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.