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Turn Your Music Catalog Into a Real Asset · Clone Wars: The Spinoff

• 0:00
  Welcome to the show, everybody!
• 0:01
  I'm Dangerous Zygos, C.E.O.
• 0:03
  of Currency Development, joined by the squad: DJ Universe, our resident music
• 0:07
  executive and manager, Calvin Blingwell, straight out of Calabasas holding it down
• 0:12
  on the artist side, and Dandy Market, who kept it lit to survive.
• 0:15
  And look, we gotta jump right into a massive play.
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  Lil Wayne recently confirmed Tha Carter VII is on the way.
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  The first Carter dropped in 2004.
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  That is a twenty-year value engine.
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  Man, 2004.
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  I was still a kid in Louisiana when that classic dropped.
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  See, as an artist, what Wayne is showing us here is the power of a sequenced body of
• 0:39
  work.
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  It is not just about a single song that blows up on TikTok for three weeks and then
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  dies.
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  Every time Wayne announces a new Carter, it triggers a massive streaming spike
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  across the previous six albums.
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  It keeps the back-catalog constantly compounding.
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  That back-catalog lift is where the real money is at, Calvin.
• 0:58
  As a manager, I tell my artists all the time: the new release is just the billboard.
• 1:04
  The real cash flow is happening in the dark, in those old masters.
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  We are talking about publishing, master royalties, sync licensing for films and
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  commercials, and merch tied to specific eras like the Carter III aesthetic.
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  When that seventh chapter drops, the royalties on 2008's A Milli are going to jump.
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  It is a predictable financial system.
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  It is about discipline, man.
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  You look at it through the lens of Supreme Mathematics and knowledge of self.
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  This is not some random, chaotic flooding of the market.
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  There is an order, a mathematics to how he structures this.
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  It is a planned progression.
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  If you just drop random singles with no connective tissue, you are starting from
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  scratch every single time.
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  Wayne built a skyscraper, floor by floor.
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  But look, Dandy, if you are an independent artist right now,
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  you might be thinking, "Cool, but I do not have Cash Money Records backing me."
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  You do not need them to start.
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  You can build this exact same structure on a zero-dollar budget.
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  Instead of releasing isolated singles, group your releases.
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  Call it Volume 1, Chapter 1, or The Bedroom Demo Files.
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  Give the listener a universe to enter.
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  Exactly, Calvin, but you have to secure the legal infrastructure of that universe
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  from day one.
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  If you do not own it, it is not an asset.
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  You need to register your publishing with ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC.
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  File your formal copyrights with the U.S.
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  Copyright Office.
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  And please, before the song even goes to the distributor, get clean,
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  signed split sheets from your producers and co-writers.
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  Man, if I can jump in, those split sheets are life or death.
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  Look at what happened with J.
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  Cole and Cam'ron on the track Ready '24.
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  That was a major sample clearance situation that turned into a legal headache
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  because the rights were not locked down and cleaned up early.
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  Even in adjacent-use or interpolations, if the metadata and the clearances are a
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  mess, the distributors will pull your track down, or worse,
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  you get sued right when the song starts making real money.
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  Clearance is not an afterthought; it is part of your catalog strategy.
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  And once those rights are clean, you have to network your own catalog.
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  When you put out a new track, use your Spotify canvas, your playlist sequencing,
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  your link-in-bios, and your social clips to deliberately point people backward.
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  If they love the new track, make it incredibly easy for them to find the older
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  project that sounds just like it.
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  Make your music a web they can't get out of.
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  So let's give the people a concrete checklist for this week.
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  Step one: name your series.
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  Step two: secure your split sheets.
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  Step three: register the work with your PRO.
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  If you cannot trace the flow of rights and money on a piece of paper right now,
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  you do not own an asset; you just have a digital file floating in the cloud.
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  And remember, a clean catalog opens up sync opportunities.
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  Music supervisors in Hollywood do not want to hunt down five different writers to
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  clear a fifteen-second clip for a Netflix show.
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  They want clean metadata and one contact person who can sign off.
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  That is how independent artists secure five-figure checks without ever getting on
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  the radio.
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  But there is a real tension we have to address here, fellas.
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  The quality has to stay high.
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  Wayne did not drop all seven Carters in three years.
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  He spaced them out.
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  If you rush the next installment of your series just to keep up with the algorithm,
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  and the music is weak, you ruin the brand of the entire franchise.
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  Sometimes releasing less often is the smarter business move.
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  That is the ultimate question we want to leave you with today.
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  If your next release disappeared from the internet tomorrow,
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  would it actually matter?
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  Is it connected to something bigger that your fans can hold onto,
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  or is it just another random file lost in the noise?
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  Think like a catalog owner, not a content creator.
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  Peace.