The Pomp Podcast - #1199 Mike. On Making Millions As Independent Rapper

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Mike. (formerly known as Mike Stud) is one of the most interesting music artists in the world. He has consistently pioneered different ways to make music, distribute music, and make money off of his music. Mike. continues to build out subscription services while building audiences with a very high degree of engagement. It all started as a baseball player at Duke University. Mike. continues to push the edge of everything from content and monetization. You can learn a lot from people who are pioneering other sectors of the economy. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 235,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with Mike.

That's right. His name is Just Mike. He is one of the most interesting music artists in the world, in my opinion. He has consistently pioneered not only different ways to make music, but also how to distribute the music and how to make money off of the music. Mike continues to build out subscription services, continues to build an entire audience with a very high degree of engagement. And it all started about a decade ago when he was a baseball player at Duke University. Mike continues to push the edge of everything content and monetization.

And I tend to think that you can learn a lot from people who are pioneering in other sectors of the economy. Here is my conversation with Mike. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result?

Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. investments you should not treat any opinion expressed by pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy but only as an expression of his personal opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only so when'd you graduate um 2007 was the year my freshman year i had the all that was like my my breakout year

2007 so i graduated 2012 and then i did georgetown grad for for half so like the same time that you in college i was in college basically okay yeah it was you um asher roth right was another one and then there was um mac miller yeah and i went to school in pennsylvania and asher roth and mac miller were just running back and forth across the state doing every frat house whatever yeah and uh so i remember listening a little bit whatever and then when strowman uh my brother and i he started dm'ing us about like yo what coins to buy there was like a six month stretch he's like literally every day was like yo bro we're up with the cash that's my guy and so then and then he kept like tweeting at you or whatever and then i was like oh wait a second

hold on mike it and i started listening i was like oh yeah he literally went all in all this awesome yeah went all in i mean the guys you mentioned man like uh especially mac miller rest in peace i remember i remember just just starting to dabble a little bit in my room making because i because i was injured really what happened was you know i was you recorded my full time my and since i was eight years old i was just i had this very intuitive draw towards baseball knew it would be my meal ticket out of where i live you know just knew it would be that was a thing yeah it was and i knew i had it i had something i was from rhode island so it's not a baseball powerhouse by any means so the whole time there was that like you know

neighborhood like i was really good in this area but what does it mean you know and i i worked very hard very diligently had a great super lucky with a great family great father helped shit sorry helped cultivate you know my my skills whatever i go on to play at duke um which was you know already kind of feel like i was achieving my dream and first year i just had as i look back almost like every single thing went my way that year i was a all-american as a freshman closer just like i remember throwing balls 2-0 right down the fucking middle and it just they just roll over it was just like the whole year yes i was i was you know excelling but i just remember now that i have some hindsight like a lot of shit went my way it was almost like the

universe was giving me like it's your last hurrah you know what i mean because it's like really what happened man like i was on cloud nine i go play in the cape cod league this is it's all coming to fruition my elbow starts acting real feeling very strange i was a guy who was like never hurt yep i never came out of a game when i pitched in high school just always my arm never hurt i was and then all of a sudden it just changed like one day ended up having tommy john struggling with the recovery never returned to full speed and for whatever reason i had another intuitive feeling about just dabbling with some music, you know? And so you'd never made music before?

Never, never. That's crazy. Strange. And, like, I don't know what the fuck it was, really. I mean, I guess I was the guy who could, like, freestyle while everyone was drunk on the baseball team and I could do it, you know? But nothing like, wow, you need to do this, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just had some calling to it. I self-taught myself some GarageBand. I made a few songs. and for whatever reason like relatively relatively the first one i put out went viral my buddy came and shot it for free he's like y'all like this like i thought it was just gonna be my one and done music video like i made one this is you know i remember this like the whole time i'm thinking i'm gonna be a professional baseball player this is just a bump in the road i'm gonna be better

and it just uh it just totally went a different direction i i kind of got enthralled by it I kind of had an aha moment when I was like trying really trying to recover and it wasn't happening and I'm traveling I'm going to the games and I'm like you know it sucks because I kind of was the guy freshman year and now I'm watching my peers kind of play and I'm sitting there and the fans I started having fans in the in the crowd like where they'd be like Mike Studd fans like yo I had like one song two songs out and my wheels started turning oh you're the musician he actually plays baseball as his hobby yeah and it's they kind of supplement each other because i feel like that's the reason people cared about the music really like it was amateur and cool but they're

like oh he's a fucking baseball player that's kind of cool like yeah you know it's not bad it's you know but i started my wheel started turning a little bit not that i felt like it would be my career per se but it just felt like it was the next step for me it was almost like pay attention to the signs like you got fans here from university of louisville while you're playing them and they know you for you know one music one thing i i spent like one week doing it what the what the kids in the dugout or like the coaches were they like yeah what's going on here or they think it was cool they didn't even the guys on the team just thought it was a laugh like you know once it started to work a little bit and they were supportive to my face you know my good buddies

were like yeah but no one like i'd be totally lying if i said that anyone really thought it would translate into you know the life that we've gone on to lead and just have how it became really what i am and what i do and my i feel as though it's my place right now and i feel like i'm right where i should be you know but so when you started recording how much of it was like i'm just gonna record a certain way because that's all i can do like i don't have access to a big studio i don't have you know producer whatever it was just more of like well fuck it like if i'm gonna do this in any serious way i just got to do with what i have at the moment yeah i mean i was like a i i think i got a mac like my junior year in college like i wasn't even one of those guys with the laps like

i got it there was garage band on there and i just had free time man my roommates were baseball players they were gone like i wasn't traveling with the team so you know i kind of always had a way with words so i like just i just had this inclination to do it man i can't really put a finger on what made me do it exactly but at the same time i feel as though in hindsight and how i'm living my life now is just like that's what it is man following your intuition yeah you got a feeling about something go x go go after it you know it's so funny because i think now for those that don't know uh the way you create the music is very different the way that you've marketed music is very different i think the way that you uh live your life and like the business behind it

we're getting all this it's just like you've approached it very differently but if you even go back and you listen the jay-z's of the world or the dame dashes they'll say the same thing they're like yo we wanted a record deal we just couldn't get one so then we had to do it ourselves if we wanted to chase this thing yeah how much of it for you was that in the beginning and then when did it change when were you like no actually even if a record deal shows up like i don't want that yeah right i want to do it this other way because like i'm assuming that changes at some point and you're like no this is my path i'm gonna double down absolutely yeah you hit the nail on the head man i think you do it i did it first off i made these songs if i had to go to a studio to

make those songs they would have never existed i would have never did it you know um and you know i make a few songs it starts to work i take a leap of faith i start touring a little bit you know i definitely had a bit of beginner's luck you know shit was kind of going my way like it was a very different landscape you know like there was there was a handful of artists like you just put your finger on like oh asher roth it was a few of them look at nowadays there's literally hundreds of thousands of artists people making music and and sharing it when in this era it was like this perfect time where but it was also it was like there's only a couple of people who are doing it but the people i just named it almost felt like they were targeting the college market yeah well

right it was like kind of like the frat houses it was technically called coin frat rap like it was like kids in college college age not like um it was just a totally different sphere for for hip where it didn't really exist, where it's like friendlier hip-hop. What are college kids really experiencing for the most part? It's a lot different than regular hip-hop culture experiences. So it was just kind of speaking to a lot of kids who like hip-hop, but maybe the lyrics were more relatable coming from somebody in the same age group that's had similar life experiences.

So it kind of dialed into that, like a relatability. You might like hip hop in the way it makes you feel, but even here's some hip hop that maybe you can relate to. So it was it was kind of geared towards college kids, but organically, because that's all we knew. You know what I mean? So you brought up Mac Miller. I remember I didn't even know that there was like this kind of Internet rap thing happening until I made a song and I put one. You know, I saw Mac Miller. I didn't know he existed yet. And I just, I remember watching him and I was just like, and I, and, and I don't mean this in any disrespect.

He's, he's one of my favorite artists. I mean, I just saw how he was doing it. He's walking around with his friends. He's talking about real life shit like that I could relate to. And I was just like, I could do this. It's kind of like a light bulb went off. And I remember him specifically. I remember the video.

But you have to see it. Like, like I do think being exposed to things makes it tangible, right? like you realize oh somebody else didn't have to go to the big studio they didn't have to do the really scripted music video they just walked around with their friends and like the uh the ability to emulate comes from exposure to it yeah and i do wonder how like the internet obviously was important right but also like this entire generation like i remember when we first got like youtube and being like yo crazy they would never put this shit on tv like that's how you thought about internet videos right it was like this is the cool stuff they would never put this on tv

now everyone's dropping tv to go and basically get youtube right like it's crazy how much that changes i think it's an amazing time to be alive i mean you can make arguments either which way there's an argument for every everything on the internet valid arguments on every side of every topic you know but i think it's an amazing time to be alive and just being witness to what's and the evolutions, and especially in the arts. We could get into it more later in the conversation, but it's just such an interesting time to be a creator and contributor.

How do you make the music right now? So you've got a microphone, you just got your computer basically? Yeah. And you get an idea, you just jump on the microphone? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can honestly say, I think my first setup was like 1200 bucks all in.

you know and that was that song that one song it was called college humor taught you know and i was literally just talking about my day in college that day like it just just caught on enough you know but i mean i was recording and marcus stroman was there we were in a closet i hung towels up to get a little sound proofing or whatever and we're just fucking just throwing paint against the wall having fun you know and like truly that's what i've tried to harness now that's what i'm doing right now i was telling you before we got on screen i mean my setup uh is in front of the biggest nicest window in the house usually um ideally in the master bedroom so that's how i'm choosing houses you know essentially what i'm doing is i'm

traveling uh i'm kind of like a current day gypsy in a sense like i i don't have a permanent address When COVID really, really happened in 2020, I had been in L.A. for about six years. I'd done the whole Hollywood race, tried to be a cool guy, Beverly Hills, you know, and it just never aligned with me. And I just, it was almost trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, I felt. And I also kind of developed into an artist where I record myself. I'm the lead producer. I'm lead vocalist. I'm lead engineer. I'm executive producing and I'm handing file exchanges to mix master. I'm handling the business.

I've stayed independent where, you know, so it is, it's just not a one-stop shop, I'll say, because I work with a few producers, mainly remotely, but like, I don't need to be in fucking LA or Nashville. I don't need to be in a music city. And that freedom, that aha moment, I went and visited my buddy at the time. I was very close with Post Malone and he was around in LA a bunch. He'd always come over to the house and I went out to see him in Utah and live out there for a while.

And I just noticed how I felt, man. I was waking up, there's pine trees, and how I felt creatively. And I just knew I needed to go. And we just sold and fucking picked up and left. And we're U-Haul Penske boys, man. Like, we, you know, I travel light. I got one big storage unit in Nashville, one big storage unit in L.A. I have an amazing guy who takes care and does the drives and helps break down and makes moving easy.

You know, but we're light. So it makes moving easy. but we're traveling wherever the fuck we're called to, you know? So I've been in Miami for two months right now. I'm looking at a, you know, I'm looking at the ocean and, and you can, I seriously, like what I will say, creativity is a bit of, there's some spirituality with being creative and there are places,

there's energy in everywhere you go. A hundred percent. Like it will light you the fuck up. And I've, the more I've tuned into just being present and in spirit, i'll say aligned with my spirit i just realize and recognize when a place has gotten stale or stagnant and i would appreciate something new whether it's the electricity in miami where you get that vibe from the ocean the ocean's one of the most energetic things on the fucking planet like um then there's mount yeah i've been to two different places in montana uh idaho we've been

all over you know all different types of spaces and energy but i i feel as though i'm i'm not really i'm just tuning in to the to the space that i'm at and i feel like i'm a vessel i can translate it into the music i make different music there than i would here and i set up in front of big studios it makes no sense to look at a wall if you're trying to be creative imagine going into the same room every day and be like why are my ideas stagnant i'm looking at this fucking black wall you know what i mean and now i'm like oh i'm looking at this beautiful view that i haven't seen in this new house, you know that energy, there's an excitement to it.

And what it's done to me is I just feel so present because I'm not really letting stagnation happen. You know, the way the mind works, I've dove into that a lot, and I just feel like I'm more or less trying to live every day in a creative, basically opening up a way for me to feel creative and create space for ideas to come through. How much of the super viral, super successful song

are hours, days, weeks of work versus like, yeah, I was drunk and I just had an idea and I fucking sat down and recorded it. It's like the equivalent on Twitter. I always joke that like, you know, these people will spend hours. I've done it.

Yo, it's the fire tweet. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business the result less time spent on operations more time connecting brands

with the moments and fandoms that matter most learn more at accenture.com spotify dud toilet tweet you're sitting there taking a shit bam fire went off super viral right and like i don't know if that's uh that's the truth like that that's the thing that's closest to like the authenticness and that resonates with people and so it explodes is music the same way yeah i have i have a thought about like writing like journaling or any writing ideas like if it's if it's not messy you thought too much about it and and i think creativity what i was just saying is about i'm basically trying to set up myself every day to be available for ideas to come when the ideas come you just be a vessel and translate it so that's how i've made it into my music making

process it varies right it's case by case some ideas might need to be nourished and ushered in to a certain space personally um i know in my experience all the best stuff is in the magic the stuff that i you know all my all my best stuff really the majority of the idea happened in an instant happened in a span of 10 20 30 minutes um and that's that's really where i lean more and more as i go if i gotta think about it and baby an idea and like work hard i've don't try tattooed in my leg like if i have to work hard to get this idea to fruition you know what i mean i don't it might not it kind of speaks to me like there's some i don't know you know like the ones that i get really excited about and feel and the proof is in the results like a lot of them are

their moments yeah the moments that you capture how um how much do you pay attention to how big big the audience is how successful a song is like what i would think of uh a business person goes to work right and they're very much uh okay we have to hit x revenue goal we have to uh you know reach as many customers whatever most creative people it's kind of hit or miss some people are like that right they're very data driven and very much like hey i want to create things that that uh keep growing my audience and things like that other people are just like brock couldn't tell you how many followers i have or whatever because it's just like i'm just like i just enjoy the music and if it works, it works great.

Yeah. In my opinion, it's about, for the artist, right? It's about the doing. It's just about the creation, right? I know, because I've been in the game for a minute and I know, and I've had so many foots in the water. Hey, I might dive in, do a record deal. Hey, let's go mainstream.

Let's grow the audience. Really what it is, is they're offering a commodity exchange. We're going to give you more fame, notoriety. Your name, your value, your presence, you'll be able to monetize at a much higher level, probably 10x, maybe 20, shake, maybe 100. You know, you could be, we can make you that. Without us, you're not going to be that, right? And that's really the dream, and that's really the commodity exchange, if you think about it, is we're going to take the lion's share of the income here on this music. We're going to take 85, the common deal is 85% goes to the record label.

The artist gets 15%, but we're going to grow you and your presence so strong that the return on just your notoriety and just your brand is going to make more than enough sense. Now, that rings true for a tiny percent of artists who do record deals, and that's who they champion to the new kids they're trying to sign. Look what we did. Look at Post Malone. and look at all these, but really the majority of artists that doesn't happen and really what ends up happening is you get shelved because art, it's a corporate game, right?

Like these are publicly traded companies. They want market share. Hey, we got 75% of market share. This is why our valuation is this. It's going up and up and up. They want to gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble up the market share. They don't care personally about your record

your career going to the moon they want the market you know what i mean so in regards to audience like i'll tell you really most of it is smoke and mirrors i can say that like factually right like they're paying people to boost like they're paying people to boost the streams i know they're stream farms i've seen i've been in email exchanges we're like hey we can offer you this and because really what they're feeding into is it's the modern day marketing right it's just it's the herd mentality. This has 8 billion. Ooh, do you see he's getting 75,000 likes on these videos and all these comments? What am I missing out over here? That song's got a billion streams or I can't swipe through TikTok and not hear this song. What is this song? I should know

about it. Ooh, I do like this. Yeah. Really, that's what they're feeding into, but it's kind of a big game of payola. You know what I mean? If something's booming on TikTok, it's mainly because they spent a bunch of money paying influencers to use the records organically in their posts how much you think they pay to make something go viral i mean it ranges right like you could pay a bunch of money and your shit sucks and it's not gonna work i'm not i'm not taking away from the artists but the game really is like that's really become the new commercial that's become the new radio ad that's become the new you know like it's it's essentially like hey anywhere from probably it can range but anywhere the starting point for really getting some

traction on tiktok's probably 50k a song on the radio is a hit song because they put almost a million dollars behind it yeah getting all the fucking ihearts and everybody conglomerates and that's really the whole game right so when you realize that as the artist you know like for me it's corny to fucking pay people to like my shit i'm not interested in that that's that's just lame you know what i mean like so i just started seeing what was actually happening you asked the question earlier i don't even think i got to the answer but it's like there was a time where i wanted more than anything to just be validated by a record deal say hey look fuck you guys you were wrong you know what i mean or hey mom like look i'm not an idiot i went to duke and i became

a fucking white college rapper and it's working out i got a record deal like look my songs on the radio there was one time where i did a little i did a distro deal not a record deal but a distro deal and this legend, Lior Cohen, who's a rap legend, just administrative legend in hip hop, fucked with me, came on board, ran one of my songs up. This was 2014. I had a record working at radio. And I remember sitting in my car, waiting for it to come on in my local radio station. You know what I mean? Now I look back at that and I grimace. I'm just like, really all it was is just like, I'm paying people to play the music. The dream, the way you have it it's like oh you get you make such a great song that everyone hears it where that's really not

that's just making a great song is your artist duty and going back to your main question here is like it's what it has to be about if you want to be an artist for a long time and enjoy yourself if you're if you're attached to the results when they're not even in your control you have to do a deal or you have to have private capital or you have to figure out how to really hustle move and shake maybe you network your ass off and you know a bunch of tiktokers and they'll post it for you because they're your boy or whatever it is but there's external factors that are out of your control completely in regards to having a hit hey saying the regular guy you know whoever who's not really in the music game wow mike made it man like i hear a song on the radio and like wow there's

millions of followers now and like look how big he and popular he is you know that became less and less the goal as I started to see the realities of what was going on how much of like the lifestyle the vibe right because it's very distinct um yeah I can pretty much play any one of your songs you don't know this but uh my young daughter if I play one of the songs she starts dancing right and it's like you old mcdonald and a couple other songs but like there's just something to it right where it doesn't matter if you're a young child or an adult like you feel it's different right it's a magnet though because you have a lot of friends a lot of people who have come around you they professional athletes people that others would know that aren't in the music industry

whatever and is it more so they're drawn to like hey this is different and uh kind of the outlier type folks somehow find each other in life yeah like i think a lot about you know everyone who's like super corporate if they go to a party they all find each other they go and they talk in the corner right and then all the action man yeah like all the weirdos right they all end up in a corner all the entrepreneurs end up in a corner right all the people who like are the contrarians they end up and you're like how'd this happen how do we self-select into these groups but you kind of find the people who tend to think like you do or have the same vibe as you so yeah yeah um i i actually like you follow me on instagram i know we go back and forth and you probably see

like there's a spiritual undertone to where i'm where i'm at in life and um it's just the truth It's like the cold, hard truth of what happened to me, where I fell into my artist bag truly, and why I think it's resonating on a frequency level. That album's called The Highest. Guess who's on the fucking biggest, highest, the highest frequency on the fucking planet? It's kids.

You know how many people tell me their kids fuck with it? I mean, I'm not making the music for kids. It's adult music, and it's like, you could argue, you probably couldn't, some songs you shouldn't let your kids hear. Yeah, my wife would hit me with that sometimes. I was like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Tell her it's a frequency thing and she'll understand. She'll remember what we told her five minutes ago.

She's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know what I'm saying? It's kind of where this whole conversation's connected and why I stand by being, like, the best thing that ever happened to me was staying individual, independent, and not trading, yeah, maybe I could be playing stadiums right now if i took the dive five years ago or even three years ago which there was a few times i almost did

why what were those opportunities like why did you not do it well you know get fairly i got pretty balls deep in one in particular where i was like very close to doing do people know which one it is or no i've never really said it it was with a big artist in tandem and it was tied to doing you know it was tied to having features it was tied to being on their tours Was it Post Malone? All right, go ahead. But, you know, but more so, even deeper than that, really what it came down to was, like,

when I talk about intuition, I'm dead serious. Like, I never felt like the people, like the real administrative side of the record labels, like, I didn't value their opinion. They're, like, fucking in a suit telling me if it's a wave or not. I don't need you to tell me if it's a wave or not. I'm not even making music for you. I actually prefer, I don't give one fuck what you think about my music.

And then I'm just thinking about it. I'm like, this is my livelihood and I'm building this. And it's just like, I'm going to gamble it with this dude who might be at the other company in three. Like, it's like a merry-go-round. People are switching labels, they're getting hired. So I just like, I talk about being behind the curtain a lot. And like, I've taken this really long route here

where I've just seen a bunch and I've sponged it up. i'm like this doesn't really align with this doesn't make sense for me you know i mean yes i could get way more popular and famous but i'm giving away the lion's share of my fucking income and this is my livelihood these people don't give a fuck i know i can sense it you know what i mean so that was where it really was i can't say there was like one thing they did or one reason but it was this intuitive feeling like this is way too much of a gamble like yeah you know what i mean It reminds me of Kanye, the trilogy that's on Netflix. He's got the one scene where he goes in.

He's got the CD and he's a producer. He wants to be a rapper. He puts it and he's playing it. And he goes like literally like office to office. And they're just like, yo, bro, like get out of my office. Like I'm trying to get work done. Right. And you hear it and you're like, bro, that's a banger.

Yeah. Yeah. Now. And it's like art. I mean, taste is so, it's so subjective. And in society, we like to, he's the best. I'm the best. Oh, you see these streams?

He's the best. He's sold this many. It's like arguments over who's better and I can't believe you like this and this whole thing. It's like you don't go to dinner and argue like you should have got the steak. The steak's way better than the chicken. You should have got it. It's like it's just fucking taste. You know what I mean?

So for me, it's like if I like something, that's my compass. I feel as though I'm tuned in to who I am and my taste. I've closed the artist gap. There's a gap. I forget the Perth philosopher who talks about this, but when you're creating things, there's a gap that you, the real aim is, they talk about the 10,000 hours. That's how you close that gap. You have something in your head and your heart that you want to create.

It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of diligence and hard work to close that gap and then be actually creating what's in your heart and in your head tangibly. So over the years, I've closed that gap significantly to where right now, I feel as though I've arrived at i'm making what i want to make what's in my heart and in my head and it's effortless and this is where i'm in my bag here so if i fucking like it at all there's going to be fucking hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people that like it too you know do you ever think when you see how many streams or the views on a youtube video or whatever like one of the pieces that it took me a long time so we'd publish a youtube video right an interview

with somebody or something a million views i got cool got a million views i'm excited right like i see the numbers like everybody else but that stops at thought one time i was like do you know how many super bowl stadiums a million people is right like imagine sitting on the field all these people watching and then times that by like eight or ten and being like whoa that's a lot of fucking people right do you ever do that where like the digital numbers don't feel nearly as real as maybe you go play a festival and there's a thousand people and you're like yo that thousand people feels way more real than the million people who listen to a song, but it's just a number on the screen? Yeah. Yeah. It's the times we're living in, right? Things are just going digital and that's

just the way it is, right? So what you just said is super valid and I've had that thought before. You can't ever trade in the feeling for human connection and the energy in a room and how it feels to shake their hand look in their eye or just you walk in and people erupt and and they're singing the lyrics and you feel it and it makes it all worth it you know what i mean um at the same time you know from from the business standpoint and just being objective you could really argue nowadays it's way more cost effective as an artist and creator to stay home and create and upload because you're reaching yeah you might be in tennessee nashville tennessee and there might be 8 000 people there that night and maybe you made 3 000 new fans out of it awesome but one

post can make 18 000 new fans and get in front of 600 000 new people and that whole what is that kinetic react like what is the chain of of reaction that happens there and how does it trickle down into your success and money earned or awareness or notoriety you know so i don't uh i really again leaning into the spiritual side of things i don't i i'm really practicing detachment like the joy like the joy i get when i have an idea and i create it and and i have a huge smile on my face like i'm a eight-year-old you know what i mean like i'm in my room sometimes in my underwear because I just woke up and I got a fucking, I'm smoking a fucking backwood looking at the ocean. I got here off making music and I got a fucking, I'm lit up with a huge smile from

an idea. That's kind of where it begins and ends for me. Now I'm going to execute it. I'm going to execute it because that's the role I've taken. I've taken an independent route and it comes with more duties. I'm going to make sure I execute this. I don't have executive producers or A&Rs or labels. I'm not interested in spending money and marketing it and trying to tell people like me i believe is though like you said you put your true frequency out there you put your true self out there it will attract others that are on that same vibe but i also think it's a more valuable fan i think a lot about like uh you know there's um you could have millions and millions of people who know you and kind of sort of like you but by doing it the way you're doing

it when you have a million people show up somewhere they fucking love you like i saw a video uh recently uh taylor swift i think maybe in philadelphia i don't know if you saw these videos uh she did a concert and uh they were filming like the bridge and like the highway and shit outside of the stadium and somebody commented they were like yo she's got more people outside listening to the music than most artists have inside at their uh show it blew me away she's a probably the prime example of like yeah she's gotten mega mega famous and has been for a long time but she's been able to have this grounded feeling right like she she you never lost her if you were listening to her, you never lost Taylor

to the ether of just being so famous and having such a different life. Like she's still, there's just something, I think there's something human that other humans need or really yearn for and it's subconscious. But like, you could tell if I'm being authentic. Of course. You just can.

And like, even your ear can. You're like, I don't know why I like this more. Maybe, technically like a lot, i have no idea what i'm doing musically none i have no music theory understanding yeah i have no idea why i have melodies in my head i don't know you know what i mean but you you know someone who's classically trained might say ah why didn't he go he should have went to a major there why did he i don't give a you know what i mean and i think at least i'm going off my ear and my experience is like i think most people aren't really they're not listening to

the music like in theory you know i mean they're just going it's a feeling it's literally a vibration how does it make you feel you're a vibes dealer exactly for real though and you know like if you can add a good vibration to someone's day or even for a moment that's where you start to have these real fans like so she's done such a good job at cultivating and amongst mega stardom just having a grounded essence you know and and she's really really good at at showing her fans she cares she played a fucking three hour set and fucking rain crazy most guys most guys would cancel most people would just be like fuck it we'll redo it you know i'm it doesn't matter i'm so fucking successful and famous it doesn't matter you know it is a similarity between taylor swift

playing three hours in the rain and uh i think michael jordan was famous for saying like if i was not like basically on my deathbed i was playing right whatever kid bought that ticket maybe the only time he's ever got a chance to come watch me play i'm playing and you almost get this like um the the people who rise to absolute like the extreme of uh talent they feel an obligation and like they feel so um connected to the audience that it's not a one-way street it's not like oh you guys have all this fame whatever it's actually this feeling of like i owe you all just as much as think that you know i like uh you guys owe me and as much as i think i literally fell into a spiritual bag because i was experiencing this i had people telling me like i saved their life

with with uh you know certain songs i would make as much as i was like the college rapper like i i did always kind of tap into more meaningful stuff and and i'm on this tour bus it's like the magic carpet ride you know you mean like we're getting we're getting wasted playing playing shows getting wasted going out getting more wasted whoever's around girls on the bus fall pass out wake up another city we're doing the same thing you know what i mean and and you do it over and over again and there's something like i don't even know how to put it it's just kind of numbing you know what i mean it's like then all the p it's just like a simulation it's just new faces and news news but it's like the same song and dance literally you know what i mean so but

But it also is like you and your boys probably at some point get to, you've done it so many times. Like you could literally, before the night starts, like script it out. Be like, hey, we're going to do this, this. He's going to say this to a girl, right? This guy's going to get drunk and pee on himself. Like you just know the night.

We had a fucking blast. I'm not, and especially coming from the space where this was so left field. Like I had no foresight of like me being a musician and touring and being like, I just did it. You know what I mean? Like I had me being, I had a feeling I was going to have fame and success in some way, but I felt it was going to be from being a pro baseball player.

And that was all I cared. You know, that was what I wanted to do. But we go on these tours, getting to the point, like I started to feel myself. First off, we had a blast and I'm not saying it was, we did like, it was amazing, but I started to feel a lack of presence. and what you're talking about is you know this ability to stay present as an artist when you are getting abnormal amounts of attention adoration you know what i mean you're getting almost situations that like you know it's not really like natural for humans to be like for

another human to be like i come on stage and people like ah you know what i mean like that's not even normal or natural you know that that becomes numb and then people are saying these things and they're like i'm i was having these meet and greets so i stopped doing meet and greets like this i came up with a new way of doing it but it's just like i'm waiting in a line for half the time i'm hung over and i am truly trying to be present and they're coming up and shaking your hand and telling their story and they have this really short window of time and like the security guards rushing them and it's awkward and i'm like they're pouring their heart out i started to like, I needed to tap into presence.

Like, I, it's when I started to clean up my life a little bit and really start to practice presence, because I didn't really have much of it as a young man. You know, like, and that has been a huge unlock, because as I've gotten more successful, I get more grateful, more compassionate, more understanding of fans, and maybe the way they behave sometimes is a little overbearing.

Okay. You know what I mean? i mean less self-importance as i've become more important quote unquote in the world as my notoriety grows less you know judgmental and and less like hey like give me my space i'm a celebrity or you know it's just it's just like for me the more popular i get the more fucking thankful i am to the people and it's really you know goes hand in hand with some of my choices here like i'd much rather you talk about you i know you're a numbers guy in business and and i have a very different approach at how to view an audience and how to monetize an audience and and i really think what is the difference so i have i have something so i call my fans steve's why no idea we're like

most of the shit that works like we just talked about were dumb ass stupid ideas me and my boys we would get high we'd smoke and be like do your thing steve we just always call each other steve And we were filming a little TV show. I started a YouTube vlog called Touring's Boring, which was satire. It was like really racy. Probably couldn't put it out now. You know what I mean? Like it was like the trenches of touring, women, partying, whatever.

A TV, Esquire Network sees it. We do This is Mike Studd in 2015 or 16, I believe. We're filming it three weeks in. There's a camera crew following us and they're like, the producer pulls me aside. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most.

Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. we have to address the steve thing because all we have is you guys calling each other steve and like it doesn't no one it doesn't make any sense not gonna make sense to the viewer you know so we address it it becomes a bigger thing you know what i mean the steve thing is is uh it's just like a perfect anomaly example of like i think all the best ideas are the stupid ones imagine being the producer going home and like telling your significant other but these fucking guys call each other steve like can you imagine if i just came home and called you larry yeah yeah Like, there was this boyish charm to it all,

even as we were fucking idiots and probably doing it longer than we should have been. And we weren't kids anymore, but we felt like we were. I still feel like I'm a fucking kid right now, but like. So Only Steve's is something that I launched in about, I think it's, we're approaching two years ago, right? Okay. Obviously, you know,

Only Fans is a real thing, real commerce happening there, but also very risque, very niche, you know, porn sex leaning, right? Like just that, it's definitely associated to that. Now, I'm an artist who like really makes a lot of ideas. I freestyle everything. It's paint against the wall.

There's a lengthy vault, a lot of great ideas. But, you know, there's also a process of executing, which is like taking songs that are 50% ideas to 100, right? And I'm just looking at it objectively. I'm trying to understand, like I'm trying to see where the innovation is because it's the wild, wild west. The industry is changing so fast. And I'm looking at where we can innovate.

And we started this subscription model. No artist had ever done it where it's like, yo, I'm literally going to, I'm locking myself into a timeline, which is a big creative no-no. Like, hey, let creative, as an artist, you're not supposed to, Timelines are like kind of almost like, be careful to subscribe to timelines. Don't put time on your creativity and don't rush things. But I just was listening to myself and seeing what I was doing. And most of the ideas happen really quick now.

I have this vault growing. If you think about it, right, I'm putting a song out every two weeks. I'm doing behind the scenes only, exclusive access, you know, the same song and dance as like a Patreon, whatever. um but i mean i'm not doing any extra work and i've tripled my music revenue in two years so what the way i look at audience right 10 000 people a month subscribe to 10 bucks i'm getting 100k for ideas that guess what they might not come out right or they're going to come out of most of the songs do come out and do the same business they would do on the spotify's and the apples so i'm just getting a fucking cash advance from people that really want to care

that really want to hear this shit and are really tapped in and we haven't even scratched the surface man it's been a really slow development there's a reason why we're we're making our own it's i can't i can't exactly say that the the date yet but very soon here we've been building out a platform that is built for this the music industry is like really really changing um with ai and what's happening and like it's really not about having a zillion fans two million fans it's about having 20 30 20 000 people if 20 000 people are subscribed at five to nine bucks a month you're talking about being a millionaire and it's only 20 000 fucking people that are tuned in you know i mean so it's weaponizing your actual art it's whatever you're good at you know what

I mean? This direct-to-consumer model is just, to me, I feel as though it's bigger than creators. It's commerce. You know what I mean? So my boy, who's a partner on this company that we've been building, which is why I've been slow playing the development of Only Steve's, because it's going to go a lot user-friendly and a lot better very soon. His girlfriend's a content creator. She has 70,000 followers, I believe. She has 100 people subscribed to her. She was kind of the beta the first the first trial 100 people subscribe she's doing eight thousand dollars a month she's working two hours a week and she's just making one-of-one recipes recipe packs no no digital there's no she doesn't have to get on camera you know i mean she's just leveraging her a little

like the crowd that the crowd that she's built she's living in her passion so she's making a living off how she lives, which is really what making a living should be. Forget it for living and doing living your truth and figuring out how to monetize that directly. So what I'm saying is like, I already know the commerce and how hard it is for artists to really get lucrative. And I know how saturated this market's getting right now. There's a hundred thousand songs a day uploaded to Spotify and Apple. And guess what? In two, three years, it will be a million a day. AI might change it forever to the point where there's 10 000 songs going up a minute because they have ai bots generate you don't know what do you think about the ai stuff i think it's legit it's it's

the future so like you can you can it's no doubt definitely polarizing there are going to be a bunch of people hence what i was just talking about there's going to be a bunch of music consumers that say that i want to i want to have a connection with i want to i want the art to be from real artists and i love music and it's just i can't do you know cool right so there's going to be a bunch of people that go that way and then there's going to be the majority of the people that music isn't music isn't like they're not going on spotify when they get home from work and combing the fucking with a dat piff yeah like think about you like you you have a fucking business and then you have kids and you you're not like combing the that's for kids when i was

in college it's for kids every leaks album i fucking knew about it exactly now couldn't tell you one of them so guess what kids and i'm telling there's a song right now called heart on my sleeve by a goat his name was ghost writer and i know through a friend of a friend that it was a it's a fair it's a fairly established artist who did this so first off right now the way the ai works is i can explain it a little bit like the way the way it works is the artist the songwriter right you have to create the melodies and record them with your voice so you have to have one the know-how the feel and the sauce to just make a dope song so this guy who did it is actually a dope writer right then he runs it through the ai generated drake and weekend bot which sound

pretty fucking close you know and the shit's taken off it took off immediately on tiktok started to take off on spotify they took it down in two days but right now as i scroll through my instagram reels i hear it every fucking day no one gives a so many people don't give a fuck who the artist is anymore yeah my whole point with the direction and like i started to realize is like it's just about having your crowd and fucking managing that yeah serving your crowd because very soon bro like the artist could become obsolete the producer could become obsolete with this ai thing i think it's the future i think most kids you know like we said kids are the ones who are the combing of looking for the who's my favorite artist this i love you know

It's like art plays a big role in kids' lives and they have that free time. And most kids who are seven, eight years old right now, by the time they're 15 and this AI bot is just gonna keep improving and proving you're not gonna know what's real or fake. So they're gonna be listening and should be like, yo, this fucking shit's hard.

I don't give a fuck who made it. You know what I mean? Why don't you do, I think Grimes. I saw she basically, I don't even think she actually did anything. I think all she said was have at it, use my voice. I won't come after you and we'll split the revenue. That's the future.

So it's part of what's being built in our world. It's like, it's starting here in this space, this only Steve's like, you're an artist, you're a creator. Maybe you're a fucking, maybe you're a mechanic who's amazing at fixing tires and fixing cars. You can outsource your services directly as a marketplace. So like included in this marketplace, like my marketplace right now is subscribe for nine bucks.

You get a premium podcast, premium songs, four of those guaranteed, you know, two podcasts, two songs, a bunch of behind the scenes shit. We're also kicking back cash. You can create, curate your own service, right? But where it goes from there is essentially, it's a market, it's no different than Shopify. So on my page or on my artist page going forward,

yeah, you can submit your songs with my bot. I'll like, just like Grime said, if I like it, I'll sign off on it. You can feature me on the song. I did no work, you know, and pretty soon, that's just the way the AI bot works right now. Pretty soon it will be so developed to where it will say you're a Mike fan, right? And you want a song with Mike. I have enough songs and offerings that the AI, the bot will be able to predict and learn the type of melodies I would do as well.

So not only will it replicate my voice, but it will also be able to write the song. So you could type in lyrics and say, I want a song about fucking cold beers. I think you can do it right now. If you go into ChatGPT or whatever, you can say, for example, write a blog post about this. But the part that blew my mind was you could be like, and write it in the style of Hunter S. Thompson. Write it in the style of whatever. Amazing. Eventually, you're just going to be able to write song lyrics about this topic in the style of Mike.

I'm also saying melodically. Oh, interesting. I'm saying like, oh, I know what, I've heard all the mics. The AI has heard every melody choice I've ever made and it predicts and interprets what I would do melodically. So it's not just the words, it's putting it all together. And then if you don't like it, you hit refresh until you get another one.

So that, you know what I mean? Like this is where the commerce of music is going to change completely. Does it hurt you if too much music comes out? Like, is there a scarcity value where, you know, okay you you definitely publish more than most artists i would say right and that's part of the brand that's part of the lifestyle like all the stuff and it's like hey when inspiration hits i'm doing i'm not waiting for an album whatever could you do it too much um or are we gonna find out

we're gonna find out yeah no you know it's it's uh it's it's case by case i'm a type of artist like i said i've kind of developed into this space creatively where i'm like most of the ideas i'm like they're happening quick you know i mean so yeah like i play a middle ground right now but even you saying that it's a bit outdated and i'm a bit out i'm in a similar age bracket where like it's a bit outdated that's kind of an outdated thought like oh man you're over serving people are fucking bored in three seconds now yeah you know that's true that's true so it's like oh that like the old model was essentially like hey we're working this song to radio right now like this is your single don't put out another song hey we're working this song right now don't

put out the album because there'll be too much there's too many songs and now it's just like bro each song is like buying a fucking piece of real estate it's like a salesperson that goes out into the universe and maybe it's going to garner a bunch more business you know i mean or maybe it But for a small overhead cost, I can buy a property. My small overhead cost, because I'm doing a lot of it myself, it costs me four to 5K to put out a song, execute a song and put it out, right?

I'm making that in the first fucking two minutes on streams when it goes out. How much money can you make on a stream? Like what is like a general for an artist, whether you or somebody else? Yeah, I mean, this is where, what I'm talking about independence and like a lot of people are bitching about,

and I understand where they're coming from. from like man i made 300 million streams and it's and it's only x amount of dollars right it like feels like because they're looking at it from the old model first off if my music wasn't stream capable if it wasn't on streaming services i'm getting right now i get monthly monthly listeners i could i could even show you monthly listeners i think across spotify and apple's five like 5.2 million listeners right it's a lot like like unique people yeah unique monthly listeners that's fucking crazy right but at the same time like and put that in context for people like taylor swift drake like huge huge names how many do you think they get i'm gonna i'm gonna

just pull it up just just to have it because because when you start to think about not just like the number of plays right not just the uh kind of views on youtube but actually the unique number of people right way more important number 70 million for drake just on spotify so it's probably over 100 million monthly listeners yeah what i'm saying is these are different type of listeners these are different type of listeners than the people that would go and buy your album you know what i mean these are different type i'll repeat it these are different type these are different types of listeners you know that would go to a store and fucking pay 10 bucks to buy your album so what i'm saying is like yeah there's 100 million streams and yeah you only made you know

i don't know what that equates to you can find out quite easily but regardless you wouldn't have got one hundred millionth of those streams yep yeah yep it's this ecosystem and the way music listening and consumption has transformed is like there's a lot of people getting streams just by happenstance just by people being in playlists or an algorithmic hey i'm just all day in the store we play this spotify playlist in their stream so it shouldn't be i'm not really one of those artists who are a big contester of like the payout model because but can people make like let's say that they don't have only steves and like all the other stuff can an artist be mildly popular and make a living yes yeah so it's not um it's like i recently saw uh um who was it i think it was daniel uh cormier

he was talking about everyone's like you know ufc fighters don't get paid and for sure when you look at the numbers you're like damn you know they made this much the fighters made this much that don't seem very fair but he's told the story about uh he went he fought john jones and um i think got paid like three hundred thousand dollars get another three hundred thousand dollars in sponsorships and two days after the fight dana white called him up he goes hey bro we're gonna give you an extra four hundred thousand dollars our champions need to make a million bucks right that's not caught in the data anywhere right and so it's like the ufc and again i'm not saying the ufc does that every time i'm not saying that they should or shouldn't it's just like i'm assuming with the

math of people say 100 million streams equals this dollars like there's probably other things people are doing to make oh yeah oh yeah yeah 100 million i'm just making sure this is the right number i I don't want to botch it. I know this is a numbers podcast. You know what I mean? Wait till he finds out we don't do public math on here. Yeah. So 100 million streams on Spotify is about a quarter million dollars in income.

The difference is I'm getting fucking lion's share. I don't have any hands in my pocket. When you do a traditional record deal, that doesn't, what's 15% of 250? Plus you got to play your manager. Plus you bought a house for your mom. Plus you have your overhead costs, your assistant, plus your producer splits. plus taxes at the end of it all, you know? So, you know, you can, like,

100 million streams is a lot, you know? But at the same time, like, here's what I'm saying about the whole model that we're building, right? It needs to go this way. If you want to be a human artist in the next five to 10 years, you're going to have to have a focus group of your people who fuck with you.

You can constantly be marketing yourself in the digital world, you know, and it's going to get more and more digital world. And then you have to be able to bring them to this space and understand how to monetize them. And it is this subscription model in one way or another. It is for the artist, because I developed, like, I'm a bit of a unicorn because I was just,

it's just the luck of my timing, you know what I mean? Like, I developed this fan base over a decade of being truly authentic and working my ass off and just always giving free content to the point where now I'm comfortable saying, saying, no, I'm going to fucking, I'm going to give you all a bunch more content, but at this price. And, and I've earned that with them. You know what I mean? But there is going to be an education learning curve happening and it's happening already. It's just like, because

other creators are doing it and making real livings. Comedians. I mean, there's some like, there's some comedians making huge fucking bags and they're not talking about it. And it's this. i know some of them and they're making a lot of money and and bro like i'm i'm i'm kind of the guinea pig yeah i know what do you think i know what this did bro i'm i'm doing six figures a month yeah subscription i think it can go i really think it can 5x in like a year or two okay so let's say that this works like let's take an artist who uh is on the come up becoming more popular uh is smart about not just staying independent getting stream money built out subscription uh we haven't even talked about you got some products and merch like all these other

things that you've got where there are additional revenue streams to kind of feed back into this right is it possible for an independent artist to make i don't know a million seems actually pretty feasible a month it is could artists make 10 million a month if drake did this right now i don't even know what do you make more or less money that he's making more if he said you know what i'm pulling my shit from all this you gotta subscribe you can hear my whole fucking catalog and all my new shit and i got a new album let's drop it on there i don't know bro i really don't know he can maybe make 100 million in a month bro elon musk got uh on twitter i think he's got set at like two bucks or something uh you know

the subscription thing he's got like 25 000 people subscribed he gets it right and and by the way he didn't tweet it he didn't do it like he just like literally the button's just sitting on it's just It's where there's just this rumbling happening. It's underneath. And then once it's at the surface, it just becomes the norm. It's happening, though. There's a rumbling happening, and it's building and building. It's going to come to the surface where the listener is going to understand that.

Yeah, this is how I support their lives. And that's how I make the artists. That's how I make my consumers feel, because it's the fucking truth. You know what I mean? Y'all are helping me support so I can make this music the way I am. If this music touches you and has a role in your life, the reason I'm able to continue to do it this way and not sell my soul or have to do a record deal where my whole dynamic changes and maybe the art's never the same, which happens to a lot of artists when everything changes. You know what I mean? So it's kind of this agreement between the consumer and, you know, if you go back to like real true commerce and how it started is like everyone would go to the fucking farmer's market and we'd barter.

Hey, what are you good at? You make the best bread. I'll give you some money for that. Thank you. You know, like, and the baker's happy because he's doing what he loves. And this person's happy because, you know, they're getting the product they want. You know what I mean? So in the long run here, I really do think it serves the community.

The community being culture. It's just like, yo, find out what you're good at. Figure out how to monetize it. And guess what? Like that number you're talking about. do you know how many people how many artists have like 2 000 people that really fuck with their music 2 000 is a tiny number these days you know what i mean because of streaming and the it really gives you a ton of exposure like to me like spotify taking the lion's share is just a

tax because they're fucking giving there's tons of there's tons of like opportunity and just the exposure generated from being there and how the streams work you know what i mean so it's like yeah like if you got 2 000 people my subscription is nine bucks a month do you know what i mean that's a real fucking bag we're talking about 20k a month if i told most art like most artists are starving you know i mean like dollars a year they're getting fucking they're like yo my song has two million streams like and that's fucking nothing what is two million streams two million streams is like two million pump is uh we need you probably like five grand, something like that?

We need you. Let's see. Bro, I just told you we don't do public math, and now you're asking me to do complex math. Yep. Yeah, exactly. 4,800. 4,800?

Yeah. So 2 million people consumed that. By the way, the audience is shocked that I was even in the ballpark. So let's not, maybe 2 million streams isn't unique 2 million people. Let's call it 800,000 people heard that song. bring it back to 20 000 people that need to hear it and they're paying the subscription

and you're making 20 fucking bands a month that is life-changing money for most artists bro i know because i'm in the culture i see like it's very hard i'm so that's why i'm so great that's just but all you're talking about here is just the subscription revenue and then if you have 2 000 people that are willing to pay you nine bucks a month they're also willing to buy your hat your t-shirt they're willing to show up to your show they're willing to do this they're willing to do guess what you can leverage it so stevenson ranch this is a big part of my business now like this one took off this i've been doing products and so stevenson ranch obviously we call our friends steve um my house in la was a zoo we called it stevenson ranch because it was

like an open door saloon door policy like you could push the door open we let you in you know like so we our house was called stevenson ranch and then we just i was doing merch and we were starting to really work and i was like yo stevenson ranch like we started building out the shit and it's like it's really take it's really taken off has legs we're doing seven figures well over seven figures it's our second year of doing it you know i mean but what i'm saying is like this marketplace idea right right in that same marketplace like if you're in this club you're getting exclusive hats you're getting exclusive access i'm gifting every every week I'm giving away signed hats, signed vinyls, thousands of dollars.

So it's just this community where it's like, yeah, if I'm making six figures, I'm kicking back 10 to the fucking fans every time. It's just, I'm just looking at it as an overhead cost. Yeah, explain what you guys do. Because I think we get $5,000, $10,000 per month. You basically pick someone that's a subscriber. Yeah, so we do it. I'm in the process of translating into a foundation officially because it just makes sense economically. But, you know, I'd say since we've started, we've kicked back just to our subscriber base close to 100K.

And it's anywhere from five, some days, some months it's been 10 when something really bad happened. Basically, what we do is make a post and we say, you know, who needs fucking help? You know what I mean? This month, like, let us know. Like, this week, let us know. We're giving away, the way we do it now is we give away a couple thousand a week. and you know last last last month like one of our real fan got in a horrific car accident nearly died we raised you know we donated personally like eight eight thousand to him but we raised

almost 20 with my buddy who's a philanthropist but it's just this culture of like man these people are spending their hard-earned money i know it's i know it's an ask i know they're forward thinking and taking the dive with me because this is rare like no one people subscribe nine ten bucks a month to spotify and they get all the songs in the world i'm asking them to pay the same just to hear mine so i understand that but i'm offering so much service in it you know i mean i'm really you know again i might be a bit of a unicorn because i'm a podcaster and i mean we have these clothing things that are of value and i can add into it maybe you're not that person maybe you're not that type of artist and that's okay but what i'm doing is i'm leveraging the dope

shit that people want that we have to offer and i'm giving it's it's all it just feels like one big perk like yeah i'm in for nine bucks this month which is the cost of a coffee and there's a chance i come up on 2k there's a chance i get the bundle i'm hearing all this new music i'm tuned into what mike's doing i'm hearing the you know it's just this commodity exchange that i think is actually closer to fair you know what i mean where you know the artist is kind of getting hammered by the middleman in a lot of situations where these fans actually You really fuck with the, like, it's pretty easy for fans to feel connected to an artist. When you're an artist, music's the most powerful universal language in the world.

Like, you don't even have to know what the fucking words are saying. There doesn't have to be words, and it can speak to you. Dude, I see it. We have an email that I send every single day. It's my opinion on current events and financial markets or whatever. Once a week, I send it for free. And then four days a week, I send it to an audience that pays. It's cheap, right, depending on when they buy, whatever.

the open rate is like 75% higher for the paid audience. Of course, they're paying for it, right? They're like, oh, I want this. And it also, you're hitting them more times and they're getting connected. And then what I noticed is those people respond more. They engage more. They do all this stuff.

And I learn more from them than I do from the larger audience, right? Because I know, hey, the serious person is the person who is gonna take the time to write this email response back. like all the things you're saying it's not just music right it's across society is it's almost like this leveling up of seriousness yeah right these are the more serious fans yeah and so if they're more serious you're willing to give them more because you know they're serious and in

response they're willing to engage more right because they're they're they're parting with money for it's almost it's almost one of the more daunting things about fame and celebrity that fucking ruins people like it's why most celebrities go off the hinges it's just so hard to have so much energy to face your way hey can you give me this hey can you sign this just non-stop whether it's you know when you walk out of your house or whether you open your phone and it's never-ending people telling you their story it can be draining you know what i mean so it's kind of the essence of like a friend to everyone is a friend to no one you know what i mean like i'd rather really be with my dogs who really get what the fuck's going on or are gonna either support me give me

truth, honesty. And when they can, like, I know for the most part, you know, there can be bad apples, but I know the guys around me want me to fucking win. You know what I mean? And, and at the same thing, I want the fan, like, I want to know who the fans who really want me to fucking win are. And I want to play to them because I know how small the number is to really be a fucking millionaire and really live off your art and live in a peaceful state of not worrying about going to a fucking job you don't like and you don't care about which i think is is really what we're dealing with right now is there was an industrial age we're going into an intuitive age we're in the information age right now where there's so much information it's got to go back

to intuition where you know like we're kind of what we're dealing with now are the results of an industrial age where we indoctrinated the people of society to be fucking employees and that breeds unhappiness so when the society is hits a tipping point where there's too much fucking unhappiness and there's no fulfillment on a broad scale from a human level society implodes if you ask people what their purpose is i think that it is shocking to researchers people who run these studies whatever how many people say i don't know right because if you think about um you know hundreds of years ago it basically was survive right at the end of the day it was feed my family you know do this do this whatever but like you were so self-reliant that you didn't have the

ability to try to create impact or do this it was just like yeah i gotta make sure the crops are here gotta make sure my family is physically safe right we don't freeze to death in the winter like all these things if you go back um drop me the 50s 60s 70s right there was uh people who were yeah they had a job or whatever but like the generalization would be like you know the hippies right it was like they were they were seeking something higher or whatever and you kind of follow and each kind of generation has something different but right now actually there's an entire generation of people who are being defined by the lack of purpose yeah and it's kind of like i don't know if it's the tiktok instagram stuff where you're just like doom scrolling i don't know if

yeah uh you're just going and you know you're sitting under fluorescent lights all day long you're just like yo uh i hope that my fucking boss doesn't see that i took an extra 20 minute lunch break or whatever but just like that lack of uh purpose and freedom and autonomy and all this kind of what we're speaking to kills people it's what we're speaking to really this whole thing it's just like we're kind of in a way society as a whole especially in america we're kind of experiencing what it feels like to be rich. And let me explain. My outlook on life is like, no matter where you are, it's all perspective and lens. So no matter where you are, there's going to be ups, downs, highs, lows, problems to solve, issues from the heart,

whatever. These things that you have to navigate for your human experience. You know what I mean? So right now, comparatively to what you're talking about in the 50s and 60s, where it's about survival and just making sure that like your, your wife and your kids are like going to stay alive and be healthy and like have a fruitful life, maybe be able to procreate and continue the family name. Now we're rich. We're gluttonous. We got all the info. We could talk to anyone in the world. I could watch a girl. If I fucking am addicted to sex, I could watch it all day. You know what I mean? If I, if I want like anything, you know what I mean? So we're so gluttonous that it feels it almost breeds this feeling of like you're constantly looking outside

of yourself just constantly distracted everything external like that that her and it's like no one is getting in tune with themselves why i'm so high on the spirituality i'm not religious per se but i know what it did to me when i went inward i don't go out anymore bro like you got me out of the house because i respect you i don't leave my fucking house like yeah because i know it's all within me i also think you know what i mean it's like um there's an easy life right so uh people got very upset when i said this but whatever i said and i believe it is that uh if you spend hours of your day scrolling on your phone you have the easiest fucking life ever yeah right because uh it goes online a lot i don't know if you saw the 50 cent um uh viral video where he

was like depression's a luxury yeah and people were like yo you like that's that's out of you're not allowed to say that right he's like no no you guys don't understand right he's like i'm not saying depression is not real he's just saying where i came from no one had time to think about that shit he's like because they had three jobs they were trying to eat right and he's like that's not good bad whatever it's just like it's a luxury when you look at it from that perspective same thing with like the doom scrolling if you're if you go in your phone go in the settings and look at how much time spent on these fucking apps if you're on instagram for two hours a day you got a soft life exactly right it's not wrong no it's just not even 150 years ago

we're now just like our parents were indoctrinated to ring the bell go to work that's what school was like yes we had to create employees they were indoctrinated into this why they don't understand how we're working in the information age it's the same thing you know i mean now the new set of what i meant by like we are all kind of rich like we're rich with info and access and correct you know what i mean so it's time so it's like yeah and that's like what rich people deal with like I know rich kids who were born rich and they're fucked because they don't you know I mean they've always had the access it's never gone anywhere there was almost nothing nowhere to go you know what I mean and it was a part of me like coming into some some financial success and also achieving

some goals like I went into the spiritual aspect of my life like I told you I felt like I was losing presence and I had things that I yearned for and it didn't fucking mean anything you know I mean? And that's what I mean. I don't want to sound like a hippie about it, but that's what I mean by going inward. It's just like, take some time because we're indoctrinated to fucking be comparing ourselves. We're indoctrinated to be looking outside because there's always something to see. So that's why I limit myself and I limit my access going outside. I have timers on my phone like no more because I'll find myself in a less grateful more anxious oh should I go somewhere maybe I could go to dinner tonight and we should go to fucking poppy steakhouse and like I don't

give a fuck about that shit you know I mean but if you're out if you're fucking watching it oh looks good steak looks good there's celebrities oh be cool to be there you know and it's just like you know this purpose discussion is it's really becoming bigger and bigger and like you said it's it's a it's alarming how many people feel as though they don't because the purpose is being here yeah you know i mean the purpose is being here and just trying to manage navigating your human experience manage now be here now the purpose will reveal itself but who's to say your purpose isn't just being here and maybe impacting your wife's life positively your kids life what is bigger than that when you walk out the room what do your boys say about you

what's bigger than that it's because everyone else we want more you know what i mean because we're looking at everybody else and all the things they have and all the highlights you know if our parents grew up in this age they'd be going through the same fucking thing you know what i mean they're jealous uh yeah i could talk to you for hours where can we send you there's a bunch of people who probably are watching this or listening to this uh they love the story they love kind of how you guys are innovating in the business i've never heard the music before so maybe where can we send people if they want to listen yeah i mean i'm i'm that douchebag that has a one a very very strange artist name it's literally mike so i so i went

from a incredibly douchey name mike stud and even somehow got douchier just went mike but you know mike so it'll be more wild than mike stud mike yeah mike stud was like i literally i didn't i didn't think i was going to be a musician yeah and i'll give you just cool we'll end on this like my uh i went to duke do you remember the duke lacrosse scandal yes i remember I went there right in the heels of that. I went to high school. I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. And so I was in high school while that was going on.

I didn't know you were from Raleigh. And for people who don't know, the Duke lacrosse scandal was probably one of the most controversial things in that part of the country for 18 months. Here I come trotting in with my fucking backpack thinking it's going to, you know. Oh, here's a Duke athlete. I made it to Duke. Like I made it, you know, and they're on almost like a lockdown. So they don't allow us to have social media at that time. I'm dating myself.

i'm aging myself here i think they only had facebook and twitter was just starting this was yeah 2010 or something like that whatever whatever it was so we all came up our coach was a hard ass and he's like yo no social media like essentially what they were doing was like they were trapping duke athletes online like they'd have a pretty girl and like friend request you that you'd accept her friend request and then it would be somebody trying to smear duke athletes so like underage drinkers and stuff and it was just they were attacking duke athletes for a period of time when we first got there. So we all came up with fake Facebook names

so we could have it still. And our theme was porn star names with our real initials. So mine was the no-brainer. I had the best one on the team. It was Mike Studd. Like I was like, so that actually stuck as a nickname to my teammates. And it was like, we hated our coach.

He was a fucking asshole. So we would always call each other by our code names and he wouldn't know what was going on. You know what I mean? So that's why Mike Studd existed. When I made a song, I was just a Duke baseball player, and that was the obvious name to go with. I didn't want to use my real name.

I didn't think I was going to be an artist. Anyways, we got off track. That's an incredible story. Yeah, so then it works, and it was like, man, I don't even know if it would have worked without the name. I think the name was a big part of it. It was like polarizing. You hated it or you loved it.

As I matured, and then this became real and real and real, and then I also understood there was a ceiling. I was in the game and taking these meetings. there was a ceiling to being Mike Studd because he was the college douchey athlete. Oh, isn't that that college picture? Oh, yeah, it's cool. Like, no one wanted to take it serious. There was a ceiling there. So the rebrand, my business people at the time were like,

you're crazy. Like, this is making money. Like, changing names right now, you might, you could go to zero, you know? And I just knew, like, I knew it couldn't be Mike Studd. I knew the music I was making was different. I knew who I was becoming as a man. Mike Studd would be a lie to be that still, you know? you know so i changed it to mike period um the period is just like very significant it's one to differentiate it a little bit because mike's like the most common name ever but also

you know the end is this is the end of the story it was mike seander the baseball player there's mike stud the you know college rapper and mike the creative entrepreneur you know figured out a way of navigating bringing this into my adult life you know but um really long-winded answer long-winded answer well if uh if you can own the name mike pretty good spot to be yeah so so social media it's it's at just mike j-u-s-t-m-i-k-e because everyone says mike who and he says just mike you know i mean everyone i see it all the time like what's your artist name like mike like mike mike who mike what you know it's just mike so i thought about i thought about being my artist name just mike but then i thought it would better be better

it's just it's better like yeah um if you want to just listen to the music you just go to any of the streaming platforms just type in mike period or or mike i think will just pop up you know all right thank you for doing this we'll definitely do it again in the future yeah for For sure. It was great to meet you, man. This was a blast.