Aside from being the guitarist for Dragonforce, Herman Li spends quite a bit of time on the side doing content creator across various social media platforms. In an interview with Metal Injection, Li was asked about he feels about Bring Me The Horizon's recent comments about young musicians being "forced" into getting on TikTok and creating content. Li said musicians should really look at content creation as more of a bargaining chip and source of income rather than something they "need" to do, pointing out that negotiating a record contract can be vastly different based on your following.
"If you are writing music and you get your content creator stuff going, you have so much power to negotiate your record deal. You're just laughing at them. Why do you think I [have] a million subscribers on YouTube? So I can go to the next record deal and say 'what have you got for me? Oh, you have your YouTube channel? I got that too. I don't care. How much money are you giving me? What's the deal, what's the percentage?' There's an upside to that, how you can switch it around and make it less like, 'why do I have to do [content]?'"
"A lot of the [endorsements from companies] and brands have moved from artist endorsements to artist influencer departments now. Being able to great songs [and being a big band] is not enough for you to get free gear sometimes now, and guess what? If you're a content creator you get free gear and you get money on top. So win-win there."
Li later added that of course money isn't all he's concerned about, but "having that security lets you control you art. Understanding the business, understanding that part [of things lets you] control your music and your art. Or else someone else is going to come in and do it for you, and they always know better than you because their percentage is really what they care about the most."
