Artist Makes $70,000 Monthly with AI BOTS | No Record Label | Chad Focus Reveals The Truth, Spending $4.1M Streaming Bots

https://rawdoggtv.com Why Can’t Music Fix Its Fake Streams Problem? According to one estimate, more than $1 billion in royalties could be lost to streaming fraud worldwide. But the industry has yet to form a united approach.

Artist Makes $70,000 Monthly with AI BOTS

No Labels Necessary is a Weekly Podcast hosted by Sean "BrandMan" Taylor and Jacorey "Kohrey" Barkley, unveiling the world of marketing from Indie Artists to Major Labels.

Topics Covered:

00:56 Chad Focus Sentenced 2 Years For Wire Fraud and Conspiracy02:50 Behind the Scenes with Chad Focus08:13 Exposing The Industry With His Marketing Budget as Indie Artist14:28 Getting Real Streams With Mediabase DJs22:18 Stream Bots Are Only For Major Artists 25:23 Exposing Spotify's Algorithm With Bots To Gain 60K a month28:11 What Bots Are Truly Meant For32:06 Being Controlled by The Music Industry33:37 TicketMaster Finessing Fans 39:14 How I Copied Ticketmaster's Business Model 45:18 Learning The Music Industry System50:17 Why Aren't You Using Bots55:53 Chad Focus Reveals The Truth Spending $4.1M on Company Card

No Labels Necessary is a Weekly Podcast unveiling the world of marketing from Indie Artists to Major Labels.

This podcast is hosted by the founders of ContraBrand Agency, Sean "Brandman" Taylor and Jacorey "Kohrey" Barkley. ContraBrand Agency is a music-first marketing agency that helps artists impact culture through digital content and marketing.
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so I'll give you guys my exact blueprint I could care less of Spotify knows about it doesn't know about it I got over 200
0:05
records in BMI the scale you allowed to do as an independent artist every day is 3 000 streams or below so if I got 200
0:11
records and I'm doing 3 000 strings or below I can do around 600 000 uh uh streams a day you understand what I'm
0:18
saying but I gotta do it through an assortment of Records so I'm not allowed to have one record blow up but I understand how I'm gonna get paid every
0:24
day so if I can do 600 000 streams a day times 30 days in a month I know how to do my 18 million streams I still know
0:30
how to make my fifty thousand sixty thousand seventy thousand dollars what's up what's up what's up I'm Brandman Sean
0:35
and I'm covering and we are back with another episode of No Labels necessary podcast episode number I can't remember
0:43
what episode yeah we gotta stop with the numbers man every Tuesday every Thursday
0:48
you get catching streaming on YouTube Spotify Apple music whatever you stream your podcast now chop it up
0:54
about music money content creation economy so many of the interesting things and today is a very special day
1:00
because we got a special guest up on here and he's not like many of these
1:06
other guests on these podcasts I'm talking about Chad Focus now Chad before
1:11
you say anything before you get up in there I need people to know just a little bit a bit about who's
1:18
talking in in one of those one just to talk around you so then you can clear it up from here all right so I'm gonna read
1:25
the headline there you go rap artist Chad Focus sentence to more than two
1:32
years in federal prison for wire fraud and conspiracy rap artists spent more
1:38
than four million dollars on employers credit card to promote his music
1:46
I'ma leave it at there I could get into the details the very newsy reading of it all but but that's pretty much the
1:52
narrative that's been pushed you've been sentenced to two years federal prison for wire fraud and you spend more than
1:58
four million dollars on an employer's credit card to promote your music
2:04
leaving that Chad focus is in the building his building because this is you know we
2:10
over the internet on this one I appreciate you hopping on not just that because you know as you
2:18
all see this man has a lot of thoughts and a lot of expertise on it's not it's
2:24
not about clearing up his story or whether he's a rapper music or not like he got game when it comes to the Bots
2:29
there's been a vice special about him right I mean there was other people in the special but to me I really saw that
2:35
as a special about you as like one of the kings of you know that world and how
2:41
Bots work in the music industry but with that without further Ado man you
2:46
know again appreciate you being on Chad and I want to go ahead and let you talk we can start from where you want in that
2:53
regard most death man we'll appreciate it man Sean my budget Corey man I appreciate y'all having me on the
2:58
platform man it's good to be home um as you know man uh all marketing is
3:03
marketing I guess right off publicity is good publicity so to be honest with you Sean I think at the end of the day just
3:09
being put on the uh everybody's radar man I don't know I guess I guess it kind of worked out for the best right so I
3:16
put it like this man my background Sean man uh bought raise them raised in uh born and raised Baltimore Maryland bro
3:21
Homer Kevin Lyles Cisco Mario maybe a couple artists that you guys are familiar with but as far as us being
3:28
here bro it's not a big uh City for one music opportunities or industry at all
3:33
bro we kind of isolated from everything um you guys most familiar with Baltimore as far as the wire you know the
3:39
headlines as far as the violence bro and the poverty and a lot of things we go through and so um you know I try to
3:44
create a brand Sean you know I'm saying no pun intended bro that was built around you know people concentrated on their skill sets and and focus on their
3:52
creative abilities and that's really how Chad Focus started bro um as far as like how the headlines go
3:57
man I literally just got home bro I had to go ahead and serve two years I ended up at uh Petersburg FCI
4:03
um that's the same exact prison that uh Joel Santana had to go sit down for you know he had his little two years for his
4:08
little gun case so you know I'm just touching back home man they got something called the drug program
4:13
uh when Gucci Mane went to prison bro it's called the residential drug assistance program bro you go there you take care of your business you get out a
4:19
year early so I'm home right now I'm doing my house detention you know I'm taking care of business one day at a
4:25
time and you know we're here man um while I was away bro they dropped the vice TV down
4:31
the vice TV doc was about how I was able to kind of like take advantage of like what was going on in the industry most
4:37
importantly bro we was talking about scouting in the concert tickets so I was one of the early guys man that was out here inflating the concert tickets when
4:44
I seen with Ticketmaster those guys was doing so behind the scenes man I've been uh I've been a marketer I've been an
4:50
executive I've been a musician I've been anything and everything you need to do you know get the job done so I guess I
4:56
don't know where we want to start it man we want to start a couple years ago we want to start when I when we when we certified focus music like what's what
5:02
about you man well first I didn't I wasn't aware that they dropped it's Vice special while you were
5:09
in so that was recorded before the winning facts bro so when when I got so look when I initially got arrested bro I
5:15
got hit with what's called a no contact clause and I got was hit with a uh uh uh
5:21
a gag order so when I originally got sentenced bro I wasn't allowed to come on the internet and speak at all about
5:26
my case they disbanded my record label was sort of like the Murder Inc situation I woke up one day everything
5:31
was gone bro stores warehouses cars houses everybody on my label or anybody that
5:37
was employed whether it was local radio or artist producers I wasn't allowed to have any contact with them so I didn't
5:42
know what was going on as far as like who was in my circle that was right who in my circle was wrong who went to the
5:47
left went to the right um I came home bro on house arrest so I spent two years plus covid trying to
5:54
fight my case and figure out how he was going to deal with the situation uh if you guys know this when you've seen my
5:59
headline it said Chad focus and nobody else and it also said an unnamed company so if you guys have seen the documentary
6:06
I was the the search engine marketing executive for a company called Agora publisher all right it's a billion
6:11
dollar firm here in Baltimore man they do all types of content publishing and financial news I was the guy that built
6:17
one of the early early bot networks and this was for like Google man like 12 years ago in my 20s so I was making a
6:23
lot of money man in Corporate America making a lot of money in Wall Street it started in content publishing first before I got the music publishing and
6:29
that's sort of like the background guys um when I got locked up man the headline
6:35
was dope because everybody's looking at okay the amount of money and I think the click bait was what was really popping
6:41
about it because if you didn't know about my story at all I think that was a perfect introduction to Baltimore rapper takes all this money uh from some
6:47
unnamed company and everybody went crazy it definitely went viral you know saying you guys spoke about it hit Breakfast
6:53
Club CNN MSNBC and while this is going on Sean I'm just looking at the type of
6:59
money it would cost to go ahead and duplicate that kind of campaign that's millions and millions of dollars
7:04
of people covering your you know covering your story that's the type of syndication and going viral that you can't kind of predict you can't do
7:11
anything except for reverse engineer that and hope that you can pull it off again you get what I'm saying so as as
7:16
far as me bro I had to deal with the situation um if you guys are familiar with Baltimore that same year our mayor got
7:23
prosecuted by the same uh uh uh prosecutor we lost our Police Commissioner
7:29
um we had a couple lawyers that's really farming where I'm from Chad Focus got locked up and right now bro the same
7:34
exact prosecutors also attacked the Marilyn Mosby she's the young black lady here in Baltimore bro that did the
7:40
Freddie gray case when they killed the cops so we got a lot of stuff going on in Baltimore that if you hit the like politics and what's going on as far as
7:47
your power players in Baltimore we all going through a kind of Shakedown right now interesting interesting so
7:55
the story like you said I remember doing the video on you and
8:02
like you said there are a lot of other people that talk about the video and I know you say all you know all publicity
8:07
is good publicity and kind of give me the light too hey there's this rapper in
8:13
uh Baltimore but at the same time I feel like most of the people their
8:18
thought their perception of you was like who's this guy like to be frank like oh this this guy's an idiot like how he
8:25
spend this much money I don't know who this artist is still and he's way so how you spend that much money and you're not
8:30
the most popular artist in the world I didn't talk about it that way in terms of the video but like that was the
8:36
energy I saw I think even in my comment section and other people who talked about it so like how was it
8:43
seeing that vibe that was coming from things you know what's crazy bro it was weird to me because I put it like this
8:49
as far as like being in the music industry man I got some extremely Power Players you know that I'm associated
8:55
with so if you get to dial back to like the documentary you'll see I'm tapped in with your with your Executives your your
9:01
people at 300 entertainment I've been to billboard we did Revolt TV I'm cool with that tavio
9:07
double XL all the platforms right and so what my job to do was Sean was kind of like expose the injury industry for what
9:14
it is bro for somebody like myself I did have a huge budget and I did everything that you could do as far as a major
9:20
artist but I did it independently so for me to have the biggest billboard in New York City not for just you know a couple
9:27
months bro for an entire year this wasn't uh a digital billboard this was vinyl right so I got the Citibank
9:33
building I got 42nd Street I had the biggest Billboards in the entire city now uh if nobody paid attention to those
9:40
that meant that anybody could go ahead and buy that kind of marketing that mean that you can say whatever you want on any type of platform and nobody actually
9:46
does any checks and balances all right I'm from the marketing game so when I said I was a number one artist in the
9:52
world I think having the biggest billboard and just being out here and dragging your nuts you know saying that right there qualified as being the
9:58
number one market in the world right in my mind now if somebody else would have
10:03
done that billboard whether it's a Jay-Z or Drake which I have noticed that's the thing that we got to think
10:08
about it's a young black dude it's a young black face up there wearing a suit got a bunch of money even the creative was really loud you know saying even the
10:15
colors that I picked I really did it for real Sean because Clear Channel owns the radio all right
10:22
Clear Channel almost I Heart Radio and you coming from the industry where you got to realize how you're going to
10:27
get your stuff uh uh syndicated as best as possible well I'm an independent artist bro so if I can go ahead and buy
10:33
Billboards that was a slick way for me to not do Payola to get my records on the radio you understand what I'm saying
10:38
I was more concerned with becoming rich and successful than actually becoming famous because we all know how that go bro a lot of these guys in the industry
10:45
are famous but they don't get a pot to pissing they don't own their masters they don't own their publishing they don't own their rights they don't own
10:50
their likeness so I was just taking a reverse product I was taking a reverse process bro I was working backwards like
10:55
if we get successful when I get all the connections I lock them with all the DJs I got all of my situations set up as far
11:01
as my sound exchanges bro my my my bmi's my distribution we can figure out the
11:06
famous part at the back end I'm doing all the same things the famous guys is doing you understand what I'm saying we
11:11
going on trips uh uh we taking everybody to BT Awards I'm performing with little baby money back yo Fat Joe Rick Ross at
11:20
the end of the day becoming becoming viral for what happened people could go back and see
11:25
what we did like there's no way this guy shouldn't have been famous he got a record with T-Pain the best record that
11:31
T-Pain put out in the last four or five years not the one with Tory Lanez when he did a remix of his old record you
11:36
know not the joint with dreezy we got dance with me you go listen to the music and you actually listen to music you like your dance with me is popping this
11:43
fire you go look at all the DJs I had planning from your DJ SNS to your DJ apps to sus one I can go down the line
11:49
of everybody on a DJ pool that played my record I can go down to days that I was on Power 105 and your hot 97s so all of
11:55
this is happening bro and everybody acting like they're not paying attention but if I'd assigned to a Empire Sean or
12:01
Interscope or or Atlantic it would have been a lot more energy around my
12:06
movement as if it was like a cardi b or your a boogies of those guys so it really was for me to show like yo look
12:12
if you're an independent artist it's a ceiling it's a ceiling that you got no matter what your budget looks like or
12:17
your skill set or how many resources you get bro and that's just how the industry works so you got to accept the successes that you do get you might not be
12:24
mainstream but your success might be mainstream extremely wealthy why do you think it works like that
12:30
well you can understand this control bro the system is controlled by the by the guys yo we do got Gatekeepers we do got
12:36
to respect what the industry is right um it's also a reason why guys like man you didn't exist as far as your platform
12:41
my platform 10 years ago 20 years ago because we the information bro not only not only are y'all the
12:48
information y'all the information I'm the case study so I'm the one that walked in all these different buildings bro I'm the one that knows how the Bots
12:54
work I'm the one that knows about your media base you know how you can go ahead and pay to get on your radio stations
12:59
your playlist the artist that we love guys they aren't involved in this process because they don't own the records They Don't Own
13:06
they don't own the actual product so as far as making a product become a a a
13:11
mainstream thing as far as getting the brand out to the people they're not in those rooms they're not a part of those marketing discussions you understand
13:18
what I'm saying they're not a part of those balance sheet discussions or those those long discussions or what kind of money we putting up these guys are just
13:24
the Creator bro so the guys that we come to love man the ones that we see in the face they aren't a part of the decision making quick second have you ever seen
13:31
an artist catch some traction and then they start to move the numbers start to grow they might even go viral but then
13:37
fast forward a year from now somehow their numbers haven't really grown that much they dropped back close to the same
13:42
monthly listeners they had before the traction environment well that's because you have to know how to convert those
13:49
moments into careers and we've done this again and again with not only songs but artists and so has J.R McKee who's been
13:56
a part of helping artists like Lil Durk Rod wave Justine Scott and money long and we just did a collab where J.R McKee
14:03
does a step-by-step breakdown of how he took money long from zero to millions of monthly listeners and winning a Grammy
14:09
over Beyonce Mary J blies and Jasmine Sullivan check out this breakdown while we still have it up you can check it out
14:15
at www.brandmannetwork.com Grammy again that's
14:24
www.brandmannetwork.com Grammy back to the video I want to get
14:29
your opinion on a couple of like Trend topics that I think fall within your expertise but before I even get to that
14:36
you just talked about some things that you feel like they don't know about how much money it takes media based all these things so explain media based and
14:43
why that's important all right so look you know in your local city man you got the DJs that you feel like are popping right you got the guys
14:49
that everybody knows what you got to realize is that there are certain DJs that are affiliated with what's called
14:55
media base where when they play your record the statistics count towards you actually charting they count towards you
15:00
actually getting paid for your performance royalties and mechanical royalties so in your local city you
15:06
might be the man but nobody has ever heard your record in any of these college towns Vegas Montana Detroit
15:12
nobody knows who you are outside of your market so what I did Sean that was different is that I affiliate affiliated
15:18
myself with different DJ Foods your core dealership I mean your core DJs your Coalition DJs your vertigos your mp3 wax
15:25
all your DJ pools and then I specifically sought out the DJs that was also affiliated with media base which
15:31
means that I need you guys playing my record on the mixed shows I need to be a part of the 9pm rotation I want the strip club please I want the in the club
15:38
place so not only do I want to build not only do I want to become successful I want that to count I want these
15:44
marketing dollars to count towards the statistics when you go log into music connect when you go log into Nielsen I
15:50
want that to actually count towards me becoming a Billboard Chart an artist I want my Spotify streams account so it
15:55
was stuff that I learned bro early on like we like SoundCloud SoundCloud doesn't count towards you getting your riaa certifications you understand what
16:03
I'm saying you can go ahead and use use your uh audio Max you can go ahead and use your datpiff.coms which replace the
16:10
emphasis on as far as building audiences but that don't translate the dollars so I started to learn man that
16:15
clout in popularity didn't translate the money and I was trying to find an equal balance Sean
16:20
um so what the the media-based specific DJs I know about like the the Coalition ones you know like the MP3 wax ones like
16:28
how are you how are you able to tell which which of these days are a part of that is it just you networking you talking and it comes up or is there like
16:34
a space where you were able to see like hey these are the DJs I need to go rock with to to make this plan work the way I
16:40
needed to let me ask you this have y'all ever heard of a a act called spin fire y'all familiar with spin fire at all I'm
16:46
not I don't know what it is what it is six six years ago me and ralo shout out to my boy ralo he's still locked down me
16:53
and ralo was the face of an independent act called spin fire and the idea of it was to take
16:58
Independent Artists or major artists in their records and for us to have a quality controlled check-in for when
17:04
they were actually breaking our records you know how it is somebody breaks your record they tag you they go ahead and send you a video What If you could see
17:10
those statistics now we we marketed guys man we understand the money is in the data so we can't see that we spent a
17:17
thousand dollars and how much that translated into as far as plays or reach or downloads it don't make sense for us
17:23
so for me to have a big budget and for me to go to the DJ pool maybe like give me fifteen thousand dollars we're gonna
17:28
send you in all the cities make sure you popping I had to go out here and hit the boots hit the ground running and find
17:34
and meet these DJs specifically and ask them yo bro are you media based certified are you acclimated can we help
17:40
you how can I provide value to you as a DJ you need help Brandon all right cool you need a clothing line you need some
17:46
merch so I started to build relationships which still exist today fellas that was bigger than just being the artist it was about trying to build
17:51
an infrastructure certain DJs don't even have a cool about media base so some of them think they the guy bro but you
17:58
playing in a minor league you know we trying to play in the big leagues your biggest artist and your biggest record
18:03
labels they have an assortment of media based DJs they know exactly who to send the record to to not only make a splash
18:09
as far as your clout as far as your social media but also in the industry just like you guys know how the Oscars
18:15
and the Grammys Awards work not everybody's opinion matters so this media based thing man is is real
18:21
specific they also only want to play records of proven artists so that's why I did dance with me and then I did A
18:27
Dance with Me remix with T-Pain because people might not understand that his resume alone is bigger than 90 of
18:33
artists in the world he got some of the most Grammys some of the most features so yeah to us he might not be relevant
18:39
at that time but to the industry Chad focus and T-Pain remix was the biggest they was talking about behind
18:44
closed doors and important rooms now we just talked about
18:50
networking last episode and bringing value to people um and having something that you take to
18:56
bring to the table right a mutual exchange and it sounds like if I understood that correctly not only did you find media based DJs it
19:05
sounds like you help some DJs get access to Media base and be certified that way
19:10
right 100 100 so you just gave me a sales like hey bro yeah you already got
19:15
the skills you doing what you're doing but you're not even getting fully recognized on the level that you should be so you plug me in now of course I'm
19:22
gonna be like yo this is my guy I'm gonna play Chad whenever I can man Sean listen bro I'm from Baltimore
19:27
bro I don't know if you know any Baltimore artists we got y'all moose we got ybs scholar little scooter was here
19:33
like you guys might not be familiar with some of these guys I don't know if you know the maybe the biggest artist you might know from Baltimore shorty shorty
19:38
you heard a shorty shorty yeah shorty shorty the biggest in Baltimore do you know they do not play his records here in Baltimore nowhere no clubs no
19:45
strip clubs no parties no functions no bowling parties no birthday parties specifically these DJs will not support
19:52
a local artist who is bigger than just being local yo he don't make the sound that we like he don't make a record for
19:57
us he don't pull up in a strip club my he's at Coachella you understand what I'm saying he's not coming he's not
20:03
coming to Norma Jeans bro he's at Coachella bro he's headliner bro he's on the B side and a side he's marketing
20:09
across the world so what you'll notice is that when you become too big yo for your local market especially in a place
20:14
like this it can also hinder you all right so behind the scenes Sean I was
20:19
playing a role like with you and Jacoby are playing which is I was in for I was informing the guys about the game I
20:26
didn't create focus music to become the artist I had six artists like all my family members guys I signed up to the
20:32
record situation what I learned from them is that yo being an artist is more about hard work than talent I need a guy
20:38
on my team that goes to sleep last and wakes up first well that was me you understand what I'm saying I watch your
20:43
high Drake and Kanye West build their situation yo I'm paying the producers I'm paying the writers I'm paying the
20:50
ghost writers I own all equipment I own the studio I wake up I work hard I eat good I take care of my family so all
20:56
intangibles as far as being an artist guys I had that easily I played ball growing up learning how to become a
21:01
musician and do the artwork wasn't the hardest part it was about assembling the team and letting the guys that was
21:07
around me know yo be humble enough to know that yo I might just be what we need to get this movement off the ground yeah you might rap better but I sell
21:14
better yeah you might perform better but I entertain better and it also comes down to interviewing and Brandon and
21:20
being a people person bro and then uh uh ego list so if the richest guy in a room
21:25
doesn't mind being a janitor it's certain attributes yo it's going to allow you to be a successful artist
21:31
that's why my story bro was so important because it's bigger than hip-hop when you're doing vice TV bro and it goes to
21:37
CNN and you see these young guys that look like me and you we can talk this talk we understand this marketing we
21:42
understand Bots we understand engineering and algorithm we understand networking I'm doing podcast bro on
21:49
platforms I never thought I'd be on before it extends parents hip hop but I'm glad to sit with you brothers because y'all
21:55
consciously understand like this is what's next these conversations people don't have now we can do it all we can
22:00
talk about all the drawers we can talk about all the money that's cool bro what about the impact the impact is That Yo right now we sparking a conversation
22:07
that you guys been in the game for a minute and without me being known I got more media based DJs than Interscope
22:13
Records Atlantic Records I could take a record right now with the right budget angle number one you know we talk about
22:19
the budget right the budget what what QC say what two hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollars yeah that's because you got to pay the right
22:25
people at one time to play your record in unison it got to happen at the right
22:30
time if you want to go out here and you're going to do the Bots you can't do the Bots to a certain type of level
22:35
unless you are assigned to a major label so that's where I went wrong at fellas I tweaked the system and the algorithm
22:42
independently and they get different structures and they got different ways to go ahead and find out when you're
22:47
game in the system and you're not a major artist I can't deal with a 50 Cent or French Montana or a little baby can
22:53
do it's only so much that even if I got an unlimited budget if I do a certain amount of numbers the streams on Spotify
22:59
they're going to trigger that it's going to trigger the fraud detection now if you are a major artist they'll
23:08
still they'll still detect it but they're gonna let it go right yeah they're gonna they're gonna let it go Sean and not only that you got to
23:14
realize man you know places like Sony and whatnot they all got stakes in the Spotify so if you think about why the
23:21
system makes sense if Sony is paying for the box to get streamed Boom the artist
23:26
is blowing up inorganically organically everybody's going to win at the end of the day because you're building up a
23:32
star so now they're going to come back to Spotify to find a little baby Sony's made money Spotify made money they in
23:40
bed together the artist is making their you know same profile bigger so if you got your focus and I'm doing the same
23:46
amount of numbers as little baby and I own all my publishing all my masters and I'm recouping my own money it's no
23:51
benefit for you if any independent artist and a couple street dudes with their own bag and their own Intel can
23:57
come and master the system like that bro they can't win no more so my job was to break the industry and show everybody
24:02
how you could break it if you own everything you do your own marketing you write the marketing off you build your profile now you got an audience so we
24:10
could just use their platforms to build our own audience and monetize it like that like a little Russell you know what
24:16
I'm saying like uh uh uh you're Ryan Leslie's who people don't speak about one of the most genius things you've
24:21
ever done is came up with a super phone that connecting directly yo with your clientele you think about the Nipsey hustle these guys is Geniuses bro they
24:28
bigger than just being artists these guys are pioneers as far as how you can really be an artist independently to
24:34
another level bro nobody speaks about that as much as they should yeah yeah man you you actually just confirmed
24:40
something I said a couple episodes ago remember I said like the industry doesn't care about the bot thing because
24:45
of morality they care about it because they want to make sure they can control the people like game in the system right
24:50
like if I don't have any if I don't have any um skin in your game why do I want you to succeed to see that way so now
24:56
that you you've known that and you experienced that has it changed your your approach to like how you're running
25:02
some of these marketing strategies knowing that like you might hit a ceiling where you have to like get over there hump or they are you still running
25:07
things the exact same way I put it like this because because uh it what it did
25:13
bro is it helped me kind of like uh it actually helped me out it helped me kind of see like where the where the
25:19
loopholes were you you guys know how all loopholes work and so what I say is this the artist that contact me and that want
25:25
to work now I know it's a certain ceiling that they can go through so I'll give you guys my exact blueprint I could
25:31
care less of Spotify knows about it doesn't know about it like I'm gonna get paid regardless right they banned my
25:36
artist's profile so chair focus is no longer on Spotify but what they can't manage their metadata because if they
25:41
ban your metadata they got to ban everybody's metadata there's certain artists that have been able to re-upload their tracks but they
25:47
had to change their name because there's different levels of fraud detection that's going to happen all right for me
25:54
personally I got over 200 records in BMI the scale you allowed to do as an independent artist every day is 3 000
26:01
streams or below so if I got 200 records and I'm doing 3 000 strings or below I can do around 600 000 uh uh streams a
26:09
day you understand what I'm saying but I got to do it through an assortment of Records so I'm not allowed to have one
26:14
record blow up but I understand how I'm gonna get paid every day so if I can do 600 000 streams a day times 30 days in a
26:22
month I know how to do my 18 million streams I still know how to make my fifty thousand sixty thousand seventy thousand dollars it's by becoming an
26:28
independent label which they don't want us to be as young black men own all of your artwork put your guys on your
26:34
paperwork build it up together and become a brand become a label so that's how I make my money now guys because I
26:40
understand how to spread the love prior to this get to the money was my record dance with me was my record I was
26:45
running up the streams a million a day a million two million three million and it was like yo how's this kid doing more
26:51
streams than your Taylor Swift your Uzi version Kodak blacks your Drake's it just wasn't working for them so that's
26:56
really how I charted guys because I was out here trying to break that and let it be known like yeah we figured it out and it's not for me as far as being
27:03
an artist guys I'm like you guys at the end of the day I love the music I love the culture yo but I love the game more
27:08
than that yeah I got you so it sounds like the strategy changed from how can I blow up this single to be as
27:16
big as possible until I know how can I just focus on making my entire catalog be so big that it escapes under the
27:22
radar is that what you're saying big big facts big big factor Chloe and that's how I uh communicate with the artists
27:27
that come to me now like yo bro if you want to do a million streams give me an album give me an album and give me 30 days and
27:34
let's make it make sense and if the the algorithm takes off with people like this record and the way that
27:39
we put it on different playlists and we move around then you want to know which record works for you so let the data tell you if you are artists the one
27:46
thing I want you to know if you're watching Contra brand agency is let the let the audience let the people tell you what the record is just do the initial
27:53
marketing you'll figure it out you'll figure out what they like and then you go ahead and put your budget behind that
27:58
record full force and your visuals and everything you got going on so that's a campaign so I like to I like to do that guys I like to figure out what's working
28:04
first before I go ahead and scale up gotcha got you yeah well yeah I was just
28:10
gonna say while we're on the subject of bots I want people listening
28:15
who haven't seen like device special and just heard that headline that I noted
28:20
about you the beginning to know it goes a lot deeper than you're just a guy who's using Bots you know what I'm
28:25
saying like you really are in that world you're you're moving um at a higher intellect than someone
28:31
would give credit for just any artist using bots so can you explain how you
28:36
got into the bot world you know why you're you know and you know the inner workings of it just so people get a
28:43
story of get a better understanding of just even how it works Beyond just hey you're an artist and you find somebody
28:48
to pay for your bucks thanks all right so look as a as of right now it's crazy guys like I said I just came home in
28:54
January I'm coming home man I'm looking at artificial intelligence and chat GPT and I'm like oh why it's about to be a
29:00
wreck bro y'all see what artificial intelligence is going like videos content editing copywriting like the
29:06
world about to change right before our eyes I was into the boxing engineering fellas uh 2011 and I got into the
29:14
marketing world and it first started guys with the search engine which is Google Yahoo Bing
29:20
companies pay me a lots of money to help them rank on the first page of Google because if they had certain keywords
29:26
that was bringing them traffic they didn't have to spend money on paid advertising the best client is an organic client
29:33
somebody who feels like they found something but people don't realize organic is just a strategy it's just
29:38
it's just a turn fellas it's just a strategy it's just a way that people feel like they found something it's a fulfillment you can either do paid or
29:45
you can do organic when I came in a game Bots were used to manipulate the search engines to make people's content show up
29:51
higher than others so if you got YouTube and your name is brand man Sean and you're doing a video on Gucci Mane
29:59
and it's 20 million people searching for Gucci Mane that day and your video shows up first Sean gonna get 18 million of
30:06
those views he probably gonna be rich overnight off of advertisements and clicks and whatever else he's doing
30:12
he might have to invest in his visibility so Sean doesn't have to be hot 97 or complex or DJ academics or say
30:19
cheese if he got a guy like me because I can use Bots to make Sean an authority for whatever content he's posting on the
30:26
internet so that was the initial way I got into this Lane I was working for Wall Street
30:31
companies that weren't as big as Wall Street Journal they weren't as big as the street and they wanted their financial news information to show up in
30:37
front of everybody in the world so I learned how to tweet the game to help Publishers in the financial new space get visibility for big big projects they
30:45
paid me a lot of money based off the front end and the back end sales so I became a millionaire guys in my early
30:51
20s when I seen how that industry worked this was before Spotify title and apple
30:56
music came out when that came out the same exact contractors I was using from upwork guys and fiverr.com they
31:03
transitioned right along with me from the Google search engines to social media to YouTube
31:08
social media YouTube Google the one thing that nobody has a conversation with Spotify they're all search engines
31:14
in their own respects they're just search engines for different topics and different niches the concept is exactly
31:20
the same so the ability to tweak an algorithm based on traffic views likes
31:25
comments streams it's synonymous in every industry fellas so this don't just start and stop you with the music
31:32
industry this is everywhere you can tweak this any and everywhere if you understand the music industry labels
31:39
been buying artists records forever if you go back to 50 Cent and you go back to Kanye West they were buying those
31:45
records to make sure one guy went platinum they were making sure that she went number one on Billboard because you were number one then clout took over and
31:52
then people really came to buy the records and engage so being number one has always been the goal whether you're in a music industry whether you was in
31:59
different publishing world and that's how I got started with the Box guys I've been building one of the biggest bot networks for the last 12 to 13 years
32:06
when I was indicted the conversation that nobody had was that Chad Focus took four million dollars and we feel like he
32:12
invested into the Chad Focus brand a lot of the headlines that people took was
32:17
that he invested his money into the music industry now y'all know I'm too intelligent to take four million dollars and not have 50 number one hits and not
32:24
to get a drake feature and all this other so that was just the idea was to make it look
32:29
like I was ignorant because if he got all this money and he got records and he don't blow up
32:36
y'all need to stick with us it was a shot at us like y'all ain't smart y'all better come and stick with us
32:42
Y'all Gonna Come and buck the system is you crazy is y'all Lonzo balls father as you love all you're not sending your son
32:47
over to Turkey and he becoming a number three pick and he's lamelo ball they don't want that bro that's how you see
32:53
how they attack anything that doesn't make sense to them so I was something that didn't make sense because I was a threat to the entire industry fellas if
33:00
you can't keep these stupid and you can't keep people uninformed then guess what you can't control them so
33:06
when you look at your Michael Jackson's bro and you look at your princes and you look at all the information they was giving us people don't talk about that
33:12
bro they don't talk about how Mike owned half the industry and all the publishing they don't talk about how Prince changed his name bro because he just wanted to
33:18
be compensated for what he invested in his pride projects you feel what I'm saying so that's what it was bro I
33:23
figured out the game I made a lot of money in a lot of different Industries bro this is just bigger than the the
33:29
bigger than music bro you know what I'm saying it's much bigger like I said we can talk about the Ticketmaster Billboards I actually want to get right
33:36
into that uh Jacory you just brought up the story about Drake yeah right so I
33:42
want you to tell Chad that story just in case he doesn't know it already and then
33:47
I want you to start talking about your your ticket scalping back background as well the story that's circulating now is
33:54
Ticketmaster's kind of catching some heat because people realize that they're scalping like Drake tickets really using
34:00
something like I think what we talk about camera like some high level marketing but at the end of the day is scalping right so what they did was um
34:08
I might be wrong but I think it was a New York show that Drake was having come around and Ticketmaster was pushing the
34:14
whole narrative like hey like this and Drake you know one New York show um you know I'm saying it was being
34:19
reported like Drake won the certain price for the tickets but then Ticketmaster like like upscale the prices and it was running real hard it's
34:26
now they're like hey this is the last day to buy tickets this is the last day they sell out the tickets and the very next day Drake releases like another New
34:32
York date or something right so it's a lot of people in the ticket box you know saying Hey Y'all panestas into buying
34:38
these tickets and you know Drake is kind of like hey that's not me that's Ticketmaster you know what I'm saying doing doing all this thing they got
34:43
nothing to do with me but like that's that's essentially what's coming down to they're raising prices on Drake's tickets to be higher than I guess what
34:50
the team was trying to sell them for yeah they're tricking the audience into the feeling like this is the last time
34:55
you can get certain things when like Drake has other plans to release other dates hey hey look at jakoy I was doing
35:01
this uh I was doing this seven years ago and I was doing it early before I became an artist so I'll break I'm gonna break
35:07
this down so with this one little baby and money bag yo this before
35:14
little baby was who he is today this is before he was 200 occasion whatever whatever that little baby version is this is little baby at thirty thousand
35:20
dollars a show this is a little baby at thirty thousand dollars a Show and Chad focus at a half a million dollars a show and the way that you do it is
35:27
Ticketmaster is going to go ahead and if you make a deal with them and you're going to be a promoter you can go ahead
35:33
and buy out a venue so let's just say uh you buy out Miku Pavilion or you buy your Madison Square Garden you pay them
35:40
up front they want to get 30 of whatever you do as far as a net the date of the tickets come out you got
35:45
something called the fire sale guys or early bird sale which means that you can probably get the tickets for Less the first day of with companies like
35:52
Ticketmaster we're doing and record labels we're doing is they were buying out 80 percent of the tickets a day of
35:58
at the lowest price that you could all right because now I want you guys understand why this is genius they can
36:04
write that money off as marketing so they're giving your radio station tickets they're giving tickets to the kids they're giving tickets to the
36:10
artist they're doing all types of promotional things with those tickets but now in the concert looks like yo this about to be jamming like yo
36:16
this joint almost sold out yo you gotta get you a ticket before it's none left now Ticketmaster owns those tickets bro
36:22
they now are going to upsell them for 200 300 400 the markup the week before the concert releases you
36:29
get 20 of people that actually brought the tickets because it looked like it was sold out and they really want to go to the show that week they start to re-release
36:35
tickets it starts to look like people was refunding tickets so you got a spot available Ticketmaster is just re-releasing their tickets back on the
36:42
platform so now if they brought it at fifty dollars you now can buy it at 100 200 300 400 they're going to always
36:49
break even for Life guys they will never ever Miss they know how this game works by the day by the night of the concert
36:56
that Friday night they're going to release even more tickets but then they're going to put them on third party websites your event breaks your stubhubs
37:03
and now they're going to sell them from 50 to 500 thousands of dollars two thousand dollars by the day of the
37:08
concert they gonna have their own ticket scalpers in the street that work for them the guys that me and y'all know
37:13
that we want to go to a basketball game we want to go to a Drake concert we call Mike Mike up and he got the tickets for
37:19
us you guys know what I'm talking about everybody has a street team all right the day of the concert is called urgency
37:26
and it's called scarcity and we are marketers it's the same thing they do with PlayStation it's the same thing
37:31
they do with Jordan same thing we do with Yeezy you buy up the market you make it unavailable and
37:37
then you make it available for people that are desperate enough to pay whatever they want to get their hands on it there's enough people that have money
37:42
that will pay any price for a drake ticket a Taylor Swift ticket a Beyonce ticket and they've been doing this
37:48
forever guys from Metallica Drake Jay-Z Beyonce the first concert that I did that at
37:54
guys was Jay-Z and Beyonce's On the Run Tour I took my entire Hood 50 people and
37:59
then I sold those tickets that I had left over that were front row tickets for 100 grand so I took my whole hood
38:05
for free spent 50 Grand and then I sold the other 150 000 tickets for 100 grand so I was making money taking my homies
38:12
back and forth with me putting them front row and I started to figure out like okay this is what Ticketmaster and
38:17
this is what the Live Nation and these guys do and if you're an artist you just want to show up and make sure that your
38:22
concert is sold out you don't really care about ticket sales you don't really care about record sales you just want to
38:28
do your job so if y'all look at interviews right and they ask these guys do you care what your first week sales are what they always say no I just want
38:35
the people that had the music that's not what the exec is saying that's not what the marketing guys are saying no
38:40
we gotta Break Even we got a triple so when you got a concert concerts get canceled by them not being able to do
38:46
the pre-sales guys so those Taylor Swift tickets that y'all seen I can guarantee you that 75 percent of those bought by
38:53
somebody internally that made that entire craze about the Taylor Swift tickets that made me and you talk about
38:58
it so even with this Drake thing that's happening right now guys it's marketing all publicity good publicity the concept
39:04
going to sell out and you're gonna go see Drake now I'll write this down though with that in mind now that people
39:10
have a sense of how that works drop that little baby concert story
39:15
so here we go little baby concert chair Focus this is this is the I'm the most unknown guy that ever got paid the most
39:21
for like you know being an opening that guys I'm gonna break it down for y'all if you're local you know that promoters
39:26
are going to go ahead and charge you and the local guys will come and perform for your your acts that come to your city your Yo Gotti's your Rick Ross are y'all
39:33
familiar with that right we all from that game so I always had my homeboys and they will perform and it'd be nobody
39:38
in the crowd like why are you paying five thousand dollars to perform for Rick Ross and Rick Ross fans on here bro
39:44
you performing at two o'clock and he performs at nine o'clock so what I did that was different is I said you know
39:49
what I'm gonna be a promoter I need ownership over the merch I need ownership over the marketing I need
39:54
ownership over the visuals I need control of certain things and I want a certain percentage of the tickets I want
40:00
this percentage of the front end I want this percentage of the back end so I negotiated what I call an amazing leverage deal I'll take care of the
40:06
venue I'll take care of paying a little baby what he wants which we had a team of guys and promoters that paid little
40:12
baby so he gets his 30 000 money bag yogis is 40 000. you got the concert you got the venue
40:18
and you got the mainstream X now all I got to do as a marketer is find the audience that wants to see little baby in money bag yo next thing you know I
40:25
make it as a co-headlining situation come see Chad focus and Friends little baby and moneybagg yo now I know I can't
40:32
pack a venue with six thousand people by myself but I can probably bring 200 to 300 people I can bring some of my other
40:37
local artists they could bring 200 300 people but little baby a money bag yo is going to bring them over four thousand to five thousand people but when you
40:44
look at them Flyers when you look at the promo and you see me all over it you hear my voice you see my concert you see my merch it looks like it's a focus ran
40:51
event so as the promoter in the co-headlining artist I was able to sell out the venue and then I was able to
40:57
oversell The Venue out because I gave away a bunch of different tickets I did exactly what you guys see Drake doing I
41:03
brought out all the tickets with my credit card a month before the concert for forty dollars I re-listed them a
41:10
month later for a hundred dollars so I could make my 60 flip I made sure all the other promoters got paid I made sure
41:15
all the other Ticketmaster guys got paid I released another thousand tickets on StubHub guys for 500 600 700 800 I gave
41:23
away four 100 500 tickets to the kids that was in my hood and never got to go to a concert they never got to go ahead
41:29
and see their favorite artist up close and personal and then I let all the local acts from my hoods perform for free
41:34
next thing you know Chad Focus little baby money back yo I performed in front of a sold out crowd I own a visual of
41:40
those guys performing and now we legendary uh we made 250 000 net profit because the money I invested was 250
41:46
Grand as far as your artist getting a venue doing all of the marketing and being able to go ahead and upsell the
41:52
right records I mean uh the tickets for a certain amount of money that was the game changer bro so if I could have done
41:58
that over and over again bro that was also one of the biggest situations before I went to prison I was doing this to concerts I wasn't performing that so
42:04
I planned on starting a tour with all your biggest artists from your young dolls to your Rick Ross's to your little
42:09
wings I was going to be the co-head mining act and I was going to make money in all the mainstream artists because I
42:15
was going to be the promoter and I was going to be the artist scalping your own concert bro I love it
42:20
I love it I love it best part about the headline Shawn is they say yo he bought
42:25
125 000 to his own concert they never gave nobody no contacts so I just never argued you understand what I'm saying it
42:32
was a great it was a great headline yeah like if I if I did that and nobody came to the concert I think we've seen that
42:38
before we've seen people try to embellish who they was they got fake followers they throw a concert nobody shows up my was different spent the
42:45
125 Grand in marketing 125 000 a throw to event I made 250 000 and I only
42:50
performed two songs so that was the conversation on Vice TV is what happens
42:55
when an artist figures out the same process as Live Nation and does it himself independently it's also another
43:01
reason that the industry is scared of of Chad Focus because these are the conversations that we have on this platform that not me Sean but L.A
43:09
Russell or Jadakiss or those guys see they got people that are paying them a small portion of the product come and
43:15
perform so what if they bring in the promotion side in-house what if they start doing that themselves you
43:21
understand what I'm saying the promoters be making a killing but if you are artist and you really want to be a boss you got to be your own promoter you got
43:27
to be your own manager you got to make sure that you take care everything in-house yeah and you see they say that
43:33
a lot with Talent right when the ones who figure out how to make the money is no different than Floyd having his own
43:39
promotion company like yeah I'm a boxer but now I gotta own the promotions company now I'm promoting for other Fighters and I'm promoting for myself so
43:45
I can get the big cut right so like bringing the house is big and I feel
43:51
like I don't know man some artist s they don't want to to do all that
43:57
though and they hate that the game is that way what do you say to those artists I feel bad for them because you got to
44:04
be from you know how a lot of say they from the mud or whatever the that's supposed to mean that you're not really
44:09
hungry bro I got too many miles to feed bro I can't just let I can't let certain dollars go out the window I'm gonna put
44:16
any and everybody to work like like it's just it's a mentality to me you understand what I'm saying and you got
44:22
to look at the people that we're working for they not they're not they about to figure it out if you're a ball show you figure it out so guess what
44:28
build your team bro you only a solid as you're networking your team that's why guys like like Sean and Jacoby that's
44:34
why you guys is the in the industry because if you can't figure it out you Outsource go you know what I'm saying you split some money I can't let you
44:41
mess my guy up name a name again just call him Corey it's your courageous
44:46
Jacory jakori my father Corey man I apologize bro
44:52
John and jakori I apologize big brother but but but what I meant from that
44:57
jakori though um is uh you know I think that people should go ahead and uh build their team bro and and also put people
45:04
in position and y'all can help out a lot of people and these artists could find people his help is there but I don't
45:09
think that they understand that you got to share a bit of the power and you got to be informed about what's going on so getting taken advantage of is a choice
45:15
not knowing certain information that you guys know it's a choice now yeah and I think too like you know touch on Sean's
45:22
Point all right I think the most successful people in music realize that at the end of the day this is really
45:27
just a game right and so I was like if I go play Monopoly and Sean reads me of
45:32
Monopoly rules I'm like man I don't really with those Monopoly rules but Sean's in Black well that's the only way you can win you know I'm saying you
45:37
have to play Within the rules of the game if you want to if you want to beat me right and I think that's what a disconnect is artists will come in not
45:44
realizing there are rules to the game they'll learn the rules to the game but oh that's not right that's not fair and then people like us are like well it is
45:51
what it is so I'm gonna go figure out how to at least play it before I start trying to change things I'm saying
45:56
um and I've seen that a lot just with what I consider to be successful and unsuccessful like the most successful artists even they put out the image that
46:04
they won't play the game when you talk to them behind the scenes is a completely different story I'm saying they're like no I did this because I
46:10
need to do this and my manager put me on this game and that's what made this go so like I guess the the question I
46:16
wouldn't tie on that to you is like what was the moment when you realized like this was a game you kind of had to
46:22
play right like I like asking artists like when was the moment you got your rose tinted glasses kind of knocked off about the industry and realized you had
46:28
to play it a certain way so what was it like for you like what made that click for you so so the program director here
46:33
in Baltimore man where I'm at man I went to high school together right and so you pretty much figuring out like all right
46:39
we got relationship we know each other from sandbox he's definitely going to take a good wreck and play the record hell no he wouldn't even give me the
46:46
information on how to get my record in media base and Nelson so that I was allowed to you know do what I need to do
46:51
to get it onto the to the actual radio so what I did that was different is I found out what the radio was actually meant for was meant for advertising I
46:58
started the internship at the radio station and I hopped right into the marketing department so I went to the guys that were above your program
47:04
directors and artists this is a big thing for you to understand you don't even need to go to the program directors you go deal with the guys up top which
47:10
is the marketing coordinators and the advertising coordinators and you let them know I got product and I got a brand and I want to put my product and
47:16
brand in front of your audience and also want to be supported as an artist so I started to buy advertisements on a radio
47:23
station fellas with my music as a part of the background so I started learning how to get ad spots and get paid one for
47:29
my music on that basic level and then I built the relationships and advertising and marketing department when I became a
47:34
client then I became more important than just the artist so then my opinion and my voice mattered because I was a part of the bottom line when I realized the
47:41
guys that were The Gatekeepers that looked like me and look like y'all they were the real reasons that they were in
47:47
the way because they didn't even have the intellect or the knowledge of how things were getting done so sometimes bro the guys that you look up to and the
47:53
guys you believe know the answers they really don't and that's what I want people to take in it was a self-education part for me guys I was
47:59
having meetings and I was sitting down with guys that I thought was important to getting something done and they were never the point person they were never
48:05
the decision maker they was just trying to ball a block of God and you know what I'm saying they were trying to grease their own poems fellas so that was the
48:11
most a lot of times they're them blocking you isn't really because they
48:17
don't really feel you like that is because they don't even want you to know that they don't know what they're talking about right
48:24
and that's the thing because it's like oh man they're not blocking me they actually can't do nothing but they don't want you to know that they can't do
48:30
nothing it wouldn't be a good look it wouldn't be a good look bro it's a it's a uh Sean it's a um
48:38
I went to uh uh you guys heard a Fiverr before right yeah all right so that's
48:44
gonna be this was crazy Fiverr early on I had stocks and fibers Spotify like I was trying to do some different as
48:50
far as like learning the ins and outs of how that game plays right being a shareholder so
48:55
Fiverr had the record labels early on the last like 10 12 years they were
49:01
selling their services through Fiverr because it was a slick encrypted way for you not to know who was what and what was what so I actually went on fire and
49:07
I started testing out a bunch of these different services and then that's how I started figuring out who were the program directors and where my records
49:13
were getting spent that and all types of stuff there is a underground Coalition of
49:19
program directors that you can send your money to and be top 40 the next day and all types of other like I haven't I
49:26
haven't been in that scene in about two three years but I can guarantee that's the way that radio works it's an underground way to get money to the
49:33
right people to get your record and rotation tomorrow night and the program directors is just as responsible for it
49:39
the thing that broke my heart is the guy where I'm from he told me that he could tell I was doing Paola because I was
49:44
getting a lot of support from out of town and doing different he was just mad that I wasn't figuring out a way to strategically do Payola with him
49:50
instead of him strategically figuring out how I could do it with him you understand what I'm saying he was frustrated at me for not figuring out
49:56
how he could get his palms grease instead of being like just tell me straight up bro we from the same Hood like you won't get paid let's figure out
50:02
how we get paid don't just be cryptic and block my record and then eventually I didn't need them
50:08
yeah oh man that's funny but there's um
50:14
there's a couple things I want to like I want to go through with you first let me
50:20
tackle a couple of these questions from the our programmer our producer he said
50:25
in your opinion our Bots are necessary evil in the music industry trillion percent and it's never going
50:32
nowhere I think I think uh that when people accept it and start figuring out how to strategically use it it's gon