Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Schulz Reacts: Joe Budden Leaves Spotify | Patreon Sample

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

This week Andrew, Akaash, AlexxMedia discuss Joe Budden leaving Spotify, how far would you go for America, OnlyFans, Nancy Pelosi, NBA Playoffs and much more. INDULGE! Want a new episode every week? Become a Patron! www.Patreon.com/FLAGRANT2

What up people, Shultz here, and you guys are about to listen to a clip from our weekly Patreon episode. If you want to sign up to our Patreon, support the flagrancy, support what we are doing, completely uncensored, flagrant content, you go to patreon.com slash flagrant2. With no more interruptions, here is the exclusive clip. Al! Oh, fuck. Al Oh fuck No I wanted to say that

I think I already told you Yes I did tell you Did I listen to The Joe Budden podcast Okay I listened to Why you gotta point the gun at me Why you talking to me

Cause you need to know Who I'm talking to Okay Alright I listened to the Joe Budden podcast. I listen to, I guess, two clips. I listen to one clip about him leaving.

Yeah. And then I listen to another clip about him being critical of Charlamagne. Okay. Obviously, you know Charlamagne, my guy. I'm a very loyal friend. That's a fact. It clouds my objectivity at times. I'm more loyal than I am objective.

That's just what it is. Most people are, but at least you know that. If you did some fucked up shit to somebody and then they punched you in the face, that's their fault. That's their fault.

That's how I feel. Why'd you take it that way? Yeah, exactly. That's not how he meant it. Is that how you meant it? Never. He didn't mean it that way and even if he did,

you shouldn't have fucking felt that way. Getting offended is a choice. You made a choice. Bad choice. Okay? Break my other pointer finger. You know? So, offended is a choice you made a choice bad choice okay break my other point of finger you know so

um i listened to the podcast i gotta compliment joe i think i said this to you yesterday very engaging speaker yes passionate like you're watching somebody give a press conference after like a brutal loss do you know what i'm saying like you know like chris paul like they thought that he got like ripped off whatever at the end of the day he's draymond green it's like it literally feels like when he's speaking it was it was two seconds before the guy at spotify took a shit on a glass table he was forced to be under he's speaking with that much passion and fury about what's going on so it's so encapsulating of course you're listening you're like oh my god he makes it feel like it's the craziest thing in the entire world so i completely understand the passion

and my assumption is again i'll listen to podcast, but my assumption is that that passion, when applied to, let's say, the hip-hop world with hip-hop insight, is very engaging for hip-hop fans. It's like, this is where I get my hip-hop news, and I'm getting from the craziest source. And by crazy, I mean the guy who says the shit he's not supposed to, and he just goes he just goes oops afterwards yeah you know like he leaks shit without even supposed to be leaking things i'm assuming yes or no not always but maybe once in a blue he might might once in a blue what i will say i just won't limit it just to hip-hop fans because it's like uh it's always interesting to hear someone who knows about any uh industry that you're not really familiar with just like um it's so interesting to listen to a joe rogan interview because you're hearing insight from somebody who knows what they're talking about right i would say

his expertise is the music industry the music industry yeah yeah that's what i meant just the music industry in general and it's a rare occurrence that you have someone that has been on the inside been maybe taken advantage of and is now on the outside not reliant so he can speak freely about those people yes most people are either still dependent on the industry so they're fucking frightened of saying anything right yeah or um they didn't get taken advantage of they're still making tons of money i would even sort of kind of put you in that boat. For sure.

I think a lot of people relate us. Yeah. So in regards to like independent thinking and being independent and doing your own thing, absolutely. That being said, what I will say, my criticism of the podcast thing

or the clip that I saw was that he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the business relationship. And I think his understanding is actually altruistic. In his thing, he's like, I know I signed a contract, but I did really good. So give give me more and then the person signing the contract with him is going i signed you to that contract thinking you were gonna do really good and i would make all that more that's what i'm doing now i'm sure if joe and them went to spotify and his show underperformed he's not giving back any of that money. Nope. He's not calling up Spotify like, yo, we fucked up. Here's some of the bag that you promised us because we underdelivered.

So Spotify's going, I'm not going to give you more of the bag for overdelivering. This was what we agreed was okay for these years. Now, of course, the maybe right human thing to do would be reward somebody who does really well. It's what I've done in my business. I believe I've done it with you, even without you asking. I think there's been times where I've come to you and I'd be like, yo, I really appreciate what you're doing. I've got more. You get more.

You know? Very fair with me when you didn't have to be. Leverage-wise, you don't have to be. Absolutely. But that's just me. Yeah. A lot of people are like, yo, Schultz, why didn't you run a podcast network? Why don't you have all these podcasts under you?

I don't want to own people. Yeah. The way that Barstool makes money is he signs people, Portnoy signs people and then the word abuse is bad because people are getting to do the right,

whatever they want but he makes way more money off of the content that they create than he's paying them. And works them incredibly hard. And it's very cutthroat. Absolutely. That's what you sign up for.

Like owners of sports teams. Absolutely. 100%. So, excuse me. So that being said, it's not surprising to me that that's how this corporation operated because that's how corporations operate. So in my eyes, I'm looking at this like, oh, you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how these corporations work. And it's shocking to me because you come from a field that is the

most exploitive. Music is super exploitive. Which he says. Which he says. So you shouldn't be so naive about the business that you're operating in. You don't become a billion dollar business by just throwing money all around. Do you know what I mean? I could be way more wealthy if I was way more cutthroat. I just don't want to live like that. I don't want to sign a bunch of podcasts and go, this is how much you're making, and then blow them the fuck up and then keep all that. The only relationship that I want to have with a podcast is like we do with the advertising agency that I'm a partner in in where I'll provide ads for you.

You make as much money as you can possibly make. If you get more views, you get more money. We're just going to take our cut. And anytime you want to leave, I wish you the best. I don't want to own nobody. And the cut is equal to or less than what other companies do.

Exactly. Probably less than. Probably best deal. So I guess what I would say about the Joe thing is, and I'm not educating on this because he fucking knows it. He's frustrated, I get it. But he knows it deep down. This is a guy who is familiar with the business.

He knows he signed a deal. He outperformed the deal. And that is what it is. Now, generally speaking, when that deal is over, now you clobber him. Now you hit him over the head. And it feels as if they didn't offer him a deal that his clob now you hit him over the head and it feels as if they didn't offer him a deal that his clobber time hit him over the head and he's in the worst time in history to make a

negotiation with spotify because they just got the biggest whale yeah when you get the biggest you got moby dick you got moby motherfucking dick bro like this is the megalodon yeah right everything is underneath Rogan. I love you guys talking about Michelle Obama like that. Also that. Oh, fuck. Also that. I mean, they got Michelle.

They got Rogan. Once you get Rogan. They got the biggest dick and the biggest pussy. They're covered. I don't even know. Not in a derogatory way. I mean, they got the guy. They got the girl.

Oh, yeah. There you go. Metaphorically speaking, that's a great ass point. I was a even know. Not in a derogatory way. I mean, they got the guy, they got the girl. Oh, yeah. There you go. Metaphorically speaking, that's a great ass point. I was a little terrified for a minute, bro. That's why I hopped in quick because I knew it was dangerous. Michelle Obama grab you by each arm and tear you in half, bro. You better be careful. Nah, she gonna Hulk smash me.

I'm not- Real talk. So, I guess what I'm saying is he's entering a negotiation year after the team just signed LeBron. After you sign LeBron, you can't ask for max money because you know you're not LeBron. We used up the max slots over here. Exactly. Spotify, just like any other company right now that's buying podcasts, is buying consumer confidence in podcasts on their platform. They want to be synonymous with podcasting, and they just bought the biggest or licensed the

biggest podcast in history. They don't fundamentally need the Joe Budden show. Joe Budden can go wherever he wants. As far as I'm concerned, his fans are incredibly devout. They love the fucking show. Seems realistic, no? And wherever he goes, I believe he'll have the same success. So he still has value to another company that wants to compete with Spotify. But he has no leverage with Spotify because what they're going is, okay, Joe Budden operates within a very sizable

but also niche audience. We just got the big whale. We can lose that little audience because the whale is bringing so much more and yeah you're not gonna whoever he brought over yeah they're only a small percentage of them are leaving yes so you have served your purpose for us we're good we got the fans we wanted to get we got a little reputation now we're going at number the number one spot we got rogan your fans might leave yeah out of loyalty we got more than we wanted al stop me if i'm wrong i feel like he's trying

to create this into like a race issue where i don't see that at all yeah he said he said something was interesting this is systemic oppression or something i think that's where like he starts to get into i think that's why like that might be the reason why joe is limited in his like mainstream appeal is he's incredibly knowledgeable and well-spoken about one thing, and then outside of that, it all seems to kind of unravel a bit. Because when he started to talk about business and that shit, anybody who's familiar with business, himself included,

is going, what are you doing? You sound like a third grader here. This isn't real. What he's talking about when he was blaming it on systemic oppression is not the case. Bl blaming it on systemic exploitation is the case and guess what welcome to capitalism and capitalism is systemic exploitation by brand if you are trying to help your people i don't think the solution is say oh this is racist

i signed a shitty deal and i can't throw a fit the way a white person would no anybody who signs a shitty deal if it was my son i would be like yo you got to serve that deal you signed a shitty deal if you're joe budden you're smart enough to have lawyers look at the deal before you sign it right you get a good entertainment lawyer they will say yo you're getting fucked here joe on the podcast early on says spotify doesn't know what they're doing i'm the one with the expertise and that could be true later on says i helped craft the deal so you want to pitch a fit over a deal you helped craft and blame that on systemic oppression i obviously systemic oppression is a problem i feel like saying this is an example is a disservice to real systemic oppression i think

black people who are listening might be like yo that is fucked up there are a lot of things that are fucked up about being black in america clearly this ain't one of them before you sign a deal you negotiate the terms that are favorable to you particularly when you're the one with the knowledge you got all the leverage you can ass fuck them on a deal. That's the point of a negotiation. A negotiation is in its fucking spirit, a win-lose proposition. Very rarely a win-win between two entities. And if you are in, again, in music, which is by its nature,

the most exploitative business, if you have the knowledge, you should be the one on the other end right now. So to put it on, oh, I couldn't pitch a fit because as a black man, I'm worried about, I believe that exists.

But any race of person who signed a shitty deal, we got fucked on our MTV deals. That's what MTV does. They fuck you on your deal. So what do you do? Sorry. You serve your deal. And then the next time you get a good ass lawyer and you- I would push back on that.

Yeah. About the MTV thing. I didn't get fucked. I got what I signed up to. Yeah. To do, right? By saying you got fucked in your deal, that's the same thing as what Joe's saying.

Okay, I lost the negotiation. That's what I would say. And what I would say is I won the negotiation. So let's just clarify with MTV deals. Back in the day with MTV, I signed an overall deal with them. And I think it was for $125,000. And it was a one-year deal with two options, meaning they could option me for the next year and then the next year after that.

I think there was like a 5% bump on each year, 10% bump, whatever. What that meant is they could use me for whatever they wanted, and I couldn't do stuff outside of that deal. So overall means they can use you for whatever they want. Exactly. You cannot say no. Right. Exactly. I think, look, you could prove that you can't because of health reasons.

But for the most part, yo, if we want you to do this, do it. Now, I went into that deal understanding at a very early age of social media that social media was the truth. And that was the currency of the time. And I think I understood that maybe before a lot of people did so in my mind i was like 125 000 going from making zero thousand dollars a year doing comedy to 125 i was like that's great money they're gonna work me bone dry but one i'm making great money and two i'm gonna build up my social media as much as i can so i can have some value, some leverage, some currency so I can sell out some clubs, et cetera. Now, while on that deal, I'm doing guy code, all these different things. I have two of my own shows.

One of the shows was on MTV. It was a dating show where I did like 25 episodes. Okay. That's a lot of episodes. I got a bonus on top of my deal for $25,000. They're like, thank you for doing this extra show. They did the right thing. They were like, $25,000 is, they didn't have to give me anything. I was contractually obligated to do that show, but they knew that they were going like a little above and beyond in terms of what they demanded of me. And they paid me a little bit

extra. They didn't have to. If they didn't, I wouldn't have been upset. I signed that deal knowing full well what I could be in. I was referring to the first contract we signed. I didn't do the overall. I passed on it. They offered me different terms than they offered you. And I said, no, and that's fine.

But your point stands. But to your point about the bonus and doing the right thing, that was another beef I had with what Joe was upset with, which was he feels like he hit his numbers for the bonus. Spotify says they're not the right kind of numbers. Joe's like, what the fuck are you talking about numbers and numbers? He might be right. I also know for a fact a lot of times they are very specific about what numbers are important to them. And I would not be surprised if that's written into the contract.

Numbers are you listen to this percentage of an episode or you listen for this much time. That's what counts as a number. That's how you hit the bonus. We're all on Facebook. If you want to monetize a Facebook video, they have to watch at least one minute of a three-minute video. If your video is two minutes and 59 seconds and they watch two minutes and 59 seconds, it don't matter how long they watched. That's not monetizable. You know that going in.

I would not be surprised if they told Joe in the contract, this is a stream. This what it takes to hit your bonus and he's just like well i can't understand no i think they probably defined it and i think he was even saying that he worked to help define it but um i guess i guess what i would say i i've been like even when it comes to that like the nuance of the contract you're going to know what you're going to want to do but the takeaway from this is and maybe joe is amplifying this because it gives him more leverage going into the next deal that he's going to do or he's bringing more attention to him.

He's very good at like creating attention, right? But again, Joe has the people. There are certain people when they leave the fucking home and garden network where they renovate the houses,

when they leave that, they're not carrying that many people back to their own YouTube page. Some lady that just hosts Top Chef, not even one of the chefs, just the host of it, they're not carrying many people. The host of Dancing with the Stars, if he leaves Dancing with the Stars, he's not carrying many people to his YouTube page. Joe still has his audience. So maybe he doesn't do his deal with Spotify, but he has the people. You could do a Patreon. You could go to Apple. You could do all these things. His criticism of Charlemagne was that they were

fighting different battles, that Charlemagne is part of a network and Joe is an independent entity. Joe was part of Spotify. I imagine it was maybe a licensing deal. I'm not exactly sure what the deal was. But so it's different in terms of like Joe maybe owning his podcast. But when he was part of Spotify, it's no different than Charlotte being part of iHeart with The Breakfast Club. I think it's pretty the same. Excuse me. That being said, both things are okay. You can operate within mainstream media and do it very successfully.

Charlamagne has done it. Partnered up with these people. operate within mainstream media and do it very successfully charlamagne has done it partnered up with these people if you want to get to the top of your business and be at the top top at some point you are going to have to intertwine with mainstream media all right guys you just listened to a clip from our weekly patreon episode if you want to continue to listen to that episode subscribe join the asshole army patreon keep it tight and keep it flagrant with us you can do that at patreon.com flagrant to indulge