The New Blueprint for Turning Fans Into Community ft. KayvanMD #249

Director of Music Distribution at Genius/Worldstar Kayvan Daragheh breaks down why community is the new superpower for indie artists.

We dive into building real fans, keeping them engaged, and why most artists lose the audience they already have by treating fans like customers instead of people.

Kayvan shares how he built “Kayvan’s House,” what modern A&Rs actually look for, and the mindset every artist needs to build a lasting career.

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Transcript

0:00

People get the idea of community and fans or community and customers kind of mixed up a little bit. If you're an artist who keeps hearing build community and you think that means more followers or more customers, you're f***ing wrong. Because today we're talking to someone who actually built a community. His name is Kayvon Darage. We never actually got the pronunciation of his last name, but he is the director of A &R at Genius and Worldstar. He's an artist manager and he's the guy behind Kayvon's House, a community of thousands of serious musicians all learning and leveling up together. I think I've seen community pop up as kind of a buzzword I think for a lot of people when it's not really community at the core of it and it is actually just more capitalism and business and enterprise at kind of the core of it. Customers. He's focused on how to actually build something that's self -sufficient and supportive instead of just squeezing money out of your fans. There is going to be that need to consistently bring in new customers and grow and scale a business. But at the same time, you do still have to make sure you're serving the people who are there or you will lose them. Plus, you're getting a real A &R perspective in real time. I mean, you're going to hear how Kayvon is scouting artists, what he's looking for when he's signing distribution deals and why literally none of this s*** even matters if the music isn't good and the work ethic isn't there. It's still music first. It has to be great art before everything else. And we did not shy away from the money talks. We got into stuff like monetizing your fan base without turning them into ATM machines. Why he was lowering his prices for his music reviews when everyone else was raising them and why relying on streams alone is simply not the plan as an artist. Bogus. If you're doing this to make money, do anything else. There are literally so many other jobs and industries that will make you substantially more money. So if you're actually serious about leveling up and turning some of these casual listeners into real community or you just feel like you're stuck chasing numbers, this conversation is the episode for you. It's the one for them, man. How do I get it? Why are you still talking? I don't know. Let's get into it. Let's start the episode now. Well, welcome back to another episode of the One More Time podcast. We got Kayvon in the building. Well, virtually in the building. In the virtual building. We need budget to fly guests out, bro, at this point. We got to make more money, man. Like, comment, and subscribe so we can boost the channel and get that budget to bring our guests always in person. But no, this was a conversation we definitely wanted to have because you've done such a great job at building your own community, right, with Kayvon's house. You've built such a strong personal brand, too, just in the industry. And I think that artists can take a lot away from what you've done for yourself and then obviously, you know, what you're doing on behalf of your management clients, I'm sure, and obviously the clients that you're signing to, you know, distribution deals. So really, this whole conversation is going to really be focused around community. So let's just get the basics out of the way, right? Like, how would you define an artist's community? Oh, man. See, that's a tough one because I think a lot of people get, like, I think about community. And I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I think I've seen community pop up as kind of a buzzword, I think, for a lot of people when it's not really community at the core of it. And it is actually just more capitalism and business and enterprise at kind of the core of it. Customers. Yeah, customers. And so I do think sometimes people get the idea of community and fans or community and audience or community and customers kind of mixed up a little bit. But so for me, I think what really constitutes community more so than maybe those other terms is actually the give and take. You know what I mean? It's not just about taking from XYZ people or having them interact with your thing or send you money or submit using a paid submission or do paid promo or things like that. Like, I think there is inherently the need for community to be self -sufficient and supportive in both internally and externally. So even if it's not stuff like for us and the discord community, one of the things I want to make sure is really at the core of it always is not just, hey, we're doing this thing in here only. But, hey, here are some opportunities outside of our community that are maybe in other communities that we support or maybe, you know, other other places or platforms where you could get highlighted or supported or maybe they'll like your music. So it really is about sending our community members to other things outside of our community as well. But I think that is kind of the core of it. Right. It's that give and take. So, like, sure, I want you to interact with the things that we're doing because that helps grow the community. It helps grow kind of the idea behind what we do and why we do it and spread that hopefully to everyone. So everyone has the same kind of mindset on supporting each other and kind of like building true community around artists and independent artists. So what does that look like for the artist? Right. So an artist who's looking to not just take from their community. Right. And say, buy this, buy that, you know, stream this, watch that. What does the give and take look like for an artist, do you think? I think it depends on the artist. You know what I mean? Like, I think obviously for some people it's going to be more transactional. I think if they're an artist in general that's not really as invested in kind of like knowing their fans like that. And honestly, at a certain point, I think maybe artists can't really do that every day. Right. And I think that's the upside of obviously having like moderation teams and then people within your community who can kind of like be the liaisons between those individuals who are there and those individual pieces. And then this like overarching kind of brand or artist or person that's there. Right. Even for us, we've got we've got discord moderators. We've got a team that's kind of in there making sure on the day to day things are running. I'm still in there every day talking to people and kind of having that back and forth. But there's going to be days where I just can't because I'm busy and I have too much going on. And then we have the moderation team to kind of be there to keep talking to people, keep conversation going, kind of spark that community interaction between people who are just there. So I think it does depend artist to artist. For me personally, I think maybe the best ways that I've seen artists do it. Because I think there are certain artists who have very, very good, strong discord communities specifically where they are like there's a lot of stuff happening in there. They're talking to each other. They're doing all kinds of activations to kind of give back to those people, whether they're artists or producers in those communities as well. Johan Lennox, I think, is actually like a prime example. He's one of the people that I think has done one of the best jobs of creating like a very cool community, especially within discord, but then outside and in the real world as well. Right. Because like I think when he first started doing it, it was like kind of around the same time I started music streaming where Johan was also kind of hopping into the discord space and like building the community there. And one of the things that I've seen him do consistently is collaborate with people from his community and kind of put them on. And, you know, Johan obviously has like incredible credits. He's an incredible musician. Like he's definitely tapped in. Like he's not just like an artist that people don't know or produce that people don't know about. So I think that's been one of the cool things I've seen from artists like him. Kevin Abstract similarly, I think, has a really good and active discord community where they do music curation to give back to the artist community as well. And they highlight artists from their community and just kind of bring a little bit more in the sense of like, oh, you guys are here because you fuck with what I do. Let me find ways to just give back to you through this thing that I'm building and through this kind of audience I'm cultivating through this community I'm cultivating. So I think those are good examples. But for me, it's like it's really just about figuring out what you can do to bring value to those people who are there. Right. So and I think that's the case with honestly, like fan bases and audiences, too. Like I think at a certain point, artists need to figure out why people should care and stick with them and stay with them. Right. And I do think an easy way to do that is actually foster some sort of a relationship between you and your fans and find ways to bring value to them. And you're pretty bullish on discord as a platform to achieve that. Yeah. I was going to say is discord the main place for community building for artists, you think? I don't think it's the only place. I think there's different versions of it. There's a lot of things that exist. Right. This community. I think like even now, like you can even kind of do direct to consumer kind of like conversations and pushing stuff to them directly. Right. Exclusives. There's like Patreon groups. Like I think it's just figuring out what works for you and your community. For me, we started on discord. You know what I mean? So it was like one of those things where like in the pandemic, I was here gaming. I was streaming and it just kind of all intersected at the same point of being like, all right, well, this is a great way for me to kind of get all of my community in one place. So we can kind of create this this place where we can talk about music. We can share things. We can have exclusive playlist opportunities. We can have Q &A's with industry pros and just kind of get everything in one place. I wasn't so worried about the monetization aspect of it, which is, I think, why some people go to Patreon, why some people go to group to like some of these other companies, because there is kind of that like paywall like option. You know what I mean? But for me, it just wasn't really something that was I didn't really care about it. To be honest, like that wasn't the reason that I started it. But so I don't know that Discord is the only one. I do think that there are ways to use Discord. And I do like the kind of cross functionality of like how much you can do in that. It's obviously like you can stream directly in Discord if you want to. You can you can have like sound stages and bring people on, do listening parties, have Q &A's with people in the community and things like that. Right. And then you have that every day kind of like conversation happening in there, too. So I like those aspects about it. It's absolutely. It's super impressive. It blew my mind. You were tapped in already. I was already there. You were already on Discord. When we started our Discord, which like admittedly we are not in there at all enough as, you know, as we want to be. I was just shocked, bro, as to like the quality of the, you know, video chat, you know, functionality, the like audio only type of like conversations you can have. Screen sharing. The screen sharing capabilities. We have all our meetings in there now. All of like the links and files you can upload. I mean, there's just unbelievable amounts of functionality. And I was like, how is this free? Like it was just also unbelievable to me that like we're not paying for it to survive as a company. You know what I mean? Like it was wild that that was not the monetization plan for Discord was to charge us, you know, as the like people hosting the servers or whatever. Yeah. That was mind blowing. And we have not been paid by Discord. Discord. It is actually it really is impressive. Same. Also not a partnership. Don't have a paid account. Like none of that stuff. It's just something that I found a lot of use from. But even from that, like I will say it's not it's not the only place where I'm focusing on building community either. It's just a place where I can kind of compile all of it in one place. Right. So like TikTok, I think, was it was a big start for me as well. Just getting people into the Discord community because like there was a time period. I think this is like probably right during the kind of like I don't know if it's the golden era of TikTok, but like there was like a time period. We know what you're talking about. There's like a period of time. Pandemic. Pandemic hit. TikTok is going crazy. I'm working with artists. I'm trying to get them to make content. They're not necessarily doing it. So I'm like, all right, well, fuck you guys. If I have the time to make four pieces of content a day and post them, there is no excuses that you can give me about not having time to make content and posting about your music. Like, it's your full time job. Yeah. Come on, bro. I got it. Sound off. Yeah, exactly. So during that time, that was kind of when it all started. So it started on TikTok. We kind of brought people from TikTok to Discord. How did you do that? Because that's a big question. I feel like, I mean, shit, it's really a question that we have for ourselves. I'm like, how do you move people from, you know, big social media platform that's more of, you know, I guess less community driven and more just like they're scrolling their ass off. Right. To then move them to an engaged community based platform like a Discord, like a Patreon group, whatever one you want to use. How did you do it? I hope you guys are enjoying the conversation. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about our pals at DistroKid. You can't get your music onto streaming platforms without a distributor. And DistroKid is an excellent choice to handle that for you. For the ridiculously low price of $23, you can upload unlimited music for an entire year. That is less than $2 a month. I tripped on $2 walking down the street earlier. They have countless features to help you out on your musical journey. One of my favorites is Splits. Instead of my collaborators hitting me up all the time saying, where's my money? I can input everyone's percentage when I upload the music and DistroKid will handle it. I've personally used DistroKid for many years and can genuinely recommend them as a great tool to get your music out into the world. And if you sign up at omtdistro.com, you'll get 30% off an already insanely low price. This is absolute peanuts for unlimited uploads yearly. We wish you the best with your creating. Let's get back to it. I'll say the first time that I got it was luck. The first time. Okay. God damn it. This is not helpful. I wish I could say it was a job. Jesus. First video I made. This is like when I'm like kind of in TikTok heavily making a combination of like music curation content, educational content. And then was just starting to kind of like tell the story of like who I am, what I do, what I've been doing. And I had just like, this is probably my first video that went crazy. But I was like, hey, like I started a discord for independent emerging artists. This is what the point of it is. This is what we do here. I had maybe like 15 to 20 people in the discord at that point in time because it was all just friends that I was gaming with. Right. Like it literally was like I had made this to just talk to my gaming friends when we were playing COD. And like that was that was like literally it was like again, like Warzone's just dropped. We're all playing it. No one's doing anything. Everyone's just binge playing Warzone every single day. And so I made this video. And then literally like within like a couple of days, we were up like fifteen hundred, two thousand members. We're up to fifty eight hundred now. And there's more of a like a concerted push to drive people across. But I do think it's been a combination of content and incentive. You know what I mean? Like that's the thing we're really working on right now because we have a lot of members. But it's making sure that people stay active. It's making sure they keep coming back. It's making sure they still kind of contribute to what's happening in there. And I think incentive is the big thing. Right. So these discord Q &A is that we've been doing, which are exclusive to discord. We'll do the we'll kind of have the VODs as well, like the recordings of the audio go in there. But it's just opening the floor to have our community members be able to ask people who work in the industry questions they want to ask. So we had Freddie Fein from Amazon Music a couple of weeks ago. We've got one with someone from Sparta on the distro site coming up. We've had managers. We've had like an attorney. That was our best one so far. We had Ben Lawyer. Shout out to real Ben Lawyer really quickly. But he did an amazing job. Literally took like an hour and a half of his time just to really break down questions that artists had about legal issues, copywriting, like all that kind of stuff. Right. Getting beats placed, getting beats cleared, like all that kind of stuff. So I think that's kind of been the next step, right, is going from like, hey, we have this space. It's there for you. There's collaboration channels, those channels for you to link up with people in different cities. If you're going on a trip to New York, we've got a New York City link up channel where you can get in there and just be like, hey, I'm coming to New York. This is what I'm looking for. We have an emotional health, you know, just support channel for people if they're just having a hard time. But it's just trying to make sure that there's incentive for them to be there. Right. And I think that's probably the hardest part, if I'm being honest, like especially with like a very small team, it's literally like me and two people. And we've had teammates kind of cycling and out over the years. So I think maybe when it was it was like at peak and at its like like best form was when we had consistent outside opportunities coming in, which were kind of ramping back up on consistent Q &A is consistent community playlists where submissions are like specifically in the discord. So I think it's just been it's been figuring out the incentives and trying to make sure that it is still of value to the community because that's the biggest thing. You know what I mean? At the end of the day, like I just want it to be a space where artists can actually get something useful out of it, regardless of what it is. I always tell people ask me ask me industry questions in that, too, so I can just answer them without somebody having to hire me for a consultation. I can just give everyone the answers at once. So I feel like a lot of artists are much too focused on growth and new followers, new fans, new people and not fostering the ones they already got. And they overlook the existing base. Right. And they're existing people that are maybe like wanting the opportunity to be an engaged member of a community. Right. Why do you think that is? Why do you think a lot of artists are overlooking this notion of community? And I'm also curious how you split your time and how you think artists should be splitting their time between, you know, finding new and fostering current. Yeah. I mean, you got to do both. Right. Like, I think there needs to be kind of that balance and combination of both, not only for artists, but anyone building any sort of business. Right. Like it's the same as any business where you have customers and you might have regulars who come back every single week and they never stop coming. They die for the brand. They live for the brand. You know what I mean? And then there is going to be that need to consistently bring in new customers and grow and scale a business. So, like, I think it's it's got to be the combination of both. Right. I think a lot of artists get caught up on the acquiring new customers, acquiring new fans because they have to by nature, especially because a certain point. I say the stars all the time, like it's just a super oversaturated space right now in general. Music, content, like all of it. Right. Like everyone is building something. Everyone is making content. Everybody is kind of like building their brand and pushing and selling us stuff. Right. So I think that you have to be doing that because it is necessary because at a certain point, those fans who are there in theory may get a little stagnant. They might not be as excited. They might not be there to go to shows. They might not buy the merch. They might not listen to the music. They might just miss things purely because the algorithm not serving it to them. So I think that does have to be that common combo of like, all right, we're acquiring new customers. We're bringing new people into the community, especially if they're people who don't know about it, if they don't know what we're about, if they don't know what we care about. But at the same time, you do still have to make sure you're serving the people who are there or you will lose them. Yeah. But I think that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. But you talk about people getting stagnant and like not engaged. But do you think that's because of the exact problem that we're talking about is that they're not getting served? They're not getting taken care of. That's that's how I kind of look at it. It's like, dude, even seeing people that come back around for our community of like, damn, I haven't seen that person like something or comment or be engaged in a while. And it's probably a little bit on us. Well, it's also a function of just how algorithms work in general. You talk about people not, you know, seeing new posts from people. It's like, yeah, like look at any social media feed. It's majority not people you follow. The algorithms think they know what you want to see more than you do now. So it's I think the most important time to be building some real community. Yeah. Yeah. I like it's hard to say because it's like you could say one is the cause. One is the effect of either side of it. You know what I mean? So I don't know that there is like a perfect answer for it necessarily. But I think that's why the combination of both is so important, because you do need to make sure that the people that feel like they're special, feel like they cared for, feel like you value the fact that they are there in the first place, because otherwise they will leave. Are we talking like 50 50 or if you had to like split it? I think it depends on the person. I know, again, I feel like I'm dodging the answer a little bit, but such a politician. Let's say like a brand new artist, brand new artist. Well, I guess they don't have any community. Yeah, I was like stupid. It's a bad example. Fucking example, Henry. Jesus Christ. That's 100 percent. Literally. This guy. Friends and family. I threw him an alley-oop to be able to answer. I told you Henry wasn't on his game today, guys. He was a little stressed coming into this whole episode. Yeah. You shook, bro? You good? I'm fine, man. Are you good? Heavily weighted in one direction. I think if you're like Drake, it's probably heavily weighted in the other direction. What about Justin Bieber? What does he need to do? Are you done yet? Fuck, man. Jesus Christ. If you're in the middle, I think it depends on where you're at, right? So I would say like it's probably a sliding scale, right? If you're a more established artist, make sure you're taking care of the people who are there, because they've been with you for a little bit. There's probably a reason they've stayed with you for a while. You know what I mean? If you're a more emerging artist, it probably slides a little bit more towards customer fan acquisition, audience acquisition, community acquisition, because you have to by nature. Yeah. So I think that's probably the perfect answer. It's not necessarily like a specific number. No, but like, you know, all jokes aside, Henry, it's okay, man. Sorry. I feel like there's some tension here. You will not just move on. We did right now. Oh my God. No, but so something, you know, something I've thought a lot about again, like just looking at our own journey. Cause in a guys, the only reason we were speaking about our kind of like platform building journey is because I do think it's like super similar to the artist's fight, you know, as much as we want to think that, you know, podcasters and content creators aren't the same as our, it's like, guys, we're all trying to do the same thing. We're all trying to build an audience, like cultivate them, of course, build a business around having an audience. Like we're all doing the same shit in some ways. So something that I think we've talked about a little bit is like, if you really lean in and like really give the base, like what they want and like keep them hyper engaged, I feel like they're going to do the growth for you. Is that like a fair, like they're going to tell people, are people gatekeeping still? Like, I don't know. I think word of mouth is important. Like if you give a base, like a really amazing experience to be a part of a certain community, I'd like to think it's almost like more efficient. And again, we're not doing this this way. And I, I fucking hate that we don't sometimes. Right. We are focused a little, probably too much on like new acquisition and growth, et cetera. Cause it looks sexier, right? We're all ego driven. We got these vanity metrics of followers and likes and comments and all this bullshit. But like, I'd almost think that our community would be doing almost a better like street team job for us. If we super, you know, how do you look at that? Yeah. I mean, honestly, that's why I try and work them into literally everything I do. Like anytime I'm making a playlist, anytime I'm making content, like we've got content specifically for community members. Cause that's, that's what I want it to be. You know what I mean? I want them to know that they are valued and there is a reason that I do this. It's not just, I don't know, like for me, I've been artists, right? So I think that's a, that's like an important part of my journey as well as that. Like I started where they are at. And so for me, like there is kind of this like chip on my shoulder a little bit of being like, all right, well, how can I give back more to this community that I've been a part of? And I understand the plight of, uh, I think also like, cause I manage artists. So I see it from the other angle as well of being like, well, look, there's all these places that exist that do curate music and do kind of, you know, content about artists and music. Like the kind of super serve a certain pocket of the industry, if we're being honest. And there is kind of this huge hole, especially for more emerging and independent talent to get real constructive feedback and also just kind of learn the things that they need to do, need to know to just make this a little bit easier. So I think for us, you know, for me, there's definitely this, this kind of core thing of being like, no, like I built this to serve these people first and foremost. And then like through the content that we do on Instagram, where it's like, I do a new music Friday playlist every week. That's usually how I'm thinking about how do I get new artists, new artists, fan bases, new groups of people that I can kind of bring in, right? Like it's not always going to be just from the submissions when it's our new music Friday or like community playlist is always going to be that. And that's what it was built for, right? Cause it literally is like, Hey, you submit this in the discord. We'll consider you for the playlist. That's how that works. Um, but for the other playlists that I work on for the other content that I make around music, there's always going to be a focus on smaller, more emerging acts, but that is kind of how I, I, you know, kind of like bring these new artists into the fold or like bring different communities into the fold. Cause I think for me also, like I think about music as a very global thing. I grew up in the UK. So that's like also a big part of like my background. I've moved around a bit. Like I lived in Nashville, North Carolina. So even just like little pockets of different like music scenes, like I do like to bring them into the community too. And so I, I, I don't know, like it's sorry. I think I've, I've also just not even answered what the question was. No, no, it's, that's how I'm thinking about it. It's all good. So how do these conversations sound between you and your management clients? Right? Like, cause again, you talked about, yes, you know, you have a past of being an artist, but like, obviously now you're in a role where you're, you know, A &R director at, you know, genius slash world star. Um, you're obviously, you know, founding member and curator, uh, and, you know, kind of, I guess, community chief, if you will, at Kayvon's house, but then you do manage clients like how do they look at community? And cause you clearly see the importance of it. And how are you like talking with them about it? It's the hardest. Like if I'm being honest, it's the hardest thing I think to convince any of them that it is important, but that's not even like really on them. It's just, it's, I think it's more so just the idea that like one, it takes a lot of work. Right. And I think being an artist in general now probably takes the most amount of work it ever has. Cause you're not just making music. You are a content creator. You are a community builder. You are a leader of, of like this brand and business. You kind of have to do a lot of things. Right. So I think for some of them, it's, it's always a conversation of like, yeah, this would be really cool. I think Isaac, uh, one of my clients, Isaac Zell, right. He's from Canada. He's from Vancouver. He's done an incredible job and I think he was the one who really like grasped this idea of like, Oh, like how can I give back to the audience? So like we talked very openly cause it was just a long period of time. Like he streamed really well. Like we were doing really, really well algorithmically just on streaming platforms, but the social was, there was always kind of this disconnect. And I was like, bro, like you're a, you're an independent artist who's had like, I don't know, like 20, 30 million streams that you've done on your own with spending very little money. Like you mix everything yourself. You master everything yourself. You've been doing this like self -shot DIY video stuff since you were like 14 years old, like kind of open up your process a little bit more. And so we kind of went from the shift of just making like music content to, all right, well, if you are a self like DIY artist, here are some tips, things that I've learned here are VSTs. And so he had gotten into doing content first. He's kind of shifted now and I'll talk about what he's doing now. But at first he had shifted kind of into like educational music content. I'd seen it working for me on TikTok. We talked about it. I was like, yo bro, you are literally an engineer. Like you could talk about, you know, working ways to promote your music, but at the same time be talking about how you're doing it, how you're making it. Maybe like for the kids who don't have money to like buy like the top tier VSTs, how do you kind of like put the free versions or like the light versions or like kind of like the clone versions that people can use and access easier to kind of get the same sound or get the same effect without having to spend the premium amount to get like that premium VST. Cause there is a lot of like those other versions that exist, right? And you can kind of get close, even if it's not exactly the same. Yeah. And so he kind of stepped into that realm a little bit. And I think that was how he built a pretty big TikTok following in a short amount of time was kind of getting into that educational side of things and just sharing what he'd learned in his experience with people. And then it's kind of at the core of what I tried to do also with like everything we do on the cave on South side. So I think he was the one who grasped it the most. Since then, he's gone on to actually start a YouTube channel called Ova Zealots. He stepped away from making music. He started literally from scratch and making a building a new community that was specifically kind of centered around politics and also education around politics, history, background, context. We're like nine months in 125, maybe 130,000 subscribers. What are we doing wrong? Yeah. But that's all him. Like, I can't say that I've done that. He's just found a really, really good way. Like our initial conversation, like he doesn't even use social. You know what I mean? This is all from YouTube specifically. Wow. Damn. We are very lucky that, you know, shout out to Hassan Abhi, who's obviously like a very big kind of person in like the political social space. He watches like every video that Isaac does now on his stream, like every time it drops. But he's just really put a lot of time and effort into making the content be digestible, easy to understand. And also just like he's in the comments, like every video that posts, he's in the comments. He's on Twitter interacting with people. So like he kind of does that work himself naturally. So it was a bit of an easier conversation of like, Hey, you need to do this. Yeah. But it works. Bro. I just, I just love, we just talked about this. I don't even remember who it was. God, you know, we have a lot of conversations, but, um, someone literally talked about like being just able to pivot, you know? And like, he clearly wasn't feeling the music shit anymore. He might've had just a genuine interest in politics over the years, whatever, just like on the personal, uh, you know, side of things. Yeah. So then he tried this new thing and look at the fucking like results. It's crazy. Yeah. You know, this is a music podcast. We don't want to discourage you guys. You know, we don't want to tell you to stop doing music and do something else. Pack it up. But, but I mean, there, you know, there, there's not, music's not the only fucking option and he might want to revisit music down the road. And he's now built this other, yeah, exactly. And he's now built this other platform and maybe it takes a little bit of the pressure off the music shit, because to your point, man, this is a fucking rat race. You guys are having to do way more than artists of the past. That is just facts. It's subjectively true. And it's, it's hard, man. So it is. Yeah. And everything costs money now too. I think that's the other thing is like, I actually am very pro self -sufficiency from artists and like, you gotta get a job, get a job. Like it sucks. It's difficult. But like at the same time, it's going to give you the financial freedom to do the things that you want to do the way that you want to do them. Right? Like, sure. It might slow things down a little bit, but I also tell artists all the time, like everyone's timeline is completely different. And like the thing that you might've seen 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, like maybe the thing I even fell in love with when I was like, I want to be an artist. It's not the thing that it is now. You know what I mean? It's a drastically different industry. The pace is faster. The way the artists come and go is much quicker for the most part. Like there's obviously, you know, outliers that kind of stand the test of time and stick around, but I think generally when we see those artists that they are the ones that have a little bit more backing or have that freedom or have that, that machine behind them to help kind of bring these ideas to life. It is harder to be an independent artist, but I think like that is kind of the need for having that, like being able to self fund, you know what I mean? And if that takes longer and you can stack your bread up and get a good rollout plan because of that, or shoot the best visuals that you can do and really bring this creative vision to life, it's kind of better. So I'm very pro pivot. And let's not forget, like, it's also possible, even fucking possible for anyone to do it. I used to, there's no gatekeepers. Like I used to not sure. It's hard, but like you have a chance at least let's start there. It's easier to be able to do it, but then it's harder to do it. Yeah. It's like this weird paradise. So something we talk a lot about, and I want to get your take on this is like, and you alluded to it earlier is like the whole digital versus IRL, right? Side of community building and just side of like being an artist, right? Yeah. The, the most successful ones are able to, in my opinion, at least are able to not only of course, establish a very strong digital presence online, but they are able to have that translate, you know, to in real life moments. So how do you view that? And where have you seen artists like really have strong IRL community building? Cause I think we focus a little bit now on the digital side. Like what are some great examples of in real life community building for artists? You know, I think it's, it's less that I've seen artists do it. And it's more that I've seen platforms who work with artists do it. If that makes sense. You know what I mean? Where it's like indie labels who might do mixes that are very niche. I just was at one recently with a, um, you know, Dost means friend, like the, it's like an Instagram account and Kogo. They, they very specifically focused on like South Asian artists, right? Okay. So they had a mixer, Amazon music recently. And it was like invite only very specifically kind of catered towards the, the Southeast Asian community and or Southwest Asian, South Asian, South Asian community in general. Um, so it was like a lot of like Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi artists just out there like meeting and connecting with each other people who work in the industry or around the industry as well. And I think that's probably where I've seen the best community building or like I've been going to like, you know, obviously like digital log mixes and events for years. And I think like communities like that is, is maybe where I've seen the, the IRL stuff like where you work well, the meet and greets are cool. Like the Cardi B meet and greets that is probably at least from like a major, like big artists. I wanted to tell the things I've seen recently that I've already enjoyed though. Yeah. Tell the people like what you saw or like, well, you know what she was doing. Cause not everyone's even familiar with like how she had been rolling out this project, bro. And I wanted to do a whole episode on it. We probably won't now at this point. It's a little bit, I don't know. It's a little stale. Yeah, it's happened. So we kind of missed the moment, but it was something that I brought to Henry's attention cause I'm not sure he even like saw all the details of it. So what, what did she do? You know what I mean? And why do you think it worked so well? Yeah. So, I mean, it was like a combination of like, she literally was like out on the streets, like giving out CDs and selling CDs, which I thought was just like just such a cool, like New York shit also, you know, like I couldn't name another like major artists, like an artist of that size, like somebody who's like literally like recognizable, just like you can tell by her voice. You wouldn't even need to see it. Yeah. Um, like I haven't really seen any artists, I think of that level kind of be so willing to do what feels like more grassroots promotion. Um, and I just was like literally down to the hood, like getting some dude in a headlock in a photo shoot. Like I really enjoyed seeing that stuff and it just felt like it brought so much of a personality out as well. But it was, it's that like one -on -one interaction, like not to, you know, obviously the Nikki Cardi beef stuff is happening. So that's why Nikki's top of mind. But like Nikki is not like, I'm gonna go out and show love to all my friends, fans kind of post. And like, I've literally, I've seen it be like four hours late to a fan event and like not care at all. And like, this is kind of is what it is. Like this Cardi stuff feels like the complete like polar opposite of that. You know what I mean? I think it's like stuff like that. Obviously the Kohl's like dollar and a dream tour when he did that, when it was like, I'm going to go on tour, it's a $1 ticket show up, be here at this time. Like it's stuff like that. That I think we're as a fan, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's the shit you remember and it's the experiences you remember. But you're all, you'll always be like, you know, I remember that time I could go to this thing like flip side, like eras toward ticket prices. That's, that's unattainable for a lot of fans. You know what I mean? It's like, but bro, I think, I think what you're talking about with the like memorable side of it is super important. And let's not like gloss over that, bro. Cause I think even at the smallest level, right. Cause you're mentioning of course, like things at a very grand scale, right. You know, at least like a list artists, even emerging artists, if you can do, if you can think about whatever you can do to make something memorable, bro, like that's, what's going to create a fan for life in my opinion. Cause I still remember some of my like favorite emerging acts where I had like moments, you know what I mean? In there kind of come up that I just, I'll never forget, bro. And I think it's, it's kind of vague what I'm saying, but just like whatever that means to you, like if you can create a memorable experience for someone like that is the golden ticket to like their fandom for a very, very long time. And I would argue it's even easier now that so much of our lives are spent on screens. It's like, if you can just get someone to a place that's already half the battle, you know what I mean? And then, yeah, obviously, you know, you want to put on a quality event and you want to have people from there. I got some examples that I think are actually really good examples for more emerging artists. Lexa Gates in the glass box. Love that. Yeah. That's it's a really good rollout. Like even if you didn't know who she was, if you walk past that on the sheet, you'd be like, what the fuck's going on here? Let me go check this out. But then it was everywhere. You know what I mean? It was like every content creator was out there. Everybody had gone to see everybody was like, damn, this is like really cool. Saki, who's one of the artists that we signed a genius distro, not in his most recent project, but this is probably like two and a half, maybe three years ago. I wanted to sign him at this point. He actually hand built a telephone booth that he took all around while he was touring so that people could go in and listen to the music and this like immersive like telephone booth that was just kind of at venues. And it was sick. Like it would just be there before shows. I thought it was one of the coolest ideas ever. He literally built the shit by hand, too, with like some friends. And then from Virginia, just like trucked it around like from show to show. And I was like, damn, that's really like such an interesting way to kind of bring fans into a more immersive experience. And then the other one and this is maybe like, you know, again, like I'm lucky to be in New York, but like Tommy Richmond, right? Him and Jay Mack used to come up from Virginia all the time and they would do that like the everything is punk parties. You know, Tommy would do that. Everything is punk parties. And I feel like that created and built this like fan base and audience around him at a very early stage. They just really understood like what he was about and wanted to be out there and just party with him. Right. And so I think those are examples of like how certain artists have done a really good job of building community in these RRL spaces. But also digitally, I think like Tommy is a great example of digital, digital kind of community building as well. Yeah. But what I think, and we've talked about this too, is like, bro, the RRL stuff is also always going to be able to be amplified online. So it's like, it's almost like, even if you only have five people come out to it, IRL, which is still like a win for a lot of emerging artists. To your point, it's very, very difficult to get people out of their fucking comfort zone, out of their house, right. To go somewhere and do something. But even if you only have five people, the amount of people you could have, you know, see such a thing online, right. And be amplified online. It's, it's mind blowing. So I do think like, we need to start thinking about it of like, not just of course the like true, like, you know, IRL component of it, but also how it can be amplified online. And that's something that like LVRN does incredibly, right. Like, and, and like since the eighties too, like I remember JID with, um, with the fucking like, uh, golden car, like his like golden, uh, I don't know if it was a Cadillac, but whatever, like his old school, his like old school car that like, I think he used to drive back in high school or something. And they literally like moved it from like city to city. Right. And it was just this whole kind of like scavenger hunt type shit. And again, it was amplified extremely well digitally. So it's like, not only did they get the IRL stuff, but then they also had the like online amplification of it. So it's kind of a win -win bro. I think double dip. Um, so something recently, like a biohazard truck or something, right. And he brought fans into the back of the truck and they could like, let's stop. I can't remember exactly what it was. I just remember seeing it online and being like, damn, that's actually a really cool idea too. So I think there is like, and to LVRN, like the summer Walker hard drive shit, like taking that around all over the place. Like those, those are things that stand out for sure. As like just really, really good rollout moments. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So on the like A &R side, right? Like how are you viewing like the strength of an artist community and how important is that before you sign someone to a distribution deal? Right. Yeah. Um, I, I mean, it's important. It's maybe not the most important thing to me because I think. Cause you can do it for them. You can help. Yeah. We can help. That is a part of what we are supposed to do. I think. And I think it just across the board, I think that's what labels should do. I think that's what distributors should be thinking about doing too, is like figuring out how to wait ways to help artists figure out how to build that community. Cause like that that's in theory, what we are here for is to guide them and help them figure it out. Right. Like to me, if the artist has the work ethic, if they have the ability to figure out how to, and are at least savvy of the landscape as a whole, like if they're just not doing the things at all that you need to do as an artist to build a fan base, then maybe I can't help. You know what I mean? If they don't have the work ethic to be like making content and trying to, and experimenting and just being willing to take risks, or if they just don't have the attitude, like to, to kind of like put the work in and just try shit and be kind of not too, like if someone is acting too cool, like, yeah, maybe I can't help you. Cause it's just like, I don't really think that's people, what people want as an audience anymore is somebody just trying to sell them like a, like a persona or facade of like who they are. So I think, yeah, like the, the actual size of the community they have is maybe less of a concern for me, but I also think that's not necessarily the case across the board. Like for me personally, it's still music first. And I think it has to be right. Like it has to be great art before everything else. The work ethic is probably the second most important thing to me. Cause if they don't have the work ethic, that is not actually something that I feel like we can teach artists necessarily. You kind of just have to have that willingness to do the work. If you aren't, you'll always struggle with that. Like I've, I've experienced this. You will always struggle with the conversation of, Hey, I need you to do X, Y, Z thing by this date and them having it done by this date versus them maybe coming back with like 15 excuses as to why they don't have the thing done. Um, your work ethic just places your ceiling. You know what I mean? The lower work ethic you have, you immediately, you're not going above this level. A hundred percent. So yeah, I think those are the important things. But then also for me, it's like at the end of the day, like I think if there's a story to tell and there's a way that I can think about it strategically of like, how do I, like, how can I come into this and actually do something useful? Um, that's, that's probably important to me too. Like there's definitely artists that I would love to work with who maybe I don't necessarily feel like I can really bring that much to the table or it doesn't really fit or align with like my own beliefs or like the things that I care about. And then maybe I'm less likely to work with them than someone who like, not just like, I got this, you know what I mean? This is, this feels like something that means something to me as well. That's a very selfish way of thinking about it, but you know, this is my time at the end of the day. So I just should be a little selfish about it. How are you discovering artists these days? Um, it's a combination of things, honestly. Like I obviously we have the music feedback stream twice a week and I think that's a great way for me to find stuff. Um, we get in house content. Yeah. Like I signed like seven or eight artists from my community to genius distro over the last three years. Um, our first was my name isn't J Mac who I found on Twitch and discord. Now he's, you know, he's my name isn't J Mac, which is awesome and amazing to see. Um, and so there's been like Bray who's now part of illusion Hills, which is a really amazing group collective out of LA that's starting to pop up to like, he was also from my discord and Twitch community. Antone now who's a 16 year old 17 now, sorry, rapper from Florida, producer from Florida, very much in that kind of like Gene Dawson, alternative hip hop lane that he was from my community as well. Serena, who's our Afro pop artist. So that has been a great way for me to find things for a couple of different reasons. One, I can actually have a back and forth with the artists. We can build trust. We can build that rapport. They can see that I, that I care about this and they can see like why I do this and what, why I'm passionate about it. Um, two, I can see their work ethic over time. I'm not somebody who tends to just jump on things at a whim without seeing what kind of work ethic the artist has, what they do without me, what they can do, what they're willing to do. Um, and so, yeah, I think that has been a really good way for me to just actually talk to the people on the other side and kind of build that relationship. But then it's like, yeah, I'm on, I'm on, I follow like every curator that I respect taste wise basically as well. I'm like, I am constantly like chronically on the internet kind of looking at what people are listening to, what they're consuming, what's popping up, just keeping, keeping track of trends and knowing like what sounds are kind of like the predominant sounds in different genres right now. Cause I am also very genre agnostic. Like I love listening to music basically across the board and I've always been that way. Um, like I'd, I'd really wanted to sign like a jazz artist this year. Like obviously like from being from the UK, like I love dance music and the UK garage, drum and bass, kind of like 132 to 170 BPM range. Like that's my sweet spot. Um, and then I grew up playing classical violin. So like, I just kind of have like all these different styles of music that I've really enjoyed in my life. So it's, yeah, I just try to be like everywhere and just kind of be aware of like what's happening as a whole so that I can understand maybe like, all right, well folks having like a bit of a resurgence right now, like everyone is signing folk. And that seems to be a thing that is working on streaming and people are really enjoying also curators are covering it a little bit more. So maybe we do something in the folk space. Um, so I hope you'll share some details. I don't want you to obviously share names, but if you can share, cause I just think our community is still like, what do these deals even look like? Right. For, for various like sized artists. Right. So is there any, just again, take names out of the equation, but like, if you can share maybe like follower counts on socials stream type of metrics. Right. And then what kind of deal they actually got, I think that would be just so helpful, man, because it's like, people have no idea. Like, okay, if I have 50,000 monthly listeners and my songs have this many streams and I have this many followers on social and I make good music, like what kind of deal can I get from a distributor? Like, I don't think anyone really, I don't think that people are as transparent as, you know, as I would love them to be. Well, I think relationship is still kind of King at the end of the day. You know what I mean? It's like you, if you have great relationships, odds are, you can get a better deal anyway, just off the strength of the relationships you have. And maybe the people around you, maybe who's co -signing you and bringing you into a building that can really change things. Um, generally what I feel like I'm seeing, I can speak to it from a management standpoint, from a distro standpoint, we would know money deals every time, 80, 20 split promo included on the genius platform, YouTube channels, and then really the trade -off. And what I would always tell artists is I'm actually going to do the work. Like, it's not going to be, oh, I'm going to hand you off to like a product manager and a marketing team with like a thousand other clients in a week. Like the, the trade -off for us was always not like if we're doing these releases, because I'm the one scheduling the calendar and making sure that things are being put in the right places and planning the rollout with you. We are on a text thread together. You will be talking to me the entire time, start to finish. I'll be helping you schedule the social stuff, the YouTube videos, like anything that you have coming down the line, we will be talking directly. I'll be doing the pitches myself. I'll be talking to the DSPs, the curators, just really trying to make sure that we're telling the story properly. So I think our situation was a little bit different in the sense that like, honestly, like I feel like a big draw was we will do the work that other people say they are going to do and then maybe hand off and it doesn't get done. And I've experienced that as a manager too. And I think that's really the reason that at the core of Genius Distro, that was a big thing for us was making sure, hey, like we will schedule things properly. So everything can be the priority. So we're not dealing with 50, 100, 200 releases a week and only focusing on the five to 10 that we're already allowed to say our priorities with like our label relations teams or whatever. Right. And I think that's the thing that a lot of distributors don't tell people is that their A &R's job is to sign you, especially if it's a volume business. They are going to tell you that you're the priority, even if you're not actually realistically the priority. Right. And if you think about it from a business standpoint, they have to do that. There's no way that they can prioritize every single thing they have in, especially if they've got 20, 30, 100,000 things coming out through their distro in a year. Right. So I think that's one of the big things was just kind of transparently being like, look, like, yeah, I can't give you$20,000 in funding or $30,000 in funding. What I can give you is access to this platform that has a community and has like a fan base and an audience that's there. What we can do is help you go from point A to point B. What I can do is promise you that I will do the pitching myself. Make sure that we're doing good, like actual detailed pitches to DSP carriers. And that we've built good relationships with people who are actually curating playlists, not just going through like labels, relations teams or things like that, which most distributors are. We kind of figured like a bit of a loophole in that sense. And I do, you know, shout out to every single editorial person at every DSP who's ever literally answered an email for me at all or looked at anything that I've sent them because they didn't have to do that either. I think that was one of the things that I was maybe the most surprised about. Like it did take like a first year, year and a half to like really find the key players and try and like build a genuine relationship with them to be able to get to that point of sending them stuff and also explaining what kind of the purpose and goal of what we were doing was and is, which is, you know, finding and supporting independent emerging talent before anybody else and helping them land those first placements and kind of build that story and tell that story with them. Um, yeah. So why did genius get into the distro space in the first place? Right. Cause like a lot of people look at genius and they clearly think lyrics obviously, right? Like what's the backstory? I don't know. I just was like, um, we, we got acquired in the pandemic. So I've been a genius for like eight years. Right. So I started on the YouTube side. I did a lot of verified, deconstructed content strategy for like building the YouTube channel. And that was kind of what I did for the first like three years working at genius was really heavily work on the content side of things. So I started, it was just me and Rob and artist relations at the time. He was really kind of heading, running the, running the ship on the artist relations side of things. He was doing all the interviews, booking all of the interviews. So when I came in, I came in kind of a blank slate from, you know, I wasn't from New York. I didn't live here at the time I moved here for the job. Um, and so, you know, I can't, I had come from being a CAA, which was like more of like a live touring background, which was like super intense work. Like if I'm being honest, look at the most miserable I've ever been in my career was being, was being an agent's assistant and booking shows. But it kind of gave me and taught me a lot about booking in general. And it made it very easy for me to transition from booking things that did cost money where we were asking for like big budgets, backline hotels, like all this stuff to being like, Hey, we want to book you for an interview. Here's the date. Here's the time. Here's how long it'll take. It was just easy to transition from one thing to another. So the start of my role of genius was really heavily on the booking content side of things. We went from like 500 K subscribers when I started to like three and a half million in like the first like year and a half, two years of me being there. And then that skyrocketed from four to six to eight to 10. I think we're at like 12 ish now. Um, and so it was just, you know, it was just like a lot of bangers, like a lot of good content pieces that went out. And so they'd always been kind of like, you know, talking about let's do a label, let's do a distro. And I had always personally been kind of like, no, we shouldn't, cause there's not really that many music people in the building who are actively doing this or understand the process. It's really just myself and Rob, I think at the time who had already ever released and tried to promote and market to music. He had been doing it. He's, he's done it as a manager, but he's also done it as an artist, you know, like he's obviously released his own music and kind of seen it from both sides too. And so historically I'd been like, no, let's not do this. We got acquired in the pandemic by a company who owned world star as well. And then, so they'd already started doing world star distro with them. Um, and so they were just like, Hey, do you, do you guys want to do this? Rob knowing that I want to do something more in the A &R space in my career longterm. Right. And just building labels, working with artists and then being really hands on kind of just looked at me and was like, do you, would you be down to do this? And I was like, yes, absolutely. But if we are going to do this, I just need to explain the way that I think we should do this. Um, and really, really like that was a big thing for me. It was just like the method and the approach that we took to working with artists is very important to me, the deals that we put in front of them. I just was like, maybe a bit too much of like a, Hey, like if I wouldn't sign my own client to this, then why would I be selling this to other artists kind of person in the building? And I'm really lucky to have been working with Rob and B Fred, who both really, really understood and kind of saw the vision of it too. And understood why we were saying it, especially with the team that we had at our hands. Like it literally was just me and Rob for like the first two years, like doing all the distro stuff, shout out to two lost our distro partners as well, cause they had been extremely helpful and just kind of being the pipes to the operation as well. So we had like their marketing team supporting us and helping with pitches, the ops team. If there was ever any ops issues, shout out to Lucas and Jillian who were re have been amazing partners in making sure that if there are tech issues that they are there to support us. Um, but yeah, it, you know, it was just kind of one of those things where they were like, Hey, do you want to do this? And I was like, sure. Like we'll, we'll try and figure it out and see what we can do. Yeah. Yeah. They just needed cave on his approval to finally do it. No, it was not my approval. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Shout out to my, to a Rob Markman one time. Yeah. I would love to have him on. He's a legend. Yeah. Sure. He would love to do it. Yeah. He's the best. No, he changed my life. I have nothing. I've never said a bad thing about Rob. Like he literally like gave me a chance when no one else re had or would. Um, I literally wasn't even living in New York the first time we met and I was just like, Hey, like, I would love to, I would love to work with you. I've been following Rob. Like I didn't know this, but like, I've unknowingly been a Rob Markman fan since I was like 13 years old. Like when I moved, when I moved to the U S and I started buying double XL magazines and like really just like reading all this shit. Like I still have, I think back here probably still have issues of freshman covers that would like his thing, you know what I mean? And like covers that he worked on editorial pieces that he was like the associate editor, the assistant editor on. But yeah, man, like I will always give him his flowers. Like that man has changed my life. I know that countless other people's lives as well. He's really one of the few that I think invests a lot of himself into helping others grow and develop and kind of build careers and always be grateful. Yeah. There's not a lot of Robs out there. Sadly, I'm like, I don't mean to be discouraging, but like he really lucked out getting, getting introduced and connected to him because a lot of other people are, you know, just selfish, not really out here to help, help the rest of the rest of the folk. But, um, so yeah, one thing I wanted to make sure we, we got your take on is like, how early should, um, artists start monetizing their community? Um, I think it's kind of like what you're comfortable with, honestly. Cause like, I'm still of the mindset that like, I would rather just not like if, like, if I don't need to, like if I've got a job and there's ways for me to subsidize what I'm doing, like the kind of the point of me building my community was to not monetize them. Cause it just feels like everybody does that. And like, that's not to say we don't like we have a paid skip queue, but that's literally cause everyone asked me for it. Like when I first started doing this stream, I was like, nah, like we're just going to go in order. And like, it is what it is. Like you get some weight. If you're here in the chat, like you'll go in the queue, wait for it. But there was a lot of people who were like, no, we want to do a paid skip queue. We want to guarantee we get played. We want to make sure we get played earlier in the stream. And so I was like, all right, cool. But we've made the price as cheap as we physically can. Like I literally changed platforms from doing Twitch subscriptions because they had increased the Twitch subscription price to like $14 a month. And I was like, that's steep as fuck for like one skip that you get to do. Or like you've got to pay $14 every time you want to get bumped up in the queue. That feels like a lot of money to be taking from artists when everyone is taking money from artists. So I literally switched over to this platform Nero, um, where I see a lot of people doing streams now. And you know, I also see the prices a lot of people set for their streams. Uh, I was like 14 bro. I was, I mean, it's kind of, I mean, most of the people that I see for skips, five, 10. No, I feel like more. Really? Uh, like some people are 20, 30, 50. Yeah. And it feels so exploitative to me. Yeah. I literally switched platforms so I could do a $5 paid skip. Yeah. So I can make it cheaper. We have a $10 super skip. If people want to do that, we have a 50 odd throne spot that I literally tell people not to do. There's still people who will do it when they want to, but I'm like, you're like, don't feel like you need to do that. Like I don't care. Like if we do more free skips in a stream and we don't do paid skips, like that's fine. Like I'm really here to listen to music first and foremost, and just kind of share what I've learned with artists. And I think that is kind of the thing that I wish I saw more from communities in general is the doing it because you love it. Shit. Like that's kind of the reason that we all started doing this. And I do always tell artists like, cause I think this is a bit of a misconception on the industry as a whole, but like if you're doing this to make money, do anything else. Like there are literally so many other jobs in industries that will make you substantially more money. Like that's not like, I don't know, like historically, if you look back at art, you know what I mean? It's not like Da Vinci was not like the richest man in the world or like Van Gogh wasn't like the richest man in the world. Like their art became valuable after they died. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know what I mean? So it's like, I don't know, like there needs to be that. And maybe this is me being just like, you know, wishful thinking or being naive. But I think at the end of the day, if you're making art, like you're going to make art because you love making art first and foremost. And like, you feel like you need to create and make it not just to make money. And I think we have gotten a little lost along the way because of all the, like, I do think social plays a big part in this, but just kind of the facade of like the, the kind of like glamor of the music industry. Like, yeah, sure. But just know, like if you're a fan, it's being sold to you. It's not really necessarily the case for everybody or the case for most artists. Like I've interviewed artists in the pandemic who live in a studio apartment and or a huge artists, but that's the situation. You know what I mean? And that's fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I've talked to and interviewed artists who still live at home and live with their parents. Like there's nothing wrong with that either. You know what I mean? It just kind of is what it is. But at the end of the day, I think at the core of it, it's like, yeah, like sure. Monetize your audience, figure out how you can, cause it's important. If you want to run this as a business and like from a business standpoint, I understand that from a more kind of like philosophical standpoint for me personally, I don't know that that's necessarily what I would do first and foremost, cause then you are kind of stuck in this cycle of being like, well, I'm going to rely on my fans to give me money so that I can fund other things. You know what I mean? Like, I think you do kind of get stuck in this vicious cycle of being like, I need to monetize my audience so that I can spend the money on my art and music. But then your audience is going to get tired of that at some point. Cause they also don't have infinite money and they probably spending money on a million other things and their lives and other things they want to buy and stuff like that too. Right. So unless you have like the most compelling reason ever for people to just give you money, like it, you know? Yeah. I don't know. I think I really just, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the people again, online who like want to take the purist approach, but yet then they're like following a lot of music business podcasts, like cars or something or platforms. And it's kind of like, look, like if you want to take that approach and you don't want to monetize because you think it's going to impact, you know, the purity of the art, then like, that's cool. Yeah. That's cool. But like, if you also don't want to be in a studio apartment and you want to buy a house, here are some things you might need to consider, you know, on ways to like grow this business that you're running as a creative. So that's, I just kind of take, you know, issue with that, where it's kind of like this almost hypocritical stance of like you, you claim you want to do music full time, but then you like get disgusted by like any sort of entrepreneurial business tips that like could help you build a business around your music. So it's just kind of like those people rub me the wrong way to be honest. And again, they're just the loudest on, they're just the loudest on the internet. There's a lot of people who are just like soaking up the game, doing the best they can making the best music that's pure to them. Cause like we, we do know that is what's going to work. Right. The second that you do start kind of like making the music just to do the business that it's, that's where it starts to fuck up. So like it is this very fine line. I feel like that I empathize with, you know, it's tough. I think with everything it's balanced, you know what I mean? It's like you go too far in one way, you go too far in the other way. It's probably not going to work either way. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I think there is that sweet spot of being like, all right, like there's an artist I really respect. He's a small independent artist. He funds everything himself. What he did do that I thought was amazing was he built his own brand, like his own like clothing brand. He was selling hoodies, sweatshirts, sweatpants, like sweatsuits. And they did well. You know what I mean? He marketed those well. That was a way for him to kind of create an income and then invest that back in his art. He makes great music. So I do think there is kind of that middle ground. But the thing that I always try and tell people is like, figure out how to monetize your skill set. You know what I mean? Like don't rely on other people to give you money. Don't beg people for money. Don't be like, Hey, spend your money on me, but give them an incentive and a reason to spend money with you or give you money. Right. So if you have a skill set, you can apply to other things that you do. If you, if like you make your own videos already, why are you not shooting videos for other people? Yes. You know what I mean? If, if, if like you take photos, why are you not taking photos for other people and charging them to do it? If you mix, why are you not mixing for other people? You know what I mean? If you produce, why are you not selling beats on beat stores or doing something like that? Even if it's under a pseudonym or why aren't you uploading instrumental tracks to Spotify and Apple and just creating a secondary income stream or like barter these services. Something that I don't think enough artists do is just fucking barter with your homies. Like make friends with other artists who need you to shoot their videos and have them shoot yours and just stop fucking like, yeah, like it's not even necessarily always needing to be a super paid thing. It can also just be a trade of service. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not anti artists making money just for just to, just to, just to also let the record show. Kayvon's about that bag. Like, like, like, absolutely. Like being able to like be self-sufficient and make a living off of music is like the dream. That is literally the reason that I work in the industry. That's like what I want to do. My whole life is to be able to sustain a life that I can live through the thing that I love. But I think it is just more, again, back to the pivot, being able to figure out how you monetize, like if music isn't making you that much, what else do you do that can become kind of that? It is just, it's about figuring out how you can monetize. You know what I mean? And sometimes that's not just relying on the audience or your community to spend with you. And you can like crowdsourcing, crowdfunding is still good. I think even is actually like an amazing idea for a platform of being able to give your fans an incentive to spend, to get exclusives or to get access or to get these kind of additive pieces, which they will always remember and love. But I also think at the same time, especially earlier on in your career, you cannot rely on that to be the thing that will kind of bring you money or funding or just give you budgets to work with. And I think that is the mistake that a lot of artists make is that they think they can rely on just streaming to kind of be enough of an income. It just doesn't pay that well, if we're being honest. Like I wish it paid more. It just doesn't, unfortunately. But I do think things like even and direct to consumer kind of sales, like whatever it is, you know, like figuring out ways to kind of work that into a rollout and create, even if it's a small amount of fans, right? Like we're talking a million streams on Spotify is probably something like three grand, right? Like it's not like the craziest amount. And that's like after splits and stuff, like maybe that's the smaller amount. But like in theory, if you sell like a hundred albums and merch bundles at like $30 a pop, that's the same amount. And that's way less people that you have to, you have to rely on to interact with your art and what you're building. So I think that's the thing now is it's like, I think that's actually probably the future of what's going to happen with music over the next like five, 10 years is like artists figuring out how to kind of leverage that direct to consumer kind of rollout strategy to create that funding, to get those super fans and the people who already care to spend the money. So, you know, that's probably, you know, that's probably the thing I would say for artists is don't rely on monetizing your audience necessarily, but find ways to do it as you build and as you grow, just make sure there's an incentive and a reason for them to do it. That is actually special. And that makes them feel good. Make it valuable, you know, make it worth it. Exactly. That's my big thing. Henry, we've entered a final segment of the podcast. Take us home. What a conversation. Yeah. It's great. Great insights. I love it. Really thinking about community right now. I know. Thinking about where we can improve. I'm thinking about all the places we can improve. Yeah. For sure. This was a rude awakening for us to do better. So hopefully you guys out there too. So please like, comment, subscribe. If you're thinking about your community, man, we're trying to remind ourselves to say that. Join our community, guys. It's fun over here. Yeah, join our YouTube community. A lot of knowledge. So Kayvon, this is the rapid fire rampage. I don't know if I even mentioned that. No, let's go. It's going to be three sections. We'll start with some short answer questions. Let's get into it. I'm one winded, so I'll do my best to be short answers. This is where you got to force yourself, yeah, to pivot. Because they're not judged on the answers. They're only judged on the speed. That's right. That's the tagline. Starting with, what is up? Of nothing? Our podcast means nothing to you? What is up? This, this. We're doing this. There you go. That's better. Okay, cool. All right, moving on. You kind of mentioned a couple throughout the episode, but I kind of want to get it in a concise form. Give us like a few of your favorite communities that are worth studying. Uh, Johan Lennox's community on Discord. Kevin Abstract's community on Discord. That good shit? Yes. Great community. Shout out to Annabelle and her Patreon billboard in Times Square. That was pretty fire. Yeah, big shout out for that. And then I breathe music all day, man. Shout out to him. He does an amazing job of cultivating his community. Go check those out, guys. Bro, the amount of times he posts our friend Suave is so amazing. I love Suave. He's just a Suave fan page at this point. It's incredible. He really is. Okay, Vaughn, who is the most underrated artist on your phone right now? In my phone book or in my phone? In your contacts, maybe, that we need to know about. Do you have a phone book? Yeah. Yeah, my roll a deck? Yeah. I was like, what kind of old school motherfucker do we have on the pod? Check your pager. Who is the most underrated artist? He goes from Discord to his phone book. This guy is living in the past and the future all at once. Oh, my God. I mean, self -plug Vera, because that's a client that I manage. But then outside of Vera, I would say most underrated. How do you spell it so people can find it? V -E -R -A. Sorry. Perfect. You can't even spell it myself. V -E -R -A. The Rolodex thing threw him off. Yeah, fully. And then outside of maybe my, that's a tough one, Serena. Okay. Kayvon, you've just been appointed Supreme Leader of the music industry. You have unlimited power to do whatever you want. What is your very first order of business? Oh, my God. How are you going to fix this thing, man? Or are you going to fix it? I mean, it's up to you. I don't even know. That's a hard question. Someone said take a nap was the first thing. Yeah. Thanks for respect. We're all tired of this shit. Shit, man. Sign everything that I want. Just no restrictions. No restrictions. They need a million advance. We've got it. Yeah. No restrictions. Just throwing money at everybody. We'll print more if we need it. Yeah. I love that. How about this one? What is one non -music skill you think every artist should learn? Marketing. Mm -hmm. Yeah. Tend to agree. Oh, time management. Oh, that's good. Facts. Absolutely. Henry could learn from that. Kayvon, title. Can I move on? Go ahead. This is my segment. What's stopping you? Title this chapter of your life. Doing good shit. Amen, brother. I love that. This question is called Ideal Audio. I'm bringing it back. Okay. Oh, Lord. We're going to create a song with any artist you want, any producer, any A &R, whatever. Whoever you want to create this perfect song just for you, alive or dead, who is on this song? Oh, man. This changes all the time. Right now, I am very much in a let's listen to post -hardcore punk pop kind of emo phase again. So, probably it's My Chem with Rob Cavallo who produced most of the Black Parade with them because that's my favorite album of those. Turnstyle and My Chem crossover track. Ooh. That would fucking lose my shit. A little MCR and Turnstyle. My Chemical Turnstyle. Okay. See what you did there. Nuts. All right. Last one of the short answer, Kayvon. What is your favorite curse word? It's probably cunt. Yes. In the UK. And that's just one that we use a lot in England. That's just a, it's a, that's like a pleasantry over there, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, cunt. How you doing, cunt? Okay. We should bring it back. You didn't have to look at me. That's such a bad one in the US too. Oh, man. I never got that. Like, I moved to the US and the first time I used it, I felt like everybody was so offended and I was like, oh, what? What's happening here? Yeah. It's a bad one here. We haven't caught on yet, but it's fine. You don't hear it enough. In my opinion. Anyway, we're moving on to the this or that section. Kayvon, I'm going to give you two choices. You just got to pick one. Starting with. Hooks or verses? Hooks. 9 a.m. Business meeting or 9 p.m. Creative brainstorm? 9 p.m. Creative brainstorm. Popping online or popping locally? Popping online. Big world. CEO mindset or artistic intuition? Ooh. Artistic intuition. Guitar or piano? Piano. Indie grind or major machine? Indie grind. I love it. Pet llama, pet goat? Pet goat, man. That's just hilarious. Maybe kind of messy. Yeah. Okay. I love the noise they make, though. It's a little... It's a good bop. It's good. It's good. AI or AI? AI or AI? AI. Was that the second one, I think, just to clarify? Okay, yeah. The second one. Got it. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Only your first one was like the most insanely happy AI version I've ever heard. If I don't exaggerate, then the question's pretty confusing, right? Yeah, it was very understandable. Anyway. Unwavering consistency or elite quality? Unwavering consistency, always. And finally, become a full -time oboe player or leave the music industry forever. Oboe player, bro. I'm classical. Let's go. Yeah, I was going to say, that wasn't even... Did you... I mean, you obviously didn't know he played, like, classical violin, so it's like, he's in the orchestra already, bro. Why did I obviously not know that? I don't understand. Line of thinking there. Anyway, moving on to the... Did you know that? Word association is the final portion. Kayvon, I'm going to say one word. All I need you to do is say the first word that pops into your head. All right. Again, you are not judged by your answers. You're only judged on speed. You got so lucky on that oboe one, bro. Starting with... Music. Does that count? We'll take a noise. We'll take a noise. Wow, that's depressing, but yeah. Yeah, kind of sad. Some days it's like that. Some days it's true. Yeah, it's true. Today is fine. Tomorrow will be different. Community. Family. Bow and arrow. Bullseye. Charcuterie. Board. Vinyl. Collection. Money. Laundering. Family. Love. Kanye West. Oof. Podcast. Great. Viral. Content. Snake. Bite. Hockey. Ice. Bitcoin. Pricey. Kayvon's. House. Let's go. Let's go. This has been Kayvon from Kayvon's House and Genius Distro. Appreciate you coming on the podcast, man. Seriously, as he said, Kayvon's House is one of the platforms that we fully support. Head over to their Discord. Go now. Appreciate you. Engage. Be an actual attributing member. Contributing member. There is real value there. Yes. Because the more you give, the more you're going to get. That's it. That's it. Submit music. It's free. All the time. There you go. There's literally a billion ways for you to submit music. It's all free. I love hearing music. All free. Send me stuff. Appreciate you, man. Until next time, Henry. What are we doing? Appreciate you guys. Getting out of here. Getting out of here. Peace, y'all.