Modern Music Marketing

Andrew (00:00)
If you only had one minute to give music artists the best music marketing advice you possibly could, what would you say?

Gio (00:04)
These

type of videos also would perform really well, but it also depends on the genre of music, honestly, because like TikTok style videos, I saw working really well for like pop artists and like more like TikTok-y type music, for like generally speaking, these two formats work really well. Kind of the same thing of launching a new business. You're probably not looking at

acquiring customers in 15 different channels. You are more likely using one. And so when you can master one channel, then you can move on to the next one. I think it's so much more honest and just entertaining in general to see someone's growth rather than just them making content just for the sake of making content. Oh my God, easy questions for us, right?

I would say surround yourself with people who you know you can trust for the next 10 years because I've made the same mistake of not either vetting or making sure that I was trusting the right people both as a musician but as business owner as well. And so I think that's honestly one of the best advice that I would have given myself five years ago.

And also I would give to literally anybody because when you have people that you can trust and they trust you as well, no matter what you do, I think things will play out the way that you would hope for anyway.

Andrew (01:44)
Awesome man, great advice. I think we've heard that before either. We've done a lot of cool things and I probably don't even know all the cool things, but more recently, the things that I knew you for initially was initially you had a course on promoting stuff, promoting people's music on Spotify using ads. Then you started an ad agency, Noise Lash. Then you started a software kind of SaaS music, smart link company called Smart Noise. Tell us about...

Gio (01:47)
Really? Okay, interesting.

Andrew (02:13)
that kind of path along that. Software company.

Gio (02:18)
Yeah, that's

a funny one. long story short, I played music my whole life and I was in a band and I was recording bands as well, mixing, producing all that stuff between like 2013 and 2018-ish. And so a lot of bands had the same question. Okay, we had the album now, but what should we do? How we should promote it?

And I was kind of doing the same thing for my own band as well. We weren't like huge, we go like a million streams without any particular like, I mean, there was no playlists in companies. There was nothing. And I also opened for some of my favorite bands. So we were not huge, but I mean, I had a lot of fun for sure. And I started helping the bands that I was recording, you know, to like promote the music and stuff.

I did some very nice campaigns and I thought, okay, I actually really like this marketing stuff. Let me play with it. So I started working with local businesses actually, and like run ads with them. And so in 2020, I thought, okay, I have this like knowledge in music. I am an artist. I work with artists.

And I also have this passion for marketing. Let me try to combine these two things and especially because in February 2020, all the businesses that I was working with told me, hey, we don't want to spend anymore on ads or just on marketing in general because of COVID. So bye bye. And so I had to like reinvent myself somehow. And so that's how I launched Noiseless. And then, yeah, we've worked with like

hundreds of artists, really cool artists, labels. And we had to develop some tools for ourselves internally. And a friend of mine actually pitched me the idea of building a platform. And I was like, do it. I don't know. It's so much work, which it is actually, but we built something internally. And then fast forward, it's something that

hundreds of artists companies are using now. So it's pretty exciting.

Andrew (04:49)
Yeah. And noise lash or not noise lash, smart noise. Originally when I saw it, I was like, cool. Another smart link company. You know, there's like so many, right? but you guys have done some pretty cool things to innovate where some of the more, long standing companies haven't, and I'm sure they'll copy you and some of these features just because it's not like you can copyright. I think smart link feature or trademark or whatever. but

One thing that was really cool, the first like super exciting thing I saw about Smart Noise was that lifetime pre-save. And that's just one of the cool things you have. So tell everyone kind of what are the most exciting things about Smart Noise that differentiate it from Tomedan, Hypedit, Beacher FM, Linkfire.

Gio (05:35)
wow. So first of all, honestly, I don't really I mean, I'm usually very bad at sales and when some people ask me how is SmartNose compared to these other platforms, I really suck at like selling SmartNose just because I don't want to like down sell other people's work in a sense. So I always tell them what

Andrew (06:01)
What's the most exciting, what's the thing that excites you the most about Smart Noise? How about that?

Gio (06:07)
Well,

so the thing with lifetime pre-saves, for example, I was never a fan of pre-saves because as you probably know, you as an artist have to do the same thing over and over. You start from zero on every single release and you don't necessarily know if pre-saves actually work or not because sure, you get the song saved on release day, but at the same time, you don't really know if they're actually working. So we did this thing where

when a fan presaves once, they will be presaving all future releases automatically as well. And in order to also make sure that they actually listen to the music, they get email notifications on release day. And the funny thing is on average, we are seeing an open rate of like 40 something like 49%, which is pretty high, you know?

So this is exciting to me because the thing about pre-saves was only about getting the actual song saved, but for me is more so the ecosystem around getting the pre-save. So building your email list, building like another conversion touch point with these emails. So for me is more the building a cohesive...

ecosystem more than just building a tool to get your songs saved on release day, if that makes sense, you know.

Andrew (07:38)
Yeah, because when someone presaves your song, the artist gets their email address, which most of the time is actually the most valuable part of that presave. But very often artists don't have an email platform. So guess what? They do nothing with that email address. So it's cool that you guys actually do something with it for them, because I don't know if the other SmartLink services do that or not. If they do, they've never really...

Gio (08:06)
I believe some of them have something similar, but again, I don't really look into competitors very often, so I have no idea.

Andrew (08:18)
Yeah,

absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about different marketing tactics because you were in, I believe, kind of like a progressive metal band.

Gio (08:32)
Yeah, we were like a hybrid between like metalcore and whatever else. Now I have another project is more like a hardcore punk slash metalcore thing.

Andrew (08:45)
So like for any of those genres, whether it was the other band or the car pan, play listing, not really even a viable option, right? I'm sure you've probably figured that out over the years that there's not like compared to the playlists that are there for like hip hop, pop, EDM.

Gio (09:00)
Yeah,

dude, from 2017 to... So in just one year, no, 2016 to 2018, my old band, just from editorial playlist, we got 350,000 streams. Right now, it would not be possible by any means.

Andrew (09:22)
Yeah, and that's like editorial. That's probably the biggest playlist in the genre. And over the course of years, 300,000 streams.

Gio (09:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, and this was like six years ago. I'm talking with so many people now and I think you do too. But the amount that they are getting from editorials to the amount that they are getting from algorithmic, for example, it doesn't even make sense anymore almost to pitch your music to editorials. mean, I don't know, dude, I don't see it working that much anymore.

Andrew (10:00)
I see it working for certain people. Like I know an artist who's in kind of the alternative metal hard rock niche and he gets on almost every single song they release gets on several massive hard rock editorial playlists. And that ends up being quite nice. But I also know literally hundreds and hundreds of other artists who have pitched 50 songs and gotten like one.

accepted in their whole life. Yeah. And I've only had one song accepted the editorial out of my catalog ever. And I probably pitched 40, 50 songs. And I one song added to two playlists that only totaled, I don't know, 80,000 streams on

Gio (10:45)
So

0.5 % rate with 80,000 plays.

Andrew (10:52)
Yeah. I mean, yeah. So it's like, to algorithmic, it's, I don't even care about it. And even the big artists I know, where they have some editorial coverage, they also don't care about it as much because their release radar radio discover weekly, your daily mix, et cetera, is way bigger than anything they ever get from editorial. So they still pitch every time and sometimes it's nice, but, they often don't really care. They're like, yeah, be nice, but

It's not going to change your life if you get on the tutorial playlist.

Gio (11:23)
Definitely

not. Not anymore.

Andrew (11:26)
For your band, were you mostly using Facebook ads for how you guys promoted?

Gio (11:33)
Yeah, so this was again in 17, 18. So I was only started using ads. So I actually remember posting a post with like a hundred bucks and getting our new song to like 15,000 players within like two weeks, which is, I mean, it's possible maybe now, but it's definitely not the same thing. So we were...

I'm not even sure how we got there, honestly, but it was a mix between, mean, we were playing a lot of shows, like a lot of shows, you know? And then it was a mix between, yeah, just a little bit of ads, a little bit of word of mouth. But now with the new band, yeah, I'm going pretty much all in with mostly ads, but we are also playing shows here.

But yeah, it's mostly ads right now and just organic content, but it's more so like a long-term approach rather than just getting a quick return, which is actually working because what I see a lot of artists not considering is that when you run those ads, sure, you want people to go to your Spotify, Apple Music, whatever, but one of them...

maybe more valuable things is that they will stay within your ecosystem. for us, for instance, just by running those ads, so we launched the project on October 16th or something. And then we started with like 35 followers. Now we are at 2,500, but the objective was not to get followers on IG, it was to send people to Spotify.

Apple Music, but when you find people who resonate with what you do, you send them to Spotify, whatever, but then they are way more likely to actually come back and engage with you and send you DMs all day, every day, which is what's happening to us. But I mean, we are not special by any means because I know that this happens to a lot of other bands as well. so, yeah.

Andrew (13:52)
Yeah, a lot of artists are really surprised when they get that Instagram growth from an ad that they considered was really only to promote Spotify. They're like, I get X amount of dollars to push people to my song on Spotify. And so they think I'm going to get growth in Spotify. And then when they actually get that, plus they get roughly the same amount of Instagram followers as they did Spotify followers, and they get a whole bunch of shazams when they...

don't even know what Shazam is necessarily. noticed a lot of artists have never really used it before. And they also have YouTube subscribers and YouTube views. And it's cool to see the amount of people spill over just because they're so interested that they want to make sure that they follow along.

Gio (14:25)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't know if you do the same thing too, but we don't run ads on Facebook just because most artists now are not really active there anymore. So we only run them on IG because that's where we see the highest return in terms of I'm investing in this thing, but I want both the audience growth as well as the streaming growth.

Andrew (15:03)
We tweak it depending on the artist basically. if the artist is doing, well, I tell everyone to start with Instagram only because I found if people have, let's say they have a brand new ad account, if they jump in using Facebook placements, about 20 % of the time, Facebook will spend their entire budget and they'll get no streams in Spotify for the conversions that they got on Facebook ads. So for some reason, Facebook as a placement can like,

ruin campaigns if you have a new pixel, which is weird, but it happens. And so I have people start with Instagram and then if they're like pop, EDM, R &B, hip hop, they'll often just stay on Instagram. But if they find that, well, if they know their demographic skews a little bit older, like they're in classical blues, country, even rock stuff, then there's a lot of people on Facebook that are older that.

Gio (15:52)
yeah, definitely.

Andrew (16:00)
might not have Instagram and therefore it's just, it like doubles their audience size and it ends up being a win.

Gio (16:05)
That is true.

Andrew (16:07)
Yeah, but Instagram, like, so many artists just don't give a damn about Facebook pages anymore. So, you know, they'd rather just get the Instagram followers. Cause like, oh cool. I have 500 followers on my Facebook page. I'm going to post a post and I'm going to get like three views. know, it's like, don't care about it at all. So.

Gio (16:28)
Yeah, but it's also very hard. And this is especially true for artists who are starting out, but that also want to be laser focused on one channel because it's kind of the same thing of launching a new business. You're probably not looking at acquiring customers in 15 different channels. You are more likely using one. So it's either content, SEO, paid ads, whatever.

And so when you can master one channel, then you can move on to the next one. So for instance, if you were to run ads on IG and Facebook, you will need to keep up with the content on both platforms because realistically speaking, if someone lands on your IG page and they see a post from yesterday, what's the word? Subconscious?

Yeah, like they think, okay, they are active, therefore I want to be a part of this. If they go on Facebook and the last post is like six months ago, it gives you this signal that it's like subscribing to a TV series that they are not making you happy so it's anymore. You're probably not going to watch it, you know.

And that also becomes very hard to make content for both because yeah, sure. You can use apps that can like make you post in different platforms, but then you also have to keep up with like comments and different sizes for. So I think it's, it's worth sticking to just one platform in this case, IG, because it's a

worth it in general.

Andrew (18:22)
Yeah, that's a good point. I often will tell artists if they're doing the organic content thing, which everyone should do the organic content thing. A lot of people don't. They're like, I'm running ads and that's all I'm going to do. But post more on social media, everyone, please. As much as we hate it, post more on social media. I usually will tell people just to cross post it everywhere, which in one hands, logically seems good to me because it's like, get, let's say you get 300 views on TikTok.

But then you post an Instagram, you also get 300 views and you post on Facebook reels. You also get 300 views posted on YouTube shorts. You also get 300 views. And one of those platforms might do better or worse or whatever, but you basically just quadrupled your view count on each post. But it is a good point that there is a kind of mental overhead that has to occur with each of those platforms. Like you have to now one post all those posts and I use later.com.

So like that's how I automate all my posting.

Gio (19:25)
I use buffer. Yeah, but yeah, that is pretty much the thing.

Andrew (19:30)
those platforms, which whichever one anyone chooses, they're, they're super great for that. But then you have to keep it up with comments, which something like buffer later can help you with. But it's still kind of a lot. And instead of having all of this stuff be like concentrated in one platform, you, do get on the situation where you have a little bit of stuff in a lot of places. And on the flip side, when, I tell people to focus on streaming platforms, I'll tell them like,

when you're your ads, maybe at first just put Spotify and Apple so that you can concentrate your results instead of having like a little bit of streams everywhere. So what do you think people should do in terms of social media on that end? Like is Instagram better than TikTok? Is TikTok better than Instagram? Should they post everywhere? Should they post in one place?

Gio (20:21)
I mean, you actually brought up a really good point, which is actually what I'm doing with Smart Noise Noiseless and with the business side of things in general. What I say is if you can find some sort of content format, like a content template that you can use, and it's not extra work to adapt on every other platform, I think you should go with it.

For instance, if you now create like a vertical videos, like one minute video, like you said, it goes to IG stories, reels. I use LinkedIn as well, but then it goes to YouTube shorts. It goes to TikTok. So if you can just do all of them, just know that as we said before, you would have also to keep up with the potential engagement on each one of them.

But from a reach standpoint, that is absolutely true. You will reach more eyeballs and more people in general. So if you can find something that works content wise, and then you can use later buffer to distribute the content on like four or five different platforms, that is absolutely worth it. And that is probably what I would recommend anyway.

Andrew (21:48)
Yeah, Flipping back over to ads, what have you found is working the best nowadays in terms of the actual creatives that people are using in their ads?

Gio (22:00)
That's funny because up until like six, eight months ago, I would have said like TikTok style of content and that still works. But for my own band, for instance, I've been testing quote unquote very boring ads where there is a video background, the cover art for fans of and the different bands call to action. That's it. And it's

converting really well. But I think the key here is that if you find yourself having to trick people into clicking on your ad to go listen to your music, you might get a really good cost per conversion. But if you're only tricking people into listening to your music, I don't think it's really worth it. And so realistically speaking, if you have a really good song,

with a Vita background that makes sense, with the cover art that doesn't suck. And if four fans off makes sense, I don't think you should have any issues in converting people from strangers to listeners at a relatively good cost. Because what I found is that you actually attract people who are there because of the music, period. Not because there was like some clickbait stuff or so. That's what I would also recommend.

but we've been testing also very easy videos like if it's a metal band, for instance, if you have a background of like a fire going on and with a caption that says, add this song to your gym, like metal workout or something. And these type of videos also would perform really well, but it also depends on the genre.

music honestly because like TikTok style videos I saw working really well for like pop artists and like more like TikTok type music but for like generally speaking these two formats work really well. We are also developing this feature with SmartNews that should be out next week where you can essentially

pick a Vito background and a Vito template, input your Spotify song, describe the mood of the song, and we will basically generate Vito ads for you that will have a specific background and the copy that is based on what you described the song with, like, specific copy that is tailored for ads for music that is based from the experience that we've had with all this.

different videos for.

Andrew (24:56)
clever because the the. Hiked it has its automated ad platform and the way it does its video ads is you you upload your song in the artwork and then you can choose like a filter and the filter would be like, there's some rain over the cover art or those like this twinkling light over the cover art. But I've always thought it was so bad that there's no way that that's going to be the best video to use.

And I'm sure that feature in Hype doesn't work out for a while, so I'm sure they're going to improve it. Because I think now they have the ability to upload drone ads. it's cool that it makes a lot of sense that you could have a video library of backgrounds, have someone choose it, and then use AI or something to generate some text from a prompt that a user gives you, and then make a better template than just a rain filter, which is

Gio (25:52)
Exactly what's going to be released next week.

Andrew (25:58)
Next week. So by the time people are watching this video is this probably come out in a couple weeks this feature

Gio (26:04)
Hopefully, yeah. Yeah, hopefully.

Andrew (26:07)
development time depending, right? But in our ad agency, we do two different things depending on what we have from the client and the artist. But one thing that we've done a lot of is kind of what you described, where we have some kind of background video, which isn't necessarily the artist. Sometimes it's just clips of people skateboarding for like punk song, clips from Grand Theft Auto 5.

if it feels like a kind of underground hip hop song or whatever it is. And then we have the artwork, basically for fans of, and we list 10 bands, I think, or 10 artists, and then a call to action. And that can work great. Sometimes it sucks, but sometimes, a lot of the time, in fact, more often than not, it's great. And it'll actually sometimes outperform footage that is like of the artist actually performing.

I usually tell artists if they're running stuff through their own socials to use clips with them in it just for like a branding perspective because it's weird if you're like...

Here's what I sound like and if you like this you like this it sounds a little weird coming directly from the artist compared to if it's coming from like another page you know you can kind of say whatever you want and it doesn't feel weird like if you're like this is like the best new hip-hop song of 2023 if it sounds really bad right but if if some anonymous marketing company or record label says it it's like that's that's normal it's just market yeah

Gio (27:36)
Yeah.

That is definitely a good point. That is definitely a good point. We run the ads through the artists social, so that's why we have to be really careful. And 99 % of the time, they want to make sure that is on brand. But if you're doing it with a separate page, which could actually be a very good strategy for artists in general, where they can literally...

write anything they want about their music without being labeled as cocky. That is actually a pretty good strategy, by the way.

Andrew (28:29)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And like I've done them in the past without even thinking about why I would do it. But I had like a separate page for my company, Jenner Studios. And at one point I tried, well, what if I run ads through this instead of me? Even if it's like the same ads, does it perform differently? Because it's not Andrew Southworth running an ad for Andrew Southworth. It almost looks like, there's this label promoting one of their artists. Do people treat it more seriously than they otherwise would?

And the answer was kind of ambiguous. It kind of seemed like it did work. Like people responded better to the art. Because for some reason, when you see Apple marketing or Bank of America or whatever, you're like, yeah, that makes sense. Company is going to market. When you see a creative type of person marketing, whether it's a music artist or like a YouTuber or whatever, everyone is like, man, fuck that guy.

You know, it's like there's some stigma about it. Like if an artist is like marketing or they're making money, it's almost like they're bad, you know.

Gio (29:40)
Yeah, it's weird dude, like this actually reminds me of a comment that someone left on my band's like a week ago and they said, I'm gonna listen to you guys because you actually paid for this ad so I'm gonna do it, which is funny. But yeah, a lot of time, yeah, there is this like weird stigma which is whatever.

I think there are definitely pros and cons with like these two strategies with like the label page. You would potentially lose the engagement on your profile, but you would increase the, mean, whatever you can write to make sure that you can convert people. So yeah, it just really depends, honestly.

Andrew (30:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's definitely pluses and minuses for it. Now, outside of ads, what have you found to be the most effective marketing method or promotion method for music or even inside of ads, like whether it be a different ad platform or Facebook?

So either outside of ads or other ad platforms or anything else that either you guys are using in your company or you're using for your band or other artists you know are using.

Gio (31:03)
So, besides being patient as fuck, I would say, well, something for shows actually that I've been doing for bands. So what most people do when they want to sell tickets, for example, and you don't own the platform where you sell tickets, is you send people to this page and then you hope that...

Someone will buy and you also have no way to actually track how many people Actually bought you know so what I like to do is instead of focusing on selling tickets I focus on growing the email list in each city that a band is gonna play and so we come up with some sort of offer so Hey friends in Paris We will be playing there on like August 31st, whatever and the first

10 people who sign up to our email list, they are going to get a signed city plus whatever. And we find this method to be really effective because it's actually the backend that does all the magic. So you get the email sub from this person who's in that city because they will otherwise not be like subscribing. And you would also target your ads based by the...

And then when they obtain, you send an automated email sequence like 10753 one day before the show. And you tell them, hey, if you use this link and you buy the ticket, you're gonna get another whatever on top of the thing that you were giving away to the first 10 people. And that is how you can.

actually track ticket sales, you know, and then once you play that again in six months, 12 months, whatever, you don't have to pay to reach the same people and hope that by running the same ads, sending people to this landing page where you sell tickets, you can reach out to those people directly and just focus on more and more people that will be added on top of the ones that you have. So in like one, two, three years,

You can literally build like a hundreds of people email list for each city that you can sell merch to, sell tickets to. So that's what I really like to do when it comes to shows, honestly, because it's always like this 360 degrees approach. Like how can we maximize the quote unquote fan conversions than simply the thing that we want to do?

Instead of just selling a ticket, let's grow animalist and sell tickets as well. You know, so why, why just not doing both? but that's also.

Andrew (34:05)
Such a brilliant idea and I'm actually angry at myself that I didn't think of it first. Because I work with several artists to promote their shows and tours over the past year or two. And we've come up with some pretty good strategies. We've had good results with traffic campaigns at Ticketmaster pages. We've used landing smart links for tour, feature famous tour links. You guys also have tour links, I saw.

I got an email from you guys today about features, is cool. And those both can work, know, conversion pages, traffic campaigns to a ticket page, target people in a certain radius around the venue. man, sending them, giving them a super slick offer to join your list.

Gio (34:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew (34:57)
targeting people in the city and then having an email funnel that sends out stuff going up to the show, it's just like, that really is such like a perfect idea.

Gio (35:10)
Yeah,

we were getting people like fan signups for like on an average of $2 to $5 each and the conversion to actual ticket sale in the backend was I think it was anywhere between 50 and 70 percent something like that like five zero and seven zero so it really works you know.

Andrew (35:38)
It was like $8 to $10 per ticket, basically, right?

Gio (35:42)
Yeah, and I think their tickets were going for like 25 or something, I think.

Andrew (35:48)
Even if you lost money on that though, but this is the best part of it, which is why it's such a, you know, such a great strategy is that even if let's say you sold, it took you $25 per acquisition to get a sale and the sale was $25. So you made nothing. You played a show for free. The next time you go back and every future time you go back to that city, you still have those emails.

Gio (36:15)
Yeah,

but dude... Yeah, but dude, you also have a room full of people that you can sell merch to.

Andrew (36:24)
Yeah, even better. it's like, and let's say you it cost you $40 a ticket. So you actually lost $15 a person. So then like even with at the show, you sell merch and then you break even. It's like every time you go back to that city, as long as you did a good job at the show, a good amount of those people are going to come back. Like every time Tool comes to Boston or like somewhere close to me, I go see Tool. Right. They're like they're my favorite band. I'll see them live every time they come here.

And a lot of the times periphery comes here. I'm gonna go see periphery I've seen them like five times and so, you know if you if you really if you guys are as good and I don't mean like you specifically but like if your bed is as good live as as you think you are then people are gonna come back next time you're in their city and So it's just like, you know, it's a great idea because like I did the same thing with like a pre plus shipping and handling funnel

Gio (37:22)
you

Andrew (37:22)
where

it didn't matter if you made money off the front end because you got a lot of orders just passively for people afterwards when you run sales or like if they buy your next album it's like now you've doubled the money for that customer.

Gio (37:38)
Yeah, it's a concept that in business, it's called loss leader. So there are so many companies that run like a low ticket offer in the front end and they would also lose money on the front end because they know for a fact that all the profit will be from the back end. And I also understand that for some artists it is hard to

their mind in a position where they are gonna lose money with the intention of recouping them in like three months because it's hard for sure but that really works that that really really works you know

Andrew (38:23)
That's why record labels exist basically. Artists either don't have the funds or they don't have the belief system that they think an investment now will reap rewards in the future. But that's literally all the label does. We'll give you $10,000 now and we're going to make X percent of your record for the next 10 years. They know for the next four years they're going to be running at a loss.

But then as soon as they break even at the four year mark, the next six years, they're making profit. And like, that's, that's the only reason that they exist. I mean, not the only reason, but it's a, it's a big, big reason why they exist. They're like a lot, basically like loan. They're like banks, you know, they've got about loans.

Gio (39:09)
you

Andrew (39:13)
Yeah. When I had Anthony on, because you know Anthony from Sipful, right? Yeah. That's how you saw it.

Gio (39:23)
Yeah, he's a very good friend of mine.

Andrew (39:26)
So he talked a lot about how like his favorite or he thought the most impactful thing artists could do was basically just post content on TikTok. What's your perspective?

Gio (39:45)
I mean, it's not wrong by any means.

But I don't know, dude, like it really, really depends because I see so many artists just focusing on one thing and they have no way to actually make it successful. They would just keep posting for like 12 months. But generally speaking, it's, I don't know, dude, it's not wrong.

I wouldn't say that is the only thing for sure. It's always just a matter of what do you think is going to work for you? What do you think your audience is? Because realistically speaking, if you are a jazz artist, you might not find success by just posting on TikTok, but you might find more success by posting on IG. you are a, but I know.

as a pop artist, TikTok might work really well, but it also depends if, like what type of content do you feel like you are good at? Is it better for TikTok? it better for IG? What I think, not a lot of, like the type of content that I personally enjoy so much is when someone is documenting rather than just creating content.

You know, I think it's so much more honest and just entertaining in general to see someone's growth rather than just them making content just for the sake of making content. You know, that's also why I started like doing some more like documenting. I posted a video like six months ago, which I wish I actually had more time to make more.

episodes like that, but like what it's like to build a music tech company and all the BS that was going behind the scenes, all the issues, all the problems. And that's just more fun for me.

Andrew (42:01)
I

watched that video last night and then I looked it to see if part two was up or there was like a whole series and then I was like, He called this part one and then he never made it follow

Gio (42:13)
I told

you dude, you need to teach me how you can be so consistent with YouTube viewers. I have no idea how you do it.

Andrew (42:22)
It's definitely a lot. mean, the number one thing that helped me get to be able to do two videos a week was I found a way of filming and editing my videos that cut the editing time by a factor of 10. It used to be like I film for 15 minutes. I have two hours of editing, something like that. Maybe, maybe more. Now, if I film for 15 minutes, if I do things right,

Gio (42:39)
Fuck.

Andrew (42:52)
I'll be editing for less than 30, 30 minutes. the way, it won't work with every video style, like your episode documenting what it's like to be in a tech startup. Probably wouldn't work for that editing style, but basically I use OBS, which is normally a live stream software, to perform my video edits.

Gio (43:16)
I see you like clicking some...

Andrew (43:21)
Yeah, yeah, so I have a stream deck here, so I can even click it now. It's going to make everything. So I have this little keypad here where I can, I can trigger, um, screen changes. so basically instead of editing all the screen animations, which is usually the biggest waste of time when you're editing a video, it's just, Oh, you got to get the screen on there. Got to animate it, the slide over. It's just for me, it's a button press. Now the caveat is there's a little bit of a learning curve where you have to learn how to basically perform.

your video edits. And so instead of worrying about all that crap, I just have to worry about getting the take right. So.

Gio (43:58)
Like in the studio, right?

Andrew (44:00)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's like, you in the you it's the difference of like, are you going to are going to perform your stuff really, really well, or are you going to have to spend two hours inside of Melodyne? Right. You know, and sometimes it's worth it to spend extra time in Melodyne instead of wasting your time doing 50 takes. But once with this, it's very easy to do just by clicking a few buttons. And so that helped a ton being able to crank out the video output.

The other thing that you might just want to do for like that series is just hire a video.

Gio (44:34)
I thought about it. Yeah, dude.

Andrew (44:36)
I still edit my own videos, but that's because I have that easy editing style if you need like To get a bunch of footage because your video had like zoom calls and interviews and yeah

Gio (44:47)
Yeah, it was insane. And the funny thing is, for the first time in my life, this August, I was invited to speak at this conference in London with like 100 people or something. I filmed the whole thing and it's not even out. Just so you know, this tells you how hard this is for me. So, I mean, I...

What I have in mind is to, because I actually started filming for this new episode about a few weeks ago, my goal is to release this new episode with like, hey, we've launched Smarteries 2.0 and all these cool features. And then also include my trip to London and my speech into just one episode. fingers crossed I can do it.

Andrew (45:43)
I feel like your YouTube channel would... I mean, it's doing pretty well. You have a couple thousand subscribers, I think, and your video's got a decent...

Gio (45:54)

but I have like one one 10 0.5 % of the Beatles that you have

Andrew (46:05)
Right. Yeah, and so I feel like Having your platform just like if on your channel you're just like teaching stuff for free and Then people find your videos to learn something and they're like, he has this software platform that he uses it's actually his software platform and then they subscribe to it. I feel like that's a pretty natural Like, you know quote-unquote sales journey. It's like I hate selling stuff

I'm the last person you want on a sales call, which is why for my ad agency, I'm not even part of my own sales team. We have separate people to handle that because I'm not the person.

Gio (46:45)
Me neither dude, I just don't do it anymore.

Andrew (46:50)
But when it comes to like thinking about sales funnels, I can do reasonably good because like my people are like, you hate selling, like you have this YouTube channel where you're selling all sorts of crap. And but like you also don't sell stuff. like I'm not like in the beginning of every single one of my videos, like, buy my course, hire my ad agency, use my website builder thing, use my music distribution thing. I mentioned at the end screen, like there'll be a 15 minute video. And I mentioned that a little bit in the last 20 seconds.

Gio (47:20)
Yeah.

Andrew (47:20)
in the description and I found for people that's enough like if they like what you're saying they'll watch the whole video and they'll look in the description to see what you're pushing.

Gio (47:33)
Yeah, I'm like, I with the very few videos I have, I did pretty much the same thing. It's just like 99 % of the video is me teaching stuff and then, hey, by the way, if you need help, me know. There is also some something valuable that I think it's worth sharing with your audience. I don't know if you saw the new update from Google Ads.

Andrew (48:02)
Thanks.

Gio (48:03)
But now

you can essentially run YouTube ad campaigns and optimize for subs, not DWS.

Andrew (48:10)
Yeah, I an audio on that yet, but...

Gio (48:13)
I made like a step by step video because I did for my own band and for another band too. And that works really well because the problem with running ads to your music video was that you would get a lot of views most of the time, but like very few engagements, you know, but now if you can optimize for subs, they will still watch a video, but it's going to be a much more healthy engagement ratio.

you get like, I think for my own bed, I spent 250 bucks and I got 480 subs, 15,000 views and like, I don't remember how many comments, but the number actually made sense. And so I

Andrew (49:03)
My clients went balls to the wall with it and he only ran it in Thailand, Philippines, etc. For $1000, guess how many subscribers he got?

Gio (49:11)
you

Five.

Andrew (49:19)
No, 25,000.

Gio (49:22)
with this new objective. Jesus Christ. OK.

Andrew (49:24)
Yeah.

So he spent a thousand dollars and got 25,000 subscribers. Now, who knows how many of these people that are subscribing are ever going to watch the channel again? That I don't know yet because I did it with someone else and he was getting like 30 to 40 cents a subscriber in like the US, UK, you know, expensive countries. it can work really good. But I wonder and you might know the answer to this because maybe you've been doing it for a little bit more than I have.

Do these people actually watch the video, the new videos you upload? Or do you not know yet?

Gio (50:02)
I haven't.

I haven't watched the like follow-up data basically because for instance, for my own band, we've uploaded, yeah, we've uploaded a second video and I haven't spent anything on ads and with 480 subs, we got 300 views. I think. Which is not terrible considering that we...

Andrew (50:31)
Really good.

Gio (50:32)
I mean, we didn't even promote the video on socials. just put it there because it's kind of like a visualizer boring thing, you know? But most of the time, if you post a new video on a brand new channel, and the thing about music videos is that they are not SEO optimized. So there is no way that you can ever rank before it actually gets used, you know?

And so, yeah, I haven't looked into the actual stats, but if you focus on like actual, like, I don't know, like tier one countries for us work really well. So I think as long as the audience makes sense, I think you should be good. Because again, it's not bots, it's like coming from like YouTube ads, you know.

Andrew (51:29)
It when I showed that other guy how to do it I was like don't go crazy with this because I don't know like how this is gonna work and He was like, yeah, whatever Andrew. I don't care. I just I just want a lot of subscribers basically Okay, just went to town with it and I wonder like he's running YouTube ads, right? He's running it through Google. So they must not be bots, No, I mean it's to be doing it in the Philippines and Thailand and no

Gio (51:55)
I think it's the same with Facebook ads because you've probably tried this. If you run the exact same campaign and you send people to Spotify for instance, but you run an engagement campaign or a conversion campaign with the engagement campaign, same CTA, same link, same everything, you are not going to get the same results than

Deconversion campaign because by default with your objective Facebook itself or I do whatever changes the delivery mechanism or the delivery delivery system, so Even just by using a different objective you will reach different people and I think the same thing will apply to YouTube ads so I think somehow they They would just go and find people who are more more likely to subscribe to a YouTube channel within the audience that you

specified, I think.

Andrew (52:56)
Yeah, yeah, at least I hope so. Yeah, mean, it's all that is exactly how it works on Facebook, for sure. You run a link click campaign instead of a conversion campaign. it's like, you you get a great cost per click, but then like no one does anything on the other side of the click. And then you use a conversion campaign. And it's like, magically, the click through rates amazing on the landing page.

And it is kind of trippy to see how that works. Like Facebook really does know who's most likely to watch a video, who's most likely to comment, who's gonna convert in your ads, who's not. And it's kind of spooky. Because if you think about like when you're scrolling on Instagram, it's like how do they know? But I guess like if you happen to watch a lot of, basically you see an ad and you watch it, they're like okay, this person watches ads. So if we have someone's running a video of your ad and you're in their niche.

it's reasonable to think that you'll be willing to watch 15 seconds of that ad if you're the right demographic for it.

Gio (53:58)
Zuckerberg magic dude.

Andrew (54:00)
Zuckerberg

magic, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Let's see. We've been going for about 54 minutes. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we call it a day?

Gio (54:18)
I don't know. I don't want to pitch other of my stuff, so.

automated marketing, self-survives. And that is actually a new feature that we launched today, actually, which I'm more curious to get feedback from because that is brand new. I don't know you remember on the previous call we did that I showed you these music discovery funnels. So basically...

It's a new tool to essentially just from one fan to get as many fan conversions as possible. So say for instance that you are a record label with like 10 artists. You can create this page that has like two songs for each artist. And when a fan goes through, they can listen to each song directly on the page and they can decide if they like the song or not.

And when they like X amount of songs, they will obtain the same way that they would do it with pre saves and with their permission. Smartness will basically save all the songs that they have liked to their library. It will follow all the artists. It will capture their email. It will get a lifetime pre saves for all the artists plus the email automation thing.

And then it's going to create a personalized playlist for the fan with all the songs that they have liked. And they will be sent to that playlist and the first song will automatically start playing. So it's basically a way, even for an artist with a very big catalog, to get as many fan conversions as possible into just one final page.

Andrew (56:37)
Yeah, I honestly like for myself I can already think about how that'd be cool because I release music under so many projects It's a way to Because even though they're all different. It's like they're all me singing So I feel like there's a reasonable chance that someone would like my electronic rock solo project But then also my alternative metal band it might not like my dubstep metal band but A lot of people might right because it's I have a metal band. have an electronic

artist and then it's like I have a dubstep metal project which is just electronic and metal mixed together. But I could basically make a discovery, what do call it, discovery funnel? that what you call it? Discovery funnel where I could have multiple, you could probably do just multiple songs in your catalog, right?

Gio (57:15)
Yeah.

You can do as many songs as you want. The fan will have to like one third of the songs within that page. So if you have 30 songs, after 10 songs, they will have to obtain because we just wanted to limit that number because we didn't want people to exploit that feature, if that makes sense.

Andrew (57:46)
Yeah, so even having 10 in and of itself is probably more than enough for most. The more you have, the less likely they are to get to the end and they only say that at the end, right?

Gio (57:53)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Andrew (58:02)
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I think a perfect number would be like three to five.

Gio (58:09)
Yes,

so if you want 5 song saves it means that you have to have 15 songs.

Andrew (58:17)
Oh, wait, wait, so it only saves all the ones they like.

Gio (58:24)
Exactly. But they rotate every time. So if you have 30 songs, they will have to like 10 songs and then they will have to log in to do the whole thing.

Andrew (58:39)
Gotcha. you add this up. I'm going to have to check it out later.

Gio (58:44)
That is a demo video on the Smartness Blatter that actually shows how that stuff works. yeah, we are just, I'm really curious to get feedback now. So if you or someone's watching wants to give it a try.

Andrew (59:04)
Yeah, Well, there'll be a Smart Noise link below where people can check out and sign up. But yeah, thanks for coming on the show, man. This was awesome.

Gio (59:17)
Absolutely man, it was very much fun.