Mathematics Articles From Ozone Magazine

New Blogs and Updated Wendy Day sites...YAY!

2011-10-01T17:14:00.001-07:00

I've just set up two new blogs through my websites. They are a blog where I'm posting ALL of my articles (in one place so there aren't 5 article archive sites with articles, just 1....and that blog is:

www.rap-coalition.com

And then I've set up a personal blog where I talk about life and music industry stuff (everything BUT articles I've written)...and that blog is:

www.WendyDay.net

Also, my new eBook dropped today and you can get it here:

Amazon.com Widgets

360 Deals ARE Today's "Record Deals"

2011-01-21T00:43:00.001-08:00

By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

I gotta state right upfront that I am biased against 360 Deals. I understand WHY they exist, I just find them unfairly oppressive in the label’s favor in an industry with a draconic history of jerking artists out of money. I stopped negotiating deals for artists in 2005 because I refuse to do a 360 Deal for any artist! How strongly do you have to hate something to stop your own income over it?

In the early 2000s, the music industry went through a severe change. Music sales plummeted, the importance of the internet reigned supreme, and there was an influx of artists into the industry causing an over saturation never seen before. It’s gotten worse, not better, for the major record labels.

Once used to a healthy profit margin that afforded grand lifestyles for those at the top of the food chain, the major labels became disgruntled as sales dropped while they missed the boat on less profitable digital sales. Taking on the role of dinosaurs fighting for survival, they tried everything from stopping the new digital revolution, to fighting it, to suing it, to band wagon jumping too late. Nothing worked for them. And they still haven’t learned from their mistakes—they still continue to fight the ways the consumers want to receive their music.

So to justify their continuing existence, they decided to take an even larger share of the pie from the ONLY aspect of the equation that they controlled—the artist (or the “content” provided for digital download). Back in the day, labels took roughly 87% of the pie while giving the artists 12% of the money AFTER the artist paid back everything spent on them from that 12% share. This means that if the artist sold $500,000 worth of CDs, and it cost $50,000 to market and promote that CD (a very low example), the artist share of $60,000 (12% of $500k) would be divided between paying the label back that $50,000 and a check for the remaining $10,000. The label would receive $490,000 for its investment and belief in that artist while the artist made $10,000. In exchange for giving up the lion’s share of the sales, the labels always told the artists that they’d make 100% of the touring. Any show money, was the artist’s to keep!

When the shit hit the fan financially for the labels, they decided to tap into the show money, and all other streams of income for the artists, as well. After all, if your profit margin is made smaller, you need to eat more of everyone’s income to keep the fat cats at the top, and the stock holders, happy. Most 360 Deals share in endorsement income (15% to 30% depending on the artist), performance income (10% to 30% depending on the artist), merchandising income (20% to 50%) and Film/TV money (15% to 40%). Before I go any further, I have to thank the good folks at Warner Bros Records for leaking me a major label contract for an artist’s 360 Deal. This enabled me to write about REAL contracts instead of just what I’d heard from lawyers, artists, and label folks.

How do labels justify taking an even BIGGER share of the pie from artists? They complain that they are doing all of the developing, investing, marketing, and promoting. Their argument is that they believe in the artist when the artist has nothing, and they feel that assuming the lion’s share of the risk should result in sharing in a lion’s share of the profit. If the label is developing and building the artist to a level of super stardom, they feel they have the right to share in a percentage of everything that super stardom affords the artist. So if they drive the artist platinum, they feel they should get a piece of the tour that came from the fame the label helped the artist build, and a piece of the endorsement deal or film income that came from the fame that the label helped build. I guess I could see this argument better, if I actually agreed that the labels did their jobs well of building artists.

I have a different vantage point of record labels. I see major labels based in tall glass buildings in NY and L.A. that have little interaction with the streets, fans, or the artists. I see them sign artists that have already started to build a buzz or sell music themselves, and then I see them sit back and let the artists’ teams continue to do much of the work themselves. I don’t see major labels taking much risk with their artists, but do continue to put them through a system that is almost an outdated cookie cutter version of how to sell CDs. The labels rarely interact with the fans and are quite out of touch about what the fans want or are willing to buy. They seem to create this assembly line of artists who all sound similar and fit a certain format at radio. They seem to throw a lot of music into the marketplace and work whatever catches on quickly and easily. Most labels do what’s best and easiest for the label, not what’s in the best interest of the artist. Now, in a way, it’s very unfair of me to make this sweeping generalization, because there are some amazing people who work inside of major labels and really go all out for the artists. But I find these people to be the exception, not the norm, and I also find them to be frustrated most of the time because they constantly have to fight with their bosses and the status quo to succeed on a project.

I also find that competitor labels usually hire the best people away from the labels who are experiencing some success, thereby breaking up the synergy within a team once they all learn to work well together. This is why a label like Def Jam or Universal could be so strong in the late 90s and yet be struggling to succeed today. I find that artists rarely look at the teams working at labels and just fiend for a record deal no matter the success of the label or who’s at the label (staff or other artists).

So labels got further away from the fans, the staffs got lazier or more frustrated (perhaps more work for less pay?), the artists took less risk because there were more of them and they were just happy to have a record deal, and the fans started expecting music for free because they could just download it if they didn’t feel like paying for it. Major labels continued reducing spending, slashing budgets, cutting pay, and signing “sure things” (whatever that means). And to justify the spending they were still doing, they decided to offer deals that cut into more of the artists’ income. The argument was that out of 50 artists signed to their label, only one was successful and funding the 49 losses. No other business on earth has such a backwards business model. Imagine if Ford built cars and accepted the fact that every model but the Taurus was meant to be a loss leader, and that the Taurus sales had to make up the loss of every other brand under their umbrella. Huh?

Or imagine if banks lent money for mortgages expecting 99% of the mortgages to default, and 1% of the mortgages were expected to make up the bank’s profits that year. Further imagine if each homeowner paying back their mortgage didn’t actually get to keep ownership of the house after their mortgage was paid back! The bank’s argument would be that they took all the risk on the house, so they should get to retain ownership. The people that lived in the house would still have to pay for all the repairs and upkeep, but the bank would own the house. That’s how the music industry is built. And the folks at the top with the most to lose are the ones fighting to keep this backwards system alive.

People ask me all the time what I think is wrong with the music business. I would like to blame our troubles on the greed of major labels, the proliferation of bad music that the fans don’t seem to want, or the free downloading of (stolen) music. But the truth is that if the artists didn’t agree to these incredibly bad deals, there would not be incredibly bad deals. If a bank existed that kept ownership of your house after you paid back your mortgage, you would never do business with that bank. Yet all day, every day, there is a long line of artists willing to sign their lives away to record labels because they don’t understand, or possibly don’t know about, the consequences. Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe the need for fame overpowers the need for money…until they realize they aren’t making money but someone else is. I find that it takes artists 3 to 5 years to realize they are getting jerked. In that time, a lot of money is lost and one or two things happens: either the artist is replaced with a new artist willing to make less money, or the artist has enough value to renegotiate their deal and share a larger piece of the pie. Sometimes, they even start their own labels and repeat this onerous process with their own new, unknowing artist! They got jerked, so they turn around and jerk someone else.

But back to 360 Deals. This new model will exist until artists are willing to say “no!” and I don’t see any signs of that happening. What I do see happening are artists becoming more entrepreneurial, and instead of signing to major labels, I see them finding their own investors and building their own teams who can help them succeed. There are enough laid off employees of record labels who’ve experienced some success out here to hire to run and work at indie labels. There’s a huge void in the marketplace to deliver the kinds of music fans want…and that’s not just one kind of music.

What I learned from both the buzzes of Drake (lyrical mainstream artist who’ll succeed at radio) and Gucci Mane (not-so-lyrical street artist with gutter stories and experiences to share) is that fans still want music. Major labels are still slow to respond to the needs of the streets and the internet is only speeding up and splintering demand further. There’s still a market for good music that the fans want. Our job is to give it to them. And if we do so with a fair and equitable split of the profits, the artists can build lifetime careers and we can all make money!

I hear the artists who sign 360 Deals say that they feel they have to sign these deals because the label won’t work their projects if they don’t give up a bigger split. I hear the artists say they want the labels to help them land endorsement deals, major tours, and TV Shows and film roles—but I’ve yet to see a major label do this. Let’s be realistic, these major opportunities go to the biggest stars and the ones who apply themselves directly in those alternate areas. If you hire a film agent, and take acting lessons, you may get increased roles in film and TV. If you increase your fame through music sales, your endorsement opportunities increase. Beyonce landed a Revlon contract because she was a star, Revlon did not make her a star. How many new artists are the major labels building to be stars? In 2009, it was Taylor Swift and Susan Boyle out of all of the releases that came and went. And neither of them were developed by the major label system—one was a product of an indie label and the other a product of a TV show. The majors had access because they did deals with middlemen and then applied their systems behind those movements that were already happening. Maybe that really is the job of a major label in today’s environment.

In my opinion, a 360 Deal is an excuse for a major label to take a bigger piece of the pie without doing any additional work. It’s insurance on their part. If the artist does blow up by chance, it gives them more opportunity to make a bigger cut. And that’s just smart business. I guess if they called it what it really is, I’d be less annoyed by it: the price of doing business with a major label. If they played a bigger role in building overall success, I’d be happy to see them share in a bigger piece of the pie at the end of the day.

Example of a “360 Deal” Artist (this is not an actual artist example):

Male rapper based in Atlanta with a strong following. He has his own team of inexperienced friends and family around him and a very strong street following. The DJs, fans, other artists and industry are supporting him and propelling him forward. With no real single or CD in the marketplace, demand is high—he’s getting $30,000 a show and performing three or four times a week for the past few months. This will last about 6 months, approximately. He’s put out a series of mixed CDs, for free, over the past year. The label signed him a year ago to a 360 Deal but hadn’t begun to promote him yet because their roster was full. The artist got tired of waiting and began putting out a new mixed CD every month to build his buzz.

Advance: $75,000
Album Budget once popularity increased: $350,000
Recoupable Marketing and Promotions: $750,000
Monthly Show Income: $420,000
Endorsement Deal: $50,000

Album comes out and sells a total of 350,000 copies (it was a very commercial album but the artist had been very street, almost gutter, up to the point of his album release so fans didn’t really embrace the album as expected).

Album income for label: $3.5 million
Artists’ Share after Recouping: negative balance of $405,000
$750,000 + $75,000 = $825,000
12% of $3.5 mill = $420,000
$825,000 - $420,000 = $405,000
Artist’s endorsement Deal Share: $37,500
75% of $50,000
Artists Share of Touring Income: $1,764,000
70% of $420,000 x 6 months
Artists Share of Publishing Income (50%): $100,000 (estimate of mechanicals and ASCAP/BMI royalties)

Income for Label: $4,773,500 gross income on an investment of $825,000
$3,500,000 sales
$405,000 recoupment
$12,500 endorsement income
$756,000 tour/show income
+ $100,000 publishing income
$4,773,500 gross income
Less Staff costs
Less Day to Day operating expenses
Less Taxes

Income For Artist: $1,122,375 income
$37,500 endorsement income
$1,764,000 tour income
+$100,000 publishing income
$1,901,500 sub total
-$405,000 recoupment
$1,496,500 gross income
Less 20% management fee
Less 5% Business Manager fee (Accountant)
Less Tour costs/legal costs/tour manager/DJ/Operating expenses/taxes

Let’s compare gross incomes…
Artist made 1.5 million while label made 4.7 million
Artist share: 24%
Label share: 76%

Let’s compare Net incomes before taxes…
Artist made approximately $1 million while the label made approximately $4.5 million
Artist share: 18%
Label share: 82%

If the label is taking all of the risk (they are not), putting up all of the money in all of the right places (they are not), devoting all of their attention to this one artist (they are not), and doing most of the work (they are not), then this business model makes sense for everyone involved. But if the artist is doing the bulk of the work, risking their career in the hands of the label, and coming out of their own pocket for many expenses, then this business model is hugely skewed in favor of the major label.

Perception Is Reality

2011-01-21T00:42:00.001-08:00

By, Wendy Day (www.WendyDay.com)

One of the most difficult parts of being in this industry, is accepting that perception is reality. What people THINK is true, IS true to them. Let me explain. If you think an artist is wack, he is wack. Even if 2 million screaming fans buy his music, you still think he’s wack. It would be difficult for anyone to convince you otherwise.

To millions of Americans, Michael Jackson was a pedophile, OJ Simpson was guilty and his all-star legal team beat the system, Obama is a Muslim socialist born in a foreign land (that’s just too funny), and Tupac is still alive. Proof or no proof, the belief is there. Their perception is their reality.

This mindset travels into business as well. If a record label thinks an artist is a good risk, has a strong buzz, and is talented, they will sign that act. But if the label thinks otherwise, that artist doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting a deal unless he or she does something to change the perception. So whether an artist has real talent or not, has never been of much relevance in the music industry—it’s the perception of talent that matters. Labels chase perceptions, because that is what’s accurate and real to them. If Waka Flocka is the hottest rapper on the streets of the south right now, then labels will scramble to sign him, work with him, and look for other artists like him. Perception is reality.

Once you understand this simple concept, it makes it far easier for you to move forward in the music industry.

If you are looking to get a good record deal, one that could actually lead to some longevity and success in the music industry, you will need to change (or control) the perception that labels (or those with money) have about you. If the perception is that you are a star, then you are a star. If the perception is that you are surrounded by a team that doesn’t understand the music business, then you don’t understand the music business.

When I have shopped deals in the past for artists, I always focused on changing the perception to be what we needed it to be to get the deal done. And for the most part, I did so with artists who were talented and could back up their 15 minutes of fame with some real artistic value. I learned this lesson very early in my career when I was shopping Eminem.

In 1996, I went to speak on a panel at an event in Detroit at the Athenium Hotel (I think it was called Music Mecca). I had driven there from Chicago with a rapper called Rhymefest, and there was a whiteboy rapping outside in a cipher that ‘Fest immediately recognized as hugely talented. Eminem was one of the best lyricists I had ever heard, but he was white and I knew the stigma of white rappers. Back then, the industry was just recovering from Vanilla Ice, a pop sensation that had a lot of money and promotion sunk into him, but he was later found out to be “pre-fabricated” (therefore not real), accounting for a huge loss to the label and industry as his career plummeted into obscurity.

So my perception of Eminem was that he was an incredible talent, but it would be hard to get a label to sign him. Enjoying a good challenge and being a little crazy, I offered to shop him a deal. For nine months, I took his package around to the labels trying to get anyone to see the value in his lyrics and ignore his skin color. Slowly some progress was made, and The Source Magazine covered him in the Unsigned Hype column (the holy grail for any unsigned rapper at the time, yet a small percentage of rappers covered in that column actually went on to have successful rap careers so the perception at the labels didn’t change much) and the Lyricist Lounge monthly showcase in NY embraced him. At that time in the industry, labels were less excited about an artist’s lyrical prowess, and more excited about the hype and buzz surrounding them. I knew that if we were going to get Em a deal, we’d have to change the perception of white rappers and change the perception of lyricists in the industry. I also knew we’d have to get some CDs out on the streets to try and build/expand the buzz.

I wasn’t alone in recognizing Em’s talent. He had Paul Rosenberg (he was a brand new lawyer at the time trying to be a brand new manager) shopping him a deal, a production company I never met or spoke with called the Bass Brothers, and a guy who owned a magazine named Mark who is outspokenly bitter about being cut out of the equation early on by Paul, Em’s manager. I have no idea whether he was or wasn’t, as he was gone by the time I started shopping Em’s deal. Truth is, I dealt as little as possible with Em’s team, just reporting back to Em or Paul regarding my progress, or lack thereof.

To shift perception, I put together an event called RapOlympics. My plan was to showcase lyricists in a competitive atmosphere and get M-TV and BET to cover it. If it became a hugely talked about event, it would showcase lyrics in a positive light while bringing attention to the best of the best—the winners. With RapSheet Magazine, a handful of volunteers, and the best lyricists in the country, I pulled it off in Los Angeles in 1997. I took a wicked financial loss (sadly, not my biggest one--Twista was the biggest financial loss I ever had in this industry), but my plan worked. Lyricists were brought into the spotlight (it wouldn’t last, unfortunately), Dr Dre signed Eminem to what I thought was an above average deal for a new artist, and fans of lyricists were encouraged that talent mattered once again.

I recall this story for you only because a few days ago, the manager of an unsigned group with a strong buzz called me to ask for advice getting his group signed. They had offers on the table, but the offers were low and were 360 Deal offers. He felt they weren’t in line with what the buzz and hype of the group warranted. He was 100% correct. As I called around to label presidents on another project, I struck up conversations about this hot group to see what the perception was, and every label had similar comments. The perception was that the team behind the group made bad business decisions, and once signed, the label feared this team would negatively impact their ability to make money. Their distaste ran so deep that most referred to the lawyer and manager by name, something labels rarely do. So the offers were low enough to counter this risk. It’s very hard to reposition disbelief in a team. It was especially frustrating to hear because I found their manager sharp and intelligent—the opposite of what the labels’ perception was.

Although I never voiced my opinion, I felt the only real way to counter this perception was to change the team (or the illusion of who the team was with a new manager and a new lawyer that the labels would respect, while keeping the old team involved behind the scenes). Or, create a new outside offer from an investor that would be higher than all of the low offers from the major labels. This would either drive the price up at the Majors, or give the group a deal within the price range they felt was worthy of their situation with an investor. I see many deals lost or lowballed because the labels don’t respect the manager, the lawyer, or the negotiator. In 2005, I did a deal at Motown for an artist whose lawyer received an offer for $350,000 and 15 points in August. It was the only label interested in the artist, so raising the stakes would be nearly impossible. The artist found out the lawyer wasn’t well respected at that label, fired him, and hired me. Within 30 days, the artist was signing a deal for a $650,000 advance with a 50/50 split on the backend—a far better deal. Perception is reality, so make certain it’s always to your advantage.

Behind The Scenes

2011-01-21T00:40:00.000-08:00

By, Wendy Day

To those outside of the music industry, the business of music appears easy and available to all. It’s not. Part of what has led to this mistaken impression, is the amount of idiots that work in the music business (or pretend to work in the industry but really just keep busy all day accomplishing nothing real or of value). As people outside of the industry watch the spate of reality shows based around the music industry, or meet these idiots who appear to be employed (but are working for free or slave wages), the mindset becomes “hey, if he can do this, then so can I.”

People enter this industry each year by the thousands thinking they understand it and have access, but they really don’t. To me, it’s not damaging until folks try to enter with funding, because more often than not, they end up wasting it, trusting the wrong folks, and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of a few short months. Very few of you actually read articles like this or meet people with legitimate strong track records of success, in order to build a successful career.

Fortunately, all of the excess bodies come and go very quickly. Very few people have the dedication to take the beating of the music industry (financially, emotionally, and mentally), nor do they have the staying power to work for the few pennies tossed to them by those in power. The reality of the music business, is that those at the top make millions and those at the bottom work for free (and rarely, if ever, make it to the top) and every one in between is scratching, clawing and stepping on each other to become the ones at the top. Most never do. [If you are a history buff, see “share cropping” for a historical reference you can apply to the music business psychology.]

For every one person that succeeds, hundreds fail.

The major labels depend upon artists and their teams not knowing or understanding how the music industry works. They encourage ignorance so they can take advantage financially, after all, if an artist has a knowledgeable team, the label makes a smaller share of the pie. I’ve even seen members of the artists’ own teams keep the artists ignorant and away from legitimate established people just so they can protect what they see as their cut. Just this week, I watched an Atlanta lawyer who is not well-respected tell a group he represents not to hire an outside person to shop or negotiate their deal, when he had tried and failed twice himself. The major labels have no respect for the group because their team appears stupid. He seemingly was protecting his own fee over doing what was best for his group that could potentially be superstars if they had better advisors. Someone will sign them for cheap and squeeze out the manager and lawyer within a few months, and steer their own choices in place. For the record, no label should ever have input as to an artist’s manager or lawyer, as those positions are naturally adversarial to the label. In a perfect world, you want someone the label respects, but isn’t employed by the label or too close to the label.

I’ve put together a list of some of the things you can do, and avoid, to properly prepare for your foray into the music business, or to strengthen what you’ve already built during your stint in this snake-filled industry.

1. DO THE RESEARCH – Watching BET every day (or American Idol) does not qualify you to work in this industry. Read all the books, and study the websites and blogs every day to learn who’s who and what’s going on behind the scenes in the music industry. Follow the behind the scenes folks on Twitter, not just the famous artists. See who they talk with frequently, what they say to each other, and what issues are important to them. Ask questions (specific ones like “how do 360 Deals adversely and positively affect artists in today’s economy?,” not general or selfish ones like “how do I get started in the music business?”, or “how come you never return my calls?” or my personal least favorite one: “Follow me back!”).
2. DO VOLUNTEER OR INTERN – Very few people enter the music industry without doing some free labor of some sort, unless they start their own businesses. Working under a legitimate, well connected person in this industry can be more valuable than any money you could have ever been paid. Even if you decide to start your own management company, record label, or be a publicist, it’s important to gain some knowledge, connections, and experience in this business prior to going out on your own. Hey, P Diddy started as an intern.
3. DO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS – This is a “who you know” business. You need to build real and lasting relationships with people. The bulk of paid work and opportunities that you get will be referred by someone else. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of paying jobs I’ve helped people get in this industry—not because they asked me to do so, but because someone mentioned they needed a road manager, or marketing person, or good publicist, or radio promoter, and I’ve plugged in folks I know and respect. I don’t hook up friends, I hook up people who are right for the job. They tend to go further in positions and make me look good for recommending them.
4. DO NOT BURN BRIDGES – I have burnt a lot of bridges in this industry, but they have all been well thought out, planned, and as a last resort. This is an ego driven business and there’s nothing worse than insulting someone and then finding yourself in a meeting with that person years later needing something from them.
5. DO NOT ASSUME – There’s so much that goes on in this industry behind the scenes that you can’t possibly assume you know what’s going on. When you are at the Barbershop talking about why an artist got shelved or signed, you look stupid for speculating. If you’re at a party talking about the latest rapper getting arrested based on what you read on the internet, you’re an idiot.
6. DO NOT ALWAYS BE “ALL ABOUT THE MONEY” – being fiscally smart is a good thing. Always attaching a price to everything you do will get you left behind. Even the top folks at the most successful companies have their pro-bono and spec projects that they work on strictly for the love. If you are seen as being all about the money, you will gain a reputation of being a “culture vulture,” and those who are willing to pitch in and work free on special projects or special events will surpass you in their careers.
7. DO SURROUND YOURSELF WITH LEGITIMATE PEOPLE – This industry is really just a minute big. We all know who the fuck boys (and fuck girls) are. If you are so desperate to get into this business by working for or coming up under a scumbag (artist or company), expect to always be seen as a scumbag. And if you end up working for a snake because you didn’t know any better, too bad! See #1 above.
8. DO BE LOYAL, BUT NOT LOYAL TO A FAULT -- Loyalty is one of the most important traits in this industry (or in life). Misplaced loyalty is not. You can do the right thing, but if you do the right thing in loyalty but for the wrong person, you can really get burned. I’ve seen people take bullets and razor cuts for their team, but then watched the team not make a call, pay a hospital bill, pay for funerals, fund the bid, or even visit the family. Be loyal to those who will be loyal to you in return.
9. DO NOT BE BLINDED BY FAME – Fame is attractive and intoxicating. Do not trade your money or dignity for fame. It is fleeting, short lived, and those who have it will try to fight to keep it (but never succeed)—even at your expense. Just being “down” with an artist doesn’t make you famous or rich. It makes you just another groupie. And when you leave that camp, even though you’ve moved on, the stigma of you selling out to be a groupie stays forever. See any famous sidekick for proof of this fact.
These are just a few thoughts to help you move forward in your career in the music business, behind the scenes. Truth is, maybe ten people reading this out of all of the tens of thousands will still be in this industry next year, and maybe one or two will really succeed.

Changing Times

2011-01-21T00:39:00.000-08:00

By Wendy Day

OK, so writing this article is the first productive thing I’ve done since I got my iPad. It’s crack to me. I’m so addicted to my iPad apps. I can’t get any work done. And I’m gonna have to take out a loan to pay for all of these expensive ass apps I am downloading onto my toy! The apps on my iPhone were 99 cents to $3.99. The iPad? The business apps are $9.99 and up. Games and books and shit? $4.99 and up… crazy. But I’m officially addicted. I have to pay to play.

Which brings me to the internet and technology... The playing field has been leveled. The price of recording equipment came down so anyone could record songs at home without having to spend a lot of money to record in a 64-track studio. Then, with the social networking sites, artists could go direct to fans and promote. With companies like TuneCore.com, artists can upload from home, and digitally distribute their music while collecting the bulk of the income from the sales. Could it get any better than this?

But here’s the downside: the internet with its relatively free access has led artists to believe that this is all they need. And that message was welcome news to most ears because—well, let’s face it, artists are almost always broke. So when led to believe that all they need is to upload their shit to the web and promote for free from home, they ate that up!! And still do. Unfortunately, it has made any internet millionaire artists in the music industry.

This thinking of “oh, that’s easy, I can do that,” spawned an entire new generation of people who jumped head first into the industry. This not only included artists and producers, but anyone who was able to invent a job within the music industry and look important. People able to copy news and information from the major hip hop web sites became bloggers and started blabbing their personal opinions and called themselves “sources.” Anyone able to collect email addresses and press send on a mass email became email blasters (for a fee). People with the ability to email bloggers and websites started calling themselves publicists and charging for it even though they lacked the relationships, skills, and experience to get successful placements for their clients. The more enterprising scammers toured the country doing seminars and showcases for a fee, as if they were the New Music Seminar meets American Idol. Except they taught next to nothing useful in the real world, and gave artists little more than experience performing in front of other artists, for a fee.

On the social networking sites, like Twitter, people with no experience and no access gained instant access to the inner circle of the music industry. You can “friend” or “follow” Julia Beverly, Puffy, Steve Rifkind, and every star and convince yourself you have a relationship with them. You can retweet what they say, or repeat it in an e-blast and lead others to think you have access and inner knowledge (reminder: you don’t).

Industrious folks quickly learned they could sit at home and surf the web in between computer games and would call it “grinding.” They could print up business cards and charge other unknowing folks who jumped into the industry to publicize them, promote their music, buy beats or hooks, subscribe to their eblasts, and pay good money for a variety of useless and ineffective services. Up sprang a cottage industry of conference calls, record pools, DJ coalitions, award shows, and seminars.

So an industry already rife with bullshitters and scam artists went into hyperspeed. Intent on making money off of artists’ dreams, these less than experienced “fuck boys” (including women) started promoting themselves and their services as if that’s what it took to succeed in this business. Only, they were wrong.

Even Souljah Boy, who is credited with being the first rap artist to use the internet effectively to promote, didn’t build his career solely by promoting on the internet. He got out on the streets and promoted to actual living people, as well as utilizing the internet to its fullest extent.

The internet has almost single handedly wiped out the need for retail stores and CDs. So what all of this created was an industry that was over crowded, inexperienced, and full of shit. It made it next to impossible for anyone to make a living doing music. It became overcrowded and saturated. The ancillary services were reduced to a few very talented people and a sea of bungling idiots. Many, many people lost large sums of money banking on the wrong people to help them.

But the Internet and technology aren’t the only things that negatively impacted the music industry. In the mid-2000s, the labels caught on to 360 Deals, and instituted them like they were fresh air. Not only wasn’t anyone getting a deal or being promoted at the label level unless they agreed to and signed a 360 Deal, but they became the new industry standard.

360 Deals impacted the industry quickly and heavily. Because the labels were now partners in every revenue stream possible for artists, the focus switched from building a career to making the artist a pop icon as quickly as possible. For example, where it took TI four albums to go from street rapper to pop radio superstar, and Young Jeezy three albums, Gucci Mane tried to do it in his first major label release. Labels became keen to drive their artists to urban radio and into the domain of pop radio so they could quickly impact tours and endorsement money. A rapper with a hit pop record could transcend into film, tv, endorsement, bigger touring opportunities, etc. It became about the financial split instead of about building a sound career with a foundation. Artists have become disposable. When the fans grow tired of Eminem (or he ages out of the target demographic), there’s Fergie and Black Eyed Peas to pick up the dollars. If and when Black Eyed Peas sales start to lag, the label can impact with Lady Gaga. It’s a constant cycle of filling the label’s coiffures. VERY smart business. Very damaging to the art form of music.

And since I’ve mentioned touring, let’s talk about how that has changed for the worse. When new artists were coming up (like Yo Gotti, Plies, Jeezy, Lil Wayne, etc) there was a market for artists to make $5,000 to $10,000 a show. Up and coming artists who had developed a street buzz could make a living doing shows. When I first met Yo Gotti, he was doing very well for himself performing for $3,000 to $5,000 a show, three or four nights a week. He could eat, his manager and his team could eat, and it helped to build his reputation and buzz with fans and with the industry. He built a solid foundation.

In today’s economy, artists seem to raise their prices quickly, so they become more expensive than they can attract fans. Here’s what I mean: Nicky Minaj had a wonderful buzz. Before she had a single or an album to promote, the word was she was charging $16,000 a show. That is a wonderful thing, but here is the reality of that. In a smaller market, which is what makes up the bulk of America, to make a profit on a $16,000 show, the promoter has to have a venue that holds at least 3000 people willing to spend $15 or $20 a ticket. In a smaller market, there are very few clubs that hold 3,000 people and very few people who can afford a $20 ticket a couple of times a week. So newer artists go from being a regular feature in a small town to a once in a while event.

There was a point this past Spring where the show prices of artists either fell into the $1,000 to $5,000 range (Travis Porter, Roscoe Dash, etc) or the $15,000 to $25,000 range (Yo Gotti, Waka Flocks, etc). While I absolutely LOVE seeing artists get money, I can’t help but wonder what the promoters did who needed shows in the $5,000 to $12,500 range. Sadly, I know the answer--they stopped doing rap shows. They couldn’t make money. The artists who commanded the higher price point ended up doing spot dates in bigger markets, and couldn’t tour properly because the economics didn’t make sense. I worried about Gotti and Waka when their planned tour ended after just a handful of dates. Touring not only brings in income for the artists (and now the labels) but it also promotes the artist amongst the fans all over the US. Not being able to perform in Albany, GA or Columbia, SC, or Nashville, TN hurts the artists, the fans, and the industry as a whole.

So when I pulled up SoundScan last week, I noticed that very few rappers have gone Gold. The artists who’ve sold the most are the mainstream pop acts, the artists like Black Eyed Peas, Lil Wayne, Kanye, Rick Ross—the ones who’ve already built their careers on a solid foundation. The ones who no longer need the smaller markets or the smaller clubs to make a living.

Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel: bullshit comes to light very quickly and the folks that will remain after all of the dust settles, are the ones who were passionate enough to ride out the turbulence and stick it out. The artists savvy enough to think longterm and who realize that it’s better to work for 7 nights at $2,000 a night, instead of once a week for $10,000, are the ones who will have the staying power and the solid careers. The rest will fizzle out and go by the wayside. Natural selection at its best!

Mistakes Artists Make

2010-02-28T15:31:00.000-08:00

Mistakes Artists Make
By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

I’ve learned so much from mistakes—both my own and others’. Mistakes are NOT necessarily a bad thing (provided you can fix the situation when things go wrong), if one learns from them. The cool thing about mistakes is that it means that you are trying new things and taking action (assuming you aren’t making the same mistake over and over)! Here are some mistakes I have learned from and that I’ve seen others’ learn from—some are small errors in judgment and others are million dollar career killing mistakes. If this prevents one person from making one fatal mistake, it was worth the time it took to research and write it. Thank you to everyone who shared their painful stories to help others avoid the same pitfalls (I’ve protected your identity, as promised). These are in no particular order of importance…

Surrounding Yourself With The Wrong Team: If the best player in the NBA stepped out on the court alone, against the worst team in the NBA, the worst team would win. Why? Because they are a team working against one player. There’s a powerful force that occurs when multiple people come together with one goal in mind—especially if each person plays their role and stays in their lane. And teamwork is especially powerful if you have key players who are the best at what they do, all coming together to move forward towards one goal.

New artists don’t often choose the best teams. They often surround themselves with their friends and family who know very little about the music industry or how the business works. Whether due to trust issues or laziness in finding the right people, I’ve seen more careers end because an artist has trusted their careers to the wrong people.

There are people in the music business who are good at what they do, and even more who are not. Unfortunately, because it’s a “who you know” business, one’s popularity in the music business is not conditional upon being good at what one does. If an artist doesn’t do thorough research on a person to find out if their skill level is sub-par, they could very easily have a team member who sucks at what they do. For example, having managed a major recording artist is NOT a sign of aptitude, it’s a sign of access. Managing multiple recording artists successfully IS a sign of strong management skill.

A team consists of a manager, an entertainment lawyer, an accountant, a booking agent, and a publicist (I am the only person I know who includes a publicist as a mandatory part of the team, but if there’s no one broadcasting the artists’ moves and triumphs, no one will know). Since this is a “who you know” business, relationships, connections, experience, and aptitude are all important.

On the flip side, often artists choose the wrong people to surround themselves with and are outcast by the industry. This fact may be hidden temporarily while the artist is experiencing a little success or popularity, but it really shows itself down the road when there are no endorsements, limited media coverage, reduced shows (burn a promoter one time and your show money is affected all over), etc. Everyone will put up with a bullshit team while the artist is riding a hot record. But where it matters is on the upside or downside of that hit record, and this is where a strong team comes into play. This is the main reason why urban artists have such a short shelf life….they often have shitty representatives and terrible teams.

A contract can protect your rights, but it can also hurt you. It’s important to have a well-connected, experienced entertainment attorney look over everything before you sign it. It’s often what’s missing from a contract that can hurt you more than what’s in there. You need professionals on your side to advise you.

Indecision -Or- Jumping From Plan To Plan: Quite a few artists go from person to person in the industry seeking a quick and lucrative way into the industry. When one plan doesn’t seem to lead anywhere, or even before giving it a solid chance, they meet someone else that they think can advance them forward and they jump from person to person, plan to plan, or crew to crew. Aside from being exceedingly disloyal, it doesn’t make good business sense to do this. The best way to find a direction and plan for yourself that will work, is to learn as much as possible about the music business, devise a plan that’s best for your situation, and then move forward to enact the plan with the proper team. If you’ve given one plan a solid try and enough time to work, and it doesn’t, then it makes sense to rethink your plan and try another angle. But to jump from industry person to industry person alienates the folks who really can help you, and makes you appear desperate for success, thereby attracting to you all of the bottom feeders who may want to take advantage of your desperation. There are numerous paths to success in this business. Find one that works for you, make a decision, and stick with it long enough to see if it is the right path for you.

Waiting Too Long To Realize Something Is Wrong: As I am writing this article, I got a call from a major platinum producer who informed me that he was never paid his royalties on a number of #1 hits he had with a record label. I remember these hit records because they are classic records today, but they were in the early 1990s, which was almost ten years ago. My first question to the producer was: why did you wait so long to try and collect your money? “We were family,” he said, and “I was hoping I’d get more work from that label.” I won’t mention that the label eventually hired in-house producers and this guy hasn’t made a record for that label in at least 5 to 7 years. How long did he hang onto hope of more work?!

In law, there is a statute of limitations on everything including collecting back royalties, and except for a case of fraud (which is difficult to prove) an artist has a limited time to file a claim against their royalties due. That time can be anywhere from 2 to 4 years, and is stipulated in whatever agreement was signed at the time. Additionally, most artists and producers have limited financial resources for legal fees and filing lawsuits against labels that are international conglomerates with very deep pockets and lawyers on staff. It’s important to chase your money immediately—twice a year, every year. Royalties are paid in March and September of each year and part of your team’s job is to chase money due, audit regularly, and keep track of what’s owed and outstanding.

Do not let a label or powerful artist bully you. By speaking up for what’s due you, you are NOT hurting your career, not stopping more work coming your way, or creating tension. By not being paid properly, they are fucking you out of what’s rightfully yours. If the money isn’t coming to you, it’s going to somebody—you earned it, so collect it in a timely fashion.

Self-Destructing and Making Bad Decisions: This mistake is the most popular one I see artists, producers, and DJs make in our industry. I don’t have a solution for this one beyond getting your shit together as an artist and getting some professional help if you continually do dumb shit and can’t stop yourself. I most often see this occur surrounded by drugs and alcohol. The music industry is naturally a “party” industry and has a fun vibe. Most artists spend their time in clubs when they aren’t recording, so the influence is constant. But many artists take partying to the extreme-- to the point where they miss important events in their schedules, get arrested, exercise bad judgment, or do inferior work. I’m not saying not to have fun, or party. I’m saying that if you have to take drugs or have “chemical cocktails” on a regular basis, you are a junky (the industry seems to have a fascination with syrup, ecstasy, Viagra, pills, cocaine, and weed—and often mix them, hence the term “chemical cocktails”).

But self-destruction doesn’t just come in the guise of excessive partying. I’ve seen rappers have babies like they are accessories, spend more money than they make, fight to prove their “realness,” beef with people who ether them, make music that is outside of their lane, date the wrong women, do prison bids mid-career, die, not pay people properly, say or do dumb stuff publicly, etc. Self-destructive behavior comes in many forms. In my opinion, the goal in life is to be the best human being you possibly can be, and if you are a miserable scumbag that can’t even stand to be around yourself, it’s time to change some things about yourself. No time like the present!!

I have also seen artists make horrendous decisions about their careers—like a street rapper choosing to let his label bully him into making super commercial pop music. Or an artist has a very public negative event happen (a sex tape leaks, domestic violence, a drug overdose, and public fight or shooting, an arrest, etc) and doesn’t handle the situation immediately with qualified publicity firms that specialize in damage control. Exxon has a major tanker accident with the Valdez, killing the eco system and wildlife for generations and for hundreds of miles and recovers, yet you punch someone in the face or have a sex tape release and your career never recovers…. Mel Gibson gets arrested and spews anti-Semitic remarks in a drunken stupor in an industry where his livelihood depends mostly on Jewish executives and it doesn’t even dent his career, but you get into a verbal battle with another rapper and it ends your credibility and career? C’mon son… learn from others who’ve survived worse.

Not Understanding How The Industry Works: Back in the 80s and early 90s, I understood how artists got jerked. It was difficult to learn how the label system worked and hard to do any research on the aspects of the industry that effect artists. But in the mid-90s all of that changed with the internet. Today, anyone can research and find out anything they need to know about anyone or anything. Not understanding how this industry works is unacceptable for anyone considering a career in the music industry. So if you come into this industry just thinking you can rap, sing, make beats, or DJ and that’s all you need to know, you are an idiot.

You don’t get “put on” in this industry without getting pimped—so building your own buzz and leverage so you put yourself on is a good career move. A great connection doesn’t lead to a great career, but it does lead to making someone else a ton of money at your own expense. Sending out demos to record labels won’t get you “discovered,” but it will allow an idea, a beat, or a whole song to be stolen from you (even if you copyright your songs, so you have enough money to sue and enough proof that they took your song?). Promoting yourself at industry convention after industry convention doesn’t build your buzz with fans and people who buy records (the ones that REALLY get labels’ attention), it just makes people like me hug you a lot. Getting signed to a record deal isn’t a guarantee that your career will take off you will be successful. More people sign to labels each year than records come out by that label. Just because you have the funding to start your own label doesn’t mean you have the talent or know-how to do so. I’ve seen some mediocre artists spend millions of dollars to fail.

Take the time to study the industry, learn who the players are, and find out who’s on the teams behind each successful artist (this shouldn’t be difficult to do since so few artists are successful today). Attend industry events and actually network with industry people and attend the panel discussions instead of macking hoes or looking for your next boytoy. Read as much as you can about the music industry. Some great books are Confessions Of A Record Producer (Moses Avalon), Everything You Need To Know About The Music Industry (Donald Passman), Dancing With The Devil (Mark Curry), Hit Men (Fredric Dannen—this is a history book more than a how-to book), etc. Meet with as many successful people who are doing what you want to do, as will meet with you. Many won’t take the time for you, but many will. Build relationships with those who will.

A solid understanding of how publishing works, performance rights societies (ASCAP and BMI), and how to get a record deal, will prevent you from getting jerked out of money by others. A little bit of education goes a long way in this business. We can’t stop the huge amount of fuck boys in this industry who will try to steal your dreams from you to make a quick buck, but you can educate yourself so their pitch doesn’t make good business sense to you. You can keep yourself from being a victim.

Focus On The Talent, Not The Money: In the mid-90s, the music industry shifted from being about talent to being about money. It seemed to become the new dope game. Folks were trying to get into this industry to hit a quick lick, not because they wanted to impact music or propel the artform of Hip Hop forward. International corporations got involved, either as record labels or through endorsement opportunities with international superstar artists hawking their products.

Rather than choosing the best music or writers for songs, companies and even artists themselves began choosing people that were signed to them or their own companies to create for them. Rather than choosing the best producer to compliment a rapper, labels began choosing in-house producers to make the beats because the label would retain an additional 50% of the ownership, or get a kickback from the producer or writer of the song.

Some employees at companies quickly tired of seeing the money wasted by their employers and figured out enterprising ways to get a bigger share of the pie—they started secret production companies with the artists they signed, took big kickbacks from artists in exchange for record deals, signed artists and then cut out the teams and producers who got them where they were, chose producers based on kickbacks or co-ownership of the music, chose song writers based on kickbacks or co-ownership of the songs, etc. Even the artists started their own companies so they could eat off of the artists coming up under them—there’s a lot of money in being a middleman, especially if others are doing all of the work.

Measuring Success

2010-02-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

One of the many changing things in the urban music business is how we measure the success of an artist. Measuring Rap, R&B, Reggae, and even Dance music sales has always been challenging, and even though companies like the Neilsen-owned SoundScan claim to have been 100% effective, they were not.

SoundScan is a company that began measuring music sales in the early 90s by supplying willing music retailers with special scanners and software that counted and tallied up bar code (UPC) scans at the point of purchase (cash registers). Every Sunday night that tally would be automatically downloaded to SoundScan headquarters in White Plains, NY for publication the following Wednesday to subscribers with very deep pockets (the subscriptions are costly), meaning major record labels.

One of the problems with SoundScan is that it has never been able to measure EVERY sales outlet. Many of the independent retailers around the country, where the bulk of rap sales were happening in the 90s, were reluctant to have any counting system overseeing their business. Whether it was for tax reasons (did not want the IRS to know how much music they were really selling) or for business reasons (fear that a chain store would get their retail sales information and open a store directly across the street with lower prices thereby putting them out of business—which ironically happened anyway), many didn’t want to report their sales to anyone. It also didn’t count venue sales until somewhat recently—and they are self-reported, which means it depends upon the honesty of the person reporting.

To make up for this lack of accurate data, SoundScan weighted certain of the willing-to-report stores more heavily than others. This meant that when an independent store, in say St Louis, scanned one sales copy of a CD, it could count as four sold copies to make up for the area’s lack of actual SoundScan reporters. Additionally, many of the SoundScan stores realized early on that there was a business to be made of selling SoundScan scans to labels. Aside from being treated better by the labels because they were a SoundScan reporter (meaning promo dollars spent in their stores for key pricing and positioning campaigns), an economy of “seeding” sprung up around the country which caused labels to send extra boxes of CDs to retailers for additional scans for a price. Some would scan the chosen CD at the register daily no matter what other title was sold, while others would receive boxes of free product to scan throughout the week. Smart labels controlled the scans and made it appear as natural as possible, sometimes to have a big first week (hitting #1 on the Billboard chart was a sure way to garner extra press and attention which led to additional sales) and sometimes indie labels used this method to land a bigger deal with a major label.

Buying SoundScan in urban music (at least in the areas in which I travelled) became such a popular practice that when I was shopping deals at the major labels from 1995 to 2005, I used to separate out the SoundScan sales from the independent retailers, and if it was more than 15% of overall sales by the artist, I knew (and the major labels knew) they were buying SoundScan. I would pass on shopping those deals because I knew the Major labels would see the fraud and I didn’t want that fake shit to sully my otherwise stellar reputation for doing deals (I’m proud to say that I’ve done some of the best deals in urban music from 1995 to 2005 when there were good deals to be had). I was proud that my deals led to superstar sales levels (except two) and fake scans weren’t the way to achieve superstar status (at least not as an indie).

In the early years of the 21st century, however, I watched urban sales switch from a full length CD marketplace to a downloaded singles market. I also watched Best Buy and WalMart—the biggest music retailers become replaced by iTunes in importance and overall sales volume. I also noticed that the core rap fans were not really the active downloaders, the mainstream and pop fans were. So while 50 Cent and Kanye West were fighting illegal downloads, artists like Young Jeezy, Boosie and Webbie were still able to sell large amounts of CDs, especially in the South. I watched an increase of bootlegged CDs pop up at carwashes and swap meets throughout the ‘hoods in the South though, as CDs sold 3 for $10 in most cases, and as the RIAA resorted to suing college kids for illegal downloading instead of shutting down the shops with multiple burners to bootleg CDs. Music became “free” (or close to free) among an entire new generation of fans.

In a way, this shift benefits the indie artists who are out here selling their own CDs. Enterprising bootleggers don’t mass produce music until there is a mass market of sales, and the fans still seem to admire and support the grind of artists who sell their CDs hand to hand, or who travel from town to town promoting their music regionally. While artists and major labels all around me were complaining of bootlegging and lost revenue, I watched the TMI Boyz sell hundreds of thousands of CDs while on the road for almost 18 months straight. Very little of it was measurable by SoundScan.

But even with the inaccuracies in the SoundScan system, the urban music industry used to be able to measure the sales, the response to promotional and marketing efforts, and measure the buzz or hype an artist had. We could see it in the attendance at shows, merchandise sold, and CDs sold. More importantly, we could measure it by area. When I was managing David Banner and Twista, this was important because I knew what areas to target with shows based on sales data, radio spins, and buzz factor. And consequently, knew what areas to target to increase our sales, make sure product was heavy in stores in certain areas, and could target our campaign effectively around those key target areas (Banner was heavy in MS, Washington DC, IL, TN, AL, and GA; while Twista’s main fanbase was IL, TX, LA, MS, IN, OH, and MO).

When I met the guys from Trill Entertainment in 2004, we saw Lil Boosie’s and Webbie’s largest fan base was northern FL, AL, GA, MS, LA, and TN. It was easy to measure and track. The buzz was easy to measure as well, based on their show bookings every weekend and the sales of the indie CDs in the marketplace mostly in those key markets. When radio adds for Webbie entered the equation, it was a no brainer as to where we should go. We didn’t have to wonder where anonymous downloads were occurring, they weren’t.

Today that measurement process is more challenging. I noticed it when Gucci Mane got out of prison in March of 2009. He had a good buzz on the streets from dropping back to back mixed CDs and from OJ Tha Juiceman keeping Gucci’s name alive while he was locked down. But I don’t think anyone could have predicted the $30,000 to $50,000 per show booking price that he’d command almost instantly, with no album in the marketplace and no hot single at radio (this was months before “Wasted” hit radio). There was no way to measure his buzz prior to that. He was kept busy doing shows but still managed to record mixed CDs and keep music in the marketplace. Most of it was downloaded for free (by his choice) from websites and blogs that had become the way to receive new music. Fans at his shows could sing along, word for word. They didn’t need radio singles.

While his MySpace hits increased and his popularity on Twitter was apparent, there was no legitimate measuring system in place to gauge his media mentions, count the downloads (too many sites had music posted), track the shows and price increases, or measure the increase in success he was experiencing. His increased popularity also led to an increase in popularity of the artists surrounding him: Nicky Minaj, OJ Tha Juiceman, and Wacka Flocka Flame.

In today’s music business economy we have no real accurate (or even semi-accurate) way of measuring success for artists. With SoundScan tracking mainstream sales, only the mainstream artists seem to be faring well (Lil Wayne, Kanye, Taylor Swift, Susan Boyle, etc). Meanwhile, I haven’t heard a decrease of music coming from or playing in the ‘hoods of America. Even without SoundScan sales, kids are singing along to every Gucci Mane and Yo Gotti song during their shows (music is from their mixed CDs). They are listening to a larger number of unknown, independent, and unsigned artists than ever, and they aren’t getting the music just from the internet.

As this change is occurring, I’m watching folks who thrive on research and numbers scramble to count MySpace hits, Twitter and Facebook friends, downloads from myriads of websites and Blog sites (too many different ones to count), World Star and VladTV views, etc. Yet none of it is accurate. Software programs can boost numbers on the web as easily as SoundScan swipes could be duplicated at indie retailers in the 90s. Music magazines are becoming obsolete, so purchases of issues based on our favorite artists on the covers are becoming a thing of the past. I guess we’re going to have to let the fans tell us. And this means we need an even closer one-on-one relationship with the fans, the streets, and the internet. What was as easy as picking up SoundScan reports on Wednesday mornings is no more. Oh how I long for those days….

I guess the key, at least for indie labels, is to keep your eye on the sales and the relationships you are building with fans. Last week, Tom Silverman who built the Tommy Boy Records empire in the 80s and 90s (Afrika Bambaataa, De La Soul, Queen Lafifah, Naughty By Nature, Information Society, Coolio, House of Pain, Everlast, etc) and who owns the New Music Seminar, published a study at www.MusicianCoaching.com . He pointed out that in 2009, there were 1,500 independent releases in all genres. Of those 1500, only 13 releases sold over 10,000 units (that’s only $70,000 to $100,000 in wholesale sales). The #2 release was the label I consulted, TMI Boyz. They were the ONLY rap act on that short list of 13. And that list was based on the (inaccurate) SoundScan sales we tabulated at 30,000 CDs sold. While on the road for a year and a half, they sold 2 mixed CDs and a full length CD. Tom’s research was based solely on the CDs that were sold at FYE stores in the South. Since we weren’t focused on SoundScan, just on making money, we weren’t trying to have each sale counted. The bulk of sales were at shows, Mall parking lots, state fairs, flea markets, street corners, gas stations, car washes, high schools, clubs--anyplace where a mass of people were gathered so TMI Boyz could jump out of the wrapped van to make a sale. You may have never heard of them, but they made $1.6 million in sales in 2009. Isn’t that the best measurement of all? Besides, being #2 is good, too.

Scam Afta Scam

2009-11-30T07:36:00.000-08:00

Although I did not write this expose, I found it important enough to post here. We absolutely need to clean up our industry, folks....

SCAM AFTA SCAM: A TRUE STORY

OZONE investigates how a new breed of greedy artist managers and booking agents, led by Gucci Mane’s representatives, are sucking the blood out of the music industry.
by Julia Beverly (this article also appears in the upcoming print edition of OZONE Mag)

To continue reading in PDF format with images (recommended)
http://www.ozonemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ScamAftaScamArticle_lowres.pdf
To download plain text (no images), http://www.ozonemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/soicey.rtf
To comment on this article, http://www.ozonemag.com/2009/11/30/scam-afta-scam

“Johnnie [Cabbell] is the grand vampire,” proclaims legendary Chicago-based promoter Godfather. For over twenty years, Godfather has been promoting concerts through his company Star Power Entertainment Group. He estimates his losses from bad business deals with Johnnie Cabbell and Debra Antney to be nearly $100,000. “I don’t work with Johnnie anymore,” he states emphatically. “He sucks the blood out of you.”
As the CEO of Hitt Afta Hitt (otherwise known as HAH), Johnnie Cabbell is Gucci Mane’s exclusive booking agent and also manages Bankhead rapper Shawty Lo. Johnnie’s “partner in crime,” Godfather says, is Debra Antney, who describes herself as Gucci Mane’s “business partner and manager.” As CEO of Gucci’s So Icey Records and the management company Mizay Entertainment, Antney also oversees the careers of OJ da Juiceman, Nicki Minaj, and others. Multiple promoters from across the country allege that Cabbell and Antney have collaborated to defraud them collectively of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

THE SO ICEY TOUR

Scheduled for at least 12 cities in July 2009, the So Icey Tour was supposed to feature OJ da Juiceman, Nicki Minaj, and the headliner, Gucci Mane. It sounded promising. Gucci’s buzz was at an all-time high. He had just returned home from prison a few months earlier to ecstatic crowds at “Welcome Home Gucci” parties throughout the South. His artist/protégé OJ had been steadily building a buzz of his own and helping to keep Gucci’s name alive by flooding the streets with mixtapes and fresh material. They were both hot commodities. And in an industry nearly void of female artists, up-and-coming emcee/sex symbol Nicki Minaj was quickly building a name for herself, strengthened by her affiliations with Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane. The timing seemed perfect.

But by all accounts, the “tour,” organized by a Carolina-based promoter named Shannon Marshall, was a mess and fell apart almost immediately. None of the artists showed up for the first two Florida dates (July 4th & 5th), leaving veteran promoter Mr. CC (who, like Godfather in Chicago, has been successfully promoting concerts for over 20 years) with losses of over $140,000. He claims that nearly half of that money, around $70,000, is in the hands of Cabbell/Antney, who refuse to return the deposits or reschedule his dates.

On July 19th, 2009, midway through the scheduled tour dates, Soulja Boy tweeted, “My nigga Gucci back in jail. Free Gucci.” (right) Rumors quickly spread that Gucci had again violated the terms of his probation and was back in jail (or rehab). Although Gucci’s management and label denied the rehab rumors and it’s still unclear exactly where Gucci was in mid-July, it’s clear where he wasn’t: He wasn’t on the So Icey Tour. Of the 12 scheduled tour dates, OZONE has confirmed that at least six, but probably more of these shows (Jacksonville, FL; Pompano Beach/Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Louisville, KY; Chicago, IL; Baltimore, MD; and Detroit, MI) never happened, leaving furious promoters demanding refunds.

That’s a less than fifty percent success rate. “People get fired for those type of numbers in baseball,” laughs Baltimore attorney Paul W. Gardner, of the Gardner Law Group. Gardner spoke to OZONE on behalf of his client, who also lost “a significant sum of money” by booking the So Icey Tour for a stop in Baltimore on July 18th, the day before word of Gucci’s alleged re-incarceration leaked on the ‘net.

“[About] four days before the event, [Cabbell/Antney] said that [Gucci] might not show up,” says Gardner. “Later we found out it was because he was in some sort of rehab facility.” Gardner declined to reveal the exact amount of the deposit, but based on other promoters’ experiences, it is reasonable to assume his client’s total losses were in the range of $40,000-50,000.

When Gardner’s client attempted to reschedule the date, So Icey suddenly changed their story. “They said, ‘How can we reschedule something we don’t have the [deposit] for?’” he laughs. It’s a theme that is repeated over and over in other promoters’ stories: after months of contracts, wire transfers, and conversations, Cabbell/Antney suddenly played dumb, either pointing the finger at each other or hiding behind a complex web of multiple contracts with middlemen.

The So Icey Tour dates were officially contracted through two other entities: reputable New York-based booking agency Ujaama Entertainment, and the much less reputable third-party agent Shannon Marshall. Both of them apparently kept a small percentage of the deposits as a booking fee before sending the bulk of the funds to Cabbell/Antney, presumably to secure all three artists. Because of the complicated paper trail, most of the various promoters’ attempts to legally retrieve their deposits have been difficult and thus far unsuccessful.

“I’m not sure if it’s on purpose,” notes Attorney Gardner, “but [the way the contracts are written up] are very nasty and sinister. It’s multi-layered. From a legal standpoint, when someone does something wrong to you, you can sue that person. Person A sues Person B; laymen understand that [concept]. But the problem arises when a middleman is included and the person on the backend does the harm. Person A has to sue Person B to get to Person C, but in this situation, Person B’s contract says ‘You can’t sue me.’ With the [So Icey Tour] contracts, Person A is the promoter. Person B is Ujaama [and/or Shannon], Person C is Johnnie, Person D is Deb, and E is the artist.” For this reason, he explains, proceeding with a lawsuit is both a difficult and costly endeavor. “Because of the difficulty of the third-party situation, I have to prove which party has the money,” he explains. “Or maybe it’s all of them.”

Complicating the matter even further, the agents’ contracts state that they cannot be sued in the event of a breach of contract. Although this clause is standard in most booking contracts where the agent is only a broker for the artist, Gardner advises his clients to cross it out before signing. “You can’t do business with people you can’t sue,” he says. “It’s legally impossible.”

Ujaama’s attorneys have advised them not to comment on the matter due to pending litigation. Shannon Marshall, who did not return numerous calls for comment, appears to be in hiding. Most of the promoters interviewed have not been able to reach him at all since the cancelled tour dates. “I guess Shannon was a guy that got caught up with them thinking they were good businesspeople over there at Mizay Entertainment and found out they weren’t,” theorizes Godfather. “They were double-booking shows and Johnnie was taking all the deposits.”

Unanimously, the disgruntled So Icey Tour promoters say their money vanished into the hands of Cabbell and Antney. Although the initial deposits were wired to Ujaama, most of the promoters have seen confirmed wire transfer receipts that verify the money ended up in Antney’s bank account. Many have done business with Ujaama for years and never experienced similar issues. “I’ve dealt with Ujaama [before] and never had a problem, so if they say they [sent] the money to the next person, I tend to believe them,” adds Attorney Gardner, who compares the scenario to the sleight-of-hand shell game (left) practiced by street magicians. “It’s like being on the beach and watching the guys with the coconut shells. We just don’t know whose hand is on the coconut.”

“I’ve had a great relationship booking artists with Ujaama for over ten years and I really didn’t wanna get into a legal battle with them. [In the past,] if [an artist] didn’t show up, Ujaama promptly refunded my money. But this? This is a nightmare,” says a frustrated Mr. CC. “I’m out so much money right now that I don’t have a choice. Legally, I have to sue Ujaama. Then Ujaama has to sue Shannon, who disappeared, and then Shannon’s gotta sue Gucci’s management.”

Godfather, while emphasizing that his Ujaama representative Dave Nelson is “a good dude,” blames the fiasco on Cabbell/Antney. “[Ujaama] did a good job of trying to sit down and work the [So Icey Tour] situation out, but [Johnnie and Deb] didn’t want to. If you had $300,000 in deposits, would you want to ‘work it out’?” he asks. “Who’s going to come down to Atlanta and mess with an old lady and go to jail? That’s why you have to sue [Deb]. Everybody else is suing her too.”

Attorney Gardner agrees that hundreds of thousands of dollars appear to have vanished. “The one [deposit] my client sent was a significant sum, and if you multiply that by a 10+ city tour, that’s a hefty bill they have to return. Somebody has the money and can’t repay it,” he reasons. “I don’t know if it’s Johnnie, Deb, or Ujaama. We don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes, but what’s in the dark always comes to light. If my client decides to sue, we will get to the bottom of it. Multiple defendants always end up telling on each other.”

MODERN DAY SLAVERY

While it’s clear that Ujaama, Shannon, Cabbell, and Antney all received a piece of the So Icey Tour pie, it’s unclear how much – if any – of the initial hundreds of thousands of dollars in show deposits actually went to the artists. It appears that none of it went to OJ da Juiceman or Nicki Minaj, and it’s questionable how much the headliner Gucci received, if any.

Chicago-based John Mosley of Power Move Promotions, a.k.a. John Doe, believes Gucci received little or nothing of the upfront deposits. Since 1997, Mosley has been successfully promoting events in Chicago, Miami, and Atlanta with artists like R Kelly, Jeremih, Twista, Too Short, Gorilla Zoe, and Plies. He partnered with Godfather for the Chicago So Icey Tour date. Although he didn’t reveal the source of his information, Mosley claims that Gucci is locked into a 360 deal with So Icey/Asylum/Warner, and a good portion of the initial show deposits goes to the label, So Icey, which Deb controls. “Gucci Mane is a slave, man,” says Mosley. “Call him and ask him how much of the [show deposits] he’s actually getting.”

360 deals, which are the norm in today’s digital music world, guarantee record labels a percentage of their artists’ revenue from many different sources, including touring. A high-ranking executive at Warner Music Group wouldn’t disclose the exact terms of Gucci Mane’s deal, but did confirm that 360 deals are now standard. “All new [record] deals are inclusive to everything [including a percentage of show monies]. It’s a full-fledged deal,” says the exec. If true, it would appear that large portions of the show deposits (the 50% upfront) are being pocketed by Cabbell and Antney, and the artists themselves don’t get paid at all until they actually show up for the show and receive the back-end money – which could explain why Cabbell/Antney don’t appear to be too concerned if the shows actually happen.
Another source familiar with 360 deals at WMG doubted that Warner itself would have received a portion of the show deposits, stating that the artists’ performance revenue isn’t closely monitored by the major label.

Regardless, “I’m sure Gucci never saw any portion of the deposit,” insists Attorney Gardner. “The artist [only] gets the back end when he shows up [to the show]. I’ve seen it [in other situations]. The label tells the artist, ‘You have fees.’ It’s just business. If Gucci owes them $10,000 for bottles or flights or jewelry, they’re gonna take 100% of what’s owed out of the [deposit].”

FEDERAL FRAUD

The most sinister element of the scenario is the fact that it appears Antney/Cabbell continued accepting show deposits throughout much of the Fall 2009, fully knowing that Gucci would not be able to leave the state of Georgia. They allegedly told one promoter that they were simply “hoping” the judge would clear Gucci Mane’s legal obligations.

According to Attorney Gardner, conspiracy to commit federal fraud (which can bring both civil and criminal charges) “involves two or more people coming together to fraudulently take someone’s money.” Accepting deposits and signing contracts for show dates that legally cannot happen is fraud, and money has been wired across state lines, potentially making it a federal offense.

Taking it a step further, Gardner implies that Gucci himself could be liable for criminal fraud charges, even though he didn’t personally sign the contracts. “The state [of Georgia] already has Gucci [imprisoned], and the Feds are licking their chops to get him on something,” notes Gardner, who is also advising his clients to demand that artists personally sign booking contracts in addition to their management. “If you want to hire Gucci Mane, there should be one page with Gucci Mane’s signature saying, ‘I know about this date, and I agree to be there.’ Tie him into it legally.”

Attorney Gardner notes that both he and his client had previous dealings with Deb, before her stint as Gucci Mane’s manager, which were “extremely positive.” So although his client is not currently pursuing criminal charges, Gardner adds, “I wouldn’t play with it [if I were them]. I’d say Johnnie, Deb, and Gucci need to meet and figure out where the money is, [because] any attorney that really wants to spend some time on this could make things interesting for them.”

PITTSBURGH, PA

Even if Gardner’s client chooses not to go that route, it appears that Pittsburgh attorney Jim Cook, who represents promoter William Marshall of B. Marshall Productions, is preparing to “make things interesting” for Deb and Johnnie. Marshall, along with his partner Derrick Brown of Rock Star Entertainment, invested nearly $50,000 for two Gucci Mane dates that never happened. Their pending lawsuit alleges that “[Radric ‘Gucci Mane’] Davis/Cabbell/Antney have continued to book shows, take money from other associates & clients, refuse to return deposits or lost promotion expenses, and reschedule show dates, although they are/were aware that Gucci Mane is not allowed to leave Georgia..thereby committing a state and federal fraud.” In addition to a civil lawsuit on behalf of Marshall, Cook is threatening to turn the case over to the Pennsylvania Attorney General and the FBI for investigation into criminal fraud charges.

In June 2009, Marshall wired $27,500 to Hitt Afta Hitt and So Icey Entertainment to book Gucci Mane for a show on August 22nd, 2009. He also spent an additional $13,500 to begin promoting the show and secure the venue. About a month later, in mid-July, Marshall heard the rumors of Gucci Mane’s imprisonment and immediately contacted Johnnie and Deb, concerned about his $41,000 investment.

On August 5th, Deb and Johnnie assured Marshall both verbally and in a written letter on HAH letterhead (below) that the show was “in good standing” and would proceed. They also offered similar assurances to G. Rowell, an associate of Marshall’s in Washington D.C. who had another upcoming Gucci Mane show. Based on these guarantees, Marshall continued spending money to promote the event. Just two days before the scheduled date, he was notified by Deb that Gucci Mane would not attend. She refused to return his $27,500 deposit or cover any of the $13,500+ he lost promoting the show.

“At no time would Cabbell/Antney explain Gucci Mane’s confinement or restriction or the length thereof, and both were aware that Gucci Mane could not make the Pittsburgh or DC show dates when they issued the letters [on August 5, 2009],” Marshall’s pending lawsuit continues.

Several weeks later, Marshall was issued a new contract for a rescheduled date and guaranteed a video drop to help salvage his reputation in the city. Video and/or audio drops are typically used by promoters on radio or TV commercials to prove to local fans that the show is legitimate (for example, “Hey, this is Gucci Mane, and I’ll be in Pittsburgh on November 7th!”) After two months of waiting for the video drop, which was never received, Gucci was again a no-show for the rescheduled date.
“Why are [they] continuing to book shows and Gucci Mane doesn’t have movement yet?” asked Godfather, during our interview in late October. “What if the judge says no when he goes to court?” It appears Cabbell/Antney continued scheduling dates for Gucci, including Birmingham, AL, Chicago, IL (Nov. 19th), Lakeland, FL (Nov. 28th), and Houston, TX (Dec. 27th), even as he was legally unable to leave the state of Georgia.

And as it turns out, the judge did say “no.” On November 12th, 2009, Gucci was led away in handcuffs from a court hearing and sentenced to twelve months in prison (he may only be required to serve six months; his lawyer, Dwight L. Thomas, is optimistic and told MTV News that Gucci could possibly be released as soon as the first of the year with good behavior).

The second paragraph of Marshall’s contract with Hitt Afta Hitt explicitly states, “In the event that Artist fails to appear, 100% of the show money is guaranteed to be refunded to the Purchaser.” But despite the written guarantee, as of press time, Marshall has not been refunded the $27,500 deposit that Cabbell/Antney have held for over six months, not to mention the money he lost on promotion, the credibility he lost as a promoter, and the money he could’ve made had he invested those funds elsewhere.

FLORIDA

Around the same time B. Marshall sent his Pittsburgh deposit, Florida promoter Mr. CC of Mr. CC Productions (right) says he wired $105,000 to the Shannon/Ujaama/Cabbell/Antney collective to secure three consecutive dates on the So Icey Tour - July 4th (Pompano Beach), 5th (Jacksonville), and 6th (Orlando). According to Mr. CC, his contract with Shannon Marshall – who then had contracts in turn with Ujaama, Cabbell, and Antney - stated that the total $55,000 fee was all-inclusive, meaning that CC was not responsible to pay additional travel expenses (OZONE was not able to obtain copies of these contracts and was therefore unable to verify the specifics of the travel arrangements).

On July 4th, says Mr. CC, “I spoke to Shannon the evening of the [first date] and he said [the artists] were on their way.” He never heard from Shannon again and the artists never showed up. Frantic, he tried to contact Ujaama, So Icey, and Hitt Afta Hitt – and the following day, no one showed up for the second date either.

By the time Mr. CC finally got in touch with Johnnie, he says, word had spread that Gucci and co. were no-shows for the tour dates. “[Johnnie] told me the artists didn’t come [to Jacksonville and Pompano Beach] because we didn’t send them travel money,” reveals Mr. CC, who says that his reaction was one of shock. “’Travel?!? My contract doesn’t say anything about travel. It’s all inclusive. It’s stated specifically in our contracts!’ They said my contract [with Shannon] was wrong.”

Johnnie told him the only way to make the Orlando date happen was to send $10,000 – that same day – for travel expenses. To salvage his name, Mr. CC paid the $10,000 immediately and Gucci and OJ did perform in Orlando on July 6th (but no Nicki Minaj – Johnnie refunded Mr. CC only $3,000 for Nicki’s no-show, while during the same timeframe, he was charging promoters upwards of $7,500 to book her). The previous no-shows, CC says, seriously hindered the turn-out. “We lost $30,000 in Orlando,” he sighs, noting that the local crowd didn’t think the artists were coming. “Those other two Florida no-shows directly affected the Orlando date.”

“Johnnie and Deb admitted that they did receive the [deposits] for all three dates. No one ever called me [prior to the shows] about travel [expenses],” insists Mr. CC. “Not once. They had all my information and nobody called me, so I had no idea [that travel was an issue].”

Between the $30,000 loss in Orlando, the $35,000 Jacksonville deposit, the $35,000 Pompano deposit, and an estimated $40,000 he spent securing venues, radio commercials, flyers, and other forms of promotion, Mr. CC calculates his losses to be over $140,000. And on top of that, he alleges that Johnnie personally robbed him of an additional $5,000. “I said, ‘Look, man. I just need those two makeup dates because I’m out a lot of money. I’ll deal with the travel,’” recalls CC. “He said if I sent him a $5,000 [booking fee], he would work it out for me. He didn’t work it out, and now he refuses to refund my $5,000. He’s lost his damn mind, because I’ve never heard of that in my life. Holding money for a booking fee for an event that never happened?”

CC even agreed to pay the additional $10,000 travel fee per date, even though he says it wasn’t included on his initial contract, just for the opportunity to try to recoup some of his losses. “I just want my damn dates!” he exclaims. After months of getting the runaround from Johnnie, who insisted that he would reschedule, the story suddenly changed. “Now he’s blaming it on Ujaama and Shannon. He’s saying, ‘We didn’t get paid for travel, so it’s a breach of contract. We don’t have to give you back your money.’”

“I guess I have to do a lawsuit that includes everybody,” sighs Mr. CC. “I have to go after all of them for my money and let the judge decide who’s gotta pay. Somebody’s gotta pay for damages – potential earnings and the losses I incurred while going through all of this.”

JOHNNIE CABBELL

Cabbell told Atlanta newspaper Creative Loafing, which briefly investigated the fraud allegations, “I’ve been doing business since 2002, and I never [before] had a problem with any promoter.” But OZONE found plenty.

“If any promoter deals with [Johnnie Cabbell], [it’s because] they just don’t know. I’m not gonna do business with him ever again. I’m done,” says Mosley. Several promoters didn’t want to speak on the record to avoid “burning bridges” or damage pending dates, but many have a negative impression of Cabbell as a businessman. One word that kept coming up over and over again: “disrespect.” And phrases like, “I just don’t like his attitude.”

At worst, Johnnie Cabbell is conspiring with Debra Antney & co. to commit federal fraud. At the very least, he’s a liar, according to promoter Jesse Peak (left).
“That whole camp is fucked up. Johnnie is someone who continually tells you he’s gonna do something and then doesn’t do it. He promised me 200% support [on my show],” says Peak, who followed up a successful Plies show in Orlando by booking Gucci Mane in New Orleans in May 2009. In early 2009 when he sent a deposit for Plies [to his booking agent Coach], he promptly received a phone call with a voice drop, an email with eight pre-recorded studio drops, and met Plies at a local radio station to film a video drop for promotional TV commercials.

Impressed with Plies’ camp and their professionalism, he then contacted Gucci Mane’s agent expecting the same courtesy. “I told [Johnnie], ‘This is what I expect from you.’ He promised me radio drops as soon as I sent my deposit. They promised video drops so I [paid extra] to book TV commercials,” recalls Peak. But after sending his $21,000 deposit, weeks went by with no response. Finally, HAH directed him to the Mizay/So Icey office, where he also spent several weeks calling with no response.
“Once Johnnie gets your money it’ll be at least a week before he picks up his phone again,” concurs Godfather, who also never received drops for multiple Shawty Lo shows before his attempted Gucci Mane booking. “Johnnie must be busier than damn [Barack] Obama,” snorts Mr. CC. “I have to call eight or ten times before I can get him on the phone, and he’s always ‘busy.’”

According to Peak, his show’s turnout suffered without drops to add credibility to the promotion. “The city of New Orleans thought it was a fake [Gucci show], just some bullshit, because I didn’t have any [drops].” Also, when he brought the balance of $17,500 cash to Gucci Mane’s road manager G-Boy on the day of the show, he was told that he had to pay an additional $3,500 for travel or Gucci Mane would not perform. Peak’s contract does state that he was responsible for travel – however, he claims that So Icey/Hitt Afta Hitt never told him the cost or details of the travel even after repeated calls to their offices inquiring.

Some people have successfully booked shows through Cabbell. “We haven’t booked Gucci Mane, but I haven’t had any issues dealing with Johnnie Cabbell or Hitt Afta Hitt when I’ve booked Shawty Lo through them,” states Amy Jurkofski of Atlanta-based booking agency The Music Group. Tallahassee, FL promoter Willie McKenzie, who booked Gucci Mane to perform at Florida A&M University’s homecoming this past October, received his deposit back (from a third-party booking agency, not Hitt Afta Hitt) when Gucci was unable to perform due to his legal troubles.

If there’s one thing Johnnie has done right, it’s lock down a niche in a previously untapped market. While Hollywood actors and actresses have a wide selection of agencies to choose from and New York-based acts or major pop/R&B artists are often represented by established agencies like the William Morris Agency (WMA), ICM Talent, or Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the recent explosion of Southern rap left a void waiting to be filled. At least in Atlanta, Cabbell helped fill that void by representing many of the smaller acts that sprang up.

“Johnnie came to me for advice on how to do [bookings],” says Coach of Florida-based Direct Connect Entertainment, a reputable agent who has been booking shows for over 15 years. Currently, Coach is Plies’ exclusive booking agent (pictured at left together). “I’m not saying I trained [Johnnie], but I kinda lectured him on the business when he first started out,” Coach recalls. “And as far as what he does [now] I’m not 100% pleased, and he knows that. He’s never put me in a bad position, but I’m hearing stories from other people saying that he has. He’s never done me wrong, I guess because of his respect level for me or because he knows I wouldn’t tolerate that type of behavior.”

Pittsburgh promoter B. Marshall agrees. “[Johnnie] does a lot of deals with dope boys because he knows they won’t go the legal route. He wouldn’t try to pull some of these moves on [someone like well-known Atlanta promoter] Alex [Gidewon of AG Entertainment] because he won’t get away with it.”

Some of Cabbell’s affiliates defend him. “I think [Johnnie’s] reputation comes from being a hard-nosed businessman,” says South Carolina DJ Chuck T. “He’s known for having crazy ass riders… but he’ll bring in one of the lesser-known groups he fucks with and have them open up. So basically you get a good deal on booking artists but at the expense of bringing one of his new artists and paying for their shit.” Marcus “Rip” Rippy, of Hoodrich Entertainment, echoes the same sentiment. “I’ve seen Johnnie at work and I can understand why some people could feel the way they do. But the truth is that he goes hard for his artists. They are his top priority.”

California-based DJ Nik Bean (left) disagrees, arguing that Johnnie’s bad business practices hinder his artists more than help them. Billing himself as “LA’s Mixtape King,” Nik Bean has toured with Cali up-and-comer Glasses Malone and worked with many other West Coast favorites like Daz, Kurupt, and Nipsey Hussle. Prior to the BET Awards in June 2008, Nik says, he contacted Shawty Lo to inquire about doing some work with him as a DJ.

“[The experience] changed my perception of [Shawty Lo],” says Nik, bitterly. “I liked his music but [dealing with Johnnie] made me question him. Like, ‘Why are you doing business with this guy?’ I can’t say anything bad about Lo, but I’m not doing no more business with Johnnie, period, point blank. And I’ll make sure he can’t do business out here [in L.A.].”

As Shawty Lo’s manager, Cabbell asked Nik for a favor. “[Johnnie] was like, “We’re gonna be out there [in L.A.] for the BET Awards. Set something up for me; get me some money,” recalls Nik. “I made some calls and got the ball rolling on a situation for him to make some show money.” As other promoters got involved, Nik sensed things getting too complicated and backed away. “I was supposed to get some money off the show but the situation got too sticky. I saw too many sharks in the tank, so once I realized I was gonna get screwed, I’m not a professional booker, so I just said ‘fuck it.’”

Johnnie agreed to “make the situation right” with Nik by promising him a Shawty Lo verse for his digital album. Shawty Lo got his money for the LA show Nik set up, but Nik never got his verse. “I had everything ready,” recalls Nik. “I had Glasses Malone do the hook, and we put the beat together. We left an open verse for Shawty Lo. The song was custom-made for him, ‘Concerns of A D-Boy,’ right up his lane. Johnnie promised me, ‘I got you. No problem,’ and I assumed that since he’s Shawty Lo’s manager, it was official. I didn’t think people would do business like this; it just didn’t make sense to me. I would think an artist of that caliber would have the sense to have a decent manager.”

After the BET Awards, four months passed. Nik called Johnnie’s phone repeatedly only to hear, “Yo, I’m in a meeting.” “He kept bullshitting me; I heard the same thing four or five times,” says Nik. “I could smell the bullshit from a mile away. How many ‘meetings’ could you have?”

Nik never received the promised verse. “I told Johnnie, ‘Don’t ever come back out here [to L.A.],’” Nik recalls. “It’s not a [physical] threat, but I meant, ‘Don’t try to [break] no records here.’ There’s other people in the game like [him] too. I guess I’m too nice. If I ever get wind of Johnnie trying to work a record out here, best believe I’m gonna try to shut that shit down.” While it might appear a minor incident, Nik felt personally insulted. “I was so mad because I helped him make money in my city. It’s disrespectful and foul.”

Personally, I’ve had my share of problems with Johnnie. The first was a feature I booked for Shawty Lo for an independent label. Johnnie quoted me $10,000 and I set up the deal for $12,000. I sent the record and the paperwork to Johnnie’s email and waited several weeks as he continually assured me that Shawty Lo would get the verse done. When I later learned that Johnnie had contacted the artist directly after seeing their name on the paperwork and charged them $12,000 for the feature, pocketing my commission, I confronted him. He claimed to not know that it was the same feature I had set up – even though I had emailed him the record three weeks prior. I reluctantly gave him the benefit of the doubt and let it slide.

Then, I booked Shawty Lo to host a party at Las Vegas nightclub Prive on a Monday night with Johnnie’s explicit assurance that he would perform two songs from the DJ booth to satisfy the club’s expectations for the event. I was awakened at 5 AM East Coast time on the night of the event to a conference call/screaming match between Johnnie, the club’s manager, and one of the club owners – a huge mess which went on for hours until Shawty Lo calmly took the phone from Johnnie and agreed to fulfill the requirements of the date. Problem solved. The manager is supposed to fix things for the artist – not the other way around.

Diamond, who was a standout member of the group Crime Mob (represented by Cabbell) before launching her solo career, feels that Deb, not Johnnie, is primarily to blame for the bad business. “I’ve heard of [promoters] having situations with Johnnie, but when I was dealing with him, he was about his business. I haven’t had problems with him myself. It’s about 50/50. I know some people that don’t fuck with him and some people that do fuck with him,” says Diamond. “But I don’t deal with Deb at all and I don’t wanna ever deal with Deb. I’ve heard her attitude is fucked up and her business is fucked up. I’ve never heard anybody have anything nice to say about Deb.”

DEBRA ANTNEY

Often confused as Gucci Mane’s “auntie” because of her last name, Debra Antney is actually not a blood relative of the rapper. She is, however, the mother of up and coming So Icey rapper Waka Flocka Flame (pictured at right together). 49-year-old Deb made the unlikely transition from a non-profit organization called Rah Rah’s Village of Hope and popped up on the scene as Gucci Mane’s manager after bonding with him at a charity event a few years ago.

And yet even with a background in non-profit and charity organizations, many people who’ve dealt with her question her integrity. “[Deb] is the ringleader behind the desk,” says Godfather. “She’s got everybody by the nuts. She’s robbing everybody over there [at So Icey/Mizay], and Johnnie is her partner in crime.”

Some evidence appears to corroborate this. Although most of the promoters’ anger is directed at Cabbell, it appears that bad business practices existed in the So Icey/Mizay camp long before Cabbell/HAH got involved in March 2009. A high turnover rate within both entities and poor communication between the two appears to have only complicated the existing problems.

ROCKFORD, IL

A year ago, in the fall of 2008, Gucci Mane’s asking price was $15,000 plus expenses. Illinois party promoter Yungwaun (left) booked him through So Icey/Mizay for $17,500 plus expenses – a premium rate for a holiday performance. Gucci was scheduled to perform in Rockford, IL on Halloween (October 31st, 2008). Yungwaun sent a $10,000 deposit along with several thousand dollars for travel, secured a venue, and began spending money advertising the show.

“No one ever [contacted me] to let me know that he wouldn’t make the date,” he says. On September 12th, 2008, a month and a half before Yungwaun’s scheduled show, Gucci appeared in court for a probation violation hearing. Various websites reported that Gucci, who had been convicted of assault in 2005 and sentenced to probation, had failed to meet his required community service hours (he was required to serve 50 hours a month and had only clocked in 25 hours over a three year time period). In addition, he had reportedly tested positive for ecstasy, marijuana, and alcohol during a random drug test. The judge revoked one year of his probation and sent him to jail.

Concerned, Yungwaun contacted So Icey/Mizay to find out the status of his show deposit. Severe Green, a So Icey employee, told him that it was not her responsibility to handle his show because the original person he dealt with at the company had already taken a commission and no longer worked there. After repeated inquiries, Severe assured Yungwaun that the show would move forward as planned and advised him to continue promoting, but he was skeptical. “My investor said, ‘No one’s gonna come because [they know] Gucci is locked up,’” says Yungwaun. “It’s all over the internet.”

Two weeks before the scheduled date, he was officially notified that Gucci Mane would not be attending. Naturally, he wanted his money back. But So Icey/Mizay refused to refund Yungwaun’s $10,000 deposit, first claiming that the “force majeure” clause in the contract released them from the obligation. According to Wikipedia, force majeure is “a common clause in contracts which essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, or an event described by the legal term “act of God” (e.g. flooding, earthquake, volcanic eruption), prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract.” Clearly, Gucci Mane popping pills, smoking weed, failing to do community service, and therefore returning to prison on a probation violation does not qualify as an “act of God” (continues Wikipedia: “force majeure is not intended to excuse negligence or other malfeasance”).

So Icey/Mizay held Yungwaun’s money for over six months. When Gucci Mane was finally scheduled to be released in March 2009, he says, “[Gucci] was so booked up [So Icey] wouldn’t even tell me when he was getting out.” Instead of scheduling a make-up date at his initial contracted price of $17,500, So Icey/Mizay tried to sell him a date for $30,000. “They told me I couldn’t get a date unless I paid the [difference of $12,500],” recalls Yungwaun. “I told them they must be out of their mind, because I had a contract.”

After months of back and forth, Yungwaun, who could not afford the $30,000 price tag, reluctantly accepted his deposit back – minus a $500 commission. “They kept the commission for a show that never happened!” he laughs bitterly. “They held my money for six months! They had $10,000 just sitting there. Plus I had [paid for] commercials and flyers. I lost the potential to make money; I could have made more [money] off the show than I spent.”

Around the time of Gucci’s release from prison in March 2009, So Icey/Mizay handed over the booking responsibilities to Cabbell and Hitt Afta Hitt. Due to a combination of factors (including OJ’s buzz, a slew of Gucci Mane mixtape material floating around, and an overall slump in the music business) the street demand for Gucci Mane had risen during his incarceration. According to simple economic theory, a combination of high demand and low supply (because of his unavailability) equals an increase in price. So during the span of his 6-month incarceration, Gucci’s asking price magically rose from $15,000 to over $40,000. And instead of honoring the previous contracts that had never been satisfied, So Icey/Mizay allowed Johnnie to double or even triple the original prices.

“There’s no way I would have charged [the promoters] more,” says Coach. “For their inconvenience, they should be charged the same price [as their initial contract] or even given a discount. When an artist fails to show, not only is the [promoter’s] name and character at risk, but [the promoter] has incurred a lot of advertising expenses. The radio money, the flyer money, the street team, the venue rental…he’s not gonna get any of that money back. So there’s no way he should have to pay more, because he already lost [money] the first time the artist didn’t show. The booking agent’s responsibility is to get all the money that was sent [for the deposit] returned.” Beyond that, Coach says, the promoter would have to sue the artist directly for breach of contract to attempt to recover funds lost on promotional expenses. “Some [promoters] have won [additional monies in a lawsuit] for damages when the artist couldn’t give a legitimate excuse for not being there.”

CHICAGO, IL

Less than a hundred miles away, promoters Godfather (right) and John Mosley (below right) experienced similar drama when they teamed up to bring Gucci Mane to Chicago, IL in the fall of 2008. Their contract was for $15,000. Since Gucci Mane was incarcerated on the date of the scheduled show, So Icey/Mizay promised to reschedule. Mosley estimates that he had to call So Icey at least 200 times before they finally confirmed a make-up date.

After the make-up date was confirmed and they had been advertising for four weeks, Godfather says, Cabbell suddenly tripled the price. “[Johnnie] called and said someone else wanted the date [for a higher price],” Godfather recalls. “I don’t care that his stock went up. That’s why you invest. I lost over $15,000 [on the deposit and promotions] and they held my deposit for a whole year!”

Johnnie threatened to book a show with another promoter in the same city if they didn’t agree to match the offer. “We were only supposed to owe $8,000 [on the back-end to So Icey/Mizay],” confirms Mosley. “But Johnnie got involved and said he was getting thousands of calls [for shows in Chicago] from promoters who want to give him $40,000, and we’re gonna have to match those offers, even though we already had a contract!”

Cabbell refused to honor the $15,000 contract, saying that Gucci was hot in the market and deserved more. Laughs Mosley, “Right! I made him hot in the market! They played his records on the radio because we spent so much money [promoting his show] with the station.”

To avoid losing the date to another promoter, Godfather and Mosley ultimately agreed to pay Cabbell $42,500 for Gucci Mane, plus a $10,000 travel fee – a total of $52,500, plus the money already gone down the drain on advertising and venue rental fees. Why did they continue spending money rather than demanding their deposit back? “I’ve been promoting shows for 20 years and in this market I have a reputation to uphold,” explains Godfather. “My name means more to me [than money].”

Almost a year after sending their initial deposit, the show finally happened in May 2009 and 5,000 people showed up. According to Godfather, it was the biggest show Gucci Mane has ever done (right) [as the headliner] to this day. Mosley says there was plenty of bad blood in the city from his previous no-show. “People were threatening [Gucci’s] life,” he recalls. “The things we went through even getting him into [Chicago] and on stage alive were ridiculous.” The promoters were able to recoup their previous losses (and, one would assume, turned a hefty profit).

Several days later, Johnnie called Godfather and offered him a date on the upcoming So Icey Tour. “He told me, ‘I apologize. Let’s do another date to make it right.’ He tricked [us]. He told us he had a tour coming and he was gonna show me some love,” recalls Godfather. In retrospect, he snaps, “If this is ‘love,’ I don’t want nooooo love from him ever again.”

Godfather and Mosley agreed to book a date on the So Icey Tour for $55,000, which was scheduled to take place on July 24th, 2009. They sent a $35,000 deposit for the artists, a $5,000 booking fee which went directly to Cabbell (“Johnnie thought I was trying to go around him [by dealing with Ujaama] and said I couldn’t do another show unless I sent him $5,000 cash,” alleges Mosley), and $10,000 for travel. But after wiring over $50,000, the promoters learned that all three of the artists on the So Icey Tour were booked on their date in various other cities – so they were forced to push the date back a week, to August 1st. “Johnnie just completely lied [to me],” says Godfather. “On top of that, he knew Gucci was scheduled to take a drug test three weeks before my show and he was high as a kite.”

“I found out Gucci was in jail on Twitter,” laughs Godfather. “Johnnie never called, management never called [to tell me he wasn’t gonna make my show]. Soulja Boy said on Twitter [on July 19th] that Gucci Mane was in jail, and I know him personally, so I was asking him not to say that because he was killing my ticket sales in Chicago.” Nicki Minaj, Godfather adds, was also posting “free Gucci Mane” on her Myspace and Twitter pages less than two weeks before their scheduled event. Meanwhile, Johnnie reassured Godfather, “Gucci is straight. He’ll be at the show,” but never sent the promised drop. Shannon stopped returning calls altogether.

Less than a week before the show, Godfather says, they suddenly changed their tune. “Johnnie is like, ‘Aw, man, I don’t know [if Gucci will be able to come].’ Then he says, ‘We’ve got a bunch of deposits. How do we know we have your [money]’? I’m like, ‘What?! We’ve been talking for months! I’ve got all kinds of contracts! So now you’re trying to say you don’t have my money?’ Deb plays like she doesn’t know what’s going on and hangs up.”

So Godfather retraced the paper trail: Ujaama received the initial deposits. Ujaama in turn wired money to Shannon, who then deposited the money with Deb. “I have definite confirmation that Johnnie and Deb have my money,” says Godfather. Having spent over $50,000 plus promotional expenses, with less than week before the show, he says, Deb or Johnnie didn’t answer the phone for three days. Finally, he reached them by calling three-way through one of Gucci Mane’s bodyguards and sent copies of all the contracts, paperwork, and receipts proving that the money was transferred to Deb’s account. According to Godfather, at that point Deb finally admitted, “I don’t know if Gucci can make that date.”

“This is four days before the event!” exclaims Mosley. “When we advertise an event in Chicago, we blow it up. No one has it on lock like we do. We’ve been promoting for six weeks. 100,000 flyers, [SMS] text blasts, Facebook [invites]. Gucci Gucci Gucci! Gucci’s coming! And four days before the event, they’re telling me he’s got legal problems. Are you kidding me?”

The next day, just three days before the show, Deb demanded an additional $3,500 “security fee” that was never previously discussed and was not included in the contract or rider. They threatened a no-show if the fee was not paid. “Johnnie said my show wouldn’t happen unless I [paid for] more security. He threatened me and my business partner!” Godfather says, incredulous. “At that point, I told him, ‘Fuck you. I don’t care if any of y’all come. It’s embarrassing now.’”

“[Calling a promoter at the last minute with additional charges] is not standard practice for a booking agent,” says Coach. “Everything should be on the contract. Nothing should be added on [verbally] unless somebody defaults on the agreement that’s already in writing.”

With Gucci Mane’s status in limbo, Godfather then learned that no funds from his initial deposit had been used to secure OJ da Juiceman or Nicki Minaj, even though all three artists were supposed to perform. He took matters into his own hands and booked OJ through a local Chicago artist who had a relationship with the rapper, spending an additional $12,000 and getting a studio drop from OJ to continue promoting the show. Nicki, who was on the road with Lil Wayne’s Young Money crew on the America’s Most Wanted Tour for most of the summer, did not attend the show.

On the day of the scheduled Chicago date for the So Icey Tour (right), Godfather was informed that Gucci wouldn’t make it either. “Of the three artists I booked on the tour, OJ was the only one who came, and I had to pay him [an extra] $12,000 to salvage the show!” he exclaims. At the end of the day, Godfather estimates they lost over $90,000, including $8,000 for security, $5,000 on advertising and over $46,000 in ticket refunds that Ticketmaster issued to unhappy patrons because of Gucci Mane’s failure to appear. “I didn’t get a dime back from the ticket office,” laments Godfather. “We put signs on the door saying ‘Gucci will not be here,’ and we still got 3,500 people in there, but we had to give all that money back,” sighs Mosley. “[The fans] blamed us, saying we were false promoting. DJ Pharris had to get on the radio [in Chicago] and let people know it wasn’t our fault.”

“[The promoter] should definitely get their money back if the artist can’t fulfill the contract. Without a doubt,” says Coach. “It’s just like a [UPS] delivery. If you agreed to do a show for a certain amount and now you’re unable to do the show, you have defaulted. If [UPS] promises to deliver something and they don’t, for any reason, the bottom line is they didn’t deliver. It doesn’t matter if the tire was flat or the driver was sick or the weather was bad. The fact is, you had an agreement to deliver, and you didn’t.”

As of press time, Godfather says his $35,000 deposit has not been refunded. Godfather says that he also lost the $5,000 Johnnie pocketed as a booking fee for a show that never happened, as well as the $10,000 travel fee and $3,500 last minute security fee for artists who never arrived. “They haven’t even tried to give me my money back or reschedule the show,” says Godfather. “Getting my money back would be cool, but I want them to reschedule a date with me so I can try to save some face with the radio station. These are people who I’ve known for 20 years, and [the no-shows] ruined my name with the station, fans, and artists. I have to do a make-up show with the radio station to save face with the Program Director.”

It also hampered Godfather’s ability to continue promoting shows in his market. “All the venues here talk to each other. Even though I had no fights and people got their money back [from the Gucci Mane tickets], they still question letting me get venues. I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he adds. His credibility and reputation, he feels, are priceless.

While Johnnie and Deb refused to refund Godfather’s money or reschedule his August date, they accepted a Gucci Mane show deposit from one of his competitors, Chicago promoter Mark Yukon (that show, scheduled for November 19th, 2009, also did not happen).

“Gucci Mane can’t come to Chicago unless I okay it,” declares Godfather. “They all know it. He knows it, his security knows it. He knows his squad is messing up, so it’s on him. He can’t come here unless he works it out with me, so he’s pretty much dead in the market. The radio is gonna stop playing his record and everything. I’m a part of the reparation squad for Johnnie Cabbell’s overcharging. OJ [da Juiceman] is a good guy, but Gucci has signed his life over to Johnnie Cabbell.”

Booking back-to-back shows in the same city with two different promoters is another favorite trick of Cabbell’s. When a savvy promoter requests an exclusivity clause be included in the contract, which normally prevents an artist from performing anywhere in a certain radius for 30 days prior or 30 days after the show, HAH’s carefully worded “exclusivity clause” reads, “artist(s) are not permitted to perform two weeks before or two weeks after the date above at the listed venue,” a loophole which could technically permit Cabbell to book the same artist at two competitive venues on the same street, in the same city, on the same day.

“That’s not something I would do out of respect for the promoter I’m doing business with. You’re going to cause both people headaches,” says Coach. “That definitely shouldn’t be happening at all and that’s one of [Johnnie’s business practices] that I disagree with. I know promoters that have had real bad episodes with [Johnnie] and are displeased.”

THE VAMPIRES

Godfather feels that Cabbell’s shiesty business practices have rubbed off on other up-and-coming booking agents. Combine that with the desperation of the recession and it’s an ugly formula. “There’s a lot of guys like Johnnie now. People in Young Jeezy’s camp are doing the same thing,” mentions Godfather. “[Jeezy’s booking agent] Asha is now following standard Johnnie Cabbell practice: they call you a week before the show and threaten to not show up if you don’t send an additional $5,000 or $10,000 for travel [or security]. Then you have a choice: either cancel it and [forfeit] all the money you put into it and disappoint [the fans], or go ahead and take that $5,000 or $10,000 hit because you’ve already sold thousands of tickets. These new dudes like Johnnie are spreading venom to the managers and killing the smaller promoters. I’ve known Asha for years, but she just turned into a vampire last year. $10,000 for travel!? He’s not using jet fuel to get here. He’s using regular gas [for his tour bus]!”

“Travel buyouts” seem to be one of the vampires’ favorite ways of sucking every last drop of money out of a promoter. After Orlando, FL promoter Dawgman (left) sent in a deposit to book Shawty Lo through Cabbell in Spring 2008, in addition to the artist’s fee, he learned that he was also required to spend $4,000 on a “travel buyout” instead of booking flights himself. Johnnie explained that the fee was high because their travel agent was purchasing “refundable” tickets for the entourage, and because Shawty Lo needed to fly first-class (which is always refundable).

But on the scheduled date, Shawty Lo never showed up, and Dawgman was forced to issue refunds to his patrons to salvage his reputation in the market. During separate phone calls to the promoter and the promoter’s assistant, Cabbell and Shawty Lo’s road manager Jay provided two different reasons for Lo’s absense - one claimed he was in the hospital, while the other said he was attending an aunt’s funeral. Of the seven round-trip flights that were supposedly purchased with the $4,000 travel buyout, only three of those people showed up (the road manager and two entourage members). When the date was rescheduled, Johnnie threatened a no-show if Dawgman didn’t again pay a $4,000 travel fee. So what was the purpose of paying extra for “refundable” tickets if they weren’t really refundable? And more importantly, where did that initial $4,000 go?

“Johnnie is trying to pocket money everywhere,” complains Mosley. “He gets it any way he can get it, and he never leaves [Atlanta] to deal with the problems [on the road]. He’ll send the road manager [like Gucci Mane’s G-Boy, Shawty Lo’s Jay, or OJ da Juiceman’s Big Sam] out there to deal with the problems.”

Any hot artist with records getting regular radio spins (like Shawty Lo, back in Spring 2008) is generally working at least 3-4 nights a week – meaning that each of those three or four promoters is paying a high “travel buyout” for round trip travel. Multiply that $4,000 by 3 or 4 and if you’re really only paying one-way expenses – from each city to the next (if the artist even shows up), and you can see how it could become profitable. Let’s say Johnnie charges four promoters $4,000 each for travel expenses for Shawty Lo to go out on the road for four consecutive dates (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, for example) and only spends $10,000 on travel. Who do you think is pocketing that extra $6,000?

Mizay and So Icey seem to have gotten wise to this additional source of revenue early on in their relationship with HAH, insisting that all travel and hotel be handled through their office for Gucci Mane and OJ da Juiceman shows instead of through Johnnie. Similarly, they demand that promoters pay a high fee upfront which is wired directly to them. Traditionally, for most bookings, an “all-inclusive” artist fee means that all flights, hotel, and ground transportation is included – unless otherwise specified. But So Icey/Mizay often require a “travel buyout” and then later inform the promoter that there is also an additional “hotel buyout” due, plus ground transportation, which must also be booked through them at a premium rate. The HAH contracts generally only vaguely define the travel expenses, leaving room for “the vampires” to tack on thousands of dollars in additional fees at the last minute.

Kym Hall of Royal Pair Entertainment booked OJ da Juiceman to perform in Orlando, FL on Saturday, November 21st, 2009, and although ultimately pleased with his performance, she expressed exasperation with the Mizay/So Icey booking process and feels that they skimmed off the travel money. She claims Jamie Dixon, her So Icey representative, refused to divulge any of OJ’s basic travel information (such as when his flights were arriving, so she feared he would be a no-show) and refused to show her any receipts documenting the actual travel costs.

In addition to paying the “travel buyout” for the flights, So Icey demanded a large sum (which Hall feels was excessive, but declined to disclose the exact amount) for a “hotel buyout,” stating that OJ must be placed in a four-or-five star hotel, but refused to tell Hall where he was staying. “The only reason we found out where he was staying is because [OJ had] an ‘incident’ at the hotel and we had to go over there,” explains Hall. It turns out that Mizay/So Icey had taken her large lump sum “four-or-five star hotel buyout” and placed OJ at the SpringHill Suites Maitland, a three-star hotel at best which can be purchased online for around $80. Hall says she is demanding to see receipts and insisting that So Icey refund the difference between the amount of her “hotel buyout” and the actual amount they paid for the hotel (good luck, Kym).

BURNING BRIDGES

In the January 2009 issue of Atlanta-based Street Report Magazine, the editor General addressed his issues with Deb in his editorial (below) stemming from an OJ da Juiceman no-show at a Street Report event at Club Frequency. According to General, Deb had promised OJ’s attendance in exchange for advertising in the magazine.

“One of the 2009 topics is burning bridges and breaking your word to sell your soul for the almighty dollar,” wrote General. “What’s up to OJ da Juiceman (Chevron Shawty) for keeping the streets on fire in the A and getting to the money. I also want to add that you are a grinder and the streets are loving you but the flip side to that coin is ‘WOW’ when it comes to your management grinding just as hard as you? Debbie we are talking about you so therefore we are not going to do it like the rappers do it by subliminally sneak dissing. You know what I am talking about with the December 10th Club Frequency situation…”

General continued addressing OJ later in the editorial, adding, “A rapper can be hot today and glacier frozen like the titanic the next. So have that street/business meeting with your camp and tell them the minute that they lose focus of becoming that fucked up word in the game, that shit follows you no matter what business that you are in and people are whispering about it now but they are just keeping shit quiet is kept until they are positioned to voice their say so. Keep getting your money Juice and remember that every move is a calculated step, but your management can lose my number because their word is in the same book as George W Bush (I don’t trust what is being said to me) and for the record, I am not trying to assassinate your character (Debbie) by telling people not to deal with you. Everybody can fuck with you as far as I am concerned but I know not to fuck with you because you lied to me directly and it was not a third party lie. Street Report Magazine doesn’t want any bargains from you. Send over some ad money not a conversation. Aye!”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of Street Report Magazine’s bad experience when I made a similar deal with Johnnie and Deb in May 2009 to trade an advertising package in OZONE for a free OJ da Juiceman show.

After fulfilling our part of the agreement, we here at OZONE shopped around for a venue and finally settled on Club Libra in Atlanta. As the Libra representatives sat in my office prepared to sign the contract, I called Johnnie and Deb to let them know we had secured a location. Johnnie told me that OJ would not perform at Club Libra because they had “issues” with the club. After much discussion I reluctantly agreed to keep looking. Less than three weeks later, a commercial began playing on Atlanta radio for - guess who? - OJ da Juiceman performing live at Club Libra! Rather than giving OZONE the free date we had agreed on, Johnnie apparently went around me and booked the date himself.

I suppressed my urge to curse him out, opting instead to try to peacefully resolve the situation. I shopped around for an alternate venue and closed a deal with Freelon’s Nightclub in Jackson, MS, for OJ to perform on August 8th, 2009. Johnnie sent me a signed contract confirming that the OJ show was paid in full as per our advertising agreement. As per the contract, we (OZONE and the promoter) were obligated to pay $3,500 for travel and there were no additional funds due for the show. The promoter wired the travel money to So Icey/Mizay several weeks prior to the show. The contracts were signed by myself, Johnnie, Deb, and the promoter in June.

Almost two months later, on the afternoon the day of the show, Johnnie and Deb called me on 3-way demanding that I pay an additional “security fee” of $3,300 or OJ wasn’t going to leave Atlanta – a fee which had never been mentioned or discussed at all during the month and a half that our contract had been in place. It was also never included on our paperwork. OZONE had fulfilled our obligations and now Johnnie and Deb were refusing to fulfill theirs. Deb claimed she didn’t know the Jackson date was my show, pointing the finger at Johnnie and saying it was his fault. I told them I wasn’t going to pay an additional $3,300 for a “free” show and whatever miscommunication had happened was between the two of them, and they needed to figure it out immediately. A few hours later, Johnnie told me, “We worked it out,” saying that he and Deb had settled their miscommunication and OJ’s tour bus was leaving Atlanta, headed for Jackson.

At 11 PM the night of the show, as a line of fans eager to see OJ formed at the club, I was still 45 minutes outside the city. OJ’s road manager Big Sam went to Freelon’s and told the club owner that if they didn’t receive $5,500 cash immediately (including $500 overtime for their driver – another additional fee that was never discussed and was not our responsibility) they had been instructed by Johnnie and Deb to leave town immediately. Without $5,500 cash, OJ would not perform at OZONE’s “free” show. So here I was faced with the choice that so many other promoters have had to make: cancel the show, ruin my relationship with the promoter and the promoter’s reputation, and fight Johnnie and Deb in court for $10,000 (the value of the advertising package)? Or move forward and only fight them for $5,500?
Similar to the So Icey Tour contracts, the OZONE contract with Johnnie involved multiple parties, so going the legal route would probably also mean suing a long-time client and friend (Freelon’s) because of Johnnie and Deb’s fraud. I later learned that OJ and Big Sam had no idea what was really going on, didn’t know that I was even involved with the show, and were simply following Deb and Johnnie’s instructions.

THE GOOD OL’ DAYS

When established artists like T.I. and Lil Wayne first started doing nightclub shows years ago, they were reasonably priced. “They earned their way up the ladder, and they have stronger foundations because of it,” explains Coach, who recalls booking T.I. for $1,500 or $2,000 in the early days and Lil Wayne for $10,000 when he was touring with Sqad Up and already had two albums under his belt. “They made solid movement all the way up the ladder until they’ve reached this point [where they command six figure show prices], and I can respect any artist that is willing to go out and work from the ground up.” Johnnie is certainly not the only booking agent to charge exorbitant prices for an artist with one hit record, but it’s one thing he is infamously known for – resulting in a short lifespan of many artists he has represented (where are the Shop Boyz, of “Party Like a Rock Star” fame? Fabo? D4L? Crime Mob?).

Nicki Minaj, for example, has a strong buzz, but doesn’t have an album out yet. Jesse Peak inquired about booking Nicki for a BET Hip Hop Awards afterparty in Atlanta in October 2009 but quickly changed his mind when her former manager Cortez directed him to Hitt Afta Hitt. “They were shooting out dumb numbers like $12,000 plus I’ve gotta pay a travel fee, even though she was already scheduled to be in Atlanta,” says Peak. “When an artist is represented by Hitt Afta Hitt, it discourages me from booking them because I know exactly what to expect from them: They say whatever you wanna hear to get your money, and once they get your money, you can’t get a call back.”

Mosley laughs while offering some words of advice to artists considering Hitt Afta Hitt representation: “You’ll have better luck diving off the Sears Tower.”

“A lot of artists are overpriced, and that hurts their career,” explains Coach. “If an artist is really overpriced and a promoter takes a risk on him and loses badly, when the artist tries to make a comeback the promoter is gonna say, ‘I did you when you were hot and I lost, so I’m definitely not gonna do you when you’re cold.’ So when you put the artist’s price up so high just because they’re new and the demand is high but they haven’t been proven, you’re risking their career longevity. These artists today get one single and they want $7,500 for a show. They haven’t been tested. The single may be hot, but the promoters lose money. Some might win, but most lose. And [as a result] the artist’s careers are short-lived. Very short-lived.”

D4L frontman Shawty Lo (left) is a perfect example of this phenomenon. “I don’t get requests for Shawty Lo [now],” says Coach. “In my opinion, he should have been charging less than [he was] at his peak. It would have made him a much more viable product today if he had been at a lower price when he was really hot. More people would’ve had accessibility to him. He would’ve been in more venues; more promoters would have been successful with him and would’ve had a better opinion of him. When [a promoter] loses, it leaves a bad taste in their mouth as far as that artist afterwards. Not saying that they lost at every show, but there were some where the price was just too high.”

Godfather is even more direct. “[Johnnie] killed Shawty Lo; destroyed his career,” he confirms. “[Shawty Lo] can’t get shows now because of his relationship with Johnnie. Johnnie overcharges and double-books. [Shawty Lo] was battling with T.I., the so-called King of the South. How were you on his level and then you fell from grace that fast? It’s because [Johnnie] was overpricing him, [charging] $40,000 or $50,000 for a guy with two songs, then doing no-shows, then threatening you with the $5,000 booking fee. He took his price past what he was worth and he fell off quick. [Now] I wouldn’t give [Shawty Lo] $1,000 to go anywhere. That’s not personal on Lo, it’s Johnnie. And he’s gonna do the same thing to Gucci [Mane’s career]. I didn’t deal with him on D4L because they had so many no-shows. No one wanted to book them anymore and they fell off. Anyone he touches, he kills their career. He’s bad, man. He’s a very shiesty businessman.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, artists like Lil Boosie and Webbie and legends like Too $hort and Uncle Luke have consistently toured throughout the country, putting on good shows and hosting parties at a reasonable price. The cost is fair and the demand is still strong. In turn, the promoters are able to turn profits and bring these artists back time and time again, contributing to their career longevity.

“Boosie and Webbie get [booked] for a lot of shows because their price is good enough that promoters can make a profit,” agrees Coach. “There’s two people involved: the artist and the promoter. In the end, both people should be happy. I don’t think it should just be one guy coming to get all the money and going home happy, while the promoter lost all his money and he’s unhappy. [Promoting shows] is a risk, but there should at least be the opportunity for the promoter to make some money if he does it correctly. If the artist’s price is too high, the promoter doesn’t have the opportunity to make money.”

SHOWMANSHIP

With all the hype surrounding Gucci Mane’s 2009 shows, you’d think the price tag would be worth it. For $40,000 or more, you should get a well-rehearsed, energetic, exciting sixty minute performance and the fans go home satisfied, right?
“Gucci’s show is garbage,” says Yungwaun. “I saw him perform in Milwaukee. He doesn’t move, he just stands there.” Comparing Gucci Mane’s performance to other in-demand rappers of a similar genre like Plies or Young Jeezy, agrees Jesse Peak, is laughable. “[Gucci’s] show is shitty. He doesn’t have much showmanship at all. If you pay somebody that kind of money, you think they’re gonna get down [and put on a good show]. He comes to shows high as a kite and he just doesn’t do anything. He sits on a stage like he’s in a booth and raps into the mic. That’s it.”

“I wouldn’t book Gucci Mane again even if the tickets were pre-sold out,” emphasizes Peak. “I wouldn’t pay him anything. He’s not worth it. I was completely disappointed with the whole experience. I wish [Gucci] luck, but I hope Johnnie don’t ever come to one of my parties.”

IN CONCLUSION

To be fair, there’s always more than one side to a story, and Deb and Johnnie’s side is not represented here. But when a dozen promoters in different cities with no prior affiliation are interviewed separately and all tell the same infuriating tales, chances are there’s some truth to it. Although I too have been bitten by the vampires to the tune of $5,000, that amount is pennies compared to some of these promoters’ alleged losses, and I have made every attempt to be reasonable and objective in my reporting.

As they became aware that their dirt was being dug up, Deb and Johnnie tried valiantly to slander my name (hateful email blasts about me containing baseless insults), damage my credibility (recording highly unprofessional online “conference calls” with racial accusations), and scare me (attempting to sue me and get an emergency injunction for “defamation of character”) away from investigating these fraudulent activities. I did not reach out to them for comment because I doubt it would be a productive conversation for anyone involved. Johnnie even attempted to file a warrant for my arrest when I commented on Twitter that he rapes promoters. I think this article contains sufficient evidence to prove that fact, and telling the truth is not a crime.

“What Johnnie is doing ain’t right, and it’s dangerous because you’re dealing with people’s money,” says Mosley. “I respect promoter’s money,” concludes Coach. “I don’t think [Johnnie] respects promoter’s money.”

The solution to all these problems, it would seem, would be for management to put more effort into keeping Gucci sober and free, and less effort into taking deposits for show dates he can’t legally attend.

“I can’t see how [artists] would want to put their trust in someone like [Johnnie],” laments Nik Bean. “Gucci Mane obviously needs new management. Everybody’s talking about ‘Free Gucci Mane’ when we really should be saying, ‘Gucci Mane needs to get a new manager.’ Why’s he doing all this time [for failure to meet community service requirements]? They’re supposed to be managing him and his time.”

Unlike Gucci, Lil Boosie, who began serving a reported 2-4 year jail sentence in November 2009, did not leave behind a slew of angry promoters. Courtney Scott of Trill Management, who handles Boosie’s show bookings, explains that they “slowed down” on Boosie’s dates as soon as they became aware of his legal troubles. They returned three promoters previous deposits, Courtney says, adding, “We made a conscious decision as a management team to prepare for the fact that he might [have to go to jail]. People kept offering to book dates, but we just didn’t take their deposits. We told them we can’t accept it, because he has to go to court.” This seems to be a much more logical management strategy than the get-as-much-money-as-possible-now-and-worry-about-the-consequences-later mentality exhibited by Cabbell and Antney.

Mike Jones (not the rapper), who handles marketing for the clothing store chain DTLR, sponsored Godfather’s Gucci Mane no-show in Chicago. “It’s [all about] the fans, man. You can’t blame them for wanting to see their favorite artists,” he reflects. “I was at the show [where Gucci was scheduled to appear] and it was just a bad look. Some fans don’t even care if you perform. They just wanna see you and take pictures with you. When you don’t even show your face, it’s just bad for business. It’s about the fans; the consumers.”

“Y’all see what’s happening in Chicago on CNN and the news [with so much violence]. It’s Beiruit out here,” finishes Mosley. “People can’t afford to jack off $50 or $60. To play with people’s money and emotions, it’s not a good look. All that money is going somewhere.” Jones vividly recalls tearing down the Gucci Mane promotional posters from his stores, one by one. “I don’t even wanna be affiliated with Gucci Mane anymore. I don’t wanna see anything with his name on it,” he vents. “The word up here [in Chicago] is, ‘Man, I wouldn’t touch Gucci Mane’s show if Jesus was hosting it.’ Real talk.”

Now that Gucci is gone again for at least six months, most of the promoters just want to cut their losses and get their initial deposits back. “Cash is king in this recession. Rescheduling a show isn’t even a possibility for at least eight months, [and that’s] assuming Gucci behaves himself and gets out early on good behavior,” explains Attorney Gardner.

Although Gucci’s previous 6-month incarceration increased his demand, this time around, things could easily go the other way and cool down his buzz like it has for many other rappers (Mystikal, for example, is out of sight, out of mind). “When he does get out, who’s to say he’ll even be relevant at that time?” questions Gardner.
But as long as Gucci, OJ, Nicki, Waka, and the rest of the So Icey artists continue making hot music, the streets will continue demanding their appearances and promoters will continue to book them. Gucci has found a way to make lemonade out of lemons, turning his legal troubles into the theme of his upcoming album, The State vs. Radric Davis (left). At the end of the day, though, the artists’ management is supposed to be working for them, not against them, and all the fraud allegations can’t be good for business. “This is how empires fall,” says Mosley. “It’s going to come back on them.”

When confronted with the accusation that her and Cabbell’s actions have not only been unethical but also criminally fraudulent, at least in the case of Marshall’s Pittsburgh no-shows, Antney defended herself to Creative Loafing. “The only thing you have is your name, and if you ruin your name, you ruin everything,” she says. At least we can all agree on that. //

If you have experienced similar problems as the promoters interviewed in this article, please contact me at jb@ozonemag.com.

To comment on this article, http://www.ozonemag.com/2009/11/30/scam-afta-scam.

Clearances

2009-11-13T08:32:00.000-08:00

By Wendy Day (www.HelpfulAngel.com)

You are an unknown struggling artist. Rick Ross is in town performing and you have the ability to offer him a few thousand dollars to come by the studio and drop a quick 16 bars. Your cousin knows Akon and said for $80k he’ll sing the hook on your song, you just have to send him the money and the ProTools session. Lil Boosie went to jail and his manager has some verses for sale to keep money flowing to him while he’s locked down. You’d like very much to have Rick Ross, Akon, or Boosie on a song with you. But it’s not as simple as just having the money to pay for that feature…

Anyone who is signed to a record label is technically OWNED by that label. This means that even if a rapper is my friend, and I want to feature him or her on a song, I MUST get the permission of the rapper AND his or her record label to use the song IN ANY WAY. Whether that song that the artist is featured upon is my single, album filler, on a mixed CD, or just featured on my MySpace page for free. Legally, JUST TO RECORD the song, I must have the permission of the artist and the label to which the artist is signed. If I plan to use it commercially (even for free promotion or on my demo to get a deal), I need the permission of the artist and their label. That permission is called a “clearance.”

I am giving you the legal, raw explanation here! But what’s legal and factual rarely happens in the underground music business where everyone is struggling to be heard or stand out. All of those songs that you hear floating around the internet by rappers you’ve never heard of, but that feature Gucci Mane or Lil Wayne, were probably never cleared. So this is where every signed artist is about to get really pissed off at me, because this is one of the ways rappers make money…without a clearance from the rapper and the rapper’s label (business affairs dept or lawyer) you legally can NOT use the feature…even if you paid for it. That little piece of paper (the clearance) means everything!!

It gets worse. In order to CLEAR the feature, you must submit the completed song. It doesn’t have to be mixed and mastered, but it does need to be relatively tight. So, you ask, how do I get a Lil Wayne verse on the record without paying him money to be on the song—a song I might not be able to use? You pay him half upfront to record, and half when it clears. Now, I can’t speak for Wayne, but I can speak for most artists. If you don’t pay them in full for the song upfront, they aren’t stepping into the studio to record with you because they know there is a good chance the song will never clear. This is a gray area that has plagued the music business forever. Most rappers will tell you that’s why they charge indie artists so little, because they might not be able to use it “commercially.” If a signed rapper charges another signed rapper $25,000 for 16 bars, but you’re getting him for $7,500, it’s not hard to figure out that there’s a catch.

How do I, personally, get around this with MY clients? I don’t feature artists on songs who might not clear through their labels. Because I’ve been doing this for a long time, I know who I can easily clear and who I can’t clear. I also have some label favors and artist favors stored up so I can flex a little power when asking for a clearance. For example, if I negotiated an artist’s deal at Universal and come back to them after they’ve made tens of millions of dollars on that artist, they might be more apt to clear a feature for me if I’m not putting their artist on some garbage. They also know that if I am behind a project, it has a better chance of succeeding. If I step to a label where I just broke the contract of their biggest artist, they are likely to tell me to fuck off when I want to clear a feature. Politics.

But what does a local label do that has NO connections to the industry or the major labels? The real answer: You don’t feature their artist. Now here’s where the line gets real murky, because often the more savvy street labels (like CTE, Grand Hustle, Slip N Slide, Big Gates, etc) want their artists performing along with the hottest local artists, but the major label does not. Let’s use Jeezy as an example because he does so few features anyway (now you know why). A new artist would want Jeezy on a song because he’s well known, has street credibility, and it’s instant name recognition for an unknown artist to say he has Jeezy on a song. It makes the newer artist look well-connected, and it might even make it easier to get radio spins. Jeezy may want to be on a song with whoever is the hottest up and coming artist from an area because it reaffirms his connection to the streets. But for Jeezy to appear on a song, you need a clearance from CTE (which is Jeezy’s label that he owns with his partner, Kinky B) and Def Jam. Most new indie labels don’t have access to a label like Def Jam to clear a song, so they pay the artist to get on the record and then they throw it out on the streets hoping that is blows up. Their mindset is that they will cross that clearance bridge when they come to it. They are hoping that the noise the uncleared song will make for their artist will outweigh the bullshit they are going to suffer. And let’s be real—if it’s a hit record, the major label won’t complain about Jeezy being on it. Protecting their investment in Jeezy only really matters to them when the songs don’t blow up, or are garbage because it makes their national artist look bad. Imagine if Jeezy had been on that hit Drake record. Def jam would have happily cleared that! That’s what I mean by murky…

Most smaller labels don’t have the budgets, or the proper connections, or even the experience to make a hit record blow up. The major labels know this, so they are reluctant to allow their artists to perform on a feature. On the flip side, some major labels look at clearances as a come up. Their attitude is ‘if you want to use our national artist that we’ve invested millions of dollars into building, pay us too. You can use our artist and we’ll clear the usage, but it’ll cost you $30,000.’ So, if you are paying $30,000 to the artist and $30,000 to the major label, you can see where this gets a little costly, right? Plus you need radio money, promotion money, DJ money, promo tour money, marketing money, etc….and you’re on your own to market and promote it.

My personal preference is to feature a hit producer rather than an artist because I don’t need a clearance to use a hot Drumma Boy track or a killer Zaytoven beat. But if I want to feature Boosie, Jeezy, Gucci Mane, Plies, Drake, Nicki Minaj, or any other signed artist on a song, I have to jump through paperwork hoops that could possibly kill months and tens of thousands of dollars. There are better ways for me to break my artist on the streets. Having said that, if you absolutely need to feature Lil Boosie on your record, you will buy the feature, record the song, and then submit the song to both Trill Entertainment and Warner for clearance (unless Trill owns the masters, then just Trill—Warner’s legal department would inform you of that). Or, you will do what so many others in this industry have done before you, you will record the song and put it out and say “fuck it!” I don’t believe in doing business that way, but many can’t afford the money, or time, or possible “no you can’t use the song.” If you are buying a Boosie feature in hopes of using it as a radio single for your unknown artist, and you have no connection to Boosie, Trill, the industry, or powerful lawyers, you are an idiot trying to use someone else’s artist to benefit your own pocket. Why would any label in their right mind want to help you do that? Look at it from their point of view. This is a business. Now maybe, with someone with power in the industry on your side you could get it cleared, but it’s still a risk and you’re asking a lot.

Lack of knowledge is this industry is the #1 killer of artists’ dreams.

I asked a label head within the Universal system about clearing features and was told that “if the artist fights for the clearance and if the artist is in good standing with me, I’ll usually clear it to keep the artist happy.” Another label head looked at it from a financial point of view during a recession and said “so, you want to build up your artist by using a verse from my artist that I’ve spent millions of dollars to build? $30 grand off the rip, and more if it’s an A List artist. Plus, you can’t put your shit out 3 months before or 3 months after my artist drops!” Hmmmm, sounds like it’s a business.

Then there are the REAL label politics that you have to worry about if you get signed with your song that has a feature. There is some animosity between major labels—for example, Universal and Atlantic, so clearing anything at one label to appear on a release from the other is a nightmare. So if I am doing a deal with Universal for an artist who is signed to Atlantic (remember, most smaller new labels don’t clear appearances ahead of time), I know that getting that clearance will be difficult. I remember hearing a song on the radio with Gorilla Zoe (Warner) featuring Lil Wayne (Universal). I was so surprised that Block was able to clear a Lil Wayne verse. Turns out it didn’t clear and the song was taken off the album after it had already hit radio and was climbing the charts. If Universal made Warner pull the song from radio, what would they do to Little Local Records, LLC? Welcome to the music business and have a nice day.

Changes In The Way We Do Business

2009-10-07T17:40:00.001-07:00

By, Wendy Day (www.HelpfulAngel.com)

“The only thing constant is change.” --Heraclitus, Greek Philosopher (535 BC-475 BC)

“Wow! Our shit is fucked up!” --Wendy Day, circa 2009

1. The Absence of Retail From Our Economic Landscape: Whether you want to download music or not, that’s the way it’s going. CDs are going the way of vinyl, cassettes, and 8 tracks. Get used to it. Because downloads are seen by title on a screen instead of pre-packaged in a tangible format, the music business has switched from an album culture to a singles culture. Fans and consumers can pick and choose songs instead of being forced to buy 10 to 18 songs packaged altogether in a cohesive unit. If you want to sell more than singles to your fans, your shit is going to have to be an album of hot singles.

Upside: Consumers only shell out 99 cents for the songs that they want. Artists can see exactly which types of songs their fans want and can offer more music in that direction.

Downside: Some of my favorite songs are the ones in between the singles on albums that grew on me as I listened to them over and over. Now fans make compilations of songs they already like by their favorite artists—it’s like making their own albums by the artist. But it certainly isn’t how the artists intended us to be listening to their music. It’s no longer an art form to sequence albums perfectly because very few people will listen to their music in sequence.

2. Prices Are Plummeting… According to RIAA, CD sales have declined every year for the past 8 years, falling 26% in 2008 from 2007 (the most recent measurement for 2009 sales won’t be available until January 2010). Retail stores are going out of business very quickly. The remaining stores that do carry CDs are mostly big chain stores, so their focus is Top 40 (the mainstream CDs with the highest sales demand). Very few of the places where you buy music are meant to sell music. So you can pick up your CDs along with tampons and greeting cards, refrigerators or washer/dryers, or your weekly groceries at WalMart (if the music has no cursing), Target, or BestBuy. CDs sell for $9.99 to $12.99. In an effort to compete, FYE is trying a new program in 75 of their 600+ stores: they are selling all CDs for $9.99.

Upside: At least there is a place to go for those who still want to get their music on CD. When CDs first came into fashion, cassettes were phased out within five years. I can’t even buy a cassette today if I want one. Also, consumers want to pay less for music and instead of spending $17.99 on a CD that costs less than 30 cents to manufacture (not including marketing and promotion), they can now spend ten bucks. And lastly, the lower price point is forcing the major labels out of the music industry and leveling the playing field so smaller indie labels can compete. Whoever has the best music and can make it for $10 a CD, wins.

Downside: A $10 CD means a wholesale price of $5-- down from a high of almost $12 ten years ago. CDs now retail for a lower price than what the wholesale price was 10 years ago.

3. …And The Labels Will NOT Be Taking The Loss From That Plummet: Almost every label is offering only “360 Deals” to sign artists or for current artists who aren’t selling millions of CDs. A 360 Deal means the record label gets to share in the other income streams for artists besides just music sales. They get a percentage of publishing, a percentage of the touring and show money, a percent of the merchandising, sponsorships, and endorsements….shit, if the artist quits and goes to work in corporate America, I think the label gets a piece of that job paycheck too (just kidding, I hope!).

Upside: As leaner, meaner, more profitable companies, record labels can do what they do best. Additionally, artists who have no access to investors and no business acumen to put out music on their own, can actually still have a career (although, arguably, at a high cost). Lastly, if you absolutely refuse to sign a 360 Deal, you can build your leverage so strong by selling your own music that you can negotiate another type of deal, or you can just do it yourself--finding investors and a team of experienced people to help you is far easier than finding a record deal with a major label.

Downside: Artists no longer just make 12% of the retail price of their CDs after they pay back all of the recording costs, promotional and marketing expenses, etc. Now they get to lose 50% of their publishing, and 30% of their tour money, endorsement deals, and film/tv/book deal money. Where else can you go to pay back everything spent on you to build your career and then keep on paying out of every dollar you make?

4. Magazines Are Dying While Blogs Are Sprouting Up Daily: Bloggers are the new mixed tape DJs. Just as mixed tape DJs used to break new music back in the day, today it’s the bloggers. According to RapRadar.com, the Huffington Post of the rap bloggersphere, there are 100 Blogs or Websites worthy of being listed in their “Blog Roll” list. This means that anyone with a passing interest in rap and some writing skills (or not) can weigh in and have their opinions read by others.

Upside: We get our news and information instantaneously. Voicing opinions have come into the hands of the people and have been taken away from the traditional gatekeepers.

Downside: We sacrifice journalism, quality in-depth reporting, and sometimes accuracy for the sake of having instant information. Also, any idiot with a following can seem credible (Perez Hilton, stand up!) regardless of their training, their access, their ability to write or research, or their own agenda. Additionally, those who are reporting on the famous often want to be more famous than the famous they are reporting on. And lastly, an industry that was lacking in journalistic integrity to begin with has entrusted information into the hands of sycophants, plagerists, idiots, and whores (male and female). Oh, and a few very qualified people with integrity and fact checkers who do this because they love it. This is who and what we depend upon to get our “news” as it occurs.

5. Too Much Information: In an effort to get up close and personal with our stars, we have gotten, well, up close and personal with our stars. There was a time where there was some mystery and glamour to the façade of the entertainment industry. Now we have inner circle access to everyone with a reality TV show, videos to post on World Star Hip Hop, a twitter account, and YouTube uploads. I don’t care what brand of tampon that R&B songstress uses or her ghetto mama, I don’t need to know how much that rapper likes to fuck and in what positions, nor do I need to know what an asshole my favorite DJ can be when he’s drunk. We’ve gone too far… and we wonder why sales have dropped. Stars that we used to respect look like sellouts trying to get paid off of any and everything they can find to keep them in the limelight—Dancing With The Stars, America’s Biggest Losers, their own reality shows (the more bizarre, scandalous, or embarrassing, the higher the ratings). When did it become all about the check, fame whores?

Upside: One can see the reality of what it’s like to be famous so we can either avoid it at all cost or go racing towards fame. People we thought we wanted to get to know-- we can either get to know who they really are or avoid them. People with products to hawk and no shyness can go full out to sell their books, movies, music, clothing, etc. Also, people who got into this fame induced fantasy industry can fully realize their dream--to have all eyes on them.

Downside: Our image of the star is blown to smithereens. After all, familiarity breeds contempt (you may not know that though, as the 48 Laws Of Power hasn’t had its own reality show yet). Also, we get to see how truly ghetto our stars can be…instead of just suspecting it.

6. Fuckboys And Inept Teams : Bad economic times means layoffs and less money circulating in the world and in the music industry. That also means more people out of work who are looking to survive and make a quick buck. While this industry has always attracted a disproportionate amount of people who take money and don’t deliver (or possibly can’t deliver because they are inept), these tough economic times have them out here in droves looking for their next meal. There are more new artists than ever getting jerked (it’s hard to rip off those who know and have been around for awhile), and more than ever coming into the industry with their own trusted teams of inexperienced “managers” who are inadvertently fucking shit up. At least have one person around you with some industry knowledge before you burn yourself out doing all of those features with no-name rappers. In a minute, you’ll have no value, and that unsuccessful label you are signed to will give up on you and shift focus to someone with a better team who’s easier to work with.

Upside: Hey, fuck boys gotta eat too! Also, most people who get jerked out of a couple thousand dollars quickly move onto other industries. This “natural selection” process weeds out all of the extra people in this industry who don’t take the time to learn about it before jumping in with both feet. The last person standing is usually those who know better, or the fuck boys because they have all the money.

Downside: A fool and his or her money is soon parted. Fool! I’ve seen people lose millions of dollars in this business by having the wrong team around them.

Things in life change. Either we keep up with the changes and adapt or we become irrelevant. The upside is that new people coming into the business never knew any other time so there is no reminiscing over “better times” like my generation seems to like to do. None of the changes in the music business have occurred over night. We’ve all seen them coming and been given ample time to adapt and learn the new systems and approaches that work.

One thing that has never gone out of style is hard work. Work hard and educate yourself—no, work SMART, and educate yourself. You’ll find you’re ahead of the game no matter what the changes are.

Radio Spins

2009-09-14T16:12:00.001-07:00

Radio Spins
By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.IndieLabelBuilder.com)

Thanks to the advent of the Internet over a generation ago, the playing field has been leveled for artists. In today’s climate, an artist no longer HAS to sign to a major label (or any label at all for that matter) to succeed. One can make one’s own music and upload it to the internet to share it with the world. But if you are starting a business, meaning you plan to SELL your music, that’s a different story.

While the internet has made it easier for today’s artists to navigate the industry and sell their own music without a label, it still is a business and every artist needs some business sense and a blueprint to make it happen. Part of that blueprint involves having a budget to pay for the marketing and promotion of the music, for buying tracks or features from other artists, and for the necessary mixing and mastering to bring the music to commercial quality.

Yes, I know the story of Drake. I also know the story of every artist out there trying to replicate his success (and if Lil Wayne and Young Money put a budget behind your third mixed CD to buy radio play, you may have the same level of buzz too!). But while there is no one formula for success, nor one roadmap of how to achieve it, there are some things you can do the strengthen your chances of success. Let me say here and now though, that just getting a record deal should NEVER be the goal. Many, many, many artists who have come before you and that are way more talented than you have been signed to labels to just sit there for years and have no movement forward (on a happy side note, I’d like to point out that B.O.B. was finally given a release date by Atlantic of the Spring 2010! WOO HOO!). The goal is to succeed with a career in music, not be shelved and sit in a holding pattern once signed to a label.

Therefore, to increase your chances for success, you need to work your own project to show the labels that you are a good risk and that they should sign you to their label (if that’s your goal). I, personally, don’t see the need for a label, but not every artist is entrepreneurial enough to put out music, or to find an investor to fund their dream.

When putting out a CD, all aspects must come together to promote that release (and the timing must be on point. All aspects must hit at the same time to be truly effective).

It’s important that you plan succinctly, way ahead, and have budgets for marketing, street and club promotions, internet promotions, touring, publicity, advertising, attending and promoting at events (attendance at conventions and consumer events), video promotions (if you shoot a video), tools (posters, flyers, flats, postcards, t-shirts, etc), radio play, and of course pressing (of the singles, mixed CDs, and/or actual full length CD).

Anytime you start a business, there are costs involved. The music industry is no different. If you plan to put out your own music, you must be able to properly afford it or you are just wasting what little money you have. It’s also important to have someone reputable on your team if you aren’t going to hire a consultant to guide you. While I set up a free website years ago to help people put out their own CDs (www.rapcointelpro.com), no website can tell you whom to hire, which service companies are best, or who is genuinely good at what they do. Experience, connections, and being inside the inner circle in this shark-infested business are the only ways to know who’s who.

Truth is, even the folks who are at the top of their game today may slack off (or be too busy to help you properly), or be replaced by a newer, more hungry and aggressive person only to become the worst at what they do in a matter of months. In addition, there are a slew of folks in this business who make gobs of money from taking advantage of people who don’t know, aren’t experienced, and who can’t smell a con man a mile away. Most people lose money in this business.

Independent radio promotion is one of those treacherous areas where an artist or label can lose a lot of money. Hell, experienced people can lose a shitload of money here, too, not just new people.

It’s important to have a goal when going to secure radio spins. That goal must be more significant that just wanting to hear your song on the radio. Radio spins are not for artists trying to secure a record deal, nor are they for people without a healthy promotional budget. If radio spins led to a good deal that secured an artist’s career successfully, everyone with $50,000 to spend would have a successful career in the music business. And they do not.

If you look at the top selling artists with careers (NOT the one hit wonders), not one of them got a deal from having radio spins. There’s a good reason for that. Having radio spins does NOT guarantee CD sales, only selling your CD is a true test of CD sales. However, spins do often equal ringtone sales ($2.99 each) and single download sales for 99 cents each, which make the record labels salivate at the thought of quick one-off money, but it has yet to build the career of a serious recording artist. Would you rather be The Shop Boyz or Jay-Z? Would you rather have one hit song like “Laffy Taffy” or be putting out your 9th CD like Snoop with multi-million dollar touring opportunities, film and TV deals, endorsements, and other income producing opportunities?

So there is really only one reason to go after radio play: to sell CDs. Any other reason, and you are just taking away a potential slot from an artist who has his or her shit together and who came with a plan.

There are two kinds of radio promotion people:
1) The kind who promise you 300 spins a week (no one can promise you an exact number of spins because it depends on who else is at radio when you are, how hot your song is, and how well it researches at radio), take your money ($15,000 to $40,000), and then deliver whatever spins they can get you (usually 45 a week to 230 a week) at any radio station where they have a key relationship.
2) The kind who understand what your plan and goals entail, and deliver the stations within your marketing territory with which they have relationships, in a time frame that meets with when your other promotional efforts are hitting. These promo people are few and far between.

If you are releasing a CD independently, and the south is the market you are targeting, radio spins in the Bay Area, St Louis, Milwaukee, or Detroit are not helpful to your goal. No radio promoter should deliver spins solely where they have relationships unless you are a major label targeting the entire US. And even then, the majors work region by region so as to impact their limited budgets. So should you, on a smaller scale!

I get calls from folks every week asking me to refer a radio promotion person. Hell, muthaphukking NO! I will give up EVERY aspect of how to put out a CD for free, but I will not give up my radio folks. First of all, they are too hard to come by and if you don’t pay them, I’d have to kill you. Secondly, there are only so many open slots in any playlist, and I don’t need anymore competition than I already have.

Lastly, although not guaranteed, radio often drives sales in our business when used in conjunction with other promotional opportunities, and if you don’t have your shit together, you are wasting their time and your own money. Just because my radio guys do great for me, doesn’t mean they’d do equally as well for you. My experience and the amount of records I bring to them every year sets me way apart from what any of you are doing individually. There is far more incentive for them to deliver on one of my records, than on yours.

Besides, all of my guys will take your money to get you radio play so you can try to get a deal, and if you read a few paragraphs above, you will see that no successful career has ever been created from getting a deal based solely on radio play. In fact, very few deals have even been inked from radio play alone. Yet, every single one of them will take your money to try to get you enough spins to attract label attention. They have families to feed. If you are stupid enough to try this route, they have every right to deliver to you what you are seeking: radio spins! When it doesn’t work, you will call me complaining that my radio guy took your money. It would now actually cost me less to hire him because he made more money from my referral, but I don’t want to hear you complain. It’s just not worth the aggravation!

Radio is expensive. There is no way around that. The way that I impact radio is to work the region on the streets and club level getting the record hot long before I ever go for radio. I build it from the ground up so that it has legs. Then, I take it to radio in smaller markets first. For example, I would hit the smaller markets surrounding Atlanta like Macon, Albany, Greenville, Columbia, SC long before I ever went into Atlanta. Atlanta is an expensive market to work on the streets and at radio, so I prefer to get my record bubbling in the smaller, more affordable places.

If the market favors club hits that people can dance to, that’s what I work. If the market favors more calm ride-to-it type songs, then that is what I work. I match my singles to the markets and bring what the market wants. I never try to force records on people because you’ll lose unless you have Def Jam or P Diddy sized budgets. Kanye’s Jesus Walks was a huge hit for Def Jam. It most likely would have been an expensive failure for an indie label.

Once I see that the record has legs, I take it to the bigger markets. This gives me a story to tell at radio in the bigger markets. It’s much easier to get the attention of a program director once I have spins in smaller outside markets, than it is to show up to a music day and say “Play my shit, it’s hot!” Very few records are really hot and there is no rhyme or reason to what catches on. So it’s important to test your record before you go full out on the budget. Better to lose $10,000 or $20,000 to find out you didn’t have anything than to spend $80,000 out the box to find the same thing out. Once your song begins to spin, it’s important to keep supporting it in the marketplace. I offer the artist for free to the station for a show, or back up the spins through promotional tours or by doing give-aways with the station (tenth caller receives a free give-away from my artist. This can be a t-shirt, a gift card from a store, a contest, etc, or even just a free CD before they become available in stores).

There are also times when you have to believe in your record even if it isn’t catching on quickly. Songs that took a long time to catch on were Webbie’s Girl, Gimmee That, and his Bad Bitch, Souljah Boy’s Crank That, Nelly’s Country Grammar, etc. The key is being experienced enough to know when it’s a good record and when to stop throwing good money after bad.

There’s a term in radio called RESEARCHING. Research is when a radio station does a telephone poll (market research) amongst listeners. They play a portion of numerous songs and ask people if they can identify the song or the artist. If the market research comes back that listeners don’t respond to your song, the station takes it out of rotation saying it isn’t researching well. If the research comes back positive, the program director will often bump up the spins because it means listeners like the song.

It’s important for radio stations to play what the mass of listeners want to hear. Radio is based on ad sales (commercials) and those prices are set quarterly by how many people in the market are listening. That’s called share. Share is all that matters to the radio station because that sets their pricing or income. If Gangsta Grillz Radio in Atlanta has a 10 share, and their biggest competitor in urban music has a 40 share at the station across town, the radio station that airs Gangsta Grillz will make moves to replace the show, no matter how much you or I enjoy listening to it. Everything in radio comes down to numbers and money. Everything!

Lastly, I want to remind you that as you go for radio spins, you MUST have a competitive song. The sound quality must be as good, or better, than everything else at radio. This means it must be made in a professional quality studio, not your basement. It needs to be professionally mixed and mastered. I use Tony Rey at Dirty South in Atlanta for mixing (I manage him) and Big Bass Brian and Bernie Grundman in L.A (I wish I managed him) for mastering. They are the best at what they do for me.

If everything currently at radio is at 92 BPMs, don’t bring in a song at 80 BPMs. It won’t mix with the other songs properly. On the flip side, if everything currently at radio is slow, don’t come in with a super crunk dance record trying to get it spun. Learn how radio works and you are that much more likely not to lose your entire life savings going after the all-important radio spins. And for heaven sakes, don’t ever offer anyone at radio money to play your damn record! That’s illegal!!

Social Media

2009-08-12T15:44:00.001-07:00

By, Wendy Day at Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

I have not written much about the digital or on-line marketplace. It’s not because I don’t think it has value, it’s that because it’s such a cheap means of promotion that I don’t want artists to think they can just promote on the internet and that’s it. Many people choose to promote themselves on-line because they can do it from the comfort of their own home, it’s easy, and it’s cheap (almost free).

Because of that, I am going to remind urban artists that the internet is only 15 to 25% of your sales base (less if your music is very gutter and street oriented), so if you are ONLY available digitally, or only promoting digitally, you are leaving money on the table, and missing a large part of your fan base that still buys CDs and still puts value in the traditional methods of finding out about an artist: street buzz.

Both traditional promotion and on-line promotion are important. You, the artist, are a brand. You need to spread the word about your brand into a movement. As your movement grows, you want more and more people involved in it and talking about it to others. This is the goal of any product, person, artist, or idea that is looking to be spread. It is important to reach people in their environment, on their time, whether they read publications, read blogs, surf the web, play video games, watch videos or tv/cable shows, hang out in clubs, go to the Mall—whatever they do, and wherever they go, your brand/logo/mention needs to be in their face. The more they see “you,” the more they will wonder who you are, and investigate if you are worthy of their time and money.

In a perfect world, you want them dancing to your song in the club, hearing your song on mix CDs, singing along to your song on the radio, noticing your song playing in other vehicles as they drive by, paying to see you perform in the club, buying your mix CDs and buying your music (and who gives a fuck if it’s a CD or the download of your album as long as they are paying for it and not bootlegging it!).

Social networking consists of exactly that—interacting with people in a social environment, in an arena where they come to interact with you. Some great resources are MySpace (they can hear your music and learn who you are), Facebook (they can see who you interact with and who you do business with, plus they see what others are saying about you), and Twitter (they can interact with you directly and read what you say and how you respond to others). One thing about social networking sites is that the genuine y-o-u usually comes out, and hopefully that’s a positive thing!

If you are totally missing the boat, you can use these social networking sites as opportunities to sell stuff and over hype and over promote yourself, but people will tune you out pretty quickly. Or you can be smart and use these sites as little inner glimpses of who you are and what you believe to allow your fans to understand and gravitate towards you (or push you away if you are a tremendous asshole). For example, on Twitter, Nicki Minaj (@NickiMinaj) uses her tweets to talk about “Barbies” and her upcoming shows. As I see her tweets, I realize she is a hard working artist who is always busy and performing. This tells me she has a fan base if she’s doing 5 shows a week, and therefore must be popular. It made me want to research her music and who she is, even though I’m sure I’m on some email list somewhere that has sent me her music. She defines her own words called “Nictionary Terms.” She has stood out from everyone else and gotten my attention. I am just one person….she has over one hundred thousand followers. In fact, on a Tuesday in July at 3pm, Nicki Minaj has been mentioned 54 times by name in the past 2 hours (not including her tweets, nor @nickiminaj, nor any label or publicist tweets). That’s great for a new artist who hasn’t dropped an album yet. And with all of those followers and tweets, she still manages to interact with her fans on Twitter. It’s amazing to me.

How Can You Build Your Brand and Fanbase Using Social Media Besides MySpace & Twitter?

In addition to interacting directly with your fans and the industry on Twitter, you can build a Blog. It’s another great was to humanize your brand and share opinions and thoughts with your fanbase. You can talk about your life, who you are, where you are from. You can discuss opinions on current events and places. You can offer a running commentary on how you spend your days, if it’s interesting enough. You can post photos and blogs along the way. Blogspot, Blogger, and WordPress are the free ones I know about without googling for more. You also have the option to build your own blog on your MySpace page.

For those who want to spread their image as well (which is important), photos, YouTube, or UStream can be tied into all of your social networking efforts. Remember if you go live, that having something to say is important. Not everyone is meant to have their own live reality show. I’ve seen many that are as exciting as watching paint dry. I do enjoy the ones in the studio sessions where I can watch artists and producers record. Drumma Boy and J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League offer some exciting ones!! Also, TI’s studio, Echo, has a UStream feed that offers technical tips and do’s and don’ts from head engineer, Dirt! Your live feeds also give you something to talk about , on your Twitter page, blogs, etc, before, during, and after the broadcast.

When I was out on promo tour with BloodRaw we set up his own YouTube TV page and downloaded video footage at the end of every day so fans could tour along with us. We also had a blog page where we uploaded photos along the way so fans could see what we were doing and where we were. By the end of his 40 day promo tour, we had over 12,000 people riding along with us. And that was 18 months ago….before Twitter was popular. I think we’d have more than 4 times the following now since it’s far more popular today and since we could have been instantly interactive (like Twitter).

Podcasts are also a wonderful way to share your brand, and voice, with fans. It’s a quick way to record your voice and share a story or experience in your own words. The podcasts can then be downloaded from your sites or blog, attached to tweets, or uploaded to iTunes if your demand is big enough. Vocals and visuals can often times make a story more exciting than just text. I’ve heard some awesome podcasts by B Real discussing border crossings with weed in his pockets, back when he was touring with Cypress Hill. His amusing antidotes are funny, and are great experiences to hear.

Facebook is a great place to interact with fans as well. A savvy artist can also set it up so that tweets post there as well as on their website, so it gives people multiple ways to reach you directly (or a staff member working for you). Ron Artest’s fake Twitter page (who’s on payroll) is far more fun and interesting than his real page. I’m not even going tell you which is which.

Facebook allows you to post photos, join groups, interact with fans directly, blast information and posts, and keep up with other artists that you’ve befriended or who have similar fan bases as you. It’s a great way to increase your reach and seen as more professional than MySpace (which seems to now skew younger)! As an artist, you need pages at both sites. You can also offer contests, discounts for shows, schedules of events, etc.

Most newer artists haven’t navigated the world of iPhone and Blackberry Applications, but if you have a strong enough following, they are definitely a source of income and promotion. Also, FriendFeed is a newer network that could become a player in the social networking mix for artists soon. It is a social media content aggregator that offers a community of people who conversate around content. And after all, you want people talking about you.

Although it’s important to use traditional methods to spread your awareness and promote yourself, the internet is a great and inexpensive (but VERY time consuming) way to get your name and message out there. The trick is to find the right balance that works for you and best reaches your core fans and new potential fans.

Selling Music In A Changing Economy

2009-07-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

By, Wendy Day (www.IndieLabelBuilder.com)

The most dangerous person in the music industry is the one who doesn’t understand how it actually works. They chase false goals and are doomed to follow wrong paths! --Wendy Day Twitterism

We’ve all heard the adages about how during a recession, music sales increase. But we’ve never been through a depression before (they won’t start calling it that until we come out of it for fear people will grip onto their spendable dollars even tighter). And prior to the shitty economy, music sales were taking a nose dive anyway…some say because of bad music choices, and some say due to downloading and free P2P music swapping. Others say it’s due to too many entertainment choices vying for our attention; we all only get 24 hours each day.

Chris Anderson wrote a great book called “The Long Tail,” and what I took away from it was that each artist now needs to reach his or her own niche directly--through building their own movement and interacting with fans, and potential fans, directly. I see it reinforced everyday on Twitter. Those who are skilled at interacting and inviting their fans into their circle will fare the best. Ludacris (@Ludajuice) and Tyrese (@Tyrese4Real) are exceptionally skilled at this. Gucci Mane and Yo Gotti are exceptional at working the streets and clubs. Drake and 50 Cent are great on the mixed tape circuit. But the real challenge is to be great at it all!

I’m fortunate in that the indie labels that I consult are doing very well. They still are able to sell CDs and downloads by spending promotional dollars in places where it matters, with people who are legitimate, and grind like their lives depend on it—which they do. But not everyone has this same experience. The key is to make great music, market and promote it well to people who would buy it, and work harder than every other artist out here.

Word of mouth and people hearing songs that they like are what sell music. Therefore, promotional efforts should be based around letting people hear your music, and sparking people to talk about you. Everything you do needs to revolve around working your single and getting your word of mouth buzzing. Spreading your music while showing your image is important. Some artists use mixed CDs, snippet CDs, YouTube videos and footage, and upload stuff to places like WorldStarrHipHop.com and VladTV.com. Most artists tour and do shows whenever and where ever possible. The more someone sees you is the more they recognize you!

Artists with bigger budgets use radio spins, promotional tours within a 3 to 5 state area, and songs featuring other artists in addition to the other promotional methods. Keeping in touch with fans via phone calls, email, newsletter e-blasts, twitter, websites, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. With the over saturation of music and rappers, it takes more work and more time to sell less music. It almost seems like giving away music for free and selling merchandise, shows, and endorsements makes more sense. It’s about good music and an interesting story to get people talking about you. A fucked up image can do more damage than bad music, however.

While most artists are still begging the major labels for record deals, the smarter artists have realized that working their own project to build a buzz and sell their own music is the ticket to success. The best start is to make good music that has a competitive sound. That does mean that it needs to sound like all the other crap out there, but it can’t be so completely different that no one wants to hear it. The quality needs to be relatively tight, at least professional enough to compete in the marketplace. Can your single be played on the radio between Young Jeezy and Kanye and still sound good?

When you’ve got good music, it’s best to get feedback from DJs and retail stores to see what they feel are the best songs (let them choose your singles). Then focus on the single to build awareness. Depending on the budget you have available (and like EVERY business, this one also takes some money to make money), you draw a circle around your city. For example, you draw a circle that’s a 3 hour driving radius around your city, or with a bigger budget, you draw a circle that’s a 5 or 6 hour driving radius around your city. That circle becomes your target market area.

You cover every inch of that market promoting at clubs, barber shops, malls, high schools, flea markets, clubs, hair salons, colleges, car washes, strip clubs, community centers—anyplace where your market hangs out. If your music is more street (like Gucci Mane, Maino, or Young Jeezy) you focus more on the ‘hoods and streets. If your music is more lyrical (like Kanye or Drake) then the focus is college and high school campuses. I believe every artist should hit everywhere, even if your stronger focus is more street or more college oriented. If your music is younger oriented (like Souljah Boy), make sure your focus is high schools, middle schools, community centers, arcades, teen clubs, and skating rinks. Make sure your music is clean if you’re promoting to younger people.

The best tools to utilize are posters, flyers, t-shirts, wrapped vehicles, snippet CDs, mixed CDs, postcards, so people can see your image and hear your music. E-blasts of your single, YouTube videos and footage help tell the story of who you are and what your music is about. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter let fans see personal aspects of you and your personality. Filming behind the scenes footage also involves your fans in your movement.

Gone is the day where fans want to see artists flaunt that they have more material goods than the fan will ever possess. Gone is the day of having one or two good singles and a bunch of filler to make a $20 CD sale. Today, fans pick and choose the songs they like and free music is all the rage. I read a post on Bob Lefsetz’ blog by the artist Moby, who said that his #1 sold download on iTunes was a song that he’d been giving away for free for two months. Free does help sales as we all suspected.

DJ Smallz told me that the Blogs today are what the mixtape DJs used to be to music. Bloggers are now the people who spread the word about which artists are hot and who’s who. They also now get the new music first. I’ve downloaded more mixed CDs from RapRadar.com lately than from any other source, including the e-blasts that used to spread the music. I find that I am more pro-active now, looking for the music rather than waiting for it to come to my in-box. I’m also burned out by all of the music delivery services that popped up when they saw Digiwaxx controlling the marketplace. We sure do burn shit out in this industry. If someone sees someone else doing something, rather than start a different business, they start the same one whether it’s profitable or not. In the past month, I’ve counted 30 e-blasts services that spread music for a price…most of which is free because none of them can make money with the over saturation. Some of them boast 100,000 email recipients…c’mon now. Are there THAT many DJs and tastemakers in the world? Doubtful. Save your money for the respected ones.

There are a few great services for spreading singles. I certainly don’t mean to say that none are legitimate. Just some folks jumped on a band wagon without the ability to really deliver. In this industry, there are so many bogus people—bullshit promoters, bullshit radio promoters, bullshit street team promotions, bullshit marketing companies, bullshit label consultants, bullshit event planners, bullshit publicists, etc. It’s really important to check the credentials and track record of anyone you give your hard earned money to. 99% of the people in the music industry are full of shit just trying to make a come up off of an uninformed person with money.

Once you market and promote within that 3 to 5 hour radius which is your market area, you build the buzz until there is a strong enough demand for your album (usually after fans have heard a couple of songs and a mix CD or two). You’ll be able to feel the buzz because you will most likely be getting paid to perform at shows now. Your demand will be increasing….more incoming phone calls, more web hits, more Twitter followers, more MySpace friends, more followers at shows, more invites to events, etc. Also, more local artists and producers will be hounding you to work with them. At this point you can upload your music to an aggregator like TuneCore.com for digital sales and an independent distributor (someone LEGITIMATE who can get CDs into stores for you—REALY, REALLY, REALLY check references here! More distributors are bullshit than legit). Once your music is for sale in the marketplace you have to work even harder to get people to support you and buy it. It’s truly a popularity contest, and fans vote with their dollars whether they like you or not!

In today’s declining and challenging marketplace, it’s no longer necessary to be backed by a major label or a sub-label (usually owned by another artist or producer). Provided you have the budget, or the ability to find an investor, the playing field is more level today than it ever has been in the history of the music business. Just make sure you know what you are doing and have found good guides along the way to help you. If not, this can be a very expensive hole into which you could waste a lot of money!

My Judgment Day

2009-03-08T20:31:00.001-07:00

By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

Today was the first really warm day in Atlanta—warm enough to drop the top on the Beamer. I was riding through an upscale, white suburb of a suburb of Hotlanta, about 40 miles north of the city, up by the lake. There was an old Impala chasing me…it was clean! Gorgeous rims, sound system to rival mine, and in great shape. I wasn’t nervous at all about being chased, as I was coming from the firing range and therefore perfectly safe. He pulled up beside me at a light. I had to turn Jeezy down to hear him. He saw my PacNBig license plate. He wanted to know if I liked rap—he was kinda half laughing at me, a middle aged white woman jamming unreleased Jeezy very loudly. I smiled.

He cranked his system back up…the 808 was pounding. The light was about to change. My smile was not because he didn’t think I fit the stereotype to give a fuck about rap; I was smiling because the shit he was listening to was one of my artist friends, and the track was made by my favorite producer. I was in the studio when that song was made, and as he drove away bobbing his head, all I could do was smile at the memory.

On the introspective tip, it reminded me of all of the times I looked at someone, or knew a small fact about someone and assumed I knew everything. I reflected on my relationship with the real Ricky Ross and how he is nothing like the street lure and the DVD re-enactments (he’s even better), or Demetrius who is all about being real and having balls, not just about the flash that surrounded him at one time. I’ve learned so much from both friends about them, life, loyalty, truth, and myself.

T.I. told us, on his last album, to appreciate what we have instead of focusing on what we don’t have. In a world where materialism is king, and fame and money are the alter at which we worship, it’s hard to remember to be thankful for what we have. I tend to focus on my losses instead of the successes. And in 2008, I got sucked in to giving attention to my haters and detractors instead of the thousands of people who love and support me in this industry—detractors that are barely in the industry one short year later. Look, I’m doing it again in making my point…grrrrr!

I’ve been soul searching a lot this past year as many of you know who follow my ramblings and writings. I’m bored with this declining industry. And then it hit me all at once this week: if I don’t like the way that it is, I’m going to have to change it. Or at least change my little section of it. I suck at keeping in touch with folks, which is pathetic because this is a who-you-know industry. I’ve decided to create a strong inner circle of people around me who are successful at what they do, those who really want to implement positive change, and anyone interested in moving together as part of a team. United we stand, divided we fall. We can bitch about the haters, the lack of creativity in the music, and the declining sales in the marketplace, but until we do something about it, this is what we will be stuck with.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the current environment, I just hate some of the things that are making it stagnant and ruining the business side of what we do. The plus side is that a depression in any economy forces out those who don’t have passion or staying power. It forces out the bad business folks. It forces out, naturally, the bullshit. This week marks the beginning of my 18th year in the urban music business. I’m still doing today what I started when I got into the industry—helping artists. Some of you haven’t even lived as long as I’ve been making a difference in urban music. There are years where I didn’t make a dime, and years where I made a grip of gwop. Neither slowed me down or stopped me. Money doesn’t drive me. There are years where my name came up often and years where folks barely heard from me. But I’m still here. I am tremendously thankful that I am still good at what I do, still successful, and that I am still relevant (at least in most circles).

I had a long discussion with a wise friend last week. He told me about when he was locked down and sitting in the hole for the sixth consecutive week. He shared with me that it wasn’t the memories of the material shit that kept him sane or brought him joy. He couldn’t recall how the new Bentley smelled, or how it felt to move into the 15,000 square foot house, or even how it felt to fuck three women at once. But he distinctly recalled his baby’s touch. Those irreplaceable moments are what saw him through.

I remembered back to a time when I didn’t care what I drove (a 1995 Isuzu Rodeo), or what I wore (pajama bottoms from Target run $11), or what purse I carried (a $20 back pack holds more than a thousand dollar Gucci purse any day). I looked around my cluttered house that’s so overcrowded with stuff I don’t need that I bought on shopping trips that I thought were making me happy at the time. Truth is, if my house caught fire in the middle of the night, I’d grab my little dog, photos of my Mom and my boyfriend that I can’t replace, and probably my baby blanket that has sentimental value to me. Everything else can go.

After I did the Cash Money $30 million deal, they didn’t pay me (please don’t email me about this: I sued them and long story short, three years after I did their deal, they paid me right before we went to court). Because I had been cash advancing my credit cards to survive while I worked their deal, not getting paid had resounding affects. I got evicted, my credit went into the toilet (which lasted until just a couple years ago), and I lost everything I owned in the eviction. A humbling experience. But it sure made moving easy, and rebuilding fun. Some of the stuff I can’t ever get back like baby pictures, photos of my father who passed away, old out of print books, demo tapes from now-famous rappers, etc. But it’s all just stuff!! I really didn’t lose anything—I got to keep me. It’s like my friend said about sitting in solitary confinement…what he missed most was his daughter’s touch. The stuff that matters…

Materialism: Worshipping At The Alter of a False God

We’ve always had excessive materialism in urban music. In the early 80s, I heard Slick Rick say in a rhyme that he had his Ballys on. Once I learned that they were shoes, I couldn’t go buy a pair of Ballys fast enough. When you grow up poor with nothing, you want to be able to obtain whatever you feel you’ve missed out on, it’s just natural human desire. The Hip Hop Nation is no different.

I wanted to own all of the things that I grew up around, but could never afford. Having been raised with morals, ethics, and a conscience slowed me down a bit, but I found industries where there was a fast track to money. For a minute I rebelled against my love affair with money, and studied African American studies with the intention of helping young Black folks start businesses—the only true way that I saw to empower oneself. Often distracted from that path by the glitz of the music industry, and by the smoke and mirrors of fame, I found my journey to be more cyclical than an even growth upwards.

And the music seemed to follow my own evolution. The positive lyrics of Public Enemy in the late 80s clashed with Jay Z and Biggie’s early love of popping bottles in the early 90s, just as today Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kweli try to overtake Young Jeezy and T.I. in my CD changer. But here’s what I have learned over the years, and if sharing my insight helps one person reading this, then today is a great day: Balance and moderation, in life, are key! Materialism and the love of money is not necessarily evil—it’s letting them control and consume your life that is. Just as we all need toys and trinkets to play with, so do we need things in our life that give us hope and something to believe in!

Making money for the sake of buying shit and collecting cash is empty. Doing something you believe in and are passionate about is fulfilling. Collecting trinkets and souvenirs along the way makes perfect sense, provided it is done with intelligence and wisdom. Buying a $125,000 car to drive doesn’t make good financial sense if you can’t afford it or if you have other more important things to do with your money. Then your trinket becomes another source of stress….just ask most of the rappers out here who didn’t figure that their careers wouldn’t always be on an upswing and got in over their heads.

This is probably a great place to interject that making music or songs for the sake of collecting a check is also empty. If your music isn’t based on truth and your own passion, you may sell a few CDs and downloads at first, but your follow up release will tank heavily when the fans catch on that you’re just a gimmick. The masses will have moved on to the next gimmick, and the 100,000 or so hard core fans that do believe in your movement won’t keep you afloat unless you are indie—and you aren’t, because you chased that big advance check (which is long gone). The music industry is not the new dope game. There are no quick licks to hit here, I promise you!

I’ve been reading a lot of goal setting and motivational books over the past year. They helped to an extent…but I had to do the inner work myself. I had to figure out what makes me happy and what I really want to do next with my life (sometimes it’s as much pressure to reach your goals and have to figure out what’s next, then it is to never reach a goal to begin with LOL). I had to fix the problems in my life and celebrate the positives. This was challenging because I tend to focus on what I don’t have and what went wrong, rather than to focus on the blessings I have and what went right.

I’ve decided to get more organized, be more active in the positive segments of my community, and to make changes to the aspects of this industry that I don’t like (but have the ability to impact). I’m becoming less judgmental, less know-it-all prone, and more generous and sharing than ever (which is a challenge because I was already pretty open with that). I’m expanding my inner circle to include like-minded successful folks, and I’m devoting more time to helping those less fortunate (my personal focus is on non-violent offenders who are incarcerated). The negative folks around me and those looking to tear others down rather than build themselves up can all eat a fat baby’s dick. They no longer exist in my vision and I refuse to give any credence or energy to them. They’ll fade away in a minute anyway, as they always do.

"Your values are in disarray, prioritized horribly
Unhappy with your riches 'cause you're piss poor morally"
--T.I. "Live Your Life"

“Dancing With The Devil”

2009-02-10T14:01:00.001-08:00

By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition

Mark Curry is my new poster child for Rap Coalition, but he doesn’t know it yet. Not because he has written a tell-all book slamming Puffy’s business practices, not because he takes responsibility for his own bad decisions, but because he tells his firsthand experience about the shadier practices in the entertainment industry that prevail in almost every company. And he tells it loudly, with examples, and from his experiences in the music industry being signed to Bad Boy for more than a decade.

This is a similar story that I have heard over and over and over in my 17 years in this industry. The story hasn’t changed much in 40 years since artists were given fancy new Cadillacs in exchange for their music, nor does my reaction to this and similar stories change (it always depresses me; I am not desensitized to it). When I sit down with most artists, it’s more of “to what degree did you get jerked?” than “did you get jerked?” Obviously they got jerked. Most do. Sadly, it’s the price many creative people are willing to pay for their chance at “getting on” or some primal need for money and fame. Every time I hear this similar story, my first question is always “why did you stay so long?” The answer always floors me: I believed him. We were family. I knew he needed me so he’d have to do right eventually. He said if I would just wait a little longer, all of my dreams would come true. It’s a building process. My turn would come. All I wanted to do was buy my Mom a house, and he was on his fourth Bentley so I knew he’d break bread eventually. Blah, blah, blah.

Mark Curry was signed to Bad Boy Records through a production company that was bought out almost immediately. It is a way for people behind the scenes in the industry to get a quick pay check. Someone finds an artist and brings the artist to the record label (in this case, a well known street dude). The label recognizes the value of that artist and wants that artist in their camp. The label “tests out” the artist’s talent by giving him, or her, an assignment. The assignment is usually to write a song or make a track for another already signed artist who is struggling for a hit record to “help” the family, or company, or team. In Mark Curry’s case, it was P Diddy himself looking to make a hit single for a soundtrack to a Godzilla movie. Mark delivered.

Once the label is convinced the artist has value, it comes time to pull out the paperwork. In Mark’s case, he says Puff gave him a contract to sign with the middleman. When Mark asked why he couldn’t sign directly to Bad Boy instead, he was told because the middleman was Puff’s friend (as an ironic twist, this same friend is the person Puff testified in front of the Grand Jury that he didn’t know his real name—the same crime that sent Lil Kim to prison in a different case) and actually found Mark and brought him to Puff. After Mark balked at the language in the contract that he was unable to understand, he says Puff was kind enough to send him to an attorney (after Puff allegedly asked that famous question, “Don’t you trust me? I thought we were cool?!”). That attorney, Kenny Meiselas, turned out to be one of Puff’s entertainment attorneys at a strong and credible law firm. Conflict of interest? Not exactly, Mark wasn’t exactly signing to Bad Boy. Mark was advised to sign the deal by counsel, so he did. Puffy then bought the contract from the middleman, thereby putting a wad of money--recoupable money from the artist, in the middleman’s pocket and landing Mark Curry on Bad Boy.

That contract, entitled Mark to a $75,000 advance: $25k was a signing bonus (recoupable), $25k was for the rights to half of his publishing (recoupable), and the remaining $25k would be given to him upon release of his debut album (also recoupable)--an album that never came. Since the middleman had taken half of Mark’s publishing off the top, he received that $25k, so all Mark received for signing to Bad Boy was $25,000. He knew it didn’t feel right, but he focused on the future and what other ways there were to make money in this business—touring, endorsement deals, etc. I wonder why we didn’t see this scenario on any episode of The Making Of The Band. It’s all too commonplace in this industry.

As Mark was consistently promised the opportunity to work on his own album, he was side tracked with tours, writing songs for Puff, and teaching Puff how to deliver his rhymes. Basically, he was put on hold to build the artistic career of his boss. Mark went along with that because he saw everyone else in the camp doing so, and figured it was the way things worked. He watched Puff enact sales pitches on the “Bad Boy family” of other artists and producers to get them to do whatever he needed done. He watched Puff get into numerous legal scrapes to emerge victorious. He watched Puff use Biggie’s death to increase his own popularity, fame, income, and fan base. Mark watched one disgruntled artist after another leave Bad Boy. He babysat other artists under the guise of “developing” them at the label. And Mark watched promise after promise fade into dust, even when he was most desperate.

When Mark Curry reflected on why he spent ten years at Bad Boy without ever releasing his own record, he surmised that he had more value to Puff building Puff’s career. He also felt that it was because he was trusting enough to believe his mentor and label president when he spun him by telling him the timing wasn’t right, or that he was busy with the planning of his next party or his clothing company or his world tour…or the most common excuse: we’re waiting for your budget to be approved (a lie that a label accountant finally exposed upon telling Mark that Puff never had submitted a budget for Mark’s project).

In “Dancing With The Devil,” Mark pointed out numerous ways that Bad Boy and Puff, directly, was able to profit from artists. In most Bad Boy contracts there is a clause stating that the artist has to pay Puff for appearances on a record. Since Puff is creating the album, he controls those appearances on all singles and album cuts. At $40,000 per appearance (even if just whispering “Bad Boy! Bad Boy!” in the background), he can make a fortune on appearances on his own artists’ records. Bad Boy artists often record at Daddy’s House, a studio owned by the mogul. If an artist receives a recording budget of $250,000, that fund can easily be spent with Hitmen producers (you guessed it, producers who are signed to the mogul with a stake in the publishing rights) at Daddy’s House studio (rumored to be the current going rate of studio time at $125 an hour in the late 90s). Not only does the production and recording fund go to Bad Boy owned entities, but it is all recoupable from the artists’ budgets—a double win for any company willing to do business this way.

Mark also pointed out that when Mary J Blige was recording at Daddy’s House, for example, she would be billed for 8 hours in the studio, but may have only used 6 hours. Those additional 2 hours would be paid from her MCA recording budget, but would be used by Bad Boy Recording artists to record-- artists with no ties to MCA. Mark also set the record straight about Kirk Burrowes, a former Bad Boy President, who was allegedly threatened into signing away his 25% ownership in Bad Boy, but was strung along long enough (apparently with the promise of money) to miss the statute of limitations deadline to sue for what he claimed was rightfully his. Once he filed suit, he was falsely painted in the media as a disloyal, money-grubbing liar out to gold dig a mogul (for the record, Puff spent more on jewelry for his women than he paid in annual salary for Kirk Burrowes to run the label during the early years of Bad Boy--his argument being that Kirk was a 25% owner of the label and would make money in the long term). The “relationship” that Puff had with his artists and staff seems to have been a powerful hold which kept them around long enough that they couldn’t do anything about it, and close enough that they didn’t want to….until they caught on and it was too late. In which case, either violence allegedly ensued, or images and careers were destroyed.

There are two things I didn’t like about “Dancing With The Devil,” although it’s an amazingly honest, insightful, and brave book. The way Mark listed names of street dudes who were in Puffy’s circle was a bit excessive. Now, I’m not saying he did not tell the truth, but I don’t feel he needed to discuss by name who allegedly shot Tupac in Quad, or who allegedly killed Puff’s bodyguard Wolf, or who allegedly shot Jake that fateful night that is credited with kicking off the East Coast/West Coast beef. Secondly, while there are more artists than not who’ve signed to Bad Boy and eventually cried foul, shady industry tactics are not the sole dominion of Bad Boy. Shady and fraudulent practices exist at many other companies throughout the music business. It doesn’t seem to be a Black or white problem specifically, but a green (money) problem. I realize Mark is speaking from his personal experience, and it is his autobiography, so he is only speaking about what he knows. Bad Boy is NOT the only company, by any means, in this industry that has been accused by its artists of shady business practices. Although it IS one of the most successful, and has been accepted without due diligence by journalists, the media, fans, executives, the industry, star fuckers, hoes, and party goers alike.

All in all, “Dancing With The Devil” was a riveting read, and a must for anyone who takes a career in the music business seriously. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down til I was finished the book. It is available at www.MarkCurryBooks.com.

“I told you that we won’t stop…” –Sean “Puffy" Combs

Producers And Beatmakers

2009-01-08T14:21:00.001-08:00

By, Wendy Day (www.WendyDay.com)

Over the past ten years, the price of equipment to make beats has come way down. In addition, the ability to upload production to the internet and circulate music quickly, easily, and cheaply has made the amount of producers and beatmakers soar in the urban music industry. And if you also factor in that EVERYONE thinks they have the perfect ear for music and knows exactly what is missing from the current music industry, you get exactly what we have today in the music industry: a glut of producers.

Producers, like rappers, have exploded onto the urban music landscape in droves. Hundreds of thousands of artists have set up MySpace pages attempting to sell their music, influence the industry, and take their shot at fame and success. What we have is way more producers than we need. What this means is that the supply far outweighs the demand, driving down the income and opportunity for all producers.

Very few producers really stand out in today’s business. The ones who do rise above the din most assuredly have platinum hits under their belts. The majority of A and B list artists and the bulk of label executives seek out the producers who have a track record of success in delivering hit singles, and are willing to shell out bigger checks to secure the hits. Meanwhile, there are usually between 10 and 15 songs on a CD, leaving room for the album filler to be filled by lesser known and new producers. The prevailing attitude at labels is that maybe we’ll get lucky, and one of the $1500 to $5000 filler tracks will be the next big radio hit. The more entrepreneurial rappers have set up production companies and signed their own production teams so that they can even claim ownership of a larger share of the music on their own releases. Very few are willing to use producers outside of their own camp because that eats into their profit margin.

At the labels (major or indie), each artist has a recording budget. The budgets are determined by a mathematical formula based on how many CDs the label projects the artist can sell either based on previous sales, or based on the buzz and hype of the artist. For example, 50 Cent or T.I. will have a larger recording budget than Hurricane Chris or Alphamega because of their track record of success. However, Hurricane Chris and AlphaMega will have a larger budget than Roccett or PapaDuck because their buzz is bigger.

An entire album must be delivered within the confines of the recording budget. That budget includes production, studio time, features, sample clearance, and often mixing and mastering costs. If an artist has a recording budget of $250,000, then the album must be delivered to the label without spending more than that $250,000. If mixing and mastering costs $15,000 and recording at a decent studio is $125 an hour, that doesn’t leave much for the production of 10 or 15 songs—especially for artists who believe in recording 25 or more songs and choosing the best 10 or 15 for the album. If the artist wants a Jazze Pha, Jim Jonsin, Mannie Fresh, or Drumma Boy track that can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $70,000 depending on the relationship. It is easy to spend $100,000 or more on the production for three or four hot potential singles. And since it seems that one out of six Americans is a producer today, finding the remainder of the album filler is quite easy. The competition to sell tracks today is crazier than I’ve ever seen it. Even my mailman makes beast on the side.

The best way for an aspiring producer to sell beats is to develop a relationship with the artists and the label A&Rs who buy beats. Selling tracks is an on-going thing, because you just never know who is buying beats and when. And because there are so many producers out here hawking beat CDs, you need to have your music in front of the decision maker at the exact moment he is buying tracks. Easier said than done!

For a producer without access to large number of artists (meaning you don’t live in southern FL, Atlanta, or NY), and who isn’t able to make the regular rounds to the record labels (meaning you don’t live in New York City or Los Angeles either), this approach can be very difficult. The next best thing would be to find artists in your local area and provide their sound—their production, hoping that they blow up and achieve some level of success. That way, when they blow up, you blow up. This worked for Beats By The Pound, Mannie Fresh, Dr Dre, and others. Of course, it’s harder now than ever for local, regional acts to break through and secure the attention of a major label the way No Limit, Cash Money, and Death Row did back in the 90s.

Sha Money XL, who manages many producers, feels the best way to get on as a new producer is to “be the man everyone goes to for tracks in your area. Work with every artist and build a name for yourself locally and then expand that. Get your name out there as much as possible. In today’s viral world that’s easier than ever! The internet is a great tool to spread the word. To sell beats on-line, you may need to be a little better known, but spreading the word is still key on-line for a new producer.”

Some producers have even chosen to take the loss and give up part ownership in their own music to secure a spot in a production company owned by a more established producer or artist like Jermaine Dupri, Dr Dre, Jazze Pha, CTE, etc. The thinking is that it’s better to give up half now to build a name and reputation underneath someone else. In my personal opinion, this doesn’t work out very well—just ask Sam Snead, Mellman, Butta, Ced Keyz, Carl-So-Lowe and the list goes on and on….

So what’s a newer producer to do?

The good thing about the glut in the marketplace is that only the truly dedicated will survive. The folks doing this because they think it’s easy, or because they think they can make a quick buck, will give up quickly and leave. When they see how hard it is to survive, they will move on. Only the folks with music in their blood and souls will be able to withstand the bullshit.

Also, there are many levels of producers. The key is to figure out where you want to fit in and go for it. Not every producer needs to be a Dr Dre. There are many underground producers in the ‘hood selling beats for $100 to $500, and perfectly content to be that underground go-to guy. Fearing my article was sounding a bit pessimistic, I put in a call to the ever positive Drumma Boy for advice. His opinion is that “this industry has always had a lot of competition making beats. Right now is no different…just the numbers have changed. It’s important to figure out what level you want to be on as a producer, and go for it. Opportunities open for those who are prepared and talented. Always have your beat CD on you. I’ve made connection with artists at the airport. They might not buy a beat then, but they’ll remember me.”

I asked Drumma if he was a new producer today, what he’d do to sell beats. “It’s still all about getting to the artists. I’d pop up at studios every night. If I were in a smaller town, when the artist came to do a show I’d be at the club with my beat CDs. I’d still do what I did to get on…pop up on the artists. If Jeezy is performing, I’d be at the club pressing a CD into Jeezy’s hand-- not anyone in his entourage if I can help it, but Jeezy’s hand. After doing this over and over again, they’ll at least know about you at some point. They remember the tracks that bump. Every artist wants the hot tracks. Eventually they’ll call if your beats are hot enough.” Thanks Drumma!

What else should a newer producer do?

It’s important to focus not just on the creative process, but also the business side. Making hot music is necessary, but so is understanding how the business works. The price a producer quotes for his beat is really an advance against backend royalties. Depending on the budget, and depending on how badly the artist or label wants your track, a new producer is usually paid $1500 to $5000 by a major label, and $500 to $3000 by an indie label for a track. The producer almost always goes into the studio with the artist to record. This is the difference between a beat maker and a producer. A preliminary agreement called a “producer dec” is usually circulated, prior to recording, between the lawyer for the artist or label and the producer’s lawyer (yes, you have an experienced entertainment lawyer who is well versed in production agreements on your team).

A producer gets paid half of the advance upfront BEFORE GOING INTO THE STUDIO TO RECORD, and half after delivering the track (that second half is usually paid when the album is released, if it’s a major label). The “backend” royalty is whatever you agreed to accept while negotiating, usually somewhere between 2 points and 5 points (3 points is average). Those points come out of the artist’s share, and artists rarely recoup. That means there isn’t always a backend, but be sure to negotiate it just in case there is. If you don’t understand what points are, there’s an excellent explanation in Donald Passman’s “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Music Industry.” At the very least, read that chapter on points and royalties in your local Barnes and Noble store. Also, attending Sha Money’s producer conference, One Stop Shop, in April in Phoenix is money well spent--it’s the best convention of all of the ones that I attend each year!!

And if you remember nothing else about this article, remember this: keep 100% of your publishing on ANY track you create. If you choose to sample, monies will be withheld from your backend and from your publishing to pay for the sample. That is why more experienced producers rarely sample anymore. Avoid any and all agreements that ask you to sell your beats as “work for hire.” They are fuck boy contracts.

Even though the production side of the urban music industry is over saturated, it is possible for producers to eek out a nice living. If you have the talent, and the drive to succeed, you will. If not, make sure you have a back up plan. This industry can be ruthless.

Death

2008-12-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

By, Wendy Day

I had written an article for this month’s column about the proliferation of negativity in this industry—namely, HATERS! It has gotten so bad that some of my more powerful friends have been holding conference calls with each other to block and destroy the people who are attacking them with words (both publicly and privately). And while I am a more karma driven person than a pro-active blackballer, I have to admit that I understand it.

But I guess you’ll have to wait til next month to read about how to handle the haters in your life, because last night I heard that Shakir Stewart shot and killed himself. And while I understand why people want to stop the pain they are feeling, I have to admit that the news of his death shocked the shit out of me. It brought back the pain I felt when I heard Pac passed, and when I got that call from Vanessa Satten at XXL telling me there were rumors that Pimp C had died, and could I call his Mom to see if he was OK…I mean how do you ever make THAT call—“I hear your son may be dead, what are YOU hearing?” Nah, I’ll pass on that call. I immediately called Chad’s cell phone and was able to leave him a voicemail—that was an encouraging sign that his voicemail wasn’t full. I called Julia Beverly at Ozone and Grouchy Greg at AllHipHop, neither of whom had heard the rumor yet—more good signs. Both did call me back within the hour to verify his death, however, while my assistant called Greg Street who also verified it as truth, not fiction.

The thing about death is that it is both personal and public. So not only do you have to deal with your own feelings of loss, but you have to deal with others’ reactions as well. So, not only did Shakir leave my life, and the industry, but he left the lives of his family, friends, children, co-workers, artists, and fans. He also left the people he interacted with along the course of his daily life from the person who cut his hair to the guy who parks his car or sells him coffee in the morning.

So bear with me as I talk about death a bit, because it’s how I’m working out the loss of a guy who from the outside looking in seemed to have everything going for him, success, a dream job, a great life, money, connections, power, kids, etc-- but a ton of pain that he wasn’t able to handle any longer… Just goes to show ya…you never know what the next person is going through.

When Biggie passed away (I really wanted to say when Biggie was gunned down viciously but it sounded angry, and I’ve been too angry in this column in ‘08), it was a mess. He left a wife, a mother, children, and a label president, all of whom seemed to have some stake in ownership in him. Biggie left no will, no paperwork, no instructions for what HE wanted to happen after his death, so there was nothing to sort out the mess besides time and fighting. When Pimp C passed, it was also a mess. He had a wife who had legal say, but also a mother, artists, a label, and a partner, all of whom had emotional claim to what came next. Chad also died without leaving any instructions.

The outcome after your passing may be a scenario that you would never want to have happen. So handle it now. Here are the basics:
• A Will: A will is a legal document that enforces your wishes of what happens in the event of your death. It says who gets what, whether you’ll be buried or cremated, if you want to donate organs or body parts, and who gets to make decisions about your estate. When I die, I want to be cremated and sprinkled in the ocean, and this document specifies exactly that.
• Life Insurance: This is the insurance policy you take out if you have children or loved ones that you want supported financially, after you are no longer alive to do so. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I pay a little under a thousand dollars a year, for a million dollars worth of coverage. If I die, my Mom will become a wealthy woman because it is my intention to take care of her as she gets older, and if I am not here to do so, someone has to—hence the life insurance policy.
• An Executor to run your estate or foundation: If you are someone who has wealth, this is an important aspect of your instructions. You need to choose a friend, a family member, or a professional (like an accountant, lawyer, or business manager) to handle your business when you are gone. Biggie’s Mom handles his estate. Tupac’s Mom handles his estate. A business manager named Artie Erk handles J Dilla‘s estate. My entertainment attorney will handle my estate—I trust him and he knows me well enough to know what I’d want and not want.

Here are some of the things an Executor will need to know:
• Vital Statistics and Data: Parent's address, Children’s names and addresses (and birthdates), and your correct date of birth. Gather this information in a notebook: Full Name, Address, Birthplace, Date of birth, Social Security number, Marital status, Husband or wife’s name, Children names and dates of birth, Father's name, birth date and birthplace (city and state) Mother's full maiden name, birth date and birthplace (city and state). To assure accurate vital statistics, keep copies of your official birth certificate and social security card with this personal information.
• Personal Data: Year moved to current address; Education: High school attended, year graduated, colleges attended, dates of graduation and degrees; Occupation: Employed by or retired from and any additional employment information you want known; Church Membership or Affiliation; Heritage/Ancestry; Veteran: Branch of Service, Date enlisted, Serial number, Date of discharge, Location of discharge papers, Last rank, Additional military information (It is helpful if a copy of the veteran's discharge and form DD214 are stored with this personal profile); Professional/Fraternal/Charitable/Social Organizations
• People to Notify: List Full name, address, phone number and your relationship to this person
• Personal Records: List all Bank Accounts-- Checking and Savings-- Name of bank, Type of account, Address, Phone number, Account number; Safe Deposit Box: Name of bank, Address, Telephone, The name on the box if not your own, Location of key; Insurance Policies List policies with name of Company, Policy number, Name of insured, Amount of benefit, Beneficiary, Location of policies; Pension Plan: Name of company, address; Real Estate Owned: Address, Location of Deeds and Titles, other documents related to the real estate
• Location of Important Papers: Automobile Registration; Birth Certificate; Income Tax Records for past 3 years; Marriage Certificate/Divorce certificate; Last Will and Testament; Original Last Will and Testament and the copies; Stocks and Bonds; Attorney's Name, Address, Phone number; Accountant's Name, Address, Phone number; Executor's Name, Address, Phone number; Real Estate Broker's name, Address, Phone number; Stockbroker's Name, Address, Phone Number; Authorized persons to arrange final details of funeral (chose two); Additional information: extra keys, car title, bills, loans information that needs to be paid off, etc.
• Funeral Service Choices: Choice of funeral home, name, address and phone number; Type of service, Catholic, protestant, new age etc.; Location of service, name address and phone Officiate, Clergy, other: Name, address and phone. Other speakers or readers at service: Name, address and phone numbers; Participating Organization: Fraternal or Military Pallbearers: Name, Address, phone numbers; Honorary Pallbearers: Name, Address, and phone numbers. Obituary: Yes or No, Photo attached?; Name of newspaper, address; Family Visitation: yes or no; Public Visitation: Yes or no; Casket: Open or closed; Casket type: Steel, Copper, Bronze, Wood, other; Casket Color, Interior Color; Flag: Yes or No, Folded or Draped; Clothing: From current wardrobe or new; Jewelry: Yes or No; Preference of Flowers; Memorials: Full name and mailing address; Favorite Poetry, scriptures or other readings; Music; Items to Display: Collection of Family Photographs, Favorite possessions, Family mementos, Awards received; Special Items to be placed in casket, etc.
• Cremation: Urn: Wood, Metal, Steel, Copper, Bronze, other Disposition of Remains-- Earth burial, Entombment, Kept by the family, Scattering, other Special instructions if kept by family: Special instructions for scattering. If Earth Burial: Outer Burial Container: Yes or No Concrete, Steel, Bronze, Other Exterior Color Inscription Name of Cemetery: Location: Lot in name of: Section: Lot: Block: Plot: Inscription for memorial marker: If Entombment: Name of Columbarium, Location, Inscription for memorial marker

There are professionals who handle this planning for you, before you die, to make sure everything will go smoothly when you do die. There are lawyers and accountants who specialize in estate planning. They have access to insurance people who can implement the necessary policies. But the bottom line is that you need to take care of it now because after you pass away, it’s difficult enough for those you leave behind. Don’t allow them to fight amongst each other because you were too lazy, or too scared, to plan for your future beyond your life—especially if you have kids.

I have watched too many friends die and the uncertainty that surrounds everything is cruel, at best. When Proof passed away, he had an entire record label but no instructions on who’d run it, how it would run, how it would be funded, what would happen to the staff and artists signed to the label. And it came to a screeching halt. I can’t imagine Proof would have wanted it to end like that. When Pimp C passed away, the careers of his artists came to a grinding halt. This forced his wife to wake up the next morning as a label owner, plus deal with her husband’s death, whether she wanted that responsibility or not.

Planning for your death doesn’t mean you are going to die anytime soon. It’s just the responsible thing to do. And if Biggie, Pac, Proof, Pimp C, and others made plans for what would happen when and if they passed away, it would have made the lives so much easier for those they left behind. Hell, folks will already be grieving over your loss….and to make them step up and handle business, make hard decisions, and fight over what remains (worst case scenario) is crueler than cruel.

Signing To A Label Owned By An Artist

2008-12-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.Rap-Coalition.com and www.rapcointelpro.com)

In my experience, there are two ways to get signed to a deal that could possibly lead to a successful career in the music industry. One way is to put out your own CD and sell enough CDs regionally to create the leverage to entice a major label into signing you to a deal that will lead to success, and the second way is to sign to an already established platinum recording artist, and come through the deal he or she has worked out with a major label that wants to be in business with that artist.

There are both upsides and downsides to signing underneath an already signed artist or producer. There are more artist owned or controlled labels than at any other time in the history of the urban music business. Some of those current opportunities are:
Artist examples
• Young Jeezy’s CTE (formerly known as Corporate Thugz) through Def Jam
• 50 Cent’s G Unit through Interscope
• Eminem’s Shady through Interscope
• T.I.’s Grand Hustle through Capitol or Asylum
• Ludacris’ DTP through Def Jam
• Nelly’s Derty Entertainment, through Universal

Producer examples
• Mr Colipark’s label through Interscope
• Polow’s Zone 4 through Interscope
• Dr Dre’s Aftermath through Interscope
• Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music through Sony
• Pharrell’s label through Interscope

DJ examples
• DJ Drama’s Aphilliates label through Asylum
• DJ Khaled’s label through Koch

When a major label has an established artist with a strong sales track record of success (platinum or better), that label often offers a label deal to the artist to keep him or her happy. In some cases, it’s a real label (such as DTP, Shady, CTE, G-Unit, etc) with real offices, with their own dedicated staffs. And in some cases, it’s just a logo printed on the back of a CD to appear that the artist has his or her own label. There are a variety of reasons why these different types of deals exist, but that would be a topic for another article…

If one of the ways to get established in this industry is by coming up underneath an established, successful artist, you should consider the pluses and minuses.
Downside:
• The money, if and when it comes, passes through the hands of middlemen. If 50 decides to sign you to G-Unit, the money eventually goes from Interscope through G-Unit and then (hopefully) trickles down to the artist.
• There’s often a long wait--most artists already have their friends that they want to put on through their deal. Therefore, if you are an outsider in that camp, you’d have to wait your turn to come out.
• Compilation albums are usually the first release from a major artist who has just been given his own label deal. Often, this is because the artist has too many artists coming up under him or her, and compilations often allow one artist to stand out from the rest.
• If the major artist pisses off the major label, your project will suffer exponentially.
• If the major artist’s next release doesn’t do very well, the label deal will often suffer because the need to keep that established artist happy is no longer as strong.
• Many artists sign other artists who are not as talented so they will not be upstaged. Very few major artists are secure enough with themselves to sign artists who are better than they are or who can out rap them.
• Most artists do not have strong business sense and not many have the business acumen to hire professionals with a strong track record of success to run their companies for them. You could end up signed to a label run by (and therefore trusting your career to) the artist’s best friend who has no music business experience.
• Most releases under a major artist’s label are seen by consumers as just “friends” of the artist and are rarely taken as seriously as unknown artists. Murphy Lee will always be seen as Nelly’s boy, D-12 will always be Eminem’s buddies, P$C are T.I.’s friends, and Tony Yayo will always be seen as 50’s childhood friend. Whether they have this kind of history or not, that is the perception—admit it, you were thinking that when those albums dropped.
• You will never have a better deal than the deal your artist label-owner has with his label (unless you sell more CDs than him and can renegotiate). For example, if you are signed to an artist who received 18 points from Def Jam in his deal (that’s 18% of the retail selling price of each CD, after you paying back all of the expenses), you will likely get a lesser percentage than 18 points. He can’t give you more than he gets.
• You will most likely have to use newer, less established producers for your beats—or even the in-house producers, because there’s rarely a budget for you to record with the A-list hit makers like Mannie Fresh, Jim Jonsin, Dr Dre, etc. In a hit-driven, radio-focused industry, that could be somewhat challenging.

Upside:
• If the artist who signs you is a priority at the label (like Eminem, Ludacris, TI, 50 Cent, etc), there is a better chance that your project will be a priority at the label as well. The level of effort the major label makes on your project is in direct proportion to the level of financial value of the artist to whom you are signed.
• You gain immediate recognition in the marketplace when a major artist gets behind you and co-signs you.
• You are signed to a label that is run by an artist so the understanding of the music and artform is much stronger than if you are signed to a label run by a lawyer or an accountant.
• Your first release is almost guaranteed to feature the platinum recording artist because you are signed to him or her, and there is a financial stake in being promoted (and co-signed) by that artist.
• You are thrust into a career that starts out at a mid-level. You get to tour with an already established artist, you get to learn the industry through the eyes of a platinum recording artist, and you gain part of an already established fan base. The opportunities for exposure for you are immediately greater.
• You get to see the inside view of a superstar’s career. You can learn from the mistakes or successes of that artist who comes before you. It is next to impossible to get such an insider’s view without being right there to live it firsthand. This education is invaluable if you are smart enough to apply what works to your own career and not experience those same mistakes and pitfalls yourself.

While there are upsides and downsides to every deal, each artist must weigh these for themselves and their own situation. Signing to an established artist may not be good for everyone, and it may be the best route for others. The trick is to know all of the pluses and minuses of any opportunity and then to make an informed decision based on what is best for your own career and your own situation. After all, signing any record deal is usually a commitment of 5 to 7 years of your life. In most cases, this is the life span of a rap career, so choose very wisely.

The Basics

2008-07-07T12:47:00.001-07:00

By Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

This article is dedicated to Mannie Fresh, who was kind enough to give one of my indie clients a hit fucking record for a great price!! Mannie is in the process of putting out his first artist, The Show. I have chosen to devote this article to giving my friend some free advice, since he was kind enough to give me the ammunition that I need to win with my group. A smart reader would evesdrop and apply it to his or her own situation!!

Mannie is a super producer, and I have proven to be skilled over the years at putting out records (not to mention negotiating deals)—we all might learn something:

Dear Mannie;

Putting out an artist, either independently or through a major label, is a tremendous amount of work as I am sure you know. Even with your relationships and connections, knowing who to trust and who can really benefit your release if difficult—imagine if you didn’t have the access or name recognition that you have!! Most others in this industry don’t….so you are already a step ahead.

I understand what you mean when you talk about the talent and passion missing from this industry today. While I do agree with you completely, just talent alone isn’t enough to win. Much like you, I am a purist. I believe that the beats and rhymes are key and the folks who are doing this solely for the money are fucking it up for everyone. That’s really why the sales are down. So many folks treat the music industry like it’s the new (legal) drug game. Those without passion, however, won’t be able to withstand the licks that this wicked industry doles out. They won’t stand the test of time. You will, and have!

But in addition to the driving passion, I also realize the need for an artist to sell CDs. My favorite rapper is Ras Kass. He’s lyrical as hell, but has he been able to sell CDs? You’ve heard Jay Z, Common, and Talib Kweli talk about dumbing down the lyrics, and we’ve all watched Bun B go from dopest southern lyricist to rap star able to sell CDs (thank God! He deserves it!!). There’s nothing wrong with making a living from one’s artistic craft. That is not selling out! Those who believe that it is, need to go get real jobs and make CDs as a hobby and pass them out for free.

I like the Mixed CD that you and DJ Wop made for The Show (“Victory Lap”). It highlights his lyrical abilities over some incredible Mannie Fresh beats, and gives the fans 27 examples of what’s to come. But in my opinion, the mixed CD lacks slam dunk, hit singles—radio records. You most likely chose not to put them on a mix CD, saving them for his release. In today’s environment, it will be difficult to go to market without a hit radio record or two. This is especially true if you have a major label behind you, like Def Jam, because they survive on that formula of radio records to drive sales and exposure. It’s not that it is right or wrong, it’s that it just “is.” If that’s what they have to do to blow up an artist, any artist, then so be it. It’s up to you to give them the ammunition that they need.

Hopefully, that was part of your thinking before doing a deal with a major, and that you chose one that needed what you could deliver (I only say that because some folks see all of the labels as interchangeable and only care about getting a check—truth is, the checks are small and the opportunities are shrinking everyday). If not, you will find that you have to build a ridiculous buzz on the streets to get them interested in working your release. The reality is that if you want someone who excels at chasing radio hits to get excited about your project, and you decide not to deliver radio hits to them, you will need to show them how to work your records, make it appear to be cheap and easy, and then let them take 100% of the credit when it happens.

I guess it’s like you driving that gorgeous new Bentley. If someone was only used to Hondas, there may be some apprehension and discomfort in driving such an artful machine. But once one is used to driving perfection and sees how easy it is, it becomes easy. We all become comfortable with what we know—you with good music, a major label with hit radio records.

Here’s the dichotomy though: hit radio records do not always equal sales. There have been plenty of hit records that the labels paid to drive up the charts, but the full length CDs tanked when they came out. My guess is that they only had one or two good records on the album. You are Mannie Fresh, therefore I’m not worried about that. You make great music. And The Show is lyrical and seems to be able to make great songs.

Here’s what I would do: since he’s based in New Orleans, I’d build a buzz in LA, TX, and southern AL. I’d make those my “Phase 1” market areas. I’d attend all of the events in the Summer and Fall where large amounts of potential fans gather (Summer Jams, park parties, college Home Comings, music festivals, etc). I’d also go from town to town promoting The Show.

I’d throw him in a wrapped van, and hit a different city every day. I’d make sure we went through radio, retail stores (chains and independents), clubs at night (performing if possible), strip clubs, and hip hop gear shops. If you really want to grind it out, I’d also hit the chicken wing spots, key barber shops and nail salons, high schools and colleges, and make sure you spend time in the ‘hoods. Your name will open a lot of doors for him. I’d be sure to pass out flyers, hang posters wherever I could, and sign as many autographs as humanly possible. I’d advertise ahead of time the cities we were hitting through his website and his MySpace page (and yours).

Also, I’d suggest explaining to The Show that artists don’t really make money from their record deals. It’s important that he knows he’s grinding this out for something bigger down the road, but it would suck for him to think it was one thing and it became another. Especially because of the way you, and other artists before you, got jerked out of money in this business. It’s important that he understand how the payments work and how the money comes from shows, endorsement deals, and other opportunities that the fame will bring. He’s very bright, he probably already knows this. But it’s important that he understand it fully. That alleviates problems down the road.

After building the buzz in that 3 state area, his buzz will organically grow. As college students return home for their Breaks and vacations, they will spread his music. People will naturally share great music with friends, and the internet speeds up this process. It spreads like fire…usually in an orderly fashion. So as it is spreading to MS, OK, AR, TN, GA, etc, you can be chasing that spread with Phase 2 of your promo tour. You can also start working a single at radio. The DJs will already be aware of The Show, now it’s time to spread that awareness to program directors around the region. Focus on the south—it’ll be cheaper to back up an area that’s somewhat contained. Also, in the south, fans will buy good music whether you are indie or major, so it’s a naturally good market to work.

And lastly, work the project for a minimum of 4 months before you drop the album--six months is preferred and 9 months is even better. If you aren’t coming through a Major label, make sure you choose a distributor with a strong track record of paying, and one that has great relationships with rap record buyers and stores. This is NOT the area to take risks—it’s your money!
A hit radio record will make the promoters start calling to book shows faster. A super hot record will make the show price increase quickly. When The Show is making good money, it will be easier for him to work even harder. It’ll be more hectic, but better. It will save you money too. As he travels to different cities on the promoters’ dime, you can hit radio and retail in those cities.

Lastly, make sure The Show is the shit at home. Be certain to give back to the local community, especially New Orleans because it needs the support more than any other place. Offer picnics in the park and Kids’ Days. Support the Moms and the schools that need help. Speak to the kids and keep them from going down the wrong path. That’s not mandatory, but it is the right thing to do.

Mannie, you are shit! You’ve been down a long, hard road. But you survived and survived well. No one can take that from you. You have legions of fans and soldiers, just waiting for you to do something for yourself. The Show is it! Go get it baby! And I am always here when you need me. Always. I love you Chubby Boy!

With Love and Respect,
Wendy

Conferences And Seminars

2008-06-05T11:18:00.001-07:00

By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

These days, it seems like everyone is doing a conference and/or awards show in hip hop. What is up with that? I guess people see one or two people do it, and they think they have the proper connections, knowledge, and opinions to do it their damn selves. The problem is, most fail. It’s also not a money maker and most people seem to think it’s a quick come up. It’s really not. Ask anyone who has done a conference or awards show.

I believe in knowledge, so in the past three years, I have attended every seminar, conference, and summit that seemed worthy, and that fit into my schedule. This kept me on the road for at least 10 days a month in the past few years. I now have enough frequent flyer flight miles to go to Hong Kong in the Fall. That’s a lot of conventions and seminars, and yet only a handful were worthwhile. I have attended so many bullshit events, that I am now officially burned out on seminars, award shows, and conferences.

Most of the events lacked the proper funding to advertise and promote the event properly, so numerous times I ended up speaking to rooms with less than 50 people. Almost all of the events were done in nightclubs, which confused the attendees when they were told to shut up and listen to the folks on stage speaking. As you can guess, most didn’t shut up, so we ended up speaking to ourselves and the first 10 feet of attendees with the dull hum of voices in the background to thoroughly distract and insult us.

And at almost every conference, I ended up speaking along side of people who were more interested in self-promoting their company or crew, or who gave wrong information to the attendees. My favorite was a local lawyer who told the crowd that artists didn’t need to copyright their music. Idiot!!

Somebody, somewhere, must be telling folks in our industry that they can put on a conference with no upfront money (wrong!), without advertising or promoting it, and without having panelists that people would be willing to pay $100 or more to hear speak. Seems more than a few of the conventions trick folks into coming by offering showcase spots (for $500 to $2,000 a spot), telling the artists that they will get to perform in front of industry folks (yeah, folks like me who wouldn’t stay for a showcase even with a gun to my head) who could sign them and make all of their dreams come true.

These suckers who pay for showcase spots are obviously the people who are talking through the panels in the back of the room because the majority of panelists actually tell artists exactly how to get signed to a record deal (if you were listening, you’d know too). Hell, I spoke over 40 times in the past 14 months, and at every event I talked about how to get a deal and how ineffective it is to hand out demos. At the end of every panel, I was bombarded with demos. I also skipped every showcase (while it’s important for artists to practice their craft and perform, doing so in front of the industry with the intention of getting signed to a major label is a waste—doing so in front of consumers who will buy a CD is a better move; more strategic, and the sales are more likely to attract a label to sign you).

The importance of a local seminar in smaller towns and cities that don’t have access to a music industry, is its ability to bring together like-minded people. In areas like Gainesville, Memphis, Augusta, San Antonio, or Jackson, a seminar brings together local radio people, DJs, retailers, artists, etc, into one place so they can network and interact with each other. It’s a great way for new people to get to know who is who, and an even better way to plan to work together on projects and build relationships. This is a who-you-know, relationship business. In a perfect world, these events may even bring in national or regional folks from the music industry who are proven successful and willing to share their secrets of success. At least share them with the folks who aren’t standing around rudely talking to each other in the back of the room.

I built my career at conferences and seminars that matter—that’s how I learned much of what I know about this business. I met folks, kept in touch, and learned from their experiences. I’m fortunate in that I came up in this industry when there were a handful of conventions each year that mattered, that everyone attended. Imagine 4 or 5 TJsDJs/Ozone weekends throughout the year. That would be awesome (but would kill me financially).

Instead, we now have hundreds of little seminars that no one attends, with panelists who don’t really matter, and with attendees who didn’t come to learn. When I am the most powerful person in a room, something is horribly, horribly wrong. This means the seminar organizers fucked up. Hell, folks can come to the SEAs (Southern Entertainment Awards weekend) every January and hear me speak—even spend time with me over the weekend. And the SEAs are free and have far more important and powerful folks than me in attendance.

So, if you are planning a conference or seminar in your area, please make sure you find the perfect venue (nightclubs are for showcases, not panel discussions), and sponsors who are willing to invest in your vision. Make sure your panelists are a nice mix of successful people who genuinely want to share useful information (as opposed to airing out others or pumping up their own businesses). Your panelists should consist of local successful people, regionally established industry people, and nationally significant people—all with proven track records of success. The panelists should be people willing to give back, not people coming into your marketplace to “rape” the local artists.

Plan out the panels so the panelists can speak to your market. If you have an abundance of indie labels in your area (like anywhere in FL, Birmingham, Atlanta, etc) make certain you have panelists who can share knowledge on putting out an indie record and maybe a LEGITIMATE distributor on the panel. If your market has no great producers but a ton of rappers, make sure you have some regional and national producers on the panel to help both the artists and the up and coming producers learn. Fill the void! Whatever your community is missing is what you should be offering access to. You will most likely need to fly key people in and put them up in a hotel. That is standard unless you have the connections and power to ask people to come at their own expense (for the SEAs, I ask the panelists to pay their own way so the conference can remain free and open to everyone).

Panel discussions should last longer than 45 minutes. You need at least an hour to get a real discussion going, and almost as long for the audience to ask their questions. Make sure you post a schedule on a website so people know where to go and what’s going on. It’s a good idea to print that schedule out and hand it to your attendees as they come to your event. Make sure the panelists receive it ahead of time so they can attend more than just their panel—I spoke on a panel this past weekend and missed a panelist dinner because no one told me there was one. I was sitting in my hotel room with nothing to do.

Have a moderator who can control the crowd and keep the discussion moving along in a lively fashion. Have a strong moderator no matter what. Last month in Houston, at the Go DJs/OG Ron C event, Mannie Fresh and I did a one on one conversation for 90 minutes. This event was historical because I shopped and negotiated the Cash Money deal ten years ago, based on Mannie’s excellent hit-making production (as well as the outstanding rappers and the owners’ vision for the label). Mannie and I had not seen each other or spoken for those ten years. Also, in that time, we both had done some amazing things in our careers. You’d think the 70 people in attendance would have wanted to learn from us (especially the producers, artists, and DJs in attendance) but the talking and murmuring from the audience was distracting us.

Finally, one of my friends (Rick Edwards, who used to run Suave House back in the day) decided to moderate the conversation, grabbed my mic, and told the audience to shut the fuck up. He pointed out that between Mannie and I, we had earned (not necessarily made, but earned) millions and millions of dollars in this industry. Mannie’s production has sold over 30 million CDs and singles, and my deals have sold over 100 million CDs worldwide netting a larger share to the artists than ever in the history of rap music. The crowd let Mannie and I continue without any more distractions after Rick broke it down for them. I would have NEVER imagined that someone would want to talk through Mannie sharing secrets of his success, but that day proved me wrong, and proved the necessity of having a strong moderator.

Make sure you spread the word about your event. Just using free MySpace blasts are not enough. Radio ads, flyers and posters, and advertising to the urban music community at least two months ahead is key for a small event. Six months ahead if you are trying to attract attendance from a larger area like your entire region. The SEAs begin advertising the next year’s even the week after the SEAs end. You don’t have to be that thorough, but maybe that’s why the attendance there always breaks a couple thousand. If your event wasn’t worthy of people attending this year, there won’t be a next year. I know I won’t be back.

And lastly, if there’s already a successful event in your area or region, find another avenue. Why try to copy or compete with something that already works and works well? TJsDJs springs to mind. Every Quarter, his event attracts 3,000+ people, mostly key artists and industry people. If you are in that region, why would you want to compete with that? You’d end up looking bad, unable to attract the volume and the key people that his events attract. Don’t follow, lead. Find what’s missing in your region and supply that. And then be sure to do it well.

Con-Artists, and Scams In The Music Industry

2008-05-16T13:51:00.000-07:00

By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.WendyDay.com)

As many of you know by now, this industry is a very difficult one in which to maneuver unless you are in the inner circle. There is a large circle of people who all do business together, and getting into that inner circle is never easy. It’s even gotten harder as the music industry is making less and less money these days.

The cool thing about Hip Hop is that we have never waited for an invitation, and we don’t care if you like us, we just bulldoze our way into situations and make the best of it. I call this ‘kicking in the door.” We don’t knock and wait for an answer, we kick that bitch in! Part of kicking in the door, is knowing how, when, and where—and what, to kick in. An even larger part of that is making moves utilizing relationships and connections. If you are missing a key aspect, you need to be able to pick up the phone and call someone legitimate who has that access or knows someone else that they can call to gain access. That access allows you entry (kicking in the door) to the industry, and achieving success will keep you there. Surrounding you, every step of the way, are bullshit people who claim to have access and connections, but don’t. At best, they can get a meeting or a call returned, but they can’t close the deal.

Let me be real frank here: if you are the type of person that people do not like, or if you have any asshole tendencies (including an over inflated ego), you should NOT be on the front lines. Find someone in your camp who is a people person and can kiss a little bit of ass to get what is needed. It’s not a problem if you are not that person, as long as you don’t try to be something you are not. People see right through the bullshit in this industry very quickly, and we all talk to each other (in fact, male or female, we are little gossiping bitches in this industry, so expect bad stuff to spread faster than a forest fire).

The hardest aspect for you to overcome, if you are NOT in that inner circle, is knowing who is legitimate, whom to trust, and to whom to turn when you need something accomplished. This industry is ripe with sharks, snakes, scam artists, and idiots. And all of them have one goal—to separate you from your money, especially if it appears as though you have a lot of it.

In the music industry, there are a LARGE handful of clueless people who suck at what they do, but will happily charge you money for that. You will lose money if you fuck with them. You will also lose credibility with the legitimate people if you fuck with them. Inevitably, I get a handful of people who come to me every week asking me to undo some stupid shit that another “consultant” did to fuck up their project. It is ten times harder to clean up someone else’s mess than it is to start a project from scratch, so expect to be turned down by the legit folks, if your project is already a shambles. I know I won’t touch it.

Oddly, the clueless people who suck at working other people’s projects, seem to be masters of their own self-promotion. Not only are they not too busy to send out a ridiculous number of email blasts talking about their “success” on a project (I especially LOVE the ones that come through talking about the meetings they’ve had that didn’t lead to anything, but they sure have pictures of themselves with famous artists and CEOs who would never take their calls again), but they think that doing a little bit of work is the same as finishing a project from A to Z, and they pump that up publicly. I guess it’s like a little kid learning the alphabet, where they feel that if they can recite the first four letters of the alphabet, it gives them the right to claim they know the entire alphabet. And then they go brag about it.

I have spent the past year undoing incredible damage that one of these “master self-promoters” has done to an artist’s career. And he or she is still out there claiming to have built success for this artist, when all that was accomplished was a big mess for 4 other industry professionals to have to sort out and clean up. Every time I receive an email blast from this idiot talking about what a great job he did building this artist, I cringe and roll my eyes in disbelief. It’s hard for me to decipher if he or she really feels that something positive was accomplished, or if the goal is just to claim success to get checks from other artists who don’t know any better.

Part of me wants to expose the fraud, and part of me wants to accept that this person’s intentions may have been good, just that ignorance is bliss. On a similar note, there’s an artist out there (many actually) who has built some limited success on taking others’ music and selling it as his own. Of course, in this industry, exposure comes very quickly—you get about a 2 or 3 year run before everyone finds out what a fraud you are. This artist recently got signed and then dropped from a major label when it was discovered that he has limited fans but bodacious self-promotion. Why is it that other industries have Better Business Bureaus, Consumer Report Agencies, and Ralph Nader type whistle blowers to expose the frauds, but in the music industry we shrug off the frauds who are jerking people out of millions of dollars every year? I hear folks compare the music industry to the streets and the drug game regularly, but if that were true, we’d have no scams because the price of ripping someone off would be very, very high.

There’s an artist in Indiana, whose parents were bilked out of a quarter million dollars that they invested into their son’s career (the Feds got involved in this one). A few guys out of Chicago with no traceable track record of success took these people for a financial ride, promising to help their son accomplish his dream of being a superstar producer. When I asked the parents what made them trust the guys (a Google search turned up NO information on them), they pointed out that these guys claiming to be music industry executives always showed up to their home in a limousine, so they assumed they were successful. Classic. That’s worthy of dumping a quarter million dollars into a slick talking charlatan. They pulled up in a limo. Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope Records (one of the most successful labels on the plant) wouldn’t even pull up in a limo.

I remember meeting with a charismatic “producer” when I lived in NY. He flew in from out of town. He constantly cited God for his success and even closed our meeting with “may God bless you!” He had a beat CD of incredible music. What I did not know at the time was that this beat CD contained beats of not his own work, but the production of 3 or 4 other producers from his hometown. Although I never did business with him, that “producer” went on to get a publishing deal for his production even though it was not his music. He never became a “super producer” because the real producers back home caught on to what he was doing. Two of those producers who got jerked by this bullshit artist have gone on to become platinum producers in this industry, and the bullshit producer has just recently been exposed for being the sham that he is. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!! I hope God “blesses” him properly.

All this to say, when you do other people dirty—intentionally, or through inexperience and ignorance, there is a price to pay. This industry is built on connections and relationships. Once you burn them out, there’s nowhere else for you to go, but down. And it happens very, very quickly. And I am happily spreading the word.

Developing Relationships

2008-05-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

This is the UNEDITED version...

Developing Relationships
By, Wendy Day (www.WendyDay.com)

You have heard me stress the importance of team, over and over again. Just as Lebron James, who is inarguably one of the best basketball players in the world, could not take on and win against the worst team in the league by himself—even as talented as he is, no artist can succeed without a team of people propelling them forward.

Team + Grind = Success.

David Banner said it best, so I will quote him here: “One of the mistakes I made was not continuing the same grind I had earlier in my career once I got on.” It is important to put in the work and to keep putting in the work, on a regular basis. Building a rap career is similar to politics in that it’s about shaking hands, kissing babies, and meeting fans (and making an impact on fans) one by one.

Team + Grind = Success.

I just got back from spending 28 days on the road with BloodRaw, where we went to 26 different cities. He has an album dropping this Spring, and we felt it was best to get him back in front of his fans, and potential new fans, to connect with the new music and to reconfirm all the work and grind that Raw has put in over the years that he was unsigned. It was time to take Mr Florida regional, and then national.

By “we,” I mean BloodRaw’s team: the staff at CTE (he’s signed to Young Jeezy’s label, which has a deal with Def Jam for their releases), his management team of Czar Management helmed by Jimmy Henchmen with Snake doing the day to day, me, and his publicist, Kim Ellis—plus, of course, BloodRaw himself.

Since there is no money involved in the early stages of an artist’s career, it’s important for the team to be devoted and work harder than if there was actual payment involved. Getting people to do work on speculation (the promise of something in the future that may or may not actually happen) is extremely difficult. That dedication is based on the relationships that the artist has. It’s pretty obvious that the average person would not put in hard work randomly for just any artist, but someone who believes in the artist as a person and their ability to succeed, will put in hard work, dedication, and time.

There were seven of us who went out on the road with Raw, again, with no money involved. We had Raw’s artist and hype man Gator, the security team of Scrappy and King to keep us safe, Nokey who filmed the tour and uploaded footage daily to Raw’s YouTube TV station, Raw’s DJ Mike Fresh, and me (I routed and planned the promotional tour on a shoestring budget that made sense to both BloodRaw and CTE). Our individual relationships with Raw is what got us out on the road with him, and kept us there when times got tough. Not one of us was paid to be there. Not even Raw.

We woke up everyday in a different city, visited retail stores, radio stations, DJs, clubs, high schools, the ‘hood in every city, and malls. In some cities we even spent time on campuses at the Black colleges. The key was to figure out who would buy a BloodRaw CD and reach them in the areas where they’d be hanging out. Performing at the clubs every night was also important to let folks see and hear the single, “Louie,” featuring Young Jeezy. Working a single is what spreads the word about an artist and the impending CD release.

We focused heavily on the streets and the DJs because we needed a certain amount of spins at radio to get Def Jam excited about BloodRaw as an artist. The staff at Def Jam is based in New York City—they have no idea what’s hot on the streets of Dothan, Macon, or Gainesville. It’s the artist’s job to show them. Truth is they care about Jeezy, and Raw is Jeezy’s artist. We needed to get them as excited about Raw as Jeezy is—in fact, moreso.

Relationships are what enabled us to find key people in each market to take us around and share their market with us. While an artist can infiltrate a market without someone from that market involved, it’s always easier when there is someone there who can roll with the team from point to point. It also gives the artist a local contact person so that if something is going on in that market, they can educate the artist, or easily reach out to the artist to bring him or her back for a show or an important event.

So in a market like Mobile AL, where a key industry person like Dirty Dan was there to take us to all of the ‘hoods, the strip clubs, the radio clubs, the Malls, high schools that mattered, and even to show us the best chicken wing shack and a local studio where the artists in Mobile record, it was invaluable to have that relationship that allowed Dan to do all that work as a favor to us. He was even able to get us into the radio station to appear on Nick At Night’s show—BloodRaw’s relationship with Nick kept us there most of the night.

Relationships go further than money in the music business. While many people try to buy their way into the industry, the smart ones learn to leverage their relationships and trade favors. But the important aspect of trading favors is to actually remember what people have done for you in the past and repay their kindness when you can.

Sometimes it’s relatively easy, such as us staying in contact with DJ Neko in Augusta, and DJ Hotrod in Savannah, and offering them exclusive material on all of the artists our team has access to (which are quite a few artists from The Game to AlphaMega, to Gorilla Zoe to Young Jeezy, etc). Sometimes it’s a bit more difficult when you have a DJ in Charlotte helping out, like DJ Chuck T, who already has access to everyone from whom he would ever need something exclusive. The key is to figure out how you can be helpful to those who’ve been helpful to you, and fulfill it.

As we visited with DJs along our promo tour, one resounding theme kept recurring. The DJs, both club and radio, could recount endless stories about artists they’ve helped in the past by showing love on a record, only to have gotten nothing in return but broken promises. One of the DJs in SC shared a story about helping an artist years ago who had no budget but had a hit record, and while this artist promised the moon to DJs throughout the south, once he became a star he changed all of his phone numbers and did nothing for any of the DJs. One thing DJs do is talk to each other, and that artist’s name came up over and over again on our promo tour. He hadn’t just burned one bridge, he’s burned many. This is especially sad because this artist still puts out records, and is nowhere near the level of an Eminem or a Nelly, and perhaps this is why. Many, many DJs really feel burned by him, and won’t spin his records.

This is a “who you know” business. Knowing the wrong people is just as detrimental to a career as knowing the right people and fucking them over. And it may not even be the artist’s intention to fuck them over, it may just happen because it’s the circumstance the artist is in. Regardless, a burned bridge is a burned bridge. They are almost impossible to repair.

There was a radio DJ of some importance who told me a story about an artist who always called him every few days when he had a record that was about to come out. He would stress to the DJ how much he needed him on the record because his label wasn’t fully behind him. He’d even pop into the market semi-regularly and stay at the DJs house, eat his food, and drink his booze. The artist would do free show after free show as he attempted to build his career—for everybody but the DJ who was helping him. Then, once the artist had some success, not only could the DJ no longer get in touch with the artist, but the artist stopped coming through his market to promote, bypassing this market for bigger markets where he could make more money. To add insult to injury, the label, not knowing there was once a relationship between the artist and the DJ, hired the competing DJ across town to do street team work for the project (the artist never stepped in to right this wrong).

Do you imagine this key DJ will ever support anything this artist does? If this artist has artists coming up under him, do you suppose this DJ will ever support any of them? Probably not. After staying at this man’s house, and getting countless spins on a record that could have gone to another artist with a bigger budget, the least this artist could have done was arrange to come back once he was successful, and do a free show for the DJ. Most DJs have a night during the week where they have club access, and doing a show and letting the DJ have the door is a nice way to let everyone eat and repay a favor. Some artists are too short sighted to see this.

Sadly, the artists who’ve come before and done people wrong, are making it difficult for the new artists coming through now and need help. Many of the DJs, promoters, and street team guys have been burned so many times that they are reluctant to work with anyone new. It hurts everyone, especially the industry.

Relationships are key to success in this business. It’s important to guard your relationships and connections as tightly as you guard your money—in fact, when the money is gone, all you’ll have left are your relationships. At the very least, call everyone that has helped you get to whatever level you are at right now, and tell them thank you! Maybe even ask them if there’s anything you can do for them…

January Issue 2008

2008-01-23T20:51:00.000-08:00

Business Plans
By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition

My office is red. It’s not a Blood or a Crip thing, hell, my car is blue. It’s just that it was planned around a red chair that I liked in a store, and the next thing I knew, most of the chairs, accessories, and stuff were red to match that first chair.

I don’t mind it at all. It wasn’t planned to be red, but it worked out nicely since my office is so comfortable and pretty. Rarely does not planning something out ahead of time, work out so nicely.

My office set-up did take some planning. Once I decided on the location for it (Buckhead), I then had to make sure I could afford it every month. Office expense is more than just rent—it’s heat, electric, cable, high speed internet, security, furnishings, and payroll for staff. What seems like it’ll be a quick two stacks a month, turns into a monthly nut of about six stacks. Without careful planning, one could go out of business as quickly as one goes into business.

Spending money on one’s company is the ultimate form of sacrifice. It’s not like having kids where they hug you and tell you they love you repeatedly. It’s like having a husband or a wife that doesn’t love you back. Yes, I’d rather buy a new pair of shoes or a new purse than pay to have my website redesigned, but that’s just not realistic, is it?! The website will bring money into the company while the shoes will only make me feel good for a few wears.

The hard thing about furnishing my office was that the actual chairs and such didn’t directly put money back into my pocket. For example, flyers and web sites are expenditures that bring clients and money into my company. A hot conference room table doesn’t bring in business, but not having one could actually cost me business. See what I mean? So when I planned it out, I had to consider my expenditures carefully. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money.

I tell the labels I consult that if it doesn’t directly impact you selling CDs, skip it. That means a $10,000 set of rims on the wrapped vehicle is unnecessary, but spending $10,000 to press the CDs is very necessary. The artists who tell me they want to buy rims because “image is everything,” need to learn to keep their wrapped truck washed and neat while they build their image as one who grinds hard, instead of flossing wildly. Substance matters. The most beautiful scandalous hooker in the world is still a scandalous hooker. She’ll just be pleasing to your eye as she makes you cry.

Just waking up one day and deciding to get out there and grind isn’t enough. You need to have a plan. While hiring a music industry accountant to put together a business plan for you will cost thousands of dollars, you can put together a plan that will at least cover the basics so you know what you need. There is NOTHING worse than having a hit record with no money to back it up with promotions and marketing. That’s even worse than not being able to make a hit at all!

The best way to foment a plan, is to make a list of everything you want to do in order to market and promote your music. Then call around to see what costs are involved for each. The costs may determine which direction you decide to go. For example, an artist who wants to blitz the entire southeast US will quickly discover that the costs involved in that will make him or her plan smaller and slower. Rather than blitz seven southern states, it may make financial sense to start with one or two and expand slowly as the money comes back into the company from sales or performances.

You may decide that spending $10,000 to give away 2,000 T-shirts isn’t as great of an idea as spending $10,000 on 10,000 snippet CDs that you paid an established DJ to mix for you. A t-shirt is a great way for people to learn your name, but a snippet CD is a great way for people to learn your music. Do people buy CDs because of the name or because of the music? That’s a no-brainer…

Getting into your wrapped van and traveling within a few hour radius of your hometown will expand your buzz beyond just your home turf, and will quickly give you an idea if people outside of your area will embrace your music. For the more serious artists that I consult, I always pull SoundScan for the region where we are targeting to see what type of music the fans in each area embrace. For example, in Washington, DC one can sell more copies of BloodRaw, David Banner, Young Jeezy, and MJG & 8Ball than Talib Kweli, Lupe Fiasco, or RhymeFest. In Philadelphia or New York, the opposite is true.

As you make the list of what tactics you want to utilize, whether it’s local BET cable ads during 106th & Park, or posters and stickers sniped everywhere in the ‘hood, it is important to consider what is legal and available in different areas. For TMI Boyz, we were unable to buy local BET ads in our best market, McAllen, TX, because BET isn’t available in that market. In Atlanta, GA, BloodRaw doesn’t spend a lot of time and money hanging posters or putting up stickers because they are illegal and will come right back down as soon as they are put up, with an expensive ticket to the City of Atlanta to pay as the cost of sniping.

Once you have assembled the list, and priced everything out, you will now know how realistic it is for you to begin your promotional campaign. You may want to start your campaign around the time of year that brings large events to your area so you can reach the maximum amount of people at one time. In New Orleans, it would make sense to hit the NBA All-Star Game at the same time as Mardi Gras, followed by the Core DJ event in March. In early first Quarter in north Florida, it makes sense to hit Demp Week, the Gainesville Music Summit, and TJsDJs—all of which occur within about 30 days of each other. August is probably the busiest month in rap music with the Ozone Awards, Core DJ event, TJsDJs, and numerous other conventions and events. Of course, everyone is thinking that, so you run the risk of not standing out among the other hundred or so artists in grind mode. Regardless, getting out on the road is the key to success. Plan wisely.

This industry is over saturated. There are so many rappers and producers per square inch these days that it’s hard to stand out. What will you do to be different? How will you stand out? And most importantly how will you plan to pay for it all? Without a proper plan in place on paper, you don’t stand of chance of doing anything but wasting money.

Here’s an idea of what a plan looks like (roughly):

1,000 t-shirts $4,500
5,000 posters $2,000
10,000 flyers $400
Wrapped vehicle $3,000 (plus the vehicle)
Art work $1,000
Website $250
MySpace page $100
Travel expense $5,000 (gas & hotels)
Mix CD (to sell) $3,000 (DJ)
$5,000 (pressing 5,000 mix CDs)
Club entry $1,000
Buying drinks for DJs $2,000
Snippet CDs $5,000

So, now I know before I even get in my van to leave my house, I need a MINIMUM of $32,250 PLUS whatever I’ve mistakenly left out (like food). Not to mention, I need to have my music mixed and mastered professionally so it sounds good enough for someone to buy, spin at a club, or play on the radio next to Kanye and Jeezy! And if I am going out on the road, I need to make sure that my bills at home are taken care of so I don’t come home to an eviction notice or no lights.

This is why it is sooooo key to make a Plan. It’s also important to not leave anything out—to try and anticipate all of your needs ahead of time. It would really suck to only have $15,000 in your pocket and start down a road that might cost you $40,000. You’d be certain to accomplish nothing more than losing your hard earned fifteen stacks. And quickly, too.

If you are hiring someone to consult your label, make sure they give you a realistic budget (call printers and pressing plants to check prices to make certain your budget is realistic before you start spending money). Your consultant should also tell you when the expenditures will come up, way ahead of time. Nothing is worse than realizing on a Tuesday that you have to press up CDs in the next week or so, and having to come up with $15,000 overnight to make your deadline with the distributor or for a key event.

Make sure you know what that person’s total consulting fee will be, especially if they are charging you monthly—that’s the oldest swindle in this game. Five thousand dollars for the year it takes to put out your CD is actually $60,000. You can get someone with a great track record for $60K; you don’t have to settle for the local industry wanna-be who probably can’t make it happen for you (for the record, I was a local industry wanna-be in the early 90s and both Do Or Die and Twista took a chance on me and both won. Of course, I worked for both projects for free because I had no track record yet). Someone who tells you it will take just a few months is either lying to you or has no clue--either way, the wrong answer. By the way, you should NEVER give up a piece (%) of your company for someone to advise you. There is no need to do so and you will be stuck with them forever, even if they don’t succeed with your project.

I was speaking on a panel in Jacksonville, FL at Bigga Rankin’s Ghetto Grammy/Hood Conference, and a very frustrated man in the audience asked who can be held accountable when he hires someone (he seemed to be a man spending a lot of money without getting any real return on his investment, and little movement forward). The answer is: anyone to whom you hand money is accountable to you. But the real answer is that YOU are accountable to yourself. If you hire someone to help you that has a limited track record and no real success that you can verify, it’s not rocket science to figure out that you will lose money. Most people do. Very few people in this game win. Very, very few. And it is not a quick process. Putting out a CD takes 6 to 8 months on the short side, and a year to a year and a half on the long side. Make sure you can go the distance. Plan it out on paper and then follow the plan!