How To Break An Artist (With Less Than 10 Steps)

Next subject: how to break an artist. All right, bro, I've been waiting for this one, bro, like I've been waiting for this one, bro, so we got to get contacts to this topic right. All right, so my insurance said we on this retreat was since the 80s and they had us do a really interesting team exercise last night and the exercise was they had everyone out here go around the table and write down in, let's say it was like 10 steps or less, I think. Show more

I don't think it was a limit on the steps, but basically how many? However many steps, how would you break an artist? Like if you was a, you know, manager label personally has vested interest in artists- and you had your game plan on how you gonna take that person from, you know, whatever situation you see in your head to big star or popping act. Basically the Breakthrough Point. Yeah, how would you do it? And yeah, but I feel like we need to share what we put because we have really different answers. Some of them were aligned, but I feel like the way we went about it was was pretty different, which I thought was interesting. I think we can go run through mine and yours quick and then get to the bigger conversation that came from, because it's more of the lesson that comes from this than anything. Show more

So my number one was music. I'm gonna focus on the music, make sure that the music is right, because the way I'm looking at it, I know from all the campaigns we ran: look, nothing works like good ass music, yeah, like. And some bad music, you, you really pushing uphill. So we want to make sure that this the art, it's an artist that has some really solid music. I'm not talking about full-blown development, production, production, which is a great thing that I I could have thought about that, but I don't in my personal life. Show more

I don't have that investment to just throw into an artist, yeah, or the infrastructure set up. So I'm just like, I'm picking an artist, I'm gonna pick an artist that has really Dope music that's unknown, okay, okay. So we're just going to step up. Do your number one, yeah. So my first step was just getting the artists to believe it's possible, and so, where I was coming from, that is a mentality thing, right, I think, before any of the other steps can really be enacted, like, you gotta get that [ __ ] to believe. Show more

You know, I'm saying: show them some some tune, core statements, show them some results of campaigns. Right, give them something to make them go like, oh, this is possible. Because I think, especially, you know, in my head I was thinking of a complete like Ground Zero rapper, like like a [ __ ]. I heard like rapping in the hallways. I was like, oh, you follow, you should make music and get popping. Right, see, you almost gotta sell them on division, on the dream exactly. And that's the difference, man, I don't know, you gotta have it for yourself, because I can't want that [ __ ] more than you. So I'm, I'm immediately thinking you have to want it big. You see it big. I can sell someone on division along the way, but it's gonna feel like work at some point. But I, but even with somebody that already sees it, I like that for reaffirming, yeah, the possibility, yeah, just showing them how real it is like getting them in environments like this, the little stuff- you know what I mean- like you said, tune, core statements, whatever it is, just so they can know and that their dream can be real. Show more

Yeah, because the changes at every level, like I'm sure there's an Arts out there making 100K a year that if somebody come along and show them here you can make 10 million. It might completely change the way they move, even though they're doing well. It probably would change what they're doing. So, yeah, that to me is like first step. Let them taste what it looked like. Gotta make you believe it's possible. So my number two, which I kind of pushed to- they are the argument- became: I made two steps in one, but I said: get your vision right, you'll have Clarity on your brand and what you want to do in the marketplace. Right, because to me, I've encountered so many artists that have good music that get confused once they start putting music out there. Show more

They want to release this song and the next thing, you know, they want to release on a totally different style or they don't like their fans and they're making music that won't connect with the people that they want to connect with. But it's popping. Remember, we got one artist that he got popping with people that he didn't want to. Oh yeah, but it was going crazy for people that he didn't like and wanted to be his fans. He was actually kind of like creeped out by him, right, but it was for that fan base, it was. It was a really good big thing. So, like you have to understand, like that Clarity of what you want and does, what you have and the approach that you're going to take, actually connect with those people, right, and then I my my pairing that was illegal, apparently- was see the void in the marketplace, because you can have something but present it in multiple ways. Show more

Right, so, like Justin Bieber was like there was a missing place of, like a young kid at the time he came in. Like this young boy pop star. Right, so there was a boy in the marketplace. Yeah, if there was another guy who already existed, they might have approached it a little bit different. Like he might have had to go a little bit left with that guy who already existed, whatever that might have looked like. So, understanding, oh, that's a complete void of this now. Oh, we can go straight for these little girls Hearts. Right, make him the hard drive. There's nobody to move on this and we need to move real fast and make sure we dominate this before as anybody else has changed for another five years, right, yeah, yeah. So, like that's what I was thinking. Let me take a quick second to say if you're an artist trying to blow your music up or if you're a manager, a music professional in General trying to help an artist blow their music up. I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, go viral- all of that stuff- and we've now made the way we've been handed multiple artists and help them go viral completely free, step by step, in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetworkcom. You apply, it's completely free. Show more

But the thing is we're not going to let everybody in Forever, So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted brandmannetworkcom. Check it out. Back to the video. Yeah, wasn't that? Oh, should I have that Vision? I should sign up, just be right. Okay, it was. It was a bit of war between us and Justin Timberlake. I should end up getting them, you know, you know it's him and school LeBron from the get-go. Okay, gotcha, gotcha, all right. So my number two is just make the artist representable across the board, and so what I was thinking about with this was like visual branding. Show more

Let's make sure the dsps look nice and professional. Let's make sure the socials are professional. I don't think at this stage unnecessarily looking for the artist to have like a look. I think I'll be looking for them to like actually, yes, I would, I'll be looking to have a look, at least a look that we get. We feel like we could translate well visually, whether that be you know content, hard assets and things like that. But yeah, bro, the second step for me is like we got to make you look like somebody people want to listen to. Show more

Yeah, yeah, I could see that all right. So I think for the last ones, we should just run through them so people can hear our vision. Then we can talk about the different Visions. Okay, right. So my next step was content development. Meaning, hey, we're gonna, I hope you understand how to create content that people actually are going to consume and enjoy. But it has to reflect your brand and give you that muscle, because I look at content development today as a similar thing to music development. Show more

Right, like that has to be a muscle, and I'm not saying to have you posting three, five times a week, seven times a week is really just to know how to do it and communicate your brand in an experiential way online, not the post tick tock and put my music behind stuff, right, it's a completely different thing. Once you know how to do that, now we're gonna push our music, okay, because you know how to create the music, you have the vision and you also know how to present it in the context. So let's push your music using all those elements and hopefully start to find the first hit. Then we're gonna double back and do some shows, because now you have some music out there to do shows with and help you build that muscle of doing a show, because I'm trying to build a superstar, right. So that means you need to, you know, I mean you don't need to today technically actually to have shows, but if the ones that last, we already know the cream of the top, cream of the crop- a statement that was made by somebody very well established here who's done that thing, made a lot of money in this with artists, the moment you can be identified as an Entertainer, your, your price goes up. Yeah, right, it's the difference between artists and entertainers, right? Beyonce, Bruno Mars, the like, different price, right? So, working on that side of the muscle, because we're thinking long term, it's not just, oh, we're trying to cap off of the music and make some money. That's nice, but it's more so for the long term. And then we're going to get some PR so we can get you everywhere, be omnipresent. You know, you think of the ice spice type stuff. Give it about eight weeks of going hard, like you're popping up, being in a video collab with an influencer who's popping at the time in your space, and then we're also doing some PR campaigns around that influencer, but again, mostly not that, not that influencer, the artist, but more from a social media standpoint. So just popping up where people get the narratives, whatever the narratives make sense for that artist. Show more

And then we're gonna start working up on a follow-up song because, in my mind, all right, we built you the, the skill sets, we got you popping, then we and then we develop your skill sets a little bit further for through shows and now we made you omnipresent, all right. So okay, got the skills, now you put yourself into the marketplace and launch, and now we start dominating to break the artist, not just the music. That's what- the pr stuff for the social media PR stuff too, okay. And then we follow up and assume that we had one song that was strong and maybe you might have had a couple that had a nice little level of visibility, but now we're looking to find the seconds long to really tie [ __ ] in. Yeah, cementyeah, just dementia, ass. Like. You're a legit artist. Show more

Yeah, right, not just somebody with one song that we happen to know a lot about because you did the pr stuff. We still need to connect with music. We want to, like, keep going the artist route. That's how I saw it. Okay, all right, the solid, solid breakdown, man, solid breakdown. Well, let me look at my next up. Oh, so my next step from that was release music, right? So, like I said in my head, this artist is complete ground zero. So this is what I'm thinking of, right? So just get them to start putting music out there and really start building a catalog and, you know, having something for the fans that we ideally build to experience. I after that develop a Content strategy, because I'm all about the free. How can we get [ __ ] shaken with little to no money involved? And kind of like what you said, man, it's going to teach them a lot about communicating their Vision to Their audience in a way that is not going anywhere. Show more

So, you know, I do think it's a very valuable skill set. My next step was find the song right. So that kind of makes me think about lightning rod concept. We have an agency. I once heard another marketer say: hey, bro, let me take one song to get in the game, and I've I've lived and died about that ever since I heard that quote. Yeah, I'm saying that [ __ ] just changed my life when I heard that [ __ ]. So my next step would be like yo, let's figure out like what V song is. Ideally this will come from the content strategy and that's kind of watching how people move on that stuff, you know. But it might be some gut feeling that we'll be taking the people we trust. But either way to go be to find like these on the song. We about to try to push the single. After that man build a paid marketing funnel right. So this is the ads, this is the influencer strategy, this is the pr campaign. This Is Us building out our fan building funnel using things that we can control. You say what, like, what? Like ads, like influences, like I said, PR stuff that we're like we can't really be gatekeeped out of getting it, because I'm looking at this too. All right. Last night I was thinking about like a paid Market in front of like ham selling merch, because I'm gonna get paid off of merch. It's a marketing funnel. You were talking about things that we can pay for. Yeah, so paid Mark. Okay, yeah, like paid marketing funnel. Yeah, so things that help grow the artist fan base, that we can control, that we can't be gatekeeped out of advertising- influencers got it, things like that right, whatever that looks like, based on resources and budget at the time. Show more

Okay, set next that would be, and this one might be kind of. And then I look back on it but I put: get the artist to 100K streams with no playlist, no playlisting. I'm not including playlisting in my paid marketing funnel because I want to have a very clear assessment of the artist fan base and who we're talking to. I don't want nothing muddying up my data- Maybe online, but not not at this point- and I'm looking at the 100K streams as building proof of concept because it's gonna, it's gonna tie into my my next step. But I believe in like building proof of concept of an artist. Like, let me, because every artist ain't that Lit and they can make it. Everybody says it about the artists they're working with. Yeah, we need proof to believe that, right. Show more

But, like I said, my next step is now I'm gonna start looking for industry Partnerships. So dsps, platforms, Tech talk, Instagram, YouTube, things like that. Other artists, right, trying to figure out, like, who their peers are and get them, you know I'm saying, associated with those people and next to those people, maybe execs. I'm saying because I feel about it. I'm not the most like exact Chasey type of guy, you know what I'm saying, but maybe, maybe for the artists, you know I'm saying if I feel like there's some value there. But at this point I've already built my funnel to get the artist, music fans and get them awareness in, like the music space. Now I'm trying to get them industry awareness right and get them in front of people and things that can help them. Just why industry? Why fan awareness before industry awareness for you? Proof of concept? Still, I think a lot of. So the conversation we had with them last night changed my mind a little bit on this, but I think they're a different breed of people, since the age is a different, bigger people, because Barry was like you know I'm saying he don't always feel like he needed to see numbers to believe in somebody which I think is noble and even cool. So here, because I haven't really heard that before. This goes into the latter conversation, though. Right, this is one self-belief in that you know, as an individual I can make some shake, yeah, but that also becomes from the position. Yeah too, right, you've done a certain amount of things and you have a certain amount of Leverage, knowledge and resources that you can see something and move on a lot quicker and build afterward where someone at the beginning, you might need a lot more proof of concept to know that this thing is going to happen. Show more

It's like the analysts who watch NBA games and they're so focused on stats. Why? Because they don't know what that [ __ ] really looks like. Because they haven't really Moved Through the Motions, they don't have the Instinct for it and that. But- and what they try to Discount is, this Instinct isn't just some woo-woo [ __ ]. My instinct got built through legitimate experience and actually seeing it from the ground level. Show more

So it might seem like, oh, I'm just making it and I'm not being scientific, but I've already gotten evidence on evidence, on evidence, and I've seen the things that the numbers can't reveal, which allows people, I think to move like that. That's what I thought about, because the other buddy, number, number two- yeah you know Zeke- was like: oh, I'm locking them down on them papers. Yeah, like to make sure again on understanding that experience. Yeah, when I, when the artist takes off, how many times do artists blow up and then leave the manager who's done all the work? Yeah, right, which, again going back to artists, decision making is Awards just artists- always, not always assuming they're the only ones getting screwed over. Yeah, no, many times. I have no idea how many times managers and people dealing with artists have gotten screwed over by the artist, but it people just don't [ __ ] with the people they don't know as much the people behind the scenes. So it doesn't become a big story. Show more

Yeah, like you're never going to have an interesting campaign. Oh, Beyonce got screwed over. Oh, that's a big. So, Kanye, people are interested in that. It's not gonna be news that this manager from Milwaukee got screwed over, that you don't know, by your favorite artists. You don't even want to believe that because you love the artist too much. Yeah, right, so artists that should do [ __ ] happen. Oh, more more often than you would love to acknowledge, and that's why I say like I, I know those type of people exist, because I even think about like Sam. Sam is like that, you know I'm saying one a good friend of mine, he's like that. But I think once you start getting to DSP, yeah, just a good guy in, yeah, if he believes in something, even though how the numbers are, he'll stand behind it and try to help him out, because I've seen him do it before with Taj, like with Taj Keaton, he was helping him build from Ground Zero. Well, all right, before you get into your next thing, I think another in hearing him in that same example, I think another thing that goes with that is a curse: the belief in that artist and also having a vision for what you want to build and be a part of, yeah, as well. So which, when we talk about recruiting team members early on, if y'all are part of the same vision, they have a similar Vision to you than what you can accomplish. That's all you can ask for as an artist. Right, you can't expect them to give you everything or have a lot of resources, but they have a similar vision. Show more

Yeah, and, as I said, like those people, yes, for what I've seen with the dsps. Maybe the DSP sometimes, but the social platforms, they don't usually move like that. They want to see some numbers. Right, hey, before I give you this Tick Tock partnership, I want to see a quarter million credits. Yeah, right. So that's. That's to me why the proof of concept building is so valuable, because I do think that if you push the Arts in the right way, you will come across those people who don't care. Show more

But I'm thinking about the ones that do care and I'm saying there's gonna be a lot of them. You know, I'm saying we're being honest. So, like that, that's what made that my next step. Well, so looking for industry Partnerships, oh, next that would be trying to figure out how to monetize the artists. So figuring out how can we get some money back in this to me ties into the proof of concept conversation, because I do think that more doors open for you when you can prove that the artist is making money right. It's kind of like that last conversation we had last night where they were saying that if you can build a profitable artist like you, you lit. Show more

You know, I'm saying because everyone doesn't build a profitable artists. Very few people build a profit bar. It looks like there's a lot because we see all the big dogs, but if you think about how many artists release music that are not making money, the fact that you get someone making money is seen as a very valuable thing in the music industry. Yeah, even if it's not like a crazy man, you got your artist making 10K a month. Damn, let's follow you. I'm saying I know 150 000 [ __ ] that wish that was making a hundred thousand a month out there, right. So figuring out how to get the artists making money, and then my last step will start looking for funding, because now I feel like we got that pipeline, we have the, we have the music fans, we have the industry awareness. You know we build proof of concept. We started monetizing the artists. Now we just need fun into like gases and like really break them through. So that's why that, to me, is my lifestyle, because I wouldn't want to approach an investor personally without the other steps in place, because it's about leverage without leverage. Yeah, see, so I think the big takeaway from all of it- because there are so many other perspectives and people who approached their rollouts different than us. It came down to a couple things. One, the way you're going to go about it is based on the resources that you have in hand and your main primary skill sets and experience, right? So there's that. Two EJ went crazy on a very specific artist, yeah, that he imagined. Yeah, basically, I is speed. That's pretty much who he built, right, it was a gamer, right streamer, culture artist that he was able to build everything around. Show more

So the specificity is going to change how you approach these artists. Most of us gave some general tenants and more framework approach of how we would approach it, but when you have a specific artist you're working with, it's actually going to change how you do it all. Right? Which leads me to the ultimate point that Zeke mentioned. However, both of them mentioned, right, it was like, Hey, if we knew exactly what to do, the amount of money they had be crazy. Show more

We do it every time and they've done it right. And he said: we'll do it every time, right, but you don't know exactly what to do for every single artist, because every single artist is different where they are, they're fan based. There's new things to learn, but it's more about taking those Frameworks and moving on them, learning and then learning how to navigate and feel your way through it, which is the instinctual part that can't be accounted for. That's why H labels like to buy momentthat's already established, because they can skip the learning phase of by who these artist is, who their fan base is. How do I learn the artists and how they move? What song is going to pop like? That's? That's a new thing to learn in training, just like when you hire new employees, right, it's extremely expensive. So that's that was like the big value in the conversation, like just remembering, even from these people who have helped break multiple artists have been a part of you know, not just you know- we talk about the Earth Gang and new and jig- but been being a part of wiz's situation, Mike dimes, that's a new push through. Yeah, who else was an older one around the Wiz Khalifa stuff? I forgot. Oh, Matt Miller, Mac Miller, right, these people have been a lot of multiple situations and they're still not like: oh, there's this one step that I can run every single artist through, right, or this one set of steps I can run every single artist doing break at artists, guaranteed every time. That just is what it is. So never forget that now. With that being said, Show more

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