I mean I think it's just obvious it's just ridiculous to just give some celebrity a Creative director role of anything. There's only like three guys that I think could even possibly work You know consistently and that's Ryan Leslie me and will I am? Wow, what's up everybody once again is brain man shine and today I have to talk about Arguably one of the most successful Independent artists as a matter of fact one of the most independent independent artists There is in the game that would be Ryan Leslie. I mean, I'm talking about somebody who did two million dollars in one album cycle Without any major record label and without having his music on streaming services first I got to give a shout out to all of you guys out there who'd asked me to do a video on Ryan Leslie because y'all have been asking for a minute Now here it is. I'm for those of you guys who don't know who Ryan Leslie is He hit the scene hard with the song addiction back in 2008, which was featuring Cassie But not only is he a good singer and rapper. He also was an off-the-chain producer and got a lot of traction for a video that went viral of him Just producing the song addiction in the studio But what makes Ryan Leslie so unique in terms of being independent when I think about what makes Ryan Leslie unique I always go back to my personal experience when I first met Ryan Leslie It was actually at a conference a tech conference and there are only like five like people there. It was me Ryan Leslie One of the guys was Ryan Leslie's team members assistant or something Paul judge and maybe somebody else me and Ryan chopped it up a little bit alluded to following up and then he told me to take down his phone Information he gave me this link that was basically similar to kind of a B-card type feel a couple of months later We had necessarily followed up, but then my phone vibrates. I pick it up look at it And it's a happy birthday text message from Ryan Leslie. I remember thinking hmm Like this guy can't be like me because me. I know I'll schedule a text so far in advance I mean, it's not even December yet and already got a happy Valentine's Day schedule for my girl I did a little bit of research about Ryan Leslie's super phone and this is what makes Ryan Leslie so unique Ryan Leslie a Harvard government major who became a Grammy nominated recording artist has removed his music from iTunes and Launched a company to reach fans in new ways and he's made more money as an independent than ever before Super phone is basically a CRM for fans now if you guys are not familiar with the concept of a CRM CRM stands for customer relationship manager and a lot of companies use CRM's because they have a large amount of Customers but they want to be able to be as personal with their customers as possible especially in sales at the very least You want to understand your history with that customer so whenever you reach out you're not started from square one because you know You know talk to the same people every day. It might be months in between But what's all that mean, but just imagine you're outside, you know going through your everyday life And then somebody walks up to you like oh my god. I'm your number one fan Imagine yourself being able to go really oh man, that's dope. Let me um oh Actually when I look it up it looks like you're really my 57,000 and 304th fan because you haven't bought any of my projects in about three years You actually haven't been to any of my concerts. What makes you think you're my number one fan again? Ryan Leslie can do that. I want to talk about why this is the future But first check out this example of one really cool way that Ryan Leslie used the platform and so just over this last New years I threw a party and I just put it out there to all my fans I said look if you guys reserve at a 200 euro price point a ticket to my New Year's Eve party I threw a private New Year's Eve party. I didn't have a venue. I didn't have anything 48 hours later I was up 40,000 euros and I rented a palace in Vienna, Austria and 200 of my top fans came to Vienna, Austria And had a big party with me for New Year's Eve And then this year we did it again and this time I said well if you guys want a super exclusive package The tickets are $1,700 that intimate experience that access. It's not really about the money It's really about a price this moment. So go ahead and just let that soak in a little bit You can simply have an idea Text your fans directly no marketing in terms of having to pay for advertising get on certain platforms Don't have to get a graphic designer none of that time you can just come up with a concept get the money in return Or at least your fans of pens and then execute it if you still decide you want to do it The amount of money and effort that that saves especially if somebody is independent is invaluable As Ryan Leslie says he does it with no manager no record label none of those things He has a record label of his own that he's running from his phone Now check out this other really unique thing that Ryan Leslie was able to do because of this platform and his access to his fans I realized that maybe they didn't want to support me by buying a digital copy of my record But I did have folks that decided hey, why and if you want to make a video I'd love to give you my services if you need 30 Lamborghini's in a video I run the Lamborghini club in Belgium and I can have them all pull up His name is T-Bogg and Reenie Grab myself a hundred wishes that me now I'm a genie genie Five hundred eighty orders in my Lamborghini When I pull them beauties out that me I'm with very T-Bogg I'm disguising thirty cause of me you never see me And the cool thing about it is when you have a fan base you have no way of knowing what every single person does What they have access to this person ran a Lamborghini club so you got all these lambos for free once again As a independent artist any resources are extremely valuable and when you have this access to resources and these Unorthodox ways you're gonna be able to create Experiences that other people can't recreate with their fan base now. Let's talk about themselves though Look at my major label release A hundred and eighty thousand copies album one and sixty thousand copies album two. How does that make sense? You know when the second album was Grammy nominated The real disconnect is why wasn't the marketing plan to personally reach out to the hundred and eighty thousand people that got my first record Well, that can't be the marketing plan because we don't know those people all right Well if you want to continue Chasing that dream with those people that don't know those people then be my guest for everybody else man I'll leave you to the promised land take my hand what super phone allows him to do is say hey y'all like my project Here's my next project speaking to the people who actually bought the first project He eludes to this and talks about this, but it really is a true business principle that it's cheaper to maintain a customer Then it is to create a new one you spend a lot of money trying to create these customers But once they're in the house all you have to do is maintain the relationships They're the ones who are most likely to buy more a lot of the brands that you use are partake in you do it more than once And they don't really have to convince you again But the very first time that you were ever introduced to that it costed them something to get that brand in front of you Many of you have heard of the concept of a thousand true fans I never did a video on it because I thought it was enough videos talking about it out there So I'll do a link in the description below somewhere Ryan Leslie is truly an example of that concept because as he said in one video He did two million dollars for an album cycle and it was with around 15,000 fans now if you think about that You do the math that's about 133 dollars per fan But if you do the math if he only had one thousand fans he could have did 133,000 dollars off of that one project with a thousand person fan base But he's only able to get the most out of his fan base with the least amount of effort because he's able to identify and communicate with his strongest fans You get his music through his platform through his website Even if he decides to put something on a Spotify or Apple music His fans his biggest fans have access to it first and they literally get it through a text message link This is exactly why this is the future of music If you want to be successful in the digital era You need to know who your supporters are and what this type of contact does is it allows you to cut the marketing cost And it also allows you to cut out the middleman for independent artists That's a lot of money safe which is important when they don't have a lot of money to spend This is why if you listen to Steve Sout talk about the music tech company that he just launched united masters Two big things you hear him talking about is marketing and also his company has its own CRM That next level of connection with fans is going to be huge as a matter of fact I would be surprised if Ryan Leslie had something to do with the united masters CRM because when I think about it Andries and Horowitz is actually an investor in united masters and they're also an investor in Bevel Ryan Leslie and Tristan Walker are good friends So probably makes sense. They all run in a similar circle I'm pretty sure if not at least he's very aware that there's that competition at play Competition and those sorts of spaces just let you know how real the opportunity is but also validates how much that really is the future I want to end this video in a slightly different way because I want to end it with some words from Ryan Leslie So that's it. You know what to do He did subscribe But in number two is it's about sales right? It is actually about sales When music is available for free Every sale counts and so you have to understand that one percent of releases accounts for 77% of money spent on music right so that means that less than Three less than three percent of albums released every year Sell more than a thousand copies and so for me I'm interested Well, I'm part of the three percent right. I might be part of the one percent right? Yep Um, what's also interesting is that I'm interested in teaching young musicians how to be part of that three percent There's so many kids I get man. They put so much passion