We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chris Fuller & Jon Flynn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Chris & Jon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?
We hope that DTRMG leads the charge on resetting industry standards on transparency, and fairness. We want to be known as a safe haven for all artists to come and seek support in furthering their career and creativity in an industry that has been known to exhibit dishonest business practices and create unsafe environments for artists & creatives that love contributing to our culture.
Additionally, we hope that DTRMG’s legacy will be one where we became a company, and a brand that became a vessel that employed and uplifted African-American men and women, and the generations that came behind us. We are proud to be a black-owned business. We hope that when people think of DTR, they not only think about the music and content that came from our artists, but that we opened doors, gave opportunities, and changed lives.
Chris & Jon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Dreams To Reality Music Group, LLC. (DTRMG or DTR) is an up and coming music label and entertainment company founded in Raleigh, North Carolina. We were established under the principles of transparency, creativity, and passion while modernizing the ancient concept of record labels.
We think of DTR as a jack of all trades. We specialize in artist management, content creation, merchandising, artist development, and strategic business development. The music industry and music labels have a notorious reputation for being toxic, greedy, and empowering environments and practices that often leave artists unpaid, uninspired, and exhausted.
Our company prides itself in fostering an environment, company culture, and transparent business practices that allow artists to be compensated fairly, maintain their artist’s rights and continue to be the inspired creatives that they are. One thing anybody that follows or supports DTR should know is our heart and souls go into everything our logo is on or is associated with. Our brand logo (the DTR flame) symbolizes our commitment to trailblazing new paths for artists to have freedom, breaking industry barriers, and the future entertainers of tomorrow.
Our current roster of artists include Alie (@dontmindthesmoke), Don Altae (@donaltae), and Cloud Envy (@cloudenvy.22).
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
At the core of DTRMG, we strive ourselves on being genuine, upstanding individuals; in our personal lives and how we handle business. We value creating strong, long lasting personal and business relationships whenever we can. We’ve learned, especially as a young, growing company, strong social networks are key to building strong legacies. We are only as strong as our foundation. and we hope that when someone brings up DTR, whether it be Chris, Jon, or our artists, that the following comment is of a positive interaction they had or a positive adjective that follows behind it.
Additionally, our brand is at the heart and soul of DTR. We pride ourselves in creating high quality products, whether that be our merchandise, our events, the content we create, and especially the music our artists release to the world. When people see our brand or content, we believe because of the quality of work that we put behind it, anybody wearing, listening, or watching our art, they know it’s something that we put our hearts into.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
In our industry, we have more “supporters or fans” than clients. The best source to generate new supporters or fans has been a mixture of a couple of things: high quality content, consistency and developing personal relationships.
This isn’t just something we preach to our artists, this is a foundational approach company wide. From major events, to local open mics, we plan on being any and everywhere we have to be to expand our brand and our art. Additionally, we have to continue to be consistent on social media, consistent with creating high quality content, and consistent on fostering and building our relationships. Of course, it would be major to go “viral” on social media, but we want to continue to cultivate, build, and focus with the fans that have been supporting us from day one (and most importantly, support us financially).
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.dreamstorealitymgmt.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreams2_reality_/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DTRMG
- Other: Listen and stream our artists! Check out our merchandise! DTRMG’s roster of artists: https://linktr.ee/DTRMG Alie (@dontmindthesmoke) – https://linktr.ee/IAmAlie Don Altae (@donaltae) – https://bio.to/donaltae Cloud Envy (@cloudenvy.22) – https://dtr.fanlink.to/cloudenvy
Image Credits
John Kornegay and Zak Selwaeh