Artist Manager on Music Marketing, Artist Branding and Gen AI

0:00You know, trying to cold start a viral moment on social media is completely impossible. You know, to justify engaging one of those companies and running one of those campaigns, which, by the way, are all extremely expensive, you know, really significant sums of money. And some artists, a lot of independent artists won't have the financial means to be able to deploy those kind of campaigns. We don't all have billionaire fathers, unfortunately. No, we certainly don't. But, you know, even before crossing that bridge, I would have to see some sort of organic momentum. And the organic momentum comes from your own organic content effort.

0:49You know, if you see a moment catch on socials, that's when you go to one of these third-party influencer agencies to run all those campaigns because it's purely amplification you know you can't cold start one of those moments

1:10welcome to the new music business i'm your host ari herstan author of how to make it in the new music business the book the fourth edition is coming soon but the third edition is currently out now all formats you can find that book today my guest is charlie stent he is the founder and ceo of stent music group and olympic records he represents artists uh from naraya who we spend a good amount of time talking about and she uh has over a million monthly listeners on spotify alone uh tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of streams at this point and has built up a pretty substantial hard ticket business uh he also represents 11 time multi-platinum producer and songwriter Jason Paris and four-time Grammy-winning mastering engineer John Greenham and also Tess Greenham, mastering engineer, who I want to give a special shout out to because I've used Tess quite a bit to master some of my projects and the artists that I work with.

2:09Charlie actually was referred to us by our partners at DistroKid. For those of you following us for a while, you know, I've been a fan and partner with DistroKid since the very beginning and I've used DistroKid for many, many years and occasionally they'll hit me up and be like, hey, I think you should talk to this artist or this manager or this person. And so they hit me up and be like, hey, you should talk to Charlie. He's really smart and he's got a really strong business and his artists are doing really, really well. So I'm really happy they referred him. And I had an incredible conversation with Charlie.

2:35He is incredibly smart. He was coming to us from London, but he has offices in New York and LA as well. And today we talk actually a lot about marketing, the state of music marketing, how them as a management company are approaching music marketing from everything that you would imagine we touch on ads we touch on playlists we touch on organic social media content everything so if you have a question about music I mean we even touch on the controversial methods of burner accounts and sleeper accounts as you call them fan accounts sound campaigns narrative campaigns if you have no idea what any of those things mean don't worry we're gonna get into it and we break them down and explain what it is but this is modern music marketing this is where we are at with music marketing and I think it's really important for you to understand where the state of music marketing is.

3:21I mean, he's working with artists at a very high level, but they're all independent artists. That is what is important to keep in the back of your mind for this. This is not somebody at a major label. This is not someone whose artists are working with major labels. They pretty much handle everything in-house, and they're really good at what they do, and they're not relying, this is the point I want to make, they're not relying on a major label infrastructure or a major label funding for that matter or investor funding. You know, they're doing this in-house with an independent budget with independent artists.

3:53So if you're an independent artist or an independent manager or even an indie label out there, this is definitely an episode that is going to resonate with you. You're going to learn a lot. We really bat around all the various ideas and concepts of where music marketing is at these days and artist branding. I mean, we actually touch on, which he broke down really well, and I was very appreciative and surprised that he was as open and transparent about his tactics and strategies. I mean, he tells the platforms he's using. He tells exactly how he goes about artist branding, how his artists, you know, and I asked him, like, what does that even mean?

4:27What is artist branding? Why do you keep using that? Like, how does that mean? And he breaks it down. And then he talks about like what he looks for an artist that he's going to sign and what attracted him to the artist that he was signing, which he gave a very inspiring answer. And I'll let you stick around to listen to that. Really great conversation. And then towards the end, we even touch on AI. Of course, how can you not? And he actually had an interesting take on how he's thinking about generative AI music and generative AI tools out there. He acknowledges it's a polarizing topic. I think it's an important conversation to be having, especially from people who are passionate about the music industry, about music, about artists, the representing artists.

5:09I think it's it's important to listen to what he says with an open mind. You got to differentiate. You can't really listen to those that are being paid by Suno with an open mind, what they think about AI, because they're being paid. So he's not, and not to say that he's like a fan of it all at all. It's just, we had a nuanced conversation, which oftentimes you don't really have nuanced conversations. You can't on social media. People get pretty tribal over there. So this is the forum for that. This is why I like doing podcasts. Why I like the medium of podcasts is we can have an extensive conversation where you don't have to feel like you are being performative in social media comments or that we need this to go viral or whatever.

5:50These are real conversations. This is a conversation that I would have had with him over drinks if he would have let me bring my notebook. Actually, probably a little bit deeper, you know, or a meeting or something like that. So really inspiring episode. Really, really dig everything that Charlie talked about. and I was very appreciative of how open and transparent he was. You can find stentmusicgroup.com. Just visit stentmusicgroup.com to see their roster, everyone who works there, everything that they do. We talked a lot about Naraya. You can find Naraya, that's N-E-R-I-A-H, everywhere. She goes by thisisnaraya on Instagram and on TikTok.

6:32and then you can find her on all the streaming platforms, of course, and the other artists and producers we reference as well. You can find all of us that make the show happen at Ari's Take on the socials. You can find me at Ari Herstand on Instagram. The best way to stay in touch with us is to get on our email list, though, so visit Ari's Take.com, get on the email list, sign up for the email list. That's where we keep you updated with all the newest happenings of the new music business. But right now, if you wouldn't mind, just pause this episode, Leave us a five-star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

7:05However you're listening to this, give us a comment on Spotify. Give us a comment on YouTube. However you're listening to this, leave that comment. Give us a thumbs up. YouTube, hit the subscribe button, hit the follow button, all of that stuff. All right, let's kick into the show. Charlie Stent, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so I find your business very fascinating. And I would love for you to just start with an overview of what is Stent Music Group and kind of what do you guys do? What do you do? Primarily, Stent Music Group is a label services provider, management business, global management business, representing a host of talent ranging from artists to record producers, songwriters, mixing engineers and mastering engineers.

7:54They're quite an eclectic roster. and we also have a distribution arm of our business as well so there's the three primary verticals but i suppose you know first and foremost i'm a manager great and yeah so it's it's interesting this you know where we've evolved as an industry to this point where um it isn't so siloed these uh factions of the industry like what you just listed off like a label. I mean, you said label services, but label services. It's a mouthful, but it's a lot. And, you know, historically, 20, 30 years ago, that would have been completely unthinkable. So how did you get here?

8:33Did you start as a manager and then evolve? And you're like, oh, you know what? Let's tack on some label services. Marketing is just natural. It, you know, it touches every aspect of the business and the distribution. We just need, tell me how you got here. Yeah, absolutely. I suppose I can give you a condensed version of my origin story, if you will. I started out in the music business circa 14 years ago as a day-to-day manager when I was 18 going on 19 years old. I've worked at top flight management companies over the years. That was your university education, that's your extended education.

9:10It was a crash course. I mean, I was at a crossroads when I was 18. I was split between going to study music business at the University of Westminster London, although two weeks prior to that program starting I had the spontaneous opportunity to be day-to-day for a very successful reproducer and artist at the time, Mr. Hudson, who took a chance on me as an ambitious keen lad who just wanted to learn everything there is to the various nuances of artist management and the adjacent fields as well. And I remember sort of confiding in my father, who I tend to go see for advice. I said, look, am I going to learn more in a classroom or should I just sort of pack my bags, move to Los Angeles, which is what that job entailed.

10:01I'd fortunately done some years growing up in LA. But ultimately came to the decision that I was going to learn more from firsthand nature and sort of attach myself to Hudson, and shadowed him for a year, learned so much, made a lot of mistakes, but was exposed to each and every facet of the industry, operated very much as a sponge, but harnessed as much knowledge as I could. That led me to Maverick and so on and so forth. I founded Stent Music Group, which started predominantly as a management company in 2016 during my time at Maverick, which was certainly a baptism by fire i mean it was a crash course in management 101 slightly corporate in in their approach being a primary subsidiary of live nation under the artist nation branch at the time but what an incredible opportunity to work with literally the greatest minds in music management from guy siri to scott roger to flarence Farrick Spaulding and Larry Rudolph and many others who were part of that consortium at the time.

11:12So I learned a whole host of skills during my time at Maverick and applied them to my own management startup, which was a daunting endeavor at the time, you know, creating your own book of business especially especially when you're working amongst senior management executives who are at the you know the top flight of their game yes but you know nevertheless I I trooped on and sort of scaled the business through developing independent artists who went on to have you know success in their own right but the business was economically sustainable to the point where I left Maverick and I've had joint ventures along the way.

12:03I've run record labels and I've been the president of operations at a UK music services company many years ago but that leads me to where I am today and I'm so fortunate that I can call the artists that I work with partners because our flagship artist in particular, Naraya, who continues to go from strength to strength and accomplishes so much, is a purely, and I mean purely independent artist without legal backing, without private capital backing. It really is just her and I taking on the industry. Yeah, that's great. And I want to talk about Naraya, and you mentioned a key word. You said partners.

12:49and that you consider your artists as partners. Expand on that a little bit, because I think that might be surprising to some artists listening to this, what you mean by that, considering, yeah, what does a partner mean, and how do you consider artists as partners with you? It has to be a synergistic relationship, you know, a harmonious relationship, which would certainly suggest a partnership in many cases. you know one of our core values at stem music group is being family orientated by nature and when we consider signing any artist or consider working with any third parties um that person or company has to feel like an extension of our own values um and share in that sort of family-minded ethos so they very much do feel like a partner yeah um that and and i'm assuming with kind of the uh the work that is done uh you or tell me tell me just kind of how the delineation of duties uh works and in the in the the business or maybe what you expect from your artists or what types of artists uh how the relationship works because you know some people might think well the artist does the music the manager does the business and there's this like right hard firewall between the two, but I think anyone who's been paying attention for the last 15 years, that has shifted quite a bit.

14:17I'm curious your approach with that type of relationship. I think it's multifaceted collaboration down to, you know, the artistic level through to high level business decision making and everything else in between. I don't think there's a clear delineation anymore or at least I don't apply that to my business or my artist managerial approach. With Naraya it's certainly us hand in hand working as a united front to scale in unison and that's how it works. She is self-sufficient certainly in her own right she's a marking machine it's just one of her natural gifts but she personally likes to be involved in her own business dealing and at stem music group you know i like to say you know we it's so important for me to give you the educational tools to best inform your own executive decision making because at the end of the day you're your own ceo and we're a partner in said business well put and so that is interesting so yeah the artist is their own ceo You're a partner in the business.

15:33Now, yeah, I think that's really important for artists to kind of understand that, that they are the CEO. They're in charge. It is their business, you know, and the manager is the partner in that business. But essentially, at the end of the day, it's the artist's name. It's the artist's IP. It's the artist's songs. and a manager is, you know, an extremely important part of that business. But the artist has to lead and has to have the, you know, be partners in the vision or command the vision. Tell me, let's dig into Noraya a little bit because this is such a fascinating case study and an artist and she's having quite a moment now really starting to catch fire.

16:17I mean, it's been, you know, a few years, I believe, you know, one of her biggest songs, Unfinished Business, initially came out, I want to say maybe four years ago, four or five years ago, something like that. And it's had multiple lives. But I'm just curious, like, you know, how did you get started working with her? How did you take her from kind of this baby indie artist to now over a million monthly listeners and just having all the success she's having now? Short form answer is a lot of trial and error. I've been working with Naraya for coming up to six years now. I discovered Naraya because her former executive producer at the time was an assistant engineer for my father who's a producer and record mixer.

16:59And I remember that. Spike by extent, yeah. Spike by extent, indeed. And I remember that assistant engineer came into the studio where I was spending time just working there. And he kept on banging on about this incredible artist that he'd been working with and that he co-composed this song, which was, from what I understand, the embryonic form of Unfinished Business, actually. Oh, okay. And he was massively excited. And honestly, Ari, just to kind of shut him up, I said, look, I'll listen to it. like just hanging on and i listened to it i was instantly compelled by her vocal tone her ability to craft really clear narrative through lyricism um i just the record itself just just gripped me instantly and so i kindly asked his name's jack I asked Jack to introduce me to Mariah.

18:00I met with her for a coffee the next day and we sat down and three hours later, we were off to the races, really. And we truly haven't looked back. And, you know, our relationship is really just a testament to overcoming adversity, which is inevitable. As an independent artist, you're going to come up against challenges, not just weekly or monthly, but daily. you know things are bound to go wrong and it's really how you you face those moments and you work as a as a collective from to to best move forward positively and constructively and and we've really we've done that for the for the past six years and and we continue to to scale globally now which is really exciting um you know her her heartic business has taken flight and her streaming business is continues to surge just the past a million monthly listeners on spotify now but really it's the the the core driving factor of the naraya project is the community that she herself has cultivated it's so rich it's so rich in culture and i think that ultimately is what is going to cut through for an artist it yeah no that's great and there's a lot there and i just want to pause for a second because i'm curious i i it's very inspiring to hear that you got excited about this artist because of the music and it sounds it sounds weird but we are been like in this era of the industry where it is so data driven and analytic driven we hear that every a and r to label is just you've seen what songs are trending on tiktok and then they're jumping on them and the the music the core of the entire business so rarely is discussed that it even matters uh which is disheartening to a lot of artists um and and you know people that love music that got into the industry even on the business side because they passionately love exactly managers and young nrs and everyone and then they get into the reality and and the powers that be are there's like yeah but what are their tiktok numbers what are their streaming numbers How many hard tickets are they selling, et cetera?

20:11What type of business did Naraya have when you first got involved? She didn't really have a business at all. She had foundational pillars. She had an established brand. And that's certainly what resonated straight away as well as. So like a vision. She had a vision of who she was. She had an understanding of who she was. She had a vision, but she had a true sense of self. And she knew how to represent that visually. And I think that's a rarity with a lot of artists today is they don't truly know who they are. And so if you don't know who you are, how can your audience expect to have a firm understanding of what you represent?

20:57It's so important. So well put. Yeah. Because you mentioned, you know, I was clarifying a little bit when you said, you know, she had a strong brand. because that's a term that in the industry you understand but then clarifying yes the strong sense of self understanding who she is all of that like that that is crucial and a lot of young artists don't have that they're like oh i love to write songs i love to sing but i i'm curious like maybe maybe unpack that a little bit more like what strong sense of self what does that mean to you and you're in like how do you define that like how can you see an artist has a strong sense of self that strong brand and then other artists maybe are super talented they have great music or they're a really good songwriter but they just don't have that sense of self or that brand locked in yeah really good question um i suppose it's a case of being able to define your attributes beyond the music itself when i'm deconstructing what is a an artist brand nucleus that i'm always faced with the question i was like so what are your other interests outside of music what are the tenants of your brand that we can build on you know that are that are going to really grow your your audience you know because it has to be it does have to be bigger than the music these days in an increasingly competitive market one that is hyper oversaturated with um high volume releases week in week out um you know the brand has to cut through and what you what you say as an artist you've got to stand for something and so we were so in the infancy of working with artists in an artist development capacity you know we work diligently in defining what that brand is, what those brand attributes are, and then packaging around that what we refer to as a brand Bible.

22:56And that brand Bible will be a visual aid that we can reference back to for the duration of your career, just to make sure that things are concise and cohesive. Because with the brand, you also have to build the realm around that and then comes the community. Yeah. So tell me about the brand Bible. Is that a Google Doc that you put some keywords in? Is that a Pinterest board? Is it a mural? What is it? A combination of the two. It's a Canva. A Canva. It's an extensive slideshow of where we, again, deconstruct their brand. We'll go into their affinity artists, their contemporaries, their stylistic influences.

23:40we get as detailed as going into color schemes and different palettes, hobbies, calligraphy they like. You know, we really get into the nitty-gritty in that regard. And that may sound ridiculous, but it's all very important. Yes, definitely. Because the more intrinsically they understand themselves, the easier it is to best represent that, especially when conveying themselves on social media. Totally. No, that makes a lot of sense, and that's super helpful. So I'm assuming maybe this brand Bible evolves maybe every album cycle. Tell me how often you evolve this canva, this brand Bible. Yeah, it can be tied to an album cycle, but I think throughout the course of a narcissist career there's going to be a natural evolution to their brand and so too the brown bible has to change and continue to be refined and reflective of the stage of career that they're at or the stage of life they're at um so yes to answer your question it certainly does um take new form yeah and you said it all kind of leads towards and you referenced this earlier uh a community talk to me about what that means what is the community community is is an artist core fan base that you have to continue to feed and and keep engaged to build from you know a fan is is only as strong sorry an artist is only as strong as their fans and so to have that hyper engaged community and continue to build upon said community um it's critical yeah yeah and so tell me about these tools you said they're you know the the tools that artists uh to engage with their fan base with their community to keep feeding them um to engage with them the artist is only as strong as the the fans uh what are the tools like i see noraya you know super strong with with kind of your standard tools i guess we'll call them like you know instagram tiktok whatnot but yeah yeah yeah please lay them out i guess the layer below um standard social platforms are are your crm tools so anything from audience development platforms like laylo discord symphony uh comey is a fantastic data aggregator that we use as well um you know those are some best practices of crm tools that we utilize to harness fan data and make sure that we're always continuing to cultivate that community.

26:34That's great. And so, right, because I noticed here and there, little businessy things like, you know, she'll say like DM me noodles or something like that, which is like her like fan base or audience and stuff like that. But but but you know, I as a business that I know when you DM noodles, like I'm assuming like Lalo or ManyChat or something kicks in, pops them into a funnel to get their email, to get their SMS, to put them into these categories. And yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a Lalo feature. Right. Yeah, it's an automated feature. If I DM your keywords, then it would add you to a mailing list that could be specifically tied to a product launch or whatever I'm trying to promote at the time.

27:18Or a tour with their location and all of that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I see she she posts a lot and it seems super natural to her. I'm curious how she how you guys approach social media. Is it something that you're on her every day is like, we got to make a post. It is Tuesday at 2 p.m. Like, where's the post? Or is it just so natural to her that she's like, I'm in my car. I'm going to sing along to the song or do you map it out on, you know, okay, we leasing this song and every day we're going to do a post here, a post there. I want you in your car. We're going to set up a shoot here. We're going to do a video.

28:03Like how formulated is this on a rollout for a new song or an album versus how natural or organic is it? Because it seems organic, but I know behind the scenes, man, it could be a full calendar's worth of business. yeah it's fairly organic in the case of naraya because she's really self-sufficient with her own organic content strategy however when it comes to being a release cycle i firmly believe it's a manager's job as a tactician to provide um you know a snapshot of what it means to promote that release and we'll get as granular as to like the organic content strategy associated with that and paid media etc but ultimately you know we give the artist somewhat of a blueprint or a guide and they take with it what they will and they try to execute to the best of their ability but they don't always follow it to the letter I mean Naraya again you know she has her own ideas all of which are fantastic and she knows what her audience wants and she really knows how to market at her own um record and so she'll sort of she'll riff in many ways so you're right in thinking it you know as natural as it seems you know that's actually authentic to her approach now you've worked with a lot of artists um i'm assuming not all uh take as naturally to posting so talk to me about uh you don't have to name names but i'm just curious when you when When you're working with an artist where you feel like, man, if only they could be a little more Nariah.

29:43If only they could, you know. Or just like thinking about the rollout strategy of a song. And we know how powerful social media can be. But we also know there is so much noise out there. It can be super disheartening for an artist when they post and nothing happens. Nobody sees their post. The algorithm is constantly changing and evolving. Strategies are constantly changing and evolving in terms of music marketing. how do you approach other artists that maybe don't take as naturally to this constant stream of organic posting and understanding how to communicate with the community as well as I think you just have to always ensure that they're empowered to have ownership of their own content and their own voice you know we educate them on best practices when it comes to the nuances of digital marketing and where you can as i said earlier architectural organic content strategy but you know when something doesn't hit which is somewhat inevitable that you know not everything you post online is going to go viral be received as you expected it to you know there will be that element of being discouraged and you know it's our job to support them through that holistically if you will yeah um because i think in in the world of social media and drawing comparisons to their peers and competitors it can become incredibly disheartening yes uh that there's a there's a lot of comparisons drawn day in day out um and and it's a manager's job my job uh certainly in her eyes case keep her focused and keep her on time

31:25Yeah, there are a lot of third parties out there that you can pay a bunch of money to and they will assist in your marketing efforts, your social media efforts, your clipping efforts, your ads, your digital ads, all of that stuff. I'm curious if you have ever or recently engaged agencies, marketing agencies like this. And if so, what is the focus and the purpose? And I guess what is your approach to these third-party marketing agencies out there? Yeah, I think what you're referring to when it comes to some of these third-party agencies is specifically third-party influencer agencies where they run UGC campaigns.

32:11At least those seem to be the most popular agencies to engage when running any sort of social media campaign that has that underlying influencer-driven layer of it. I use the analogy of you know trying to cold start a viral moment on on social media is completely impossible you know what to justify engaging one of those companies and running one of those campaigns which by the way are all extremely expensive you know really significant sums of money and some artists a lot of independent artists won't have the financial means to be able to deploy those kind of campaigns. We don't all have billionaire fathers, unfortunately.

33:09No, we certainly don't. But, you know, even before crossing that bridge, I would have to see some sort of organic momentum. And the organic momentum comes from your own organic content effort you know if you see a moment catch on socials that's when you you go to one of these third-party influencer agencies to run all those campaigns because it's purely amplification you know you can't cold start one of those moments that's really important uh distinction and and clarifier because i think you know a lot of artists think well i have a great song i want to reach an audience who can i pay to help me reach that audience oh this company says they can help me let me just pay them to kind of do that but you're kind of alluding to that's not really the best approach what comes before that that that's you said amplification so they will help amplify what if the artist needs a little booster uh is it only really keep posting like what is the strategy to get that thing to start there's other paid media avenues that you can explore i mean best practice in in scaling um a release campaign is is really initially we will deploy um digital ads right so we'll spend we'll spend what we'll have an allocated fund uh to deploy uh particularly uh dark ads on socials um typically dark ads just clarifying that's the ones that are not publicly posted to the social profiles so you won't see it on the artist uh instagram page or something like that but they're running in the back end and so they'll just show up for people through their feeds correct yeah correct okay yeah um and and in that case i find the greatest roi running those campaigns uh which are which are always very targeted and you review the data analytics and and then you refine your your targeting to get the best results from there um and that not only drives real um fan conversion but also spotify consumption and and streaming consumption as a whole mind you how have you noticed oh sorry go ahead no no no that's yeah how have you noticed uh kind of the the streaming algorithm the spotify algorithm that has evolved over the last maybe few years or something like that three three years or so i mean are our playlists i do even pay attention to playlists is there is there a playlisting strategy these days or uh is there a release um frequency that is important or matters anymore do pre-saves even matter anymore like just when you're thinking about yeah the spotify strategy how has it changed over the last few years i think just speaking to pre-saves i think the importance of pre-saves continues to fluctuate.

36:12One month, best practice from the perspective of the editors, respect to DSPs, is that they want to see a high pre-save count and that can influence their editorial decision making. And then some months, you'll have a robust amount of pre-saves and you don't get the support that you were expecting. I mean, it really does vary. I think consistency is key when getting editorial support. Having a defined and concrete brand, having a visual plan associated with your audio strategy, and by audio strategy, I mean your release strategy. I think having a comprehensive release timeline that's not just limited to a single release is what moves the needle with getting support.

36:59However, landing on an editorial playlist is not the be all end all. You have to do whatever you can using your own devices to generate organic consumption outside of editorial conversion.

37:19Are you finding that editorial is moving the needle like it did maybe five years ago or something like that? How much weight do you put on editorial? Quite a bit, because I think the optics, especially to the independent artist, the optics of getting editorial placement is really strong. And the conversion certainly is there. If you get it, particularly if you get in some of the Premiere, Spotify, Apple or Amazon playlists, they certainly drive a substantial amount of streams and yield real fan conversion, which elevates an artist's career naturally. but there's also independent playlist properties on all those platforms that have equal amounts of engagement and yield the same sort of results fan conversion wise stream yield um so so we also you know as a company when building out a release strategy we focus on on seeding records to third-party influencers as well as official edges.

38:25Third-party influencers and third-party playlists, we know that's super tricky because a lot of them are infested with bots. There's a lot of spam going around. There's a lot of scams going around. What is your approach at seeding third-party independent playlists to make sure that you don't get caught up in a bot scheme or that you're not cited for streaming fraud to get the song taken down yeah really good question again trial and error i've used a handful of third parties of people who i thought were trusted contacts who had built a network of who they thought to be sincere uh playlist curators um who had turned out to not be as as sincere as they had said and i i had hoped um but just just to be completely blunt um yeah but i i think you know you also develop your own relationships with the the curators themselves of these third-party playlist properties and then see you it's your job to vet and field them to know the ones that are legitimate and have real followership and real stream yield and those that are that are botted and fabricated yeah yeah simple simple as that really yeah um and when you're kind of rolling out a single uh or an album i i'm curious like what when you're when you're putting weight on all of these pillars uh that we've you kind of laid out the the official editorial the independent playlist editorial the ads that you mentioned the dark ads uh the ugc influencer organic posting uh social media all of that if you were to maybe make a hierarchy of something that like this is huge this is not so much but we like to just touch it a little bit like what is that hierarchy i think a lot of people put emphasis on on getting official editorial as very much of the all end all but in in my opinion it should be purely supplementary um from an inception of a release i think the hierarchy in my mind would go digital ad comprehensive digital ad strategy because you always know that's going to sort of ensure a certain level of organic consumption converted by said ad.

41:02You can then go on to run a third-party playlist campaign through trusted third-party vendors or the playlist curators themselves, which we have a real depth of these individuals who are all people that we very much trust. And that's just been forged over the years and through many different campaign and so i would go digital ads third-party playlist campaign official editorial um and then everything outside of that should be just community building audience development and and to fan strategy now you didn't mention social media posting i'm assuming that just kind of goes hand in hand uh that's that's that's a in the current market that that's a given you know your organic content strategy is paramount and should always be front and center because that's ultimately what moves the needle i mean that's your your driving vehicle promotional vehicle um and if you can have a have a successful um organic content campaign and that in turn drives pre-saves and then you have the assurance of listeners who show up on release day because they're free savers um that's another bonus as well i want to ask you about uh kind of this um newer marketing music marketing tactic uh maybe it's not so new for people that have been following for a little while but uh you know it really blew up with uh kind of the chaotic good uh story on the billboard podcast and then you know all the subsequent uh think pieces on wired and guardian and all of that stuff about how geese was a psyop and you know it was the headline that made its way around um you know essentially what it is just to summarize for people that that had not been paying attention um you know there are these third-party marketing agencies uh and they were running um they're running like tiktok sound promotion campaigns essentially and and they sure were engaging influencers third-party you know tiktok uh influencers that could help boost the sound and make videos for the sound.

43:21But what they were also doing was creating tens, if not hundreds, of burner accounts, just their own TikTok accounts that, you know, maybe had a theme or something. It was an anime account or it was a TV clip show account or something like that. But they were running these in-house. So they weren't like people behind these. They weren't just like some kid in their bedroom. It was actually this agency that was running all of these burner accounts that would then post. and then of course they would soundtrack each post with the song that they were promoting um and then you know we can take it a little bit further now that's a pretty common practice these days what i've found um you take it a little bit further which is a little bit more controversial practice which was what they were calling narrative campaigns which is like those burner accounts or they have a bunch of fake accounts that then start commenting on other people's videos and in the comment section saying you know either like this if it's a if it's a post about the band or the artists that they're they're promoting like oh this band is incredible this artist is the it's the performance of the year type of thing you know if they perform it on snl but then also what we've now seen and this is in every industry you know we have an election coming up here and i'm seeing i'm seeing these types of bots what i think like commenting on all of these you know various candidates, politicians, accounts, all of that.

44:39Like, you know, and I know I see them, they're bots. I know what's happening here, but they're like, oh, you got to check out this candidate or this issue. We're like, we're all thinking about this. But of course, it's in music now too. I'm curious how you're thinking about all of this. And if you engage any of these types of agencies, if you run any of this in house, or if that is just so far outside the realm of what you're focusing on, I'm just curious where you're at with all of that. Yeah, I mean, that's, It certainly includes an element of fan account strategy. We have other sleeper accounts, which are sort of like culturally defined accounts where we've grown their respective followings naturally over the years.

45:22And we can activate them for certain artists when they're in release cycle, or even when they're not actually. And we can shift the narrative of a campaign. You create that ecosystem where all your accounts live in, where they interact with one another.

45:41Define sleeper accounts for me, fan accounts. A little bit more specifically, what are their names? Are they just Joe Schmo from Podunksville, whereverville? Or is it actually like Naraya HQ that is just posting live videos of Naraya incessantly? A bit of both, yeah. It can be artists, sort of branded, artist fan account, and that's how they're branded, or it can be sort of food enthusiast accounts. It can be something as basic as sort of, you know, you mentioned anime accounts, cinema account, hobby accounts, and everything else in between, you know, as long as it's got that engaged viewership and it's somewhat music relevant you know then you can start to seed your your releases through through said accounts that will have engagement so you're you're guaranteed to get that that viewership right and uh which brings us back to the brand bible i'm assuming you then go back to that brand bible and be like who are our fans oh they're fans of anime there's this crossover if you have an artist where you could tell their fans are also fans of anime or they're also fans of uh the tv show off campus or they're also fans of whatever you could make you know an account that is just clips of off campus or you could make a tv show or a fan account that's just like clips of anime and and you see those videos you score those videos soundtrack them with your song then naturally the algorithm is going to find the audience that's a fan of that tv show and they're they're going to watch these clips and then they're going to keep hearing your song and you know that there's a good crossover do you do you get that analytical about it are you thinking like that or are you kind of just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks uh to be honest no i i don't get that granular when it when it comes to sort of like clipping account strategy.

47:48When we want to run a clipping account strategy at scale, I'll usually bring in a third party for that. Cool. Yeah, I've been going deep. I've been nerding out of this stuff and I've been thinking really hard about it. You've gone down the rabbit hole, my friend. I've gone down the rabbit hole for better or worse. Cool. That makes a lot of sense. It's interesting though that you've seen the parallels to at least similar strategy in the political space i mean because oh i've been calling it out i like i'd like to think that i was uh early on because in our primary season here in california uh you know we have a girly primary governor's race and we had some mayor primaries and stuff like that i was noticing i got influenced by uh some of the comments initially i was like oh everyone's everyone is talking about this candidate i'd never heard of that's interesting so i was like oh let me go check out this candidate i'd never heard of because so many people commented about and then And I was like, hold on.

48:43I had just actually, you know, listened to the chaotic good episode on Billboard. And I was like, wait a minute. I wonder if this is happening. And then I started investigating all of the accounts that were commenting, go check out this candidate that I'd never heard of. And sure enough, all of those accounts, how I can tell their bots is they all are private. They all have about, you know, 50 followers or less. And they're all following 50 to 100 accounts. that like it's like pretty standard across the board it's just like you know you got like 50 100 followers and then you know it's just like an innocuous uh you know bio that means nothing and then a profile picture that is innocuous maybe a person maybe not but i was just like oh it's every one of these accounts they all have under 100 followers and i'm seeing that in the political space it's it's very active right now um but i feel like that's a newer strategy that just started to hit this campaign season.

49:40But we know that that's been in music now for at least a year or so. And so that's just kind of social media marketing a la October, 2026, where we're at. Yeah, exactly right. I think it's just marketing 101 and that stretches to other fields and other business sectors. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's wild. It's crazy. And like James Blake said, everything you see on the internet is fake. I'm sure he wasn't the only one who said that, but basically, you know, you just, uh, I don't think he's the only one. He's definitely not the only one. It's hard to know. It's hard to know what's, what's real on the internet, especially with advances in AI, which is a whole other subject.

50:24Um, you know, let's touch on it for a second. Cause you brought it up. I had a feeling you were going to go there. Yeah. Well, you know, I didn't want to start with it, but we're deep enough in. I do want to, I'm curious how you're approaching AI, more so with your artists and generative AI and generative AI music creation platforms. You do represent producers and songwriters as well. I'm curious if you're hearing or seeing, are they using it? How is it being used? What is your take on it? Yeah, just, yeah. I think generative AI as it relates to music creation can be the greatest equalizer for artists, really, especially giving power to the independent artists.

51:19I mean with AI plugins which can mix your records and master your records and you have soon over the music production and just creation as a whole gives you access to creative resources which independent artists wouldn't otherwise have access to nor have the financial means to and therefore can compete with artists who assign and have extensive recording budgets and and teams of professional teams around them who can connect them with high level musicians, high level producers, high level, you know, mixing engineers, mastering engineers. You know, if I'm a kid in a bedroom who doesn't have a label when I'm releasing my music through Distrokid or any of those distribution platforms and I'm just starting out and I want a competitive mix or a competitive master, I can use certain AI plugins to do that for me these days.

52:14And I think for those very reasons, it can be an incredible thing. However, it's when you're using or you get into the waters of certain individuals using AI to infringe on other artists' IP or copyrights. And that's where AI can be very dangerous and needs to be heavily regulated. That's interesting. Yeah, you know, you're calling it the great equalizer. I mean, I would say some artists, and I would argue the majority of the artist community, songwriter, producer community out there, are taking a far more skeptical approach to generative AI music. just in the sense that maybe everybody shouldn't be given this access and shouldn't be, doesn't deserve, or maybe deserve is the wrong word.

53:14I would argue typing a prompt into Suno is not the same as learning to be an artist or learn an instrument or spending hours and hours and hours struggling with a song and a verse and a bridge and collaborating with other people in the studio. and I struggle personally with putting those two types of creators in the same industry, in the same pool of Spotify royalties. The kid who types a prompt in the Suno and then uploads it to Spotify, which is happening every day. Deezer recently came out. I just had the CEO of Deezer on the podcast and he said 90 ,000 songs every single day that are being uploaded to Deezer that are 100 % AI generated.

54:0690 ,000 songs are 100 % AI generated that are being uploaded every single day to the streaming services. So I'm like, I'm a human artist. There's a lot of human artists out there that are having to now compete with these 100 % AI generated songs. I'm not talking about like, you know, using a tool as a mastering assistant or that's AI. i'm talking about like suno but but but i'm open to the discussion because like you said maybe they don't have access to a producer that knows how to run it and etc etc look i know this conversation is polarizing and and i'm just trying to sort of empathize with the the independent artists who wouldn't have the knowledge the means or the or the resources to have access to you know you know all the key components of the record making process um whereas you know you know those who do have financial backings or label backings do um have access to those resources but by no means am i advocating that genre of ai should replace the pure um music creation process yeah and it is super great yeah it's super great like i you know i i i've talked to hit songwriter producers who who can do everything and they're like you know what i uh i needed a baseline i can't play bass uh my my friend who plays bass and who i usually call and hire to come in wasn't available i needed to turn this demo in so i used suno to create a baseline for me and uh it made the demo and you know it's it's great it's like okay how is that different from finding this the sample on splice and then using a splice sample and and i get it i get you know it is very gray um and you know but i also you you represent mastering engineers actually uh tess greenham i've worked with uh quite extensively and an artist that i work with She's incredible.

56:16She just mastered one of my artists' records. We got the masters back last week. She's fantastic. I'm curious if you had conversations with her or any of the other mixed scene engineers or mastering engineers you work with. It's just like that seems to be one of the first things that will go with AI, honestly. be, yeah. Although I think as of today, it's clear to distinguish what is authentically a master from a mastering engineer in comparison to something that's AI generated. I think it's still clear night and day. I'm just, again, to the independent artists who wouldn't otherwise know a test screen or have the financial means to afford a test screen in this case, you know having having something like a a master nai mastering plugin and we'll give them more of a competitive mix you know yeah that is that is not by by no means the level of of a test green or a john green but it will give them something that um it is more you know sonic sonically capable yeah and yeah exactly i mean it is you know uh always been the case throughout the course of history at least um that uh the access has been an issue and you know when lander first came out with their kind of auto mastering service this is before anyone was using the word ai uh it was helpful and you know lander's mastering service has been around for gosh 10 15 years maybe something like that.

57:56And it's like, there's a place for that. And I've used it. I've used Lander's mastering service, which one could argue that is AI or AI mastering. It's just, it was, it's been auto mastering since the beginning for, for various, you know, quick turnarounds types of things. Maybe you want to quick master a demo or you're doing a whatever, but then personally, yeah, I always turn to the professional, the, the, the human, the person when I'm going to be doing an official release or one of my artists are doing an official release uh you know there's there's a place for that um but yeah we are in this weird time period because it is so gray there's such a a scale and it's less like i think everyone in the industry nobody appreciates the prompters out there that are putting those 90 000 ai generated songs out there but then everything in between we haven't quite settled on as an industry with the gut check of what is acceptable and what's not but i i hear you on the equalizer comment and the access that that is that is that is absolutely true and i've heard that argument for sure yeah that's really you know where i'm from um yep obviously you know the the authentic form of music creation whether you're a mastering engineer mixing engineer producer or the artist himself you know that will always be unbeatable yeah definitely yeah yeah for sure um i want to touch on uh you mentioned you have a distribution side of your business um and you referenced distro kid and i'm just curious kind of like with some of your artists uh and i know you kind of have a label arm as well um how do you determine whether you're going to like which distributor you're going to use do you have your own distribution arm with a more higher touch higher level distributor out there i know you have kind of a a sister label i believe tell me how how all that works and and which artists you decide to go through this pillar you know this avenue and that we're signing an artist to our label vertical and and our economic model at the label is it's you know licensed deals 50 50 net profit deals with artists um we're partnered with video so so they are our dedicated distribution partner on on the label front however if we're running label services campaigns for artists where we don't have any involvement in their ip any equity in their ip uh we we tend to to always go with with distrokid they are our preferred partner because we provide in-house label resources where we wouldn't have to rely on aligning with you know a more traditional label services provider yeah for those are very reasons so you know that there's certain benefits of working with the incredible team at district kids but you know retaining a hundred percent of your your royalties for instance with the exception of having a third party collaborator in your record right is you know that's an unparalleled deal.

1:01:05And I suppose that the trade off there is that you don't really get the white glove label services that you would with a traditional company, but at least you have full creative control. You can release as much music as you want. It's your vision. You're not subject to anybody's approval that that would be your label. Everything is controlled and streamlined through district and therefore we do typically release through district when we're just running label service campaign yeah and that makes a lot of sense especially because your company you guys have such a strong handle on every other aspect of the business that you don't need to necessarily rely on a label services company an outside distributor that might have more of the white club services because it seems like you have a very strong handle on it, whereas I think some artists and managers might rely on a team or need an outside team.

1:02:08Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have those services in-house from product management to content operations to organic content strategy, paid media in-house with the exception of some select paid media partners. We handle ANR, brand development, brand pitching. we do select radio promo in-house, we do publicity in-house, and ultimately we also do editorial and to market strategy in-house. So we pride ourselves on being sort of, you know, one of the best class providers in that respect. But it's come from years of hard work and again, you know, making mistakes and being able to identify what works and what doesn't.

1:02:56Yep. Yep. Well, Charlie, this, this is just flown by. I really, really appreciate you being so open and transparent and revealing. And I love how you approach everything. And you guys have a really powerful business over at Stent Music Group and everything that you've been doing. I mean, it's very cutting edge and it's super inspiring to see how you've set up the company, the business and all the clients that you represent from your artists, the songwriters, producers, everybody, the engineers. And yeah, I appreciate you pulling the curtain back. Not everybody does that. And it's, you know, I know the listeners are so appreciative right now.

1:03:40And I'm going to apologize in advance for the influx of people that are going to flood your inbox because they're like, they're so inspired by what you've said today. Yeah. Look, you know, for the most part, I was likely just rambling on, but my door's always open. You know, the point of our business is education, you know, education for the artists that we're partnered with. and anybody who wants any insight into some of our best practices when it comes to art development, I'm more than willing to share that knowledge and information with them. So yeah, by all means, reach out. Very, very kind of you.

1:04:21I have one final question that I ask everybody who comes on the show, and that is what does it mean to you to make it in the new music business? What does making it mean to you?

1:04:34That's a really, really good question. I think generating an economically sustainable business which gives you the means to create art that you find fulfilling and that connects with with people and moves them is why I'm in this business, that's for sure. Yeah, that's great. I think if you can afford to do what you love and influence people's lives in a profound way, I mean, that's in my mind. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Charlie Stent, thank you so much. That was great. Thank you, Ari. Take care. This episode was edited by Ruben Zarate with music by Brassroots District and produced by all the great people at Ari's Take.