The Evolution of Manhack

Thomas Crawford, founder of the band Manhack, discusses the origins of the band and their journey from a solo project to a full band. They talk about the evolution of their music and the addition of vocals. They also discuss the decision to play live shows and the challenges of translating their recorded music to a live performance. The conversation then shifts to the topic of record labels and the pros and cons of signing with one. Thomas emphasizes the importance of having a strong team and filling the gaps in the band's skills and resources. The conversation explores the challenges and experiences of musicians in the music industry, particularly regarding record labels and streaming platforms. It discusses instances where bands were mistreated by labels, had to pay back money, and faced creative control issues. The conversation also delves into the importance of streaming royalties and the dominance of Spotify in the streaming market. The potential of accepting cryptocurrency as a payment option for merchandise and donations is also mentioned. The conversation explores the use of crypto debit cards and the potential risks and benefits of investing in cryptocurrencies. The guests discuss their personal experiences with crypto debit cards and highlight the convenience and flexibility they offer. They also address concerns about the volatility and security of cryptocurrencies, comparing them to the stock market. The conversation concludes with a discussion about the future of cryptocurrencies and the potential for widespread adoption.

Manhack Instagram: @manhackofficial
Website: manhack.org

Host: Todd Stevens
Co-Host: Travis Groo
Guest: Thomas Crawford

Intro track "Rich and Strange" by The Threats.

Website: createdbyhuman.com
Instagram: @createdbyhuman
Facebook: @createdbyhuman
Tik Tok: @createdbyhuman.official
YouTube: Created by Human

Transcript

Todd Stevens (00:01.919)
Hey dudes.

Thomas (00:03.114)
What's up?

Todd Stevens (00:05.078)
Travis, what's going on? So we've got Thomas Crawford with us today, rocking and rolling. Thomas is with the band Manhack. Thomas, you founded the band, right? That's correct. Thomas killed it.

Thomas (00:06.67)
Hey!

Groo (00:07.692)
What up? What up, Thomas?

Thomas (00:23.726)
That's correct. Yeah, it started in 2011, pretty sure. It was just supposed to be something. I had just started recording music and kind of getting into that whole thing and learning what the hell even any of that was about. And had always kind of written riffs and stuff before and put together songs. And I mean, up until that point, it was literally a spiral bound notebook.

Tabbing out stuff and writing and just don't remember any of that shit But it's like I was probably a better way to do this So that's kind of when the recording thing came into play and I'd already had a friend who had been recording and showed me A little bit. So yeah, it kind of just started in 2011. We uploaded manhack Officially uploaded its first song

to SoundCloud in 2011. And yeah, that's where it started. It started as a solo project kind of thing to just kind of mess around and stuff. And then over the years, it's kind of ended up to where it is now. So.

Todd Stevens (01:27.894)
Very cool. So yeah, so when you first started, it was just you. So I don't, I'm trying to remember, were there any vocals or was it just instrumentation?

Thomas (01:35.914)
At first it was just instrumentation. Yeah. It was just, uh, one guy doing the whole shebang besides vocals, obviously. And then around 2014, around the time actually that we got signed to autumn in color, um, back in 2014, 15, I believe that was right after we had just. Actually, no, I think you guys released our first EP with vocals on it in 2014. Yeah.

Todd Stevens (01:37.703)
Right, okay, yeah, yeah.

Todd Stevens (02:03.242)
Yeah, we did. Yeah.

Thomas (02:05.938)
And that really wasn't a set vocalist. There's like 11 people on it doing different vocals on different songs. So yeah, that's what kind of started the whole vocals thing in a Manhack song and then didn't end up playing our first show till late 2018. So yeah, it's been an interesting road for that.

Todd Stevens (02:11.586)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (02:28.306)
Yeah, so why so long in between, you know, recording stuff and playing your first show?

Thomas (02:35.594)
Ah, that's a good question. Um, well, when it first started, it wasn't ever supposed to be anything serious. It was just really, here's a riff. This sounds cool. Put it together, write a song, whatever. Just kind of get it out there. It's more just kind of a having fun and through a creative outlet kind of thing. It wasn't ever meant to be something serious. And then had a bunch of friends that just did vocals and had some.

It's like, all right, well, we can take some of these friends and just throw them on an EP and.

Every song is a different vocalist, right? And they might have two or three different vocalists on it. Okay, that's a cool idea. And then Matt, our current vocalist was one of the people on that EP. And he kicked everybody's asses on that EP. I mean, I just, I mean, everybody, that EP sounds cool. And there's a lot of bad ass vocalists on that. But when Matt came in and recorded, it was like, what the hell is going on right now? This guy is just next level. So after that, I was like, Hey, do you want to just keep doing this? So that's when we came out with Russ.

and then Welcoming Judgment and he was on those exclusively with a couple of guest vocalists but and even when we did Rustatorium which was the first EP that he was on fully for vocals I mean we think it was really a thought then to play shows it might have been something we were working up to I don't even remember honestly if we planned that or not because it was so long ago at this point

Groo (04:06.781)
So Thomas, prior to Man Hack, you were in a full-time band, touring band called Face All Fears. Now prior to Face All Fears was Man Hack kind of a side project that you were working on while Face All Fears was going on because we did sign Face All Fears, that one album deal and I loved that album and that was a fantastic album. That was a fun album.

Thomas (04:11.011)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (04:15.653)
Yeah

Thomas (04:31.15)
Hmm. Yeah.

Groo (04:36.037)
Was manhack a thing back then? Or was it more of like a creative side project?

Thomas (04:43.102)
I think part of the whole face all fears dynamic is what kind of lead manhacked probably start doing vocals. Because I mean, when you go from being an instrumental project and then you put 11 vocalists on an EP and then you get signed to a label, it's kind of, okay, you're at least taking it serious to some extent. And face all fears had, I joined face all fears probably.

couple years before that or so, one or two years before that. Um, so that probably. Ignited a little bit of that creativity into manhack a little bit. It's like, okay, well, face all fears is doing this. Then let's get manhack doing some stuff too. So that probably is what maybe kind of started that kind of happening around the same time and kind of kicking it up a notch as far as the serious factor is concerned.

Groo (05:37.225)
No, that's fantastic. Do you have a favorite song or is that a weird question? Do you have a favorite song that you've written for ManHack?

Thomas (05:47.554)
for manhack. I haven't been asked that one before yet. A favorite so just one just in general or just one to perform live or?

Groo (05:48.705)
Yeah.

Groo (05:55.733)
Yeah, just your fun, a fun song that you wrote, that is your favorite. You love playing it, you love performing it. It's kind of your go-to song.

Thomas (06:06.766)
Um, it's kind of tough to say generally. I prefer the songs to play live at least that are not as technical riffing wise on the fretboard because those, the songs that are easier to play live are the ones you can throw your shit around more easier. You can do more guitar spins, flips, jump off stage, run into the crowd. When it's super

Groo (06:17.15)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (06:26.345)
Mm-hmm.

Groo (06:30.39)
Yeah.

Thomas (06:33.578)
When there's a lot of shit happening or if the song has a solo in it, for instance, you feel like you obviously, especially during the solo, obviously, you have to kind of plant. You have to stand there and play it correctly. But so songs as far as live is concerned, the ones that are my favorites are the ones that are super easy to play. Just because there's, like I said, there's a lot more time to a lot more effort that you can put towards being theatrical.

Groo (06:53.066)
Mmm.

Todd Stevens (06:53.558)
Sure. Have you, once you guys started performing live, did you start writing differently? So like, once you perform live, you go, oh my gosh, this thing, this thing, this starts to really get the crowd going. So all of a sudden you start writing a little bit differently.

Thomas (07:13.194)
Yes. And in fact,

Groo (07:15.149)
Todd, you just got really blurry there for some reason.

Todd Stevens (07:18.61)
Yeah, it's gonna kind of freeze up and all that kind of stuff, but it's uploaded regularly, so it should be fine.

Thomas (07:23.814)
Um, yeah, so that's a, that's a good question. Um, initially. So initially manhack is when it always has been even to this day, but initially manhack was centered around using themes from movies and video games, et cetera. It's sound design elements from that in with metal. So.

Todd Stevens (07:40.588)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (07:42.746)
A lot of the stuff that was written early on was never meant to be played live, obviously, because it was just one guy. We hadn't even started doing vocals yet. And even when we started doing vocals for a while, we didn't know if we were going to play live or didn't think about it. So a lot of the stuff was written based on it never being played live. So maybe there's harmonizing guitar parts left and right, even though there would only be one guitar player on stage.

packed in together a whole bunch of dubs maybe it's this crazy synth part maybe it's whatever it is uh maybe this is crazy eq swell on the guitars or something that you just can't do live for the most part now uh when we're writing stuff i absolutely take that into consideration um

Todd Stevens (08:15.124)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (08:33.622)
Sure. Yeah.

Thomas (08:35.522)
Thankfully with the advent of amp modelers and increases in technology for amp sims and just guitar tone related stuff in general, it makes it a lot easier to pull off some of that stuff.

Todd Stevens (08:48.849)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (08:50.686)
especially these kind of glitchy guitar effects that you hear in the recording, a lot of that I can pull off with the Axe effects and make it sound exactly the same. So the technology nowadays helps us with the creative side to be able to pull off more of the stuff live. But a good example of this is our song, Death and Faxes, which that song is almost five and a half minutes long.

and it takes forever to get to the point and there's a whole lot of sound design in it, but it's our most popular track by far. It's easily the number one most streamed one. I forgot what the streams are at last time I checked, but that song was never meant to be played live because the justification was, like who's gonna listen to a five and a half minute long song? Nobody cares, right? Throne, for instance, keeps coming out with these bangers and they're all two minutes long.

and they got a million monthly listeners, right? That's the kind of shit, people don't wanna listen to five and a half minute long song that takes forever to get to the riff. But lo and behold, it became the most popular one. And I definitely wrote that track with the intention of never playing it live. So, cause there's a lot, there's, yeah, there's, you're forced to play it live now, even though there's three or four different guitar parts happening at the same time. Well, when you're one dude, it's like, okay.

Todd Stevens (09:44.044)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (09:58.402)
Sure. So you got forced to playing it live.

Thomas (10:13.603)
Shit, why did this one have to be popular? So

Groo (10:16.253)
It doesn't surprise me that a song like that is popular. I mean, look at Tool. It takes them 10 minutes to get to their riff. And then you're like, yeah, there it is. There it is. Right there at the end.

Thomas (10:24.08)
True.

Todd Stevens (10:27.302)
Which is crazy because when tool when tool released their latest album, they saw success that they hadn't seen before because like there were a bunch of kids that kind of grew up with their parents listening to tool. And then all of a sudden tool was like, all right, we've got a new album coming out, but here's all of our back catalog via streaming now. Right. So when they dropped it all, they were like, holy shit, people actually care. And like all these kids were like tuning in the tool.

Groo (10:43.977)
You froze. Ha ha ha.

Thomas (10:45.899)
Is he still there?

Todd Stevens (10:52.938)
Like I couldn't get my kids to listen to Tool. I was like, man, I love Tool. And then all of a sudden when they dropped their new stuff, they were like, man, Tool's badass. I was like, well, yeah, they are. But they also got a little bit older too, so. I get it, man.

Groo (10:57.961)
Yeah, they beat out Taylor Swift.

Thomas (11:02.99)
Mmm.

Groo (11:07.593)
No, it doesn't surprise me that a song like that, like an epic song, is your most popular. Now Thomas, I have a question. You and I talked a little bit about your success lately and tossing up the idea of staying independent or going the route of a record label. And we've had extensive discussions about this.

Thomas (11:32.521)
you

Groo (11:34.825)
You know how I feel, I think, about record labels. Once a band starts getting some success and they start doing well on their own, record labels see dollar signs. That's what they see. And you know I'm a fan of the 50-50 deal. I believe that if it's not a 50-50 deal, it's not a good deal. And I know you've been approached by several labels.

How do you feel about staying independent versus getting the help from a record label? Where's your head space with that right now?

Thomas (12:18.966)
It... Well, with how much bands can do on their own nowadays, hell, 10 years ago it was, we're a band, how do we get our song on Spotify? Like, how do I do that? Nobody really might have had any idea how to do that. Now it's just, oh, you just make a Distro Kid account and then upload your music. And then Distro Kid puts it on 90 different platforms. All right, cool. Super easy. It's getting easier to have better recordings.

Todd Stevens (12:44.246)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (12:48.926)
It's getting easier to learn how to manipulate social media and blow it up in your favor. It's getting easier to design your websites. I mean, everything is getting easier to do on your own. So less and less of a need, there's less and less of a need of a label moving forward. It seems like as time goes on. So...

For instance, there's a really big band in Atlanta based band called Left to Suffer that's killing it and they just got announced on the summer slaughter tour and I mean in the past three years, they've just been doing these badass tours blowing up Streams are going up all over the place. They're doing badass music videos songs, etc. Never been signed never I mean, they've been independent the whole time. So they started from zero to

Todd Stevens (13:32.181)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (13:36.31)
touring the summer slaughter tour. I mean, but part of that is also shout out to Jeff, their manager, so he just knows what the hell to do. But Jeff kind of has the same opinion that you do, Travis, where it's like, why do we need a label? He might be a little more down the road of, you don't need a label at all. So I mean, it just depends on what you can do as a band and what you can't. So the label that we,

won't really talk about this much because it's still kind of up in the air, but when we got approached by somebody, it was, okay, our dynamic is probably going to be a lot different than most other bands because we already do a lot of these things. I mean, really the only thing that a label could offer us is a PR blast. I mean, and then really for us, the only thing that would look different there would be our

Metal Socks or Lamb Goat as opposed to we do an exclusive premiere through New Noise Magazine. And whether or not our song premieres on Lamb Goat or New Noise Magazine will not make or break this band at all. It's irrelevant. I mean it's cool, but stuff like that doesn't matter. So the only thing that I would really be interested in a label at this point is the PR blast, right? Having access to their team and just say, hey, here's our video. You do the press release. You get a badass place to premiere. Cool. I don't even have to worry about that. That's

Groo (14:48.817)
No.

Todd Stevens (14:52.298)
Well, it's changed so much. Yeah.

Thomas (15:05.368)
one less thing, but that's not that great. I mean, we do the social media. There's no other label that anybody on any of these labels, we can do social media better than them, right? I, if I were to put myself in a contest with this dude, I'd be like, all right, first person to get a 10 million view video wins, right? I would hit that before he does. So.

Groo (15:21.482)
Yeah.

Thomas (15:31.602)
I mean, and when you make a video pop off like that, that tide raises all ships. So you get more traffic on Spotify, you get more YouTube subscribers, you get more comments, organic comments on your music video, you get more website traffic, you get more merch sales, you get more people coming to your show. I mean, it truly raises all ships. So at this point, what can a label offer us? I mean, it's...

Todd Stevens (15:38.837)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (15:47.44)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (15:57.57)
We're already doing most of the stuff. Now a situation where, uh, in 2024, where a band might need a label is. You don't know how to do any of that stuff, right? You don't know how to record your own music. You don't know what's up with social media. You post one video every eight days. You don't really know what's going on.

Todd Stevens (16:07.511)
Right. Yeah.

Todd Stevens (16:14.609)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (16:16.49)
you guys have good music that you write, but you might just not have anything else behind it. And I've talked to a band recently who was in that situation with the label that was kind of looking at us. Um, they were in a complete opposite situation as we were, where it was, they didn't have any of that stuff and they had a full link, but they didn't have a way to record it. In that situation, it might've made way more sense for them to sign to that label. But

Todd Stevens (16:21.174)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (16:45.034)
I mean, for us, I mean, we do our own recordings for free. And it's not even, I don't even really like to say that because when you say, yeah, we do our own recordings for free, you expect to just hear, right? Some, some garage band, you put a microphone in the middle of your literal garage and just recorded six instruments. But I mean, we've been working on our recordings for 12, 13, 14 years. So they, they sound close enough, quote unquote, to industry standard.

Todd Stevens (17:08.037)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (17:13.814)
to not even need to go to a recording studio. I mean, yeah, somebody out there, I mean, if we were to go with someone like Buster Odenheim, for instance, yeah, he could mix our stuff way better than I could, but is that gonna get more heads in the door just because the recordings sound 5% better? No, so there's, I don't really see a need for it. Now, we're always interested in...

any offers if somebody wants to hit us up and said, hey, here's what we're offering. Yeah, we'll read it for sure. Have everybody read it. Maybe take an entertainment lawyer, have them skim over it. Obviously, Travis, have you read it just to see what you think or Todd too, whoever. Yeah. So I mean, we're open to that and maybe there's some wiggle room. Maybe they're willing to negotiate. Maybe they understand that, hey, this band.

Groo (17:49.925)
I would probably vote no on it.

Thomas (18:00.114)
has everything we just need to push them a little bit harder in this specific direction that

Groo (18:04.853)
You know, you're exactly right. And you know, those are red flags for, you know, Todd and I ran the label. A red flag for us was a band that needed a label. They actually needed a label because they weren't doing anything on their own or they didn't know how. They didn't even have good photos. They didn't have good social media. They didn't have even a good logo. You know what I mean? These are the bare minimum.

Todd Stevens (18:18.431)
Mm-hmm.

Groo (18:34.229)
that you have to have your branding in place or you're scattered from the get-go. And so these were situations where I would take bands and do development deals with them. It's like, you're not ready for a label, but I'll take you on as a development artist for a couple months to get you ready because really these photos look like they were taken in your grandma's basement. Like they're not good. Like you guys look miserable.

in these photos, like they're just terrible. And so like, those are red flags for a label. And a lot of times bands need a development deal before they're even ready to talk about a record label. You guys are way past that.

Todd Stevens (19:02.943)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (19:19.486)
Yeah, it seems like, oh yeah, it seems like record labels, I don't know, I mean, I'm with you guys nowadays. I'm just, I don't know that it's necessary. If you're a hardworking artist, you can make more money and have it actual, make it a career by being a small artist. Like you don't have to be Taylor Swift. Like you could literally make 80, 100,000 a year being a touring artist if you control all of it, if you're a businessman or businesswoman.

But yeah, I just don't see a point in it anymore, man. I think it needs to switch to no more labels. They're consulting deals, right? It's a consulting deal. Listen, are you uncertain of what you're doing? No worries. I have a fee. It's this much per month. And call me. This is what it gives you. And I'll guide you through it. I'll help you go through it. I'll get you to where you want to be. But I don't own you. I don't own anything you do. I'm just here to help.

But everything's gonna be pay to play, right? Like if you hire a publicist, pay to play, right? You hire a booking agency, it's pay to play. Like all of it, like if you're a smart artist, you can hire all these things and that's all a label does. They just have some of it in house.

Thomas (20:21.052)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Groo (20:33.629)
Yeah, I mean, could you imagine Taylor Swift's fees? She probably pays out millions of dollars a month just to have her team around her. She doesn't do anything on her own. I mean, yeah, she might write some songs. You know, I think she's a talented artist. I do.

Thomas (20:33.675)
Yep.

Thomas (20:47.341)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (20:53.286)
I'm sure she's very involved with what's going on. I mean, yeah.

Groo (20:55.681)
She's involved, but she delegates at this point. Go ahead and do this. What's my wardrobe? What should I wear for this tour? Like her fees, could you imagine what she's paying out? I mean, she's already, she just crossed a billion dollar mark as an artist. Her fees are astronomical, but she's at that level. Every artist needs a team around them to kind of see things that the artist can't see.

Thomas (21:09.232)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (21:09.55)
Oh yeah.

Thomas (21:18.444)
Yeah.

Groo (21:25.409)
from the inside looking out, you need to be on the outside looking in going, you know, you gotta, the band has to trust their team too. If you don't trust that person, don't work with them.

Todd Stevens (21:33.843)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (21:36.754)
And the team dynamic was, is a great point because that was kind of going to be what I was going to bring up about a label is me and our booking agent have talked about this a lot with Manhack and what seems to be more important nowadays for bands than a label per se is having a team of people.

Because we want to take this all over the planet. I mean, we want to be the next lamb of God. I mean, we just don't want to do a week long run to Texas and back here and there or something, I mean, all over the planet. Yeah.

Todd Stevens (22:10.954)
You have to commit like you have to commit. You're right. Like I've always said this not to cut you off Thomas. I apologize. But I've always said this that if you go and do anything for a long period of time and you give everything, if you put 110 into it, it will be successful. Define success. Total. It's all over the place. Right. A million dollars in the bank or I get to do this as a job and I love it. But I've always said it, man. If you do anything long enough.

Thomas (22:28.898)
subjective yeah

Todd Stevens (22:36.234)
And you just you go at it 100 percent 110 percent you will find success and that's kind of where I see you guys right now You're like really like okay. We're going we're going we're going but those like you said that week long run You know, that's cool, but you need to be out there for like three months Like saturate, you know

Thomas (22:51.926)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and eventually it gets to that point. It's just, yeah, you might have to take some stepping stones, maybe you do a three day, maybe you do a week, and eventually get to that point. But me and Ryan have talked about the whole building a team dynamic. And...

talking about kind of the labels versus having a team. I mean, having a team is more important and understanding as a band where your shortcomings are and having someone else to fill that void. So for instance, our shortcoming is booking. Just because of the fact objectively, I'm not good at it because emails feel like turn-based combat.

I mean the whole political word manipulating dynamic and like it's like oh I gotta send an email to book a show. Let's put on the battle armor and the great swords and go to battle. It's like hey no uh uh. All the things on this band that are of this band that are fun to do, if you were to make a list right it'd be booking would be just down here under the house. I mean it would least fun thing to do. So

Todd Stevens (24:00.914)
Yeah, for sure.

Thomas (24:03.446)
don't want to spend any time learning how to get better at booking, right? That's what Ryan's for. Cause that's what he does for a living and props to that man, because I don't know how you just sit there and send emails to these bands. I mean, imagine having 30 bands on a roster that you have to book shows for and do all that shit. So no, it doesn't. And

Todd Stevens (24:25.186)
Oh, because they never go smoothly. There, yeah, there's always a hiccup. So it's like back and forth, back and forth, you know, ah, that's always, I'm with you, man, that was always the worst. Like Travis and I got into it a little bit with some of our artists and we were like, mm.

Thomas (24:32.551)
And it just...

Mmm.

Thomas (24:42.694)
Yeah, and he's really good at that. He has a lot of experience. He used to be a radio DJ. He used to work for Live Nation. I forgot his resume exactly, but I mean, it's long and it's stout. So he knows the jargon. He knows how to read between the lines on these emails between other booking agents and venues, shit that we would never catch. So hey, you do that. And even though we pay him, obviously he has a rate, right?

He only takes that from shows that he books and it's more than what we would get overall because we would get... Yeah.

Groo (25:17.825)
That's a good investment. That's one of the best investments you can make for an artist is having a good booking agent. I'll have to ask you back.

Thomas (25:27.19)
Yeah, and we would, it works out because we got his contacts now, we have his insight. I mean, even just having conversations with him on the phone, the amount of things that you learn for free because he's like, okay, well, this is how you think it is. Cool. This is how it actually is. And he's pretty upfront and blunt too. So it, the reality is that was a void for us that needed to get filled.

That opened up the opportunity for us to play more shows and have more opportunities, get better slots, and get bigger guarantees even after we pay him. So we're interested in bringing people onto the team that will help push us further and faster down the tracks and help get us to that goal quicker. If it happens to be a label and the deal's good, cool. If it just happens to be another person.

Right? Maybe, right. We have a booking agent here. Maybe we hire a manager separately and then they take a certain percentage. As long as they're helping us to exponentially grow more. Cool. I mean, it doesn't have to be a label at this point. It just, where is your band falling short? Where are you guys? Where are you guys lacking? Right? Figure out how to fill that void. And that seems to be the most important part compared to a label at least.

Todd Stevens (26:40.77)
Mm-hmm, absolutely. Yeah, and when you look at Manhack, I mean, Manhack is out there doing those things. So you're in a position right now to where a label can come along, and you're so wise about the industry. You've been it, you've done it, you've done all these things, that you can say no, right?

You know, there's plenty of stories, hell, my wife and I just watched the TLC documentary. Listen, don't judge, I ain't no scrub. But what I will say is they got hosed, man. They got hosed. Like, there were multiple platinum selling artists touring all over the world and had this. Nothing. They were paying for their own trips to go to like interviews and stuff like that. It was pretty bad. Anyways, my point being is that you guys are in a position to where you can go, no, no. We know what we want.

Thomas (27:11.404)
Yeah.

Thomas (27:18.288)
Oof.

Thomas (27:24.767)
Mm-mm.

Todd Stevens (27:29.598)
and this deal doesn't offer it. Change that deal. Yep, yeah, I love that dude. Killer.

Thomas (27:31.402)
Yeah, that ain't it. Yeah.

Thomas (27:36.287)
Yeah, that's, that's...

Groo (27:36.605)
Yeah, you're only as strong as your team too. I mean, you also have to be careful what label it is as well. If they're not well connected or if they can't make things happen quickly, then they just want to feed off of your success and your hard work. Be careful for that too because there are such things as lazy record labels.

Thomas (27:56.704)
Yep.

Groo (28:04.205)
that just want the bands to do their work for them and they need the bands to make them look good. And I've seen that. I've seen that. A lot of these labels have already folded. So...

Thomas (28:11.96)
Yeah.

Thomas (28:15.494)
And even, uh, even situations where I have a personal friend, I'm not going to name them the label or the band or anything, but a big, a big label. Let's just, let's, let's leave it at that. Everybody's probably heard of it.

Groo (28:22.421)
No, no need.

Todd Stevens (28:29.238)
Columbia.

Thomas (28:29.31)
They were signed to that label and because they were an entry-level band They kind of got the treatment Travis that you were just kind of talking about where they didn't not only not really got paid at first it seemed like they were getting some attention from these guys and these Labels gonna push them pretty hard, but it got to a point where they just stopped doing shit And then they breached their own contract and that the label did

pulled the rug out from under them. And then these, this band and thus the people in the band had to pay over 10 grand in money back to this label, just to get the rights of their songs back. Even though that label yanked the rug out from under them. So there's even this, that whole dynamic where the label, this deal looks great. We signed the deal. The entertainment lawyer said it was great. And then six months into it, you still get screwed. So.

Todd Stevens (29:02.038)
Hmm.

Groo (29:07.17)
Yep.

Todd Stevens (29:17.77)
Yeah. I mean, there's yeah, there's another story like that. There was a band that we used to play around with when I was doing my music thing back in the day. And this is probably early 2000s and they were well known here in Atlanta. They had such an incredible sound. And then they got picked up. They got signed.

Thomas (29:19.958)
That's a whole other thing to consider also.

Groo (29:20.138)
Yeah.

Groo (29:32.449)
Hmm.

Thomas (29:36.878)
Todd, you keep breaking up there. I just wanna let you know you keep breaking in and out there a little bit. Yeah.

Todd Stevens (29:41.03)
Oh, do I? Okay. Dammit. Um, internet sucks over here today.

Groo (29:46.485)
Yeah, Mr. Podcast host, your internet's really sketchy right now.

Todd Stevens (29:49.738)
But anyways, so hopefully this will be like recording on my back end, even though it is breaking up. But so anyways, this band, they were they were super popular here in Atlanta, blowing up. Everybody loved them. Shows would sell out and they got signed. They got signed to a big label. And it was a it was a deal where they were going to record an EP and they were going to record this EP with some really badass.

producer and In LA so they went out there they did this thing and the label made them change their name the label changed their sound and It flopped and that was it. That was their career. Their career was done, but they were like they were huge here Everybody loved him and their sound was so great and then it all changed And so labels do that kind of stuff too, you know

Groo (30:29.845)
Okay.

Thomas (30:31.223)
God!

Thomas (30:39.074)
Wow.

They try to make a better creative decision for the band and think this is going to benefit everybody. And because we have a team of people that are so smart and intelligent, blah, just borders on arrogance that they think that that's the best decision is up screwing the band. That sucks.

Todd Stevens (30:57.954)
Oh gosh man, they totally screwed the band. It was awful. Um, so, okay, so let's talk about this. We know nowadays and Travis and I saw the writing on the wall years and years ago that, that streaming was going to be the way to be and way to go. And that, you know, all sales were going to cease. Um, so that's happened. So now all money's made on touring.

all money is made on merchandising. So how is that for you guys now? Like you said, you know, booking, you guys are getting better guarantees and stuff like that. So when you do the comparison, because I just want people to kind of understand out there who are listening to this that aren't musicians, how jacked up it is, you know, like when you go and you have a million streams, which happens, and you get a check for a hundred and something dollars. It's crazy. Right.

Groo (31:39.53)
Oh

Thomas (31:49.174)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (31:49.546)
But then you can go out and sell a shirt. Shirt probably costs you eight, seven, eight dollars to make. And then you can sell it for 20 to $25, even 30 now Taylor Swift sells them for like 50 or 60. Um, that's what the money is, man. So how is that for you guys? Like, what have you seen as far as making revenue as a musician?

Thomas (32:10.69)
So I'm gonna throw you for a loop here and actually tell you that 90% of our income is from streaming, believe it or not. The other 10%, I mean, yeah, when we play shows every once in a while, but we don't play shows regularly enough now to count that as income, but.

Todd Stevens (32:14.075)
Okay.

Thomas (32:27.418)
this business generates passive income. We have stuff uploaded through CD Baby, which gets deposited once a week, and then the main bulk of it is DistroKid, which we have to personally, you have to physically withdraw the funds out of DistroKid yourself. It doesn't have an automated kind of thing, which is whatever, who cares? We just do that once a month. And that pays for our advertising, that pays for merch, that pays for this, that pays for that. Now is it?

Todd Stevens (32:54.71)
Nice.

Thomas (32:56.294)
hundreds of thousands of dollars? No, but it's an interesting dynamic because most people are kind of stuck in that situation. They're stuck in that rut where it's, you see on paper the number of cents to the seventh decimal point, seemingly, that Spotify pays. But when the reality, at least for us is...

Todd Stevens (33:17.115)
Hahaha

Groo (33:23.114)
Hmm

Thomas (33:24.054)
When we get a royalty check from DistroKid, the biggest chunk of that is Spotify. But yeah, I mean, Spotify pays like crap, but they're also the biggest one. I mean, if you were to go through and look at all of our landing pages, for instance, that have seven or eight different streaming platforms on them, Spotify, Amazon, iTunes, Bandcamp, whatever the hell, 80% of people are going to click on Spotify if given the choice. So

Todd Stevens (33:28.782)
Okay.

Thomas (33:47.454)
It pays like crap, but it's also the biggest one. And we've had enough content go viral and brought our Spotify numbers up well enough to where it just is constantly rotating and any band can do that now. So situations where you might kind of Todd, like you said, make, uh, you get a million streams on a song and you only get a hundred dollars, there's probably too many people skimming off the top. There's probably labels involved. There's probably too many people on your team that don't maybe

Todd Stevens (34:13.11)
Mmm.

Thomas (34:17.368)
be there or they're taking too high of a percentage because the reality is and I've confirmed this with streaming royalty calculators and following a couple of various independent artists one who's called Nick D for instance who has 400 million monthly listeners and has never been signed to a label and owns 27 acres he posts yeah he posts a lot of really cool content and goes pretty deep dive into what he does and how he does it

Todd Stevens (34:19.522)
Sure.

Todd Stevens (34:38.338)
It's all about the acreage. You're right.

Todd Stevens (34:46.242)
That's cool.

Thomas (34:46.666)
Anyway, reality is if you get a million streams on Spotify, that's about three to four grand from Spotify. Now, if you have it uploaded to DistroKid, that could probably equate to four to five grand. So if you can get a million streams a month on Spotify, you should be getting three to five grand. Only if that goes straight to your bank account.

Todd Stevens (35:09.91)
Sure. OK.

Todd Stevens (35:14.178)
Straight. Right.

Thomas (35:16.382)
Now, it could be where, like you said, a band is getting a million streams a month and they're only getting a hundred bucks because they're just getting shafted, right? But we can attest to the fact personally that all you got to do is build it up and it'll eventually start rolling in. Because when we first started in March of 2022, when we set a goal to post on social

Todd Stevens (35:24.67)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Thomas (35:42.378)
I didn't know what the hell any of this shit was gonna happen. I certainly didn't think we were gonna generate passive steady income to be able to pay for the expenses of the band. It was just alright, this seems like the right thing to do. Let's see how it works out and end up being the best thing we've ever done as a band. But it as long as nobody's putting their hands in your cookie jar.

And you're doing the right thing to blow your stuff up then you should be starting to get something But there's a lot of bands that are They just don't do the right thing. They just they Upload a jpeg of a show flyer once every eight days on their social media and then wonder why nothing happens. Well nobody's gonna come because

you didn't provide any value. I mean, you, you're pretty much holding a party in your house and you didn't invite anybody to the party. And then you're wondering why it's Friday night at 8pm. And the music's pumping on your stereo, but you're the only person in the house because you didn't bring anybody into it. So it's the, the whole,

Todd Stevens (36:28.852)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (36:45.608)
Right.

Thomas (36:49.69)
Bands earning streams dynamic is pretty interesting. So for us right now to kind of loop back around to your original question for us It's mostly streaming royalties believe it or not and the biggest chunk of that is Spotify believe it or not. We Yeah

Todd Stevens (37:03.626)
That's wild. Well, I get it. I get the Spotify thing because like my kids, I mean, I don't know. I'm one of those Apple, like I just do everything through Apple music because I'm all Apple everywhere in the house. But my kids are like, no, we don't care that you pay for the Apple family plan. We want our own Spotify. Okay, but they love it. Here's one of the Use the plan. I'm gonna downgrade the plan kids. But no one of the things though that I love about it is Spotify because I and I didn't really know this because I don't use Spotify as they were like

Thomas (37:21.716)
Which kind of probably pisses you off because you're like, use the plan please.

Todd Stevens (37:33.71)
So and so they'd find this new band, this new artist, and they'd be, Oh my gosh, I love this. Like this guy's got right now he's got 3000 monthly listeners. And I was like, wait, hold on. That's a thing. Like you can monitor.

And that blew my mind just because I come from an older school generation to where it's kind of hard to measure those things. So kudos to Spotify for giving that kind of thing out there. And that's really cool for kids too because they see that stuff and they want to support it even more. Because as they start to see a band grow, those numbers, listeners go up. And then it's like that old school thing where you found that band first. And you're like, oh man, I found that band first. I was around that band when they had a hundred listeners, man.

Thomas (38:09.218)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it's, it's go, I was just going to say real quick. It's, it's, it's social proof and

Spotify absolutely did that on purpose. If Spotify didn't show monthly listeners or plays, they would just be another Apple Music. Which Apple Music is cool, but it ain't the biggest one. Or they would just be another title, right? Title, those other places, they don't show monthly listeners. I think that's one of the biggest things that reason why people even pay attention to Spotify, or the reason why Spotify is one of the biggest ones is because of that reason. Yeah, the UI is great, the website is great, user, the GUI is great and all that stuff.

Todd Stevens (38:21.179)
Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Todd Stevens (38:26.091)
Mm-hmm.

No. Yeah.

Groo (38:35.375)
Yeah.

Groo (38:42.293)
Yeah, Ben, I was followed by you. Yeah.

Todd Stevens (38:42.332)
Oh sure.

Thomas (38:48.632)
get around objectively. Somebody's probably gonna say, oh, Apple music's way better to get around. I mean, cool, you get the point here, but because they show monthly listeners, that's probably why they're the biggest one, honestly, just because of that number. Because now bands are judging each other. I mean, bands are getting put on a bill of a show based on that sometimes. I mean, that's...

Todd Stevens (38:49.518)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (38:54.582)
Hahahaha

Todd Stevens (39:00.838)
Oh, it's huge, man. Let me, Apple takes a key.

Todd Stevens (39:09.555)
I believe it.

I mean, it's stats, like that's one thing.

Groo (39:12.489)
Yeah, I've been using Spotify since day one. I mean, Todd's always been an Apple user, but as soon as Spotify came out, I had the free account for a while. And then I was like, I really liked this, but I hate the commercials. So, you know, and you couldn't play an album all the way through. So I got an account and I've had one since 2010 or something like that. They were the first ones to launch the music streaming platform and I've loved it.

Todd Stevens (39:16.991)
Yeah.

Thomas (39:39.586)
Hmm.

Todd Stevens (39:39.764)
Oh yeah.

Groo (39:41.809)
It's got a kind of a social aspect to it where you can be friends with people, see what they're listening to, or you can turn it off. So you can make playlists and invite people to listen to your playlist. I think it's really cool.

Todd Stevens (39:55.742)
No, that is cool. And it's brilliant that they do it too, just simply because when we would look for artists to sign and we would look for artists to help push. That's I mean, we did. It was like social media. Like, you know, how many people do you have on your social media? So I could see how Spotify has become that now. Right. Like, let's see. What are you doing? Man 50 monthly listeners. You can't get this show. You see if we can find somebody a little bit higher. I get it, man. Makes sense.

Thomas (40:09.806)
Ahem. Mm-hmm.

Thomas (40:18.246)
Dude, it's exactly that, yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, and that's the thing. It kind of comes back because for a while there it was Facebook likes, right, before Facebook kind of fell off and kind of stopped being relevant for bands. Yeah.

Todd Stevens (40:30.067)
Oh yeah.

Groo (40:33.653)
Before that it was MySpace. How many MySpace friends did you have, you know?

Thomas (40:38.622)
Yeah, and in

It's it's those numbers are great on paper It's but it's always best of course you guys know to take the grand picture like the 50,000 foot view here of All the social medias combined. What are they doing overall? because you could have a band that's killing it on tour and that only has 2,000 followers on Instagram and it's getting insanely high engagement. I mean they'll post a Screenshot of a flyer once every eight days and get 400 likes on it right with only 2,000 followers I mean

Todd Stevens (40:50.123)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (41:07.222)
400 likes, 100 comments. Yeah, I mean, that's the kind of stuff you have to look for. Yeah.

Thomas (41:10.956)
some bands are like that and some bands are just killing it like that and you go to their Spotify and they got 700 monthly listeners but they're killing it it's just that number ain't that high so it is an important number but I mean it's one of those things too where you just got to look at the whole picture really

Todd Stevens (41:32.01)
Yeah, absolutely.

Groo (41:32.705)
Though I have a question. Does the band have the ability to accept payments with cryptocurrencies?

Thomas (41:43.602)
No, I don't believe so. There's ways on our GoDaddy site. Yeah, okay, we can talk about that. Yeah, there's ways on our GoDaddy site to set up multiple payment options, but not with cryptocurrency yet. What do you bring that up? Is that something that you're interested in?

Groo (41:47.81)
If not, I would highly recommend it.

Groo (42:02.749)
Absolutely. I do believe it's the future and I believe if you had a way to, you know, pay with Bitcoin or pay with SHIB or pay with Dogecoin or something like that, it would bring a whole new audience, an underground audience to your page and you might be on the forefront of something very new and fresh. If you could collect cryptocurrencies for merch or even donations or even just support.

or for any kind of payments, I highly recommend that you put a link on there that links to one of your cryptocurrency wallets. You can collect payments that way.

Thomas (42:48.586)
Have you seen a band doing that specifically lately? Is that? Yeah. Cause that's the thing I'm trying to even think how to set that up. Cause go daddy doesn't have that option. Even if we wanted to do that through their site. So that's interesting. Yeah.

Groo (42:51.389)
No.

Groo (42:59.189)
You'd have to do it a separate link. You'd have to do a separate link on your page that if you wanna share, you know, it's this much Bitcoin, you could take Bitcoin. You could just limit it to Bitcoin or Ethereum or something like that.

Todd Stevens (43:14.814)
Yeah, because I'm with you, Thomas. I do a lot in Shopify. I do a lot of building sites and stuff like that in Shopify nowadays, and I don't think they offer anything. Bitcoin. Well, but that's what makes it difficult because then you're talking about all custom coding. Like you mentioned earlier, Thomas, the ability to just throw these things together now because the technology's there, it just makes it easy. So when I go, hey, I can build.

Thomas (43:25.924)
Mmm.

Groo (43:27.341)
Dude, I'm telling you man, this is something that-

Thomas (43:28.402)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (43:43.178)
I'm so efficient in Shopify, I can build a website a day if I wanted to, right? Like no big deal. Graphics, everything. Um, but if you started talking custom, custom coding, I can tweak coding. I can't write. I can't write coding, right?

Groo (43:55.337)
Well, all you would need is your wallet address, your 32-digit encoded wallet address. You could do like a landing page for it and click here and you get the 32-digit Bitcoin address. Or you could do USDT. USDT is one for one for the US dollar. So you could just do, we accept USDT, which is Tether, USDT, one for one. So it's equivalent to the dollar.

Thomas (43:58.399)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (44:08.246)
But that sounds complicated.

Todd Stevens (44:13.407)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (44:18.082)
Sure.

Groo (44:22.393)
I'm telling you, it would bring an edge to the band that would, in my opinion, absolutely explode and you heard it here, folks. You heard it here, folks. Right here on the Traverse and Todd.

Todd Stevens (44:32.894)
You heard it here first, folks.

Thomas (44:35.155)
Heard it here first. Yeah, you're... You're... You heard it right here. That dang old crypto gonna be the thing, boy.

Todd Stevens (44:43.678)
That's the thing, I tell you what.

Groo (44:43.925)
Privates to all the Thomas. The three T's, the three T's told you all about it.

Todd Stevens (44:49.15)
That's right, and I'll tell you what guys, I'm also canning, I'm canning beans, and I'm canning, I'm canning all kinds of peas. I'm s- I mean, it's coming. Jesus is coming. I'm just saying.

Thomas (44:51.253)
Three T's. Oh man, that's great.

Thomas (44:59.583)
Where are you moon shit? You know what's funny about this whole crypto thing is this has been, it's really interesting that you bring this up because this has been a lot on my mind lately because I also play poker on the side and am interested in eventually making that more of an income. And what's great about poker is it's always been super easy. Now granted, yes, in Georgia it's not.

legal in Georgia so blah yeah but there's unregulated sites you can play on in which I play on it's called ACR which is an unregulated site which isn't yeah hurry here first but it's always been super easy with sites like that to do crypto exchange and what's great about that is it's not traceable.

Groo (45:31.837)
You heard it here, folks. You heard—

Todd Stevens (45:33.285)
You heard it here first, ACR.

Groo (45:43.358)
Hmm.

Thomas (45:46.442)
I mean, obviously, yes, if I win a tournament, win $5,000, and I decide to put four grand of that in my checking account, yeah, you're gonna see four grand hit my checking account, but you're not gonna be able to see shit else besides that because when it comes in and out of the cryptocurrency, it's not traceable, right? Yep.

Groo (45:59.229)
Yeah, well you keep it you keep it in your wallet man you can get a It's decentralized it's decentralized currency And you can get a debit card that's linked to your wallet It has a visa logo on it. You can spend it anywhere and you don't have to put it back in your bank boom I'm telling you

Todd Stevens (46:03.463)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (46:14.602)
Yeah. So that would, and, and we are always looking for ways to not give the government money. So if that's a way we can do it, yeah, let's, let's sign up for that. Oh, the IRS thinks we only made five grand this year when we really made 50 grand. Cool. Thanks guys.

Todd Stevens (46:24.396)
Yeah.

Groo (46:25.297)
like a real libertarian.

Todd Stevens (46:30.055)
Yeah, absolutely.

Groo (46:30.466)
Yeah.

Groo (46:37.001)
You are here folks right here. You are right here. But no man, that's my, as an outsider looking in my advice to the band would be to be able to accept cryptocurrencies.

Thomas (46:51.922)
Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, I'm gonna look into that, made a note here to kind of look into that a little bit more. So we'll see what the options are.

Todd Stevens (46:54.41)
I mean, it's a cool, it's a super cool idea.

Groo (46:54.485)
OOOOOH OOOH

Groo (46:59.906)
Mmm! Here we go.

Todd Stevens (47:01.726)
Yeah, Travis, what's his percentage? What does Travis get for if you get it all set up? Let's get a little kickback. Point, point, we'll pick point zero seven.

Groo (47:07.125)
Pay me in Bitcoin. Pay me in Bitcoin.

Thomas (47:07.238)
69%

Thomas (47:11.715)
69%

Todd Stevens (47:13.278)
Oh hell yes! Well, there are all kinds of things like this, right? Doesn't matter just pay me. So no, it is interesting because there's all these things There's all these things that are like this that um that you don't really think about and you know like for me I go, you know, I don't know. I don't know if I really want to go that route But it's also kind of where you miss out on opportunities, right? You go. Oh man

Thomas (47:15.288)
Bye!

Groo (47:21.312)
Oooo

Thomas (47:21.758)
Yeah, yeah. Dogecoin. Even though Dogecoin was only relevant for three weeks, but anyway.

Todd Stevens (47:42.026)
Shoot, if I would have gotten on Apple back in the 80s, well, that would have been nice, you know? But the same thing here, like, I don't know, Bitcoin, you know... Maybe?

Thomas (47:50.834)
It's kind of, it's, it kind of almost is kind of the same dynamic of offering four X, five X and six X sizes and shirts. I mean, obviously these are completely different situations, but most people that wear those sizes. If they go to a show and you have that size, they will buy it. Even if they didn't watch your band. And even if they don't like your shit really, because no other bands offer that kind of size really that often.

Todd Stevens (48:09.164)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Stevens (48:17.314)
That's true. Yeah.

Thomas (48:18.526)
So it kinda seems like the same dynamic where it's, you might be potentially opening yourself up for more sales because no other band is offering that.

Groo (48:23.649)
Dude, the crypto market is on fire and I'm telling you people use their crypto debit card for everything nowadays. They don't use their bank cards. They use their crypto card.

Todd Stevens (48:35.122)
I mean, imagine that being one of the first bands to offer some type of crypto. I mean, that'd be that'd be cool. Yeah.

Thomas (48:40.618)
Yeah. So is it an option? Like you're talking about a crypto debit card. I've heard about ATM, like Bitcoin ATMs, but you can get a debit card where when you use it, it just comes out of your wallet and instead of coming out of your checking account.

Groo (48:40.656)
I'm telling you, dude!

Groo (48:55.153)
That is correct. I have one.

Todd Stevens (48:55.294)
Yeah, that's pretty badass.

Thomas (48:58.283)
Really interesting.

Groo (48:59.173)
I have one crypto.com sign up. It's free to sign up you buy some coins you apply for the debit card It costs 499 for them to ship it other than that. There's no fees You can use it anywhere that takes visa which is everywhere You can click a little button for international usage and it converts it to the coin of that country for free So you can literally use it anywhere anyway

Thomas (49:15.851)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (49:24.822)
So Travis, here's the fear. Here's the fear about crypto. I guess my fear, right? Maybe other people have it. Thomas, maybe you have it. So you take your own money, your own physical dollar that you've earned, right? So then you take that money and then you put it into crypto, right? The fear, what happens if whatever that crypto platform is, because there's a whole different bunch of them now, falls apart, fails? Where'd my money go?

Thomas (49:27.314)
Interesting.

Groo (49:49.405)
It's the same thing as the stock market.

Todd Stevens (49:51.594)
Well, okay, but I'm saying my money that's in my bank account, the money that's sitting there in my savings, I get the stock market, I play that, I get that. That's a calculated risk. I understand that this would be a calculated risk, but you're saying if you started to use that so it's untraceable money, right? You started putting it in crypto, what, that fear of like, what happens if that tanks? What happens if that company shuts down? You know?

Groo (50:00.008)
Hmm?

Thomas (50:16.263)
Yeah.

Groo (50:16.689)
Yeah, there's it's not a company. It's decentralized.

Todd Stevens (50:19.562)
Well, somebody's got to run it. Right, what happens if that server crashes? Like, you see what I'm saying?

Groo (50:24.145)
It's the same thing as buying a stock. It's the same risk as buying a stock. And you also have cryptocurrencies that are one for one for the US dollar. So we all know our dollar is not very strong right now. It's failing and tanking left and right. And it's only getting worse as we print more money out of thin air. So people are looking for ways to put their money in places that aren't so volatile as the US dollar, which is weak.

Todd Stevens (50:52.194)
sure.

Groo (50:54.141)
and it's falling apart and I think it's only going to get worse. So stuff like Bitcoin and other coins, yeah they fluctuate up and down but the trajectory track is always up. It's only blowing up and you can buy and sell and transfer. What you want to do is buy low and if it goes up you sell it. I mean just like anything else and it's instant with an app.

Thomas (51:09.815)
Yeah.

Groo (51:21.121)
And you have a debit card that you can top up and spend anywhere. So yeah.

Todd Stevens (51:23.442)
I mean, it sounds cool. So you're saying you just wouldn't use it as like an alternative to your current banking system or where all your money is like.

Groo (51:34.097)
Absolutely! I want it to be my primary banking. Are you kidding me?

Todd Stevens (51:36.594)
Okay, so you want it to be, but isn't that scary right now? That's my whole point. Like if you say it's like the stock market, right? So if it's like the stock market.

Thomas (51:37.501)
Mmm.

Thomas (51:42.721)
Yeah.

Groo (51:43.034)
Oh, no. The US dollar is more scary to me than cryptocurrencies, honestly. It's not good. We have a bunch of freaking...

Thomas (51:47.903)
Yeah, true.

Todd Stevens (51:49.972)
Travis, if you need to borrow $100, you let me know, okay? When it all goes south, I got you, bro.

Thomas (51:54.253)
Ha ha!

Groo (51:56.297)
Hey, when the... When that 401k...

Thomas (51:57.174)
Todd said, cold hard cash is the way to go, which there is an argument for that as well.

Todd Stevens (52:02.131)
Give me that kiss. Oh yeah, that's going away.

Groo (52:03.533)
Two, three years ago my 401k was growing at 25%. It's now growing at 4%. I've lost more money in the 401k on like a moderate to conservative layout on my 401k. If I would have put this in Bitcoin, I would probably be a millionaire. Like 10 years ago.

Todd Stevens (52:08.129)
I know dude, mine too.

Todd Stevens (52:12.966)
Right.

Thomas (52:28.462)
Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing that's interesting too is it doesn't have to sit in that crypto. So for instance, with the whole poker dynamic, comes out of my account, does a wire transfer into an exchange like Gemini. It sits in Gemini, so you can see the money in there. And then you, well, what I'll do is I'll, when I'm ready, I'll put it into Ethereum, get that code, and then drop it in.

Groo (52:36.168)
No.

Thomas (52:57.63)
So it only sits in Ethereum for a few minutes, but then it goes, yeah, for sure. And it comes out of Ethereum, it goes into the poker app and then use it for whatever you need to. But then when you withdraw funds out of that, it goes back into Ethereum, only sits there for a few minutes, you sell it, and then it sits in the exchange again.

Groo (53:00.413)
Ethereum is constantly going up, man. You can make a ton of money on Ethereum.

Thomas (53:19.314)
So even if Ethereum tanks 10 minutes after that, it doesn't matter because your money isn't in there. So it doesn't necessarily have to sit in the crypto. The thing I'm interested in though is if it, with your debit card Travis, does it pull from the money that you have in Bitcoin? Or is it pulling from the money that you have in the exchange that's just sitting there and not tied to a cryptocurrency?

Groo (53:19.403)
Hmm?

Groo (53:43.393)
You can top up your debit card from whatever coins you have. You can top up with Bitcoin, with Tether, with Kronos, with Dogecoin. You just, whatever coins you have, you can top up, put it on your debit card and go up to your local McDonald's and buy a burger with it, whatever. Go to Starbucks, buy a coffee. And so, anywhere that takes Visa.

Thomas (53:49.302)
Gotcha. Okay.

Groo (54:12.769)
So if your website takes Visa, that's cool. But if they wanna wire, let's say they wanna wire $20 USDT for a shirt, you should be able to have your 32-digit encrypted code on there somewhere so they can wire you 20 bucks and you send them a shirt.

Thomas (54:16.928)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (54:30.03)
Mmm

Todd Stevens (54:35.378)
Okay, I'm seeing a benefit here. I'm seeing a benefit. So here's a benefit for you right here. You heard it here first. That's right folks. So if they were like you could sell a shirt online 25 bucks. However, if you use crypto $20. See what I'm saying? So there's less fees. There's a benefit to it.

Thomas (54:35.723)
Yeah.

Groo (54:38.217)
Boom! You heard it here, folks.

Thomas (54:40.258)
Heh, you heard it here first.

Thomas (54:51.871)
Ah, yep.

Groo (54:52.149)
Boom! Last fees!

No taxes.

Thomas (54:57.678)
What's great about that is too, if it's in crypto, they don't know that they're feeding my poker addiction so I can just take it out of crypto and go straight to the poker client. Yeah. More, more benefits to manhack here. Fueling gambling addictions. Let's go.

Todd Stevens (55:02.794)
That's right. Ha ha ha.

Groo (55:03.061)
There we go. That's a win-win. It's a win-win. That's a win.

Todd Stevens (55:09.034)
That's right. Let's go.

Groo (55:12.501)
That's a win all the way. So Todd, as a website designer, you need to start incorporating the ability to pay with crypto.

Todd Stevens (55:15.892)
I'm out.

Yes, ma'am.

Todd Stevens (55:24.83)
You know, you're absolutely right. I need to look into that. I mean, I just like, like I said, I mean, other than hearing it from. I don't know, man. I mean, if I could figure out a way to do it and it's just there as an option, then who cares, right?

Groo (55:27.222)
Telling you man.

Thomas (55:28.816)
Yeah, Todd might be a hard sell on that one, but.

Yeah.

Groo (55:36.685)
I could go, I'll go show you my debit card if you want me to. Hold on.

Todd Stevens (55:40.678)
Yeah, let me see the numbers. Let me see the numbers on him. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully he shows us the numbers. Hey, what's your CVV code? What's that CVV code?

Thomas (55:41.578)
whip it out. Let's see. I'm actually interested to see what this looks like. Yeah. Flip the back over to and really put it in the camera.

Yeah, what's the three digit code on the back?

Todd Stevens (55:53.17)
Yeah, give me the three digit code. What's your billing address?

Groo (55:54.605)
Alright, y'all read? So, this is what I'm referring to. See this? See that logo right there? This is plastic. The one above this is a metal card.

Thomas (55:56.746)
Gotta buy a box of Newports with em.

Todd Stevens (56:03.026)
Okay, is it plastic or metal? Cover up your number, dude.

Thomas (56:03.296)
Yeah.

Thomas (56:08.766)
It's so blurry you can't even see it anyway.

Todd Stevens (56:11.447)
Are you covering up your number? Do cover up your number, bro. I know, damn it. Now I got more work to do.

Groo (56:11.989)
So you don't want to look at the number.

Thomas (56:14.941)
You're just gonna have to put that in post man. You just got to put a sensor bar

Groo (56:20.257)
See that?

Todd Stevens (56:23.006)
Yeah, I see it. Show us your number again.

Groo (56:23.125)
This is a crypto.com debit card. Okay. And it links directly to the crypto.com app. You see it? See that logo crypto.com and boom.

Thomas (56:26.375)
Pfft

Todd Stevens (56:28.61)
Okay. That is cool.

Thomas (56:29.762)
That is cool though.

Thomas (56:34.301)
What's your phone password?

Todd Stevens (56:35.506)
Yeah, what is that? Ha ha ha.

Thomas (56:39.282)
Yeah.

Todd Stevens (56:40.478)
There it is. By the way, we're not sponsored by Crypto.com.

Groo (56:46.145)
I am.

Thomas (56:46.319)
Not yet.

Todd Stevens (56:49.341)
I'm gonna have to message them later. Hey, by the way, we talk about you. Give me some money.

Thomas (56:49.687)
That's awesome though.

Yeah. Yeah, I-

Groo (56:54.369)
I'm telling you man, it's the future and manhack is the future. So that's what I'm... I'm telling you.

Todd Stevens (56:58.746)
Manhack is the future, that's right.

Thomas (56:59.126)
Yeah, that's what we like to hear. Yeah, I made a note to sign up for that at least to check out that debit card. So, and then.

Groo (57:07.406)
Cool. I'll send you a sign up code and we both get money if you sign up. Seriously? Oh!

Todd Stevens (57:11.655)
Ooh, send me a code.

Thomas (57:11.678)
Yeah, check that out. It might be viable for sure.

Groo (57:17.157)
It's it would be genius I'm gonna send both of you

Todd Stevens (57:22.384)
So, let me ask you, let's wrap up on the crypto, but I just want one more question about it though. So, if I'm putting money in there, like for you, you're putting money in there, are you seeing like daily increases of your money? Does your dollar go to 1.2? What are you seeing?

Groo (57:40.597)
Yeah, you do see increases. I mean it fluctuates just like the stock market But there's a few coins that are poised to really make you some money like sheab for instance shib It's fractions of a penny right now, so I literally have I Literally have let's I'll tell you like 21 million she right To be exact I have 17

Todd Stevens (57:56.417)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (58:07.369)
Mm-hmm.

Groo (58:08.525)
million SHIB coins. 17 million coins. If this goes up to $1, guess what that means?

Todd Stevens (58:10.094)
Okay.

Todd Stevens (58:17.194)
Do the math, how much? Banking. So can I borrow $100 then? Okay, but that's the thing. Okay, so I hear what you're saying, right? We need to get off this damn topic, but it's very interesting, okay? So I hear what you're saying. You can put your money in there, but why SHIEV? Why would SHIEV go up when you have other currencies? Aren't other currencies more popular?

Thomas (58:17.654)
We're all rich. All of us are rich. Yeah.

Groo (58:19.853)
17 million!

Groo (58:25.241)
Yes. So, yeah.

Thomas (58:34.406)
Hehehe

Groo (58:44.457)
I don't know, ask Elon Musk. Elon Musk has put millions and millions and millions in SHIB and he believes it will go up to a dollar as well. In fact, Tesla just launched their own coin, the Tescoin. It's not on a lot of the exchanges yet, but you could buy it off the Tesla website and they did not take credit card. You had to buy it with cryptocurrencies, which is really amazing.

Thomas (58:59.17)
Hmm, interesting.

Todd Stevens (59:11.582)
Yeah.

Groo (59:13.293)
We lost Todd, but I mean you talk about JP Morgan getting involved with cryptocurrencies, Warren Buffet, you've got Tesla now, you've got these huge companies that are investing in cryptocurrencies because they know probably the market is about to fall out. We lost Todd.

Todd Stevens (59:14.942)
I'll come back. And my bike.

Thomas (59:16.11)
Come back, Todd.

Todd Stevens (59:39.574)
Hmm.

Groo (59:42.721)
Weird.

Thomas (59:43.589)
Have a way to get them back somehow.

Todd Stevens (59:44.902)
Am I not back? I'm here. Can you guys hear me? Ha ha Am I back yet? Can you guys hear me?

Groo (59:45.645)
I don't know. The feds heard us talking about crypto and they shut them down. That's exactly what happened. Ha ha.

Thomas (59:55.459)
Uh, that sounds about right.

Todd Stevens (59:57.444)
Am I here guys?

Groo (59:58.601)
Anyways, yeah, I mean look into it. I sent you the link and so let's see how that goes You have any questions. Let me know. I'm always here

Thomas (01:00:01.278)
Yeah, we will for sure.

Yeah, yeah, we're definitely gonna look into that. Yeah, for sure, we appreciate that. Yeah, I'm gonna look into seeing if that's gonna be an option for us or not.

Groo (01:00:13.677)
That'd be cool, man. Well, now that we've lost Todd, do you have any closing statements that you'd like to offer or say or anything you'd like to leave us with?

Thomas (01:00:28.034)
Um, well, just follow man hack on social medias, uh, subscribe to the YouTube, follow on Instagram. I mean, Instagram is the main thing. So get followed on there. Um, we re releasing new music regularly. We try to aim for every four to eight weeks, more or less. We're trying moving forward to make that a little bit more towards the four week mark, we would like to get to a point where we can drop a song every month. Um, that would be cool, but

get followed. We're always going to be coming out with new music and aiming to do more shows soon. We're actually looking for a touring drummer right now because our drummer Jacob is hitting school pretty hard. So once we find a touring drummer, we can, we're going to start playing more shows out of state, start kind of stepping in that direction a little bit and come into your hometown soon at some point. So yeah.

Groo (01:01:20.589)
It's amazing. I can't wait. We'll get you up here in Raleigh again, man. I can't wait. Well I appreciate you coming on. Looks like we lost Todd. So thank you all. And follow Man Hack and follow Thomas Crawford on social media as well. He puts out some amazing content. It's amazing. Some of the best stuff I've seen in a long time. So um.

Thomas (01:01:25.162)
Yeah, let's do it.

Todd Stevens (01:01:26.375)
my back.

Thomas (01:01:34.11)
Yeah, thanks man.

Thomas (01:01:45.334)
Thank you.

Groo (01:01:50.465)
Thank you all for joining us and we will see you next time.

Thomas (01:01:54.39)
Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Todd. Somewhere lost in the abyss. Thank you, Travis. This has been awesome. So appreciate y'all.

Todd Stevens (01:02:00.766)
Bye guys.

Groo (01:02:00.801)
Thank you. All right.