At any given moment in time within the industry there’s the way it is…a way you’re suppose to do things to have success.
And then there are the artists pushing that idea into what it will evolve into in a year or two or ten.
It’s easy to think you don’t have options. But in five years it won’t be like it is now…and you don’t have to wait five years to begin adopting that reality.
In order to win the college basketball tournament you don’t need to be the best team in the nation…you just need to be a team can win six games in a row.
It’s a fundamentally different approach.
To be called the best you don’t need to be the best…you just have to do the thing (win the tournament) that people associate with the ‘best’.
Labels, associations, norms, culture, traditions, perceived status…these are the underlying ingredients that are played with and played for.
To be a successful artist (whether that’s simply making a living or making millions) you’re going to have to do a lot more than just play music.
Playing the music is the prize for making it through all the other stuff that isn’t music.
Even the best artists with the best teams don’t get to just noodle on a piano all day.
There are phone calls and meetings and handshakes and traveling. Signing deals, getting out of deals, new lawyers, switching booking agents, firing the tour manager, choosing the producer. It’s endless.
It’s really hard and it’s not going to go according to plan.
But the music and the feeling you get while playing it is the foundation. Never forget that. All the other stuff is simply the problems you’re choosing in order to build a certain type of career.
The moment you take your guitar out of your bedroom, you’re going to have to do more than play music.
The song you pick as the single…
How are you going to play it live?
What about when you only get to play one song…for a showcase or in a meeting room?
What about when you only get to play that one song amidst a bunch of other artists playing one song?
What if you have to play for an audience in the morning?
How will it translate best on TV or video?
If it becomes a hit, how does it best fit in your set? Can you close with it?
When the song is being played and performed at its best, what is the audience doing, how are they responding?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘I don’t know’, it’s not a reason to not pick the song as the single. What it tells you is you have some fun problems to solve if you want to have more fun with your song.
This is what we are the worst at and yet the future is all we worry about.
Leaning into the power of ‘over a long period of time’ is perhaps a leap of faith more than a defined path.
And yet we can’t help but notice the reasons for being exactly where we are today come from the habits, skills, relationships and commitments we’ve made over a long period of time.
So if we’re utilizing this power subconsciously, why do we have such a hard time wielding it consciously?