Eleven Steps To Fixing The Problem That Occurs When You Work Harder Than Everyone Else In The Band

I wrote this post eighteen months ago.  I am slowly rewriting and moving some of my posts from my old blog to Music Think Tank.  My apologies to those of you that don’t like getting reruns in your newsreader.

The day the band (the company) was formed, band members voted to split ownership evenly; now you find yourself doing much more work or creating far more value than your bandmates.  Perhaps you started out as a band, but the band has also become a business.  You don’t want to appear greedy and it’s not your style to change the rules once the game has started.  However it doesn’t seem fair that everyone benefits evenly when you’re doing more work than everyone else.

This is one of the most common problems in small businesses - ownership and reward is divided evenly, but the work and/or the value creating capability are not.  Here are eleven easy steps to fix the problem.

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Just say NO to putting an end to illegal music sharing.

There are plenty of artists that would like to rollback the clock to the days prior to illegal music sharing. I have come to believe that this would be a colossal mistake. I don’t say this because I believe that illegal sharing is justified; in fact I am against the ‘attitude’ entirely. Confused yet? This post is going to bring up a pile of unanswered questions like how would one solve the conundrum of enabling yet disabling? So please just consider the philosophical argument.

To eliminate or to throttle file sharing is an assault on your rights as an artists. Moreover, to eliminate or to throttle file sharing (in my mind) is an act that would reduce competition in the marketplace.

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Investing in the music industry...

If you are interested in reading my thoughts about the pitfalls and opportunities pertaining to investing (time or money) into anything connected to the music industry, Hypebot has an exclusive three-page PDF that I wrote over the weekend. Click here to find the post on Hypebot.

Here’s the summary take-away thought: Even today, just about every investment (from small to large) connected to the music industry runs into the major label wall. There is barely a single company that has built a substantial ($20M+ annual) and sustainable business that exists completely outside of the influence of the major label ecosystem.

I believe it’s possible (read the paper). However as of this minute, I don’t see any company that is seriously challenging the establishment. What are your thoughts? (Krzysztof - I already know yours…) Note - the paper is not a book or an instruction manual; it’s simply fodder for debate.

Spotify isn't available in the states yet. Can someone please tell me what's so earth-shattering about it?

I have never seen something that you can’t get (in the states) that has received so much positive attention. What gives? Is Spotify that great? Does Spotify matter to artists? Is it game-changing for the industry? Is there room for five more companies just like it? How are new songs discovered on Spotify?

Thanks in advance for the comments.

Your digital music industry future…

Perhaps with some tweaking, here’s what current wisdom tells you:

1. Make music.
2. Give your music away; it’s your best advertisement.
3. Organize into a business entity.
4. Go on tour.
5. Build an audience.
6. Sell stuff and a bit of music when you can.
7. Go on tour again.
8. Sell even more stuff.
9. And when you stop touring, your revenue stream will slow to a crawl.

As new interactive digital products enter the marketplace (and they are), your digital future will look something like this:

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“Where have all the musical geniuses gone?”

In his recent blog post, Eric Beall (Berklee Music) quotes Jason Flom (Lava Records) as follows:

“Where have all the musical geniuses gone? Why has this generation not produced even one musical genius on the level of Dylan or Sly Stone, or John Lennon, or Prince?”

Within his post, Beall offers a sensible answer to Flom’s question. However, I want to try out an alternative explanation. Here it is:

The ‘geniuses’ still exist, but ‘genius’ can no longer be manufactured.

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"True artists couldn't give a damn if no one hears their music..."

I just dug the following quote out of my last post…

“True artists couldn’t give a damn if no one hears their music. The shit (money) just got in the way and marginalized the scholarly pursuit of creating art for art’s sake…”

Do you agree, or are you on the other end of the spectrum?

I say - whatever rows your boat..  Create for an audience of one, or create for an audience of millions.  Make it for money, or make it for art’s sake….

"Does all this shit have anything to do with the music business?"

My phone number is on my contact page on Unsprung Media. At least once a week a random artist calls me direct to chat about business.

Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? That’s me. I have the same conversation every week. No worries, I seriously enjoy these chats.

Bewildered and in disbelief, every artist eventually asks the same question: “Does is all this shit have anything to do with the music business?” Note: it’s not ‘stuff’, it’s ‘shit’ every time and without fail.

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artistspaid.com

artistspaid.com is one of my favorite RSS feeds.  I have no idea who runs this site, but it’s worth subscribing to in you are into the music industry.  thanks for the flow of interesting images and article links…

The Song Adoption Formula

If you want to be semi-scientific about music promotion, here’s a song adoption formula to consider: Listeners * Optimal Frequency Rate * Social Situation Rate * Conversion Rate = Song Fans.

Here’s the short form: (L * OFR * SSR * CR = SONG FANs)
Here’s how the formula breaks down:

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Remember the mullet? I guess the trends are accurate?

In March, I wrote a post titled “Remember the mullet? File sharers are next.” Since that time, several studies have been posted that more or less demonstrate that the Google Trends I cited can be used as a forward-looking guidepost. 

Google Trends for the music industry are not perfect indicators, but they are worth examining occasionally.

Here are two links to information on the recent surveys on file sharing.

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Miles Davis Album Art - hot web site to check out

If you like looking at really well done sites that feature music or music related stuff, you have to see Tyler Thompson’s page featuring Miles Davis Album Art.  Great design work!

NEWTOYORK was created using SquareSpace.  Here’s the link to the hack that tells you how to recreate this page.

Please contribute to HypeBot's Success List...

Bruce Houghton just started an ongoing list of artists that are achieving real success outside of the major label system.  Contributing to this list helps everyone to understand what’s possible in this industry.

I want to add a few criteria (if I can?) for putting artists on this list..

- If previously signed to a major label (or an affiliate of a major) that previously obtained radio play for the artist, please disclose this.

- Success to me = each band member (or the artist) is consistently generating over $50,000 USD a year after all expenses are paid (including health insurance).  You can live on less, but if you are going to dedicate your youth to music, I would target $50K (at the very least) as a measure of financial ‘success’.

Please contribute to the list.

Don’t go over the self-promotion cliff; crush your local radio station instead.

The more that I read about the latest and greatest music marketing trends, the more I want to stand up on my desk and shout “don’t go over the cliff with the rest of the lemmings!” But, given the current hype and the herd mentality that artists usually exhibit, twenty-four months from now 5,000,000 artists will be using Twitter and fan relationship management tools to attempt to acquire fans and/or to boost average-revenue-per-fan (ARPF). When I think of the prospects of millions of artists traveling down this road, ARPF is exactly what I want to do. Three years from now, most artists will be disappointed and a new crop of artists will be jumping off a different cliff altogether (remember the MySpace cliff?).

The famous hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is; a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” In this post I want to uncover the obstacles to self-promoting music and suggest an alternate path that will take you where the puck is going to be.

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