The Genius Who Turns Small Artists into Industry Plants w/ Steve Cardigan

Transcript

Clipping is quickly disrupting every single industry, but few more so than music. Artists are now bypassing labels and going viral on their own by using fan pages. How people discover music closely follows how people discover products. So if you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or just someone interested in how this stuff works, you're going to love this episode. We brought on industry thought leader Steve Gardigan to talk about how clipping actually works, what's blowing up artists in 2026, and the backstory behind the viral AI song from Haven, I Run, that took over TikTok and didn't use a single human voice. That's what we get into right at the start of the episode. Let's get into it. So there was a viral song last year, I think it was called I Run. And I learned from you that this was a fully engineered viral moment. This was an AI song, all these different theme pages. I just need to hear the backstory on that. [SPEAKER_02] Okay, so I Run was controversial because nobody knew it was AI at first. [SPEAKER_02] It was these two guys in a studio making dark silhouette content of themselves making this song. [SPEAKER_02] And it was a Georgia Smith trained AI vocal. And everybody thought it was Georgia Smith. Female vocalist. [SPEAKER_01] Yes. So everybody thought it was Georgia Smith. And they weren't even shy about the fact that everybody thought it was Georgia Smith. They were posting on YouTube like Georgia Smith leak dance music, or even clipping pages were posting this new Georgia Smith house song. [SPEAKER_02] So whether that was paid out from them or clipping from them on their side. But this whole stir happened and the song gets massive. And then everybody finds out it's AI and it was taken off Spotify like seven times, demonetized on YouTube. All these things happened and then they eventually got a human to cover their own song and sing it. No way. Because they wrote the song. Yeah. They have all the publishing on it. And so Georgia Smith came out and was like, this is not me confirmed. And so they actually got an artist to sing and it still ended up crushing. [SPEAKER_01] So how did they make it blow up? [SPEAKER_01] What was the actual viral loop that they built? Yeah. So they used clipping. I made a post about how music curators are one of the most important future jobs in music today and the next five years because of exactly this instance. So they would put the audio over clips from boiler room sets or reaction pages, Kai Sinat. And they would clip all of these to get all this UGC content because nowadays UGC is basically new radio. People aren't discovering on radio anymore. They're discovering through content. [SPEAKER_02] And if it's not the artist content, especially for a faceless artist that's AI, they're going to have to lean on clipping pages. [SPEAKER_02] So they were doing that really well. And the song is very good. It's very catchy. It catches your ear. [SPEAKER_01] And I would say probably 80% of the people that ever heard that song never even found out it was fake or AI. Even today, probably. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Most of the people still were just like songs are bangers. [SPEAKER_01] A hundred percent. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And the reason I'm so curious about this is because it seems like clipping is starting to become super mainstream. [SPEAKER_01] We're starting to hear Wall Street Journal talk about it. [SPEAKER_01] Everyone's seeing clavicular doing all this stuff. [SPEAKER_01] And it's like finally reached the zeitgeist, even though the song was what two years ago. [SPEAKER_01] It was a minute ago and these people were on the frontier and clipping is nothing new. [SPEAKER_01] People have been slapping temple run underneath a podcast clip since the dawn of TikTok. [SPEAKER_01] But I wonder if you know any of the behind the scenes on the mechanism that they were using. [SPEAKER_01] Was it WAP content rewards? [SPEAKER_01] Did they build an in-house clipping engine? [SPEAKER_02] It was probably WAP. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. That's what I would assume. [SPEAKER_02] And that's a good side of it, right? The clipping. [SPEAKER_02] And another thing that people don't realize is the correlation between sound usages on TikTok and Instagram to streams is crazy. [SPEAKER_02] So yes, you're fighting for views, but you're also fighting for people using the original sound in their own content. [SPEAKER_02] And the best way to do that is to seed it in a bunch of videos, because then you're playing the lottery, not only for views, but also for somebody using that sound. [SPEAKER_02] And then all of a sudden, if you're getting 10,000 crates a day on a song, it's going to translate to streams really, really well. [SPEAKER_02] If you see all these songs popping off right now, you can trail it back to usages on TikTok and Instagram sounds. It's crazy. And it's funny. TikTok and IG have added that "add to Spotify" on all of the sounds, which is thank you for playing nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Thank you for making that easy. And I feel like what we've seen is a lot of these songs actually lead with a chorus, you know, they have that really trendy 15 second moment in their song and they tease the song for 30, 45 days with people begging in the comments like, when's it going to drop? When's it going to drop? And then the song ultimately drops and it's like, oh, the chorus was really good, but the rest of the song wasn't even there. [SPEAKER_02] You know, it reminds me. [SPEAKER_02] It's so funny. Seriously. [SPEAKER_01] Thank you for making that easy. [SPEAKER_01] And I feel like what we've seen is a lot of these songs actually lead now with a chorus. They have that really trendy 15 second moment in their song and they tease the song for 30, 45 days, almost people begging in the comments, "When's it going to drop? When's it going to drop?" And then the song ultimately drops and it's like, oh, the chorus was really good, but the rest of the song wasn't even there. No, it reminds me. It's so funny. A good buddy and mentor of mine, Nolan Smith, talked about this exact thing a couple of years ago on a conversation where he was comparing it to the Coke Pepsi challenge where he said, you know, back in the day, there was actually a time where Pepsi eclipsed Coke in sales in the U.S. and a big part of that was the Pepsi challenge where it was a sip of Pepsi versus a sip of Coke. And so what he was talking about was now TikTok is Pepsi where people, a sip of a song is what people hear. But if you drink a whole Coke versus a whole Pepsi, you enjoy the Coke more. So people were saying nowadays music is Pepsi when it should be Coke. But now it's even, I've seen people, I don't agree with it, but people have been saying that this song by Prospa and Murder Beats is the same way baby. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. Because it was that huge moment, the classic murder sample. And then it's the Prospa sample. And it was, you know, the live show clips really good. And then the full entire song, some people were saying like, wasn't as good. I disagree. I think the whole song is amazing, but for a lot of people, yeah, people think that way all the time. [SPEAKER_01] I think that's a great segue into what are the smart DJs doing right now? Because to me, there's two camps. There's people who understand social and those that don't and Prospa, Clooney, Pasa, all these red hot DJs are also mega viral. And I know enough to say that it is not just pure organic, right? They're not sitting like, "Hey, what should we post today?" There's clearly a very sophisticated, smart strategy behind it. So what are some of these smartest artists doing behind the scenes to blow up? Some good things I've been hearing is they'll create fan accounts. So let's say they make 10 to 15 fan accounts for, let's say Prospa, right? For example, Prospa fans, Prospa daily, Prospa OGs, or Prospa stands, whatever it is, they make 10 to 15 accounts. And then these accounts are posting three times a day. And imagine all that compiling content. It's what we're just talking about, right? You become omnipresent. [SPEAKER_01] Yes, exactly. You're getting hundreds of millions, millions of views, tens of millions of views. And it's getting awareness. And so in the South, everybody's saying this DJ is everywhere because I keep seeing clips from all their shows they're playing or people listening to their songs or people reacting to their music. But so they're doing that. And then they're doing a call to action, which is basically go stream, go download or see them on tour, whatever it is. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Dropping on this date. Right. And then I still think that a huge part of it isn't just the views they're getting. It's the UGC that comes out of it from everybody liking the song. It's an earworm, right? When you hear a song on the radio back in the day all the time, that's the biggest song in the world. But this is the new radio, right? It's the biggest song in the world because I keep hearing it now. Beatport number ones are almost eclipsing the importance in house music specifically, eclipsing Billboard because now that's where the culture is. That's who's buying the tickets now. [SPEAKER_01] And Beatport is what? The streaming rankings? So Beatport is where DJs download music. So if you have a Beatport number one, it means that all the DJs are playing your music. Right now "Baby" is number one on Beatport. So that means all the DJs are playing the song. So that's a good signal to what all the clubs are playing, what everybody's playing in sets. Because for house music, it's very unique compared to hip hop or R&B where everybody's playing each other's music. They're selectors. It's becoming more rare for a DJ to just play their own music the whole set, right? It's like they're selecting and they're showing up to the Yuma tent at Coachella and they're going B2B with all their friends and they're playing all their own music and then the hot new songs. And now artists are posting screenshots of Prosper or Clooney downloaded my record from Beatport. So they get that notification and then they're thinking, oh, and now people are getting that social proof that all these big DJs and artists are playing their song. And then that explodes. And now everybody's commenting, "Oh, I want the song. I want the song," because they know that's the hot song at the moment. Dude, that is so fascinating because it seems like house has obviously exploded in the last couple of years and really overtaken, at least in the, I don't know, maybe I could be in an echo chamber, but it does feel like it's overtaken rap in terms of cultural relevance. And you see that. The clearest signal would be Coachella. You know, the music festival is about who are people really hyped to go see at these things? [SPEAKER_02] Right. Or Murda Beats produced some of the biggest drag records ever. He's now getting into house music. Dude, that is so fascinating because it seems like house has obviously exploded in the last couple of years and really overtaken, at least in the, maybe I could be in an echo chamber, but it does feel like it's overtaken rap in terms of cultural relevance. And you see that, the clearest signal that would be Coachella would be, the music festival is like, who are people really hyped to go see at these things? [SPEAKER_02] Right. Or Murda, Murda Beats produced some of the biggest drag records ever. He's now getting into house music. Right. Because he sees what's cool. Right. I mean, Roddy Ricch did it with Marshmello a few years back. And what's cool about that is what you just described is an insane network effect of if people, if I'm Pasa or if I'm Clooney, right? It's like, yeah, of course I'm going to play Prosper's music because they'll probably play mine. We should go collab. And you kind of create this loop where it's so much more collaborative, which obviously features have always been a thing. It's not like that's new, but I don't think people, like Roddy Ricch was dying to play Money Bag Yo's songs at his concert. Right. That's a completely different experience. It's a huge difference between the two genres. [SPEAKER_02] And I think why also if you're at a show, think about your experience of the show for a rap concert versus a house music show. The openers, right? Nobody knows their music. So everybody's standing around, but the opener for a house, there's a huge controversy right now for the opening DJs and that they should outshine the headliner. This is a big topic currently right now that's going around the internet, but wait, why is it? What's the debate? [SPEAKER_02] People, there's two sides. One side says that the openers shouldn't play the newest hot songs. And that's been known in the industry forever. But now there's people that are saying, oh, if you have an opener that's playing songs that everybody likes and it's outshining you, it's a you problem, not the opener problem. So they're battling about this. [SPEAKER_02] A little bit of accountability. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. But to the point where if you're at a show from doors until closer to the main act comes on, there's going to be good vibes the entire time because house music, there's like, they can play other artists. So you'll see that people are moving and excited. And like, I think that really helps smaller artists because if you're standing around and somebody's rapping their own songs or singing their own songs at an R&B concert, at a rap concert, you're not going to get that love from the crowd that you would from opening for a really big artist. And again, [SPEAKER_02] The content that comes with it, you'll just see people saying in the crowd if you're singing your songs to them. But you'll see the crowd going crazy if you're playing a cool edit or a cool flip of a song or something that's hot right now as an opener for a show if you're a DJ. So [SPEAKER_02] That's super interesting. And so if you were an artist just getting started, how would you try and grow? How would you try and pop off? [SPEAKER_02] So obviously, making your own content is number one. Nobody, a lot of artists will sign to labels and they expect the labels to make all the content for them. But labels are now signing artists who are making content more and they're passing on artists who aren't because they know it's expensive. And they know that the artists who are building audience and showing up and playing like the modern game are the ones that they can actually invest more money into. It's just that it's the music version of founder-led sales. Right? Like founder-led content is obviously a massive leg up if you're building a consumer brand, if you're building a tech product, whatever it is, this is the same thing. And there's so many labels now and so many A&Rs. So they're scooping up artists as quick as they can who are creating content, even if it's one video that pops off. They're going to get flooded in their emails and their DMs from A&Rs from labels, because they know that you have to act fast because a hot moment, a viral moment that can happen. That's the biggest leverage right now for artists is to be able to go viral, right? It's not easy to do, but if you're showing up consistently and you have a better chance of doing so that label will make a bet more so on that chance happening. So that unlocks more budget. [SPEAKER_02] Do artists need labels right now? Is it still as much of a value add as it used to be with the viral distribution mechanisms that exist? [SPEAKER_02] It's interesting because it depends what type of label. There's so many different types of labels now, right? These digitally native labels that I'm trying to build at Put You On Music Group. If the labels are good at making content or they're investing in these clipping pages, right? Or these fan accounts, even an interesting thing that we use for AM Radio, the morning shows that we put on the parties that we put on. We've been using a tool that a lot of artists will use as well, like Blondish or Fred again. And these fan pages are made from UGC at their shows. So every time AM Radio is tagged at an AM Radio event, we, on our backend for co-brand, who's our distro partner, they have a bunch of music tools and they work with a bunch of cool artists. They're distribution right now for artists. They have a tool that every time AM Radio is tagged, it saves on the backend in this video log. And now we can go after every single event and pull all of our favorite clips that people have shot. And we put it to the AM Radio Archives Instagram page, which is our fan account, basically. So if you're an artist, that's a smart thing to do because you're getting a lot of UGC from your shows that you might have a couple of shooters in the crowd, but we can get the real energy from a fan with their friends or a cool vantage point. Those are the ones that do well online because it's great social proof as well when you're showing so many people at your show. So that's really smart. And then on top of that, a label that is able to get these pages [SPEAKER_02] And we put it to the AM radio archives Instagram page, which is our fan account. So if you're an artist, that's a smart thing to do because you're getting a lot of UGC from your shows. You might have a couple of shooters in the crowd, but we can get the real energy from a fan with their friends or a cool vantage point. Those are the ones that do well online because it's great social proof when you're showing so many people at your show. So that's really smart. And then on top of that, a label that is able to get these pages and stuff like that, but it's an investment. It's tough, but a lot of artists are starting their own labels because if they have motion, disco lines are good records. SG Lewis just started his own, right? SG Lewis. I'm sure he did. Blondish, abracadabra, crazy SG Lewis fanboy. Yeah, I know. We try to get him forever. I have to say on camera. If you got him in AM radio, I would fly anywhere in the world. [SPEAKER_01] We're trying to get him for a vinyl one. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. He spins vinyl and yeah. [SPEAKER_01] He plays every instrument. Yeah. He's great. He's crazy. So it's how do you play the modern game of radio, which is UGC content and showing up and how do you display that content? You can just have a backlog of all this content, but you're not going to post on your own page. So you need a place to post it. So you have to get methodical with it. What's the difference between a legacy record label and a digitally native record label? In our instance and Pump Your Music Group's instance, it's the curator, right? It's funny because I didn't start a label and then decide to go make content and then decide to go start events. I did the hard part first, which is doing the content, doing the 10,000 hours, showing up every single day, showing up weekly. And even when nobody's watching. And then also the events when nobody was there. You're doing these things. And then at the end of everything, it's all led to building a record label, but it's a face to it, right? It's a creator brand, right? You have that moat because you have the audience. But people know who runs the label, but it's harder for people to find out who runs a major label because it's a corporate structure. It's a suit, a scary suit in the background. Exactly. You see the videos of Bobby Shmurda performing his hot shit to a room full of people in suits. Just a boardroom. It's just so weird, right? So over the last two years of building Nibble, shipping nearly 8,000 UGC ads and getting performance data on every single one of them, it became super clear. There are two types of brands: those that understand creative volume and those that don't. The core difference was what they focused on. Brands that focused on volume plus hit rate were never complaining that meta changed the algorithm. Their stuff just worked. And anytime we did work with one of those savvy brands, it was always on the same platform: Motion. Motion is by far the best tool to optimize your creative pipeline. Provide structure, visibility, and insights that your creative team needs to make better decisions. I think of it as what meta would actually show you if they cared about your success. All the key metrics like three second stop rate, winning angles, formats, competitor research, it's all built into their platform so you can make quicker and better decisions. They even just launched a new AI agent, Runeth, which functions as a 24-7 creative strategist providing recommendations to your ad account. Make sure to go check them out at motionapp.com. Let's get back to the episode. I think that probably helps you in your relationship with the artists as well, right? Because they know that. Yeah, when you can provide value directly and they can text you. Like yesterday I posted a video for our artist Pods out of Chicago and was just comparing them to other artists that people love in the industry, another Chris Lake, right? So be able to do that, give them a cool cosign. And then that content itself lives in a way that I think has worked in the past. So I'm able to know, all right, cool. How do I present this artist, right? Or Berjan, right? Berjan is an artist who I found from Toronto. He is from Turkey originally. And I was able to create a viral moment for him. And then now he went from zero to 300,000 monthly listeners from a single video. So it's a different approach. There are different styles of labels right now. There are ones that are not digitally native that are doing really well as well. The digitally native ones are creating original content. I think there's a difference between paid media and original content. Paid media feels like a complete money pit in the music world. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Because paid media is how you get false signal a lot of the time versus organic content creates grassroots. Yes, exactly. So even if we are, let's say that even playlists, right, that labels might own, they're going to run ads all day long. Or these YouTube channels, this transition from these YouTube labels, like Suicide Sheep or the Nations, right, Trap Nation, House Nation. They're just running ads all day, all day building up the YouTube channel and their playlists. And then they're sending their artists to these playlists and these YouTube channels and it works well. But the margins are smaller, obviously, than somebody who's creating original content over and over again. And that's the biggest difference between what we're doing at the label because we're able to manufacture a moment for a low cost because we're doing original content ourselves. When you're also putting together IRL, so there are real events, right? And then you have a playlist actually that I think is super interesting. Because for those people that don't have a total background on you, you started as a content creator, you've been in the industry for a while, you have a Spotify, several Spotify. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, a network, I guess, all of them kind of curated. [SPEAKER_02] And I think it's really interesting value prop to a new artist, right? It's like, hey, we have a place to put you. Also, we have a place for you to be discovered. ourselves. When you're also putting together IRL. So there's real events, right? So I mean, [SPEAKER_02] and then you have a playlist actually, that I think is super interesting. Because I mean, for those people that don't have a total background on you started as content creator, you know, been in the industry for a while, you have a Spotify, several Spotify. Yeah, like a network, I guess, all of them kind of like curated. Yep. And like, I think it's really interesting value prop to a new artist, right? It's like, hey, we have a place to put you. Also, we have a place for you to be discovered. And look at my storytelling chops. Because when I talk about an artist, like, it resonates with people, I'm really good at explaining what their vibe is, and what the appeal is. Have you found that to be like, super helpful and attracting new talent? Absolutely. I mean, when I am talking to a new artist, right, you kind of list the benefits of working with our label, right to sign into our label. It started to add but yeah, like the playlist was the first thing. And that kind of goes back to it. How big is the playlist right now? You have a lot of I feel like I have a lot of four main ones. The big one has 190,000 followers. Yeah. And then it goes like 100k huge on Spotify, like 190,000. I mean, those aren't usually pretty viral, right? So it's literally been consistent organic content, zero paid ads ever on any playlist [SPEAKER_01] online. Only organic content called action and the video follow this playlist or here's more songs like this on this playlist. It's in my bio basically right now with many chat, it's even better because you can just you can have 100 people right away that are just commenting to help push the video even more but that in itself is really big because the organic side of it is key. And then when building these playlists, it's yeah, it's a value for the artist but not only just for streams on the playlist but also for the algorithm on Spotify. Because if I have let's say you drop a song and I put you on a playlist next to Prospa and Cooney and Frankie Rosardo, your those you're gonna start showing up on their radio stations and vice versa. So the Brian Blum radio will have these big artists on it. So you're kind of being coupled in and it's like you're going to create millions of streams for you just from the ecosystem it creates on Spotify for it. Because Spotify is smart. Spotify knows who is saving songs and sharing. They know who the good listener is. So those listeners your content typically finds those same people because the algorithm. So now Spotify is like oh cool. Brian who shares all music every single week with his friends and is listening to the albums and saving them and adding to his own playlist like it knows who you are. So if you're now listening to you're a you're a high value listener to Spotify. So do they have archetypes like that? Like they have a share, a super share, a curator, do they tag? I don't know. I don't know. I think they must. I mean they're smart, right? They know if the people who are really active listeners are listening to these artists, it's a good signal for them. So that might you might show up more radio stations, more auto plays, more generated playlists, [SPEAKER_01] you know algorithmic playlists, right? So it's really important. So labels. Yeah, like labels will typically go and try and pay curators to get on their pages or get in their playlists. But as a curator, I you don't want to ever take money for playlisting ever, ever, ever content. You can whatever but the playlist thing. That's such a big no no like it destroys the entire integrity of it's yeah. And like then your playlists aren't very good. And then Spotify knows like if you're adding a really moving song, it's a mess. So Spotify is not guilty. I mean, Spotify runs ads. Spotify lets a lot of artists put the sponsored like discovery thing, which is so funny because I mean, and I would love to look at the click through rate data on the back end of that. But for me, if I see a sponsored suggestion from Spotify, I'm like, bro, get out of my do not show me this, you know? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, organic. I mean, that's why curators, I think, are so important because we have the age of AI songs getting clipped like we talked about. Right. And then you have, I mean, if you think there's a lot of music now, wait until five years from now when there's a million songs per day uploaded to DSPs. Like where are we, where do we sift through everything? Like what, where's a human in the loop? I think human friction in music is important, but also in everything is important. Right. Like think about a premium feature for calling into Delta airlines, right? If you want to talk to a human, it's going to probably cost you in the future because a human in the loop, human friction is a premium feature. Everything has a hotline for a VIP like Delta airlines, chase, whoever it is, like they treat you way differently if you're a good customer versus yo, 45 minute wait. And I think that's an interesting point. Like in music, there has to be friction. There has to be that recommendation besides, I mean, curation, the AI music thing is just too much to even, that's brain frying. You know, it's a million songs a day. It's possible. I mean, Suno is expensive. It's exploding. Well, it's that, but it's also I'll get submissions for the label all the time. And I'm like, wait a second, this vocal is really good. Who is the artist that you have? And they're like, oh, it's, because now an artist can have an idea in their mind. So now they don't have to go and find a vocalist to get their ideas out. They can just do it. And then they can create a good demo. And then all of a sudden they're like, wait a second. This is better than Jenny, who I really know is a great songwriter, but she's going to cost money to [SPEAKER_00] take points, which she should because she deserves it. But for me, if I'm a new artist, I would rather get out the ideas myself. And AI vocals is now just becoming a tool. Just like the way that splice became a tool where it was, everybody was using the same sounds because it's a library of available tools and sounds. Like the same thing with vocals is going to happen. So now you imagine how many artists are going to be out in the world because now you're like, oh, I can make a hit now because I don't need to sing it or I don't need to find somebody. I don't know any singers. So now I can go in and I can just make, like, I run like Haven. It's like, nobody knows who those guys were before if they were accomplished producers. Have they delivered anything after? [SPEAKER_00] I think so. [SPEAKER_00] They've had a couple. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] Haven. I think so. [SPEAKER_00] Splice became a tool where everybody was using the same sounds because it's a library of available tools and sounds. The same thing with vocals is going to happen. So now you imagine how many artists are going to be out in the world because now you're like, oh, I can make a hit now because I don't need to sing it or I don't need to find somebody. I don't know any singers. So now I can go in and I can just make, I like I run, Haven. It's like, nobody knows who those guys were before if they were accomplished producers. [SPEAKER_00] Have they delivered anything after? [SPEAKER_00] I think so. [SPEAKER_00] They've had a couple. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00] Haven, I think so. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I want to switch a little bit because you kind of live in both right, very digitally native but at the same time you're investing a lot in real life events. You have PM radio that you're hosting tomorrow, AM radio. Talk a little bit about the funnel for both and how that kind of interplays with your content and then the behind the scenes of throwing those events. [SPEAKER_00] Okay, I'm sure there's a lot of different things people just don't even appreciate. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah. The funnel is crazy. I mean, so I started something called the Put You On music club like four years ago and it was me sending a playlist of new releases every Friday to the people who signed up for it and it was like three at first. [SPEAKER_01] It was a newsletter. [SPEAKER_00] It was a text list on Lalo. [SPEAKER_00] Oh, no. [SPEAKER_00] And I charged three dollars a month for it because I needed the cash because of pure music discovery back before the events were happening. I was like, how do you monetize being a creator or music curator because you can charge for playlists but I was always against that because it's sketchy and I think your playlist become bad and then they don't grow. So I was like, cool, how do you do this. And so I charged three bucks a month and I was like, cool, I got like 50 people. So 150 bucks a month and I'm sending them a playlist every single Friday. [SPEAKER_01] That music club was sitting at like 50 to 75 people for a while and I wasn't really promoting it. It was always in my bio. And then when the idea happened for me to create more events around our label and for our label artists and for the music club community, which wasn't that big at the time, we had the idea for AM radio. [SPEAKER_00] Dan, who's my co-founder, he moved from Denver to L.A. And him and I had become internet friends because he was talent buying artists from the label I was in A&R at. And then he's like, hey, I'm going to be in L.A. I knew he ran events and I was always trying to do more events for the label. So when that happened, I was like, I need you to run the events, be the head of events for Put Your On Music Group. [SPEAKER_00] Right, so we're doing artist campaigns for a while where we'd do an event, the media for them and then invite our music club. And it was okay, but we did some cool collabs like 360 out of London. And I finally had the idea to do it at a coffee shop because we want to get our YouTube popping. And I was like, how do you get these YouTube sets that were popping off at the time, like Apartment Life and Book Club Radio, like these DJ sets were running things where an artist could throw a party. Jero was doing these canopy clubs for like 100 people, but he would get millions of views on YouTube. So I was like, all right, how do we create crazy FOMO? Yeah, exactly. And DJ sets just still today are so good on YouTube because you can just play it. It's a playlist that flows. Yeah, exactly. And even if you don't watch it. So we were like, cool, let's get a YouTube channel. And then I was like, I think I know where to do it. Coffee shops instead of a playlist on Spotify. Let's get an artist that you might see at Coachella and invite our music club. And we did the first one. There was probably 60 people there. And we were like, we are popping. Yeah, we're like, we made it. We did it. And the second one I did, I wanted to double my RSVPs from 300 to 600. So I made this video that changed my life, Dan's life, everything. The whole thing when AM radio really became viral. [SPEAKER_02] So it was funny too, because Dan was texting me that day. He's like, man, LA is tough. I've been trying to apply to all these jobs. Can't get a job. I don't know if I can stay in LA. Like an hour later, I post a video and the rest is history. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, all the problems are solved. Yeah. So what was the hook on that video again? [SPEAKER_02] Club culture is dying. That's right. That's right. Club culture is dying. And I did that for a Jero video about YouTube sets, how important they are. And it did really, really well. And I was like, okay, cool. So I used club culture is dying because in LA, especially, all the clubs were closing down. Nobody was going out. Everybody was going to house parties and everybody was doing day parties. So I was like, all right, that's a good hook. I used that hook for a good eight months. Keep rinsing it. Yeah, keep rinsing it. And then I was kind of like, eh. But yeah, so back to the music club, right? So when that video goes viral, the music club jumps from like 70 people to like a thousand. [SPEAKER_01] And I was like, oh, whoa. First of all, good problem to have. But now to send these text messages. Now you're up to 3,000 for current revenue. Right, right. [SPEAKER_01] You can almost afford a shack in Venice. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, well, no, the thing is, this was free. I saw it. I made it. I made music club free a year before the paywall. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, so these are free people. And now I was like, cool, if I want to send a playlist of these new releases to everybody, it's going to cost me like hundreds of dollars. I was like, that's not really the ROI I'm looking for here. It's not my thing. So I moved it to Instagram broadcast channel. And then from that point on, I was like, if you want to get invited to AM radio, we invite our music club. And then it grew from November to January to like 12,000 people on the broadcast channel. And I was like, okay, cool, because there's a lot of great social proof with it. You can see how many people see the post and how many people are engaging with it and things like that. [SPEAKER_02] It's gonna cost me hundreds of dollars. I was like, not really the ROI I'm looking for here. It's not really my thing. So I moved it to Instagram broadcast channel. And then from that point on, I was like, if you want to get invited to AM radio, we invite our music club. And then it grew from November to January to 12,000 people on the broadcast channel. And I was like, okay, cool, because there's a lot of great social proof with it. You can see how many people see the post and how many people are engaging with it and things like that. So now to this day in LA, we don't post the events anywhere publicly except for the music club. [SPEAKER_01] And we'll do 1500 ticket sales in 10 minutes in LA. [SPEAKER_01] Are you selling out every single time? [SPEAKER_01] Off-rub? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_01] In LA especially. [SPEAKER_01] We'll get like, we don't, we haven't sold out every single show, but almost every single one has been a sellout. [SPEAKER_01] Art Basel in Miami wasn't a sellout. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] So it depends. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, just from a pure audience owned audience though. [SPEAKER_01] That's crazy. A lot of people are hosting these events publicly running ads, that sort of thing. And it's interesting how powerful even a channel like Instagram broadcast can be. I feel like a lot of people neglect that. Yeah. I mean, if you can get on broadcast channel, I don't know what the qualifications are, but it's been a game changer for us. [SPEAKER_01] Because now when we get this, like our flow, our, this is our flow when we go to like, let's use New York City, for example. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. So for this most recent New York City show, biggest risk yet. It's our biggest capacity venue we've ever done. Yeah. Can you share a lot of the numbers on everything? Like. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Venue, artists, expected ROI, a lot of that. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] So 1200, 1200 is the capacity of the rooftop. Shit ton of people. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] A lot of people. [SPEAKER_02] That's insane. [SPEAKER_02] And it's a big risk. [SPEAKER_02] It's like, cool. How do we do this? Right. So we invite our music club. So we first post it to the music club and that typically gets us the first couple hundred sales and people that are in the city talking about it. Right. We just want a few hundred people in the city talking about it. And dude, everyone in, I mean, people are fiending for events right now. Yeah. Like anything that's not like, hey, let's just go to the bar. Right. New York in particular, the line culture is out of control. Right. People will do anything to show up just to have something to do. Just to prove that they are showing up to something that people are excited about. People just want activities here because you can't be in the house. Yeah. And so any sort of pop up is gonna have a line around the block because it gives people something to do. [SPEAKER_00] And New York is very unique too, because like you said, I don't think people realize you can't have people over to your crib. No. Because your apartments are typically small. [SPEAKER_01] No, they're so small. Like have all your friends over. So you're always people, people legitimately live in closets. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. So we do that and then it's all the organic content from that point. So it's like, all right, I'm posting a carousel post in our classic VHS style, carousel info on the event. And sometimes it's surprise lineups. And then it's like, I mean, sometimes it's surprise lineups. If we can't get clearance for the artists that they're playing like a festival in that same market in the next six months or something like that. Or if we just want it to be like the, it's worked for us. [SPEAKER_02] These secret lineups have worked because people have kind of trusted us to curate a lineup that is good. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And so you never know who's going to show up. I would say the surprise lineup is interesting because people are just trusting your brand. I mean, that's the power of the curator, right? Like at this point they have an expectation for what kind of vibe you're going to bring. Yes. Yeah. And people, they sometimes just like finding out who it is. So we'll typically post day of, or we'll post like a poster at the physical event who's playing and people go like, oh, wow, this person's playing. [SPEAKER_02] So we do our best to deliver on that. [SPEAKER_02] Are brands trying to activate with you at these events? [SPEAKER_02] Like probably in a big way, right? Yeah. I mean, it's a really nice audience to reach. I would imagine. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, for sure. [SPEAKER_01] We do a lot of, um, like CPE company, they want cans in hands. [SPEAKER_01] So a lot of NA Bev companies, your ma madre is doing our sober at the coffee stuff typically. [SPEAKER_01] For a while they were because we were at coffee shops for a long time. And then once we, AM radio eight was our last coffee shop that we did, except for, we did the Starbucks reserve in Chicago for Lollapalooza. That was like, and that's the biggest coffee shop in the world. But other than that, we've exited coffee shops, but yeah, for a while we were just like, all right, this is the menu at the shop. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] So a lot of NA Bev companies, your madre is doing our sober at the coffee stuff typically. [SPEAKER_01] For a while they were because we were at coffee shops for a long time. And then once we, AM radio eight was our last coffee shop that we did, except for, we did the Starbucks reserve in Chicago for Lollapalooza. That was the biggest coffee shop in the world. But other than that, we've exited coffee shops, but yeah, for a while we were just like, all right, this is the menu at the shop. [SPEAKER_02] It's not being a degenerate. [SPEAKER_02] Cappuccino. [SPEAKER_02] And so it was people were confusing us with a sober party, which is what it was, but we were just like, Hey, first of all, there's way less liability for you to put on an event with. Second of all, 10 AM. 10 AM. Maybe Bloody Mary's. But now, people drink at our events. Espresso martinis are flowing. [SPEAKER_01] Oh yeah. [SPEAKER_01] People are. Day drinking is the wave right now. I feel a lot of people, that's a great way to get the day started. [SPEAKER_01] We'll do anywhere from 15 to 25 K at the bar. [SPEAKER_01] Wow. [SPEAKER_01] And you split that with the venue typically. So my favorite model is typically no fee for the rental space, but you just do a bar share. Now y'all already know we are super skeptical on this show about most AI tools promising the world. They have flashy demos, huge promises, and ultimately under deliver. [SPEAKER_01] But I do have to tell you about one that has blown me away and saved my team countless hours of time. And that's Rich Panel. Imagine a 24 seven customer support engine that handles all your tickets, seamlessly escalates anything requiring human intervention. And here's the best part: upsells your customers in the process. Their onboarding process is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. You input your brand and within 15 minutes it has full context on the latest drops, product information, and plugs into all your apps. That's not even to mention the cost savings. They're three times more affordable than their competitors. I couldn't recommend this enough. So if you're a brand looking to turn support into an asset, go check out richpanel.com and tell them we sent you. How's booking artists? I feel booking artists is one of the crazier ranges of prices anyone's ever seen. It is. It depends on the market. It depends on if it's a surprise lineup or not. And it also depends on what value you're giving to the artists. If we're giving them all this media and a slot on our YouTube page that has 33,000 subscribers, and then we're getting these three cut downs on our pages. And maybe I'm going to make a video for you like I did for Club 200. And I've made videos for artists that have played AM Radio and they get booked by UTA the next week. And so there's value these artists are seeing in this content because not every artist can make all the content all the time. So they lean on curators and other events to get their name out. And the content is a value. [SPEAKER_01] So we can typically get good prices for artists. But we were the cute coffee shop party for a couple months. [SPEAKER_01] And then agents were like, okay, you guys are pulling in 1000 people. You guys are obviously making money, so we've got to. So now we're trying to work with a lot of agents now. Back to tomorrow's event. 1200 people rooftop venue, they approached you, right? They wanted you to work with them. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, we're in Miami for music week. And one of the guys who's connected with the rooftop, he's like, hey, Forever in New York, we have this rooftop. We're like, hey, we want to go there in May. That was on our roadmap for the year. [SPEAKER_01] He's like, cool. This is the rooftop. And he showed it to us. We're like, all right, this is cool. And so, yeah, we did that. And all the content has been, I can pull it up. We did the carousel slideshow. We'll put it up on the screen for sure. Then I made a video about New York rooftop culture and how it's better than L.A.'s, because that's why we're doing this rooftop at sunset. These sunset rooftop parties in New York are great. And that culture in New York is really good for obvious reasons. There's not much real estate that's open air on top of the building. [SPEAKER_01] Whole deal. And then I did a video on Collect 200, who's our headliner, announcing them as our headliner. [SPEAKER_02] And that was a collab post with AIM Radio and My Page. And then we did a carousel slideshow for Collect 200 that I made like a wheat paste, very New York vibe, with their lyrics on it. [SPEAKER_02] It says, "Brooklyn, we got love, me and you." And their biggest song, the opening line is, "We got love, me and you." [SPEAKER_02] So I did that slideshow and then we did, oh yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Then I did a video for our second artist that we announced, Meizos from Texas. And talked about how they're co-signed in the industry, they have a bunch of support from artists, and they have a top 10 B-port song. [SPEAKER_02] So there's credibility there. That's why you should come to our party. [SPEAKER_02] That B-port thing is crazy. B-port is, dude, artists will celebrate a B-port number one more than any other accolade. [SPEAKER_02] And their biggest song, the opening line is, we got love, me and you. [SPEAKER_02] So I did that slideshow and then we did, what was this one? Oh yeah. Then I did a video for our second artist that we announced, Meizos from Texas. And talked about how they're co-signed in the industry, they have a bunch of support from artists and they have now a top 10 B-port song. So there's credibility there. That's why you should come to our party. That B-port thing is crazy. B-port is, dude, I'm telling you, artists will celebrate at B-port number one more than any other accolade. [SPEAKER_01] You're going to get into the network effect. [SPEAKER_01] They would rather get a B-port number one than a million streams on Spotify. Wow. Hands down. That's crazy. On their new song. So how many views total across what was that, seven posts? Yeah. 55,000, 90,000, 36,000, 28,000. [SPEAKER_01] So whatever that math is. Public math, I'm going to guesstimate 230. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] 230,000, somewhere around there. Yeah. And then all of it is a comment, right? Comment to get the invite. And then boom, we do the many chat. It goes into their DMs and then it's a ticket that's sent to their phone, basically. All of it is really top of funnel as well. Yes. All top of funnel. I think what's really smart about just looking into your content strategies there is, I remember when you made the Collect 200 video, NYC Rooftop Culture. Those are two things that can both just go completely broad, right? They don't have to narrow into, are you a house music fan? Show up to our rooftop, right? It's NYC Rooftop Culture. [SPEAKER_02] That's going to get people that aren't house music fans. [SPEAKER_02] It's going to get people who are just looking for stuff to do. Maybe I've been wanting a rooftop. Everyone when we're booking artists, we know too. We knew Collect 200 was big in New York. [SPEAKER_02] They're a newer project. [SPEAKER_02] They have 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. [SPEAKER_02] They haven't grown that much on social, but they're doing their thing on social. [SPEAKER_02] But we knew their market for New York was really good. [SPEAKER_01] And you can see in the comments of other posts, when you come to New York, and this is their first New York show. [SPEAKER_01] They play the Spotify event after us. [SPEAKER_01] So we're first. [SPEAKER_01] And so there's the first time you- [SPEAKER_01] What's the Spotify event? [SPEAKER_01] They have a showcase. [SPEAKER_02] Okay. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Dude, I went to this John Summit LinkedIn Spotify. [SPEAKER_02] Did you go to that? [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, that was crazy. [SPEAKER_01] It was actually really smart. [SPEAKER_01] They had an activation where it was, you know, photo booth, John dressed up in a tie, the whole thing was kind of LinkedIn, nerdy. [SPEAKER_01] And obviously got a bunch of content for it. Cool activation for their backstage, LinkedIn people. [SPEAKER_02] LinkedIn influencers are a unique type of individual. [SPEAKER_02] If you ask a DJ what some of their favorite gigs they get booked at because the money is really good, it's corporate tech events. [SPEAKER_02] They crush. [SPEAKER_02] People were turning up in there. [SPEAKER_02] It was the craziest crowd ever because it was John Summit's top 1% of fans on Spotify in New York raffle style. [SPEAKER_02] Oh, very cool. [SPEAKER_02] And then 20% was LinkedIn influencers. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] And it's what that Venn diagram does not exist. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] That doesn't exist at all. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] You're creating new Venn diagrams. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And I want to talk about people enjoying themselves just dead sober, losing their minds. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] People are into that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_01] And so yeah. [SPEAKER_01] So now fast forward to now we have the event tomorrow. [SPEAKER_01] It's going to be a sellout, which is awesome. It should sell out today if it hasn't already. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And that's all through organic. [SPEAKER_01] We did 300 bucks in ads, but we picked the best video that I did because my talking head videos and my storytelling videos are the best converters for ads. Co-brand sees, right? He's like, yo, your cost per click versus you versus a poster campaign that Dom Dalla put up is crazy. He loves them. [SPEAKER_01] So we pick in other markets, we'll do a couple hundred bucks on ads on the best creative that we have that's performing. And then that really, really helps. [SPEAKER_01] And now we've done 1200. That's so okay. So Dom Dalla poster ad, artists are obviously running ads to their shows. They're trying to run TikTok. [SPEAKER_01] They're trying to run Meta, what do they see in terms of ROAS? Do you know? [SPEAKER_02] I wonder what that arbitrage looks like. [SPEAKER_02] Because obviously you want to sell out 15,000 person venue. Maybe you've got 11,000 tickets sold. [SPEAKER_02] You're trying to sell the last 4,000. [SPEAKER_02] And then there's probably a lot of other dynamics. Because there's a rev share on the booze, cost per click six cents. But this is a really early one. It was the only one, he showed me the data that he actually ran over the wrong ad. It was a Dom Dalla ad on our account accidentally. [SPEAKER_01] Because it was just Dom Dalla at AM radio. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I know. [SPEAKER_01] So everybody's like, you're getting Dom. Maybe you've got 11,000 tickets sold. You're trying to sell the last 4,000. And then there's probably a lot of other dynamics. Because there's a rev share on the booze, cost per click, six cents. But this is a really early one. It was the only data that he actually ran, and he ran it over the wrong ad. It was a Dom Dalla ad on our account accidentally. [SPEAKER_01] Because you're like, it was Dom Dalla at AM radio. Yeah, I know. So everybody's like, you're getting Dom. We're like, no, wow, dude, you're not really independent news anymore, are you? [SPEAKER_02] But it was CPM $10, cost per click six cents, 25 clicks. [SPEAKER_02] That made up the best data set. [SPEAKER_02] There's a depth to this content, the shares that these ads get. That was the one thing, a content piece that I would make. [SPEAKER_02] The amount of shares that it gets on an ad blows the mind of co-brand. [SPEAKER_02] I've never seen so many shares on an ad before. Think about it, we're not even going to share an ad that much. [SPEAKER_02] Very rare. [SPEAKER_02] So it's very rare. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it's really good. That does lower what the CPM is. So when you have a ton of shares and engagement, that's the most natural way to lower CPM. We do that with every client. [SPEAKER_02] Free reach after that. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. It's how do you get some engagement bait in the ad account just to lower the overall CPM and get more eyeballs. [SPEAKER_02] Exactly. So that's what's worked for us. [SPEAKER_02] And it's always stressful. [SPEAKER_02] We're always like, how are we going to sell these tickets? Tickets weren't moving that fast in the beginning either. But again, you have to know week of sales are always really big because everybody's like, what am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing for lunch. [SPEAKER_01] I don't know what I'm doing in two weeks. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] So yeah, we scaled it perfectly, I think. [SPEAKER_01] And that's a pretty repeatable playbook across new venues and locations. [SPEAKER_01] So people are always like, how do I get people to mine? You know, going back to even the coffee shop days for AM radio, we pioneered these morning coffee shop DJ sets. Right. And then once this blew up, now everybody over the world does it, but people are like, how do I get people to mine? Everybody can put a DJ into a coffee shop, but how do you scale an event company? If you do the content talking head content, that's the best way to do it. But it took me five years to do it. So now we have a five year head start on anybody who wants to start today. If they want to start a morning coffee party, it's going to take five years of them building an audience and music to be able to have that kind of lift off. [SPEAKER_01] Maybe not in five years because brand equity takes a long time to build and you've also done a lot of trust building. There's what people call a binge bank. [SPEAKER_01] Like by discovering radio or Steve, you can just go back and check the tape. And it's like, oh, this is actually something I really want. The algorithm will start recommending stuff. It took me so long to get to 100,000 on Instagram. It just got there in March. And there's curators and people in music who are music tastemakers that have millions of followers. And I just got to 100k after all this stuff. My growth has been like this. But I think those people are sticking around, which is good. Yeah, that's huge. It seems like the new meta is really niching into going deep with an audience. The platforms have made it much more difficult to grow. I would guess all those music curators you just mentioned with millions probably accumulated that in the 2020 to 2022-23 era because followers were just much easier to obtain at the time. And now it's like the riches are in the niches. If I have 100,000 listeners on an episode, we failed, because we don't want people outside of our target demographic to listen to the show, because we would have to dumb it down. [SPEAKER_01] This is something we go through all the time. This is even an experiment. We want to see if our audience loves the music stuff, because there's so much spillover between the music marketing and the growth loops and what you have to do organically. You could apply any of these lessons to a CPG brand. Yeah. If you're a beverage company, you should be thinking about how do I do this content stack? Okay, broad topic, specific thing about the event, stack that all together and then drive people to an IRL activation. Exactly. That's the model for how I always explain putting you on music group as a label. It's a creator brand, right? It's a creator-led label where the product is music, it's not gym clothes or cosmetics. It's music, streaming, and now events. So that's out of that same playbook. What is the audience? What is the built-in audience? How big is your billboard that you created for yourself? Because you've been showing up online and building the audience organically. And then the event is really great because it's the tangible version. People can go, people buy your merch there, and they have a good experience. They can't wait to go. They're looking forward to it. They bring their friends, they tell their friends about it. They become a curator of events if they are in the music club, and they can tell their friends, hey, I have a move for us this weekend. I got four tickets. And they're like, oh, I didn't hear about this. Yeah, you didn't because you're not in this music club. I am. So there's a lot of value in that for people. [SPEAKER_01] It's all the same stuff. How do you create that moat? And I think the content and showing up and being the face of the brand is the moat that's getting bigger and bigger every year. [SPEAKER_01] So you're a curator, you know how to direct eyeballs to music. How much of music discovery today is organic versus engineered by this clipping stuff or paid media? Yeah, it's a good question. So organic, you just mean non-paid media and non-clipping pages, basically? [SPEAKER_01] But it's all the same stuff. It's how do you create that moat? And I think the content and showing up and being the face of the brand is the moat that I think is getting bigger and bigger every year. [SPEAKER_01] Okay, so you're a curator, you know how to direct eyeballs to music. How much of music discovery today is organic versus engineered by this clipping stuff or paid media? Yeah, it's a good question. So organic, you just mean non-paid media and non-clipping pages? Yeah, is there any viral artists that's not leveraging some of these clipping tools? Or is this the new music marketing? Well, Hugh Gell did a really good job of this. Hugh Gell has been such a great example of how an artist found his niche. I always tell artists to find a repeatable piece of content, right? You don't want to spend three hours making a piece of content and then it gets 1000 views and you're like, I'm never doing this again. Why don't you just sit—we're doing it—you set up a camera and you're playing your song on your laptop, right? [SPEAKER_01] Hugo was doing this really well. Hotel room, he's public on tour at this hotel room on a balcony at sunset. He's doing this stuff. And that's really repeatable. And that worked really well for him. The music has to be really good in these instances. It's typically like, "Oh, the song is so good. And look at the vibe that I'm also seeing while I'm listening to the song." But it's hard to say. Fred again did a really good job with his style of content and doing things that's not just showing your music, right? How do you provide value to these artists or these fans? Because there's a difference between asking a fan to listen to my music or come to my show, and between that and also giving them value and good music, entertaining content, right? So there's a lot of artists. Graphicers is a good example. And the ones that are doing it really simply, those are the ones that are crushing because the way we're, even me, I'm doing the green screen videos now instead of setting up my studio shot. Because I think the run and gun style— [SPEAKER_00] People want to hear what people are thinking about right now versus what they're deeply thinking about. [SPEAKER_00] Like a 10-day lead time on an edit too. So a lot of these artists are doing a really good job at that because it almost looks like they're not trying, right? It's always like, it looks like their TikTok page. [SPEAKER_00] He was a great example. I feel like he's just always vibing. And now he's so big. It's crazy. And he puts out a lot of music. But yeah, he kind of faded me in Miami. I hit him up. I was like, "Hey, I'm here for Basil." He just liked the message. [SPEAKER_00] I'm not Latina. So I got it. But I mean, there's—I always say artists ask, "How do I want to go on tour, right? And they don't have momentum yet." I'm like, "Why don't you start a party in your city that everybody wants to come to, everybody's talking about, and then do it in another city?" That's what we did with AM Radio. Now we're almost like a traveling artist, almost an artist on tour. I had people send me your shit to go to. And I was like, "Oh no, you don't understand. That's crazy. And he's coming to Canal Street." Right now. So Real hopped off the red eye. So the thing that I keep thinking about is when this artist is asking me this, it's like, you should go and do something that everybody can't stop talking about and then try to repeat it in other markets rather than putting out 10 dates at a soft ticket, which is basically—soft ticket is when you are booked at a nightclub and people buy tickets to that night at the nightclub, but they're not buying tickets to you. Soft ticket, right? And instead of doing that, you know, people play empty rooms and things like that. It's weird. Do something that people just start loving. So I'm gonna give a shout to Country Night. Country Night started throwing country dance parties in LA. So there were country music, and then they would do EDM remixes of country songs, kind of like that Diplo album back in the day, like the Heartless album. Well, the thing is now Diplo's Honky Tonk at Stagecoach is a stage. Now it's in the Yuma. This year was in the Yuma tent that they kept up from Coachella, and now it's Diplo's Honky Tonk. So Country Night are these two guys in LA and they start throwing these parties. And then all of a sudden they become an artist project and they start putting out songs and now they're getting good monthly listeners. And then now they're booked at the best slot of the night at Diplo's Honky Tonk because they started a party. They became a draw, and they fed their audience their music. They didn't try to bring an audience to the music. They just built the audience first, right? So they're a really interesting thing to look at as well. They're great guys and they've done a good job at building organically and keeping true to themselves. And then now they're playing. You should see their Stagecoach set. It was crazy. Yeah, that's fire. Well, dude, I mean, I think that was super valuable for a lot of people listening. Where can they support you? Yeah. Instagram, Steve Cardigan is my personal, but the label page is putyouon.club. That's where we post a lot of our releases, but also just cool content. I'm always collab posting between my page and the Put You On page because it's kind of my editorial. Put You On started just as a media channel essentially, and the label is new. So I keep that consistent. AM Radio, am.radio.la is our Instagram for the events. And then the music club is in all three channels if you look in our bios. Yeah, join the music club. That's the one. The music club is cool. We do New Music Fridays. So I have to go and create this playlist. This girl named Tori from New York City actually helps me curate the playlist now. Shout out to Tori. And then, yeah, we also do show giveaways. Like if we're in LA and an artist that's played AM Radio is coming through for their big show at the Shrine, And then the music club is in all three channels if you look in our bios. Yeah, join the music club. [SPEAKER_02] That's the one. [SPEAKER_02] The music club is cool. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] We do the new music Fridays. So I have to go and create this playlist. This girl named Tori from New York City actually helps me curate the playlist now. Shout out to Tori. And then, yeah, we also do show giveaways. If we're in LA and an artist that's played AM Radio is coming through for their big show at the Shrine, we'll always have their agent or their manager, and we're like, hey, can we get three tickets for the music club? [SPEAKER_01] And then we're like, hey, we're giving away three tickets. And we did that for Black Coffee. And it was 500 replies in four minutes. They get these tickets. We're like, oh my God. So it's a good place to be for music, new music, discovering stuff. And I'm going to come to events. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And not only LA either. We come. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Come all around. [SPEAKER_02] Cool. Well, dude, thank you for coming on. Yeah. Thanks. No, appreciate you. And people, people, they, they sometimes just like, you know, finding out who it is. So we will, we'll typically post day of like, or we'll post like a poster at the physical event who's playing and people go like, oh, wow, this person's playing. So we, you know, and we, we do our best to, to, to deliver on that. Are brands trying to activate with you at these events? Like probably in a big way, right? Yeah. I mean, it's a really nice audience to reach. I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh, we do a lot of, um, like CPE company, they want cans in hands. So a lot of NA Bev companies, your, your ma madre is doing our sober at the coffee stuff typically. For, for a while they were because we were at coffee shops for a long time. And then once we, AM radio eight was our last coffee shop that we did, except for, we did, uh, the Starbucks reserve in Chicago for Lollapalooza. That was like, and that's the biggest coffee shop in the world. Um, but other than that, we've, we've exited coffee shops, but yeah, for a while we were just like, all right, this is the menu at the shop. Like, yeah. Like, yeah, it's not being a degenerate. Yeah. Yeah. Cappuccino. And so it was like, people were like confusing us with like a sober party, which is like kind of what it was, but we were kind of just like, Hey, like, first of all, there's way less liability for you to put on an event with. Second of all, 10 AM. Yeah. 10 and then it's 10 AM. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe Bloody Mary's. But now, I mean, now we do people, people drink at our events, like espresso martinis are flowing. Oh yeah. Like people are, people are. I mean, day drinking is kind of the wave right now. I feel like a lot of people, I mean, that's a great way to like, you know, get the day started. Yeah. Like we'll, um, we'll do like anywhere from 15 to 25 K at the bar. Wow. Yeah. And you split that with the. Red, you are shared with the venue typically. So if my favorite model is typically like no fee for the rental, the space, but you just do a bar share, um, a ref, a ref share of the bar. Now y'all already know we are super skeptical on this show about most AI tools promising the world. They have flashy demos, huge promises, and ultimately under deliver. But I do have to tell you about one that has blown me away and saved my team countless hours of time. And that's rich panel. Imagine a 24 seven customer support engine that handles all the time. All of your tickets seamlessly escalates anything requiring human intervention. And here's the best part upsells your customers in the process. Their onboarding process is frankly, one of the craziest things I've ever seen. You input your brand in within 15 minutes. It has full context on the latest drops product information and plugs into all of your apps. That's not even to mention the cost savings. They're like three times more affordable than their competitors. I couldn't recommend this enough. So if you're a brand looking to turn support into an asset, go check out rich panel.com and tell them we sent you. How's booking artists? Like I feel like booking artists is one of the crazier ranges of prices that you've anyone's ever seen. It is. It is. It depends on the market. It depends on if it's a surprise lineup or not. Right. And it also depends on what value you're giving to the artists. Right. If we're giving them all this media and a slot on our YouTube page that has 33,000 subscribers, and then we're getting these three cut downs on our pages. And maybe I'm going to make a video for you like I did for Club 200. And like, you know, like I've made videos for artists that have played AM radios and they get booked by UTA like the next week. And so there's value of these artists are seeing in this content because not every artist can make all the content all the time. So they lean on curators and other events to kind of get their name out. And the content just is a value. So we can typically like get good prices for artists. But we were like the cute coffee shop party for a couple months. And then agents were like, okay, like you guys are pulling in 1000 people. You guys are obviously making money like we got to, you know, so now we're just like trying to, you know, we work with a lot of agents now. Back to tomorrow's event. So 1200 people rooftop venue, they approached you, right? They wanted you to work with them. Yeah, we're in Miami for music week. And one of the the one of the guys who's connected with the rooftop. He's like, hey, forever in New York, we have this rooftop. We're like, hey, we want to go there in May. That was like on our kind of roadmap for the year. He's like, cool. This is the rooftop. And he showed it to us. We're like, all right, this is kind of cool. And so, yeah, we did that. And all the content has been, I mean, I can pull it up. It's like we did like the carousel slideshow. Yeah, we'll put it up on the screen for sure. Yeah. Then we did the carousel slideshow. So then I made a video about New York rooftop culture and how it's better than L.A.'s, because like that's why we're doing this rooftop at sunset, because these sunset rooftop parties in New York are great. And that culture in New York is really, really good for obvious reasons, right? There's not much real estate that's open air on top of the building. Yeah, whole deal. And then I did a video on Collect 200, who's our headliner, announcing them as our headliner. And that was a collab post with AIM Radio and MyPage. And then we did a carousel slideshow for Collect 200 that is like, I made like a wheat paste, very New York vibe, with their lyrics on it. It says, Brooklyn, we got love, me and you. And like their biggest song, the opening line is, we got love, me and you. So I did that slideshow and then we did, what was this one? Oh yeah. Then I did a video for our second artist that we announced, Meizos from Texas. And kind of talked about how their co-signed in the industry, they have a bunch of support from artists and they have like now a top 10 B-port song. So like there's like credibility there. Like that's why you should come to our party. That B-port thing is crazy. B-port is, dude, I'm telling you, artists will celebrate at B-port number one more than like any other accolade. Right. It just shows you're going to get into the matrix. You know, you're going to get into the network effect. Like they would rather get a B-port number one than a million streams on Spotify. Wow. Hands down. That's crazy. On their new song. So how many views total across, what was that, seven posts? Yeah. 55,000, 90,000, 36,000, 28,000. So whatever that math is. Public math, I'm going to guesstimate 230. Yeah. 230,000, somewhere around there. Yeah. And then all of it is a comment, right? Comment to get the invite. And then boom, we do the many chat. It goes into their DMs and then it's a ticket that's sent to their phone, basically. I mean, all of it is really top of funnel as well. Yes. All top of funnel. I think what's really smart about just poking into like your content strategies there is like, I remember when you made the Collect 200 video, NYC Rooftop Culture. Those are two things that can both just go completely broad, right? They don't have to narrow into like, are you a house music fan? Like show up to our rooftop, you know? It's like NYC Rooftop Culture. Like that's going to get people that aren't house music fans. It's going to get people who are just looking for stuff to do. Maybe I've been fiending for a rooftop, you know? Everyone in, when we're booking artists, we know too. Like we knew Collect 200 was big in New York. Like they're a newer project. They have like a 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. They haven't grown that much on social, but they kind of, they're doing their thing on social. But we knew their market for New York was really good. And you can see in the comments of other posts, when you come to New York, when you come to New York, and this is their first New York show. They play the Spotify event after us. So we're first. And so there's like the first time you- What's the Spotify event? They have like a showcase. Okay. Like, yeah. Yeah. Dude, I went to this John Summit LinkedIn Spotify. Did you go to that? Yeah. Yeah, that was crazy. Yeah. It was actually really smart. They had an activation where it was like, you know, photo booth, John dressed up and like, like a tie, like the whole thing was kind of like LinkedIn, like nerdy. And obviously got a bunch of content for it. Like, you know, cool activation for like their backstage, like LinkedIn people. I mean, LinkedIn influencers are a unique type of individual. If you, if you ask a DJ, what some of their favorite gigs they get booked at because of the money is really good. It's like corporate tech events. Like they crush. People were turning up in there. It was the craziest crowd ever because it was John Summit's top 1% of fans on Spotify in New York raffle style. Oh, very cool. And then 20% was like LinkedIn influencers. Yeah. And it's like what that Venn diagram does not exist. Yeah. Like that doesn't exist at all. Yeah. You're creating new Venn diagrams. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to talk about people enjoying themselves just dead sober, you know, losing their minds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People are into that kind of stuff. And it's, so yeah. So now fast forward to now we have the event tomorrow. Um, it's going to be a sellout, which is awesome. It should sell out today if it hasn't already. Yeah. And that's all through organ. We did 300 bucks in ads, but we picked the best video that I did because my talking head videos and my storytelling videos are the best converters for ads. Like co-brand sees, right? He's like, yo, your cost per click versus you versus like a poster campaign that Dom Dalla put up is like, it's like crazy. He like loves them. So we pick like in other markets, we'll do like a couple hundred bucks on ads on like the best creative that we have that's performing. Um, and then that is, it really, really helps. And now we've done 1200. That's so, okay. So Dom Dalla poster ad, like people, like artists are obviously running ads to their shows. Like they're trying to run TikTok. They're trying to run meta, like what do they see in terms of like ROAS? Like, do you know? Like, I wonder what that arbitrage looks like. Cause I mean, obviously it's like, okay, you want to sell out of, you know, 15,000 person menu. Maybe you've got 11,000 tickets sold. You're trying to sell the last 4,000. And then there's probably a lot of other dynamics. Cause you know, there's a rev share on the booze, like, like, um, cost per click, six cents. But this is like a really early one. It was the only, he showed me like the data that he actually ran over the wrong ad. It was a Dom Dalla ad on our account accidentally. Cause you're like, it was just like, sometimes it's like Dom Dalla at AM radio. Yeah, I know. So everybody's like, you're getting Dom. We're like, no, like, wow, dude, you're not really independent news anymore, are you? But it was like, yeah, like CPM, $10 cost per click, six cents, 25 clicks. Like it was, you know, that made up the best data set. But, um, there's a, yeah, it's, it's depth, this content, the shares that these ads get, like, that was the one thing, like a content piece that I would make. The amount of shares that it gets on an ad is like blows the mind of co-brand. Like I've never seen so many shares on an ad before, because think about it, like we're not even gonna share an ad as much. Very rare. So like, it's very rare. So, um, yeah, it's really good. That does lower what the CPM is. So like when you have a ton of shares and like engagement, like that's like the most natural way to lower CPM. Like we do with that with every client. Free reach after that. Yeah. It's like, how do you get like some engagement bait in the ad account just to like lower the overall CPM and like get more eyeballs. Yep. Exactly. So that's what's worked for us. And it's always stressful. Like we're always like, how are we gonna sell these tickets? Like tickets weren't moving that fast in the beginning either. But again, it's like, you have to know like week of sales are always really big because everybody's like, what do you, what I'm, they don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing for lunch. I don't know what I'm doing in two weeks. Right. So, um, yeah, we, we scaled it perfectly, I think. Uh, and, and yeah, it's, I mean, that's a pretty repeatable playbook too, across like new venues and locations. So people are always like, how do I, you know, going back to even the coffee shop days for AM radio, who, you know, a lot of people can say we pioneered these morning coffee shop DJ sets. Right. And then once this blew up now, everybody over the world does it, but people are like, how do I get people to mine? Right. Everybody can put a DJ into a coffee shop, but like, how do you scale an event company? It's, you know, if you do the content talking head content, you know, that's the best way to do it. But it took me five years to do it. So now we have a five year head start on anybody who wants to start today. If they want to start a morning coffee party, like it's going to take five years of them building an audience and music to be able to like have that kind of lift off. Maybe not in five years because I mean, I think it's like brand equity takes a long time to build and like, you've also done a lot of trust, you know, and like, I mean, there's just like a role of debt. I mean, people call it a binge bank. Like where by discovering radio or Steve, like you can just go back and check the tape. And it's like, oh, this is actually something I really want to get fed old videos. The algorithm will like start writing stuff. It took me, it took me so long to get to 100,000 on Instagram. It just got there in March, just got there. And there's curators and people in music who are like music tastemakers that have millions of followers. And I just got to 100k after like all this stuff. My like my growth has been like this. But I think those people are sticking around, which is good. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's huge. Like a lot of I mean, it seems like the new meta is really niching into like, going deep with an audience, right? Because I mean, the platforms have made it much more difficult to grow. Like I would, I would guess all those music curators you just mentioned with millions, like, they probably accumulated that in like the 2020 to like 2022 23 era because followers were just much easier to obtain. at the time. And now it's like the riches are in the niches, right? Like if you're, I mean, TBPN, like John Coogan said famously, he's like, if I have 100,000 listeners on an episode, we failed, because we don't want people outside of our target demographic to listen to the show, because we would have to dumb it down, you know, and I mean, something we go through all the time. And this is even kind of like an experiment, like we want to see if like our audience loves the music stuff, because I think there's so much spillover between like the music marketing and like the growth loops and like kind of what you have to do organically with, you could apply any of these lessons to a CPG brand. Yeah. Like if you're a beverage company, you should be thinking about like, how do I do this content stack? Right? That you kind of just mentioned where it's like, okay, broad topic, specific thing about the event, like stack that all together and then drive people to an IRL activation. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, I'm the model at how I always explain, put you on music group as a label is kind of like, a creator brand, right? It's a creator led label where the product is music, it's not gym clothes or cosmetics, music, it's streaming, and it's now events. So it's it's it's that that's out of that same playbook, right? It's like, what is the audience? What is the built in audience? What is your how big is your billboard that you created for yourself? Because, you know, you've been showing up online and building the audience and things like that organically. And then now the event is really great, because it's the yeah, it's the tangible version that you can go you can sit now people buy your merch there, and they will go there and have a good experience. They can't wait to look they're looking forward to it. They bring their friends, they tell their friends about they become a curator of events if they are in the music club, and they can tell their friends, hey, I have a move for us this weekend, I got four tickets. And they're like, Oh, I didn't hear about this. Yeah, you didn't because you're not in this music club. I am. So there's a lot of value in that for people, I think. But it's it's all the same stuff. It's like, how do you how do you create that moat? And I think the content and showing up and being the the face of the brand is is the moat that I think is getting bigger and bigger every year. Okay, so you're a curator, you know how to direct eyeballs to music. How much of music discovery today is organic versus engineered by this clipping stuff or paid media? Yeah, it's a good question. So organic, you just mean non paid media and non clipping pages, basically? Yeah, like, I guess like, is there any viral artists that's not leveraging some of these clipping tools? Like, or is it kind of all? Is this the new music marketing? Well, Hugh Gell did a really good job of this. Yeah, Hugh Gell has been he's such a great example of how an artist and he's just he found his neat like, I always tell artists to like find a repeatable piece of content, right? You don't want to spend three hours making a piece of content and then it gets 1000 views. And you're like, I'm never doing this again. It's like, why don't you just sit like we're doing you set up a camera and you're you're playing your song on your laptop, right? Like Hugo was doing this really, really well. And it's like hotel room, he's public on tour at this hotel room on a balcony at sunset. And he's like doing this stuff. And that's really repeatable. And that worked really well, really well for him. And, you know, the music has to be really good in these instances, like you're not, it's typically like, ooh, the song is so good. And look at the vibe that I'm also seeing while I'm listening to the song. But it's hard, it's hard to say, I mean, Fred again, did a really good job with his kind of style of content and like, doing things as well, that's not just showing your music, right? Like, how do you provide value to these artists or these fans? Because there's a difference between asking a fan for a value and listen to my music or come to my show. And between that and also giving them value and like good music, entertaining content, right? So there's a lot of artists, I mean, graphicers is a good example. And like, the ones that are doing it really simply, like, those are the ones that are crushing because the way that we're, you know, even me, I'm doing the green screen videos now instead of like setting up my like, like studio shot. Because I think that the run and gun style, like, thought like, like, people want to hear what people are thinking about right now versus, you know, what they're deeply thinking about. Like a 10 day lead time on a edit too. Yeah. So, so a lot of these artists are doing a really, really good job at that because they're, it almost looks like they're not trying, right? It's always like, it looks like this, their TikTok page, like they're like, I mean, he was a great example. Like, I feel like he's just always vibing. And now he's so big. It's crazy. And he puts a lot of music. But yeah, because you know, like, he kind of, he kind of faded me in Miami. I hit him up. I was like, Hey, I'm here for Basil. He just liked the message. I'm not a Latina. So I got it. Yeah. But I mean, there's, I always say artists are like, how, how do I, I want to, I want to go on tour, right? And they don't have like motion yet. I'm like, why don't you start a party in your city that everybody wants to come to, everybody's talking about and then do it in another city. That's like what we did with AM radio. Now we're like a traveling artist almost like almost an artist on tour. It's like, we're, I had people send me your shit to go to. And I was like, Oh no, you don't understand. Like, that's crazy. And he's coming to Canal Street. Yeah. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. Yeah. So real hopped off the red eye. Yeah. Yeah. So he, the, the thing, the thing that I keep thinking about is like, when this artist is asking me this, it's like, you should go and do something that everybody can't stop talking about. And then trying to repeat it in other markets rather than like putting out 10 dates at like a soft ticket, which is basically, soft ticket is when you are booked at a nightclub and people buy tickets to that night at the nightclub, but they're not buying tickets to you. Soft ticket. Right. And instead of doing that and you like, you know, people like playing like empty rooms and things like that. It's just like, it's weird. Like do something that people just start love doing. Like, so I'm gonna give a shout to country night country night. I made a video I've recorded a video on this haven't posted it yet. But if you're an artist pay attention to artists like country night who started throwing country dance parties in LA. So there were country music and then they would do like EDM remixes of country songs. Kind of like that Diplo album back of the day, like the Heartless album. Well, the thing is now Diplo's Honky Tonk at Stagecoach is a stage. Now it's over the Yuma. This year was in the Yuma tent that they kept the Yuma tent up from Coachella and now it's Diplo's Honky Tonk. So country night are these two guys in LA and they start throwing these parties. And then all of a sudden they become an artist project and they start putting out songs and now they're getting good monthly listeners. And then now they're booked at like the best slot of the night at Diplo's Honky Tonk because they started a party. It's like because they became a draw, they became a draw and they became they fed their audience their music. They didn't try and bring an audience to the music. They just built the audience first. Right. So they're really interesting thing to look at as well. And they're great guys and they've done a good job at building organically and keeping true themselves. And then now they're playing. I mean, you should see their stagecoach said it was crazy. Yeah, that's fire. Well, dude, I mean, I think that was super valuable for a lot of people listening. Where can they support you? Yeah. Instagram, Steve Cardigan is like my personal, but the label page is putyouon.club. That's where like we post a lot of our releases, but also just cool content. I'm always like collab posting between my page and the Put You On page because it's kind of like my editorial. Like Put You On started just as a media channel essentially. And the label is just new. So I keep that consistent. AM Radio, am.radio.la is our Instagram for the events. And then the music club is in all three channels if you look in our bios. Yeah, join the music club. That's the one. The music club is cool. Yeah. We do the new music Fridays. So I have to go and like create this playlist. This girl named Tori from New York City actually helps me curate the playlist now. Shout out to Tori. And then, yeah, we also do like show giveaways. Like if we're in LA and like an artist that's played AM Radio is coming through for like their big show at like the Shrine, we'll always have their agent or their manager that, hey, can we get like three tickets for the music club? And then we're like, hey, like we're giving away three tickets. And like we did that for Black Coffee. And it was like 500 replies in like four minutes. They get these tickets. We're like, oh my God. So it's a good place to be for like music, new music, discovering stuff. And I'm coming to come to events. Yeah. And not only LA either. Like we come. Yeah. Come all around. Cool. Well, dude, thank you for coming on. Yeah. Thanks. No, appreciate you.