Ursus Magana and Raf Luzi

Ursus Magana and Raf Luzi are two of the three principals at 25/7 Media, which represents 58 acts and has 27 employees. Ursus was profiled in the "Wired" article entitled: "Watch This Guy Work, and You'll Finally Understand the TikTok Era." These two are experts in social media, in breaking acts, you'll want to listen, definitely.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.
My guests today are Ursus mcgona and Raf Lousey of
twenty five to seven Media. Gentlemen, what is twenty five
to seven Media?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Whose place to work? Man?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Okay, just so people can distinguish the voices, this is Raf.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Hello, guys. Twenty five seven Media is a company that's
entranced in digital and internet culture. We work with influencers, musicians,
and we try to create different moments on the Internet
than now. We're starting to spill over in real life,
and people like Bob and people in the music industry
have taken kind of interest.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Too, versus something to add to that.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's second all that, and I'll say it again, it's
the coolest place to work. And yeah, I'm really happy
that best friends just really believed in each other and
believed in the Internet.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Well, how long have you guys known each other?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
We've known each other for about five six years now.
And then the other founder, Andrew, I've known him for
twelve years. So yeah, it's it's a trio. But right
now it's just me and Raf.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Okay, you guys are experts on social media. Let's talk generally,
what do people not understand about social media that you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Know, I think people are trying to overcomplicate it. There's
kind of three different people that don't get it. It's
either unfortunately an agism thing. There's people that don't think
it's a tool that they can use. They think it's
only for celebrities or for people that have a nick
on it. And then thirdly it's businesses that aren't really

(01:55):
implementing it correctly. But in reality, every generation has a
tool or a way to connect with people, and this
is the best way to connect with people at the moment.
And so with that being said, we constantly look for
new ways to make sure that whether it's an artist
or a creator, finds the newest way to connect with

(02:15):
people so that they can interact and obviously eventually monetize.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Okay, let's go through the varying social media platforms. Snapchat,
to what degree does that mean anything in terms of business?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
I mean, I'm sure that they're looking at that billion
and they might have want you know, they might have
wanted to take it, but Snapchat is actually very underrated
right now. It's very underrated, and we actually have experimented
a lot with it. I'll let rap talk about it
a little bit. But the way that I see social
media platform when it's dying is people tend to think like, oh,

(02:51):
you know, it's no longer there, da Dad, Like, let's
move away, let's move the ad dollars away. But until
that platform is completely dead, there's a lack of competition.
And so what that means is that when there's a
lack of competition and the lack of content, the platforms
will actually pay more dollars for you to have high quality,
engaging content there. So there's kids that are making a
killing on Snapchat. They're making one hundred thousand dollars a

(03:13):
month on Snapchat because Snapchat has a functionality that allows
you to pay creators through a lottery system when they
gain a certain amount of views. So the less competition
there is there, the people that are crushing it on
Snapchat are actually making a ton And Snapchat is actually
a little bit more intimate than your normal platforms because
it feels like you're actually texting someone. It feels like
you have someone's number, and it's a little bit more intimate.

(03:35):
And gen Z is actually very very into Snapchat more
than millennials because millennials want to show you their beautiful
feed and their beautiful life. That isn't really true, but
gen Z wants to connect with people on a one
to one level and Snapchat provides that for them. But
you want to talk a little bit about some experiments
we've done with Snapchat.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah. So Snapchat is it's more in an authenticity tool.
So every platform has its own thing. Instagram is a resume,
so you have to cheat your Instagram like a resume.
Snapchat is about authenticity. TikTok is about a lot short
form videos that we're supposed to be on YouTube, but
you're doing trailer videos on TikTok to then hopefully take

(04:14):
themto YouTube, and then YouTube to this day is still
the holy grail out of really all social media. Yes, absolutely,
that's where you find music, that's where you find long
form content, that's where you find short form content. Is
just YouTube was so late at creating the playlist and
the user generated experience that Spotify and Apple did. That's

(04:38):
why it didn't overtake in music as well. But until
someone is able to kill off YouTube and their long
form their long form video with Spotify, try to do.
They just didn't execute at a high level. YouTube is
still the king of all media. That's where you want
to drive all your traffls.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Okay, let's get back to YouTube, Twitter and thread Twitter
X they mean anything in your world.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Absolutely well Threads Unfortunately it doesn't. But I think, like,
what was the statistic they released the other day, like
eighty two percent or something of the people that created
the threads account and no longer using it. It's dropping
off even more. I think the point of threads was
just for Instagram to show the world that, like, hey,

(05:26):
if we launch a product, people are going to sign up.
I think that that to me, that's what the statement was.
But no, X is still very relevant. Again, it's a X.
It's it's a hybrid between Snapchat and Instagram where people
want to express their authentic opinions. Uh, it's more of
a texting like texting posts. And also the discoverability on

(05:50):
video is becoming a priority for X, so discoverability for video. Eventually,
I think it'll move a little bit more into live
streaming as we saw what they did with FIFA, but
it's a different type of audio I think right now. Uh,
some platforms are separating not only for usability but also
for audience. So you know, if you're on X, you
don't mind, you know, a controversial take here there, you

(06:11):
don't mind, you know some of the things that are
not necessarily shown on on other other platforms.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay, but conventional wisdom and I'm talking to the experts.
That's why. One of the truth is younger generation is
not participating on X. Is that just untrue?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, that's untrue. A lot gen Z is participating on
X because the memes are just really.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
They're they're they're participating, but they're not spending time on it. Yeah,
they're not spending So they're reading headlines on X or
they're creating headlines which then they can use on other platforms.
So all the all the platforms where there's video is
pushed insanely like Instagram and uh YouTube and TikTok, that's
where the young generation is spending their most time.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
That's where they're spending the most time. That's huttering.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, correct, But the headlines are created at X.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Well, just to be clear, that's where you're harvesting things
as opposed to starting things.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
You're no, you're discovering things on the video platforms, because
the video platforms have the most discovery reach. Right now, okay,
all platforms, including X, they're all adopting video more and
more because watch time is king, so not views anymore.
A lot of people, you know, probably five years ago,
views mattered a lot, Subscribers mattered a lot. Followers and

(07:29):
subscribers and views don't matter as much today Today. What
matters is the watch time, how much you can actually
have someone watch a video and spend time on your platform.
That's what matters the most. The platforms don't necessarily care
about people's feelings or the way that the algorithm is
working that. They just want to optimize their platform. They
want to optimize the algorithm and show you content that's
going to keep you there as long as well.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
And X's video has not gotten to that level where
people are sitting there and consuming video on next they
are consuming though though the means the title of the.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Titles, the memes, the articles.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, okay, you know, that's a word we've heard for
over a decade. Not everyone is sophisticated. They might ask,
what is a meme? Can you tell us.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
No?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
I mean, well, you know, let's say the need let's
say the meme has blood, has nudity, has something that
is against the guidelines. On the traditional platforms, you're going
to find the worst memes in the in the planet
hilariously on X, you know, so, that's where you're going
to find that. And also gen Z loves the edginess
about it. You know, they love how edgy it is,
how they can share something with no repercussions. If you

(08:32):
say a curse word or two on the other platforms,
you are going to get dinged and censored. And so
I think that's what gen Z loves about X. But
it's not for everybody. It's it's so weird. I feel
like millennials feel like it's not for them. But gen
Z and late millennials, especially political millennials, are on X,
you know so.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
And then a meme is just the inside jokes that
you have with your friends, but made into a public
that other people can consume and understand.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Another way that I like to explain memes is that
they're hieroglyphs. If you think about the Egyptians, right, Like,
you go to Egypt and there's a bunch of hieroglyphs
on the wall, their images, but each image represents like
a huge story, and that's what a meme is. It's
basically an image that you can attach to a headline
and it's an inside joke, whether it's from a movie,
whether it's from something that you and your friends were discussing,
or something with pop culture. And that's the thing about

(09:23):
gen Z is that they're not afraid to say what's
on their mind. And then, obviously, as we all know,
especially if you're in the in the entertainment world, if
if you say something that's on your mind, there's probably
a million people thinking it too. So I think that
that's what attracts, you know, the meme world, the and
the fried memes to gen Z.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Okay, to what degree is Facebook important or is that
just boomers and gen xers.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
It's boomers in the United States, but Facebook is really
important in Mexico and Europe and in other Third world
countries because Facebook is beta for what China is currently
now with we Chat, and so Facebook is incorporated more
into a lot of different apps and utilities and games
and video games that people use. Facebook groups are also

(10:09):
very very popular in Mexico and in Latin America. They're
used almost to the popularity of Reddit threads here in
the United States.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
And Reddit is a cornucopy of information. Does that figure
in your world?

Speaker 3 (10:26):
It is Reddit. Reddit is basically Twitter on steroids steroids.
If it works on Reddit, then it will take the
world by store. Those people spend a lot of time
on the Internet, and it's a lot of people that
have a lot of pool on the Internet. So they
start the joke or the meme on Reddit and then

(10:48):
they use every other platform to spread it.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Okay, you talk about Facebook being like we Chat. We
Chat is a super platform with payment and everything. This
is what Musk's vision was with PayPal, and they squeezed
them out and it is still his vision at X.
Do you think Facebook has a chance to be that
super app?

Speaker 2 (11:11):
I think that Facebook is already ten years ahead of that,
more than X. But I don't think that. I don't
doubt that Elon can do it as well. Facebook is
already fifty percent there. I mean Facebook has your age,
it could store your payment settings. If you've seen the
shop function on Instagram, Instagram is meta and if you've

(11:31):
bought anything through the Instagram function, you've already made a transaction.
If you've submitted your information to get a bonus when
the reels came out. You're already in there right now.
We may not be using Facebook, like I said, like
other countries, but there are apps that are enabled through Facebook.
There are groups that are enabled through Facebook, Facebook, Marketplace,

(11:52):
these things that are connecting us. If you think about
a group, a Facebook group that connects you, if you
think about Marketplace to compete with Craigslist, they're already fifty
percent there. They just need. What they don't have right
now is they don't have the hardware.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yep, that's what I was going to think exactly, Like
they've tried. They just can't get the hardware exactly, and
I don't think they will. It doesn't seem.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Well, let's snap our fingers and they get the hardware, right,
what would the hardware be? What would that look like?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
It's an AR it's a it's an AR tool. This yeah,
it should have been the phone. I think it's too
late for the phone. I think it's too late for
the phone for everybody. But the if it gets integrated,
it's going to be an AR tool, correct, and so
that well it's yes, so like right now, the cost
for you know, the hardware, if you want to dabble

(12:43):
into the metaverse or into ar The hardware cost for
you to even experiment is going to run you anywhere
from you know, five hundred to maybe fourteen hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
You're talking about a headset here.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yes, and so in a world where you get the
headset for fifty dollars, well, you're gonna get that headset
for fifty dollars because it's going to come integrated with
a bunch of tools that you are going to be
using for your everyday life. And so that's the way
that they get the hardware to be adopted by, you know,
essentially the masses.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Okay, will we eventually get there or is it going
to stall out?

Speaker 2 (13:24):
That? That's something that we ask ourselves every day.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, that's that's the that's the tough that's the tough question.
I mean, we had a chance to get there quicker
with COVID, just because people were inside they had nothing
to do, and then the moment the world opened up,
it almost people just threw away a lot of those habits, right.
So yeah, I don't think we're going to get there.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
I don't think we're getting there my lifetime.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, Okay, just to be clear, when we had Pokey
Mond augmented reality, that was missed like the first video
game leading into something, or it was just an anomaly
and means nothing.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
No, people are still obsessed with Pokemon Goo. My brother
in law plays plays that every single day. There will
be pockets, and there will be hobbyists and there will
be early adopters, the same way that for the last
five years people have been playing with VR headsets. But
I'm talking you know. When to answer the question, when
does Facebook actually turn into a competing we chat? I

(14:24):
think that Facebook is ten years ahead of X. However,
if X focuses on that, I don't doubt that they'll
figure out a way. However, I don't think that we
do that with phones. The only way to do that
is if you have a better product than the iPhone.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Okay, just moving on through the platforms. Instagram. Instagram had
its moment for about ten years. It became the platform
of those who were image based. Then they said they
were going to go to video. They have reels. Reels
is a competing product with TikTok. How do you assess
what's going on at Instagram?

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Love reels? Man?

Speaker 3 (15:01):
No, I mean, the the what they did initially is
they put it on the main feed and people got
really upset. Now that they have an extra tab for it,
so you're specifically just looking at reels. It's it's performing
well for our creators and for their platforms. More and
more people are using reels and they already they already
got it right with with stories. When Stories came out,

(15:23):
people are like, I already have Snapchat, I don't need
I don't need Stories. And they took about a year
and a half and then no one's using Snapchat to
the to the level that they started using Instagram, I feel.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Like, until gen Z came around. But that's because so.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Like TikTok though, is filling the pressure. That's why they're
going very heavy on live video and they're trying to
take the market now. So and the numbers are swinging
it again towards Instagram.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
That's correct, and again it goes back to the conversation
about utility. Different platforms have different utility. Snapchat is more
authentic because you can be more authentic because your older
sister and your dad is not on snareat and so
you know they're not gonna add you on Snapchat and
see you drinking at nineteen So you know, I feel
like with reels though, it goes back to the conversation

(16:10):
of watch time. If watch time is king now and
you realize that you can get someone to loop a
video for a minute, if you can get someone to
watch a twenty second video, you know, multiple times, then
you can get a minute out of them then rather
than seeing a square photo. And that's also why we
introduce carousels. So when you introduce carousels, there is more

(16:30):
of a chance for you to go next, spe swipe,
and it keeps the person engaged and creates more watch
time when you're watching photos.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Okay, YouTube is hyping their short form videos to compete
with TikTok in reels, how do you assess that?

Speaker 2 (16:47):
To answer that question, we have to ask a question. So, Bob,
what's the biggest search engine?

Speaker 1 (16:56):
It depends on your age. If you're an older person,
it's Google, If younger person is TikTok, might be Amazon.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Love it's what's the second biggest?

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Well, I mentioned Google, Amazon, TikTok. Uh, you tell me.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
The second is YouTube because it's integrated with Google. And
so even though TikTok has an interesting search function. It's
nowhere near the traffic of Google, and the second biggest
search engine is YouTube. So what does that mean for
us as people in entertainment, Whether you're pushing movies, whether
you're pushing artists or whatever it may be that you're
pushing good luck, you know, typing in you know, Bob

(17:36):
Interviews twenty five seven media on Facebook or on Instagram,
And unless we optimize the tiktoks in a way, then
they'll show up. But if you if you search that
on Google, you're gonna get the YouTube video first, because
YouTube still follows all the traditional SEO laws and it's
also the much the much better way to manage an

(17:58):
inventory right now. Now there are more capabilities on YouTube
to organize playlists, to organize the way that you can
have your audience consume the content, where on TikTok, not
even every creator is allowed to make playlists. Where on Instagram,
you know, not every creator even knows the difference between
you know, saving your lives for long form content or

(18:19):
using reels. They some of them don't even know that
you When you post a video on the feed, it
instantly turns it into a reel. So YouTube is the
best way to share long form content now shorts because
it comes with the searchability, because it comes with you know,
the integration with Google. It that's why it's been able

(18:40):
to explode in such in such a cool way. And
so if you notice your phone is optimized in a
vertical way, and so when you open the apps, they
are going to let you know what they're prioritizing. The
middle button on Instagram is reels. The middle button on
on your YouTube app right now is shorts because it's vertical.
So they are pushing this because seventy percent of the

(19:02):
consumption in the United States is mobile.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Anyway, Okay, yeah, I was gonna say that YouTube is
getting shorts wrong because they're trying to fight two battles
at the same time. So they're fighting the livestream space.
YouTube live is becoming a very big thing. YouTube TV
is going against every cable company in the world right now.
And then on top of that you have the shorts.
Instagram introduced reels and just focused on reels to try

(19:28):
to attack TikTok and it's the same thing they did
with stories on Snapchat. YouTube is trying to fight three
battles at the same time. Yep, and they're just not
They're just not They're just not doing it right.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah. I don't think that shorts have the power of
TikTok yet however.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Because they're not improving the design correct.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
But they are searchable, which is crazy because now TikTok
is learning how to be a searchable company, where YouTube has,
you know, all the years of experience and it's easier
to integrate. Like just the other day, I was we
did a campaign for one of our friends, Suweko. I
was able to find that right away. I looked it
up on YouTube and I found we found it because

(20:09):
I know when we did it, and it was a
really easy campaign to find. Where if I type in,
you know, Suako sound on TikTok, I'm gonna be sitting
through like hundreds, you know, like hundreds of thousands of sounds.
So anyway, it is what it is, uh, And I
agree with raf. They YouTube just has more opponents. YouTube.

(20:29):
YouTube's opponent is Twitch. Twitch is the most interactive live
streaming platform right now. It's not the best quote unquote,
but it's the most interactive. YouTube has far more video capabilities.
They just can't get the marketing right on how to
get more people to stream on YouTube, which which you know,

(20:49):
Raft is right about that they have the best technology
for vertical video. In my opinion, they just don't know
how to market it, to create, to create the users trash.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
It's so bad.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
How do you create? How does your platform a certain
color scheme and then you roll out of feature in
a different color scheme.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, see that hurts your eyes. See the raff is
really good at finding friction. No, I'm I'm sex, I'm
just sort of no like this. These are the types
of conversations. But when he finds friction, it's like, how
can we make this frictionless? So I agree with him.
The magic of TikTok is that your cousin can go
viral tomorrow. That's the magic. And so the platform is

(21:29):
designed for the consumer and is designed for the average
person to basically feel like they could do a trend
or create one and they can go viral tomorrow. You
try to upload a YouTube short on your own right now.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
You actually need to go to YouTube. Need to go
to YouTube to learn how to do that.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, exactly, And so that's that's Raff is right. Raf
is right. So you know, a nerd like me. I mean,
like Bob before we started. I mean, look, look how
many things I set up. I set up a GoPro timer,
got a camera over there, got the camera floating, Like
I'm a nerd. This guy knows that YouTube is the
superior platform for technology. Raff is just like, who cares
if you know how to film all this? If you

(22:07):
can't even get the message across I get it.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Let's stop for a second. You said watch time is
the most important to the ultimate platform. It's important. Whereas
we've been told how many views, how many subscribers? Are
you talking that watch time is the best in terms
of compensation? Why is watch time king?

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Watch time is king to the platforms I'll talk about too, right,
So from the producer of the content to the platform.
It's king to the platforms because you can't fake watch
time as good as you could fake views. I mean,
you know, even ten years ago, people were talking about
like those like playlist farms and stuff like that. So

(22:49):
you can buy a view, you can buy a click
that's been around for a long time, but actually have
a human being interact with their device while they're paying
attention to your content is something you can't fake. And
the tools and the tracking tools are getting better and better.
So you know, these tracking tools are tracking when you know,

(23:10):
people hire like a big render farm, like those render
firms that Hollywood used to use to render graphic design.
Those render farms are being used now to fake watch time.
But these platforms are getting really good at identifying when
this is a fake interaction because there are natural retention rates.
And if you listen to some of the biggest creators,

(23:32):
you know, they always talk about their retention. They talk
about three things. They talk about their thumbnail, which is basically,
you know, the first message you sent to the world
when they are encountered with your mass awareness, which is
the platform putting you in front of their face. They
talk about their hook, which is what drives you into
the video, And they talk about their retention. Those are
the three biggest priorities right now for the platform.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Wait, wait just one second, Yes, are we talking about
retention of one video or retention con assuming multiple videos.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well, it's both, but it starts with one. You know.
If so, if you a healthy playlist, this this statistic.
You know, it's been a while since I've been at
full screen, but this statistic maybe a little outdated, but
a healthy playlist is if you get like one point
eight one point eight videos watched, so that means that
they they saw your video, they watched one more video,
and then they watch, you know, point eight of another.

(24:24):
So who knows what it is now. Maybe it's bigger
because you know, mobile and everything's a little bit more attractive.
Maybe it's two now, I don't know, but that the
point is that it starts with one. You want to
make sure that your content gets that retention so that
you can hope to you know, to live another day.
But anyway, that's the answer for the platforms. The reason
it's king it's because it's the thing that can't be faked,
and it won't be It won't be faked for a

(24:46):
long time. And another another reason is because you, as
the producer of the content, you want one hundred fans
that have seen the thing in completion rather than you know,
ten thousand fans that have just maybe heard your name
or saw you in a meme or you know, saw
your thumbnail.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Okay, the elephant in the room advertising dollars where the
consumer is spending the most time on yep. So if
I'm watching a show for twenty minutes and I'm watching
another show for ten minutes. As an advertiser, I want
to go to the one that they're consuming more slower.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Are you saying the viewer is more valuable or because
they're watching so much video they're seeing more ads.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
The viewers more valuable because you can get your message across.
You're a more valuable asset than someone that's making ten
second videos. Because if someone's spending an hour listening to
this podcast, you have the more hooked.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Okay, let's pull the lens way back. In the pre
Internet era, people got their information from traditional newspapers and television,
magazines and books, but there was a hierarchy. Then let's
just say there are many places to get your information today.
So if we are talking about the younger demo, let's

(26:11):
just call it under twenty. I don't know where you
want to break it. Under twenty one, under eighteen, even
under eight fifteen? Can you reach them with any of
the traditional tools. The newspapers mean anything, does television mean anything?
Or really, is this the only way to reach the audience.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
I'm gonna think on that, man, I got it, go
for it.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
We use traditional media to validate where you've already put
on social media. So we run a company. Right, the
Wired article came out, we could do a million views
on digital, but everyone that was under fifteen s physical
magazine and they matched the views that we do on

(26:55):
digital to that magazine has said, these guys are legit.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Okay, but you guys are out of the demo. Yeah, okay.
So the La Times, which a rockstar referred to me
as a pamphlet today, has very little information and seeming
I get it, but seemingly almost nobody I know still
gets it.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
So I see these articles and you might feel good
at home. Okay, But if you're under twenty and there's
an article on you, other than trying to reach a
different audience, the older demo might give you a movie deal. Whatever,
does it help your audience at all?

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah? Let's let me answer the question. And I didn't
want to recycle an answer, but since it wasn't published
in the Washington Post, I'll say it here. What I
told them when they asked about traditional media is I
said that traditional media has a very good opportunity at
just completely owning live And I'll give you an example.

(27:57):
I mean, look at me. I don't play sports. Right.
I don't know about sports, but I don't know anything
about football, but this dude loves football, right, so the
the primetime coach guy, right, Like, I just got hooked
on his YouTube videos and uh what do yeah? And
what he was doing with with Colorado and I was like,
this is this is brilliant, Like why don't why don't
all the teams do? And I got hooked on on

(28:17):
the energy and you know, in order for me to
actually watch the game, it had to be TV. And
so the production, you know, the machine has the opportunity
to make the best live content ever. So when you
have kids that are you know, live streaming I r
L on Kick, they're live streaming I r L on

(28:40):
on Twitch with I r L is in real life.
So what this is a this is a content category
that's actually the biggest content category on Twitch right now
and on competitor of Twitch, which is Kick, where people
are setting up go pros or dslr's actual cameras with
a backpack and they're using converters to be able to
live stream a very high, high production quality compared to

(29:02):
what we're used to live streaming. When you know your
grandma or your live streams horizontally on Facebook Live and
so yeah, this is this is like good stuff. However,
what's stopping a network from getting Gordon Ramsey Live to
you know, go into a restaurant and Save the Day live. Well,
they're just not doing it. But they have a really

(29:23):
good opportunity to do that right now, other than just
the traditional award shows and sports. I think that, you know,
if you have a production experience, if you treat production
value with you know, with that level of caliber and respect,
I think that there's a really big opportunity for you
to do that. So I think that, you know, it's
not necessarily gone. What I told the Washington Post is

(29:45):
that you know, it's it's about learning a trade, you know. Uh,
social media, if you if you want to do it, well,
you're gonna have to learn a little bit of you know, filmmaking.
You're gonna have to learn a little bit of cinematography.
If you want to take it to the next level.
You want to you know, you want to make content,
you have to learn sound. You have to learn all
of these tools and disciplines from production. And you know,

(30:07):
social media's been around for ten days at ten ten years,
you know, so now you're encountering the fifteen, seventeen, eighteen
year old that their dream was to go to USC
and not not anymore. Their dream is like yo, like
I can do this at nineteen, and I can shoot
an ad from my living room, and they're adopting these
disciplines and that's going to wash all the millennials that
just got good at posing and good lighting, because these

(30:30):
nineteen year olds that are coming already equip cinematographers that
have done campaigns for brands because brands are paying them
close to nothing because they have a million of followers
on TikTok and they don't know what to charge. These
kids are coming out, they gate with commercials, they've done,
they've done for ads, they've done music videos, they've they've
gone viral themselves. So you know, I think it could

(30:51):
be done.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
And that's why TikTok was able to take off right
away because you didn't need experience. But now all there,
the real create are coming in and it's turning like
every other platform where you need to be able to storyteller,
you need to be able to have production value to
even compete.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Okay, so let's talk entertainment outlets let's talk specifically the
music business. Music business was controlled by distribution. It's hard
to get your record in the store. And even if
you got in the record store, unless you had a
continuing line of product, you couldn't get paid. Then there
was terrestrial radio. Needless to say, there are many outlets today.

(31:32):
If you are let's just talk one of the three
major labels in their subsidiaries. This is a two sided question.
Can they make it without social media? And b if
they want to use social media, how might they employ it?

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Oh raft takes a stand ins set of the guillotine.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
Okay, So it all depends on the genre. So yeah,
look at a country right now. Country music is having
an enormous rise. That doesn't happen without without TikTok and
social media being involved. But all the artists that are
doing well right now, they also have a huge touring history.
There's only one breakthrough country artist this year, which is

(32:19):
Zach Bryan. He told his story on social media, got
a couple million views right away.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
He hit the road.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
So country, you still need to hit the road. You
still need to touch the fan base and then from
there use that piece of content on social media. Now,
if we're talking about hip hop or pop music. All
you need is that iPhone, make that song, put it
out there, and they'll they'll find you, especially if you
know exactly the fan base that you're going after, because

(32:48):
you can find the type bet that you want to
get on, you can find the type vocal that you
want to sound on, and you go from an artist
that's at zero to seven right away and you have
a product worth selling. As far as the big major
labels and the Citi aaries, what's happening there is they're
using it as a way to sign artists, but they're

(33:11):
not going back to the platform and educating them on
who the artist is. They're just like, we just signed
this really cool record and we're just gonna throw money
at it. But they're not going back and saying, well,
this cool record was made by this and this and
this type of artist. They're not going back and educating
the artists because there's so much supply and there's so
much product out there that they can make money from

(33:32):
that they don't need to go and tell the artist's
story like they used to have.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Okay, let's focus on hip hop that you just mentioned.
You say you can look at what's happening and recreate it.
We live in a world it used to be prior
to fifteen years ago or so if you did something great,
it would surface. Not today. I can point to things
that are phenomenal in everything, whether it be streaming, television, music, whatever.

(34:00):
There's just so much product. Are you saying? With hip hop,
there's a way to analyze social media such that you
know you will get attention.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Same thing with the same thing with the sound and
hip hop as well, because in hip hop there's they're
typebat producers, so they can create exactly the sound of
another popular artist, and then they can create the exact
vocal chain in your house. So you can go from
I've never made a song to I just sound like

(34:31):
my favorite artist. And the consumer on the other side,
they're like, if I listen to I don't know a
little TJ, I'm also gonna like this artist as well
because they sound alike.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Well, let me let me ok, I get all that
you have the successful artists. I'm at home, I've replicated
and I've made something reasonable.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
How do people find me easy? You just the exact
artists that you're replicating. You hit up their fan pages
and let's.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Be a little bit slower. Okay, you are the new artists.
How do you hit up their fan base?

Speaker 3 (35:05):
You open up Instagram, say hey, I also sound like
the artists that you're a fan of, as you have
three thousand followers, here's my snippet of this song. Are
you open to posting it on your story? That story
gets two hundred, two hundred new listeners, right, so that
story post is going to give that new artist from

(35:25):
zero to two hundred new listeners. Now that algorithm is
created that shows Spotify and other platforms that this artist
sounds exactly like this big artist, so you should recommend
them more.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Okay, a little bit slower. I'm doing everything you can.
I see the followers of the big artists. I reach out.
How many do I have to reach out? How many
are gonna play with me? And what do you have
to do to incentivize them to play?

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Well, you're not reaching out there to the artist directly,
I understand the fans. Yeah, you're reaching out to the
fan page. And honestly, it's very easy because they're used
to always engaging. Because a person that's running a fan
page online is also probably online twenty four to seven
so they're going to see it. It's all about I
can start this project with you today, Bob. We can

(36:13):
make your favorite artists happen today, and we could probably
have a million streams within a month.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Okay, just a little bit slower. I've created the snippet.
How many members of the fan base might I reach
out too?

Speaker 3 (36:30):
I would reach out to fifty pages if those remember
the artist that you're replicating has to have enough of
a fan base to have a fan page too. That's
the elephant in the room. So it has to be
a big enough artist that has a bunch of fan pages.
I'll reach out to fifty. I would tell let's say
twenty of them reply back. Pay twenty bucks per story post.

(36:53):
Then I'm getting my first ten thousand listeners. Then the
algorithm will just serve me too.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Okay, but ultimately, you were compensating these people.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
If you want to get a quicker, if you want
to get a quicker.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
But we've also been in a position where we had
no money to pay anybody, and it's just a matter
of See, that's the thing that see. I think the
reason why Bob keeps zooming out is because we have
to go deeper. And deeper into the core. Check this out.
Raf said something very important, which is, you know sometimes
people sign a song, but they're not signing the artists, right, Okay,

(37:27):
so let's start there. When you have the money for it.
We might not even use the money. This is just
an opportunity for you to take your artist to the
gym and say, hey, Miho, you got to reach out
to three hundred people. You have to do it from
your page because and you have to do it with
your voice notes because I'm not you. Do you want

(37:50):
it more or do I want it more than you?
It's a very beautiful opportunity, and I think that every
if this is what you do, if you help artists,
if you help creators, it's very important for you to
be able to find these assignments that also get results.
So these get results. But okay, now the other zoom
out question from Bob Okay, I've done that. No one's
posted it. Cool. Now you go back to the gym

(38:13):
and you work on your product, the problem that we've
had for the last you know, thirty years or whatever. Like, yes,
you might have a good song, you might be in
a good algorithm, and honestly, like labels aren't signing bad things,
and they're also not putting out bad things, like this
is good stuff, it's just that it's not good enough.

(38:34):
And so okay, let's say that your product or your
song is not good enough, then what do you have?
Are you very attractive? Okay, you're not attractive. You're like me,
all right. So that means that you have to build
a community and interest around what you want to do.
And so that's why when you zoom out in, zoom outain,
zoom out, it starts at the core. Man. It's like, look, dude,

(38:57):
do you do you want to be a musician because
you want to hop into a scene and have a
blast and have an amazing youth and maybe put that
money in real estate? Cool? Do you want to start
a community? And do you want to start a movement?
Because you're passionate about this genre. You're passionate about this
Da da da da da. We've seen it and you live.
You live during the time that I wish I was alive.

(39:17):
I wish I was alive when a dude came up
to me in an alley and was like, yo, you
look like you would like to get punched in the
middle of the night listening to Metallica. Who's Metallica? You
don't know? Here's this cassette. Come back tomorrow and I'll
show you where the show's at. I wish I was
alive at that time.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
And in twenty twenty, we did that with an artist
and we did like we did it in a hip
hop yep. So we you talk about in real life
and real yeah, yeah we So basically what he's saying.
I had the artist message three hundred creators yep, and
I was like, the artist that you're mimicking also is

(39:54):
followed by these specific creators. These creators all play this
specific video game, which is for Day. So I had
him message every single creator. We had about a twenty
percent response, right. We flip that to about eighty million
streams within a year. The artist was at zero.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Okay, we signed to learn clear why does this work
in pop and hip hop and not other genres?

Speaker 2 (40:18):
It works in every genre and not in country because
in country music they did they were slower to get
on social media.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
So it's just a matter of when.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, bingo, yeah, okay, this.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Is all general. You guys represent talent. How many people
do you represent today? Eight that's not very many. Okay,
of your overall time, how much is focused on those

(40:55):
eight as opposed to whatever.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
That's a tough question. It's it's pretty tough to scale.
But we divide and conquer. So we're three founders and
then we have eight managers. Well, we have twenty seven
people in staff first of all, so this is impossible
to do without a fucking big ass team.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Okay, everybody's on a weekly salary. What do you mean
as opposed to you work and I pay it two
hundred dollars when I see the work?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Oh r no, no, we well, we have vendors for
different things.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
All twenty seven know that they're going to get paid
every week.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah yeah no, but yeah, we
have vendors for different things like marketing that will will
hire some of whatever. But no, like we have twenty
seven employees, not all of them are managers, some of
them are coordinators, some of them are just specifically social
media people. You know, my brother he's nineteen, runs the
editing team. Like you know, we also stratboot and we're
also immigrants, so we know, you know, we make sure

(41:52):
the family works. But no, how we scale it is
pretty tough, but we divide it in three.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
No, no, no, no, no, no, different question. You have these
eight artists, he.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Said, fifty eighty eight. That's why I don't know.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
That's why I got confused. Fifty eight. Let me let
me go to the other half of the question. Anyway,
at twenty five seven media, is all your work and
income based on those fifty eight or is there another
business of consulting and doing what it is?

Speaker 3 (42:25):
So we we've done marketing for every major label in
the book for the last three years.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
And are you still doing that?

Speaker 3 (42:32):
No, because we still do it for like very few
friends here and there, but we like to do it
in the house because you know, you own the asset,
like you own the music that you're putting on with
the artists, so that there's a higher return there than
getting someone else's record to move on the chart.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Okay, So, for whatever reason, you don't want me to
be your fifty ninth artist. Is there somebody like you?
Guys who I could say, well, I didn't use twenty
five seven, I use three six media. Are there other
people out there of your caliber?

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah? I would it would be ignorant to say they're not.
And there's also and you know where they are.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
They're a group of friends on a discord that don't
even know that they're twenty five to seven yet.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Yeah, like before we got in the space, we well,
I was a song promoter from labels years ago. So
what I would do is I would get specific records
moving in specific territories on Spotify. I didn't know that
was an actual talent like they. I just thought I

(43:37):
was just a kid making Spotify playlist, driving traffic. And
then you see the song number one of the Philippines
and you're a part of it, and you're like, well,
I got paid like five hundred bucks for this. So
then as I got older, I was like, oh, this
is where the ball is moving towards digital. And then
I became empowered. And then when Covid hit, it made
us even more empowered because all that all those ad

(43:59):
dollars that they were going to put everywhere else, They're like,
we have to give it to these young guys. And
there's a kid right now that's learning a platform that
we're ignoring in this conversation that's gonna crush us in
three to four years.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Okay, this is a side note, but now since we've
had social media influencers in excess of a decade, you
have incredible burnout because on one hand, you have to
post every day another land that becomes very tedious no
matter how much money you're making. Has this been your experience.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
We deal with burnout in different ways. I think that
actually all three of us have different ways of dealing
with it all. At Raf kind of talk about the
way he deals with burnout when it comes to creators.
But when they if they come to me, it's because
they've already tried, you know, all the conventional things that
I've already put out there on the TikTok that they

(44:58):
can watch, right, they've already tried all the all the tutorials.
But if they come to one of us and they're
honest about it, first you have to make sure that
they're honest about it. And it doesn't mean that they're
lying to you. It's just so that you can identify, like, hey,
is this truly, you know, burnout or is it that
it's just the wrong song and you just don't like
the song, you know? And I think that by the

(45:20):
time that they come to us, what I like to
do is I like to take them through, you know,
the steps of breaking it down honestly, Like, look, dude,
sometimes you just have to tell them like, hey man,
maybe you're just not passionate about, you know, the the
lyrics that you're saying. Maybe you don't believe them, maybe
you outgru them. You know. Sometimes people, I mean, people
have been with us for four years now. There are

(45:41):
worlds where we signed someone at you know, nineteen, and
now they're in their twenties and they're a different person.
Maybe their fan base wants them to be that and
they're not. And so, you know, burnout can increase and
the candle burns from multiple ends when there are these
things other than just doing your job. One of the

(46:02):
things that I notice is that when the artists or
the content creator is actually passionate about their work and
they're passionate about what they're putting out, it's a I
don't want to say that it doesn't happen, but burnout
is rare.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
It really well, you know, we go back to one
of the original influencers, Jenna Marbles. She gave up people
who feel that there's so much pressure to post every
day sure that they they just you know, spiral out.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Well, here's here's a couple of things. So to avoid burnout,
you need a team that's always pushing your content without
you click and upload. So we have one of our artists,
he walks around, he goes shop, he would that would
be a normal day that he would do. Doesn't have
to interact with the camera at all. We shoot that
and then that's what we post. He doesn't have to
do anything different. He ate a burrito when I was

(46:51):
with him, I took a video of that. Two million
of you. He doesn't have to open up his TikTok account.
That's him right. There's other artists that need to create
content for their music or whatever they're making. That has
to be more personable. And then the elephant in the room,

(47:12):
what's your why? If you came to me three years
ago and your why was to be a superstar, and
their superstar level expectations, you have to do things that
you don't want to do. But if your goal was
to make become a self sufficient business or you know,
be a six figure, seven figure business, and we hit that,
go to Japan, shout out to ninety three. If she took.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Okay okay, you said to become a superstar, you have
to do things you don't want to do. Give me
two examples of things I might have to do to
become a superstar that I don't want to do.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Okay, so right now, the live feature is massive. A
person with a huge platform that wants to keep their
fans engaged needs to go on live at least once
a month for an hour and talk to fans, almost
like you're doing a meet and greet. A lot of
artists have social anxiety. A lot of artists don't want
to be on live. They want to have more of

(48:08):
their videos, you know, edit it a certain way. But
a superstar needs to have a meet and greet on
digital with the artist sadly nowadays at least once a month.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Okay, pull back for a second. What do I need
for you to sign me? You got fifty eight people
you're working with. You're always calming for new talent. What
are you looking for?

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Depending on who you ask?

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Depending on who you ask? Like he's all about music. Yeah,
I'll finish. I'll finish the concept. And I'll even touch
on Jenna Marbles because that's close to home, because I
love her. So the reason she stopped is because she
loved comedy. That's what she loved. And in the world
and the climate that we're in, you know, being you know,
a white woman making jokes, it's something that you know,

(48:55):
there are jokes that she regretted. But then she just
had so much anxiety with the platform as big as
she had and with making a mistake that it crumbled her.
And so again that's when we go into are you
actually burning the candle from the other end us as
the team, I make sure that the flame is burning

(49:16):
in a controllable way, but if it's melting on different sides,
then we have to be honest about it. Hey, dude, like,
maybe these lyrics are not it for you anymore. You
can't you can't rap about suicide anymore. Maybe you can't
do that, and maybe that's what's stopping you from from
from going deeper and being honest about you know, why
it is that you procrastinate, why it is that you

(49:37):
push it, why it is that you're not executing. And
that's when the candle burns on both ends of the sticks.
And that's why people like Genna Marbles have that big
of a platform also big expectations from their fans to
be funny. Now, the climate is very anti funny, you know,
et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
So let's slow down there. Yeah, tell me more about
the climate being the anti funny.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Well, that's funny, but see that's funny. But with her
there are jokes that didn't age well, plain and simple.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
I know that, but I'm trying to say. I'm sitting
at home, I want to make it. Are you telling
me that you know? Today generally speaking, we're not looking
for funny. We're looking for something else.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Man, It's just that funny is it's just a dangerous
territory man whatever, especially for gen zers, Like there's gen
zers that I'm telling you do not care, like these
kids are scary, like some of the things that they
share on social.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah, I mean it's what he's The anti funny thing
is if a comedian set a joke or an individual
set of joke, we would allow that. Right nowadays, you
can't come in and thinking you're Seine Seinfeld earned the
right to say that joke, and with social media they
will make sure to let you know right away or
whoever your boss is that hey, so and so is

(50:57):
a teacher at this school. But it is also trying
to make this type of content online. There was a
teacher recently.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Okay, just to be clear, it's not that the audience
doesn't want funny, it's just if you specialize in funny,
it's a dangerous territory.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
It's a dangerous territory because you're going to be criticized
in the same way that if you think that you're
a good battle rapper and you start making rap music
instead of mumbo hip hop, you're gonna get cooked by
the people that know how to rap.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
Okay, Yeah, let's just say you got fifty eight clients,
what genres? What are those fifty How many are in music?
How many are only fans? What are the fifty eight?

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Oh man, you're gonna have to help me with that. Well,
how many music people do with?

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Yeah, I mean it gets complicated. So it's fifty eight exclusive,
two hundred and fifty non exclusive that we work on
social media with. So you're overall three hundred. Music is
about twenty four and then the rest would be a
hybrid between YouTube and.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Only fans, between what and only fans, you.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
Tube creators and only fans. But it's kind of everybody
has kind of similar goals. Believe it or not. Everybody
has to create a community. So on music right now,
a big thing is a broadcast channel. So there's specific
members that join there and they can either subscribe or
join for free that a musician can just give them

(52:24):
snippets or music that won't hit all platforms. And that's
exactly how it works for the YouTube creators and only
fans as well.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Okay, let's focus solely on only fans. Is it one
hundred percent pornography or is anybody making money without taking
their clothes?

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Oh? Yeah, we have a ton that are making money
with say about like forty percent of the roster doesn't
take their clothes off at all.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
And what are they selling? Are they selling sex?

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Some of them are, some of them are selling bikini photos,
some of them are selling connection, connection, and also just
live streaming like watching watching anime together, like it's all
kinds of Okay.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Let me be very specific. How much are sexually oriented?
That could be sex conversation, that could be bikini photos,
that could be taking off all your clothes? Yea, what
percentage of the people you represent are in that category
as opposed to another category?

Speaker 2 (53:19):
There's different levels of boundaries, I'd say, But yeah, of
course it's it's risque, but there there's an art to it,
like there are people.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
No, no, no, no, I just want to know, is
anybody making good money not in that riskue territory?

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Yeah, what are they doing?

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Uh? They're the ones that are that are doing bikini
pictures and watching anime with their fans.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yeah, okay, let's say I'm not wearing a bikini, I'm
wearing a hoodie and ben sweatpants. Can I build a
business watching anime with my fans?

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, you can, and that's called being a live streamer
on the just chat on Twitch is just not the
right platform.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Okay, but on only fans talk about only.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
That's that's the issue with that's the issue only like
the way the way you only fans, there's going to
be a sexual component somewhere.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yeah. For for us at least, we're not in the
business of, you know, going up to someone and telling
them that they can make a million dollars by doing
like a cooking show, which is what OnlyFans is trying
to do. Right, But it's I know that it happens
for them. I don't have the day.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Yeah, I understand you answered my question. Yeah, Okay, let's
assume I am making sexually oriented content and only fans.
Is that the end? Or are there any opportunities that
only fans might lead to?

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Yeah? See, that's the cool thing about what we do
is what what the only fans side of the business
and digital One of the mottos is that you know,
no digital girl is going to die doing OnlyFans. So
the point really is to build a platform. That's the
number one priority, and then to monetize on it. Once
you have that money, what do you want to do
with that money? Do you want to start a YouTube channel, streaming?

(54:59):
Do you want to launch brand? Which we've done all
those things.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Look at Kim Kardashian, that should I just.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
From Oh, we all know Kim Kardashian and that was
made on television primarily there was a sex tape before that,
but then television. But let's not talk about Kim Dartian.
Let's talk about the people you represent, right.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
No, that's the modern day version of course, someone who
is making content sexually oriented on only fans that you represent.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
How much is the biggest gross per year of someone
who does that?

Speaker 2 (55:34):
I mean, don't want to out because everybody knows our
top three. But it's it's pretty, it's worth their while.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Is it seven figures?

Speaker 3 (55:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Oh yeah?

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Is it eight figures?

Speaker 2 (55:45):
It could be, It could be.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Okay, okay, I have a deal. We're making money twenty
five to seven. What is their cut?

Speaker 2 (55:54):
It depends on the creator. There are some people that
are legacy that have been with us from the beginning.
They're people that you know, just start. It depends if
we launch the If we launch their career.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Well give me the lowest to the highest.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
So in general, what we do when we launch someone's
career is we do fifty fifty on the only fan
side and it's a it's a three month test. And
if they because this this is the thing man like,
you don't want to uh commit to something that you're
not one hundred million percent sure that you're going to
be able to do. And part of what we do

(56:29):
is we don't really this this sounds hilarious, it's kind
of intuitive, but we don't make them do anything. We
don't tell them what to do. What we do is
we provide strategy, and we provide decks and presentations where
they can choose and pick and choose whatever they're comfortable with.
From proven trends that work, and then we also consult
them on producing the right tiktoks, and we also produce
the YouTube videos for them.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Where the traffic source? Yeah? Where the traffic source or
that platform.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Okay, let's say I'm in business with you. We have
great success, but I think I can do it alone now,
and I don't want to give up my fifty percent.
Who owns the content?

Speaker 2 (57:03):
They do? The creator does. Uh, the creator has to
own the content because they are the ones that are
producing the content in California. That's just the law. And
we also represent people all over the world. But we
we go.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Actually, I don't want to get into the legal elements
actually being a lawyer, but you they own the content
is good enough for me. Let's switch the gears to music.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, before we switch gears, I'll discuss like what leads
to that. So the point of building a platform first
beef before even getting an only fan, especially when we
launch someone. If we launch someone, we do it three
month tests. After that three month test, we give them
the option to stay, and then we do a long
term contract for less percentage. That percentage is determined based
on you know, the outcome of the business, but we don't.

(57:46):
We don't stay fifty percent forever. At fifty percent is
just the launch because in the launch phase we put
in a ton of money for the traffic, We invest
a lot in their in their in their content, We
help them with everything. And so that's what the three
the three month test this far. Now from there, it's
really important to build a TikTok because actually the way
that we build the community around digital is through music.

(58:08):
So you know, when it comes to pushing sounds, you know,
when we.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Look at who waha a little bit slower, Huh did
you switch gears? Or are you saying only fans is
driven by TikTok?

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Uh? It is.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
And it's if I'm only fans and I'm taking my
clothes off, I'm selling on I'm baking people to wear
on TikTok. But there's a musical component.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
There's a musical component for being being a creator. When
you're a creator and you want to monetize, whether it's
YouTube or only fans or whatever, you need the most
amount of awareness right now, it happens to be ig
reels and TikTok. And so that's why for us, the
priority you know, maybe maybe you you flunk on OnlyFans

(58:50):
and this has happened. Maybe you flunk on OnlyFans and
you or you find out that it's not for you.
Oh sorry, you have a conversation with uh, you know,
maybe you got a boyfriend, maybe you get a girlfriend
and it's just not for you guys anymore and so cool.
But you know what, you built a platform of one
hundred thousand followers, doesn't mean that you can't work with us.
Do you want to do marketing for us? Do you

(59:11):
want to do the marketing campaigns? Do you want to
be involved in the community of twenty five to seven
still be part of the talent like that's happened before
and it continues to happen. So that's why the priority
is building the platform because from there they can launch streaming,
they can go on Twitch and monetize there, they can
monetize on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
But just to be clear, let's say I'm successful on
only fans, I'm going to TikTok to build my OnlyFans
traffic or it's brand extensions.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Going it's both. You're going to TikTok to build a
brand but also to get the most amount of awareness.
You convert those people over to your Instagram. The Instagram
is also now a really good way of discovery because
of reels. You convert them ideally to your YouTube and
then if they really want to monetize, they buy your
merch or they continue watching your videos, or they go
on your only fan.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
That's why we Hugh was trying to say earlier, like
people are getting away with bikini pictures and sometimes I
even talk anything sexually because they've built their tiktoks and
YouTube to such a large number and such an intimate
level with their following that they'll just pay just to
get a message back exactly, which is like, it's it's insane,
Like people are paying five hundred dollars just to get

(01:00:18):
a hello back, and we're sitting there like how is
that possible? But that's the way of them knowing that
their favorite creator or that person on the other side
of that phone will talk to them.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
And also imagine being one of the first five hundred
girls to dance a dojakat song on TikTok. You're gonna
get numbers and you're gonna get traffic. So the advantage
that the digital girls get is they know when we're
gonna heat up a song, and so imagine, you know,
you're you're an artist, your your song drops on Friday.

(01:00:49):
You know, by the next Sunday, you're gonna have thirty
girls from digital which is twenty five seven media that
have hundreds of hundreds of thousands of followers, some of
them have millions on TikTok that are now doing your
song instant traffic. It's all synergy, which is actually a
term I learned from Brendan from Wired, who did the
article on this. He brought up the you know, the
Simpsons had this episode on synergy. Ever since he said

(01:01:10):
the word synergy, I can't stop saying it. But it
truly is just, you know, like like a really good
environment that we build for launching music.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
I don't want to, you know, harp on only fans,
but there are many people participating on only fans who
are really not making any money. What works on only
fans the.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Other platforms and other platforms, and that's why we're right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
But there are people, let me put it differently, there
are people who are basically selling sexual content of whatever
stripe on only fans. Does it have to be a
certain level of sexual content or is it how you
monetize the people.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Paying no again, and it's it doesn't have to be
sexual content. It's about the traffic you bring in and
the quality of traffic.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
And that's why we're able to and that's.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Why we're able to do it because a porn I'll
go deeper, a porn start, for example, does not make
what a digital girl makes because some of their content
is already out there and there's some you know, the
guy already saw it. There's no need for them to
engage with the talent further. And so when you get
the traffic and you built an interest in an aura

(01:02:27):
around you, you're bringing that traffic in and you're monetizing
on the traffic by simply being a part of their
community that you can't see. So there are pictures, even
if they're just bikinia, non sexual stuff. If the girl
doesn't post the bikini picture on Instagram and the guy
he needs to see the bikini picture, he's going to
see the bikini picture, and he's going to pay for
the bikini picture. So just like the rapper that is

(01:02:48):
pushing his EP in the McDonald's bag and sending his
EP to everybody in the drive through, there's a lot
of people that yes, they had that harsh reality when
it's like, hey, I made my only fans and no
one gave a shit because now you know what it's
like to be an independent rapper, and it's the same thing.
It's you're pushing this traffic and how do you make
people care?

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Okay, let's switch to music. Someone signs with you, guys, Hey,
are you looking for numbers before you sign someone? Or
will you sign with someone totally raw based on what
you hear in their identity?

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Well, we can't at the number factor. We can't compete
on that just because all the majors and all the
distribution companies. If you're doing about thirty five thousand streams
a day on a cross your catalog, you're on every
radar and every label is moving towards the data. So
what we have to go towards is I go based
off brand. So if I'm sitting in the room with

(01:03:45):
someone or I'm talking to that artist, am I actually intrigued?
And that usually? And if the music is about a
six out of ten, I'm like, can I actually add
value to that and get it to a seven, eight
or even a nine? I go based off brand. Fully,
so can that artist move me? When I'm in the
room with that he goes based off only music.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Oh okay, but you're in, we're in. How many people
are hungry have whatever you're looking for, but really have
almost no numbers at all.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Yeah, So we've done that and and again, like like
Raff said, well, you know, we signed for different reasons.
But I think that that's why we're a really good balance.
Like he has just it's just such a good eye
for talent, not only like music talent, but staff. Like
I I won't hire someone unless unless I get his
opinion on it. Okay, okay, But but he also sometimes

(01:04:46):
coaches me to not be too caught up in the
music and how good the music is.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Bob, it's the why. Like one of our biggest artists
right now, he's a Mexican artist, grew up in the US,
grew up in Mexico. Has that duality is figuring out
himself through you know, both cultures. He's intriguing the music. Well,
we'll getting there. He's had four or five songs on

(01:05:11):
the Billboard charts for dance and electronic, but that started
off because of his story so unique. His fans got
invested in him so that when we put out the music,
if the music was decent enough, he was gonna win.
There's other artists that we have to lead with the
music and then kind of go more old school and

(01:05:32):
create the persona of an artist. But he was already
an artist. He just needed the music.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Yeah, okay, okay, there's there's there are there are true
I know this sounds cheesy. There are truly people that
are born stars. He's good at finding those people. But
I'll come in and say like, hey, this is this person.
Can He'll be basically, does this guy haven't shot at music?
And I'll be like honest about it. With the artists
that he mentioned, Loumiatina, obviously I had a sop spot
for him because he's Mexican. On Mexican, we instantly bonded.

(01:05:57):
But I was honest with with Loomi. When I talked
to him, was like, hey, dude, I only really like
two of your songs, and you know, will this work?
I don't know, but I mean we like you, and
I think I think what I did tell him and
what I was honest about, I was like, look, I
don't understand your genre. I'm a fucking boomer out. To him,
I'm thirty, so to him, I'm done. It's over for me.
But I was like, I don't understand this genre, but

(01:06:18):
it's fucking groundbreaking and experimental, and I told him that
it reminded me of like when I lived through Scrillics.
So to me, Skrillics was one of the most groundbreaking
things because he was in my world, in the metal world,
and you know, he went from metal core screamo to dubstep,
which was basically the electronic version of a breakdown spot
in a song. I gave him that whole spiel, in

(01:06:40):
that whole background and the way that he digested it
and took it in. And then he became friends with
another one of our artists, Psycho, who one of his
favorite artists is Scrillics, and then Psycho gave him all
his intel on Scrillics and then the way he digested
and I saw the gears turning in his head. I
was like, we strike now, we strike now, and so
it ended up working out. But we'd be lying if

(01:07:01):
we said, like, even though I'm the music guy, I'd
be lying if I said, like, when I heard, you know,
crush club, the genre he created that I was like
all in on the genre. I was just all in
on the fact that he was so brave and willing
to be so groundbreaking.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Okay, you have signed an act. Let's just say for
the sake of discussion, their talent lies more in the
music than the charisma and personality identity. Obviously, whatever is
there is good enough for you because you made the deal.
But you're a ground zero. How do you get the

(01:07:37):
music heard?

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
Well, first you gotta make the music genre.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
Yeah, we're working now, that's a different f.

Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
Yeah, we're working shoegaze right now. Shoegaze is gonna is
gonna come back to the big, big numbers. So from
there we have to start off with the right mix
for the new shoegaze sound that's being created a lot
more muneier. So you get that mix right, you get
the storytelling right, then you're like, okay, cool, what then
you start doing market research? What does a shoegaze fan

(01:08:10):
look like in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Right, because they they are calling it shoegaze, but the
music that they are portraying a shoegaze now is not
necessarily shoegaze. So see, that's where you get into the
old head vitality where it's like, oh, this isn't a
real shoot, you know what I mean? Right right, right, like,
but Raf is like, dude, I don't care if it's
not real shoegaze. Just fucking teach these kids chord progressions
and then we'll make it work, you know. So that's
so Jella who's filming actually right now. He's a really

(01:08:35):
skilled engineer. He just had a really good session with
one of our new shoegaze acts that you know needs
that engineer. She has the brand, she has the music,
she has a beautiful boy voice. Now we just got
to tweak the engineering so that it could it could
match the sound of today.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
So once that record is done, then we're like, we
identify the market and then we don't just put the
music off saying this is a good shoegaze record that
you should listen to. Let's say that same fan is
also a fan of this streetwear brand. Then we start
attacking it through the fashion.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
So the slower Slowerka, you've created the track, Now you're
talking about the fan. How do you decide how to
reach out?

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
And well, how we talked about the genre and then
the fan, right so yes.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
So then I I'm a consumer. I look up shoegaze,
I look up similar artists. I look at people making
videos to shoegaze songs. So I'm like, if you're doing
this and you're not getting paid, that means you're a fan.
I look at their fashion, I look at their age.
Then I look at what they're also following on social media.
So I'm like, if these twenty people are following this

(01:09:40):
same fashion trend, I'm gonna hit it through the fashion lens.
I'm gonna put the song in those fashion pages. So
now they're thinking they're looking at a T shirt, but
the music is in the background.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
Okay, slower, you have these people who are making these videos.
You have the song. Hey, the point of connection, you say, hey,
I love what you're doing. I got a new artist.

Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
No, I don't say that. I don't do that. No,
I look at that person make I look at that
person making those videos. I look at their interest. And
then let's say they're into this T shirt brand, right,
I go to that T shirt brand and say, here's
the song for free, put it behind your T shirt ad.
And then that fan that's been making videos is just
scrolling and just sees the things that he's interested in.

(01:10:26):
That song keeps popping up.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
Okay, I get it, like just a little bit slower.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
You remember Bad Religion, right of course? All right, so
I never told I gotta now after this podcast, I'm
gonna text him and give him as flowers. But like, uh,
it's the name of Brett epitaph. So Bad Religion. One
of the things that they did that was so genius
is uh Bro went to the surfers and the skaters
and he was like, yo, like, uh use, you know,

(01:10:51):
use use Bad Religion And they wanted to pay him,
and he was like, dude, like, don't pay me because
back then, remember where they used to do those tapes
where every single skates would be playing. So he he
just got every skate shop to be playing Bad Religion.
When you know, you get all the waves and the
and the skate videos. It's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Okay, but my only But even though Bad Religion was
the punk era, di I y, there's much much more
product today.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Oh yeah, So you're saying you can always go back
to the isdlead No, yeah, but you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
Can always go find someone you say, I'm gonna give
it for free and they're gonna say yes, as supposed
someone say hey we got twenty people are gonna give
it to us for free.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Oh all right, yeah you can.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Okay. So there's always someone who's gonna use your music always, okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
And the reason I brought that up is because you know,
that is a subgenre, right, and this will always always
be alive for subgenres because your subgenre is a smaller community.
And if it's a smaller community, you can target. It's
a smaller target and.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):
At the end of the day, it has to be good.
That's why the miss.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Okay, you're there, have you picked out a specific element
of the song? When you're making the deal with the
T shirt company? What are you actually sending them? What
do you want them to use?

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Well, they're not even a company most of the time.
It's just a kid that's posting his big his most
favorite outfits. And that's just one example of I'm not
exaggerating hundreds and I mean hundreds of algorithms that that
we wait.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait once again, we have
to slow down. You do this every day. My audience
is doing this area.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
Okay, So I thought, wait wait, I thought, I so
we'll go to the T shirt. No.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
Now, I understand everything you're saying, but I just want
to make sure I have it stripped. You find someone
who's a fan, you see what they're interested, their algorithm,
the T shirt and whatever. Blah blah blah. I thought
you said you contact the T shirt company.

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):
Correct, So there's he's looking at it a different way.
I'm looking at it right, But yeah, you contact a
T shirt company. There's two ways. So I run a
campaign where I fully control how, what part of a
song they're going to use, how they're going to put
it in the cat. That's one part of the campaign.
The other campaign, I let the T shirt company or

(01:13:05):
another company similar to it, do their own thing. So
one is I I call the other. The other campaign
called don't play God because a lot of the times
there's parts of records that I think it should be
the hook, but ends up being the first part of
the verse that goes viral. So so the first campaign
is exactly what I want it to be. The second campaign,

(01:13:27):
I just let the space take over.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Okay, you've done all that. You guys have a lot
of expertise in algorithms. You're just not sitting at home
waiting to see what happens. No, how do you make
it happen?

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
So well? What he just said is actually very key
the don't play God method. In traditional marketing, this is
called a B testing, which is, you know, raps don't
play God method, and there's a reason he calls it.
Then I'll get there. You're going to make the best description,
The simpler the better, because the simpler means that more
people are willing to do it, And you're going to

(01:14:04):
pick a part of the song that you think makes
the most sense for them to post in an easy,
frictionless way. Sometimes you give the most simple instructions and
they don't do it, and you want that because sometimes
they're the expert of their audience and so what's happened,
which is why he says we don't play God anymore.

(01:14:25):
We don't give them like multiple options. We just give
them one and then we let them run. Is because
sometimes the kids the audience will pick not only the single,
they'll pick the part of the song, they'll pick the lyric,
they'll pick the thing that makes it the it moment.
They will be better suited to make that decision because

(01:14:46):
they're living the algorithm every day.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
And that's what we learn when you're asking them about
our business. Earlier, when we were three years doing campaigns
for other labels, we learned a bunch of patterns of
communities that are hyper consumers. But we also learned that
every time the label would tell us they have to
deliver the message like this, it would never work.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
It would never work.

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):
So we were like, oh, this is awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
We we'll just let the creative, which is why we
chuckled when you said, like, okay, so you go when
you said, uh, okay, so you say I have a
new artist. Now you never say that, like you know,
uh some but but you'd be surprised how many you
know labels would tell us okay, so you're gonna have
the fan say hey, guys, I just listened to you.
Da da da da da da, and make sure you
do the trend just like me. That's never gonna happen.

(01:15:32):
It's never gonna work, right, And so that's why you know,
through trial and error and honestly, by doing so many campaigns,
we've determined that the simpler the better. And sometimes when
you make it so simple, uh, the kid is gonna
be like these guys know they're.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
Gonna pick up right. Okay, but let's say you do this.
I'm not gonna work every time.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
That's the beauty of it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
As the beauty of it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Okay, let's say it didn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
Then are you gonna do Then the song's not it,
the products is not you start.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
You're gonna start the same process all over again.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
And we have to and we and and sometimes what's happened.
I'll give them the example. We spent thirty thousand dollars
on an artist one of his first campaigns. He's trap metal,
that's the genre. It's like metal but like kind of
hip hop. And we poured it all in on some
anime edits and for whatever, which is usually the genre

(01:16:26):
that works really well for this type of music. For
whatever reason, it didn't work. And uh, you know, we
were in the process of picking a different song, and
we were like, well, maybe we'll try a different song,
you know whatever, We'll just whatever. Two weeks, I think
like three weeks went by, and all of a sudden,
these Japanese wrestlers, female wrestlers are blowing each other up

(01:16:50):
like I like blow with with like fireworks. They put
like they put barbed wire around a chair and fireworks
and they're being each other with fireworks, and they put
the song with that video and it went viral. So
then what we did was, you know what we did.
We didn't even know that there was a niche of
Japanese female wrestlers. So what we did is we then

(01:17:11):
lit that whole algorithm up, and then we and then
now the song is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
Okay, you use the magic word algorithm to what degree?
Let's stay with TikTok because that's run by an algorithm
that no one seems to be able to one hundred
percent nail. To what degree do you study the algorithm,
try to figure it out, and then try to game
the system.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
It's not about gaining the system. It's just about identifying communities.
That's all it is. Like to bring it back. The
purpose of at least the mission statement of Facebook is
to create technology that brings us all closer together. And
so what that means is that you know, you're not
gonna actually bring the whole world together, but if you
can identify enough communities, you can bring those communities together.

(01:17:57):
So the algorithm is always going to change of anybody
tells you like, oh, I know the secrets of the algorithm.
They may know them for a week, but it changes
every three months officially, so that means that it changes
every every month and a half. And so no one
actually knows the algorithm. But what we know is we
know how to identify fan bases. We know how to

(01:18:17):
identify subcultures, and we know how to create them, and
we know how to ignite them in ways that for example,
like how the Wired article mentioned in ways that maybe
some of the majors are just not interested in doing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
Okay, you say it changes, they say in three months,
one and a half months would be more like it.
What literally changes? What do you observe? What changed in
the algorithm? Talk about the past.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
Let's talk about the past. Sure, So, I mean everybody
knows the famous ad apocalypse, right, Okay, So if you are,
you know, a prankster and that's your bread and butter,
and you have a Lamborghini and you bought a house
huge mortgage, you know a lot of people who gave
it back because pranks are no longer suitable for monetization
to the level that they were on YouTube guidelines because

(01:19:02):
of like you know, the harassments reports and all that
stuff that was going on in the streets, and so yes,
that is true that the platform itself, the algorithm can
literally sweep you under your feet. Sometimes sometimes it's just
a matter of words that are no longer suitable for
hashtags or trends. Sometimes it's just the matter of hooks.

(01:19:22):
So now the hook is more important than ever on TikTok,
where back then it was just so awesome seeing something
vertical go viral on TikTok. Now even a viral video
has to have a preview of the most enticing moment
of the video, put it in the intro so that
it can hook people in. So it's not only the algorithm.
A lot of people get caught in the algorithm. They

(01:19:42):
start blaming the algorithm or they think that they can
gain the system. No, what you need to consistently understand,
because humanity is always changing, is you need to consistently
understand human behavior. And if you know what happened on YouTube,
and if you know what happened on all these other platforms,
and as these other platforms are adopting more of an
official content creation mode and model, then that's where you
need to That's where you need to head. And then

(01:20:03):
there's also a counter movement of overproduced content to underproduce content.
So there are people that are actually gaining more views
for overproducing their content, like we mentioned, like being more legit,
learning filmmaking tech tactics and techniques, and there are people
that are gaining more views by looking raw, authentic and
uncut and unprofessional.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
Well something that's I mean, I don't know how when
you get this podcast out, But the reality is if
someone wants to go viral right now, the videos that
are going viral right now in this current algorithm is
videos that are within a loop. So with at the end,
it finishes the sentences the way you start the video correct,
and as long as it's in a loop, it goes
viral and ig and TikTok as of right now, what

(01:20:47):
is it November thirtieth, twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
And the reason for the loop is because the platforms
realize that they get more watch time instead of see
so some platform in the beginning with beta testing and
see that's so it's like no one actually knows how
to gain the algorithm. No one dominates the algorithm. It's
just who's paying attention and who's paying attention to human behavior.
If you paid attention. You remember this and you're like
a nerd like us. Do you remember when TikTok would

(01:21:12):
swipe up on its own after you watch the video?
You remember that? Okay, well that's because someone somewhere was
ab testing something and they thought, hey, we will get
more retention and more views if we instantly show them
the next video right after. And you know what they realized, No,
you actually get more retention by looping the video because sometimes,
believe it or not, even though it's a thirty second video,
the person didn't pay attention for thirty seconds. So what

(01:21:36):
RAF is saying, it's not necessari you're not gaining the algorithm.
The algorithm does not say, hey, this person here used
a loop techniques, so I'm gonna give them more views. No, no, no,
All that's happening is human behavior. The world is so chaotic,
and like I said, you know, your shit's just not
good enough. And if it were good enough, it would

(01:21:57):
be getting the attention to something. RAF just gave you
the sauce. If you're a noticed trying to get signed
right now, every single label knows you exist. At thirty
five thousand listeners, period streams, not less streams. Streams period.
So that's it. But if it's maybe it's just not
good enough to get sign maybe it's not good enough
for someone actually reach out. But anyway to finish, to
finish the loop, to finish the loop, it's it's not
necessarily that, hey, I added a loop, so the algorithm

(01:22:19):
is going to favor me. No, no, no, It's just that
if you constructed your argument and your video in a
way where it ends in a loop so that someone
can watch it again and again and again, maybe five
times for them to really get the point across, then
you've done a very successful you know, transmutation of human
behavior right there.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
Okay, so to what degree do you leverage certain signed
acts to gain traction for other side acts.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
We have an example. We signed obviously Loomy Athena in
December January, and then we found that he had a
friend that made music. I have two hundred and seventeen
listeners that act now became the feature on a bunch
of other songs that loom he has, and he was

(01:23:10):
able to get his own platform and now he's a
top forty electronic Dance Artist of the Year and he
has close to five million monther listeners. But he has
to be good.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
I understand.

Speaker 3 (01:23:23):
Yeah, his voice is incredible, and also yeah, so's I
want to make sure people know that we've done it
for other people and it hasn't got the same success level.
You still have to be good. You can only get
someone else's algorithm, but if you're not good, it will
wash away.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
Yeah, exactly. And also I do want to say one thing,
so when we interviewed kid, when we interviewed him to
see if we would sign him, out of all the
years that we've been doing, this is the first kid
that's ever told me, yeah, Prince is my favorite artist.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
Okay, what I assume I sign with you is leveraging
me with other talent you have signed dere girl. Can
I expect you're gonna do that like a feature on
a rap song in the old days? Or are you
basically saying, well, you got to hit a certain amount
of status. It's got to work for you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
No, it has to be. It has to be the
community in the genre, especially with these gen z. Are
they're brutal man? Like I know, I keep saying like
I'm so afraid of them that I am, Like, they're brutal, dude,
Like if you tried to introduce like a kid that's
just not in the community, like that kid would get
slaughtered and cooked.

Speaker 3 (01:24:42):
So what we do to facilitate We facilitate it, but
we don't execute it. So the way we do it
is we plan recording trips for artists are on the
same hime. So a we just had a meal together. Oh,
you guys like each other, play video game together? Oh,
randomly a song. Now you guys are making together. Ah,
let's get you back in the studio together and then

(01:25:03):
finish it up.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
Okay, let's pull back the lens halfway. People who are
not of your vintage, they will say, oh, the TikTok kits,
it's just a fragment of a song. There's no real
artists there.

Speaker 3 (01:25:22):
They're right, They're right, They're right. I mean, it's it's
only been three years and they haven't proven themselves. Remember
Vine Vine, who came out of Vine Lou Combs. Is
that a fragment of an artist? I don't think so.
Shawn Mendes, is he a fragment of an artist? I

(01:25:44):
don't think so. All those Bieber doing covers wait wait.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
Wait wait wait wait, that's that's the upside there's always
going to be some talented people playing. Let me let
me pull it back a little bit. The record companies,
the major labels, you still published players. The old tricks
don't work. As you say, as soon as someone hits
thirty five thousand streams, they're in. But you can have

(01:26:09):
thirty five thousand streams and you have traffic, but there's
not much there. So to what degree are they signing
things that have no future or are they good at
what they do and they only sign the stuff that
does have a future.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
Well, like Graf said, I mean, we're not saying, you know,
we're not saying that kid didn't have a future, but
you know, kid didn't have the platform, but we believed
in his voice and we also saw that he was
daring enough to sing on a genre that had no singers.

Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
Okay, wait wait wait wait wait wait, Raf, go for it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
Well, Bob is saying to that, are label signing stuff
because it's just making money?

Speaker 1 (01:26:47):
Yes, But the question is if there's something that's trafficked
and you can get more traffic, maybe you can even
cross over to Spotify, but there might end up being
only one song.

Speaker 3 (01:26:59):
That's fine because the deal sizes are so small nowadays,
and they're already proven. See, there's being music right now.
It's the best time to be in music. A lot
of people are complaining about the payoffs from platforms and
all that this is the best time to be in music.
A kid is doing one hundred thousand streams a day,
you already know how long how much money that kid

(01:27:21):
is gonna make, and you have about a sixteen month
window of that song hitting its peak and then it's
gonna decline, So you can do the calculations of what
that song, of what that artist is worth on paper.
There's no more guessing in the music business. The guessing
part is is that kid a superstar now? Which goes
back to the conversation we were having earlier. You have to

(01:27:43):
sit in there in the room with them. You have
to find out their why. And a lot of people
are not finding the artists.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
Why and they're not interested in doing that correct.

Speaker 3 (01:27:51):
And not just at the major level, at the independent
level too. There's people signing artists and they're not finding
that why.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
But is your experience you're in the trenches every day.
Are they doing the math correct and saying one hit
sixteen months blah, blah blah, or are they truly believing, Hey,
this guy's got this, I'm gonna blow it up.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
Something that it would be silly to say you're not
doing the math when there's so much data.

Speaker 2 (01:28:16):
Yeah, there's so much data.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
A different point.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
No, I okay, I understand your point correctly. My answer
is me and I hope they're developing people.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
Yeah, okay, let's go all the way back to the beginning.
So we're we have the old school players, pre internet players,
pre social media players. What have we established? You said,
despite all the new players, YouTube is still the most
powerful platform. You talked about legacy media. You say, well,
you want to cross over. It gives you attention and

(01:28:50):
it pays dividends. We talked about traditional networks whatever, they
got a lot of power. They just have to go
to live streaming. So at the end end of the day,
to the traditional forgetting the platforms themselves, the tiktoks, youtubes, whatever, Well,
maybe not YouTube. Do the traditional players the first movers,

(01:29:11):
et cetera? Do they always win in the end or
is there going to be someone who independently says I
know more about it than those people. I can make
it work for my talent. I'm going to establish my
own monolithic business.

Speaker 3 (01:29:25):
Well, it's been happening in Latin music for the last
fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (01:29:30):
Give me more.

Speaker 3 (01:29:31):
So in Latin music, there's obviously everybody's familiar with Bad Bunny.
The Bad Bunny deal only happened two or three years ago.
That was a project that has been developing for about
seven eight years. It's happening in traditional Mexican music. Those
artists now are getting acquired by the major labels, but
they're already doing eighty billion streams before the major label

(01:29:52):
comes in comes in. So Latin music has been happening.
It's been happening in a lot of other genres outside
of the US.

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
Now I'm asking the first question, Yeah, you've established something.
The traditional player comes in, I'm gonna lay a lot
of cash and power. I say, yes. Are there people
who are saying the traditional outlets are clueless. I'm building
it myself and my goal is not to sell out
or to make a deal with the traditional players.

Speaker 3 (01:30:19):
There's companies like ours that exist, and there's other companies
that are constantly being created. Funding is a big issue, yeah,
and so they are now third party people. Do you
do you want to take money from a music company
or do you want to take money from a venture capitalist.
That's that's the conversation that's being had right now.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
Okay, just to be clear, because exhibition is free, these
sites are all free. Why do you need so much money?

Speaker 3 (01:30:51):
So you catch her record on TikTok. Let's go back
to the basics, right, you catch her record on TikTok,
that streaming check, you're not seeing it for four months
right on the master recording on the publishing right even long.
So how are you operate? So you're at you're an artist.
That's a million, two million, three million month of listeners

(01:31:11):
that you're constantly supposed to be feeding your business. But
there's no you have no money.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
Okay, But my question becomes everything is so diy. Everybody's
got a laptop, we're shooting video. Where is the requirement
for any significant money, especially because no one gives you
money for free. If they're giving you the money, they
want something in return.

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
Well, that's why we sell the artists, and that's why
we partner up with them in the business because.

Speaker 3 (01:31:35):
The reality is once you catch that one record pop,
you're supposed to have a music video done, right, let's
say the music video is even a thousand dollars, you
shoot that music video. Let's say the moment you start
getting streaming, a lot of artists are not clearing their records, right,
the elephant in the room, right, they're they're dropping all
these records. And then the producer comes back, it's five
thousand dollars. So you have to go back.

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
You have the millions right now. Now your first check
is not going to be five that'sn't right.

Speaker 3 (01:32:00):
So Cade went from two hundred and seventeen listeners to
five million now. But when he was a two million
monthly listeners, one of ANRS came back to us and said, hey,
this bees ten thousand dollars. We hadn't seen a check
because he just went viral. And then we went back
to him and said, can we go back to like
a reasonable number because he just went viral. There's really

(01:32:23):
no money here. Yeah, he said, he has two million
monthly listeners.

Speaker 1 (01:32:27):
Okay, but I.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
Go back to my point, So why do we need
the money? It's because, like we here signed the artist.
So if we signed the artist, that means that we
have to invest in the brand, and we have to
invest in their career, and that costs money. At the
end of the day, you can't you can't escape that.

Speaker 3 (01:32:47):
But I'm looking at it from just I'm just an
artist that went viral. Yeah, and then you also need
a follow up record. That's what's happening too. No one's
in investing, okay, but let's say all in, I'm in
ten k.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
Okay, if I take the ten k from somebody, they're
gonna want a lot more than ten k back.

Speaker 3 (01:33:07):
That's why distribution companies on their eyes. That's why a
lot of the stigma used to be that not stigma.
I mean, the reality is artists didn't get fair deals.
Right now, artists are getting extremely fair deals to the
point where the other side does not care enough and
they don't do anything. They don't do anything. Hence why

(01:33:27):
there's no superstars. Because your partner is used to eating
at a certain rate, they're not eating at that level anymore.
They're not that invested in you as an artist.

Speaker 1 (01:33:38):
Okay. But okay, your company twenty five to seven Media,
is it self funded or are you taking money from
somewhere else?

Speaker 3 (01:33:47):
We're self funded right now.

Speaker 1 (01:33:49):
Okay, So if you're self funded and you sign talent,
are they going to third parties for money.

Speaker 3 (01:34:01):
They're not. No, but it gets uh, they're not going
to third parties, but there's always a major Daniel.

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
Okay, but hold that for a second. So in this
particular example, you're considering yourselves to be the.

Speaker 2 (01:34:17):
Money or the label.

Speaker 1 (01:34:18):
Okay, but it's certainly not a traditional situation with the
three majors in their tentacles. Let's stop there. And you
said in the Wired article that you contemplated doing a
deal with Mike Kieren, I have certainly known for decades,
has a long history in the music business, but ultimately

(01:34:40):
you did not. Why did you not make a deal
with Mike Kieren in the.

Speaker 3 (01:34:44):
End, Well, Mike, Mike is a tight end in music.
Let's just let's just start there. And Uh, when we
met with him, I was super impressed how he knew
so much about a and just the future of music
in general. I'm like, at this level and at what
you've accomplished like that, it shouldn't be that in tune

(01:35:06):
he was really so the reason why we didn't do
a deal with Mike and a bunch of other people
is you've ever been in those email chains and there's
like thirty people in the email chain and you don't
know who's actually supposed to do it. We wanted to
avoid that while we were growing the company because we
had that issue as artist managers, because we had artists

(01:35:26):
signed to Virgin we had ourtist signed and Warner Records,
we had o artist signed to Geffen, we had artissigned
to a bunch of other companies.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
On top of that, we're doing the marketing for these majors.

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):
So we noticed the bigger the email chain, the slower
the process was. So we're like, we're on the rise
right now, and we like Mike, but I'm like, we're
not working with Mike every day. We're working with everybody
else in that building. We're not working with Todd at
Alama every day. We're working with everybody else in that building.
And you know, it's kind of hard to recreate those

(01:35:57):
type of guys. So we were like, while we're on
the upward trajectory, we want to do it on our own.

Speaker 2 (01:36:03):
And another honest answer that we that we gave people
was just the truth. I mean, like, you know, sometime
at the time, music was really only one third of
our revenue and we have so many other aspects of
the business. That we wanted to keep developing, and so
we basically looked at it like, well, are we going
to partner up with someone so that they can tell

(01:36:24):
us what staff to bring in and how to do it,
or maybe we could take a swing at it for
a couple of years and kind of you know, build
it out ourselves in the way that if it ain't broke,
don't fix it. And I think that that's what we
want to try, you know, for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
Okay, but this has been going on since Napster. People
have said there's going to be disruption. Professor at Harvard
who wrote a whole long article the New Yorker magazine saying,
ultimately there isn't disruption. What strikes me here is for
all of this new technology, new platforms, you're always coming

(01:36:59):
back to the traditional players. But hang in there for
a second. Is your goal to sell at a certain
number or is your goal to never sell?

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):
We talk about that.

Speaker 3 (01:37:12):
Every day when I'm when I'm done having fun with
my two best friends.

Speaker 1 (01:37:17):
That's a different issue.

Speaker 3 (01:37:18):
No, no, no, that's the biggest. But that's the real,
that's the real. I mean, with the numbers that we've
got offered for our company, overall.

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
Not just the music.

Speaker 3 (01:37:27):
So we we we would have been fine even before music,
even before I genuinely enjoy working with my two best friends.

Speaker 1 (01:37:35):
This is you know, you're not at that point. Okay.
Usually when people sell out, either they're done or the
money is just everything's for sale. If I come in
here say I'm gonna sell you. Yeah here, let me
open my wall. Twenty bucks for your company, No twenty thousand,
no twenty million. Well, all of a sudden you saying, well,

(01:37:56):
let me let me think two hundred million. We're in
and sold. Everything's got a price. But there are companies.
The music business started really didn't become consolidated to the
late sixties early seventies. Prior to that it was all
independent labels, which ultimately most of them went by the wayside,

(01:38:18):
but a number of them survived. They ultimately sold at
a huge numbers of hundreds, well for hundreds of millions
of dollars. A and M Records, Island Records, but for
decades they had operated independently and when they sold, the
founders were not young. So the question is, are you

(01:38:38):
building a business to compete with traditional players with a
new paradigm, and are there people like you doing that
or in reality, are the traditional players always going to
win in the end.

Speaker 3 (01:38:52):
They're going to win in the end. I mean, look
at right, they're going to win in the end.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
Where Yeah, because there's also people like us that the
moment they even know that they could sell they.

Speaker 3 (01:39:01):
Say, yeah, correct, So that's that's that's the thing, Like
there needs to be a unity in the independent space,
right But what happens is there the big companies are
getting very smart, like in Grooves merging with the Virgin Music,
it's still a UMG company. Is that is that considered independent? No,
that's the You.

Speaker 1 (01:39:21):
Don't know, but I ask you, as I say, even
in the tech space forget music. Yeah, the guys started WhatsApp,
the guys started Instagram.

Speaker 3 (01:39:31):
We ultimately got squeezed out.

Speaker 1 (01:39:32):
They took the check and the big guy said, hey,
this is where it's going to be. Wasn't that way
they were out?

Speaker 3 (01:39:38):
Well, just to give you we've done this is our
first year as operating as a label. We've done management
and other stuff. We've done a couple of billion streams.
Right right now, we're just a little fly in the room.
We're the little mosquito. Let me no one cares.

Speaker 1 (01:39:50):
Okay, well, let maybe pull let me pull it differently
from my perspective. Hey, we're in an era where streaming
television is the most vital art form to make. That
kind of streaming television is expensive. You can shoot on
your iPhone, but really you can't compete on The other
extreme is music. You and me. We can cut a

(01:40:12):
record right now and have it up on Spotify almost instantly.
It doesn't mean anybody will listen, but the barrier to
entry is very low. Okay. So ultimately, in music, and
this hasn't happened now significantly in twenty years, a new sound,

(01:40:32):
a new genre comes along and replaces what came for before. Okay,
we had hairband music, we had the Seattle grunge. Then
we had a hip hop that we had different types
of hip hop. Okay, for the last seventeen years ago
we had If you're a real fan, you could say this,
but it's not like there was a new Beatles. I mean,
look at Beyonce, Taylor Swift. They've been in the business

(01:40:54):
a long time. By today's standards.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
That was Latin music. Yeah, and they're all telling okay, yeah, no,
it's Latin music.

Speaker 1 (01:40:59):
Okay, but it is very disheartening to hear from people
like you that are on the cutting edge of this
that ultimate because let's say, I am talent, okay, it
bothers me that the talent sells out for two reasons,
you know, Okay, I hear every day from people who say,

(01:41:20):
you know, streaming payouts are bad. Let's forget the people
who are just delusional, who are never listening to But
there are people who make deals with major labels, talking
to the experts. Maybe at a blue moon you can
get fifty five percent of the net. Most people are
way below that thirty percent of the net, and then

(01:41:40):
all of a sudden you have one hundred and four
hundred million streams. That adds up no lil nas X.
The advance was so heavy it says, you know, I
don't give a fuck about what's happening. So at the
end of the day in this sphere, is everybody going
to sell out? Look at the Titans, Okay, jobs, he

(01:42:01):
gets squeezed out of the company. He comes back after that,
all the founders wrote contracts where the stocks are. You
can't squeeze me out, Mark Zuckerberg, you can't squeeze out
the guy at Snapchat you can't squeeze out, but you're
telling me when it comes to the creative end of it,
everybody's just gonna sell out.

Speaker 3 (01:42:18):
Okay, So we're we're on your team. Yeah yeah, right
right now. Well we're championing. Even the land companies were like,
you shouldn't do that. We're we're trying to partner up
with other entrepreneurs similar to us, and we're like, let
me help you catch a second third record with your artists.
We're on your team on that end of it. However,
there's not a lot of people fighting that fight. Yeah,

(01:42:40):
so it does get lonely the other a lot of
people are going for that check.

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):
Yeah. Another like, like I said, I'll return to look,
there are going to be more twenty five seven medias
and there probably are, and there were, But what I
smelled is that the moment they could they even know
that they could sell, they sell too early. And then
the other thing too that he said, we're honest about this,
like right now we're in the very tip of the

(01:43:05):
iceberg of like what we're going to build, and we
would love to build something like Island, something like Deaf Jam,
Like we I mean we're gonna we wear deaf jam jackets,
like on the low, like when we're not in public,
when we're just alone and we.

Speaker 3 (01:43:18):
Just we're fans of like that gritty story.

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):
However we want to build a story.

Speaker 3 (01:43:22):
There's there's other people that are not like that are
our peers. I'm constantly talking to my peers in these
big buildings. I'm like, you found the artist. The deal
was twenty thousand dollars, thirty thousand dollars in pocket because
they're signing. Our majors are signing artists very very early
now because they know there's other companies similar to us

(01:43:44):
willing to, you know, develop. So I'm like, you could
do that same deal on your own, but no one's
actually doing it. Everyone's afraid.

Speaker 2 (01:43:51):
Everyone's afraid of making their own move.

Speaker 3 (01:43:54):
And it's scary because because you want to empower people to,
you know, take the next leap in music and just
be music entrepreneurs. But then when you see all these
big mergers happen with Virgin and INgrooves and all these
big distribution companies just buy up everything, You're like, who
is the last true distribution partner out there that's not

(01:44:19):
owned by a major label.

Speaker 1 (01:44:20):
Okay, two things. Distribution is king. The talent is not king,
because if it can't be bought heard, whatever doesn't matter
how good it is. But unlike anytime previous, let's just
stay with the music business, distribution has been institutionalized and
available to all. Okay, So therefore there is more emphasis

(01:44:43):
on the talent than there has been. Now getting noticed,
there's a lot of steps along the way. But you
can't say, at the end of the day, well, I
can't play. You might say I can't get interrestrial radio,
but it's this audience you know, listening to interrestrial radio anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:44:58):
No, No, you can play, make a lot of money
and it and it also costs a lot of money,
and you can make a big impact. You could do
all that, but until we see an artist truly fully
do it independently. H Ghazi and Empire are an independent
company that you know champion artists, but a lot of

(01:45:19):
artists just haven't taken that h that leap. Everyone just
at the end of the day sells off for that check.
Everybody thought bad bunny and that company was never going
to do a deal with a Sony or UMG. They
did it. So it's when you're telling me like, are
you guys going to be the one to be the difference? Hopefully,
hopefully we could be an alternative.

Speaker 2 (01:45:41):
And we and we talk about this every single week.

Speaker 3 (01:45:43):
But the reality is when you see other you know,
colleagues and counterparts, uh not doing it, it gets a
little lonely, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
But also historically the traditional purveyors don't want something to
If you look at the history of talent entertainment, yeah,
to begin with, from beginning to end, it's always the
independence that push the envelope.

Speaker 3 (01:46:08):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (01:46:08):
Yeah, but I think that's changing. And so here's here's
a take. I mean, you talked about the barrier of entry, right, right,
I mean SoundCloud. I mean there's no barrier of entry.
You don't even need a distributor for soundcland or for YouTube.
You can just upload an asset. Now you know, this
is a whole other podcast for another day. But AI
is going to change that level of entry as well.

(01:46:30):
Like we're talking skill wise, right, So if you're an
artist that doesn't know how to work with producers, but
you can tell an AI to make you a beat
that sounds like this, like, now, the barrier of entry
is even less, right, And so What that means is
that like a lot of people are scared about that,
A lot of people think we should regulate it. Da
da da. All that tells me is that, I mean,

(01:46:52):
I already saw everybody by a DSLR and think that
they're a YouTuber and they didn't make it. All that
tells me is that there's going to be an other
flood of just garbage out there, and the majors are
going to depend on independent nucleuses, whether they're management companies
or independent labels, to identify the quality and those subgenres

(01:47:14):
because it's too hard to mobilize that machine. When you
mobilize that machine to uh for visual representation holding a
little bottle cap you if you mobilize the whole building
to really dive into that, it's really hard. But if
that's but if you invest in an independent you know, label,
it's it's much more easier for you to mobilize and

(01:47:37):
and and capitalize on that moment. Here's the thing when
I said, we're not exaggerating, we're pretty much experts in
like hundreds and hundreds of different algorithms and types of
fans and types of content that exists and how it
can be repurposed and how we can re you know,
use it for different genres and what applies like that's
also what gives birth to different subgenres of music, and
also different ways that people play video games and how

(01:47:58):
that ties into the lifestyle. And so that was a
long wind the way of saying that because music and
the technology and everything is moving so fast, you're going
to encounter these subgenres in a very very fast way.
And the machine is simply not equipped to identify or
even play in such a high frequency. And so you

(01:48:18):
are gonna be seeing distribution companies as well as labels
partner up more with independent labels. So I think that
now there's a space for independence to not get crushed
or swallowed, but to be able to kind of coexist
with the machine.

Speaker 1 (01:48:34):
Okay, let's just go back a little clean up work.
You have a musical artist, yep, they have traction, yep.
How do you cross it over to a traditional streaming outlet,
not YouTube, which is visual, Spotify, Apple, etc. How do
you draw consumption there whereas there so much low hanging

(01:48:55):
fruit money elsewhere that you don't care.

Speaker 3 (01:49:01):
Uh, well, you got to start off globally first. For
a company like ours. We have to focus globally because
US marketing is expensive. The three majors in the subsidiaries
are controlling the biggest influencers, so we have to start
off globally. So the way we identify a sub niche,

(01:49:23):
we have to also identify subcreators or micro creators to
you know, get the ball rolling. If then it starts
working internationally, then we bring it to the US.

Speaker 2 (01:49:34):
UH.

Speaker 3 (01:49:34):
And then this way we're able to no, not put,
not go all in on just one record. We can
do multiple records because the cost is a lot less
in the global.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
Markets, which is also why it's such a cool and
useful tactic to do ab tech.

Speaker 3 (01:49:52):
So let me stop there. The reason why I kind
of gave almost a pessimistic outlook on like the machine
is was gonna win because what's happening globally now is
those companies that were vendors or like third party for everybody,
they're getting acquired by the big companies as well, or
the small indie label in UH, you know, Sweden, Germany, whatever,

(01:50:16):
they're getting acquired as well. So it's it's UH. And
then the even the big majors are focusing more of
their money and add dollars over there as well. So
we always just have to be first, first, first, because
if we're at the same level, they're always gonna beat
us with.

Speaker 1 (01:50:33):
Okay, just go back to the very specific question. You
have some success, how do you drive play on streaming outlets,
not YouTube?

Speaker 2 (01:50:41):
Just an influencer, an influencer push, Yeah, it's a it's
an influencer push or also have the creator. Like here's
the thing, like, either either you do sweat equity or
you pay for it, or if you really care about
your music, you do both. We're fortunate that, uh, we
work with talent that we're very honest with them and

(01:51:02):
we tell them that they also have to push their
own music, and there they lend themselves to being coached
on how to do that. Obviously, we have some tactics
like he shared where like, you know, we'll create a
page where we document their life so they don't feel
like they are producing the tiktoks. But the truth is
that nobody fucking cares man, Like, nobody cares about about

(01:51:23):
your music, about your product, nobody cares about your video,
No one cares about what you're selling. People go on
TikTok and social media out of habit now. But no one,
no one picks up their phone and says, I'm going
to see what great song I find on TikTok to.

Speaker 3 (01:51:36):
Yeah, because we were driving in We were in the
Uber and Ursus points to one of those Hollywood buses
and he goes, man, you know what's a funny rap?
I was like, what is it that he goes, No
one cares about fame anymore because their cousin can get
fifteen million views on TikTok. That's why that bus is empty.

Speaker 1 (01:51:55):
Okay, let's just stay on that for a second.

Speaker 2 (01:51:57):
But to finish that, it's it's the truth, man. No
like these platforms, you know, the monolith is so beautiful,
beautifully designed, and it fits in your hand and it's
a habit for you to look down for hours that
no one picks up their phone and says, yo, I'm
going to find my favorite song today, Like no one
has a goal saying like, okay, I'm gonna go on

(01:52:17):
TikTok right now and I'm gonna find my favorite song
where I'm gonna go to the show where I'm gonna
meet the girl in my life's of my life and
get married after I meet her at the show, Like,
no one has that in mind.

Speaker 3 (01:52:26):
But they are looking to shop. They are looking at
video game clips, they are looking at wrestling clips, they
are looking at other stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:52:32):
They're looking at interest because it's the feedback, it's the
feedback machine. You put out, you put out what you like,
the machine gives you back. So music is an accessory. Accessory, accessory, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:52:43):
To the content correct, and then if your music is
good enough, it becomes primary to that person.

Speaker 2 (01:52:49):
Exactly and asked mentioned in the magazine, we're true believers
of like the nine touch points, which is like someone
needs to see something nine times in order to buy it,
and then obviously the ten percent role, which was also
covered in the Wired article. So it's just a matter
of volume, but it's also a matter of how you
can connect. So if you're one of the lucky ones
and you're working with an artist that can get coached
on how to create content themselves, it's the easiest way

(01:53:11):
to connect because people actually like the person. Right, So
you've probably heard this before, but it's like it's it's
an argument that music people use all the time, Like,
you know, why why does someone listen to Beyonce? They
listen to Beyonce because they feel like a badass. Right.
So there's different lifestyles and feelings that an artist can

(01:53:31):
can can like communicate with the way that they make content,
the way that they make their music videos, the way
that they are and so does that music fit the lifestyle?
Because you are the lifestyle, you are the product because
these platforms are free, and so the feedback loop and
the agreement that you have with the platform and with
the mountolift is that when you use this device, you're
constantly looping your feedback and vice versa and that and

(01:53:55):
as it refines, it knows how to sell you things.
It knows what to put in front of you so
that you could stay on the platform as long as possible.
That's how everybody makes money. That's how we make money.
That's how the platform makes money.

Speaker 1 (01:54:05):
Okay, just to be very simple, you're representing an artist,
musical artist, other than streaming revenue on YouTube, Spotify at all,
where's the money and how much money is there?

Speaker 3 (01:54:18):
The merch business is business is crazy? Is incredible, It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:54:21):
Okay, But just in terms of x number of views
deals with the platforms, is that a business or is
that very rare? And not much money.

Speaker 2 (01:54:31):
We've only had deal with Yeah, we've had We've had
three deals with with Twitch.

Speaker 3 (01:54:36):
Oh you're talking about artists.

Speaker 2 (01:54:38):
Yes, yeah, yeah, there is money with with platform exclusives.
But see, sometimes, man, I don't want to misspeak. I
mean something right now, doing an exclusive deal with a
platform is only for the big dogs in my recommendation,
you know, because we've done it where we have a

(01:54:59):
deal with Twitch and they were great and they're awesome partners,
but you know, the exclusivity is just something that you know,
then you can't livestream on anywhere else. Right, So I
think that if you're a rising artist or a rising creator,
you shouldn't make it your goal to make an exclusive
deal with a platform. I think that you should be

(01:55:21):
willing to experiment all types of different social media. And
for example, you know, there's some people that made a
deal with meta with Facebook and now they can't benefit
from the incredible, incredible discovery from TikTok live.

Speaker 3 (01:55:35):
Like like Rapp said, I mean, let's let me bring
it back to music, because now I understand the question
a little bit more. TikTok has its own distribution, That's
that's true, and we've been approached a couple of times.
Why why would you do TikTok is the hot platform
right now, but why would you do a deal with
the platform itself? It's like all those people that deals

(01:55:57):
with Apple Music. Okay, well what was the benefit of that?

Speaker 1 (01:56:02):
Okay, Okay, Let's say I send both of you to
Tahiti for four months without your phone, no computer, no phone.
You come back, how much have you missed and how
much of you behind?

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
See, that's the beautiful thing about Like I know the
way that when content is consumed, and even the way
that the magazine, the underdog story of the magazine, and
how was portrayed. Like, no one, I promise you, no
one actually knows how to gain the algorithm. No one
knows how to manipulate the algorithm. Like, like, what we
do is we just pay attention to human behavior. And

(01:56:39):
as long as you go back to the core of
human behavior, you will always find your footing wherever you
are right because the playing field changes all the time.
But as long as you can study all I all
we really need is a week. If we study something
for a week, we know exactly where we are. And
the reason I know that's true is because rap said it.
I think this is the first time we've even mentioned
it in public. Yeah, we work different territories. Like you

(01:57:02):
still have to work the road, my boy, but you
have to work the road in different ways. There's different
talent in different places, in different countries. Different talent does
different trends. You have to work different territories and guess what,
everything that you think is cool here in the United States,
like how I say it, how I said in the beginning, Yo,
my cousins love Facebook. Mexico loves Facebook. If you think
Facebook is dead, you're wrong. You're so wrong. And especially

(01:57:24):
if you think Snapchat is dead and you're not using Snapchat.
That's where gen z is. If you're ignoring X just
because you may not like the founder or you know
you heard something that the founder said that you don't
like about him, you're missing. You're missing learning the experience
of every platform in different regions. And the beauty of
working with international talent and working with international creators is

(01:57:45):
that we've proven time and time again that the reason
why we can ride the wave of the algorithm is
because we can be in different footing and we just
need to analyze it. It takes us no more than
a week and we know exactly what to do.

Speaker 3 (01:57:56):
And I'll be a lot of that was really good,
by the way, But I'll add onto that I used
to be a song promoter, like I said earlier, for labels,
and everything was SEO based, So I would make the
Bob playlist and everybody that would just.

Speaker 1 (01:58:10):
For those who might not be up to speed search
engine optimization correct.

Speaker 3 (01:58:15):
So I would put Bob's playlist and every time someone
would look it up, I would have put all those
songs in there that you would recommend, and then I
would sneak in a label song in there as well.
When that went away, it was like the worst thing
that happened in my life because I was like twenty
two and I was like, I have no other hack.
This is my only hack. But then I realized, how

(01:58:36):
did I build that playlist? I built that playlist through
creating these other pages that had authority in different spaces
that would recommend music from that playlist. So it goes
back to the basics. If TikTok goes away, there's gonna
be another platform that I just need to transfer my
storytelling ability to in a similar manner. Well, how you

(01:59:00):
edit a video change. Yes, it's changed from Vine to TikTok,
but it's still the same storytelling premise. It's still the
same people winning, it's still the same concepts. There's just
the editing or the way it's filmed it's a little
bit different.

Speaker 1 (01:59:14):
So twenty five seven media, what's the annual gross?

Speaker 3 (01:59:17):
Now, well, it's one more role to daddy. I don't
want to put that out there, but over eight figures
for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:59:28):
Okay, when you zero it out, you have twenty seven employees,
and you got to share the money with the creators.
Are you in the black or in the red?

Speaker 2 (01:59:36):
We're doing well, Yeah, we're doing well. I'll actually talk
about that a little bit. So this is something I
just talked to my brother about, my little brother. So,
you know, the stereotype of the agency, record label or
whatever social media guru person is like here's my Lamborghini
and here's like the you know, like, I'm really glad
I had these guys and we all check each other,

(01:59:59):
like we don't flex any of that stuff, Like I've
never posted my car anywhere.

Speaker 1 (02:00:03):
Well, we're gonna say what kind of CARDI drive?

Speaker 2 (02:00:05):
Not gonna say, but it's awesome. I mean, we'll take
you to the to the range and then you'll see.
But the thing is, like, I like actually making a
difference in someone's life and employing them. I think that's
our flex. One thing that we've always flexed since we
had one employee to now having twenty seven, is we

(02:00:25):
always say how many employees we have, because I think
that's the only thing we flex, and we're really proud
of that. And I'd rather flex our employees. I'd rather
flex our talent and show how happy they are than
to like flex a car and be like the social
media group. Guy.

Speaker 1 (02:00:38):
Okay, you mentioned a number of times you're a Mexican,
you're an immigrant. Is there something about that you reference
this but a little bit longer that makes you successful,
has more drive? And how do you feel about the
immigration situation in America today? And how would you saw

(02:01:00):
everyone's anger about what's going on?

Speaker 3 (02:01:03):
Oh man, well, well start, okay, let's take it back.
So what I'm proud of I'm an immigrant as well.
I retired my parents. He retired his.

Speaker 1 (02:01:16):
Parents, And you're an immigrant from.

Speaker 3 (02:01:19):
Born and raised in Greece, but I'm from Albania. So
we both retired our parents. When twenty five to seven
started doing really well. So that's probably our flex that's
our our Leamborghini, right, And that's actually the reason why
we're winning because the way we invested in our families,
we invest in people that work for us and just

(02:01:39):
our talent. As far as the immigration issue, there's so
many different levels of immigration that we need to talk about.
Are we talking about high skilled immigration? Are we talking
about what's happening because immigration in the East Coast where
I'm from, and immigration in the West Coast.

Speaker 2 (02:01:57):
We had, we had a completely different, complete culture shock
when we were when we were just beginning, when we met.

Speaker 3 (02:02:03):
And he was talking about immigration like low skilled or
low skilled workers. I was like, oh, I see the opposite.
Like these kids get educated in America, they get off
for this huge compensation, and then they can't work here.
I'm like, that's completely different than the experience that you're

(02:02:23):
talking about in California. So I wish I could find
a big answer to that. I think it needs to
be in phases. I think if people are getting educated here,
they need to get addressed if you want them to
pay a fine. But you can't educate people and then
let them go somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (02:02:44):
Okay, you know the fact that the high tech worker
and the factor limits that's just nuts. But you were
going to say something urseless.

Speaker 2 (02:02:53):
Yeah. I think when when Rap and I started becoming friends,
we had a huge culture shock. I didn't know the
East Coast people aren't just open about their immigration status.
I think that's a very La Mexican thing, Like we're
just we wore our heart on our sleeves and we
connect right away when we let people know, like hey man,
like I'm you know, like I speak fluently, like let's

(02:03:14):
talk in our language. And you know, he educated me
in a lot of like the Eastern European traditions, like
hey man, you keep that shit to yourself, you know,
you know, like all that stuff. And and then I
told him about, like you know, how open it was here,
and you know, I told him about sanctuary cities, and
he was just blown away. He was like, what is that?
You know? And and so yeah, the the to answer

(02:03:34):
the question about what makes us different, I mean, uh, look, dude,
like uh, Raff and I just have amazing parents and
we were really really lucky. And if you want to
leave the immigrant thing to the side before I bring
it back, just with that alone. It's it's such an advantage.

(02:03:54):
And in the art in the articles mentioned that sometimes
we do take a you know, a mentorship role. We
do take like a like a like a fatherly role
in and that's true. Man, Like we're big brothers. You know.
Sometimes when we have to address an emergency, we could
we we we are the fathers, like we broken talent
out of hotel rooms, peel them off of balconies, helped
them in very serious situations, you know, with their family.

(02:04:16):
And sometimes we do have to wear that. But we
wouldn't be able to do that if we didn't have,
you know, the foundation that we have. Now on top
of that, you know, imagine having super superhero parents. And
then on top of that, you know, they have this
this challenge which is being an immigrant in a completely
different country. Right, So pair that with incredible expectations for

(02:04:38):
your kid because they made him go to medical school.
And my parents didn't talk to me for years because
I didn enjoy the military, right, So.

Speaker 1 (02:04:45):
What happened with medical school.

Speaker 3 (02:04:47):
Well, he added Sauce on that I was a biotechnology
major where with the University of Connecticut with the premise
of going to medical school. And that's when I came
out to La was doing the song promotion stuff, met
him and then didn't think.

Speaker 1 (02:05:05):
That did you finish college? Yeah, okay, I think at
this point we're going to close it. I want to
thank you guys for being so forthcoming, and there's a
lot to chew on here, even for those of us
who thought we knew what was going on.

Speaker 2 (02:05:21):
Well, I do want to say thank you to to
Brendan from from Wired for first of all for connecting
us right and then also obviously we're humbled, you know
by his story. I didn't have to go to therapy
for a whole year because he just he just interviewed
me for like once once a once a week for
an hour and uh and yeah. One of the things
that the story didn't mention that I think, you know

(02:05:45):
we're on this press tour four is we want to
harp on the fact that, you know, although yeah, we
are the underdogs, we spent you know, three years doing
marketing for all the majors and so raff and I
are also including that in the message when we start talking,
so that you know, our talent also knows kind of

(02:06:05):
like a little bit more of the background, and we honestly, like,
because it's our life, we don't know what our talent
doesn't know. And then until the article came out, we're like, hey,
we should probably be more vocal about you know, all
the things that all the things that we've done.

Speaker 3 (02:06:18):
But yeah, yeah, I just want to I just want
to say thank you to you, Bob for allowing us
for your platform to be heard. But I really really
want to go back to the the premise that we
were talking about earlier, where you were talking about are
still independent companies trying We definitely are, and we're looking

(02:06:38):
for more people to try it with us. And if
we if this interview inspires another kid that's spending all
his time on the internet to create a company like
ours and retire their parents, that's all you need really.

Speaker 2 (02:06:51):
And let us know, like literally, let us know right now, Hey,
I want to retire my parents. I manage artists. What
do I do? I want to start a label? How
do I do it?

Speaker 3 (02:06:59):
Like?

Speaker 2 (02:06:59):
Reach out a raph and I because that's that's part
of the message and that's why we're.

Speaker 1 (02:07:03):
Doing about a bing Until next time. This is Bob
left sets.

Speaker 2 (02:07:23):
M h m hm