How To Be An Industry Plant (Ms. Trim Strategy)

But this is how to become an industry plant 101, the Miss Trimm style. So that's what this stream is about. This stream is about how an artist can become an industry plant, uh how you as an independent artist or an upcoming artist, or maybe even, you know what I'm saying, an artist just in the middle of that, can plan and execute and put yourself in a similar position as her at some point. And this is basically like the label formula, you know what I'm saying? And I really think it's a formula where if you can if you have the pieces together, then I think that some of y'all are going to watch this stream and then start looking at artists that y'all [ __ ] with that might be kind of blowing up or that you know are signed, and you're going to see like these exact same steps damn near every single time. So before before we get into the actual breakdown, let's define what an industry plant is, right? So industry plant is a term that's typically used for artists that other artists, other fans, sometimes industry folk feel like came out of nowhere and were planted by the label. Nine times out of 10 when you hear somebody call another artist an industry plant, what they're basically saying is like, "Hey, I feel like I ain't never heard of this [ __ ] before, and all of a sudden they popped up out of nowhere, and I think that they were planted here by a label or some type of major industry figure." And if you go back and you watch the video I made about the new industry plants, then you'll see that my biggest pushback on the term is that, "Hey, nine times out of 10 when you see someone call another artist an industry plant, what's really happening is that you were just now discovering this artist." But if you were to go do your research, go put the time into it, go actually look for the bread crumbs, then you'll see that most artists that get called industry plants were not technically industry plants. They were artists that worked their way up to the point to where a label felt like they were worth investing in, felt like they were worth building up, and then we as the public started to see everything from that point on out, right? Miss Trimm is a is a a rising rap artist out of South Carolina. Uh she's been having like a massive blow up year, I would say from like January of this year up until this point, she just got listed as a XXL Freshman. She is in the midst of her breakout moment. And those are the best kind of artists to case study cuz that means you guys get to watch them build out from here on out. And you can kind of see how some of the things we're going to talk about get applied. Right? But let's get into step one. How do you become an industry plant 101? Step one is to make great music, right? Or I would much rather say make music that people like that somebody likes. You got to have the best marketing plan. You could have the the savviest group of people behind you that are that are playing as your team and kind of helping you build. But if fans do not feel like they have a song or a batch of songs they like, then almost none of this [ __ ] works, right? So, Miss Trini's breakout song was this song called uh Tim's. And even before she got the Tim's, she had I want to say maybe about like 8 to 15 different songs out. So, she was just like any other artist. She was an artist in South Carolina using her resources, putting songs out, doing the internet grind of trying to figure out, "Hey, what from me do people like?" So, she gets to a point where she's dropping songs, she's dropping songs, she's dropping like these mini EPs. And then she finally catches her one, right? She finally catches the one that blows her up. And it's a song called Tim's. When the dude on the song, A$AP Twelvyy, was for what I could tell like a local South Carolina act. So, this is one of those situations where it's like, "Hey, here's somebody in South Carolina linking up with somebody else in South Carolina." When she got to this song and she started pushing the TikToks for this song, that's when her [ __ ] started going crazy. And then she's getting viral TikToks. If y'all are Trini fans, y'all might have heard it, but this is the song that put her on the radar. This is basically the start of her journey of becoming an industry plant. Step number two, build a local buzz and build an online buzz. I think labels scout in two places. They scout digitally, so social media platforms. I'm telling y'all from my own personal experience, a good A&R to label, especially A&R who's really hungry, they going to spend like half of their day just scrolling through TikTok, scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through YouTube. They're going to spend another portion of the day calling up their friends and calling up their industry peers kind of asking them who do they listen to and who are they finding that they are excited about and they're going to spend another portion of their day going to showcases, going to underground events, going to places where they could find some young hungry artists that nobody else has kind of gotten to yet. You want to be building your buzz locally so you can give yourself more opportunities to perform and sharpen your skill and so really build a home base that will vouch for you, which will be very, very important when you start to get internet buzz and people start to call your industry plant. And so if we go back and we look at how Miss Trim did it, right? I want to start I want to start here cuz like I told you guys, she was going hard on the on the social media You know what I'm saying? She was doing the personality uh videos. She was doing the videos where she just in the mirror lip syncing to her own song. She was building a consistent online presence while at the same time she was moving around locally. So there's a a cypher that she did. And so here's a cypher that she did back in 2025. And this is how I once again, this is how I know she ain't got signed yet because look at who she's in the cypher with. Right, these are all underground South Carolina acts. >> [music] >> But I've seen artists get an online moment and then completely disregard all the local [ __ ] Like there's an artist out there who would have got what she got with Tims. Somebody like this guy One Way Zoe would have reached out and be like, "Oh man, I [ __ ] with you. I see you doing your thing online. You want to come through and do the South Carolina cypher I'm setting up?" And they'd be like, "No." They would have thought they bigger than the program because they're missing out on the importance of step two. You need the online presence. And you need the local build up at the same time. Step number three is going to be find your first investor. Now, this doesn't have to be a label. This could be you get a distribution deal and now they're ready to put out some money and put out some resources. This could be a private investor. This could be everything from, you know what I'm saying, that guy who became a [ __ ] multi-millionaire from selling oil all the way down to the local hood [ __ ] that [ __ ] with you and he got some he or she got some money to spend. And they want to invest in the music artist, right? And by the way, from step one to step three it could be anywhere from, if you're lucky, 1 year. If you're pretty normal, 3 to 5 years. If you're a little bit above abnormal, 8 to 12 years. And this is the part where it starts to get dicey. This is the part where it starts to get real industry-ish. Now, Miss Trimm is signed to a label. She's signed to this label called Boo Vision. Uh Boo Vision is ran by Boo, very prominent music industry exact. He's the brother of the artist Akon. Um he his label has broken acts like Four Bats, they broken Ian, they broken Sailor, I want to say. Um like he's had a good amount of like internet acts that he picked up and kind of took them to industry uh industry prominence over the last like 2 3 years. So, last April, Trimm teamed up with fellow ascendant South Carolina rapper Ash WerVo for Tims, the song that truly blew her up locally and helped her land a distribution deal with Boo Vision, the label founded by executive Al Boo Boo Thiem and now operating in partnership with Atlantic Music Group. We come back and look at this Hits Daily Double article. Hits Daily Double article announcing her signing to Boo Vision, 10K Projects, Atlantic Records in April 3rd of 2026. Now, that song um Tems came out, like I said, April of 2025. So, if she signed her deal in April, actually if the deal got announced in April, that means that she probably signed it in March of 2026. Which means that they probably discovered her and started talking to her, pitching her, trying to get her, I would assume around probably October, November of last year. There's a lot of things about stuff some of her other stuff. You can tell it's still just her. Tems, this is her. This is still her moving as a local artist. Bugatti, this is her. Nobody, this is her. Taxi, this is her. The Boat remix is where it starts to get questionable. If you go look at the Boat remix video and you look at the video she did before Boat, there's a huge upgrade in quality. I'm talking about I don't think her videos were bad, but you could tell that she was working with local videographers. Now, my other theory of what could have happened around this time is like at this point she's also viral. She's starting to become an internet personality. Um her followers are going pretty fast. So, she very well could have indie'd her way into getting YK Dee and Bunny B on the song. Very possible. I don't want to take it off the table cuz it does happen. I know artists that would kind of like work their own relationships and use that to kind of put themselves amongst who they consider to be their peers. What makes me feel like she signed the deal around this time, and this is where my marketing brand kicks in, is if you notice something, Taxi, Boat, the Boat instrumental, Nobody, Bugatti, Tems, those songs did not get a marketing budget. These are pretty organic numbers on her her video, right? 80K views on the video starting to crack for online, 8 9K for Bugatti. Nobody's at 172, Taxi's at 165. Boat remix has 5.5 million. Where my marketing brain kicks in is that this video has 5.5 million views on it and it has Where did go? Where's the likes at? I want to say it had like 70,000 likes on it. Now, one of the best ways for to tell if somebody ran YouTube ads on a music video, divide the amount of likes by how many views it got. If it's less than 1 and 1/2% If it's 1 and 1/2% or less like to view ratio, they 1,000% ran YouTube ads on it. So, she finds her investors, she finds Boo Vision, and she finds um a label that has experience with taking artists who have built up a internet buzz and making them legit and taking them through the rest of the program, which brings us to our next step, artist development. Once you get your industry partner, this is when you need to know what to ask them for in order to develop yourself and make yourself better as an artist. Now, this step is hard for a lot of artists because it's it's going to take you being willing and able to admit that there are things that you need to work on as an artist. A lot of artists can't say, "Hey, I suck as a performer." A lot of artists can't say, "Hey, my branding isn't very well put together." A lot of artists can't say, "Hey, I know I'll be I know I'll be singing and [ __ ] but I can't really hit notes like that." And if you And before I let the rest of this video play, look at the difference already between how she's starting to dress, how she's starting to look now versus how she was kind of dressing and looking in a lot of her earlier videos. Now, she's starting getting to what's starting to become her signature brand and look, which is like more princessy, right? She has a crown around it. So, you see the pink a lot. Now, she has dancers and [ __ ] You know what I'm saying? And I think that this was a part of development. But, I imagine they came in and said, "Hey, we want her to be able to dance. We want her to be able to be like a Beyoncé level performer, where she's not just jumping up around on stage like a like a typical rapper, but she actually has coordination, she actually has productions." Right? Let's go back to when we were talking about her building locally. Like look at the difference in how she kind of moves on camera here and then look at the difference between how she moves on camera doing that run. >> [music] >> Like she's a lot stiffer. You know what I'm saying? She doesn't You can tell she's nervous. You know what I'm saying? Like you can tell she's like a little nervous to be there. And she's not moving as slowly versus fast forward [ __ ] five or six months later. And bro, look at this [ __ ] Look at >> [music] >> So I personally think I personally think that they had somebody help her like loosen up on camera and and work on her on camera personality. But if you go back and you look at a lot of her cover arts, right? A lot of her early stuff, you can see Okay, they're just pictures. This is her probably been a SoundCloud artist. She's just trying to keep it simple and cheap. I'mma upload a picture of myself for my cover arts. asshole's label, floor label, Guapo label boat remix for [ __ ] label, Chrome with Slayer label. Look at the difference in the cover arts then or now compared to what she was doing when she was still a truly independent artist doing her own thing. This brings us to step number five and this is where things start to get fun. Because if you've been doing these steps right, you've made good music, now you have a little bit of a body of a work so where you can move around online, you can do shows, you can do performances, you've built the local buzz you built the online buzz, now you got people back in your hometown that can vouch for you that when the label does start pushing the buttons, can be like hell no, bro. I ain't no industry plant. But the breakout package is basically a a couple of singles, a couple of really high quality visuals um a couple of standout performances, places where you can kind of start to pack out. This is her five song package, right? Guapo into the boat remix for [ __ ] into into Chrome with Slayer into coconut water and then now into her Nobody remix. So, that's what? Nobody remix, coconut water, Chrome, Boat remix, Guapo. That's five songs. That's a five-song rollout over the course of 5 months. Miss Trim and her label 1,000% initially trying to break her into more like traditional hood spaces, traditional rap spaces. Um especially with like a lot of girl rappers coming through, which once again, shout out to her. That's fire because she ooped her label a fire breakout package, right? And it's evident because this was a really nice build-up. The Boat remix and the Guapo building her in what they consider to be her core fan base. Chrome put her on a different side of the internet. Coconut water starting to kind of Coconut water is where I started to think they leaning into the Nicki Minaj [ __ ] You know what I'm saying? She gets compared to Nicki Minaj a lot. They're clearly trolling us with that comparison at this point as a label. Um if you know anything about Boo Vision and you've ever paid attention to Boo Vision's formula, their formula to me is to find internet artists, elevate them a little bit, find something about their artist that the public seems to hate, and then double triple down on that [ __ ] And once again, guys, when I was doing my research for this video, I I I'm Miss Trimmed out. >> [laughter] >> I went through her whole catalog. I listened to every single song on her Spotify. I watched every single video on her YouTube. I watched damn near every single Tik Tok on her Tik Tok. In my opinion, she did not really start like getting questionably sonically close to Nicki Minaj until she signed to Boo Vision. And what I think happened is that some of it is just her voice, too, right? Like she's she's in South Carolina. She has a uh what's it called? Like a Gucci accent? Somebody made the comparison, and Boo and his team of marketers were like, "Wait, that's the one. That's what we going to piss them off with." I ain't got no proof of that, though, so take it as you will, you know what I'm saying? But that goes into my next step. Step number six, market aggressively. Now, in most phases of what we perceive to be industry plant, the part where they start to get the heavy industry plant allegations is typically during the part where the label is spending the marketing dollars. You've listened to me talk about it. I ain't ever going to hide it. The industry is a thousand percent payola and I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing because if there were no aspects of payola to the music industry in the current age, 99% of artists would never have a chance. Let's look at the other big aspect of her marketing she's doing. She's doing super super super heavy seeding campaigns. Now, if you don't know what a seeding campaign is, a seeding campaign is when you pay blog pages on Instagram, sometimes TikTok and YouTube to run narratives around you. This is typically being done through like um maybe like you gather a couple of different pieces of content around yourself. You come up with a narrative and you pay these blog pages to post you. This will be the equivalent of being a rapper in the 90s and having the source in your back pocket. This will be the equivalent of being a pop artist in the 80s and having MTV in your back pocket. You can see they're starting to run narratives around her. Trina is really coming for that princess of rap crown. She's been on a generational run. This is another hit cuz I'll tell y'all this, when I used to work for Def Jam and I would run seeding campaigns, you know what I would do? I would put together a folder with all the clips that I wanted to use in the post. I would put together a Google Doc with like three to five different headlines um that I was cool with the pages using or or or putting their own spin on. I'll put all that [ __ ] together in a Google Drive folder. I would send it to the pages that I wanted to run the narrative or to run the post I want to run and then they do that thing. And so if you were paying attention to me and you knew like my style of doing the seeding campaign, you could look at these different posts and be like, "Oh, Coi Leray did that." But I will say this guys, this is the perfect time. If you are artists and you want to run this style of marketing around yourself, you want to be able to run seeding campaigns, you want to be able to find performance platforms to post your music, you want to be able to find people to react to your music, you guys need to check out a website called Placement. What is Placement? Some of you might be asking. Placement is a platform that we built at No Labels Necessary. It's a platform that allows independent artists the ability to search and find performance platforms, reactioners, and blog pages for this style of marketing. So, you can come on, you can tell it what type of artist you are, you can tell it how big you are as an artist, and the platform will start to serve you dozens of pages within our personal network that match the type of artist you are. So, you can come in here, you can build a campaign for yourself similar to what Miss Trim is doing, right? You can come on this joint and say, "Hey, I'm a underground rage rap artist. I sound like [ __ ] Autumn Summer Sun and Ken Carson with a little bit of Cardi B mixed in." >> [laughter] >> And I have a budget of $750. Our platform will put all that information together, and it will serve you performance platforms, it will serve you blog pages, it will serve you reactionaries and curators that fit within your budget. You can use the platform to build your own campaigns, and you can use the platform to pitch platforms so that you can start to market yourself like an industry plant. So, if you're interested in checking Placement out, go to placement.us. When we put this playback on the channel, we'll have the link below the video. We do have a 7-day trial or a free 7-day trial for the pro tier for artists that you can jump on, kind of test it out, see how you feel about it, and if it feels like something that you need or something that you are seriously at the stage of your career to where something like this could benefit you, then hey, sign up for Placement today and start kicking off your campaigns so you can make yourself look like an industry plant like Miss Trim. So, if she hadn't been spending her own money to get her music videos credited, to get her cover arts, to to move around and do what she had to do, she would have never put the pieces together that made someone like a Boo Vision interested in her. And that's kind of the part of like what you're doing when you're investing in yourself as an artist. Like, half of it is trying to break yourself, but half of it is also showing different industry partners that as a proof of concept. So, I said like, your job as an independent artist is to build your career in case nobody ever finds you, but if somebody does find you, then you've built a really strong proof of concept. Which then takes us to step number Number convert your new attention into industry credibility. And this is typically the final step before people full-fledged believe that you are industry player. You are marketing yourself to potential music fans, and then you are marketing yourself to other people in the music industry. Anytime artists see another artist on something like a Complex and they brag about it, the question that always comes up a lot is, "Who the [ __ ] is still paying attention to Complex? Who still discovers new music artists from Complex?" Nobody. It's not about y'all. She's currently in the phase of her career where she's converting all of her in all of her online presence and her music fandom into industry attention, which is why we see her on the Complex >> First and only princess that touched this platform. These hosts was pushing 40 when I got my platform. See, by the age of 21, I'mma have platform. >> Look at this video. This video has 9.8k views in 3 weeks. She's not doing this for new audience discovery. Because the random 15-year-olds looking for new music probably isn't looking at Apple Music. You know who is looking at Apple Music and [ __ ] like this? That booking agent who books for festivals, that VP at the publishing company that gives out co-pub deals. So, you eventually hit a point where now you're trying to take everything you've done from making the great music to building your online and local buzz, getting your investors and your first industry partners, having them develop you as an artist, helping them build a breakout package for you of those couple of songs and those couple of pieces of content assets, marketing you aggressively. You're doing all of that to convert that into industry attention so that you're able to rinse and repeat the whole process, which is step number eight, right? Because as great as I think Miss Triniti is, as far as I think she is as an upcoming artist, as successful as I think she's about to be, she's going to have to do this whole process all over again, which means they're probably building her out towards having an album. I would assume the album's probably going to come out. And this is as simple as This is how simple it is to become an industry player. And I don't mean simple in terms of like the work to do it is easy. You know what I'm saying? If we look at what she was doing, you know what I'm saying? She started dropping music and god damn when her first single come out? God damn 2024. Wait too bad. So, it might take you your whole career to get to a point to where you can have this type of strategy ran for you. And that's okay because you got the rest of your career to be a a successful artist. I look at it like unless you plan on quitting sometime soon, who cares about how long it takes? Don't ever feel discouraged if you think things are going wrong when you're trying to build up cuz we all going through it in some way out here. I personally learned a lot while learning about Miss Trim, you know what I'm saying? And just like it's a good exercise like that even reminds me sometimes of the process that a artist has to go through to get to a certain point. But, this is fun, y'all. Um I'm about to go because I am slowly dying on the inside. Like I don't know if you can hear it in my voice, but I am getting over being sick. Um like I said, I wanted to do this Miss Trim breakdown because I was supposed to give it to y'all in the video we just dropped and I didn't. That was my bad. Sometimes when I'm in here shooting, I just be I just be in my own world. Do do do do. You know what I'm saying? So, I'm about to go drink some tea and get my life together. I appreciate y'all. Love y'all. Y'all enjoy the rest of y'all night. Y'all be safe and I'll see y'all the next time I hop on. Peace.