A guy decides he wants to be a singer because he has been told severally that he's got a good voice. He goes into the studio and makes a song, post it up on his social media accounts. Then he starts making short videos of himself singing and dancing. After a while of doing this he gets lucky, he goes viral and a good number of people know the song, they make videos of it, talk about it and the singer, etc.

Thousands of people post their music and lil videos every day but only few get this lucky, and this guy is one of the lucky few.

A big record label boss hears the song, watches the videos, he doesn't think much of the guy. He feels, oh the guy is good but I don't really see what the hype is about.

But then the hype doesn't stop, it rages on on social media for a lil more while. The boss sees that people love this guy and pay attention to him. He's got a good growing audience size/fan base. And remember the boss is a businessman, he sees the opportunity, he knows that even though he doesn't like this guy other people do, which means other people would pay money to listen to this guy.

So he calls up a meeting with this guy and tells him he's a brilliant singer, even though he doesn't necessarily think so, he tells him he has a deal for him to sign. The deal is, join my record label, I'll do all the promotions you need, give you a studio and all the tools you need to become a bigger start, but I get 70% of everything you make.

At first, the guy thinks this is ridiculous because 70% is such a large amount. But his advisers who know better about deals like these explain to him that it is a good deal. This label is a huge label, simply signing with them would increase the eyes on you by a million times, they would give you global promotion and great expensive tools that would make sure you stand out even more.

If you are to be independent let's say your music would make $100,000 this year, after expenses you'll be left with say $80,000 and you'll get to keep it all for yourself because you're not signed to any label. That sounds good right? But if you sign for this label your music will make $1M this year, and the label would take 70%, leaving you with 30% which is $300,000! Do you see that the 30% here is greater than the 100% you can make on your own?

This blows the young guy's mind, so he signs immediately.

And true to their words, the label does all they say they would do. The label provides him a great studio and staff, he makes so many songs. The label provides money for good music videos and the guy's music videos start looking sparkling!

Then the label pays some music bloggers to talk about this guy and his music, they also pay the radio and TV stations to make sure his songs are on repeat. Then they pay the newspapers and magazines and make sure a lot of interviews happen.

Now this guy's music is everywhere, everyone is talking about him, and people are saying that this guy must be so good and high status that is why his music is everywhere and all these media outlets are talking about him.

The money starts pouring in.

Next, the label boss speaks to one of his friends in the movie industry. "Do you have a small role for this musician guy of mine?" His friend says yes, because they're friends and exchanging favours is just what they do. He can make his friend pay in cash now or ask for another favour later so they're even. They've been in business for ages.

So they put this guy in a movie because that would make more people find out about him and give his music more exposure. Before you know it he is featuring on some other shows and movies, because he's getting more famous and the movies want him because a famous face means the movie would sell better. He also needs the movies because they pay well and expose his music even more.

Soon, this guy is so famous. He's been everywhere and everybody knows him.

After years of killing it like this, the guy's creativity starts dropping and he cannot come up with good songs anymore. But that's not a problem, the label pays some good song writers and they write great songs for him.

Zooming Out

The average person watching his rise and fortune would be in a hurry to say "Oh this guy is so good at what he does that is why he's been able to make it this far". But they don't realize that he is being taken this far all because someone is making 70% out of everything he makes and this person is spending a lot of money to take him far because the more he makes the more that 70% is.

Yes, the guy was a good singer, but he's not the best among his peers. He went viral on social media on his own, but he wasn't the only good singer posting songs on social media. Many other good singers never got favoured by the algorithm, they did everything right but were just not lucky.

We all know that the things that become trends aren't necessarily the best. Many memes are posted but it's almost at random that some get popular. Many good songs, movies, skits, writeups, etc get trending only at random.

Then he was lucky the label was open for new signings at that same time too. Everything from then onwards has just been to make that label's 70% fatter for the boss. All the promotions and expenditure just investments into the 70%. And the label has all the money and connections to make the right calls.

At the end of the day, the singer dies or retires a legend. People look back on all the great things he has done, they say he was so talented, he made all those songs, acted in all those movies, featured in all those shows.

They'll never know that if he had to do it on talent alone the music label boss would have never picked him because he doesn't think he's that great of a singer.

Half of the songs in his catalog were written by good song writers paid by the label.

The movies would have never picked him, they only picked him because of the relationship with the label boss, there were other better actors than him. The bloggers would have never spoken about him, they did it cos they were paid. The shows he featured on would have never... You know how it goes. All the buzz about him came because people were paid, not because he was just such a great singer.

The End

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