I Want in the Music Biz Part IV: Success… Habit or Hobby

There are many ideas of “success”. I think success has more to do with your goals than anything else. For example, if your goal is to learn to fly without crashing, then every time you take off and land and don’t break stuff, you could call that “success”. It says nothing of the ride in between the take off and landing. You may have had several near misses… just barely avoiding the electrical wires, the water tower, the cell tower and that tall guy standing on the hill. The idea of success for your potential passengers will be based on an entirely separate set of goals! This speaks to the fact that quality is part of the story of success. Who dares fly with a guy who can’t keep the plane upright even if he never crashes? Most people would rather take the bus. And so it is, metaphorically speaking, in the music business.
Maintaining a consistent image, a solid sound, good recordings, and a reputation for doing a quality show, has everything to do with your success. Getting by with near misses can sustain you only so long. If your goal is only to put together a band and go play, with no view to the future, you may have short-circuited the real success story you are trying to accomplish. You may imagine yourself in an arena playing your newest hit but it takes more than imagination to make that happen. Like the unstable pilot, there is a lot that needs to happen between take off and landing. As I mentioned in the last blog, you must take a step back and decide on your vision statement that encapsulates the philosophies for accomplishing your goals and objectives. Then you act on them to put the pieces in place.
Bands and artists who want to make a living in the business will have to take the necessary steps that lead to the intended goal. It is rare; very rare that success simply happens to musicians. In most cases, the band or artist is deliberate in their attempts to build on past experiences, leading them to positive results. Like stepping stones over a creek, forward progress is made one step at a time, and sometimes you have to throw a new stone into the water. In the same way every footstep is deliberately placed on the stepping stones, a business plan can be put in place. This is true for any business and is no less true for music. The fact that the product we musicians deliver is creative in no way diminishes the need to plan for success.
Being a musician myself, I know the challenge it is to manage the business side of things when all I really want to do is play the gig. But without setting parameters for what “success” looks like, I may never know if I am building an organization that will deliver what I am thinking of for my future. The downside of failing to plan could mean that I may play and play for years, while working at a side line job, that after time becomes my only income and music is only a hobby. If I want music to be my hobby, then I have been successful. But if I am trying to earn my living from the thing I love to do, then I must do the things that will make that a real possibility for me.
The fact is that we must brand ourselves as a product in order to help people find us and identify with our music. It doesn’t mean we have to be an international pop icon like Michael Jackson or U2. We simply need to find the group of fans who will be endlessly loyal and follow our career to every level, buying every piece of produce we put out. Without buying fans, we cannot hope to move our career from the hobby level to the pro level. Again, I ask the question… who is looking for your music?
©2009 WalkWay Group, Steven Blanton, All Rights Reserved

I Want in the Music Biz (But Nobody’s Looking for Me?)

I recently signed a publishing agreement to publish my new book, Right Words & Music: A Songwriter’s Manual to Writing Great Songs! It should be out near the end of 2009. Apparently the chances of getting a book published by submitting a four chapter query are about as good as getting a record deal by sending in a demo. Hummm… It makes me wonder if the two industries, book publishing and music production, are perhaps cousins; maybe the kissing kind. They certainly do have many things in common. Since I have my hand in both pies I am not casting aspersions on either. There has been plenty of mud-slinging at both since the digital domain began to reign supreme.
I did my research, as I am wont to do, and I discovered that POD (print on demand) is a huge industry. No more does an author stand with hat in hand, humbled by the shear brute strength of a massive conglomerate referred to as The Publisher (the ‘p’ capitalized out of respect for its eminence.) And for thousands of authors who would never have a real chance at getting published, POD is fantastic news! One can write a book on his laptop today and have it in print within the week. That is no small change in the paradigm. It means there is a colossal proliferation of books in circulation in a dazzling array of topics with very proud authors hawking books through every conceivable outlet. But, as Hamlet noted, “there's the rub.” There are now millions of books where none existed before. I recently read that the average self-published author sells about 170 books after two years of talking his relatives and friends into buying his book; a demoralizing thought for the author and the friends. Having written a book, I know the work it takes and the time commitment to get it into a submit-able manuscript form. I want somebody to buy, read and tell others about this fantastic brilliant new author… er hum… but I digress. The real problem has to do with who is looking for my new book. Having it in every known bookstore will not sell books, since the chance of someone stumbling and accidently happening upon my book is quite low.

It isn’t that hard to make the intellectual leap to what this means allegorically speaking, for the new CD you just made. Now that music is digital and vocals are often cut in a master bedroom instead of a master session, everyone who has access to recording gear can make a CD, have it manufactured like a pro by Disc Makers, or just burn it himself. This has made the music market very crowded, often with subpar product. The usual and time-honored system of filtration by A&R, radio DJs, producers and record distributors has disintegrated. Everybody can now, distribute to millions of outlets simply by connecting with CD Baby or TuneCore. But the question is the same as it is for POD; who is looking for your music? It won’t matter if you are in every music outlet on earth if nobody walks in asking for your record. The real issue is demand; creating a need and then filling it with your music. Check in next time for more on that subject… Thanks for reading… you make writing worth every minute!

©2009 WalkWay® Group
All Rights Reserved, Steven Blanton