. We were talking about these SoundCloud rappers. I think there's something to be learned by just the fact that they just are unapologetic about who they are. What were you saying about that?

Speaker 4 (02:28:28):

Yeah, basically that they have these personality quirks. They're weird people. They're definitely not your normal person, but they embrace it. They embrace their weirdness. They embrace the face tattoos and the pink hair and abusing drugs. It's very strange, but that's kind of part of them. And they

Speaker 2 (02:28:55):

Don't do drugs. Kids

Speaker 4 (02:28:56):

Don't do drugs, but I'm saying they don't try to hide it. And again, if I can draw parallels to growing up listening to punk music, these bands that I listened to never once hid their drug or alcohol abuse. I mean, probably 50% of every punk song ever made is about drinking. And then you have other bands that are way more open about their substance abuse, and it's just a part of reality and they're really just putting themselves out there. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (02:29:34):

I think that's the point to hit on is not necessarily like, Hey, do xs to be cool. Don't do that, but be who you are and put it out there. Because even though you think you're weird and you're the only person that is the way you are, you're, there's millions and millions of people like you no matter who you are. I think I've been thinking about this recently that I think Misha from Periphery is a good example of this is like he's a fucking nerd. He's like a man child nerd, and he embraces it. And I think that's a huge part of why people relate to him, because he's into Legos and playing Xbox and guitars and shit, and he doesn't try to be cool or aloof or anything. He's still that guy.

Speaker 2 (02:30:23):

I think that's exactly right. The point isn't try to appear something you're not. And it makes me think of examples from the nineties. I don't know if you've seen this home video tour video that ministry put out in 95 or something, but they were doing heroin on this video, injecting right then and there. Oh

Speaker 3 (02:30:45):

Wow,

Speaker 2 (02:30:46):

Who fucking cares? This is us just shooting up. It's out there. You can check it out on YouTube. It was on their home video. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. Now I saw it recently and it was like, wow, that's really, really ballsy. But then I also remember bands in that time period that were obviously clean trying to pretend like they were that, and it just seemed like the most contrived shit. And I'm not saying go do heroin at all. I'm not saying that. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying though is the authenticity is what won. And so if your thing is to be anti-drug, cool, that's cool too. It's just the authenticity that matters. Well,

Speaker 3 (02:31:34):

The opposite of that would be Graham Cochrane, right? I mean, he is,

Speaker 2 (02:31:37):

Yes. He's definitely the opposite of ministry.

Speaker 3 (02:31:40):

So yeah, we are not saying you should be a fuck up because that's what people will identify with. Graham Cochrane is the exact opposite of that. He is squeaky clean Christian family man, and I'm sure some people think that's corny. I'm sure some people think he's a fucking dork, and I'm also sure he doesn't care. That's just who he is. He puts it out there and it works for him because he's comfortable with who he is, and no matter who you are, there's somebody who will identify with it. So to me, that's the takeaway. Whether you're depressed drug addict, or whether you are a squeaky clean Ned Flanders like Graham, it doesn't matter. You just got to be who you are. But it's kind of getting to your point about people plotting and trying to have this master plan and why these SoundCloud wrappers are clicking with everybody is like, I don't have a fucking plan for anything. I don't have a plan for the next week, let alone my career. So I'm just going to make the video that I thought about this morning and then we're going to put it out there.

Speaker 2 (02:32:40):

Man, I just remember there was this one photo shoot my band did where we were like, we want to look metal, but not look like we just rolled off a couch or something. So we dressed up a little nicer, and then you know what it looked like, it looked like we were a bunch of waiters at a high end restaurant. It looks so stupid.

Speaker 3 (02:33:04):

The kid's first job interview where he borrows his dad's suit,

Speaker 2 (02:33:07):

It's like

Speaker 3 (02:33:07):

Two sizes too big, and it looks super uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (02:33:11):

We totally didn't look like opec. We looked like fucking waiters and didn't work. So yeah, I just wholeheartedly agree that the best path is the one of honesty and authenticity, and part of, I think what makes that tough for people is that they might be struggling to figure out who they are. And one thing that I think defines really, really great artists is that they're very clear on who they are. So their point of view and what their message is, is whether it's a fucked up message or a squeaky clean message, they're usually really, really clear about it. They might be psychologically traumatized in lots of ways you don't see or do see, but their message and who they are as an artist is set. It's a pretty set thing. So if people don't understand what that authenticity is, what that even means in the first place, maybe what they need to do is a little more introspection or create more art.

(02:34:19):

Maybe they're not ready to go public. Maybe they do need to just spend more time creating until they do find their voice or their point of view or whatever it is. With producers, I think it's more that you're not necessarily ready to take on a band yet before a certain point, or at least not ready to tell a band what until you have a certain level of experience. That's why the traditional route works pretty well. I mean, the traditional route doesn't exist the way it used to, but it works pretty well, and it has worked because if you start as the person that's sweeping the floors, it's not that you're sweeping the floors, it's that you're seeing how records are made around you. You're starting to have that environment be a part of your life. And then when you graduate to intern, it's not about wrapping the cables, but it's about seeing all the little pieces that go into making a record or maybe being in the room when you see the big boss producer telling a band what to change or what not to change. And then once, as you graduate these stages, you have much more experience and much more understanding of what you can can and should suggest and what you should shut up about.

(02:35:52):

It's hard to really have that point of view before you've really been involved with lots of records on many different levels. So as a producer, I think it takes being involved with records that you're not the boss of for a little while, a little while, meaning a few years.

Speaker 3 (02:36:09):

Dan, as somebody who I think probably helps bands think about how to choose a producer or potentially even helps them choose that person. What are the things that make you want to work with a producer over another one?

Speaker 4 (02:36:25):

I have to be really honest here. I play almost no role in choosing the producer. There may be a couple that I have a good feeling about that have put out records that I've really enjoyed, and it was something new, but really, I stay out of the creative process and let the bands figure it out. If they ask my opinion, maybe I'll present it, but I try not to interfere with the actual creation of music. But with that out of the way and me fully disclosing that, I look at things like what the producer has done recently. I've always been a big fan of Will Putney and Machine, because they were putting out records that I've never heard bands that sounded like that back when I first heard them in 2010, 2011. So any chance I got, I liked to work with them. But yeah, it's just whoever is doing something cool at the time that grabs my attention. But again, these are very rare instances that I would jump in with my opinion on who they should work with that.

Speaker 2 (02:37:33):

Well, when you talk to the bands and they're going through the decision-making process, then what have you noticed are some common themes that Vans will say go into choosing one?

Speaker 4 (02:37:45):

I mean, look, we got to be realistic, and it is availability the location. If I have an LA band and they need to fly out to Boston for a month or two months, we need make sure we can do that. Or a lot of times it's not realistic. So on my end, we are looking at these financials and seeing if we can even make it work. And then a lot of these good producers, they're just not always available. Someone like Bob Rock, we had to lock that in over a year in advance. There's a lot that goes into it. I can't just throw out guesses. But yeah, so much of it is are they available in the timeframe that we have? Can we make the money work? Is it too far away to where it financially doesn't make sense for us? And then are they capable of vibing with the band?

(02:38:42):

When we did the Blackville record with Bob Brock, we all knew Bob Rock is known for guitar driven bands, which is really the kind of record that Black Phil Brides had in mind. So it worked out for us. Now, I don't think we would've been able to get the same quality or the same kind of record going with another popular producer that maybe focused more on drum solos or vocals or whatever. But yeah, there's just so much that goes into it. I can't take any wild guesses outside of just the financial aspects, and maybe if the ideas align,

Speaker 3 (02:39:23):

I suppose it's a little bit of a different ball game when you're talking about Bob Rock and Black Vale Bride and Zach Wilde. That's a world that very few of us will ever be part of. So I guess the rules there are a little bit different

Speaker 4 (02:39:40):

Again, but in my experience, it's all very limited. I don't want to give out bad advice to people. This is just something that I'm not directly involved in, so

Speaker 3 (02:39:51):

I can't speak on. But everything you said there is very straightforward. I mean, it's not like there's some magic. It's like, well, are you available at this time? Does it fit our budget? Do we like your style? I mean, that's pretty straightforward, right? There's nothing, the hardest part of all that is even the hardest part of this whole thing is for potential clients to be aware of who you are. That's the hardest part of all this. And then if they know who you are and they're familiar with your work, then you're halfway there. Then the rest of it is just like the details you talked about, which either they work out or what they don't or they don't. So I guess my point is, even at that level, it's not a mysterious process.

Speaker 4 (02:40:35):

No. I mean, these producers, even if it's somebody that I don't know directly or that the band has never met directly, they have some sort of connection with somebody within our team. Again, it's a small music industry. Most of the producers know the a and r people at the record labels and all the various record labels, or they know some attorneys, or maybe they even have the same attorney. There's just a lot of ways for us to connect. I mean, yeah, when I was at Sumerian Records, there's been plenty of times where younger, younger kind up and coming producer hit them up saying, we want to work on a band on this record label. Here's what I've done. And they were impressed by it, and I kind of took a chance on this producer that people didn't know. I mean, they were reaching out, but it wasn't like a cold call. There was always some sort of connection, if that's making sense.

Speaker 3 (02:41:37):

Yeah, it makes sense. And so if you are earlier on in your career, then how do we apply that same line of thinking? If let's say I am just trying to get to the point where I consistently have bands coming into my studio and giving me just some amount of money, a couple hundred dollars is fine. Well, how do we apply that same line of thinking, well, who is the person in my scene? Or who are the people in my scene that are well connected? How do I get to know those people? How do we become part of the conversation? How do I do work? How can I create a piece of work that I can share with people that will make them bring me up next time they go, man, we really need to record with somebody. Do you know anyone? They go, oh, I do know. I know this guy. I guess to me, the steps are fairly straightforward, and I think a lot of people are just frozen paralysis, analysis paralysis or whatever you call it. The steps are pretty simple,

Speaker 2 (02:42:29):

And those steps are exactly the same as they were 15 years ago. By the way, they haven't changed. I mean, how people record has changed, but that basic thing of getting to know who the taste makers are, whether you're talking in your area or you're talking about in a bigger scene or whatever, that's the same. It's all the same. So yeah, back to what we were saying before, if someone can't figure out what that authenticity means or they're having trouble getting the taste makers to pay attention to them or whatever, I think that it comes to a problem of not being ready

Speaker 3 (02:43:16):

Or they haven't tried enough times because part of becoming ready. Well, okay, so let's maybe unpack that a little bit. So if you're not ready, what do you do? Does that mean you spend the next year at home in your room talking, not talking to anybody and just tweaking your mixes for a year maybe? Or does that mean that, and then at the end of that year, you'll be ready and then you come out of your cave and suddenly you're amazing and everyone's going to want to work with you?

Speaker 2 (02:43:53):

No, I don't think that's what it is. I think what it means more is as a producer, rather than being the guy that's trying to get the better known projects to hire you as a producer, it's trying to get an internship or trying to work with smaller bands or trying to edit drums for somebody or doing lower level stuff to build up to get more notches on your belt as an artist.

Speaker 3 (02:44:19):

Or make your own song. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:44:21):

Or make your own song. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:44:22):

Guys,

Speaker 4 (02:44:22):

I've got a question for you. Is it weird for a producer to ask for a referral? Let's say you had a good time producing with a band and you're happy with what came out of it. Would it be normal for a producer to say, Hey, if any of your friend bands are looking for something to record, I'm here. Kind of thinking back to when I was in banking, when I would work with or try to acquire high value customers, that's exactly what I did. I knew that wealthy people were friends with other wealthy people, and so if I had a good experience with somebody and I knew they were happy with my work, I had no shame in asking them for a referral. And sometimes they actually came through and referred their coworkers or their friends or what have you. Can the same idea be applied to producers? Yes,

Speaker 2 (02:45:19):

But it is a little different in how it actually works. And at least in my experience, asking for a referral kind of like the way a dentist office does, doesn't normally really work because you're putting weird pressure on the bands to kind of go out itself for you in a weird way, and they don't necessarily like to do that. But the referrals do come in when the bands do go out into the world with something awesome and other bands ask them about it. And so to let the bands know that if some friend of theirs in another band hears this record and likes it, please do get them in touch. But it's slightly different than having someone out there pelletizing for you, which I mean might work sometimes, but in my experience, very few people will actually take up on it. They feel weird about, they just feel weird about it. However, if someone is asking them about their own record and they're feeling stoked about how it sounds, they'll want to talk about it. And then in that case, it's a natural thing to be like, you should go check out this guy's studio.

Speaker 4 (02:46:37):

Yeah, that's a little bit more what I meant, but I feel like that that word of mouth is probably the best way to market yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:46:46):

It is.

Speaker 4 (02:46:47):

If one band is really happy with what you've done, I feel they're going to sing. They may sing your praises. Hopefully. It's not like Yelp where you can have 15 years of great service, and then one day there's no parking and you get a one star review. I would hope it's different with producers and bands can say what a great experience they had and how helpful the producer was, or how easy it was to work with them, whatever the important factors that they're trying to hit.

Speaker 2 (02:47:15):

I've noticed that people will overlook all kinds of horror stories if a producer is putting out stuff that gets results. You hear all kinds of nightmares about people, and they'll get tons of work still, if they've got the sound that people want, people will put up with a lot in order to get that sound. So I don't even think that bad reviews matter that much as long as the producer or the mixer are delivering what's asked of them, at least from what I've seen, you can get away with murder if you're delivering results. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (02:47:59):

I think that's pretty true in a lot of professions.

Speaker 2 (02:48:02):

Any key takeaways you want to finish this off with?

Speaker 3 (02:48:05):

Mine would be just make stuff. Make stuff, and put it out there. I think you were totally right when you said, don't try to plot too much. Just make shit that you like. Put it out there and keep doing it over and over and over and over and over again. That's my takeaway.

Speaker 2 (02:48:20):

The ploting should be to have enough time to make stuff plot, to make stuff,

Speaker 3 (02:48:25):

Make shit that you like. Put it out there and repeat until your dreams come true.

Speaker 4 (02:48:29):

There you go. Yeah. Fuck it, dude. This is metal. Just be yourself. This is rock and roll. Be yourself or this is hip hop. Be yourself. It doesn't matter. Be yourself.

Speaker 3 (02:48:37):

This is post rock. Be yourself.

Speaker 4 (02:48:38):

Be yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:48:40):

Well, cool. Thank you guys. Thanks.

Speaker 4 (02:48:42):

Thanks for having

Speaker 1 (02:48:42):

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