My guest this week is Temima Shames, who’s the CEO of Next Step Talent, a full service talent management and digital brand agency that’s home to more than 20 music artists, influencers and actors.

While in college, Temema worked for Atlantic Records, and Visionary Music Group before jumping into her own management company. Since then her clients have achieved 5B+ YouTube views, a #7 debut Spotify Album, highlights in Youtube’s Black Creator Class of 2023, TikTok’s biggest POV star, and one of NYFW’s creators with the highest brand return of 2023.

Not only that, songs, records, and projects Temima has been a part of have garnered 25 million streams and viral campaigns with more than 2 million recreates on TikTok. Her company has also partnered with top brands including YouTube, Meta, Disney Music Group, BOSS, Neutrogena, HBO, Netflix, Target, Universal Music Group, and NYX Cosmetics.

During the interview we spoke about how she got started managing social influencers, the strategy behind short form and long form content, branding as story-telling, artist mental health, experiential marketing, and much more.

I spoke with Temima via Zoom from her office in Los Angeles.

On the intro I’ll take a look at music platforms taking steps against AI-generated songs, and a study about vocal levels in different genres.

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