BEN UMANOV: Building MetalSucks, The Business of Music Media, and Networking in the Digital Age

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Apex High Quality analog gear for the recording studio For over 40 years, the patented Apex Excite Circuit has been audio engineers, secret weapon for signal enhancement, adding depth and punch to the lows, and clarity and sparkle to the highs. Visit apex com for more information. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 3 (00:00:29):

Hey everybody, welcome to the Joey Sturgis Forum podcast. Joel is sick and not with us today, but with me is Eyal Levi and special guest Finn McKenty. And we have another special guest with us today and I'll have Eyal introduce him. He knows him better than I do.

(00:00:47):

Yeah, this is Mr. Ben Umanov from Metal Sucks Gear. Gods the Blast Beat Network and the Laugh Network and someone that I've actually known since what, 2008 now at this point. And I've kind of watched him go from a dude with a blog to having the biggest site in metal and then going on to running a huge ad network and just spreading his tentacles through the entire industry. So definitely one of my personal heroes. And with Joel not being here, I decided it might be a good idea to bring Finn on as another co-host because Finn also has known Ben forever. Finn has also written for Metal Sucks and has his own site stuff you'll Hate, which is a part of the Blasting Network. So figured we can make this kind of a class reunion sort of episode. So Ben, thanks for being with us, and Finn, thanks for being with us.

Speaker 4 (00:01:41):

Oh, no problem, man. I mean, that intro makes me sound a lot more awesome than I really am.

Speaker 5 (00:01:45):

My version of the intro would've been Ben went from being a guy with a blog to a guy with a blog.

Speaker 4 (00:01:51):

I mean, honestly, that's pretty accurate and it really is one of those things where every day I wake up and I'm like, wow, I can't believe I'm still making money on this. It's kind of ridiculous. But also,

Speaker 3 (00:02:04):

Well you probably never thought that would happen.

Speaker 4 (00:02:06):

No, I mean it wasn't really intended that way. I mean, I guess when anybody starts anything, particularly a band, I guess they have some thoughts of, oh, what if we make it big? So there was definitely that. But I mean when we put the thing up, it was just like, oh, let's put up this stinky little WordPress site on a very basic template and just kind of see what happens.

Speaker 5 (00:02:32):

I mean, the idea of making a living off of a blog is even stupider than the idea of making a living off of a

Speaker 4 (00:02:37):

Band. You know what? But the truth is

Speaker 5 (00:02:42):

Actually, I could be

Speaker 4 (00:02:42):

Wrong a better living than dudes in most metal bands anyway. And I mean, I continually feel bad about it.

Speaker 3 (00:02:49):

I guess on that topic, how long did it take before you guys were making a living off of it?

Speaker 4 (00:02:55):

I guess we'll sort of start at the beginning. We started the blog at the end of 2006, so really we could say January, 2007, just to make it a little easier, it was about a year before we got our first ad dollars that weren't Amazon Associates or Google Ads Cents or something like that, like actual a record company saying, Hey, we want to spend some money with you, and like, Hey, it was 300 bucks, but whatever, we're not going to turn that away. And then probably about midway through 2008, so after a year and a half of doing it is when we teamed up with the metal injection dudes and came up with the idea to start the Ad Network Blast Beat Network. And then about a year after that is when the four of us being me and Matt, my partner in Metal Sucks, and Frank and Rob for Metal Injection decided to quit our jobs and make full go of it. But even then we weren't earning what I think would probably qualify as a full-time living. It took a little time to really get things off the ground, but having the time back from our day jobs to put in definitely helped to further that goal.

Speaker 3 (00:04:11):

But you guys live in New York City, which is not a cheap place to live by any stretch of the imagination. How did you take that plunge from having a semi cushy job to having to make the site work? How did you handle that?

Speaker 4 (00:04:26):

Yeah, well, I think we all had some money saved up, just sort of enough to get us through for a few months while we kind of figured it all out, but we didn't. I mean, we didn't really know. I think it always helps when you don't like your day job that much. Guys who love their day job would probably have a much harder time quitting to pursue a passion. And my particular day job, I wouldn't say that I was miserable. I didn't hate it. I worked as a web project manager at Atlantic Records for all the rock bands on the roster. So basically kind of the in-between, between the people in the bands or their managers and the designers and the developers just getting their websites done. And at that time they're MySpace pages, but while it wasn't horrible, it definitely sucks when you have to go into work and pretend to give a shit about Jason Raz and Stained and also working in a fairly, I guess a small company by Fortune 500 standards. But for me, a company of 200 people is a lot and having to deal with a bureaucracy and just politics and bullshit that comes along with that was a lot for me to handle.

Speaker 5 (00:05:50):

Is that all that Atlantic was or is 200 people?

Speaker 4 (00:05:54):

Yeah, and those were maybe two 10.

Speaker 5 (00:05:57):

I'm sure there's a few people scattered around here and there in other offices, but it's not like there's another thousand people sitting somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (00:06:03):

No, they are part of the Warner Music Group and certain back office things

Speaker 5 (00:06:11):

Or shared,

Speaker 4 (00:06:12):

I have no idea how many people were for Warner Music worldwide. Probably thousands. But

Speaker 5 (00:06:16):

Yeah, still that for something like Atlantic, which is it's a major or was or whatever, I'm kind of surprised to find that, to hear that it was only 200 people, I would've thought more. But I guess that says a lot about the size of the music

Speaker 3 (00:06:28):

Industry. That's kind of mind blowing because I remember going to the Roadrunner offices when my band got signed there and there were about 75 people working there, which seemed like a good number for a metal label. But Atlantic, from what you're saying, it wasn't that much bigger in terms of workforce than Roadrunner.

Speaker 4 (00:06:48):

Not really, especially when you're just talking about the people with the creative jobs, taking out the people who handle royalties and all that kind of stuff. But it's interesting that you bring up Roadrunner. They actually now are part of Atlantic.

Speaker 5 (00:07:03):

I'm sure. Unfortunately a lot of people probably lost their jobs in that. I didn't follow it. You probably did, but probably a lot of people were deemed redundant in that acquisition, unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (00:07:14):

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. People I'm sure Al worked with when he was there lost their jobs and there's still some people there. Some people from the Atlantic side moved over to take positions with Roadrunner, but I mean they seem to be doing okay in that environment.

Speaker 2 (00:07:31):

I like what you said about motivation. I think we talk about motivation a lot. We try to tell people, if you want to do something like this on your own, start your own business, you need motivation. I think a lot of people think about that in terms of like, okay, well I just need to motivate myself. But in fact, I think it's more about having multiple layers or reasons of motivation. I used to smoke cigarettes from age 13 to 26, so I smoked for 13 years.

Speaker 4 (00:07:56):

Jesus.

Speaker 2 (00:07:57):

And I ended up with this girl and she's like, you should try to quit smoking. It's not good for you, blah, blah, blah. Same thing you hear from everyone in your life. And it kind of clicked with me for some reason when she said it because I was like, I'm at a point now where if I stop right now, I can probably heal over the next seven years. And so what I did is I made it public so that if I didn't quit, I would've looked like an idiot in front of everyone. I told her that I would quit for her, so if I didn't quit, I would've let her down. I also told my family that I was going to quit and this sort of layered amounts of motivation caused me to actually do it, and I did quit and I am still smoke free. And I think that's just a huge point for anyone that wants to do something that's kind of off the norm.

Speaker 5 (00:08:47):

Well, I think the scary part for me whenever I've considered stuff like that or done it in the past is I guess with smoking, there's no real downside other than maybe you'll be cranky for a while and some people might think you don't look as cool without a cigarette in your mouth, but when you're talking about quitting a day job to go full time with your own business, that initial plunge where you throw away the safety net is pretty terrifying. Certainly in hindsight it worked out in the case of Ben. But Ben, what were your thoughts during those early days when you're like, fuck, what have I gotten myself into? Were there moments of terror and sleepless nights? Well,

Speaker 4 (00:09:27):

By that time it was at a point, so we're talking middle of 2009 now. So Metal Sucks was two and a half years old and it had been a year and a half since we had any kind of real ad money coming in. So there was some money. It wasn't like we were just starting from scratch. On the other hand, a lot of companies, we didn't have investors, none of the partners put in any money into the company to start it. It was just like, Hey, we'll pay the 500 bucks for the LLC filing fee or whatever. And that was the extent of it and see how this goes. So anyway, point being there was some money there and it was really just a matter of me thinking that if I had all the time back during the day that I'm spending working on Atlantic record stuff, I could make that time productive into bringing in more income.

Speaker 3 (00:10:19):

So how long did it take from the minute you took the plunge till where, and I guess you're still actively growing and trying new things, but how long did it take between the time you took the plunge till where you would say that you were at least stable?

Speaker 4 (00:10:35):

I don't really, to be honest with you, remember it in those terms, which makes me think to Joey's point that I was never really super unstable in my memory. It was close. There was half to maybe three quarters amount of the money coming in that sort of needed to be. But that said, the first two or three years of that, we weren't rolling in it. Not that we're rolling in it now, but we're comfortable, whereas those first couple years or so was definitely, I was earning less than I did at Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (00:11:10):

So it took you a couple years to get back to your old salary at the very least?

Speaker 4 (00:11:15):

Yeah, yeah, it did. And that was okay. I was, let me see, I guess 27, 28, I didn't have many expenses. I had a pretty good deal. I was paying 800 bucks a month for rent, not married, no kids, none of that. So I pretty much just had to live on my own. And another thing that I think helps is when your passion is also your work, it really helped play into it, especially when you're trying to go to shows all the time and all those shows are free working in the industry, certainly I was able to save a lot of money that way.

Speaker 2 (00:11:51):

I think that's necessary. Having passion for what you do is necessary for ultimate success. I mean, you could do something that you like not necessarily passionate about it and have some success, but if you want to have something that's undeniable success, I think you do need those multiple layers of motivation as well as the passion. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:12:07):

Yeah, because you'll never put the effort in through the hard times and you'll never be obsessed about it and somebody else will be obsessed about it. Exactly. Plenty of competition out there in anything to where if you're not on fire about it, you're going to get swallowed. But I think it's important to just realize that whenever you take a risk like this, your income is probably going to go down. And a lot of people, I guess, shy away from taking these kinds of risks because they got used to a cushy income.

Speaker 2 (00:12:40):

Well, that's the thing. You got to not worry about the money. You'll figure out a way to make it work, whatever it is you're trying to do. And if it doesn't work, then maybe it's not the right thing to be doing. But there's definitely, especially with internet business, I think now when you start a normal business with brick and mortar, it takes you a couple of years to turn a profit, just so many expenses involved. But with the internet, I feel like anyone can start a business and turn a profit on the first month or even the first year,

Speaker 5 (00:13:10):

Or on the other hand, find out that it's a bad idea one way or the other.

Speaker 2 (00:13:13):

Exactly. Really quickly,

Speaker 5 (00:13:15):

Which is no, I mean that's valuable too. It's like, okay, that wasn't the right idea, but I only spent 300 bucks getting it up and running, so cool. I'll scrap it and try something else.

Speaker 4 (00:13:23):

I think that's an important distinction to make though, Joe. You're right, because we had and still do have very, very little overhead where starting a brick and mortar business you've got a lot more to worry about and that definitely is something that enabled us to turn a profit on it, I think pretty quickly.

Speaker 5 (00:13:40):

Ben, I wanted to ask you a little bit about diversification specifically that the way I think about things is I always think it's better to do one thing well than spread yourself thin and potentially do multiple things. And if people ask me my advice, that's usually what I tell them is like, why don't you focus on this thing? And over the years, you guys have spread your footprint out a little bit more. Well, first of all, starting Blast Beat and now Gear Gods and The Laugh Network. Can you talk about how you made the decision to expand into new ventures and how you managed to do that without losing sight of the core of what you do? Well, it's actually not as

Speaker 4 (00:14:23):

Br as you're implying.

Speaker 5 (00:14:24):

Are you calling me a liar?

Speaker 4 (00:14:26):

Yes, you're a fucking liar. Stop it. They're giving me more credit than I deserve with Gear. God, it was pretty natural. And I mean, I don't mind saying that the motivation for starting that website was an answer to the question, how do we get advertising money from musical instrument companies? Which is something that we had tried to do with Blast Beat for the prior two or three years, but been almost completely unsuccessful at. So we asked ourselves, we're like, gee, maybe if we covered this stuff all the time, we would have more success at that

Speaker 5 (00:15:00):

If only it was that simple.

Speaker 4 (00:15:02):

So our first instinct was to go and try and add a gear site to Blast Beat, and then when we looked into it, we realized that there really wasn't a site that was covering gear, just gear towards the metal player. So that was when we decided to start Gear Guards, and that's actually a case where there was significant investment and some overhead, contrary to what I was saying earlier, we had to pay developers to make it, we had to hire guys to run it and interface with publicists. And

Speaker 5 (00:15:35):

You and Matt don't write at all for Gear Guards?

Speaker 4 (00:15:38):

No, I mean at first it was Chris Alfano who was editor in chief of that, and then Trey Xavier, the guy who's doing it now was a contributor early on who we actually had spoken to. He was a metal sucks reader that saw the job posting and we liked a lot. And at first we decided to go with Chris just because he had a bit more experience, but we sort of created a position for Trey from the beginning because we liked him so much. Yeah, he's great. And he's the new guy. He's doing an awesome job with it. So that's Gear Gods. And I think expanding to that sphere made a lot of sense for Blast Beat, not just for the reason of bringing in new ad dollars, but just topically. There's a lot of crossover. With the Laugh Network, it was a little bit different.

(00:16:21):

There's a company based out of New Jersey called the Music Syndicate that we work very closely with. They're a music marketing services company. They do pr, marketing, street Team, radio promotion, sort of like an all in marketing shop, and they've been a company for probably 15 years. They're very well known and respected in the New York music industry, and we've worked with them closely on Blast Feed from the very beginning. They've done a lot of sales for us. It's their site Metal Insider that's one of the sites in the network and they're good pals of ours and good buzz.

Speaker 5 (00:16:57):

Oh, okay, I see. So they're part of that whole, they're part of it from that angle then.

Speaker 4 (00:17:01):

And as the years have gone on, they've gotten less involved with metal just based on really the people who are working there and more into the comedy space. And they approached us with the idea, Hey, we have a foothold in the comedy space. We do business with Comedy Central, we do business with comedy labels that release live releases. We do live standup shows. We do this, that and the other thing. You guys know how to run an ad network. There's not a comedy ad network. What do you think about partnering up and making one? So we start talking to them about that and long story short, they do most of the day to day for Laugh Network and we are more of sort of behind the scenes minority owners of that

Speaker 3 (00:17:50):

Company. So here's another question. Just like you never thought that you would be making a living off of a metal blog. Did you ever see yourself part owner of a comedy ad network?

Speaker 4 (00:18:01):

No, never in a million years. And that's the thing, I've done a small handful of interviews, let's say, with people for podcasts or just blogs or I think actually the Creative Live one. Finn, I did an interview and what I always say when this comes up is that people looking for careers in creative fields should really keep their eyes and ears open and they shouldn't be too wedded to a super specific career path because you never know what's going to come. I never expected to be doing anything having to do with heavy metal, let alone metal blogging and in the comedy thing like, geez, never in a million years, but it's pretty awesome.

Speaker 5 (00:18:47):

I like that you used the word heavy metal. That's a term you don't hear often enough these days. Oh,

Speaker 4 (00:18:54):

Did

Speaker 5 (00:18:54):

I just say myself

Speaker 3 (00:18:55):

A little

Speaker 5 (00:18:55):

Bit? I'm into heavy metal.

Speaker 3 (00:18:58):

I can echo what you're saying though, because at this point I'm on my third career in a little bit over, well, in about 15 years I've done the band thing, done the production thing. I'm now doing online entrepreneurial education tech thing. I feel like if you basically say that you're going to do one specific thing in music or entertainment or creative fields, you better be really lucky. Like someone who says that they're going to make a good living from being a guitar player in a metal band. Well, good luck with that one. I mean, someone's going to do it, but not too many. So you definitely need to roll with the punches. I'm ask you a question then, now that it's basically established that you've done all sorts of different things from being a label to all the sites that we've talked about, do you have any advice for people who are getting into the game now, either starting their own web businesses or starting in production or starting a band even Any advice for just getting going in 2015?

Speaker 4 (00:20:06):

Yeah, I mean, just take any position you can get that's even close to what you want to do.

Speaker 5 (00:20:14):

Be desperate.

Speaker 4 (00:20:15):

Yeah, be desperate because you don't know. I mean, I think when you're first starting out, it's more about a meeting people and B, acquiring work skills. And by work skills, I don't mean specific ones for a specific field, I just mean business practice skills.

Speaker 5 (00:20:35):

I want to challenge something you said though, which is, well, I guess not challenge necessarily, but maybe kind of offer a bit of a different take on it, and I'm sure you'd agree with me, is what I hear from a lot of people that want to work in the music industry, and I don't really count myself as one of 'em, but I guess maybe I am. And I go, okay. They're like, well, how should I get a job in the industry? And I go, well, what do you do? I'll do anything, go Well. You can't really just go up to someone and say, Hey Ben, give me a job. I'll do anything. Because then that person is sort of asking you to write their job description and you have enough things to do, and so they think that they're bringing you a solution, but they're actually bringing you a problem. And although people should be open to whatever, my recommendation is that they come to the table with a specific pitch, which is they at least start by saying, Hey Ben, I'm Finn, I do this thing. Can I do it for you? And maybe you say, no, but we need this similar thing or whatever. But I just think that leading with the sort of all do anything kind of pitch is kind of like, it makes you seem super desperate in small time. And B, it's like what do you do with that?

Speaker 3 (00:21:43):

I don't think he was saying just take anything,

Speaker 5 (00:21:46):

But I just want to clarify that for anybody who might be listening, because I just hear that so much, I don't care. I'll do anything, which I get that attitude

Speaker 4 (00:21:53):

I was talking about a little bit farther along once you've already gotten the position, whereas you're talking before you've gotten it. And I think once you have it, the key, whatever it is, whether it's for example for metal sucks, we have interns that write our weekly email newsletter, which is a good way to maybe own their writing shops, something to put on their resume, but it's just important to get in the door somehow, I guess is all I was saying. I think you're right, Finn, that it helps when there's a specific pitch. Definitely.

Speaker 5 (00:22:27):

Even if they deny the pitch, that's fine. Just come to the table with something to start the conversation.

Speaker 4 (00:22:32):

So what I was trying to get at is just to say it's the most important thing is to not limit your options too much and just to meet people because I mean for everyone in this conversation right now, how many positions have you either gotten or hired people for because you just saw an ad listing for a job and how many have you gotten or hired somebody for because your friend or friend of a friend was recommended to you or needed a job or they were perfect for

Speaker 3 (00:23:06):

It? Every single thing I've ever accomplished in the real world of music has been via networking shit. I met you via networking at that show in Atlanta, and I met Finn via networking when I went to the Golden God Awards that one year. And Joey and I met via networking as well. I got my record deal via networking. I got to audio hammer via networking. Every single thing has been networking. I guess that brings up

Speaker 2 (00:23:33):

The

Speaker 3 (00:23:34):

Question. Yeah, I think that goes for everybody. Networking is definitely, I wouldn't say the silver bullet, but is one of the most important things you can do to get work in any industry and especially music. But it's a lot easier said than done for someone with no access and no track record. Do you have any advice for a noob getting started on I guess climbing the networking mountain?

Speaker 4 (00:23:59):

It's tough. It is. I think the internet makes it easier. I think it's a lot easier now with Twitter especially. I think there's a lot of networking that gets done and of course all the other social networks and websites and in a million other ways. But I think also if you're really going to be successful, this isn't always true, but you probably are better off starting at least in a city that has some kind of industry foothold in that industry because face-to-face is always going to be the best way to accomplish network or

Speaker 3 (00:24:37):

At the very least, being willing to travel for meetings.

Speaker 4 (00:24:40):

Definitely.

Speaker 3 (00:24:42):

I know that when I was trying to get certain things off the ground, I would travel to LA four times a year and New York twice a year. That was just part of what I did.

Speaker 4 (00:24:51):

You already had, you had

Speaker 3 (00:24:52):

Doth No, I did that before. Doth even. Oh yeah, doth got basically doth skipped many, many levels. We went from local band to Roadrunner and lots of stuff that was way beyond where we should have been because of that stuff that I did. I mean, I would go to Europe sometimes if I was going to be there, I would make a point of turning every single thing into a networking or promotional trip. Even if I was in Europe, I would find a way to find a metal show and hand out a thousand CDs there, or I would find a way to get to Nam and just bother people.

Speaker 2 (00:25:27):

Does anyone think that that is a valid thing to do anymore passing out demos at shows?

Speaker 3 (00:25:31):

No, I don't. This

Speaker 2 (00:25:33):

Was 2004. What do you guys think?

Speaker 4 (00:25:35):

I agree.

Speaker 5 (00:25:36):

Yeah. Well, I mean, here's where I think it could be valid. So as a vehicle to get your music heard, I don't think it's valid, but if you have somebody in your band that's super personable and charismatic, it could be a way to make personal connections with people, even if they never listen to the cd, if they just really like the person, then there may be an opportunity

Speaker 3 (00:25:59):

There. But if I was starting a band right now, I wouldn't do that. I passed out 25,000 on my own, which over the period of about a year and a half, it took many, many hours and

Speaker 5 (00:26:15):

There's an opportunity cost and your time is probably better spent on

Speaker 3 (00:26:18):

Something else. And I mean, the thing is that back then other bands would copy us, but they'd hand out 500 and that would be the end of it. I think that there's other things you can do nowadays that you can get just as obsessed over that will work better than doing that. But I definitely do think that the one thing that does still apply is physically going to where the action is.

Speaker 5 (00:26:40):

Yeah, I don't think there's any substitute for that, especially if you have somebody in your band who's really personable and great at shaking hands, and if you have one of those guys or girls in the band, then you want to get them in front of as many people as possible.

Speaker 4 (00:26:52):

And it sounds corny because people I'll hear this sometimes are like, oh, I don't want to be seen as a brown noer or sucking up or networking feels lame. And it's like, well, it can feel lame if you think about it that way. But fortunately, we work in an industry with pretty chill people for the most part. And networking in a lot of cases really just consists of having a beer with somebody when it comes down to it. At the end of the day, if you're looking at two people that are basically identical for a position and you've hung out and had a couple beers with one of 'em and had a good time, and the other one is just some name on a resume that you got in an email, who are you

Speaker 3 (00:27:32):

Going to hire? So I guess by that token though, a total nobe isn't going to be able to go to NAM and just sit down and have drinks with somebody else.

Speaker 2 (00:27:42):

That was my next question is do you think that it's valid for someone who's just starting from scratch to go to Nam?

Speaker 4 (00:27:50):

It depends how precocious they are. I mean, I'll say even I don't think I would be able to just go and meet people. I think I'm personable and can talk to most people and strangers and get on fine, but to just totally go in cold like that I think would be completely overwhelming and defeating. And the other thing is, I think at the end of the day, and this is sort of the uncomfortable truth about it, is that a lot of it is really just luck. There's definitely an element of right place, right time to this, and it's not necessarily fair, but it's how it's,

Speaker 3 (00:28:19):

It's definitely not fair, but right place, right time I think is what makes a difference between average success to huge success. But I think that there's plenty of other factors that you can control, how much effort you put in, how good of an impression you try to make on people, things like that. But Joey, I've got a question for you. You're a producer and people hit you up for work. How does someone get your attention and not just get their email deleted?

Speaker 2 (00:28:50):

Oh man, you would ask that question, wouldn't you?

Speaker 3 (00:28:52):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:28:54):

Well, I've taken an interesting approach to it because it's just become retarded. It's just ridiculous. It's impossible to deal with anymore. So what I've decided to do, which might be a really bad thing to do, so don't take this as advice, but I made a website and it's just the most basic, there's not even graphics on it, it's just HTML. It just says, Hey, I'm Joey Sturgis, obviously you're here because you want to hire me and I only want to work with people who really care about doing this with me. So in order to prove that, write me a handwritten letter on a piece of paper, mail it to me, snail mail, send me a cassette tape because just figuring out how to get music on a cassette tape for the average musician nowadays is like rocket science. So pretty much the only people that contact me are the ones that are really, really care about working with me, and it's a nice little buffer zone.

Speaker 3 (00:29:53):

What about if they want to be hired by you? Well,

Speaker 2 (00:29:55):

I'm not hiring, but if I was,

Speaker 3 (00:29:59):

Yeah, if you were in a pretend world where you were,

Speaker 2 (00:30:02):

I'll tell you how I've done it in the past. It's usually through friends and family because what I've discovered is that you need somebody that you can absolutely trust wholeheartedly. You give them the whole freaking session on a hard drive and say, here, I'm trusting you with $50,000, please don't mess it up. So the best thing I've found is just networking through friends and family and trying to find people who have a good backing people that'll back them up.

Speaker 3 (00:30:31):

So basically there it goes again, networking. That's the way to get in with you is know somebody that knows somebody.

Speaker 2 (00:30:38):

Exactly, yeah. You can't just apply, come in for an interview, send me a resume, none of that. I've asked people for resumes before and it's a trick. I'm not going to open your resume and read all of it. I'm going to open it and be like, is this person retarded or not? And make that decision in five seconds and then I'm going to start talking to you.

Speaker 4 (00:31:00):

That is exactly the same way we approach hiring for me anyway, more so for metal sucks than the other businesses, but still for all of them it's how good is your cover letter? Why do you want this job? Can you cohesively put together sentences and make a point if you're, I mean, you probably wouldn't be shocked, but lots of other people would be shocked at how many cover letters come in with just written with typos and grammatical errors and just all sorts of embarrassing stuff. And it is easy to just throw those out right away. It's

Speaker 3 (00:31:32):

Not going to work. Not on the topic of hiring, but I guess this is a cousin of it. I know you're also inundated with requests to feature people on the site, on sign bands and whatnot. What makes you pay attention to them? How do you decide, okay, this person is going to get a writeup and this one isn't

Speaker 4 (00:31:55):

Personal taste with that? Because with the unsigned bands, it's just a quick listen. We say that we listen to a hundred percent of the bands that send things in reality, I don't know if it's quite 100%, but it's pretty close. Obviously we're not listening to full albums. I'm extremely militant about email and just making sure that everything is done. So if we get a link from an unsigned band, I will click it and maybe I'll only give it 15 seconds. I'm sure you guys know that sometimes that's all it takes to determine, and if it's not catching my ear, then move on to the next one. And if it is, I kind of make a note of it and jot it down for possible later consideration. But it's really just a matter of personal taste. It's like, do I like it? Which is frustrating I think for a lot of people, a lot of artists because they want to think if they do X, Y, and Z, then they will get featured. But it's again, with the luck thing, it just so happens that the two guys who are running the site that people want to be on have certain taste. And that frustrates a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (00:33:11):

I mean, I can echo that. Let me give you a little story. This isn't the only reason that we got our record deal, but this is the luck factor for us. I mean, I obviously did all the work to get us into the position where luck would even appear, but at that time, Bonnie Connor hadn't signed an extreme metal band in ages and was bummed that Roadrunner wasn't known for that anymore and that they were known for Nickelback and more commercial stuff. And we were shown to him right when he was thinking to himself, wow, I want to sign another death metal band. So that was all timing. There was nothing else to it. Clearly we hadn't done all the work to be sign a bull. It wouldn't have happened. But also if we had come around a year later or a year earlier, it wouldn't have happened. It was just because that he was in the mood for and he liked the music. So switching gears a little bit, I have a question about Facebook, and one thing that we've noticed is that a lot of the metal sucks. Comments have moved to Facebook away from metal sucks itself, not that you're not getting comments on metal sucks, but now it's divided between those and it kind of sucks. It takes traffic away, but it's also really good for engagement on the sites Facebook, which improves your reach. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Speaker 4 (00:34:32):

Well, Facebook is the double-edged sword. It's been the number one driver of traffic for us for, I don't know, three years at least, maybe four or longer possibly. I think sort of around the same time, let's say 2010, 2011, media organizations realized that if they started posting stuff to Facebook and wording those posts and wording their headlines in such and such a way that they could really get a huge boost in traffic. And that's what happened to us and happened to metal injections. So we really put a lot of time and energy into building our Facebook following, knowing full well that in the future that all those things could change and not wanting to put all of our eggs in Facebook's basket and so on and so forth. And that went very, very well for a long time until Facebook decided to make some changes in their algorithm that were less favorable towards media organizations. And this happened this past April and we noticed it when they started moving the media posts down to a lower priority from people's friends as far as what appears in your feed, we definitely saw a drop off in traffic. So I actually feel like I didn't answer your question at all. What was the question?

Speaker 3 (00:36:01):

Well, I actually just asked you for thoughts

Speaker 4 (00:36:04):

You can't do with it and you can't do without it. Facebook is still a major source of traffic for us, definitely more than any other refer, but we're also trying to figure out ways so that we don't need to rely on that one post to just catch in Facebook's algorithm to have a good day of traction.

Speaker 3 (00:36:26):

So I guess I've heard this a lot, but lots of bands have been complaining about how hard it is for them to get any traction now because of the new rules concerning the organic reach. Do you have any advice for them on how to improve their odds of ranking a little higher?

Speaker 4 (00:36:44):

No, I don't. I wish I knew the answer. So I think it's harder now. I think we were again, lucky or at least beneficiaries of circumstance and timing where we started doing it in a time that you could quickly accrue Facebook likes without putting any money into it. But that's just not the case right now, and I think it sucks for bands and I don't really have an answer. If I did, I would probably be a lot more wealthy than I am now.

Speaker 2 (00:37:12):

I have a couple of ideas on what I think works if you care.

Speaker 4 (00:37:17):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:37:18):

Starting, I think a lot of people treat Facebook as just a dumpster. They get on there, they say, here's something we did. Look at it. Here's a picture we took. Look at that. Here's a song we made. Listen to it. Facebook was designed to be social media, social interaction, engagement. So if you're not really doing anything in your posts or on your page that the user wants to be involved with, then why are you even putting it on there? I understand why people do it. They want to spread the traffic or spread their wings or whatever, so something can take off, but it's just not as powerful as coming up with something clever that causes the person to actually engage with what you're doing. The other thing is education. A lot of people don't actually understand a lot of the features of Facebook and how a lot of it works.

(00:38:07):

And if the band spent a little bit of time just making a 32nd video that explains, Hey, click on this thing at the top that says, see our post first. If they made a video that instructed the listener or the fan to do that and made it interesting and not stupid and boring, more people would click on that and more people would see the stuff that you are posting. That's a feature that I think a lot of people don't even know about. Lemme see. Exactly. I'm actually on Facebook right now. I can tell you exactly what it's called.

Speaker 3 (00:38:35):

Well, I definitely think that bands could stand to adapt to Facebook's new rules because clearly the old way of doing it doesn't work anymore, so they can whine and cry about it, but if they actually play by Facebook's rules, it's not so bad. But the thing is, it does require sometimes spending some money and that's where people I think get turned off.

Speaker 2 (00:38:57):

Yeah, there's also a lot of people who don't even fill out all of the fields for the About section. If you don't put any effort into your page, then it's going to show the feature I was talking about. It's after you like the page, if you click on it again, it will give you the option to see posts as usual or see new posts at the top of your newsfeed. So this is actually free. You don't have to pay for this. And if a band can get their fan base to click on that, then all the fans are going to see all the posts at the very top of the newsfeed and it's free. But that just comes down to, I guess, kind of loosely networking. Again, if you're a charismatic person and you can actually convince people to click on that feature, it'll go a long way and save you a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (00:39:43):

Ben, we have a question from one of our audience members that's actually kind of on this topic from Carl Winy and he's wondering what's metal sucks plan to keep visitors returning, traffic's being sucked into the Facebook black hole more and more, and it seems like most sites are pivoting or revamping in some way to keep those eyes on the screens.

Speaker 4 (00:40:03):

Well, we've put, Carl is right, and Carl, if you're listening, hello, I know you're a regular reader and thanks for all the tips over the years and so on and so forth. One thing that we're doing, there's a couple of things we're doing and maybe you've noticed this, is that we've put a lot more time and effort into longer content over the past, let's say six months or so. That sometimes comes from me, sometimes it comes from Matt, and more often than not, it comes from a newer guy who writes under the name Emperor Rhombus, who sort of has been functioning as not a fill in, but sort of I guess the more of an everyday contributor. And he comes to the table, he's a guy who has written in the past for Revolver and maybe still does, and Decibel,

Speaker 3 (00:40:53):

He's really good. He's really good.

Speaker 4 (00:40:56):

He's a pro writer. He turns stuff around quickly and best of all, he comes to the table with new ideas of his own and develops them for the most part without any input from us, and they're always good. So that's one thing is the longer form content, I feel there's more of an appetite for that now than there has been. You're seeing, I think just across the whole internet a lot less of the 10 reasons you need to blah, blah, blah bullshit. I feel like people are fed up with that and there's more of an appetite for more in-depth analysis and critical thinking. And the second thing is that we've put a lot more investment into growing our YouTube channel, which is something we completely neglected, stupidly for the first whatever, six years of our site's existence. And so we're really trying to do a lot more in that area. We have Brian Storm who's doing everything from silly little viral clips to interviews to skits and all sorts of stuff. We have Glenn Fricker doing the weekly metal news recap, which does really well. We've got Crash Thompson doing the video reviews, which are also really popular and in general, we're just trying to make it so that we are more regularly in other places that our readers might be looking for us that aren't necessarily Facebook. And

Speaker 3 (00:42:26):

Is that translating into less traffic for the main site?

Speaker 4 (00:42:31):

No, we still post all that stuff on the main site, and we still rely on Facebook to get traffic there. Everything that goes up on Metal sucks also goes up on our Facebook page and it's instantaneous when we post something on Facebook, you can see the hit counter grow within a minute and tick upwards depending on how popular the post is. But no, I mean it's not taking traffic away from the main set. I mean really we want people to be everywhere. We want people to be following us on YouTube, on Twitter. We just finally started a Tumblr, which is like seven years too late also, but whatever. And we just want to be, and the podcast too, I think is another important one. Chuck and Godless are doing an amazing job at that, and we want to be wherever people are. If they want to be in their cars or in the subway on their commute to work listening, then we want to be there. We just want to make sure that we are in enough places that if Facebook decides to fuck us even harder, then we're prepared to weather the

Speaker 3 (00:43:43):

Storm. So I guess the definition or the way Metal sucks, exists now is more as a media site than just a blog.

Speaker 4 (00:43:51):

Yeah, I think that's accurate

Speaker 3 (00:43:52):

With being in all these different places at once. It is actually helping your site traffic. That's actually really great. People were thinking that it would have the opposite effect.

Speaker 4 (00:44:03):

Well, I think it's branding. If somebody is downloading the Metal Sucks podcast from iTunes, they're not visiting the site, but they're still interacting with the brand, and to me, that's as valuable or more valuable than the traffic itself. You know what I mean? You're trying to create a strong brand that stands on its own, and if you have that, some percentage of those listeners or watchers or what have you are going to become readers and they're going to become loyal. And it's just about building that stuff over the long term. I think rather than focusing on hits today, you have to do both, for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:44:48):

I forget where I read this, but I read something. It said, if you're a band and you're only focusing on Facebook, you're messing up. There's all these sites, man, I can't even think of all of 'em, but there's SoundCloud, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, vk, Reddit, even, all these things that people could be putting energy into, but so it's not about spreading yourself down, it's just about brand awareness, I think. Finn, what do you think about all that?

Speaker 5 (00:45:20):

Well, yeah, I mean it's hard to argue, hard to argue with any of that. It's not as easy as just shit posting on Facebook, basically it used to be or shit posting on MySpace and using a friend adder. It's more complicated and you have to approach it the way a real business would, which is that you have a brand that encompasses a variety of, as they would say in my world, digital touchpoints, which sounds cheesy and they're different. The right mix of content for each of those different networks is tough to find and it's going to be different for everybody. For example, like SoundCloud is huge in electronic music, not super huge in metal in indie music, Facebook is much less of a thing. Twitter is a bigger deal in indie music. So yeah, I totally agree. It's not as easy as it used to be, but on the other hand, that means that the smart people will rise to the top. There

Speaker 2 (00:46:24):

Was something really subtle that you said that I want to amplify. You said the right mix of stuff over the right sources. That's super important. I think a lot of people treat all these different places as one thing. They'll take their URL and their little message copy and paste it.

Speaker 5 (00:46:44):

I like that in Hootsuite, how you can have it just blast the same shit to eight different networks, which is the worst idea ever.

Speaker 2 (00:46:51):

You need to be embracing Twitter for what Twitter is and what it's good at, and then you need to treat Facebook completely different.

Speaker 5 (00:46:59):

A side note here, you know how there's those plugins for WordPress, like the share widgets where it'll make it so you can share the post to 40 different networks, like 35 of which you've never heard of. There was one on a porn site I saw a couple years ago that obviously they had the default one installed. You could share it on LinkedIn.

Speaker 3 (00:47:24):

I'm sure some people did that by accident.

Speaker 5 (00:47:27):

Yeah, so hey, if that's what you want to do with your brand, then go for it. But yeah, no, thats a

Speaker 4 (00:47:31):

Great, that ties into our earlier conversation about networking and how to get hired. You just got to find the one dude in your industry that's into Golden Shower, BBW, fetish, whatever, porn, and then get hired by that dude.

Speaker 5 (00:47:46):

Yeah, that guy probably exists, so you might be onto something. But no, I think that's a great point. I mean, Ben, what you guys do with the podcast is a good example of that. You publish it on the site, you also put it on YouTube and on iTunes. So there's three places and I always listen to it on iTunes. I never listened to it on the site, I never listen on YouTube, always listen to it on iTunes, and there's other people that probably are the opposite. So you guys offer a variety of different ways to listen to it.

Speaker 4 (00:48:17):

You know what I think is important about that is that to note, and I don't mind sharing this, is that the podcast on its own is not profitable. We lose money on it to pay the guys who do it for the hosting to pay the guy who cuts it up and uploads it and creates a thumbnail for YouTube. All that stuff adds up incrementally, and even when we get the live reads and stuff, thank you, Finn, it still isn't really profitable, but that's okay. We do not lose sleep over that at all. We are a hundred percent okay with that because it's an extension of the metal sucks, brand A, B, it's really good. I think Chuck and Godless do a great job with it and it's good for us. B, the point being to not be overly concerned about getting that hit or getting that dollar or whatever it is. As long as there's a balance of creating good content and growing the brand

Speaker 3 (00:49:25):

Well, it keeps metal sucks at the forefront of people's minds.

Speaker 4 (00:49:29):

Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:49:30):

We've got some questions from our listeners here. I'd like to ask you if you don't mind, Kevin. George is asking, what are the things that bands keep perpetuating to try to be successful that are actually obsolete now?

Speaker 4 (00:49:45):

That's tough. I can only guess in what way he means. I'm not sure whether he means,

Speaker 3 (00:49:54):

I think he means press kits.

Speaker 4 (00:49:56):

Oh, okay. Well, in that case, one thing we get a lot of is overly long artist bios. And I mean, I think this is a thing that in press Kit 1 0 1, they probably tell you to write a bio, but for me, and I don't know if it's the same for you guys, all I want is two or three sentences that describe basically what the band sounds like, whether that means genre, sub genre names or bands that you kind of sound like or whatever, a link to listen to the music and that's it. I think also bands are under the impression that offering to send a CD in the mail or just sending one will help them, but it's actually just annoying and not necessary. Really. Just an email with a link is all you need

Speaker 2 (00:50:49):

To do. And I recommend people make one of those. It's called Artist E-Card. Have you ever seen one of those? I haven't. Those are pretty cool. It's kind of like a business card for a band. I mean it kind of, it's a template website where you just plug in some information and stuff, but you can customize it and it's actually pretty effective. You can throw songs and videos on there and so the person who's receiving it can just pick and choose what they want to consume and not have to read a PDF file or something.

Speaker 4 (00:51:21):

Is that Sonic Bids? That kind of thing. Yeah, right. I'm going to disagree with you on that. I actually find those kind of irritating, just too much. I certainly understand why it would appeal to somebody. It's like, yeah, you can fit a lot of different information on there. You can get the video, you can get all that stuff. And maybe this is just specific to me because of the volume of stuff that we get and my completely irrational compulsion to listen to all of it, but I really just want a link and that's it. And just let my ears do the work.

Speaker 3 (00:51:58):

That makes sense. Okay, so Joseph Perry is asking, A band has its album, website, music, videos, killer sound, tight, live shows and tours, et cetera, but the fan base is small. What are the key things a band needs before approaching a label and does the fan base size matter as much as people think, I

Speaker 2 (00:52:18):

Freaking hate this question. You're an entertainer, so freaking go entertain people

Speaker 3 (00:52:24):

And the fan base does matter.

Speaker 2 (00:52:26):

Why do you think you deserve a record deal if you don't have fans? I don't get that. A record label sells recordings. So if there's no people to sell the recordings to, then you don't get a record deal.

Speaker 4 (00:52:39):

Well, I agree with you Joey, but just for the sake for devil's advocate here. Certainly I think from an outsider perspective, it probably seems like bands get signed before they have fans, and in some cases maybe they do if they fit a certain aesthetic,

Speaker 2 (00:52:54):

Magical timing.

Speaker 4 (00:52:56):

So maybe that's more what he's asking.

Speaker 3 (00:52:58):

Well, yeah, lightning does strike. There are bands that get lucky, the right place, right time, and happen to get in the door somehow.

Speaker 5 (00:53:10):

Well, the other thing with those bands is that there's somebody like Monty or some other smart person who can spot star potential a mile away, and they identify it in those bands like asking Alexandria.

Speaker 2 (00:53:22):

Yeah, there's too many people waiting for that. There's too many people thinking that's how it happens every single time.

Speaker 5 (00:53:27):

Oh, for sure, for sure. But the point is, you should never assume. You should always assume you're going to have to do things the hard way. And if it ends up that things go the easy way for you, that's awesome, but you can never assume that's going to be the case. And you should also not like you're delusional. If you think you have star potential, you probably don't because there's only a handful of those people that come along. And more than likely you're not one of 'em. I'm certainly not.

Speaker 3 (00:53:54):

Yeah. I mean, I can't get behind people thinking that it's going to work out. Like they're going to go on American Idol or Shark Tank and get the deal and boom, that's it. Which to me is the same thing as thinking that you don't need a fan base and a label's just going to pick you up and you're going to be a rockstar. It doesn't really work that way. I mean, it definitely has here and there, but there's more to it than that for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:54:19):

Sorry for hijacking the question.

Speaker 3 (00:54:21):

Okay.

Speaker 4 (00:54:22):

Oh no, man. Please. All of your guys' input is valuable on this.

Speaker 2 (00:54:29):

This will be a good question then. I'll just make up a question for somebody. So when you're looking at these bands and you just want to listen to the music, let's say you heard a song and it's awesome and you're really stoked about it now, what's that next step? How do you examine the audience size? Do you care about the audience size? What do you do?

Speaker 4 (00:54:51):

Well, just for the purposes of writing about an unsigned band, no, I don't care about any of those things, but I think more of what you were getting at is from a label perspective or maybe a potential manager perspective. Both of which industries I've worked in the past, and I think at this point I would look at Facebook, I would see what they're follow looks like, what they have going on. Not that either of those things would be deal breakers one way or the other, but just pieces of the pie, I guess. And I think honestly, the biggest thing for me next would be trying to figure out a way to see them live. I would never agree to work with a band who I hadn't seen live, because to me, in metal especially, that is the most important thing, is how good are you live. You've got to be great, I think, to be worthy of attention.

Speaker 5 (00:55:52):

You meant heavy metal, right?

Speaker 4 (00:55:56):

No, no, I meant metal. This is 2015.

Speaker 2 (00:56:00):

How

Speaker 5 (00:56:00):

About hard

Speaker 2 (00:56:00):

Rock? I think the same thing is true for producers as well. That's actually something I wanted to do for the last three years and really still haven't gotten into the groove of it. I wish that I could hang out with the band, talk to them for months and see them play multiple shows before I agree to even listen to new songs. However, that's incredibly difficult with my schedule, so I don't get the opportunity to do that. But I think that would be the best way to go about deciding if you should work with a band. Because if you listen to some songs online or listen to their past discography and then they show up to your studio and they're like, okay, here's our new song, and the guitar player doesn't even know how to play it, and he's literally reading tab off of a freaking laptop, you're like, whoa, what happened here? So I think kind of having a relationship beforehand will help prevent stupid situations like that.

Speaker 3 (00:56:53):

Yeah. You called their past producer and he's like, oh, well yeah, I played all the guitars on it. Dude,

Speaker 2 (00:56:58):

Good

Speaker 3 (00:56:58):

Luck. Good luck with that one. I've actually had that happen a few times where I've been, the label will be like, yeah, this band is killer. They're all serious guys, blah, blah, blah. They come to me and they're awful. And so I know the guy they went to before I call them and he starts laughing. It's like, now you've inherited the problem.

Speaker 2 (00:57:18):

I think labels are delusional sometimes.

Speaker 4 (00:57:22):

We had a situation like that with metal Sucks. Every year we do a promo with Converse. They have this recording studio in Brooklyn that any band can sign up to record for a day for free, and we curate a whole week. So five bands we choose. And one of the bands that came in, we chose them out of whatever, 200 bands because we liked the track and they just got in the studio and they were like just, oh, just a disaster. They had no idea what to do. And this was with Will Putney producing because he was doing the whole week for us and he ended up just programming like a day. You've only got eight or nine hours to record a track on Converse's Dime. And he ended up just firing the drummer, doing it all himself. I'm going to keep the band's name out of it, but

Speaker 3 (00:58:17):

I mean, that situation is way more common than people realize. So I definitely agree that if you can see a band live, that's really, I guess the deciding factor on if they're good or not. But you should try to hunt for laptops and make sure that their guitars aren't coming through the pa.

Speaker 5 (00:58:35):

I feel like with any band, the formula for success kind of has sort of three parts, which is whether their music is good, whether they play good shows or not, and whether they're good at doing business and navigating the personal parts of it. And I learned this over the years The hard way. There's so many bands that I wrote about where I'm like, man, these guys are fucking great. How come they're not bigger? And then you get to know 'em a little bit or you meet 'em or something like that, or you go see them and then you immediately go, oh, okay, now I see why they're not bigger. They have a couple of good songs and the other two parts of that pyramid

Speaker 3 (00:59:13):

Are terrible. That's actually very true. When my band was trying to get signed to other labels after Roadrunner, I went to the office of a pretty legendary dude in LA and he sat me down and gave me the sun kind of talk. It kind of like Sun. A great band is a vehicle with four tires. One tire is their songs, the other one is their legal team. Third Tire is their management and booking, and the fourth is their label. And if any one of those is flat, the band's going to fail. So what do you have? And it's like, fuck, our management sucks. Our songs are okay. He's right though. You definitely need all those to be intact or the vehicle's not going to move. So I think that's all our questions. Ben and Finn, thank you guys so much for coming on.

Speaker 5 (01:00:09):

Thanks for having us. Pleasure to do it. Do it anytime.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):

Thank you. Yeah, it's been very informative and just nice to talk to you as always. And Finn, thanks for being here and helping the conversation be cool. Anytime. We'll talk to you guys later. Take it easy guys. Thanks again.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):

The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by Apex High Quality analog gear for the recording studio. For over 40 years, the patented Apex Exciter circuit has been audio engineer secret weapon for signal enhancement, adding depth and punch to the lows and clarity and sparkle to the highs. Visit apex.com for more information to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit URM academy slash podcast and subscribe today.