Strategy for Success in the Music Industry: @The Company Man

Second, I would… the second thing I would say is no matter what you’re doing there’s riches and niches, so the money you need isn’t as far away as you think it is and that’s important because you start looking at how much everything costs every single day and it can get daunting, it can get intimidating and then it can make you start taking shortcuts or just throwing money at stuff and expecting to get… you know, results that truthfully don’t really even… it’s hard to say that it consistently moves like that in the same way. So, that would be the second thing I would think of and then the third thing I would tell them is, your most important thing right now is to be prolific and to make new fans, right, because ultimately when, you know, you’re less popular or if you know the macro environment changes drastically, right, like how do you make new fans and there’s no festivals, right? I mean, like you know, so you want to have a direct relationship with your audience but that’s one thing that Funk Volume did incredibly well and M.

E. C does that so well now is that you have to build your own community that will insulate you from, you know, how the world moves one way or the other and then after that, the rest is just getting better. Now it’s like okay well, do I want to put money into this viral or this digital advertising here? Do I think it’s, you know, better for me to spend money that… in directions that my audience is talking about that they’re interested in? I look at all those things being more based off of the type of music and maybe some of the things that are more specific to a specific artist, in terms of what they should do at that point in time but the first thing is always going to be, do you want to be famous? Are you trying to be the face forward artist? Are you looking to have a career making music? The second thing I would say is well look, there’s riches and niches and to start that we have to be… which would lead to the third thing which is that we have to be community focused and we have to be a part of the community.

02:44 - That community is crucial, I think. The value is really in the community and even if you look at, you know, outside of music. The Peleton, for example, you know, they’re not just selling a bike, right? They’re selling a community, you want to be part of this community because it’s all connected. So, I stress that to artists time and time again, like how do you… how do you build a community? I mean the M. E. C, you know, that’s what we’re trying to do, a community of knowledge, a place where you know that you can get support and good information, you know? Also, what I tell artists is that you kind of need to have a system and a plan for how you’re moving, like a system for consistent content, right? So, this is how you’re going to put out content and when you do that you get feedback on how you want to twist that, you know how you want to make some changes or tweaks to that system going forward, but then it’s also about how do you create moments? Like, I think artists that do really well are really good at creating like moments consistently, right? So even with now that I’m working with comedian, Big Ja, I think it’s the same thing, it’s like, how do… yeah ,we have these sketches coming out on a weekly basis but what’s going to be our next moment, right, and some of this stuff is kind of out of our control, when he lands like spots on Netflix films and things like that, those are moments but you know, all right let’s put together our own sketch comedy show that’s bigger, you know? That’s in the lane of what we’re doing but we can create a bigger moment around it, we can get people more excited, you know, and take them on this journey and make them feel like they’re part of something bigger.

So, I think parts that really move, they have this consistency in the content that they’re putting out but they’re also creating moments like time again or even looking back at Funk Volume it was like, you know, getting on XXL that’s a moment, you know? Touring, putting a tour together, that’s a moment. Our contest, like anything that allows you to really shake things up and show your fans that you’re kind of taking things to the next level, I think artists that are good at doing that, you know, find success!.