How Musicians Go From 0 To 1,000,000 Fans In 2026 ft. Jesse Cannon (Musformation)

Growth in general is better than what most people are experiencing. The average musician is experiencing literally no growth. They put out a song, it gets 200 listens. The next one gets 189. The next one gets 205. If you know the one more time podcast, there's a very good chance that you also know Jesse Cannon from Musformation. His channel's kind of like a cousin to ours, so obviously we had to make this happen. Jesse has produced, engineered, managed artists, consulted labels, written one of the go-to DIY music business books, and every year he does a video breaking down how artists go from zero to one million fans. So we brought him on for the 2026 OMT crossover version. For six years we had that if you went on short form video apps and you said, if You like this type of stuff, then you'll like me. Those prompts and being in your pajamas, in your bed, is not cutting it the way it used to. What people are starting to stop scrolling on is when they see something like, oh, that's a sick artist.

In other words, the old shortcuts aren't cutting the mustard anymore. Nowadays, people are stopping for artists who feel authentic, feel developed, and are actually worth talking about. I think the kids are calling it Aura. You got aura on one side, and then you got Slop on the other side. And in the middle, we got mid. We have to now find that thing where people don't go, hey, there's a mid version of Taylor Swift. What we're trying to do is get people to go, damn, that's sick. I want to know more. And that takes artist development. So if you're tired of guessing and ready to start building on the path to one million fans, watch this episode, take notes, and then watch it again because it's actually that good. You go out there, you stop making excuses, you just start filming, you find that one looks good, and over time you get better, and that's how we level up. We have one fourth of the My Point Four Cents podcast.

We just had Andrew Southworth on. Now we have Jesse Cannon. They said it couldn't be done. Henry, we fucking defied all odds. Always get it done somehow, man. Come on, dude. How do we do it? Don't Play with us. Let's go. God, Jesse, thank you, man. Blessings. Seriously. As they say, for first time, long time I've watched a ton, a ton of episodes. And I, yeah, I've learned a lot from y'all, so I'm psyched to be here. Damn. And likewise, by the way. Coming from the goat? Well, he's learning from our guests. Not from us. Shut the fuck up, Henry. Come on. We're the providers. We might have said something cool here and there. Henry, I I, you know, after seeing your skills on the uh the buttons on the podcast. No, no. Brushed up from one of the podcasts I have. So nice, good. Wow. So his fans can blame Henry for the their uh being annoyed at your sound effects. Um, but no, man. So, you know, want to really uh unpack, you've been making videos for the last, I feel like, you know, several years of how to go from zero to a million fans in you know, insert year. So we're in 2026 right now.

Uh, I know you just, you know, kind of released like a it seemed like like a four-hour course style video for this year's edition of that topic. You know, we wanted to kind of borrow from that topic and bring bring the conversation to our audience and our platform because we've never done a, like, fan base growth, fan acquisition specific, heavy episode. Yep. So I just want to, you know, get started with in 2026. What are you seeing? Uh are the main differences between those indie artists that are stuck, not growing, not acquiring new fans, and the ones that are are seeing that growth. I just want to get a few of the commonalities that you're seeing across the board. For six years, I've made this video. Okay. Basically, I try to just like every year, like, here's what changed. Now, the funniest thing is too is that for 13 years I've had my book get more fans, and everybody 's like, oh my God, you must be rewriting like those 700 pages every year. I'm like, 40 pages changes about every year in like two minutes.

So that video changes every year. Whoa. Crazy thing. But here's the crazy thing is like the two minutes that change are usually really important. Okay. I think that the biggest the biggest change that we saw last year were two major things, which is that for six years we had that if you went on short form video apps and you said, You like this type of stuff, then you'll like me. And you can be in your pajamas in a bed, and it can do really well. But we've started to see like, yes, that could get you some of your early fans still, but those prompts and being in your pajamas in your bed is not cutting it the way it used to. And what people are starting to stop scrolling on is when they see something like, oh, that's a sick artist. That's as aura as the kids like to say. Um so the big thing I've been leaning into is that we have to now find that thing where people don't go, hey, there's a mid version of Taylor Swift. That doesn't excite anybody.

No one goes to listen to there's a mid version of Tate McRae. Tate McRae is already a mid version of, well, okay, I'm not gonna go there. Okay, so the point being Alrighty. Fired. So so so so the point being what we're trying to do is get people to go, damn, that's sick. I want to know more. And that takes artist development. So a lot of what I've been leaning into with um, I've been writing this artist development workbook that in my member feed, you can see while I write it that asks you questions how you get there, because I've been lucky enough throughout my career, whether it was my years at Atlantic Records or my consulting to work with a lot of artists that have 18 million monthly listeners on down to 18. And the difference is those artists who have 18 million are asking bigger, better questions and know the questions to ask to develop things better. So the biggest change I've been seeing is that we have to go deeper on how you're not in the lane and you have a position where people go, here's what's different about that artist. Like think about when you guys tell each other about an artist, you're psyched on you're going, yo, you gotta check them out.

They're doing this thing that's fresh. Not yo, this is a mid-version of Playboi Carti. They they they don't got the money for the Rick Owens, but it's kind of sick. So a lot of what I've been trying to do is help artists develop that because that's the big change that's happening. And I'm betting that from 26 to 27 that that's gonna keep increasing. Is that we've all learned how to level up the game. So we got to go in on that. So that's the first really big difference we've had. Interesting. Yeah, I was gonna ask kind of what you've seen between 2025 and 2026. So that idea of aura and the way to achieve that being true artist development is that key like two-minute difference in the in the this year's video versus last year's. Interesting. Yeah, that that's that's a lot of it. And like what I think a lot of people don't get that I talk about is um you got aura on one side, and then you got slop on the other side, and that is actually a difference. So then in the middle, we got mid.

I like that I'm mid now. So um, so uh the point being though, is like it really is that thing It's like when you're putting out slop videos of like just the AI guy in the Corvette to your song, that ain't saying anything anybody can't do in one minute on a website, yeah, and that's not aura. It's the exact opposite. So what we have to start to be thinking about is like how we balance that because the other problem is is aura is hard to make at scale. Even the biggest artists can't do aura all the time. They engage in a lot of mid-slop and mid and do things that are just like, yeah, that's fine. This is for the fans who are addicted to me, things like that. But like what a lot of the strategies I come up with now are like how we're balancing that out of like, are we putting on fan accounts a whole bunch of slop and mid and then keeping the main account aura? Are we just gonna go balls to the wall with only aura and try to get word of mouth?

Like you see, a lot of the artists that are blowing up, whether it's like geese or McGee or these artists that like keep their accounts to that, but then you find out that they hired chaotic good who are making a whole bunch of slop and crap for them, which brings us to the other big change, which is that one that everybody wants to kill me when I am the messenger of the truth of, which is that having one account can still work, but it's getting less and like less likely it's gonna move the needle. Oh, we keep hearing it over and over all about the alt accounts. It has to be true. We've heard it enough times. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, it's it's it's funny we're doing this today because um I interviewed someone who worked at. Did you guys see this article about Flutify last week in New York magazine? Uh-uh. Okay. So the big headline of the article that's making everyone wet the bed is um that 90% of what you see online is you're being sold to and you don't realize it. And Flutify is like the main interview in it, in that they were making tons and tons, 65,000 accounts they had promoting music artists.

Yeah. I know. So like here here's a crazy thing to put this into perspective. I've now interviewed six different people who've run bot farms. The biggest one was 13,000 I've ever interviewed. So 16,000 is you know, that's a really big difference. And like people always forget, you know, the difference between zero and one thousand is big, but the difference between 1,000 and 13,000 is very, very big, and 13 to 65,000 is insane. Yeah. So we have like one alt account. I feel like we're way behind. Like they are. And but what's interesting is a lot of what our talk was today was about um how much TikTok and all these other platforms are now going, like, you know, we saw Instagram a whole year ago go. If you're just clipping Joe Rogan interviews, we're not promoting your ass. Like, we're done with that. That's for Joe Rogan's own clipper to do, but you gotta stop with this. If it's just that, we're not gonna promote that.

And what we were talking about that's really interesting is one of the ways that they're fighting it back with all these accounts now, is that they're making your feed more local. So for example, I live on a restaurant row in Brooklyn. I live like a few doors in from it. I don't go to some of these restaurants, I think they're terrible, but I'll get their content when it really pops off because it's like, yo, you should know about this local thing that's popping up. My local artists, even if I don't listen to them, those artists I'm getting in my feed a lot more than I used to, because this is how they're trying to counteract it, is they're favoring a little bit of like location so that when the bot farm is in Indonesia, you're not getting their shit. Wow. So, okay, so if so, if I'm stuck right now, how like what kind of audit or what kind of you know self-evaluation can I do to get the fucking aura up, man? Like, I'm trying to get the aura. Yeah, like it sounds like the mid and slop, like, sure, maybe on alt accounts, like some of that can fly, but we want that main page at least.

We want a fucking aura farm, right? For aura farming. Okay, so um, one of the more interesting things, I think, is when you pay attention to a lot of what the big artists say and talk about. Um, I often point to um Caroline Polachek did the greatest late night performance of all time, and she had this chart on it. And the chart was just a diagonal arrow going upwards, and the two axes were you-ness and newness. So, what she meant by this is that inside of all of us has is some unique traits, some unique experiences. You know, a good example I always say is like you could be like the lamest, lamest pop punk band, pop punk bands all have the same influences, it's like really derivative, it's the most generic shit. But then you're like really into Elvis Costello, let's say. So if you bring a little bit more Elvis Costello, which is probably a thing no one else is into, and because you authentically love that, when you bring that into your art, you start to get character where people go, Oh, that's different. That's kind of sick.

Now, can you write a song with that that still is emotional? That is the true test of artistry. But when we harness all these things that, like, you know, a good example, maybe too. Let's say you're that same generic pop punk artist and you really liked the movie The Rats of NIMH. I don't know if y'all have ever seen that, but like it's a weird cartoon from the 80s. So let's say you bring that into your videos instead of all the generic pop punk bands that do the same video, which is them in a suburban town in front of their garage talking about how they're pissed off about it. And you make this video that's kind of like a rat vibe where there's fake rats, everybody's like, yo, that's kind of sick. That's different. That feels cool. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to find all the things that make you unique and bring it into your art. And so what we see over and over again is all these quotes from like David Bowie in 1972 on the ward from when she was 15 years old, talking about the things that made them pop off, is that they had their own unique experiences and they kept harvesting them into their art. And then people went, Oh, I ain't never seen some shit like that.

And that creates aura. And what we're trying to do is look at all these things that we found powerful, and then think about how we bring them into what we do. When I see a Playboi Carti and things like that doing these things, he changes his shit every era. But what he's doing is he's going, yo, that was really sick, but he's not looking in the same world as everybody else, and he's bringing those things into the world, and then everybody goes, yo, that's fucking sick, that's different. He's a fucking vampire rapper. What the fuck is going on here? Yeah. It's just so tough because I think we talk about this all the time. But if I'm an artist, I struggle with like what to bring into my world, right? Because let's say I like those movies, I like those, you know, things that I could consider making a part of like my artist's identity. How do I gauge like what can make me unique and what should make me unique, right? Because it could, I don't know.

Like it'd be tough to know if like your Elvis Costello like interest is a thing that is worth bringing in. So I don't know. I could just see people struggling with like, oh God, like I know I'm a pop-up man, but like what makes me unique, right? Because that's I don't know, that's tough. So a lot of this is playing and tinkering. So one of the other things that I have, uh, that's right here. Yeah. Uh I wrote this book where I read 260 books and studies on creativity. And I tried to learn that, like, basically all my life, for people who don't know, I was a record producer for 30 years. And I was around all these record producers. I was friends with all these top dogs. And the one thing I learned was like none of them actually studied creativity, even though, like, what is a record producer? They're a creativity coach trying to coach it out of you at the end of the day and get you to this thing, but no one actually looked at the science of that. So that's what that book is it's all the science of creativity and how you do this. So one of the things with to answer your question now, yeah, is that we have to tinker.

And what tinkering is that one of the worst things I think we've gotten into is like we're all maxing, you know, we're all trying to do this thing as fast as possible. Listen, listen, I we're all doing it. Fucking max her over here, bro. The latest one I've heard on TikTok is ball maxing. Oh, God. Oh, oh man, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Slip that in there. I don't even All right. it's exactly what you think it is. You know, he doesn't say much, but when he does make sure it hits. I had I I I I need to get some tips later. Yeah, yeah. Not from him anyway. We'll exchange it and info. I need to know the peptide routine. Yeah, yeah. Don't add me to this group, chat, swear to God. God. So uh one of the things we have to actually do is we have to fail a lot. One of the main things is like we all accept that, like when we're making beats, especially like if we're making beat-based music, that like six out of ten are trash, and we're gonna keep four at best. Of like if we make 10 beats in a week, let's say.

One of the things we have to accept is the same thing with those influences and the ideas, is that we maybe go, yo, it'd be so sick to do the video from the finale of Stranger Things, and then we go and look, and like four people have done that because that's the shit that everybody's influenced by right now. But then if we look at what influenced stranger things, we come to find out it's like the old faces of death movies and things like that, and we pull from that into it and we go deeper and we find the influences of those things. We can find a lot of interesting answers and find a lot of shit that's slept on. So then what we do is we play around with these ideas, and then we start to learn like, yo, that's what I should be doing. We get clarity. One of my big things right now, I was talking to you guys before we started rolling, is like I'm making a documentary right now. So I have never thought I was making a documentary, so it's very new to me, like making music is to a lot of people. So one of the things I've done though now is I've had decades of watching documentaries and not thinking, oh, what would be sick in a documentary? I just emotionally reacted, did I like that documentary?

So now I go back and watch all these documentaries that affected me when I wasn't thinking about this and think about why they hit me so hard, and then what I can steal from those to bring into my own unique stew of how I make this documentary. And that's the same thing that artists need to be doing it to make this stuff. Is you go back and you're like, yo, when I was 10, this fucking thing hit me hard as hell. Yeah. Let's go back and watch it a bunch of times. Take notes. Was it the colors that hit you? Like, what excited you about this? Yeah, I mean, the example that comes to mind is KELS. She was on the podcast. She's this independent artist who's like blowing up right now. And um, she used to wear bandanas as a kid. And she stopped kind of wearing them for a while, right? And it wasn't part of her artist brand at all. She never wore them in content or you know, while performing or anything. And then, like, she was trying to figure out what could her like visual identity be, what could make her unique, and like just those bandanas and like wife beaters that she used to wear when she was a teenager, like that kind of came up for her. That's the look now.

And that's the look, and it's fucking working. So I I love like kind of like digging through your past almost for like things that used to get you super excited that might be unique things that you can drop into your artist's world. But it sounds like a lot of trial and error as well. Like not being afraid and not having the insecurities to just put stuff out there and see. You know it's really interesting too? Um, you know, I I hate when we all have to cite Kanye because of what he's become, but like we have to be real that Kanye is some of the greatest artistry that we've ever seen in the modern day. Um, and you know, despite what the misstep other stuff. Um, but like when you watch those documentaries, what everybody focuses on is like, yo, he threw the shit fit, yo, he said this crazy stupid thing. But what you see a lot of time is like Kanye is just revisiting things, like he's referencing all these things, he's trying to get inspired. Even like the fucked up detail I like to talk about is like when you read about him making um life of Pablo, everybody talks about he just watched porn all day. But like what people weren't getting about that was that he was getting in this lustful mindset, and he talks about this.

That like what he was actually revving himself up to do was be in this place where he's almost like at a fever pitch. So that when he's talking about lust and wanting somebody so badly, that he's living that too. And one of the things I think people don't get all the time is like you immerse yourself in like uh let me back up actually. What people don't get a lot of the time is um inspiration leads to perspiration. So when we think of perspiration, we think of armpit sweat, but armpit sweat technically is that you've been working your ass off, so something's coming out of you. We have to take in something. Water makes perspiration possible. If we're not getting inspired, spending the time to take in things, our perspiration is gonna be weak as fuck. And like we gotta spend that time looking at things, taking things in, and then ingesting them, thinking about them, and then we create something from all those things. So, you know, my main question though, that I think a lot of people will have is like, where do we do the tinkering and the trial and error?

Is this something that because a lot of people argue that like artist development can happen like behind closed doors, and it doesn't need to be happening publicly, you know, publicly, especially like the music artist development, right? Like making songs, working with producers, working with writers, getting the music kind of like up to snuff, and then even some of the like visual brand stuff, like you know, kind of tinkering with that could hypothetically be stuff that you like experiment with without like testing on all platforms or that's trial reels. Where do you think you know, this tinkering should occur? Should it just be like the the fans watch the tinkering and then that just is what it is? I think one of the most interesting things, especially in this world where everybody gets, you know, accused of being a nepo baby, even if you like you grow up in like the world's worst situation. Like I, you know, I think of Dochi all the time. It's like this fucking poor girl is on YouTube for 10 fucking years making videos, developing herself. Like you could literally watch her reading the book the artist's way and finally going from like mid slop ideas to like dope aura having ideas.

You can see it on fucking camera over the years. I like that. No one cares. I love it, but like then what happens? She's a fucking industry plant. She's a fucking industry. Industry plant. Yeah, I it's the dumbest shit of all time. And you know, the thing I always point out about it is like when you work at Atlantic Records, the funniest thing you see all day is you go into the lobby and there's some kid taking a selfie, and they write big things coming on it. You can see it on the tag for Atlantic Records. Mhmm. You know what happens? Nothing because big things don't happen. The rich kid got the meeting and they went, Your shit is trash. Get the fuck out of here. And that happens every day. And then every once in a while, the rich kids got the sauce, and it works out. And then they say it, and then everybody thinks it. But the big thing being, and like I know Rick Beato makes these videos like you have to be a rich kid, but like the dochi example is that yet again it's like she's poor as fuck living in fucking the middle of Bushwick, which for people who don't know is shithole apartments. I know because I lived in one.

And like, you know, like the the fact of the matter is whether you toil, I think you should toil in public view because you get feedback where you get better. You start to meet other people who see you're on the come up, you make those friends faster. And like a lot of what I try to point out to people is like the artists who are creating that were kind of doing mid shit like five, six years ago. Like a good example is Nina Drachi, she's one of the biggest EDM blowups. Last year, somebody recently found when she did a Reddit AMA nine years ago, and like no one showed up. But like you see that she's toiling with these ideas that now made it so that when she dropped this newest record, that this is like one of the fastest word of mouth blow ups you've ever seen because she hit a level of artistry and like aura that we very ever rarely see in a genre where everyone's imitating the same bullshit. Yeah.

I mean, for me, I feel like I've seen a bunch of these where um people will kind of contrast what like Chapel Rhone used to look like, and what some of these like bigger artists that we think of have of having such iconic brands and having everything fucking dialed in from the story to the to the appearance to the music. And like their shit wasn't that dialed in. Not too many. And I love that as a fan. I like to sink my teeth into what the what it used to be, you know. But I guess it's just inspiring because it's like they don't have to have it all figured out right now. No, look at these superstars, bro. These are fucking massive artists. It's funny you mentioned Chapel Roan because I I could really speak to this. So one of the things I showed in my video on Chapel Roan in the members' feed is I get an email from our AR person because I worked at Atlantic when she was signed to Atlantic. It's like, yo, we just signed this artist. Can you check them out? What do you think we should do with them? And I look and I had the same experience all of us had at Atlantic with Chapel, which was that like we went, yo, this girl is talented as fuck. Like, this is sick.

But you listen to the songs, and it's like, you know, I'll be honest, I'm a bit older a lot of the time when I don't connect with things. There's tons of things that get popular. I don't connect with. I'm like, it's not for me, but I can acknowledge. Then I meet her. I'm like, man, this girl's a fucking flat out genius. Like talking to her at 15, you're like, you'd think she's 30. She's so smart. And you know what? All her Atlantic shit tanks, she gets dropped from Atlantic. Yeah. So the funny thing is is then she blows up years later. So I I am never early to anything. I always like to say, like, I am by far like not one of those people who sees the raw talent. But I was pretty early with her. And I'm like, damn, this shit is sick. And then like a year and a half later, when she blows up, what do you see though? You see that for three years, her back catalog starts charting, charting, charting. But what happens is it's not all the back catalog, is all the shit that sucked, people listened to once and they went, not developed enough yet. This is not good. And only up to when she got really good, and she was toiling in public, but making good shit that hadn't been discovered.

That stuff, you know, Pink Pony Club is on the charts three years after it came out in the fucking top 40. Like that's because it was good, but all that early stuff that wasn't that good that was on Atlantic, everybody went, I'm good. Thanks. It's very clear inflection points. Yeah, yeah. And but like she got good in that time where she was toiling away. And like, I think one of the more interesting things we see oftentimes is I could do a list that's super long of how many artists get a lot better when they get dropped once, because it kind of gives you this like chip on your shoulder, right? And you start making shows. Well, it's also just like that, you would uh start to realize like I gotta make this for myself. I can't be doing this shit. And not to say one of the most surprising things about Atlantic is how much they don't tell you what to do. They let you be an artist and like nurture yourself, contrary to popular belief. And like the big thing being, like what we see over and over again is like you get dropped, and you're like, yo, now I gotta really fucking do this. I gotta come with my best shit. And you come with a more determined attitude.

And then like there's a list that is so long that is so funny. It's like you get dropped, the next song is your big song. And that's your breakout song. Yeah. So, you know, uh, again, like just in the spirit of you know how to build fan bases, like what, what would you say is the most important key right now, like tactically, right? So if we have the if we have the brand and like the aura kind of dialed in, like, what are some of the more tactical things that you know recommend that artists be doing now in 2026 to actually grow the fan base? Like, we just had Andrew Southworth on, your buddy. Clearly, that episode was all about like meta ads and like how to run ads to like convert people into streamers and then convert them hopefully into like fans, right? But what do you think are maybe like those like top things that everyone needs to be doing? So the thing I've been shouting from the roof for six years, everybody told me I was an idiot for the first few years when I was saying this. I'd be like, yo, I'm watching artists grow doing this, and now everybody's talking about how this is the thing.

Is you go into your micro genre or you go into music stacks and see the songs that are similar to your songs, you make a playlist of it, you either get attention organically to that playlist by making a outside influence TikTok where you go, here's the five best songs in this micro genre, and you get attention to it or you run ads to it. I don't care which method you use. If you get attention to that, you start to build up algorithmic connections as long as people are not skipping your song because it's trash. If your song is good, that will start to get you connected in the algorithm. So your song is getting played in various things up next, getting put in Discover Weeklies, things like that, next to those songs. And if it is working, that's gonna do it. So our first step from there is what's great about that stuff is that one, it's just a little bit of time for a great payoff if your song is good. Two, it doesn't have to be money. If you have money, great. Um, three, it when you let off the gas, it can still keep working for you, which is very rare with the financials in this business.

Is that after we've done something like that and we've set that up? Then after that is how do we find the right niche of people? One of the main things I just talked about also with that guy who is running 65,000 accounts, is let's say you're getting 200 million views, and then you're getting only a small million of streams. One of the things I talk about, so I had a very funny thing happen last year. I mixed this record in 2008. Now, I'm gonna be straight with you guys. I am not the biggest weed smoker. But this point in 2008, I was just waking up every day and hitting it. So I mixed this record, and I don't really remember mixing it that well. But I, you know, I mixed the record, and it was one of those records. It got critical acclaim. A lot of bands would come to me, like, yo, that's the sickest record. I want you to work on my record, but it never sold that many copies, did that much. So then this TikToker makes a video and says, forgotten gem of this era, puts up a video, and like 200,000 views leads to just tens of thousands of videos organically. Like, I know these guys didn't do some artificial shit because they're writing me going, 'Yo, bro, what the fuck is happening?

And then people are writing me, like, did you do this? I'm like, why would I go to a record I barely remember making trying to blow it up? ' So the point being, that's cool that people have thought that you could just do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I I get accused of this all the time. There's people will write me and say, you're doing this, aren't you? I can tell they're using your methods. I'm like, I've never even heard this. Um that's kind of sick though. I watched a YouTube. Um, the point being though, 250,000 views on that initial view really did spark about two million views, and then did this avalanche that turns into 14,000 videos of like different people doing to the song because people loved this song when they actually found it. Yeah. So my thing is you gotta find it's getting a big VAT of attention from all sorts of different people, like just making general memes that everyone's gonna love. That's gonna get to a lot of hip hop heads. And if you're making pop music, they are may not convert very well to your music. What we want to do is we want to get it to the niche audience you're in.

Now, niches have lots of cultures. So, one of the main things I design on my consulting calls is like, let's say you're making really horny goth music. Well, guess what? Horror movies and video games do really well with that crowd. So then what we're thinking about is how do we do edits of your song to video games and horror movies that are very horny? So we may go in, you know, Faces of Death came out two weeks ago on video on demand. We may go into Faces of Death, clip out every time some girl's looking hot and that. There's an OnlyFans model in that. We make a super cut of her to your song, go into Flow Stage, the greatest new tool for making short form video, and remix those slides 10 different ways by making an aesthetic and flow stage, and then your song goes up to it, and three similar songs go up to it on this account, and we try to get it to that niche interest that is likely to like your music. Don't gatekeep Flow Stage. What is that? Have you heard of it? Literally, when we just talked to Andrew Southworth, he just mentioned it, bro. He said Flow Stage? Yes, bro. And I I he

he heard about it from me. So there you go. I'll give you guys the deal. Yeah. CapCut's made for influencers. Okay. And it's it's made for people like us who are talking or making podcasts. Flow Stage is made for musicians trying to make music content on short form video. The guy who made it is like a super super smart dude. You guys should uh hit him up. His name is Rom. Um, I can pass on his email, but Rom is like super, super smart dude. And this app, like, you know, it's like a funny thing of um, I make a lot of sponsored content where I make things for people that pay me a lot of money to make videos for them. And I always say outright, they paid me to do this. I just saw this app and I was like, yo, I gotta make a video on this. Like this is gonna change musicians' lives because this product is good. I don't even want the money. Like, sure, give me the affiliate code. But that's how good this app is. And it changes musicians' lives. Wow. Yeah, we gotta get Rom on the podcast now. Sounds like it.

Yeah, I've never seen Jesse so excited. Hyped. Unless this is a really good app. I always say it's like a great place. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like I like, oh, like every year or two I find a product where I'm like, yo, okay, this is like finally what we've been waiting for somebody to do. Thank God somebody made it. And this is the this is the one of the year, as far as I can tell. It's just like audio plugins that like a Soothe or a Gullfoss comes around. You're like, finally, that's that shit we've been waiting for. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of artists don't immediately think to even make content like that. When they go to think of, okay, I need content to promote my music, they assume that they just have to be in it, either performing the song or you know, talking about something and then the maybe mention it or telling a story about the song. It's like there's so many other options for content to that incorporates your music and could get fans. Especially with the alt account approach. I mean, damn near like you might not post that on your main. I mean, yeah, maybe maybe not, but I just mean you definitely don't have to be in it if it's an alt account that's focused on video games and you know, whatever for the the uh horny goth uh music stuff, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Well, well, one of the more interesting things, I was just talking about this with that guy who worked at Flutify, is that I've observed this thing. So for people who don't know, I nearly every week on my member feed, I go and I dissect how an artist blew up. And one of the main things I can do is I can go in chart metric if they have data there. See the earliest videos that started doing to the song. So in EDM now, what blows up nearly every song is um weightlifting videos. Like gym culture has just become what moves it. So you get, you know, the right person who's a little influential. It might not even be the biggest account. Maybe I account with like 8,000 followers, but it's all the right people who follow it, and they're just I mean, we all want to see my muscles do this. Like this is this this video took them 30 seconds, but like then it gets like 800K, and that song starts to be a scene where everybody goes, yo, that song is dope. wow. Yeah.

And like but like the next thing you know, that's blown up the EDM song. In country, all you see now is these lyric video pages where it's a hot chick on a pickup truck or a hot chick drinking a beer is blowing up every country song is like Then, Then in hip hop, what you see a lot of the time is it's those clipping accounts that find the grand theft auto well, not even the Grand Theft Auto. The early stage one I see a lot is um that it there's all these clipping accounts of like the best like two to four lines in a verse that like you know usually all often, let's be honest, it's insulting somebody really badly. But like the real reality is like people go, oh damn, that line's fucking sick as fuck. Like, you know, this is for example, I remember one of the main accounts that's most influenced with this with Dave Blunt's first hit. It was like they you would have thought that they were just like literally clipping Dave Blunt's all day, because it was like every fucking video is just Dave Blunt's non-stop. Yeah.

And I can't put down the cup. But, yeah, listen. Listen. I I I I can't say that I didn't listen to those songs about his fucking girl leaving him for a pedophile a million times. I totally did too. Well, man got me hooked. Um I could not put down the stream. Man, I'm just I just every culture. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Every culture has different ones like indie rock, it's all these videos of the woods where it's just lyrics over it, and you will see like these songs like go from 5,000 streams to 200,000 in a week when one of those videos takes off. Wow. See, but like no one's thinking like this though. Yeah. I'm just that like I I try and tell artists that I'm friends with and that I'm kind of like working with on the side or whatever, that this is what we need. Like you have to find what your to your point, like finding the niche that you live in, dude. Like, that's what it's all about. Like, so many artists want to just have everyone listening to their music so they don't dial it in to really appeal to like one group of people. And I guess it feels limiting to them.

I don't know, but like to just know that, you know, indie indie rock people like that like foresty, like nature vibe type shit. Like, that's just a given. Like, let's lean into that with our content. To know that country likes, you know, girls drinking beer, like, you know, hot girls in jeans shorts drinking beer, that's just what they like. I mean, you don't need to try and overthink it to some degree. So I don't know. I just really I love that. I think one of the funniest things really is is like we can all make fun of musicians until God knows I do it in my videos all the time. But one of the most interesting things for short form thinking is really think down to like the dumbest instincts. So like I always talk about this is like just find hot people, clip their pictures, screenshot pictures, put a filter on it so that the copyright detection doesn't do it, and make a fucking montage to your song is the single easiest low lift. And you're probably already looking at those hot people on your feed because I know you motherfuckers, you're all fucking scrolling getting horned up. Jesse, no. Are you talking to Henry right now?

Couldn't be me either. Couldn't it be me? Absolutely not. Wow. yeah, no, the point being, like that that screenshot and assembly on an alt account to your song is like the amount of people who like even like one of my consulting clients the other day, I was like, damn bro, this video is really good. He's like, bro, I did this at like four of the morning. like in a good session. we make this all way more hard than it needs to be. Yeah, oh my god. So yeah, I mean, for me, I still love that the playlist jug is still like still valid. Dude, we're hacking the Spotify algorithm. Yeah. It's true. One of the most interesting things was tried and true, man. Three-legged approach. Do your local scene, because blowing up in your local scene is always helpful. Then do best underground artists, and then do like what I call like a greatest hits of the microgenre. Like find some new word for the microgenre. things like that work all the time.

Like, you know, the the other day I saw best quirked up indie rock tracks. I'm like, what the fuck is quirked up? this playlist? I had like 3,000 saves. And then I listened to it. I'm like, oh yeah, this is like a white boy who's a little too hype. Like they're a little too excited about something. And like this goes exactly with that artist who songs on it five different times, and I can tell it's the artist who made it. Yes. Wow. I love those recommendations for the three types of playlists you should make. That was huge. That was so big. Um okay, so you know, something that so many people have different opinions on. I want to get your opinion. Again, we are trying to build our fan base, Jesse. We're trying to go from zero to a million fans, which is a lofty goal, but you know, we gotta do it. What what should our release schedule be like? How often should we be, you know, be releasing? I mean, this is one that just you get a different answer every time you fucking talk to someone. So what are we getting from you, Jesse? I can talk about this very, very authoritatively. Let's go.

Get get credit credited as being the one who popularized this. So uh seven years ago, I used to be uh a columnist at alternative press magazine. And so what I did is it's like my editor is like, seems like people are releasing more music. Can you do a column on this? So I go in and I just start taking every artist who started blowing up in all these different genres. I just start going in and forensically looking at how often they're releasing music. Yeah. So what I saw at that point, which was yeah, 2019-ish, 2018, I'm tracing, um, is that um it was every six to eight weeks was the most common clip. So I make this video, it's like my fourth video on YouTube, which is like, here's how Billie Eilish, Kim Petras, and Pale Waves blew up, because those were like three of the fastest blow ups at the time. And I basically go in and say that six to eight week thing. Then it started to turn more of the four to eight. Then the genres started to get weird over the years. So EDM and Trap started to release more, you know, God curse, uh NBA YoungBoy and uh Russ, but like, you know, the every week or two weeks things started to just get crazy. So now what's really interesting is um I like to talk about moments where the coin is in the air that like we can't really say where it's gonna land, but like right now it's four to eight weeks, is like the big thing being is there's no magic number in there that like doing it in there tends to get people's attention up.

If you're doing less than eight weeks, people start we start to see that the fans die down. A lot of time the song doesn't have enough juice to sustain it. Every four to eight weeks, the biggest problem with four weeks, I tell people all the time is that we'll see your songs going up on the graph, but when you're gonna start taking time to promote that other song, you're gonna let the gas off and it starts to go down. When if you'd kept the gas on, it might have kept going up. That's our big problem that we have all the time when our artist accounts are the big thing that we're doing, or we're pouring money into influence or other things, is that like it takes time. Like one of the big big things we'll see is like I always go back to um Lay Bankz' girlfriend of like when that song blew up, it's like she was releasing it every four weeks, but then she had to be like, oh, so that song started to blow up after she'd released another song. She had to go back and start promoting that, and then kept promoting it for months and stopped releasing. Because in an AI world where we're getting a hundred thousand uploads a day, month, whatever the fuck statistic it is says since it changes every week. Yeah, all those songs, most of them no one's calling attention to.

So now it's about that you put out a good song and we get attention for it. So like we have to be sustaining that attention. We have to be showing people that you're an important artist with this aura. But like that takes time, and that time, I'm sorry, is not two weeks. Like, that ain't gonna cut it for most genres. Now, if you're getting clipped in those accounts because you had such hot bars, you do another Dave Blunts that It's just like you're an undeniable lyricist. Sure, maybe you could do every two weeks. But the real reality for most of us is we're gonna need around that eight-week mark to keep pushing this thing to get people excited, keep reminding them, keep trying to get attention for it, keep hoping a video pops off. And is it kind of a thing where we should have music ready and then be gauging our current release and be potentially prepared to move that up or back, depending on how this one's doing? That's exactly right. So a lot of what I changed in my 90-day song promotion plan this year is that like we really want to be watching indicators of like, did the interest lose in this song? Okay, so we should we should go ahead and move that one up to six weeks or eight weeks.

Is this interest in the song um, you know, still going, okay, we should push back because we want to keep going on this song and like riding the moment. Like one of the big things that's like really hard is um too, is that you can watch artists do really dumb moves and they'll still blow up because when a song is good, 90% bad marketing will still let that sort an exceptional song go up. So that we go, oh, they did that. Look, I could do that too. And it's like the real reality is I try to watch the people who make really smart moves and who consistently make it. So like one of the best things to watch is always what the K-pop people do because they study data, they do all the most ahead of the curve shit that everyone imitates years later. And you see it with Hive all the time is HYBE put out all these songs, and what happens all the time is like the songs are done. they come out with another one four weeks later. But then when that song gets big, they did like what's a seraphim crazy has 18 music videos over the course of a few months because they saw that that song had such long legs that they just kept pushing it and finding different ways to promote it. I hate to interrupt this episode, but guys, I got one thing on the mind right now, and it's data.

I can't stop thinking about it. All the artists in 2024 are winning because of data. They know who their fans are, they have access to their fans. Do you? Spotify is not telling you who your fans are. Apple Music ain't telling you who your fans are. But our friends over at DistroKid created a feature called hyperfollow. Every single release, you can set up a pre-save campaign with a hyperfollow and get access to every single fan's email address. Now you can let them know when you have a show coming up, when you're dropping exclusive merch, when you're going live. And without the data, you're just bound by the algorithms of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. No more relying on those platforms. We're going straight to our fans. DistroKid is the best DIY distributor. You can upload unlimited music for a ridiculously low rate. And you're gonna have access to features like HyperFollow. OMTdistro.com. You're gonna get 30% off when you sign up for DistroKid, and you can start collecting your fans' data today. Henry, let's get back into it. An argument that I hear a lot of artists at least ask me about is does releasing consistently, let's say, even that every two week mark, does that have a big impact on Spotify's algorithm? Like, does Spotify favor me if I'm more consistent to the tune of every two weeks versus an every six weeks?

Yeah, one of the more interesting things we're seeing in Spotify's language. So one of the it's a very nuanced discussion because there's a lot of things that you can get tripped up here. Because we have this problem with Spotify. What they say and what they do are not always a lot. classic. Sam Duboff has been doing a really good job of trying to be out front and communicate things that are not in those little white papers you see on the back end It's Spotify for Artists that are often out of date and say things that don't even exist on prod. Like, you know, a good example. I don't know if you guys know this that the viral 50 chart is now gone as of last week. No, no, no idea. Yeah. Why? yeah, so we got rid of that because the viral 50 chart was a measure of what's popular on the social media apps, and they want to be able to say to the AI music ones, fuck off, we'll just curate what we want to highlight. Oh, okay. That's good. Yeah, I mean, it for once it's something that we can applaud Spotify for so far. We'll see how this shakes out since things don't always uh age well with them.

Yeah. But to my point to your point of your question, I want to get to. So what they seem to be keeping on hinting now is that that they're not every regulation they seem to keep making is like, will you stop feeding us so much music? Because they have to sort through all this shit. Their servers get weighed down by bills of all these songs not being played and things like that. So what they seem to be signaling to us is that they're prioritizing that you put up quality releases, not a quantity of releases. So like I I can't say that we we're yet again in one of those moments where it's like the coin is in the air. So I can't say we have all the data to back up that what they're saying and signaling is what they're doing. I never trust until I see an alignment of those two things because the amount of times I've heard those motherfuckers say one thing and do another, I can't like my favorite example of this that I'm sure you guys have seen too is they're like, we're not prioritizing um covers and remixes on editorial playlists. So that I go to a every uh editorial playlist I follow, there's a cover, there's a remix, there's a cover, there's a remix.

Oh, yes, you're not prioritizing, but the keyword is prioritizing, meaning that yes, you choose them occasionally, but you're not banning them. And we have to be really pay attention to the words they use that are very specific. Yeah, well, one thing that may be supportive that that they actually do intend that. I don't know if you've you know about this new like 10k monthly listener threshold that they're introducing. That kind of also indicates to me that they are trying to hopefully get people to you know prioritize quality and kind of bog down all these just 10 play songs that they have to host on their servers and such. I thank you for the assist on that because that's exactly one of the things I was thinking I didn't say is that like that to me is one of the clearest indications of this. Yeah, yeah. I I mean, I just go to server costs are going up for everybody. So they're like, fuck that. Yeah. Oh man, that's that's crazy. So, what what kind of metrics can an artist be looking at to determine whether it's like the right move to keep pushing a song that's their newest release, or whether it's maybe time to move on, right? Are there any clear indicators and over a certain period of time?

So one of the most fucked up things I think we all don't see these days. And you know, it's funny, it's funny because like I, you know, like I can remember watching this podcast years ago and being like, man, you guys deserve bigger numbers, da da. But one of the things that you have to remember with podcasts is that this is the craziest statistic I know. And for people who don't know, I also I own New York City's biggest podcast studio. I produce a lot of podcasts. I have a whole company that makes content like that as well. When you get 3,000 listens to your podcast, you're a top one percent podcast. Yeah. Wow. So one of the other things that people don't get to bring this back to music, is that growth in general is better than what most people are experiencing. The average musician is experiencing literally no growth. They put out a song, it gets 200 listens, the next one gets 189, the next one gets 205, the next one gets 165 in 30 days. They're not experiencing any growth.

The average musician, I do consulting calls with people all the time. I get asked to listen look at artists. When you are growing, especially if you're growing, you know, one of the other things that people don't get about growth is that we all think like double growth. Oh wow, that's crazy. Like four 800 is better than 400. 800 is better than 400. But what's also like if you look at somber onto any of the big performing TikToks or songs, you will see a disparity of some things getting 40,000 views and some things getting 40 million, which is, you know, a hundred X growth factor, not a two X growth factor. Yeah, so the thing we have to think about is if we're seeing good growth, you are doing better than most people, and you should see it as a good sign. The biggest problem we have all the time is even things. Like let's say you're reaching out for features. That if you get one out of every 10 people to write you back for a feature, you're batting better than most people, just the same way that if you're in baseball and you hit the ball three times and get on base, you're one of the best players in the game. Getting one out of 10 features means you're doing great.

Getting two to four X growth between your songs on a regular basis means you're doing great, and you should see that as a sign of growth because most people are experiencing stagnation. Wow. God. We need to reframe our perception, man. That just got me hyped up. I was like top 1% baby. Let's go. Yeah. And honestly, yeah, like I've watched y'all's numbers grow and well deserved. And like it is that thing that will like it's really hard because then you like you look at some somebody with like 32 million views and you realize like the craziest thing of like that statistic of you know, the top podcasts get 30 million listens, and then but 3,000 is still in the top 1% because there's so few that are experiencing that in that 100,000 podcasts that exist that there's only these ones that are getting that breadth of view. And we don't frame our brains right, and like this is one of my big things, like you guys referenced my four hour video I have on YouTube that I talk about is like one, we have to look at our analytics soberly and like very infrequently, or we're gonna get put in this mindset that is terrible. Like one of the greatest tools I have for my phone is the brick.

Do you guys know about that? Yeah, it locks you out of your apps. Yeah. So I stay locked out of my apps, and I don't look at my analytics at any time except for Friday at six o'clock. Wow. Because what's gonna happen at Friday at seven o'clock is I'm gonna go out with my friends or my wife, and I'm gonna enjoy myself. And no matter if my views are tanking, I I I just put out my worst performing video of all time last week. I've been down a great streak lately, worst one of all time. I'm gonna look at that, see it's still performing terribly, and I'm gonna go, who fucking cares? I have a great life. Here's my dogs, here's my wife, here's my friends. I'm gonna stop thinking about it. I do that to keep me sane, and then on Monday, I've been having it tinker around my brain that I gotta step up my game, make sure my next video is way better than that terrible performing one. And I'm gonna get back in the game and hit it harder. Wow. I love that, honestly. Shout out brick. Maybe we should do a little collaboration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get an affiliate. Honestly, you know what I do with them. They're the greatest gift of all time because if you think of this way, when you buy a bunch of them, they become cheaper. So I give them to people because it's not the type of thing you want to buy for yourself, but when you give it as a gift to somebody, somebody's like, thank God this motherfucker saved my life. It made me stop being a slave to these apps. Yeah. No. It's a great gift. Um, so you know, uh I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about social media and short form content when we're doing a whole episode about how to grow a fan base. Any episode that we have. I mean, or any or any one more time podcast episode of all time. We could be talking about songwriting and somehow content creation sneaks its way in. Um, what's what's your just kind of like give us some of your general rules of thumb, right? I mean, are you a post everyday kind of guy? Are you uh clearly you're a fan of the alt accounts? Like, what are some of your social media specific tactics that you're seeing help artists grow in 2026? So, um a thing I like to talk about a lot is the frequency.

So Adam said that on a one of his lives, yet again, another company that says one thing does another. But we've measured this, we've seen pretty consistently that around 12 posts a month is when you're gonna consistently go into the for you. So what I say is you're gonna try to post at least three times a week. Now, flow stage, yet again the plug makes this way easier when you're in a period where you're like, let's say you're really grinding that music video, trying to get the mix down, all the things. Flow stage makes making content way faster. So if you need to phone it in to just get some momentum there, you can be doing that. But my minimum is is that you were gonna post three times a week. I still see when I do those dissections, I've dissected something like 170 artists now. That three times a week is where a lot of them still have tons of movement and they're still growing a ton. Five to seven is the average. So when we look at the numbers of like that 170, there's like a dozen that do three times a week on average, and then the almost everybody else is in that five to seven days a week that they're posting. And then there's been three artists of those 170 that post three times a fucking day.

So um now I think you have to be a level of extrovert that loves attention to have the fuel in you to do that day in and day out. So if you don't have that, don't feel bad because one, it's not necessary, and two, it's not the secret to everybody's success, but it can help. Um, you know, like Dexter and the Moon Rocks, who's one of those ones, they're one of the artists I've seen post the most. They are the sole rock song on the billboard top 200 right now. And they did that from years of being the fucking goats of rock music at posting like that. So, for those that are on the lower end of the spectrum from a quantity perspective, because I think this is something that we get asked a lot too, and I want to know your take is like other than content creation, what else, you know, because in my mind, it's like that's only three at bats a week to either find new fans or nurture existing fans. So, what else can they be doing from a growth perspective that's outside of just post to social media?

One of the things I I want to always instill in everybody is um I've consulted, I so I talk to on consulting calls around 500-ish artists every year, depending on the year, uh, for the last six years. Wow. And one of the things I've noticed that um has never failed anyone who's actually listened after we come up with this and leaned into it, is doing more on YouTube has never been an unsuccessful thing for people. Um, so what I mean by that is this is caring more about your music video, that it has more aura and more artist development, more thinking about why would somebody share this is one of the best ways. Two, having something else you do on YouTube, whether that's just vlogs, behind the scenes onto you make beats, you know, like do you guys know that artist Aries? Yes, yes, yeah, he's great. Yeah. So like one of my shows making his songs from scratch. And but one of the coolest things he'll do too is he'll make a video like what's better, what a burger in and out.

And then, but it's really about his new single and making a beat. And like he finds the way to Mr. Beast eyes all this stuff. I've been needing to make a video about him forever, especially like two of my favorite records in the last few years. Um the point being like leaning into YouTube, if you think this way, we're like, we're always talking about Spotify, and what's great about Spotify is it finds models of people who are similar to your fans and sends you to someone else. YouTube is the same thing. And the more you feed it, the more you get out of it. And if I'm being real, a lot of time it's not hard to make things for YouTube that then become your short form content. So you're killing two birds with one stone, you know, clipping vlogs, making lyric videos that you chop down to short form video, all that stuff works super, super, super well. And I think for how much ROI you get out of it, it's one of the main things people ignore. The other thing I think that really people ignore more often than they should is that like developing that recognizable look. Another thing that's a big part of that four-hour video is um I cook uh burgers and buy the top burgers in America and explain recognizability and how important it is.

The big thing being if you have three points of recognizability, it is really, really helpful to your growth. That when we see artists I consult with start to get that, what we start to see is their follows go up, their streams go up. As they get the thing that people aren't going, oh, another white boy with a guitar. Yeah, another white boy with a guitar. I have like a distinctly interesting thing with this, which is that I am extremely face-blind. I can be in rooms with people I lived with for six months and be like, is that them? I can't quite tell. Like my wife, yeah, I'm gonna run into Jesse like next month. He's gonna be like, great interview. Did I do that? It's really, it would've really Do I know you from somewhere? Like it if we were like just in a random airport, I'd be like, I can't tell at all. Like the funniest thing is like if I was like down in Atlanta or in the south, I'd be like, Oh, well, maybe I'm thinking of you, and then like I do it. But like this is the real reality is that like there's even studies that all of us, it's not even like racism. It's just it is harder to recognize the race you are not than the race you are, and things like that.

That they show pan across every culture is this nearly the same in percentage. Yeah. So what we have to consider is it's just people are not as recognizable as we think. So giving things that give context clues, backgrounds just like you guys have and I have, help people go, Oh, that's not those guys, that's these guys, you know. Looking different, differentiating, having a position, all really do things to help. Having a logo right there, all these things, you know. I make all these videos with the these things in back of me, and like that shit really, really, really helps. The other thing that really helps is, and too many people still sleep on this. Every phone can have Blackmagic camera in it, which is the single greatest app ever made. For people who don't know, it's a free app that will always be free that unlocks all the features of your phone that you can then do a color grade from. You learn one LUT, one color grade, your shit looks a million times better. Yeah, it's all about it's all about that uniqueness, man.

Especially with everything that's happening, you know, with AI, and we're moving into everything being so commoditized. Yeah, we have to lean into us. One of the things I I keep trying to tell people when they're getting depressed about AI music is you know, the Supreme Court did that uh upheld that thing that you can't copyright these AI songs. So here's what's gonna happen now: is every time um an AI song starts to pop off, a real artist can go in, cover it, and then they could do narrative, they could do performances, live shows, all these things are on this song that no one has to copyright on. We kind of reverse. You steal the AI music and make your own version that you can copyright. I don't know where this is headed. man. That's kind of devious. I like it. But but but it but it's interesting because you have an unfair advantage as a musician who can do all this narrative stuff, all these things that the AI cannot do. And um, I think like it's one of the more interesting things that like we keep not leaning into that, like as a human, you can explain these emotions, you can explain these things and bring deeper meaning into things and bring a position that's different. Like another thing we didn't really get into is we've talked about recognizability and we've talked about the aura thing, but like positioning is big.

And so, what I mean by positioning is this is um I always explain it using pop girls because it's the hardest lane to do, is that you look at Sabrina Carpenter or Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, it's like wholesome. She ain't gonna talk about like make an album cover where she's clearly about to give a blowjob on it. Like she that's how they differentiate each other from them. And when you as an artist see other people in your lane, a lot of the time you have to go, you know what? My lane, because of who I am, I'm gonna stop before where that artist would do. But I'm gonna do a bunch of shit in this range. So one of the things I have in my workbook is like a graph where you go in and you position yourself against other artists and try to think deeper about are you more dangerous than them? Okay, if you're more dangerous than them, what's the most dangerous thing that artist did? How do you do something more dangerous? Like, I always think of um, do you guys remember City Morgue? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay.

So so when they first came out with their videos, like basically what they did is they went, they're from um East New York, which for people who don't know in New York, East New York is like one of those neighborhoods where if you look like us, you better not go there. You're gonna get fucked up. So the point being, they're go they go, they go, where I am, where I authentically am is way more dangerous. Let's just show what it's like here. So all they did is just film the culture of East New York. I know I ended up working with them. This was just their everyday shit. But the big thing being is you look inside yourself, you look at other people and you go, This is what they're other people don't see, this is what other people don't have. I have this thing in me that's a little bit different than those other artists. Let me lean into that more. See, but I think the biggest issue that I already hear are fucking artist friends say. I'm a boring no, it's that like it's you have to be able to identify your peers in the space. Oh and so many people struggle with like, you know, they don't want to sound like anybody, they don't even want to think about that.

There might be five to ten artists that they should be positioning themselves against. So, like, bro, when I hear that, I hear a lot of resistance, and I'm talking to y'all motherfuckers, like, because this this is what I I do this a lot and probably ad nauseum, right? Because I don't think you need to obsess over the competition and try and to your point to do what they do, but it's like you need to figure out what makes like this is something we need to figure out what what makes us us. And I think something that I've leaned in, you know, for us is like we're a duo. There's not a lot of duo podcasts, music business podcasts out there. It's like it's like, you know, you obviously have your thing with now, you know, my point four cents, but it's like you're you, Southworth's Him, like managers playbooks, you know, one but like I think having the duo thing is like one thing that can position us differently amongst our competitors. So like artists need to do the exact same thing. It's like, what are they not doing that we want to do? You know, uh literally, and that is the thing. This is a very funny thing because when Matt and I started discussing doing my point four cents, Matt initially was like, let's just do you and me.

And I'm like, no, no, no, that's already done. Let's just speed round. No, we're not doing a speed round either. That's already done. And like, you know, like I have that thing of like what I do is an exercise with artists and with every podcast I've ever developed. And like, gotta remember, like, I've developed podcasts that have hit number one of all podcasts. Um, you know, a podcast I used to talk on was number one of all podcasts. And what I did is I went around, I looked at all the other political podcasts, and you know what I realized, which will not shock you at all. All those other podcasts were really polite and dainty. They didn't say fucked up things, they didn't say crazy shit. I went, we're gonna these people who are the hosts, they say crazy shit. We're leaning in. We're we're not even just gonna say the crazy shit they say, we're gonna say even crazier shit and say wild insults. We started insulting politicians, calling them cucks and losers, and we were the first people to do that. And we went to number one so fucking fast because no one else was doing that. That's incredible.

Yeah, but but that's the thing too. Call people cucks? I mean, where. we do that. You cuck ass indie artists. Posted a video, pussy. Sorry. I gotta be honest. Unfortunately, at the music marketer space, I already covered that up space in my point. Yeah. But my point here though, being is when you hang out with successful artists. You said a really good thing here, which is that they don't obsess all the time over the other artists. Now when their career starts flailing they might obsess a little bit more sometimes. But a lot of time they're just aware and then thinking about the ecosystem and where they sit in that ecosystem. One of the big things you see, like when an artist changes their shit up. I think of how much yeet changes changed his lookup between these two records. Mm-hmm. It's like that's him going, okay, there's all these corny motherfuckers. Like he sees SD kid, like, oh, Balaclava, never thought of that before.

Mm-hmm. And so he's like, I gotta switch my shit up now and do something different and occupy a different lane. And like that's what you're doing. You're always thinking about that. And if you're like one of those people, like, I don't want to think about these other heads. No, no, no, fuck that. It's like, okay, well, that you like ignorance, it may be bliss, but it doesn't get you anywhere. That's a motherfucking ball. That's a quote post that is being made. Yeah, right. Um, okay, so you know, again, fan-based growth. Um, a big topic that I still am like jury's out on in my mind is like how much what percentage of our content should be geared towards fan acquisition, fan-based growth, fan finding, I think is as you, you know, uh coin it versus nurturing versus yeah, like nurturing our existing base. Uh, because I mean, in my mind, I do think that sometimes that you know, nurturing the existing base and making sure that they're like, you know, all set, they're gonna do some of that promo for you. So it's a it's a it's a balancing act that um I don't know.

I just want to get your take on on how we should be divvying it up. I think that there's an interesting alternate take here, which is um lies in this um really skinny twink dude named Sombr. Um, what he called him a twig. I mean listen, listen. I learned that straight people could call each other twigs. Uh now I'm using it liberally. Um the point being Sombr, we'd love to have you on the podcast. We would totally have Sombr. Listen, all due respect. My wife puts on Sombr, ain't any change in it. Yeah. Nice. But the point being, I also one of the goats of social media, right? Yes, yes, but of course. But one of the interesting things that Sombr, I think, figured out is like it doesn't have to be a trade-off between nurturing fans and going viral. He has figured out that his narrative. Now let's think about what his narrative is. And um, I'm not gonna play coy here. His narrative is I crush on some bitch, we fuck, shit gets messy, now she hates me. Can't imagine it's because he's toxic or doing bad shit.

I can't imagine it keeps happening to him. Who knows why? Couldn't be him. The point being, yes, could definitely a problematic man that looks like that, who would have thunk it? Yeah, um, anyway. The point being what he keeps everybody held on, whether it's fans or new people coming to the program is oh shit, some shit's going down. This girl's texting him after singing those lyrics, she doesn't like what he sang in his song. Oh fuck, I gotta know more about this. So that nurtures the fans to speculate. You hear who's this song about I saw him with Addison Rae the other day. Oh my god, that they're not actually dating. Let's just get to make that clear. But like what you can be doing is when you think about I always tell everybody stop thinking about what gets likes, what gets comments, think about what gets shares. And one of the things that gets shares is mystery speculation headcanon and inspiring people to think about things a little bit more. And so what I try to think about is like, what is that meta narrative?

How do you people keep people guessing about what's your next thing that's gonna happen, your next era, things like that? So one of the things we'll see is like artists like Charlie XCX are always hinting at what's next. Yeah. And you know, you it's very easy for people to say to me, Great, I have no fans, I can't do this. It's like, well, actually, even when you have no fans, this is actually one of those things that works really well early on. Is that like hinting at something next, even at the end of your video showing the look of the next video and showing that it probably is something else coming by playing a clip of that next song? That gets anybody who liked that going, Oh, that next song is sounded kind of sick. Their look was kind of sick, and like you could be doing that from day one. Yeah, I just think I mean, just more generally speaking, to that. Um I don't want artists to use that excuse ever with any tactic, right? Like, again, there's there's ways to execute differently than the biggest artists on like insert idea or topic the principles, but the principles, they all kind of can remain the same. Like, I think it was Amber Grimes who we were trying to get on the podcast actually this week as well.

Um, she's one of my favorite episodes still to this day. I think she talked about like at the core of everything, there's a free version of everything. Like, there's a free way to do her, a very cheap way to do all of these types of marketing tactics. Yep. I think there's this artist right now. Do you guys know this artist Lamb.Wave on socials? No. She she's really good at doing like repeatable, high quality shit that you can tell is not filmed for like a ton of money. And one of the crazy things to go back to Blackmagic Camera again is like this is in all our phones. And yes, if you have a 17 Pro Max, it does look better. But even if you have an iPhone 14, I have an iPhone 14, 15, 16, 17. I don't I keep my iPhones every time because I have to film so much shit for my studios and all these things that I need to just have tons of devices. Let's also be honest, I'm running fan, I'm running fan accounts on them too. Yeah, sure. And so, but the point being, even the 14 looks fucking sick. So then all we need is just like what's on me right now, which is a $120 light from Godox.

So once you have that, you can go a million different places and film things. Right now, as I'm filming the movie I'm making, when people see the looks we're getting, it's like that's so sick. You must have done crazy shit. And I'm like, here it is on the iPhone. Here it is on the Sony FX3, which is $500... five, uh, five thousand dollars. No one can tell the difference between these No. Sometimes people choose the iPhone. I'm like, great, I spent $10,000 for two of those fucking Sony FX3s. The excuses and the cope we make about the equipment being the thing when it's really the ideas is one of the biggest obstacles in our head. Wow. And the reality is like I live in this neighborhood called Greenpoint in Brooklyn, and it's like one of the most film neighborhoods because um all the film studios are in it. So like the two places with the most film studios are like all within a mile of me. Like my block is where Beyonce films single ladies in the studio. Nice and like so, but the thing being everybody will go in this neighborhood. They goes, Well, everybody's seen these places a million times.

And I'm like, no one recognizes this shit. This is all really good-looking places to film that are really fucking sick, and no one's gonna remember a year from now that the brick looked the fucking same as a Beyonce video. The fuck are you talking about? They were looking at her ass, not the brick. Like, no. Excuse me. Not Henry. Not me. Not Henry. Jesse, I was looking at the bridge. That manicured bridge. people make the craziest excuses about why you can't do this stuff. But like the real thing is you go out, you film it, and the first time you film it, it's gonna look like shit. I always say it. My first YouTube video looks like absolute ass. And I filmed 17 of them before I ever put one up, and it still looked terrible, and they kept getting better and better and better and better. That's what you do. You go out there, you stop making excuses, you just start filming. You learn that this setting in the black magic is a little bit better. You watch another YouTube that night to learn why the underexposed look didn't look as good.

You download another LUT, you find that one looks good, and over time you get better, and that's how we level up. God, Henry, so good, so good. I there's already a part two being scheduled as we speak. Agreed. Yes. as soon as we wrap this episode, we're already gonna do a part two, man. I could talk to you for hours and hours. We've been so locked in. We forgot to ask you guys to like, comment and subscribe this channel so we could continue to bring you value. Fuck, man. Fuck, man. Like this with people like Jesse, Cannon, get it. Let me do it. I I like comment and subscribe, so you should too. If Jesse did it. Jesse did it. What the fuck are y'all doing? Come on, man. Smash the bell icon, too. Notifications, don't miss one. What are you doing? We've entered a final seven of the podcast, man. You obviously know how it works, but Henry, damn, there's so much good shit. Amazing. Oh my god. Amazing shit for real. So good. This is everyone's favorite segment. As soon as I find it. This is the rapid fire rampage. Oh man.

With Jesse Cannon. It's gonna be broken up into three sections. We're just gonna start with these short answer questions. Are you buckled up, my friend? Now he is. That was a physical buckle up. For y'all listening on audio, you miss a show. Anyway, starting with. How about this weather we're having? Uh, you know, I don't think your weather in New York's weather is the same. I I don't know if you saw TikTok last night, but uh, like people literally stepped off a bus and got swept three blocks in a fucking river in New York City last night. That's what happened in Atlanta recently. I said, We actually just had flash flooding. Swear to God. So it was like cars floating. Question was valid. Anyway, Anyway. Was a Snarky ass answer, but I mean that's my vibe. I know. For sure, for sure. It's mine too. Moving on, Jesse. What is one outdated piece of music industry advice that should just go ahead and find a hole and die in? Oh, wow.

Oh, that's definitely the fake it till you make it, I think is one of those things because people should be thinking how they show themselves, and that helps you make it. Everybody thinks that some artists are faking everything. They make these crazy narratives about like, oh, this artist was told by a team of people to do when what the real teams that are working with artists are doing, and I saw this at Atlantic Records when I worked there, is they're trying to find what's authentic to the artist, what's real to the artist, what we call the kernel of truth. You'll see everybody talking about this fucking kernel of truth. They're trying to find that truth and bring that out of them because that's where you get to better answers. The fake shit ain't it. Let's make popcorn, man. Jeez. Damn. Jesse, how should indie artists be thinking about AI right now? Uh, I'm on the side. So I I have an interesting thing that um I've been developing with some of the top minds in AI, a podcast on it for a long time. So I get access to a lot of deep thinking.

A lot of people don't. People worry about AI for a lot of right things. And like the real reality is like if we were talking about doing your taxes, yeah, AI is gonna obsolete tax preparation and HR block real fast. Songs are emotions. You know, one of the things I'm most known for is popularizing the idea that music is a mood-altering drug that makes you feel the way you'd rather feel. And what people don't get about musicians in the studio that make great songs is they're chasing an emotion and they're chasing a feeling. AI cannot do that. It can make a formula, formulas don't make music. It can guess right occasionally, it can't guess right consistently. Oh, wow. There it is. I'm not scared. There it is. Next one is another kind of Jesse personality question here. What is your most New York opinion? Okay, here I this is gonna be real betrayal. The best pizza in America is in New Haven. What? Connecticut? has the best. Yeah, yeah. People don't don't realize that New Haven, Connecticut, has a style of pizza that really is the most slept on style of pizza in all of America. And I live in literally the best pizza neighborhood in America, considered by like most every list, like the places that get ranked number one.

I eat at all of them. I take people on p. In fact, next time you guys are in New York, I'll take you on the pizza tour. I take people on. Let's go. New Haven is better pizza. I think that's his least New York opinion. That's insane. We actually might like an anti-need. You might actually make a clip out of that. That's insane. Um, Jesse, what's one thing worth spending money on early? Uh you know, actually, uh good lighting and getting a better camera with better storage so that you can film in log. Um so what I mean by that is we're now in that era where I talked about uh filming and log so you can color grade and be creative about your color grade, and then getting the light so that the exposure can be right is the type of shit you can learn in 30 minutes and it will change the way your stuff looks. Do you think that for because we did we did that and I applied like a basic light? It looked okay. But for a podcast, you know, I don't know. What do think for us? It's the Podcast the the return returns are way more diminishing. If you look at all the biggest music podcasts on YouTube, they look like ass.

Yeah, like straight up. they look like yeah, yeah. We're gonna stick with our picture profiles and out the gate. Yeah, your stuff looks better than most music podcasts. I watched an insane amount of music podcasts. Your stuff looks better than most of them. Awesome. That's all I need to hear. Especially when you've been so you guys started doing more remote guests, and the way you do it looks great. Hell yeah. Great to hear. How about what's one thing to never spend money on early? Uh well, my hot take always is is I think that the ads are not where we should be investing because what you when we get to the debates on my point four cents, we all kind of do get to that thing that like getting down your song and your like aura is a better investment. And getting your look and having creative that looks really good. That stuff will move the needle faster than just going in with your stupid AI Corvette video, like that you didn't spend any money on it, is not gonna move the needle. Like you need to get down some of this stuff that has developed you enough that people go, Oh, that looks sick.

I gotta click on that ad or that organic content. Love that. Sorry, Andrew. Well, no, we we need Andrew once we've dialed in the brand and we've locked it in and we need to amplify. It's true. He has his place. I recommend I I send artists Andrew all the time when it's at that thing of that we've got proof of concept and that it's thing. I'm like, great, you should talk to Andrew now. I put him on intro emails all day. Yep. Yeah. perfect. Okay. Okay, this next one's like a little selfish. We haven't talked about any of the like mixing and mastering stuff. I'm just curious. What are some of your go-to mixing plugins? Because I'm also an engineer producer. I my deep cut is Crane Song Phoenix is the most slept-on plugin that all the top pros you'll see it in their mastering plugins. You don't hear them talk about it. Crane song. It actually is both um mixing and mastering. Um, it's a tape saturation plugin, but it sounds better than all the rest of them. That's one of my most uh slept on the other one I'm really in love with. Real quick, are you putting it on like buses and mixing or like actually individual tracks?

On track, on track. I'll put that on a kick, a hi-hat, a bass, a guitar, uh vocal. I literally put it on everything, uh, different amounts. Um the other plug-in I think people have really slept on because everybody thinks it's for post-production, is Clarity VX. Let's say you're in a shitty sheetrock bedroom. Let's say you're uh got an echoey room, Clarity VX on that vocal, then commit the vocal down uh with that on, can get out all that ho ho sound that you get from a shitty room so so fast while making that vocal sound a million times better. Just the big thing is it takes like all your CPU to run. So you get the sound right and then you hit commit and then you go and work on that vocal afterwards. There it is. Dang. that one was for me. So I was about to say, I was like, is this turning into a mixing consultation? I just know he had knowledge on this in this episode. wasn't about it. I wanted to ask him while he had him here. Um, Selfish. Last one of the short answer. What is your favorite curse word? I'm

definitely fucked. There's no doubt about it. Every New Yorker, it's gotta be fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Andrews was fuck nugget. Fuck nugget specifically. Childish and playful. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do like that. I I often do cycle through some weird, weird, obscure ones, but yeah, fuck's the classic. Okay. I'm Still shit, man. Anyway, let's go on to part two. This is the this or that. I'm gonna give you two choices. You just need to pick one of them. Oh yeah. This is the hard part. Exactly. It's when it gets crazy. Should we focus on getting more fans or processing our creativity? Processing your creativity. Little shout out there. Two books you guys should both go get by Jesse Cannon. Moving on. Weekly singles or quarterly masterpieces. Quarterly masterpieces. Clear message or mysterious aura? Clear message. Monthly listeners or email list? Uh email list. Indie grind or major machine? Oh indie grind.

Recording studio or podcast studio? Recording studio. Much more fun. I agree. Those yappers. be yapping. I sadly agree. Um Holland again or the cure self-titled. Ooh, uh, cure self-titled. Both worked on by the man himself. Not sure if you I'm picking up what you're putting down. Cringe or forgettable? Cringe. And finally become a full-time reggae producer or leave the music industry forever. Leave the music industry forever. Oh god. I already left record production for a reason. Never mind. Uh the style of music that I least identify with. Okay. What? God knows why I spend two weeks a year in the Caribbean. You pick that weed back up, and we uh things might change. I don't know, man. That's probably true. That's probably true. You know what I'm saying? Moving on to the last section.

This is the word association. I'm gonna say one word. You just give me the first word that you think of off the top of your head. You are not graded by your answer. You're only judged on speed. Starting with music. God. Aura. Aspirational. Slop. Blech. That is acceptable. We we do take noises. Micro genre. Uh god tier. Lil Mabu. Absolute trash. TikTok. Problematic. New York. Greatest. Atlanta. Underrated. Podcast. Uh captivating. Mood board. Essential. Sushi. Essential. Drake. Yeah. Complicated.

I thought he was gonna say non-essential. Muse. Formation. Let's go. God damn. Let's go. What a goddamn episode. One of my favorites in a long time. Seriously. And I am not just saying that. Holy shit, Jesse. Seriously, man. Like I said, we've been watching your content for years and years, man. So to have you on our show and to know that you watch our shit. Huge. That's crazy. If y'all did not get anything out of this, we can't help you. Go to another channel. Um but actually don't do that. Like, comment, and subscribe. Like like, comment, subscribe, and that notification and don't put the brick on when they post. Don't brick YouTube if we're dropping a new episode. Until next time, Henry, what are we doing? We're getting out of here. get the fuck out of here. Peace, y'all. Thanks, Jesse.