Day 668

Post #36 of ANNIE B.’s D.I.Y. MAGAZINE: Is It Harder to Learn How To Be A Successful Artist Than To Learn How To Be A Neurosurgeon?

“I promise to post blogs here, sharing some daily activities & the work I do to achieve my career goals, and when I do win that Grammy, YOU can say you followed me all the way! I also hope to give inspiration, information, & advice to indie artists, and I hope you take a little something away with you when you read my posts, whether or not you are yourself an artist!”

I recently had this conversation with another musician friend of mine who had owned his own label, and the label did not last as long as he wanted it to. This guy has been in the music business for years and years, and with the people he knows and the experience he has under his belt, you’d think he could have a successful record label. Well, the fact is, there are no proven courses or degrees at any schools on how to have your own successful career in the music business. Sure, there are classes you can take at colleges all over the U.S. (especially in Los Angeles), there are seminars and conferences (such as SXSW) and workshops and speaker events and all sorts of resources. But after everything is said and done, it’s actually easier to learn how to become a successful neurosurgeon (provided you get accepted into med school, and you subsequently get accepted through all the different hoops you have to get through). If all I had to do was study my behind off & get good grades and pass all the tests I had to pass to become a successful artist, even if it took me 12+ years to do it, I would have started on that path right after high school, and I’d be there by now! But that’s just not how it works. Every time an artist decides he or she wants to learn how to make a living with their music, they kind of have to re-invent the wheel. They have to come up with creative ideas on their own, or by reading what other artists have done, and find their own success. OK, they can also look for a record label that already has a wheel in place, but that does not guarantee they will get anywhere. One time I heard, for every act that “makes it big” on a major label, there are 99 that don’t. Those 99 get dropped, shelved, or even worse, they end up owing the label thousands and thousands of dollars after getting shelved or dropped. Even worse than that, they can’t do anything with the music they wrote & recorded while under contract with that label. They are in limbo for years. It’s really pretty scary when you think of it. Why would anyone want to put themselves at risk like that? If you do want to be on a label, work with a small, local record label who you have done your research on!

So, I think it’s actually easier to become a successful practicing neurosurgeon than to become a successful musical artist. Even the neurosurgeon that graduates LAST in his class gets the diploma and the credentials and the ability to practice medicine and make lots of dough. There is a system in place that he or she needs to get good enough grades to be accepted into, and the rest of it is following the rules and studying hard.

But there is no such system in place for the artist. The system in place (record labels) can be very scary, and lots of them can put the artist in a worse place than when they started. And lots of artists think the answer is to start up your own record label, and so to those folks, I say, “Good luck!” That would be the ultimate in re-inventing the wheel, and I believe artists would serve themselves better by just concentrating on making great records, playing shows, and selling merch.

Studying the industry and learning about which record label or labels would be right for you are also good ideas, and then you can go after those labels if you are so inclined. But the best case scenario is to be so successful on your own that the labels are coming to YOU.

One of the reasons for this lack of a learning system in place for us artists is because, especially now, the industry is changing so fast that people in the biz, even those who have been in it for a very long time and seem to know A LOT, can’t keep up with how fast it’s changing. Yesterday, I heard about this guy who JUST graduated from college with a marketing degree (or some other business degree) and he started working with a company who makes this tongue brush that gets rid of bad breath and other germs. He was the guy who never listened in class… he was too busy researching the in’s & out’s of the workings of Facebook, learning how YouTube can reach more people with less marketing money spent, and all the other blogs & online news about how it all works. He got hired to get a YouTube video up as a commercial for the tongue brush, and it has sold millions, with NO marketing dollars spent except the $500 spent to produce the video. Figuring out how to use YouTube as your ultimate marketing tool is one of the things this guy concentrated on while he “should have” been paying attention in class, and now he’s going to that same school to speak and share his expertise. But he figured stuff out on his own. That’s the challenge that we as artists all have. We are challenged with learning how to survive and succeed in an industry that is changing & presenting new concerns and considerations EVERY SINGLE DAY.

“Going Viral” was the key with this guy. As it has been with other success stories. But, how can you “make” a video on YouTube “go viral”? I guess THAT is the ultimate question for the day.

How do we deal with this? Well, the tongue brush guy got smart and could see how powerful the internet is, especially YouTube, and he researched it daily and came up with a plan. For the musicians, last year a group of business people got together to figure out how to help an artist “Make It”… 6 different “expert” groups who are supposed to know something about how to help musicians succeed banded together to create a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed around simple strategy, prioritization of tactics, easy to use tools, and a reasonable budget. The hope was that any hard working, talented musician can utilize this plan to grow their fan base and help lay the foundation for a sustainable career in music. Well, this plan did not result in any measurable increase in success for “Indie Artist X”, as he was referred to during the project. I wrote about it here: http://anniebmusic.com/day-335/, and it was very disappointing.

Is “going viral” on YouTube our answer right now? Even if it is today, that could change tomorrow! So, I urge all indie artists to continue playing, and continue researching what they can do to keep moving forward. Do at least one thing every day (or, better yet, spend at least one hour every day) working on getting better gigs, e-mailing your fanbase about your goings-on, blogging, putting a video up on YouTube, creating event pages on Facebook for your gigs & inviting all your FB friends who live in that area, and working on the business (& promotions and marketing) side of your career.

Today, I did four things so far: I called a manager about a potential gig, created a FB event for my show this week & invited all my Milwaukee friends, I blogged on my website (obviously), and I sent out an e-mail to my regular e-mail list about the “Annie B. Holiday Happenings”!! (Unfortunately, I have a limit and can only send e-mails to 500 people a day, and now I have reached my limit so I can’t send out any more e-mails today! Ugh! Guess it’s time to pay for an e-mail service like MailChimp!) All this stuff took me much longer than an hour, but every little thing I do will move me forward just a little. And at some point, there will be a snowball effect, and the avalanche will start!!!

Day 603

Post #31 of ANNIE B.'s D.I.Y. MAGAZINE: Creating Your Creative Space
"I promise to post blogs here, sharing some daily activities & the work I do to achieve my career goals, and when I do win that Grammy, YOU can say you followed me all the way! I also hope to give inspiration, information, & advice to indie artists, and I hope you take a little something away with you when you read my posts, whether or not you are yourself an artist!"

If you ever have ANYTHING you'd like to respond to in my blog, PLEASE find me at http://AnnieBMusic.com
THANKS!!!

These last several weeks have been spent organizing & submitting papers, tax documents, and other documents regarding my father's passing. I hired an organizing service a week or two ago; I was so overwhelmed with everything. I have had stuff & papers (& still have) in boxes since I left L.A. in 2006, and I am finally trying to empty ALL those boxes and find a place for everything. That's been my problem since I left L.A. in a frenzied scurry-hurry in 2006... I didn't even have time to finish packing everything... a friend of mine finished for me (Thanks, Roger!!), and when I returned to my boxes and threw them in the back of a pickup in 2007, I thought I'd unpack them all sometime before 2010!!!!! Living on the road and moving umpteen times in the last few years has prevented me from unpacking. It's time now. And I'm a little scared of what I am about to face.

The organizing guy organized one big banker's box of papers in about 2 hours, and it felt really good to just get through that one box. He helped me see that it's just a matter of doing it. It's really not all that complicated. It's just a pain in the rear & VERY BORING. I have some of that "hoarder" tendency in my family, and I can see it with how I have kept so many things that I just will not be needing anytime ever. I still have a box full of papers, publications/magazines, & other contacts I collected from SXSW (THE BIGGEST music industry conference in the U.S.) in 2006. Will I ever need any of those contacts? Will any of that stuff be useful to me at anytime? I guess I will never know unless I bust open the box and start looking. Oh, and THROW AWAY (recycle, that is) the papers & stuff that does not apply to me anymore.

What I AM learning through this whole process is that I am feeling a LOT better about getting rid of some of the clutter, and I'm slowly but surely finding more time for the important things, like vocal practice at home, keyboard drills and exercises, and working on the MUSIC part of my career as a musician. Remember the blog I wrote not too long ago about honing your craft? Well, it's very hard to hone your craft when your brain is bogged down with trying to figure out how to fit it all in to your busy day. There must be SPACE. Space in your home and in your HEAD. I picked up a recent issue Good Housekeeping (does that mean I'm old???) with Jamie Lee Curtis on the cover... the article was on her sharing her secrets on how she keeps her home tidy & organized, and how that allows her to do the things that are IMPORTANT. I used to think, "Ok, I can see I need to send this guy a CD in the mail, but I'll do that later tonight; the daytime hours are for phone calls & e-mails." And I HONESTLY thought that was the right way to go about things... make the best use of those 9-5 "business hours" contacting those 9-5 people (press people, radio people, talent buyers, etc), and the "other stuff" should be done later in the evening... because it wasn't crucial that those things were done in the daytime hours. I used to make a list of the things I needed to do that evening. Like work on my MySpace page, address envelopes for CDs to mail, and print out press kits & posters. Tell me: Do you think that "evening" stuff ever got done? HELL NO! I would get so disorganized with my backwards & disorganized multi-tasking, that by the end of the day, the list of things to do would be lost, or WAY TOO LONG to actually begin to tackle. I could make you a list of things on my radar screen right now and you tell me... does this list look like anything you'd get within 20 miles of?
1. Answer Facebook friend requests (I now have over 250) - this ALONE would take HOURS.
2. Enter e-mail addresses from mailing list sign-up sheets from my last 10+ shows (I am serious... I have NO IDEA why I don't enter these as soon as I get home after a gig... oh, wait... sometimes I am too tired from driving home 90 minutes after a 4-hour gig.) These have seriously piled up.
3. Review footage from Bay View Bash performance
4. Review footage from Lindenfest performance with UA (I don't even know what I did with the DVD at this point!)
5. Get chords & lyrics printed for "Ain't No Sunshine," American Honey," any song from Neil Young, any song from Lady Gaga, Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," and practice "Give a Little Bit" from Supertramp.
6. Follow up with talent buyer from Potawatomi Casino.
7. Continue to research venues for CD Release Party in Milwaukee.
8. Figure out how to create playlists on my mp3 player.
9. Make a better sign for my CD sales at shows.
10. Burn promo CDs for The Kiwi Cafe
11. Create artwork for Kiwi Cafe Promo CDs
12. Review potential gigs/opportunities for submission via Sonicbids
13. Artbeat: Thank You letters for 2010 season. Start planning for 2011.
And the list goes on.

So it's no wonder why I can't seem to make the headway I'd like to make. I don't have any SYSTEMS in place. So, I've allowed myself to get caught up in all the stuff that needs to get done, with out actually doing any of it. I have piles of notes here & there, and lots of them get lost, ignored, and certainly forgotten. There needs to be a FLOW to my work and my workSPACE. It starts with just tackling that first box, like the organizing guy did. I can't beat myself up for not having all my tax documents ready for the tax lady, even though, I consider my taxes to be done as best as they can be. I'll submit my papers and see what she says. That will have to do for now!

So, the organizing guy asked me if I ever used feng shui to organize my work space. I know about it, but have not utilized the principles. How can I utilize feng shui if I can't get organized enough to find the space?

Like I said before, the thing to do is to just DO IT. Will things "fall into place" as the saying goes??? I hope so. Back to the act of doing the work. It's all fine & dandy if I sit here blog about it, about the work that I must do, want to do, or actually do. DOING it is the most important thing, however. So I'll finish up the day by cleaning up the dining room table that I have EVERY REASON TO CLEAN UP, now that my taxes are done. Wish me luck with the feng shui!!!!!!!!!