Interview with Sammy Arriaga

What's going on?! It is Adam. Welcome back to bringing it backwards. A podcast where both legendary and rising artists tell their own personal stories of how they achieve stardom. On this episode, we had a chance to chat with Sammy Arriaga over zoom video. Sammy was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and he talks about how he got into music. He was always singing in the chorus and the choir. And around 14 years old, he picked up the guitar and started to learn Spanish guitar. He was always a writer. He used to just jot stuff down, which ended up becoming lyrics. But when he got the guitar, he was able to put these lyrics to chords and melody. And then he started writing his first songs. 3 (1m 32s): He became really into country music around 10th, 11th grade. He moved to Nashville to pursue a career in songwriting. He talked about getting an opportunity to go to Beverly Hills, to write for a Latino artist that landed him a publishing deal. When he got back to Nashville, he wrote a record, eventually left the deal with the label he was on and started releasing music on his own. Within the past two years, he became really fascinated by NFTs and just dove into that world. Recently, he's been tokenizing his music and he's been selling them as NFT. So he gets real deep, deep dive into the NFT world and basically shows you how you can make money on your songs right now, as an independent artist with no label, nothing. 3 (2m 19s): And he talks about the song Metta girl, which is the first one he has released as an NFT and how it's sold over $250,000. You can watch our interview is Sammy on our Facebook page and YouTube channel at bringing it backwards. It would be rad if you subscribe to our channel like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and tick-tock at bringing back pod. And if you're listening to this on Spotify or apple music, Google podcast, it would be amazing if you follow us there as well, and hook us up with a five-star review. 4 (2m 52s): We'd appreciate your support. If you follow and subscribe to our podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts, 3 (2m 58s): We're bringing it with Sammy Arriaga what's up Sammy? How are you? 5 (3m 4s): Hey, good morning. How's it going? 3 (3m 6s): I'm doing well. How are you? 5 (3m 8s): Great here at the w hotel in Nashville. 3 (3m 11s): Oh, very cool. I'm in Nashville, south as well, or south of Nashville. Williamson county by Franklin area. 5 (3m 21s): Oh dude. Awesome. I love that area. That's where I'm gonna retire. 3 (3m 26s): Oh yeah. Right on. 5 (3m 27s): Yeah. It's so peaceful. 3 (3m 29s): I mean, yeah. You see you live in Nashville. You're just staying at the w 5 (3m 32s): I live. I've been living here for 12 years now. 3 (3m 35s): Oh my gosh. That's amazing. What a place to live. That's so cool. 5 (3m 40s): Yeah, man. I love it. It's perfect for what I do, right? 3 (3m 43s): Yeah, for sure. Awesome. 5 (3m 46s): Your microphone is so Chris. 3 (3m 48s): Oh, thank you. I just use like this DBX little compressor. That sounds good. 5 (3m 57s): Awesome. 3 (3m 57s): Thank you. Yeah. So this podcast about you, your journey in music, and obviously I want to talk to you all about this, the NFTs that you've started and that whole journey, because I actually interviewed somebody yesterday, who also, Ooh, I'd never, I mean, I'd heard of, and it music NFTs, it's just through one artist. I'd interviewed who this guy reign, who was a singer of our lady peace. And what he did with the new re his new record was you could kind of invest in the songs and own, like, I guess you'd own a little bit of the, the licensing or publishing. So like, if the song did well, you would make, make money off of that because you're an investor in that song. 3 (4m 39s): But the person that I spoke to yesterday has has a different concept. And I think it's similar to what you have going on. And I'd just love to hear your side. And then I can kind of, because I just learned about this literally yesterday from this list, other artists, it'd be cool to kind of vibe and see what, see what you're doing and if it compares at all, or maybe it's something completely different. 5 (4m 60s): Yeah, totally. I mean, I feel like the cool thing about the blockchain is like, you can literally do anything you want. I mean, it's literally your intellectual property and you can kind of, you know, piece it to your, to your liking. You know, you can customize it in infinite amount of ways. So I've seen people where they, fractionalize what, you know, 50% of the master of their song, where they'll like divide, like the 50% of the master into like five tiers, each tier being a different rarity. And based on which rarity you buy, you get a certain amount of percentage back when the song gets streamed and stuff. So, I mean, and then there's ways that there's artists that are getting full IP rights to their music that they they're just like saying it's yours. 5 (5m 47s): You know what I'm saying? And I feel like that's the future. I mean, it's literally like something that I've considered doing because, you know, for years, it's all, it's always been like, how do I keep full ownership? How do I keep full ownership? And now the conversation's kind of flipped on its head. And now it's like a novel conversation is how do I give all my rights away to my fans? You know? So it's like a matter of like learning how to just like master that, you know, and make sure I stayed protected and stuff. So I'm just excited for the future of man. 3 (6m 15s): It's crazy, man. It's, it's so cool to hear, but yeah, we'll get into that for sure. But first off, were you born and raised in Nashville or not from here? 5 (6m 25s): No, actually I was born in Miami, Florida. Spanish. Spanish is actually my first language. I was raised in a Cuban American household with two strong Latin women. Okay. What you call latch on clever to make, to make sure I'm in line, but I'm very, I'm very proud of that, that you know of my upbringing and stuff and my culture. So I discovered country music in high school because I, I taught myself how to play the guitar on YouTube. And I figured that country music was the John Rush to play guitar. And so, and I also 3 (6m 59s): Covered some the truth 5 (7m 1s): That's right. And I figured that, you know, since I love storytelling so much and lyrics and stuff, you know, with growing up with rap and hip hop, being so storyteller, I felt like the marriage, the marriage of the guitar and Storytime was perfect. So I moved to Nashville in 2011 and been here ever since. 3 (7m 20s): Wow. Did you so real quick, so you got into country music. What age were you playing guitar and learning on YouTube? 5 (7m 28s): I started like teaching myself guitar when I was like 14, 15. Yeah. I mean, in like my middle school days, I used to like mainly sing pop and like rap and hip hop and stuff, but it wasn't like my <inaudible>, I just did it because I loved it. But like I knew that music was like my calling sometime around like my senior year or like my 11th year of high school. And that's when I really started like taking it seriously. And also realizing that country music had a huge void for a Hispanic representation. 3 (8m 2s): Yeah, for sure. 5 (8m 4s): You know, in, in a, in a, not very diverse John rhe. So I decided to move to Nashville to kind of, you know, represent my culture and try to be the black sheep. And 3 (8m 15s): Yeah. I love that. Yeah. That's so cool. That is so cool. So prior to that, you said you were singing pop music and R and B, like, was that something you were always good at or into like, were you in the chorus choir, stuff like that growing up? 5 (8m 28s): Yeah. So funny story. I was in the choir, but since I didn't really, I wasn't a choir singer that kind of liked to fit in. I just kind of sang, you know, I let my vocal chords do its thing and the teacher didn't really like that. She was all about like blending, blending, blending, and I just kind of did my own thing and she kind of grew frustrated and she ended up kicking me out of court. 3 (8m 53s): Oh, 5 (8m 53s): Wow. Yeah. And I wasn't even doing anything. I was just literally being myself and she's like, you need to learn how to blend in. And I'm like, okay. I just didn't, I wasn't, I don't know. I just had my thoughts on that. And she didn't like it very much and I got kicked out acquire, and then I, I ended up picking up guitar class and I became very close with the guitar teacher and he taught me how to play the Spanish guitar really nicely. Oh, 3 (9m 19s): Cool. 5 (9m 20s): Yeah. So I learned how to finger pick and stuff, which is like something that a lot of people don't really like. 3 (9m 25s): That's so cool. Yeah. That's something I wish I would've learned. Like when I, I can play, you know, three power cores in the truth, but I, I wish I learned that when I was learning guitar, like I've always felt envious of people that could do the finger picking. I mean, it's just, so it sounds so cool. It's the coolest sounding. 5 (9m 46s): It's amazing. I'm just very blessed that I was able to pick up that talent and YouTube man, YouTube is a YouTube university is the best blessing we've ever received. 3 (9m 55s): So, 5 (9m 57s): So yeah, man, it's been fun. Yeah. I mean, I live here in Nashville, still pursuing music and kind of, I still kind of do country music, but ever since then, like discovering blockchain and like web three, like there's really no John era, you know what I mean? It's just kind of like, whatever resonates with your fans, that's the kind of music I like to make, whatever the fans want. So, 3 (10m 17s): Well, I'm curious, so you, what do you start writing songs in 10th, 11th grade or 12th grade? Like how did, when did you said like around that time is when you knew that music was your calling? I would point where you was it all original stuff that you're doing. Was there a moment that was somebody tell you like, hell dude, like, you're so good at songwriting. You need to pursue this as a career. 5 (10m 37s): You know, it's funny because when you say like, what year did you start writing songs? I guess that's all like, if I thought they were songs, like, you know, I just wrote a bunch of lyrics and it sounded cool and put melody to them, but like I never really finished them. They were just kind of like little rough drafts or ideas, you know, but it wasn't until I moved to Nashville in 2011 that like, I really like solidified the idea that the idea of like, I finished a song like, oh, this is done. You know, Nashville's like life source and bread and butter is songwriting. I mean, this is a writing music town. 5 (11m 19s): And so when I first moved here, I was instantly told, like, if you don't got good songs, you ain't gonna make it. Right. And so, and so I had to become a yes man and right with every single person that, you know, that I met on the street or at an event and just like collaborate and collaborate on until I had a huge portfolio. So that whenever I had these awesome meetings with publishers and labels, that I had something to show, you know, and I also wanted to have options because, you know, if you have three songs and that's it and they all suck. Right. 3 (11m 51s): You're right. 5 (11m 51s): You're kind of stuck 3 (11m 53s): So much for that. Right, right. 5 (11m 54s): Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I just kinda went through the whole, like five-year town kind of thing, you know, bombarded my schedule with, with co-writing sessions, with other writers and stuff. Some that I knew and some that I didn't and just kind of built my portfolio that way until it kind of shaped me, you know, to being a songwriter that I am today. 3 (12m 12s): And with that, where you trying to get publishing deals, or did you ever land that type of like success in that sense? Cause I know you're obviously very, very successful on your own as an independent artist. And I'm curious like how you were able to kind of build that fan base and that, you know 5 (12m 30s): Yeah. So I didn't necessarily write for that, you know, for that reason, like to get a publishing deal, it just kind of like fell upon my lap, which is a huge blessing. In 2015, I had the opportunity to write for a Latin, a Spanish speaking writing camp and in Beverly Hills, California, and it was at the Gibson headquarters at the time, I was just put with a bunch of random songwriters and we all wrote for like one, one specific artist. And at the end of the camp, you know, the heads of the organizers pretty much like did like a listening party and they chose their favorites. 5 (13m 14s): And those songs were, were the ones that were like sent to the talent, right. In the process, there was a few managers there that represented some major pop acts. And one of them being a friend of mine, Charles Chavez, he ran on an independent company at the time. And it was kind of like an all-in house labeled publishing management company. And he focused on Latin speaking, like Spanish speaking artists with like diversity, I guess, with different genres and stuff. As long as they were Hispanic, he was kind of like, you know, going after them. And he came up to me and said, Hey man, I love what you do. 5 (13m 54s): And I think we should work together. Let's, let's give it a shot. So at the time I didn't really have anything going on. I was just kind of writing. So I say, you know what? This sounds fun. Let's try it. And so I ended up like signing with him and his company. I ended up doing a joint venture with him and Sony ATV out of New York city. It was my first major publishing deal. It was, it was also in, in conjunction with a major label deal out of Nashville as well with Sony Nashville, the record label side of things. And so it all just kinda like fell upon, you know, fell in my intimate world in 2015, all at once and did a whole project. I wrote with a bunch of awesome published writers and stuff. 5 (14m 37s): But I noticed that it just wasn't like the flow wasn't right for me. And I noticed that not everybody understood the vision that I had moving forward. And it just kinda like fell apart a little bit like early. And so looking back now, like a lot of people might be like, oh, that sucks. You lost your deals since you lost this and that. But at the end of the day, like people don't realize that in the music industry, sometimes that's a blessing because you know, when you, when they let you go, that's like a massive blessing. It's mostly, a lot of artists have the story of like being stuck to their deals and not being able to get out. I was actually a very luxurious situation where it didn't work out and they let me go, 3 (15m 18s): Right? And now you have the freedom to do whatever you want. 5 (15m 21s): Exactly. I was given freedom. I was able to retain my, my, my ownership of my music and, you know, ironically it wasn't until I was let go by the majors that my music actually started gaining some traction. 3 (15m 35s): So interesting. 6 (15m 37s): And the global supply chain is strain. One is central transportation network continues to keep the economy connected 24 7. That network is freight rail. 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And, and you said that was when your independent artist and where did you shoot? It? Can, I guess 5 (17m 42s): It's it's it started like in 2017, around January, February of 2017, I started like putting out like just random songs. Like I didn't even like gauge what genre it was, you know, who I wrote it with, who produced it, all that stuff. I didn't really take, I didn't think about any of that. I just said, look, I love the song. This is who I am right now. I'm just going to drop it, no marketing, no nothing. I'm just going to post social media stuff about it and just go with the flow. And ever since I started doing that, man, I kind of kept it as organic as possible. That's when people really started resonating, you know, when there's no like glitter and no, like no Polish, you know, straight, straight from the heart. 5 (18m 27s): And I started just cranking them out every month or every two months, I just started dropping records on Spotify and apple music. And I don't know if you're familiar with the hip hop artists, Russ, but she is a fully independent hip hop artist as well. And that's kind of the same process that he does is that he just cranks out records every, every week actually or every other week. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. He's a machine. And so I wasn't able to do that as, as fast as him because it takes a lot of resources to produce that many records and videos and stuff like that, but I also didn't want to rush creativity. 5 (19m 7s): So I just like every two, three weeks I drop a new record on like Spotify, apple music. And then when, when, when the platform take talk, came out and reels that's when things really started taking off for me, I would say they're the huge, the biggest blessing for any independent creator out there, to be honest 3 (19m 26s): <inaudible> did you have, like one of the songs go viral on Tik TOK or reels or just, it was just like a slow build, 5 (19m 32s): Even though it was, it was kind of a slow build, but I'll explain. So I get anchor of 2020. I started on the app with some very humiliating dance videos thinking that it was strictly for dancers. So I did, I did what I had to do and I did it for about six or seven months of just a ton of videos that would only get about 600 views, 500 views, 400 views, which is still pretty decent. You know, I didn't let my kind of disheartening me, but it wasn't until December, I would say like seven, eight months in that I just, I was talking to my friend, Ashley Cook. Who's pretty successful on the app herself. 5 (20m 12s): She taught me a little trick on how to import your audio. Like if, like, let's say you have like a demo of a song or like a recording of the song. That's not in the database of Tik TOK. And she taught me how to import it, like do a screen recording so I could use that audio 3 (20m 27s): Videos. Got you. Okay. Yeah. 5 (20m 29s): Yeah. So I was able to like import it that way. And I did a demo of, one of my, one of my old songs at work wasn't out yet. It was just like a rough demo sitting in my Dropbox of a song that I always loved. And I always had a feeling it was going to do well. I was like, you know what, I'm going to tease this on take doc. It's almost Christmas time. Like who knows? I might get the tick-tock God's might reward me and posted the phone up on my kitchen counter. I lip sync to my own demo, but the lyrics and I put it the link in my bio to pre-saved the song that out of the da and overnight it got 1.7 million views. 5 (21m 9s): Yeah. Insanity. And so I started replying to every single comment following all my, my fans back. And that's true. That's really it, man. It's like interaction and just acknowledging your fans, you know, that's really all they want, you know what I mean? And so, and so I spent hours and hours and hours just on my phone replying. 3 (21m 31s): That's like a full-time job in itself. 5 (21m 33s): Yeah, man. It was like, 3 (21m 34s): Yeah, obviously, like you said, a blessing like, oh my gosh, these people are following me and they're commenting like I'm going to respond to everything. Like that's so great. 5 (21m 42s): Yeah. It was wild man. And it was just all of a sudden from, from, from one day to the other, it just came like, like my, my calling, like my new app, like my new fan base. So then I just started posting videos every day. I made it a daily routine to make sure that I post once or twice a day and fast forward till today we have almost, I think we're like 16 K away from 400,000 followers on takes 3 (22m 9s): Pretty, 5 (22m 10s): Yeah, man, it's, it's a blessing. And along the way, I've been able to meet a lot of other insanely talented creators and been part of some really awesome creative programs that have allowed me to network with other, you know, take tock influencers with millions of followers and got, got a bunch of information from them on how to grow my, my, my, my fan base and my platform. So I'm kind of applying the same, the same tricks to reels on Instagram as well, which seem to be doing better for me than take stock lately. 3 (22m 41s): Is that right? 5 (22m 42s): Yeah. Man real is, is, is, is pushing their platform pretty hard. And so is Pinterest. Believe it or not, they have their own version of tickets up. And so I've just, I do, what's called a multi uploading. So like I just like, or I multipurpose my videos. So like I record a one, one core video and then I just upload them to 3 (23m 3s): All the platforms, 5 (23m 5s): The short form video platforms, and then just kind of like all across the board, just upload, upload, upload, and then, you 3 (23m 12s): Know, it's kind of happens 5 (23m 14s): What habit it's got like fishing, man. It's like if on the line and seeing what bites, so 3 (23m 17s): That's so rad. And so then how do you come across? Or how do you come up with this NFT thing? And like, I'm sure you had a deep dive into that whole world to kind of figure out how to do it. 5 (23m 29s): Yeah. So I didn't really know about, and it's he's until one of my best friends from back home who was already very familiar with the space he just made, he made me aware of it. He's like, look, man, I've been in this space now for a few months and artists of all kinds are tokenizing their music. They're given up ownership. They're given out crazy utility. Like the idea of the fan club is like slowly creeping back, but in a digital form. And I think based on your following, I think you should definitely consider it. I think you should look into it and study it and see how you can tokenize your music and your music experience moving forward. 5 (24m 10s): And so I just love being an early to everything. Like as I find something like in its baby stages, I, I love to find it, you know, I found Tik TOK kind of in its early stages. And, you know, I kind of figured it out before everybody else and w which is really cool. And so I kind of feel the same way about NMT and what three, what three being the blockchain technology and the metaverse and cryptocurrencies. So I dove in into crypto early 2020, but I didn't discover NFTs until late 20, 20, like late October, early November. 5 (24m 52s): And believe it or not, Twitter is the, the hub for NFTs and crypto at the moment, Twitter was kind of like dying out until like Anaptys came into play and kind of revived the whole platform. And Twitter came up with this reimagination of clubhouse where you can join a live chat room and you could see everybody's profile picture. And so the culture has become where if you're a part of like an entity community, you change your profile picture to the NFT. Yeah. And so I learned that really quick. And so what I did, or like kicking off my web three journey was investing into different art communities and different what you call PFP communities, profile, picture communities. 5 (25m 42s): And I just became part of their village. You know, I didn't come in with, from the, from the rip, like promoting anything or marketing anything. I just, I just joined their village. You know, I kind of like stealthily, like a Fox just kind of entered their village and just said, I want to be one of you guys. And so I learned a lot through them and I kind of baby step to my, you know, thanks to them. They baby step me into the web three space. And then after three or four months of them, like letting me sing on these Twitter spaces and these chat rooms, I was able to organically grow my fan base through these Maxis that use crypto on a daily basis, you know, by NFTs MTS on a daily basis. So then when it came time to actually do a project, it was a little bit easier to market it because they had already known of me and kind of interacted with me prior, you know? 5 (26m 33s): And so that's kind of how I did it. I just started with investing into other projects first and building my circles in my community first. And then I kind of presented them with like my product, which that, you know, led to me making meadow girl, which is my first blockchain music single. And, you know, we dropped that back in late, late February. It was kind of like a yellow project. Like I just kind of said, yo, let's see what happens. And thanks, thanks to like the community embracing these so, so strongly. And so, so incredibly we were able to, to sell out in a matter of Mo a little bit under two months, a collection of 1500. 5 (27m 16s): And it allowed me to learn a lot about how I want to go about music moving forward on the blockchain and NFTs and you know how to become a, somebody on the forefront of this whole music, you know, journey on the blockchain pretty much. So 3 (27m 31s): That's so rad. I mean, so you put that song out, you have a community, so then people obviously know you, so then they're investing in you as an artist and I'm your song. Okay. 5 (27m 42s): Well, as a, I feel like the, one of the perks of being able to like grow my community from the inside out, by simply investing into something that they were invested in is they knew me as a person first. You know what I'm saying? So there's more of a foundation when it comes to like in somebody investing in me or anybody in general, you know, like, I feel like, yes, you could be the best musician of all time, but if you're not a good person, people are not going to want to invest. You know what I mean? And that when we see that left and right with the media, like, you know, people would hit songs, go and do something stupid and it ends up on TMZ and they're gone and they're gone. 5 (28m 23s): You know what I'm saying? Because at the end of the day, the core of it all is like, you gotta be a good human being. So I just wanted to be on their level, no matter how many followers I had, no matter how many streams I might've regarded in the past, like, you know, several years I was on a, on the same level as they were, you know, on this Twitter space, we wore the same profile picture. We stayed up all night on Twitter spaces with our air, with our AirPods in our head that we were, we were, we were, we all related, you know? So, and so that is the, I guess like the, the key of it all, like the reason why we were able to announce a out is because we just spent time with them. 5 (29m 3s): We acknowledged them. And we, we embraced them, you know, in, in, in, in, in a new way so that I wouldn't have been able to do in web two on Instagram and Tik TOK, because the most interaction that I had with my fans on Tik TOK and Instagram, where, when I posted a video and they replied with love the song and I just replied to it. Thanks so much. 3 (29m 21s): Right, right, right. 5 (29m 22s): That's it, you know, like there's no more interaction on Twitter spaces and you know, these chat rooms, I'm able to talk to them on a human level and say, oh, I just woke up, just made breakfast. You know, I'm, I'm at the w hotel hanging out. Like these are conversations that they're not having with their favorite artists. You know what I'm saying? And so with the metaverse, you know, coming into play very soon, which is already kind of doing its thing, the fan interaction is going to be at an all time high. And I'm really excited to see how far that goes in the next few months. 3 (29m 55s): Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, this is the time to get in on all of this. 5 (29m 59s): It really is 3 (29m 60s): Right. Cause in the next two, three years that you're, it's like Tik TOK now. I mean, if you got in now, you're the chances of you gaining millions upon millions upon millions of followers are a lot slimmer than they are when you first, if you get in early. Right. And I was listening to an interview with, I think the, the former CEO or of Google, I think he was, and he was talking about like how it's really interesting that like social media platforms live in like 10 year sequences. So like you'll have 10 years of my space and then like Facebook takes over. And then it's 10 years of that until like an Instagram. Then at 10 years of that. 3 (30m 40s): And now we're in the, you know, the, the Tik TOK world. So like to become the, you know, top tick tock person of whatever the next phase is like, you have to start getting in, figuring out where that's going now and jump in. Because if, if you wait until it peaks, I mean, that might take you jumping into five or 10 different platforms and maybe one of them will work out. Right. I mean, it's just, it's so interesting because of the earlier it's like YouTube, the people that were doing like covers on YouTube when the thing started are now that have such massive channels. Yeah. Because they've been just building and building and building and, and, and YouTube recognizes that they're like, oh, you know, this person has been doing this video. 3 (31m 26s): We'll just keep feeding those videos back to people like their algorithm will. And I also heard like, same with like, with YouTube too, is like, if you were doing dance videos and you have a big following, and then all of a sudden you're like, I'm a singer and I'm going to put the song out of, have you seen YouTube is going like, wait, wait, what? And then they're going to, they're going to bury it because it's like, well, that was, that's not like, I don't know if that's working. That's not proven yet your other stuff's proven. So I feel like it's similar in the tick-tock space. And I mean, anywhere, I guess. 5 (31m 56s): Yeah. I mean, I have one of my good friends, Cooper Allen he's got about. So he just had 7 million on Tik TOK. He's absolutely crushed. Yeah. It's insane. He is kind of known for not only like, just kind of repetitively doing these mash-ups at home, he's sitting in his office chair and like his wife will come with a phone and be like, Hey baby, like do a mashup over this, like instrumental like a famous song. And like, it'll be like, I dunno, like smash mouth, like all-star, but like the instrumental. And so then over the instrumental, he'll sing like MNM and he'll sing Nelly and he'll sing He'll, he'll like mash up a bunch of famous songs over a famous instrumental. 5 (32m 38s): And so he would just like, he'd do that over and over and over again. And he kind of became the mashup guy on Tik TOK. Like he was the guy and now he is announcing shows and he did, he planned a whole tour of like 30 dates and they're all sold out. That's so crazy. Like, and yeah. And so he, and he implemented into his live show, his original songs, but in between every like fourth or fifth song, he would stop the show and go, all right. It's mashup time. And then he'll do, he'll ask the crowd. He'll go. All right, we're going to choose 25 songs. All right. And we're going to start now, the band will start playing like a famous instrumental, and then he'll like point the mic to the whole like audience and they'll go Nickelback. 5 (33m 26s): Okay, cool. We got to go back to the old point, somebody else and go, oh, creed. And like, and then they'll just like name a bunch of bands and artists. And you'll literally like on the spot do a mashup, like random, 9 (33m 39s): Crazy. 5 (33m 39s): And so people love that. They, they, they could say, oh my God, we custom made a, a mashup. It lives in time with our favorite tech talker. And so like, it's getting to that point where like Tik TOK is now reality TV. I tell all my friends that quote, you have to treat your tech talk like your channel for like your Jimmy Kimmel. Like your Turkey found, like treat it like your television channel because people are spending hours and hours and hours looking at tech talk. It's their main, like it's their main platform. They look at it more than they look at their television, right. So you have to look at it like, you know, the algorithm feeds them, your videos. So when you, when you make a video, have that in mind, like, you know, be proud of what you show, what you film and make sure that strategic, because at night when they leave work and they sit down on their couch with their dinner, they open their tech talk. 5 (34m 33s): The first thing they're going to see is your video. You know what I'm saying? So, and that's kind of what he's doing. He's creating a reality show and, and they know what they're going to get at it. 6:00 PM every night, they sit down on their couch, they know exactly what they're going to get. And it's a mash and video. What? And so that's why he does so well, because like what you said, the algorithm is like, favors those, that kind of hammer the same. 8 (34m 55s): Is it acceptable to go to Mickey? D's just for a drink. Of course it is. But good luck leaving with just a drink. It's more than a drink. It's a Mickey D's drink. 9 (35m 7s): And right now a small minute maid slushie is just 1 59. So all you have to do is choose a flavor like the tropical mango or strawberry watermelon, and enjoy like it's meant to be enjoyed prices and participation may vary, cannot be combined with any other offer. 11 (35m 25s): Whether you're buying a new car or used one, it's a big investment, which is why you should choose Pennzoil platinum. 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The voice of the proceeded commission was not the actual voice of the winner 3 (36m 26s): Content, right? Yeah. It's yeah. Cause they know that people, they know that they can serve that video to this market and then people are reacting to it. So they're going to stay there and that's keeping people on the app, like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so chick talks like we're benefiting because people are staying on the app, watching all these guys' videos and he's benefiting because people are watching them. And the consumer is because that's what they want to see. It's crazy. 5 (36m 51s): It's like, if you do a bunch of blogs about mountain biking, I like for like the three months and you blow up about man, you're like the guy from mountain biking. And then out of the blue, you go on vacation with your wife and you do a food blog. She's probably gonna, it's probably not going to work. 3 (37m 5s): All right. People are going to be like, ah, yeah, that's cool. But like what happened? What, like what, what were trails? Are you mountain biking while you were on this vacation? I could care less that you went and got, you know, sushi at this whatever restaurant. Yeah. I know it's crazy, but it makes so so much. It makes so much sense, but it just kind of, it shows that you kind of want to stay in one lane instead of like, just trying to jump on any quick trend. I guess you could do that until it works. And then if it starts to kind of working, 5 (37m 32s): You know what? I have seen some crazy friends of mine that like, they just have so much time on their hands, but like they'll literally chase like five to 10 different, like I guess trends or ideas. They'll open 10 Tik TOK accounts. And they're all about different topics. Like one's about music, one's about dance and they'll just post and post and post and post until one of the topics blows up 3 (37m 60s): And then 5 (37m 60s): That's, and then that's what, 3 (38m 1s): Yeah. They can invest. Well, that's makes sense. Because like what, you'll see that on YouTube too, because you'll have like, my, my younger son watches so much like YouTube kids and like, there will be these families. And then it's like, now all of a sudden they have a gaming channel. And like there, I mean, he's like, I don't understand. I'm like, why do they have blah, blah, blah gaming. Now? It's like, because that's only going to be gaming videos. And if people are going to them for gaming, they're not going to have to sift through their other channel. And YouTube is going to just feed that to the gaming kids. 5 (38m 28s): Yep. It's 3 (38m 29s): Insane. 5 (38m 29s): I prioritize like certain gamers in the facility, in the, in the gaming culture. 3 (38m 34s): Oh my gosh. Well, I'm curious on the, on the NFTs now. So if I'm an independent artist and I'm like, oh my gosh, like, how did Sammy do this? Like, where would you recommend someone even starts? Like I have, you know, 1500 followers on Instagram and I got six songs and I wanted to see, how do I, you know, how do I put this on the blockchain? And is it even worth their time yet? 5 (38m 59s): You know, it's, it is. And I T and I'll tell you why, again, this might sound dumb, but like Twitter is the hub for NFTs and crypto at the moment. And I know that may sound like wild because Twitter is just like, it's been around for years, but I learned most of my, of everything, you know, everything I'm doing on Twitter because these chat rooms are completely free. I mean, you can literally just click on the Twitter spaces tab and, you know, search the topic, NFTs and crypto. And like, there's always like 24 7 live chat rooms of people talking about this kind of stuff. And you can just hop in and listen to people, speak and ask questions. And, you know, you could like write and write down notes and, you know, apply them to yourself. 5 (39m 44s): And that's kind of what I did for a month. I just did that. I jumped back and forth into different chat rooms. And then when I found one that like really resonated with me and like, I felt like they would like be cool with me speaking, I would request to speak. And then I'd be like, Hey guys, I'm a musician in the space. Like I've been doing music independently for this many years. Like, how do you guys suggest that I do this thing? And it's a cool opportunity to like, not only ask questions, but to connect with very successful people in the space as well. And you know, we're in a time right now and like a Renaissance era of web three and then of teas were not even there, there are no leaders. If you think about it, the S there are people that have succeeded in certain ways, but like, we're so early that there's no like experts. 5 (40m 27s): There's no leaders. There's no, there's just people that are on the forefront of it, that's it? You know? And so Twitter really helped me out. There's a lot of cool Instagram pages such as like, metaverse, it's just called metaverse with, like, with an E I believe, and with a three, sorry, with M three TA verse, they have a lot of info, good information that they post daily and Ft now is a great blog that you should check out. And I mean, you, you could YouTube YouTube, like how to buy crypto, you know, how to get a crypto wallet. 5 (41m 9s): That's kind of what I did. And I learned that Metta mask is kind of like the factory, the industry standard. So, so as well as Coinbase wallet is very common. Those are considered crypto wallets. And then as when it, when it comes to crypto exchanges, the P the, the three common ones are Coinbase, crypto.com and Binance. But yeah, I mean, it just, it also helped that I have a best friend back home that knew a lot about this space. So I was able to pick his brain about it. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of a good place to start. The reason, one of the things you brought up earlier about, like, is it a good time to start now? Is if a music and FTE artists were to create a piece right now, a limited collection, like, let's say a 50 pieces of like, you know, for example, I used to draw, right? 5 (42m 2s): Imagine if I drew a collection of 50, like art pieces and I attached music to each and every piece. So it'd be a collection of 50 with art and music. The fact that I made it and it scars and it's limited at this stage of my career is extremely valuable. And it's, and it's affordable because like, I can list it for like a hundred bucks a piece. You know what I'm saying? That's fine. I could make ultimately five grand, which will allow me to have the cap. The resources needed to create more music, to create more videos, to progress and my knees a career, but it will also provide the collector a piece that can gain in value in perpetuity. 5 (42m 43s): So like right now it might be worth a hundred dollars, but like, let's say, I post on tech talk tomorrow, like Cooper Allen. And I go from 400,000 followers to 7 million. I become more famous. I become more well-known and modern. And like in the modern culture, that limited piece of they used to spend a hundred dollars on is not going to be more in demand because I'm more popular. I'm more like known in the, in the culture. So you can potentially make money off of your favorite artists. 3 (43m 16s): No, that makes so much, yeah. Cause the person I was talking to the other day said, yeah, it's like, essentially, if you invested in Drake, right. He put out like five song demo and you're like, I'm going to buy and you can, you're able to buy one of his songs or, you know, you invest in the song and now you own this one song that Drake had written, you know, early on. And now he's where he is. You have all the rights and everything to that song, essentially. Right. If you buy it depending on the contract and then you can come out and say, okay, I have this unreleased Drake song. And then that I own, and nobody else has access to, then people can be like, well, I want to hear it. I want that. I want that. And then they can come to you. And now your thing's worth, you could sell it to whoever for X amount of money. 3 (43m 58s): Right. Is that essentially where it's going? 5 (44m 1s): It is. So like, for example, like, you know, somebody like, like Rihanna, for example, I heard a really good example. A few weeks back from this artist called Blau is a DJ who's really, really involved in this space. He, he did, he did a good explain the good analogy or an example where I don't know if you remember when iTunes first dropped, they gave out like free iTunes downloads. So you remember that. So, so one of them was ponder replay, which is ever 3 (44m 36s): Major hit, right? 5 (44m 37s): Yes. And so they did a limited amount of free downloads. So they said, Hey, we're giving out these free downloads to, to like the first thousand people that hit download on this song. Imagine if you can tokenize that iTunes symbol, that that was free from Rihanna, her first ever single imagine the value of that token today, 3 (45m 4s): Right? Yeah. It's 5 (45m 6s): Crazy. It would be worth, it would be worth thousands of dollars because it's, as it was scars, there was only a limited amount of free downloads. And it was Rhianna's first ever single on iTunes. Imagine if you were able to tokenize that and call it yours. And so that's kind of like what we're doing now, like artists all over the place, like all over the world are, are able now to tokenize anything, they could tokenize an iPhone recording on their phone of like, when you created a song like years ago, imagine if a Dell had the work tape, like meaning the iPhone memo of like, when she came up with the idea of, nevermind, I'll find someone like that. 5 (45m 47s): And then that's it. She's like, oh, I liked that. I liked that let's record that. And even if she had that studio recording on her phone, she can tokenize that voice memo and, and list it as an, as a limited NFT, like a collection of like 50 or, or a hundred or a thousand, meaning that only 50 people or a hundred people or a thousand people all over the world will own that limited collection of Adele's iPhone worked at of what she came up with. Someone like, yeah, you could do anything. You could do a picture of, of a coffee cup. You can do. I've seen people take a picture of a house and look and say, Hey, if you buy the center of T of this picture of a house, you not only get this NFT, but you also receive the title of the house and you can, and you get to buy the house. 5 (46m 33s): So it's like virtual real estate. 3 (46m 35s): That's so crazy. 5 (46m 37s): Like you could do anything. That's the beauty of the blockchain. And so I'm kind of like coming up with cool new things to moving forward, to tokenize my music and give back to my fans and have them not only become fans, but another investors slash collectors. You know what I mean? 3 (46m 53s): And with that, like if you were going to tokenize something, does that cost you money? Or is it a percentage taken by whatever company you go through? 5 (47m 2s): Say that again? Sorry. I didn't understand. 3 (47m 4s): Like you just said, like, okay, you have a song. If Adele would have tokenized, you know, someone like you, a voice memo, when she does that, do you, is it cost you money or do you have to pay and to put your song up, like to tokenize it? 5 (47m 19s): Yeah, there's small. I mean, there's small like crater fees, you know, that these platforms charge as well as whenever you deploy a smart contract, which is it's, it's still sounds Japanese. So a lot of people, but on the blockchain, there's a mechanism called a smart contract. And so whenever you deploy it, there's just a small blockchain fee for the P to make an a go live. That's pretty much it, but once it's live, then it's, it's available to everybody out there. Yeah. 3 (47m 55s): That's crazy, man. Well, thank you so much for doing this. Like I learned so much and like, this is such a cool new way of obviously like now a year to the complete you're in charge and you own it all and you don't need the major label or the funding or all the other stuff, you know, with within this, this world now it's crazy. 5 (48m 15s): Yeah. It's wild, man. There's so much to learn and it's, again, Twitter is your best friend. I mean, hop on there and hop in these chat rooms and don't be afraid to ask questions and yeah, I'd say it's, it's incredible. You might find me in there as well. 3 (48m 32s): I love it. I love it. One more quick question. I, you kind of just answered it there, but Hey, do you have any advice for aspiring artists? 5 (48m 39s): Absolutely. Just do everything and anything. Don't be afraid to try new things. Use all these platforms that are given to you because I look at all these platforms like, like a, like a free lottery, like you don't even have to go to a gas station and pay anything. You can just like get creative post a video. And like you're literally one video away from like creating a career. That's kinda what I did, you know, I S I see reels and take talk, and all these short form video platforms as a free lottery. And so I'm posting like two to three times a day, you know, and just kind of rolling, you know, rolling the dice, you know, and I've seen incredible growth from them. 5 (49m 22s): So if that's something that you would want that as a creator, you're wanting to do just post like crazy, and don't get disheartened by the, by the views, you know, just keep posting and posting and posting be persistent and it'll pay off.