First Monday of the month, new Hum Love playlist on Spotify and Apple
It took eleven songs for a ten song arc this month.
If you make a regularly scheduled playlist you will get better at putting your own albums together. You’ll get better at knowing what kind of song you want to come after this one. It will change the way you structure the arc, craft your intros and finish your outros.
Not a bad return on investment for something that’s fun and free.
The music business is cluttered so your message needs to be clear if you wanna rise above. Razor sharp, in bold type, spoken of often enough to be thought about all the time. And thought about enough to go into the subconscious.
Let go of the ambiguous artist thing. Let go of we’ll just see what happens. Let go of we’ll figure it out later. Let go of I just wanna make music man.
Sharpen your edges and fire up the loudspeaker.
Isn’t that what we all really want?
More than likes and hearts and playlists and followers we want to walk on stage to cheers and hollers…and have them reprised throughout the evening.
And sure, cheers and hollers aren’t going to satisfy your soul…but of all the audience connection indicators this is the best one.
So here’s a little tip…if you want people to cheer for you on stage then do things that people like to cheer for.
And one level deeper…giving someone the opportunity to cheer for you is a gift to them.
We’re trained to notice the loud problems.
We were trained early on…parents, teachers and kids take note of and pay attention to noisy kids (and babies). We then use this training to assess our current landscape as adults.
Noise is easy to spot.
Loud is easy to prioritize.
No one can argue with taking care of a loud problem. It’s feels urgent. We just want the noise to go away.
We’re not trained to notice quiet problems…
The friend who ‘gladly’ works ninety hours weeks with no end in sight.
The associate you were really close to but now it’s all weather and sports talk.
The kid who is afraid of getting anything other than a A+ on the test.
The spouse who hasn’t hung out with friends in months.
Big problems wrapped in quietness. Quiet down and you’ll start noticing.
It would be great if when you stepped up to the starting line of your big project there was an official representative making sure you were ready, quieting the crowd and then shooting the gun to signify the start.
But we know there isn’t. There’s not going to be anyone there to say Go.
Odds are you’ll get to stall at the starting line as long as you want. When someone walks by and asks why you haven’t started yet you’ll give a solid reason and they’ll accept it, as to not be pushy.
And you might not even think you’re stalling. You might not even realize you’re waiting on the Ready Set Go.
It’s not coming. You’re going to have to do it yourself.