The Music Industry Podcast
The Music Industry Podcast
From Zero to 8 Million Superfans | Max & Harvey’s Music Journey
The twins offer invaluable insights about content creation, brand partnerships, and songwriting sessions, including their recent collaboration with an undiscovered 19-year-old vocalist they found randomly on TikTok Live. This conversation isn't just for aspiring influencers or musicians, it's for anyone interested in the realities of building a sustainable creative career in today's digital landscape. Listen and discover how Max and Harvey have maintained their signature "organized chaos" approach while evolving from social media creators to legitimate musical artists charting in the dance music scene.
Welcome back to the Music Industry Podcast hosted by Burstmo. Today we're joined with Max and Harvey. Hello, I was going to say Harvey and Max, just to switch it up.
Speaker 2:I would have been so interested if you'd have done that, because I don't know that anyone has ever introduced us that way around People say it to us to either try and maybe annoy us which it really doesn't, because it's just our names in a different order. Yeah, that's it. People do just say it to us sometimes.
Speaker 1:How are you both?
Speaker 2:you're right, we've been having a rough day, I'll be honest, it's we. We sort of said this just as we arrived, but, um, some, some weeks go better than others, and at the top of this week I bizarrely got into a quite a bad car accident, which didn't didn't set off on a great tone, uh, and then we've had which?
Speaker 1:you've got. You've got both legs and both arms, exactly I I walked away.
Speaker 2:I'm very lucky, I'm very grateful, um, but yeah, then we've had, over the last literally 24 hours, about three different brand deals dropped on us, which sounds very ungrateful, but for the, with the knowledge that they all have to be completed or one in one of their cases dealt with in a different way by tuesday, it's a little bit daunting because because we're more than happy working through weekends- that's not an issue.
Speaker 1:Friday. By the way, we're on friday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, four day term and we've got three brand deals to organize and deal with in that very short space of time. So it's been a little bit of a hectic day, but we're managing it just about we're okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay is strong max woke up in a sweat yeah, I'm I.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's going on with me at the moment, but I'm just trucking on through, hoping everything sorts itself out, basically I promise it's gonna be a good pocket.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm excited everyone well, we're gonna get the ins and outs of being an influencer and artist.
Speaker 2:You're really not selling it to people are you well, no, I mean we don't really get to talk about it enough, to be honest, because when we do our stuff, we, especially on our channels we keep it very entertainment centric and just want to keep the general vibe very happy and and that people don't feel like because so much of social media is negative at the moment we don't want to be those people.
Speaker 2:we. We don't really have very strong opinions within ourselves unless it's, you know, to do with our family or our work. So it's like we'll just put out whatever we see as joyous, happy, going, to make some people laugh and hope for the best, but we don't really talk about the actual ins and outs of it. Because of that? Because if we did, oh trust me, you'd get a lot of A shite with it.
Speaker 1:Sorry, what are you guys like? We're swearing on this.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, you can swear, you're like shit fuck shit.
Speaker 1:No, I feel like the the term influencer has really negative connotations now and I don't really know. I think it's because there is so much bad press around influencers now and there are a lot of issues with influencers, and especially in the music industry.
Speaker 2:Musicians are so anti being seen as an influencer so you've, you've nailed it, because we actually don't like to call ourselves influencers either. There is and and this is the thing you do need to sort of look into the terminology and, at the end of the day, it's not that deep, because, face value, we kind of are influencers. We, you know, influence people to watch our content and act upon it and whatever. However, because we only actually really, like I said before, create content for the purpose of entertainment, we actually prefer the term creators because it's like that. That is what we're doing god you sound like such an arsehole.
Speaker 2:We're not trying to. I agree with what you're saying fashion onto people or like sell food products, particularly like yeah, we'll do the occasional brand deal.
Speaker 1:I'm one of those people.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've grown up with it being a twin. If someone calls me max, I go yeah. And in the same way someone calls me an influencer, yeah. Well, cool, whatever because it is, it's all the same thing at the end of the day, especially if you're just talking about it loosely. But, like he says we're, we're actually, in a way, bad influencers, because we don't particularly have any sort of niche or any reason for someone to follow us to get advice or or influence, for example. I think the reason people follow us is, majoritively, to be entertained. Um, so whether or not that makes us a good influencer, I guess is the public's decision I don't know, and how do you find that with music then?
Speaker 1:because for people that don't know, and maybe know you from your content, we met through the music stuff. We worked your. It's your latest track, isn't it? Yeah, where are we in the dance charts?
Speaker 2:you're up there oh, that's a good. We got to like 30 something the other day, I think I'm really bad at keeping track of the charts, because I don't know where everyone's looking at all these charts.
Speaker 1:I'm just like I know, honestly, the group chat is just like like constant success and you're like where?
Speaker 2:are you finding this? What does that mean? Thumbs up to all of them, brilliant guys.
Speaker 1:But it's doing great. It is doing great, but how have you found that, as like entertainers and creators Saying that right?
Speaker 2:No, no, don't worry, I didn't feel attacked by it, I promise.
Speaker 1:How are you finding now influencing people to listen to your music? You're right, is it?
Speaker 2:difficult. It's a weird one because we talked with an old colleague of ours that we used to work with and had like a really good meeting about how important it is to not steer away from something that's working on the internet and we obviously know that right now our podcast is working.
Speaker 2:People love the clips of that, people love seeing that and also anything that we do with our little sister, tilly. So we would be stupid to suddenly go right, cut off all music. No entertainment, now it's just max and harvey music. We'd be completely isolating the people that just recently followed us for whatever it was they followed us for, but also then losing any momentum that we actually had to promote that music. So we've had to be a little bit clever with both we've. We've created a new account for exclusively music promotion that we're a little bit behind on just because we've been very busy. But, um, we also want to make sure that anything that is being promoted, music wise, is still with the essence of what, the content that we used to create.
Speaker 2:Um, because again, if you just suddenly try and pivot 180 degrees away from your audience, they're just gonna go all right, fuck you then yeah I think, to give it a bit of context, our whole thing has always been organized chaos, but in in the sort of most energetic way, and we we like to put that in every sort of thing we do, whether it be the live performance of music.
Speaker 2:So whenever we are writing or creating music, one of the first thoughts that comes to head is sorry, comes to mind is um, how is this gonna play out live, and are people actually going to be excited, you know, by this sound? Is there enough energy going on? We always want the highest level of energy cut, like think 21 pilots or chain smokers, kind of thing. Um, and then that is the same with our content as well, as it's like if we film a video and afterwards we're like nothing happened there, we will just scrap it because it's just not worth trying to make something out of nothing if we know there's nothing to be used there. So there is an element of that is actually to go back to you saying we don't have a niche. That kind of is our niche, but we don't make that blaringly obvious, we just do it basically it is.
Speaker 1:It is like I think a lot of people think if you are a creator first and then are releasing music off the back, it doesn't work because people aren't there for that. But you have proven that people are there for you. And then also the music as well, because it is converting. You're at like almost half a million streams, it's in the dance charts, it's it is performing and you're you're not really that far really into the music stuff properly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I mean I think we are kind of lucky that we started all of this with music, and that actually is what people know us for, especially in terms of short term. I don't know if you guys remember an app called musically before it was tiktok um so that's where you started.
Speaker 1:That is where we start. Well, you've been doing this a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah we actually started on youtube and we were just uploading covers. It was me and him in our living room I was playing the guitar and harmonizing with each other and then we realized actually there's a lot of people enjoying sort of shorter form content and then musically came out, hopped onto that, did again some acoustic covers, acapella covers, and it just skyrocketed all of a sudden and that's what propelled us. And then we were like, well, we've got all this energy and time, we're gonna to do something with it and and started doing things like tv shows with cbbc and nickelodeon and disney. They were all just sort of sharing us around for different ideas that they had and um, and then it came to well, what content can we make to get more people involved with our project?
Speaker 2:And it did sort of turn into this mega brand thing where we're like just providing entertainment in every way we can. Now we funneled it into a bit more of a controlled right. Here's what everything is. But for the longest time it was just like what can we do next? And that does get a little bit crazy and I think if we kept with that strategy we'd probably have burnt out a while ago. But luckily we we switched on by the age of like 18, 19, I I would say Probably earlier than that and started figuring stuff out.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you guys have. I mean, are you aware that we did the Celebrity X Factor in 2019?
Speaker 1:No, I mean, I knew that you guys did Britain's Got Talent when you were tiny.
Speaker 2:No, it was the Celebrity X Factor.
Speaker 1:Was it? Do you know?
Speaker 2:what's crazy you did Britain's Got Talent.
Speaker 1:No, no no, where did I get that from? A lot of people think we did. Did you do a guest performance?
Speaker 2:I think you're thinking of Bars and Melody, genuinely.
Speaker 1:Possibly, maybe I don't know who that is they just do like twins that look like.
Speaker 2:No, they were these two young kids that did it at the time, and they were some of them.
Speaker 1:and because again, we're sort of coming from the background of two young kids that were singing. It sometimes does get a bit misconstrued.
Speaker 2:You went on the celeb x, yeah I'll give you a bit of background, because there's a. There's a reason I brought it up.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't you know, just throw it in the ring for nothing, yeah, yeah, um, but basically we we got approached, obviously, by the team and we genuinely thought it was a prank email at first when they pitched it, um, and then our managers looked into it and they went no, it's legit.
Speaker 2:Um, and it was literally like just a sort of almost novelty version of the x factor. Just to you know, they had the likes of, uh, vinnie jones, um kevin mckale from glee, um ricky lake, a few love islanders like where's nelson was on there, um, and yeah, and so it was a really interesting experience. But the reason I say it is because by the age we were 16 when we did it, and by that age we'd already been doing social media for about three years. We were like, okay, we're in school, we're working hard, but you know, we're trying to balance the school life and the social media life, but at that time social media was actually pretty easy to a certain extent, like you still, you still had to have you still had to have like a viable reason to have either gotten featured on musically or blown up for some reason, like it wasn't just everyone could do it.
Speaker 2:But if you did get in and you did get it, from that point onwards it was pretty smooth sailing. And then it came the turn of when tiktok got involved and everything became a lot harder to actually reach people. But X Factor as an experience completely like kicked us in the teeth. For this is what hard work looks like, because I don't know, I've never really spoken to anyone else who's actually done the X Factor other than the people that we were with at the time. But that is like.
Speaker 2:It's like nothing else I've ever really been a part of, because there is just not an hour in the week where you're not doing something, even even like sleeping hours, like that.
Speaker 2:We we maybe slept most nights four or five hours if we were lucky, and then we're just basically either sleeping in addison lee's back and forth to london, because we didn't live in london at the time and it was still well, yeah, um, but yeah, it's honestly that experience I would say, if any, if anyone wanted to just get a kick up the ass not that everyone should just go on the x factor, but something like that honestly like changed the way that we worked, I think forever in terms of what, like you realized that the the industry was different how you expected or like I think just just realizing that you know what, first of all, what time and effort actually looks like, because as kids you kind of don't really get exposed to that until you start doing work experience or whatever else, and even then a lot of kids get a fairly easy uh, intro to whatever job it is they're doing.
Speaker 2:But we were just like it was like there you go give that a go, and it was on. We were lucky that we had a great team around us and our parents are amazing, so you know we were never stressed or overworked, necessarily, but I always described that time here. Yeah, I always described that time period a little bit at points I won't go to. All right, doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Not by, not by our own team or family but anyway um, we yeah, there were a few things that got missed along the way, but basically, to my point, like we just, you know, had to lock in and had to figure out, how do we make this happen for ourselves? More importantly, because, at the end of the day, we're the only ones really fighting for ourselves. Um, when it boils down to it, um, to make sure that we looked as good as we could on this show, um, seconds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did all right. How did that go, moving forward after that show? Did it feel like it was useful or was one of these things where you're like it taught us something?
Speaker 2:it was useful until lockdown yeah, we were we had a. We literally did a tour that sold out right after the x factor, which was great for us and really gave us a good bit of momentum to majority academy, one kind of things. Not not everywhere, to be fair.
Speaker 2:A lot of them were twos as well, but it was decent size for coming off the back of that show, but yeah, and then and then, after that lockdown happened, we lost a bunch of festivals. We lost a bunch of like other, even brand deals opportunities that we just had through social media lost all of that because people had to figure out well, we can't do that in person anymore, so what are we going to do? Can't complain about that too much, though, because everyone lost something no, of course I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying we're exclusive in uh getting screwed over by lockdown, but more, more to the point that we did absolutely lose that momentum a little bit yeah from needing to get out in front of the public, um, and go here's what you just saw on tv.
Speaker 2:We promise you're gonna love it, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean it was tricky but we sort of figured it out.
Speaker 2:We kind of pivoted a little bit and focused more on the socials than we did on the music for that time period and now we're in a really good position, I think, where we're excited to be focusing back on the music and going okay, it's always been the thing that we're driven by and passionate about. Okay, it's always been the thing that we're driven by and passionate about. But for a time period we just had to almost drop it in a weird way. I think we got to a point where and actually it was really interesting and I am actually happy to share this information because it's not something that we took personally I'm not going to name drop or anything but it came to a point where we were with technically still are, but were with a massive agency at the time and the guy that was running our project turned around and said, because we were saying like, oh, could we try and get some you know, more festival bookings and that kind of stuff and he actually turned around to us and said boys, your music's not good enough.
Speaker 1:And we were like fair, so fair didn't even sugar and we were like, yeah, no, you are actually absolutely right, and I think we were probably six.
Speaker 2:We were about 16 or 17 at the time when he told us that, which, yeah, that does sound a bit harsh to tell two 17 year olds, but also, at the end of the day, we're able to take that information?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's just business, um. And so after that point, I think we had written a few more songs. We were like, right, we'll just get these out, do one more tour. And then, after that point, I think we had written a few more songs. We were like, right, we'll just get these out, do one more tour. And then after that, we're just going to stop it.
Speaker 2:I think we stopped for like three years, didn't we Focus on a bunch of other stuff? I actually locked myself away for pretty much a year. It was genuinely not to put too much of a dampener on it One of the most depressing years of my life so far. However, it did allow me to, you know, learn a bunch of new skills. I learned how to dj, how to produce um. I know so much more about music now than I ever did beforehand, um, and I think it's put us in a much better stead. For, you know, when we go into sessions with other people for the first time, I think a lot of them will probably think, oh, these are just going to be some social media guys that think they can sing. I personally don't believe that. I think we are a lot better than what it seems on the on the out. The comment section's on fire right now exactly all the artists but?
Speaker 2:but what a lot of people don't realize as well is that because, because we use social media as the vehicle to get ourselves out there, there are now so many people in social media who go. I like singing maybe I could give it a go, but they weren't actually ever like people who were like no, I'm gonna be a singer and that's gonna be my career, like yeah, I do think a lot of people won't have known that it was singing first yes, so it will very much be like see the podcast, see the content and be like, oh, they're influencers that want to create music however, the best way to get around.
Speaker 1:That's just release good music because no one says that when you've got like Benson Boone, for example not a great example, because the album's kind of flopped now, but like the touring and and his live shows are insane and no one was like, oh, he's just an influencer trying to sing because it was good. But now with this album, maybe, but I was surprised.
Speaker 2:What I will say is that and I said this, I need to double check, but I was shocked at the amount of tracks he wasn't on as a writer, which was really interesting to me because do you write like we write?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, 100, and it's always interesting to me. I I check it every time a new song comes out from someone that we see as either like maybe competition, or just someone that is like a peer or whatever. I'm always interested in whether or not they wrote it. And with benson's new album, I was going through all of the song credits for all the different songs and, as far as I'm aware, he's not on. Oh no, oh no, maybe it was an error. Maybe it was an error, hang on, but either way, my my point yeah, my point was he has been updated on all of them now, but I thought that all of the old songs had done better, because he actually had been there for the process and had gotten involved, but it looks like this is the thing.
Speaker 2:What I will explain is for the ones that we're doing at the moment. You know, in case anyone is to look at our profile, we're on a lot of features. Obviously, get down on it. That's a call in the gang song. Of course we didn't write that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um yeah, the amount of comments. They're like pretty sure this has already been released. Yeah, exactly, no shit, stacey. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:We're just trying to do some fun stuff within music to also introduce people back into the fact that we're musicians Also, I do think collaborations are one of the best ways to get back into the industry, but also for independent artists.
Speaker 1:Get into the industry because it immediately puts you on editorials if the artists are larger.
Speaker 2:It also builds connections like did you guys meet?
Speaker 1:we really through artego, like no so so we actually met geo through a friend of ours called brandon b. Who such have you? Have you actually spoken to him before, brandon?
Speaker 2:so brandon actually is one of the co-owners of mutineer, which is the label oh, it's the other guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never actually spoken to him benji who's?
Speaker 2:at connect and then brandon, who I believe they're all working together on that project. But brandon was basically me and him were chatting about something completely different and he sort of said I've been talking to this guy who's been working in music and he wants to do like a joint venture label, um, have you got anything that you could send over to me just out of interest that I could send to him and see if he's interested? And I I shat myself because I went I don't know if anything we've got is good enough to be starting to pitch to like actual label people. Oh my God, this is terrifying. But I was like you know what, if I send nothing, nothing will happen. So at the very least, I might as well send something. And if nothing happens, that was the same result as not sending anything.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we sent off some stuff and Gio, what, some of the stuff that we had, um and also was interested in. You know the social aspect of it as well. So we had a couple of meetings, we chatted about it for a bit and it turned out that we just completely saw eye to eye on so much. And then, through that, he was like I'm also looking at potentially working with altigo and we were like those guys are fucking sick, we want to work with them like they're so cool they're great um, and exactly how you'd expect them to be when you meet them in person.
Speaker 2:Just mental.
Speaker 1:They are so funny, but don't you think they're so sarcastic that you don't actually?
Speaker 2:know it's hard to tell whether they're joking or not, so we worked with altego for a little while and it was every phone call. I was like I don't know if that was a joke or not, but it was because they'd always giggle afterwards, but it was just uh, yeah, they're great guys I think they're just always out to mess with people and see how far they can get, which I think is hilarious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I swear you're only signs twins, twins or brothers, yeah yeah, um.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing I will say just really quickly, because I know we've never said it like on uh video before, basically, but with this guy brandon, he's really fascinating to us, mainly because we, when we initially met him years ago, we've known him I think since we were 13.
Speaker 2:We were doing a documentary with the bbc because they for some reason wanted to do a documentary about our lives as kids doing social media. It was all brand new at the time when they pitched it to us and it actually did turn into quite a good documentary. And this guy brandon was I think he was either doing something like work experience or something like that. I think he was. He worked at the production company but he was just like a, an assistant, uh, something, anyway he was. He was a camera operator on that documentary. We met him there, got on like a house on fire sort of then never saw him for about after that documentary, probably like three years maybe four and then he was working with some peers of ours that also do social media these guys called woodie and cliney.
Speaker 2:He was working up the ranks there just making their content better and better, and then all of a sudden, around lockdown time, he was doing his own vfx stuff and now he is one of the biggest accounts on youtube at the moment which is crazy. He definitely.
Speaker 2:There was either some sort of record that he hit or something it was like fastest grown uh account from shorts or something like that it's just to sort of have met him in that position when we were starting all of our stuff out, and now to see him at that level as well, and he's going to some of the most like important events around the world doing panels and stuff it's like giving lectures to people at adobe, like it's just mental this, what this guy has achieved in in also such a short period of time as well, and that and that is true for a lot of people who got on social media in lockdown and actually just gave it a go and realized, oh, I'm actually quite good at this, um, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's really fascinating for us who we always sort of describe ourselves like cockroaches a little bit because we've been around for so long now that we're don't get me wrong, we don't want to make ourselves sound old or anything because we are 22, but we sort of have seen so many different waves of people arrive, drop off do well, do badly.
Speaker 2:Some people come back from doing badly, some people whatever. But then there's also the new wave of people who came from lockdown. When what they were doing worked in lockdown and then the second that stopped working, they just panic and kind of go, my thing doesn't work anymore, and they blame the apps rather than actually yeah, we hear that all the time from artists. Working on it themselves.
Speaker 1:The algorithm's not pushing me out, it's like the algorithm isn't targeting you directly. The content's just not good enough.
Speaker 3:It's not personal. You guys had to adapt a lot over the last nine years and we are. Some is not working. We're actually gonna have to mix it up, or has it just always worked?
Speaker 2:this. That's the craziest thing is. It does sound a little bit self-righteous for me to say this, but we can normally tell if someone's gonna do well slash last or not based on how creative and innovative they are with their content and how they progress it as well. Because at the end of the day, you can, you know, just keep hitting the same nail on the head and it works for a bit. But if you don't switch that up and give people a reason to actually, you know, buy into what you're doing and, um, I don't really know, just give, yeah, people enough reason to stick around, it's going to peter out.
Speaker 2:And then people will be like, ah, the, the algorithm's not the same, like you said, and making their own excuses. It's like, no, you're not adapting to how social media is moving. We're constantly watching what everyone. I say we, he, uh, he's constantly watching what everyone else is doing. Don't get me wrong. I I look at social media as well, but I'm more looking for, like ideas for things for us to do. He monitors. It sounds creepy, but he does monitor a lot of people in terms of, like, their growth I'm sending her links been like we should do this.
Speaker 2:We should do this, yeah and any of our friends who are watching this right now. As a psa, I'm probably watching your content more than you think I am, but I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't then go up to them and detail exactly what happened you've got to be on it and at the end, of the day, as creepy as it sounds, if you don't look at analytics, and not just your analytics as well, you're not going to have a good enough grasp on what to do to mold yourself in this industry. Because at the end of the day don't get me wrong I'm sure there's loads of industries that are moving and changing quickly, but honestly, I don't think, to my knowledge, there's one that moves as quick as social media like it changes every two days.
Speaker 1:I mean it's the same with music in in general for sure, absolutely we started eight years ago as a business. I've been in the industry for 10. You've been in for less. More than that, a lot more than that, and I, I can't.
Speaker 1:Even if like the stuff that worked back, then you would laugh at yeah, yeah, I mean it's even like going going around a gig with like a form to put people's email in, like all stuff like that no one would even crazy do. Now I mean, even for some part, influencer marketing has like changed massively. Because I mean you guys say saying you're doing brand deals, even the how a brand deal is formed is completely different. The artist can't, the creator can't, just be holding a product and be like you should buy this because people are so used to being sold to same in music. You can't say you need to listen to this.
Speaker 2:People have to be so much more creative can I, can I say, and this is this is actually more of like a thing for both for me but also for other creators out there that I don't know actually gets said enough.
Speaker 2:The most frustrating thing and it's it's happened to us more times than I can count on my hands that will that will happen with the brand is that they will approach a creator and say something along the lines of like here's a brief, but barely give any details on what they actually want to happen in the video, ask you to come up with the concept and then kind of go but make sure it's your style and that you have fun with it, and yada, yada, yada, and then 20 revisions later finally get to the end product, when all of that time could have been saved by just going. Here's what we want, do it and and and that also does come a little bit from having maybe a researcher on their side to just kind of look at the other person, look at the person that they're dealing with, content and figure out what will work for them. And I actually want to give you guys credit. I don't know whose responsibility it was, but you guys sent over the um what was it the?
Speaker 2:ideas list and I was looking through that going. These guys actually know about us like these guys have looked at what we do yeah, we thought when I, when I went to open that full transparency, I thought, for fuck's sake this is gonna be a whole list of things that I'm gonna say no to basically
Speaker 1:is what I mean. I'm we're gonna charles credit for that. Yeah, charles they are legends, yeah, um. And also also Charles's girlfriend loves Tilly.
Speaker 3:Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1:So Charles loves Tilly, and he was like we need to get Tilly in this content, but this probably is going to get us into shit with some labels. But a lot of the times we're CC'd into emails, labels will send ideas to artists and it'll be like you're going to lip sync the song.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're going to tell people to listen.
Speaker 1:I mean our ideas and our content is always going to be out there, because that's who we are as people, that's who we are as an agency, because we get social. So there are some artists that just don't like working with us because we're going to say this will work. And it doesn't need to be inauthentic, it doesn't need to be influencery, but will work. And it doesn't need to be inauthentic, it doesn't need to be influencery, but it has to just be unique to the artist, and that's that's difficult to find now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and it's good that you like, to potentially give you a reason of why as well. I think most artists probably are gonna throw their toys out the pram slightly because don't get me wrong like obviously we love the ideas and we knew exactly how to execute them. Because that's sort of our background with them.
Speaker 2:They're seeing that and almost seeing code like they don't know how that video is gonna actually work in terms of them formatting it and especially if they don't have outside help, then they're probably just gonna throw their toys out of the pram besides dobby, do you have outside help at all?
Speaker 1:just literally, just us, yeah which, for people that don't know, dobby's the cameraman, dobby's our cameraman. He's not like a slave that they have. Well, he is, besides, your slave.
Speaker 2:Frankly, he's literally been with us since we were 13.
Speaker 2:And I think if I were to give anyone any advice now, because we were talking about this before the podcast.
Speaker 2:People always ask us you know, how can I get into social media or how can I promote my music online or whatever?
Speaker 2:And I'm like, if you grow up with someone who has an interest in the same thing that you do and you and you can't afford, like to pay for a cameraman or this or that or whatever, grow up with those people and let them.
Speaker 2:Because when, when Dobby first started working with us, he was a guy with a camera, barely knew how to use it, barely knew anything about social media, he was incredibly shy, didn't really network with people or didn't talk to anyone. But because he grew up with us, if we did need someone to help us film content or someone to do something and we didn't really have much money or or enough that you know an actual videographer would charge, we get dobby to do it and we're like, okay, trust us. I mean he knew he knew this anyway, but it was like, when this starts properly working, we're all going to be absolutely sound. And now it is, and now he's like on, you know, a full salary and all this sort of stuff, uh, or a part-time salary, because he actually works with other people as well, but um you're like hmrc.
Speaker 1:Don't come for me. Just to clear that up but.
Speaker 2:But like, all of that being said, we were only ever able to do that and have that person with us because we grew with him and had a friend there as well, because he was literally just a mate of ours.
Speaker 2:Um he was therapy at times as well he used to bicker so much, he did so much more than just hold a camera, let me tell you, but I mean that that also then helped him have a fast track into that world where he's not gone to uni, he's, he barely went to college, like he went to college, but half the time he was coming in to film our podcast with spotify and he was.
Speaker 2:He was getting credits with the bbc, spotify, all these people, because he just basically tagged along with a couple of idiots who also happened to get in social media, and I'm not trying to make it sound like anyone can just fall into that. That is. The unfortunate thing, is that?
Speaker 2:is a bit of a one in a million situation but, if you are a a an aspiring photographer or videographer or whatever, and you maybe are like I've not really got much of a cv or I've not got much experience and you just want to kind of offer yourself to someone and say, look, I'd love to help you film some content, maybe offer your services for free for a bit and then see if you can develop a more you know relationship out of that. I just think that in so many instances people don't realize how little money creators and artists in this industry actually have so to build that long distance relationship rather than just look for flash in the pan. And again, it's a, it's a privileged position to say that, because so many people can't afford to just do work for free all the time but see it as an investment and it could absolutely change the trajectory of where you end up in five years. I don't know. I think it's definitely gotta be someone you trust, though, as well 100.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I just think, so many people don't even realize that by actually, you know, working with a mate or getting someone involved in this, I mean even even one of our other mates that we used to just literally hang out with, like during lockdown and stuff, we needed an extra body on one of our tours and didn't, couldn't think of anyone.
Speaker 2:So he came on and just had a job for the summer because it was like, you know, we'd rather be surrounded by mates than actually hire someone that, um, you know, just happens to come onto the tour and we may not get along with them, whatever. We'd rather actually get a mate to do that job. That we know isn't too technical, that it's going to completely scare them off, but he was doing a lot of sound work, um, and he is a smart guy, um, and yeah again, we just, you know, would rather surround ourselves with mates and people that we do trust and that we can have fun with, but also get a job done with, um, and yeah, I don't know. I guess I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but that's just kind of you mentioned.
Speaker 1:You said creators don't get paid that well, let's talk about money. So we spoke about brand deals yeah that's not something you do like that often no especially not you don't like look for them basically by the time this comes out we've done a couple, so I mean
Speaker 2:it's only what's incredible to us and unfortunately, it just does come from a bit of a background of like. We absolutely love and adore our first managers that, you know, took us under their wing and helped us out massively. They were actually so kind I can probably give away this information because I'm not going to name drop them and a lot of people don't really know who they are but our first two managers didn't take a penny from us for the first two years. I don't think they literally did it out of the kindness of their hearts and we were like that is phenomenal.
Speaker 3:However, because professional managers, both professional professional managers, yeah I'll.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you guys who after, because one of them might be interesting to you. Um, but yeah, they did that. The issue was they were both based in america and we were obviously based over here. We did have quite a big american audience and when we started, we were getting a lot of brand deals and a lot of people were just coming to us because we were some of the only people in the uk that were doing that level of social media, like there really wasn't many other people besides us and a couple others.
Speaker 2:Because of that, we never really got signed up to any sort of agency that were actively looking for brands and stuff and we've never really been put in that field and actually known how to search out those things. Realistically, we should have, because that would have made us enough money to be coasting along nice and easy. Now it the last few years for us have actually been really difficult because we were trying to find, you know, agencies that were able to work with us and on our scale as well, because a lot of them sort of mostly deal with micro influencers, which you know that's fine and all, but they're just all being sent you can't really argue being a micro influencer yeah seven but it got to a point where we were like we just want to work with brands, because we don't understand how we can make money through social media, because we were barely even monetizing back.
Speaker 2:you know, two or three years ago on TikTok.
Speaker 1:Where were you at follower wise at that point?
Speaker 2:I think two years ago my best guess for followers was around like 5.9, maybe six.
Speaker 1:Yeah, about 6 million followers something like that and you were struggling to monetize.
Speaker 2:Yeah, struggling to monetize but also struggling to figure out how to grow, because we'd spent so long growing and then it sort of reached that kind of natural plateau point that people can come to. And especially back in the day there was an obvious plateau point where everyone kind of reached a bit of like a grinding halt because you lost momentum or whatever. Nowadays you can rebrand yourself, revamp and be back at it blowing up again within weeks if you're smart. Um, but yeah, we kind of. What was the initial question, sorry?
Speaker 2:well, it was about brands and money basically, and how you know we, we have struggled yeah, so so we, we were struggling and we we didn't know we, we were getting to the point where we were literally like, okay, we will take anything at this point. We just want to make sure that we're doing something that we believe in, because we wouldn't want to promote something that we just hated, like that would just not be fun at all.
Speaker 1:It's a bit silly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but at the same time we just didn't really know how to get ourselves in the way of all of these other people that are just excelling and doing really well and getting all the brand deals and getting all of this and that and they had the niches and whatever else, um, and we didn't. We kind of had a bit of pride and didn't want to just drop everything and start vlogging or start, you know, doing stuff that we didn't normally do. But it comes to a point where you've got to realize that a lot of the stuff you can still do with your uh essence and you can still keep it in a way that you'd be happy with it if you're willing to put the work in. Uh, because a lot of people kind of go oh well, I can't do that because I don't have the time. It's like make the time.
Speaker 2:Like so so many people, even even me now today, I'll go, I don't have time for that, and I've probably got about 10 to 15 hours in the week where I actually could be doing that and a lot of the time that's for, maybe for mental health reasons, maybe it's for looking after yourself, and that's absolutely fine. But if you want something done that badly. Sometimes it's like if it matters to you that much, do it. If it doesn't matter to you that much, get a normal job or you know some. I don't know, is that really harsh?
Speaker 3:I don't know. No, no, you're not gonna have a moment where, uh, you're only 24 hours a day. Yeah, no, that, and that's what I'm being careful of.
Speaker 1:Yeah that was what I was so worried about sounding like that's like everyone's got the same 24 hours in the day I I literally apologize for everything I say before I say it because I am so chronically online.
Speaker 2:I have seen not only so many friends but also so many people that I thought were like in the clear get done for things that were either a misspeak or just something that they meant with good intention. But maybe could have had a bit of revision on, or whatever, because your childhood has kind of been documented.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah there's got to be stuff out there that you've said.
Speaker 2:You know what we were so unbelievably clean on everything when we were kids, as kids we were not clean. Just to clear that up on social media we 100% were because we knew not only did we have a responsibility to not broadcast anything, no, I'm not even saying that we were like offensive yeah, I want to jump in in the people. The only thing people called us out for when we were kids was we occasionally got caught swearing.
Speaker 1:That was it it's like you can't get cancelled for that.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, it's just they were like why are these kids swearing?
Speaker 1:but, again.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that you know, when we 15, 16, we would absolutely have said things that nowadays especially, never, never mind at the time whether or not it was appropriate. But nowadays we look back and go. Well, of course, I would never say something like that, because not only was I not educated on it, or whatever it might be, but also I just I don't even think we have anything. I mean certainly not recorded, definitely.
Speaker 1:But like, just as kids you know you you're always gonna say just stupid shit that not necessarily even I don't even mean like hateful stuff.
Speaker 2:I just mean stuff that nowadays taking the piss out of each other, exactly, exactly. But my my point to like you said about apologizing for everything, is that because I I actually always worry that sometimes there are also people at home that didn't necessarily get the right either education or just understanding of a certain topic, so they might take offense to something that someone else wouldn't even think of. So in my head I'm like if I either not apologize for it, but more clear it up before I say the thing, I'm covering everyone. I'm just like there can't be anyone that can have an issue with this, because I've made it very clear both what my stance is, but also why I'm saying everyone yeah, so what is actually quite funny, and especially now that we've always done live streams, but especially nowadays.
Speaker 2:I'll try and throw in slightly. You know more and more crude jokes where I can, so to give you an example, just because this actually did go down very well, but we were all quite worried about, you know, the potential of me being cancelled for it. Not that I really could be, but someone asked the question.
Speaker 2:We had two of my mates who are both women in the back of the video in the back of the live stream, sorry, and someone asked the question who are the girls in the back? And I just looked back at them and I was like what witty thing can I come up with? And it was straight away. I went we've rented these and it was just like a sort of passing comment.
Speaker 2:Of course I don't mean that and of course that's not true, but I was just like what's a little funny thing I can say here and also farm a clip, because that is a thing in live streaming you try, and you know, get little clippable moments to then post to promote yourself more, and it's normally like a shocking thing that someone's done or said whatever. Um, and I always throw in little things like that because I'm like, at the end of the day, if we can't, as humans, laugh and joke about things like that when it's clearly not coming from a hateful place and you know it's just us saying funny things like we would to our mates, that's what feels real to people, and I almost miss that in a lot of places because people are so scared of like saying the wrong thing in the wrong way with the wrong tone. Yeah, and it's going to get them cancelled. It's like people don't say anything anymore. They're all just robots that are saying the same shite exactly where.
Speaker 1:Where has the humor gone with?
Speaker 2:with all these creators, because obviously comedians are still going at it because that's all they have.
Speaker 1:But but even still they're getting. They're getting cancelled netflix shows again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly it's like, at the end of the day, these people and and this is where it gets a bit of a gray area, because there are some people that make those kind of jokes that do mean it and it does come from a bad place and it's where do you draw that line? But I think, as long as you can tell that the person you know comes from a relatively decent background, they're a generally happy person that doesn't, you know, wish illness upon other people, they're not trying to, you know, ruin everyone's lives, or or it's.
Speaker 2:It is just crazy but, you're never gonna win that with with the fact that there's always going to be someone out there who's offended? Well, not even that gets offended, but feels like they've got a point to prove or like yeah some something to stat, they need something to stand up for, because they've got nothing, so they go.
Speaker 2:Oh, this really acutely specific issue that you've mentioned I've now got a problem with, because my brother's cousin's neighbor had that thing and I don't think you should be talking about it we try to hit them with like uh humor quite a lot.
Speaker 1:So, especially whenever we we talk about spotify, for example, because it's the easiest platform for people to get listeners and to trigger algorithms and just grow without even trying, and artists don't get paid well from it.
Speaker 1:We never said that they do, but it's a very easy platform to grow on, like you guys. Guys said you didn't get paid very well on social Didn't mean you stopped. You're using things as tools, so we try to hit people with humor with it. Like that guy that what did he say about Spotify? About how Spotify was raping him?
Speaker 3:What did he say? Wow, yeah, savage. I'm not going to suck Spotify's dick so he can then write me up the ass. I think I said, uh well, you do that for everybody else.
Speaker 3:you kind of got to feel empathy for people in in ways where, if they are angered by things that easily, yeah life's gonna be quite hard so I tried to go from it and like let's just try and stay happy about it be unapologetic and you can't be cancelled yeah, it's as soon as you start that molly may thing. Yeah, it was because they knew that. They knew they could see, yeah and they knew that she'd crumble.
Speaker 2:That I think that's the issue I think unless you've actually committed a crime, there's almost no reason to apologize. That's also something really interesting, though, because it's not even that. A lot of the time people are commenting on things like I think a lot of people see through the fact that people use people's anger to get views that that has become rage baiting and and god knows what else you know, just doing real like five five minute crafts are the original rage baiting yeah, I believe guys, five minute crafts for years have been creating stupid shit that everyone was like why would I ever use that?
Speaker 2:but it had five million views and a lot of the time people were like why does that have five million views? You just left a fucking comment on it, so of course it's gonna go. Oh well, that person interacted and stayed longer, so let's give that to more people. And so long as to bring it back to the other argument, so long as you know you've both a got people on side, but also be first of all, be on the right side, because obviously, but how do you know?
Speaker 1:what the right side is.
Speaker 2:People are divided nowadays not to name drop because I don't want to name drop, but there are certain people in the world right now that have people on side and they are definitely not on the right side, just to clarify in in the world. But I'm not going to go into that because I'm not interested. My point is that if you are doing something that is not harming anyone but is something that maybe one or two people might get a bit miffed about or even maybe slightly pissed off about, all that's doing is just creating more of a conversation and growing you. So if you can, if you can harness that and use that to your advantage, then I usually see that and go fair play games, the game. I personally wouldn't do that because I, like he said at the start of this podcast, like we, we don't really harbor anything other than just this is an entertainment thing almost, and it is real, it's.
Speaker 1:We're not like putting on characters do you feel like that? You are slightly characters, though, because that's going to be difficult to put on stage, because you guys haven't toured in a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so what we've always said is there's never like everything that comes from us, isn't like something that we're putting on. However, when there's a you know any type of camera or phone put in our face if I'm just sat at home, it's a similar. Uh, we, we always love making this comparison when people ask us, because you probably didn't know this and it's not even something I needed to mention, but we're quite good friends with jojo siwa.
Speaker 3:She, I know get ready, get ready, get ready for this she is the most down.
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna be.
Speaker 2:It's really random but she is the most like down to earth normal, and I think people have only just seen it on big brother, when she went on there.
Speaker 2:We've known that for years, but you don't talk about it because it never comes up, like there's no reason to talk about it. But she is the most lovely person on the planet. However, when there's a camera on her or used to be, because I know she's switched up her brand now it would be oh my god, guys, like crazy. We're not quite like that, but there is an energy influx because it's like we're performing at the end of the day, like this is entertainment. You can't just stand there and be yourself and hope it works.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, it's sort of like saying like a lot of the time, especially in the past, people would be like oh, I bet they're not actually like that when they're off camera, I bet they're this when they're off camera or whatever, and it's sort of like well, would you? Would you go to someone? Let's say we're going to see evita tonight. Rachel zegler is performing in it and if I went up to rachel I'm not gonna meet her. But if I went up to her afterwards and went, oh, you're not like how you were on stage a little bit weird it's like, yeah, because I'm not performing right now, I'm just, I'm just existing.
Speaker 2:And on that note, a lot of people do get shit because when they are walking out and about and if you know really famous people and they get asked for a picture or whatever and they just kind of go I really don't want to right now that always is received badly. But again, you've got to remember that if you're having a terrible day I mean this has been covered so many times before but if you're having a terrible day, could you, could you ever imagine being fine with someone coming up to you and asking to take a picture with you? Would you seriously be like I'm having the worst day of my life right now? Like you? Just, I don't know, you just gone through a breakup or you just, um, I don't know had anything bad happened to you, and then suddenly someone goes, hey, can I get a picture?
Speaker 1:or even worse, we had a train station.
Speaker 2:Even worse, after a nightmare someone someone comes up to you with their kid and goes I have no fucking clue who you are, but my kid wants a picture and you're meant to go, yeah fantastic.
Speaker 2:We'd love to do that. We've had that on so many occasions the other day and we don't mind it, but it's always seemed like the most bizarre human reaction to go up to someone that you're asking a favor from and start with essentially an insult. It is. It just seems like odd to me, but also I'm never. I'm never like I don't take it to heart because I get where it's coming from, especially the.
Speaker 1:The adult in the situation might always feel like I don't, I don't want to feel like I'm being weird, basically horrifically nervous to ask that question.
Speaker 2:So I actually take that into account and like they just haven't thought about what they were going to say to me. So fair enough. But then, at the end of the day, no matter who you're talking to and no matter who you're asking for something for we completely stand by manners are the most important thing ever, and they cost you nothing. So it's like, if you can't provide that to us, why should we provide a service to you? I get it that you know people watch our content and tell them what, but yeah, it's like it is what it is.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, we're so, so lucky that our you know, core fan base are all ridiculously polite. We end up having some lovely conversations with the majority of them and we can tell who are the people that have been around for a long time and understand us, and then we can also tell the people that have just seen the occasional video and gone for can I get a picture for the record? There are some fans that we actually are consciously aware of that have been watching us pretty much since 2016, and that in itself is insane to us and and to them and to everyone else that obviously follows us. We. We couldn't be more grateful that someone would actually stick around for nine years just watching basically the progression of our lives, um. But then there's also people who will like comment on a video going.
Speaker 2:I've been watching you guys for 15 years now I don't think I've been conscious of what I've been doing, for 15 years, never mind, but yeah, it is really strange, but also like such an honor, that there are still those people that can give us almost like a reference point for how we've changed, because we don't know, it's six, we're just changing, we're just moving things along. They're like sat there like reminding us of it. I mean going. I can't believe this was you. You know, in 2018.
Speaker 2:Posting edits of stupid videos we made as well. Delete that please.
Speaker 1:I bet you'll be like that with your music, though. Oh yeah, you'll look back on it in 10 years and be like, oh because. I mean, all musicians are like that, Like even a song, because we'll work a lot of releases that obviously are new for us but they'll come to that and that says something about one song that we've been working on actually, because there was.
Speaker 2:There was this one song that we wrote basically at the start of when we sat ourselves down and went we really need to start writing some actually good music because, not to discredit anyone that we worked with in the past, but a lot of the time our sessions were very rushed over, zoom, literally just writing to get a song and then release it no matter, no matter how good it was I mean I'll put it this way, a lot of people that were working with us, unfortunately, were just trying to make a quick buck out of us, and then dip in like it was not
Speaker 2:everyone, not everyone there was. There was one guy that did like the towards the end of the um music that we were doing when we were like 16 17. There was this one guy that we worked with.
Speaker 2:He was, phenomenally, actually spent a lot of time making something that we like the sound of, whereas everyone else it was just like, yeah, this is my price, you pay it or I go kind of thing, and we're like right but, what I was getting to with that was that there was one song that we wrote at the start of the point where we turned around and went, right, we need to get our shit together that to this day, every time I listen to it, I'm so excited by it, and it definitely it's not finished, which every artist says until the song's out um, but it's. It's one of those ones where I'm just like and it was truly one of the first ones of that sort of time period that we wrote and to this day it hasn't gone away, like a lot of songs have sort of fallen and gone away and we've got the social stuff massively helped with connecting with good musicians, producers.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, yeah, yeah, 100 recently I do you know what, to tell a really interesting story. I was scrolling through tiktok live of all places, just to have a look at what other people are doing. Again, it's like an analytics thing how can we improve our stuff? And I stumbled across this guy called danelle. Um, he is a 19 year old kid, I think he's from london, and he was just singing with his guitar in his room. I actually didn't know any of his backstory, but I was like he has got one of the most phenomenal voices I've heard, and he was also singing original songs as well and I was like shit, he's actually quite good at this, even though he was saying after it was like I don't really know that much about songwriting, I'm just giving it a go and I'm like for giving it a go. You've nailed it, my friend. Like that's, that's pretty damn good.
Speaker 2:So we actually brought him into a session with us uh, just with our guy that we work with phenomenal guy called matt brettel I do need to give him his props, um, and he came into that session unbelievably nervous because he'd never been in a professional setting before in music but, you know, we eased him in, had a bit of a chat, he gave us his backstory, which I'm not gonna blast the backstory here, but he has not had an easy life, put it that way, and I didn't even know that, um, and was just so unbelievably gassed that he was even, you know, doing some sort of professional session with us.
Speaker 2:We came out with, you know, one of the best songs we've written so far and I'm so excited. We've actually not finished it yet, but I'm very excited to finish it. We're doing it soon, um, and when we can get stuff out like that and also, you know, based on what you were saying, making connections through social media, that is so much more powerful to me than just, you know, some people that have been given a song by someone else it's funny because when I said like you'd be making connections through social, the first thing people will be thinking is like massive people will want to collaborate with you.
Speaker 1:For the example, he has no followers. It's amazing. It shows the power of social.
Speaker 2:Again, and I wish more people back in the day, because there was a time period probably between like 2022 to 2023, where we were desperately trying to get in sessions with people and no one was interested. No one wanted anything to do with us and, again, they didn't know our background and, frankly, anything that they could find about our background might not have been that appetizing to them, which is fair enough, but there is something about now that we've done our fair share of writing sessions. We've been in rooms with people who have done a thousand writing sessions and we've been in rooms with people who have done none.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I've had more fun and a better result out of the ones that where there's people with zero experience, because I think the people that have done a thousand and one writing sessions, the second that they decide they're not that bothered by the song, you've lost them, and so that's not to their discredit, that's just it's gonna happen, and I personally think that if you're, if you're someone who's been in the industry for like so long and you are getting maybe either a little bit tired of it or just like a little bit over it in some sessions, do a session with someone who's got no clue what they're doing, because not only is it exciting to kind of help someone along and mentor them, but they're 100% going to come up with something you never even thought of, because they're not thinking the same way that you are. And, regardless of whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's better than just coming out with the same song every single time written slightly differently.
Speaker 2:A few people are at the moment blimey. People love that. Um, what's it? The donk bass that, just like every song I'm hearing at the moment and which, fair enough, it's working, but it's just like. That is everything at the moment. I'm like when it? When is it going to switch up?
Speaker 1:yeah, trends in music are so funny because you'll get like one, maybe two charting songs of something and suddenly everyone's like that's what we're doing yeah, which I mean it does work for monetization, like if you think about if you're a charting artist already and you want to just release a song that you know is going to make you money it's going to to get radio play, it works. But for artists that are still developing it just doesn't work, because it just the only thing that does work is giving you a unique sound and the copycat formula is just done.
Speaker 1:But, we're going to keep seeing it because it works for the larger artists and everyone copies that but songwriting sessions are an interesting one because we don't actually often talk about it, but it's one of the most important things, yeah because, I mean we don't talk about because we're in marketing, but the quality of the track is everything. Yeah, and those songwriting sessions are just.
Speaker 2:You can see a song like transform yeah, but also having a story as well, like having something that the people in the room can get excited about, so that when it comes to marketing, everyone's on the same page. Because we again in the past with our old songs, not only were we not really that excited about most of them, but also we didn't really get how we would promote them at the time so all of that not making sense and it not having like a real excitement behind it really does make a big difference.
Speaker 2:Like you said earlier about how people have got like three-year-old songs that they're just not jazzed by anymore or whatever, it can be truly impossible to make that read to an audience the narrative is everything, yeah, especially now with social, because you can tell that story so easily.
Speaker 1:Um, that's why that song that you've written with that 19 year old, that should be the selling point because it's so unique, like uh, you guys have like seven, more, probably more than that million followers across platforms and you chose a random guy on tiktok live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how cool is that as a narrative but this is the thing, and this is something I've always, always stood by and it'd be quite a nice thing to end on.
Speaker 2:I know we're getting close to the the time, but um, of of everything you know, people can have the biggest numbers in the world, like they can be the most successful, even in their field, which actually that you know leans on more what I'm about to say. We don't care who we're working with, as long as they are proud of and are good at what they do. If they've got millions of followers but they've sort of blagged the living, we're not fussed Like, we're not there to be, like, oh well, they're going to benefit us because they've got all these people watching us. It's not about that for us at all. We just want to always make something good and we trust in ourselves enough that we can, you know, push it far enough. We we always have like a bit of a a moment when we, when we meet someone that we realize is like and that's not not to say that we're on like the perfect wavelength, whatever but when we meet someone that we realize is on our wavelength, we go, they're cool.
Speaker 1:It's hard, it's very hard, it's really difficult.
Speaker 2:But some people just absolutely lack any real drive or passion for the thing they're doing.
Speaker 2:Maybe because they got lost in the money side of it, or maybe because they got lost in something else, I don't know, or maybe they just never really cared that much. There's so many people doing social media right now that I think would and kind of want to quit, but can't, because they've made that their only job now. They've committed to it and it is getting harder and harder by the day. But you've kind of either just got to go for it or give it up, because there's with social media, there is no holiday, even if you kind of go, I'm going to take a two-week break. Some people on like a high level can get away with that, but some people that that could literally like kill your career if you just stopped all of a sudden and then expected to come back like legacy youtubers have been a thing in the past, like people who went away for a while and then suddenly did a comeback or whatever. But I just don't think that's how social media moves anymore really.
Speaker 1:No, it's chicken besta. Yeah, that sounds super negative, but I feel like the whole podcast has been positive you can grow this audience and it can easily move across to music, or it starts in music and you can grow that audience from there. I think it just shows the potential social yeah you're. We're gonna get artists commenting on this being like oh fuck, social and all this but you are proof that it works and you should be proud of that.
Speaker 2:I think, if you can separate, as an artist, the time where you're making the music and then the time when you're promoting it, see it as like actors that do press tours, do you know? I mean, you've just got to do the press tour and that means locking in on social media, coming up with some sick ideas, some sick hooks. More importantly, because, honestly, if you can get someone to start watching a video, you're more likely to get them to finish it.
Speaker 3:Um, and that's literally mentioned we that we sent you the ideas. How do you guys come up with the ideas? What's your creative process for that?
Speaker 2:honestly, we we usually dissect what's currently working, but you can't, obviously you can't copy it either.
Speaker 3:So you've got to make sure, like you're on a blank canvas as well.
Speaker 2:It's a tricky one, I think. I think, first of all, we think about what excites us, because it's always we've got to believe in it for one thing, so it's got to be a concept that we would watch. Um, I don't think we've put out anything in the last like two years, or maybe year and a half, that we wouldn't watch ourselves.
Speaker 1:But like how, for example, did you come up with the video where you put a blindfold on Tilly?
Speaker 2:Because everyone in the office was cracking up. Thank you, I genuinely think so. So, without sounding like an arsehole, it was definitely my idea, purely because I again I am very selfish with our social media, like I love just doing stuff that I like doing yeah and we'd been to bird world before. We established a bit of a relationship with them and I went. I I caught wind that tilly would actually like to meet the emu. It turned out that it was actually just our mum that wanted to meet the emu.
Speaker 2:She was vicariously living through tilly and so told me that so then I was like, okay, what would be a great way to make it slightly more interesting than just throwing her at an emu and going now make a video was let's blindfold her, make her think it's going to be something just completely terrifying or completely scary. So the whole way there she's just kind of like what is it? What's going to happen? We've got a video, at the very least, out of the journey as well, because I wasn't sure how long the actual main bit of the video was going to last, and then it turned out that the actual bit that people were more interested in was her getting there. They didn't even care about. I mean, the video of her meeting the emu also did like 20 across social, 20 plus million views. But the actual blindfolding video itself is on like over 100 million views across platforms 120 million, I think, or something stupid like that but again it all just came from like what would, what would I do, what would I want to watch?
Speaker 2:but also, how do we make this more than just tilly meets an emu if?
Speaker 3:that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah um, but to go back to your question, as well about ideas yeah planning for music has been a new one for us because we haven't been in that swing of things as much as frequently. But again it kind of just comes down to like what would annoy me least if I saw someone promoting their music to me, that's, that's a big one, because I, I get, I sometimes I'm scrolling through and I'm really picky with what I'm watching. If someone pisses me off with the way that they're trying to advertise to me, I just go. I, even if what they're pitching sounds like it could be good actually, that's a lie. If it sounds like it could be good, I do stick around. But nine times out of ten if someone just winds me up with their way that they're promoting something to me, I'm, I'm gone before they can even promote it. But, um, so that I just like don't annoy people. And it's again, it's the, it's the pull, don't push. It's again, it's the pull, don't push.
Speaker 2:Thousands of people have said it. But you've got to actually reel people in rather than just go. Here's the thing, love it, and that's kind of where we start. But yeah, then it just grows out of like what are our audience already watching? How do we get that in front of them? So talk about it on the podcast is the obvious one. As long as the person watching feels like they have made the choice themselves, you're on to a winner in terms of watching the full video or whatever. As long as you're not too abrasive and and they are consuming everything by their, I think especially for younger viewers. I don't know about older viewers, to be fair, because we don't really look into that demographic that much, but for younger people they want to be the ones making the choices on what they watch on social media, even if they know they're doing it or not. So as long as you're not too like he said before, pushy in their faces, you should be fine. As long as your content's good.
Speaker 2:But then it becomes completely different as well for and and this I saw a really good post about this the other day about already slightly established musicians whether you've got 50 000 followers, 100 000 followers, whatever. If you're slightly established and you've got a small audience there who want to get excited about whatever it is you're doing and you just kind of throw all the information out because you're trying to hit the algorithms or you're trying to do this, that or whatever, you're actually almost like isolating that core audience by not making a spectacle out of what you're doing, because they want to support you. Like our fans maybe not everyone's, I don't know, because I'm only talking from our own experience Our fans are truly, unbelievably supportive of literally everything we do. We could go, we're coming with guys, we're coming out with cheese, and they go.
Speaker 2:It must be. There's a reason. Great, well done, guys. You're doing great. But I think that's just because and that's not a bad thing, I just more mean like they are so excited for us and want to help us and want to support us that they actually need that kind of excitement and spectacle given back to them, rather than just kind of going oh, here's all the information.
Speaker 1:It's about knowing your audience.
Speaker 2:yeah, A hundred percent. All the information audience, yeah, yeah, and, and so when you start to grow a little bit more of a core audience, I just think don't don't forget them, don't don't stop telling them to go and listen to the song, because they want that like exciting sort of red carpet moment of like here's the new release and here's why it's really exciting. Get them involved, you know, like, make it about everyone who you know this is for, like obviously it's for the artist, but also you're putting it out there for other people to listen to, so give them a reason to get excited about it. I don't know and, brie, sorry, I know.
Speaker 1:I can't be worth talking about that. Yeah, so get Brie on here. It's a good time to end the aircon's not on, alright, well, thanks so much for coming on guys where can people find you, max, and?
Speaker 2:Harvey. We're still Max and Harvey official on TikTok. We've never changed that, but maybe we should at some point, because that was kind of we did that when we were 13 luckily, we have the monopoly. We have the monopoly on our names no one is doing Max and Harvey like we are so if you type it in, you'll probably find it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you got it cool.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks so much for coming on, guys, if you enjoyed the podcast.