If you’re playing down there, I assume you’ve already gotten some extra day party shows booked, etc. (but not too many of those I hope). I’m not going to cover that sort of stuff here. These tips are more about the spectating/networking side of the festival. They start practical and get progressively more philosophical.

1. Wear comfortable shoes. Everyone wants to look cool down there. But you will be doing a lot of walking. So bring some shoes you know will be good for that. You don’t want to be breaking in new shoes down there.

2. Be prepared for any weather. Best case scenario, it’s shorts and t-shirt weather. But sometimes, it’s Seattle in the winter weather. Lots of stuff happens outside at night, even when it’s 50 degrees. It’s good to have some layers and gloves. Bring some sunscreen too.

3. Try to eat a good meal at the start of the day. There’s a good chance you will start drinking by 2:00 in the afternoon (or earlier) and keep drinking until 2am or 3am each day of the festival. Put something in your stomach first. In the flow of things, it’s easy to forget to eat. Or there may not be food available right at the moment you realize that you need some. Remember to drink water too.

4. Don’t ignore people from your town. Paradoxically, SXSW is a great place to meet people from your hometown. In your hometown, it’s easy to just stay in your own little silo, interacting with the same people all the time. At SXSW, everyone is a fish out of water, and people from your town are much easier to spot and often more open to interacting, even if you’re not from their little part of the scene.

It’s easy to think that SXSW is mostly about connecting with people from other towns. And it’s definitely useful for that. But if you aren’t already super successful in your hometown, you’re missing a great opportunity to build your local network too (a network I might add that will probably be more useful and important in the early stages of your project than your out-of-town network).

Connections made in Texas often resonate for many years. I know I’ve made some great friends down there through the years.

5. Don’t be afraid to head off on your own. Moving around an event like SXSW with a big group of people is a major exercise in cat herding. In this situation, you have two choices: (A) stick with the group and don’t worry too much about where you end up; or (B) head off on your own and go exactly where you want to go.

Option “A” can be a fun and really rewarding experience. Often, you end up checking out some stuff you never would have gotten to on your own. But don’t be afraid to choose option “B” sometimes too. It will probably lead to a magic moment. It’s perfectly acceptable to leave the group at SXSW and strike out on your own. Nobody will be offended. Besides, with cell phones, foursquare, etc. it’s not that hard to reconnect with your posse later.

6. Spend some time in the corners. Every year there are going to be some buzz shows that everybody seems to want to go see. Try not to get too fixated on those shows. If you really want to see one of them and you have a badge, go for it. Those can be special shows. But don’t be afraid to look for stuff in the corners too, off the beaten path. That’s probably where the next big thing will really be happening. It’s also where you are more likely to have a transcendent experience watching a seasoned veteran playing at the festival for the love of the game as much as anything else. These artists are the opposite of the next big thing. But they are still the real deal. They’ll help remind you why you love music, and they might just change your life too.

7. Never assume somebody is unimportant. There are a lot of people down in Texas. Some of them are very important right now. It’s natural to want to focus on connecting with them, because they seem like the most obvious people who can help you. But remember, there are also a lot of people down there who aren’t important right now, but who may be very important a few years from now. If you treat them badly now, you’ll burn a bridge before you even realize you ought to be building one. So don’t be a dumb-ass. Have a little grace.

8. Value quality over quantity (and be open to meaningful coincidences). The festival is not a contest to see who gets the most business cards. There are no clear metrics, and its value isn’t always obvious. It could be years before you fully appreciate the value of something that happened at SXSW. So focus on the quality of your experiences and interactions, not just the quantity. You never know where that might lead you.

Let’s say you meet this gal down in Texas. She doesn’t seem like anybody. She’s just friends with somebody else you’re hanging out with (maybe they were friends from college). She says she books a few bands where she lives in North Carolina. You’ve never heard of any of them, but you’re not a dumb-ass, so you treat her with respect anyway. After the bar closes, you, your buddy, and the gal end up getting tacos on the street, stumbling down Red River past Emo’s on the way to an after hours affair. You folks have a lot of fun at the after hours party, cracking each other up. It feels like you have been friends for years, not just 3 or 4 hours. So great.

Three years later, the gal is booking a really successful rising star band from North Carolina. You’ve kept up with her on Facebook through the years, and she’s always been interested to hear the music you’re making. You had drinks with her at SXSW last year when you saw her down there, and you laughed your asses off again.

About six months after that last round of drinks, she pings you out of the blue. She thinks your band would be a good fit for the northwest leg of the tour she’s booking for that rising star band. Would you be into doing it? You didn’t even have to pitch her on the idea. She pitched it to you. Fucking “A” yes that’s a good idea.

No tacos, no after hours party, no laughing your asses off? No northwest tour with her rising star band. Seems like random good luck, right? But it’s not completely random. It happened because you embraced that moment and helped make it memorable for everyone involved.

You could have spent that time scanning the room trying to figure out if there was somebody more important to chat up. Instead, you opted for quality. Good call.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

You can spend so much time looking for that powerful person who is going to change your life that there’s not much time left to do the work that might actually get you somewhere someday. In my lexicon, the search for a magic lottery ticket is a particularly deluded and futile airpower strategy.

It’s not that powerful people don’t swoop in and help make low profile people better known. That does seem to happen pretty regularly. It’s just that most of these low profile people are a lot less low profile than you realize. That whole overnight sensation 10 years in the making thing is almost always true.

When “unknown” bands get elevated after a music conference like SXSW, they’re rarely really “unknown” to music biz insiders. Probably, they have been busily working on the ground for years to connect all the dots that lead up to more powerful people taking 15 minutes to see their band play in Austin. In Seth’s lexicon, they’ve been building their tribe. To use my lexicon, they’ve built a good ground game.

From the outside looking in, it looks like they just found a Magic Lottery Ticket. But that’s an illusion. For the project was actually built to grow even if Oprah never showed.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

The scene in the video was some high order, whiz-bang stuff, offering, as it did, the tantalizing possibility that America’s future was one of remote control wars waged mostly from the air, with few, if any, casualties on the ground.

The planners of the second Iraq War definitely accepted the premise that this sort of war was the future. No need for a large ground force. Just shock and awe them from the air with our superior technology. Then bring in the troops for a fast sprint to “mission accomplished.”

But as our second go round in Iraq has shown, the problem with doing everything from the air is that it’s often difficult to see what is actually happening on the ground.

Even with so-called “good intelligence,” subtleties get lost, misunderstandings stack up, and it can be difficult to gauge mission effectiveness. Is the mission undermining the opponent’s morale? Or is it actually hardening its resolve and creating exactly the sort of quagmire that air power was supposed to prevent? Too often, the answer seems to be quagmire.

This particular denouement isn’t limited to the military or the Iraq War. At a metaphorical level, people throughout society routinely succumb to the allure of air power with similar consequences.

In the music business context, social media sites seem to offer the opportunity to build a fan base from the comfort of a computer desk in the bedroom. Publicists, radio promoters, and other so-called “insiders” acquire such power in the minds of some musicians, that connecting with these people becomes almost more important than the music itself.

But despite some examples to the contrary, most of these air power strategies aren’t very helpful without a good ground game. If a band isn’t on the ground around the country (and the world), it’s nearly impossible to make the sort of personal connections that really seal the relationship between a band and its fans.

Air power strategies, while seemingly efficient, are also prone to false positives. 25,000 Myspace friends seems like progress. It may well be progress. But there’s a good chance that this metric offers a rather abstract and overly optimistic picture of how things are going. The same goes for a report from a publicist or radio promo person showing all of the outlets that have been serviced.

The ground game is not abstract. It is a harsh mistress. The losses are concrete and immediate. If the club holds 200 and only 20 people show up, a band really knows where things stand in that market. If the whole tour is that way, well, it’s even clearer where things stand in general.

But each night on tour, the band also has the opportunity to make an impact on those people who do show up, people who are giving the band the most concentrated attention it is ever likely to receive in any context. Even if an audience member only listens carefully to one or two songs, that’s more than they would probably do anywhere else.

For this reason, each audience member the band converts to its cause is probably worth more than 100 Myspace friends. Why? Because these are the people who are the most likely to evangelize on the band’s behalf, to drag new people to the show the next time the band comes to town, to play the band’s music for friends, etc.

Building this group of people is the long, cold, hard, ground war of any endeavor. Well timed, and well applied air power can help make the campaign more effective. But in most situations, it can’t take the place of having boots on the ground.

So before getting too deeply invested in a particular battle plan, make sure to ask whether you have the correct ratio of ground troops to air power. Otherwise, you may piss away a lot of time, money, and energy on stuff that isn’t supporting anything real.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

There’s only one exception to this rule. If you run a small independent business, like an Indie record label, you don’t have the luxury of failing so often, because a multi-national corporation with huge cash reserves does not own you. So you have to be more careful. If you only have one band on your label and it fails, you can survive such a failure if you’ve been smart with your money and structured your project so that all the costs are properly scaled (insert reference).

But once you start juggling more than one project at a time, things get much more complicated really quickly. So growing an indie music business is a perilous game. If you have any success at all initially (and even sometimes if you don’t), the temptation to expand quickly is ever present. But if you haven’t given serious thought to how this growth will be managed and created budgets that accurately address the contingencies involved, it won’t take too many failures to kill the business.

So unless, you’ve got a personal fortune and your business is actually more of an art project, it’s best to remember that small is beautiful, especially at the beginning of a venture. As I said above, failure is common throughout the music business food chain. It’s as likely to happen to a big company as a small one. And as often as not, while the underlying lessons it has to teach may not be that different up and down the food chain, the scale of the damage may vary quite radically. So if it’s almost preordained that you’re going to have some failures and learn some hard lessons, why not try to keep your first failures small? It’s a long game. There’s no reason to risk mortally wounding yourself before you’ve barely made it out of the starting gate.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

Having said that, some people seem to make enemies with remarkable ease and for no clearly identifiable strategic reason. There is a cluelessness to these people that is mind boggling. Often, they don’t even realize what assholes they are, and how significantly they are sabotaging themselves with their approach.

And don’t think this is just people who take obvious aggressive action or engage in catty, two-faced behavior. Some of the worst offenders are the people with NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). NPD people are often very nice (and charismatic too). But their awareness of others is so poor that they constantly alienate people, because all they can see are their own selfish concerns. Consequently, they can’t see how sometimes the best way to move their own ball forward is to show more concern for the needs and feelings of others.

Over the long haul, this lack of empathy undermines the NPD person, because they don’t sustain relationships with others very well. And after a while, they’ve burned through so many people that they lack the infrastructure necessary to pursue their musical projects effectively.

Bottom line: You’d be surprised how much can be accomplished by telling people thank you and letting them know you appreciate their support. And that doesn’t just mean people who you perceive to be important. That means everybody you come in contact with. Why? Well, first and foremost, it’s common courtesy. But also at a more practical level, things often aren’t as they seem. Your sense of who is important may be way off. So why take the risk?

Instead, get into that habit of following up and thanking people, not just at the point of impact (but also after the fact with a note, a call or an e-mail message). It really doesn’t take that long to do it, especially once you make it a habit. And while the dividends may not be obvious immediately, over the long haul things add up.

Perhaps the following discussion seems like so much common sense, more like “Life 101” than something that belongs in a discussion about the music industry. But I’ve seen numerous talented people fall down here and undermine themselves. They just never seem to “get it.” And then they end up bitter, never quite understanding why things have not worked out for them.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that there aren’t people who succeed without paying attention to common courtesy. But most of us aren’t that brilliant or charismatic. And as the many episodes of “Behind the Music” underscore, even the folks who succeed this way often pay for their hubris down the line. So it’s worth thinking about these issues and how you want to conduct yourself. For in the end, your public image begins with you. And even if you decide that the public image of “asshole” makes career sense, that doesn’t mean you can’t choose to not be an asshole in your private business and personal dealings.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

People are often drawn to the mysterious, because they can paint their own meanings on it. This certainly applies to enigmatic song lyrics. People love to puzzle through them (sometimes even as they complain about how hard they are to understand). But this principle also extends to human interactions within the music industry. By being enigmatic, and holding off asking for a favor right away, you can sometimes increase your odds of getting something you want or need later. People are always looking for favors and an edge in the music business. Those folks who have the power to hand out such goodies are often inundated with requests for them. They start to feel like everyone wants something from them. And they develop intricate strategies of insulating themselves from such folks.

If such a person pegs you as someone who is looking for a favor, they will probably shut you down immediately. On the other hand, if your intent is a little murkier, you may intrigue them. Or at least you may avoid giving off the “hey can you help me out” vibe. This may allow you the opportunity to get to know this person and this will probably incline them to want to help you out further on down the line (it you’re willing to be patient).

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

And in those cases where it takes less than four years, you’ll probably find that the people involved in the projects in question brought connections and experience with them from previous projects that hastened the process along.

But even in these cases, people with lots of experience still often have to face a tough reality: Starting a new project means starting from scratch. Old connections open some doors. And experience helps people play the game. But even these folks usually end up pretty much starting from ground zero.

So what should you take away from all this?

Whether you’re a beginner or a veteran, don’t be impatient. And if you’re not ready to jump on for the long haul, don’t be surprised when things don’t work out.

I can’t tell you how many great bands I’ve seen break up right as the band was really coming together (at least from an outside observer’s perspective). So be realistic about the timetable. If you think something major is going to happen in six months or a year, you’ll probably be disappointed (unless you’re joining a band that has already been at it for a while).

That’s why the four-year rule is helpful. It encourages you to establish a three to four year timetable for a project with intermediate goals along the way.

This is the way it happens for a lot of people I’ve observed. The band forms, starts rehearsing and writing songs. By the end of year one, if the band is any good, it’ll be playing shows regularly, building an audience and maybe working on a recording of some kind. Often this first recording will be a self-released CD or single.

If things keep progressing, by year two, the audience for the band will have grown, and there will be another recording in the works. With luck, maybe an indie label will have expressed interest in releasing this CD after much work by the band letting indie labels know about the project. By now, the band may have started to do some regional touring. And once the second CD comes out, they may decide to mount a larger national tour.

The first national tour will bring a lot of things to a head. The money will be bad. The crowds will likely be much smaller than those the band is used to playing in front of at home. In addition, there won’t be many friends there to cheer the band on. So for perhaps the first time, the band members will have to face audience feedback from strangers head-on. This can be pretty jarring. Band members will also be in close quarters for a number of weeks, crammed inside a van.

If this tour doesn’t break up the band, it’ll come back stronger and wiser. The hungriest and most ambitious bands will try to go back out on tour again as soon as possible. And with luck, the second time around will be a little better, especially if the indie label or the band has managed to do a little promotional groundwork (e.g., setting up press and radio interviews).

Usually, the more the band tours, the more music it sells and the better it becomes. But touring without coordinated promotion and press support can also become treadmill. So if these elements aren’t also in the picture, the lack of these things could also do the band in.

By the start of year three, things become a bit more serious. People are getting a little impatient. Lots of bands break up in year three. If the band has promise, some larger labels have probably taken notice. The interest is really pretty light. But if you’re in the band, it’s hard not to give it a lot of weight. And even light interest shouldn’t be disregarded. It means the band is on the right track.

The band will be working on another record in year three, probably for indie label. But the band is probably starting to get a little disillusioned with its existing indie label, realizing its many limitations (or it may be getting really disillusioned with still having to go the DIY route). So the band is pretty much plotting its exit strategy, and its eyes are pretty focused on the bigger label prize.

The record the band makes in year three will probably be a pretty significant leap forward. If the band is a young one, it is finally learning how to make a record and work in the studio. If it’s a band of veterans, things probably have a bit more seasoning by now. One way or another, more money has probably been spent on the recording. If the band and indie label have succeeded in promoting the band, it may try to obtain a showcase spot in some of the music conferences like CMJ and South by Southwest.

Hopes will be high, especially if the members of the band are still relatively inexperienced and naive. The literature for the conference will reference the names of bands that “got their break” from playing at the conference in previous years. And in fact, this will sort of be true. Every year, a couple of bands do get signed to bigger labels after the conferences. But although the conference literature often implies it, these bands usually have not come out of nowhere. They are not literally unknowns, and they have been on the bigger label radar before attending the conference.

Consequently, most bands will find the music conference a pretty demoralizing experience. It’ll be like going on tour for the first time, only worse. This time, the band will be in a town filled with hundreds of other bands. Many will be in more or less the same situation: relatively popular at home, pretty much unknown outside of it. And the starkness of this reality can be pretty sobering. It’s hard to face just how big the pond is and what a small fish you are.

With luck, the band will get to play in a small venue with good foot traffic. But unless there is already a pretty strong buzz about the band before it arrives for the conference, not many people will show up, especially if this is the band’s first time playing the conference. Saavy bands will try to see if they can play some other shows during the conference at parties or elsewhere.  Those shows may not be great either, but at least more shows improve the odds of more people getting to check out the band.

For many bands, the aftermath of the conference experience is a turning point. A lot of bands break up in the six to eight months after this experience. But in doing so, they miss the real point of the conference: to make contacts and try to learn from the experience. If the band survives to play the conference again it will have a much better sense of how to make the best of it, and a much better perspective on things. The music conference is not the war. It is just one battle. A victory won’t win the war; a loss need not be fatal. If you survive to fight the battle again next year, you’ll have a much better sense of how to prepare. And with any luck, more people will show up to see the band play.

Assuming the band survives the conference gambit, things will be reaching a critical stage. Another national tour is the logical next step. With any luck, maybe the band will hook up with another band of greater stature. This can be a good way to expand the audience. That or maybe the band has met another band of equal stature from another region at one of the conferences and they decide to tour together, with each band headlining in the regions where it is stronger. In any event, if the band is to succeed, it will need to see some progress on this tour in terms of attendance and response. Otherwise, there’s a good chance the band will break-up.

But if the band can survive this gambit, it now begins to play against a much narrower field. A lot of these bands do get a shot at the bigger label, better gigs, etc. But of course, even though it seems like the “brass ring,” getting signed to a bigger label is really only the first step in much longer campaign. Against heavy odds, the band has prevailed in the first war. But now it’s time for the next one. And this one is fraught with even more pitfalls and lower odds (see the soundscan figures here, less than 1% of records sold at the platinum level).

So it really helps to know what you want if you make it this far, because the fog will be mighty thick once you get there.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

Processing audience reaction is a very tricky game. On the one hand, most people who think of themselves as artists are not comfortable with the idea of pandering to the masses. They want their music to be their own personal creative expression, audience be damned. But the audience is not irrelevant. And feedback from an audience is crucial, especially if you hope to make money from your music.

Here’s why: You may see yourself as a rose. But if your chosen audience sees you as a sunflower, you will encounter difficulty, especially if that audience doesn’t like sunflowers

So strive for some clarity here. Try not to get mad. Avoid a state of denial. Instead, figure out the most productive way to proceed. Maybe you need to do a better job showing people why you are a rose. And maybe with more exposure people will see that while you initially seemed like a sunflower, you are actually a rose. You just happen to be a yellow one.

Or maybe you will decide that the people in question don’t really know the difference between a rose and a sunflower, so why worry (although I would caution against using this approach too often, as it can slide into denial pretty quickly). Or maybe you’ll realize that the people in question only see something as a rose if it is red. And since you are a yellow rose, they see you as a sunflower, because they see all yellow flowers as sunflowers.

Or maybe you’ll take a hard look at yourself and realize that you were actually wrong about yourself. You were trying to be a yellow rose, but in fact you are a sunflower. And there’s nothing wrong with that. So maybe it wouldn’t hurt to look around and see if you can find the people who are fans of the sunflower. Because as much as you want those rose lovers to love you, they just don’t seem interested right now.

But who knows, maybe they’ll eventually come around, once they see how much the sunflower lovers seem to enjoy you.

The same observations apply to selling music. If you own a label, booking agency, management company or other music-related business, be clear about what you are selling. That doesn’t mean you should have a closed mind. But you should be able to tell the difference between a rose and a sunflower. And you should make it your business to know where the best places are to sell each kind of flower.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

Statistics tabulated by SoundScan, an independent research firm that monitors U.S. record sales, confirm the [recording] industry’s predicament. Of the 6,188 albums released [in 2000], only 50 sold more than a million copies. Sixty-five sold 500,000 units and 356 sold 100,000 or more. In other words, more than 90% of last year’s releases flopped. Generally, a major-label album needs to sell about 400,000 copies to reach profitability.

-Los Angeles Times

The statistics above are getting kind of old, but I hope they underscore the following point. Some people do make a lot of money playing music, but this group comprises a very small percentage of all musicians trying to make a living playing music (I’d guess that it’s less than one percent). In this regard, the music business is like a lot of desirable professions. It follows what economists call a Paretto optimized power law curve (see Figure 1 below). That’s a pretty fancy name, and there is a lot of math that backs it up. But in practical terms, a power law curve graphically represents something pretty simple: a situation where there are a few big winners and many losers.

If you look at Figure 1 below, you’ll see that the x-axis (up and down), measures how much of something somebody has (e.g., money, fame, etc.). The y-axis (left to right) measures how many people have that thing, starting at zero where x and y meet, and then getting bigger all the way to infinity, as you move to the right.

The big winners are in the top left corner of the graph, because they have the most of whatever is being measured. If it was record sales, people in that spot would have the most sales. But as you can also see, the number of people inhabiting that spot is quite small (like close to zero).

Conversely, as you move to the right across the y-axis of the curve, the number of people increases, but the amount of stuff being measured decreases, and it is a steep downward slope. You don’t have to move too far to the right before the amount of stuff is significantly smaller than it is in the upper left corner of the graph. So if the stuff being measured is record sales, the number of records sold gets smaller really fast as you move to the right, and the number of people with smaller and smaller record sales just keeps getting steadily bigger.

Figure 1: Power Law Curve (by Hay Kranen)

What’s the take away point here? Well, even within the group of “winners,” if you could look at the actual numbers, you might be surprised to find that a lot of these folks make less money than you think. Sure, they make a comfortable living. But it’s also a part of the game to look as successful as possible. So always remember that looks can be deceiving, image and reality aren’t always the same thing, and the average corporate executive makes a lot more money than the average successful musician.

What about everyone else? Out of the remaining 99% of musicians who aren’t rich, maybe 8-10 percent manage to make a living from teaching, composing, recording and playing music. To the extent that the music business has a middle class, it is comprised of these musicians. A lot of these folks are people you’ve never heard of. They teach at schools, do studio work, jingles, play in orchestras, jazz combos, wedding bands, cover bands, and all sorts of other relatively anonymous situations.

Of course there are also quite a few familiar names in this group too: People you’ve read articles about in the press. People you’ve heard on the radio. People who might be some of your favorite artists. People you might even think of as “famous.” Indeed, the fact that some of these people are famous might lead you to believe that they make a really comfortable living too. But this is a bad assumption to make. Fame and wealth are not always the same thing.

The number of people making in excess of $90,000 a year (after expenses) from music is a lot smaller than you think. And there are some notable performers who struggle to reach even this income level. If a musician succeeds in making this kind of money, it is a lot more of an accomplishment than most people will ever realize. Indeed, if one were to reach a similar level of accomplishment in most other industries, one would probably be making 2 to 5 times as much money each year.

Other than the two groups of musicians discussed above, no other musicians make a living solely from making music. Instead, they are able to play music because they have a day job, a trust fund, supportive parents, an understanding spouse, or some other sort of subsidy. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pointing this out to get down on the people in this group. There’s nothing wrong with being in this group. Most people in the other two groups were in this group at one time or another. And a lot of folks bounce back and forth between this group and the other two groups.

I just point this out, because I think a lot of people get confused about it. They feel bad about themselves, because they are not making a living from music. Don’t feel bad. Most people don’t make a living from music. Moreover, if you meet someone who seems like they are making a living from playing music, scrutinize them carefully (especially if they are lording it over you and making you feel bad about yourself). You may find that they are actually just giving off the illusion of making a living from music, because they think it will help them get ahead (or because they are insecure). But as I said above, appearances can be deceiving, and they usually are.

Nevertheless, if you scrutinize a fellow musician and they actually are making a living from music, give them their due. They deserve your respect. They have attained a goal most musicians never reach. If you aspire to some day make a living solely from music, they are worthy of careful study,. For they undoubtedly have some important lessons to teach you.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.

I define a business as follows: an undertaking that hopes to pay for itself some day, make a profit, and support the people who run it. In a business, it’s not enough to make a good product. You need to make money too. One invests in a business.

I define an art project as follows: an undertaking where cost calculations do not figure into one’s assessment of whether the undertaking is a success or a failure. In an art project, only the finished product matters. It is the end in itself. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t break even or make a profit. And the people involved in it don’t expect to support themselves with it. One subsidizes an art project.

Especially if you are spending your own money on your music, it’s worth being honest with yourself about what you’re doing at any given time. Sometimes, the distinction may be kind of blurry: Many a would-be art project has turned into a music-related business. Many a would-be music business has turned out to be more of an art project. And this is okay.

But asking the question still encourages you to think about what you are doing. If you hope to make money from your music at some point, it helps to start thinking about it as a business. Will this shift in mindset change the nature of your undertaking? Yes. Will this change be for the worse? Possibly. But it could also be a change for the better.

Could you not think about any business stuff and one day make money from your art project? Maybe. But in my experience, there is usually someone with a little business sense lurking behind most of the projects that one-day make money. Someone finally has to say, “if we spend more than this much, we won’t be able to cover our costs. And if we don’t at least cover our costs, we can’t keep doing this, because we can’t afford to keep subsidizing it.”

Given that this is the case, ask yourself the following: If someone is going to have this knowledge and apply it, why shouldn’t it be you? The person with this knowledge will ultimately wield important power. The person with knowledge will also have a much clearer view of where the project stands. And the person with this knowledge will probably also be in a better position to avoid many heartbreaking situations along the way.

©2013 jawjawjaw. All Rights Reserved.