Going Beyond The Craft: Why Making Music Isn’t Just About Making Music
One of my mentors, a Grammy-winner no less, once told me “music is a game of pennies”. Nowadays the pennies are turning into shrapnel, and you need lots of shrapnel to make the pennies they used to be. Simply put, the entertainment industry has been blown wide apart by all factors linked to the Internet (which we are already aware), and now more than ever in history, artists must look beyond the skill of their craft itself to be successful.
The music industry is (and always has been) what’s called a ‘winner takes all game’. In comparison to other industries, there’s not a sizeable ‘middle class’ of musicians, but there is a disproportionate amount of struggling musicians, most of whom are aiming to be amongst the smallest percentage that earn most of the money. For musicians in 2013 success, and by that I mean living entirely off money from music, is a tough prospect. The field is wider than ever, and the barriers to entry are much lower than they’ve ever been in history.
Production workstations (DAWs), whose equivalent only 20 years ago would’ve been multimillion-dollar analog studio racks, are now available for less than $1000. Presets and sequenced VST’s have all but seen the end of any need to actually play an instrument, and as for singing – well, Antares and Celemony are staples of the producer’s lab and if you don’t know what that means check this out. Quite simply, all you need to produce releasable, radio-quality music is $10k (at the low end) and a room – with a fridge is a luxury, with a shower is optional.
In the current state of the biz, it’s never been more critical for musicians to expand their skills. Of course, some musical virtuosity is required but take a moment and put down that guitar, take your fingers off those keys and stop practicing those scales. These are few things that I believe separate the great musicians from the great musicians who get noticed.
1) Know the model: In most other careers/jobs, people know their place. They understand who the manager is, who the manager’s manager is and what they do, where the money comes from and who their customers are. For whatever reason, the music business seems largely equipped with people who have no clue how the commercial aspects work. And here’s the thing: that’s exactly how the people actually making money (label execs, publishers, A&R’s, lawyers etc) would like to keep it. The good news is that it’s not hard – take some time to understand how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Know your rights, protect them, understand how author societies like APRA and ASCAP work and what they do, how publishing agreements can protect you (and the tax benefits you can get from owning a registered publishing entity) and how SSA’s work when you’re on commercial co-writes. There’s plenty to learn, but if you’re equipped with the boring business knowledge, you’re already stepping ahead of most other artists in the game. You’re making the music, so know the product. The wise sage Jerry Seinfeld once said that lawyers are basically the people who have read the rules inside the Monopoly box. Practically everyone in the music industry who isn’t actually making music, are in effect just the guys who know the rules and how to use them. So, have a look inside the box. If you’re starting out, have a look at this video APRA recently made.
2) Web Design: Get into it. Like the music-production process, the barriers to entry for designing websites have lowered immensely in the last few years. WordPress, Wix and a host of others have made it possible to create and host entirely self-produced, functional and professional websites without any coding knowledge whatsoever.
3) Production (basic): Save your money for promo (Facebook ads, promoted tweets, gig flyers, whichever your preferred method is) – but learn how to record yourself. Alot of artists spend inordinate amounts of money getting tracks fully produced, and then think they can get a million hits by simply chucking it up online, sharing amongst their own friends, and letting it take on a life of its own ala Rebecca Black. Obviously when you’re ready to step into the upper echelons of superstardom, you would be wise to bring in a wiz-bang producer for your label debut. Till then know that with a little bit of effort and patience, you can get your home-recordings sounding amazing. By now you’ve probably heard of a myriad of hits being recorded in home-setups, from Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ to ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City. Both were probably mastered at top-notch facilities, but if you’re ready to get your track mastered professionally, it can be done decently for less than $200. Having the extra cash to spend on promo can be the difference between a sold out gig or noticed indie release, and a great recording just shared amongst friends and family – and we all know rule number 1 if you want to be in the big leagues is “don’t be a star in your dads garage”.
4) Cold Calling: Every musician out there is emailing venue owners, A&R’s, agents and the rest, trying to get that gig. The easiest way to jump ahead of them (and straight away cut out a bunch of the competition) is to make the phone call. Obviously this depends on having the contact number, but if you can’t Google it, once you get it – make that call! Hearing a voice and then following up on email with your Soundcloud links is always more memorable. The fear of rejection is strong, but like anything else you get better with practice.
5) The power of favours: I like to think of the whole industry as being a balance of Give and Take, in an economy of relationships. Doing that free session or that ‘under the standard rate’ gig is always a currency you can cash in down the line. The currency isn’t fiscal, but you can always trade favours for that next contact/meeting. You will get screwed over on occasion, but if you walk the line between generous but not to be trampled upon, you’ll always be up in the endgame. Ask any producer or writer who’s created a ‘big record’ and they’ll tell you they did a load of discounted or more often unpaid work, and been screwed over on occasion, to maneuver their way there. Like any good balance sheet, if each time you’re able to take a little more than you give out, you’ll get there eventually. The easiest way to do this is to trade a skill that comes easy and efficiently to you – say tracking guitars for a session – for something you can’t get easy access to – maybe an A&R meeting, or recording advice from a studio engineer. I have personally played piano – something that I can do relatively quickly and with little preparation – for peanuts on many sessions, each time trading it in at the right time to learn better studio techniques (e.g. comping vocals), to get in on commercial opportunities and to get meetings with industry folk I could never have ‘gotten to’ otherwise. The ‘Give and Take’ mentality also requires a healthy amount of blind faith in your pursuit – and if you’re reading this I’m sure you already know all about that.
With the playing field leveled and expanded, a musicians’ hustle has moved well beyond musical skill itself. You could argue that having to expand our already limited resources to tasks like marketing and learning music technology etc, the development of musical skill is impaired (limitation of time) and therefore the quality of music itself decreases.
But even this is a moot point – it’s the reality we face when commerce governs the values of our society. With that in mind, have a think about how the connections outside of your musician friends can actually help you get where you want to be musically. Like every industry sector, the music world is full of lawyers, accountants, admin people and others that mightn’t make the music but they make it an industry. The world is a small and amazingly interconnected place, and it’s just about putting the pieces together – not simply to get your foot in the door, but to go around the side and get in through the window.
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