While catching up on the exploits of the Industrial Jazz Group's
THE ANSWER.
Yes.
Although I haven’t run any clinical trials or case studies, I do believe that I have come up with THE ANSWER for all the musicians out there asking, “just how do I make a living playing music?” Best of all, it has absolutely nothing to do with Craigslist (or Myspace).
Before we go any further, I need to set things straight. I’m not totally convinced that I should even be sharing this sensitive information. But I feel that, without providing this service to humanity, I may someday die with a severe sense of regret. That being said, THE ANSEWR is really in two part form (with a very important third part that you’ll want to pay attention to).
The first part is simply: “Make a living? Playing music? IMPOSSIBLE. Cannot be done.”
?????????
Yep. Sad but true. And it’s not like this is the first time you heard it either. In fact, this debate has really become cliché. It is simply unfeasible, and highly impractical to think that a suitable long-term career choice would be that of a performing musician. That is, if you want to eat and stuff…
Luckily, for those who will refuse to heed the realities of our modern socio-economic landscape, there is an element that, when introduced, manages to twist, if ever so slightly, the crushing finality of impossibility. You feeling me? This is part two. If you what to name it, call it the Chaos Assumption. Somewhere, somehow, some gigantic butterfly is furiously flapping its wings so that you may get a shot at becoming the next Phil Collins.
The Chaos Assumption makes the totality of 100% impossibility fallible by 0.0000012% (give or take a few billions of a percent). This is just enough of a tilt to allow the chance of a profitable musical career, if ever so slight. But a chance it is…
Now that the door has been wedged open and allowed us a glimpse of the fluorescent glow of possibility, you still need that finial component, or, for a feeble metaphor: that crucial first corner piece of the puzzle. It will get you started down the road toward musical fulfillment and economic viability. By the way, this is that third part I was referring to earlier. That element? It’s the elusive spark of curiosity, the magnetic draw of inquisitiveness, the critical quotient in the COOL = COOL algorithm… I’m talking about HYPE.
Yep. So simple, just like Einstein. I almost named my dog Einstein. But that was because he’s dumb, so that’s not the same thing at all. Anyhoo…
Don’t laugh. HYPE will get you farther faster than any display of talent or skill or virtuosity. I know too many insanely talented, creative people who scrape by so close that their knuckles bleed. They got no HYPE.
That crappy art-punk band that you sat through four even crappier art-punk bands to see cause Pitchfork gave them a 9.2, that’s HYPE. Madonna? She is HYPE perfected. Now, you’re probably thinking “OK, so if HYPE is the crucial part of THE ANSWER, how do I get the HYPE?” And you would be right to ask this. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured that part out yet and I was hoping someone could tell ME.
New Music Strategies also has a ton of more interesting things to say on the topic of career launching in this digital age. If that’s your bag, I recommend checking them out.
3 comments:
You are correct. Hype can build empires. But hype is really just salesmanship, i.e. the art of selling stuff. If you want to get money without stealing it, you have to sell something. Which entails convincing someone (the buyer) that the item is more valuable to them than the money they're holding.
I went to school for engineering so I'd have something to "fall back on." Of course that type of thinking pretty much guarantees that you'll be falling back on it, but that's another story. Mainly and more to the point, I could have spent all that time hyping myself as a musician and it probably would have worked out just as well. But I still have to hype myself now, every time I write a resume or ask someone to send someone else a recommendation for me, and every time I exaggerate my accomplishments or gloss over my faults in my weekly report.
If the product you're selling/hyping is music, you enjoy the benefit that the experience of your product by the buyer is essentially subjective and not at all governed by any objective standard. It's essentially always one listener's opinion. A toothbrush lasts 8 weeks or 12 weeks. A car gets this or that gas mileage and has these features. A toaster burns the toast or not. But how would you write a standard for judging the "performance" (no relation) of a product such as music? You can't; there is none.
Therefore it becomes very easy to make outrageous claims, a.k.a. hype, in your sales pitch precisely because the experience is so subjective. You can claim that it will change lives, blow minds, melt faces, etc. And there's possibility to claim false advertising because it's all just conceptual and metaphorical anyway, and if someone doesn't agree, it's just their personal taste.
As for how to get hype, I say MAKE IT. Start hyping yourself. Repeat something enough times and eventually everyone else will believe it.
"Steve" is a way better name.
Right! Since music is totally subjective, maybe one could copy the marketing strategy for some completely different product - like, I dunno, say FOOD? That's totally subject to tastes, right? What makes one restaurant successful verses another?
Maybe restaurant's aren't the best study group. How about frozen pizza?
Yeah!
To me the big question is the extent to which you can treat the act of hyping as an art itself. Many of the artists I admire -- Zappa, Miles Davis, Mingus, etc. -- were *constantly* engaged in hyping themselves, simply by creating highly engaging public personae. Many others fall into the trap of assuming that hype is a "cookie cutter" type of thing, with no opportunities for creativity. No wonder they dread it.
Cookie-cutter hype can work (especially for the hypothetical "crappy art punk band" you mention) but only if you've got corporate muscle behind it (some audiences just want to have this stuff rammed down their throats -- don't ask me why). But for folks who actually want to leave the world a more beautiful place than they found it, other techniques are available. And like a well-designed album cover, this other type of hype is an extension of the art.
Or at least that's what I tell myself as I struggle to make a living...
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