THE MUSIK-ZONE
The Business of Music
Tutorials

Your Goals & Attitudes as a Musician/Songwriter

To Sign or Not to Sign

One of the first things you need to decide is whether you want to go with the Old Business Model or the New Business Model. Do you want to get signed with a Big Music Company? Or do you want to go the "Indie" route?

Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Old Business Model:

Pros: The record company foots the costs. You have a much more powerful organization behind you for promotion, paying for tours, equipment, getting endorsements, etc. The company handles the studio recording so you don't need to worry about sound formats, bit rates, sampling speeds, etc.

Cons: Record companies are very fickle. They don't do much to promote new bands/performers. They may drop you in an instant. They are looking for "formula" music that fits what their demographic statistics tell them, right or wrong. They control your music, not you. And they take most of the money. Contracts are always written heavily in their favor, not yours. You are never an equal. You are a commodity, a product, a brand.

New Business Model:

Pros: The artist (you) maintains control of your music and career. Your success depends on you, not a manager or record company executive who could probably care less about you individually because you are just one of many in the constant dice-shuffling game. You get to keep more of the money from sales.

Cons: You have to work a lot harder (think smarter, not harder!) to reach your target audience and build your fan base. That means you'd better go into this well-organized. You need to understand the world of contracts, publicity and promotion. You still have to have a trusted circle of advisors and assistants, no matter how small. Face it, you can't do everything yourself and do any of it well ... and your music will suffer as a result of spreading yourself too thin. You will need to familiarize yourself with the Internet requirements for audio files, how to create them, upload them and meet the individual requirements of the various sites where your music will be displayed and heard.

The pros and cons of both models could be a lot longer of course, but this gives you a rough idea.

Today, computer technology has enabled us to have a recording and mixing studio right in our own spare bedroom or garage ... and it is just as good as the hundred thousand dollar equipment found in most professional studios just a decade ago.

The question is - do you have the patience, the tenacity to learn how to use it ... without getting so bogged down in the engineering that you forget you are first of all a musician? There's a balance that has to be struck there.

Music can be one of the most discouraging careers on earth, and you're going to need inspiration, motivation and spiritual/emotional encouragement to stick to your goals.

This series provides just that with lessons such as:

1. Become More Proactive

2. But it Sounded Better at Home

3. Deal With Age Discrimination in the Commercial Marketplace

4. Do What You Love

5. How to Be More Than a Tree

6. How to Make the Most Out of a Music Conference

7. Money-Making Secrets

8. My Name is Michael, and I'm an Addict

9. "Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be"

10. Reach For The Sky

11. Stairway to Your First Cut

12. The 3 P's to Success in the Music Business

13. The Real You

14. Things To Do Today

15. Tips For Success

16. When Opportunity Knocks

17. Youth Ain't Always Wasted

One of the biggest keys to your success or failure will be your attitude and your ego. I've worked with well-known music stars and with wanna-be's, and it's almost always been the wanna-be's who were the most egotistical and hard to work with. All of the truly successful artists I've known or worked with have been gracious, compassionate and sharing.

One of the kindest, most gracious "stars" I've ever met was my good friend Mickey Newbury, a legend in the business but little known to the general public, except for Europe. We spent a couple of days together not too long before he passed on and I was treated to my own private concert of some of his then-unpublished songs.

The beginners are the most demanding, dooming themselves to failure. When I produced the "Country Pickin's" series of concerts back in the 70's, we featured artists such as Lee Greenwood, Tracy Nelson and Dianne Davidson. I remember some of the bands - unknowns - insisting that they play before someone else.

One band I don't remember didn't have it's own sound set-up (most of them insisted on plugging their own equipment into our sound boards) and they demanded that we provide them their own equipment or they would walk out. Tracy Nelson and Dianne Davidson quietly and graciously offered their own equipment to quell the temper tantrum.

Still other bands demanded they be allowed to play up to twice as long as the schedule permitted.

This kind of behavior will get you a bad reputation in the business and you'll find the gigs just aren't there. Success is as much, if not more, about attitude and relationships than it is about talent.

The Goals & Attitudes Course will help teach you how to act around record labels, audiences - even friends and family ... because the basic lessons of relationships are the same everywhere.

Now I'm not trying to be preachy. All my life I've had a problem with relationships. I'm a Cancer, and tend to be emotional - sad, angry, ecstatic, whatever - like a roller coaster. I'm not going to take drugs for it because I believe all of us could do with less drugs. Besides, the problem we have is one of understanding ourselves first.

In my case, I have to keep reminding myself - "I am NOT my emotions!" Either my emotions control me, to my detriment, or I control my emotions. My emotional make-up is just a part of the total me.