Hey guys, welcome to electronic dance money, your number one business resource for making money as electronic musicians and producers.
All right, we
are
ready. This is gonna be an awesome episode. This is one that I’ve been working on in the works going back and forth trying to get a hold of this gas, but we got a hold of them. And today I’ve got Frankie Raya, and you also might know him from Zen world his fucking incredible YouTube videos, YouTube channel actually shit tons of tutorials on there. And then his business evolution of sound Evo sound which he sells, and primarily does a shit on sound
packs as well. What’s up Frankie? How you doing? Hey, what’s up? I’m doing really good. How about yourself?
Not too bad, man. Funny enough, you’re you did a sound pack or hexagon. Oh, yeah. Dude, have you done multiple? No, I’ve only
I’ve only done one for hexagon.
I use that sound pack more than just about any other sound. I mean, almost on every single trip. I just finished a track last week. And I used I think three or four sounds from that, which are the main elements of my track h1 I go back to very consistently and I’m sure there’s tons of other producers that say the same thing as well.
Oh, yeah, that pipe was really fun to make. I think I caught up on that with another YouTuber. His name is sticks. So he has a lot of viewers as well. And he does really cool fop remakes but yeah, that pack pipe was awesome to make. I think at the time I was just really into that don’t Diablo sound from his label hexagon? You know that solly up and all that. So yeah, really, really good Park. It was fun to make and I’m glad to hear that you’re utilizing it and using it for music. That’s what the packs are for. So
yeah, exactly. It’s Do you get so I feel like a lot of producers are afraid to get so when I first when I guess when Wow, why am I blanking on the name? Wow, I am blinking zero hard here. Not serum. Uh, the website. Wow, why am I splice? Jesus Christ? I can’t believe I’m blanking on splice. Um, I feel like oh, when splice first came out. A lot of producers were like sick. This is perfect. We got a shit ton of sounds I can get. Oh, yeah, cheap. I’ll jump in. But now I’m actually feeling resistance on people being like, I don’t want to go on splice because everyone’s on splice, do you feel the same way? Uh,
I feel a little bit towards that. I mean, I love splice. I think it’s awesome. I use it a lot, mainly for vocals and whatnot. But when it comes down to, let’s see, when I’m making music, splice is more of an alternative I like personally, me I like to buy my sample packs straight out, and I like to go for packs that are super niched super. So that way, when I buy the pack, I know what I’m getting with it. So, like you mentioned hexagon, you know, one of the things I do with the packs on evil sounds, is that I always niche them down. I always want the people buying it to know what it’s for. And, and sort of the reason I do that is because I don’t want people making other stuff to go on. And by the pack you gave me because they’re gonna think it sucks. If they’re coming from a different aspect of music. A lot of them are thinking Hawes does better have like, let’s say 808, and whatnot. But at the end of the day, that’s not what the pack is about. So the thing with splice for me, it’s just too many options. So you get a little bit of choice paralysis. And again, I’d rather just go to good companies I trust that will give me what I want. And I know every packet by there’s gonna be a lot of useful stuff in there. Right?
Yeah, that’s a good point. So I kind of going off of what we were just talking about before we started recording the imposter syndrome thing. So what I do feel like I see is the younger producers are now afraid to go on splice because they feel like everyone’s on splice. And a part of that I think goes into imposter syndrome and then feeling like someone’s gonna know I use this sound, they’re gonna call me out. They’re gonna call me a fake blah, blah, blah. And then, on the flip side, though, I know older producers who are in their early to late 30s, who are all like, splices the best fucking thing because when I you know, when they were producing in 2005, there was nothing like that it was so difficult to get clean new samples. But now it’s like your fingertips you can get 100 within 10 minutes.
No Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing I splice is amazing, man. Honestly, I people. I agree. You know, it’s heavily overused. But But the thing with it is, is That, you know, if you take time to actually dive into it, rather than just going with the popular options because on splice there’s like a setting, right? popular choice for least relevant. You know, usually what? Beer Yeah, all cashmere.
Usually what I’ll do is I’ll just go on release, like the newest ones that have came in and I’ll dive deep into it. But like I said, you know if spice for me is more supplemental, let’s say I, I need something specifically, I’ll look it up on there and just dive into it. I feel like I’m going through some crates trying to find like the right drum loop or, or let’s say I have a song and like, it’s like, I’m missing a top line, but I’m just stuck. I don’t know what’s gonna work on it. Go on splice look for some symbols to put on top, at least then I’ll know Okay, this kind of vibe can work and vice versa, especially if you’re blanking out all the time. And right.
Well, I think a lot of producers to avoid the editing of loops to like, it’s really easy in creative to go in, find a really nice top line synth loop, pull that into your track, you don’t necessarily need to use the entire loop, but you can cut it up, you know, you can cut it up, do really cool effects with it and come up with something and then you can also drag that into serum and create something with that as well. So you can get really creative with a lot of these ready to go loops and samples that you can just boom grab right out
right out the box. That’s totally right, man. That’s totally right. And you know Ableton has, that’s what I use simpler. I love that thing because you can do exactly what you just said. You can get the sample and spread it out chop it up, and then you set it in Ableton sets it automatically do certain keys. So essentially, you can use the loop melody and just play on the on the keyboard and get different melodies out of it depending on what notes you’re hitting. Just got to make sure you know what key you’re in, etc. And the cool thing about this is you know autonomous splice there’s also a company called arcade that came out with or sorry output that came out with arcade. And I’ll be honest, I think they got inspired heavily by simpler from Ableton because that’s essentially what it is just a bunch of loops, right? But you you shoot him off with different keys and you can get some very interesting stuff that other people wouldn’t think of doing. Let’s just put it that
Yeah, Ableton is really crafty in that sense where they just I mean they come up with they’re always cutting edge because coming up with yet new ways to just do ever I mean it’s almost like they’re not reinventing any wheels either. They’re just creating new and and intuitive stuff that just works through and through. It just always fucking works. It’s live 10 was crazy. I went to a demo of live 10 right before it released with my buddy Noah. And this was the first time I like taking a deep dive into Ableton and I was like Jesus this isn’t and then they they were also showcasing, showcasing the push to I was like what the fuck is Casey’s insane I mean this is revolutionizing how you produce music through and through
yeah man Ableton King King at audio manipulation. That’s that’s what I tell people and my students like yeah to switch to Ableton if you’re if you’re trying to make like future bass and you like doing those vocal chops on top. Go Ableton, it’s so much easier to do stuff and the manipulation on audio that
raxil racks alone is, is a massive reason why I would want to switch to Ableton, but I tell people the same thing when whenever I’m talking to producers who are new, or want to be a producer, I’m, I always tell I use abl or I use Cubase I’m a dedicated Cubase user, probably always use Cubase um, but I always tell people like get enabled get on Ableton, it’s I just know Cubase through and through that my workflow is on fire I can get a track done in just a few hours and I’m good my workflows really clean on it. And I’m granted I’m sure if I took the time to learn Ableton it would be even faster, which I am interested in getting Ableton and slaving Cubase to it so I can have had the best of both worlds.
Yeah. Anyways,
let’s dive into your background a little bit. Let get give us the scoop. What’s the story? Where did you start from like, getting your first dog getting your first computer or whatever to where you’re at a launching a sound design business having I would arguably say one of the biggest YouTube channels in the EDM world. How did you get there?
Oh, man, you got a cute love nostalgic music or something.
I’ll play some nice piano nostalgic music here. Yeah,
please, please post. You know what? It’s all started man. Like seriously? You know, I was a kid 2004 I can’t recall at age I was but I was at Fry’s Electronics which is like a electronic department store. And, and again, I didn’t have any intention on making music or anything. And I was walking down an aisle, the software out where all the games were and all the software was and I saw this program called Magic Music maker 2004 and I told my parents you can I get this, you know, can I get this at the time already, like DJing because here in LA we have this radio station called kiss FM. And at night, they would always play like, they would always have a DJ just playing mixes and I always love the way he would make from song to song, like just hearing one songs instrumental with a vocal coming in from another song and all that so I was already doing a little bit of DJing but once I saw that, I was like, you know, I gotta get it. So I bought it, took it home and messed around with it. The good thing is that program came with a bunch of loops, man, like, like CDs that like, bunch bunch bunch of loops. I was a techno CD. I think they had a reggae one and r&b one and maybe a hip hop one. And yeah, I started with that. And I would just hit like the auto generate button, which would just like jumble, Malmo all the loops in like synth drums to make like a song. And I thought it was the Shia snippets and all that.
You’re pretty. There you go. There you go, man. Wrap it up. Let’s call it.
Yeah, so you know, I messed with that until I finally met a friend at school that was actually doing it and he’s like, you got to try reason out. So I don’t know what reason was out at the time. But that’s the next I got into early that was early. Yeah, yeah. And in all honesty, it looked cool. I like the whole hardware aspect of it, but I’m not gonna lie. You know, if I try to do something on there, like do a side chain or, or just you know, do stuff you have to pack then you had to just grab the cables and know what you were doing with it. So yeah, definitely the workflow on it wasn’t the greatest. But then I messed around with that a bit until finally that same friend switched over to Ableton. And that’s where I got into origin and yeah, the I had so much more fun with Ableton man. Good I guess reason is good for the people that have that horrible hardware background for me able to malicious right, so I’ve been with it since then. I want to say it was like 2008 when I moved to Ableton,
Ableton. So
when you go from reason, something like reason to Ableton, it’s almost like, you’re in this new uncharted territory, this new world, because you’re more free for creativity. There’s way more you can do. Like, just in terms of whatever it is that you wanted. Definitely, man.
So you know that that was mainly it. So that’s when I you know, Ableton really changed it for me time I was making trance, and then 2010 came along. And then that’s when I really picked it up. Like, take take that up. I was out of high school. So I had all this time going to college and what that so yeah, just working on music time was like trance, big room, all of that good stuff. But then eventually, you know, I was like, okay, making all this music, which I don’t think was that good. But again, I think most producers always say, like, everything gets good enough. Yeah. And I was like, You know what, I need to get an audience for my music. So how can I do that? So I started looking at YouTube was huge fan of it. And I you back then I used to watch these tutorials by boy in a band. He used to make like reason, tutorials and all that. So So I learned a lot of recent stuff as well. And I was like, You know what, I can do that. But then again, you know, I was like, how can I do it differently? What are people talking about on YouTube. And the biggest thing was sound design. So same same time around the same time from like, 2010. Since I was making tracks, I would go to the engineer beats forum all the time, which was a good forum, but punches knobs as well. Exactly that so I don’t know what time but essentially, they would talk a lot of smack on people utilizing presets and, and sound packs and stuff like that. I think Skrillex came out with a scary monster sent out. Right, right. Yeah. And there was a whole thread on there about how Skrillex utilizes just bass, one shot samples, and massive presets and all that. And yeah, they were just talking smack on the guy back then, you know, I was like, you know, if I ever get big, I don’t want people to say that about me, I want to make sure they know I made everybody else got doing that. So I learned a lot of sound design man so so around 2014 is again the time where I was just like, I need to you know, I need to create an audience for this music so that when I release stuff, people care about it, because sadly, you know, a lot of artists come on, and they’ll just release stuff expecting people to care. And you got to look at it from that point of view. You know, it’s like a brand in any incense if no one knows who you are, why are they gonna care so? So I was like YouTube, we can do it. What can I offer? So I was like, Well, most people that like dance music make our music producers right they’re gonna be the biggest fans of it. So let’s make some priests like essentially preset tutorials for them. So back then I was into trance so that was like my first year I think it was like on YouTube was the origin Nelson lead tutorial. So I taught how to do that. And then from there, God didn’t do that. Well like two or 3000 views over time. But I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna do that. Cuz I started seeing people started coming on I just kept doing that doing that eventually I was like, Alright, what’s big, big room? You know, we got epic Sandra Silva boop boop boop, you know, Yeah, dude. Yeah, the massive, you know, the massive pluck of death, I call it with a bunch of reverb. And, and yeah, just started doing that man doing that doing that, eventually, my channel grew to around 15 20,000. And this is where I got the first sample pack company to reach out to me is because back then I didn’t know you could make a living off what I do right now at the moment selling sound make some presets. The company’s name was called Shockwave samples, which is you know, they’ve been doing it for a while back then. And essentially, they told me Hey, let’s make a silent one sound bank since you got a good following with this. And I was like, Okay, let’s do it. What do you want me to do? They’re like, just make a pack with a bunch of sounds like big room inspired, and, and you’re good to go. So I made that pack for them. And that’s how I started essentially getting into this business I’m in now. And it did really good. You know, I was looking at the sales coming in, I would get the email notifications. And I was like, ah, making so much money. Not knowing the business side of Yep. Not knowing Just saying. Yeah, but past the taxing to, it’s the way the way distribution works and all that the fees that come with that man. So at first, I was like they’re selling the soundbank we’re gonna split it half in half means Shockwave samples. And I was like, all right, 3000 cells in a week, so $3,000 worth of sales. That was that was the first thing. So I was like, Alright, there’s money in this. But the thing was Shockwave samples that I didn’t like was that they didn’t have their own website. And they were they were using essentially a distributor. So for instance, you know, if you have like label like and Juna deeper, and Jenna beats, and they put their music on p port ports of distributors, so they’re gonna distribute the music, right? In the port, or whoever it is, we can say producer loops at the time. Charge 50% right out of the get go no matter what. And essentially shokri samples was putting the packs on the port producer loops, they did really good. They got to the number one spot in the respective category. And when the when my payment finally came? Yeah, it was like not what I was expecting.
You got more like 25% then
Exactly, yeah, five do it. And I was like, you know, I was like, I thought I was making?
Yeah, it’s a little disappointing.
Yeah, exactly. So So, you know, I just like, whatever. So they’re really good. They were like, let’s do Volume Two. So we did Volume Two, that just as good cetera, volume three, around this time is where I was kind of like, you know, what, I have a huge following on YouTube. This sample pack company, I don’t see value in what they’re giving me. Because all they’re doing is putting it on producer loops and B port for me, and they’re taking 25% out of the gecko, and then produce loops and be partaking 50%. And at the time, I wasn’t happy either, because producer loops and B port weren’t promoting a product, like they weren’t putting it in specific spots that I wanted them to be at. So I’m going I’m paying these guys 50% of that income coming in from the sales, you know, cost to do business. But is it worth it for me? And again, at this time, I didn’t know what I was worth. I didn’t know business at all. So I was like, You know what? It is what it is? So, yeah, eventually, I was like, you know, what, why don’t I just start my own sample pack company? What do I need to do? So that’s when I started reading about it. And it was simple, right? Just make a website, you know, essentially go and sign up as a business respective county that you’re in. So that’s how it started. So I did my first pack by myself, seventh wonder volution Volume One. And it did just as good as those volumes. But this time, I sold them myself. There’s I believe it was cell fi. And I also put it on producer loops. So again, I’m giving a bit of income away there, but it did good. And I didn’t have retained
an additional 25. What like 20 or 5025 to 50%. Exactly.
Like I I made more and I was happy with it. But again, almost
instantly doubled your income.
Yeah, pretty much. So and again, you know, it comes from that value. I feel like for sure if you’re if you’re somebody starting out and there’s a good like company or label that you can get your stuff out on. It’s worth it because you’re paying for that exposure. But yeah, at that time, I just didn’t know that. Like I was just clueless about all of this stuff. But then finally, I was like, You know what, I need to take this seriously. So I started reading business books and all that, like, I think a good business book I read was content marketing, which talks about what essentially I was already doing and I didn’t even know and then I read books on how to sell stuff, how to get people to buy your stuff, etc. Online Marketing and whatnot. A lot of it I didn’t like because I hate hard sell tactics. I like the content marketing, I was already doing it and it was working for me. So I was like, that’s what I’m gonna stick with. Anyways, I was still going to college, and not taking it like full time full time seriously, man. And and then my wife, girlfriend at the time, she tells me, why don’t you drop out of school and go all out? And I like just try it out. What do you have to lose some like? Alright, we’ll do we’ll do one semester break. So I finally double down on it, I did a bigger pack. Because the packs I was making, I guess I didn’t know my worth, I was selling them for 1520 bucks, get a bigger pack for $50. And the first, the first month of that pack being released, I think the income was like 14,000 in sales. And again, this time I released everything myself. I didn’t I didn’t include producer Lucy port, no label, just my label. And yeah, I got to keep most of that. So now it’s like, there’s money here.
Now when you made that big producer pack $50 a pack? Did you have more sales in terms of you sold more copies than the previous packs that were cheaper?
Yeah. So that was crazy.
Yeah, and there’s there’s a couple of really interesting things happening there. One is the value. So like in value in terms of price. So this is something that the six figure home studio I was telling you about before talks about a lot. This is something that I talked about a lot. I think this is something I might have mentioned in the previous podcast episode that did as well, which was about starting a mixing mastering studio. So I own a mixing mastering studio, that’s pretty much all I do for EDM producers. And really early on, I was I mean, my, what I was charging for mixes, I’m embarrassed to even say now, but I was charging $45 for a full bowl mix. And this was when I was just starting though. So again, same like you I didn’t know my value, I didn’t think I was making that great of mixes. So I was like, low balling is all hell. Um, and the issue with that is I got really shitty producers. So like I was getting really shitty tracks I was trying to get make really shitty tracks sound really good, which was a great, it was a great learning experience, I that was probably when I learned the most, that’s when I got really good at mixing. But you also get these nightmare clients, you know, you get these people who want to pay for a cheap thing. So they’re gonna get a cheap thing. And they, they have all these expectations and can cause a lot of issues. As soon as I started raising my I mean, my rate is way higher now. Um, but as soon as I started raising my rate, and more significantly, like back in May, I raised my rate started running a lot more ads. And I immediately was getting quality producers hitting me up wanting mixes and masters really good tracks way easier to mix. I knew exactly where to take that stuff. And I was making more. And so there’s this, you know, when you raise the price of something like that, if you you know, you showcase something that was 25 $30. And then you go, Oh, this one’s 50. A lot of the times if they were getting a priced, you know, a product at a much cheaper rate, and they were like, this is fucking incredible. And then you go, this one’s 50, they’re gonna think I was getting this quality at 25 $40. Now, what am I going to get at 50. It’s very similar to if you if anyone goes to webinars, webinars give out the best free content that they have, they usually give away their best stuff for free. So you’re going to learn something really good in an hour. And then they’re going to code at the end of it, they’re gonna say, hey, we’ve got this course Do you want to join this course. And most of the time people immediately buy in because they got a really good piece of free content immediately. So they’re thinking that in their head, they’re going, Okay, this is free, what’s in the paid content? And so they’re much more likely likely to dive in on that. But then the other thing too is that I think is really interesting. Why why you might have gotten more sales is possibly the exclusivity so you know, before you were on producer loops, in addition to selling it yourself, and then now you can go Oh, no, you’re not getting this anywhere else. You’re not going to get this on splice, you’re not going to get this on producer Lucy the only place you’re going to get this as here, which you know, if you have a big enough audience, but also your audience is relatively small but dedicated. They’re gonna they’re all thinking not even the biggest producers are going to have these sounds like it’s just gonna be me. So there’s something really interesting there which I’m I’m curious if that led to more you know, better results. You made more sales plus the price increase, so everything just fucking exploded.
No, yeah, that’s that’s the thing. But like I said, you know, that time, that month, I finally took everything seriously. So I started doing like, again, I already knew I was doing the content marketing. And I was like, how can I essentially apply some of the stuff I learned? So I did do Have a bit of email marketing. And sense. I also did like a free release of the pack, like a little version of it. Again, going back to give him all the good stuff. And yeah, and that was the thing. So that pack definitely did really good. I can’t say why, but maybe it is the price increase, you know, but again, yeah, at the end of the day with the pack, I was just trying to make something good that people will, will use and they will like, because I used a lot of sample packs before that were not up to par to what I would feel would be a good pack. And that’s what I was trying to improve on. Right, solve something in that in that space. But yeah, you know, from there, I just released more packs. And, and again, niching them down. So that festival, it was called festival revolution. I started niching everything down like that. So that was like a big room pack, let’s say main mainstream EDM at the time. And from there, all the other packs started coming and I started noticing niche it down, it shut down. I think that could have also played a bigger role in the sales as well. Because every pack before that was just like a preset pack for a synth. But it was all over the place. It was like the past house trance, big boom, bah, bah, blah. And I felt like you know what, people buying this, they’re gonna be like, well, I’m getting all these sounds, but they’re only gonna use two or three in there. Now with the more niche down packs, I know, they’re gonna use most of the stuff in there. And it also brings a big, big thing as well, because it also makes it easier for me to know what these people want. So when you niche down, that’s the big thing. I know, okay, if I’m making a hexagon revolution pack, all right, these guys are all about them Tableau and the hexagon label. So I know what kind of leads is gonna tickle them the right way, then I’m gonna call it data. So, so that’s like another big thing that comes with it, man, I
love that I love that you saw Okay, well let me niche these down, see what happens. And yeah, you’re gonna get a lot more people who want more of the sounds, they’re gonna utilize it a lot more often. And everything within it too. And you’re probably gonna see more. The, I like what you said, though, is the you know, people want something specific. And it’s true. You know, if I’m a big room producer, I want every sound to be the best big room sound that I have ever heard. So when you make a niche down pack like that you’re really delivering through and through results that are great. I mean, you know what to expect every single time and so you’re gonna make mega fans with that type of content. Because if you know if they bought one to me, take for me for instance, I use that fucking hexagon pack every single time. So now I know if I go to Evo sounds and I see a sound pack that is I’ve been producing a lot of transformers. And when you say if I see a transmission specific for epic trance or whatever, I know what to expect. I know they’re gonna be really good fucking sounds that I’m gonna utilize. And that’s just because for the past year, year and a half, I’ve been using the same fucking sad sound back almost every goddamn track. So, um, I really, I really do like that. That is really interesting. That’s super important. It’s almost like instead of, I mean, you have niched your business down to EDM producers, but then you can almost niche it down further to specific genres, specific types of producers, whatever it is,
yeah, that’s the biggest thing. And you know, we get even further into it. You know, essentially what I’m what I am as a sound designer, so, and also a producer. But at this point, I think I’m more of a sound designer than a producer. What I’ve started to notice is going back to what you were saying about getting low quality tracks when you’re charging last right? The thing is a lot of the younger producers, I hate to say some people say oh, he sells soundbanks and sample packs. He’s just saying that because he wants more sales, he wants people to use them. But they do play a huge role, man, like seriously, if you’re making a tech house track or if you’re making a trance track, the type of kicks, the type of claps the type of open hats you use, they play a huge difference, right? So for instance, you if you’re trying to make like a trance track, and the guy decides to put a damn a toe eight, kick, like a bone tone, instead of the right kick, how the hell are you going to mix that? So, so again, niching it down even further for me also guarantees that I’m giving these guys good content that’s going to make their music sound better, right at the get go. I’m making kick specific for the genre. Again, a lot of these guys don’t know that. The kid plays a huge role in the mix. If you have the wrong kick. It like ruins the track, but the moment you switch that kick, it’s like the track changes. And now it’s like whoa, what did you do? Like I just switched out the kick man.
Dude, that for real I fuckin I love what you’re saying. It is. It’s so true. I mean, you’re giving away really good content that’s accurate. Like you’re giving accurate results. You know, you’re you’re telling people Hey, you use this soundpack you’re this this pack in general with samples and sounds. You’re gonna be able to make a full trance track with this through and through that’s going to be accurate. That kick thing is super important. There’s number of times my buddy Noah who I’ll send tracks to, to have him take a listen. And he’ll say the same thing. He’s like you’re using a house kick. Okay, this is not you know, this isn’t a, this isn’t a deep big hard kind of resume resonant kick that you should be using for trance or like an epic transform. Like, this isn’t the right kick. The you guys switch that out? And I switch it out? I go, Wow. Okay, that’s completely different now. That is the Yeah, the sound completely changes. So
yeah, that’s, that’s the thing. So it that’s, that’s the biggest thing you know, the more I get, you know, the thing is, is I’m always improving production wise and sound the sound wise. So as I improve production wise, I’m going like, you know what? The sounds matter a lot, like seriously, and this is what I teach people as well, I always tell them, the sound you pick, are pretty much half of the mix, in my opinion. If you’re picking like a heavily distorted lead, putting up with a heavily distorted bass and heavily distorted drums, how are you going to expect all of that to work? So again, going back, it’s the sounds play a huge role in that. And again, I’m not saying it just to be like, hey, go buy some sounds calm. It’s, it’s truthfully that that’s the biggest thing man like, and again, that’s something I’m glad I can offer people. And the more I’m doing it, the more I’m starting to realize how important that is.
Yeah, it is very important. The sound design aspect, it’s something you know what I was taught. So I joined the I joined l gates producer dojo for a little while, and was checking that out. And he talks about doing sound design, having days where you’re just doing sound design, or just a session, you know, where you spend an hour to two. And what that does is one, you obviously learn better sound design, you also learn how to make sounds work with each other. And you’ll always have fresh new sounds for your next session. And this is something that I quickly learned, yes, is very true. And something that I also try to teach as many producers as possible. And when you start doing that, you do realize how important sound design eight is. Such a major part of sound selection is such a major part of production and mixing. And when you figure that out, your world changes. And suddenly, you want to spend more time on sound design. And as you start spending more time on sound design, which is why partially why I wanted to have you in here is you start building up these massive banks of sounds that no one has about you. And if you’re a producer who’s wanting to be full time, if you’re wanting to make money, if you’re wanting to tour, you’re wanting to do all these things, you know, it used to be 10 years ago, you could just do that you could just DJ Yeah, you could just be a DJ, and then all of a sudden people were producing is like, okay, now you have to write music. And now we’re in this weird stage. And within the last five years or so, where it’s no longer you can just be a DJ and just be a producer, you have to be so much more than that, you have to be doing something that can help supplement what you’re wanting to do. Now, I say it through, like, very consistently, I say it not everyone’s like you will get the, you know, the the 1% of people who can just be a producer. And then they learn how to DJ and they have all these fans, and they’re touring, and that’s all they’re doing. That happens, you know, they’re the Martin Garrix is there are the hard wells, there are these people who will be huge, and a lot of that has to do with either, you know, maybe they have a family member involved in the business or they know people. Um, and so they can really get jumped in front of a lot of people just do that. However, for the sheer majority of us, we’re gonna have to find something that can help supplement our career that we’re gonna love. And that still applies to what we’re doing. So sound design is a big one that I talked about in my podcast. Now, I haven’t had a sound designer on here does that stuff full time. So I’m very happy. You’re the one on here talking about this because it is a it’s a possibility for almost every producer, especially if you’re improving and you’re constantly working on sound design you can in with things like splice, like you were saying before, you know, you saw a point where Okay, these guys aren’t adding enough value to me, and I’m losing out on this income. Let me take this leap in this direction, see what happens. And it was probably the best decision you could have made. And like you mentioned earlier, similar to producers releasing on a record label, it comes down to Okay, do you just want to make soundpack just make the soundpack and put it on splice and promote it a little bit and see what happens or get these contracts these other businesses you can do that to dip your foot in the water and see how it is. And then, you know this is something I talked about with producers and record labels a lot is whether or not they want to self release or release with a record label and really it comes down to how much work do you want to put in. If you want to self release, you have to be prepared to come up with like six week promo plan, either like pre release, and post release, you know, get some videos together, get some, you know, if you want to run some ad campaigns, like you have to get all this stuff together follow through with that promo plan. And it could very well work out for you like you could get a really good track that gets traction, you get 10 20,000, listens your playlisted. And you get all of the royalties from that. But also, you got to look at how much time did you spend on that. So if you don’t want to do that, if you’d rather save your time, that’s why you’d want to go with a record label is the majority of the time the record label is going to help out with that sort of stuff. And it’s the same thing with business, especially with sound design businesses, you have third party companies that are sitting in waiting for you to bring your sound pack to them. So they can collect passive income. And it I mean, it’s the same with you as well, like, you can create passive income with this sort of stuff, you know, relatively because I’m sure there’s a timeframe where that soundpack kind of dives dies off, you have to release a new one. But, um, you can just release with these companies take a cut, you know, take a pay, cut, percentage cut, that’s good, there’s a lot of different avenues that you can take is the point. And if you’re doing sound design, if you’re a producer not doing sound design, one, I do think you should go buy sound packs, because you can hear and you know, reverse engineer sounds to see how producers are making stuff. But still, you should definitely be making your own sounds, there’s a lot of opportunity to one in you know, improve your tracks with your own sound, but then also build up a bank to promote sell. And I’m a huge proponent of collecting emails for email lists. And there’s not a better thing to do than give out free sounds. or collecting emails. It’s one of the tag networks. Yeah, it’s I use it, I have a sound pack that’s 90 sounds per serum, that I’m running ads out on Facebook, almost consistently like hey, you know, here’s, here’s 90 sounds for free. Just give me your email. And then I’m gonna give you really good value of my email list. And then you’ll get my marketing email. Hopefully you’ll buy into my product.
Yeah, definitely, man. Yeah, to me, try the email marketing thing out as well. You know, the thing with me, it’s, it’s more like, I love what I do. And it’s like, I know, I should be doing like email marketing, throwing ads on stuff, but like going back to when I read those books, which I that’s what we learned that stuff. I think the one that spoke to me more was the content marketing to be I hate and that’s just me personally, I hate, like shoving my product down people’s throats constantly. I’m not gonna name who but there’s some companies out there that just take it a little overboard with that. And, and every person I talked to, that’s a producer, and we get into discussions like this, they always bring it up and they’re like, yeah, fucking annoying. I just wanted the pack. And now I’m getting constantly bombarded. So that’s just me though. Like, I personally hate doing that. So I stick with, like you said, just content, giving them good content on YouTube and on Instagram value. I read a book, like I said, and that’s where I learned majority of this stuff. Even though I was already doing it. I just finally put like a name to it and like to the strategy, but I guess people also feel thankful that hey, you know, I learned I owe this guy a lot. And they, they want to help you out. They want to support you, as well. So for me that that is like the biggest way for me that I saw soundbanks YouTube videos, Instagram videos with good information. I don’t sell the pack like that. I say, hey, so I’m using this pack and will support me the best way to do it. If you like the sounds in the video can see yourself using it right? And they just, you know, again, they see it they see Okay, wow, this guy did it really fast made it look so easy. Maybe I need this pack. I’m helping them out. And that works for me really well.
So Graham Cochran, who I was telling you about before, if you guys don’t know who Graham Cochran is he started the record recording revolution, which is a course all about recording musicians and artists and whatnot. instruments. And he made seven figures off of that business wildly successful. I mean, this is Yeah, this is the strategy that he talks about. He’s like, he tells everyone screw paid advertising, all like content is king. You know Gary Vee talks about this a lot. But Graham Cochran especially this is that’s how he got his business so successful. So I think it was back in like 2010 or 2011. He decided he was going to create 35 minute videos and release a video every single day teaching someone something new, about mixing about mastering about recording on in post on YouTube for 30 days in this blew up. I mean, it was getting sent everywhere, his account blew up and through this, he realized that there’s a lot of value in content and so he started doubling down on that and now How he runs all of his businesses. He doesn’t run any paid marketing. It is just through content.
Yeah, I mean, I agree with that, that it’s I see, first off, it’s free. You’re just investing your time. And again, I feel like the value and the way you generate those sales, you’re more likely to get a superfan and people that Yeah, I with the vibe with it, like they’ll support you. They become super fans as you share it. And they share care
share.
There you go. That’s again, those who care share. Yeah, man, honestly, that that’s just my like, again, I love that style that he did. And maybe I did learn a bit from because I used to watch some of his videos, even though I don’t record stuff, but I know who he is. I’ve seen his videos, he have a lot of a lot of views. And yeah, I could definitely see that man. It’s good to hear he that’s the strategy for all.
Yeah, that’s all he does, you should check out so you know, there’s something about there’s something about us producers that I talk about, talk about breaking a lot. And that’s the fact that we feel like we need to do it on be at all, you know, we need to do all the sound design, we need to make all of our own samples, we need to mix it all we need to master it all we need to promote it all, we need to do everything. And I’m very much so against doing every single thing. I think it’s important to find what you’re really good at double down on that find out what you’re weakened in either offs, you know, give that to someone else to outsource. Yeah, outsource it, do whatever you can to not have to do the stuff you suck at and just focus on what you’re good at. Because that’s going to always bring you up way higher than trying to bring everything so even keel. So you mentioned like I’ve tried him, I feel like I need to do email marketing. I feel like I need to do one you found what works. Stick with that. And so there’s a book you should read called the one thing by Gary Keller, I think I’ll put in the show notes also send you a link to a copy of it. Really good book. And it’s basically talking about do you know about the 8020 principle? No. So the 8020 principle is another really good book that you should read, I think by Richard Cod, I believe. But it’s about this theory that is pretty much set in stone, it’s what almost true through and through, you could have 95 five, you could have 9010, but there’s always this principle that’s broken down usually on average 8020. So 20% of what you’re doing is causing like 80% of your success. And then 80% of what you’re doing is or and then you can do the flip side of like 20% of what you’re doing is causing 80% of your stress. And so you want to find out where these 8020s lie, and basically the 20% that is giving you a majority of your success, just dive into that because you can cut out 80% of the bullshit and focus in on the one thing and then like this book, the one thing takes the 8020 principle and then breaks that down into like another 8020 so you can find the one thing you can do that’s going to give you ultimately the most success possible. Um, and I mean, you pretty much have found your one thing which is YouTube and YouTube is so so i a lot of my business is based around content and just providing value that I am so about providing value. This podcast is about providing value, the articles I write are about providing value, my emails, almost everything is about providing value because I want to help out other producers. And my next stage is going to be YouTube at some point I’m gonna have to transition because video videos content King and it’s just improving. But you got into a game, I think probably early on Oh yeah. Perfect. Perfect Point. I mean YouTube is you talk about this, you know, people feel creating superfans people feeling like they owe you and there’s this reciprocity rule in in mold. Yeah, in marketing, where it’s very much so like I was talking about in the webinar, you know, when they give you the best free piece of content, when you give away a lot of really good free content, psychologically, what happens with a lot of people, whether they realize it or not, they feel they’re, they are indebted to you in some, somewhere to this some sense of the word. And there was testing done actually, in this office where this guy, they had a couple of different test groups where they were gonna ask for a favor and one of the test groups would go in and just ask for the favor from someone and it was something like 80% of it got struck down. They said no, but then they had another test group where this guy would go in and bring a soda and they would give the soda to the person and say, Hey, here you go, or they would make them a cup, a cup of coffee, they would just bring something in that they didn’t expect and give it to them for free. And then they asked for the favor in it the success rate instead of being like 80% No, it was more like 80% Yes, because they felt they were indebted, whether or not they actually, really were not. So that’s what you kind of drive drive to with this recipe or with content in dividing value is people feel. They almost feel indebted, they’re like this person has held, they’ve taken the time to help me out, the least I could do is buy their product or support them in X, Y, or Z. So you’re nailing on something really key there. And it is that reciprocity rule of creating YouTube videos.
No, yeah, that’s the thing. That’s why, like you said, you know, started early on notice Lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of DJs producers and dance music have started making videos now. It could be because of that, mainly, you know, super creating super fans, and again, providing content, so people indulge in their music as well. And that’s the big thing. So I’ve been seeing a lot of producers now on Instagram, tick tock, doing their thing. And, and yeah, I think it’s smart man. It’s it’s definitely smart. Not that educated on that. But it feels to work for them. It’s working for them.
Yeah, the one you you kind of hit on something early on is the you saw where you were, well, you saw in your career where you might be lacking in and it was the audience, you’re like, I need an audience. How can I create an audience, your YouTube tutorial videos. And then I mean, it’s just it sets it in stone right there. And you have an audience, if you release a track and say, hey, I’ve got this track I released, I bet you’ve got almost instantly a specific amount of views, because you have a specific amount of super fans that are going to listen to it every single time exactly
my thing. If we take away the sound, the sound aspect of it, let’s say I wanted to make money from music now. Is how, like, How valuable is audience I have already, right? Because I see it. I don’t know if this is a mistake from a lot of producers or not, maybe you can give your input on it. But what I have students saying I want to do content marketing, because I do talk to them about it. They always ask me what they should be doing. The problem with I see is a lot of them cater to other producers. So I don’t know if that’s the right way to take it. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I’ll make like, like posts about like, how to make an online like, I’m like, Well, how is that gonna? Bring the audience you want? Yes. Right. So when I see people doing that, and they’re just promoting music, I feel like it’s a little bit wasted time. In all honesty, the ones I feel and again, not educated. Just hunch the ones that work best are the ones creating content with their music, and content with their, with their knowledge of production, and making content that is enjoyable for even the average person that doesn’t make music. Yes to even built right. But they’re gonna like it. So remixes fun little videos where like, I’m gonna flip this sample, and it’s like, 30 minutes. 30 seconds. Sorry. I feel those are the best, but
I know I agree. No. 100% So there’s a couple of different types of value that you can provide to people now you and I we cater to a very specific we know who our target target audience Yeah, we know who we need to be purchasing our sound or you know, your sound packs my mixing and mastering services. So we’re going to cater to a very specific audience, your YouTube channel, you’re going to give away the your best knowledge. This is how I made this sound. Is there this sound? And so they’ll recreate it? But then they’ll go, you know, like, what, like the webinar? free content, what’s in the paid one, let me get that I can reverse engineer whatever. At that point. I don’t care you’ve made the sale. Um, and so I should you don’t care that they’re re you know, reverse engineering yourself, that they’re they’re utilizing some sort of skill set that you’ve been able to teach them. You still care about them?
Oh, yeah. No, I care about the Yeah, yeah. As long as as long as I’m providing value. That’s that’s the important thing. So going back you say reverse in your presets. Totally agree they can do that. But the other thing I noticed, you know, with business, you always want to solve a problem or, or, or as the way I teach my kids, you want to make someone’s life easier or save them time. That’s what I feel like I’m doing for people. Yeah, saving them time. You know, a lot of these sounds in these packs, sometimes that I make I take hours to learn how to make them or recreate them from their favorite artists. And again, I’m doing all that and that’s time they’re going to be saving because it could go into Oh, that’s how that sound is made. Rather than them going eight hours 10 hours just trying to figure it out for themselves or one
sound and Wyo others at more. I you know what, I’d rather just spend the 40 or $50 on the whole pack, and then I can dive right into making a really good track. So going back to the types of value though, like I said, we know our target audience. So we’re to cater to that audience you know, this podcast is for EDM producers, the business industry, about the business industry. Now if you’re just a producer, wanting to be a DJ, the best person that I can point to which this was actually in a meetup group that was in my buddy, Alex, he goes by loesche ello w SH if you guys are if anyone if anyone’s listening right now go on tik tok. look him up and see how he’s creating content. He’s creating content way different than you know what we’re talking about in our businesses the type of content we’re creating is accurate we’re targeting the right people. That doesn’t mean that’s the right target audience for you as a producer if you’re just trying to get more listeners and more fans because you know if your target you’re making like you said these tutorial videos on production on mixing, yes, you are getting other producers but what are you what are you wanting them to be fans, you could get fans from them but that that’s such a niche and such a tiny audience that you’re focusing too much of your time on. Rather than creating value in entertainment. There is a shit ton of value in entertainment. People always want to be entertained, they want to laugh, they want to cry, they want to be angry they you know, they want these emotions drawn out of them. So you can create that type of content you’re gonna build superfans like that. Loesch is a very good person to look at in terms of if you’re wanting another great one would be Dillon Francis. That’s a much more common Oh, yeah, he creates super fans that never would have been super fans. If he didn’t create the content. He great, hilarious comedy videos. You even have some comedy videos on your YouTube channel, which are like some of your biggest ones too. It looks like they’ve got over 100,000 views on some of them. Yeah, and Loesch is doing the same thing. He had a video go viral on Tiktok that got over like 200,000 likes, I think over a million watches because he was creating content that was hilarious on tik tok. And he’s still doing that sort of stuff. So he’s catering to the right audience, and showcases his own music and some of them as well, while also pertaining to a comical sense. So yes, you’re 100% spot on is, you know, if you want to go this omnipresent content strategy that Frankie here has done, but you don’t necessarily have a product to sell or want to sell a product. I mean, granted your music, if you’re selling your your music is your product, you have to cater to that fanbase. And if you you know, you got to create funny YouTube videos, you have to create funny videos to post on igtv on tik tok, you have to if you want to go the content route, you have to go the entertaining, entertaining route. If you’re playing in big in front of big crowds, that’s a really good way of you know, you can cut that stuff up into music videos, or whatever, or just post a video of you playing in front of a crowd, people are going to look at that. And they get the sense of, Oh, I want to be a part of that group too. So I’m going to like you and follow you. So part of that in circle that’s that you’re entertaining. There’s a lot. Yeah, there’s a lot of really interesting psychological facts that go into, you know, gaining support and fans, and, you know, the whole marketing aspect of the industry.
Oh, yeah, definitely, man. And, and again, it’s, it’s just looking at what your music is about, as well, who’s gonna who’s gonna essentially buy your music, it’s the biggest thing. So if you have a very, let’s say, party ish music, music you listen to and you go out and have fun with your friends. And, again, you’re trying to target those people. So you need to make content for that. But if you make a more serious music, like chill, like, for instance, me right now making a lot of like, chill, deep sort of stuff. For me, if I were to do content for that music, I would probably take a different approach to it, then making videos that again, are funny, so I’ll probably make like, maybe like, I tie that a lot to nature stuff, hiking, going, going to beautiful places. So I could get I could use that sort of like music, and make content that will fit it. So if let’s say I have a very chill deep song, and it sounds a little bit like Yosemite or something, then I could maybe go there and create a video based on that I could go viral or again, get the right demographic into it now, yes. Not just random people that are gonna be like, this is boring.
Right? Right. You got to target you got to find that target audience and then you got to test you know, it’s not you know, that first piece of content is never gonna blow up unless you’re lucky. In which case, there’s your one thing dive into whatever that is because it works otherwise. Yeah. Otherwise you got to kind of, you know, spread it out, make a bunch of different types of videos, find out what works and find what’s working. Let’s kind of shift focus because it’s been I tried As we’re recording this, I’m kind of going over my head, I’m like, Fuck, what am I gonna call this episode because there’s a lot of really good, we’re dropping a lot of really good knowledge, it’s definitely going to be based on the sound design aspect. But I love to shift focus over into the YouTube world, because this is how you have utilized, you know, going full time and being able to just focus on your business, which is really interesting, because there’s only a handful of people that you can really look at that have been able to utilize you to to support their career or, you know, promote your product. So when did you really see your YouTube channel start to blow up? And what type of content was that?
So here’s the thing, YouTube channel for me, has been a slow grind, it didn’t blow Blow blow up. But consistency
is key
to when all this stuff we’re talking about in terms of content consistency is key.
Yeah, so for me, I think it was the biggest one was when I shifted from trance over to what was in at the time, which was big room and and shifting to big room. That’s where I saw the bigger subscribers coming in, you know, people subscribing and more followers when I started targeting that stuff, which was the mainstream at that point. And from there, I started realizing you know what, back then my videos looked a little crappy. Just OBS record info straight away, no, no introduction, no, no personality to it. And once I started adding more personality to it, and started making videos like, not how to get this lead, but how to how to use the lead as well. That’s when as well like the the viewers increased, and the subscribers increased like heavily. And other than that, it’s just been a slow grind, man, it’s slow grind and try to make stuff that I like as well. Like if I’m making a certain style of music, and that’s what I’m about. That’s what I’m gonna make I try not to follow the trends too much. Because I feel like that’s a one way ticket to just hating what you’re doing if you’re not making the content that you like, essentially. Yeah, so for me, that’s just been a slow grind. Now, going back, you took the comedy videos, got a lot of plays, and all that that is true, they did. The thing I felt with the comedy videos, again, going back to hitting the right demographic was that the comedy videos, I felt like didn’t really return a good ROI. So in time, it would take me a while to make them. But I felt like the people watching those videos weren’t going to be people buying and supporting the work that I do is more for entertainment. Yeah, it’s nice to see the views and whatnot. Like, yeah, I got 100,000 views, right. But again, I didn’t feel value in those people watching it. Like it wasn’t the right thing. I feel more valuable. The more educational ones that I make to be honest.
Definitely. Yeah, I can probably Yeah, I can 100% agree with that. It Yeah, it just comes back to your target audience. Who are you? It does, you know, provide some value to people. But is it the right audience that you’re wanting to hit on? You know, it’s, um, sure is fun to film, and do that sort of stuff and hang out with friends? And, you know, just enjoy yourself. But yeah, it does come down to how much time are you spending on that sort of stuff? Exactly. Man, what is that return? And was the return worth it?
Yeah. And and, you know, going back to two people going on YouTube right now, mainly producers going into it just straight up, trying to make money off the ads as well. I don’t think that’s the right way to take it. Because ads on YouTube have been going down. Like, I get about 500,000 views a month from my videos. And I only make about 800 or 1000, which you know, to some people might be okay, that’s cool. But unless you’re getting in like a million views, or 2 million per video, that’s where you’re gonna see money that you can really sustain yourself on. So, so again, going back to that the views for me were never like, if I get 100,000 views, it means more sales. It’s more about again, if I get 5000 views on a video, but the info is good. And the right people are there niching that down even further. I feel like there’s more value in that even though that video might generate maybe like $10 instead of, you know, like, let’s say 500. I know the the return on investment is better, because there’s a product that I have tied. Yeah,
yeah, there’s, you know, it’s the same thing with raising rates. Whenever you raise rates, or there’s it, there’s interesting math here. So if you’re charging a product that is $200. Let’s take mixing, mastering, for instance, if you get a client, let’s say you’re getting two clients per month, each of them are paying $200 per mix and master you’re doing two tracks. You have to deal with two clients and you get $400. Now, why don’t you raise your rate to $400 because now all you need is one client one track. That’s all you have to deal with. And that’s a very simplified version of that. But I mean dummy even down let’s say you let’s say you need to make $400 a month. you’re charging $100 per track, that means you have to get four clients for the entire month. Now, if you again, what’s double the rate, if you go to $200 per track, now you only need two clients. So you do 50% of the work, and dump it down even further go to 400, you’re only working with one client, you’re doing the one thing that you need to do. And it certainly might be a little bit more difficult to find that client. But the point is, is you’re going to make the same amount of money for less work. You can draw the exact same conclusion with your videos where if you create you know, those comedy videos, sure, maybe you got an extra thousand subscribers through that, you know, maybe you’re you’re hitting your your views went up, your likes went up, you’re kind of in the algorithm a little bit more. That’s great. But are those thousand people gonna do anything? Now let’s say you were to make some sort of sound design tutorial, and you’re mentioning your products in it and you only get 10,000 views, you get maybe 50 subscribers add that Well, those 50 subscribers might be super fans, whereas the thousand we’re not even close to being a superfan, those 50 subscribers are going to spend infinitely more money than those 1000 subscribers that is your time spent way more, there’s way more value in that time spent rather than the you know, the comedic video. Oh,
right on man. And and you know, I get comments on my videos too. And followers that I have that know me for a while and they’re like, you’ll send How do you feel like this guy getting so many plays versus you and, and stuff? And I always tell them? He might be getting more than me. But, you know, I’m I know for sure I’m making more I him like I it’s it’s it’s it’s nasty to say that. But
it’s true. It’s it comes down to that value added like what are you doing
to add value? Exactly mad? It’s as sad as it is for me to say like that, because I like to be very humble about this. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It’s, it’s again, it’s like people think that success on YouTube means having millions of plays. And again, if you’re in it for that, like that’s, that’s the business goal is to get as many views as possible. And yeah, definitely success. But if you’re if your goal is to just sell a product or get people to, to know about you and high quality, again, going back to that, then I feel like no, I’m doing better than him. Because again, the videos he’s making are just all over. And also a lot of people that start off and they get a lot of views. Again, like when I started off, they don’t really have a product to sell. And right now the way I feel YouTube is if you make a YouTube channel, at least have something to sell to supplement the the bad ad revenue you’re gonna be getting because again, 50,000 plays is nothing you need millions of plays to be able to make a good living off your YouTube ad revenue for say. So for me, it’s all about that, again, having a product, good quality that you believe in, that will help people and then making videos to draw those right people in rather than just drawing in, like the masses. Mm hmm. That that’s the biggest thing.
The other thing we’re not hitting on to is the fulfillment of your life to when you really shift that focus. Yeah, I mean, even just 10 degrees in the other direction where you go from, I want views to you know, actually want to help people out. It’s like, when you if you if you are making content that’s focused on views, and you make one piece of content that’s more focused on helping out people and improve improving their life, you know, whether or not we’re talking about production, or not that the fulfillment from that is it. I mean, I it’s, it is incredible when I get a new review on iTunes, or wherever, or someone joins my, the podcast group on Facebook, and the people. I mean, people are saying the nicest things, which I don’t mean, I’m not trying to toot my own horn, you know, like you I’m trying to be humble, but how, like the feeling it gives you when someone’s like this is, I mean, I have learned so much. This is incredible. I’m bingeing the podcast, because there’s so much value, when they’re saying stuff like that when they’re like this is extremely valuable. That makes me want to make more content that makes me want to make more episodes, it makes me want to do more, and help out more people because that is way more fulfilling to be like, you know what, I actually helped someone out today, rather than I got a bunch of views today. That’s I mean, they’re two completely different worlds. It feels completely different.
No, it does I agree with you. I agree with you hundred percent on that. I always tell my wife to I’m like, if I didn’t do this for a living I wouldn’t have Instagram or Facebook or none of that. Yeah, I just don’t like the whole aspect of it. You know, the because sometimes I’ll have videos right that I know are good. They don’t get as many views and I just have issues with that like going like, maybe I’m just not good enough and the imposter syndrome. Yeah, exactly that we were talking About before the podcast, but for me that that’s just the biggest thing. So as long as I’m making good videos, I’m like, the information is super good in this video Like I’m like, huh? Yeah, and it only gets 5000 At least I have that satisfaction knowing that I put in all my work and the people are gonna get that value, I’m gonna help someone today
someone will find it someone is going to find it in, they’re gonna find it to be very useful. I experienced the same thing with you know, I’ll have podcast episodes I do solo then like, this was awesome. This is fucking great. And then it gets like the lowest views I’m like, Okay, well, you know, a couple of things I’m being told one, they don’t really care about this topic. But, um, you know, it’s someone’s gonna find it, someone’s gonna, you know, those super fans are going to listen to it, and they’re gonna see value in it. It’s the same thing with you know, you’ve got people who have the notification bell on for you. So as soon as you upload something, they’re gonna jump into it. And they’re gonna be like, this is great. This is, this is what I needed today. And they’re gonna get hyped up there go. I’m jumping in the studio today.
No, yeah, definitely. So that’s the biggest thing. And again, I hate putting it down the business. But biggest, biggest, biggest sales come from those videos either way. That’s, that’s number one thing. So. So again, you know, if the views, just good content that people want to watch, and, again, you will get people interested in what you’re doing eventually. Mm hmm.
Yeah, I agree. Um, do you have anything else? I mean, I think we’ve pretty much hit on everything there man.
Not Not really, man, just, you know that. That’s the biggest thing if people get content out of this podcast, everything we talked about, but again, if you’re a musician, I think YouTube Tick Tock Instagram is definitely where you want to be at and making content just make sure you’re making the right content for it. Making the right content for me, it’s, it makes sense to make content for producers. Because, again, I’m selling sound banks and samples for people, saving them time there. But if I’m making music, I’m not going to target producers, I’m going to target the demographic demographic for that music. So, you know, I had one student I did a session with who sname is topic, so I’m sure many people know him. Now. He’s on the billboards. I forgot the name of the song he just released. But it’s it’s up there. And the way he got known, he kind of sat down, he was like, This is what he told me. I looked at my demographic for this music I’m making, he’s like, a bunch of it is girls, like, girls from the ages of I think he said, ages, let’s say 18 to 24. And he’s like, I’m gonna make a Facebook ad for my song. I think it was some guy named Nick Santos or something. And I’m gonna put $10,000 into advertising for it. And he did that. And and yeah, it was it was spot on, worked for him. So again, it’s about having the right demographic as well, knowing knowing what you’re going to be doing with it. And again, if you want to do sound banks and stuff, that’s good, too. And definitely do the producer stuff, add value to the producers, right? Just know what you’re going to be doing the end of the day, who you’re targeting,
and finding that you like I said earlier, finding that 8020 principle, you know, because it’s important to I talked about this with law, younger producers, as well, as you know, don’t feel like you need to niche down into one business now, or you need to niche down into one genre. Now spread it out, you know, maybe make a couple of sound packs and send them to people see how they react, do some mixing for some people see how they react, find out what you’re good at, and then use the 8020 principle to cut the rest out. focus in on that one thing. Same thing with your demographic that that’s actually really going to make you drive forward that’s going to push you through your careers, that sort of stuff.
I agree, man. And I always tell producers, man, anything you anywhere you can save people time and frustration. offer it so like I’ve always had this idea. I hate working with vocals and auto tuning them and all that. You can always offer that. Like if you’re really good at it, just tell people Hey, I’ll do that for you for 100 $200
there is so I mean, I’ve got a buddy who does vocal production, he’s that’s what he primarily does. There’s a mastery to that there is you got to be like, if you spend the time to work on vocals and really good, good, get good at it. I mean, my buddy can tune up a vocal get it prepped and ready in under an hour a full vocal, whereas if I were to sit there and do that, it would take me three days. It’s it would not be good. So there’s an art form to that and I mean with how many producers that send me their tracks. A lot of producers need work on vocals. So it’s like it’s a product that the market you know needs the market needs more vocal producers. So I mean shit. I might I’m gonna need to find a vocal producer for this episode
on a new episode.
Yeah, anything, anything that again, again, it’s gonna save people time and make make their time making music. A lot more. enjoyable.
Yes, that’s and it’s gonna make them sound better to you actually, this is something we didn’t, we were starting to close up shop. But this is something we didn’t mention. But I’m curious about if you’ve heard of this and if you’ve utilized it, but making the hero’s journey about your customer. So think of in Star Wars. Now Luke is the big hero in the entire movie. Now, when you watch Star Wars, usually people resonate towards Luke, they want to be the hero of the story. So a lot of the times where business owners will fail is they think they’re Luke, they think they’re fighting the Empire, they think they are fighting Darth Vader, and they’re the hero of the journey in the story. And so they’ll market their products that way, as if, you know, if you come to me, this is like, you’re not going to get a mix better anywhere else. I’m the best mixing engineer, I’m the best mastering engineer you I’m the best sound designer, you’re gonna get the best sound packs for me. Whereas if you were to just flip the script and go, No, they’re the hero they’re Luke, I am a you know, I’m, I’m Han Solo, or I you know, I’m a side characters, I’m someone that’s not a primary person. And you know, not the main character, the entire story, and the entire focus. If you shift focus, put someone else’s Luke and go, you know it, if you come to me, you are going to sound incredible, your mixes are going to sound the best that they’ve ever seen. Everyone’s going to complement how good you sound and how great you are. Same with your you know, with sound packs, if you buy my sound pack, you’re going to have the your tracks are going to be amazing, you are going to sound like a legend. If you just flip that script, I mean, to again, talking about vibes, two completely different stories told they’re two completely different vibes. Do you utilize that at all?
Yeah, I didn’t know what’s called the hero’s journey or whatever. That’s a nice way to put it. It’s very nice. Very, very clean, man. Yeah, you know, what I found out about copywriting. So I think that was something I saw cymatics do first, they, when I started reading the descriptions, it wasn’t about what the pack had, or how good the pack was, it was more about how it’s going to help you, the person that’s gonna acquire the pack, so. So once I read that, and start realizing that that’s when I started doing that, so on descriptions when I do videos, or when I do like the overview for the packs, it’s all about the person. Exactly. I’m not saying I’m the best sound designer in this world, and, and you’re gonna sound like, oh, now it’s more about, you know, I go, like, I worked really hard on these sounds. And I know you guys are gonna put them to good use to make good songs, full source of inspiration for you, you know, targeting those key things that people want with sample packs and sound things at the right sound so that they don’t have to frustrate the, you know, the right samples, knowing that they can trust those samples, etc. Right. So, so yeah, it’s making it about them. I started realizing that too, because I was like, no back then I used to testimonials as well. Like, I had like a couple of people that would I would try and get to do testimonials for the vaccine, you know, stuff like this is a good pack and whatnot, which, you know, whatever. I didn’t feel value in that at all. I was like, why did I guess you know, that’s a bit of What’s that? What’s the term validation to it? Like, let’s be social, social social that that’s the best way social proof. But to me it just didn’t feel like it was doing a lot like who cares? Like they care about what they’re gonna do?
Right right. It’s almost better to showcase the sounds and you know if you can pull a quick track together and be like, this is what these sounds sound like in a full track and then you shift it to like you I trust that you’re going to be able to get inspired enough to utilize these sounds so that your track is going to sound so much better.
Exactly make it about them. Yep, all about that hero’s journey.
Awesome. Well do Do you have anything to plug
this you know if you make dance music tech house mainly that’s what I’ve been doing a lot recently and I love I do have a couple of sound sets that you can check out you like the sounds you hear and are looking for some check them out. support me in anywhere form or you can just check out the videos what’s your what’s your website? Evil sounds calm, Eb o sounds calm, not evil, because some people think it’s evil but
and I’ll even do all these links will be in the show notes for you guys to Envious audio.com slash Episode 38. Obviously, check out your YouTube channel if you haven’t Zen world his. He’s your unit funny enough. So I’ll tell a quick little story. When I first started producing, I had these mentors who would mix and master all my tracks for free for me, and I got to sit in in the sessions and they would show me how to do everything. And so that’s where I like learn to I didn’t really learn much about mastering I would just watch how it was done. I had an idea of it but when I launched my video mastering studio two years ago, I went to you, you have a mastering video that you have on it’s a very basic one. But I that’s the video that I watched and I basically took what I knew from my mentors and then took your video merged, merge them together. And that’s how I started mastering for clients two years ago. So it was I mean you are part of the reason why I’m here today with a studio so funny enough there’s a story there.
Yeah, that mastering video man, I don’t know how I feel about the content in it that that Ott in there that Ott I still question it to this day, but
it’s people I think a lot of our producers don’t understand the with mastering everything is just little touch just the little, little tiny bit if you’re doing anything and so a lot of producers overdo Ott and just in general and then if you tell them to Oh, hey, try Oh, TT and mastering that might be a lot. Well pump the brakes there.
Exactly. But that Ott I don’t I’ve seen it come up, I do educate myself. I have subscription to Sonic Academy, which is a good website for tutorials. And I’ve seen it come up a lot. Some people are starting to use it on their masters again, lightly like 10 6% because it adds a really nice shine, nice harmonics.
It gives you really nice like crispy harmonics, especially up in the higher frequency range. I use a little bit of saturation in conjunction with Ott and it really brightens everything up within adding just very slight layers without actually like boosting you know the highs way up with an EQ or
something. Yeah, the Elon Musk Yeah, all that when I see that. Trying to go to the moon
That’s hilarious. Oh, man. Oh, man.
Frankie, thank you so much for hanging out. Dude. This was awesome. Super insightful. Um, we’ll have to stay in touch and yeah, definitely keep keep killing it. You are you are pushing the business world of the EDM industry. And I’m loving it, dude, keep up with it.
Appreciate you. Thank you for having me. It’s nice talking here.
All right, take care of dude. Take care. Well, guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode. That was a ton of fun hanging out with Frankie. I know he’s got a shit ton of great videos. I’m sure a lot of you who are listening to this have watched some of his videos. And you may have even probably use some of his sounds whether you realize it or not, even if he just grabbed him off splice or wherever. But if you guys want to check out some more of his stuff, I will have all the links on the show notes at Envious audio.com slash Episode 38. I’ll have his YouTube channel, Evo sounds, website, all that information. So you can go check it out. If you don’t know who he is highly recommend pretty much everything he’s doing on YouTube. As always head to facebook.com and join the Facebook community electronic dance money community, say what’s up. You have any questions or you need any help with anything, make a post in there. There’s plenty of people. A lot of the guests who have been on this podcast are in that group. They are more than willing to answer any questions help you out with anything. Other than that, take care. Hope you guys have a great day. Whatever day it is, and I’ll see you next time.