This is the breakdown on Roc-A-Fella Records. Founded in 1995 by the trio of Shawn “Jay Z” Carter (the talent), Damon “Dame” Dash (the promoter), and Kareem “Biggs” Burke (the silent partner), it became one of hip-hop’s most iconic labels.The label took time to develop. Jay’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt, is now seen as a certified classic, but took time to get that recognition. It wasn’t until 1997 when Def Jam acquired a 50 percent stake in the label and The Roc went to that next level.Roc-A-Fella then created Rocawear, Roc Films, and went on an unprecedented arena tour across the country — rare for rappers at the time. Other artists like Cam’Ron, Kanye West, Beanie Sigel, and Freeway joined the squad.. Despite the success, the founders grew apart, which led to its infamous split. To break it all down, I was joined by my friend and Jay Z biographer,  Zack O’Malley Greenburg. Here’s what we covered:1:20 Roc-A-Fella origin story7:21 Reasonable Doubt09:43 Friendly rivalry with Bad Boy Records12:43 50-50 deal with Def Jam15:59 How Roc-A-Fella’s deal compared to others18:59 The Hard Knock Life Tour’s impact 28:32 Expanding the brand beyond Jay Z 30:32 Why Dame and Jay’s split was inevitable38:59 Artists taking sides44:21 Best Roc-a-Fella signing?45:22 Best business move?48:27 Dark Horse move?53:02 Missed opportunity? 59:07 Will Dame and Jay ever make up?1:00:45 Who won the most from Roc-a-Fella? Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Zack O’Malley Greenburg, @zogblogThis episode is brought to you by Norby, your digital marketing Swiss army knife. Get started for free with a free 2-week trial (no credit card needed) AND get 50% off for 3 months after that. Start your free trial todayThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmEnjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapitalTrapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo.TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Zack Greenburg: I think it was really good for hip hop, and I don't think it was ever going to turn violent, but I think again, there was just this kind of like national paranoia around hip hop and, there is, you know, in waves.I think it was just a, good reminder that you can have like a spirited dispute and, it's okay and it's entertainment, you know? and it's, nothing that anybody needs to be afraid of. So, you know, of course like credit to Jay and Nas for resolving it amicably, yeah, I mean just, to have that end, you know, like very amicably I think was just so good for everybody involved. And then, you know, I think it's really fun to watch, Jay and Nas as their relationship has evolved And, you know, Nas was sort of always like the one who was sort of behind, when it came to the business of things.[00:00:46] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Capital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Capital, Dan Runy. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:01:13] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: This episode is a rewind. We're going back in the clock to the late nineties, early two thousands, and we are revisiting one of. The most iconic record labels at the time, the one and only Roc-A-Fella Records. Roc-A-Fella Records, is the record label started by Jay-Z Dame Dash, Big Burke, and went on to be one of the most iconic hip hop record labels and hip hop brands, and that's a key thing from this conversation.I was joined by my friend Zach O'Malley Greenberg. He wrote Empire State of Mind, a biography on Jay-Z, and he also wrote Three Kings that broke down Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, and Diddy's Business Moves. So he was a perfect person to have this conversation with. We talked about the highs of this record label, the lows, some of the best business moves where Jay-Z and Dame didn't see eye to eye, some of the dark horse business moves that they made.What was the best signing from Roc-A-Fella Records? Missed opportunities and more. If you enjoy the episodes we did on Cash Money and Interscope, this one will be right up your alley and we already know what it is when we're talking about Jay, Dave, and Big. So let's dive into it. Hope you enjoy it.[00:02:17] Dan Runcie: All right. We are back to do another breakdown on one of the most iconic record labels, the one and only Roc-A-Fella records, and I'm joined by someone who wrote the book on one of the most influential people behind this record label. Zack O'Malley Greenberg, welcome back, man. [00:02:33] Zack Greenburg: Thanks for having me on, Dan, as always.[00:02:36] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and with this one, I think it's good to start even before Roc-A-Fella records because this label was a long time coming and there were a number of things that Jay Dame and Biggs, the founders of this record label were involved before this. So set the stage. Where were we pre Roc-A-Fella launch.[00:02:55] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, so, you know, I think a lot of people forget, although Jay-Z is a billionaire now, a couple times over, back in the early nineties, he wasn't even sure that he could make it as a rapper full-time. So, you know, he'd appeared on a couple tracks with his mentor jazz. Oh, this great Golden Age rapper. He had popped up kind of here and there, but, you know, really he was finding that it was much more lucrative to be a hustler.And so he was increasingly making more and more trips outta town to New Jersey and Maryland and so forth doing his thing. And, you know, I think he really kind of saw music as a hobby at that point. so he, he did have, you know, a couple supporters, namely DJ Clark Kent, you know, one of these influential producers, at the time.And, you know, Clark Kent really believed in Jay when a lot of people did it. And so he kind of kept trying to convince him to give another shot, like he could do this as an actual profession, and finally convince him to sort of take this meeting with Damon Dash. So he thought that Jay-Z was this just like once in a generation talent, from the musical side, and that Dame was sort of this promotional mastermind.And then if the two forces kind of united, they could create something really special. So in my book, empire State of Mind, Clark Kent tells the story of how he convinced Jay and Dame to sort of meet up. And so Dame, of course is from Harlem, Jay's from Brooklyn. There's sort of like this New York City snobbery thing going on, you know, Manhattan folks kind of maybe look down sometimes on people from Brooklyn and so they get together and, Dame rolls in.He sees Jay's wearing a pair of Air Force 1s and he is like, okay, this guy's cool, you know, he has good taste in sneakers, so I, can do business with him. and that was kind of like, you know, the initial hurdle was, you know, overcome and off it went. And so they struck up this really productive partnership together where, you know, Dame would kind of, help Jay Z sell, you know, they would go around selling CDs outta the trunks of cars and stuff like that.they were trying to get a proper record deal. and they just didn't have, like, nobody was kinda like really into the whole jay thing at the time. And you know, if you think about the music that he was making, unreasonable Doubt, it's like very nuanced. you know, like a lot of words packed into not very many bars, you know, like the space and the rapidity of the, the flow was like kind of not what was happening at the time in the, you know, by this time like, getting toward the mid nineties.So, basically they decided to go and start their own, and they brought in green Bigs Burke, who was kind of a silent partner, you know, another formidable hustler in his own right. And, you know, so there was the, talent, the silent partner and, you know, the promotion guy.And you know, when their powers combined, they were Captain Planet or whatever they were Roc-A-Fella records. [00:05:42] Dan Runcie: And I think part of the thing with Jay-Z that made this unique was his age at this point as well, because by the time they start Roc-A-Fella, he's already in his mid twenties, which doesn't sound anything unusual now, but back then, the rappers that were blowing up were always teenagers.There were always early twenties. You think about Dr. Dre, everyone from NWA, you think about Nas when he dropped I Maddock or you look at LL Cool J. Everyone is a young cat. So for Jay to then drop his debut album when he is 26, Is an ancient man, a grandfather trying to get into this game? [00:06:19] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I mean, it's like a 26 year old rookie in, you know, the NBA or in baseball or something.It's just like, you don't see it. I mean, al almost ever. And when it does happen, it's sort of like a journeyman, you know, like role player type but jay, you know, had just packed a lifetime worth of lyrics into this one album cuz he kind of viewed it as, you know, this was like a one and done, like a novelty thing.And, you know, he really fully anticipated, you know, kind of coming up from the underworld, dropping this gem of an album and then kind of like disappearing off into the ether, like Kaiser Souzai at the individual suspects. And that, I mean, that was actually his plan. you know, according to a lot of people who I talked to around the time.So, yeah, it was definitely not sort of the normal path, for creating an album. I mean, I think they thought that. You know, they could put out this album, it would do well and then, you know, maybe they would bring along other artists and he wouldn't have to be sort of at the forefront.Like he might just keep doing his thing on the hustling side or whatever. but obviously things turned out a little bit differently. [00:07:22] Dan Runcie: This album was also a bit of a slow burn from a success perspective. I know that many people now when they're debating the best Jay-Z albums, the best Roc-A-Fella albums.This one's always mentioned as well as a few others that we'll get into. But if you look at the commercial performance for this album, in the beginning, it was not that high. The same week that it came out, the Nutty Professor soundtrack sold more records than Reasonable Doubt. And around the same time, that summer, I'm pretty sure that Shaquille O'Neill's album, cuz he was putting out albums at the time, also sold more than Reasonable Doubt did.So extremely slow burn. And you mentioned something earlier about the hustle that I wanna tap into because this is one of the big value ads that Dame Dash had with this. He was relentless and we've all heard the stories. Many people that have met him have also seen what it's like upfront. A lot of it speaks to his success.But he was someone who was in many ways, notorious for going to the New York radio stations and giving them gifts, understanding, yes, this essentially is payola, but this is what everyone else is doing. This is what the people with the real money in the industry are doing. So he's leading into that as well.And you mentioned Kaiser Associates also makes me think about, there's one of the music videos that Jay had from in my Lifetime, volume one where, I forget which song it was, but the song essentially, you know, the music video essentially was a spoof, odd usual Suspects where he's impersonating the the Kevin Spacey, Kaiser Souzai character on it.Sorry for anyone that hasn't seen Usual Suspects for the spoilers I just dropped there. But there's so many things that I think tie in with that and just stay consistent with who he is at the time. [00:09:08] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that whole album, you know, the aesthetic was very like, maybe not Kaiser Soze, but, you know, sort of like gangster movie sort of thing and, you know, all the album artwork, you know, it's him and like a fedora and black and white and all that kind of thing.and so, you know, I think that, he's been obsessed with mafia movies for like, his entire life and you don't hear it quite as much, you know, as more recent albums. But he was kind of like living this underworld life at the time. And so I think it really resonated with him and maybe in a way that, that it, it doesn't quite resonate now.[00:09:44] Dan Runcie: And I think too that was in a lot of ways the theme that we saw he did in the nineties. You definitely saw Big Do It, especially in the whole life after death era, right before he passed. And I think there were a few moments that gave him the initial bump. Even after having Reasonable Doubt drop.Jay himself was featured on the Nutty Professor soundtrack because he had the song with, Foxy Brown that was also on his album. And then he's on Fox's album, album a little bit later. Her debut, he's also on, what's the song that Jay oh, David Brooklyn's finest, on Jay's album. [00:10:18] Zack Greenburg: Going back to Callie was on there. Oh my God, what an album. Yeah. But yeah, that was not, I would say Jay-Z got the better end of the collabs. with, the Brooklyn's Finest. I mean, that is a classic. Clark Kent produce that one also. And, you know, that was kind of like, that was another funny story from the book, like, you know, that there was also a bit of a friendly rival, mean, like they were, there were buds and all like, Jay and, and Big, but there was like a little bit of a friendly rivalry between, Jay and Dame and Puff and Big, because I think, you know, like, so the Whole Bad Boy thing was more established, by the time that Roc-A-Fella Records came about, and so I think Puff was kind of like Dame Dash, like another dude from Harlem, are you trying to be me? Kind of thing, you know, and so in order to make that song happen, I think before Jay and Big were friends, Clark kept kind of tricked them into recording the song together. So he was in the session with Big, and then he accidentally played a tape of a track that he had that was just an amazing track and Big was like, that's great.I wanna get on that. and he was like, no, I'm saving it for somebody else. And things like, well, who the hell else are you saving it for? And he is like, my man, Jay, you know, he's amazing. He's a beast. and big's like, I don't who, what Jay who. and so finally like Clark Kent sort of like goded him into, unbeknownst to big, Clark Kent had arranged for like Jay and Dame to be in a car downstairs.And he was like, oh, I think he's actually just coming in. And so he went down and he brought him up and so like Jay went in and recorded his verses, I think right then and there. And he left spaces for Big to put his verses in. and when Big went in and he listened to it, he was like, oh my God, this guy's so good.I have to like, go home and really think about this, about what I'm gonna put in there in the spaces that he left for me. and I think after that they were really good friends. but you know, it's, that kind of like, good nature trickery, shall we say. that, you know, I think some of these circumstances happen when you got some egos in the building and, you wanna make some magic.And, you know, as I recall, you know, for the chorus, Jay and Big had like become fast friends and, so like, they're leaving the studio and Clark's like, you know, on the final day that Biggie came and recorded or whatever, and Clark's like, what should I do for the chorus? And they're like, just scratch something.And that, that was how it happened. [00:12:44] Dan Runcie: Classic. And that's such a New York story, and it's also such a 90s hip hop story in terms of how the industry worked. Having someone like, oh, so-and-so's just downstairs, they're gonna come up right now because you have 'em, man, how people worked. Things classic. And it speaks to where Jay was at the time too, because as we mentioned, reasonable doubt, slow bird took a while for it to get.The respect that it deserves. But then you go to 1997, he has, in my lifetime, and that album also Slow Burn and wasn't necessarily as highly regarded as Reasonable Doubt, but still had some songs. And you could tell that Jay was trying to navigate a few things, whether it was he had the flashy suit ever himself when he had the song Always Be My Sunshine.He's feeling that out. I mentioned he had the Kaiser Souzai spoof music video, but it really isn't until 1998 where things start to change. So a few things happen here. The album Volume Two, Hard Knock Life comes out. That song, Hard Knock Life changes everything for the trajectory of that label, and that's when they start the partnership with Def Jam.So let's talk about the Def Jam piece first. Can you talk a little bit about that one and break it down? [00:13:57] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. So. As I recall, you know, in early Roc-A-Fella they had struck this, distribution deal. I think it was with priority. and you know, reasonable doubt was they had already been selling it on their own, sort of informally out of the trunks of cars.And then priority, you know, was distributing it. But it was kind of a disaster. They weren't paying Jay on time and, or maybe at all, at some point. And so he just kind of went back to 'em and was like, you know, if you're not gonna be paying me, or paying me everything, you're not paying me on time or whatever.Just like give my master's back and get me out of it. and somehow that's what happened. So that freed him up to be able to take this deal with Def Jam, where Def Jam bought a piece of Roc-A-Fella records. but again, you know, because they were buying a piece of it and not signing him to a deal. you know, he continued to own, you know, considerably higher portion of his own copyrights and, you know, possess more of the cash that came in than he would've otherwise. but you know, he already had the success. They already had this apparatus set up, so he had like, you know, he had leverage in a negotiation and I think, you know, even though his second album I think was kind of a dud and he would always, like, he has said in interviews that that's his worst album and the one that he'd like to have back.you know, he had some, heat, you know, with reasonable doubt. And then kind of like coming off the heels of Biggie's death and, being sort of like the heir parent. it was tight with Puffy who produced the second album, you know, for better or worse. But, you know, I think that really gave them sort of the ability to get what they wanted at a Def Jam, which was like, I think part of the reason that first album didn't do so well, and I think it was until fairly recently, his worst selling album, until sort of the back catalog began to catch up. But, what they needed was distribution those days was really important. Like you, you needed, you know, you could have Damon Dash, like Haranging, people at rec, you know, at radio stations all you want.But in order to really have the kind of, you know, national scale, that you need to be a superstar, at least in those days, really wanted to do with the label. So that's what they did, [00:15:59] Dan Runcie: Right, you needed someone that could get 500,000 units to 7,000 distribution points, and there were barriers to entry in order to do that.And yeah, to your point, I don't care how many bottles of champagne you try to give to Hot 97, that's not gonna make that happen without it, right? The thing that I always think about with this ever though, is the terms of this deal, because at least what we've seen publicly was that Def Jam had taken a 50% stake.In Roc-A-Fella records, and it was for one and a half million dollars. And that number always stuck out to me a bit because if you look at some of the other deals that had happened in that era, you had masterpieces distribution deal that he had done with the same priority records that Roc-A-Fella had their deal with.But Master P obviously had a much more favorable distribution deal with splits in his favor. And then similarly, that same year, 1998 Cash money, does their distribution deal with Republic Records? Of course, Def Jam is a different unit and Roc-A-Fella was in a very different place. And we know that Jay-Z had always talked about ownership and it was important to him.But it's a interesting reflection of just where things looked at in the landscape because it's easy to look back in Jay's career in hindsight and think that, oh yeah, his first album was a classic and then Hard Knock Life comes and everything is just up and up. But there was still. hierarchy and there were other artists that were getting more favorable deals, more ownership for their music, for their record labels.And Roc-A-Fella still got something that was somewhat favorable, but still not at the same level of some of those other people in the mid to late 90s. [00:17:40] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting point, right? I mean, Jay obviously is this brilliant businessman and, you know, Damon and bigs aren't too shabby either.And yet it was a good deal, but it wasn't, anything like, a cash money or no limit in terms of the splits, and what they were doing. So, yeah, I mean, I think to your point, you know, those other acts, had kind of like a more established operation, you know, Jay was one guy with one album that didn't sell very well, that was kind of critically acclaimed, you know, so it was like A bit more of a risk perhaps, on Def Jams parts, they weren't really risking that much capital on them. So, you know, I mean, and I guess I wonder if that initial deal had been more favorable for Roc-A-Fella, if they had managed, to have, you know, the kind of splits that Cash Money and No Limit had might they have stayed in business together longer? You know, in a way it's like if the pie that you have or like if the one big pie, and, you know, if you're a slice of the pie that you're sharing with your two business partners is that much smaller than it is, than, you know, let's say the Williams brothers were sharing a cash money, you know, maybe you feel, a lot more restless and, inclined to go elsewhere, but we can get to that later.[00:18:59] Dan Runcie: that's a good point too, because if Cash Money is still in business. And we know cuz we recorded that episode not too long ago, but Birdman and Slim are still getting tens of millions of dollars per year. It's essentially a cash cow asset that they have. Def Jam is still collecting for Roc-A-Fella, as is universal. And I know that Jay and Damon Bigs do have their splits, but it's not the same because they eventually did sell the other half of the record label to the parent company Def Jam. I think it was Island Def Jam at the time that that deal happened. But it changes the dynamics a lot. But with the story though, we are getting to the point where Roc-A-Fella is clearly on the way up.And I think there were a few things coming that did set things up for them. But one thing that I think was a big difference maker for them around 1999 was them wanting to go on tour and. Have their name out there. So 1999 they have the Hard Knock Life tour and at this time it was pretty rare for, all Hip Hop Act to have a nationwide arena tour that happened because at the time they had past shows or whether it was at Run DMC shows or other things in the late 80s, early 90s, and cause of violence and because of things like that, all these promoters and all these venue operators were so scared of hip hop.So you had Smoking Grooves and other festivals like that in the mid nineties where they always had to pair you with the R&B actor. They had to have two folks together. I know that Bad Boy had its, arena tours as well, but they always had the R&B acts that were there, so they needed to, they were really trying to do something different.But I think this is where Dame's Magic came to life because he was able to really control the narrative and be out in front with how they were making sure that violence wouldn't happen, whether they had their own security on top of whoever was there. They had the fruit of Islam that was at each of these shows standing there to have the, bodyguards there as present.When the reporters came into the trailers to see what they were doing on tour, there's this iconic video of Tie Tie and he has videos up and this VHS tapes up of, oh, you think we're just watching gangster flicks? No, here we got Goodwill Hunting right here. We got Brave Part, we got as good as it gets.Like we're here watching videos like anyone else. And with that and even, I think they did something that was either, either donating money or something as well cause in Colorado, because they had a show right around the same time that the Columbine shooting had happened there. So there were a few things they'd done there.And I think that tour in a lot of ways helped. Not just the Roc-A-Fella crew, but all the other folks that were associated with them that came along like Red and meth and Ja Rule and others. But then after that, we then saw the Up and Smoke tour. We saw Rough Riders and Cash Money go on tour. And I think that tour in a lot of ways helped propel them into that next level to continue to have a lot of that success.[00:22:06] Zack Greenburg: Totally. And you know, and I think it wasn't necessarily reflected in the bottom line. I mean, I don't remember what the gross was, but, you know, 18 million I think. Yeah. Like Taylor Swift probably grossed that in one show at, [00:22:20] Dan Runcie: I think he made that in two of the three nights at, [00:22:23] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, definitely, definitely over a weekend in the Meadowlands, but yeah, she probably had definitely, let's say, definitely crushed it in her like little weekend did in the Meadowlands. But you know, and so obviously if you're grossing $18 million. You're probably only taking home, you know, 10 of that after cost, maybe like, probably more like, you know, I don't know, seven or eight. and then you're dividing that up amongst however many people. There were a lot of people on that tour for like a fair amount of tour days, so it did not work out to a lot of sort of take home pay per show, but it really kind of opened the door. I think in the aftermath of the death of Tupac, Biggie and like all of this, you know, sort of, like moral panic around hip hop and violence and all of the, you know, whatever Tipper Gore stuff, you know, that this was sort of like a reminder that like, yes, hip hop Acts can go on tour and it's gonna be fine.And like that, you know, that had been done in the past and, run DMC and what have you. But, you know, NWA had gone on tour and, you know, had a big national tour. So there were other examples before, but I think people were like, kind of freaked out about hip hop in the national zeitgeist at the time, and this kind of really helped to kind of reset things. And, you know, opened the door for other rappers, but, you know, for Jay-Z himself down the line, you know, I mean, he's been a really prolific touring act and I think he's always been really clever, about it because, he's like, even now, like he can sell out arenas, but, you know, he's not like, I don't know, he sort of can't necessarily do, he can't sell out stadiums by himself, that's for sure. And there was a time when he couldn't sell out arenas by himself. and there's probably a time when he couldn't sell Amphitheaters by himself, but he always goes around, he brings somebody with him and he's got a really good kind of, level of self-evaluation and he's like, you know, he doesn't let his hubris get in the way of like, I can sell out whatever, whatever.unless he knows he can, you know, he, he's very accurate in that assessment. And if he can't make it, then he just brings somebody with him. He brings Eminem with them. you know, he goes out with Beyonce for the stadium tour. So, you know, Justin Timberlake with him. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So in a way, I think that tour was kind of the beginning of that.And, you know, how he could, see some synergies by mixing and matching with other artists [00:24:35] Dan Runcie: And that tour too Hard Knock Life tour. He showed signs of that awareness there. There's this iconic clip when Jay-Z was on the shop a couple years ago and he's talking about the show. This was shortly after DMX had passed away and Jay-Z was going on tour in each of these nights after X and X's shows, you know, he's taken off his shirt, he's doing prayers at the end.So you have people that are laughing, you have people that are crying, then people that are screaming and then they come out and they're like, oh, now you go like pointed to Jay-Z. And I mean, one Jay's storytelling of that is good. When we post this episode, we'll definitely share this clip in there, but two, it showed this awareness that people have spoke about of, and it's also what you're saying, even if he may not have always been the central act and another running thing that people have said over the years, what year was Jay-Z, the top guy in hip hop?And I think that is a very debatable thing, but it's the longevity and that's the thing that speaks to it. And how he's been able to stay through that over the years. And because he was always that core piece, like we said, price is probably one of the reasons that they didn't get a no limit or a cash money type deal.It really was just him. I think there was that one R&B album that Rocefella hadn't released in 1997, but didn't really go anywhere with that artist. So things didn't really pick up until late nineties, early two thousands. And you start to see more of the artists on Roc La Familia, and they're really able to spread their wings in that way.[00:26:10] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I mean, another thing to remember, at the time, you know, especially, I think it was 98, 99, that was when, you know, Def Jam. So I think Def Jam had already taken a pretty significant, institutional investor, but, they were selling the company or like maybe the remainder of the company or most of the remainder of the company.There's this really, really big deal happening. and I forget which sort of, European entertainment conglomerate was it Bertlesman or It was like, was, something that's since been reconstituted or, or whatever. But the, the deal was gonna happen and you know, the deal was gonna be for whatever multiple of revenue, that Roc-A-Fella had or not Roc-A-Fella, that Def Jam had produced in the prior year.And so for the, I think it was the calendar year of 1999. And so, Lyor and Russell just like leaned really hard on Jay and DMX and they were like, we need you to put out like two albums in 12 months because we're just gonna get a multiple of that. And I don't remember the exact advances that, that were given, but you know, I'm sure it was considerable.And so, you know, they were able to put out like each of them two really killer albums in the span of like about 12 months each. which is like kind of unheard of these days, right? I mean, Jay-Z goes, is like five years between albums now and, I think that was, volume two and volume three for Jay-Z.And I think for DMX, it's dark and. [00:27:38] Dan Runcie: Dark as hell and hot and then flesh and my flesh blood. And then, and those were like, like, and then there was X was the third. Oh, then there was X. [00:27:45] Zack Greenburg: That's right, that's right. So those were like, like two, like for each of them to [00:27:49] Dan Runcie: a year and a half spare albums.[00:27:51] Zack Greenburg: I mean, yeah, back to back, you know, man, like to have that much, sort of creative energy to do it so quickly, and to have it sell so well, I mean, it is quite a feat and you know, and they, personally enriched Russell and Lyor and Rick Rubin, like, I would say quite substantially cuz it just drove up that multiple.And, yeah, I think a lot of people kind of forget, how critical they were, you know, to that process. But it probably also caught thinking like, Why am I working so hard to make somebody else, you know, I'm getting rich, but they're getting wealthy and, I think the gears are continuing to turn for him at that point and he's like, Hmm, how do I kind of get to be more in their position, right?[00:28:32] Dan Runcie: Cuz I think at this time, this is when you start seeing more of the Roc-A-Fella expansions in a few ways. First Dame is already thinking about ways to extend this brand. You see Roc films, Streets is watching comes out in the late nineties and then they put out a whole documentary about the Hard Knock life tour as well.And they start selling that as the DVD Rocawear comes out. And we're gonna do a whole episode about Rocawear eventually, but, you know, Rocawear itself. And then you also just start to see more and more product coming from Roc-A-Fella that isn't necessarily from Jay himself. And I was looking back from a timeline.And this is one of the unfortunate things about Roc-A-Fella, we're gonna get to this, but right around the time they split, you could argue that they were just continuing to go up and up and up with the releases every year. Like this is the 12 month stretch that they had where I think they had the highest products.Starting in February 20th, 2003, you had freeway drops, Philadelphia Freeway, Dipset Drops, diplomatic immunity. Joels has his debut album. Jay-Z drops the Black album, Memphis Bleak drops his, and then top of 2004 Ye drops College Dropout, Young Guns drops their debut. And that's all in a 12 month span.That's some no limit cash, money level of dropping albums. And so there's so many hits and so many memorable songs that they had during that stretch. [00:29:59] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think that if, you know, we were talking earlier about the splits and so forth, but it's like, can you imagine. If they had the kind of splits to catch money it had, when you have all those albums coming out and, you know, yeah, I think it really would've changed things.Not only that, but you know, to own the masters of all those artists, which you probably would've in those days. you know, to have like a hundred percent or something close to it on all those artists with all those classics. you know, it would've been very hard to walk away from, you know, as they eventually ended up doing.[00:30:33] Dan Runcie: And I think what you mentioned earlier, probably alludes to this, right? Because if there's enough of the pie to these split between the three founders and everyone else, and they're the one accruing the assets from what they have, then maybe Jay and Dame are more likely to figure out their differences in a way to make things cook because it's working for everyone.But when you're still paying Def Jam in on top of that, or you're still paying island def jam in on top of that universal even more money, it's tough to justify that. And I think this is a good time to talk about the split. The infamous split between Jay-Z and Damon Dash. You could start to see that the two of them were going in different areas where Jay-Z was wanting to be really focused in on what he was doing from a music perspective, wanting to expand there and wanting to just do different creative things.But Dame had his own approach, and we talked a little bit about that with, the films and the sports and other things too. But he also wanted to do things his way. He was starting to get a little bit more spotlight. And then there's that infamous clip of them at Summer Jam 2001, where Dame Dash is in his full element.And Jay-Z's just like expressionless. And that clip is often looked at as like you knew from this moment. That these two just were necessarily gonna be at the same page because this is 2001, Jay-Z's are drop about to drop the blueprint, his masterpiece. And granted, you know, he could have just been in the zone or whatever, but it's definitely an unfortunate thing because granted, Jay-Z was able to reach further heights, but you never know what could have happened.You just look at how much Rocawear ended up selling for you. Look at the continued success, the momentum, and I think what it boils down to is to. People that had different philosophies where it makes it tough. Jay-Z was a bit more focused on wanting to be rich. He was willing to do partnerships with others if everyone could eat and have a piece of the pie. Granted, he still wanted ownership, but as you've written about before, he has his perceptions on underdog brands and how he could move like a private equity executive and make the right investments. And even the m and a deals he's continued to do today, his live nation deal is the element of this.But Dame was a bit more wanting to be king. He wanted to have his stamp on things. And I think you see that even now today with Dame Dash Studios, Dame Dash, this, like, it's very important for him to be able to have his kids and his other folks around him be able to work with him and be the boss, not necessarily wanting anyone to tell you what you can and can't do.And that infamous Breakfast Club interview that they had, I think it was 2015 when he's yelling at DJ Envy and Charlemagne about, well, they gotta report to whoever at Power 105 and that's their manager, that they're not a real boss, is an element of that whole dynamic. So it's frustrating that it happened, but it's also not surprising.[00:33:26] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, Jay has kind of adjusted his views on ownership and he said recently, I mean, he's sold some of his big brands, or sold half of it into, a JV with like LVMH or you know, or whatever. And he's very much of the mind of like, well, I, you know, 50% of like a billion is a lot more than a hundred percent of, you know, a couple hundred million, and I think Dave, that's [00:33:51] Dan Runcie: that you did with Kevin Hart, right? [00:33:53] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right. So, and I don't remember the exact quote, but maybe you could, maybe you guys can pull it up, but I don't think Dame really ever got that. He was always like, well, I want a hundred percent, you know, and so, you know, he ended up with a hundred percent of like, whatever, you know, seven or eight figure amount that he ended up with.But he could have had, you know, 50% or 30% or something of like billions of many billions probably. But you know, just to kind of like, I think there was a precipitating moment that sort of like was the end of, Roc-A-Fella a s it was, a partnership between the three of them.But it really could have been anything. it was headed that way for a couple of years. And, you know, I think what it comes down to, is that, I don't know. I mean, I think that Jay also recognized that Dame was very, very valuable. The skillset was especially valuable in the come up.And, you know, like when you are not well known, you need somebody to go in and yell at somebody at the radio station. you know, but then when you get there, you need somebody to like not yell at certain people, you know? And, when you get to that next level, and sort of Dame, you know, didn't adjust, To that.And, Damon was sort of Damon or wherever he was. And it was great in one situation, not great in another situation. So I think the precipitating incident was basically when, you know, after this sale, which ironically Roc-A-Fella helped, boost, you know, the Def Jam sale. There was a reshuffling of executives, which is like so complicated.I'd have to go back to that chapter of my book to, to look at it. But the gist of it was the role of president at Def Jam, opened up and, it was offered to Jay-Z. And so, you know, Jay-Z, this is something that he had sort of, it's this like great prestige job. something that he'd always been wanting.And I don't think he wanted it, like, this is my dream job that I've always wanted. As much as it was like, if I can do this, be a CEO, this opens the door to so many other things. And it will really sort of entrench me as not being pigeonholed as an artist. And, it was a no-brainer and of course there was no way to do this without, stepping on Dame's toes.So, you know, there's this whole great drama, and I think, you know, the wheels started turning when Jay-Z was, you know, on, on a yacht in the south of France with like Beyonce and Jimmy Iovine and Bono or something and, kicking it. And, you know, there's some executives there. Some conversations were had, I think at the same time back home, Dame, like elevated camera on to VP level at Roc-A-Fella without consulting Jay.And it was this kind of like big scandal and when Jay-Z came home, he was like, no. And he kind of demoted him. So there was some awkwardness there. but you know, I think then that Jay kinda like accelerated his, push toward this CEO role, and when he got it, it's like, all right, you know, sorry Dave, I'm your boss now.I mean, because of course Def Jam was, but Roc-A-Fella, there was really. There was no way for it not to be structured like that. so, you know, when that went down, of course, like Dame immediately, you know, quit or left or whatever, and, there was a hot minute where he started the Damon Dash Music group within Universal, but, you know, then he kind of like kept doing the same thing and kind of yelling at the wrong people.And, and so that didn't really go anywhere. And, you know, the thing kind of fizzled out and Jay offered to, I think he wanted to give, at the time, he wanted to give, Biggs and Dame, like all of his preexisting masters in exchange for exclusive ownership of Reasonable Doubt. they said no. but of course, you know, I don't know that the Black album had gotten as big, is it?You know, I hadn't like really fully blossomed into what it, what it ultimately was at that time. And there's like all this other, so anyway, I mean, there's a lot of like trades being offered and you know, people sort of like, you know, it's like the guy in your family in football league, your fantasy baseball league.You kinda like overvalue his own players. Think I've made this analogy before, but, dude, come on. Like, you know, you're running back, just got injured and offering you my extra running back for this wide receiver who you're not even music anyway. it didn't really work out.Everybody got all pissed on each other, you know, at the end there's bad blood. so th there's this great moment that Dame talks about how, shortly after all this went down and they're like in the elevator at, I guess the Universal Museum, that Def Jam was housed in. and Roc-A-Fella had been housed in or something.And they're like bumping each other in the elevator and Dame is wearing a state property shirt and Jay C's like in the suit. And Dame's like, man, you know, things are really different now. Like, dude, you changed, you know? so, you know, I don't know if Jay changed so much as like Dame didn't change, you know?you could argue the problem was that Jay changed, but you could also argue that problem is that, that Dame didn't. And, you know, I mean, to some extent like power to him, you know, be you. but Jay, you know, in the way that I think you know, he's constantly changing. He's restless, he's always, everything is a chessboard.He's always evolving, you know, I think ultimately there was no way to stay locked into a partnership with someone who wasn't kind of willing to change with them. [00:38:59] Dan Runcie: One thing you mentioned there made me think about how they think about things and where they are from a strategic perspective, Dame is very much your early stage startup guy.He's great for the pre-seed era. He's great for when you're even in the seed stage, maybe even series A, but once you get to that series B, C, you're starting to get some higher level executives. You're getting more talent, you're gone to bigger things. You can't operate the same way and no different. How those organizations often need to rotate and think about leadership.That's essentially what in many ways was the opportunity there at Roc-A-Fella. And there's nothing wrong with being very successful at that pre precede seed stage. I don't think Roc-A-Fella would've got to that point if it weren't for Dame hustling in many absolutely ways, whether it was on tour radio, and I think a lot of his success traits have been carried through and things we've seen celebrated and leaders in tech and people that do things that don't scale that very much is Dame Dash. That next level, though, is where things did get a little bit tough because the label's clearly getting ready to go to that next level, and they just had their tensions there.The thing that was unique though, about their tensions is that the artists themselves that were on Roc-A-Fellas started picking sides in terms of who they wanted to be with, who they were gonna side with, Jay versus Dame, and as you mentioned, Dame was the one that had elevated Cameron, who was the leader of Dipset at the time, to that VP level.That then brings everyone from dipset under his umbrella, but Ye, who had just dropped the college dropout and he was the one that was always trying to make it. He then signs with Jay, he also has a very memorable interview on the Breakfast Club where they asked him about this, and Ye was the one that was like, me and Dame we're the same. We think the same. This is how we act and go about things but I could learn more from Jay. He knows how to talk to people and he uses Jay's iconic lines. He's like, Jay knows how to move in a room full of vultures. That's just how he is and sometimes I be talking and saying the wrong things, which is a very ironic thing.I don't know if Kanye himself would admit that now, cuz that very much is a self-serving prophecy. I do think that there's a lot of truth in that, and just how things ended up shaking out for both of them. You saw the moves that everyone continued to make, and even though ye has definitely been quite polarizing in the public spotlight, a lot of the moves that he continued to make, whether it was with Yeezy or with the partnerships he's had, I do think stemmed from how he looked up to his own big brother in Jay.[00:41:42] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And he could have easily gone with Dame, right? I mean, you know, Jay wasn't so great to him early. Jay didn't believe in him as a rapper, he kind of wanted to keep him as a producer and Dame was, I think, the one who really advocated for Kanye as a rapper. but you know, I think Kanye, in his, you know, like more self-aware moments can say things like, oh, I think I could learn more from Jay.He brings something to table that I don't have, for Dame, I think the difference between Dame and Kanye is that they're very similar, in a lot of ways. But Dame isn't an artist. like, let's say a generationally talented artist. And so people will not put up with you if you're an executive. And you bring along those headaches in the way that they would put along, put up with you if you're a generational artist and you bring those headaches. And I think that was sort of like also, something that did Damon. And you know, in a way I think Damon Puff had a lot in common like they can just go in and kind of bulldoze their way into something.but Puff has that, that like other level where he can sort of like turn it up and down and, you know, to fit the situation. and is like more of a chameleon than Dame is. And Dame's just kind of dame all the time. so, you know, those are sort of the, personalized to play. But you know, like one person who gets lost in the shuffle here is Cameron.And because that was sort of the prime of his career that got like, entangled in this sort of higher level beef. but you know, you think about that album, come home with me and Hey man, like, I mean, Cam was really on fire, going into this whole situation. And then he got kind of like, I don't say like exactly lost in the shuffle, but almost lost in the shuffle.You know? and you just kind of wonder how his career would've gone, you know, let's say if, sort of he hadn't been like Dame's guy, you know, if what if he had gone to Def Jam? You know, what would that have looked like? could he have been on the level of somebody who signed? You know, like, I don't know.I mean, around that time, I think, Rick Ross signed a Def Jam, was it? [00:43:41] Dan Runcie: Ross, Jeezy, yeah. [00:43:43] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, like, you know, I think certainly has, you know, comparable ability, Tyler and those guys and, you know, I think both of them went on to have, You know, sort of like more longevity. but like, you know, I think, some of the Dipset classics and some of the solo stuff too, I mean, it's pretty unbeatable.So, you know, I just wonder, he's had a really good career, either way. But like, you know, I don't know that he ever like, broke through that next level, consistently, you know, to the point where he could just kind of stay there indefinitely. And, I wonder if he might have, if things had kind of gone differently in the Jay-Dame scenario, [00:44:21] Dan Runcie: The man had men wearing pink. He started his own fashion. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's true. Unbelievable. With that, I think it's a good chance to hit through some of these categories, cuz I think you're jogging my memory the few things here. what do you think is the best signing that happened under Roc-A-Fella? [00:44:39] Zack Greenburg: Well, I guess you can't count Jay if he, you know, co-founded Right Label.But, you know, I'd say probably Kanye. it's hard to top that. And when, you know, when you think about those first few albums, you know, I mean, he brought an element into hip hop, into the mainstream that just wasn't there. and, you know, I don't think, you know, if you hadn't had Kanye, in the pink polo, and you know, talking about his feelings, like, I don't know if you get Drake right.I think that he kind of changed the discourse. he brought hiphop to the mainstream and then he also like brought a different sort of voice to hiphop, And it was fantastically lucrative, obviously, for everybody involved. So, yeah, I agree with Kanye, for sure. [00:45:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah, agreed. And then just given the longevity there, even into the early 2010s, still putting out records under the Roc-A-Fella Records umbrella that still went back to them.And longevity that lasted longer than most of the people that were assigned to that label. So I think it has to be him. Best Business Move made, I know we talked about a few of them, but what do you think is the best business move that to come from the Roc-A-Fella era? [00:45:47] Zack Greenburg: Hmm. I mean, it's funny now that we look at it, I mean, in a way, know, the deal itself that set up Roc-A-Fella was not, you know, it wasn't a bad deal, but it was not the best, move.It wasn't the best kind of financial arrangement. you know, I mean, Rocawear is kind of an offshoot. Maybe that's cheating, but I'm gonna go with Rocawear because I think in some ways they're like, well, we can't get a hundred percent of the money on this thing, so we're gonna create an adjacent brand that's like very clearly associated with it that we can really monetize fully.And you know, I mean they got paid, I mean that, that company was doing hundreds of millions in revenue and they sold it for hundreds of millions. So, you know, I think they made more off of Roca wear, than they ever made off of Roc-A-Fella. So I'll go with Rocawear, we can talk more about it when we do the full Roca too.[00:46:36] Dan Runcie: I know. Yeah. I'd Rocawear as well. I won't go into the company itself cuz Yeah. We'll get into that in the next one. But I do think the good thing about that was it was a precursor to how artists now are thinking about their own revenue, their own business models, right? How they're using streaming, how they're using anything else that gives them a platform.Use that to grow your audience, use that to grow the awareness while generating money for that, establish the base. So some of those other business units were likely more influential, thinking about them doing the deals with Def Jam and then them having the hard knock life tour. But I do think Rocawear was the best business thing to come through there for sure.[00:47:18] Zack Greenburg: And just a s like a subset of that. I think the philosophy that was embodied by Roca wear, you know, the idea of like, they wanted to go Roca wear started because they wanted to go. there, there was this Italian, knitwear brand. iceberg. And they like went to the iceberg offices and said, Hey, can you give us some free t-shirts or something for wrapping about your thing?And they're like, or no, I think they wanted an endorsement deal. They wanted some cash for an endorsement. and then the executives were like, we'll give you some free t-shirts. And, Dave was like, this is stupid. Let's go start our own thing. So, but I think that was really the beginning of, you know, like, I'm not gonna give, free publicity to other brands.I'm just gonna go start my own thing and rap about it. Like other rappers have done it. But, it became so pervasive for Jay-Z's mindset. It wasn't just like, I'm gonna do my own clothing line and I'm sorry, I'm gonna do my own champagne. I'm gonna do my own cognac. I'm gonna try to do my own car.I'm gonna try to do like a freaking video game, you know, he was involved in so many things that kind of sprung from that. so I think the implications were much broader than just, the clothing aspect. [00:48:28] Dan Runcie: Agreed. Next one here is the dark horse business move. So one that we actually haven't talked about, but I do think is one that Roc-A-Fella definitely lead into was the Jay-Z and Nas beef.The controversy that this was able to stem and start, I briefly mentioned Summer Jam 2001, but everything from then and just the drama from there, the two of them back and forth, Jay drop in takeover that, NAS drop in Ether, that whole back and forth was able to then create so much interest. They had all those beef DVDs that were g blowing up in the two thousands, I think largely came up cause of how they were able to reignite beef from essentially the biggest beef that hip hop had seen since Biggie and Tupac several years earlier.Yeah, it was huge and the level of. Bars that I think we're able to get the songs they're able to get back and forth. Just the impressiveness of Nas essentially taking on this whole entire unit by himself. People can debate whether or not who won and lost, whether you're looking specifically from a battle perspective versus who won in the long term.But we eventually see them come together on American gangster and they continue this f familiar relationship ever since. But I do think that this was the height of the time to really sell controversy. Obviously we saw 50 cent and others continue to do that too, you know, their own, putting their own flavor on as well.But I do think that Jay-Z and Nas Beef still was one of the little crown jewels that they had with this. [00:50:05] Zack Greenburg: Absolutely. And, you could tell that it was like there was real enmity there. but also, you know, the fact that it, it never turned violent, I think was just. I think it was really good for hip hop, and I don't think it was ever going to turn violent, but I think again, there was just this kind of like national paranoia around hip hop and, there is, you know, in waves.I think it was just a, good reminder that you can have like a spirited dispute and, it's okay and it's entertainment, you know? and it's, nothing that anybody needs to be afraid of. So, you know, of course like credit to Jay and Nas for resolving it amicably, but man, you know, like just being in New York and that time and like the Barbs going back and forth and man, I think that's the only time that, like a beef has gotten so nasty that, a rapper's mother has like, made him basically apologized for saying something mean, which, I think that was Jay-Z's response to Ether. I think Ether was sort of like the pinnacle of it and Jay-Z's response to it was like, not quite as good, like, how do you top ether? but I think Jay-Z's was just like, viscerally, like, you know, won't get too deep into it because if, Jay-Z had to like, call in to apologize for it, you know, I dunno if we can even talk about it on a podcast.But yeah, I mean just, to have that end, you know, like very amicably I think was just so good for everybody involved. And then, you know, I think it's really fun to watch, Jay and Nas as their relationship has evolved. And, you know, Nas was sort of always like the one who was sort of behind, when it came to the business of things.and then, you know, like he really was music first all the time. And, you know, I think some people thought that he would never really kind of blossom as a businessman, but then, you know, he became sort of the leader, within hip hop entering the venture capital world and, you know, created this great, Queensbridge Venture partners and, you know, invested early and just about every startup you can name and has had all kinds of fantastic exits.And, you know, I think it's so funny that Jay-Z then started MVP, you know, Marcy. So it, it's like definitely like a nod to Nas, you know, each of them naming their venture fund after the project where they grew up. So, I think that's super cool. And, you know, they still like drop these little subliminal, I don't know, like references, where you could tell they're kind of like tweaking each other, just like.You know, like sibling rivalry kind of thing. which is I think, really fun to watch. And, you know, I think that there's some friendly competition around deals and so forth these days. But it's just, it's so fascinating to like, watch the evolution from this real knockdown, drag out, very personal beef, that occurred, you know, to now like, sort of like comparing deal flow.And I think it speaks very positively toward like, the evolution of the business of hip hop. [00:53:03] Dan Runcie: Definitely. You think about things that they wrapped about in their most recent, songs that have been popular, right? Like Nas's song where he calls himself Cryptocurrency Scarface, or Yeah, yeah.Jay-Z. what was that line in God did with Khali where he is like, oh, we had cap tables, not that cap table, or something like that. I mean, he's clearly leading into that stuff. What do you think is the missed opportunity if of any, from Roc-A-Fella besides the split, cause I know we've talked about that, but there any other missed opportunities, especially from that 96 to 03, 04 range?[00:53:37] Zack Greenburg: I think it's Armadale Armadale, like, and you know, that kind of came to be, I think of anybody that was more Biggs's pet project, than Jay or Dame. Although, you know, Jay was kind of trying to make it happen. He would, he had it. If you recalled the MTV Unplugged album, which as actually might be my favorite Jay-Z album of all time. It's kind of cheating cause it's not a studio album, but, it's so good. He's backed up by the race anyway. He's like, some point he's like, I need to stop for some Armadale. I need an army break, you know, he was really trying to shout it out everywhere he could. But already when they started doing that, you know, they were on the outs I think.And, I think Jay-Z wasn't fully invested in it because why would he get fully invested in it? And then another thing that he was partners with Bigs and Damon, I don't think anything against Bigs, obviously. And I think they're totally cool now. And they've, been doing some stuff together more recently.but like, why would he go do that when he could just wait and then do something on his own? But, you know, I mean, Armadale could have been cRoc, right? if they'd done it right, there's no reason that it couldn't have been. I mean, it's the same formula. It's like European unknown, whatever.And then, you know, put it in videos, put it in songs, and, you make it, you know, whatever it's gonna be. And you know, we've seen what Jay has done with Deuce and Armando Biac, so we know he can do it. It's not only Puff who can do it, only a few people who can do it. Levelly can do it, but like Jay and Puff can do it and done it. And Jay could have done it with Armadale, just, you know, At the timing just didn't quite work out. [00:55:03] Dan Runcie: I think Armadale had one memorable shout out from the Jay-Z song. It was, excuse me, miss, right where he is talking about Armadale popping off. but that's also the same song. I think he gave Cristal a pretty big shout out there where he is like, it's not Cristal, it's Cristal, right? But then a couple years later, he is like, no like obviously we're done with Cristal because of, you know, comments, racist comments that the founder or the CEO had said at the time, my missed opportunity is one that highlights something that I think Jay-Z did well, but it probably could have done more of.And that's movie soundtracks. If you ask certain Jay-Z fans, I do think that they have American gangster as one of their top Jay-Z albums, as they should. It's a great album. I honestly think the album's probably even better than that movie is in particular points. But Jay-Z, so that movie, that soundtrack comes out 2007.He missed, I think an entire wave of times when movie soundtracks, in my opinion, were even, were just bigger deals than they are by even 2007 and even later on. And now I think it's very hit or miss that you could even get a soundtrack to that level. But especially during the Roc era. And I know that he had songs that were popular on the, but really being the mc behind an entire soundtrack in that type of way, I think could have been there probably could have been more opportunities to do something like that earlier on.[00:56:26] Zack Greenburg: Oh, I like that's a really deep cut. [00:56:28] Dan Runcie: So a few more things here on Roc-A-Fella, Well, we've seen just continued spats back and forth. Not necessarily jabs, but just comments back and forth between Jay and Dame. It's been nearly 20 years since this split. We've definitely seen more from Dame than Jay, and it's one of those things where it does become a bit sad to see and frustrating to see at times and not be expecting to be best of friends.We have seen Jay-Z say things that are quite complimentary. When he got inducted into the Roc and Roll Hall of Fame, he did shout out both him and Biggs and say, Hey, this wouldn't have happened without either of you, regardless of what had happened, you know, in our past. Gotta give you guys both shouts for that.But then we've also seen Dame say things during the years, and I think he's. Alternated on whether or not he's wanted to speak on them and stuff. But it's one of these things that is a bit frustrating to see because I think about it when I think about NBA players and how they've had issues over the years.Kobe and Shaq, of course, infamously, they continue to talk about each other for years and then eventually they came and they had that sit down chat on TBS, right? Where they're talking back and forth. If they and Dame ever did something like that, they don't even have to go do it on some platform. They could do it on their own thing.It would be box office. It would be great to be able to see that and just see how, then hear them talk things out. Because even another NBA thing, Kevin Garnet and Ray Allen of course said, had their infamous dispute because Ray Allen went to go join the Miami Heat. Kevin Garnet, very intense, hated that that was their rival.But then after Ray Allen had walked past him at the 75th anniversary thing last year, that's when KG was like, okay, what if Ray Allen passes the same way, passes away the same way that Kobe Bryant did? I would, yeah, be very upset with myself if that ever happened. So it's like, Hey, you guys are both in your 50s now.You never know what can happen. We're seeing a lot of artists and a lot of entertainers that we love that are around the same age as Jay and Dame have unfortunate health scares. If there's a way that, not even that it needs to be public just for our consumption, but if there's a way to see them ever rekindle things at that perspective, that would be nice to see, at least in a public way.[00:58:44] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I mean, I think it'd be great. I just don't know. I just don't know that it would happen, you know? I mean, I think that Jay has so fully moved on. I just don't know if, he would do it. and I think just sort of like the nature of Dame, is to sort of like want the spotlight and I think James just kind of like wouldn't want to deal with that, you know?I think Dame would want to come into it with sort of like equal billing and it kind of goes back to a strategy that Jay has had, throughout his career, which is like, you know, I think he learned this when he had the lion. I'm about a dollar, what the fuck is 50 cent? And that was like when nobody knew 50 cent was, and it kind of catapulted him into the conversation even though within hip hop Dash is obviously.You know, really well known and, let's say highly respected by some, maybe infamous to others, but, you know, he's definitely a known quantity. I think in the national conversation, Damon Dash is not known. And I think that now that Jay-Z is in this sort of international phase of his, you know, of his career, like that same philosophy might apply.Like, I don't want to sort of like give free publicity to somebody, you know, for no reason. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, maybe if you were in some kind of legacy burnishing mode and like, you know, mending fences or something like that, but it might have to come down to some kind of like, somebody has a health issue situation, you know, for it to really like resolve it in that way.And I just don't know, like again, in terms of it being, you know, like box office, I mean, it would be great versus, you know, yeah. but I don't know that people would tune in for like a Jay-Dame special or something like that. And I don't know that Jay, that's what Jay would want for his brand. I think, you know, Jay-Z wants to be like Jay and Bill Gates do a one-on-one sit down.Like he, I don't think he wants to like, go back to that period of his life. [01:00:46] Dan Runcie: I think that's fair because I think that's a good clarification because it would almost be like, it, maybe it would be less like the Kobe and Shaq thing would almost be more like Jordan and Pippen, where like Pippen is the one that's saying like, wild shit about Michael Jordan. Yes. And Michael Jordan's like, I'm in rooms right now considering selling my stake in the Charlotte Hornets for Yeah. Hundreds of millions of dollars right now, maybe even billions at this point. Yeah. So I think to your point, it likely is something that would mean a lot to people within hip hop, but not necessarily at this level where, you know, it's not like both of these people were clearly at doing the same thing.They were complimentary, but one was the artist. And the artist is always gonna have a bit of that poll there. So, yeah. And I guess we close things out, as we do with these case study breakdown episodes, we always break down who won the most from this record label in this era. Jay-Z's the obvious answer, but if we were to take Jay-Z out of the equation, who do we think is the person that won most from Roc-A-Fella records?[01:01:50] Zack Greenburg: Well, I mean, you know, I would almost argue that Dame was the big winner, over Jay, because Jay has gone on to do all these other things. And granted, like if he hadn't gotten to start and Dame hadn't been sort of like the early stage VC for him, You know, would he have, finally made it? I kind of think he eventually would've made it anyway.and I think that, you know, the Roc-A-Fella years were the peak of Dame's career. and, you know, he will always be, known in some circles and, you know, and revered in some circles for his role there. you know, in a way that every, you know, I'd say nothing he's done since, has sort of done for him if that makes any sense.[01:02:35] Dan Runcie: I get that. I followed that logic. My answer is Kanye and I think we talked about this a little bit, but I just. Because I think the core piece of the question is, where would this person have been without Roc-A-Fella records, right? I feel like Jay, or I feel like Dame probably would've found someone, probably even another artist in Harlem to attach his way to, I don't think there was anything stopping him in the late nineties era for doing what he eventually did. He could have teamed up with Irv Gotti and done it with Murder Inc. I think he could have like, done it with a few of these other groups potentially. But would ye have been in the same situation if it weren't for Roc-A-Fella? I think he clearly is talented, but I think he needed a little bit more of the stars aligning in the right way for him to have had the career path.Interesting. [01:03:21] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And I think, you know, specifically what he was selling, you know, nobody was buying at the time, right? Like and it took someone with street cred. someone like Dame, someone like Jay to take a chance on him and elevate him and sort of into the national conversation that then, you know, allowed there to be sort of more demand for it, and, for people to really get invested in it.So, yeah, I mean, I think kind of would've figured something out, but, you know, I really do wonder, I mean, he might've just gone a totally different group, you know, like he might've just been, like unknown in hiphop circles, but gone and done something totally different in, you know, in fashion circles and maybe become known, in hiphop circles, only in the way that somebody like Virgil Ablo became known. [01:04:02] Dan Runcie: Right. Or almost like a Jane d or someone like that. Mm-hmm. You have to be in it, and then you're like, do you hear the brilliance of the music that this person produced? [01:04:09] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a really good point. So it could have been a very different path for him too. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. It's a good one. [01:04:16] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Well, I know we could talk for another hour about Roc-A-Fella itself [01:05:14] Zack Greenburg: All right. Very good. Thanks again, Dan. [01:05:16] Dan Runcie: You too, Zach. Thanks, man. [01:05:17] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead.Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Will Page returns to the show for a “state of the industry” episode. In last year’s appearance he correctly called out the slowdown in streaming subscriptions, bubbles in web3, and more.Will believes the value of copyrighted music could hit $45 billion annually when the 2022 numbers are calculated — up $5 billion from 2021, which is already an all-time high for the industry.  Another massive shift is glocalisation”: the trend of local music dominating the domestic charts, as opposed to Western artists. This phenomenon isn’t just being felt in music, but across every industry, from film to education.We covered both these trends, plus many more. Here’s all our talking points: 1:33 Why the music industry is actually worth $40+ billion annually7:03 Physical music sales on the up and up10:47 How publisher and labels split up copyright value16:59 The rise of “glocalisation” will impact every industry34:39 DSP carnivores vs. herbivores 40:23 Why video vs. music streaming isn’t a perfect comparison 46:31 Music as a premium offering in the marketplace 51:38 How to improve streaming royalties  1:06:05 AI music benefits that goes overlooked 1:10:07 Will’s latest mix pays homage to Carole KingGlocalisation report: https://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/Assets/Documents/LEQS-Discussion-Papers/EIQPaper182.pdfWill Page's 2023 Believe in Humanity:https://www.mixcloud.com/willpagesnc/2023-believe-in-humanity/Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuest: Will Page, @willpageauthorThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmTrapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Will Page: I put so much emotional time and effort into making these mixes happen and going out for free.They get your DJ slots, but more importantly, it goes back to what makes me wanna work in music, which was a lyric from Mike G and the Jungle Brothers from that famous album done by the forties of Nature, where he said, it's about getting the music across. It's about getting the message across. It's about getting it across without crossing over.How can I get art across an audience without delegating its integrity? And it's such an honor to have this mixed drop in this Friday I mean, that's, made my year and we're not even into June yet.[00:00:30] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:56] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is all about the state of the music industry, and we're joined by the One and Only, Will Page. He is a fellow at the London School of Economics. He's an author of Tarzan Economics and Pivot, and he is the former chief economist at Spotify. Will's second time on the podcast. Now, the first time we talked all about the future of streaming and where things are going in music, and we picked that conversation, backed up.We talked about a bunch of trends including the glocalisation of music, which is from a new report that Will had recently put out. We also talked about why he values the music industry to be close to a 40 billion industry, which is much higher than a lot of the reports about recorded music itself.And we also talk about a bunch of the topics that are happening right now, whether it's ai, how streaming should be priced, the dynamic between record labels and streaming services, and a whole lot more love. This conversation will always brings it with these conversations, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's our chat.[00:02:00] Dan Runcie: All right, today we have the one and only Will Page with us who is recording from a beautiful location. I don't know if you're listening to the pod you can't see, but will tell us where you are right now.[00:02:09] Will Page: So great to be back like a boomerang on Trapital. Dan, and I'm coming to you from the Platoon Studios. Part of the Apple Company Platoon is our label services company, which is owned by Apple. They're doing great stuff with the artists like Amapiano music from South Africa. And the best place I can describe to you here, it's like a Tardus.Have you've ever seen Dr. Who? There's a tiny door in this tall yard music complex in North London just behind Kings Cross. When you enter that tiny door, you enter this maze of the well class spatial audio recording studios of Apple. And it's an honor they've given me this location to come to Trapital today.[00:02:41] Dan Runcie: Well we're gonna make the best of it here and it's always great to have you on, cuz Last year, last year's episode felt like a state of the industry episode, and that's where I wanna start things off this year with this episode.A couple months ago, you put out your post in your Tarzan economics where you said that this industry is not a 2020 5 billion industry, the way others say. Mm-hmm. You say, no, this is almost a 40 billion industry. So let's break it down. How did you arrive there and what's the backstory?[00:03:12] Will Page: I get goosebumps when you say that you think like 10 years ago we were talking about a 14 billion business and now it's a 40, you know, skews a slurred Scottish pronunciation, but let's just be clear from one four to four zero, how did that happen?Well the origins of that work, and you've been a great champion of it, Dan, is for me to go into a cave around about October, November and calculate the global value of copyright and copyright is not just what the record labels publish, that famous IFPIGMR report that everyone refers to, but it's what collecting studies like ask F and BMI collect what publishers generates through direct licensing.You have to add A plus B plus C labels, plus collecting societies plus publishers together. Then the complex part, ripping out the double counting and doing all the add-backs, and you get to this figure of 39.6 billion, which as you say, you round it up, it begins with a four. And I think there's a few things that we can kind of get into on this front.I think firstly we should discuss the figure. I'll you a few insights there. Secondly, I think we should discuss the division. And then thirdly, I want to cover the physical aspect as well. So if you think about the figure, we've got 39.6 billion. We know it's growing. I think what's gonna be interesting when I go back into that cave later this year to redo that number, it's gonna be a lot bigger.Dan, I'll see it here on Trapital First. I think a 40 billion business in 2021 is gonna be closer to a 45 billion business in 2022. And one of the reasons why it's not labels and streaming, it's a combination of publishers are reporting record collections, essentially they're playing catch up with labels, booking deals that perhaps labels booked a year earlier.And collecting studies are gonna get back to normal after all the damage of the pandemic. And when you drive those factors in where you have a much bigger business than we had before. So for the people listening to your podcast who are investing in copyright, this party's got a waiter run. You know, don't jump off the train yet cause this thing is growing[00:05:18] Dan Runcie: And the piece I want to talk about there is the publishing side of this. If you look at the breakdown of the numbers you have, the publishing is nearly, publishing plus is nearly 13 billion itself. The major record labels own most of the largest publishers right now. Why isn't this number just automatically included? Wouldn't it be in everyone's advantage to include the fact that yes, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group are together, part of the entity that make this, whether it's them, it's Warner Chapel, it's others. Why isn't this just the top line number that's shared in all of the other reports?[00:05:56] Will Page: It would be nice if it was, and indeed, I think the publishing industry around about 2001 used to do this. They haven't done it since. But it's like spaghetti. It's the best way I can describe it. I mean, how do you measure publisher income? You know, is it gross receipts by the publisher? Is it the publisher plus the collecting Saudi? That is money that went straight to the songwriter and didn't touch the publisher. So what the publisher holds onto what we call an industry, a net publisher, shares all these weird ways of measuring this industry that we have to be clear on.And it's, not easy. but I think what we do in the report is we try and make it bite size. We try and make it digestible to work out how much of that publisher's business came through, CMOs, the S gaps and BMIs this X over here PS music and how much do they bring in directly? And that allows you to understand a couple of things.Firstly, how do they compare vi to vis labels in terms of their overall income? And secondly, how do they compare when they go out to market directly, let's say putting a sync and a TV commercial or movie versus generating money through collective licensing that is radio or TV via ASCAP or bmr. So you get an interpretation of how these publishers are making those numbers work as well.[00:07:03] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And then when we are able to break it down, we see a few numbers that roll up into it. So from a high level, at least what you shared from 2021, we have that 25.8 billion number from the recorded side. So that does fall in line with what we see from what the IPIs and others share. 10 billion Sure.From the publishing. And then you do have, the next 3.5 and then a little sliver there for royalty free and for the publishers' direct revenue that doesn't come from the songwriters. The next piece though, within the elements of how all of the revenue flows into that. We've talked a lot about streaming and we've talked, we'll get into streaming in a little bit, but I wanna talk about the physical side cause that was the second piece that you mentioned.We've all talked about vinyl, but it's not just vinyl. So could you talk a bit about where the trends are right now with physical sales and why this is such a huge factor for this number?[00:07:56] Will Page: Who would've thought on a Trapital podcast in May, 2023. We'll be talking about physical as a second topic on the agenda, but it's worth it. I mean, it's not a rounding era anymore. It's not chump change. in America, physical revenues largely vinyl outpaced the growth of streaming for the second year straight. It's not as big as streaming, but it's growing faster and it has been growing faster for two years now. That's crazy. Here in the uk the value of physical revenues to the UK music industry has overtaken the value of physical to Germany.Quick bit of history. For years, decades, Germans used to buy CDs. that's fallen off a cliff. They've given up on CDs. Whereas over here in Britain, we've all started buying vinyl again. So the value of vinyl in Britain is worth more than the value of CDs to Germans, that type of stuff you didn't expect to see.And if you go out to Asia, you see the CD market still strong. You've still got people who buy more than one copy of the same cd, of the same band. Don't ask me to explain the rationale for that, but it happens and it moves numbers. But after all this, when the dust settles, I mean a couple of observations, all the data to me is suggesting that 55, 60% of vinyl buyers don't actually own a record player.So I think it was Peter Drucker who said, the seller really knows what they're selling, and I don't think you're selling intellectual property or music cop right here. What we're actually selling is merchandise, you know, Taylor Swift, I got an email from Taylor Swift team saying they've got a marble blue vinyl coming out this week.Now we're talking about vinyl in the same way we used to talk about stone wash jeans, marble blue. This is like the fourth version of the same 11 songs priced at 29 99. Let's just figure that out for a second. I'm willing to give you 10 bucks a month to, access a hundred million songs on streaming services, but I'm also, it's the same person.I'm also willing to give you 30 bucks to buy just 10 of them. This is expensive music and I might not even be listening to it cause I don't even have a record player.[00:09:55] Dan Runcie: This is the fascinating piece about how we're calculating this stuff because the vinyl sales and all of that has been reported widely as a great boom to the industry and it has been.We've seen the numbers and in a lot of ways it brings people back to the era of being able to sell the hard copy of the thing itself, but it's much closer to selling a t-shirt or selling a sweatshirt or selling some type of concert merchant. It actually is the actual physical medium itself. So it'll be fascinating to see how that continues to evolve, how that embraces as well. On your side though, as a personal listener, do you buy any vinyls yourself that you don't listen to, that you just keep on display or?[00:10:34] Will Page: It's like your shoe collection, isn't it? Yes, right. Is the answer to that. But no, I mean, I will say that I got 3000 fi funk records in the house and they're all in alphabetical chronological order.So if they haven't been listened to, at least I know where to find them.[00:10:48] Dan Runcie: That's fair. That makes sense. So let's talk about the third piece of this, and that's the division of this. So you have the B2C side and you have the B2B side. Can we dig into that?[00:10:59] Will Page: Sure. this is, I think the backdrop for a lot more of the sort of thorny conversations happening in the music industry is now, you may have heard that in the UK we've had a three year long government inquiry into our business.We had the regulator turn over the coals, and so there's a lot of interest in how you split up this 40 billion dollar piece of pie. who gets what? And the division I'm gonna talk about here is labels an artist on one side. Songwriters and publishers on the other side as it currently stands, I would keep it simple and say two thirds of that 40 billion dollars goes to the record label and the artist, one third goes to the publisher and the songwriter.Now, when I first did this exercise back in 2014, it was pretty much 50 50, and when you see things which are not 50 50 in life, you're entitled to say, is that fair? Is it fair that when a streaming service pays a record label a dollar, it pays the publisher and the songwriter around 29 cents? If you're a publisher, a songwriter, you might say, that's unfair, cuz I'm getting less than them.I have preferences, issues, and I have any issues with this division. Well, let's flip it around. If you look at how B2B world works, licensing at the wholesale level, let's say you're licensing the bbc, for example, if your song's played on the bbc, you're gonna get 150 pounds for a play. 90 pounds goes to the songwriter and the publisher, 60 pounds goes to the artist and a record label.Now, is that fair? Why does the publisher win in the B2B market? By the record, label wins in the B2C market. And the one, the lesson I want to give your listeners is one from economics, and it's rarely taught university these days, but back in 1938, 1939, in a small Polish town called la. Now part of the Ukraine, ironically, free Polish mathematicians sat in a place called a Scottish Cafe, ironic for me, and invented a concept called Fair Division.And the question they posed was, let's imagine there's a cake and there's two people looking at that cake getting hungry. There's Dan Runcie over in the Bay Area and there's Will page back in Edinburgh. What's the best way to divide that cake up? And the conclusion they came up with is you give Will page, the knife.Aha, I've got the power to cut the cake. But you give Dan Runcie the right to choose which half. Damn, I've gotta make that cut really even otherwise, Dan's gonna pick the bigger half and I'll lose out. And this divider two model gave birth to the subject of fair Division and it simply asked, what makes a fair division fairer?How can I solve a preference? How can I solve for envy? I want that slice, not that slice. I'm unhappy cause Dan got that slice and not that slice. There's a whole bunch of maths in this. We had a third person that gets more complex. But I just wanna sow that seed for your listeners, which is when we ask questions like, why is it the label gets a dollar and the publisher gets 29 cents?There's gotta be some rationale why you know who bets first? Is it the label that bets first or the publisher who commits most? Is it label that commits most marketing spend or the publisher? These types of questions do with risk, often help answer questions of fair division, or to quote the famous Gangstar song, who's gonna take the weight?Somebody's gotta take a risk when you play this game, and perhaps there's a risk reward trade off, which is telling us who gets what Share of the spoils.[00:14:15] Dan Runcie: Let's unpack this a little bit because it's easy to see. May not be fair, but it's easy to see why the record labels get preference on the B2C side because as I mentioned before, the record labels have acquired a lot of the publishers, and especially in the streaming era, they were prioritizing that slice of the pie, their top line, as opposed to what essentially is the subsid subsidiary of their business, the publishing side.Why is it flipped with sync? Well, how did that dynamic end up being that way?[00:14:47] Will Page: That's an anomaly, which is actually blatantly obvious. You just don't think about it. And the way it was taught to me is anyone can record a song, but only one person can own a song. So I think, let's give an example of, I don't know, a Beach Boy song where I could ask for the original recording of that Beach Boy song to be used in the sync.Or I could get a cover band. So let's say I got a hundred thousand dollars to clear the rights of that song, and the initial split should be 50 50. If a band is willing to do a version of it for 10,000, the publisher can claim 90,000 of the budget and get the option. If the record label objects and says, well, I wish you used a master.Well, you got a price under the 10,000 to get the master in. So this kind of weird thing of bargaining power, if you ever hear. Let me scratch that again. Let me start from the top. Let me give you a quick example, Dan, to show how this works. One of my favorite sort of movies to watch when you're Bored and killing Time is The Devil's Swear, Prada great film.And then that film is a song by Seal called Crazy, incredible song, timeless. That guy has, you know, timeless hits to his name, but it's not him recording it. Now, what might have happened in that instance is the film producer's got a hundred thousand to get the song in the movie, and he's looking to negotiate how much you pay for publishing, how much you pay for label.Now the label is getting, you know, argumentative, wanting more and more, and the publisher is happy with a certain fee. Well, the film producer's got an option. Pay the publisher of the a hundred thousand, pay him 90,000, given the lion share of the deal. And then just turn the label and say, screw you. I'm gonna get a covers bant and knock me out.A decent version of it. And this happens all the time in TV films, in commercials, you'll hear covers of famous songs. And quite often what's happening there is you gotta pay the publisher the lion share of your budget and then just cough up some small chains to the covers bant to knock out a version.And then, so just a great reminder, Dan of anyone can record a song, but only one person can own the song that is the author. And that's why negotiating and bargaining power favors publishes in sync over the record labels.[00:16:59] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And as you're saying that, I was thinking through five, six other examples of cover songs I've seen in many popular TV shows and movies.And this is exactly why?[00:17:08] Will Page: It's always car commercials. For some reason, every car commercial's got cover in a famous song. You think, remember that weird Scottish guy down Ronie Trapital? Yeah. That's what's happened. The publishers pool the rug from under the record label's feet at negotiation table.Another super important observation about the glocalisation trend, Dan, is I'm gonna take one of those 10 countries as our spotlight, Poland. Now the top 10 in Polands or Polish, the top 20 in Poland, or Polish. In fact, if you go to the top 40, it's pretty much all Polish bands performing in Polish, and you could say that's localization.But stop the bus. Most of those acts are performing hip hop, which is by itself a US genre. So perhaps we've got glocalisation of genre, but localization of language and artist. And that's a very important distinction for us to dissect. And perhaps it's for the anthropologist, the sociologist, to work out what's going on here.But it's not as straightforward as it's just local music. It's local music, but it's global genres, which is driving us forward.[00:18:08] Dan Runcie: And that's a great point for the people that work at record labels and other companies making decisions too, because there's been so much talk about hip hop's decline. But so much of that is focused on how this music is categorized and a lot of it's categorized solely on.What is considered American hip hop. But if you look at the rise of music in Latin America, which has been one of the fastest growing regions in the world, most of that music is hip hop. Bad Bunny considers himself a hip hop artist. You just brought up this example of Polish hip hop being one of the most popular genres there.So when we think about. How different genres get categorized, which genres get funding. Let's remember that key piece because hip hop is this culture and it's global, and that's gonna continue. So let's make sure that we are not taking away from a genre that is really one of the most impactful and still puts up numbers if we're categorizing it in the right way.[00:19:04] Will Page: Damn straight. I mean, I think genres are often like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and in a paper published by London School of Economics, I was honored to use that line that I think I said on trap last time, which is rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live. Rap could be the genre, hip hop could be the lifestyle.Maybe what those Polish acts getting to the top of the charts of doing is representing a lifestyle, but they're doing it in their mother tongue.[00:19:28] Dan Runcie: Well said. Agreed. Well, let's switch gears a bit. One topic that I wanna talk about, and I actually gave a talk recently, and I referenced you from this term, and its of music, was the glocalisation of music and why this is happening and what it means for Western music specifically in the us. But first, if you could define that term and explain why this is so important in music right now.[00:19:53] Will Page: Well, I'm so excited to be on Trapital talking about this because we are now officially published by London School of Economics, so I'm gonna make my mom and dad proud of me. At last Backstory, paperback of my book, guitars in Economics, retitled to Pivot. Apparently WH Smith's Travel and Hudson Travel said books with economics in their titles Don't sell an airport.So we've rebranded the whole book to Pivot and it's in airports, which is a result. that book, that paperback came out on the 6th of February and that night I was on the BBC one show and they had this great happy, clappy family friendly story. They wanted to bounce off me. They said, Hey, will, Isn't it great that the top 10 songs in Britain last year were all British ex?For the first time in 60 years, Britain got a clean sweep of the top 10 in the music charts. And I said, curb your enthusiasm because we're seeing it elsewhere. The top 10 in Germany, were all German. Top 10 in Italy, all Italian, ditto France, deto Poland. And if you go to Spain, the top 10, there were all Spanish language, but largely Latin American.So it's not just a British thing that we've seen this rise of local music on global streaming platforms. We're seeing it everywhere, cue some gulps and embarrassments live in the TV studio. But I made my point and I came out of that interview thinking. Well that stunned them. It's gonna stu more people.And I said about working on a paper called glocalisation, which with a Scottish accent, it's hard to pronounce. Let's see how you get on with it. Not localization and not glocalisation. Emerging to by definition and by practice glocalisation. I teamed up with this wonderful author, Chris Riva, who'd be a great guest on your show.He did a wonderful blog piece you may have read, called Why is There No Key Changes in Music anymore? It's a really beautiful piece of music writing and there isn't. Nobody uses key changes in the conclusion of songs. And we set out to do this academic study to explain to the world what's been happening in music and why it's relevant to everyone else.And what we saw across 10 European countries was strong evidence of local music dominating the top of the charts in these local markets on global platforms. Now history matters here. We didn't see this with local High street retailers, America, British, Canadian music dominated those charts. We still don't see it in linear broadcast models like radio and television, you know, it's still English language repertoire dominating those charts. But when it comes to global streaming, unregulated free market, global streaming, we see this phenomenal effect where local music is topping the charts. And you know, you look at what does it mean for us English language countries like ourselves?It means things get a little bit tough. It means exporting English language repertoire into Europe becomes harder and harder. Maybe I'll just close off with this quite frightening thought, which is Britain is one of only three net exporters of music in the world. The other two being your country, United States and Sweden.Thanks to a phenomenal list of Swedish songwriters and artists. And I can't think of the last time this country's broken a global superstar act since Dua Lipa in 2017. Dan, we used to knock them out one, two a year. 2017 was a long time ago, and it's been pretty dry since.[00:23:13] Dan Runcie: And that's a great point for the people that work at record labels and other companies making decisions too, because there's been so much talk about hip hop's decline. But so much of that is focused on how this music is categorized and a lot of it's categorized solely on.What is considered American hip hop. But if you look at the rise of music in Latin America, which has been one of the fastest growing regions in the world, most of that music is hip hop. Bad Bunny considers himself a hip hop artist, you just brought up this example of Polish hip hop being one of the most popular genres there.So when we think about, how different genres get categorized, which genres get funding. Let's remember that key piece because hip hop is this culture and it's global, and that's gonna continue. So let's make sure that we are not taking away from a genre that is really one of the most impactful and still puts up numbers if we're categorizing it in the right way.[00:24:07] Will Page: Damn straight. I mean, I think genres are often like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and in a paper published by London School of Economics, I was honored to use that line that I think I said on trap last time, which is rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live. Rap could be the genre, hip hop could be the lifestyle.Maybe what those Polish acts getting to the top of the charts of doing is representing a lifestyle, but they're doing it in their mother tongue.[00:24:32] Dan Runcie: Well said. Agreed. This is something that's been top of mind for me as well because technology in general has a way of making regions and making people in particular regions closer together than it does making the world bigger. It's like in, in a sense, technology can make the world seem bigger, but it actually makes it seem smaller, right? And I think that algorithms and bubbles that come from that are another symptom of this.But this is going to have huge implications for Western music. You mentioned it yourself. All of these markets that are used to being export markets, when they no longer have the strength to be able to have those exports, how does that then change the underlying product? How does that then change the budgets, the expectations of what you're able to make? Because if you're still trying to maintain that same top line revenue, you're still trying to maintain those airwaves you have, it's gonna cost you more money to do that, because you can't rely on the few Western superstars that you have to get, that you have to have equivalent of a superstar or at least a middle tier star in every region that you once had strong market share that you could export in.And it's gonna change cost structures. It's gonna change focus. And a lot of these expansions that we've seen of record labels, especially Western record labels, having strong footprints in different regions across the world, they're not just gonna need to have presence, they're gonna need to have strong results.And in many ways, try to rival the own companies that are in those comp, in those regions, the homegrown record labels, because every country is trying to do their own version of this and it's gonna be tight. This is one of the challenges that I think is only gonna continue to happen.[00:26:14] Will Page: You're opening up a real can of worms. I get it. Pardon to your listeners, we're getting excited here. Day of publication, first time we've been able to discuss it on air, but I know I'm onto something huge here and you've just illustrated why just a few remarks. One, some of the quotes that we have in the paper were just phenomenal. We have Apple included in the paper. We have Amazon, Steve Boom, the head of that media for Amazon in charge of not just music, but Twitch audio books, the whole thing. He's looking at all these media verticals. He makes this point where he says, as the world becomes more globalized, we become more tribal. Stop right there, as he just nailed it.What's happening here? It's The Economist can only explain so much. This is what's so deep about this topic. I wanna toss it to the anthropologist of sociologists to make sense of what I've uncovered, but it's massive. Now let's take a look at what's happening down on the street level with the record labels and the consumers. You know, the record labels are making more money and they're devolving more power to the local off seats. You know the headcount in the major labels, local off season, Germany, France, and Vietnam or wherever is doubled in the past five years. It hasn't doubled in the global headquarters. That's telling you something.If you look at how labels do their global priority list, maybe every month, here's 10 songs we want you to prioritize globally. So I had a look at how this is done, and across the year I saw maybe 8, 10, 12 artists in total, and there's 120 songs. There's not that many artists. You think about how many local artists are coming out the gate every week hitting their local labels or local streaming staff, up with ideas, with showcases and so on.Not a lot of global priority. Then you flip it and you think about the consumer, you know, they've had linear broadcast models for 70 years where you get what you're given. I'm gonna play this song at this time and you're gonna have to listen to it. FM radio, TV shows now they're empowered with choice and they don't want that anymore.They want what's familiar. What comforts them. They want their own stars performing in their own mother tongue topping those charts. So this has got way to go. Now, a couple of flips on this. Firstly, what does this mean for artists? And then I'm gonna take it out of media, but let's deal with artists.Let's imagine a huge festival in Germany. 80,000 people now festival can now sell out with just German X, no problem at all. So when the big American X or British X commanded like a million dollars a headlining fee, you wanna go play that festival. That promoter can turn around and say, sorry man, I can't generate any more money by having you on my bill.How much are you gonna pay me to get on stage? Price maker, price taker? You see what happens. And then the last thing, and there's so much more in this paper for your listeners to get to, and let's please link to it and you'll take, I'll take questions live on your blog about it as well, but. There's a great guy called Chris Deering, the father of the Sony PlayStation. Did you play the Sony PlayStation back in the day? Were you're a fan of the PlayStation.[00:29:08] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah. PS one and PS two. Yeah. Okay.[00:29:11] Will Page: You, oh, so you, you're an OG PlayStation fella. So he's the father of the PlayStation and launching the PlayStation in the nineties and into the nineties. He offered us observation, which is when they launched a SingStar, which was karaoke challenge.In the PlayStation, he says, we always discussed why the Swedish version of SingStar was more popular in Sweden than the English version Science. Intuitive enough. Let me break it down. Gaming back then was interactive music was not, you interacted with your PlayStation, that's why you killed so much time with it. Music was just a CD and a plastic case that broke your fingernails when you tried to open it. That's how the world worked back then and gaming offered you choice. I could try and do karaoke with those huge global English language hits where I could go further down the chart and buy the Swedish version and sing along to less well known Swedish hits. And the consumer always picked the Swedish version. So as a bellwether, as a microcosm, what I think Chris Ding was teaching us was we saw this happening in gaming long before you started seeing it happen with music. 20 years ago when there was interactive content, which gaming was, music wasn't, and consumers had a choice, which gaming offered a music didn't.They went local. Today, Dan, we're dealing with music lists, A interactive, and B offers choice. And what we're seeing is local cream is rising to the top of the charts.[00:30:33] Dan Runcie: And we're seeing this across multimedia as well. We're seeing it in the film industry too. Even as recent as five, 10 years ago, you release any of the blockbuster movies that were successful in the us, almost all of them had some overseas footprint.Some of them definitely vary based on the genre, but they were always there. But now China specifically had been such a huge market for the Hollywood and Box office specifically, but now they're starting to release more of their own high ed movies and those are attracting much more audiences than our export content can one.Two, the Chinese government in general is just being very selective about what they allow and what they don't allow. And then three, with that, that's really only leaving certain fast and furious movies and Avatar. That's it. The Marvel movies are hit and missed depending on what they allow, what they don't allow, and how, and it's just crazy to see the implications that has had for Marvel Studios for everyone else in Hollywood as well.When you think about it, and we're seeing this across multimedia, I think there's a few trends here that makes me think about, one is. Population growth in general and just where those trends are and how different corporations can approach the opportunity. Because I look at Nigeria, you look at Ethiopia, these are some of the fastest growing countries in the world.And you look at the music that is rising more popular than ever, whether it's Amapiano or it's Afrobeats, that's only going to continue to grow. And that's only from a few regions in the huge continent of Africa. So when we're thinking about where success is gonna come from, where that lines up with infrastructure, people have been seeing it for years.But the reason that we're seeing the growth in Africa, the growth in Latin America, the growth in a lot of these markets is this trend of glocalisation and it's only going to increase. So if we're thinking about where we wanna invest dollars, where we wanna build infrastructure in the future, we not just being folks that live in the western world, but also elsewhere in the world, this is where things are heading.[00:32:37] Will Page: Let me come in down the middle and then throw it out to the side. So, Ralph Simon, a longtime mentor of mine, is quoted in the paper and where he's actually gonna moderate the address here at the Mad Festival here in London, which is for the marketing and advertising community here, where he says, what you've uncovered here that headwind of glocalisation is gonna affect the world of marketing and advertising this time next year.That's what will be the buzzword in their head. So if you think about, I don't know, a drinks company like Diagio, maybe they've got a globalized strategy and a globalized marketing budget. When they start seeing that you gotta go fishing where the fish are and the fish are localized, they're gonna devolve that budget and devolve that autonomy down to local offices. So the wheels of localization, this rise of local, over global, they've only just got started, if I've called it right. We're onto something way bigger than a 20 minute read LSE discussion paper. This goes deep, deep and far beyond economics. But then you mentioned as well China, I mean just one offshoot observation there, which is to look at education.If you look at the UK university system, about a third, if not more, of it is subsidized by the Chinese government and Chinese students here. Great for business, slightly dubious in its business, besties, charging one student more than another student for the same product. But that's what we do over here.And I recently, we made a fellow of Edmar University's Futures Institute, which is an honor to me, you know, gets me back home more often. Fine. And I was learning from them that. The quality of students coming from China to study here in Britain and across Europe is getting worse and worse. Why? Cuz the best students have got the best universities in China.They no longer need to travel. So there's a classic export import dilemma of, for the past 10, 15 years, universities have built a complete treasury coffer base of cash around selling higher education to the Chinese. And now the tables are turning. I don't need to send my students to you universities anymore.I'll educate them here. Thank you very much. So, like I say, this stuff is a microcosm. It's got a can of worms that can open in many different directions[00:34:39] Dan Runcie: And it's gonna touch every industry that we know of to some extent, especially as every industry watches to be global to some extent. This is going to be a big topic moving forward.Let's shift gears a bit. One of the terms that was really big for us. That came from our podcast we did last year. We talked about herbivores and we talked about carnivores, and we talked about them in relation to streaming. We haven't touched on streaming yet, and this will be our opportunity to dig down into it, but mm-hmm.For the listeners, can we revisit where that came from, what that means, and also where this is heading? What does this mean for music streaming right now as it relates to the services and competition?[00:35:24] Will Page: Well, when I first came on Trapital, that was in a small Spanish village of Cayo De Suria and I didn't think I'd come up with an expression that would go viral from a small village in Spain to be, you know, quoted from in Canada, in America.And Dan, this is quite hilarious. we have a new secretary of state of culture here in the UK. The right Honorable MP, Lucy Fraser KG, Smart as a whip. Brilliant. And when I first met her, you know what the first thing she said was, I listened to you on Trapital. I wanted to ask you about this thing you've got going called herbivores and carnivores.So right the way through to the corridors of power, this expression seems to have traveled. What are we talking about? Well, the way I framed it was for 20 years we've had these streaming services, which essentially grow without damaging anyone else. Amazon is up. Bigger subscriber numbers. Apple's got bigger subscriber numbers.YouTube and Nancy's bigger subscriber numbers. And then Spotify. Nancy's bigger subscriber numbers. Everyone's growing each other's gardens. That's fine. That's herbivores. What happens when you reach that saturation point where there's no more room to grow? The only way I can grow my business is stealing some of yours.That's carnivores. And the greatest example is simply telcos. We're all familiar with telcos. We all pay our broadband bills. How do telcos compete? Everybody in your town's got a broadband account, so the only way you can compete is by stealing someone else's business. The only way here in Britain Virgin Media can compete is by stealing some of skies.The only way that at and t competes is by stealing some of com. So that's carnival competition. Now, the key point for Trapital listeners is we don't know what this chapter is gonna read like cuz we've never had carus pronounce that word correctly. Carus behavior before. We've never seen a headline that said, Spotify's down 2 million subs and apple's up 2 million, or Amazon's up 3 million and you know, YouTube is down 3 million.We don't know what that looks like. So I think it's important for Trapital to start thinking about logical, plausible scenarios. You kick a one obvious one, which is again, a lesson from the telcos. When we do become carnivores, do we compete on price or do we compete on features? Let me wheel this back a second, you know, we'll get into pricing in more depth later. But downward competition on price tends to be how carnivores compete, and that'll be a fascinating development given that we've not seen much change in price in 22 years in counting or as we saw with Apple, they roll out spatial audio, they charge more for it, they've got a new feature, and they charge more for that feature.So do we see downward competition blood on the carpet price competition, or do we see. Upward competition based on features. I don't know which one it's gonna be. It's not for me to call it. I don't work for any of these companies. I've worked with these companies, but I don't work for any of them directly.But we have to start discussing these scenarios. How's this chapter gonna read when we start learning of net churn amongst the four horseman streaming services that's out there. It's gonna be a fascinating twist, and I'm beginning, Dan, I'm beginning to see signs of con behavior happening right now, to be honest with you.I can see switchers happening across the four, so I think we're getting there in the US and the UK. What are those signs you see? I'm just seeing that in terms of subscriber growth, it's a lot bumpier than before. Before it is just a clear trajectory. The intelligence I was getting was, everyone's up, no one needs to bother.Now I flag, you know, I signed the siren. I'm beginning to see, you know, turbulence in that subscriber growth. Someone could be down one month, up the next month. Maybe that's just a little bit of churn. The ending of a trial period, you don't know. But now for me, the smoke signals are some of those services are seeing their gross stutter.Others are growing, which means we could start having some switching. I can add to that as well. Cross usage is key here. I really hammered this home during my 10 years at Spotify, which is to start plotting grids saying, who's using your service? This person, that person, and next person now ask what other services are they using?And some data from America suggests that one in four people using Apple music are also using Spotify. And one in four people using Spotify are also using Apple Music. Cross usage confirmed. So if that was true, what do you make of that? With a public spending squeeze? With inflation, with people becoming more cost conscious in the economy with less disposable income, maybe they wanna wheel back from that and use just one, not two. And that's where we could start seeing some net churn effects taking place as well. So, you know, imagine a cross usage grid in whatever business you're working on. If your Trapital listeners and ask that question, I know who's using my stuff, what else are they using? Um, that's a really, really important question to ask to work out how this carnivore scenario is gonna play out.How are we gonna write this chapter?[00:40:23] Dan Runcie: This is interesting because it reminds me of the comparisons that people often make to video streaming and some of the dynamics there where prices have increased over the years. I know we've talked about it before to tend to a 12 years ago Netflix was cheaper than Spotify was from a monthly, US price group subscription.And now tough, tough. It's right. And now it's nearly twice the price of the current price point. That it is. The difference though, when we're talking about when you are in that carnival, when you're in that carnival market, what do you compete on? Features or price? Video streaming, you can compete on features essentially because the content is differentiated.If you want to watch Wednesday, that Netflix series is only one platform that you can watch it on. Yeah, you need to have that Netflix subscription, but in music it's different because if you wanna listen to SZA's SOS album, that's been dominating the charts. You can listen to it on any of these services.So because there are fewer and fewer limitations, at least, if your goal, main goal from a consumption perspective is to listen to the music, how do you then differentiate, which I do think can put more pressure on price, which is very interesting because there is this broader pricing debate that's happening right now about why prices should be higher.And we've seen in the past six plus months that Apple has at least raised its prices. Amazon has done the same, at least for new subscribers. Spotify has announced that it will but hasn't yet and this is part of that dynamic because on one hand you have these broader economic trends as you're calling them out, but on the other hand you do have the rights holders and others pushing on prices to increase.And then you have the dynamic between the rights holders and then the streaming services about who would then get the increased revenue that comes. So there's all of these fascinating dynamics that are intersecting with this her before shift to carnivores[00:42:23] Will Page: For sure. Let me just go around the block of those observations you offered us. All relevant, all valid and just, you know, pick off a few of them. If we go back to Netflix, I think Netflix has a, not a herbivore. I'm gonna talk about alcohol here cause it's late in the day in the UK. A gin and tonic relationship with its competitors. That is, if Dan Runcie doesn't pay for any video streaming service, and let's say Netflix gets you in and I'm the head of Disney plus, I say, well, thank you Netflix.That makes it easier for me to get Dan to pay for Disney Plus too. They compliment each other. They are genuine complimentary goods. They might compete for attention. You know who's got the best exclusive content, who's gonna renew the friends deal, whatever, you know, who's gonna get Fresh Prince of Bel Air on?That could be a switch or piece of content too, but when you step back from it, it's gin and tonic. It's not different brands of gin, that's really important technology, which is they've grown this market of video streaming. They've increased their prices and the same person's paying for 2, 3, 4 different packages.If I added up, I'm giving video streaming about 60 quid a month, and I'm giving music streaming 10 and the sixties going up and the music's staying flat. So it's bizarre what's happened in video streaming because the content is exclusive. Back to, how do music carnivores play out again? Could we see it play out in features?I listen to airport cause they've got classical and I listen to Spotify because it got discovered weekly. Is that plausible? Personally, I don't buy it, but you can sow that seed and see if it takes root, as well. I think just quick pause and Apple as well. I think two things there. They've launched Apple Classical. That's a very, very good example of differentiating a product because it's a standalone app like podcast as a standalone app. The way I look at that is you can go to the supermarket and buy all your shopping. You can get your Tropicana orange juice, you can get your bread, get your eggs, get your meat, get your fish or you could go to a specialist butcher and buy your meat there instead. Apple Classical for me is the specialist butcher as opposed to the supermarket, and they're offering both in the same ecosystem. It'd be incredible if they preload out the next iOS update and give 850 million people an Apple classical app.Imagine if they did that for Jazz, my friend. Imagine if they did that for jazz. Just if Apple's listening, repeat, do that for jazz. So there's one example. The other example from Apple is to go back to bundling. You know we talk about 9.99 a month. I chewed your ear off about this topic last time I was on your show.Just to remind your listeners, where did it come from? This price point in pound Sterling, in Euro in dollar that we still pay for on the 20th of May, 2023. It came from a Blockbuster video rental card that is when reps, he got its license on the 3rd of December, 2001. Not long after nine 11, a record label exec said if it cost nine 90 nines, rent movies from Blockbuster.That's what it should cost to rent music. And 22 years plus on, we're still there, ran over. But what does this mean for bumbling strategies? How much does Apple really charge? If I give $30 a month for Apple One, which is tv, music, gaming news, storage and fitness, all wrapped up into one price. Now, there's a famous Silicon Valley investi called James Barksdale.Dunno if you've heard of him from the Bay Area where you're based. And he had this famous quote where he said, gentlemen, there's only two ways to make money in business. Bundling and unbundling. What we've had for the past 10 years is herbivores. Unbundling. Pay for Netflix, don't pay for Comcast. Pay for Spotify. Don't pay for your CDs, fine. What we might have in the next 10 years is carnivores bundling, which is a pendulum, swings back towards convenience of the bundle and away from the individual items. So Apple, take 30 bucks a month off my bank balance. Please take 40. All I want is one direct debit. I don't care about the money, I just want the bundle.And I don't want to see 15 direct debits every month. I just wanna see one. I think that's a very plausible scenario for how the next 10 years it's gonna play out as we shift from herbivores to carnivores[00:46:31] Dan Runcie: And the bundle benefits, the companies that have the ability to do that, right? You can do that through Amazon Prime and get your video, your music, your free shipping or whatever is under that umbrella. You could do that through Apple. You mentioned all the elements under Apple one. Spotify has some element of this as well, whether it's exclusive podcasting and things like that. So you're starting to see these things happen, one thing that you mentioned though earlier, you're talking about going through the supermarket and all of the items that you could get there versus going to the specialty butcher.One of the unique aspects of the supermarket thing though, is that. You go into the supermarket, yes, you can get your high-end Tropicana, or you can get the generic store brand, but you're gonna pay more for that high-end Tropicana because you're paying for the brand, you're paying for everything else that isn't gonna necessarily be the same as the generic one.That may not necessarily be the same quality or the same taste. We're seeing this a bit in the streaming landscape now and some of the debates that were happening. You've heard the major record label executives talk about how they don't necessarily want their premium music. They see their content as HBO level and it's being in a playlist next to rain music, or it's next to your uncle that is playing some random song on the banjo and they're getting essentially the same price going to the rights holders for that song.And in the supermarket that's obviously very different, each item has its own differentiator there, or econ has its own price point there and its own cost, but that isn't necessarily the same thing in music. Of course, the cost of each of those tracks may be different, but the revenue isn't. So that's gonna be, or that already is a whole debate that's going on right now. Do you have thoughts on that?[00:48:21] Will Page: Well, you tossed top Tropicana, let me go grab that carton for a second. It's one of the best economic lessons I ever learned was visiting a supermarket in America cuz it's true to say that when you go into one of your American supermarkets, an entire aisle of that precious shelf space, it's dedicated to selling inferior brands of orange juice next to Tropicana.Just very quickly what's happening there, the undercover economist, if you want, is a bargaining power game. Tropicana knows The reason Dan Runcie pulled the car over, got the trolley, went into that supermarket is to get a staple item of Tropicana and other stuff. By the time it gets to the till, Tropicana could be $5.By the time he gets to till he spent $50. So here, subscriber acquisition cost contribution is really high. They're getting you into the mall. What you do once you're in the mall is anyone's business, but they got you in. Otherwise you would've gone to the deli across the street. So they could say to the supermarket, I'm gonna charge you $7 to sell that Tropicana for $5 in my supermarket.Supermarket knows this, they know that Tropicana's got the bargaining paris. They counter by saying, here's an entire shell space of awful brands of orange juice to curb your bargaining power to see if the consumer wants something different. Now is this Will Page taking a stupid pill and digressing down Tropicana Alley. No. Let's think about this for a second today, Dan, there's a hundred thousand songs being onboarded onto streaming services. Is there anybody what? Marching up and down Capitol Hill saying We want a hundred thousand songs. No, the floodgates have opened them. It's all this content. Two new podcasts being launched every minute.All this content, all of these alternative brands to Tropicana. But you just wanted one. And I think the record labels argument here is that one Cardinal Tropicana is worth more than everything else you're offering by its side. So we wanna rebalance the scales. Now this gets really tricky and very contentious, but what is interesting, if you wanna take a cool head on this topic, it's to learn from the collecting studies, which is not the sexiest thing to say on a Trapital podcast, but it's to look at your Scaps and your BMIs and understand how they distribute the value of money for music.Since their foundation in the 1930s, scap has never, ever treated music to have the same value. They have rules, qualifications, distribution, allocation practices, which change the value of music. And they don't have data scientists then. And to be honest, I don't think they have data scientists now, but they always have treated the value of music differently.When they were founded, they had a classical music distribution pot and a distribution pot for music that wasn't classical music. Ironically, their board was full of classical composers, and I think that's called embezzlement, but we'll leave that to the side. What we have here is a story of recognizing music as different value in the world of collecting Saudi.I call that Jurassic Park, but in the world of music streaming with all those software developers and engineers and data scientists, 22 years of 9.99 money coming in and the Prorata model, which means every song is worth the same for money going out, and that's your tension. That's your tension. How do you get off that?Tension is anyone's business. We got some ideas we can discuss. User-centric is one, autocentric is another. I've got a few ideas for my own, but I want your audience to appreciate. In straight no chaser language we call it. That's the undercurrent of what's going on here. How do you introduce Trapitalism to communism?[00:51:38] Dan Runcie: You mentioned there's artist centric, user-centric, but you mentioned some ideas you had of your own. What are those ideas?[00:51:44] Will Page: Can I bounce it off? Use my intellectual punch bag for a quick second. Yes, and I've worked 'em all. I've worked on the artist centric model. I've worked on artist growth models. That's up on YouTube. I've worked on user centric, but I'm just, I'm worried that these models, these propositions could collapse the royalty systems that these streaming services work under. The introduction of user centric or artist centric could become so complex, so burdensome, the royalty systems could break down.That's a genuine concern I have. It's not one you discuss when you talk about your aspirations and the land of milk and honey of our new streaming model that you envisage. Back in the engine room when you see how royalties are allocated and calculated and distributed out to right holders, I mean they're under stress anyway.Any more stress could snap it. So I come at this model, my proposition from the one that's least likely to break the system. I'm not saying it's the best model, but it's the least like least likely to have adverse impact on the system. And it came from my DCMS Select Committee performance in the UK Parliament, which your listeners can watch, we can give the link out, which is I said to the committee in terms of how you could change the model.What about thinking about duration? This wheel back since 1980s when B BBC radio plays, let's say Bohemian Rhapsody, it will pay for that song twice what it would pay for. You're my best friend, members of Queen wrote both songs, both released within three, four years of each other, but one lasts twice as long as another.So duration is not new. We factor in duration a lot in our music industry. We just never thought about it. If you look at Mexico, the Mexican collecting Saudi, which is so corrupt as an inside an army barracks, if you look there, they have sliding scales, duration. They factor in time, but they say the second minute is what?Less than the first. But I'm giving you more for more time just adding, decreasing scale. Germany, they have ranges in your country. America, mechanical licensing collective, the MLC in Nashville, they have overtime songs that last more than six minutes get a 1.2 multiplier. So I've been thinking about how could you introduce duration to this business?And the idea I've come up with is not to measure time. That'd be too complex, too burdensome. Every single song, measuring every second of consumption. How do you audit there? If you're an artist manager, but I wanna measure completion, then I think this is the answer. I want songs that are completed in full to receive a bonus and songs that are skipped before they end to receive a penalty.Not a huge bonus, not a huge penalty, but a tweak. A nudge that says, I value your attention. I value great songs, and you listen to these great songs and it captures my entire attention. You deserve something more. But if I skipped out after the first chorus, you deserve something less. I think that small nudge is a nudge in the right direction for this industry, and it wouldn't break the systems.So there it is. Tell me now, have I taken a stupid pill?[00:54:42] Dan Runcie: What I like about it, and I've heard other people in the industry mention this too, you're able to get something closer to what we do see in video streaming. I forget which app is specifically, but their threshold is 75%. So they acknowledge that yes, if you don't wanna watch the credits, you don't wanna listen to the closeout, that's fine.But if we at least get you for 75%, then we are gonna count that, and then that then can get used internally. That can then get used in different areas. But I think it provides everyone better data and analysis, much better data to be able to break down than. Whether or not you listen to the first 30 seconds, that's such a low threshold, but that's essentially where we are today.I think the biggest thing, regardless of what path is chosen, because as you and I both know, there's trade-offs to everyone. So instead of going through all the negative parts about it, I think it's probably more helpful to talk about it collectively, you accept the fact that there are trade-offs. You accept the fact that people are gonna try to game the system regardless of how you go about it.Because we have seen duration work elsewhere and it does get at that particular thing that we're trying to get at there is help there. And you mentioned other things such as, yes, if you're listening to the Bohemian Rhapsody, you, which I think is at least seven minutes and 15 seconds, most likely longer versus two minute song that is clearly idealized for the streaming era.There still should be maybe some slight difference there because listening to a minute and 30 seconds is very different than listening to five minute and 45 seconds to be able to hit that 75% threshold. So between that and then I've heard other topics such as which artists you start your session with should have some type of multiplier on there, and as opposed to someone that gets algorithmically recommended to you to be able to put some more onus on the on-demand nature of music streaming.The tough thing is that these things do get tough in general. Anytime there's any type of multiplier or factor in, there still is a zero sum pot that we're taking the money out of. So accepting the trade-offs, I like the direction, I think that there's a few ways to go about it that could make it more interesting, but in general, I do think that any of the proposed options I've seen at least, allow a bit more of a true economic reflection of where the reality is as opposed to where things are today.And I understand where things are today. It's easy. It's easy to report, it's easy to collect on and pay people out, relatively speaking. But like anything, there's trade offs.[00:57:14] Will Page: Yeah, it's really easy today. Even drummers can work out their royalties and no offense to drummers, but that's telling you something.But two points on my duration proposal. Firstly, you mentioned the word threshold there. That's crucial because we already have thresholds. Music, every streaming service has to measure 30 seconds, one interrupted play in order for our royalty to be crystallized. So I'm just adding a second threshold.I'm not reinventing the wheel. It's low marginal cost. Here I'm just saying, gimme the threshold of completion. I don't care how long the song is and how much of that song was consumed. Just tell me did it get to the finishing line, yay or nay. And remember that threshold has anomalies, as I tell in the book Pivot, and previously is a hardback tar in economics.That 32nd threshold is like the tail wagging the dog. You're seeing songs are getting shorter and the choruses are moved to the front. Why? Cause I got a hook you for 30 seconds. I don't care what happens after 31 seconds, just get me 30 seconds. And why should I write a longer song when I'm not incentivized to do so?So the grass isn't greener back on the other side of the fence. There's problems with our current model, and I think a way of like, Steering it back towards an attention economy is gonna help music win. Kevin, Netflix says that sleep is their biggest form of competition, but also valuing the art of songwriting.Let's get back to the song. Let's put the artist back in the haystack and focus on the art, the creative process a bit more too, and reward that when it's consumed, it's an entirety. Second thing and final thing to wrap up on, Dan, can I quickly tell you about a wedding I was at recently? Yeah. Well I love weddings cause you get to wear your kil.That's always a nice talking point. But I also love them because you get to speak to bands. I always forget to speak to the bride and groom. I just drift over to the band after the reception's over and chat to the band instead. And I was at a wedding recently and the band was there and they played celebration by Cool and the gang for the bride and the groom.They played a second song for their parents to come and join on the dance floor. Then the band went into a two hour, 50 minute medley, nonstop right away through the evening didn't stop. It's like, wow, the band were tight. Went over to them at the end of it, said Drums, bass, you are in syncopation. I could see like, you really are a tight band, but what earth were you doing?Doing a two hour, 15 minute medley. And they said, it's TikTok. Nobody wants to hear complete songs anymore. And my Pint Glass dropped the floor and they said that. I was like, Scott's people don't drop their drinks. But I dropped on this occasion because, what did you say? It's TikTok. Nobody wants to hear a full song.They just want snippets. So we just do mes instead. Now forget the economics and the legal arguments. That makes me worried about which path music is currently on. Right there we are in an attention economy and I think it's got a little bit wared. We've got a straight up on the tracks. So I think this proposal's got legs.[00:59:56] Dan Runcie: That's that story. That wedding from that, that story from that wedding you went to, that's like the Steve Lacy example, right? He went to his concert. His concert has been doing very well because of his song, bad habit. But then the people that are. At his show, the fans that are there, they could only recite that one instance of the song that's on TikTok.I don't like, not even the whole song, just that one instance of the song that are on TikTok. Granted, Steve Lace has been making music for a while. It wasn't all the fans that were there, but with this influx of him not being able to perform in bigger venues, people wanna hear this song. It's one thing for years we've become accustomed to musicians performing for audiences that only know their hit.Singles are the one that got the music video, but now a lot of them are experiencing hearing their fans only repeat back. That one moment that went viral on TikTok.[01:00:48] Will Page: What's this? It's called verse two. If you stick around long enough, you'll hear a third one as well. You know what? It made me also just play that one off with me here, which is that famous Fleetwood Mac clip that blew up on TikTok.Guy hanging off the back of the truck drinking a bottle of soda Singing Dreams. A 1981 song by Fleetwood Mac. It's 34 seconds, couple of things, firstly, that had about 90 million views, but had 843,000 impersonations on TikTok of people hanging off the back of a truck pretending to sing a Fleetwood Mac song.But secondly, could you have a Gen Z millennial go and pay like 120 pounds to see them at Wembley Stadium, the cost of a streaming service for a year who's only ever consumed 34 seconds of their repertoire? I mean, that's not implausible, right? What type of world are we living in , albums anyone? Sometimes,[01:01:35] Dan Runcie: And sometimes that's all it takes, sometimes that's all it takes, right? In some ways, the fact that we saw that much user-generated content from it, hundreds of thousands as you've just shared in that example, is huge. But it's crazy and this is actually a good transition to talk about AI because so much of the AI music that is relevant and has been top of discussion has been based off of popular artists.We know we're talking about the AI that's based on a viral song from the Drake and the weekend. Granted, that song got a lot of buzz, especially when it first came out. I don't know how many repeat listens it's gotten since, but that's not necessarily the point. None point more so none. Exactly, exactly, right?[01:02:19] Will Page: 20 million streams from 20 million listeners. Nobody streamed it twice, trust me.[01:02:25] Dan Runcie: You gave in at least one stream though, right? You gotta give it a blessing, right? What was your thought?[01:02:33] Will Page: Well, I'm gonna hand the torch over to Jessica Powell, the founder of Audio Shake, who I think is the most exciting company in music tech right now. And point your listeners towards her CK blog posting, which is this whole Drake Week weekend thing. Isn't it just a fuss over a remix? Paraphrasing the title, and it's a beautiful, that woman is inspirational, but she can write. She can write, which is like grabbing you by the luquette lapels and shaking seven shades of shit out of you.She really uses the power of the pen to express her words, to go back to remix culture. So I think inspired from her work. I would say two things here. I think the thorny legal issue that's going on here is consent. We've had remix culture for years. We've had computers involved in music creation for years.We need to see that in a continuation. But if you think about language of deep fakes, if I could manipulate the voice of Dan Ronsey and put that over a record without his consent, that's a red light, you know, I'm not being paranoid here, but there's a line that cannot be crossed. Dan once did not say those words, a computer generated those words. You could be liable for those words. How do we solve that? That's not just music, there's a whole, that's a whole spectrum of issues out there in society today that are gonna be affected by that. Music is a bell weather. That's a microcosm. It's the one that always gets hit first, but the rest are reaction stacked and ready to tumble.But on the positive side, you flip it from risk to opportunity. We think about catalog uplift for a second. That is how can release of new content drive demand in all content? As I've been saying, to record labels since 2018. That's a secret source. That's what you're trying to correct. The purpose of a new album is not just make that new album a splash.Get it to the top of the charts. Make sure you're in today's top hits. It's can you get the new fans to go back and listen to the old content? For some artists, it works. For others it doesn't. Do you fix what's broken or work with what's fixed? The greatest example is an artist that would love to hear on Trapital , Eminem, needs no introduction.When I look at his streaming data, All he needs to roll outta bed fart and burp on Spotify, and his catalog goes through the roof. His new content has got nothing to do with new content. It just inspires people to go back to the late nineties and early nineties and all those releases, which were so big back then.The new content's great. No disrespect, but it's like a reminder that there's this amazing catalog that you want to hear again and again, and it's a valuable catalog because that stuff is already recouped. A catalog dollar is worth way more to the bank account than a frontline dollar. There are other artists who can't make it work, and it's just for me.What happens if AI music solves that secret source of catalog uplift? So, here in the UK, we here at Platoon Studios are next door to Noel Gallica from Oasis, and there was recently an AI generated oasis, which is getting Noel Gallica Liam Gallica back together again. Artificial intelligence achieved this.Human beings can't achieve this. The two brothers don't get along, but AI sold it. That's cool. And Liam gave it a thumbs up. He's like, I love this walking. Good stuff. I'm not offended by ai. I embrace this. What did we see? No, a small spike in the AI version. A big spike in Oasis catalog. So for all the fear and paranoia on this topic, once we realize it can regenerate interest in catalog, I think you'll see the tables turn the sentiment change in our New York millisecond. Literally, they'll be like, I can make bucks out of this. This is a force of good, not a force of bad.[01:06:05] Dan Runcie: I would hope that that's what people take away from this whole narrative is that if you are the owners of the back catalog of Drake in the weekend, you probably saw some type of noticeable bump.Because even if people don't want to hear that song, they're still gonna go back and stream worse behavior, which in my opinion, is one of Drake's best songs because they want to hear that time and time again. Mm-hmm. And I think too, I'm glad you brought up Jessica and Audio Shake. I'm a small investor in the company and one of the things that I think she did well in that piece and others she's done is just laying the table stakes for where we are because.Even if the song itself isn't that good, A, I don't think we're at the point yet. We may get there eventually with AI, but I don't think we're at the point yet where people will listen to this music as a replacement. But if it could remind you of what's already there, that's what's valuable. If you let fans experiment and get them to play around with the tools that are available and upload their music as long as it can fit within certain parameters and isn't violating anything or trying to impersonate the artist itself, you can let them freely create in a way that even 10, 12 years ago, there are all these questions about people putting their songs on putting artist song on YouTube as user-generated content in a video.And over time you two was able to figure out how to get tagging properly so that artists could still be compensated for problem. Exactly. So that is possible, and I do think that eventually we can hopefully get to that point and I'm glad you mentioned Eminem. Two stats that always blow my mind, I'm sure you probably saw this one, but his 2005 Greatest Hits album was the sixth bestselling album, or the sixth bestselling hip hop album.I forget the exact stat, but it was one of the bestselling albums in the UK last year. And Lose Yourself is the most streamed song on Spotify from the two thousands. So when we talk about longevity and we talk about him, I mean, people already knew him as the bestselling artist of the two thousands, but when we see those numbers and you see these catalog sales and all of that, if he ever made a decision, I don't know what his ownership structure, what share he has looks like, but if he ever had a decision, the amount of people that go back to his music to work out and everything else, it's one of the most valuable catalogs of music.[01:08:24] Will Page: And he owns it all right? The rights are reverted back to him. So he's got a hundred percent ownership on that.[01:08:29] Dan Runcie: Oh, wow, I didn't know that. Wow.[01:08:31] Will Page: So, but the bigger point, and I know that the Trapital has a huge audience. It's an honor to address them here and now. And it's a broad church. I mean, the Secretary of State for media and culture in the UK Parliament, it's a big listener, obviously.So I wanna land that point, which is don't hand this off to the lawyers to solve because they're gonna be too risk averse and they can't see the wood from the trees. There's a huge opportunity here. And those same balanced voices like Jessica Powell from Audio Shake, I want them to be rise up so we can counter the risk aversion from the lawyers.Lawyers will do what they do best, but I describe in any workplace, there's two types of people. There's a yo squads and there's a no squads. And lawyers more often than not are no squads. They think of reasons why you can't do something. So I just wanna make sure we balance it with some people from the Yo squad so that we don't choke this off before the party can really start.There's so much opportunity and let me remind your listeners as well, Jimmy Hendrix, the greatest export from America to Britain of all time. He came here in 1966, I believe, maybe 65, 66. And the label that first did a deal with him, the label owner, who I won't name, but I've seen the picture, had a plaque above his office.So this is 1966. Okay? And the plaque said, the day that we can get computers to replace drummers is when we can have a proper music industry. And just keep in mind historical context. Music's a ride and we're on this trip forever. We're not getting off anytime soon. This is just part of that ride, and that's what I loved about Jessica's essay.It's just a reminder that we're just on a ride here and AI is just the next stop on the train line. There's more stops to come.[01:10:12] Dan Runcie: Agreed. Music is always gonna be there. It's like water, right? We have to understand where the technology's heading, but that's where it is. Well Will, before we close[01:10:22] Will Page: Along with the typewriter.[01:10:24] Dan Runcie: Exactly. Exactly. Well Will, before we close things out, it's great. This podcast, the base of it is the business of music, but you yourself are a dj and you have this incredible mix that you put out every year. It was an honor to provide one of the drops forward, but tell us a little bit about the mix and what to expect this year.[01:10:43] Will Page: I'm so excited to, uh, launch this mix that's going out on Friday. Friday is an important day on the calendar. It's gonna be 50 years since Carole King performed in Central Park to a hundred thousand people for free 50 years since release of our album fantasy. And this year's mix is called 2023. Believe in Humanity and That word, you know, believe that expression, believe in Humanity, is the name of one of the songs on that Carole King album. Now, just wheel back for a second, you say, Carole King, most people think of tapestry, a Willie jumper and a cat, and you need a friend with James Taylor. Get it?I mean, that song got me through my third year at university. But if you listen to fantasy, she does funk, and she doesn't just do funk. She does funk better than anyone. You think you're in the song Cho Rathon, and she's doing deep, dirty, aggressive funk. You know me and you, our music tastes are similar. We don't drink tea without sugar.This is tea with lots of sugar. This is incredible funk music, and she just knocks it out the park like, touch me if you can. Best funk record I've heard is Fantasy by Carole King. So I've named the song The Mix 2023 Believe in Humanity. After that song, the mix opens with that, but more importantly, Dan, it opens with a speech from Carole King exclusively to me.And that's for a kid from Edin Pro. He's been doing mixed tapes out of his bedroom since he was going through puberty. I've now got Carole King opening my mix. Do I need to say more? I gotta say more. There's so much more. Nile Rogers is in the mix. Anderson Peck is in the mix. Dan Runcie's got a shout out in the mix, and we've got Kyle O'Leary, who I think is the most promising hip hop artist out there today.We have her and we've messed around with her track players. We've given it the edge of, you know, Dave MacAllum's music. We've given it the edge. There's a hint to your listeners, we've got it all. So, I mean, I put so much emotional time and effort into making these mixes happen and going out for free.They get your DJ slots, but more importantly, it goes back to what makes me wanna work in music, which was a lyric from Mike G and the Jungle Brothers from that famous album done by the forties of Nature, where he said, it's about getting the music across. It's about getting the message across. It's about getting it across without crossing over How can I get art across an audience without delegating its integrity? And it's such an honor to have this mixed drop in this Friday to do just that and to have Carole King open it. I mean, that's, made my year and we're not even into June yet.[01:13:07] Dan Runcie: That's special. That's special. Well, we're excited to drop that and share it as well, especially around the time this episode comes out.So please share that link once it's ready. And Will, as always, it's been a pleasure. We covered so much in this episode. And before we let you go, where can people follow along to stay tuned with you for the next post that you put out for the next thing that you publish? Where can they, stay to follow along?[01:13:31] Will Page: Sure, I mean a couple of of tags. Firstly, the website, tarzaneconomics.com. I mean, I built that to be a resource for industry professionals, for students alike so they can navigate the spaghetti of this music industry.[01:13:43] Dan Runcie: Well soon be pivot.com though. Check me there. You gotta have a website that does well at airports.[01:13:47] Will Page: I got the dopple ganger pivotal economics.com gets you to the same place, so I Oh, nice to resurrect it for the paperback. Lucky I got that too, just in the nick of time. very active on LinkedIn. will page on LinkedIn, you'll find me there. and then also on Twitter it's Will page as well. But yeah, when this mix drops, it'll be great to get feedback from chapter listeners. So please comment and please, please, please share, get the music across without crossing over.[01:14:13] Dan Runcie: Thank you Will, it's been a pleasure.[01:14:15] Will Page: Thank you so much, Dan.[01:14:16] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead.Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

UnitedMasters and Translation CEO Steve Stoute returns to the show, fresh off a new deal with R&B star Brent Faiyaz for a reported $50 million. Brent had his pick at multiple major labels, but chose to stay independent with UnitedMasters.We talk about how independent companies can compete with majors on upfront money, competitive advantages in the music industry, and more.Steve and I also chat about the industry at-large: AI, entrepreneurship, subscription prices and more. Here’s what we hit on:2:19 The ups and downs of entrepreneurship 06:11 Building two companies at once10:56 Positioning UnitedMasters in the music distribution space 13:16 Does anyone in music have a moat?15:56 Why Brent Faiyaz chose to sign with UnitedMasters27:33 Should the DSPs raise prices?30:07 Artists and creators becoming mini-media channels 36:58 How NIL (name, image, likeness) is like the independent music business37:19 Is Steve going to strike more NIL deals?45:52 Why every artists needs a Chief Technology Officer54:30 Separating real from hype: blockchain, to web3, to AIListen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuest: Steve Stoute, @SteveStouteThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmTrapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Steve Stoute: They used to have a moat, but no longer do they have a moat. And I don't think anybody independent music has a moat. I think Distro kid has a lane and TuneCore has a lane, and United masses have a lane. And, you know, others have, certain strengths about them. but, I think the only moat you have is the moat that is a true result of the success that you have. If people choose you and you build a strong business, and you're growing, that's the quote unquote moat. [00:00:27] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:55] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode covered a wide range of topics, but the key thing that's central to it is artist independence, and we're able to sit down with none other than Steve Stoute, who is the founder and CEO of United Masters founder and c e o of translation, and has been working in music and entertainment.For decades now. This is actually his third time on the podcast, and we covered it all. We started the conversation talking about motivations and how you were able to stay consistent as an entrepreneur, given the ups and downs of that lifestyle. Then we talked about translation, United Masters, Artist Independence, a bunch of trends happening right now and how.A company stays through all of the waves of technology waves, whether it's blockchain from a couple years ago to web three to where things are with AI now. Really fun conversation. Steve always brings it in these talks too, so it's a really great listen, hope you enjoy it. Here's our conversation.[00:01:53] Dan Runcie: All right. We're back with the Trapital podcast. Yeah. We got the one and only Steve Stoute here. I think this is your third time on the pod. [00:02:00] Steve Stoute: Really? I thought. I guess I thought it was twice. Thought This was my second time. [00:02:04] Dan Runcie: We did one time. We was at Empire Studio there. Yeah. We did it virtual during the pandemic, and then we got this one.[00:02:11] Steve Stoute: Oh, well, I'm fan of it. very early. You were? Yeah, I was on it very, very early. I think you're a good job. [00:02:18] Dan Runcie: Appreciate that. [00:02:18] Steve Stoute: Thanks for having me back. [00:02:19] Dan Runcie: Thank you. Yeah. These conversations are always good. And I wanna start this one and a place we haven't started others. I feel like we normally dive into the business, but take it a step back.You've been building businesses as an entrepreneur for decades now. How do you stay even keeled? How do you stay consistent with it, just knowing the ups and downs that naturally happen with building businesses? [00:02:42] Steve Stoute: Well, the fact that I appear to be even keeled is a compliment because, I certainly am emotionally attached to the businesses I build.I know there's, you know, the saying, don't be emotional about business, but when I'm building something from an original idea that I have, it's, you birthed the idea. I'm emotionally attached to the success of it, and the organization around it and the perception of it. So, you've been through those tumultuous cycles, so you tend to not chase the highs or chase the lows.and that sounds good. but it is definitely harder to do that when you're emotionally attached than, you know, understanding the theory that you should do that. And I think experience helps a bit, takes the edge off. But yeah, I would say to you, you just, like, for me, I've been able to sustain the energy andsustain through the ups and downs, through, sort of expecting them and not, chasing the highs like that's where the big mistake is when something great happens or a series of great things happen, you know, respecting it, but not chasing it because I believe that that's still not, gonna prevent the tumultuous time from coming. Because [00:03:56] Dan Runcie: I think the tough part with that, and this is something I know I struggle with too, it's tying your own satisfaction, your own esteem at particular points with those highs when things are going well. Yeah. And it's great to say those things, but I know even myself, it's tough to be able to stay even keeled when things are going well. The phone starts ringing more, you start getting more opportunities, more looks for things. Yeah, yeah, [00:04:20] Steve Stoute: Yeah. And it becomes more hectic. And then you have to hire more people. And then that creates another set of problems and responsibilities. And look, building a business isn't easy. I said it, the shop, know that the biggest mistake that I see is the glorification of entrepreneurs like, almond entrepreneurs. So therefore, like, you know, the sacrifice that it requires, to be able to know that failure is imminent or success is imminent that you may have an idea and you can go years without realizing the opportunity and it may go to somebody else. people ask me, how do I do it? And, you know, I'm here in San Francisco, I was, You know, in LA the day before that I was in Miami, the day before that, the day before that I was in LA again, it's like, it just keeps going. And like, you know, not seeing your family an d sacrificing some of the comforts of home or the comforts that you have of a routine, it's also part of the sacrifice. So it's not easy, and you have to really be committed to it. It almost has to be your A plan, your B plan. Your C plan is that plan, like you won't find joy or fulfillment. in doing anything else. At least that's how I feel. [00:05:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think a lot of it's accepting those trade-offs and knowing that you can't do it all. I think I've heard you talk about this on the shop as well, whether it's so-and-so as the birthday party, so-and-so as the this, and yeah, it's great if you can line up and do those things, but you've chosen this life to be able to be in LA, be in Miami, be in New York, and back to back days and Yeah, doing that requires this type of commitment to it and you can't do everything. [00:06:04] Steve Stoute: Yeah. and hiring great people, is part of it. but putting your own personal comfort is certainly not a priority. [00:06:12] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. Interesting you brought up the hiring piece because I think you've definitely built up a reputation as someone that's always operating on 10. So you naturally wanna surround yourself with people that are at that level. What are some of the things that you look for to see, okay, does this person have the edge? Cuz you know you're gonna be running all the time. Can they run with you? [00:06:36] Steve Stoute: it's very hard to, you know, resumes or LinkedIn pages, whatever you use can tell you a lot, but they don't measure resourcefulness or effort, right? So those things do not appear in any aspect of looking at, a person's profile. So I've learned through failure, you know, I may have not, I may have, I have high, I have hired and fired. you know, 3000 plus people, you know, so you learn what are the qualities or what are the questions to ask, to try to help, mitigate that the kind of person you need for your company. It doesn't mean that person's bad. You could have made a bad hire, not because the person's not good, they just don't fit your team. I mean, you see it in the NBA all the time. Players on somebody that was on the Lakers or somewhere else goes to another team and then all of a sudden they do well cuz it's the system, it's the culture, it's the coach. And that's the same thing with employment. Like, you just may be good just not for this company. So understanding what you specifically need versus, oh, this person worked at, so tech high, or they worked at Google, they worked at Airbnb, we want that right? Pulling them into a startup or pulling them into that culture or pulling them into that product not made completely, is completely different, specifically in our case, than what they were doing over there. And not every single job transfers one to one, whether it's the music business, the tech industry, the marketing business. We hire people at translation all the time. They came from Ogilvy. It's like, well, that has nothing to do with us, right? Or they come from Goodbee and you're like, well, that ain't gonna work here, right? Why? Just because the way we are, set up, what they may be used to, the programming that they run versus what we run, they, you know, may not be a great culture fit. And so, knowing that helps mitigate that risk. So knowing who you are, knowing what kind of people respond well to your culture is an important aspect. Not only just the mission statement stuff. Yeah, great, But like really innately knowing it and feeling what works.What are the common attributes of the people that are successful at your company that are more nuanced based and knowing how to identify that in others and what other companies share those values so that people that come from those companies tend to do well at your company.[00:09:05] Dan Runcie: You mentioned how this is a tension point in music in this industry. I think we've seen it from time and time, whether it's the record label side and folks on the creative versus streaming and tech coming in and some of the pushback there. I think you've been able to have a good vantage point with both of these because you have a ad agency and you also have a music distribution service.The talents, the skills needed for one, may not make sense for the other, but they also have a bit of a unique identity there. How is it with that perspective?[00:09:38] Steve Stoute: Difficult, hard. at the onset of starting United Masses, I put translation in united masses under. United Masters, Inc. And understanding that in order to do that, to build a marketplace that has creative or brands on one side and creative and culture and cultural impact and creators on the other side, and building that marketplace takes hiring unique people because we sit at the convergence of culture, technology, and, storytelling. Mm-hmm. So you need people who are prolific at least two of those three things, every single person. And that's the only way you have a shot of getting that convergence to work as one and hiring for that and building organization structures around that probably is the most important thing. That I do every day is understanding where could we be more efficient in that model? What kind of people do we need in order to accelerate that model? How do we scale that model as a result of the talent we have and the talent we need? That is very difficult, and it is probably, it's definitely a top five priority, from the CEO. [00:10:56] Dan Runcie: And I assume as well, part of this is required with the nature of how you've positioned United Masters, right?If you don't have these differentiating factors, if you don't have this tie in to culture or trying to present sync opportunities or things like that, then it could easily be seen as another music distribution service. And that's not what Well,[00:11:17] Steve Stoute: Dan, you've been following the company very closely before you could be, just another distribution company before that became popular, I had this idea with that differentiating factor seven years ago, right?So I knew from the onset that distribution was table stakes. and the building of United Masters with translation and power powering the brand sync opportunities, the influence and type of opportunities, was something that I had the early vision on. So yeah, it's important, but it's not important in response to, oh, all of these, you know, distributors in the market now, so you need to X, Y, Z. I was doing the X, Y, Z before they even had the idea to be in music distribution, to be honest with you. And a lot of these music distribution companies that you see are coming out, are looking at United masses and honestly copying it. Some of it they can't copy. That's fine. some of it they can't copy. It's 20 years of experience in, you know, running record companies and building an advertising business to be able to do this. So you think you can replicate the outcome without replicating the process, which I've never seen actually happen, the theory is right? But to replicate it, to hire the people, to have the credibility in the marketplace to speak to brands and hire the type of people needed to pull us off. Good luck, I do believe, and I am supportive just to add to all of that, great distribution companies that support independent music, that have something to contribute to the independent music movement are welcome and everybody, you know, rises as a result of it. So I'm not necessarily, I don't look at. at these other, distributors as competitors, I look at us as contributing to an industry that's, changing the music business dramatically and if you have something to bring to the table, it's beneficial to all. [00:13:17] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I think for United Masters as well, you've been able to have your moat essentially as you've described it. You have the years of experience, you have the ability to connect dots in ways that others don't, and that's led you to land some of the artists you have.You have a recent deal that's been announced with Brent Faz and a long-term partnership there. Can you talk a bit about that deal and how things came together? [00:13:43] Steve Stoute: Well, a moat is a bit of a stretch. I don't know if we have a moat. We have a great business model that certain artists, labels can find use of.[00:13:56] Dan Runcie: Do you think anyone has a moat in this space?[00:13:59] Steve Stoute: No. No. The record companies, the traditional record companies had a moat, when physical distribution was a barrier of entry, right? It's very hard to press up 500,000 CDs or vinyls or whatever it is. and distribute it to 7,000 points of distribution. That's not easy to do for a small, a single individual or a very small business. So that was their mode. They also had a monopoly on radio and, MTV, you know, MTV doesn't matter at all and, for music per se. And, radio matters much less than it used to. for discovery, right? So they used to have a moat but no longer do they have a moat And I don't think anybody independent music has a moat. I think Distro kid has a lane and TuneCore has a lane, and United masses have a lane. And, you know, others have, certain strengths about them. but, I think the only moat you have is the moat that is a true result of the success that you have. If people choose you and you build a strong business, and you're growing, that's the quote unquote moat. but other than that, I don't think anyone has, a clear defining advantage that no one else can replicate, right? A nd just because we have the brand stuff doesn't mean that that's the, you know, I wanna believe that's very important to the artists. But somebody else may have another thing that is if marketed well and that's what they think their advantages. I don't have the ultimate advantage cuz you know, brands and brand partnerships in sync may not necessarily be what you find most valuable. It could be a distribution company that creates and manufacturer's merch and you're like, oh shit, that's the one I want. Mm-hmm. Right. So I don't, wanna say that specifically. We have that. [00:15:56] Dan Runcie: That's fair. I do think that that mentality is part of the differentiating that I think is lost in music overall to some extent, because I think that you have few record labels that truly have unique brands. I think you have few music streaming services that have unique brands, and when you have something, it's clearer to be able to say, who is this for? Who is this not for, right? And clearly, I assume you were able to do some of that with Brent Faz and that partnership. He saw something with how you all do business and said, okay, this is for me.[00:16:32] Steve Stoute: Yeah, Well, Brent is a very, very unique talent. I obviously he wants to be with something that. A company, distributor, or partner that represents values that are there to him. So creativity is extremely important to him. The fact that we do have translation really matters in that instance cuz brand partnerships is something that he holds near and dear to him. He also was very respectful of, my, you know, reputation and what I've accomplished and chose that over others who, you know, was offering more money but didn't have the, same values that he had or shared values he didn't share their values. He was very particular about that everyone who knows him knows that, he's high taste. So he wanted to be with, you know, a brand, a distributor, a partner that was, had a sense of premiumness to it. That was important to him. So I think the combination of those three things and, you know, just our chemistry, his manager Ty, is also a fantastic, really intelligent, guy who I've developed a great relationship and a lot of respect for, also played a very significant role in this partnership. And we're gonna do great things together. I knew this day would come, I knew where so much respect for guys, like maybe maybe for Toby, right? Toby Nii, who, I keep screwing up his name and he keeps making fun of me screwing up. His name is actually part of his name now. When I say it. But, I have so much respect for him and fat because we've done so well together and, they've committed to us and we've committed to them. And it was a proof point that an independent artist can be successful, can be, you know, a global brand. And I directly tie the work that we've done with Toby and, and others. And others. He just comes to mind. I spent a lot of time with him for why Brett chose us. Brett chose us. and now you got Brett who sold out his tour in three days around the world and shit. That kind of star deciding to stay independent, not go with a major label. And they offered him everything, all the money in the world. And I knew that trend is gonna happen. That's gonna happen, man. You're gonna start seeing this happen all the time, like, you know, the one moat, again, back to the legacy labels that they have, is that because they own your masters, when your contract is up, what they do, their, their thing is start to give you back the shit they took from you, right? So now you leave, you finish your 8, 5, 7 album commitment, whatever it is, right? And it's no longer can they give you any more money to stay. So they go, we'll give you back album one. And you're like, I'll stay on Sony because now Album one reverts I'll stay on Universal cause album one reverts. So they stay stuck in the system because all they do is now give you back what you shouldn't have never given actually, or they never should have taken. So they hold you cuz you're tethered to that, right? And no matter what, an independent distributor can't give you your first album that you wrote, because you never had in the first place. You never, you know, so you never had it in the first place, however. So that's the moat that they have with legacy acts that will stay. So it'll be hard for legacy acts to leave when they can give you back that kind of stuff. But the new artists who are building their careers are considering independent distributors such as myself or others, at the same consideration set as they're considering a label. If you can give 'em money and you can provide them services, look man, you know, people talk about like, oh, these labels have a service. We picked up our systems. We distributed a song, from a great, great young artist, good man, superstar Pride outta Mississippi has a song called painting Pictures. The song was released in October. The The song moves like this, my building, just, I don't know, 3000 streams a day or something like that. and then all of a sudden, on February 6th, it goes from 3000 to 9,000 or something like that. Our systems catch it, right? We're looking for the second derivative.We're measuring acceleration. Boom. We find it, Two or three days later, other labels. It goes from 9,000 to 27,000, and then five days later it's compounded to fucking 400,000 streams, something in a day. It's crazy. But we already have identified it. all the labels are offering the money, three and a half million, 4 million, this, that, and the third.He chose to stay with United Masters. Everybody said, well, they can't get you this. They can't do that. Songs gonna be number one at radio. It's not like they have an advantage anymore, you know what I'm saying? It's like, it's not even like a problem. It's Mm-hmm. nothmm. if it was like a heavy lift, the artist made a great song. We gotta work it at radio. There's a formula to that money is part of that formula, right? And we can do it. it. Somebody can't do it better than us. Universal can't do it better than us. They don't like for artists to think that, right? They would like the perception of that to be true, but it's not the real marketing is coming out of, you know, the artists themselves and your relationships with Apple and Spotify and other distributors and YouTube, and we have the same relationships they have. So the new artists know that. They don't see, the only thing the record company can really give them that they believe they can get, that they can't get an independent is money. And I hope the Brett Fires deal just shows that we have money too. It's like, [00:22:18] Dan Runcie: How big is that money difference? Because I think that's the one thing that people do. [00:22:21] Steve Stoute: It's getting smaller and smaller as the record companies are losing. They're letting people go. their margins are getting smaller and smaller. They're firing a lot of people. don't know if no one talks about this. this, but they're not running around writing those big ass checks like they used to anymore. They Hell no. no. No, no, no, no, no, no. [00:22:41] Dan Runcie: Because I think people will look at a deal like the one that Drake did last year. Yeah. For instance. And they're, say the Ruter mal is somewhere 300, 400 [00:22:50] Steve Stoute: It was more than that. Much more than that. But that's different. They have Drake's, remember what I told you, they got Drake's masters, right? That's different than an artist starting from Drake releasing the first. song with Trey songs. All right, whatever. When he started his career, like if Drake released a song today that Drake considers an independent music company, at the same rate that he, looks at a major label cuz the major label can't say anything to him today that will make him believe outside of money that they have an advantage. [00:23:25] Dan Runcie: This topic too, reminds me of something similar because we're talking about the record labels and the streaming service as well, who's bringing in money, and there's all this debate right now around pricing for these services. The record labels want those prices higher. The streaming for songs? Oh no, for the monthly subscription that customers pay.[00:23:45] Steve Stoute: Oh, oh, okay. [00:23:46] Dan Runcie: Yeah, yeah. So they want the hire, the streaming services, well, a few of them still want to keep them as low as possible, but we're seeing things trending in that direction. You owning a music distribution service, relying on that streaming revenue as well, where do you take, what's your take right now on pricing on the consumer side and Yeah, [00:24:08] Steve Stoute: A few things there. Number one, the record companies had the opportunity when they held all of the leverage. To control pricing, to control pricing for the customer, as well as the price per stream. All these things were set up at a time when the record companies, you know, got big advances from Apple, you know, got ownership in Spotify, so they were cool with whatever was going on. As they're starting to lose market share now they need to go find growth, and the only way to find growth is go to the streaming services and say, charge more money so we can make more money. But the problem is that if the artist got the lion share the money, rather than the label getting the lion share the money, the current pricing model will work really well. The artists, if they were independent and they were receiving 80% of the money that came from streaming, and it went to each individual artist, they'd be fine with it. They'd be making a lot more money than they're making right now. The independent artists are making a fortune of money. Go ask russ. Go ask Toby. Go ask Brent what he's done for so many years. Why he stays independent, because they've really received the lion share the money. The record companies have bloated overhead, whether it be office space, employees and salaries of their CEOs and shit like that, and whether they're public or or not. In the case of universal, it's public. They need to show growth, and they're losing margin on how much money they're making per album or release, And the only way to find growth, real growth is the diversify of their business, which they haven't been so good at. There's not that many entrepreneurs insider, a record companies. Jimmy Iovine was one. Dr., Jay-Z was another, but there's not that many. You don't see that many. I'm not making this up. So you're talking about CEOs who were fat and happy, now all of a sudden have to innovate and they don't have a person that can make beats by Drake. They don't have a person who's gonna create the next thing.So now they gotta go to apple and Spotify and squeeze more. The problem is their leverage with Apple and Spotify have sort of, gone in the other direction. They don't have as much leverage as they had seven years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago. ago. So that's the landscape. I the artists should get paid more money. That's we built our model to do, make sure the artists get paid more money and have great partnerships with, the platforms. And that's how I see it right now. yeah. So to answer your question on pricing, whether or not Spotify or Apple should charge more, I mean yeah. If they're gonna continue to grow so that you don't wanna price it so that people start canceling subscriptions, right? You gotta price it right so that it keeps growing. Cuz the more they grow, the more the pot of money grows. But before I get to even worrying about what they're charging, I need to worry about the artists are getting the lion share of revenue, and that's what we, stand for United Masses, and that's what we've been able to accomplish today. Okay. [00:27:33] Dan Runcie: And at least for the artists that are part of United Masters, they don't have the rights holder relationships that the signed artists do on the record label. So that side doesn't necessarily affect them as much. I think you definitely addressed that piece of it. I think the other side of it is looking at streaming prices on all the video services and how Netflix and all these other services have definitely expanded beyond their 9 99 price point.And then for you all as a business, knowing that a company like Spotify, which does have lower churn than a lot of those other companies as well, if prices were to increase 10%, that's 10% more revenue, at least for the streaming revenue side of the business. For a company like United Masters given the cut you have [00:28:16] Steve Stoute: Again, yes. and at some point you can raise the price to the point where somebody says, you know what? I'd rather not do that. I'd rather have an not that service. I'd rather listen to it free on YouTube, or I'd rather deal with ads. It costs too much. I don't know what that price is, but there's absolutely a point of diminishing return and setting any price. You gotta just know what that price is. So rather than me sit here and go, yeah, they should raise prices, which I could easily say, cuz it's beneficial to me. I want them to raise prices and continue to grow. Cuz as that pot grows, there's more money to be distributed. If they price it wrong, it hurts us. That's my only point. [00:28:59] Dan Runcie: That's fair. I get that. This topic as well, reminds me of another thing that I wanted to chat with you about. [00:29:07] Steve Stoute: We're talking about, reminds you of something else. That's great. That's how you write, you write like that, you find all these, comparisons, to different business models. in fact, you know, that's why I'm a fan of what you guys do of what you do. but it's funny when you say it, actually, reminds me of[00:29:22] Dan Runcie: That's funny. That's funny. I was actually gonna say, this isn't a random reminding, this is actually something you had said in that episode of the shop. I think it was the last one you did. You were, I think Drusky was on there. A fewer folks were on there. Yeah. You were talking about dollars that were moving from traditional tv Yeah. And going towards creators. Yeah. And how much of an opportunity that is. And I know you, with the business you have with translation, a lot of your work has been focused on doing these traditional TV partnerships, whether it's with a State Farm or some of the other clients you have.I'm curious to hear how this type of transition impacts your work and what opportunities you see and how you may have be thinking about the future on that side. [00:30:07] Steve Stoute: So the media buying companies, people who buy media for brands are seeing and advising that television ratings outside of sports are going in the wronging direction and advising to put that money more into digital channels that are primarily driven by creators. The creators have deep connections with their fans. The creators can create a network effect. So you can hire, you know, 50 creators who who have deep impact in different regions, communities, and you can buy against it. and sort of create marketplace momentum around a movement, a brand, a product, whatever it may be. My question toski is, this thing is shifting in your direction or what are you doing to prepare for it? I said something so long ago on, on my man Swae. I said that that artists are going to become mini media channels. I said this six years ago, mini media channels. If you look at the artists and you look at them like what cable channels were, you watch ESPN, they have an audience, you watch Turner, they have an audience, you watch Discovery, they have an audience. The artists, the influencers are gonna be exactly like those with obviously much smaller audiences, but the relationship between the artists and the audience or the influence in the audience is where the media money is going. ESP N, Turner and Discovery are prepared for that. that. Their organizations are set up for it. They stay on brand so that when the money comes their way, the brand knows, whoever's spending money against it knows exactly what they're getting and the kind of audience that they have. What What are the creators doing to be prepared for that movement of revenue coming to them? How are they set up for that? Because in the beginning it starts to look like, oh shit, this is all found money. But I'm saying, this is not just found money. This is the new industry. [00:32:23] Dan Runcie: Is there anyone that you see that's doing a good job of this right now? Or any creators that are ready for this moment [00:32:29] Steve Stoute: there's so There's so many of them. A lot of YouTube creators are doing it. You know, mr. Beast disguise, I mean, you know, the names. They all, you know, have created, you know, products that create lines around the block. I mean, you know, you don't look at it this way anymore because, she's transcended what you first seen her as. But Kim Kardashian is that she's the ultimate influencer. She's the influencer's influencer, right? Right. And she's built billions of dollars of business as a result of using her culture, her influence. that started with Instagram and social media. So like yeah, we've seen a lot of people do it, right? The musicians are now starting to do it right, because they're starting to realize Rihanna and Fenty. And others are copying or copying or seeing that, look, the streaming business is great and touring is great, but my impact, my movement, because of my digital footprint can allow me the opportunity to sell other higher margin items, like beauty products like lingerie, like footwear. So understanding your influence, whether you're a musician or personality and who your audience is creating opportunities for a lot of money to be made. [00:33:50] Dan Runcie: And how does that shape the type of work that translation will continue to do in the future working with creators? [00:33:58] Steve Stoute: Well, our number one responsibility at translation is to be lockstep with culture and lockstep in real lockstep. So as we help provide solutions for brands, creative, strategic solutions, We understand that what I just said about where this business is going and the influences and their impact that they have, we're very fluent at that. So it doesn't impact us in a way that says, oh, now we have to change our business as a result of this. We just create in these new landscapes, right? Like, it doesn't impact us at all. In fact, it hinders. The more bigger traditional agencies who have not even wrapped their brain around diversity culture, they're still running an old playbook. This new thing, they hope goes away, but we've seen this over and over again, right? It's the dilemma that happens, the innovation dilemma that takes place and whether you do it yourself or you get disrupted by somebody else. if you hold on to what you've done, you'll be disrupted. When we built translation, we built it under the manifesto of translating culture for Fortune 500 companies. And translating always needs to happen. It's why I came up with the name, everything needs to be translated, right? So the fact that tr culture needs to be translated and because it's translated and it changes, you have to be clear and understanding of it. I talk about that all of a sudden, the speed of culture, the speed in which, you know, someone can become an overnight success. Like there's a tape, a footage. You should run it, in this spot and I'll send it to you. Where Lil Nas X, goes on, he eats a piece of pizza January, 2019. He's eating a piece of pizza on Instagram. And He's like, yo, this is Nas X I got 1000 plus followers on spotify. I got 3000 on Instagram, you know, a couple, you know, thousand views on YouTube, but I think Old town Road is gonna be a hit. and I'll see you guys a year from now, literally a year to the day he has on a white fucking mink eating pizza. And he is like, you know, it's little Nas x 30 million on spotify, da da, da. And that's no different than skims disrupting spanks in a year. Like that's no different than other. Everybody is ready for the, that's the speed of culture and it's fast. It'll never be this slow again. Like that's a fact. So being a brand of an agency, a creative company, a influencer or whatever you are, if you are not aware, prepared, built for that speed, you will get left.[00:36:59] Dan Runcie: The other area that's move in just as fast, probably even faster is NIL and everything happening there with [00:37:06] Steve Stoute: This you of NIL? You were gonna say that, that reminds me of NIL deals. Oh shit. How the fuck did he do that? That reminds me of a great piece of pizza. I just had Steve again, NIL deals. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. [00:37:19] Dan Runcie: And I think we've seen a lot of fast movement there. Yes, we have. You've definitely probably see plenty of opportunities cuz I think the space is very unregulated. There's random things happening. [00:37:32] Steve Stoute: Yeah. And yeah, you should go look at, just so that you properly, as you definitely, know my work and have been, very much appreciative of my contribution. I did a documentary at LeBron James called student athlete that came out five years ago. You should look at that. You should play clips of it. We followed four athletes over a year that were high school, that were college athletes. One of 'em got injured and fucking, like, had to sleep in his car because you know, you are a D one athlete, you get injured, you don't make it to the pros. You don't get any fucking health insurance anymore. They fucking cut you. That's the end of it. Right. So you're playing for this lottery ticket and you don't get shit. And the fact that these student athletes don't get a chance to actually get a great education because they have fucking practice every day or games on Friday or traveling to get to a game all over the place. But the school benefits from all of the advertising dollars. And all of the conference dollars was something that we put a highlight on and it was really, making it and seeing these stories. You felt like this is of modern day slavery. Mm-hmm. So NIL deals the Wild, wild west, the transfer portal as well. So you had NIL deals and the transfer portal happening at the same time. What is this doing? This reminds me of the independent music business, because now these student athletes really now are independent business people. They can change schools with less friction than they could have five years ago, 10 years ago. Forget it. you change schools, you had to sit outta here. You couldn't do this, you couldn't do that. By the time you could play, you know, you lost a step or you weren't the same, or you were too far removed from the game, whatever it may be. So the hindrance of that made you stay at the school and not go through that problem. That was the way they kept you. Well, it's certainly not fair that the football in which you have to stay three years, right? And basketball pay for 90% of all of the other scholarships That the fucking sports program had. And yet these guys don't get any money. It is not right, you know, think about players getting thrown out of bowl games because they got tattoos, free. It's crazy. So I'm all for NIL deals and I'm happy, it's the wild, wild west. And I like the fact that there's a guy or girl on campus make making $2 million a year balling in a fucking Porsche Bentley or investing his or her money, whatever they're doing, helping their family. I'm happy for the fact that they are getting a chance to monetize their impact beyond a scholarship, that is fantastic, but definitely a education that is not the same because they're practicing the amount of time they're practicing and traveling. The way they're traveling, this is the least that they can do is get paid for their services. And the NCAA got away with a lot for a very very long time. You should look at that. Look, when the student athlete, it's a bylaw, right? that actually became a thing and why it was set up that way and what it means and the implications of it. It was a way to hog, tie or build a moat so that these kids would never leave. As college sports grew and the money grew, all of a sudden it became, these assets, right? Became really lucrative. These conferences became very lucrative, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in TV deals. I'm happy for it. In fact, we represent the Big 12 and, shout out to my man, Brett, who now runs the Big 12. He came from running the Brooklyn Nets. He, I worked with him when he moved the Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn. Then he went over to run a aspect of Roc Nation and now he runs the Big 12. He's the future of collegiate sports cuz he understands the music industry and the brand building industry. He understands the business of running sports team, the nets, the arena, the Barclays, bringing in talent to fill that arena pricing, dynamic pricing, media deals. He did it all. And now he's taken that combination of skills to Big 12 and he's once NIL deals. In fact, that's his competitive advantage because none of those guys who run all those other conferences, they're all like, shit, we gotta give these NIL deals. The students are gonna do X, Y, Z in this transfer portal. What are we gonna do? Brett's? Like, this is what I've been doing my whole career. I can't wait to set up NIL programs, bring brands in, you know, treat these students athletes like the same way we treated artists in my previous career. it's dope and, it's way, way, overdue. This reminds you of, [00:42:46] Dan Runcie: Didn't remind me of something, but I was gonna ask you, is this an area that you would work more directly in through translation, through the agency, working with the [00:42:54] Steve Stoute: Yeah. I mean, yes. Look, it's not like, again, we represent the Big 12, so our contribution to that, is adjacent to a lot of that kind of stuff, you know, there is an opportunity to set up a. a division that works specifically on NIL deals. I think it's much more, urgent that the CAAs do and the UTAs and the WMEs have that because their brokers of that kind of stuff. Where they have talent and they brands and they put 'em together, we do that for our clients. We don't do that as a industry trade. We don't just like connect random brands with, you know, artists unless we are, or athletes, unless we are doing much more immersive experiences and creative for those brands. But, you know, I'm happy we represent Beats. We did the, Beats deal with Bronny, then we did the commercial with Bronny and his dad with LeBron and like I love that. I love it. Not only for that story, but the fact that again, this 17 year old kid signed a deal with Beats. And we can actually market that and advertise that as, without him losing eligibility or whatever the fuck these guys were coming up with is dope.[00:44:07] Dan Runcie: Right. Especially given that everyone was gonna make money off of his name. So I'm glad he can do it himself. [00:44:12] Steve Stoute: Of course, like, you speak to Jalen Rose about this like when they're at Michigan man, the Fab 5 and these guys, [00:44:18] Dan Runcie: Oh, that was bad. [00:44:19] Steve Stoute: That's terrible man. Selling jerseys with their name on it and these guys. like, everybody's looking at investigating the, what they did and what did Webber do and what he did to try to feed his family. You can't even afford to get your family to come see you play. Mm-hmm mm-hmm. Well of course corruption's gonna be in it. You mean, I can't eat? I have a scholarship though. And my parents can't even come see me play cuz we can't afford it. You don't think that's gonna lead to corruption? What are you crazy?[00:44:47] Dan Runcie: It's this weird juxtaposition where I think either, Webber or Rose talked about this in that documentary [00:44:52] Steve Stoute: It's the coach by the way.Yeah. Gets paid $10 million, in most, towns or cities in America, the highest paid employee of that city, or town is the coach of the football team. Yep. Or the basketball team. They're the highest earning person in the entire city. [00:45:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah. They save at the state level too for the Colleges [00:45:12] Steve Stoute: Then they get deals with Nike and the coach makes the player wear Nikes or Reebok or whatever it is, the coach makes that decision. Everyone's making money except the student themselves, but they're getting a scholarship. [00:45:27] Dan Runcie: Right, it's crazy [00:45:28] Steve Stoute: And definitely an education with an asterisk next to it.Isn't that fair? Are you fucking outta your mind? [00:45:35] Dan Runcie: It's crazy. It's crazy. I'm glad this is happening and I'm glad we're seeing this shift. [00:45:41] Steve Stoute: Yo, pull up student athlete. When you do this, I'm you the edit right now. I'm gonna send you the Lil NAS thing and the student athlete thing. Oh yeah. We'll throw it in there. Put it in. That's why we're doing video. video. [00:45:52] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no. That's why we, no, this will be good. And then we have the clips and everything. Yeah. Shifting gears, last time you were on, you talked about chief technology officers and why artists need to have tech side folks on their platform. Yeah, [00:46:06] Steve Stoute: Yeah, brother. [00:46:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah, How have you seen this develop the past couple years since? [00:46:10] Steve Stoute: I haven't, the artists that obviously have the foundational truth is as technology is becoming much more important in content and video services, every artist needs a chief technology officer. That's the foundational truth. The practical reality is that that's not gonna be the case, which is the opportunity for platforms like ours to be extremely useful in providing tools, intelligence, information that is allows the artist, the influencer to take action in a very user-friendly way to help grow their career. So essentially, we wanna be the Chief Technology Officer as a platform for all of these artists. I believe that to be true. In fact, in building our platform, the remit to my engineers is that, that we have to anticipate what the artist's needs are. And build that for them. We're it for a community of artists. We're not building it to best interface with Apple or Spotify or YouTube. That's one part of it. 80% of it is what do you, I say all the time, man, I'm about to put my name in the system. I'm about to upload my first song. That experience. If I nail this, I'm gonna change the life for me and my mama. I'm gonna become my dreams. I'm gonna be able to quit this bullshit job and really live out what my talents are when I hit this button and upload this song. That's how they feel. to build a technology that's empathetic to that, and then as they continue to grow, make sure that they have the tools and they need information in order to do their thing. That's what I tell each and every engineer that comes into my company. [00:48:17] Dan Runcie: That trajectory makes sense because if you're starting out, you're a dependent, you're not gonna have the resources to hire someone to pay them 1 50, 200 a year, whatever it is to be a CTO on staff. Yeah. How could you leverage the partnerships you have? Maybe if you get to a certain point, you could have someone internally. [00:48:35] Steve Stoute: Of course. Of course, you know drake and, you know Beyonce and Pharrell and they have a version of a chief technology officer, somebody who, their interaction with technology is seamless and smooth and they understand it and they have relationships and, you know, they could speak with the tech leaders and be able to find the value and where the integration and partnerships can best take form. Up until you get to that point, we should be the platform to provide that for you at scale[00:49:08] Dan Runcie: Artists as well. This is also valuable because there's so many new things that are always coming. Obviously I talk about them often in capital. You're evaluating themself for your own business, whether it's a couple years ago, whether or not we should be building something on the blockchain.A couple years after that, should we be involved with Web 3? Should we have NFTs and 2023? AI is the big thing. [00:49:33] Steve Stoute: Can I talk to you about that? [00:49:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah, [00:49:35] Steve Stoute: But go ahead, ask the question. I'll get into it.[00:49:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, so I was gonna ask twofold how you look at it for yourself with the businesses and then also the value add and advice you give to artists that are considering this.[00:49:46] Steve Stoute: Yeah, So let's, I take a step back for a second. Whether 20 years ago as technology, you know, sort of more consumer facing technology 30 years ago has been, is taking shape into, is taking shape. The popularity of code or the popularity of, you know, technology outside of just the internet itself. It wasn't immediate frenzy around it. It didn't, like, it was just happening. It wasn't like front and set of the media. And I think part of it is like there weren't that many day traders like Uber drivers are traders and school teachers trade everybody's trading stocks. So now that you've built applications that allow people to day trade and everybody could be a stock analyst themselves, the technology has gotten a lot of media attention and a lot of that media attention I do believe has escalated the fact that it becomes top of mind. But yet the application of that technology may be premature. Agreed. So every with the metaverse, oh my God, everybody are you doing in the Metaverse? We're in the Metaverse. We're in the Metaverse. You in the Metaverse. What is the Metaverse? Is Fortnite the Metaverse? That's not the Metaverse, the Oculus is the Metaverse. No, that's not the Metaverse is gaming in general. The Metaverse. Well, whatever. But before we could even get to that, NFTs come, well fuck the Metaverse. It's the NFTs. Well, the NFT, you got a NFT. You got a What's your character? What's your character? Who you got a character? What's your character? What's your vetas? don't have a character. Let me see your crypto wallet. What's in your crypto wallet? What's in your crypto wallet? What's in your crypto? Okay, now we just went to the Oh shit. Fucking AI. you use chatGPT. How we gonna, it's like, yo, bro, could we just chill out? Stop. and the media writes it and then everybody just runs around. Thinking that they need to be prolific and like force themselves to find the application. cuz they don't wanna be left out like, let these things find, use cases that stick and therefore the products and the applications that come out of it will then take hold. But like for you to just run to crypto wallets and metaverses and ai and the, it's like, it is so overblown. And what I was telling my team about is what happens is like take crypto, like the media is incentivized to write it all the way up, right? write it all way. You gotta get this, you gotta get this, you gotta get this. They write it all the way up and then as soon as the shit melts, they fucking write it all the way down. So they still win because they fucking made everybody feel like it was important. And then, They start shitting on it and everybody has to read that because they wanna know why they're shitting on it. And then while they're shitting on it, they fix the next thing. Metaverse da da da it's like, it's funny to me cuz I could it's obvious actually. It's funny because it's obvious, but yet people sort of work themselves up, like, you know, I deal with CMOs all the time. They're like, you know, what are we gonna do in the metaverse 18 months ago? They don't even fucking bring it up anymore. Right? Why were you bringing it up 18 months ago? Cause you read it in the New York Times because it was on some news channel and you don't even bring it up anymore. [00:53:08] Dan Runcie: The dialogue around this heightened into the fomo. Everyone has the fear of missing out on all this.[00:53:14] Steve Stoute: Not me. I think I don't have any FOMO on shit that's not real. And I'm not saying it's not real, I'm saying until it has practical applications that affect my life or my business really.[00:53:29] Dan Runcie: How do you determine what that is?[00:53:32] Steve Stoute: I don't know, Talent? testing, I don't know, like that kind of thing. [00:53:39] Dan Runcie: It's interesting, right? Because I feel like we could go back to two years ago, and I remember, I think that was around the time that NFTs were having their craze and artists could've been like, oh, well, what if we could release a N F T on United Masters or something like that?Yeah. Or what if we could do this? And it's one of those things, in hindsight, of course the right answer is, yeah, that I don't think we need to do that. [00:54:01] Steve Stoute: Let's stay the you ask anybody who worked with me, I never, ever bought that that bullshit. I'm like, look, until that young kid, that 17 year old kid, 16 year old kid in Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, los Angeles, is me that they're willing or want to buy an album as an NFT. I am not gonna allow Discord chatter to say that's where my business is doing.[00:54:30] Dan Runcie: I think that's a good example here, because so much of the chatter around this stuff is hyped up by people that are in it. People that were buying NFTs or music related NFTs or things like that were people that were talking about this on the regular, on Discord and Twitter, but it's not the 14 year old [00:54:48] Steve Stoute: guy, you know?and he's my man. But, he owns, Royal. [00:54:51] Dan Runcie: Oh, BLA? [00:54:52] Steve Stoute: BLA, you know, right? You know he put out an album, right. right. You know? Mm-hmm. Oh [00:54:55] Dan Runcie: yeah, I remember that [00:54:56] Steve Stoute: Remember 11 Million in that, right? DJ [00:54:59] Dan Runcie: and then Naz had done something on Royal a couple months later. [00:55:02] Steve Stoute: Right. But you so very smart, very, very smart. Made $11 million on an album. Everybody was like, that's the example. NFTs the whole thing. When you ask people, like regular fans who are fans of DJs that listen to EDM music and you say, you know that album blah da da da, they don't even know what you're talking about. That album that did that was purchased primarily by people that was in that business, the Discord community. It wasn't the general music community that bought it or even was aware of it. It was the people in that community. That's fine, that's fine. That's good for him. It's good for that community. Perfect. But to try to say that that applies to every, the industry at large now, and now the 16 year old kid in Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, whatever, is gonna now want that. That's not the right idea. And you know, it didn't require testing and learning for that. You could just do the work on it, do the math on it. Now there's aspects of the NFT, the blockchain technology, I think is very important, for payments. Yeah. So, I see that application, everything has an application. It's like AI is gonna, is fantastic. NFTs and crypto, and all of its fan the metaverse Fantastic. I just think this accelerated frenzy and FOMO sometimes get you to lose focus on what about it is really important to your business. And what I learned in the frenzy of the NFT marketplace or Web 3 was. The value of blockchain to payments. Payments in the music industry are very difficult because you have many people contributing to a song and, the rights holders need to have something that bound them right on these digital forever. Right. Until they decide to change it. And the blockchain does really good with those agreements in being able to put, you know, 17 people writing one song, whether it be a sample or just original writers, whatever it may be, and allow them to have these digital contracts that make sure everybody gets paid fairly precisely automatically. That part of it I like, I mean, for my, business, I like all of it. Mm-hmm. But specifically, for our business, [00:57:23] Dan Runcie: Does anything about AI spark interest or application in the same way? [00:57:28] Steve Stoute: Well, with AI, I'm trying to figure out, I'd really like it for education. So, you know, if I'm giving you tools, look at Uber, right? And They tell a driver, you know, peak times 4:00 PM this area, the town, the driver know where to go. The driver could be of any education level, but the tools that are provided to that driver, apply to, you know, whether you speak perfect English, you know, your learning English, your education level varies. The simplicity of what they provide you to be a small business is absolutely brilliant. You should look at the backend of Uber. You should see what an Uber driver sees. it'll amaze you. For our artists, I look at them like that. So, where I think AI can be really good is an understanding like when you post during this time, this is when the best time you get results.This is the type of content that works best for you. the, you know, release of songs when you should release them. The timing of it. I think utilizing AI to provide education around building your business can be very helpful for us, because of the fact that it can pull all that information and then provide a very easy way of understanding the best way to move forward based off the intelligence that it gleams.[00:58:47] Dan Runcie: There's so many applications of it, I think both internally for companies like you mentioned, but also how you deal with your stakeholders, how they then deal with their fan bases. It'll also be interesting to see just the bigger picture, what that next big thing is, how people are gonna react to it. A lot of it is accelerated by, How people live in bubbles themselves in a lot of ways.If you're only spending your time on Twitter, on Discord, you're just seeing the frenzy. You think everyone is there with you. Yeah. I remember a year ago I was at a dinner and this was right at the height of web 3. It was a lot of industry professional folks in there, and I remember being the person saying, you're all saying that we're gonna be on web 6 a year from now.There's people, the average person really isn't tapped into this. I don't think we're moving that fast. And a lot of 'em looked at me like I was crazy then. Yeah. And I'm like, it's my job to follow this stuff. I'm not a Luddite here telling you this. This is just the reality. So, [00:59:42] Steve Stoute: Well people, a lot of times people fight, try to solve problems that don't exist. Yeah. Right. Like it's like, you are saying web 6 and all that, we haven't even gotten to, you know, look, we still don't even know what the fuck 5G does yet, right? It's like, let's be really analog about this topic, yeah, we're fixing that, with AT & T but just in general, the regular con general consumer, you ask 'em about 5g, they see it on their thing. They're like, my text didn't go through any faster and my videos are still, you know, it's, Yeah. It's still like cycling. So I thought I had 5g. So sometimes things create more media momentum than the practical consumer experiences and a lot of times, spend a lot of time trying to solve problems that actually don't exist.[01:00:35] Dan Runcie: Agreed on that. Agreed on that. Well, Steve, before we close things out, the first interview we did, we talked about where United Masters was, where the future was, and I believe you told me, [01:00:45] Steve Stoute: but I did pretty good when I look, I haven't seen the interview, since, but I don't know if I did pretty good in my prediction. Do you remember? [01:00:52] Dan Runcie: You said we are in the first inning of this cause I think I asked you, what does the future look like with exits and future? You said we're in the first inning, we're early in this perspective. What inning do you feel like we're at now and what do you see for the future of the business.[01:01:07] Steve Stoute: I believe that we're still in the the first third of the innings. I think we're in inning to bottom of the second, you know, top of the third kind of thing. and the reason why is because now money is back into music. When I first sat with you, There was no vC money in music businesses anymore. They'd fucking ran. They lost all that money with all those other, you know, versions of this idea for reasons that make perfect sense, that the money had up, the money was going to social media and, you know, FinTech and a bunch of the other things like why me? Why music. And in the last five years, whether it be catalog sales or, independent music now being discovered by financial systems, Goldman Sachs and the others investors more, mainstream investors have realized that there's growth there and there's globalization of music and all of the things that bring energy back to the industry and that the record labels don't have this. Choke hold on it like they used to have. And it's not as difficult and to understand, which was another thing that people didn't understand about the music was They made it so difficult. People thought it was like a business that was so hard to figure out and all that other kind of stuff. Cuz over the rights. But because it's now become clear where I used to have to explain it to every single person. They're like, so you're competing with Spotify, like, no, you'd have to explain. it. They understand it now, which is cool. So now money's in, which means more entrepreneurs are gonna come in and build services like ours and other alternative services tools. The fastest growing segment of the music business is independent music. The fastest growing aspect of the music business is global music. Global music, the record companies never dominated because English speaking music was the only thing that really mattered. I mean, you just about it, Bad Bunny headline Coachella, right? How many people don't even know what the fuck he's saying? I mean, if there's 80,000 people there with maybe 65,000, don't know what the fuck he's saying. Yet they're dancing, all this great music coming outta Africa. Mm-hmm. That people are just going crazy over. That never happened. At the rate this has happened. Now, all of that independence rising globalization and music rising and money coming in. Is now you're about to see the acceleration of what can happen as a result of the momentum. It was always headwinds. And now I would say in the last year, it's been tailwinds. It's an exciting time. It's a very exciting time. it's an extremely exciting time. it's no longer in the dark. It's no longer something that, you know, big business. it wasn't paying attention to. Everybody sees it now. and when everybody sees opportunity and money and. Value creation and the fact that you can disrupt this, you know, a hundred billion dollar business of the music business, it can be disrupted because the barriers of entry has completely been removed like every other industry where the barriers of entry has removed, money goes into it, entrepreneurs come into it and new value is created. and I think that's being recognized as we speak here today. So we're in the bottom of the second, top of the third. [01:04:47] Dan Runcie: Nice. Alright, bro, appreciate that. [01:04:49] Steve Stoute: Always, as always, This is good man. All right. Trapital. Let's rock and roll. [01:04:53] Dan Runcie: Yes sir. man. Cool. [01:04:55] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

It’s never been easier for brands to push their message out. But building true connections is  in today’s fragmented landscape.Dr. Marcus Collins has advice for cutting through the noise. His new book, “For The Culture”, is full of insights. Marcus has worked with Beyonce, Apple, Nike and more. He’s the Head of Strategy at Wieden+Kennedy, and a marketing professor at the Michigan Ross School of Business (Go Blue!).Marcus believes people use brands to express who they are. To win now and in the future, the most successful brands will have to double down on identity, not on value proposition. Here’s everything we covered:[3:20] How media fragmentation is affecting community-building [5:35] Brands have to activate people, not algorithms  [8:45] Ideology creates cultural consumption[10:44] Brand ideology transcends industries[19:18] How non-visible companies can use tangibility to brand build[20:04] Effective market research goes beyond just data[23:57] Great marketing taps into the moment[30:04] Why Marcus wrote this book[31:30] How to reach MarcusListen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Marcus Collins, @marctothecThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmThis episode is also brought to you in collaboration with Primary Wave. James Brown would have turned 90 this month. Let’s revisit his cultural legacy and check out his greatest hits. Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapitalTrapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo.TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Marcus Collins: The hope for me personally, is to scale my impact like I believe that reasonable, my ideology, my belief, my conviction is that we're put in this world to serve God, and serve each other. That's what I believe, and the way I serve is by helping people realize the best version themselves operate the highest fidelity. So the book is a way to scale my impact.[00:00:21] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:45] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is all about culture, culture's ability to drive the decisions we make in business, in society and more. And our guest is the one and only Dr. Marcus Collins. He is an award-winning marketer. He's a professor at the Ross School of Businesses, university of Michigan, go blue. And he has done a number of impressive things in his career, working on campaigns like Apple Music, Budweiser, made in America's Festival, Bud Light Platinum, Beyonce and her digital work, especially in the Sasha Fierce era. He's also worked with Matthew Knowles, Steve Stout, and many others in the industry today, and he is the author of a new book that just came out called For the Culture. So in this episode we talked a lot about brands reaching that ideology level, which Marcus describes as that top tier that a brand could reach in terms of how it connects and identifies with people and in communities.So we talk about what that looks like. We also talk about Marcus' goals for this book, how that shapes his viewpoints and some of the challenges that brands can face. With regards to branding and reaching that ideology level, whether certain industries are more or less disposed to being able to get there and more.I give Marcus a ton of credit, him and I had met over a decade ago, back when I was in business school at Michigan as well, and seeing his career path and a lot of the decisions that he was able to make a transition into doing something he truly loves and is one of the best people in the world at what he does, gave me inspiration to not only see that there were plenty of other non-traditional career paths after going to business school, but I think a lot of that also informed the type of work that I now do at Trapital today and how I try to continue myself on the path that makes most sense for me.So really great conversation, always great to have him on a second time on the podcast. So here's my conversation with Marcus. Hope you enjoy it.[00:02:41] Dan Runcie: All right. We are joined today by the one and only Dr. Marcus Collins, author of For the Culture, an award-winning marketer and a Ross alum. Go Blue. Welcome back, man.[00:02:51] Marcus Collins: That's right. Thanks man. Thanks for having me, doc. Always a pleasure to be with[00:02:55] Dan Runcie: Likewise and your book. Great job on it. Great job on the release too. You got a bunch of heavy hitters giving support for this. And one of the things that I wanna start with, you've talked about this before, the ideology hierarchy that brands go through and that journey. So for the listeners, can you first explain what that is and then an example of a brand that you think has gotten there and done A good example of that.[00:03:20] Marcus Collins: Yeah, so we think about ideology, it's about the way the brand sees the world, like the point of view that the brand has it's conviction. Some call it as purpose. It's really the driving belief that dictates where the brand goes, what it says, what it does, and with whom. it shows up in the world.And we all think about strong brands as brands that people know. Oh, I know that brand. we're strong. Where a lot of brands that we know that we don't consume from, right? Like Sears, we know that brand Blockbuster, we know that brand, but clearly people weren't showing up. So awareness isn't enough. One step up, we go, well there's, I know that brand and it has good quality, right?Oh, that's awesome. I know the brand has has good quality. It's a stronger brand. But to go one step higher is to know the brand. Strong, good quality, but it's also considered a leader in the space, right? So you've got like a Hulu and a Netflix and a Tubly. Which one is more trusted? Well, definitely ain't Tubly, right?Because they're not considered anywhere close to being a leader in the space. A step up from that is trust and confidence. I trust the brand. Not only do I know it, it has, good products. it's a leader in the category, but I also trust it. I have confidence in it. We think about, the headphones that we know to be the most trusted headphones in the market.We'll say, oh, that's Bose, right? Bose is demonstratively, a leader in the category and the most trusted headphones. Think about audio quality, sonic quality. However, Bose is bested in the market by Beats by Dre. Why is that? Because Beats by Dre operates at a higher level still. It's association and relevance that the brand, it's relevant for someone like me and the association, the imagery I have that's associated to the brand makes it seem cooler, right?Which is why Beats by Dre owned like 48% of the market when they were before AirPods came out, right when it came to the headphone market. But then it's one step higher than that. And the most strongest brands operate at this zenith, this pinnacle of brand strength. And that's ideology. They transcend the value propositions of the product.My razor sharper, my battery last longer, my car goes faster, and they operate at a place of conviction. And this is so strong for brands because people consume those brands, not just cuz of what they are and what they do, but because who these people are. And the brand becomes an extension of my identity.of Who I am, a Patagonia fleece is just as warm as a Columbia fleece, however, where in Patagonia says something about who I am, my identity, that I believe in mitigating our impact on the environment, and that's massively powerful.[00:06:01] Dan Runcie: This is relevant for musicians and artists as well, because I think they have some of those ideological brands too. I've been looking at the trends, especially with vinyl sales. More than half of the people that are buying vinyl don't have players. They're buying them to put them on display to showcase them.It is an extension of them. I want you to think that I am the type of person that listens to Drake, that listens to Tyler the creator. That's that zenith that we're talking about. it[00:06:29] Marcus Collins: It was so cool, and I fully agree with you. A few years ago, Fruit of the Loom, they do partnerships with musical acts like, Metallica, Kiss, Aerosmith, Seal's t-shirts. People got metallic on their, shirts. That's a licensing deal between fruit, the loos, and those musical acts.And a few years back, fruit looms. Were looking at their book of business to see which. brand, likeness which artists l likeness was doing better than the others. So they can re-up those licenses and they found that the Ramones was outperforming Kiss, Metallica, Aerosmith. They're like, what's going on The Ramones little small little band.Then they had like two albums out in the seventies, like, what's happening here? So they asked those fans, they said, you know, you must be a really big fan of the Ramones that you bought this t-shirt. They were like, Nah, I don't even know they're music. But the Ramones mean punk rock, and they want to be seen as punk rock, the meaning associated with the brand, that vessel of meaning that is brand.People use it as an identity mark, not because of what it is, but because of who they are. I mean, the biggest brands that we know, the biggest artists that we know, they all transcend what they do and operate at a level of why they do it. In the words of Simon Sinek,[00:07:43] Dan Runcie: This reminds me of those Iron Maiden t-shirts. You remember that era? Maybe it was like five, seven years ago when everybody was wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts. I don't know if they were really listened to the music, but I think it's that thing as well where they just wanna be seen like the type of person that would identify with that[00:07:58] Marcus Collins: Of course not. Of course not. I mean, people are wearing, Red Bull t-shirts. That was a thing, is a way of signaling something about yourself. NASA t-shirts. Exactly. Like just signaling something about yourself. And really, that's all we're trying to do to try to peacock our way through the world signal who we are in hopes that we can find people who are like ourselves and we find connection because that's what we are, we're social animals by nature.[00:08:21] Dan Runcie: And a lot of this, at least what we talked about so far, are consumer brands. This applies at the enterprise level as well. I think a company like McKinsey aligns perfectly. There is a status that you're able to send both internally within the organization and externally by hiring that firm, spending the seven figures for them to come and work on your project because of what you want to be able to say.[00:08:45] Marcus Collins: To say, McKenzie is our agency, that's who does our strategy work, McKenzie, and we know this from being in business school, that people want McKenzie on their resume. Because of what McKenzie means, what it signifies, you know, there's a sociologist named Pierre Perdue, who talks about this idea of cultural capital that our consumption, the more conspicuous it is, the more we align, value from it.There is embodied cultural capital. That is our skills, our knowledge, what we know, like, you know, if you go to the opera and, you know, the literature, you know, the Odyssey, you know the Homer, you know all that stuff. Then you have a amount of, value, of capital, of cultural capital.And the idea is that if you were an equestrian growing up, that signals that you've come from wealth and your friends who were equestrians growing up signals that they come from wealth and who fr what friends, do you have friends like those and those friends open up doors for you for jobs? VC funding and the alike, right?So that cultural capital that embodied cultural capital turns into financial capital. The same thing goes with objectified cultural capital, the things that we buy, the clothes that we wear, the cars that we drive. This a way of signaling who we are in the world in an effort to meet other people like ourselves, that open up door for financial capital.The same thing goes for institutional cultural capital where I go to school, where I work, what fraternity I joined, whether I was in Jack and Jill, like these things signal who we are in the world that open up more financial economic opportunities for ourselves. So you're right. So it's not just, B2C as we typically think about it.These are all the many ways that we signal who we are in the world, the companies we work for, the schools we went to, the institutions that we frequent. These are all consumption behavior to signal our identity. So that we might find people like ourselves that create more social and financial opportunities for ourselves.[00:10:44] Dan Runcie: Are there certain industries or sectors that hitting that ideological level is extremely difficult or it's almost impossible? I think back to my own career experience. I've had internships at cable companies and airlines, and I think that there's challenges, especially just given the nature of their businesses, how consumers interact with them.But even I think about companies in waste management and areas like that. Companies that could have strong brands and business businesses, but is there a ceiling of how high certain companies and certain industries can go because of the industry dynamics?[00:11:19] Marcus Collins: I think that if a company defines itself by what it does, then yes, there is a ceiling. But if a company defines itself by what it believes, I think the possibilities are endless. Cuz even as you name off those companies, we look at them through the lens of their industry, their category. And they are defined by their category.Oh, you have waste management services. So you are in waste management. You have an airline. So you are in the airline industry. you make microprocessors, so you're the micro processing industry. When you only define yourself by the product services or product goods you bring to the world, then that's the only opportunity you have.But when you elevate beyond that, you say, we believe this. We just so happened to provide waste management services. Imagine if we said this is arbitrarily speaking. Imagine we said that we believe that a clean environment makes for. a better life. Let's just say that. I'm just make that up, right.A clean environment makes for a better life, and that's why we have sanitation services, waste management services. Then we go, well, what else could be better if it were clean? Well, what if we cleaned up the oceans? We're no longer in the waste management business. We are in the cleaning oceans business.Or, well, what if we cleaned up the internet? Mm. What if we went through the internet and found all the smut, all the whatever, the things that aren't as savory. Maybe for kids and we're going to clean the internet up. We're gonna create products to do that. We just so happen to do waste management.We still happen to clean up oceans. We still happen to create software that cleans up the internet. But what we do that because we believe that a clean environment creates for better solutions. Again, I just riff that but the idea is that if you operate at that level, you are not defined by your category and what you do.You're defined by your conviction and why you do it, and that is just Superman powerful. And then you bring in people who see the road the way you do.[00:13:12] Dan Runcie: I think we just gave an entire industry. A market class and a playbook that they can use moving forward.[00:13:19] Marcus Collins: That's right. We should of held onto that one.[00:13:21] Dan Runcie: But you're right, because it also makes me think of insurance, and I know you worked with translation and one of their big accounts has been State Farm, and if you look at the product itself, the features of that product don't necessarily align on the surface of what you would think could be something that is something you would advertise in that way, but we look at the benefits. That's how you can think more broadly. We can get to Chris Paul versus Cliff Paul, and so many of the other memorable campaigns we've seen from State Farm.[00:13:50] Marcus Collins: What's actually quite interesting about that and you're spot on, is that I don't think there's very many industries as commoditized as the insurance industry. They all use the same actuaries. All of them use the exact same actuaries, just some of them are more conservative than others, and they're willing to charge you a premium for their product.And I suppose the way they, you know, get it, the job done at the end of the day is better than others. But according to the research, from when I was working in insurance, people only report their collisions, their calamities 25 to 35% of the time. So 65% of the time, at best, people aren't even reporting the accidents.So the brand, the company never comes in to actually make good on their promise, right? We're just really hanging on there based on what this brand is all about. And State Farm exists because they believe that people should live life more confidently every day to help people live life more confidently every day.This will happen to have 18,000 agents across the country to help people make better decisions. This will happen to have to cover your stuff and help provide financial services, but why they do it? To help people live life more confidently every day. And now you say, okay, so how might we do that?Well, What does that mean for basketball? The NBA, one of their sponsorships? Where is actual statistic for helping people in the n NBA called the assist? Let's go after that. Now you have a creative platform to be a part of this institution that we call the NBA, but also another way of demonstrating why you exist, not what you do.[00:15:26] Dan Runcie: Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I think that's applicable for a number of industries here, and we're getting into insights and just how you perceive people. And one of the things that we're talking about is who are the best market researchers. You have this piece in the book, and you've talked about this before, about why comedians are actually some of the best market researchers out there.Could you talk a little bit more about that?[00:15:49] Marcus Collins: Yeah. Comedians are phenomenal because they just observe people. They observe us humans as the social actors that we are, as we navigate the phenomenal world that we live in, and they look at people and go, that's odd. You see what she did? Oh, and he did it too. And they did it. And they did it. Okay. This is a thing, and as they observe people act, they apply theory to describe what they saw, right?They use theory to describe the socially phenomenal world that we live in, and then they say, okay, this is why it's happening. This is the underlying physics of why these people act the way they do, and then they tell it with a slant. They find an interesting way to communicate it such a way that when they get on stage and go, every time we go to the mall, you notice that you do this, we all go, oh my goodness, that's so me.I totally do that. Of course you do, because they have used what we know is to be the best description of human behavior. Theory and applied it to something empirical that happens. The phenomenon that we take on, the chances of us understanding people are far higher when those two things are together and the chances of us saying something that's meaningful to them is far greater when we tell it with a slant.And that's what good marketers do, mark, especially advertisers do. But market research, no one does it better than comedians. Full stop.[00:17:12] Dan Runcie: And this gets at something else. I know you've talked about comedians are able to get at that intimacy level. They're actually interacting with people. They're seeing things, and they're not mistaking that for information. And I think that's one of the challenges. I know you've talked about how we have so much data.There's so many companies that can easily just turn on Facebook ads, turn on Google ads, so you could see the profiles, but that doesn't necessarily give you that deep engagement to be able to understand beyond, and I feel like that's becoming a bit more and more of a challenge.[00:17:44] Marcus Collins: Exactly, that's the paradox. More information, very little intimacy and comedians are, have always been intimate and marketers used to be intimate, but as we get more. Information, more data. We go, oh, I don't need to go spend time with people. I don't need to go talk to people because I have their search history.I have their click history, I have their downloads. I have what they watch and what they listen to that describes who they are. It describes what they do. To get to who they are, we have to get closer. We need greater proximity to understand the underlying physics that govern, why they listen to trap music and why they watch, Succession, and why they consume what they consume, why they're going back into the nineties for fashion inspiration.Why is that happening? We can observe it and say, oh, cool, that's a thing. That's a trend spotting, but you don't know what's going on until you get close to people. And this is what we have to do as marketers. And I would even argue that maybe this is what we need to be doing as a society. Just get a little closer to people and it's easy to look at someone and go, oh, they're crazy.Because they operate by a different meaning system than we do, than different cultural characteristics than we do. But if we understand that the way we see the world is subjective, not objective, we go, oh, well my truth isn't, their truth doesn't mean that they're wrong. It just means it's just a little different.And the closer I get to understanding how these people make, meaning, how they navigate the world. The more connected I probably feel to them, but as a marketer, the more likely I am to interact with them, to engage them, to get them to adopt behavior, which is the core function of our gig.[00:19:18] Dan Runcie: This reminds me of Tyler Perry and what he's done with Tyler Perry Studios too. Of course, we all know the backstory. He was doing his plays. His plays were able to gain great traction. He ended up moving that into movies and his TV shows and everything he's done since. But even through all that success, he still was doing the plays.That was his opportunity to be in front of the actual audiences, see how they reacted. He would make jokes different in the north versus the south versus the Midwest, and that's his way of, although he may not be a traditional comedian, he's still wearing all the hats and he's still providing humor through his content.So I think that's one of the things that doesn't get talked about as much, about why he's been able to build this billion dollar empire.[00:20:05] Marcus Collins: That's right and the best set up comedians, they still go to the Laugh factory. They still go to the hole in the wall to try new bits to sign, try new material. Oh, they laughed at that one, not this one. Okay. That one got in. Okay, cool. They build their set by workshopping it iteratively, right?But marketers, that we hold onto it. We concoct it in the walls of our offices and then we release it to the world, prayerfully, hopefully in Shallah that it's gonna connect with someone. And it's like, well, yeah, there's some randomness that we can't control. Sure, we can't predict everything, but we can certainly increase the likelihood of connecting by just getting closer.And the challenge is that there are perverse incentives that make getting closer a challenge. In that it takes time. It takes effort to build relationships, to talk to people, to see the world through their lenses. Where I've had, I got one quarter to turn my business around, man, whatever's the most efficient.And that's what we rely on. And we wonder why we don't have strong relationships with our consumers because we look at consumers as machines, eat messages and crap cash, as opposed to real life human beings who navigate the world through their cultural lenses.[00:21:18] Dan Runcie: Do you think this got worse since the pandemic?[00:21:21] Marcus Collins: I would say in some ways, yes, in some ways, no. I think that there was a level of elasticity that when the pandemic hit, people were emailing everyone in their database saying, We care about. You we're thinking about you and then someone made that film where it took all the ads from all the marketers and they were saying all the same things.And you go, this is nonsense. And marketers went, oh, they're right. So let's like be a little bit more human. And people got human like, like the murder of George Floyd. People were like, oh, there's a world that exists beyond my own. there are lenses that are translating the world that aren't my own.Let me go see the world through other people's eyes. And for a moment, therefore, a brief moment we were getting in like some humanity in the world. But then once we got back to some normality, some normalcy, we snapped back into place. All right, cool. Let's use the data. Tells us, let's use it, this news to that.I thought that the pandemic was an interesting time because people just became a bit more empathetic, right? We saw companies treat their employees a little bit differently. They're like, hey, gives people some grace. People need time. People need space. like people's needs. And then once we went back to quote unquote normal, assuming we're back to some kinda normality, get back to work, get back in the office, gonna razor sharper.My battery lasts longer, my car goes faster. You aren't human, kind of a sad situation. and you would think that kind of inogen shock to the system will wake us up a little bit more. But unfortunately I think that there's some return to status quo a bit.[00:22:53] Dan Runcie: Part of the challenge seemed like there was so much growth that so many software and tech companies had during the pandemic, given the nature of the services they offered, and because the pandemic and lockdowns limited, then from the in-person interactions, it could be very easy to think, okay, well we don't need to spend the money on those focus groups.We don't need to spend the money on having our leadership team be out in the field to interact with people. Look at what we're able to do in the current ecosystem and we saw that there was just so much growth, especially from March, 2020 up until November, 2021. Things were booming, but then. World started to open back up and I feel like we're starting to see it more.We're seeing more flexibility with what certain companies are doing in terms of their policies, whether they are letting people work from home. But I'm also seeing people wanting more in-person events, more engagement. There is an appetite for this, which I think should hopefully translate to an appetite to getting in-person time and more inpe intimacy with the people you're actually trying to serve.[00:23:57] Marcus Collins: Well, what I think is awesome. Is that the technologies help facilitate ways to get closer, even if you can't in person, right? So, you know, we typically use ethnographic research for, when we're trying to study culture, right? Go into people's cultural contexts, observe them, interact with them, don't be, you know, sort of a tourist, be a part of the community.But then there's netnographic research, which is the same thing in ethnography, just in online spaces. In fact, all of my academic work. All my academic research is typically done on Reddit like I'm observing these communities in their cultural contexts, practice their cultural subscription, and the beautiful part about Reddit, truly.Now, I'm about to just nerd out for a moment here cause we could do that. Dan, is that Reddit has moderators that actually clinging the data for you. The moderators, they remove content that's not within the cultural conventions of the community, and then they'll get rid of people who post things that are outside of the norms of the community.They are cleaning the data for us to observe this community operate and abide by its cultural characteristics for a researcher goodnight. It doesn't get any better than that. And we get to observe these people make meaning through their discourse in an unobtrusive way. And not only that, we get over the hurdle that people have about qualitative research, that the sample size is so small that we can see this in massive, massive, massive, occasions in my dissertation work, I had over 12 million lines of text. I'm watching people engage. And like I'm going through it and looking at how they make meaning, the language they use, the memes that they use, all these different texts that they use in an effort to communicate, to help make meaning, negotiate, construct meaning.That's superman powerful. And if nothing else, this creates great opportunity for us, right? You could do interviews via Zoom. We did some ethnographic work, with folks in China when mainland China wasn't letting anyone in or out, so we couldn't even go be in the field. So we used Zoom. That was helpful, right?The technology is meant to extend our human behaviors, right? It means to extend where we have human limitations. And if we don't take advantage of that, what are we doing really?[00:26:15] Dan Runcie: I love that you mentioned Reddit there because it is a great lens into all of these subreddit. Each of them is a community that provides a reflection on what that broader community may be thinking, what they if, how they evaluate things and how they interact with each other. How do you, from an audience segmentation perspective, how do you look at the conversations that may happen within those communities and.Get an idea of how that may extend to a broader community, knowing that Reddit itself does attract, maybe a more analytical or a deeper type of thought that may be slightly different in terms of the broader subreddit community represents.[00:26:53] Marcus Collins: Sure. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So when we're going out in the field to Stu to study, see, I wanna study cost players. I'm gonna go to Comic-Con where the hardcore cost players are, because these are the people that are abiding by the cultural characteristics of what it means to be a cost player, right?I'm gonna implant myself where they are and engage with them because oftentimes these are people that are like a part that are leading the construction of an a negotiation of meaning among the community. So Reddit, to your point, these are people who are hardcore into it. And maybe there's some bias in the fact that they're more inclined to be there than others, but they're representative of the community.And what we do in all research truly, is that we look at a sample of the market and then we try to generalize the learnings, right? So we, we look at, social phenomenon and try to find generalizability of it. So my research, particularly my dissertation, I looked at how brands of branded products spread within a cultural context.And I chose hip hop because hip hop's tentacles are. I mean, I'm talking to the guy who wrote the book on this, and you know this very well, how widespread hip hop's impact is in like, almost every industry. You could think of jewelry, high fashion, high tech, auto, sneakers, beauty, pharmaceuticals, everything, hip hiphop touches almost every single thing.So I studied, how brands and branded products spread in hiphop culture. Specifically, this community looked at the mechanisms by which they make meaning and they evaluate and legitimate products as they spread, throughout, throughout the community. And then generalized that broadly on how communities make meaning.Now, there'll be nuances that'll be different for rock climbers versus pickle ballers versus runners. But at its core, these are the processes by which things spread. So we try to get at some generalizability, especially when we have a wide swath of data to analyze.[00:28:56] Dan Runcie: Makes sense, and I know we've talked about that dissertation before. it's powerful. I mean, and that's so much of what attracted me to this work as well. We see how hip hop is so pervasive in every corner that it touches. And that's only going to continue even if they may not call it hip hop in the future.We still know where the origins come from, I say that because of just some trends I'm seeing in terms of how certain songs have been categorized and they've been talking about hip hop's decline. But we know what's there when we hear general music themes. This is the origination place. This is where it is, and this culture is now about to celebrate its 50th year in a few months, so it's just great.[00:29:34] Marcus Collins: I mean, which is why Trapital is so important, man. Like it's, you need, cultural producers to preach the gospel and to quantify its impact on commerce in the economy, which is you're doing the good work.[00:29:46] Dan Runcie: Thank you. Appreciate that. So before we close things out, let's talk a bit more about for the culture itself. You've been doing so much work in this space, you already had a great platform. What was the value add for you with this book, putting it out there, what does it do for you moving forward and how is that process?[00:30:04] Marcus Collins: The hope for me personally, is to scale my impact like I believe that reasonable, my ideology, my belief, my conviction is that we're put in this world to serve God, and serve each other. That's what I believe, and the way I serve is by helping people realize the best version themselves operate the highest fidelity.So the book is a way to scale my impact. As opposed to if you can't be in a Michigan classroom and you can't be a client at Widen Kennedy, or you can't be on my team at Widen Kennedy, here's a way to get some of, some of the thought leadership, right? But the other part, it's to helpfully raise, the industry that if we are using different language, A better Rosetta Stone talk about culture that will be better practitioners of culture and bear some responsibility to what we do. So we're not conquesting people's culture to sell more widgets, but we're actually contributing to it, realizing, that when we're using other people's cultural markers, we run the risk of what we know is appropriation.If we do that without understanding the meaning that it's associated to those things. And once we understand that, we go, oh, okay. We're not just gonna pimp their thing out, we're gonna contribute to the community that actually has made this thing a thing. And the hope is that, the residuals from that, the reverberation from that, will make a little dent in the world and would've I would've done my part.if that happens.[00:31:30] Dan Runcie: Makes sense. Love it. Well, for people that are listening along and wanna get a copy of further culture themselves, where can they get it and where can they follow you?[00:31:38] Marcus Collins: the book for the cultures available where all books are sold, particularly Amazon. you could find me at @marctothec, m a r c t o t h e c at all the social places, and marctothec.com/.[00:31:50] Dan Runcie: Love it. Dr. Marcus Collins. Thank you.[00:31:53] Dan Runcie Episode Outro: Thanks for watching Trapital on YouTube. If you want more where that came from, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can get all the latest updates. Or if you wanna hear the latest episodes, go ahead. Subscribe to the Trapital podcast. That's Trapital wherever you get podcasts. And if you wanna stay up to date with the latest insights, go ahead and subscribe to the Trapital newsletter.That's Tapital.co And sign up there. Thanks so much.[00:32:19] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead.Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

This week, I’m running back an interview with another one of the most popular episodes we ever did with KevOnStage from early 2022. KevOnStage (Kevin Fredericks) is a comedian, producer, director, and entrepreneur behind KevOnStage studios.  Today's episode talks about how he built an independent brand that really paid off his hard work. He established a solid fan base, had millions of followers on social media, and monetized these platforms by producing his hilarious viral content, a total blast in the mainstream.Listen as we talk about what's going on in his business and his independent success, turning rejection into a massive opportunity to be where he is now.Episode Highlights[01:56] What KevOnStage is currently working on[04:49] His take on more black content going in the mainstream[06:53] KevOnStage’s motto, his marketing strategy, and business goals[11:57] What it’s like to have autonomy in his brand[19:08] His thoughts on artists knowing their audience and dealing with critics[21:30] What's the process from the stuff put out on socials versus onstage[25:24] How does he approach his game using different social platforms[32:38] What’s something beyond just the monetary gain that makes him want to continue to feel inspired to create content[35:13] His opinion on creators who are a one-platform-dominant[38:21] Where does his most lucrative income come from [41:57] How he diversify his content to own the media and make his brand stand out[45:51] What would he like to be doing more of[51:28] KevOnStage’s new content to watch out forListen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuest: KevOnStage StudiosThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmTrapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTKev: So, sometimes partnering is great, sometimes licensing is great, sometimes selling is great sometimes. A good business person takes the best deal for what they need to get done.(intro)Dan: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I’m your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. Today’s guest is KevOnStage, the comedian, producer, director, and entrepreneur behind KevOnStage Studios. I’ve been following KevOnStage for years now. I think he’s one of the funniest people on the internet so it was so good to have this conversation. We talked about how he’s built his business and everything that he has done from how he creates content, how he thinks about what platforms he prioritizes, how that then provides insights for what he creates for his longer form content, what gets created from KevOnStage Studios, and, ultimately, the type of opportunities that he can offer for other creators and other entertainers that want to do, in many ways, largely the type of thing that he’s done. And we talked about where his streaming service sits in this ecosystem of the Netflixes and the Hulus and, in a lot of ways, even though those streaming services may have their black voices tabs, that’s not quite the type of content that is what Kev is making so he’s really finding his niche, doubling down there, and how he uses the insights from that to infer what gets made, that is how many creators have been very successful so so much of that is very relatable. This is also probably one of the interviews I’ve laughed in the most. He’s hilarious, like I said. This is a great conversation. I really hope you enjoy it. Here’s my chat with KevOnStage.(interview)Dan: All right, we got my guy KevOnStage here. Kev, you are one of the busiest people that I’d seen from 2021. Now we’re next year, man. How you feeling? Fresh year, how is it?Kev: I’m excited, man. We’ve got a lot of new things we’re working on. I’m really excited, man. It’s always fun to be at the beginning of a project, not knowing where it’s going or how far it may go and that’s kind of where I am now. All the things I’m like, “Oh, soon as I get back, soon as I get back, I’m gonna start working on that.” That time is here now so I’m really excited.Dan: That what’s up. Because I feel like for you, you got a few things that are already in motion that have been working well. Your content’s good. You got that machine going. But the Studio, I feel like that’s the really exciting thing that’s been growing.Kev: Listen, man, I’m working on my own flywheel, okay? Westbrook, they got their flywheel, fast IP, that was the best graphic I’ve ever seen that you made. Dan: Oh, thank you. Kev: I was like, “This is what I wanna do. I wanna do everything from Instagram videos to selling shows.” So, you know, and they all have their own value so that’s what’s exciting. I have the same amount of joy from making a funny reel like I posted of Angel falling in the challenge show, it was just — I spent 20 minutes on that, really just getting the fall right. And then I came here, you know, I went on location scout right before I came here to this new show we’re working on and then this podcast, like they’re all exciting for different reasons so I’m trying to enjoy it all. Dan: Yeah. I think the cool thing with that, you get to wear multiple hats and I know, with this, there’s a number of things that interest you about this, right? Like you enjoy comedy, you have that piece, but I also know that you like to put people on. You wanna use your platform to do that. So I feel like you being able to wear each of those hats and do those things gives you that opportunity to provide all of that.Kev: Absolutely, man. I think there’s the old saying of the church, “We’re blessed to be a blessing,” and that’s kind of what I wanna do. People have given me opportunities, partnerships with, you know, people have helped lift me, and I just wanna pass along the same thing. For me, my platform isn’t about me shining alone, you know what I mean? I tell my friends all the time, I want us all in the gated community. One things I used to do at all deaths that I found a lot of joy in was give people their first great reel or first time directing or whatever and I found that I had as much joy doing that as making somebody laugh. And KevOnStage Studios is really just a more expensive version of that. So, we wanna give people their first time PA-ing or help you get into the wardrobe union or makeup union. It’s hard for black people to get into those places but we need black people in those spaces so that’s kind of what we’re working towards doing. And then even simple things like our editor, one of our editors likes improv so it’s like, “Hey, you wanna be in an episode?” Things like that are great too because I want people to be able to scratch their own creative itch and that’s kind of what my passion is. Dan: What I like about KevOnStage Studios is that, sure, I think there’s a lot of attention right now with, “Oh, there’s so much black content out there on your Netflix,” your this and this, but what you’re doing is like you’re saying, that’s true to an extent but it really isn’t true for a lot of the people that I think could have the opportunities to be put on in this era.Kev: Yeah. I was just watching Abbott Elementary this morning where I was shaving and I was just like, man, this show is amazing, and to see somebody like Quinta Brunson who — my first time seeing her was on Instagram. Her “Girl who’s never been on a nice date, a large, he must got — he got money. He could —” like from that to a network sitcom. And even shows like South Side, which I don’t know their story as much, but the show is amazing, that’s great. But then there’s a lot of creators who have those similar ideas and absolutely no path to HBO, Comedy Central, ABC, Netflix. Even me, like I’ve pitched to a lot of people and I had a lot of, “Uh-huh, we’ll circle back.” And, you know, that was 2018, ’19, you know, pandemic killed off anything I had going in Hollywood so I want to be that same network for people who can’t get all the way to Hollywood, you know, like here’s your chance to get to, you know, Hollywood adjacent — North Hollywood, if you will. You’re right over the hill, you just — you know, it’s cheaper in North Hollywood. You know, there’s more taco trucks, you know? And your number 15 minutes of real Hollywood, you know, that’s what KevOnStage Studios, it’s the North Hollywood of Hollywood. We’re right there. We’re right there. But it’s a one-bedroom washer and dryer stacked, you know?Dan: Exactly. Kev: That’s a leg up from having to go to a laundry mat. Dan: Yes, that’s true. It’s true.Kev: Stackable’s good, man. I’ll take a stackable.Dan: Right, right. It’s one of those things, right? It’s like location and all that, you can’t pick everything with these things. You can pick two, and, Kev, you’re gonna give them two.Kev: Laundry is a huge plus. Location and a stackable, I’m like, “Bet, let’s do it.” Dan: Well, I think the good thing with it is that — because I know in past interviews, you’ve talked about, hey, with this model, this is something you wanna provide the opportunity. But from a business perspective, I know that it’s not something that you necessarily need like a ton of subscribers to reach some point or you’re not trying to reach like Netflix scale necessarily, it’s something that can sit beside that. But with that, I’m sure you also have goals from the business side as well as the impact side with the service. So, what does that look like from a streaming service perspective?Kev: Yeah, that’s a great, great question. It’s like — I heard this example somewhere. They’re like, you know, somebody’s saying you’re not gonna beat Walmart at selling everything at a low price, right? They’re gonna beat you if you’re starting out. What you can beat them at is selling a lot of one thing, right? Because they sell so many things for a low price, they can’t sell a lot of any one thing so they’re gonna have, you know, maybe one or two black shaving kits, maybe Bevel and maybe one other thing. If you have a black beauty supply store, people are gonna be like, “Well, Walmart doesn’t have what I’m looking, here I can go get some weave, you know, a do rag, I can get Bevel, I can get seven other, I get essential oils, I can get Dixons,” you know?So that’s our motto, like we’re not — Netflix has an $8 billion content budget. They made Squid Game to Red Notice with the Rock — we can’t compete with that, right? But they don’t have black people learning how to play spades. They don’t have that video. They don’t have, you know, the Real Comedians Challenge Show, they don’t have things like that, right? So we wanna over serve a population that is being served by Hollywood but it’s not the primary focus, you know what I mean? Right now, we’re in an area of, we’re sorry, black people Hollywood, like, man, we really discriminate against you guys for a long time and you guys caught us out on it. So we’re reaping the benefits of all that, you know, time where we weren’t, you know, getting our just due. But even then, there’s still so many other shows that can’t be made to this audience and that’s kind of what we wanna fill. We wanna make stuff for black people who don’t see themselves on Netflix, you know? This church show that we’re working on, you know, is for black people who grew up in the church from a point of view of somebody who also grew up in the church and worked in the church, like if you grew up in the church like me, you know, there’s never really been a true church show from people who grew up in there. There’s people who attended but not people who like worked in ministry, and Netflix might not see the value in making a show like that and that’s where we come in, and we wanna serve that audience. All that content where they can’t get it on Netflix. And also I’m not even saying you don’t have to have Netflix, like I ain’t gonna lie to you, Dan, I watch my Netflix, I watch Hulu, HBO Max, like as a consumer, there’s stuff that I wanna watch too, like Game of Thrones one through four. Dan: Yeah, one through four. One through four.Kev: One through four. Insecure, like all those shows. Of course we’re not even here to say “Don’t watch Netflix” and “Boycott Netflix” like I won’t even ask you to do that because I’m not gonna do that. But, you know, sometimes you want a nice steak dinner at a five-star restaurant, sometimes you just want a taco truck, you know, and you can’t get that experience. When you really want a street taco or the corn man selling elotes, you know, a big steak dinner is not gonna do it. So that’s all we wanna be, man. We just a little taco truck on the street, man, just pull up real quick, get you three little tacos, you know what I’m saying? Some Jarritos and a little elote and go on about your way. You’re not gonna bring your wife here to propose to her. But if you’re in between work, you know, this Kevin taco, that’s KevOnStage Studio, just a little street taco place on the side.Dan: Right. And then with Netflix too, that’s the place that has all the good ratings of the people that know what’s up.Kev: And that’s the thing. You know, somebody gotta tell you about this place. “Hey, man, you gotta go over there. Trust me.” And when you — and that’s kind of how we’re growing, right? We don’t have the marketing budget like Netflix, right? When Netflix came out, yet get three months free, a year free. They had billboards and buses in Times Square. We don’t have that.Our thing is like, “Yo, there’s this funny show on this network called KevOnStage Studios, you gotta check it out.” Or you see a funny clip on TikTok and you wanna see the rest of the video, that’s our marketing right now. Word of mouth, your boy telling you, your girl telling you, or you seeing a clip and you wanna see more.Dan: Right. I think I heard you made the analogy once of the Sally’s Beauty Supply as opposed to, you know, what you may see at the traditional place like a Walmart, right? And I think even with that, it’s like, you know, from a haircare perspective, you know what, yeah, Walmart may have that can of Sportin’ Waves but I may want something a little more serious if you wanna make sure the wave’s spinning, right? You gotta get something a little —Kev: Absolutely. They might just have Sportin’ Waves but they’re not gonna have Murray’s, they’re not gonna have Sulfur8, Just For Me, they might just have one thing. And that’s kind of, yeah, that’s exactly what we wanna do here, man, and we’re having a good time doing it.Dan: That’s great, man. That’s great. I think that, in a lot of ways, like we were saying before, that’s how you identify the elements of your flywheel and where everything sits and how you’re able to foster not just your platform but the other opportunities and what I think it does at the end of the day, it narrows in, okay, what is the KevOnStage brand? What does it stand for? And what type of opportunities you can create from that? Because I feel like with you specifically, you’ve now kind of hit this mode where I know you mentioned that, you know, you were knocking on the door of many folks in Hollywood or anywhere else and they weren’t necessarily letting you in, but now I feel like you’re kind of at this stage where you are doing well for yourself given everything you’ve built up independently.You’re now able to leverage things. As you mentioned yourself, you got that Maserati, like you’re — like you’re showing from that perspective, right? But you got those things. I’m curious, though, because I know that — and as you know, definitely you have broken down a lot of the levels of what creators are and the creator economy and all those things, at this stage, you really do have the autonomy if you wanted to, okay, at this stage, would I wanna ever do some type of partnership or deal with one of these bigger distributors that are always trying to offer comedians or creators like yourselves the serious bag, but I’m curious from your stage right now, like is that something that would still entertain you? Like is that something that you would ever do?Kev: I thought about it and it depends and I’ll tell you why. One of the best parts about being at KevOnStage Studios and not having to answer to a network is not having to answer to a network. If I wanna make a show, if I wanna cast whoever, no name or whatever, I don’t have to have anybody else say yes, you know, or no, right?One thing is, you know, I learned when I shot my first pilot that a network paid for, when they pay for it, what they say goes, right? So in this instance, they were like, “Take this joke out and this joke out and this joke out,” during the notes process and then when we shot it, they’re like, “This isn’t funny. This is not landing. We don’t think black people are gonna get this” so we took all that stuff out, even though we were fighting for it, at the end of the day, they won because we were small and we didn’t have as much power in the room, and at the end of the day, they passed on it because they said it wasn’t funny enough. We were like, “Well, you took everything funny out. How could it be funny?” So, you know, when you’re first starting out, the network has all the power because I’m not Denzel or Shonda Rhimes. If I got an opportunity, they’re gonna tell me what it is, and fight as I may, it’s gonna be what they say. But here, we can make what we want to make and I think that autonomy is very freeing and it allows me to make what I know is good and funny. Like one of the things that I pride myself on is knowing my audience and what they will like and all that stuff. And, you know, even when I do like brand deals, you know, especially early on, I would have less power and I would have to basically say whatever the brand said and it would come out corny, and I’d be like my audience would hate it and they could smell the fakeness from a mile away. As I’ve grown. I’ve been like, “Hey, I’m gonna tell you right now that’s not gonna work. Trust me, let me do it this way and it always goes over better.” So, in that instance, I love the autonomy. However, if we were able to partner with someone, it allows us to make things at a greater scale and provide more opportunities for other people and do things a lot easier. You know, everything we do now, we gotta figure it out, you know, when your mom came home, the kitchen bare, the cupboard’s bare, she’s like, okay, we got two chicken thighs, some corn, you know, some breadcrumbs, make something work. That’s where we’re at, you know what I’m saying? At the end of the day, you’re like, “Hey, low key, that was kind of fire for what we had,” but you’d also love to just go to the grocery store and get everything you want. So, right now, I’m loving the freedom, but as we grow, I wouldn’t say no to an opportunity to do more and maybe employ more people for certain projects. I don’t think there’s ever a world where everything I do, I answer to somebody. I always want to be able to create something that I want to create without having to answer to anybody. But, you know, if Warner Brothers said, “Kev, we’re gonna offer 140 million to develop some stuff,” well, yes. Yes, I would — I’ll take a little 140 mil, yeah.Dan: Right, right. And that’s the thing, right? It’s like you have the clear strategy and from an overall perspective, it sounds like, hey, I know that overall deals are the wave, that’s not necessarily what I’m looking for. However, if that number is right, I’m not gonna not have the conversation. We’re going to talk about itKev: Absolutely — like look what Tyler Perry did, right? And I’ve watched his career and tried to mimic it to the best of my ability, which I haven’t done that well yet. But, you know, still working. But, you know, he leveraged the early Lionsgate deals into his own pocket, like, you know, he partnered with them and they were able to finance those movies and he did X, Y, Z, boom, boom. And then the capital that he got from that, he was able to finance his own shows. So sometimes, partnering is great sometimes, licensing is great sometimes, selling is great sometimes. A good business person takes the best deal for what they need to get done, right? So I wouldn’t say that, you know, part of our business model is if I can make a show, you know, at our margins and I can license it to you in the first window, I can make a great margin there and now I’ve done two things, I’ve made the show and I made the show I want and I might, you know, right now, there’s a lot of, you know, places that have more distribution than we do so if you wanna take it off our hands, we made our money back and you wanna, you know, stream it, then you’ve just introduced a lot more people to KevOnStage Studios and they can come back to the app and watch the other stuff we’ve made. So that’s definitely part of our plan and that would help us make more shows. So even if we sold that one and they own the rights to it, I wouldn’t cry because we can make eight more shows with what we sold that one for. So it’s about making the right business, you know, choice at the right time and not being like, “I wanna own it all,” like, I mean, obviously, I wanna own it all but that also comes with its own risks, which means you have to finance it all. And if it sucks, you’ve lost everything, you know? Everything you spent. So that’s a risk that you don’t want to have to take every time, you know? Sometimes, you wanna take it when it’s near and dear to your heart, but not — every time? You wanna reach into your own pocket every time? You know? Not every time. So, yeah, we’re always keeping our options open to the right partnership whenever that may come.Dan: Yeah, I think that’s the healthy and best way to look at it, because as both of us, people that spent a lot of time on Twitter, we know how big — everyone wants to own everything, right? But until you’re actually in it, you don’t realize how much nuance there is with all of that and I really look at these things as a spectrum, as you do, and I think the best people have a mix of both of these things. And like you said, I know that, you know, you mentioned Tyler Perry as a model, the same way that you know how to create this content and do it at a way it’s affordable, that’s essentially what he did with like Meet the Browns, right? Boom, let me go sell this to TBS and now we got cable distribution for however many years, you know, he’s been doing that.Kev: Absolutely, and hardly anybody in Hollywood could shoot at the rate he shoots at. So his margins are much lower than a traditional network or even cable. So I mean, you know, Tyler, you see articles, they shot 20 episodes in six days —Dan: Wild.Kev: — nobody would even attempt that, you know? And BET was like, yeah, we’ll take more. We’ll take whatever you got. So, for him, he knows his audience, he knows his business model, he knows it works. Critics don’t stop what he’s doing. And the numbers reflect that he’s doing the right thing. People criticize, come what may, but when them numbers come out, people are watching. So that’s one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is like, especially if you’re on Twitter a lot, everything sucks, everybody hates everything, there’s nothing good, everybody’s wrong. But at the end of the day, somebody is watching that. So, you know, we’d be on Twitter trashing everything but somebody likes that show and they’re watching it weekly. So, Tyler’s learned to focus on those people who are enjoying it and tuning out people who don’t enjoy because they’re not — they don’t help his plan and that’s kind of what we’re doing here. Like we’re not trying to make everything for everybody. We’re trying to make a lot of stuff for the people who want to watch it. And then you grow, the same thing Tyler did, you have your base, you cater to that base, and you grow that base.Dan: Yep. Kev: And if you do that, I mean, that’s tried and true. Like we were talking about earlier, you don’t need a lot of followers, you don’t need a whole bunch of people. You need people who are really excited and who want to come to your live show and buy a t-shirt, to support your Patreon, and get your app, you know? There’s so many creators with millions of followers but not a lot of active fans so when they try to go on tour or sell a t-shirt, people are like, “No, man, we don’t — we’re not — you know, post the thing on Instagram I like.” Dan: Right.Kev: But I wanna do this. No, no, no. So I learned a long time ago, it’s better to have 500 really active fans than 5 million people who kinda like your stuff.Dan: Definitely. And I feel like, with you, you’ve been able to see that in real life, like you are going on tour, you’re seeing these people in person, you’re getting all those reactions too. And you mentioned earlier about just insights and you being able to see what works and what doesn’t and I wonder, how much of that is based on just the feeling of, “Okay, this piece or this post really took off and then I’m gonna try to incorporate that into something,” or how much of it is also, you know, data driven as well where you’re looking at things, you know, precisely and you’re like, “Okay, like if I’m spending this much time here,” what’s that process like, you know, from the stuff you put out on socials versus what you may do on stage?Kev: That’s a great question. For socials, the one thing I’ve learned about the internet is I don’t know anything about the internet. What goes viral? What works? Man? My best TikTok is me holding my son’s dog and talking about how black people —Dan: Oh, does your dog know if you’re black? Kev: Does your dog know you’re black? If you’re Mexican, does your dog know you’re Mexican? If you’re white, does your dog know you’re white? That didn’t take a lot of thought. I literally was at home and he was about to get into something, I was like, and then I was like, I wonder if he knows that means stop in black, you know what I mean?And then I wondered if a Mexican family has their own version of that. I just threw that up and it had — it’s got like 2.6 million views on TikTok. That is not the funniest video, it’s not the most relatable, it didn’t even do that well on Instagram or Twitter or whatever. I just throw it up against the wall. I let the internet decide what’s funny or not and I know some things tend to do well more than others. Any culture messing with black food in a way that’s not traditional, you mess with macaroni and cheese, it’s gonna get a lot of views, right? But, you know, I was making a lot of those food videos and then people were just — like I was getting every food video so I was like, okay, as a creator, even if it does get a lot of views, I don’t wanna be the food guy and I don’t wanna keep making the same video. So, part of my strategy is I make something that is funny, make something that’s relatable, or make something that I just think is funny. Or if I got nothing of that, then I’ll share another creator who’s funny. There’s been some days where I’m like, “Man, I don’t feel funny today,” and I’ll see somebody else’s video, I’ll be like, well, let me just share their stuff because there’s nothing I can do that’s as funny as this. So, you know, and I share and tag them and then I’m like, even if I didn’t make something funny, I fulfilled my promise to introduce you to new creators. So that’s kind of my strategy. And I just also am very consistent. Even if I don’t think the video’s great, I still post it because what’s great to me and what’s great to somebody else is very different. I’ve had a lot of videos that I think they’re hilarious that did absolutely nothing. And a lot of them, like my dog video that I didn’t think nothing of and just threw up, that went viral. Like I made this waffle house video probably four or five years ago, I mean, I was on my way to work, I was like, you know, I saw this article, it said Waffle House is dirty. And I’m just like nobody who eats at Waffle House cares about that. Dan: Right.Kev: We know. That video went stupid viral. I mean crazy. And I didn’t even — it took less than 5 minutes total. Shoot, edit, post. And I did it — I wouldn’t advise this but I shot the whole thing on the freeway. I was driving to work, I always had my phone in my rearview mirror thing, hit record, said what I had to say, turned it off. When I got out of my car, I edited it, put the article next while I was walking to work. That thing went crazy. Didn’t think nothing of it. Just threw it up and so many people, that’s how they got introduced to me. So, you know, what do I know? I’ve been doing this 10 years now pretty consistently. So many things went viral that I would have never done. And, you know, that’s the nature of the internet.Dan: Right, it’s like you know that there’s generally a type of content you put out that’s going to work, you put it out there and you just know that something’s gonna hit. It may not always be what you think is gonna hit, but you put it out there, for sure.Kev: Absolutely, man. Let the people decide what’s fun. I mean, I did one video where I was yelling at my son, I use the term loosely, ’cause he had gotten good grades. It did like 7 million views on Twitter, 6, 7 million views, and I was just like, kids, puppies, they’re gonna work every time. So, you know, I try to exploit my dog while he’s still small. I don’t exploit my children as much. But the dog, he don’t even know how many videos. He does well. He’s earning his keep in the Fredericks household. Dan: One of the things I also, you know, like about how you approach your game is that you look at each social platform differently and you also know how to move to things, right? Like you know that Twitter is quick. You’re gonna — that’s gonna be the one that’s most current about things. But I know you’ve also put a lot more time into TikTok and just given, I think we saw the recent stats that TikTok, people spending more time on that now than Google, you know, you gotta be early on a lot of these platforms to rise. But there’s also things like Clubhouse, for instance, where, you know, I think things rose and then, you know, it dipped and I’m curious, how do you approach that? Like do you know that there’s certain ones where you’re like, “Okay, there’s something here, let me double down here,” like what’s your method for that type of thing?Kev: You have a lot of good questions, man. This is why you — you should do a podcast, maybe a newsletter as well about hip hop and entertainment. What I try to do, one of my, you know, things that I’ve noticed works well is using a platform how that platform was designed to be used. So Twitter, the best thing is tweeting, like writing, like writing out funny tweets, whether you’re trending, relatable, whatever. I post my videos — the only reason I post my videos on Twitter is because people would rip my videos and post — because videos didn’t do well on Twitter for me for a long time and the only reason I posted on there now is because people would rip my videos and post them and they’d do better on Twitter than I ever would have thought,so I was like, well, nobody’s gonna be getting them if I’m not gonna get them. But as far as TikTok, I always try what’s new incoming. I’ve tried, I mean, Vine. You want to talk about the worst creator ever on Vine? Kevin — I mean, I couldn’t get Vine to work for nothing. I made a Vine one time, Dan, and I’m lucky you can’t find it. And I was like making toast and I put a piece of bread in the oven and then the Vine cut and I had like half a second left and I was like, “Burnt,” and it was just a piece of burnt bread. And I was like, I don’t — I’m gonna stop doing this. This is literally the worst Vine ever. I tried Socialcam, Periscope, Clubhouse, spaces, Fleets, Stories, Snapchat. I’ve tried everything. Part of it for me is like, let’s talk about TikTok, for example. TikTok was a new — there were so many fun ways to edit on there, editing was more seamless, they had all those backgrounds. So, as a creator, it was just fresh. But anytime children are using something, the user base is gonna grow. And I think TikTok used to be Musical.ly and I remember my niece was on Musical.ly a long time ago so my strategy is always dip my toes in the water, see what works, find out how that platform works specifically. I realized what I learned about TikTok is you gotta be even quicker than other places on TikTok. I’m talking about people are scrolling like almost like this. You got like maybe 6, 7 seconds on Instagram, you got like 2.3 on TikTok and you can buy 3 seconds if you put the caption. It took me a long time to realize you had to write the caption on the video because people are not looking down to, I believe it’s the left to see what you’re saying so you gotta figure out, stop their system for one second and say when this be like or baby like or whatever. That’s step one and now you might have their attention. Using whatever trend is popping or whatever music is popping, now that’s step two. Now, you got them for 7, 8 seconds, now you may have a chance. But almost all of these platforms are, “Is it funny? Is it entertaining? Is it educational? Or is it relatable?” If you’re doing one of those of the four, you’ll be better off, but like I was a long winded person so I was on Periscope early and I stayed for a long time and I have so many of the people who are now on the Stage Crew is what we call our group of fans are — I used to go on Periscope every day while I drove to work. I was stuck in traffic for an hour and a half, I’d be on Periscope for an hour. And I just chopped it up. I’ve seen video ideas. And so many people loved it and they stuck with me for a long time. And another thing I do, I know I’m just rambling, I test out concepts on platforms, right? So I’ll tweet something and if that tweet does numbers, then I’ll be like, “Bet, I’ll make a video of that.” Like, for example, Uberfacts tweeted, “What’s —” This is a trend maybe last week. Uberfacts tweeted, “What’s a company’s secret you can spill now that you don’t work there anymore?” and I was like, oh, I worked at the bank. I quote tweeted, “The bank does actually overdraw you on purpose,” like a lot of people used to accuse us of that and we would have to lie but they actually do it on purpose. It had like 26,000 retweets so I’m like, okay, that’s great, that means people are interested. Now let me screenshot that, go to TikTok, and make the talking version of that. And then I put that video on TikTok, did well. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, did well. And then a couple of days later, I put the video version of a tweet that went viral right back on Twitter with my own tweet and it also went well. And I’ll do that all the time. If I’m not sure video work, I’ll post it on my stories and I’ll check the engagement. If I get over 50 shares or 100 shares, I’m like, “Oh, I’ll take that off and put it on the main grid.” Sometimes I’ll make a full video. So I’m kinda like seeding out content and seeing what people respond to and then deciding if I wanna make a full video after that. I have to do that now because I’m doing other projects. I used to just scour the internet for videos all day but because we’re making stuff for the app and stuff, I don’t have as much time so I’m kinda like throwing stuff against the wall, seeing what works, and then making full versions of that. And that’s kinda how I continue making content consistently while I’m really spending more time creating long-form content, where I’m on set 10, 12 hours a day. I just don’t have the time to be on the internet like I usually was so I’ve gotta like be more strategic about doing it.Dan: That’s your fastlane IP model right there. You just broke it down.Kev: Yeah. Absolutely, man. I’m just always moving in there. And my hope, one day, I wanna be like — do you remember, DC Young Fly early? He used roasting to rise him to fame and then he leveraged that into other stuff. Now he can use social media just to remind you of what he’s doing. One day, I’ll be able to be like, “Oh, my social media is just to remind you of what’s coming and going.” Or like Kevin Hart, like he’ll still come on every once in a while and remind you he’s hilarious on social media but he doesn’t need it as a vehicle as much as he used to. That’s my goal, when I can go a week or a month without making something funny, and people still are checking in. But I’m probably a little ways away from that.Dan: What do you think that would look like to get there? Like is there a particular number or do you feel like it’s like a feeling of where you are in your career?Kev: I think — what it really will probably be is when I’m shooting so many things that take up my full day, when I’m shooting 10, 12 hours on set, it’s really hard to make a great internet video that day, because I’m not on the internet because I’m shooting. When I’m on break, I might be scanning but, you know, the lunch on set is 30 minutes, if that, feels like. By the time you sit down and eat and then you’re back on set for 6 hours. If I was doing that for three months, it’d be tough to make the same amount of content that I’m making. So if I was basically doing those kinds of projects back to back, then I know my social media will suffer in the sense of creating at the pace I usually did. My only hope is that the monetary benefit from my other projects will, you know, keep me afloat. I mean, obviously, I don’t make crazy money, well, relative, from the actual platform, it’s all about leveraging them to make money off the platform. But, you know, we still get paid from Tik— I mean, not TikTok, I mean, technically TikTok but I make no money off that. Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube so my hope is that I’ve got so many projects that I’m making, either from my own distribution service or for somebody else or a partner or something we’ve sold, that I’m like, “Man, I’m making too many things, I don’t have time to like see what the TikTok trend is.”But, honestly, Dan, I like making videos so much. If I was on my lunch break, scanning through TikTok, I will make a video, because it doesn’t take me that long. My best skill isn’t funny, isn’t being hard working, it’s efficiency. When I’m inspired, I can download, shoot, and post in no time. And TikTok, God bless them, so happy you can just click download for most videos. Don’t make me go through screen recording and down— that’s too much. You want people to share these anyway, make it easy. So, I can do a whole thing in less than 5 minutes so as long as I got 5 minutes, I’ll probably make something.Dan: Yeah. I feel like that’s what drives it at the end of the day, right? Like there has to be something beyond just the monetary gain to make you wanna continue to feel inspired to create and that’s great that you have that still with the videos. I mean, I definitely sense that from the joy and passion that you share out of it, but I think for a lot of people that do create content on the internet and then that is the awareness they build to sell elsewhere, they ideally would just love to sell the other thing but the internet feels like this thing that they have to do. So the fact that you don’t feel that, I mean, I’m sure it’s still exhausting, for sure. But the fact that you don’t feel that naturally, I think, is what helps that longevity.Kev: Absolutely. I think, you know, we all deal with like burnout or not feeling funny or feeling like I’m never gonna come up with any other idea. But I see the value in using these platforms but also leveraging them to your own stuff, like being an early YouTube creator when adpocalypse happened and Logan Paul did that suicide forest thing and everybody’s monetization was punished, that’s the first time I was like, “Oh, snap. I didn’t even have nothing to do with this. I never been to Japan. I would never. Why am I getting punished?”That’s the first time I was like, “I can’t rely on these platforms,” and then when Vine came and went, even though I sucked at Vine, there was a lot of people where they depended on Vine and, luckily, most of the creators who were big leveraged that to Snapchat or Instagram or YouTube but some of them never even got close to the heights that they had on Vine. And the same thing happened on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. You know, a lot of people are one platform dominant, killing it on TikTok but nowhere else big. I would rather be five platforms doing okay than one platform dominant because now I can go from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, into my own platform, Patreon, which is fantastic. It’s very important to what we do here. If I only had Patreon, I’d be okay. So, you know, I’ve kind of like made my exit strategy because the Internet changes too quick, you know? One day it’s popping — Clubhouse, man, people were — it was the thing for like 5 months and then everybody — it felt like everybody was just like, “Nah,” like one day, and it’s still there, it still have great stuff going on there, but during the pandemic, man, it launched — or not launched but it popped at a perfect time when everybody was at home. Dan: Right. Kev: But then people just got sick of people talking and Facebook came up with their own one and Twitter came up with their own one and then Clubhouse didn’t have, you know, that exclusive thing anymore. I mean, that’s — you talk about a quick pivot. Dan: Yeah.Kev: You know, Clubhouse, how quickly Twitter jumped on that, that was fast. It took Instagram a long time to copy Snapchat. Dan: Yeah, and —Kev: It took Twitter, it felt like 2 months before they had —Dan: Yeah, Spaces was quick.Kev: I was like, Jesus, and the thing that Facebook did really well is kind of what Twitter did too. They said, “We’re not gonna beat Snapchat’s market share, and we don’t have to. All we need to do is slow their growth and get somebody who was never gonna go to Snapchat to do what they would have done on Instagram.”My wife is that person. She never went on Snapchat ever. But they took that idea and that, you know, Stories, put it in Instagram, and she was like, “Oh, I’ll do this.” And I was like, “Girl, I’ve been telling you about Snapchat.” She was like, “I’m not downloading no more apps.”And that’s the same thing. So you — that’s why I never wanna be one platform dominant because the winds, they blow and change too quickly and you could be caught in the cold, you know? Like YouTube, man, YouTube decided on a whim, it felt like, family content, if it looks like it’s geared towards kids, you’re not gonna be able to monetize that. People went from making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to zero. When they decided they didn’t want pranks anymore, people went from making 50 grand, 150 grand a month to like literally zero, I’m not even exag— I know people who had to give up their house in the Hollywood Hills when YouTube was like, “We’re not doing that no more.”And that’s when I was like, “Oh, this is too dangerous to be only on one platform.” You gotta use them all but you also have to have an exit strategy. To me, you know? Everybody doesn’t have to do that but, to me, you gotta have an exit strategy.Dan: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And I think the way you structured it makes sense too. I mean, yeah, you mentioned you’re still getting some income from those platforms but the majority is outside of it. And I’m curious, what do your splits and breakdowns look like from a percentage perspective of, you know, like how much does come from those platforms versus how much comes from your other content or your stand-up or any of the other ticketed type of things?Kev: So, the most lucrative by a mile is live events. Touring, live events is the most lucrative. That’s why when the pandemic happened, I was like, “Oh my God,” because that — before the pandemic, that was foolproof. As long as people wanted to come see you, you will be able to eat forever, and then all of a sudden, no. So, for me, the most important thing is touring. The second most important thing probably is my Patreon, because that’s a group of people who really believe in what we’re doing here and support me and if I lost my other platforms, they would still be there. Outside of that, YouTube and Facebook, YouTube was really consistent monetarily. Facebook can be a blow up, for me at least, a blow up and then nothing. You have some months where it’s, you know, 2 grand and some months it could be 10 grand, you know what I mean? So it’s like, you really can’t build a business off of that, you know, wave of, you know, unpredictability. But for me, I probably say 60 percent is live, 40 percent is — or I’m sorry, 20 percent is Patreon, and the other is like podcasting. Podcasting can be really lucrative with the ad revenue. It’s also platform agnostic. Like I don’t need to be monetized on YouTube because I’m monetized through the ads that are baked into the podcast, you know? So, for me, those are what I focus on and everything else is gravy. Whatever Instagram pays me, gravy. Whatever Facebook pays me, gravy. Whatever YouTube pays me, gravy. And those are the things I have the least amount of control over anyway so, yeah.Dan: That makes sense, yeah, and I think like that split too, honestly sounds like what it’s like for a lot of artists as well. I mean, so much comes from live performances, more than half for most of them, but that other chunk, you know, whether it’s through their branded partnership or any of their influencer revenue that they may have but also what they get actually selling their music through streaming or the publishing revenue that comes in. So there’s definitely a ton of similarities there, which is why I like the model of what you all, and what you specifically have done to build it up. But I think the difference though is that I probably see a little bit more creativity on average from some of the more successful independent comedians than maybe some of the more, you know, successful artists.I feel like there’s been more of like a standard path but whether it’s you or some of the others that have, you know, risen up, especially in the past 5 to 7 years, there’s definitely, you know, I think a bit more variety and, you know, especially whether they’re building their own studios or they’re trying to do a few more creative brand partnerships and deals, I’ve always been fascinated with that piece about how comedians and stand-ups are able to monetize and use the internet.Kev: Absolutely, and I think like look at any 85 South, man, like they have — their live event is huge. And then they can just put that exact video on YouTube or their app and they sell merch and even if they did nothing else but live shows and merch, they’d probably be okay, but now, they’re building their own app out. It’s already out there, the Channel 8, and they’re expanding that.So, you know, another smart thing, like let me diversify what we’re doing and own the media aspect of it. But, for me, that’s merch and brand deals like, to me, it’s hard to be good at everything, you know what I mean? So I don’t try to be. I’m like merch, I’ll focus on the road, if I have a great idea, but it’s not my strong suit, because fashion and design aren’t my strong suits so I’ll just really make stuff for the Stage Crew who loves it. And I’ll focus on live events, video content, and podcasting and I’ll be strong there. I mean, you got people like Kountry Wayne who like master of Facebook and Instagram, like he knows the amount, you gotta be at least 3 minutes to get really paid. His sketches are 3:01. They’re gonna be over 3. On Instagram, they start really quick so he’s mastered that and he’s also on the road. So everybody has their skill set and it’s kinda like, to me, basketball players, like LeBron’s the greatest player to me, ever, and he’s good at a lot of different things. Steph is the best shooter ever so he doesn’t have to be a rebounder like LeBron because he’s gonna shoot threes from the logo so you won’t be able to guard him. And that’s kinda how I think of creators, like very few people are as well rounded as LeBron but you can have a long career being really good at one or two things and that’s fine too.Dan: Yeah. And as long as the platforms that are there are still aligned to like where your skill set is the better.Kev: Yeah.Dan: Because it’s one of those things where Steph also was really good at something that he was able to set a trend with and, you know, just gotten more and more favorite too as the game went on. But it’s like if you’re really good at, you know, like that Charles Oakley, you know, old school right? This next game, you might not have as long of a career is you may have had in ’93.Kev: That’s a fantastic point. Charles Oakley wouldn’t know what to do in this game, like he’s still gonna be big and strong but he’s gonna be guarding Luka or Kevin Durant and they shooting from three, they’re driving around, the game has changed so that’s a good point as well like the game changes so you have to be able to, you know, change with the game. The internet changes. The same thing with comedy, like what was funny and tweetable 10 years ago isn’t funny or tweetable this year, and I’m not one of those who complains about cancel culture. As a comedian, our job is to know where the line is. Know what society thinks is funny and stay there and not to be like, “Well, this was funny 12 years ago.” Yeah, The Nutty Professor was hilarious before but it wouldn’t be as funny if it was made now. People would call it fat phobic or whatever. But if you watched it then, it was great, you know what I’m saying? Pepé Le Pew, hilarious as a kid. Now you’re like, “Yo, what’s was he on, man? Where’s the consent? Leave her alone, man. Let her go,” you know?So I think comedy and everything is similar. Everything is changing. Fashion, language, music, all of that stuff. So, you know, as a creator, you have to be aware of that change or you get left behind.Dan: Yeah. And to bring it full circle, what you brought up with Vine is a great example of this. You yourself may not have been the most successful on that platform, like you said, but there are many people who had some of the most popular Vines that were like winning and spread everywhere. And, unfortunately, I just haven’t seen them as much because there’s something about that 6-second storytelling that they did so well with that just didn’t translate as well to where things are right now.Kev: Absolutely. 100 percent. That’s what I was saying, like some people translated but for some people, that was it. They never reached the heights they had on Vine ever again, you know? And some of the same trends on Vine probably would work on TikTok but not exactly. So, you know, you gotta get in where you fit in and fit for as long as you can. And then, as the world changes, you gotta fit there too. And that’s, to me, the only way to survive.Dan: Definitely. So, for you, just because you are wearing, as we talked about, all these different hats, all these different roles, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, of course, we don’t know where things are going, but in the ideal scenario, what would you like to be doing more of or what would you like to be doing less of?Kev: More of helping other creators create their content. That’s actually one of the things we wanna do at KevOnStage Studios. It’s the hardest part though. Much harder than I realized, you know, to even maybe make somebody else’s show, to even go through the legal process of trying to make it is already expensive. So I found that that part was a lot harder than I realized. If somebody comes in and is like, “Yeah, whatever deal is fine,” it’s very easy. If somebody is like, “I’ve got these ideas and stuff,” talking to their lawyer, our lawyer, it’s tough. And to do development, you need somebody who can focus on that, you need the resources for legal, you need the production staff to be able to go and make that. So I would hope that we could grow enough to be making more of stuff for other creators and creating those opportunities. Right now, we’re kind of focusing on building the foundation with the team we have. But in order to do that, we’d have to scale out a little bit so that would be our goal.I would also love to be making independent movies. That’s always been a dream of mine. I just love the experience of movie, either in theaters or at home, I don’t care. I’m not like one of those creators, like, “It’s got to be in a movie or it ain’t real,” like I was poor so we couldn’t go to the actual movies that much so all my dreams and memories are watching them at home. So I don’t care if you’re watching it on your phone or TV or whatever, but I’d love to be doing those two things, if nothing else. Creating content with others and then creating movies and creating stuff that I would love to create and hopefully distributing it to a lot of people. The one thing about the KevOnStage Studios app right now, it’s still very small so, you know, to the viewer, that’s fantastic, but the other streamers and distribution sites, they have a lot more access. If I tell you to go watch a show on Netflix, the chances of you having Netflix are very high. Or HBO Max, something like that. If somebody tells you to go watch something on KevOnStage Studios, the chances of you already having that app are not as high as you having Netflix. So our goal, our hope would be that, “Oh, yeah, man, I’m gonna check that out. I didn’t even know we had that.” But you gotta have the show that breaks through. Like if you think about Apple TV, as much money as they have, people didn’t really click in by and large until Ted Lasso. Like I watched See, they had a lot of stuff. Nobody cared, by and large, until Ted Lasso. So even — and they have trillion dollars in cash. People were like, meh, you know what I’m saying? So it’s not just unique to what we’re doing, it’s a lot of places that struggle. Peacock and Quibi. Quibi had all the money in the world, access to every A-list star in the world, people were like meh, so it’s not easy, man. It is not easy. It’s not even unique to being small. It’s just not an easy business to be in. So I would just hope to still be here, in fact. Low key, to still be able to do this for a living in 5 years, I will be happy with just that.Dan: No, man, I think you will. And I mean, I’m not just saying that as someone that’s been a fan of your content following you for a while. I mean —Kev: Thank you, thank you. Dan: I really do look at you as one of the success stories when we think about this era of the Internet and what creators were able to do in this phase. I feel like we’ve seen folks in, you know, past eras and eras before that and the Internet has always been so nascent but I think your focus and consistency. Wait, which one?Kev: I really don’t know. Nascent, what’s that?Dan: Oh, in terms of like just being early on a trend and just being, you know, like quick with it. Like I think that, you know, for you, oh, man, lost my train of thought —Kev: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.Dan: No, no.Kev: When people use a word that I don’t know, I always ask because then I’ll be like, you know, “That was nascent,” and then people would be like, “What did that mean?” Oh, you know, what it means is early on to the trends and whatnot, you know what I’m saying? So I didn’t mean to get you off track but I was — that’s a good word that I don’t know so I had to ask you real quick. I could have Googled it later but —Dan: Oh, no, no. I appreciate that. I know, people appreciate this too, just from like, you know, the conversation, for sure. No. So, normally, some of these things, editors, I’m like, “No, can you all take that out?” They’re like, “No, we’re leaving this in here,” because —Kev: Leave it in, editor. Dan: They’ll learn too. But, yeah, man, I mean, like I said, you, the focus that you had with so much of the content that you put out and also just how you continue to enjoy it, I feel like that is the model. And I’m really excited for you and where you continue to grow and the fact that you’re leveraging your platform the way you have to put people on, I mean, that’s the dream. I mean, I know that, you know, I’m definitely, you know, in the days of it, it could likely feel like a lot of work but, hey, man, you’re doing the work, man. And it’s much appreciated.Kev: Thank you, man. That truly means a lot, Dan. I appreciate you even saying that. And I’m glad that you think, you know, I’ll still be here in 5, 10 years because I hope too, you know? But if not, you know, I own a house in this small town. If you see me living in South Carolina, just figure out that it didn’t work.Dan: Hey, man.Kev: But I’ll still be happy. I’ll still be making videos or doing podcasts or something.Dan: And joy will be there. The joy will be there. For sure. Regardless. But, hey, man, Kev, this was great. I really appreciate you for making the time. Kev: Thank you, man. Dan: But before we let you go, anything you wanna plug the audience, let them know some of the content you got coming out with the streaming service?Kev: KevOnStage Studios. man, go to your app store, whether you’re on Apple, Android, Roku, Amazon, go to KevOnStage Studios, download that. Go ahead and subscribe for the year. Don’t worry about what’s on there. Just subscribe for the year. Trust me, it’ll be worth it. We’ve got a lot of amazing things on there. We got the Real Comedians Challenge Show, which is just knockdown drag out funny. We’ve got What’s Good?! which is a food show with comedians and comedians are more like regular people than chefs so you’re gonna feel like it’s you and your friends going out to eat in a different city. We got Love On Stage, which is a dating show my wife created and produced. That’s fantastic. You can stream that whole season in there. Just fun stuff like Get Your Black Card Off Layaway shows, Keon’s All Stars, Crafts and Cocktails, just fun stuff, man. Just go on there, check it out. Destination Evrywhr is an amazing travel show that, you know, has a musician who went all the way to Cambodia to make music with Cambodians. We have stuff like that. I mean, just go over there and check it out, man. Just don’t worry about the monthly fee. Don’t pay monthly. Pay by the year. You get two months free when you pay by the year. Just go ahead, go from here, wherever you’re listening, right to KevOnStage Studios and pay for the year. You won’t regret it. And even if you do, we already have your money.Dan: We’ll make it easy for people too. We’ll put the link in the show notes.Kev: Perfect. Thank you so much, Dan. I really appreciate it. I’m a big fan of yours. I’ve been watching your podcast and be like, “How does Dan get these guests?” And then you tweeted like I just be asking, I was like That ain’t no secret. That’s just —He’s like you just know somebody or just shoot your shot. I’m like, you had Rick Ross though, man. You had Issa Rae. And you’re like, “Yeah, just ask.” I’m like, “Okay, we’ll see how that works, Dan. I’m gonna just ask too, see what I can get on my podcast.”Dan: I will say, I mean, there’s something a bit more nuanced to that and I was like, you know what, I could have added more because I made it seem like, “Oh, y’all could do it. Why don’t you just DM Rick Ross?”Kev: Yeah. I was like, “Dan, it is not that easy.” It is not that easy and you know that. I just believe all we got to do is DM him and he’ll be like, “Yeah, I’m gonna be on there.” You know it took more than that, Dan.Dan: Oh, man. Well, no. So ’cause I think people probably appreciate this for the folks that do listen. So the Rick Ross one, real quick, so the Rick Ross one, I had had his attorney, Leron Rogers, on the pod. Him and I had had a good conversation and, you know, stayed connected afterward and I saw that Ross was putting out a book and I was like, “Alright, if someone’s put out a book, they’re gonna be on the tour,” and then I was like, “Okay, hey, you know, I know that Rozay is gonna be on the tour, would love to have him, he’s writing about business. This literally is the avenue to do that.” And he was like, “Alright, send me some details, let me see what I can make work,” and then we made it work after that. Kev: See?Dan: Yeah.Kev: It is more than just DM-ing. It’s timing, it’s relationship, it’s an audience people care about and a podcast that people actually watch and download. So, sorry, guys, it’s not as easy as Dan made it seem.Dan: No, you’re right. If someone has to be, “Oh, hey, how did you get KevOnStage on your pod?” I’d be like, “Oh, I just DM-ed him. Y’all could do it too.” You gotta get all these people flooded. They will be like, “Oh, KevOnStage, can you come to do my thing? Oh, KevOnStage —Kev: Guarantee you it’s not gonna be that easy. ’cause if I don’t follow you, I don’t even really see your DMs. I’m a fan of Dan so I saw his and I already wanted to be on this show so when he asked, I was like, “Finally, my time is now.”Dan: It’s funny, man, because I so remember, it’s like one day on Twitter and, I mean, like I said, I’ve been following you on, you know, all the other platforms. And then, one day, you just quote tweeted something I said and you were like, “Y’all should follow this guy.” And I was just like —Kev: Yes.Dan: Yo, KevOnStage — I was just like, okay, all right, we hear this.Kev: ’Cause you’re really smart, man, and you take stuff that is like out there and you make it so digestible. Like what Westbrook is doing, I’ve been following them but when you made that graphic about the flywheel, it’s like, “This is exactly what they do,” but it makes so much — I sent that to so many of my friends. I was like, this is what KevOnStage Studios has to become and the way they did The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion, all of the stuff they did with that and then they ran that same thing back for King Richard, genius. And then with Will’s Best Shape of My Life, I watched that, get YouTube to pay for it, boom, use it to actually lose weight and promote your book.Dan: Brilliant.Kev: I said what the heck? I wanted to get the book because of that. Genius level marketing and even somebody as big as Will Smith, everything they do is not behind the paywall. They gotta use YouTube and Instagram just like regular people. So I know I’m on the right track. And I also met Will Smith, I don’t know if you know that. I don’t like to talk about it. Dan: Oh, no, you only post a photo, what? Every month or so.Kev: I haven’t posted in a while. I should bring it up again today.Dan: If he wins this Oscar for Best Actor, you gotta be part of that campaign.Kev: He might thank me from the podium. He might be like, “This wouldn’t have worked without KevOnStage’s dad joke to help promote the film. I’m so glad that he did that and that’s why you heard about King Richard,” and I’m gonna be like, “Thanks. You’re welcome, Will. And you’re welcome, world.”Dan: Oh, man. I’m kind of waiting for that moment, that will be dope.Kev: Oh, man, I’ll be so happy for him. I’ll be so happy. And he was great in that, like it was an Oscar-worthy performance so I really do hope he wins.Dan: Yeah, no, definitely. No, he does too. But, hey, man, this was great. I really appreciate you coming on.Kev: Thank you so much for having me, Dan. I appreciate it, man. (outro)If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. 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