If I had full control over an artist that I believed in for 12 hours a day, I believe I could break them in just 12 months with no label, zero budget, just work. The problem, artists don't actually want to break. They want success with stipulations.
Now, I've worked with thousands of artists. Most say they'll do whatever it takes, but then they start saying, "I just don't want to go live every night. I don't want to post music.
I don't want to do content in a certain way. I'm just not good at social media. " And that's not whatever it takes.
That is stipulated success. So, here's what I would do if I had an artist with zero stipulations. If they gave me full control for 12 hours a day, I would make them a machine.
And here are my 10 non-negotiables that would break any artist in 2025. And if you are not doing these, ask yourself, is it because it's hard, or is it because you're still adding these stipulations? Most artists fail not because they're not good enough, but because they aren't willing to give up control.
So number one is I want full control over the calendar. That's right, 12 hours of your day, 7 days a week. It will be very simple.
We will set up a Google calendar and we will start time blocking every single hour. I want to be responsible for what you are doing every hour of the day. This is hard work.
And a big part of that's going to be things like songwriting minimum three times a week. I want new songs, new ideas, new creatives that we can test. Then when it comes to music production, how long are we going to be producing?
How much production can you do? Do we have to bring someone else in? Is it going to cost anything?
Cuz if that is, then that's a problem. Then there's the the content creation broken into research time, concept time, hook time, um analyzing what is working, what isn't working, preparation. We remove all of the luck.
We add in gigs. We add in live shows. We add in meetings.
We add in rehearsals. Data analysis. The day is given to you not by winging it, not by inspiration.
No luck needed. What we do is we make things happen on a dayto-day basis. Number two, content testing is our new obsession.
We are not just throwing at the wall, which is what 99% of all artists are doing. We are going to work on a content plan that highlights you. But we're also not going to batch content.
Something I've been harping on about for many, many a year. But we are going out of the quantity phase into the quality phase. So what we need to do now is we need to spend time crafting quality.
And to do that, we need to stick to the NST rule. Never stop testing. We test songs.
We test parts of songs. We test locations to shoot. We test clothes.
We test what you say. We test what you do. We test intros.
We don't spend three minutes on a piece of content. We spend three hours on a piece of content. This is your brand.
This is your message. This is your message to the world. And we are here to take over the world with your music.
So, let's respect how hard that is and how much time needs to go in the attention to detail. Number three, you are going live on TikTok for a minimum of 2 hours every single night. And you are going to talk to people.
You are going to play songs. You're going to perform. You're going to communicate.
You're going to be likable. Now, this builds discovery. It builds the attention at the start of your fan base.
Hopefully, as we improve your Tik Tok lives, we start generating some good income. We have artists that we work with at the moment that are getting paid to build an army of followers. They get paid between five and $10,000 per month while they're generating thousands of followers on Tik Tok from going live.
Now, the reason for this is because of the supply and demand. Not many people are going live, but Tik Tok very much wants you to go live because it's taking 50% of the income generated. So, it is pushing you out there.
So, for the people who are good at this, they're going to get the rewards. And the rewards is all the attention, all of the money, and all of the growth from Tik Tok. You're getting prioritized.
Number four, we start building the inner circle from day one. At the start of your journey, fans are they're more like excitable friends who want to get involved. So, we militarize them.
We get them helping by rewarding them for being part of this journey. This is community, but you you're the leader. You're the artist.
You're the leader. You reward them. You engage with them.
You look after them every single day. I'm talking voice notes instead of comments. I'm talking videos to them because you can.
Because it's that simple to do. Artists underestimate what you can do with just 100 dedicated followers. And I'm not talking about the fan base.
I'm talking about people who just say, "I just like you and I want to support you. " A hundred of those people in a small army is like the film 300. You don't need millions.
What you need is a dedicated, targeted, focused audience that will work with you and help spread your word because that 100 doesn't go to 101. It goes to 100 to 200, from 200 to 500, from 500 to 5,000. And that's the way exponential growth works.
So, we need to look after the ones. Number five, we release more songs. And this is part of the testing.
We are in a time now where most artists want to have say from their own ego of what music goes out as part of the art. The problem with that is it's up to the audience to decide what works and what doesn't. So, we're wasting valuable time and energy on the back of your ego of what you think works when we have an audience ready to test the work for you.
And music is about momentum. If you think about about a bicycle, you start pedaling on that bicycle, you get faster and faster. you stop pedaling over a period of time, if you're on the flat, you will slow down.
You will fall off the bike. Now, you're not in charge of what people will like. And socials are that testing ground for your music, for your talent, and for your message.
Now, I would rather release quality demos regularly, rather than just finishing a track and paying a lot of money in order to put a full release in. When we have a winner with a demo, then we can go in and we can record it fully. Now, at the moment, everyone's trying to act like they're, you know, the Foo Fighters or Coldplay and saying, "You will listen to what I want you to listen to, and I will finish everything.
" The problem with that is it takes a lot of time, effort, and money when what we could be doing is testing things on socials, not necessarily on Spotify if you don't want to or YouTube, seeing what's working, and then taking that data, and then picking the winners, picking the treasure, and going full force into that. Number six, and this one's now going to trigger people. From here on in, you are a production company.
Yes, you are an artist. Yes, you are a musician. Yes, you are a talent.
Yes, you are a songwriter. But you are a production company. Now, this includes music videos, content, long- form content, short form content, behindthe-scenes content, music videos, different content for different platforms.
It's not about a piece of content every day that we stretch across multiple platforms. It's about what can we create today that people will genuinely like, that people will engage with. Where can we put it?
This is about quality versus quantity. Why can't we have quality and quantity? Why?
Because it's time. The reason why people are going quality versus quantity. Quantity is a very lazy argument.
I can't really do both. So, I'll pick one. So, I can make five pieces of content very badly or one decent piece of content.
Why? Why can't we make 10 pieces of very, very good content? I want a reason for people to follow you on every single platform.
So therefore, if we take one piece of content and put it on all the platforms, people are going to say, I'm getting the same thing. So why am I going to clog up my feed on Tik Tok and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube, etc. ?
Why? I don't need to. Whereas if we are giving dedicated uh content on dedicated platforms, it gives me a reason to say, hey, I want that extra bit.
I'm going to follow you on more platforms. Then feed more data into the platforms. Give the algorithm more data in order to find more people like me who are going to follow you, who are going to engage with you and like your stuff.
So rather than picking the the content platform, what we're going to do is we're going to create a media production company and we are going to spend a long time every single day making content on different platforms doing different things that are going to bring people value. Number seven, we are going to create a killer live show. I'm talking about set list, a show, an experience.
And at every single show, the reason why we're doing this is because we are going to use this to meet people and drive that data back into socials. Ecosystems are imperative in building momentum. So, can you do everything via Tik Tok?
Yes, you can. But why don't we feed everything together? Because this is where you get real exponential growth.
a real artist who's touring or playing gigs, who's writing, who's releasing, who's recording, who's actually doing interesting things, who's doing collabs. It means your offline and your online worlds meet. And that is when your socials really come to life and you're not just doing another video of walking down the street saying, "I think I just wrote the song of the summer.
" So therefore, we're going to make the best live show and we're going to funnel people into your email list, into your Instagram broadcast channel. We're going to make sure that rather than just the attention, we're using that attention to funnel into something that we can utilize like your army at a later date, which means we're going to spend a lot of time in a rehearsal room. I want the best show possible because that will feed into your TikTok live.
That will feed into people seeing you and needing to be a part of your journey. There are way too many artists out there that are gigging for themselves. They're like, "Oh yeah, I'll come and do a gig.
" And they'll put on some average performance and nobody really cares. or you can say, "No, no, this is my opportunity to blow people away and get 10, 20, 30, 50 people onto my email list that can drive that data. " Number eight, and this one is a non-negotiable.
We do not record songs until the demos and or the live shows have tested them. No ifs, no butts, no wasting time. Now, 99% of artists waste time and waste energy.
This is one of I mean this is one of my total pet peeves, but this is the one where artists really hate it because every time I've done it and implemented this, it has worked. From taking an artist from zero to a major label, the artist wants to be able to put out their own music. And what I say is, no, we're going to test.
Every time we test something, we get more data. And this goes hands down when it comes to songs. So instead of going in and recording your album and say, "I finished it.
Is it going to work? I don't know, but let's test it. " we haven't just wasted the time and the money, we've wasted the energy because now we have to promote it because it's been finished.
You've put all that time and effort into it. Whereas, imagine if someone came to you and said, "Look, you've got your 50 songs. Let's just work on three because three of those 50 are going to take you to the next level.
We just don't know which 50 is. " So therefore, rather than guess, we're going to test 50 of these songs and we're going to do it five to 10 times each. And we're going to take that data and then we're going to wrap that up into the right song.
Now all of a sudden you are bypassing all of the artists that are spending time in a studio with a song that won't work on promotion because the ego is not allowing them to allow the audience to test that song. So we let the market decide. You like the song, that's great.
I like the fact that you like the song, but when it comes to putting time and effort into that song, let's see if it works. And that can be a demo on YouTube or on Tik Tok or on Instagram. It can be on a live show.
It can be on a Tik Tok live. I don't care as long as we are getting good data that supports the reason that we put time and effort into recording this song. Number nine, nothing, absolutely nothing, goes out on socials until it's been cleared because content can make or break you.
And yes, you are one piece of content away from your entire career blowing up. But you are also one piece of content away from your content blowing up in a bad way. Content can do so much damage.
And the amount of times that I'll talk to an artist and be like, "Why have you posted this? " And they'll say like, "Oh, I thought it was funny. " Or, "I thought it was just a like it was like me being the real me.
" And I'm like, "I don't want the real you. That's this is you're you're an artist. You're a leader.
I don't want the real you. I want the best version of you. This isn't just the behind the scenes of you waking up looking This is about you leading the way.
" So, we are clear. Every single post, every single hook, every single color grade, everything that goes out is a reflection of you. is a reflection of your brand.
So this is how we build the exponential growth. We make sure that we clear everything. We are creating the perfect brand of who you are.
And one post can damage momentum. It can damage everything. So don't forget when people say I am an artist, but I am a person too.
Nobody gives a They care about you the artist, not you the person. They will care about you the person down the line. But right now what we need to do is build that brand.
And number 10, we become people obsessed. Every fan gets treated like royalty. We personalize everything.
We forget comments and all thank yous go on to voice messages or videos. We send postcards. Why?
Because we can. We write many songs for one person. Every person who comments or messages or appreciates it gets treated like they are worth a million dollars.
Because if you make a video singing your song and you introduce it and you say, "Hey, Barbara, I know you like the song, so I thought I'd just do this for you. " And you make them a little video, it takes three minutes and it's part of your production company, but Barbara is going to show everyone. Barbara's going to be like, "Wow, no one's ever done this for me.
" And it's not creepy because you're just going, "Hey, Barbara, I thought I'd make this for you. I thought as you like the song uh and I'm in the studio, I thought I'd make this. " They're going to love that.
Why would you not do that? How much does that cost? Nothing at all.
It costs nothing at all. But you are valuing people. So this is what I call the Dave Gro test.
Like if Dave Gro messages, you will move heaven and earth. You won't just give him a thumbs up. You will be trying to message him, trying to be his friend.
Well, why can't you do the same for Janice or Barbara? It's the same thing because these are the people at the beginning who like you that will become fans. Let's drop this ego that everyone is fans.
It's kind of frustrating when we start at the beginning and we start talking about a fan base when you know we've got 500 people listening to your music. We will build a fan base, but right now these are people who appreciate you. They're not they're not fans as in they're not going to break in your house and do crazy on your pillow, but at the same point they will be there if you treat them well.
This is the chance to push them towards that fan base. So, let me ask you this. With that in mind, do you want to actually break as an artist, or do you just want the results with all of the conditions, all of the limits, and all of the rules still in place?
I await all of the comments in the comment section saying, "God, Damian's the fun police. " I had the same thing when I made a video a couple of years back about how to make a really great rehearsal. Having been an MD of many, many bands and gone on tours, I know how to get a band to sound absolutely killer in a very short time.
But you know what it is? It's boring. It's hard work.
It's attention to detail, but that's where you win and that's where nobody else will do that work. So, if I had access to an artist that I believed in for 24 hours a day and we could actually work with no stipulations and we worked on these aspects, I absolutely believe that within 12 months we would be making 10 20 grand a month. And I absolutely believe we would hit a 100,000 followers.
And the reason why I know this is because even with the stipulations, we have artists that have done that. So, let me know what you think. Hate as much as you want.
Um, but this is the way you take away the luck and you replace it with work.
