Michael Walker: What up, what? Alright. I'm excited to be here with my new friends, Michael and Anto. They're from Music Promo Today. A quick introduction: Music Promo Today is a digital music agency that blends Web2 and Web3 with cutting-edge blockchain technology to propel artists and labels into the future.

Michael is Head of A&R, and Anto is a co-founder of the company. They've done some campaigns with people you may have heard of, like Beyoncé, which is pretty incredible. When I was browsing the resumé, I was like, holy cow, that's the Queen. Let's go.

Before we hopped on here in the green room, we were just talking a little bit about the current state of the music industry. There's a lot of fear and excitement, and there's a lot that's changing with AI. I'm really looking forward to connecting with them and just hearing a little bit more underneath the hood of what's really happening right now in the music industry—both where we're coming from and where things are going.

So, thank both of you for coming on the podcast today.

Anto Dotcom: Thanks for having us, Michael. It's a pleasure, man. Pleasure. Thank you, Mike.

Michael W: Absolutely. So, to kick things off, maybe we can just start with a little bit of an introduction to you guys and how you started Music Promo Today—and how you found yourself working with artists like Beyoncé.

Anto: So, back in 2007, 2006, a few of my friends reached out to me and said, "Do you know we could make a website, and then we can make money with a website?" And I was like, oh, that's interesting.

So me and my friends started a blog in the music industry. Back then, people were downloading torrents and MP3 files to listen to music.

We had a music blog, and it was a lot of fun because we used to get a ton of traffic. People used to use Kazaa, Winamp—it was a different music industry.

We sold that blog after a couple of years, and I met Raffi. When I met Raffi, we launched a few startups together—one on Twitter specifically.

Artists reached out to us to grow their Twitter followers. There was no Facebook; there was no Instagram back then. So we helped artists grow their Twitter fan base with basic methods—no AI, no advanced strategies. It was mainly follow/unfollow automation, tweet more, just to get reach.

But it worked. So a lot of DJs, a lot of musicians, politicians worked with us. We flipped that business, and then we did the same thing with Facebook pages when Facebook started to grow.

When we did that with Facebook, we tried the same with YouTube, and then we were like, okay, this is getting interesting. Now we have a baggage of knowledge—let's start a marketing agency.

So we launched a marketing agency that we still run to this day. It was mainly B2B clients until we started noticing a lot of musicians were reaching out to us.

We were like, okay, this could be a niche on its own. Our very first client was Masspike Miles from Massachusetts. We ran a campaign, things were going in the right direction, he signed to Rick Ross, and then Maybach Music Group—his management company—signed with Warner Music.

So we were like, okay, let's go after the main guy—the labels. When we looked back, we were like, okay, we have more musicians as clients than B2B clients.

We'd done a lot of great campaigns for large corporations like Sony—not Sony Music, Sony PlayStation, Sony VAIO laptops back in the day. We've done campaigns for companies like Bell Canada, Virgin Mobile.

At that point, we were like, okay, we have more musicians than B2B. Let's create this MPT branch—Music Promo Today—and just focus a certain number of employees in the music space.

We started that officially in 2014. Now it's what, almost 11 years? We're still in the game. We pivot. People tell us we're experts, but we try to make sure artists get from A to B.
 And frankly, B is very different for every single client we have.

Michael W: Absolutely awesome. Yeah. I mean, you have to be doing something right if you last more than five years in the music industry.

Anto: Oh yeah.

Michael W: Okay, awesome. And having had perspective both from your previous work with the marketing agency, and before entering the music industry, I'm curious—how do you feel like the landscape of the music industry compares to other industries that you've done marketing for before?

What are some of the unique facets of the music industry that you think are only relevant here and not as relevant in other industries?

Anto: Well, there's a lot of opinions out there, but the one that really struck me for some reason came from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank, and he said, "I don't invest in the music industry 'cause it's a very risky space." And not that I'm a fan or not of Mark Cuban—he's been successful—but you remember that it's a risky space not just for musicians, but also for investors and people with capital.

I think after a decade, I kind of understand why it's risky. There's risk in every sort of business operation, but the music business is very unique. I find there's a lot of challenges for the investor, for the founders, for the recording artists. It's a very fast-paced industry, especially now that technology is involved. Things used to be very simple back in the day compared to today.

I think in this question, there's something very interesting about music that's pretty unique about the music business. Once your asset is created—you made the song, you published it, it's out there—even if it's 15 years later, you've been unheard of or off the map for 15 years, you made one song and that was it, got a few thousand streams, but 15 years later, all of a sudden it could resurface.

Unlike any other business where, if you don't have any customers anymore, that's pretty much the end of your business and you gotta lock the doors and call it a day. Music, as a creator—especially on the artist side—you always have something that's there that could have and create value many, many years later.

Which is something we see often, especially now in the age of TikTok and everything, where people are digging up old songs that people haven't heard of since the seventies or some weird niche track from the fifties, and all of a sudden it's a trending sound on TikTok. And everybody's invited, and the person's name begins to climb streaming channels, and some trust fund somewhere from their fourth descendant all of a sudden gets a check for 40 grand. And they're like, "Alright, well, where's this from?" I think that's a reality that can only really exist in this creative space.

Michael W: Mm.

Michael Ghannoum: As opposed to anything else. A lot of artists that show up and it's their debut can take the model of a startup and profile it on top of the artist. You could look at them as someone that, okay, first, what's your product-market fit? And you could use the same terms and all these different things to analyze it.

So, it's unique in that sense, but also shares a lot of similarities with classical businesses. As Anto was saying earlier with the business of music and the music business—two very distinct things.

Michael W: Hmm. Super interesting. It does seem like what you both said kind of ties in together in some ways too, around it being more of a risky business, but also that you have this art that can actually have value that lives beyond the original business.

What came to mind was thinking about some of those stories of artists—like famous artists that everyone recognizes—that they weren't famous in their time, but then they died and then their art became huge. And it's kind of a bummer for the artist. So, not really until after. But it's unique and it's interesting that that even can happen.

Do you think that that's a function of the art itself? And this is probably gonna lead us into some interesting territory with—it sounds like you guys are involved in the Web2, Web3, and blockchain things as well. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the role of art and where things are headed on the music side.

Anto: Yeah. I want to comment on what you just said about artists passing away and music taking off. I was actually thinking about this in the last two weeks.

Michael W: Hmm.

Anto: About legacy planning, you know?

Michael W: Hmm.

Anto: We work with a lot of interesting people that have a lot of interesting music. And music could be in the shape of, let's say, instrumental as well, or lyrics that are very meaningful and that could even heal people. So I've been thinking about starting something with MPT that not only takes care of the artist today or the next three months or six months, but plans for, just like starting a business. Entrepreneurs, founders don't plan for concession. And when something happens, everyone is like, what's gonna happen? And then the bank comes in to take over. I want to make sure that if someone is really talented—has, like Michael said, amazing, an amazing sound, music, a catalog—it should actually reach out to people even after they pass away.

And it's not the case now. We see that after, let's say, 75 years or X amount of years, even copyrights disappear, and you can get a hold of music without their original copyrights. But if you really want to help a musician, I think you have to help them even after they pass away. So my mission is to actually make sure that, not just now, but after as well.

I think that's a very important thing because at the end of the day, one day we’ll be gone from this world. And if one generation or two generations after us remember us, that's great. But if you could set things in stone so that you are remembered for generations to come, that means your music is actually very, very powerful. And as humans, we could do that. We could do this. We could—on top—we can all unlock that genius to get this done. I firmly believe that we could do this with our company. We have very smart people engaged. We don't count the hours when it comes to getting the artists from A to B. If you're focused, you could make anything happen.

And just on that point, I think it's very important for a musician to plan that legacy and to think about what's gonna happen when you take the stairs. That question of art, Michael, that you asked, it's super interesting because part, fashion, style, all come down to social values. When society kind of encapsulates an idea, then an artist can represent it. And naturally, the representation of an artist—whether musical, painting, sculpture, whatever—is a reflection of that society's emotional stance or moral stance.

So there'll always be a reappearance of the thought or of a culture or of an idea that will come back in the future and become more popular or grow out again. And an artist today can be feeling, let's say, the emotions of today, but it could also be reflecting the possibilities of tomorrow, or maybe the hopes of tomorrow, or maybe it's a reflection of the past. So naturally, the second that artist created it, it becomes timeless because it encapsulates everything altogether.

So in today's society, this music—unfortunately, because of the sheer volume of music that's coming out and the sheer volume of art—it's hard to always properly represent it or represent it the best way possible. But through these different technologies, whether it's platforms like TikTok or the future marketplace for legacy crafts that Anto seems to be building as we speak, in either case, technology is going to have to catalog these things to group them for public interests.

Michael W: Wow. It's super interesting. I love this conversation. It's kind of like zooming out and just having a wider perspective. Yeah, I feel like it's something that we just don't really acknowledge very often. Just the fact that we have such a temporary time here to be alive. In the grand scheme of things, it's really this tiny little piece of sand.

Michael G: There was a comedian—I don't mean to cut you off—but there was a comedian that I saw. I forgot his name. I think it showed up on my Instagram feed. I'm not gonna pretend that I'm a connoisseur, but it showed up on my Instagram feed, and the guy was talking about how Picasso was actually alive in the seventies. And he goes, you think of Picasso as this great ingenious, grand designer of everything, but essentially, this person existed at the same age as Mountain Dew and all these types of hyper-commercial and ridiculous types of things. The comedian made a fantastic point about it. If I find the video, I'll share it again.

But we have this perception that some things are so grandiose that they're out of reach, but they've only been a few years away. So an artist just investing that amount of time now, today, can be so significant that they don't even know yet or they don't even understand how significant the work that they're putting into it can potentially be.

Michael W: Hmm.

Michael G: You always have to be comfortable with what you release. And function of timelessness, because that's what you're creating. You're investing time to create something that's timeless.

Michael W: Hmm.

Anto: I...

Michael W: I like it. Yeah. It's creating something timeless. I did not know Picasso was alive in the seventies. For some reason, I think of him like, I don’t know, the 1700s?

Anto: Exactly. Exactly. No, he dies in—wait. Picasso dead... 1973. Wait, he’s still alive? He’s in Orlando? Exactly. No, but he died in ’73, you know. And Mountain Dew's around in like the twenties or something.

Michael W: Like correlation maybe?

Michael G: I think so. I think so. But yeah, Picasso could have been listening to Deep Purple. Could have been listening to Van Halen—oh, maybe not Van Halen—listening to Led Zeppelin and been inspired by these artists and created something amazing.

Michael W: Hmm. That’s pretty cool. So, I mean, on this front of talking about timelessness and creating a legacy, and also what we talked about in terms of the current state of the music industry in terms of AI and just sort of this feeling of things are moving so fast—I'm curious where you see things. How do you create that legacy? How do you create a historical way to take the song and actually extend it multiple generations down the line? Is it related to Web3?

Michael G: Fans. The answer has not been different in the last 200 years. For anything—fans. Fans are what perpetuate everything. Your music could be the greatest thing in the world. You could be an absolute genius that has created the most complex thing in the world. But if nobody hears it—well, great. You created the most complex and beautiful thing in the world, but nobody heard it or it wasn't able to affect anyone.

It's the fan that perpetuates the dream. The fan consumes the music. The fan consumes the brand. The fan consumes that artistic, moral concept that's being delivered. It could be something as simple as "I'm a really good-looking girlfriend, a bunch of money, and a fancy car." It doesn't matter. But that's what's being consumed by the person nonetheless.

And if that thing holds value or if the value of it is able to ripple, and the artist is giving opportunities for their audience to engage and interact and complete the story or add to the story that they've created, then a song can live forever. Like, as long as it can. Anthony, you've gone through this where some of your clients have come back years later, and the song is still popping, still making money.

Anto: I think in general, it's about your message. Some artists don't realize how powerful their message is until they get a fan letter or an email or a comment on social media. And then it hits, and they're like, "Oh, I didn't expect this." A lot of musicians are doing things today because they follow the norm. They follow the follower, and they don't understand why they're creating music or the impact that they could have.

So I think it all comes back to dissecting the why. Why do you create music, and what's your message? If you know why you're creating music, you have the answers—the 1, 2, 3—and you know what your goals are, where you need to head, and for the why reasons. You just have to execute that. Some days will be shiny, some days will be dark, and if you stick to that goal, you will get there.

But nowadays, we see a lot of musicians—at least the ones that reach out to us—they don't even know why they do music. They just think they can make money with music, or it's a passion. And sometimes we realize it's not really a passion, and they think—they convince themselves—that this is their passion.

If you really dissect and you understand the why—why you are creating music and the impact you could have—I think you become much more responsible with the music that you create, and you don't start to follow the trends. If you start following trends—they change all the time—you'll get lost in a storm of trends.

So you have to be yourself. You have to be unique. You have to be you. You have to be different. And if you're different, you're unique, and you're the first doing—starting that trend—and you know the why, you could be very impactful. And 99.9% of artists can't answer these questions.

Michael W: Hmm.

Anto: And if you can answer these questions, you will be very happy with the little number of fans that you produce. People don't realize, and we always preach this, if I put a thousand people in front of you, you needed to start a conversation with them. You don't know where to begin. That's a lot of people.

But if you get a thousand likes on Instagram, it doesn't look like much. If you get a thousand subscribers on YouTube, it doesn't look like much, let alone a thousand comments on a single post. You could be very unhappy about it. But if I put a thousand people in front of you and I tell you what you could sell them, what message impact you could, what energy you could transpire to them, that could be very dangerous. That could be very interesting, and it could be very exciting at the same time.

So people are very much focused on numbers without actually focusing on the why, on what's their mission, why do they create music, and what's the vision? And if they could answer these questions, they will get to where they need to get without even maybe knowing what's Web3 or what's Web2.

Because for some people, obviously it's sophisticated. Web3 is not for everyone, and that's fine. That's okay. Just like it's fine having a thousand very dedicated fans instead of 10,000 or a hundred thousand people that you don't know.

And it's funny, a thousand fans — that thousand number — Spotify just removed that thousand listener mark. And you think about it and it's like, yo, a thousand people just listened to my song. Why should that be diminished in any way, shape, or form? You know how many people could actually have a thousand people in front of them at a concert or sell a thousand tickets? But it's an interesting number.

Michael W: It definitely is. Yeah. I love this conversation. And it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the most important things to get clear on to start with is why you're doing what you're doing — the purpose. Because if you don't know that, then you—One analogy that comes to mind is: if you're climbing up a bookshelf and you climb really high, but then at the end you kind of realize, oh man, I was up against the wrong bookshelf.

Versus if you actually figure out what really is your purpose. Another analogy is kind of like having a North Star in the sky — figuring out what is your message, what's your purpose, why are you doing it. And you might have up days where it's all sunny and it's great, and you might have down days where it's rainy and it's stormy, but at least you know you have that mission, you have that thing that you're driving towards.

Michael G: Absolutely. And it goes with everything. Step zero is important for a lot of people. And sometimes it's not necessarily clear at first, but you could still see that the person has a natural inclination. And you could see this a lot in young artists — people that are just starting.

You have the artist that's coming out of music school, that they've learned in an academic fashion, like, okay, this is the talent, this is the industry, and this is the thing. And they're putting it together as a business. Whereas there are other people that were just good at something, they began to practice, and in a swing of a moment, through maybe a few means and a few opportunities here and there, decided to record something. And there's a lot more of those people than you might think. And a lot of them, like Anto said, some of them have no idea and they'll never know. Maybe it was just a fluke or a good time.

But a lot of them kind of get into this thing where they realize that, okay, there's a creative process, and all of a sudden they're learning that creative process from scratch.

And it's important that when you meet an artist that's at that level, that you see has that inclination to keep practicing, to keep doing it, and to put in the time.

Those are the people you need to nurture. Those are the artists you really need to encourage as much as possible, because they're often the ones that are going to be able to make it all the way through without necessarily having gone through the process of learning and going through a deep technical knowledge of music.

So yeah, North Stars — definitely. I like it. Friends as well. Artists need North Stars and good friends. That's for sure. It's a very difficult business to do alone.

Michael W: Yeah, that totally makes sense. And the phrase that comes to mind as you share that is, “Who you are speaks louder than what you say.”

And it sounds like what you're saying is that education is really valuable, it's really important, but actually who you are and actually showing up and doing the thing is the thing that's the most important.

That's why it's possible to be very successful even if you don't have technical education — but you actually show up and you do it, and you become that person.

Michael G: The confidence in knowing who you are. The confidence in being kind of assertive with your why — owning your why.

And it doesn't mean that the why needs to be permanent. It could go this way, it could go that way, but you own it. You really have to own that why.

Even Rick Rubin says — he was on Anderson Cooper, the CNN — he's like, "I have no technical knowledge." He's like, "I have no idea how any of this stuff actually physically works."

But the man is behind some of the greatest things possible because he was able to convey that message properly and stay true to himself as a creator, as a creative mind.

Michael W: That's powerful. Yeah. One question — I'd love to hear your guys' perspective on this.

So one of the themes that we're discussing is around authenticity and being yourself and showing up, having your why, your North Star, and not necessarily chasing the trends, but actually just continuing to be true to yourself.

Which I think for a lot of artists is something they're extremely concerned about. They don't want to be on the flip side, which is sort of like “selling out” or being seen in this commercial or whatever.

And on the flip side, it seems like that side of it — the memes or the cultural memes — sometimes there's a greater macro thing that's happening in the world, and then that thing kind of propagates, and then it's like, bam.

So I'm curious where you guys fall on the line of: do you think that there's a balance between being authentic and being yourself while also being aware of the macro state and trying to line up?

Or do you see it more as: no, don't worry about the trends at all and just kind of focus on being true to yourself, and after enough time, that's gonna get you there?

Michael G: So it's not really a one or the other. You really need to be careful to take things step by step.

Because if, let's say, you haven't really figured out the why — or let's say you haven't figured out your step zero — and as a musician, you go on TikTok and you're just looking up what's the next big trend to do, and you're just blasting out 20 videos. Okay, maybe one can go viral, but you're not going to have any idea what to do with that virality.

And then you're going to come back to that same formula of just trying it again. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't.

Whereas if you do show up to that point in time where you're like, "You know what? I need to experiment strategically because it's an opportunity that's there, and this trend does kind of fall under my audience, my vibe — I could actually..."

There are enough trends to go around. We could all agree on that. So it doesn't really matter who you are, what you like — there's a trend for you. But until you get to that point, if you don't have that thing established already, it's not going to fall through. Whereas if you show up and you pick the trend and you go with it, and then all of a sudden you have a whole bunch of viewership, and you know exactly what to do with those viewers, you know exactly what your next piece of content can possibly be for them to be redirected —

That's a whole two— it's two completely different scenarios.

You know, commercial viability, artistic authenticity — I don't know if you need a third to make it a Venn diagram, but basically, the intersect between these two is where an artist needs to be.

Michael W: Mm-hmm.

Michael G: Anto likes saying that it's a process. Because it really, really is. The process is key. You can't rush through it. You could get lucky, and hopefully you have enough people around you to make sure that they can just grab as much stuff as possible to put you in the right position. But you can't bet on being lucky. That's not how life works. You bet on what you know. You bet on what you can achieve.

Michael W: Mm.

Michael G: If you want to be a little risky — sure. But you can't bet on being lucky.

Michael W: I like that. Yeah. The Venn diagram. So, you know, it's commercial viability — it's possible to have all of those things. And it also kind of reminds me of what you talked about earlier in terms of: it's great if you can be authentic and be yourself and express yourself — awesome. But if it's not being heard, if it's not connecting with other people, then there's a missing component there, just in terms of the fulfillment. That's what music deserves — to be heard. That's part of the purpose of it — to connect and build relationships.

Anto: Cool.

Michael W: So, maybe, I mean, I know that Web3 and blockchain—what I appreciate about both of you in this conversation up to this point has been that it's very rooted in the foundation of what's really important, which is the connection between the artists and their fans and their relationships. And also, there are new tools and things that are happening right now, big shifts that are happening in the landscape of things like the internet and, yeah, Web2 and Web3.

And so I'm curious to hear your perspective on the current landscape of that transition and, as it relates to NFTs. Obviously, there's a big bubble pop, and for good reason—there's, I don't know, GIFs of hamsters aren't worth millions of dollars. Surprise JPEGs, really, right? Who thought?

And I'm curious to hear your guys' perspective on the current landscape of that transition and where you think things are headed for artists on these platforms.

Anto: I could go on for days with this one, man. I don't know if—I'll leave you the mic though to hold my—yeah, I'll keep the NFT parts for you, Michael. I mean, I've collected a lot of NFTs. I'm savvy when it comes to the blockchain and Web3, but Michael's the enthusiast. I think there's a lot of platforms in today's era when it comes to technology, and artists are distracted trying to find out what they have to do.

And as, let's say—I don't like to call ourselves experts—but I'm trying to think how we could put this together as people that have been through a lot of experiences with a lot of different types of music and artists. We use so many different tools when it comes to software, technology—software whether it's with AI or not, platforms, social media platforms, features—so much money that goes into advertising.

When we run campaigns, that's really where we learn about what works and what doesn't work. Unfortunately, in today's era, artists put a social media post, and if it doesn't engage well, they're very quick to give up.

We try to teach them that, hey, it's okay if you're not producing numbers after 10 posts. What if it's the post number 145 that's going viral for a reason that you will never understand? Are you stopping at 144, or will you get to 145? That 145 could very easily be post number 2,000.

This is a game of consistency, understanding what you're doing, but at the same time, because it's changing at a very fast pace, you have to try everything. You have to fail faster. That's what we say. And when you work with us, we've gone through those trials and tribulations.

We've failed many times. We spent so much money where, let's say, the CPC or the cost per click is 10 times higher than it should be. So because we've been through that, when you come to us, you're kind of taking a shortcut.

We're not here to do miracles. If you do pop music and you're targeting the Bronx for some reason, and I find someone else in the Bronx that also does pop music, that sounds exactly like you, if both of them have the same budget and the same targets, the conclusions and the outcomes will be very, very different.

So this is why when people come to us, we're like, look, there's no cookie-cutter program. There's no copy-pasting. We have to try, we have to listen to the audience, just like you said, and we pivot based on the reaction. And the crowd tells us what they like based on engagement levels.

And then we bring back a new round of content to them. So artists should just keep going. And it's challenging to keep going because there are no royalties, there are no quick rewards. The crowd and musicians would look for quick satisfaction, instant gratification, and none of that exists.

And when you keep going, sometimes you get signals. Things start to move. And I could tell you this applies to every single platform out there—YouTube on its own, TikTok on its own, Instagram. What else? X. When you start using these platforms, genuinely invest time into those platforms and their features, you start learning.

Not only do you learn, but you also discover, okay, this is working. This is not working. This is how I should tweak my approach. You look back, and every single platform today, without charging you a single dollar, is allowing you to make a post, a profile. All these posts are instantly crawled by Google, indexed.

You're not paying a single dollar. They allow you, optionally, to advertise—to ice the cake. But imagine if you had to pay TikTok to sign up, and you had to pay for every single post to go live. These are things that musicians are taking for granted. And people always have expectations.

So personally, I'm a guy that has no expectations. So this is the easiest way to be happy—no expectations. Things happen, you can get happy. But the bottom line is to really try everything, fail faster, try everything. Mitigate risk, but keep going because every platform out there wants their users to succeed, and they reward them, but only if you keep using their platforms, which I think is fair.

So if you know your why and you're on these platforms and you're consistent and you never give up, you don't look at your numbers, you will get somewhere in between. The harder you work, the luckier you get. Because I believe in luck now. I didn't believe in luck about two years ago, but when I actually understood the definition of luck, I started to believe in luck.

And luck will come to you only if you work hard.

Michael W: Fair, fair, fair. I like it. Fair, fair, fair. When you say understanding the definition of luck—is that referring to, I feel like I've heard a phrase like, "Luck is where preparedness meets opportunity." Is that—

Anto: Yeah, that's right. That's a good one. I think the most simple way to put this: a lot of things happen that are out of your control and out of the control of other people that directly impact your life.

And if nobody is in control, what do you call that? I'll tell you the source. I had a clash with my own brother about this topic of luck, because I was like, you have to work hard, and you could work smart after you work hard, so you could work hard and smart. And when you work hard, you get lucky.

And then he gave me this amazing definition. I'm like, what was the source? So he told me about this book, The Psychology of Money, that I read, and I forgot the author's name. But that's the book I recommend.

And that book has the best explanation of luck—things that happen in my own life that have no ties to me, even if I'm prepared or not, and that impact directly my life. That's luck. You can't control that.

Michael W: Hmm. Yeah. So sort of like pure circumstance. The parts that you can't control. That reminds me of the—what?—the Serenity Prayer. Like, "Give me the courage to change the things I can..."

Michael G: The humility... the change... the things I can... humility to change things I can't... not change things I can't... and the—listen—know...

Michael W: The difference.

Anto: Mmm.

Michael W: We worked it out together. I think I've heard a different version. I don't know if you—I like humility too. I've heard a different version, but the idea is exactly what you're talking about right now though. It's just the ability to determine: wow, this is the part that I actually can control, and have courage to change it if I can.

This is the part that I actually can't control, so I'm going to accept it. I'm going to surrender to that part. And I'm going to do my best to determine which parts I can and which parts I can't.

Anto: That's it. Good stuff. Yeah, of course.

Michael W: So, coming back to the core—for artists who are watching this or listening to this right now, and maybe they're in a place where they're on post 1,211, and they're just really—they're trying. Like, they really want to reach people. They want to make it sustainable.

But they're trying to have that breakthrough. How do they know the difference between when they're on—like, what, like, in your opinion, should they—the main thing is just keep showing up, just keep doing it.

Or when do they know when to pivot or do things differently? Actually, here's a better way to put that. I love what you said about, you test, you explore, you don't have the expectation, but you test and you see what comes back, and then you use that to pivot.

But how do artists do those explorations? How do they do those tests in meaningful ways so that they can learn to pivot?

Michael G: So, it's very important to visualize your day as an artist. This is where the music business becomes the business of music. Okay? And it's very important to organize your day in a way where you're capable of creating, because that's your core function.

As an artist, your core function is to create. What that thing you're creating is—it’s a new song, it's a piece of content, it's an item or something—whatever, it doesn't matter. Your main purpose is to create.

Once you finish your creative, let's say, cycle, that's where you have to begin to do your quote-unquote admin work. Where you're organizing what you need to do. That's where your team comes into play.

And for most artists that don't have a team, you need to learn how to go through each one of these cycles, because at the end of the day, your product needs to come to life. It needs to be distributed, it needs to be interacted with, and you need to get something back from the world to go back and create all over again.

Michael W: Mm-hmm.

Michael G: Pivoting, okay, is when you're seeing, number one, a change inside of you. Okay? So let's say a creative shift. You thought X, now you think Y. You were less humble, now you're more humble. You were more humble, and now you care a little less. Something happened. Mm-hmm. Okay. Something happened that's going to affect that cycle. Okay? Mm-hmm.

Once you feel that as an artist and you feel that it's being represented in your creativity, don't stop. Keep going because you are only expressing yourself. You're maintaining. When it comes to your numbers and your metrics and all of these different things—let's be honest—money is important, especially when you're spending on platforms, when you're spending on these types of things. You need, at some point, the organic effect. It will begin to dilute at some point in your journey. Whether it's an amount of follows or it's something else, at some point it's going to dilute.

So you do need to figure out a monetary value to keep putting in and keep experimenting and conducting those types of experiments. After that creative cycle, after that, you have basically the responses. After putting out all of these songs and contacting so many, let's say, radio stations or blogs or venues or things like that, are you getting the responses that you want?

What's the actual feedback from your music? Because it could be that you make a song and you're like, "Oh my God, this is the greatest thing I have ever produced." You start throwing it out there and you're like, "Well, nobody really likes it," and everybody has something very harsh to say about it. It's like, okay, you could take that as criticism and hurt yourself, but maybe it's like, yeah, maybe they just don't appreciate it, and they're not the right crowd for it.

Are you going to continue making the same thing for the same crowd? No, you're not. You're going to listen to yourself. You're going to listen to your audience. You're going to pull that song back. Maybe you're going to find other people that might enjoy it more. Maybe it goes around. And in reality, you should consider doing it better, or playing better guitar, or editing it more. There's always a level that you can learn as an artist and go back into your creative cycle to create something new.

And the faster you do that, the more often you do that, the better everything will be. Even the pivots will come to you naturally because you'll be able to listen to what the world is telling you, and you'll be able to pivot towards what's working without necessarily sacrificing your own creative integrity.

I want to add something about pivoting. A lot of times, pivoting could be a very serious thing to do, let's say, in business. But if you're a musician and you're on post 1000, like you said, pivoting could be small changes to your strategy, to what you're doing.

And I often say, analyze. Picture an artist without any ad spend, without any budget. Those are the best examples to take. If you have a great piece of content, anything you could do online with money, you could do the same thing without money—only if you have the right strategy, only if things happen at the best time in your favor.

So if we take an example of an artist that has a great song and needs to promote that song without the budget, analyze what people are doing. Because the music industry is a saturated space and there's millions of people doing certain things. What you see on videos all over YouTube, podcasts, especially social media, they can't even assess if the advice is right or wrong. Even community notes are not reliable, let's say, on Twitter, on X.

So you have to analyze what the public is doing, and you have to try to do something different. Because not only are there a lot of people, but there are a lot of people trying to do the same things.

And if we look at Spotify, for example, the editorial team has shrunk to a very small team in the last couple of years. How many artists are they going to be able to respond to?

So number one piece of advice—because everyone is trying to pitch to editorial through, let's say, Spotify for Artists or LinkedIn—try to follow and stalk these editors. Stalk whoever they're following on Instagram. Get those followings to share about you—20 of them—and then the playlist curator will be like, "What's happening on my feed? The same music?" And maybe that sparks interest.

That's a random example. But you have to try different things. You have to see what the public is doing, what thousands of artists—millions of them—are doing. And you have to be different. You have to be unique. And you have to be one of the first people implementing this. Otherwise, you're just stuck executing what the follower of your follower is doing, which minimizes the success rate.

And it's very challenging for a musician to master, to create an amazing body of work, but then to just hope that Spotify editorial will pick it up.

So if you're on post number, let's say, 1000, and you're one post away from giving up or you're one post away from going viral, try to change something. Small things. Every post, every two, three posts. It doesn't necessarily need to be a big pivot.

With every new post, try to send it to one more person. Try to change one small thing. And then you do that a thousand times. These small pivots will result in something positive. And one day you'll look back and be like, "Oh, I created something amazing."

Add the why. Add the purpose. Add the fact that you're mission-driven. And the mission—hopefully it's not just money at the end of the tunnel—you will be happy because you will have this sense of accomplishment. And the crowd will come. If you have valuable content, great music, the crowd will come. It's up to you to assess and be smart about your numbers.

You could be unhappy with 20 million monthly listeners. We have clients emailing us, calling us if they don't hit a million streams every 24 hours. Mm-hmm. And we have to comfort and explain. Look, there's competition. You're not even spending money into advertising. Algorithmic plays could fluctuate. Mm-hmm. But that's the reality.

People are very distracted with numbers and the platforms and the features, but let's hope. And we see this with celebrities. Some celebrities have a number one hit record. The crowd looks at them as a god, right? Number one hit record, platinum, this and that.

In reality, if it's the artist's first number one hit record, that artist is already looking at the next single and already by default expecting another number one platinum record, which is very stressful on a celebrity—especially a new celebrity that doesn't really have the team or the budget, the financials around them.

So we have to be very grateful that we have access to these platforms, that we have access to these solutions. And we unfortunately have to be very smart with every single tiny decision we take in this space. Because there's a lot of ways to spend the hard-earned money that you earn in the music space, ending up doing what people think.

I could give you another example. Everyone talks about playlisting, right? And the blogs, the platforms, the SaaS product. You gotta be on the best playlist with the most followers.

In reality, if you spend money into advertising, the best way to spend money on advertising to promote the song is not advertising directed to your song—it's advertising directed to a playlist that has your song.

If we just look at the numbers, the metrics, the cost per conversion... but people don't talk about this because not a lot of companies or agencies or individuals are spending as much money to get accurate conclusions. Yet you Google, everyone talks about being on a playlist. Nobody's talking about analyzing these playlists—the growth of these playlists, what data is backing the audience of these playlists, how quick they're in decline or growth.

So there's a lot of factors that the average musician can't track. This is why we like AI. You could analyze a lot of pieces of information in a very short timeframe.

Michael W: Hmm. Awesome. I like it. Well, I feel like we could have a conversation for two or three more hours and it would still be just as entertaining. But this has been great. I feel like we've covered the foundation, kind of the core heart of creating a purpose for the music and also some tactical ways to zig when they're zagging. And a good lesson to be yourself, but also find that Venn diagram and kind of find the balance of connecting with more people.

So yeah, thank you both for coming on here and sharing a little bit about your wisdom and insight for the past decade—or several decades. And for anyone that's listening or watching this right now who is a musician who’s interested in connecting more or learning more about the different resources that you have, where's the best place for them to go to connect more?

Michael G: So, I was gonna say, Michael, you could always find us, of course, on our website, on our LinkedIns, on any of the social media.

We're currently working with a new pivot for a lot of artists with TikTok directly. We'll be making an announcement pretty soon, so stay tuned, everyone. For all those artists that are interested in opening up a brand-new monetization route that's directly with TikTok — that technically is not going to be really available to most of the public for another couple of years — we have the advantage in the regions that this is available in. Do contact us directly: info@musicpromotoday.com.

You could also give us a call: 646-650-5557. Oh my God, I sounded like one of those advertising guys — "Call us now!" — but, all right, maybe in another life.

But yeah, you guys could reach us through email, reach us on Instagram, reach us pretty much anywhere. I'm getting all kinds of DMs in my LinkedIn, so feel free, guys — reach out, talk to us, ask us about our new TikTok plan, and stay tuned.

Michael W: That sounds awesome. Yeah, cool. Well, like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access. And thank you both again for hopping on the podcast today.

Michael G: Man, it was a pleasure, Michael. Thank you so much for your time, man, and giving us this platform to share our knowledge. Great, great time.

Michael W: Yeah.