As many of my devoted fans know, I\u2019ve been blessed throughout my life with a lot of very talented friends, some of whom have gone on to varying degrees of success. I\u2019m happy for them and proud of them all, but of course this can also bring up occasional flourishes of envy or of nagging self-doubt\u2014especially when some of these successful friends give me pep talk\/lectures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the music business<\/em>,\u201d says one.<\/p>\n \u201cThe business side of things is just as important as the creative side\u2014you should think of them as the same,\u201d says another.<\/p>\n \u201cThink of it as a marketing installation,\u201d says yet another. (I admit that this perspective on the situation spoke to me a bit more).<\/p>\n Are these things true? Why didn\u2019t anyone tell me earlier? And would I have even listened?<\/p>\n A few years back I was reading an article by Exclaim<\/em>\u2019s music business journalist Allison Outhit. Some guy she interviewed gave a quote along the lines of \u201cIf you\u2019ve been working hard for 10 years and you\u2019re still not successful, maybe you suck.\u201d<\/p>\n The quote stayed with me, bringing along with it a stark self-questioning: if I\u2019m not successful, does that mean I haven\u2019t worked hard enough? Or that I suck? (Allowing of course for the possibility of a third option, that this guy is a goddamn asshole).<\/p>\n In 2008, I quit my job, where for the first time in my life I had a respectable income and was settling into middle-class comfort. I felt I wasn\u2019t putting enough time or effort into my creative work, and wanted to take a genuine crack at an artistic career, which I had never truly devoted myself to before.<\/p>\n Two years later I found myself, for the first time, questioning the value of carrying on this project in the face of profound non-reaction from labels, promoters, and the whole trend-obsessed music business machine in general.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to write about this kind of thing for a few reasons. First of all, I\u2019m very grateful for whatever small impact I\u2019ve been able to make, and I\u2019m also acutely aware that certain things I’ve accomplished (getting played on the radio, touring internationally, collaborating with famous people, etc) are things that some artists only dream of.<\/p>\n Secondly, I generally feel that it\u2019s unbecoming for anyone to bitch and moan about not being more successful.<\/p>\n Finally, if certain people believe that I am successful for the reasons listed above, a pretty big part of me feels that I should let them have that illusion\u2014it\u2019s a win-win situation for us all.<\/p>\n That said, there are some things that I need to get off my chest and goddammit, what is the blogosphere for if not the shameless combination of self-pity and self-promotion?<\/p>\n To be continued.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As many of my devoted fans know, I\u2019ve been blessed throughout my life with a lot of very talented friends, some of whom have gone on to varying degrees of success. I\u2019m happy for them and proud of them all, but of course this can also bring up occasional flourishes of envy or of nagging … Continue reading “Music, business (part 1)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,191,188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-rockonomics","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}