What Cruel Optimism is and How to Address it

I recently heard the term “cruel optimism” used on a podcast, and I decided to learn a little bit about it. It was coined by the late cultural theorist Lauren Berlant to describe when people form attachments to beliefs, objects, or relationships that are ultimately detrimental to their well-being.

Frequently, people become attached to a particular vision of the future, a desired outcome or way of life, even when it is unlikely to be achieved or may be actively harmful. This attachment creates a sense of optimism that becomes “cruel” when the desired outcome is not achieved, or when the pursuit of it leads to harm or disappointment.

For example, someone might be optimistic about their career prospects as a musician, writer, filmmaker, dancer, basketball player, or college professor, despite the limited job opportunities in these fields, and then continue pursuing their career goal for many years. As their optimistic vision of the future is not realized, it becomes increasingly “cruel,” sucking the positivity and joy from their life, hindering their ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and blinding them to alternative sources of meaning and satisfaction.

Continue reading “What Cruel Optimism is and How to Address it”

Apple and Personality-Based Marketing/Publicity in the Music Space

Apple Computer Logo
By Apple, Inc. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I was on Facebook earlier today and came across the comment below from Tim Quirk. It’s apparently about Apple’s new streaming music service, which is slated to launch later this year. Tim’s a musician and has also spent time working at Rhapsody and Google Music, amongst other places.

WHO’s telling you to listen is far, far less important than WHAT they tell you to listen to. Also, GETTING you to actually listen.

Reading the comments underneath Tim’s post, I came to understand that it related to his criticism of what he asserted was the personality-based approach that Apple seems to be using with its new service.

One commenter, Jamie Dolling, asserted that the new service was as much about “personality as it is about music,” and worried that this approach couldn’t help but “poison the water.”

Subsequently, Jon Maples, a digital music consultant formerly of Rhapsody, indicated that it was the same..old…’human music curation’ approach without any understanding of what the listener actually wants.”

I started adding my own comment on that post, but as its length ballooned it seemed to be morphing into a blog post. So I moved over here.

Anyway, here’s my take on this stuff.

As Tim correctly points out, getting listeners to break out of their default is the challenge, because most listeners just want to keep listening to the stuff they are already familiar with (and consume the same products over and over again as well).

To my mind, personality-based approaches to marketing and publicity can be one way to accomplish that goal. Even if there’s an element of bullshit, snake oil to it, they wouldn’t still be using it if personality-based publicity and marketing didn’t sell shit.

For many people, who is telling you to listen/buy is inextricably bound up in what they are telling you to consume. That’s the whole point. It’s a gestalt experience.

The further you move to the right in the diffusion curve on anything new, the less likely consumers are to use their own research and judgment when making buying decisions. These people are much more likely to look to trusted people (opinion leaders) for signals about what choices to make.

This is not a new thing. It’s as old as consumer capitalism (or actually even older still). And while I pride myself on doing my own research on lots of stuff and making my own decisions, there’s lots of other stuff where I just don’t care enough to do that. I want somebody else to point me to an answer that is good enough (or better still, great). The whole point of doing that is that I don’t know what good is, so I can’t really effectively evaluate the quality of the thing being recommended. If I could, I wouldn’t need somebody else’s advice.

So the personality/trustworthiness of the person making the recommendation is extremely important. It becomes a proxy for the knowledge I lack about the thing being recommended, because, rightly or wrongly, I do feel comfortable evaluating what I think about the person doing the recommending.

The logic goes something like this. I don’t trust my judgment about what cool clothes are. This person over there seems to be a person who I think is cool and has on cool clothes (or at least a person who I understand from their reputation is supposed to be cool and wearing cool clothes). Therefore, their judgment about cool clothes is probably better than mine. So I’ll see what they think I should wear, and moving forward I’ll look to them for more clues and cues on that subject.

Unlike data driven metrics, this isn’t just about figuring out what I want. It can also be about creating a new want, because while I may know what I think I want, I may not actually know what I want all the time. Data driven metrics may do a good job of figuring out what I think I want right now or even what I might want based on what I have wanted in the past, but they don’t do such a good job of determining what I don’t know that I want right now but what I might nevertheless want in the future if it was put in front of me in the right way. The right sort of charismatic curator/opinion leader has the ability to do that.

For many people, music is something they are unsure about. It’s also something where they don’t want to have to filter through all the noise to get to the signal. They like having music around. They also know that what music they like says something about them, so there’s something at stake there beyond just the hedonistic experience of consuming the music.

But in many cases, they just want to be pointed towards some good stuff. If liking this good stuff also seems to help make them seem a little bit less uncool, well, even better. Because in 2015, nobody wants to seem uncool, not even middle-aged people like me. Indeed, seeming/feeling less uncool may be just as important–or even more important–than liking what has been recommended.

So yes, Apple’s new music service is a publicity/marketing platform. And yes it appears to be personality-based. That’s because the biggest objection that the music industry seems to have about many of the other streaming platforms is this:

They may deliver a good user experience to certain users, but despite many assertions to the contrary, they have not yet proven themselves to be particularly good marketing/publicity platforms for companies trying to focus demand on a limited slate of new releases (the only way to generate the kind of cash they need to stay in business long-term). They can service demand when it arises. But they don’t drive demand or significantly shape it.

Moreover, to the extent that these services create new wants in people, the want pattern is much more diffuse than in the old system. So the old-line music industry is still trying to find a marketing/publicity platform that looks and works more like terrestrial radio did in the glory days, because that was a great platform for focusing demand on a limited slate of new releases. It had a focused want pattern.

It’s a fair criticism to say that trying to find that sort of platform is a pipe dream. That we’re in a new reality now, and the desire for that sort of platform reflects an unwillingness to get with the times. But there remain very practical reasons why that sort of platform would still be useful to the music business. So it makes a certain amount of sense that its members continue to chase it.

Apple seems to be taking a stab at trying to provide that sort of platform with a more personality-based approach. But just because Apple may, in part, be trying to solve a problem for the music industry, that doesn’t mean their solution is inherently at odds with the user/audience.

After all, terrestrial radio has often been a personality-based marketing/publicity platform both for labels and all the advertisers that subsidize it. But it’s also beloved by many users, because they value both the curation and the personalities they find there. Often, those things cannot be separated.

That doesn’t mean that human curation is always good. Indeed, on average, algorithmic approaches may now be better at delivering a good-enough experience that is more personalized than the average human curation experience.

But when human curation is good, I think it remains the gold standard for curation, even when it is less personalized. Maybe I’m showing my middle-age here, but that’s how it seems to me. That sort of curation is inherently personality-based. That’s a big part of its appeal. You trust the curator enough to give up control and let them take you on a journey of discovery.

In the process, you bond with them, for being associated with a cool personality has the capacity to make you feel cooler and a part of the world they have created around their personality. That experience creates a want in you.

An algorithm rarely makes you feel cooler like this, because it’s a tool. You might use it for the purpose of doing your own research and discovery.  It might even show you some things about yourself that neither you nor other people readily see. That, in turn, might allow you to feel cooler when you deal with other people, because of the knowledge you’ve gained. But even when the algorithm is doing a good job delivering quality suggestions to you, it still makes you feel a little bit more like a data point and less like a human.

A friend of mine recently started a Spotify mix-tape group on FB. Each week a different member delivers a 90 minute playlist to the group (a virtual mix tape). So far, this experience has been infinitely better than any algorithmic experience I’ve ever had, because each group member actually takes into account what other people have done and who the audience is.

So if somebody included a track last week, that track isn’t likely to be in this week’s mix and more than likely neither would that artist. Although if it made aesthetic sense in the context of the mix to include the same artist or track two weeks in a row, maybe it would be in there anyway. But in any case, these mixes have a much richer sense of the many contextual factors that contribute to creating a good mix. The same is true of a great show on a non-comm radio station like KEXP. As a result of this, these kinds of mixes reinforce a sense that the group members are part of something bigger than themselves.

Of course, if that mix tape group was me and 25 kids who are under 15, the quality of the curation probably wouldn’t seem as good to me, although I’d probably still hear an occasional great tune I would have missed otherwise. I’d also feel more like an interloper in that group. Maybe that distinction is actually demographic rather than personality-based. But to me, issues of demographics and psychographics are embedded in the idea of personality-based branding. You are buying the gestalt experience that you associate with that person or company.

This is why an anonymous human curator is less valuable than a curator with a personality/reputation that is known and trusted by users, even if the choices of the anonymous curator are objectively just as good as or better than those of the known curator. The lack of an identifiable personality makes it harder to evaluate the utility of the suggestions. And once you’re dealing with that problem, you’re pretty much right back where you started. The curator is no longer solving a problem for you. Now, you need a curator to sort out the anonymous curators for you.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t use algorithmic radio ever. I do. A group of my college friends made a playlist that encompasses many of the songs that were on the jukebox in the coffee house that was in the basement of our dorm at the University of Michigan (the Halfway Inn). Spotify generated a radio station based on that playlist, and it works pretty well, although it still does a poor job of managing repeats of the same song and multiple related songs by the same artist or by related artists (e.g,. Velvet Underground and solo Lou Reed).

A good human curator does not do these things. That’s part of the artistry. They take those things into account. Like I said above, they have a better and richer contextual awareness. Also, part of the reason that particular Spotify station works as well as it does is because it’s based on a playlist that was human curated. So it’s bootstrapping on the contextual awareness of the people who compiled that list.

If enough people trust a guy like Zane Lowe, some of that is his personality. But his personality and that trust is also a function of his talent for curation.

Grunge/Alternative rock broke on commercial radio back in the ’90s in no small part because of Seattle DJ Marco Collins. The relationship that people had with Marco at that time was very much personality driven. They liked him. He was a dynamic on-air personality, and they thought he was cool. But a big part of the reason why was that they came to trust his taste.

If Marco said something was cool and played it on the radio, people gave it the extra listens they needed to appreciate why it was worthwhile, even when their first impression might not have been great. Twenty years later, his impact is clear enough that somebody recently made a movie about him.

Some people have that intuitive gift for knowing what new stuff people will like if they just give it a chance. Computers are also getting better and better at deducing that information based on prior user behavior. But I’m still not sure those two approaches always lead you to the same place.

What’s that term? “Filter Bubble,” where your perceived options keep getting smaller and smaller as the search algorithm feeds back based on your previous choices. At its best, human curation seems less prone to the filter bubble (although it has its own problems and risks–e.g., it’s probably more prone to personal politics and lobbying, which can create a bureaucratic capture problem that undermines trust–See e.g., payola). But human curation only works if people trust the human curators and don’t have to invest too much energy vetting them.

Apple is a high profit-margin, gold standard brand. That’s why people pay extra for it. Its whole message is grace, ease of use, and quality (even if these things are not always actually true). Historically, it’s been about finding the spot where technology and people align. You know, a mix of art and science.

That’s the value proposition it is selling. The personalities are at least theoretically in the service of that. They are supposed to be part of the art that interfaces with the science and tech.

Part of the art is also the fashion sensibility. Undoubtedly, that’s part of what must have attracted Apple to Beats. I have mixed feelings about that. My feathers get ruffled thinking about paying hundreds of dollars for a pair of headphones that may be fashionable but ultimately aren’t very good sounding headphones for the money.

But at the end of the day, I guess I’m a bit of an engineer at heart. I value function over fashion, and I especially hate the idea of paying a premium for something just because it is perceived as being fashionable. Nevertheless, I also recognize that many people are not like that, and that these kind of people are more than willing to pay a premium for something they perceive as fashionable. Indeed, in many cases they are the highest margin consumers.

The personality-based approach also dove-tails with Apple’s history and culture. Before the death of Steve Jobs, it was a personality driven company. It’s also an opinion leader brand. So while it collects plenty of experience data from users, it has not historically solicited explicit input from the public about what it wants. It doesn’t have the same sort of beta-testing developer blogging, two-way conversation that many other companies have as they develop their products.

I once had conversation with a Boeing IT guy in a bar here in Seattle. He said they loved Microsoft, because they were much more open with his department about what they were working on and where it was going.

Typically, Apple hasn’t shared where it’s going until it releases a product for the public to see. It’s not looking for that sort of approval and feedback. When it releases something, the message is this: “Here’s our new thing. We’re cool. We think our thing is cool, and if you try it, we’re confident that you will think our thing is cool too, even if you don’t understand right this minute why it’s cool.”

Over the last decade, it’s had a pretty good track record doing that. So even when it does something that other people have arguably already done, it typically re-contextualizes it in a way that makes it sit differently with the public

We’ll see if Apple’s new music service provides that sort of bold leadership and delivers on the idea that theirs is a place where art does a better job meeting science than at other places. We’ll also have to wait and see whether their approach resonates in the market.

If it just ends up being a re-branding of the Beats music service, then I think the answer will be “no.” While there was nothing really wrong with Beats and it looked cool, at the end of the day, I didn’t find it qualitatively different from its competitors, either in terms of user experience or curation.

So to succeed, imho, Apple will need to extend things considerably on the personality front and keep their curated playlists and other personality-based offerings far more dynamic than they were on the old Beats service. Otherwise, it’s just the same wine in a different bottle.

 

 

Artists and Art

This entry is part 12 of 12 in the series Navigating In Fog: Thoughts on the Music Business

The Artist is a very romantic figure in our culture. There’s a lot of ideological mumbo jumbo attached to what an Artist is and what an Artist should be. It’s one of those paradoxes. The dominant ideal is that art is about freedom of expression. Yet lots of people would put a lot of rules on art given a chance. People love to set up boundaries and categories. Some people might even try to shatter the whole notion that Artists making art is a romantic ideal.

I like those kinds of high-minded debates. But this isn’t the place for them. So I’m not going to get into that stuff here. Instead, I’m going to accept the following premises: (1) being an Artist and making art represents a noble pursuit; and (2) if there is anything pure and good in the music business, it starts with the Artists and the art they make.

Why am I going to the trouble saying this? Well, the further you venture into the Fog Machine, the easier it is to lose sight of these ideas. And once you forget them, you’re sunk, especially if you see yourself as an Artist.

At the same time, it’s important remember that Artists make art in a context. Our context is a market economy, where people have to make their living somehow. And the ideals of making art and making a living don’t always easily co-exist.

But if you are an Artist, you have to find a way to deal with this reality. Usually, that involves figuring out where your compromise point is on a broad range of issues. As an Artist, you’ll probably have to face this process head on. But never forget the idealistic goal of art: that the product should come first regardless of what the market seems to be saying.

Sometimes that can be a tough one, especially when people who are supposedly experts about the market are challenging your judgment. But never forget the reality of the Fog Machine. Ultimately, a lot of these folks don’t know anymore than you do. And oddly enough, when an Artist has talent and stays true to his or her ideals, it’s actually pretty surprising how often that resonates in the marketplace.

Going to SXSW? 8 Quick Tips

I’ve been to every SXSW since 1995. Sadly, my streak ends this year. Since I can’t be there, I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned through the years with those of you lucky enough to be going.

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.

Seth Godin on the perils of the Magic Lottery Ticket

Over on his blog, Seth Godin just made this post about the perils of spending all your time looking for a magic lottery ticket. More than most people, Seth has the ability to really distill things down to the essence. He had a post a while back called Barry Bonds. It’s a favorite of mine, and I’ve shared it many times with various people I know trying to make something happen in the music business. His magic lottery post is kind of like the sequel, and well worth reading.

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.

In school, if you’re right 60% of the time you’re a failure. In the music business, if you’re right 60% of the time, you’re a genius (unless you’re starting an indie label).

This entry is part 11 of 12 in the series Navigating In Fog: Thoughts on the Music Business

It’s true. Picking winners in the music business is a lot like hitting major league pitching: Most people strike out a lot. For every band on a major label that succeeds, a far greater number fail. This means that the A & R staff of most labels spend most of their time failing. So if you ever meet one of those rare individuals (and they do exist) who seem to pick winners more than half the time, bow down in front of them. In music business terms, this person is a genius. And if you happen to be one of those people, well take a bow. You are a genius.

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.

Usually, being an asshole does not help you

This entry is part 10 of 12 in the series Navigating In Fog: Thoughts on the Music Business

On the surface, this seems obvious. But if you take some time to think about it, it gets more complicated. There are many levels to being an asshole. Some are very obvious and easy to spot. Others aren’t so obvious. Why? Well, sometimes the difference between being assertive and being and asshole is subtle (or in the eye of the beholder). As you move through life and try to get things done, you may make enemies. Sometimes, it’s a zero sum game and there is no way around it. Indeed, if you have no enemies it may indicate that you’re not pushing hard enough (or placating people at your own expense).

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.

Sometimes it helps to be enigmatic

This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series Navigating In Fog: Thoughts on the Music Business

While it seems like the straight line is the most effective way to achieve your goal, this is not always the case. Sometimes, it is better to keep people wondering a little bit about who you are and what you’re intentions are. Don’t get me wrong; you have to be who you are. I’m not sure it’s possible to will yourself to become this kind of a person, if you really aren’t that way. But this does seem to be a strategy that works for at least some people in the music industry.

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).

If you want to be a rock star be prepared to persevere: in most cases the four year minimum applies.

This entry is part 8 of 12 in the series Navigating In Fog: Thoughts on the Music Business

I know this is a bold statement. And let me be honest, it’s not really based on any empirical evidence, just my observation of a lot of rock bands. Nevertheless, I stand very firmly by this statement. Of the bands and solo artists I’ve seen achieve success in the music biz game (e.g., get a major label deal, become a touring act that earns steady money, etc.), it seems to have taken most of them at least four years to get there.

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.

If you make music, know what kind of flower you’re growing. If you sell music, know what kind of flower you’re selling.

This entry is part 7 of 12 in the series Navigating In Fog: Thoughts on the Music Business

One of the hardest things to do as a musician is to see yourself and your music as strangers see it. (Let’s face it, your friends love you. So they’re inclined to support you no matter what. It’s great to have them there. But it’s foolish to read too much into their reactions.)

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.