Everyone who buys an expensive ticket to see the big artist coming through town agrees that the artist should get a bunch of money.
So if you think you should be making more money, you need more people who think the same as you do.
A great way to get people to think the same as you is to be giving them something worth more than what they’re paying.
Any party. Make one up. Pick an existing holiday. A historical event. A pop culture event. The changing of the seasons. The 99th day of the year. Lots of people. Or just a handful. At your house or at a venue or a park or an exotic location.
Just pick a party and have it every year.
Become known as the people who have the ______ party.
The party I have suggested to many artists is to have an annual Grammy party. Not one where you fly out to the show or even watch the show or do anything having to do with the Grammy’s. But a party that looks like this…If we would have won a Grammy (for example) this year we would have thrown a big party and invited and thanked everyone who works with us, our families, our close friends, a time filled with gratitude…so while we didn’t win the award we’re having the party anyway.
And do it again the next year…
It all starts with a little commitment.
Actually, I guess it starts before that. Before the first traces of commitment you have a completely wide open landscape, the whole world is at your fingertips, an infinite number of choices.
But it turns out we’re not very good at having the world at our fingertips. Boundary-less framework is pretty tough to build on.
So it takes a seed of commitment. Cause after that, the next part doesn’t have to come out of nowhere…it’s simply an extension of what’s already been committed to.
When you sit down to write a song, there’s too many options to stay in that limitless space for very long. So then you commit to starting with a C chord or to 105bpm or to a catchy phrase. Ok now we start building.
Commitment narrows the available choices and gives the endeavor an identity.
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.