Revolutionizing How Artists Get PAID (ft. CEO of EVEN - "Mag" Rodriguez)

Think of any major superstar you want right now, they might know who 1% of their fans are. Who cares about monthly listeners except for the music industry? I'm in Kenya next week, meeting with the president of Kenya. This is not 2016, where you get put on rap caviar or new music Friday, and all of a sudden you are like every label's calling and flying you out. That does not happen anymore. Million dollar baby, right now. I want that s*** on a t-shirt right now. On today's episode of the One More Time podcast, we sat down with the co-founder of a company that is changing the game when it comes to artists getting paid. Mag told us all about how even.biz is here to fix the broken business model that is streaming. I mean, who's making a living off three tenths of a penny per stream? Anybody? Sit down, Drake. And he explains how artists like LaRussell are taking full advantage of the platform to reclaim ownership of their data and of the relationship with their community. Something that's really lost these days. I don't want to say too much more. Let's just get into the episode. One more time. Let's do it one more time. One more time. Spend it, rock. Spend it, boom, boom, boom. Baby, baby, one more time. The initial thesis of Even is would fans pay for music before it's made available on streaming platforms.

Sounds crazy to me. Yeah, I mean, it's like it's how it used to be. I know. Like yeah, but are we going backwards? But boy, were we wrong. My analogy was it, I didn't even start with that. My analogy was think of the movie theater and think of Netflix. Yes. Right. Has anyone ever canceled their Netflix subscription when they went to the movie theaters? No. Maybe some random person out there. But no. But no. The only way to watch Dune 2 is by paying $20 at a movie theater. Even though we know it'll be on Hulu or one of these streaming platforms in the next 30 days. Right. That movie's already in profit just on movie theaters. And this didn't require 100 million people to watch the movie, right? I think the movie cost like 120 million to make, right? 20. You divide that by 20. We're talking about a realistic number. That movie, I think is about to hit 200 million in revenue. Now, again, that's that top 1% of films, but we scale that back. My idea was imagine if you're an artist and you get 100 people to pay you $20 to listen to your album, what would that do for you?

Going back to the initial thesis of what's, or to your initial question, what is wrong with the music industry? What's wrong with the music industry is the mentality of the music industry. If the music industry was thinking the way fans were thinking, a lot of our problems would not exist right now. What else? I mean, I I classify the problems in the music industry by really three pieces. Number one, payments. There's no reason why people should be getting paid two to three months after every streaming period, right? If you go to a local restaurant right now and you buy food at this restaurant, I'll pay you guys next month, two months from now. Can I get you next quarter? Can I get you next quarter? No, but what's crazy is imagine you go to that restaurant, you pay that restaurant, but then their payment processor says, we'll pay you in three months. That business would not be in business anymore, right? I'm not paying for my Apple Music subscription or my title subscription in three months after I listen to it. I guarantee you, I stop, I don't pay that.

That $999, $12.99 doesn't go through this month. I probably won't have access today. Yeah. But for some reason, the artists are being paid two to three months after that. Now, we can get into the specifics of why that works that way. That's not the fault of the streaming platforms. That's more of an ecosystem problem. Sure. But that's problem number one. Problem number two is data. Why is it that if a consumer is consuming your content, you do not know who they are? That's fucked. I remember when they initially rolled out like the for artists, right? On all DSPs. Because you were probably like, okay, great. This is gonna give us so much data about our listeners. I remember this is we were so hopeful, Spotify. Well, this is interesting. I actually I I just got um I met up with with John Bricks. Shout out John Bricks from UTA. He's an agent, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredible agent, but he was one of the early agents that I worked with when I was a manager. And as a manager, I wasn't encouraging the artist that I was managing to release to the DSPs at the time, right? We're talking about 2011 to 2014, around that era.

The thing to do was to upload to SoundCloud. That was the cool thing to do. Is you upload to SoundCloud, we're doing this for the music, the culture, whatever. We weren't trying to make money, we were teenagers in high school, right? Like it was a thing that we wanted to do. And I remember all the DSPs reaching out and be like, yo, you should upload here. Let me introduce you to the distributor. And we're like, nah, we're good. And they're like, no, but you can get this, this, and that. They're like, you can get money and you can get data and you can get this. And then I remember we uploaded and then we waited. And then we finally got paid. I was like, oh, there's actually some money here, but I didn't understand the delay or the lag. So I would say that the first two, which are very important is revenue and data, and I think the third most important that kind of ties into both of them is the industry hasn't allowed artists to own the relationship with their fans. Yeah. The people who benefit from artists not doing that is the organizations around them, right? That they kind of have to supply content, music, et cetera. And you know, it was interesting.

I I I remember one of the early conversations that I was having with a partner, right? Um, and by partner I mean like an external party party that was not involved with even. And I remember talking about these pain points, and their first thing was like, well, do artists want to get paid daily? Why the fuck not? I was like, are you serious? Is this a joke? And they're like, Yeah, I'm just like, why would an artist want to get paid daily? I'm just like, well, they're running a business, right? Like any other business, you make money today, you should get money at latest tomorrow. Bro, Yeah. At latest three days. Shit, we'll take seven days. Right? That'd be crazy. That'd be great. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Right. A week. Come on. And then the data component, right? And there, I remember the follow-up question that they asked was just like, well, what are they gonna do with the data, right? What are they gonna do with emails and phone numbers? Oh my god. And I'm like, well, what do you do with it? Well, I don't do anything. Our marketing department does something with it. And I was like, exactly.

I'm like, so what are we talking about? Right. So I would say that's really the main three problems. One, revenue, number two, access to data, and number three, owning that relationship with the fan. I try to stay away from the word fan internally as a company. I call them customers, right? I help artists really transition their perspective on how they see their fans and really transition them into customers, right? Because the moment you transition someone from a fan to a customer, you are also empowering them, but you're empowering yourself with the responsibility of who they are for you. Yeah. Serving your customers sounds a lot more like you have to do this versus serving your fans for some reason. A 100%. Because you can you can dismiss a fan. Yeah. Are you just a fan? If you have a customer, you're not gonna close your window on them and just drive away. Yeah. Right. And that I think that that's why the system hasn't really benefited both people. It doesn't benefit the artist and it doesn't benefit the fan, mostly because for some reason there was a barrier that was created between them to say you two should not be together, right?

But the truth is they should be closer than ever before right now because that's the way you can build a sustainable business and a sustainable career. Unless you're that 0.1% of artists that can just survive off of streaming and touring, where you never have to directly interface with your fans. Sure, right? If you're good with three tenths of a penny per stream, then by all means. But that's the difference too between uh McDonald's versus a local burger chain, right? It's like there's only so many McDonald's that can exist at a certain period of time, right? But nothing stops from like, I'm sure your favorite burger is not McDonald's. What do you think it is about that mindset shift from fan to customer that I would assume that takes artists a little bit to have that click? A lot of times they think it's harder than what it really is to get started, to get a customer, to get a customer versus they think it's easier to get a fan. It's easier to get a fan in their minds, right?

It was interesting. I actually reshared this today. Daniel Ek on LinkedIn posted this like report that was showing that 56% of fans on Spotify are discovering music because of their algorithm playlists, right? Okay. Whether it's algorithm or editorials, it's like 56% is coming from us. But what was interesting when I saw this, I was like, well, this means 43% of discovery on Spotify is happening from people like us just looking for stuff, right? That to me was so interesting because we we know that there's a decline in editorial playlists and the way that people are consuming editorial playlists. We've known this for the past five years. It's been in a natural decline because discovery is not happening on social media, right? For example, this Tommy record is going crazy right now. Number one. Shout out Million Dollar Baby. He's number one. Going crazy. I what a use case.

This is this is real life. I met with someone that's immediately affiliated with him over the weekend, and they were telling me about him. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. But people always hit me all the time about music. Yeah, yeah, sure. Tommy Richmond. Okay, yeah. Yeah, Tommy, Tommy. Totally, totally, totally. I was like, Tommy, I literally did a mental note because I like to listen to music. I like to listen to artists when people bring them up to me. It took a reel, very random reel. I'm almost embarrassed to talk about this today. No, we need this. This is real life. I saw a reel. real life. Ah, sorry. why you gotta do that. He's like on a roll. He's on a reel. It was there, it was there. No, no, no. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Um, I saw a reel on Instagram, actually yesterday, of this like buff man dancing to this song. Okay, and the video was annoying, but the record was I was like, yo, this is hard. Crazy.

I immediately click on the sound on the reel. Tommy Richmond. I immediately go to Apple Music. I've been playing that, I've maybe played I've streamed that song easily 200 times. That's why it's, It's because of MAG that the record's number one right now. Yo, no, I've done it too. It's really good. I've done it too. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's really. It's really good. And you got mad at me. I'm Just saying. Way worse. We're here all day, folks. We are here all day. But see, even I've been saying this for so long, but then it's interesting because I caught myself in it. But this isn't the first time this happened. I am I discovered a song not because of a playlist, not because of a homie reaching out to me. You gotta I listened to it because of something I saw on social media. Why do artists not understand that that's how it's happening? It's where people are finding things, it's where the eyeballs are. Can you guys guess what's the next thing I did after I looked for the song? You went to his profile.

100%. And then I did what? Followed him. Yes. It was just this natural trajectory. By this point, I've interfaced with the song. I've interfaced with him now on social media. At no point in this moment do I have the opportunity to give him money to become a customer. Oh. The link in bio. I go to his link in bio he's just sending me back to the streaming platforms. There's no way for me to enter my email, my phone number, nothing. I'm ready to spend money. I'm like million dollar baby right now. I want that shit on a t-shirt right now. Tommy. Where are you at? Literally people want to give you money right now, bro. But that's that's my thing. If I were to look at you guys right now, I'm like, yo, give your favorite new artist $100 right now. It's almost impossible for you to do that. That's insane. Unless you find their Cash App or their Venmo. That's true. No, man. I mean, we're living in an age right now where like I had enough proximity to you guys, and you guys had enough proximity to me. And granted, I am not Tommy, right?

But in many ways, like in our world, you kind of you're our Tommy. I'm just saying. But nothing stopped from us to be able to take that relationship off of Instagram. And now I have your email. Now we're talking on an email. Hey, look, come through the podcast, come to this sketchy house with a few Why you gotta do that, man? Why you gotta fucking do that? This is a professional podcasting studio. Yes. Okay, look at this set. Look at this giant warehouse we're in. Looks like- it's like 10,000 square feet in here. Come on, man. no, this is real life. My Uber did not have functioning AC. And this man said, I'm not driving up there. That's how sketchy it was to get. up. Well, that's a function of Uber. Okay. No, I'm joking. All right, all right. So yeah, yeah. So obviously, you know, it it's a problem to not be able to like directly support your uh favorite artist financially. Outside of that, right? Like in that moment, I my intention was I want to put money in Tommy's pocket. That's not what it is.

For me, it's I want more. Right? Like in that moment, I'm just like, yo, I want access to more. Right now, the access to more can only live in the present. I can go listen to his catalog, I can listen to other music. But as exciting as this is right now for me, right now, I want to know what's next. I want access to what's next. It's the same way that like I really wanted to watch Dune 2 because I saw the trailer. And I saw the trailer, I was like, yo, this is crazy. I'm like, I want to go watch this movie, and next thing you know, I'm watching this movie, I'm reading the Wikipedia, I'm I'm investing into this almost like a moment that's happening the same way that like I'll find a new brand on Instagram, I'll click on their website, and next thing you know, they're retargeting me. And then next thing you know, I'm buying a shirt and or buying these pants or buying these shoes or whatever it is, right? I think that to me is the thing that's missing in the industry. Conversion, the return on investment is only quantified, and the only metric is based on these vanity numbers that don't mean anything.

I hope you guys are enjoying the conversation. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about our pals at DistroKid. You can't get your music onto streaming platforms without a distributor, and DistroKid is an excellent choice to handle that for you. For the ridiculously low price of $23, you can upload unlimited music for an entire year that is less than $2 a month. I tripped on $2 walking down the street earlier. They have countless features to help you out on your musical journey. One of my favorites is splits. Instead of my collaborators hitting me up all the time saying, Where's my fing money? I can input everyone's percentage when I upload the music, and DistroKid will handle it. I've personally used DistroKid for many years and can genuinely recommend them as a great tool to get your music out into the world. And if you sign up at omtdistro.com, you'll get 30% off an already insanely low price. This is absolute peanuts for unlimited uploads yearly. We wish you the best with your creating. Let's get back to it. One of the most interesting case studies that we did before we launched Even, I went and I reached out to a hundred people, just in my world, right? Non-music-related people, and I'm like, Do you know how many monthly listeners your favorite artist has?

You know how many people knew? None of them. Yeah. They didn't fucking care. Who cares about monthly listeners except for the music industry? I asked the same 100 people how many times have you pre-pre-saved a song? 10% of them. Oh, I've pre-saved this thing. What did it do for you? I used an a net promoter score, right? This is like a tech thing. Oh, yeah. NPS. We know NPS. Yeah. Uh-huh. I got a notification on my phone when it came out. But I asked them, I was like, when's the how would you ever recommend anyone to pre-save a song? Right? These 10% of people. All of them is like, no, it did nothing. It was annoying. It took me 10 minutes to do. I had to log into my iCloud. I had to log into my Spotify on this Instagram browser. And I had an air, so I had to open up on. And it did nothing for them, right? And that to me was a very clear view that like, how do we rip replace the pre-save campaign? Yeah. The pre-save campaign does nothing for anyone. And that's really what even is intended to do.

So yeah, enter even. Let's let's actually like walk our audience through what the platform does, how it works, how artists are using it today, because I feel like you did a really good job of like painting the problem landscape, right? Let's get into the solution. and let's get into like what it is that you guys offer and what you're trying to achieve. Think of a world where you discovered Tommy. Okay. I love this Tommy. It's so like right now. Although by the time this airs. This won't be out for a little bit. This is why I wish we were. You know what's crazy? Anyways, the Tommy record will still be crazy it will be. It'll probably even be crazier. Okay. Just know we were early. Today is 2024. Okay, now he just outed us of how long it takes to get episodes out. They're gonna edit this out. Mac is really fucking us over right now, bro. I thought I liked this guy. Now he's just outing us from multiple directions. Bro, we edit these.

I'm gonna bleep that out. Okay, it's fine. Today is they're gonna use AI. It's May 26th. Okay, but yeah. So in you know, enter a world where enter a world. I discovered this Tommy Richmond million dollar baby record. Yep. Okay, and then what happens? I'm gonna paint the picture. I love this. this is exciting. It's great. Think of a different universe where Tommy is on Even. You discover this song. The Tommy Verse. The Tommy verse. right? And you discover this record, you go to his Instagram, and you're like, oh dang, there's an album I can listen to right now. You can listen to the song on Spotify, Apple Music, etc., but there's an extra five songs. It's an EP. Just an EP. EP. It's just a light, slight EP symbol. Yeah. You click on that link and you see, oh, there's an EP. There's six songs. Dang, if I buy this, I'm gonna get invited to a virtual QA. There's a chat. Shit. Tommy's in there?

You pay over $50 and you get a signed vinyl. Oh, Tommy signed vinyl. Signed by vinyl. Signed by Tommy Richmond. By Tommy Richmond. Himself. And they got Apple Pay. Oh, I can just use my iPhone. But you know what? I really want this $50 vinyl, but I only got $25 right now to spend. Oh, they got Klarna. What's that? Pay uh uh pay as you go. They loan you. Pay later. Buy now, pay later. Buy now, pay later. They'll split your payment into four pieces every two weeks. Okay. Essentially, in that moment, in a matter of two minutes and 60 seconds. Three minutes. Yeah. I was like, is this some start it over? We'll edit it. No, no, no. I I do that as a joke all the time. Because it takes three minutes to get you from A to Z. But in three minutes. No, two minutes and 60 seconds. Two minutes and 60 seconds. Yes. You can get from A to Z. A is you saw it on Instagram. C is now you're listening to this EP. Wow. You're engaging directly with Tommy.

You're engaging with other fans who bought the EP before the rest of the world. Other Tommy Richmond fans. People like me. I would do that today. I would pay to listen to the other five songs that are coming from Tommy today. What do you think your bread and butter is, though, right? Because I feel like you know, you've described like some different functionality within the platform. Like what's the what's the thing? This is the way I explain it to my mom, right? Well, yeah, that's what we need. Yes. Kindergartner, mom, whatever, you know, analogy you want to use. Even is the movie theater premiere if Spotify was Netflix. Okay. Right. Most artists are going live on even between seven to thirty days before they go live on streaming platforms. So it's not meant to replace DSPs. No, no, no. It's not even or streaming. It's even and streaming. Okay. Every release on even is designed to have a beginning and an end. The beginning is when it goes live on even, the end is when it goes live on DSPs, unless you're LaRussell, who says, no, I want to keep it live even after. Shout out LaRussell. shout out LaRussell.

He said he was gonna do the interview when he's in town for the T-Pain uh tour here in Atlanta. That's in June. So let's make sure, guys. I will get on his ass. I'll I'm gonna text him after this that Mag and I just locked in. So let's make sure we do it. Let him know. Um, okay. So what do you think Spotify and like Apple Music, for example, are good for though, as far you know, because obviously you're not trying to replace them. So, what what role do you think that they play in the the artist's like ecosystem? I'll give you an example, right? When I'm working at home and I'm in my living room, I I left my office, I'm now home, and but I'm getting working on my laptop. I'll play Bob's Burger Burgers or whatever, right? Great show. Great show. I have never actually sat down and watched like the show. Okay, but I'll just play it in the background. Every single day, Monday through Friday. You will catch Bob's burgers playing literally on my TV. Okay. That is weird, but I get it. Okay. I get it.

No judgment. any other given week, it might be like Rick and Morty. No, it's Bob's Burgers. Bob's Burgers, right now. Um that to me is streaming, right? It's like I am it's background noise, it's accessible, it's passive. Watch very, very passive. Now there is moments where like I want to watch Shogun, right? Incredible show. And I will sit there and I will watch it intentionally because you have to read the subtitles, and it's like, but that's a blue moon, right? I can't. There's maybe five total series that like series that I've actually sat down and watched beginning to end. Most of the time, my consumption on these streaming platforms on the video side are always just passive, the same way that my streaming consumption on the DSPs is very passive most of the time. It's a playlist, it's a playlist that I've created, it's an album that I have. But then there's the Tommies of the world, right? Where every once in a while I'll find something and I'll go looking for it.

And it's not just me. It's like my little brother is now 13, and my little sister is fifth about to be 15. And I pay for their subscriptions. They're on Spotify, right? And they send me music all the time. You're just paying. That's just the cheapest AR research team, you bet. Bro, we're on to you, man. You're paying for their $13 a month for them to send you new artists, bro. Oh my god, and they do that all day. That's a jug, bro. You know where they find their music? This is interesting. That is child labor, bro. They're paying for it for their subscription. Okay. Um, I mean, my little brother is extorting me for his Xbox expenses. Uh Fortnite skins, Fortnite skins, Roblox, I mean, everything. So it's a lot more than the Spotify. It's more than that. They're paying benefits. Right. The perks. Yeah. No, but you know what's interesting? I always ask them how they discover music. My little sister discovers music on TikTok.

That's how she finds music. My little brother discovers music on YouTube. Two completely different habits of consumption. Neither of them discover music on Spotify. Wow. I'm like, oh, so you don't have any playlists? He's like, oh, I do have one of those because ex-YouTubers, ex-YouTubers has a playlist of all the songs that he plays while he's staying, and I I save it, but I always just like listen to music or I'll find a song that I really like and then I'll go look for it. And there's a reason why that's happening, right? Because we grew up in radio. We grew up putting CDs together. We grew up putting mixtapes together, right? The new generation, Gen Z and Above, whatever the new generation's called, uh, they are learning to be influenced. Right. They came up in an era where it's like so-and-so likes this thing. I have the opportunity to like this now, right? We grew up on an era where it was like so-and-so told us to like this thing, and it's only available here.

Therefore, this is what I'm gonna listen. Radio, that was radio, right? Whatever was playing on the on your version of Kiss FM or whatever that station was. This guy's on MTV. I like him now. How much is the CD? The biggest bullshit that's happening right now is no one can put you on in this industry. No one can put you on. This is not 2016, where you get put on rap caviar or new music Friday, and all of a sudden you are like every label's calling and flying you out. That does not happen anymore. Right now, the only way that it could happen is you get Kai to put you on his stream or plays his record. But I guarantee you, people like Kai are only playing that record if someone around his network influenced him enough to be like, yo, this is a record. Right. Right. There's this kid out of Milwaukee right now, JP. I don't know if you guys know Bad Biddy. I'm gonna put y'all on some. Milwaukee. I was like, I don't know Bad Bitty. I didn't know anyone made music in Milwaukee. I'm just going to say, I wish I had my own song board. Wah, wah, wah.

I got that one. There you go. Okay, but yeah. Going going crazy right now. It was interesting because what ended up happening, I was out with um the genius people. And I was like, yo, y'all gotta listen to this. I was I was that annoying friend. I was like, y'all gotta, we're in an Uber together. I was like, y'all gonna listen to this song right now. And I play it, and it was like, okay, cool. And I I looked back at Katie, who's like one of the senior producers at Genius, I was like, trust me, this is gonna be a thing. Boom. They went live with it this past week, when they actually brought him on the show. She never like, we never talked about it again. Whether I had an influence or not, I might've had a little bit of influence, but it's one of the fastest viewed videos on the genius channel, and the record is still has been going crazy. I'm talking about millions of views. You guys have probably seen it. Like, if you hear the record, you'll know you just wouldn't know that he was some kid from Milwaukee. But I think that's the thing, right? It's like I didn't put him on because he was from Milwaukee per se. That definitely helped me, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that like this record's been.

I actually found out about the song by Wiz Khalifa. Okay. Wiz Khalifa did a video with it. And I was like, yo, this is hard. And then next thing you know, you know the algorithm. I started seeing a bunch of videos of that, and then I found out he was from Milwaukee. That even got me more excited, right? Oh, you were hype. Oh, I was so hype. You were so hype. Everyone had to know. Everyone had to know. genius has to know. The algorithm knew that they were both from Milwaukee before he did. And they're like, oh, we're about to get him. We're about to get him. He thinks we're just showing him a Wiz video. Oh, just wait. It's his new favorite Milwaukee artist. To be fair, to be fair, we got K-Camp, we got Rico Love from Milwaukee, Lakia. K Camp's from Milwaukee. Yeah. I thought he was from here, bro. Lakia's from Milwaukee. Oh. Jacob Lattimore's from Milwaukee. Damn, Milwaukee's kind of fly, bro. Giannis Antetokounmpo. Oh, shit. He's From Greece. Okay, okay, okay. So I know I know we don't like the term fan. We like to, you know, call them customers, but I do feel like the people that are gonna, you know, come on to even that are consumers of music and the art.

I do feel like I would categorize them as super fans. That's the hot take I wanted to talk about. Yeah, okay. So no, we don't we don't call them that. I mean, well what is this? What's your definition of a super fan? my hot take is the music industry is getting super fans wrong. Okay, what is it? The music industry thinks that super fans are these like hyper aggressive human beings that are like I love Taylor Swift. I will, you know, tattoo her song on my body, right? Like, there is people like that, right? And we probably know some of those few people who Swifties? Swifties, but it could be anything, right? Uh anyone. Now, the interesting thing is on even, the data is showing that only 10% of the consumers on even are considered your traditional super fans. How are you making that distinction? We have like a survey that we do for fans after they buy or release on the platform. Okay, and so what are you asking them that tells you whether they're a super fan or not? We ask questions like, how many times have you listened to this artist in the last 30 days?

How much have you ever paid for any merch? Have you ever gone to see them live? How many times have you seen them live? Right? Just kind of like your traditional consumption. The traditional things that we would usually think mean super fan. A hundred percent. You're debunking that myth. Do you follow them? How often do you view their story? How often do you view their feed? How was the last time you liked one of their posts? Like, I mean, it's the surveys are designed to be kind of like them depending on how you answer other questions, will come up. Sure. What's interesting is very rarely is that the case. Right. 80% of the users aren't even are classified as two consumers. One is the frivolous spender. This is your everyday person. As long as they got Apple Pay, Google Pay. If I don't got to pull out my credit card and I could get this right now in a matter of seconds, minutes, et cetera. That's why we prioritize when I made the joke of like two minutes and 60 seconds. We are trying to get it down to two minutes. Okay. That's our goal. It's like He's counting down from that second, that third 60.

One minute, 60 seconds. Literally. And you know what's interesting about that is like think about next time you buy something on the internet, think about how long it took you from A to Z. That's why Amazon's the best. 100%. I can blink and I've already bought the thing. Literally, the buy now button is insane. I don't need my CVV code. Oh my god. It's fucking nuts. On even, right now, I can show you guys we can get literally from A to Z. I could probably get it under a minute in front of you guys just because I've done it so many times, but the new consumer, we test it. Like we record how much time it takes from A to Z. Yeah. Sure. And even as consumer tech first, music tech second. Our job is how do we get consumers from around the world to be able to check out? And again, 40% of our users are frivolous spenders. These are people who are just like, uh it was available, my cards connected, boom, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link Pay, Cash App Klarna, whatever it is. It was $10, whatever.

It's done, right? The other 40%, which are a huge majority of our fans or users on the platform or customers, whatever we want to call them, depending on the conversation, they are the conscious consumer. These are people who care about, you know, where their food comes from, where their clothes come from. They rather go to a local coffee shop than a Starbucks. These are people who feel like the mission is really connecting with them. Buy the art from the artist. They're actually using the term probably support. Support. Versus buying. I didn't buy the art. I supported my favorite artist. Exactly. I made an impact. Yes. Consciously. 100%. Yeah, I mean, and the thing is the conscious consumer space has blown up globally. How do you find out that those are them? Questions like that, right? It's like, how important is it for you to support your favorite artists? Okay. I was just wondering, like, how do you even just ask them, bro? Just ask them. I mean, man, I spend maybe five to ten hours a week talking to customers, both on the artist side and on the fan side. Wow. That's big.

we don't. Oh man, we don't do that. We don't do enough. I call people. We'll get it. We'll talk about this later. But just in general, it's important. Oh, it's so, I mean, man, it's And artists can be doing that. Artists should be doing that. Artists should 100%. And you know what's crazy? When I was talking about the learning curve. Well, actually, I want to touch on the last 10%. Yeah, the last 10%, right? So it's 40, 40, and then we got 10 and 10. The additional 10%, which has been growing as we've, it's probably now closer to 16 to 20%. It's the experience seeker, the proximity buyer, right? What we call on the platform. So to give you guys some insight, there's I don't know, close to 9 billion people on the planet, right? Uh only 10% of the global population will ever have proximity to their favorite artists in their lifetime. Mostly because the touring markets are so nascent around the world. Okay, so you mean proximity physical? You're gonna be touring in my city, or you're gonna be doing an event, you're gonna be doing your listening party, you're gonna you live in my city, whatever the fuck, whatever it is.

They will only 10% of the global population will have proximity to their favorite artists in their lifetime. Wow. This leaves seven to eight billion people from the world around the world who will never have proximity to that artist. Yeah. Now, 23 years ago, when iTunes launched, only six percent of the global population had access to a credit card or a debit card. Whoa. That's the estimate. It probably was a little lower. Now over 50% of the global population is buying things on the internet every single day. So a fan from Australia, Singapore, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, can now buy Tommy's album on even with no problems. And we're seeing that. We during our closed beta, we just came out of beta on April 8th. We were in beta for a year and a half. We're Officially one year. We had users in 195 countries.

Whoa. I didn't even know there was 195 countries. You just blew my mind, right? I was today years old when you told me there was 195. No, and more than that. I've spent in the last year talking to governments from everyone. I'm in Kenya next week, meeting with the president of Kenya. What? We just we just got access to the Kenyan currency and uh their main payment processor, which is called MPesa. And I've been doing this. I've been in Nigeria, I was in DR. I mean, we're literally part of the reason why we're on this roadshow right now is we now support 135 currencies on the platform. Again, I did not know there was 135 currencies. Jesus. But part of the reason why we're doing that, this is twice as many as a Shopify, for example. Spotify isn't available in 195 countries, right? The streaming platforms. So you think about there's consumers from around the world where they can access a Tommy, for example. Man, we're giving Tommy so much love Dude,

Tommy better come on the fucking podcast after this. I'll work on that. I'll I'll connect you guys. But I mean, we're gonna make an epic Tommy Richmond clip, like for sure. Well, no, but that's the example, right? Thinking of a Tommy or a LaRussell or et cetera. I'll use an example, a real life example, Lauren Jauregui or Lauren Jauregui, right? She's Cuban and incredible partner. She's done two singles on the platform. She found even on her own, created an account, and I remember like our client services team like put this in front of me, like called me at like 11 o'clock at night. Heck, Lauren just created an account. I was like, why are you calling me at 1130 at night? Did you know who she was? Oh, 100%. Yeah, but I was like, why are you one? I was more concerned of like, why is my employee calling me at 11 o'clock? Okay, cool. Now that we're past that, this is incredible. We reach out to the team, and she ended up, she's done two singles on the platform. Most of her sales, without giving away too much information, have come from outside of the country.

And they're coming from regions that she has rarely toured. And these are fans that like want proximity to her, right? Bro, this is blowing my mind right now. They would be this part of it, they never would have had any type of access like that. This is the this is borderline the biggest. This is like huge, right? Well, this is the thing, right? Now you add currencies to it, right? When we started including these new currencies on the platform, fans in Mexico can pay in the Mexican peso. Yeah. Fans in Nigeria can pay in the Naira. We pay the artists in whatever currency they want, no matter where they are in the world. Now, on the other side, not only are we paying daily, but we can pay an artist daily no matter where they are in the world. And it doesn't matter what currency their fans paid in. So people are now seeing this in their native currency, in their native language, supporting their favorite artists, no matter where they are in the world, and the artist is getting paid daily. Did you think that this was gonna be a use case at all? Not at all.

No way, right? No, no. I mean, I I've spent hours and hours looking at even and like trying to understand how like this is just this is mind blowing. And I know it's a small percentage right now, because you said it's only you know, it's 10 to 20% now growing. I would not be shocked, bro. If this is Oh, that this is that is that is the thing. Yeah. this is the thing, right? We identify that, but we it goes back to the question. You're only gonna get the data you ask for. Yeah. We weren't asking. How would you know? The frivolous spender and the conscious consumer can tie into that global user. And again, the data has showed us we have users in 195 countries. Only 30% of Even's users right now are from the United States. Whoa. Everything else is coming from around the world. Yeah. Right. There's people that are supporting LaRussell, buying albums of LaRussell, who now has, I think, like eight albums on the platform from around the world. LaRussell has never toured outside of the United States yet, right? So that is the data that we are now being able to pass over to our partners and show them.

Now, a Lauren, who has a global audience, millions of followers, millions of monthly listeners, she already knew she had these audiences. She just didn't have a way to engage with them. Now you take a LaRussell who is seeing crazy growth, who now has the opportunity to be like, yo, maybe we should go to Romania next. You know? So now, where it gets interesting is when we start working with global artists, right? We did our first release in Ghana in January with this artist Kwesi Arthur. He is from Ghana, right? The average person in Ghana makes $2,500 a year. That's like the average income. He did his album on even, and in the first overnight, he made $5K. 80% of those sales happened in Ghana, with the average fan in Ghana paying $9 per album. Wow.

Every major insights company on the planet in the music industry called us. And like this happened on Friday. By Monday, every major insights company, most of them appalled. How dare you sell music in Ghana? What are you doing launching in Ghana or doing this thing? And granted, we weren't even supporting the Ghana currency. We weren't supporting any of those payment methods. These were just people who were finding a way to pay with a US card or a debit card, which they're available, right? But the everyday person was going to use probably more traditional card that was primarily around the ecosystem that they were, you know, buying things in. But the most interesting part that we found in that moment is people are willing to pay no matter where they are in the world. Now, we launched in Nigeria earlier this month, a part of separately from our launch. We found that in Nigeria, this is a country of 220 million people, right? About 60 to 70% of the size of the United States as far as population density.

In 2023, Afrobeats made 110 million dollars. Only 2% of that touch the country. Because they're monetizing globally, but distribution companies are in the States or in Europe. There is incredible artists in Nigeria today. They can't leave the country because getting a visa to get out of the country, so they're just waiting their turn for their time to be able to grow that economy, even now offers it an opportunity because they have these massive audiences to monetize their music without leaving the country, getting paid in their country in their native currency. Damn. This is yeah, this is so cool, man. I was like, I didn't, I so much just more thought about it as the super fan. I that's really what I was like, I had like a bunch of rethinked questions. I'm like, fuck it. That's why I love just you know, kind of going off the cuff a little bit. Because yeah, I really thought it was about um just you know, I'm a die hard, you know, LaRussell fan. I've seen him 10 times live.

I've bought every piece of merch. Of course, I want to buy his album to get exclusive access early, and I want to be in the you know, group chat, like whatever, or like the you know, QA chat. I didn't think about it from the like, you know, gaining access to global audiences that do want to support you that just really they can't They have no way to do it. Going back to the Tommy example, it's like if someone in, you know, now if Tommy goes on tour, he's not going global, he's not gonna go on a global tour right off the bat, he's just not right. So if you're in any of those other markets, you can't spend money with this guy. Like, it's hard. I mean, and and and that's the part, right? Where like when I'm talking to a team, I've met with teams on every side of the spectrum, right? The top point zero zero zero one percent of artists, right? The global superstars. You met with Drake, the top on the side zero zero two percent. And then, you know, I've we've also met with like the artist who's never made a dollar from streaming before, right?

What's really interesting, there is a common denominator. Think of any major superstar you want right now in this moment. You ask them, do you know who your fans are? They might know who 1% of their fans are. With the limited data that they've been able to collect, they might have like, yeah, we have a Shopify store, or hey, we have this Lalo account, or hey, we have this thing. We're talking about one percent of their fan base because they've never been able to be put in an opportunity. Live Nation's not giving them that data, Spotify's not giving them that data, YouTube's not giving them that data. And that is really the flaw of the industry. I started my my career in the music industry as a producer, manager, engineer, did that for six years, and then I started working in the venture space. And one of the things that I learned in the venture space was consumer startups, whether they were consumer packaged goods or consumer tech. One of the most fascinating things that I witnessed in real life, I saw a company go from zero dollars to selling for hundreds of millions of dollars in the high hundreds of millions of dollars in a span of four years, and they only had a couple hundred thousand customers. And here I was working with artists with millions and millions of monthly listeners who could not pay rent at the end of the month, who couldn't even get a hundred thousand dollar advance from a distributor or a label without signing away everything.

And I'm like, something's broken here. Why is it that there's a company here who's selling a product that only a very small percentage of the population wants? And here's this artist who's making incredible music, can't have a sustainable career. And the answer was data. Here was this company that can sell product. They knew who every single one of their customers was. They know where they live, they know what they like to buy. They knew the track record. If you buy this product and it's meant to last you for 30 days, I know to send you an email on the 27th day to remind you that you should buy this now so you can get it by the time you run out. The music industry has never had that before. And this isn't just the emerging artists with no monthly listeners. This is also UMG Warner Sony. When we talk to some of these major labels, major distribution companies, very rarely do they give a fuck about the revenue, if I'm being honest with you. The revenue is a plus.

But for them, it's the data. It's like, oh, we now have access to data. Now, once we get through the hurdle, right? Of like, all right, well, where does money go? Where does the data go? Et cetera, etc.? The next challenge is what do you do with the data? We introduced this new tool three weeks ago called Fan Connect on the platform. Think of MailChimp Meets Community. You can send SMS notifications, email notifications. Now, on paper, the tool is very simple. It already exists in the world. We just plugged it into the platform. What made it very powerful is where an artist like LaRussell, who now has data of fans who've bought music on platform, now can send a set a text message and say, hey, I have this new release. I'm not posting about it on social media, but you can buy it from me. If you guys bought any of LaRussell's albums, you guys probably got his text message or his email, like, hey, I have this new release. He made five figures overnight without even promoting this album on social media. One one text.

Wow. That is the power of data and what it does at long term. But then there's a responsibility. And just a couple days ago, I was texting LaRussell and he was doing like this merch sale, and I was like, man, you should text everyone. He's like, no, no, no, no. He's like, I want there to be a medium, right? And that's one of the most powerful things to do. Having access to data doesn't mean you exploit data. as well. You can abuse it really easily. You can abuse it very quickly and people will unsubscribe. It's knowing the medium, right? Like Nike doesn't send me an email every day and shit. Lord knows I've spent so much money on Nike. They only come to me when they know my specific product that I'm gonna want is gonna be releasing. So how do you get people to be that customer? I think because I think that's this all sounds good and well. All right, it's amazing. But I think our biggest challenge, and I say our as in our community's biggest challenge is okay, awesome. How do I even get a community of people to want to support me financially, right? I think that's the biggest question.

So, like, what are you seeing as far as like, you know, common success models for people that are converting, you know, followers on social to customers on even? The simple answer is just start. Right? Lower even if it's five. Lower your expectations and start. That's I swear to God, I just said this. I was like, because we want to start getting our community involved to support us because we're the same way where it's like, yeah, we have maybe like a donate button, but it's it's very hard. If someone does want to like immediately like, oh my God, I fucking love their content. I love that interview. How do I support these guys? How do I, you know, purchase something that is exclusive or you know, whatever the case, like we don't have it. Yeah. And I think that we have this weird thing of like, well, what if it's only five? Who fucking cares if it's five people that pay just 10 bucks, 20 bucks? Yeah, there's a hundred bucks. Of course. I'll give you an example. When you guys started this podcast, you guys probably didn't start with this plant probably wasn't here.

We were on that pool table table right there. You simply have to start, right? And when I talk to a team, it doesn't matter who I'm talking to, lower your expectations and start. That's literally my formula. Start messy and then start learning what's working and just build. And you know what's crazy? Sometimes it's easier to do that. Lower your expectations and start. Because after you do it and it goes really well, then your expectations get really high. It went really well. Now you're expecting it. Where it's kind of like that that's always been really interesting. We'll have an artist who goes live on even and they'll make, I don't know, a thousand dollars on their first release, and then the next release, they go in so confident. They're like, I'm gonna make another, and then they'll make $500. They're like, what went wrong? And I'm just like, well, I can tell you very clearly, you went into this release so confident that you thought you were only gonna make two posts. Last release, you did 10 posts. You were DMing people, you were messaging people, right? And then we have artists who go into it with like no expectation, right? They have 200 monthly listeners.

Not 200,000. I've seen artists on a daily basis. I could pull up my phone right now and show you an artist sold an album for a thousand dollars today, and this artist had less than three thousand followers. So crazy. We see it. We see it every single day. The amount of streams they would have to get. It's unfathomable, bro. The math does not math. The math doesn't, I mean, and and what's what's really interesting. I think what I'm when again, when I'm talking to an emerging artist, for me, the thing that excites me every day is those artists, right? That like have never made a hundred dollars, have never made a thousand dollars, and here they are making tens and thousands of dollars on the platform. And then what's interesting is on the other side, we'll we use as an opportunity to highlight them. If you've ever been on our Instagram, every once in a while we'll highlight an artist who like just made a bunch of money who doesn't have a massive following, and next thing you know, they'll have a distribution deal and they'll have a new manager. And I love the way y'all position the numbers too, right?

It's like how many streams, the streaming equivalent, I think is what y'all call it. Yeah, that's so cool to see. Of like to your point, like to make that thousand, you would have to get what, like 250,000 streams or whatever. Yep, right. But if it's a thousand dollars and there was a ten dollar product that you sold on even, that's a hundred. Yeah, a hundred versus two hundred and fifty thous 250,000. It's just the magnitude is insane. The most fascinating data point that I found is that it takes 200,000 fans on streaming platforms every single month just to make five thousand dollars. Yeah. That's crazy. Think about this. Any other business in the world, $200,000 people, you're out of here. Millions and millions of dollars. Because that's if they were to spend, you know, even if they spent one dollar, It's $200,000. Yeah. I'll reframe it another way. If only one percent of those $200,000 people. So what is that? $220. Yeah. What would happen?

Yeah. You're talking about $40,000, right? It's I remember I was looking at the data and I would go back and I was like, no, let's look at another artist. And then boom, same thing. Same thing. Boom, same thing. And it didn't matter. You would combine all of the streaming data from all of the streaming platforms, combine it based on streams, based on total listeners. Boom. 200,000 to 400,000 people every single month just to make $5,000. And I'm just like, this does not make sense. Like, why isn't anyone talking? Like, we've been so hyper focused on like the 0.00 per stream that we'd never stop to think, well, how many people does it take to actually make this money? Ask your distributor. If you're an artist, ask your distributor, ask your label. When they give you your report every month when they're paying you for your streams, how many people listen to my music? They probably don't even have that information. That's fucked up. That hurts my soul. Because if they did, the gap would show up so clearly.

People would realize how is it that this artist only made $100, but they have $80,000 people listening to them? Yeah. That doesn't make sense. So on the back end, on even one of the favorite one of the things that we did from day one is we have the streaming equivalent. Yeah. When artists will make $10 and we'll show them. seeing that number in front of you has to just be mind-blowing. When I was even doing the post that we did about you guys, like putting that in there, I was like, is that the right number of zeros? And we have artists that like they'll say, like, yo, we just hit a million streams on even. And I'm just like, no, that that makes sense because those numbers make it real for the artists, right? We have an artist come on the platform that has hundreds and thousands of followers, millions of monthly listeners. They make five, six figures in revenue. Cool, right? Like, that's exciting. Yeah, that's amazing. We got to go work with these really cool artist. But nothing beats the moment of like working with an artist who made $10,000 in a day. Who's used to getting $17 in royalty?

money. Even if they were making $500 a month, right? There was a release that we just did uh on yesterday, Sunday, who made $9,200 in 24 hours, and he was making $500 a month from streaming. That was crazy in that moment. It wasn't like it wasn't that it was unpredictable, but it was just like, holy shit. Here's the next 18 months of those checks at once. At once. At once from like 300 people. Yeah. This is like 275 people or something crazy. And the crazy thing is when they get excited in that moment. I try to I try to tell them I was like, look, don't stop now. You have these 250 people that just decided to pay to listen to your album two weeks before streaming platforms. Give them something crazy. Do you have any merch? Yes. And they'll be like, Well, no, we'll have this idea or da, da, da, da, whatever. Mock it up. Mock it up, send that shit. Yo, I'm selling these t-shirts, I'll ship them out in three weeks. Yeah.

And they'll sell out. And they'll make an extra 10 grand. Yeah. And they'll be like, holy shit, I just made I'm like, keep it going. Where is the biggest market? You have 50 people in Atlanta. Go to a show. Go do a show. Find a small little bar, call them, be like, yo, can I do a 4 p.m., 5 p.m. show? Invite those 50 people. Because you can invite them. You can because you have the data. You actually have the data. All right, all right. So this sounds so fucking great. All right. I'm an aspiring artist. I'm like, oh my God, how do I fucking take advantage of this? How do I sign up? Can I can I sign up? How do I get on the platform? So there's two ways into this. The first way is you can go to even just directly, even.biz, click for artists, create your account. Uh there is an authentication process. I'm gonna look at this camera and say, if you're going through our authentication process, enter all your information into your bio, images, streaming links, social media links. It will make the process a lot quicker for you. The current wait time is anywhere between four to six weeks to get authenticated, mostly because of the wait list.

We have about, I think we're nearing 50,000 artists on our wait list right now. It's a big wait list. It's a wait list. That's yeah, that's something. um and we're working literally seven days a week to, you know, we're approving anywhere between 100 to 200 artists a day. Yeah. The other route is ask your distributor. Um, if you're working with the distribution company, you can ask your distributor, just go to your support line or your direct contact and be like, hey, I want to work with even. There's a nine out of ten chance possibility that they're already in the network and they can expedite your process as fast as like a day. And we're not talking like the biggest of the big, like exclusive label distributors, like we're talking ones that a lot of y'all might use. The distro kids, the distro kids, CD babies, potentially tune cores, UMs, whatever. They might have the relationship, right? So ask, and just because you know, if they do, there's still probably like some things that have to happen, but like at least initiate the process through your distributor. That seems like to be the best bet to like, you know, kind of quicken the process, right?

I can't for legal reasons say what distributors just yet. Yeah. Maybe by the time this airs, it'll already be public information. Uh, but ask your distributor. What I can say is we have direct contact to every major indie DIY distributor. So reach out to your distributor, ask your rep if you have a relationship with them. And honestly, the easiest way, even if you want to do if you don't want to go that route, email us artists at even.biz, and our team will take care of you. We have an incredible client services team. They do. That will literally get you set up. Um, we'll find the right avenues to get you, they'll ask you all the fancy questions of like, do you have a distributor, aggregator, whatever it is, label? And I think to that point, there's a misconception that we only work with fully independent artists. Uh, we love working with fully independent artists, it's a lot of what we do, but we also work with signed artists. Uh, and the reason why we prioritize that since day one is we want to be a part of an artist's career from day one to the day that they're selling out arenas, and that's something that we've prioritized because it's important, right?

I think of platforms like Bandcamp where the fact that they never paid out to the PROs and they never had a direct relationship with some of these like performance rights organizations, mechanical royalties at a global scale, has prevented some of the biggest artists from being on platforms like Bandcamp. And it's something that we've prioritized from day one. We've been able to build direct relationships with the PROs, uh, not just in the states, but from around the world, and we prioritize not only paying the artists, but also paying songwriters and producers, which will allow artists at any scale to be able to go on even and engage with their favorite artists. I'm just curious, you know, this is all just incredible for the artist, just to kind of flip sides and look at it from a fan's perspective. We're so used to all this music, you know, instantly, basically free, you know, a small like monthly subscription. Have you seen any kind of pushback? Are people kind of upset at the thought of going back to paying for music? I'll say this from the hundreds and thousands, almost we've all we're almost crossing the million dollar, like the not the million dollar, the million user mark on platform.

We've only ever had one request for a refund. Really? Yes. And that request for a refund. You'll never forget it. Oh, I'll never forget it. But it was crazy. It was an accident. The request was an accident. No, the payment was an accident. They bought it on accident. They paid more. They paid more than what they could afford. They typed it in an extra zero or something. Yes. This fan paid a thousand dollars and they meant to pay a hundred dollars. Literally. Wow. And they so it wasn't real, it wasn't like a full refund. It wasn't a full refund. It was uh whoops. Whoops. Fat fingered that zero. And you know what's crazy? What ended up happening was we processed the refund instantly for the fan. Uh, we returned whatever they wanted the difference to be. The artists saw it on their dashboard that, oh wow, this fan just paid a thousand dollars. Holy shit. The artist called the fan, and it was just like, yo, thank you. But no, it didn't say like thank you for spending a thousand dollars or whatever. They're like, Thank you for buying the album.

I really appreciate you. This like means the world to me. The artist went, the fan went on the platform and paid $900 for the release. Wow. Holy shit. That's what that access to. Wait, you can call your fans? You have access to all their information. You can just you can you can own that relationship with a man wow. That's that's an amazing story. That is why Henry, on that note, we've entered a final segment of the podcast. That was so worth it. That's a Nice question. Yes. I was like, is this gonna be good, this guy? You never have faith in me, you know. Well, like coming in last minute, you know? I thought you would have double dutched. It was on my mind for a little bit. I was just so locked in. I could tell. Fuck. Let's go. Good shit. Okay, so this is the rapid fire rampage. Let's do it. We're gonna break it up into three parts. Let's start with some short answer questions Let's do it. Starting with, why did the chicken cross the road? Because it was curious.

And to buy music directly from his favorite artist. Uneven. I was curious about how to do that. I hate you sometimes. My thing is now the first question gasses up the guest. Like, get him hype. I love that. for sure. That was good. That was good. Okay, moving on. Playback Ben has a thousand dollars to roll out his new single. How would you advise that he spend it? What's the outcome that he wants? I think you have to dictate. He has no idea what he's doing. OK. so he's a brand new artist. But he's got this hot single. Let's say this. I want to get as many customers to purchase the song on even. Number one, create a pixel. Right? Make sure you are on even. Right. So uh create your account, upload your album on even, and do a campaign where you convert your followers into actually. You know what?

Actually, scratch all that. Fuck that. Use that a thousand dollars to create a unique experience for your audience. Whatever it is, whether it's I'm gonna create a custom bobblehead of my album or a custom candle. Create a unique experience that you can offer as an access point to build a relationship with an audience, right? Something you can put a ticket on, right? Like $50, right? Where now you just need 20 people to pay you $50. And it's crazy because we bought this candle from an artist. Shout out Will Hill. One of our favorites. That was amazing. Yeah, that was good. Damn. Yeah. Completely flipped that shit on his head, bro. Unique experience. Yes. Very unique experience. That's all it's about. Mag, you must choose one song to play every time you walk into a room. Million dollar baby. Tommy, Richmond. God, I love that for him. Actually, you know what?

I want to. No, no, no. I'm gonna switch it up. I'm gonna say it. up. I'm going to switch it up. You can't. We're editing this second answer out, Okay. Ay Lupita by Lomiel. you guys should check it out. Incredible record coming out of DR right now. Wow, his accent just kicked in. I don't know how to spell it. Ay Lupita. Ay Lupita. Ay Lupita. Ay, Lupita. That's a new intro for this episode. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's the intro. Got it. Yeah, for sure. Ay Lupita. Give us your best three pieces of advice for an artist who just decided they want to sell directly to their fans. What's the three top things that you just immediately put into action. Don't think about it. Just do it. And don't be afraid to reach out to your immediate network about it. It's the best way to test it. Right? Just set it up, create your campaign, and start reaching out to your immediate network. No need to go, you don't have to aim bigger than what's already within your reach.

I think it's the most important. That's a good way of putting it. Hand-to-hand combat DMs, texts, people you know, hand in hand. You know. Just do it. This guy really does spend a lot with Nike. I really literally. Love it. Christ. If you had to jump into a pool of something besides water, what would it be? God damn it. Jump into a pool. It's uh so This is a new one. Yep. I can tell. Money? Yay! Let's go. The money pool. Scrooge. I only swim in money. Let's go. Swim in money. Does your money have? does your money, Does your pool have money in it or not? Fuck that water. And finally, what is your favorite curse word? Well, this is I I gotta think on this one. I have a couple. Okay. You need to narrow it down. Um nothing beats a good fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It's hard to beat. It's a tough one to beat. Yep. For

Sure. That was part one. Part one. This is the this or that. I'm gonna give you two choices. You just pick one. Starting with upload your music to DSPs or sell directly to fans. Oh, sell directly to fans. Fuck you DSPs. Okay. Daniel Ek would never. Until Daniel comes on the pod. I want to see Mag and Daniel Ek just go on the craziest beef. Would you moderate like a debate? Yes. I'd totally I'd host a fireside chat with Max and Daniel Ek. Daniel Ek's my bro. For sure. Slap boxing uh shit. Daniel Ek's dropping like a fly. I love it. I love it. That's crazy. Moving on. I do not approve them. That's fine. We said it, you didn't. Mac or PC? Oh, Mac all day. Pet bird or pet snake? Pet bird. Wait in the merch line or see the opener. See the opener.

Whiskey or tequila. Tequila. I knew it, bro. We gotta get bro. We're on it. Yeah. It's two guys. sitting around. Music loves tequila. Does. Especially Atlanta. Yeah. TikTok or Twitter? Twitter. Or X. Yeah. Money printer or Time Pauser. Money printer. Cheesecake or Brownie? Cheesecake. For here to go. For here. Fight one horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses. When people actually think about it in their head. Yeah, there's that moment where the visual clicks. The visual clicks. I want the the bottom one. You're gonna get it. You're getting it now, Max. You said a horse-sized duck? Yes. Or a hundred duck-sized horses. Single foe.

Yeah. Okay. And finally, become a full-time singer-songwriter or leave the music industry forever. Uh leave the music industry forever. He was like, could I do it? Could I maybe do it? Nah, nah nah. Pass off even, make a nice exit. I did have a dream that I was uh on Sway in the Morning and I decided to spit a 16. Max spits hot fire. And it went viral for all the wrong reasons. Literally. Wow. I love that. The final part is the word association. Max, I'm gonna say one word. You just give me the first word off the top of your head. As little thought as possible. Preferred. Here we go. Rampage! By the way, that guy's saying rampage, H John Benjamin, also the voice of Bob from Bob's. Burgers. From Bob's burgers. Callback. Wow. Yeah. My favorite voice. actor. Burp, burp, burp, burp. He's Great.

Starting with hip hop. Million. Microphone. Dollar. No. No, he's not doing it, folks. Tommy, baby. So annoying. Tried to divert it. I love this for us. I love this for us. I tried to divert it. I'm sorry. No, no, I love this for us. This is a good moment. Alright, that was a moment for sure. Yeah, that is a whole episode. Whole episode has been a moment. Kiwi. Strawberry. LaRussell. Different. Ice skating. Dangerous. AI. Dangerous. Silk. Soft birthday. August. Hookah. Tequila. Lil. Yachty. Buy the art.

From the artist. Let's go. So this has been Mag, co-founder of Even. Even Even.biz. Submit your application to be on the platform today. If you are a fan and you want to support your artist, buy the art from the artists. Buy the art from the artist. For God's sake, folks, buy the art from the artist. It just makes sense. It just makes sense. Come on. Speaking of support, support the One More Time Podcast by following us on Spotify Podcast, following us on Apple Podcasts, like, comment, subscribe if you fuck with this interview. We are here each and every week. Until next time, Henry, what are we doing? Getting out of here. Getting the fuck out of here. Peace, y'all. Bye-bye.