You Can’t Spell Music Business without “Business” Obvious, right? Not so much. Here’s an anecdote from today and some thoughts on the issue.
At Music Xray we send out a mass email every Tuesday to tens of thousands of artists who have signed up on our site to receive them for free. This is a link to the one we sent today: http://eepurl.com/rX8D
Today, we got back an email from a disgruntled artist that said, “YOU PEOPLE ARE THE WORST KIND OF LOW LIFE LEECHES THE SLEAZY MUSIC BIZ. HAS TO OFFER… I’M NO LONGER STUPID WHEN IT COMES TO THE KIND OF SCAMS YOU’RE PEDDLING”.
I’ve said before that I do not blame any artist for feeling jaded. The music industry has a long history of mistreating artists and you don’t have to look very far to find artist-facing internet sites that are well-meaning but that can’t live up to their promises. Many times that’s due to the fact that they can’t muster the traffic it takes to help an artist promote their music. Other times, they don’t have the ability to attract industry professionals to their sites to do deals with the artists. Either way, there are simply a lot of dead end sites for artists out there. Artists end up uploading their music over and over again to tons of sites and have little to show for it. Frankly, with over 13 million artist profiles on MySpace alone it’s no wonder it’s harder than ever to stand out.
Yet, we keep hearing all about the new tools that make it easier than ever to do it yourself. Get a MySpace page, a ReverbNation presence, a website, a digital distribution deal and you’re set. Except it’s not working. I’m not saying artists shouldn’t have that stuff. They should. They have to just to be in the game. But it’s nowhere near enough. Most of the time, it’s still going to take a mass-exposure event (or series of events) to break a new act. To break out. To break through.
Nevertheless, the harsh reality is that if you’re and artist and you’re planning on making any money with your music you have to either be good at the business or you have to go into partnership with people who are. Most people aren’t good at both sides of that equation so teaming up is the only option. But revenue generating deals are like pretty girls at the dance. They have no shortage of suitors. It’s easy to resent that (I know I did) but resenting it doesn’t change it.
The fact is, deals between artists and industry people happen every day but if you’ll permit me to continue with the analogy, the pretty girl is definitely not going to dance with the boys who don’t ask. Getting discovered as an artist is very much the same these days. Just because an artist has a lot of fans and plays on MySpace isn’t likely to get the artist a deal. The artist must submit music to and interact with industry professionals. They must build relationships. They must get feedback and advice on how to get deals. Industry professionals aren’t out looking for artists these days because they don’t have to. The artists come to them. Artists have to hustle. That’s just the way it is and artists can decry it but it’s not going to change until there are more opportunities than artists – and if an artist waits for that to happen the opportunities will continue to pass them by.
So, when we get an email like the one I quoted above my reaction is not to get angry or to feel attacked. It makes me motivated to help artists get over feeling jaded and help them find the real opportunities to generate revenue with their music.
What do you think?
Mike McCready
CEO
Music Xray
http://musicxray.com
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