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Show Summary
In this conversation, Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor draws parallels between the music business and the stock market, explaining how understanding investment strategies can help navigate the music industry. He discusses the importance of investing in music catalogs and how artist success can significantly impact market value.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (00:00)
All right. Well, I mean, if you probably see it now as investor, right? So a lot of investors right now, they go into the catalog space, right? I was on that years ago. Nobody knew what I was talking about, but I was like, listen, but basically the correlation is this, right? You have a, okay, you have a stock, for example, you have, okay, you have a great company. Say Coca-Cola, use Coca-Cola as a big company, right? So, know, ask the candler, he started Coca-Cola, bought the recipe, da-da-da. So now…You inflate the price, you know what saying? You get the stock hot, you got a good company is backed by something, right? So the same with the music business. You got a high artist, you back them, their stock goes up, it’s different asset classes and revenue streams that it come from, but you still keep that same publishing share that you get.Dylan Silver (02:13)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is involved in DJing. He’s an investor across several different asset classes and he’s currently in North Carolina by way of New York. Please welcome Charles DJ Chase Taylor. Charles, welcome to the show.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (02:32)
For sure brother, for sure brother. Thank you for having me, thank you.Dylan Silver (02:35)
Where are you based out of right now in North Carolina?Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (02:38)
yeah, I’m in Charlotte. So I’m from New York. I’m from Harlem in the Bronx, New York. And then right now I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina. So salute to Charlotte and thank you. Once again, thank you for having me. Thank you.Dylan Silver (02:49)
How long have you been out there in Charlotte?Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (02:51)
About a year and a half, well, almost two years now, so about a year and a half, a year and some change, so like a year and like nine months, something like that.Dylan Silver (02:57)
So I’m actually from northern New Jersey. ⁓ So you probably don’t know the Caldwells where I grew up, but you might know like Montclair, New Jersey, which is, you know Montclair, okay.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (03:00)
Okay. Yeah, I got to DJDJ in Jersey all the time. Like I’m not a I travel a lot. I do a lot of traveling. So Jersey is my second home. So I used to be in Clifton Union all of that Rutgers all my clear, you know, all the spots. So that’s those the have fun in Jersey. So
Dylan Silver (03:23)
I always find it interesting the connection between marketing and promotion, but also how this makes deals happen in the real estate space that’s very common. That’s one of the big reasons why it’s a blessing to have a podcast like this. How did you get into DJing?Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (03:33)
Yeah.⁓ Honestly business bro, like I you know, like I said, ⁓ you know my dad he did music my mom kind of she didn’t do music but you know, she was always around it and ⁓ it’s something I grew up on actually my grandfather used to own nightclubs and that around like hip-hop first started so, you know, I’m really rooted in that and things like that. So mainly to my dad, but to be honest, I actually wanted to be a stockbroker music was more like something I just did as you know, growing up in the 90s. I’m an 80s kid, but growing up in the 90s, you know, you have extracurricular activities.
you know, to keep you occupied. you know, just life, life happens, you know, college, know, just are a DJ in a college, you just stick with it. So, you know, I’ve been doing it ever since.
Dylan Silver (04:20)
You mentioned wanting to be a stockbroker. know that you’re an investor right now. We were talking a little bit about the different investments before hopping on here. Did you really explore that route? I know you got to get what is it a series six, series seven. It’s all these tests that you got to get.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (04:24)
Mm. Mm.Yeah, yeah,
yeah. So, ⁓ you know, it’s funny because like, you know how life happens. So I was, I wanted to be a stockbroker when it wasn’t cool for black kids to be stockbrokers. You know what saying? So I’m actually, I’m actually a product of Big Brother Big Sister. So I was in the Big Brother Big Sister program in the nineties and we used go to like Ernst & Young when Ernst & Young was big before they merged. It is EY now, but when it was Ernst & Young in a good old day. So I wanted to be a stockbroker.
I was like always in the gifted classes and stuff like that in the math classes. So
I seen the movie Boiler Room, if you’re familiar with Boiler Room. You know what saying? So I seen that and I was like, this is what I want to do for my life. You know what saying? So I took it from there. you know, like you go through life stuff, man. College sometimes doesn’t happen the way you want to. But I still applied my knowledge and things like that to the music business. So the music business correlates exactly to the stock market for me. So was easy for me to navigate the music business because it’s exactly like the stock market.
Dylan Silver (05:55)
Yeah.Give me some corollaries there. I want to connect the dots. Help me with that.
Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (06:24)
Yeah. Yeah.right. Well, I mean, if you probably see it now as investor, right? So a lot of investors right now, they go into the catalog space, right? I was on that years ago. Nobody knew what I was talking about, but I was like, listen, but basically the correlation is this, right? You have a, okay, you have a stock, for example, you have, okay, you have a great company. Say Coca-Cola, use Coca-Cola as a big company, right? So, know, ask the candler, he started Coca-Cola, bought the recipe, da-da-da. So now…
You inflate the price, you know what saying? You get the stock hot, you got a good company is backed by something, right? So the same with the music business. You got a high artist, you back them, their stock goes up, it’s different asset classes and revenue streams that it come from, but you still keep that same publishing share that you
Your publishing goes up, the higher the artist goes. So it’s the same way as the music business, you know? No stock button, excuse me.
Dylan Silver (07:13)
Walk methrough your experience in the music business. I know that there’s so many different ways to be involved. Have you worked with artists and making sure that they have, you know, the rights to their music and this sort of thing so that they’re able to profit from every sale of their music and every stream?
Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (07:19)
Mm.Mm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. You know, like with me, my biggest thing is like a lot of times, you know, you hear a lot of rumors, a lot of stuff that has been in some, especially like these podcast people and stuff, they don’t really understand the business. Like you have a lot of people that you get, I would say like a salary or pay or get a check for something like a one-off, but you’re not thinking a long-term, you know what saying? So music is about publishing, you know I’m saying? So that’s why a lot of artists fight for their publishing more or less, you know what saying?
My journey was a little different because I actually had a leg up, you know, so my mom used to actually work at a publishing company growing up and I had no intentions of like being a, I had no, that was the furthest thing from my mind. But the thing is the long-term game. So you have like rights collections and things like that. have a copyright, intellectual property, basically, long story short. So the game is intellectual property game and you have to figure out the sales funnel to intellectual property, if that makes sense.
Dylan Silver (08:23)
Yeah.No, yeah, I mean, one of the things that we see right now, from my thousand foot view looking in is you’ll see songs that may be, you know, a decade old, seven years old, eight years old, and they’ll pop off on one avenue or another online, maybe on one social media site in particular, right? And then people will start using that song, or they’ll start clipping it together. And so now
Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (08:36)
Yeah.Mm.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm.
Hmm.
Dylan Silver (08:57)
people are like, well, where’d this song come from? And then this artist could get, you know, some extra pop, but if they’re out of the game, if they don’t have the rights to their music in that sense, property.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (09:05)
Yeah, it’s all yeah,doesn’t make sense. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense. Yeah. So it’s like this, like I said, the stock market is like I said, it’s a little different. I think the path to me and I guess my way my mind works is the same, but it’s just more or less just on a basic level of it of like, you know, raising the value of something. You know I’m saying? Like a new song to me, I look at as like an initial public offering, like an IPO. To me, a new song is an IPO. So every time you put out a new song, it’s a new IPO for something else. You know what saying? But it keeps going.
Dylan Silver (09:32)
Yeah.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (09:33)
You know what saying? So that’s why I always look at the music like business like the stock market to me. You know what saying? So it was like, all right, how can I still promote it and still make it at the same time? So, you know, it’s just, it’s just the same like that. Like even like with real estate, like real estate is just, you know, you have a property manager, you put the bill in the LLC, you have a property manager, you don’t run it, you don’t put your name on it. You know what saying? Things like that. So it’s all the same. It’s all the same. It’s just more, you know, buns the bigger scale, one’s not, you know.Dylan Silver (10:00)
I want to pivot a bit here and ask you aboutmusic creation right now in general. I don’t want to give away all the gold, but I’ve been put onto some game with AI and how incredible some of the AI music creation is coming along. And I even saw people like white labeling this one software that I’ve come across where
Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (10:39)
Yeah, yeah.Nah, nah.
Yeah.
You
Mm.
Dylan Silver (11:00)
Basically, you could put in, you know, a description for lyrics, a song genre or type, and then it would make a song. So people would white label this and say, okay, well, if you want a custom song for an anniversary, if you want a custom song for a birthday, you could put in this information and we’ll charge you however much money. But there’s really one service behind it that was doing all of this. I’m curious to get to your perspective on the current stage of music creation and AI and where we’re at.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (11:31)
Honestly, I’m a huge fan of it and I’m explain why. The reason why I’m a huge fan of it is because I started before social media. So I’ve been DJing since 1999, like, you know, and I’ve really been putting out projects in 2003, 2004, 2003. Listen, I was there burning CDs. Listen, I never wanna go back to that ever again. And I say that to say, it doesn’t hurt the artist because if you’re good,people are still gonna buy it. If you’re talented, people are still gonna buy it. The computer cannot replace a human emotion. It cannot replace human psyche, you know what saying? So you still have to program it. And it’s actually a good tool because it makes the workflow faster. it’s like, not putting nobody out of work. It’s just making the workflow faster. So it’s just like, okay, think of it this way. You can focus more on the marketing if that’s taking, the, you know what saying? It’s less work.
Dylan Silver (12:20)
Yeah.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (12:27)
You know I’m saying and also and it also reduces your overhead So a lot of people don’t understand like a business same real estate and same business like your overhead So you have you want to build ⁓ a get a rental property for example like this. This is my first like this office I’m in right now. This is my first ⁓ I guess commercial property. I put my lease on so this is my first commercial property So, you know, you still have to bitch your overhead. So your overhead is what’s gonna kill you. So ⁓ The less employment you have or overhead things like that the less you have to worry you can focusDylan Silver (12:28)
It’s less work.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (12:56)
that resources on other things. You can allocate those resources to other things.Dylan Silver (12:59)
I mean, it’s so incredible what you’re able to do. I was using one. I’m going to keep the name of it close to the chest because I almost like it.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (13:01)
Mm-hmm.Yeah.
I was gonna say
I was gonna say it but I didn’t want to say I figured he I figured you didn’t want me to cuz I actually put out and to be honest with you I actually put out a dubstep project with AI so I just is out now called artificial that’s what I’m trying to get the name of it that’s called art with intelligence so it’s pretty dope so it’s a dubstep AI project I did yeah
Dylan Silver (13:25)
And I mean, I live in the Dominican Republic, I had been living in Texas prior and I’m from New Jersey. But what I noticed was AI can not only make songs for pretty much every genre, it can make it across accents within a language. So if I wanted to have a traditionally Southern American accent, I could do that. If I wanted to speak Spanish like they speak in the Dominican Republic and haveCharles “DJ Chase” Taylor (13:28)
Nice, okay.Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm.
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Dylan Silver (13:54)
the type of flow over music that they have in their popular music out here, Dembeau. It can do that. It is…Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (14:01)
Mm.Yeah, them both. Okay, so all
right, so I got one for you, right? So them both, right? All right, so you know how like Dominican Spanish is more like I’m from the Bronx. So we Dominican all day. So, you know, Dominican Spanish is more like Southern draw, right? It’s more Southern, more lax draw, right? It’s more like, it’s not as like, no, throws in, you know saying? It’s the way different, you know what I’m saying? So, okay, so with that being said, so with the AI, you can use it, say you want a dem bold snare or say you want a dem bold hook.
Dylan Silver (14:18)
Right.Right.
Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (14:33)
You can actually put the dimple hook and then you rap the song or you, you know what saying? The acapella or things like that. You know what saying? So it makes your workflow faster, you know?Dylan Silver (14:37)
Yeah.I want to pivot a bit here, Charles, and ask you, if I can, about the investments that you’ve been involved in. You mentioned a little bit of crypto. I’m imagining stocks as well. What are you looking at these days, and what’s been your experience as an investor?
Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (14:44)
Mm. Yeah, good!Mm. Yeah.
I love it, man. You know, like I said, investment is great.
I say it like this. A lot of, and I’m speak from an African-American standpoint, right? A lot of black people, feel like they get a lot of misnomers. You know what saying? And it’s not, it’s not wrong information. Sometimes it’s just information that doesn’t apply to you. You know what I’m saying? So a lot of information, like you have podcasts and TikToks and stuff like that from people who never owned a business, who never…
seen it on paper, you know what saying? So with that being said, like you can’t afford to risk your money on a penny stock or a stock that’s like IPOs like, or, you know what I’m saying? Or things like that. So you kind of want to focus on stocks that are already working. So like an Apple and I can say no way I’m giving legal stock advice. I have to disclaim that I can’t give legal stock advice, of that. But you know I’m saying? You have to put your money in things that is a long-term game, not a short-term game. So
You know dividend stocks things like that. So you want to focus on stuck to pay, know nice dividends You know and slow slow build up, you know, saying five dollars here You can buy dollar shares, you know, I’m saying dollar course average and things like that help you out Yeah, so you can always dollar course average across the play, you know across a nice nice little portfolio So they everyday things that you use like, you know, I’m saying like Procter & Gamble is a good stock Starbucks Starbucks. They play dividends like every week almost so, you know I’m saying
Dylan Silver (16:46)
Dollar cost averaging, yeah.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (17:02)
companies that already turn a profit so you don’t have to deal with the stress of am I making money? Am I making money? Am I making money? So, you know what saying? Those are some good stock tips that I give, you know?Dylan Silver (17:11)
Charles, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go if maybe they’ve got a question about the music industry and they’d like to get your feedback on it? Or maybe they’re in the music industry and they may be interested in collaborating or picking your brain about investing strategies.Charles “DJ Chase” Taylor (17:14)
Okay.Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah. ⁓
man, I’m anywhere man. I have a website, DJchase.net. My radio station, DJchaseradio.com. Also have a book out on Amazon called The Record Label Cheat Sheet. So go to Amazon, go pick up my book. I have a mobile app, streaming app, DJ Chase Radio on your iPhone or your Android, or just Instagram underscore DJ. Google me too. I’m here, I’ll pop up on Google so you’ll find me. Once again, Dylan, thank you so much brother. Thank you for having me too.
Dylan Silver (17:54)
Thanks for coming on.
