How to Pursue a Record Deal Realistically

A young man asked me for advice on how to get started in the music business. I thought I’d send him a few bullet points and that would be it. Darn thing turned into a book on me. The following is a reduction of the longer discussion.

Figure out exactly what you want.
Do you want to be a performer on stage, in videos, and/or on television? Writing songs? Arranging songs? Producing the music for songs? Playing for artists' bands? What? You've got to know exactly what you're aiming for in order to make a plan to get it. All the things mentioned above do not require the same path. This particular person wants to be an artist, so the following ideas are geared toward becoming an "act."

Find your sound.
That means your strongest style of singing and performing. If you're not sure, the genre in which you buy the most music, and your favorite performers, will probably indicate what you'll sound like. Remember though, that fans like what they like, and the music business is about them, not you, so if you prefer country music but you're a better rock singer, do rock music.

For MAJOR LABELS you need four things: (a) talent, (b) great songs, (c) a lot of fans, (d) good looks, (e) an image, and (f) obedience.  If you don't like the word "obedience," then let's use flexibility. For INDIE, all you need is (a), (b), and (c).

(a) TALENT:
Actually, some labels don't care about talent, so this is not always true. But play it safe and have some, just in case. Or don't go into music. Please. And I believe that musical ability can be developed, so don't get me wrong. But until you develop some, don't go into music.

Please.

Now, in order to find out if you have talent (which really means that other people like your music), let people who don't know you hear your music; they care less about hurting your feelings. And if you have to use people who you know, don't let them know it's you that they're listening to. For example, take them for a ride, play it in the car, and don't say a word. If they stop mid-sentence and ask, "What the hell is THIS garbage?" then you probably don't have talent. Unless they're musical imbeciles. Which is possible.

(b) GREAT SONGS
Write them (the cheapest way), buy them, or borrow them with permission. Make the melody easy to sing, the words easy to remember and about something that you care about. I would say write about what other people care about, but you don’t know what other people care about, and for some reason, when you start trying to guess what other people care about, your songs start to suck. The secret is this: you’re not that unique. Anything you care about is also important to millions of other people. Yeah, that too. So chances are, by writing songs to reach yourself, you’re reaching others at the same time.

Get a good music producer. The music can make the song. It shouldn’t have to, but it can. (By the way, if the music is the best thing about the song, rewrite it.) Find a producer who can give you the sound that you want, by playing your favorite recordings for him, or better yet, listening to his samples to see if he can pull it off. But get that music tight.

Make sure it’s a good audio recording, too. Professional is best but expensive. If you can find an affordable pro, go with her. Compare your recording to the downloads and CDs in stores. It needs to be just as loud and sound just as good. If not, don’t submit it. People say that the quality of the audio doesn’t matter, and that it’s all about the performance. Don’t believe them.

(c) A LOT OF FANS:
Labels want a ready-made market. They don't spend money to break artists anymore. That's why well-known artists, actors, and athletes are suddenly trying to do each other’s jobs; rappers want to act, actors want to sing, and singers want to write books.  They already have fans who will follow them into their new careers.

So you need fans, and you have to get them on your own. To draw a major's attention, you need a LOT of fans. (Locally, I'd say at least 500 to be safe; a producer associate of mine says even that's too low. 1000s is better. More than that and you don't need a record deal.)

To get fans, perform a LOT of local shows. Ask venue, restaurant and club managers if you can perform there. Pick the ones who use your kind of music. You'll have to give them a press kit, which has a headshot, bio, and your three best recorded songs in it.

If your press kit sucks, even these bottom-rung managers will trash it. (And don't call them "bottom-rung" in their faces, or they won't book you.) So hire a professional photographer with headshot experience, and let them know what your musical style and image are, so they can make the picture match (we’ll talk about image some more later). Pros know how to do it. If the photographer can't do it, find another one.

When you get shows, video all of them, make sure the venues are full, or at least look full on the videos, collect all the audience names for an emailing list, and get a website with a hit counter to show how much traffic is coming to your site.

Sell your CDs at shows. Get a barcode for your album so you can prove to labels how many you’ve sold on your own. Also get your music on download sites, and then direct the people who sign up with you to those sites. You can prove the numbers on that too.

Interact with your fans regularly: answer e-mails with meaningful responses, blog about the subjects of your songs, and respond to their blogs about you and your music. If they’re interested in your music then they’re probably interested in you – assuming that your music is you – so most fans will appreciate the interaction. The more fans you have, the harder this is. Oh well. Work harder. It’s a nice problem to have.

(d) GOOD LOOKS

Pretty women and handsome men get the most attention, even before they open their mouths (and when they do, sometimes you wish they wouldn’t have). If you’re not Melyssa Ford or Ryan Gosling, it’s a liability from a label perspective. You’ll have to make up for that “deficit” with other elements.

(e) IMAGE

Image is not about pretty or ugly. It’s more about what kind of person you appear to be: cool, feisty, sexy, smart, deep, funny, suave, radical, hard, delicate, mysterious, quirky.

(f) OBEDIENCE

If you do all of the stuff I’ve mentioned here, sell thousands of CDs and downloads, videotape shows with hundreds of people in the audience digging your music, and submit those videos along with a killer press kit to labels, you’ll hear back from someone. 

And they’ll want to change you. 

Your image, music, songs, producer, name. Something. Unless what you’ve done with yourself is so strong that they don’t want to fix what’s not broken (and they won’t see it that way unless you have WAY more than 1000 fans), you are a work in progress in their eyes. That’s just the way it is. They’re spending money and they want it all back, plus some. 

You are a product. It’s that simple. Big Oil won’t argue with a barrel of oil, and labels won't argue with you. So, if you’re flexible, you’ll get along fine, until they drop you for not selling enough, or they can’t touch you because you’ve sold so much.

That's pretty much it.

P. S. 

If you're wondering why I don't have a deal, since I know so much: (1) none of the advice I've given guarantees you'll be chosen; (2) I haven't followed my own advice.

White teacher, Black school

[The following was my reply, to a White teacher who was burned out from working in a Black school.]

Opinions are like assholes (everybody's got one). Here's mine. 

You've taught for 5 years. I quit after 2 months. So I have no credibility. No matter. It's the Internet.

I'm Black, like my students were, so I didn't have to deal with the cultural-outsider status like you do. But many of my kids still didn't want to learn anything. I was a music teacher, so I brought in rap and soul music, thinking that would resonate with them. It didn't. Not all the time. Color is not a magic bullet.

Neither is anything else, for that matter. Students still have to be willing to learn. In spite of poorly interrogated, inspirational bullshit, the human will cannot be overridden or redirected - except by its owner. Volition. That's why it's called FREE will.

The fallacy of influenced will is a variety of POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC – “after this, therefore because of this.” Some teachers think that because they do a few pedagogical cartwheels in front of 13-year-old, Jamal "I-Don't-Give-A-Damn" Washington, and at some point after, Jamal appears to give a damn, then the cartwheels deserve the credit.

They don't. JAMAL does.

And Jamal has to trust you. If you think you're above him, or you're pissed because you couldn't get a position in a better part of town? He knows. And that might be the real, deep-down reason why he (and they) don't like you. Because the feeling is mutual.

If you're surrounded by teachers, administrators, and parents who don't recognize the sovereignty of students' human will, and who, driven by the fear of losing their jobs or being called lousy parents, place their blame-game crosshairs on YOU, it can drive your stress level off the meter. Perhaps this is where you are. 

And I understand, you signed on to teach, not to do a total-immersion, psycho-emotional self-defense practicum. You asked: "How do I keep the passion, when the students have been beating the stuffing out of me, from every angle, for almost five years? How do I not just say, 'I've given you everything; the only thing I haven't done is do it for you! Get off your whiney, lazy rear end and do something'? I'm giving my life and blood to teach children who hate me and hate school."

If you liked school as a kid, this may be difficult for you to understand, but a lot of classes are USELESS to students (not just the Black ones; they're just more blunt about it). "How is this useful to me?" That's what they want to know. Useful = money-earning + life-bettering + happiness-generating. Kids have seen enough crooked, moronic politicians, borderline-illiterate entertainers, Enron CEOs, and street pharmacists (whose truck rims match your annual salary) to know that the value of "education" has its limits. 

You probably think, "Of COURSE it's useful! They should understand that!" If you really feel that way? Prove it. 

Teach for free.

Finally, you asked: "Any ideas on how I can re-motivate myself and stay motivated, after suffering a slow, painful death of my dream?"

Parents don't hire teachers to fulfill their dreams. They hire you to teach their children, and you can't do that effectively if you discount their definitions of curricular usefulness. You cannot teach effectively if you resent your students, because your negative subconscious expectations will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. "They were already losers," you say? Okay. 

No one can prove you reinforced it.