Making Millions from Viral Beats: How Kato Turned TikTok Sounds into a Music Empire
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How do you make money touring? I created my own tour called the Sound Advice Tour. I go city to city to individual studios across the U.S. and Canada. I sold out my first 26-city tour just by doing that. Of the three main lines of business you have, which one's the most lucrative? Right now or just all time? Wow, can I get both? The way you asked that. I probably invested... How much do you think we invested in that space?

You've worked with some incredible artists. Yeah. Who has been the favorite? What's up, rich friends? Welcome back to another episode of Net Worth and Chill with me, your host, Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF and your favorite Wall Street girly. So today we are diving into something that has been plaguing me.

The fact that in another life, I really should have been a rapper. No, I'm just kidding. Please do not laugh at me. But, you know, music is something that I've always been super passionate about. I love listening to music, whether I'm working out or doing work at my desk or just commuting or just having a dinner with some girlfriends. And the business of music and how to actually build wealth in a creative industry is something that we do not talk about enough.

And I know we have a lot of creative entrepreneurs in our audience. And if you think Wall Street is cutthroat, wait until you hear about the music industry.

That's why I'm hyped to welcome someone who's not just making hits, he's building an entire empire from his production skills. He's worked with Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum artists like Tyga, B.O.B., K-Camp, Snoop Dogg, E-40, Jay Park, Jack Harlow, Paul Wall, and even members of the Wu-Tang Clan.

But what really sets him apart is how he's turned his production skills into multiple income streams, from beat leases to education to social media. Today, we're learning about music. Everyone, please welcome Chris Ju, otherwise known as K-K-K-Kato on the track, bitch.

How's it going? It's so good to have you here. Are we about to get into it today? I mean... Are we doing this? We're doing this. Okay. You're going to start beatboxing. I'm going to start... No, I'm just kidding. People would literally be like, what are they doing? I want to start us off. For people who love music like me, but they don't know too much about the actual business of it, what do you do as a music producer? What does that even mean? How do you make money? Support for Net Worth and Chill comes from Brooklinen. As spring approaches, we can finally start

start thinking about removing those bulky comforters from our beds. But what comes next? A quick stop to Brooklinen, obviously. Brooklinen's super high quality products have been tested and awarded by experts including Good Housekeeping, GQ, Wirecutter, and more. Brooklinen sheets are tried and true with 200,000 plus five-star reviews and millions of happy customers.

Brooklinen's customizable bundles make it easy to refresh your bed and bathroom by putting everything you need in one place. Shop award winners and fan faves in store or online at brooklinen.com. That's B-R-O-O-K-L-I-N-E-N.com. Get 15% off your first order today. So, uh, a

A producer, at least in hip hop and rap, is responsible for making the beats. So I produce the actual musical portion of the song. The artist or the rapper will come up with the lyrics. But we kind of oversee the whole creative process from start to finish.

from the writing to the recording to the mixing, sometimes even the marketing aspect of it, depending on if you have a platform, which was one of my main motivations for creating my own platform.

But yeah, that's pretty much what a producer does. How does one make a beat? Like, are you on like garage band like I was in like eighth grade music class? It's similar. So there's a lot of different what they call DAWs, digital audio workstations. All right. But yeah, it's all digital now. Like no one's actually sitting there. No one's like... Yeah, exactly. When did you know you wanted to work in music? I have a very...

clear memory this one time it was probably in like middle school or high school and my sister actually had an acoustic guitar at the time and

And she was horrible. She's not like a musical person. Shout out, sister. Shout out to my sister. She's super creative, like very artsy. But yeah, music wasn't her thing. And I remember one day just walking into her room and just seeing this instrument sitting in the corner of her room. And I was like, oh, what's that? And I picked it up and I just started like...

playing. And I jumped on YouTube and found a bunch of tutorials on how to play the guitar. And I taught myself chords and how to play like different songs. And from there, it was just led to me being in my high school band and then starting a band, a rock band with my friends. And then I started producing beats in college. So it just kind of

into what it is now. I feel like you and I must be on very different YouTubes because you learned how to play the guitar and I learned how to snake my drain. Like get all the hair out of my shower. I mean, I did that too, but yeah, YouTube just taught me everything that I needed to know about music production and that's basically where I got my...

education. Amazing. I mean, that's a free education. That's amazing. Yeah. And speaking of free and not free, a lot of producers do get caught up in bad deals early in their careers.

What are some key things that you were looking out for when you started out in this industry and you were starting to look for like your first publishing and collaboration contracts? Yeah, I'd say a big reason why a lot of producers and songwriters get into financial trouble later on is because they don't understand how these deals are structured. Yeah. Artists too. So for example,

Once an artist signs a deal, let's say with a major label, maybe that deal is like an 80-20 to the label, right? So the label gets 80% and you get 20% of the royalties. Now, when you sign a deal,

They usually give you what's called an advance. Okay. So an advance is basically a lump sum of money that they give you. And it's not a paycheck. It's not free money. You know what I mean? No. Wait, what does that mean? So an advance is recoupable.

And it's recoupable against your future earnings. Your 20%. Your 20%. So what trips up a lot of artists, and this applies to other types of deals too, but so when the label recoups that money, they're not recouping it from the full pie, the full 100%. They only recoup that money from your 20%.

So it's essentially like a super high interest loan. Yeah. Now-

I just want to make something clear because the music people always go crazy about this point, especially lawyers. It's not exactly as bad as a traditional bank loan because if the label doesn't make a dime of that money back, they just take the L. So they're not coming after your assets. It doesn't affect your credit score, nothing like that. But it is essentially like having an 80% interest loan.

Because they're only recouping from your 20%, right? Well, I guess like I don't – I'm kind of surprised by that because I didn't realize that. Like I knew artists got advances, but I thought they were more closely aligned to like book advances. So I got an advance for my book. Okay. But if that book did badly, it would be like the publisher wears all the risk and I'd be like, oh, so sorry. Like too bad. Right. But you're telling me in the music industry –

I get an advance, and then I put out an album, and the album tanks, I might have to pay that money back. No. So it is the same as your book deal, where if they don't make a dime of that money back, then...

Okay. They just take the L. They just take the L. Okay. Yeah. And you could get released from your label deal after that. You could get dropped. You know, you can negotiate like getting out of that deal. But yeah, I mean, it is a huge risk on the labels part, right? Because they're putting up a bunch of money, giving you this advance, knowing that there's a high likelihood they might not get that money back. Yeah.

But once you have that advance, you start ticking down on every dollar that's actually sold against that album. Correct. And you don't start making more money until you have completely paid back your advance. Exactly. So let's say they give you a million dollar advance. Okay. Right? And you have an 80-20 deal. Yeah.

you don't start making money until you get to 5 million and one because it needs to be 20% of that five. Right. And so the label will have already netted

What? $4 million before you make a single dime. Yeah. Which is crazy because even with the streaming rates now, you know, musicians get paid 0.003 cents per stream. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry. 0.003, roughly, 0.003 cents per stream.

So you make a third of a penny per stream. Correct. So if I listen to your song three times, you make one cent. Yes. Like... It's crazy. Yeah. And...

The really wild part about this, right, and my frustration with the music business and what really motivated me to create my own ecosystem outside of the traditional music business is that the three major labels, Universal, Sony, and Warner, there's only three major labels in the world. They have equity in Spotify, right?

So they, when you go to your Spotify playlist and play, you know, like do you listen to a Spotify playlist when you're working out or go to the gym, right? Yeah. Like Rap Caviar. I'm throwing that out. Exactly. So Rap Caviar is completely curated.

Internally by people at the label or people at Spotify So they're incentivized to put their own artists on there a hundred percent and so not only that right But they are also dictating what artists musicians and songwriters are getting paid So they're the ones that set the royalty rate of zero point zero zero three cents per stream which affects Everyone else all the creators like me We just have to live with that. So

It's not great. It's not great. Can we talk about like how do you think streaming has like changed or ruined the industry? I think it's great for consumers. Yeah. It's made music more accessible and convenient, but it's come at the expense of the creatives. Yeah. Because I think any time art becomes more accessible,

it devalues it, right? So that's why we're left with fractions of a penny per stream because it's so easy for anyone to access art and our music, which is great on one hand, but on the other hand, it kind of brings the value down for everyone. So I don't know. It's really, really hard to make money as a musician. Yeah. Well, what's made you want to do it? Like,

I have to imagine there are easier jobs out there. Yeah. Like...

What make like was it ever because you're like, oh, I want to become a rock star and famous and like make money or no? No, I think for me, the motivation was always just that I found an escape through music and music was always something that I love to do. It was the only thing that I could imagine myself waking up and doing every single day. Yeah. You know, and that is rare. Like, I feel like people don't really have the opportunity even to, you

explore that, you know? And so I feel very grateful that I found music at an early age and was able to really kind of cultivate that love and turn it into a career, which is like the craziest step, right? But yeah, it's always just been a passion. And so I think that if you're that passionate about something,

you'll figure out a way to make it work. To make the money work. Yeah, to make money off of it and to create a living off of it.

So speaking of money, you know, we've talked a little bit about your actual like day job of producing, you know, for some of these incredible artists. You are an artist yourself. But there's kind of like two other legs to your three-legged stool, right? There's the big time social media piece. You've got a large following on social media, but also you're doing some other like, I

I would call like business tangential things like beat leases and courses. I call it music adjacent. Yeah. Yeah. Music adjacent. Like, did you just wake up one day and think like, I'm going to have multiple streams of income? Like how'd that come about? No, not at all. I mean, when I met my wife. Shout out wifey. Shout out to my wife. She's right over there. When I met her 11 years ago,

I was a broke, starving musician in every sense of the word. Like the typical broke, starving artist. That was me. Wow, she is an incredibly good investor. Yeah, 100%. She always jokes with me that I was like her best investment. But I was a broke, starving artist back then. And I think over those 11 years, you know, I just kind of learned –

how to build my own ecosystem around my passion of making music and figured out different ways to monetize it. And at the same time, you know, technology was really advancing in that direction that allowed me to do that. Beat leasing became really big. Can you explain to me what that is? Beat leasing? Yeah. Okay. So... Like, I thought I'd just come to you. I'm like, I would like one beat, sir. And you like sell me the beat. Traditionally, yes. That's how it's always been. But...

Sometime probably in the early 2010s, this concept of beat leasing became really big, right? And that was just this idea that producers can now essentially license beats to anyone that wants to use it without selling exclusivity behind it. So...

There's this really big platform that I use that I've been on for 10 plus years called BeatStars. It's the biggest online marketplace for artists and producers to buy and sell beats. So they offer a platform where someone like me or anyone else can go on there and you can upload your beats and offer individual non-exclusive licenses for...

20 to 50 dollars a pop whatever right make it super super accessible for artists that don't really have big budgets and They're still able to get quality production without paying, you know a couple thousand dollars for an exclusive beat from me So that's the concept of beat leasing and it's really taken off. I've made probably half a million dollars just selling beat leases online and

That's sick. Which is insane, right? Wait, but sorry, I cut you off earlier. You were mentioning how you were building out your business. You mentioned beat leasing. Sorry, continue your earlier thought. I didn't mean to cut you off. Yeah, no, beat leasing, one-on-one mentoring and coaching, online courses, brand deals became super big for me during the pandemic when things started blowing up on TikTok, which I'm sure you have experienced. I do know a thing or two about that.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Such a wild time looking back at it like that whole couple years. It was also like the Wild West because like nobody was allowed to go outside. Yeah. You had to be inside. All of this like traditional media came to a halt, right? Like we couldn't make movies. We couldn't make TV shows. Suddenly I'm spending hours a day watching people do stuff at their house. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's what inspired me to start uploading my beats to TikTok because I kind of saw, I don't know, I just saw an opportunity there because I didn't see any other producers or beat makers uploading their beats. And then I started seeing this feature on TikTok where people could do these split screen things and like take someone else's video and then add your own stuff on top of it. But they were mostly like

dances or talking videos. And I was like, what if I uploaded my beats and allowed rappers and singers to duet that? Yeah. Do freestyles, right? Yeah. And that idea completely blew up. Yeah. And the whole open verse challenge thing became huge, especially over the pandemic.

And I grew from literally a couple hundred followers on TikTok to a quarter million within a couple months. And had some big viral moments, the whole So Pretty Challenge became a thing.

And I ended up selling that beat to Universal for $25,000. I mean, you really like that beat owes you nothing. Like you used it on social, you leased it, you sold it to Universal. I did everything with that. Yeah. But that's just the kind of opportunity that you have now with social media as a musician and especially for producers. Yeah. You know, because I feel like.

opportunities and platforms haven't quite caught up to the producer community. Yeah. Because we tend to be more behind the scenes. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like producers like being behind the scenes, like making the beats, not being on camera, not being on social media like that. And it just opened up so many opportunities for me that I didn't even knew existed. I mean-

the amount of brand deals that I got after TikTok was insane. And I had no part of my mind was ever thinking, all right, I'm going to make brand deals a part of my business. Yeah. You know, like it was just so far from my thought.

Until it happened. How did you navigate that process? Because a lot of, you know, creators and influencers, like they hire management teams, they hire agents and stuff like that. And like, you are so used to being behind the scenes, the one pulling all the strings and suddenly now you're on screen talent. How'd you navigate that? Um, I navigated it as best that I could.

You know, I wasn't, I can't even say I was prepared for it. Yeah. I had a business partner at the time who stepped in and really helped kind of structure my business around that time that all the brand deals were coming in and then record labels, every single record label in the world was in my inbox, like wanting to get a piece of that So Pretty record and seeing what else I had in the pipeline. And I don't know. I mean,

Up to that point, I'd been in the music industry for six or seven years. So I wasn't brand new to it, but nothing to that degree. And so I just kind of figured it out the best that I could with the people that I had around me and had to put trust in those people and just pray that it worked out. And it did. It did. Yeah.

But, you know, the music industry is very unstable. So define, like, explain that to me.

There's a lot of ups and downs with being a musician because as a musician, you know, I always say that we're not only in the music business, but we're also in the media business now, right? Because we have to be on social media. We have to be creating content. We have to think of the marketing side of everything that we do. It's not just about the art. And so if there's one message that I would just want to –

stress over and over to every musician and artist out there is that it is not just about the art. The music is 20% of the business. The rest is like the marketing, the touring, the everything else that comes with that. And so, yeah, that's been the part that has been a journey to navigate. Yeah.

Can I ask, how do you make money touring? Like, do you make money touring? Is that a stupid question? No, no, that's a great question. So I can speak to how I make money off of events and touring. So actually right before the pandemic, I created my own tour called the Sound Advice Tour. Okay.

And so up to that point, I kind of built a brand on social media for being like similar to what you do, like giving advice. And so a lot of musicians were coming to me for advice on how to navigate their careers in the music industry.

And so I built a whole tour called the Sound Advice Tour where I go city to city to individual studios across the US and Canada. I book it myself. I literally called every single studio myself, booked it, paid for it, paid for all the transportation, the lodging, and sold tickets direct to my audience.

And I sold out my first 26 city tour just by doing that. On social media. You were just like, hey, I'm coming around. Come see me. And people did. Yes. And people did. And it was incredible. Like just bringing together communities of artists and musicians in 26 different cities was crazy. And I never actually like to me.

I was doing it more as an experiment. Yeah. Because I was like... You wanted to see if you could do it. I wanted to see it. Exactly. Because there's no real precedence for that type of thing. Yeah. And I, in my delusional thought, you know, just imagined it going really well. And thank God it did. Because I could have lost a lot of money, but I ended up making, you know, probably...

over $100,000 off that first tour, which is rare because when most artists tour as an independent musician, you're losing money. Wait, how? Just the overhead cost of touring is very, very high. It's very expensive. You got to bring equipment on the road. You got to get transportation. You got to bring your whole team of people. It's very expensive. So a lot of artists do not make money touring. Some of them do.

Uh, but it's, it's really, really difficult. But for me, you know, it made sense because I was just pulling up to these cities solo with my assistant. Yeah. It was just me and him. So you kept it really lean. I kept it super lean. Um, and...

The tickets were definitely a premium experience, but I feel like it was worth it because I was doing individual music feedback. I was giving people feedback on their music. It was a very intimate thing. Imagine 20 musicians in this kind of size room, and I'm listening to their music, giving them advice. You're showing them how you make the sausage. Yeah.

I feel like that's an investment for them and their career. Yeah. I mean, it was great for everyone. Yeah. And just the, I, a lot of feedback was like, okay, no, thank you so much for putting this event together. I met so many other talented musicians in my city that I didn't even know existed. Um, and they end up collaborating and like opportunities just sprout from there. That's actually so cool. And yeah,

Now I want to ask a very challenging question. - Okay. - Of this three-legged stool, producing and actually making music, making social media content, where you do make some big bucks, and the music adjacent business, which of your kids is the favorite?

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Shop award winners and fan faves in store or online at brooklinen.com. That's B-R-O-O-K-L-I-N-E-N.com. Get 15% off your first order today. My favorite? Yeah. They're my favorite for different reasons. That's like such a diplomatic answer. I know. Okay, so here's how I'd break it down. Okay. Music is still my favorite. I was guessing you were going to say that. That's always going to be just my passion, right? Yeah.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, music is really, really difficult to sustain income from. It's very up and down. Yeah. So with that said, the social media, the brand deals side can be very lucrative. Yeah. And it's just like another creative outlet for me. Yeah. Once I kind of understood the mindset of going into social media and not really...

placing too much self-judgment on you know what's gonna happen like how do I look in this video what are people gonna think of this once I kind of removed that from my head it was like

The rest was easy. It was just a creative outlet for me to tell my story to my audience, right? And that's really how I look at it now. It's like social media is a platform for me to tell my story and that's it. Whatever else happens after that is just a bonus. It's a blessing. So that was my mindset. And yeah, I think that might be my favorite. Oh, yeah.

Wait, you didn't even mention the redheaded stepchild of the music adjacent kid. So you don't like that one. It's not that I don't like that one. I would just say...

That's always kind of a process. I'm still learning how to build my ecosystem in the most efficient way. So building out those parts of my business is still a learning process for me. So it's not that I don't love it, but it does require a lot of time and energy. And sometimes it doesn't, most of the times it doesn't pay off. Like I've done a lot of things and launched a lot of

services or products that flopped. And I'm not embarrassed to say that because I think that's just part of the process, right? It's like a lot of experimentation and just trying things and seeing what works. So most of the things that I've tried have flopped, but-

People don't see that. Yeah. You know? They only see your wins. They see the wins and they see the videos that go viral on TikTok and on Instagram. And they hear your music when it's playing in their Peloton class and I'm trying to get through the second hill of my Peloton ride. Yeah. Yelling Kato on the track. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what people see. Yeah. And then they build their perception off of that. Yeah. Right? But there's so much that happens online.

And that's why I think a lot of musicians, we get inside our own heads so much. Yeah. Is because there's so much that's done before the music comes out on Spotify. Yeah. That like we just, we kind of wrestle with. And there's no one else really there to see it other than us. And so I have a lot of empathy for musicians and artists because it's a really, it can be a really tough but fulfilling job.

Of the three kind of like main lines of business you have, like which one's the most lucrative? Right now or just all time? Wow. Can I get both? Like the way you asked that. Right now?

I would say it's all the music adjacent stuff. Okay. All time. I don't know. It's hard to quantify because it's like even, even all the music adjacent stuff is still connected directly to the music. Right. You wouldn't have that business if you didn't have an actual successful producer business. Yeah. It's not like I'm going and starting my own liquor company. Right. Right. And even if I did that, you could argue that I built my brand off of like my music and everything. But, uh,

Yeah. It's all connected to the music. So I'm still very much connected to that piece. And I think it all ties in together, honestly. They all feed each other. You mentioned earlier that you've had some ventures that were major flops. And let's be real, per

Production is not a cheap industry like there's a lot of tech that's involved You have those like fancy mics that look like flat like, you know, like windowsill thingies Yeah, you've got the actual like soundproof rooms and like the thing that looks like a mega keyboard I don't even know what this is like the mixing thing Yeah, right like how did you know when you were building out your career like when to invest and like What was like too much?

I think you can't go wrong investing in things that help inspire your creativity. So obviously hardware, software, instruments, even things like, you know, people buying a ticket to my sound advice tour and getting to meet other creatives. I think all of those are worthwhile investments.

Um, the thing that I think about a lot and have personally invested a lot of time, money and energy into is my environment. And so building out my studio to, you know, the aesthetic that I like, that makes me feel the most creative, the current house that me and my wife are in.

We made that decision to buy that house because it had a separate space for my studio So I built out the entire basement to just be my own dedicated space. But before that we lived in an 1100 square foot house. Yeah, and my studio was half of the guest room And so Going through that process. I was like, all right our next home is

I have to have my own studio space. That's a non-negotiable for me. And credit to my wife, she was like very supportive of that idea. And so when we found this house that we live in now, it had the perfect space. You know, I probably invested, how much do you think we invested in that space? I love that you turned to your wife and asked that. Would you say, I mean, okay, so if we're talking all in,

$100,000 to renovate and make it like a studio like all the equipment all the Soundproofing material the space itself. Yeah And that was like you knew you could make that investment because you had been making money in your Producing business and your social media and like the music adjacent I am curious like when you were just half of the guest bedroom mm-hmm like

Did you ever feel like I should just pull the trigger and like buy a nicer mic or like buy like how do you weigh decisions of like what to spend on versus what you can get away with? Right. When you're kind of bootstrapping it. Before we moved into our current house. Yeah. I just didn't have the money. Yeah. OK. It was very simple. That's honest. Yeah. I just didn't have the budget to spend money.

any extra money on, you know, like making sure. And also just, I knew that that wasn't the space for me to do it in, you know, cause we still needed the other half of the guest room. I couldn't get rid of the guest bed, you know? Uh,

And so I just knew that when the time came and we found our next home, that would be the space that I'd really, really go hard and invest in.

in everything that I wanted it to be. I love that so much. I want to ask a random question. How did you come up with your producer tag? And did you have to pay for that or did you just like make that yourself? No, my producer tag is actually an artist that I have been working with for a long time. His name's Jaron Benton. He's the first artist that I really, really became established with as a producer. And he's also from Atlanta.

We started working together and probably 2008 somewhere around there. We got signed to the same label together. We went on tour together I've produced probably 75% of his music And we had this one song Called I think it was called shut up bitch and in the beginning of that song he said Kato on the track bitch

And I took that and just made it my tag. I love that. And it's been the same ever since. Also, like, where does Kato come from? Because your name is Chris. Yeah. So Kato, do you remember the Green Hornet? Like the superhero movie? Yeah. Like vaguely, yes. Okay. So in the 60s.

there was a character like Kato's sidekick or I'm sorry the Green Hornet's sidekick was named Kato and he was played by Bruce Lee and Bruce Lee was like my idol growing up I'm dead

My wife loves this story, by the way. And so that's where I got it from. Okay. Yeah. Just like the nickname because you were the green hornet's sidekick, Bruce Lee. And I just added on the track. I love that. Because I thought I was cool. That is cool. That is cool. And, you know, now that you are kind of like really, really established, like you've worked with some incredible artists, artists that people are listening to every single day. Mm-hmm.

Who has been the favorite you have ever worked with and why? Favorite? A lot of people are about to be offended. How do I say this in the most PC way? And it doesn't necessarily need to be like the best. It just needs to be like, who did you like really vibe with? Yeah, yeah. I mean, those early memories of just locking in with Jaron. Yeah. Was like, those are core memories for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because so much happened in that period of...

eight years that we worked together, really like big milestone moments. Yeah. You know, we went viral for the first time before viral was even really a thing. Yeah. We got signed together. We went on tour together. Yeah. I mean, we did everything, you know, like we shared. I can't imagine doing all of that with like your bestie.

Yeah, right. Exactly. And so that's why those memories for me are so like, just so special because we literally went across the country in a...

12-seater passenger van, you know, for 60 days at a time with seven other people in there. Like, we did that together. It wasn't glamorous at all, but it was like just very, yeah, formative times. Speaking of formative times, do you have any advice for people who want to get into the music industry, like budding producers, anybody who's starting out?

I would say for producers and songwriters, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate. Ooh, that is hot fire. That was a bar. So, and let me explain because I have the perfect example of this, right? Okay. So when I had the So Pretty beat blow up on TikTok and it went insanely viral, I

Every record label in the world was on my line wanting to get a piece of that song, right? Because at that time it was me and Rayanna Maria who was an 18 year old Australian girl. Yeah. She that was the first song that she ever made in her bedroom, you know So we were both completely in independent situations Neither of us were signed and so every label obviously wanted a piece of that song and ultimately to sign it and to acquire the white rights to the song Yeah

So when we were going through those negotiations, initially a record label reached out to me and they offered me $2,000 for the beat. Which...

I won't lie. If I was a new producer and that was my first placement and my first moment, I would have been like, hell yeah, cut the $2,000 check, you know? Pre-taxes. Pre-taxes. But because I had had experience before and this wasn't my first rodeo, I knew that I could get more. Yeah, of course. And so just going back and forth with my lawyers, we were like,

Should we ask for a million dollars? And I think he did he was like we want a million dollars for this beat and eventually I've never told this story before but eventually I got Tyga involved in the situation because He duetted that beat it went crazy and then everyone started suggesting that Tyga get on the song on the so pretty song and so I got Tyga involved in it and

He made a very smart business decision. He brought in his friend, Steven Victor, who's this really, really established executive in the music industry. They ended up acquiring the rights to the song. And Tyga called me and he was like, bro, you asked for a million dollars? Like, you're crazy. What are you doing? Because technically, like, he's a part of that deal now. Yeah. Right. And so he's going to have to put up the money or it's like his situation. Yeah.

And so I was like, all right, you're right. A million dollars was kind of crazy. And so we went back to our lawyers and they asked for, I think, $50,000. And then we ended up settling for $25,000 just straight up for the beat. And then I also get a percentage of the song. So it ended up being a good deal ultimately. But I got what we negotiated, not what...

they thought I deserved, you know? Yeah. So I think that's really important for producers. And there's a fine line, like sometimes over-negotiating

can burn bridges or it can turn people off or people will just think you're a greedy asshole. Yeah. Right. And so there's a fine line between over negotiating, but, but negotiating enough to get what you deserve, you know, and what you want. Yeah. So I think that's the part that every songwriter and producer should really understand. I think get a good lawyer. That, that too, that too. I mean, I feel like that's incredible life advice. It's like, you

You don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate for. Yeah, true. You have to fight for everything. Yeah. Where do you feel like the industry is probably going to go in the next 50 years? And how do you plan on being a part of it? Um...

It's really weird right now because I feel like technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in music, right? There's the whole debate about AI and how it's going to replace all of us. Oh, my God. Ghost Drake. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Yeah, exactly. And...

I don't know. I think there will always be a place for human art. I don't think that's ever going to go away or get replaced. But I do see AI playing a larger role in the creation of music, even with things like, have you heard of Suno? Suno is an AI platform where essentially they created an AI technology by sampling all the music that has ever been created. Okay.

But the big controversy is like they didn't pay for that. Yeah. They just kind of stole it and created their own technology off of it. Yeah. And now they're facing a ton of lawsuits. But I've used it and the technology is incredible. Yeah. Like it does a really, really good job. Yeah. So it's like where's the line? If it can help me make better music, it's still all –

Coming from me, like I'm still the one pressing the keys and clicking and pressing the buttons and then pressing export and mixing it. And, you know, I'm still the one that is putting it all together. But now I'm having AI assist me with that process. Yeah. Right. Is that bad? Like, should we be fearful of that? Should we be worried about that? I don't know. I don't know that I have the answer, but I do.

see myself just continuing to build my own platform and my own ecosystem and kind of operating outside of the traditional music industry. Cause I think that that's where it's at for, for music creators and artists. Yeah. You should focus your time and energy on building your own ecosystem as much as possible.

I love that. That's such great advice. And multiple streams of income like you have, because if one's a little dry for a second, you got to rely on the other two or, you know, that one will then, you know, start to make a little bit more money. Then maybe you can ease up on a couple of the other things. But yeah, exactly. Super smart to not put all your eggs in one basket.

100%. I love that. Everyone, please go listen to Kato on the track. You can find him wherever you listen to your music and Kato producer on all platforms. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you liked the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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