What is most important to your band? What area(s) are you not willing to compromise on?
The answers to these questions come fairly easy, and with a puffed out chest. Artistic integrity gets thrown around a bunch, along with terms like creative control, power, holding the cards. All good things. Even the puffy chest.
But here’s the more scary part.
In what areas are you willing to compromise? Which areas don’t matter as much to your band? Is everyone in the band on board with this?
If you think about those questions for a minute, you probably already feel threatened, like me or someone is trying to trick you or take something from you. We’re not.
But if you can look back on the life of your band and truly say that you never compromised, then you’ve been holding the band back.
You’re going to have to work with others to get to you want to go. You’re going to have to be a part of fulfilling someone else’s (you manager, agent, producer, etc) dreams and goals along the way, and they might be slightly different than yours. Or really different.
The Beatles didn’t start off owning their publishing. U2 didn’t start off owning their masters. But the publishing/record deals they signed, and eventually got out of, are a big part of what made them successful enough to get out of them!
Knowing the areas in which you’re willing to compromise will turn them into areas of great invitation to have other passionate, brilliant people attach their purpose and meaning to your band.
Talk about this stuff now, not later. It’s better that way.
