For your consideration, the following classic exchange:
Unemployment Office Person: “Name and occupation?”
Comicus: “Comicus, Stand-up Philosopher.”
Unemployment Office Person: “A what?”
Comicus: “A Stand-up Philosopher. I coalesce the vapors of daily life and produce anecdotes that have synonymous meaning with various people.”
Unemployment Office Person: “Oh. A bullshit artist!”
In today’s music industry, there’s a lot of hype, but there’s an overabundance of bullshit. For example, there are a bunch of terms being bandied around that all by themselves are sort of meaningless bullshit terms. But people use them because they feel they have to. I’m (almost) as guilty of this as anyone else. Have you noticed the growth in “social networking sites” and “music discovery sites.” Have you also noticed how many of ’em really suck? Investors and egotistical CEOs are riding a trend for nothing more than profit. But they’re not music people, don’t claim to be, and they’re polluting the market by causing good and deserving companies to suffer. To beat a dead horse series of metaphors, they’re the bad apples spoiling the whole bunch (girl…).
One company I worked with was doing fairly well. They had a lot of cash in the bank, and a huge staff. Of the whole bunch though, a disturbingly small percentage actually went out to see live music – the kind that the artists they were targeting actually played and performed! They were marketing to an audience that they couldn’t be bothered to actually interact with.
This company continues to offer products and services while steadfastly refusing to be part of their audience. Their initial solution: pay an obscene amount of money to hire a company to run a focus group! Thousands of dollars, and a few weeks later, the answers that came back were exactly the same ones that could’ve been achieved by simply heading out the door, down the street, and into a club.
On the industry side, I’ve worked with everyone from local artists up through major label talent. And at every turn, the one thing that separates the good from the bad is the ability to determine a) who’s out for the money and 2) who’s actually in it for the love of music.
As technology grows, it becomes to easy to forget the basic truth that you actually need to be right for (and good at!) what you do. The best platform in the world, with all kinds of “web 3.0 technology” doesn’t justify a shitty idea.
For me, as goofy as it sounds, music gets me excited. As rotten a day as I might have, seeing a band perform instantly recharges the batteries. It’s not just a “connection” with the music, but I know that I just “get it.” And it’s been proven wherever I got involved. If it hadn’t, I’d find another industry. But when your justification for a job in the music industry starts with “well, I got my Master’s at ….”, odds are you’re not the right person.
In this industry, you can only succeed by establishing who you are — not who you aren’t. If you do your job right, you have no competitors because no one else is doing what you do. Make your product something that stands out on its own merits, isn’t a copy of someone else’s idea, and (definitely!) isn’t done strictly for the cash.
Musicians can smell “Stand Up Philosophers” coming from a mile away.
