Sorry for the late response my phone was f***ing up.

I appreciate that ur looking out for artists instead of a quick bag. I see a huge gap in terms of revenue between artists who try to get attention thru antics or making generic music and those who rly try to do something cool and unique. Makes me frustrated but I guess there's so much talent and the rap game is so accessible that it's natural. At the end of the day some music is just niche and finding that market is rly tough

When u say artists, u mean your local high school Soundcloud cafeteria "rappers" correct?

When I started working with musicians in 2013, almost every artist I worked with was a pretty small local Soundcloud rapper (it was during the boom of Soundcloud). I know that grind very well and I honestly don't think there's any group that's harder to work with (the combination of ego + lack of talent is ridiculous). However, I'm fortunate to be beyond that now.

Beyond that as in posting in ktt2 cs section six years down the line? Doesn't look to well for you

You made an alt just to say this?

I'm just looking out for the KTT2 fam

Lol I appreciate all of the questions realistically.

I currently work a day job as a marketing manager and I have a handful of clients that I work with on a one on one basis outside of my day job.

The agency that I posted about here is separate from my day job and the clients I work with on a one on one basis. The reason a few coworkers and I started this agency was because as we started working with bigger budgets, bigger artists, etc. we realized how big of a discrepancy there was in terms of the quality of offerings for larger artists and the quality of offering for smaller artists. And because I have a software engineering background, we felt that there were a lot of aspects behind the scenes that we could automate in order to drive down costs and give smaller upcoming musicians access to quality services.

In terms of posting on ktt, I personally love ktt, people always give great feedback, and why not notify y’all of a service that was made for smaller artists to help promote their work. Ktt isn’t how we are planning to spread this but I wanted y’all to be in the loop.

Does that help to answer your questions?

Whats the most valuable thing you've learned since starting

It would take me a minute to figure out the definitive number one or two thing. But one thing I think is really misunderstood is how much effort and resources are put into growing a fan base behind the scenes so it looks organic.

An example of this actually isn’t from the music space but my first insight to this was when I was contracted to help work on building a YouTube page.

The page was run by 2 guys who I had met in the music industry (one used to make music videos) and they decided to make a YouTube page with funny skits. They started out just releasing videos and kind of waiting for things to happen. Once I started working with them, I wanted to really track everything. And so we did a data audit and I started looking at a lot of things around who was actually watching these things.

The page started off growing pretty slowly until one video became fairly popular (the video later received a cease and desist because of copyright infringement). And just from looking at the data, it was possible to see pretty early on that this video was performing better than the others. And so we poured a pretty substantial amount of money into targeted ads for that particular video. Since we had already done the data audit previously we had a pretty good sense for who would like the video and that helped the video really skyrocket in terms of popularity.

But the weird thing is that from there the channel still didn’t have that many followers (it was around 10-20k if I recall) but we got an invitation to join a private fb group. And the fb group had a ton of creators inside and there was a large set of rules in terms of how the group operates. For example, when a new video is posted, everyone in the channel would have to like and comment on the video within a certain period of time or you’re kicked out of the group. And other rules like that. And these were channels that just seemed like the most personal, organic creators. And there’s a lot of groups out there like that.

And once we got into that group, we started getting access to more and more. Networking became a lot easier. We continued to pour money into targeting the fans who were already loving our work. Etc.

The channel is now at over 1.3 million subscribers since it was started a few years back.

So I think in summary the two things I realized are:

1) Having your data in one place and organized can be the difference in making critical insights and missing them. It is crazy how granular you can get.

2) Almost everyone you see that looks to be an organic, grassroots success probably isn’t. However they sure try to create that impression.

And if I could add anything else, it would be to just keep creating and find your own clarity as a creative. I talk a lot about marketing and promotion and all of that, but if you don’t have a clear sense of clarity for who you are as a creative, your marketing efforts or whatever you do are probably not going to work well.

Two quick examples of that:

1) going back to the YouTube channel from above, they started out by making all kids of videos. Artsy funny videos, more elaborate skits, etc etc. and just by scrolling through their page, they were all over the place. And they enjoyed making all types of videos but what we noticed is that a particular type of video was by far the best received. As a creative, that’s a weird position to be in but it really helped them to see how scattered their potential audiences were and they felt that by doubling down on killing one niche, they could have success and that’s what happened. Not always but sometimes data can be a very helpful tool for understanding at least what directions people are really gravitating towards

2) an example of someone not following that advice is a rapper I worked with from New York. He had a pretty substantial following (15-20k followers when I started) and was pretty connected in New York scene (I got to go to some pretty dope meetup parties in ny through him). But his music was just all over the place. One song he’s making a drill ish song. The next he’s on some 90’s production and just rapping bars. Then he’s on other stuff etc. and because of that lack of clarity and focus, it was really hard to build any consistent campaign around him.

Every time we find something that works in terms of an audience that likes his work, he’d do something totally different and we’d be starting over. I left that partnership after it became apparent that he just wanted to do his own thing and he’s at the same ish position he was in when I left now. which is totally fine. Artists can create whatever they would like. However he was wanting to grow his audience and fan base etc not just create stuff and that’s where we ran into issues. His manager still reaches out frequently.

So I would just recommend trying to find as much clarity and focus in the early stages as a creative and even though it sounds cheesy, building out an identity profile or something of that likes can be a game changer. I can probably dig up some old templates I have if anyone is interested

Hey Man! Would love to follow you on instagram if possible! I looked up Maven Media on google and tried to go onto the website but the domain was currently down!

here's my instagram just in case!

instagram.com/kaleabsamuel

word, lmk and ill hit up on IG!

i just followed you! we recently changed our domain and branding to mavenboost to better reflect what we're doing. follow back and we can chat on there

hey our instagram is @mavenboost. if you follow, i'll send you over some things!

I don't think you can DM here, but the sentiment is appreciated regardless

fam, i have to connect with you lol

my IG is @onlyfeathersworth ... gonna give yall a follow.
i read all your above posts and would love to pick your brain bro

music is dead

I just sent you over a message! hit me with any questions

also what's your IG?

Sorry fam
I'll hit u up soon! Been busy

can i get your email? i'm a creative director for an independent artist and i'm definitely interested in hearing more about your service

hey, send me over an email at lawrence@​mavenboost.io. I'd love to chat.

thanks!

sent you an email, but just realized i forgot to put a subject line so it might end up in your spam

i got it! i'll respond today

/ Tips / Trends In Networking? How Can I Build More Industry Relationships?