Welcome to Episode 36 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. This is part two of our Siris on how to get signed to a record label. My name is James Cross, and I have again Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona.

Matt, I'm not gonna ask you how you are, because I mean, no one really cares. Just like no one cares how I'm doing. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. We actually just recorded Part one. And so if you want to hear how Matt and I are doing, just go listen to Part One, which is Episode 35. Band. I've got rocks slash 35. That's the numbers three and five will take you to that episode, and you can hear how we're doing in my story about how the Internet was out all day and that's why?

We're doing two episodes late at night. Long story short, though. Matt, I care about how you're doing. I hope the listeners due to it makes no sense to ask you when we just went over this, like, 20 minutes ago. I'm still good. Nice s. Well, I'm glad to hear that. And, uh, we'll keep this episode as short as we can. Just thio keep it concise and drop info bombs as much as we possibly can. Again, if you haven't listened to 35 go do that now. It's a prerequisite for this episode.

We left off that episode on a cliffhanger where we said record labels are not a good idea for most bands. And we did promise that we would tell you how to get signed to a record label. So we're going to follow through on that mat. How are you going to follow through on this? What are we gonna do? What's our plan here? Well, it's simple. If, uh, you guys remember in a previous episode we've talked about the idea of dressing for the job that you want. Now, this is no different.

You need to practice the things that the record label wants you to practice theory. Easiest way to get signed is to do the work that they want you to do before you signed. If you're doing everything that they want you to dio and you're making money, if your band is succeeding if your brand is building, if your revenues are increasing, you're getting sponsored tours each and every time you go out and you play a tour, you're getting better returns on your investment and you're legitimately doing good.

That's when you can start to expect those record deal contracts to come in. This is the coldest and hardest realization that you have to make as an artist is that labels will not just give you everything. They want to see that you are already doing the work yourself. I mean, and after all, why shouldn't they think about any endorsement sponsorship in history? You look at an Olympian. They're wearing Nike or Adidas or, you know, are under armor or whatever. Do you think that Nike and Adidas and under our murg Eva them any of those sponsorships, endorsements or any of that without them first being some sort of prestigious athlete?

The answer is No, they've already won tournaments. They've already been a part of sponsored events they've already been at. You know this, that and the next thing And these major corporations are using your presence at these events. Your presence on tour, your presence at festivals to market. You are a marketing agent for your record label. And so the more you market them or a A k A. You know, the more that you're doing that they want to be represented. By then, the more label or offers you're gonna come in if you're a I mean, uh, if you write a hit song tomorrow and then you know, you put a song out, you go to bed and then you wake up the next day and it has a million views on it.

I guarantee you, before the end of the week you'll have 5 to 7 record deals on the table, and that's because you're already doing the job that they are looking for. You're already making the money. You already have the streams. You already have the product. You already have the audience, and that's what they want is that there are businesses. Well, any business needs one thing, and that's an audience. You have to have consumers. Consumers come from an audience, and so for you, you're the icon. Early International was a clothing company started by Bob Hurley in California.

He was a surfer. He had nothing to do with punk rock music, but he enjoyed liquidity to, so he gave Hurley international merchandise to Blink 1 82. Consequently, Hurley International became one of the largest, uh, brands of the nineties and early two thousands because of Blanco. Nitty to Atticus was another one of those. And then on top of that there, waas at Niece, which was the shoe company that Tom DeLong started, and use that to market his product. These were other brands that decided that this person knew what they were doing, and they put a hand in their business and that caused their brand to grow exponentially.

This is what brought in mass revenue. It's what brought in awesome marketing deals is what brought a massive amount of publicity and massive tours, you know, and you could still go look at old Blink 1 82 posters and there, sitting there wearing Hurley international clothing. Hurley would not give them clothing if they weren't doing something well. And that's the same exact thing with a record label. A record label will give you nothing unless you're doing well, and that's a sad reality. It sucks sometimes. But do the job and you'll get the paycheck that's just outward.

I love that example. And before we dive deep into this, I'm just gonna recap the four reasons that are most commonly cited by bands who say they want to be signed. The first one is it's rite of passage. They see getting signed as basically success. That means they've made it. The second one is a team, so they have people working for them managers, booking agents, publicists, all that kind of stuff. The third is budgets, basically money from the label, which is a very valid point, and the fourth and last one is connections.

To get straight into it, though, your team should not be built exclusively on people, the record label recommends. Now, if you remember in Episode 35 I was talking about how marketing and radio companies and stuff like that will be contract by the label. That's totally fine because those companies aren't going to be advising you to run your business in a way that conflict with your interests. But you should never, ever, ever take a manager who is recommended by a label unless that manager has zero ties to that record label, because that is a terrible conflict of interest.

The manager is supposed to work for you and represent you, not work for the label. But if the manager is working for the label, he or she is probably going to end up siding with the label because the label is going to give them other clients or some other form of kickback that makes it more advantageous for them to favor the record label than you. Their actual client. Absolutely. You know, I think that's a wonderful point for us. You know, we're in pinup artist management. Our manager, Joel.

I wouldn't be surprised if that guy would throw fists for us on. I honestly mean that. You know, there have been times when we've had open dialogues where we were worried about financial situations. We were in and Joel came out and said, and he's like, Well, honestly, I'll just tell that guy to shove off That was so relieving. You know, it was absolutely incredible. Toe, have somebody say, like, Look, man, we're gonna go to bat for you. This was what it actually felt like to be a part of a team.

You know, it's like everybody has, you know, you have this idea in your mind of, like, you know, you getting jumped by someone. Now, if you have a team of people, getting jump shouldn't matter. Because at the end of the day, you're literally gonna have, like, you know, 40 other people turning around and coming to your rescue. And and that's kind of the beauty and having a team, you know, for us, we have, ah, publicist. We have manager. We have a record label, we have a booking agent, and these were all different facets of our team.

And whenever we're getting ready to go out on tour, we have weekly meetings with everybody. Not just like, you know, we we don't talk to this person on Monday. That person on Tuesday, everybody calls each other. You know, we get on one giant group call through Google chat, and everybody sits there. We talked for about an hour every Tuesday, and we bounce ideas off of our publicist who? But you know who and we all talk openly is a team, and anybody that has a good idea is an idea that we capitalize on.

If our manager has an idea, then guess what? That's the band succeeding. And so you know, this is what it means to have a team. When you have a whole group of people that are all sitting together working together for you, that's incredible. Labels can be tricky because sometimes they'll try to push it manager on you, and you want to run away from that as quickly as possible because, like James is saying, that's a conflict of interest. At that point, you don't know where his ties are.

Incentive wise for all you know, the record label has made an awesome deal with him, and he's gonna make a ton of money from screwing you over. And so that's why what? James said. You want somebody that's willing to get up to bat for you? That's gonna sit there and be like, No, the bottom line is these guys deserve mawr or you know this is gonna happen, or whatever the situation requires. Whatever dialogue needs to happen to have a fierce manager who is a part of your band and I say a part of your band because there are too many managers who managed the band and they're not a part of the band.

We looked for years. Jesse and I. We do a lot of the management ourselves and things like that, and we've been doing it for ourselves for a long time. But like I just mentioned, we have Joel as our manager. Joel is an equal part of our band. When we make money, Joel makes money. When we don't make money, Joel doesn't make money, and so that's one of the biggest things that managers need to be. They need to be a part of the band. So for a long time the industry standard was 20% of gross, which means that no matter what, they make 20% of the money that you make.

So if I make $200 on a guarantee but I had to pay $180 to get there, I only made 20 bucks. However, if I pay 20% of gross 20% of $200 is going to be 40 bucks, so I have to pay him 40 bucks to. I only made 20 bucks, so that sucks. How do you make money doing that? That's a lot of gambles. That's a lot of changing variables. That's a lot of merchandise the year required to sell, and you can literally get to the end of a positive tour. You can make money at every show and then get to the end of your tour and still end up losing money because you have to shell out money to a manager who gets paid gross.

So it doesn't matter to him. You need to find a manager that's willing to work for you. He's willing to be a part of the band. He's willing to work equally for you and, you know, for us like we were able to work out deals where our manager has unequal pay of net. So after all expenses, they get a percentage of what we make for us. This works really well, you know, there's no such thing as one size fits all. If anybody ever tells you that they're a liar, so maybe this situation won't work for you Maybe this situation won't work for them.

Everybody lives in a different economy. There's different variables that need to change for different parties, and that's just that. The point I'm trying to make is you have to get into a contract that works mutually and that really, honestly keeps your manager working for you. If I go out and I make a hit song and I do everything myself and I sell a million copies and your manager that says, Oh, guess what, you know, like I didn't do anything of that. I had nothing to do with distribution, nothing to do with marketing, nothing to do with connections or anything.

But I deserve 20% of that. That's kind of silly. But now when your manager is a part of the team, when your manager is going on tour with you, when your manager is physically the one that's going into at the end of the night, go to settle with the promoter and things like that when they're actually, you know, putting themselves out there for your band. That's when the relationships working a lot better, and it's infinitely easier to cut that person to pay check when you can physically see what they're doing on behalf of your brand, so managers are integral.

You need somebody on the outside working for you, but you need them to be a part of your inner circle. This is a part of your band. These are people who are going to make hard decisions with you, Not hard decisions in spite of Absolutely. I think I can't top that. He said it perfectly. So I'm just gonna tell everyone that I lied because in the last episode I said, You don't need to pay back in advance that the label gives you. You actually kind of dio because you don't have to pay it back.

But it comes out of your royalties and I should specify. Typically, it is your sound recording or artist royalties, not the song royalties. And we will in the future have an episode about copyright. But for now, basically, the sound recording is owned by the label. If you're on a label and the song is owned by you and your publishing company, sometimes the publishing companies owned by the labels, sometimes not. It all depends on the deal you have. But the point is that you will not get any money for your artist royalties until your advance is paid back in full.

So while the advances free money, don't expect to actually earn money aside from that advance unless the advances totally paid back by your royalties. Absolutely. This is an incredibly crucial topic, because this is the thing that could make a breaking music career. You know, if somebody comes in and says, Here's a million dollars for you toe br artist for life and you don't actually think that situation through all the way to the end and the consequences of your actions, you might end up, you know, 20 years down the road, never being able to play music again because you're in so much debt with the record label that you basically have to absolve your entertainment persona.

Because if you entertain somebody again, you're gonna get sued by a former label because you have this horrible contract, you know, with advances. Last episode I mentioned a couple artists who ended up making very large deals, and the advances needed to be paid back in a normal contract. This is where it gets sketchy because a record label will say, Here's $10,000 but you have to pay the $10,000 back, which is normal. But the clause is you have to look out for are the ones that say 100% of the recoverable money is coming out of your share of the royalties.

So now let's say you're splitting royalties 50 50 50% goes to label, 50% goes to you. But if you have to recoup 100% of the money out of your 50% then you have to make twice as much money in order to pay it back. So if I were to put in some figures, let's say I give you $10,000 to spend. You spend that money so you owe me 10 grand. You sell $10,000 in product. Now you would think that $10,000 would pay off the debt. However, since we split it 50 50 I only get $5000 and you get $5000. Well, since the recoup a bill, money is paid back out of my portion.

I pay $5000 to you. I still have a $5000 debt to you and you have now made $5000. So now we make another $10,000 and you make another $5000 profit, and I take my $5000 to pay off my remaining balance. The label has made $10,000 and you have still not made a penny like for us and our we're all say it are recording contract. It says that regrettable money comes out of all money before a split. So if they give us $5000 we sell $7000 in product, then each one of us makes $1000 because the $5000 gets paid back and then the $2000 get split and those air good contracts and they take a long time to find a long time to negotiate.

And sometimes you will work for years as an artist until you're able to find somebody who truly has a passion for music rather than the exploitation of artists by way of record labels. And those are the people that are going to take you to the place that you need to go in your career. I think it's so important and I have not heard of anyone who has been forced to pay back in advance out of their own pocket. But I'm sure a label somewhere at some point has tried that some of my friends in a band they had a million dollar merchandise steel then for their members quit and each one of them had $200,000.

It was recoup a ble. So it's like this brand lost a whole bunch of credibility and instantaneously. All these other people had $200,000 but the members that stayed in the band, they felt that it was morally their obligation to pay the money back and be who really believe in their brand. They have since stayed, and they've been working really hard to pay that off. But those of this you know, there's clauses in like that that that protect artists where it's like if you quit the band, you're not liable.

So if you signed a million dollar contract and you don't know that your bandmates or 100% backing you when one of them goes, Oh, I was thinking, you know, mentally, they were thinking about quitting because touring is hard for them or whatever and you know, you get a million dollar deal, they take their 200 grand split. That's tough. It's not only important to make sure that you know that you have a team behind you that's backing you, but also really to like, understand exactly what's happening financially in your band and that if you're going to sign a contract for a million dollar deal, you have to understand the other factors are gonna be playing in the minds of your band mates.

Like maybe they have a different priority to you having $200,000. Maybe, Like awesome. I got this awesome nest egg, and to somebody else, that means maybe, like, cool. I'm like, out of debt. And I could, like, buy a house or, you know, and I can escape whatever I was trying Thio there's always a different perspective to look out for, and you gotta be really careful about this big, huge, sexy sounding numbers Million dollar contract like you sound beautiful, But guess what? That really is just, ah, death sentence because it's gonna take me decades to pay that back unless you are that 10% unless you are that one in 10 artists that's going to make it financially.

Another thing that, like in the industry, people really do when it comes to labels is relying heavily on their connections. If you're not developing connections as an artist, you're not playing the game. If you're not out there, you know, trying to figure out who the best printers are. Who makes the best graphic art for you, who has absolutely impeccable music videos at a cost that works well for you. We've talked about this before where sometimes you say, you know this guy's gonna record, this guy's gonna, you know, edit or whatever.

And those are the things that you need. Thio. You need to continue on, and we were talking about relationship building. Then anybody that's never read the book, how to win friends and influence people. I've mentioned it before, and I will mention it again because it is the best book in history period. It will help you build connections in life. The Onley industry in business is networking, and you are in business, so you are in networking, so stop relying on other people's connections. Make sure that you're you're out there toe, stimulate the economy, find out the people that are willing to work for you in the same way that you're willing to work for them.

You know, people love working for people that bring them consistent work. So if you have a good connection and people don't be afraid to share that amongst other people, I run a coaching business. I have people that when they come to be about merch questions, I instantaneously send them over there because I'm confident in their abilities and people are confident in my abilities and it ends up working great. And that's how we all, you know, coexist together. It's our connections that continue to grow out, and you can't rely on a record labels connections to get you to that place you need to get. Exactly.

And so now that we've covered some of the downfalls of the reasons bands typically wanna label and why does probably aren't the best reasons as a blanket policy toe wanna label. And you know, As you said Matt, nothing is one size fits all. There are always exceptions. For some bands, a label might be a great fit. It seems like you have a great label in smart punk and it's a good fit for you. That's awesome. For some bands, a label really is a great move, and it really works out well for them.

If you are one of those bands, great, do it. If not, that's fine. Either way, the steps, you're gonna be the same. So you're probably thinking, What now? Well, we're going to give you a couple tips that you've probably already figured out, but just to put them out there, formerly build your own team. That means you have to learn to recognize your strengths and weaknesses so you can understand what you can and should do yourself and what you've really need help with when you're not signed. Budgets reply tight.

You want to take on as much as you can handle, but outsource the rest so you don't get burned out. That's a throwback to Episode 32. Don't let burnout ruin your career. How to separate yourself from your art. I think that's a really important episode for people because so many D. I Y artists have this attitude of 110% all the time, and the truth is, yeah, you have to give 100 10% But you also have to take a break so you can give that 100%. Even if that just means taking one day a week off or taking a one or two week vacation once a year.

Whatever works for you so you don't get burned out. But when it comes to building your team, focus on ditching the things you know are your weaknesses. Those should absolutely be the first things that you outsource and hire someone else to dio. Absolutely, you know, and I think another really important thing that you should focus on is your growing is is ensuring your business is financially stable. The only way that a business can grow is to make sure that you have the groundwork financially for growth. What's the best tool for this is it's a budget, so you can either make your own budget.

If you're really good at making your own budget, then I I strongly suggest to do that, because you you know you've worked with yourself your whole life, so if you know your strengths and weaknesses, that's a really good tool. However, if budgeting is not your strength, then I highly recommend you use a tool like wine AB or tally. Actually, y name is wonderful. It means, you know, it stands for you need a budget and it really focuses on compartmentalizing your money. And so that way you know, areas that you can grow in.

You really want to make sure that all of your band spending is moving towards achieving your goals. So if you haven't sat down as a band and actually laid out what your individual goals are, what your 10 year goals are, your five year goals are. Your one year goals are your month and so on and so forth. If you haven't sat down and done that, you need to make sure that you do that. And then once you know what your goals are, you need to work towards them.

You know, just make sure that you're spending is going towards that. And I know I'm sure every single one of us is now. You know, at this point in our lives have seen the thermometer being filled up, you know, you know, people are taking donations and they feel that their mom attar up whenever they get a new donation on either a piece of order or whatever until it gets to the top. Build one of those that visual marketing is wonderful. I'm a marketer. I'm a firm believer that using visual aids in order to propel what you're doing is one of the strongest tools that you can use, like that's child, like learning like That's something that's so dumb down that anybody can understand it.

And on top of that, when you can see daily goals when you can see your progression, that's incredible. That's edifying. That's like it reinvigorating and it's like, All right, awesome. I'm gonna stop, smell the roses, be pumped about this and then move on to the next thing. So while you're making sure that your band spending is moving towards achieving our goals, you also need to make sure that you're thinking of creative revenue streams because this money that you're investing, ideally it's to make money back for you.

You know, every dollar has a job, and so when you put a dollar in three goal is that it will make you at least $2 back or, you know, whatever your market is, you know at least at least dollar and 10 cents back. And so you have to think of creative revenue streams for being able to do that. These are gonna be different things for everybody. I'll use coronavirus. For example, corn was selling face masks. They had been selling face masks for probably a decade. Then, as soon as coronavirus hit instantaneously, they were selling Mawr masks than they knew what to do with now.

They had already thought of the creative revenue stream before, and it was implemented in the market before there was a high demand for it. But I've also seen plenty of other artists who immediately went out and had masks printed with their branding on it, and they made a whole bunch of money as well. Now there's people who are argued that that's immoral or whatever, and I'm going to stay out of that. The point is, is that it was creative and they adapted, and they figured out a way that during covert times when nobody's out playing shows that their band could still be making a revenue that would be propelling them toward the cheating, their goals.

That's very, very smart. This is a huge investment, and so when you're talking about investment. Whether it's time or monetary, everybody in the band has to invest their fair share. When I say invest, I mean really invest. This is your life. This is your time. This is the thing that you're passionate about. And so the people who are on board you're gonna find out because those are the people that when you get the million dollar contract, they're going to take their £200,000. And hopefully you've determined before you get that deal that these are the people that you want around you all the time.

Your band should retain some income to invest in the future, like rainy day fund. If you want to do this for forever, like if you work for Apple or Boeing or McDonald's and you work for them for a long time, they start putting money in a 401 K for you. And so moving forward. If you as a band can slowly but surely build your income and take that money that you're putting into your band and investing it to once again building that rainy day fund A. You're gonna have a business that propels itself because you're gonna have enough capital to be able to make the moves that you actually want. Thio.

But then, on top of that, you're actually going to be able to have a long, sustained career that has hopes of retirement. So these are all, like, super awesome things that are really important when it comes to financial stability in your band. So these will help you succeed and really help you when it comes to a record label. Because if you're not managing your money, the record labels not gonna do that for you. So if you're not managing your running, your business is gonna fail. So these are important things to set up beforehand.

Because if you're doing this ahead of the time and somebody comes to you with a business deal and you already know the ins and outs of your business there 10 times more likely to actually sit down at that meal and have a dialogue with you because you know what you're talking about, you have credibility. Absolutely. You know, one thing I think we should mention because you're talking about creative income streams and putting money aside, look at bands like Linkin Park, Chester and Mike and maybe the rest of the band, I don't know, but at least Chester and Mike started a venture capitalist firm so they could invest in start ups and have a nest egg for later so they could have something for their families because they knew that Lincoln Park's not always gonna be popular.

I don't think they knew how Lincoln Park was gonna end. But I'm sure Mike is now really happy that they invested some money so he can now have a Nen come from another company. He diversified his income. He didn't put all his eggs in one basket. That's really what it comes down to. There are so many artists who don't do this. But then you see ones like Lincoln Park who dio and I would hope that it worked out for them in the long run. One thing that they also said is that they approached Lincoln Park as a tech startup.

Essentially, they viewed the band as a tech startup and ran it as a business which I know we're drilling that into everyone's heads on this podcast is your band is a business. Your band is a business. Your band is a business we say that all the time and you're probably sick of hearing it. But Lincoln Park is probably one of the top five most successful rock bands of the past 25 years. And guess what? They're running their band as a business. I hope that makes you understand why Matt and Erin and I are always saying your band is a business.

And if you look at pretty much any artist who has ever found success and made a full time living off of their music, they've done something unique, creative. They've adapted. They run a business. They don't just create art. And I know that creating art is what you want it to be about. But you've got to run a business. Here's something that I want to tell you that I hope inspires you. If you run your business well, then you can play anything. You can play any style of music.

You can write about any subject you can do anything. The sky is the limit because I promise you there is a market out there for what you're trying to dio. There are people out there who appreciate the art that you're trying to create And if you strive to push your business to the next level in every way, shape and form, then you are going to find those people. And when you find those people, you'll go the places that you never dreamed that you have the capabilities of going and that is the beauty of business, agreed.

And you know what? Something I want to add to that is I'm pretty sure we've all been to a show at some time with a pretty high level band and just thought, man, they're terrible, Live like how are they so good? Like, how are they so well known? How are they so successful? Because they run a business, that's what it comes down to. They sell tickets because they run a business, not because they have a great live show. But you know what? The people who connect with that music and our that bands number one fan, they're not gonna care that they're not great live.

They're going to say this album meant so much to me. I just want to see it live. Yeah, you know what? Maybe he could sing a little more on key or, you know, the bass player could have some better timing. But you know what? I love the songs anyway, so whatever, Like, I'll go to the show, I'll buy a ticket. That's business. And it's funny because I will be the first person to say every single one of my most favorite event moments in my music Lifetime. Every single moment where I have felt the most inspired by other artists or where I have felt captivated by what they've said has not once ever been my favorite artist.

It's always been obscure artists who are just like, Oh, I was at the show and something magical happened, and that created a moment, and it was those bands. Of course, there was truth and honesty behind it, but I mean, that was business, and it was awesome because it changed my life for forever. But at the same time, when you objectively take a step back and look at it, it was good business because I'll be a fan for my whole life, you know, when I said all this band's my favorite band, but my favorite life show experiences this.

All of my favorite live show experiences are none of my favorite bands And that's because they were put on by people who understood the requirement that needed to be met in the entertainment industry. And that's what's awesome is that there's different appeal to different people. So while my favorite artists weren't doing the things that I needed in a live show, other artists were which made me have a natural affinity towards them and a true love towards you know what they were doing and honestly have built lifelong relationships.

Whether or not their music has continued to remain good. That's just like some of the power that you could have in good business and to go back to what we're talking about. What you're describing is exactly what a label looks for. They want that band that inspires with their live show. Now, obviously, if you're running a good business and your live show is not great, but the rest of your businesses, the label will look for that too. But the thing is, really your business has to be well rounded, and part of that is having your own network so you can have connections that are based on genuine two way relationships, because if you're always asking for favors or just telling people about yourself and never asking people how they are or helping them out.

People are not going to care about you. You're gonna be that annoying person who is just always asking for a handout. Matt, you had mentioned the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. That is a great book. I totally agree with you there. There's another book which is probably a slightly easier to read but basically has the same principles it's called the go giver. Honestly, I would recommend everybody that listens to this podcast should just read both books if you're going to read just one of them, whichever one.

But really, I would recommend both because they take different approaches to the same outcome. And if you can understand both approaches, you're just gonna have that much more success. Essentially, being ago, giver is building relationships, so people want to help you without you, even asking opportunities will come to you effortlessly. And that doesn't mean you haven't put an effort that means that people will come to you. This is how I run my business. I do not actively look for clients for Pinnacle Pro Sound. People come to me and I have spent hours and hours and hours doing cold outreach in the past.

I don't do that anymore. People come to me now because they know that I could do a good mix of their song and I can put it out there and that's fine. It's all relationship based. Or maybe somebody hears of me that hasn't heard of me before because somebody I worked with told them about me. And then they looked me up. That's still being ago giver, because I helped somebody. They told someone else about me and referred them. That's what it comes down to. It's the same thing for bands.

How many times has anyone here been hit up by a band saying Hey, we can't play this show But they're looking for bands. Maybe you'd be a good fit. Go check it out. That's probably happened, Thio. Quite a few of you. And if you could build more relationships like that where it's kind of a quid pro quo and you both help each other out, that's just gonna make your network stronger. You have to utilize your network to get things done help each other out and grow community.

That is how you can round out your business and really be appealing in the eyes of a record label just to wrap things up. Basically, what we talked about at the start was most bands think a record label is going to solve all their problems. Flash. It's not going to do that. No way. If it were that easy, don't you think Mawr record labels would be out there and more bands would be getting signed? I mean, that would be awesome, but then the market would just be flooded.

We're already seeing so much content coming out from labels or independent artists that I don't want to say it's a Red Ocean because music is not a Red Ocean, there's always gonna be something new. But if you're doing something that bands have been doing for 20 years, if you sound exactly like good Charlotte or Blink 1 82 or Bush or Nirvana, why should anyone care about you? You're basically a cover band with original songs, but you sound exactly the same. Great event Fleet. They sound like Led Zeppelin. For them, it's been long enough because it's been about 40 almost 50 years since Led Zeppelin was a big thing, so they can pull it off.

It's fresh to people, but if you're ripping off a band and just you sound like them, But you're Sahlins Air, you know only 90% is good because you're not them, but totally instrumentally from your style. Everything sounds the same. Why should anyone care? It's not gonna happen. So you have to find out how you can stand out and then run a good business. Because if you're not trying to give things a shot on your own, why would a label give you a chance? In a Red Ocean market, you have to be in a blue ocean, which means you have to be original and creative. Absolutely.

I mean, it's all about self reliance. That's the beauty of it. Is that that if you are self sustaining thin, you're doing it, you're floating, you're in the ocean, you're alive. And so like, That's the beauty of it, you know, like, yes, you can outsource things. There's nothing wrong with that, but you need to make sure that you benefit from it. You need to have your aces in your places for me, Like I'm not a graphic designer, so I don't ever do graphic design work, But I'm a songwriter.

So, like we don't outsource song writing, we outsource graphic design work. So, you know, finding out, you know exactly the things that you're supposed to outsource, and you know when you're supposed to do and how you benefit from it. You know, these are things that help make you even mawr self reliant, thes air, things that help you run your business and your business, even mawr optimally. To really grow your business, you need to know how to run it. If you were to look at any great business and you were to go from the ground level all the way up to the top, I guarantee you that the people at the top know what the people at the bottom are doing because a lot of the times they had to do that at one point, and then they built a system that they were able to teach to somebody else.

And so like to really grow your business, you know, for you to come into the top level and come down to the bottom level and say, Hey, just you know, this needs to be run a different way. You need to be knowing what you're doing. You hire a marketing company because they know how to market, but at the same time you are in control of your brand. And so while somebody may know how to market, they might not be able to market your brand well without your expertise in your opinion and the way things that need to be worked.

So like, that's part of that relationship. It's part of that community. It's part of open communication, not asking for favors, but really having a mutual, a symbiotic relationship, really. It all boils down to this to grow your business, know your business if you know what happens at every level of it. If you know what happens in merch, if you understand what happens when printing goes through. If you understand the fundamental concept of building a website, then those are things that you can outsource because then you could take your time and apply it towards some other part of growth in your business.

But if you're gonna outsource and that's gonna cause you toe regress, don't do it. Outsourcing is in the name of progress to grow your business. You know your business that does it for this episode as well as this Siris on the band. I've podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed these two episodes and that you learn something to take away and improve your business. Remember, if you want to get signed or if you don't want to get signed or you don't really care either way.

What we talked about in these episodes still applies because the same things that would get you signed are also what will boost your band's career without a record label. It doesn't matter which path you want to take through your career. The steps are going to be almost identical. If you'd like to discuss the pros and cons of signing, to label head on over to our Facebook group by going to Bandhive dot rocks slash group or by searching for banned I've on Facebook and join our group where we will have a discussion going for this episode all about record labels.

Thanks again for listening. We'll be back next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time. We hope you have an awesome week and, of course, as always, keep rocking