My company Loyalty X Entertainment began to manage artist back in early 2011. One of these artist, Siano, became my favorite artist to work with, but not just because he had his own studio and was a workaholic, but he knew so many people who wanted to be in music like him. So, when it came down to doing a first single, Siano called upon producer and entrepreneur, Biggs, who I instantly became good not only good friends with also a great business confidant with. I got a chance to catch him right as he came back from an event at LaGuardia Community College promoting his nightlife/events search site Merrlo.
DJ Mainstream: Biggs, thanks for doing this interview with me
Biggs: It's all good. Thanks for having me
Of course. Now for those who don't know you, like I do, I will let them know... your a very talented but busy guy. Your a producer and also owner/creator of Merrlo. How do you balance the time?
Before the fall came, I was taking a year off from school to pursue Merrlo full time (and) have up the core site. So, I had a lot of time to do music and work on Merrlo with my fam's blessing.
Always important to have family blessings. But has there one person that has been there that has pushing you to succeed or given you the fuel to keep going?
Yeah, my sis Sheena. She was the first to back me and always from time to time to push me to keep making progress
That's good makes me wish I had a sister (laughs). But back to business, producing is totally different from what your doing with Merrlo. But are there any similarities you've noticed?
I think a couple things. Probably the element of timing and patience because with making a beat... this joint may sound nice after the 20 odd minutes you make it but, if you rush to finish the track it may not have the same end result (especially) if you look over and see where the hook could be re-worked. Adding a couple of new sounds or making each verse section unique or even mixing it
Patience is definitely a need in the music industry but more as a producer
Yeah. Then with Merrlo, it's a unique type of service/product and it requires a lot of functionality which subsequently needs patience to find the right people and develop funding to put the best product out there in the market.
Ok, that sounds like A LOT of work. So what's the easiest, if there is any, as far as developing a site like Merrlo?
The easiest thing with developing Merrlo is probably that people already like the concept. It's taking some time to introduce it but so far in the last four months, I've heard nothing but positive feedback. But there's still work to be done.
Always work to be done but it all comes back to patience as we said. The one great thing I can say is your site is much better than using Yelp to find a club's info and then see if the club has a site and whatnot. Do you see Merrlo being as big as a site like Yelp?
Yeah, bigger in the long term. By then, I may be interesting in buying them and incorporate my plan I had for them into Merrlo also.
So you have big plans for Merrlo. Then let me say this... why does Merrlo benefit, lets say, a promote? Besides the obvious of being on your site.
I see a promoter's company or DJs, and hosts as brands and the products they put together brand-able, just like how artists like Jay-Z is branded/partnered with Duracell Powermat. Especially for promoters parties, those parties can be branded/marketed for users to check out if they are live. Word of mouth is effective and if you doing your job as a promoter, DJ, host, dance team, etc, put together live parties, people gonna tell they friends about it. Subsequently, you wanna check it out, you can search for it on Merrlo or other events, like a show. I think that will create value long term to a promoter later.
I can see the value myself. I wish you and Merrlo were around a long time ago when I was first doing events (laughs). In the long run, I see the plans for Merrlo, but what if producing comes calling and you get that big placement on a album. Have you though about the "what will I do"? Or just that "what if"?
Any business is good business. I think it'll be good look for me. My passion for music will always be number one, and even if Merrlo doesn't work out or if I don't make a big placement in a album, I'll still be making beats creating if for me and who ever like it. But with Merrlo, it was just a big of sacrifice because even though I could of used the money I made this year to buy new VST's, speakers and piano lessons.
That's hustle right there.
I'm confident that Merrlo would succeed 10x over than any amount of hit record I produce or placement I get.
It's one thing I've always stressed in people in entertainment or music industry; be confident in what you do. You have anything big coming up that you wanna let everyone know about?
We have a Meek Mill appearance in Brooklyn this weekend. You can check out more info right here: http://bit.ly/OjZZCr
Meek Mill & Merrlo, sounds like a great connect! Biggs, thanks for your time I appreciate you coming for the interview.
No problem, this is Voiceless Music and we signing off.
Contact Biggs below:
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