Weird At CheckOut

People don’t buy things from weird websites.

We don’t need to anymore. There’s Amazon and Ebay and checking out with PayPal that make the transaction feel familiar, like we’ve done it before.

And if we’ve done it before it’s easier to do it again.

Sure you make a little more if I buy your t-shirt from your website than if you let me buy it on Amazon…but if your website looks weird and that’s the only place to buy the shirt I’m not going to buy it at all.

After doing all that work to get someone to want one of your products, don’t scare us away.

Make it look good, like a transaction we’ve made before. You’ve already done the hard part, don’t lose us.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

How You Wait

How are you waiting? How you wait is important. What you do with the waiting is important. Because if you want, you’re always waiting.

The watched pot most certainly boils, but watching it is such a waste of the waiting.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Coffee Mugs

I was out on the road with a band recently, there was maybe twelve of us and I asked the question…

Have you ever grabbed a coffee mug out of the cabinet looked at it and then put it back in order to grab a different one?

Everyone said yes.

Who puts extra effort into making sure they’re drinking out of your mug? And what are they telling themselves just as they’re putting the first mug down and picking yours up?


***Here’s a million or billion dollar idea I’m not going to do anything with…

Make a music video with lots of cool stuff in it. Create software and partner with Netflix or Amazon to where at any point during the video you can pause it, and click on ANYTHING you see and buy it.

Even further…Create an TV show episode or season like this. Someone let Kim K know.

Even further…make it so you can do this for older shows or movies like Seinfeld or That Thing You Do. It would be a thrill to rewatch and binge purchase so many fun things.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Remember, It’s January

PSA

It’s winter time. It’s colder. It’s post-holidays.

There’s a lull. An annual energy lull. Maybe even an optimism lull and an over all depression.

So no sudden bad movements. No rushed rash decisions. If you need to make a big decision right now, consult more wise people than usual.

Take a breath. It’s going to get warmer. You’re going to think more clearly here soon.

Keep your head down and do your work. Spring is coming.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Now Everyone...

Now everyone can make music that sounds good.

Now everyone can cut a vocal with headphones and a pop filter (and take a picture of it).

Now everyone can have a photoshoot.

Now everyone can make a great looking video.

Now everyone can have lots of social media followers.

Now everyone can make it look like you wish you were them.

So what now?

Now that technology has stripped away so many of the old differentiators, what are you going to do?

It gets more worthless everyday to (only) say: Look over here, I have good music and I look cool and I have a cool video, don’t you wanna be a superfan?

So you have to trade on something more.

Think of the people who really love what you do. What human emotion would they attach to a trip inside your world?

That’s a good place to start.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

The Hard Part Of ‘You Had To Be There’

If you’re putting time effort and energy into something where ‘you have to be there’ to partake (i.e. your live show)…you need to understand that you’re working on something very different than ‘check it out whenever you want’ (i.e. your recordings).

The hard part about building something where ‘you have to be there’ is that there can only be so many people in the room. A few hundred in a club or a few thousand in a theater or max twenty or thirty thousand in an arena or at a festival.

That’s it. That’s the total number of people who will get to experience the blood sweat and tears it takes to make and perform a great show.

(Most people on the planet will be left out)

Where as working on and pouring over your recordings for months and years to get them just right makes perfect sense because millions upon millions of people can and juuuuuust might check them out tonight.

More energy goes into making the recordings than the live show because one has very limited seating and the other has unlimited.

And that ‘unlimited’ carrot hanging out there is very seductive…it’s hard to take your eyes off of it.

Why would you put weeks and months of your creative energy and time into something that can only reach a tiny number of people when you can put weeks and months of your creative energy into something that can hypothetically reach everyone?

Because doing something where ‘you had to be there’ is still valuable, rare and desirable.

Spending the night taking care of (i.e. entertaining) four hundred people instead of working on something for four million people is rich. It’s special. It’s fleeting.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com