Inside the Playbook: Charlie Rocket on This Is Why Your Artist Strategy Isn't Working

The fact that social media exists today is so much potential. But I also feel that social media is ruining artist development. What is the art of artist development? Okay. Artists development. There's a popular topic because people say today there's not artist development. Or there's a lack of artist development. And what I would like to get across to everybody watching is the relationship between the artists and the fan. Mm-hmm. Right. Because there is a lack of that today. How to make your first $100,000? How to have your first viral video? How to generate revenue every day without the use of a record label. If you're a manager out there, like, what can I do to run this as a business that doesn't rely upon a whole bunch of other people? Yeah. I want this thing to come back to given the artists and the managers their power. You have a dream. You need to be driving your car. You don't need to be in the passenger seat waiting for a record label or waiting for somebody else. You might be an artist watching this and you might not even have a manager. Right. You might be a manager watching this and you might not even have a record label or you might be an artist who was successful with a manager and the record label has you benched. I need you to understand how much power you have and it's time to look at this industry without the industry. Right. The industry kills so many dreams. And you don't need it. Yep. It's nice to have. If they're focused on you. But the more you're driving your car, the richer you'll be, the happier you'll be. I heard a conversation earlier and all I heard was anger. When I was in the music industry, I was angry every day. Right. To where I don't know if you said it. You might have said it. But man, it's like now if somebody gets dropped from a label, it's almost like congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Like congratulations. Like it is flipped to where now is the time. It's the greatest time to be in this game. Yeah. Because you have more power. What a time to be alive. Like when I wanted to blow an artist up, I had to like pass out CDs. But the fact that social media exists today, there's so much potential. Okay. And I'm talking about in a major way. Okay. How come? Artists should not be influencers. It's taking the mystique away. The goal should not be to just get people to know this song exists. The goal should be to form a relationship with the fans. Now, this is what so many artists are doing. They have a song. They're told make 200 TikToks about it. It works. You promote it constantly. You might get good at TikTok and it starts getting views. People come in, but once they click that follow button, and they're watching you. All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break from the pod because, listen up, if you're a labeled exec, a marketing lead, agency, or artist manager, and you're writing influencer campaigns, Godspeed. You already know this is a major time suck. Manual discovery, slow outreach, scattered approvals, messy pricing. And by the time the team aligns on everything, the trend is done. Now, that's not good, but what is good is that it came across as tool called Influr Pulse. It's a great tool to what all the BS that comes with influencer campaigns. Pulse is an AI agent built specifically for music teams. It's not a dashboard you babysit. It runs in the background tracking real-time, momentum, signals, and building creators list that actually fit the song and the moment. It also gives pricing context based on 50,000 plus real creator transactions with real social influences. So you're not negotiating the dark or overpaying off hype. Also, just in case you were wondering, these are not AI influencers. These are real people. Pulse helps run the workflow end-to-end. So your label, manager, and artist stay aligned while you move incredibly fast. Now, this isn't theoretical. Major labels are already using it, helping shape where it goes next. If you want to see it in action, hit the link in the description and book a demo. Now, let's get back to the pod. You are pissing off your fans. They're like, I didn't sign up for this. Every video, you're promoting the same song. There's no mysteriousness. It's just one big, it's like a magazine full of advertisements and advertisements only. Like, I liked this song. Right. I hit follow. And now it's just you just doing gimmicky things to get more views. Yes, you might get more views and you might get more followers. But you're ruining the people who are inside of the experience. Yeah. I almost, if I were to have an artist today, I would separate it. Let's talk about that. Because I think a lot of artists and their managers, they are looking for that viral moment. Yes. And I think that's an okay thing to look for. But there are the do's and don'ts of a viral piece of content. Yes. Break down what that looks like. The do's and don'ts. Okay. The very first thing. Let's talk about how to get a viral video. Please. The do's and don'ts of your viral video. Because you can have a video go viral and it be a don't. Right. Because you can ruin the entire superstar ism of your artist. The goal should not be views. The goal should be fans. And you can ruin yourself with a video as much as you can make yourself. So let's break it down. There's. There's a trend going on where this group, they take a water balloon, they throw it at somebody as they're on the street. And then they turn around and start singing. Okay. Got 10 million views. Okay. Got my attention. Song sounds good. I hit the follow button. Then I saw him do it like eight more times. I'm like, I'm not a fan. I can't be a fan. I miss the days of where artists were mysterious. Like this isn't being an artist. See, humans and as fans, we have this thing called a worship gene. And we're waiting to worship something. It's what we do as humans. We're waiting for that politician. We're waiting for that next artist. We're waiting for maybe the religion or the spiritual part of our life. We're waiting for something to be like, this is what I'm subscribing to. I subscribed. But then you ruined it because you did that 10 more times, 20 more times. I didn't get to be a fan. What I would do, that stuff works. All the viral trend stuff. I would just never do it on my artist page. I would curate my artist as a mystique, as the music videos. And I would cultivate that almost like it's a museum. That is precious. We have to protect our artist image. And in the era of social media, we are ruining that artist image. Why do you think we're not getting mega superstars anymore? Because people will say in this era, it's incredibly impossible to be mysterious and how that mystique. It's easy. Okay. Those viral videos, they work and they work every time. Just don't have the artist do it. This is what I would do if I was an artist. I would have my page that's mysterious. And I would still have it go viral. And we're going to talk about like how to make a viral video in a second. But I would have a separate page. That's almost like a fan page. And I would have my friend and or an engineer. Anybody, an influencer friend, it doesn't matter. And I would have them duplicate viral videos using my song. Want me to show you an example? Interesting. Yeah. All the cheesy stuff. Please. Works on social media. Stop making these artists cheesy. But I haven't used it in their song. Use the song. I'll give you an example. Can I show you a video? Yeah, please. I guarantee you 11 times out of 11, I made a secret little folder on Instagram just for this podcast. Because I want to show some examples. Please. All right, so Scott Managers play a book. I guarantee 11 times out of 11, if four of your friends, even if they had 10 followers, on Instagram. If they made this video, it would get millions of views every time using your song. Let me show you. Sure. I'll screen recorder or punch an ink. Let me show you this. Three, two, one. All right. Yup. It's a big one. What I want. What I want, my rapper, we'll put a frame in it. We'll show it on in the podcast. Beautiful. Like we'll cut it in. What I want my artist jumping around on a treadmill. No, but his fan page could do that 50 times a day in a work every time. I would take every viral cheesy video that exists because it's going to work every time. That's the thing about these viral cheesy videos. That's why you see these artists do the same thing over and over because they're like, "Oh, we got five million views. I need to do it again. I need to do it again." Yet you're ruining all the people inside of your fan club. They're like, "Oh, this guy, he's not even a star. He's just looking for more views." But imagine if his fan page did that. Right. And did it every day because the goal isn't to see my artist on that treadmill. The goal is to get the song heard. And you just put on it. What's that song? Everybody's wondering, what's that song? Put it on the fan page and spam it. You could take 200 videos of the same song and do it on the fan page. But we have to start protecting our artist's image. And that doesn't exist today with these influencer type artists. So let me ask, sorry, let me just ask a question here. Are you saying to take that exact same video and repurpose it on a fan page with the song of the artist's representing? Remake the video. Remake the video. Get your friends. Got you. And you could do this with every weird gimmicky, all the gimmicky videos that you see artists doing. What's another example? Let's see if there's another example. Let me see. Now, the question some people might be having is, how do I make a music video? Make them content and it's not going viral. Yeah. There's one little hack that I want to introduce to everybody. Please. And this is something nobody talks about. If people started doing this one thing when they made content, they make your life so much easier. The concept is called unfolding. Okay. It doesn't have to cost money. It could be done on an iPhone or it could be done on a big budget. But the concept is unfolding. I want the artist to be in one location and I want the camera to start off close. And I want something to unfold. Either the camera can zoom out and unfold things happening. For example, let's say I had a vinyl record and a waffle iron. And my artist is singing. And the waffle iron goes down and it's melting the vinyl record. Those are two things that aren't supposed to happen together. Final record, waffle iron. You're a little intrigued. Now, you just created and intrigued without being gimmicky or corny. It might be artistic. We didn't throw water balloon at somebody. Now the camera's zooming out and it's showing the location and things might be happening as the artist is singing. That's it. I have a perfect example to show you. If I could show you the perfect video. That is one location, low budget, it would be this one. The context was he was walking. The context was the lead singer was walking and the camera was on him. And it was just unfolding. It was outdoors. There was mountains in the background, red rocks mountains. And it unfolded in a way to where it revealed that there was a drummer. So you got a little glimpse of the drummer as he's walking. So you're like, over there's something. But he's walking and then the camera pans and it unfolds a little bit more. And then he walks into the actual set. Sound so simple. But as a viewer, you got to understand, I, one, I have to like what I'm hearing. Let's just eliminate that. Of course. But as far as the visual goes, the reason why this did so good is because we're walking somewhere, where are we going is the, what the viewer says. This is an interesting location. There's a mountain. And he's walking. And then I see a drum set. But I don't see all of it. And then it's unfolding until he walks into the set. And then his entire band is there. That video got 400,000 views. That video was tasteful. That video was not expensive to make. But the simple act of us wondering, where is he going? There's an art to that. And we got to master that with our artist without being corny without being cheesy. So unfold it. There's, here's an example of a video. There's this artist. His name is K. Joe. Okay. He has one video on his TikTok that has 100,000 views. And there's a reason why that video has 100,000 views. Why is it? The title of the video is playing my girlfriend a song I wrote about her. That's the title. The camera is here looking up. You see a little bit of his face and you see a sliver of her. So you have this visual of he's about to play his girlfriend a song. You see her. So you know she exists. That's important. You got the title. And what are we waiting for as the audience? We're waiting for her reaction. So what does he do? Does he start singing immediately? No. It's seven seconds of strumming. First, like he's like kind of like tuning the guitar a little bit. So now we're waiting. We're not just waiting for a reaction. Now we're waiting for the song. I read the title. I want to see her reaction. Now I'm waiting for the song. And now the song is about her. So it's like, oh, is she going to like it? Is she going to hate it? He's playing a song. Beautiful lyrics. Amazing song. And we waited all the way to the end. And that's why it got 100,000 views. It unfolded. There was something to look forward to. That is not complicated. But if we start understanding that we don't have to throw water balloons and ruin our fan base. Instead, we can we can understand the audience want something to unfold. Give them a little bit of something to watch to the end. These are simple things, but we have to start taking a series if we're going to make super stars. The important part about that is you don't need the record label for that. No. This is an incredibly small team. Yes. I love to get into that, you know, being able to maneuver. What does that look like to maneuver? Yes. You know, with a small team. And how how how actually beneficial is that? So so I always recommend this to people like do not aspire to be a cruise ship, be a jet ski. The Titanic sunk. There's a reason why the Titanic sunk. Okay. Why did the Titanic send it? It couldn't turn fast enough. We all will die if we cannot maneuver fast enough. We're sitting around trying to have too many people to get something done. I want to be a jet ski. How do I become a jet ski? Well, who should we talk to first? Are we talking to artists? Are we talking to managers? Let's talk to the artists. If I'm an artist, two day, first thing, I need to know how to record my own music. Take a week and figure it out. Absolutely. Like you need to be able to sit in your bedroom and get to work. Because remember, the goal is to get to 62. Right. Is this going to be expensive and take a very long time? I need an engineer. I need a studio. No, you don't. I recorded our first 62 songs in my mom's basement with a $100 microphone and a quilt hanging from the ceiling. Grandma's quilt. It was dusty. I recorded on Garage Band. Guess who the engineer was? Charlie Rocket. Me and one of my artists, one of the members of the group, Travis Porter. We used Garage Band. I used Auto Wall. I moved Auto Wall all the way up. I just messed around with it till it sounded good. It's not rocket science and you could watch YouTube. But if you could just figure out how to make yourself sound good first, you could be a jet ski. You need to be able to go to work and go to work every day. Or you're not going to get paid. If you work at UPS and you don't go to work every day, eight hours a day, they're not going to pay you. First thing, record yourself. I learned very early on when this one artist, Mike Posner, came to our studio. We're in a studio and he put his microphone on the desk. I was like, but we're in a studio. Like you don't wanna go in the booth? They're like, no, I'm good. I'm like, all right. Like you just need a microphone on a little tripod. Okay, cool. And then when I watched the little Wayne documentary and I see him in a hotel room, like hold on to the biggest in the world do this. - Yep. - And then we go to Kanye's house. And we're just in a living room or in the pool house. - Right. - Like no booth, no nothing in sight. And we're just on a computer and the microphones wide open. I was like, the best in the world aren't going to studios. I mean, you can. It's fun to go to a studio. - You can. - But we need to be able to get this creativity out fast. - Jesse's first project, Kitto, the EP, the majority of that is recorded in a portable. - Come on. That's amazing. - Yeah, it was like the makes of studio of Tim Sube, but it was not as portable at the end of the day. - Absolutely. - And they were making the records there in a small little room. I would, I think it's still, I think this is the record from there. So I had no exactly where you're talking about. - Vyna Jetski is the first ingredient. We have to be able to move with speed if we're not going to sing like the Titanic.