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It's Worse Than You Think: The TRUTH About Why New Artists Fail
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Have you guys noticed how old all the
people on the top of the music charts
are? If you go to the top Spotify
monthly listeners chart and you start
looking down, let's say that take the
top 25 and you look at the ages of the
people. If you start with Bruno Mars who
has 130 million monthly listeners, he's
39 years old. Let me go down the list.
The weekend, 35 years old. Billy Isish,
23. She's young. Kendrick Lamar 37. Cold
play. Chris Martin at least is 48.
Rihanna is 37, Ed Sheeran's 34, Ariana
Grande is 31, Taylor Swift 35, Siza 35,
Bad Bunny 31, Drake 38, Justin Bieber
31, Duual Lia 29, Eminem 52, Post Malone
29, Sabrina Carpenter 25, Travis Scott
33, Maroon 5's Adam Lavine is 46,
Shakira is 48, Jay Belvin is 39, Katy
Perry is 40, Lana Del Ry is 39, Adele is
36, and rounding out the list at number
25 is Beyonce who's 43 years old. Now,
if you average all those together, it
comes out to be 36 and a2 years old.
That's the average age of the people in
the top 25 on Spotify's monthly listener
chart. That's really old. So, out of
that list, there are only four people
that are in their 20s. Billy Isish who's
23, Sabrina Carpenter, who's 25, but
Post Malone and Dual Lia are 29 and
almost 30. They're both going to be 30
this year. As a point of comparison, in
1965, the Beatles released their sixth
record, Rubber Soul. On that record,
John Lennon was 25 and so was Ringo.
McCartney was only 23 and George
Harrison was an astounding 22 years old.
Six records into their career. And if
you think I'm just cherrypicking this,
there's tons of examples of this. When
the Rolling Stones released Exile on
Main Street in 1972, that was their 10th
album. And Mick and Keith were both 29.
Another great example is Stevie Wonder.
Stevie Wonder was 26 when he released
his eighth studio record, Songs in the
Key of Life, in 1976.
Or if you go to the 80s, YouTube
released their fifth studio record in
1987, the Joshua Tree. And on that
record, Bono and Adam Clayton were 27
and Edge and Larry Mullen Jr. were 26.
The they're far into their careers. And
there's many more examples of this. If
you look at today's charts, you're going
to notice something very different.
Bruno Mars is 39, but only released
three albums. The Weekend and Kendrick
Lamar are 35 and 37 and they've each
only released six albums and Ed Sheeran
who's 34 has released seven. So far
fewer records and are much older. So why
is this? So I came across this thing
called the Matthew principle or Matthew
effect which refers to the concept of
cumulative advantage where those who
already possess an advantage like wealth
status or in this case Spotify listeners
tend to accumulate more while those who
start with less tend to lose what they
have. In economics, individuals with
more wealth have more opportunities to
invest in things and generate even more
wealth. I think the way that it relates
to this list is that people that were
already famous in the early 2000s to the
mid 2000s like Taylor Swift, like
Coldplay, like Maroon 5, they had a
distinct advantage on this list because
they were famous when streaming really
blew up, which made it easier for them
to be higher on the list. They had more
songs to pick from. People were going
back listening to their catalog songs
and their new songs that they're
releasing. And that's one of the reasons
that they're so big on this list. Bruno
Mars may only have three records out,
but he's been on so many people's songs.
He is all over the place. The same thing
goes on social media. Let's say YouTube.
I have almost 5 million subscribers. And
I will get there if you hit subscribe
right now. Quick plug. It's far easier
for me to get subscribers cuz I have all
this social proof. People look at my
channel and they see, "Oh, this video
has got a million. This video has 5
million. This video has 20 million." And
so you tend to click on those videos and
subscribe to those channels that have a
ton of social proof than you will if you
come across a channel that only has 20
followers. Think about your own viewing
habits. If you're going to try to fix
your hot water heater, are you going to
look at a video of someone that's got
5,000 views or 5 million views? You're
going to go with the one that has the
social proof on it. Especially with
something like that. That pretty much
goes for anything. If you're trying to
learn anything, YouTube will typically
serve up the videos that have the most
views or that have the most views and
the highest rating. And this Matthew
principle goes for things like social
media platforms. Like why did Facebook
outlast things like MySpace or any of
its other competitors? Well, because
people would spend x amount of time
posting things on there and then once
you have all this history, people don't
want to start from scratch. It's hard.
People are like, "Rick, why don't you
move to this platform, move to that
platform?" Uh, maybe because I have
2,000 videos on YouTube and I don't want
to start from scratch. And because
YouTube is the best platform to be on
because it's got the best search engine.
People when they're searching things,
they go to YouTube. They don't go to
other places. And when you look on
Google, it brings up YouTube videos. It
doesn't bring up Facebook videos. So, if
you want to learn to do something, you
search it on Google and you find the top
YouTube videos to learn how to do
anything. And those are the ones that
you go with. That's your competitive
advantage over other things, which is
why these people on Spotify keep getting
bigger and why they're older. It's this
exact same thing. They have this
competitive advantage by being around
longer. So, I'm not going to tell you
that it's impossible to be successful on
this platform even if you start from
scratch today, because it's not. You can
start from scratch and grow a huge
channel right now. I have friends that
have done it in the past few years, but
it is difficult. And when you're
competing against people, let's say
somebody like me that's 63 years old and
you're 30 years old, not only is my
competitive advantage the length of time
I've been on YouTube, but it's also my
age. Being 63 does give me a competitive
advantage. Why is that? When I'm talking
about music from the 60s, I was alive in
the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and the
90s and the 2000s. So, I was able to
live and hear the Beatles when they were
on the radio in the 60s and Jimmyi
Hendricks and Black Sabbath. I was able
to hear all those artists that Led
Zeppelin, all these artists that were
big in the 60s and the 70s and 80s and
the '9s. I lived through the grunge era.
I learned about jazz music when I was in
college in the 1980s and I taught jazz
studies. I touch jazz history. I played
classical music in the 60s and the 70s
and the 80s. I studied it and I have
this incredible lived experience of
playing all these different genres of
music not only on one instrument but on
multiple instruments. So, it's far
easier for me to talk about Jimmyi
Hendris because I remember when Jimmyi
Hendricks was putting out records and I
remember when the Stones were putting
out records and the Beatles, well, the
Stones are still putting out records and
all these artists that are not even with
us anymore. So, it's very difficult for
a young person to come in and start a
channel and compete with someone that's
old like me that has all this
experience. But it's not impossible. You
can have a successful channel, but the
things you need to do are actually the
things that I did. You need to outwork
other people. You really need to just
dedicate yourself to this and put in the
work that it takes. And it takes a lot
of work to be successful at anything.
The next thing is that you have to keep
learning. If I didn't keep learning
throughout my channel, I would not be
able to be doing this 9 years into it. I
didn't know I was going to be making
videos on AI. I didn't know I was going
to be making videos on a lot of the
topics that I talk about now because
they didn't exist before.
And the last thing
is somebody's got to be successful, so
why can't it be you? That's the thing
that I always thought when I started my
channel. It's like, hey, somebody's got
to be successful, why can't it be me?
Love to know your thoughts. Hit
subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.
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