When to promote, when to practice?
I would love to know what other musicians think about this little gem:
"You’ll know when you’re on to something special, because people will love it so much they’ll tell everyone. If people aren’t telling their friends about it yet, don’t waste time marketing it. Instead, keep improving until they are. "
(Attribution withheld to avoid comment bias. If you know you said this, shhhhhhhh...)
Obviously there's a lot implied here, and even more one can infer. This is basically a nicer, more universally applicable version of the old RockAndRollConfidential.com motto; "less makeup, more practice."
I'm predicting that this phrase will, at one level, tell you what kind of musician you are; the marketing wizards will say "that's BS! you need to make people get excited!" and the meedlie-meedlie types (of which I am of course one) will be able to see this as a justification to hide in their basements and practice arpeggios or tweak graintable synths and compressor settings or whatever until their fingers are sore, if they wish.
So let's move on from that.
First off, remember: if there was a formula to "Making It" in the music business, then everyone would be doing it. This statement strikes me as just another formula. "If x then y in order to z." As if this business followed logic. As if it made any sense.
I think my main issue with this statement is that it seems to presuppose two things:
1. a static, objective and observable definition of "something special"
2. a correlative relationship between the abovementioned "something special" and "excitement"
Let's say you've got a band that's really damn close to having everything solid, and you're just missing a couple elements that'll get everyone all worked up in a lather and telling all their friends to go see you play. I mean let's just say. So here's the issue; what're the elements you're missing? How do you know what you don't know? This is what I'm getting at in point #1. There are A LOT of different factors that can go into making some band popular (even just down at like the regional level). You all know this. So what are you supposed to do? Just start guessing? What if you start to work on your image when your songwriting needed tweaking? Or vice versa? What if you were already doing everything right but what you were doing wouldn't come into popularity for another two years? Or you were just in the wrong town for your style? Well, then in that case all you needed to do was hang in there or move, but how the hell could you have known? With something as frustratingly subjective as a peoples' tastes in music, it's impossible to pin down what's gonna work or not work with a given band. Plus there's almost nothing objective about it, because people seem generally willing to forgive any deficiency in an artist if other aspects are seen to make up for it, but those redeeming aspects are a moving target and can change with the zeitgeist, which is my aim in point #2; you could be great in every observable way but are ahead of the curve or not in the right environment when people are ready to care about what you're doing. Or! Worse! Maybe your stuff is timely and you're in a great physical place to nurture your music, but you play a couple shows and on those specific nights, for whatever reason, people just aren't feeling it. What do you do? Start re-tooling? Go re-write your stuff and re-think everything? Maybe you just need to do more shows and start getting the word out to more people so they'll come and then you can...oh wait, that's marketing, isn't it?
So anyway, those are the issues this kind of statement raises for me. I think the first sentence; "you'll know you're on to something special when people start talking about it" is of course true, and a point we all want to be at, but I don't think the 2nd and 3rd sentences necessarily follow from the first. I think stuff like this distracts from what I feel is the only sure-fire way to "Make It;" Do Everything All The Time. I know, it's impossible, but it's the only way. It's the only formula 'cos it's not a formula. Shit, to do that, it'd be...it'd be like a job.
"You’ll know when you’re on to something special, because people will love it so much they’ll tell everyone. If people aren’t telling their friends about it yet, don’t waste time marketing it. Instead, keep improving until they are. "
(Attribution withheld to avoid comment bias. If you know you said this, shhhhhhhh...)
Obviously there's a lot implied here, and even more one can infer. This is basically a nicer, more universally applicable version of the old RockAndRollConfidential.com motto; "less makeup, more practice."
I'm predicting that this phrase will, at one level, tell you what kind of musician you are; the marketing wizards will say "that's BS! you need to make people get excited!" and the meedlie-meedlie types (of which I am of course one) will be able to see this as a justification to hide in their basements and practice arpeggios or tweak graintable synths and compressor settings or whatever until their fingers are sore, if they wish.
So let's move on from that.
First off, remember: if there was a formula to "Making It" in the music business, then everyone would be doing it. This statement strikes me as just another formula. "If x then y in order to z." As if this business followed logic. As if it made any sense.
I think my main issue with this statement is that it seems to presuppose two things:
1. a static, objective and observable definition of "something special"
2. a correlative relationship between the abovementioned "something special" and "excitement"
Let's say you've got a band that's really damn close to having everything solid, and you're just missing a couple elements that'll get everyone all worked up in a lather and telling all their friends to go see you play. I mean let's just say. So here's the issue; what're the elements you're missing? How do you know what you don't know? This is what I'm getting at in point #1. There are A LOT of different factors that can go into making some band popular (even just down at like the regional level). You all know this. So what are you supposed to do? Just start guessing? What if you start to work on your image when your songwriting needed tweaking? Or vice versa? What if you were already doing everything right but what you were doing wouldn't come into popularity for another two years? Or you were just in the wrong town for your style? Well, then in that case all you needed to do was hang in there or move, but how the hell could you have known? With something as frustratingly subjective as a peoples' tastes in music, it's impossible to pin down what's gonna work or not work with a given band. Plus there's almost nothing objective about it, because people seem generally willing to forgive any deficiency in an artist if other aspects are seen to make up for it, but those redeeming aspects are a moving target and can change with the zeitgeist, which is my aim in point #2; you could be great in every observable way but are ahead of the curve or not in the right environment when people are ready to care about what you're doing. Or! Worse! Maybe your stuff is timely and you're in a great physical place to nurture your music, but you play a couple shows and on those specific nights, for whatever reason, people just aren't feeling it. What do you do? Start re-tooling? Go re-write your stuff and re-think everything? Maybe you just need to do more shows and start getting the word out to more people so they'll come and then you can...oh wait, that's marketing, isn't it?
So anyway, those are the issues this kind of statement raises for me. I think the first sentence; "you'll know you're on to something special when people start talking about it" is of course true, and a point we all want to be at, but I don't think the 2nd and 3rd sentences necessarily follow from the first. I think stuff like this distracts from what I feel is the only sure-fire way to "Make It;" Do Everything All The Time. I know, it's impossible, but it's the only way. It's the only formula 'cos it's not a formula. Shit, to do that, it'd be...it'd be like a job.