Telling you what it’s like is different than you knowing what it is.
(It’s why John wanted Yoko there…among other reasons.)
When you’re there, when you’ve done the thing, you know.
Stop reading up about drum kits and get a drum kit.
Stop talking about putting on a show and put on a show.
Stop getting advice about making an album and make an album.
Watching the Rocky movies will only take you so far in your boxing career.
Step in the ring.
It’s more fun when your friends have heard the same song you’ve heard.
I send out an email every Sunday night to songwriters and publishers with a bunch of information from a couple of the big charts (you can check out a sample and sign up here).
When a song gets released and immediately goes to number one on the Global chart and the US chart…it’s probably the closest thing we have to a water cooler song. The closest thing to ‘this is what’s happening in music right now’.
You can bring it up with friends and odds are everyone has heard it...as opposed to the more common, ‘Hey have you heard this song by this artist...no?...oh go check it out sometime'.
We love our niches, our personal gems and the deep cuts that feel like they are just for us.
But it’s pretty fun (and more rare these days) when everyone has heard it.
Something special happens when that artist sings those notes.
Such a crazy, simple thing.
And yet it’s from that power that music became a popular thing and continues to be a staple in our lives.
It can be a lot of fun to play the music business game, to try and get famous or get lots of money or become associated with the cool crowd because of the music.
But all of those pursuits are built on top of a silly little magical thing that happens when someone vibrates their vocal cords a certain way to a certain rhythm. That’s it. That’s the first building block.
Record labels these days get a bad wrap for only signing acts that already have a huge audience. That are already proven. That are already making money and have the rest of the pieces in place.
And it’s true.
But it isn’t only true of record labels.
Every entity: management, booking, radio, playlisting, publishing, labels…everyone is looking for the least amount of work for the biggest pay off.
Management wants tons of stuff already going on, including label interest.
Booking agents want pre existing promoter relationships and hard numbers on Pollstar.
Radio wants all the other stations to play it first.
Playlisters want the other playlisters to add it first.
Publishers want you to be well connected with other writers and have a catalog that is generating revenue.
So it’s not just the labels, it’s everyone.
And it’s us too. We long for familiarity. We long for low risk high reward. We are afraid. We’re afraid of making the first move. We don’t want to look stupid. We don’t want to lose our jobs by rolling the dice on something unproven.
If anyone of us were in charge of putting a million dollars into an artist with the obligation to turn it into two million…we might surprise ourselves with just how ‘true to the music’ we really are.
Most of the time we all operate exactly like the record labels do.
Writing music, releasing music, playing music for people.
For decades these three things have been at the foundation of anyone wanting to be a musician. If you’re an artist this is what you do.
These three things also turned the wheels of the money machine. So it was a good match. These are the things musicians do…which are the same things that grow the music industry.
But it’s changing. The definition of ‘if you’re an artist this is what you do’ doesn’t always include those three things anymore. And those three things are the only primary drivers of revenue.
Is the artist and artist if they’ve never played a show longer than sixty seconds?
If they’ve never written a song?
If they don’t have a discography?
I’ve yet to talk with someone who made a plan, carried out the plan and everything went according to plan.
More often I’ve talked with people who have made a plan, carried out the plan, adjusted the plan as they went and ended up somewhere a little different than they had planned. And are quite thrilled with the results.
A plan is an excellent thing to deviate from. But if you try to deviate with no plan to start with, that’s just wandering.