0:00 Have you guys noticed how old all the
0:02 people on the top of the music charts
0:04 are? If you go to the top Spotify
0:06 monthly listeners chart and you start
0:07 looking down, let's say that take the
0:09 top 25 and you look at the ages of the
0:12 people. If you start with Bruno Mars who
0:14 has 130 million monthly listeners, he's
0:17 39 years old. Let me go down the list.
0:19 The weekend, 35 years old. Billy Isish,
0:23 23. She's young. Kendrick Lamar 37. Cold
0:26 play. Chris Martin at least is 48.
0:28 Rihanna is 37, Ed Sheeran's 34, Ariana
0:32 Grande is 31, Taylor Swift 35, Siza 35,
0:36 Bad Bunny 31, Drake 38, Justin Bieber
0:39 31, Duual Lia 29, Eminem 52, Post Malone
0:44 29, Sabrina Carpenter 25, Travis Scott
0:47 33, Maroon 5's Adam Lavine is 46,
0:50 Shakira is 48, Jay Belvin is 39, Katy
0:53 Perry is 40, Lana Del Ry is 39, Adele is
0:56 36, and rounding out the list at number
0:59 25 is Beyonce who's 43 years old. Now,
1:04 if you average all those together, it
1:07 comes out to be 36 and a2 years old.
1:10 That's the average age of the people in
1:12 the top 25 on Spotify's monthly listener
1:17 chart. That's really old. So, out of
1:20 that list, there are only four people
1:22 that are in their 20s. Billy Isish who's
1:24 23, Sabrina Carpenter, who's 25, but
1:26 Post Malone and Dual Lia are 29 and
1:30 almost 30. They're both going to be 30
1:32 this year. As a point of comparison, in
1:34 1965, the Beatles released their sixth
1:37 record, Rubber Soul. On that record,
1:39 John Lennon was 25 and so was Ringo.
1:42 McCartney was only 23 and George
1:44 Harrison was an astounding 22 years old.
1:48 Six records into their career. And if
1:50 you think I'm just cherrypicking this,
1:52 there's tons of examples of this. When
1:55 the Rolling Stones released Exile on
1:57 Main Street in 1972, that was their 10th
2:00 album. And Mick and Keith were both 29.
2:03 Another great example is Stevie Wonder.
2:06 Stevie Wonder was 26 when he released
2:09 his eighth studio record, Songs in the
2:12 Key of Life, in 1976.
2:14 Or if you go to the 80s, YouTube
2:16 released their fifth studio record in
2:18 1987, the Joshua Tree. And on that
2:21 record, Bono and Adam Clayton were 27
2:24 and Edge and Larry Mullen Jr. were 26.
2:27 The they're far into their careers. And
2:29 there's many more examples of this. If
2:32 you look at today's charts, you're going
2:33 to notice something very different.
2:35 Bruno Mars is 39, but only released
2:38 three albums. The Weekend and Kendrick
2:40 Lamar are 35 and 37 and they've each
2:44 only released six albums and Ed Sheeran
2:46 who's 34 has released seven. So far
2:50 fewer records and are much older. So why
2:53 is this? So I came across this thing
2:56 called the Matthew principle or Matthew
2:58 effect which refers to the concept of
3:01 cumulative advantage where those who
3:03 already possess an advantage like wealth
3:05 status or in this case Spotify listeners
3:09 tend to accumulate more while those who
3:11 start with less tend to lose what they
3:13 have. In economics, individuals with
3:15 more wealth have more opportunities to
3:18 invest in things and generate even more
3:20 wealth. I think the way that it relates
3:22 to this list is that people that were
3:25 already famous in the early 2000s to the
3:27 mid 2000s like Taylor Swift, like
3:30 Coldplay, like Maroon 5, they had a
3:33 distinct advantage on this list because
3:35 they were famous when streaming really
3:37 blew up, which made it easier for them
3:40 to be higher on the list. They had more
3:42 songs to pick from. People were going
3:44 back listening to their catalog songs
3:46 and their new songs that they're
3:48 releasing. And that's one of the reasons
3:50 that they're so big on this list. Bruno
3:52 Mars may only have three records out,
3:54 but he's been on so many people's songs.
3:57 He is all over the place. The same thing
3:59 goes on social media. Let's say YouTube.
4:02 I have almost 5 million subscribers. And
4:05 I will get there if you hit subscribe
4:07 right now. Quick plug. It's far easier
4:09 for me to get subscribers cuz I have all
4:11 this social proof. People look at my
4:12 channel and they see, "Oh, this video
4:14 has got a million. This video has 5
4:15 million. This video has 20 million." And
4:17 so you tend to click on those videos and
4:19 subscribe to those channels that have a
4:21 ton of social proof than you will if you
4:24 come across a channel that only has 20
4:26 followers. Think about your own viewing
4:28 habits. If you're going to try to fix
4:30 your hot water heater, are you going to
4:32 look at a video of someone that's got
4:33 5,000 views or 5 million views? You're
4:37 going to go with the one that has the
4:38 social proof on it. Especially with
4:40 something like that. That pretty much
4:41 goes for anything. If you're trying to
4:43 learn anything, YouTube will typically
4:46 serve up the videos that have the most
4:48 views or that have the most views and
4:50 the highest rating. And this Matthew
4:52 principle goes for things like social
4:54 media platforms. Like why did Facebook
4:57 outlast things like MySpace or any of
4:59 its other competitors? Well, because
5:01 people would spend x amount of time
5:03 posting things on there and then once
5:05 you have all this history, people don't
5:08 want to start from scratch. It's hard.
5:10 People are like, "Rick, why don't you
5:11 move to this platform, move to that
5:13 platform?" Uh, maybe because I have
5:15 2,000 videos on YouTube and I don't want
5:18 to start from scratch. And because
5:19 YouTube is the best platform to be on
5:21 because it's got the best search engine.
5:24 People when they're searching things,
5:25 they go to YouTube. They don't go to
5:26 other places. And when you look on
5:28 Google, it brings up YouTube videos. It
5:30 doesn't bring up Facebook videos. So, if
5:32 you want to learn to do something, you
5:35 search it on Google and you find the top
5:37 YouTube videos to learn how to do
5:39 anything. And those are the ones that
5:41 you go with. That's your competitive
5:42 advantage over other things, which is
5:45 why these people on Spotify keep getting
5:47 bigger and why they're older. It's this
5:50 exact same thing. They have this
5:51 competitive advantage by being around
5:54 longer. So, I'm not going to tell you
5:56 that it's impossible to be successful on
5:58 this platform even if you start from
6:01 scratch today, because it's not. You can
6:03 start from scratch and grow a huge
6:05 channel right now. I have friends that
6:08 have done it in the past few years, but
6:11 it is difficult. And when you're
6:13 competing against people, let's say
6:15 somebody like me that's 63 years old and
6:18 you're 30 years old, not only is my
6:21 competitive advantage the length of time
6:23 I've been on YouTube, but it's also my
6:25 age. Being 63 does give me a competitive
6:28 advantage. Why is that? When I'm talking
6:31 about music from the 60s, I was alive in
6:33 the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and the
6:36 90s and the 2000s. So, I was able to
6:39 live and hear the Beatles when they were
6:42 on the radio in the 60s and Jimmyi
6:44 Hendricks and Black Sabbath. I was able
6:46 to hear all those artists that Led
6:48 Zeppelin, all these artists that were
6:50 big in the 60s and the 70s and 80s and
6:52 the '9s. I lived through the grunge era.
6:54 I learned about jazz music when I was in
6:56 college in the 1980s and I taught jazz
6:59 studies. I touch jazz history. I played
7:01 classical music in the 60s and the 70s
7:04 and the 80s. I studied it and I have
7:07 this incredible lived experience of
7:10 playing all these different genres of
7:12 music not only on one instrument but on
7:16 multiple instruments. So, it's far
7:18 easier for me to talk about Jimmyi
7:20 Hendris because I remember when Jimmyi
7:22 Hendricks was putting out records and I
7:24 remember when the Stones were putting
7:25 out records and the Beatles, well, the
7:26 Stones are still putting out records and
7:28 all these artists that are not even with
7:30 us anymore. So, it's very difficult for
7:32 a young person to come in and start a
7:34 channel and compete with someone that's
7:36 old like me that has all this
7:38 experience. But it's not impossible. You
7:40 can have a successful channel, but the
7:43 things you need to do are actually the
7:45 things that I did. You need to outwork
7:47 other people. You really need to just
7:49 dedicate yourself to this and put in the
7:53 work that it takes. And it takes a lot
7:54 of work to be successful at anything.
7:57 The next thing is that you have to keep
8:00 learning. If I didn't keep learning
8:01 throughout my channel, I would not be
8:03 able to be doing this 9 years into it. I
8:06 didn't know I was going to be making
8:07 videos on AI. I didn't know I was going
8:09 to be making videos on a lot of the
8:12 topics that I talk about now because
8:13 they didn't exist before.
8:16 And the last thing
8:17 is somebody's got to be successful, so
8:21 why can't it be you? That's the thing
8:23 that I always thought when I started my
8:25 channel. It's like, hey, somebody's got
8:27 to be successful, why can't it be me?
8:29 Love to know your thoughts. Hit
8:30 subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.
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