Last week a friend of mine turned to me and not so politely asked, “why are those twins still in the show, they can’t sing and they just sent home a dope group”.

My response was simple, “it’s not a talent contest, it’s a popularity contest”, very much like the rest of the industry and all the other “talent” shows on Tv. How well you sing has little to do with your success. Success on the show is very much about how the audience responds to you and whether they are compelled to pick up the phone and vote on your behalf.

The magic of this is that through this process you build a star with an immediate fan base that already knows their story and has watched them essentially turn their life around, coming from usually humble beginnings to find “success” through hard work, determination and their ability to “sing” (entertain).

Your marketing has taken care of itself and all you then need to do is deliver the product (album, tours, merchandise etc) in a timely fashion to capitalize on the buzz.

We tend to think of viral growth as something new and recent. But really the internet has brought us the future by returning us to the past.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we haven’t had recorded music all that long relatively speaking. Way back in the past when fire and the wheel were our greatest innovations, music and stories were spread from person to person, only through people’s memories. If your mother sang you a song that you fell in love with, then you sang it your children and that is how the arts were shared.

Even now without realizing it, that is how things permeate through society. The items we purchase tend to be those recommended by someone we trust. We fall in love with music our friends love, and share it with others around us. We are not doing anything new, we are just doing it more efficiently and have gained the ability to more easily spread it to strangers in far away places.

Which means that as ever the key remains to be able to create compelling content that people will want to share and recommend.

Jon has worked with numerous clients at his studio such as BBC, Channel 4, Sony BMG, Rubicon Soft Drinks and American Express. He also produced 2007’s Ivor Novello award-winning song, “Elusive” by Scott Matthews. Currently, Jon is producing the soundtrack to the feature film, Nativity (out December 4th 2009) which stars Ashley Jensen (from Ugly Betty), Martin Freeman and Alan Carr. Having a man with such credentials give us his time was an honour and we hope you enjoy the podcast.

Part1 by rmxplay

Part2 by rmxplay
Part3 by rmxplay
Part4 by rmxplay

We recently came across a very talented singer on Youtube, Hannah-Rei. Unable to contain our excitement we decided that we had to work with her. Thing is, she is under a management contract and can’t work on any other recordings other than her own. Did that stop us from trying? No! In fact we fired up a unique demo and sent it to her management team.

Now most people tend to send a compilation of previous works and in the worst cases works irrelevant to the recipient. They simply burn a cd and send it to a record label address, hoping someone will pay attention. Nonsense. They will be lucky if anyone actually listens to the demo. The cd either goes in the bin, or the email is discarded as spam, especially if it is unsolicited.

Knowing this, we decided to create a demo with a twist. We took one of Hannah’s demo songs (piano and voice) and added full production to it!

Here is the original;

And here is our version;

After uploading the video on Youtube, we sent an email to her manager. This message contained the Youtube link to our fully produced version with details of the production services we could offer. A few days later, we got a positive reply. While we will not be working with Hannah anytime this year, there is potential to do so in 2010. Was the demo a success? Most definitely! Was it striking? We would like to think so. And here is why;

The 3 Steps

1. Differentiate

We did not simply send a cd or zip file of our previous works. That is boring. We took a demo, turned it into a fully produced song, synced it to Hannah’s original Youtube video, uploaded it onto Youtube, and then sent the link to both Hannah and her Manager.

2. Value

In our email to management, we offered the full version of our production demo at request. Even though they did not take us up on the offer, we were ready to provide the full version for them to use in any capacity, as long as we were credited. If there is no value in the demo, it is worthless. As an artist, you should create something such that the Gatekeeper will listen and think, “I can make a good return on this”. In other words, make sure it is damn good!

3. Gatekeeper

In the Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer brazenly says “if you can’t get in front of the real decision maker, you suck”. We exchanged messages with Hannah and found out she was under a management deal. Luckily for us, there was no real barrier to getting in touch with her Manager. Normally, you might have to do a bit of schmoozing with the gatekeepers (personal assistants, secretaries) to get through to the real decision maker. Or if you are smart enough, you might find ways to avoid them all together. The key is to get your proposal as close to the real decision maker as possible.

Quantity

Few people in the western world have heard of Sripathi Balasubrahmanyam. He is an immensely successful prolific Indian singer who has recorded more than 40,000 songs in the space of 40 years. That is roughly 3 songs per day, every day for 40 years. Remember when we spoke of mastery? Imagine the rate at which he developed while writing and singing everyday. A number of other prolific artists we can draw inspiration from include Mozart who wrote over 600 works during his life time (which unfortunately was only 35 years), Shakespeare who wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets, and Michelangelo who created 53 brilliant pieces of art that will never be forgotten.

But I am Not A Genius

The above characters were immensely gifted and created works that very few will ever be able to top. Mozart’s Symphony no. 41 for example was said to prove the existence of God! Talent and being gifted deserves a post of it’s own, thus for now let us concentrate on numbers. I stress prolificacy because like most things in life, success in the music industry can be, and often is a numbers game. And what is a numbers game? Persistence. If you shoot 100 basketballs at a hoop with the aim of scoring, you are likely score at least one. And the good thing about the music industry is that sometimes all you need is that one shot to get things rolling. So by producing as much content as you can and combining mastery with prolificacy, you increase not only your odds of success but also the magnitude of it.

What Can I Do?

Clay Collins wrote a brilliant post with a few pointers us creatives can try out to increase our prolificacy. Below is a summary of 3 key points drawn from his post which I feel are the most important in increasing output.

1. Habitualize creating music. Philip Guston, a renown painter once said, “I go to my studio everyday, because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don’t go and the angel came?”. So keep on creating, and at times where you lack inspiration, go to the studio anyway.
2. Fuel your creativity. To keep up the inspiration, attend live music shows, listen to fresh music, and draw inspiration from everywhere and anywhere. Are you going through a rough patch? Draw from that. Are you particularly happy? Draw from that. Are you mildly content with life? Write and sing about it!
3. Embody the artistic spirit. Accept that you are an artist and fully assume such an identity. Until recently, I shied away from thinking of myself as an artist (strange I know, but there are quite a few of us that think this way). All this did was leave me unfocused about the “singularity of purpose that can’t be present unless you’ve come to own your own creativity”, as Clay Collins mentioned in his post.

So, the general idea is that the more you can churn out as an artist the more likely you are to succeed right? No. You can’t take this concept in isolation and expect success. The strategies are to be used in conjunction with each other. Mastery alone will get you no where. Creating 1000 songs without having attempted to master the art of song writing will also get you no where. Do both however, and you are likely to get somewhere. Tune in next week, as we take a look at the catalyst that is Networking.

photo credits : featured picture by jared

Master Your Craft

A ball park figure thrown around by various authors (Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” and Csikszentmihalyi in a recent TED talk)  is 10,000 hours of effective practice. This is how much you should be ready to invest in your craft before acquiring the knowledge and expertise to really shine. That is 3 hours a day for 10 years! Are you hungry enough for such a commitment? For the virtuosos, making such a commitment is a no-brainer. Take Maxim Vengerov for example. A violinist who gave his first recital aged 5, he recounts his younger years as follows;

“My mother would get home at 8pm, cook dinner and then teach me the violin until four in the morning. As a four-year-old boy it was torture. But I became a violinist within two years.” Times Article

An important factor we must not forget however, is that of innate ability. Personally, I don’t believe in “talent” - the mystical and unattainable skill set, only granted down by the gods to select individuals who never have to work for it. What I do believe however is that within us, we all have unique and individuals callings. If Tiger Woods started playing basketball at the same age he started playing golf, yes he would be an amazing basketball player, but would he play like Michael Jordan? No. So there are numerous other factors to consider in the cultivation of true mastery. Namely, genetics, the environment, and the amount of mentoring available.

I Am A Musician, What Should I Do?

1. Find your “calling“.

You can usually find hints about what this is by asking yourself the following questions. What are you naturally good at? What do people (not just friends and family) say you are good at? In what activities does time seem to fly by quickly? As a kid, what did you gravitate towards the most? What, if you don’t do enough of, leaves you feeling a little empty inside? Once you know what your calling is, you may move onto the next step.

2. Dedicate at least 3 hours a day, everyday, to mastering your ‘calling’.

Whether that is making beats, writing songs, or mixing and mastering, put aside time to truly learn and develop your craft. I do understand that a lot of people may have personal commitments which make this impractical. For example I am still at University, and during term time, achieving such consistency is near impossible. However, we are now on a summer break and I am putting in well over 8 hours a day in various aspects of my endeavors (business & music) to make up for the lost time. Find ways to adapt. Thomas Edison for example resorted to power naps and a mere 4-5 hours of sleep a night!

3. Get a mentor.

This part is ignored by many when in fact it is just as important as the first 2 points. You may say there are no mentors where you are, but with the internet, you don’t need to find your way into Timbaland’s studio to be the next Danja for example. If you are a producer, why not enter beat competitions? I did this in my earlier years at illmuzik and it accelerated my progress. Perhaps not as much as having Dr. Dre by my side would have done, but had I not entered the competitions, there would have been no way of judging my skills and finding some objective measures of progress. This applies to singers and rappers as well. If you can’t find a mentor, enter as many competitions as possible!

Tune in next week for Part 2.

photo credits: guitar pic Luiza

The Game Has Changed

The future economy is yours for the taking no matter how small you may be. As we keep on saying here at RMXPLAY, technology has changed the Game. The small players now have an equal footing with the big corporate players. In the music industry this is already prevalent with independent artists such as Ronald Jenkees amassing hundreds of thousands of fans and over 10 million views on YouTube without any major label backing.

Indeed, the Game has changed. And what excites us the most is the fact that we are approaching a point where the corporates will no longer have monopolies all to themselves. Instead, we will have millions of quasi-monopolies, created by you and me, to cater to millions of niches across the world. eBay does exactly this. Take away the sellers who cover just about any product you could think of, and eBay has no business. 

Music Industry Effects

Musicians are in a great industry because it is already experiencing the above trend at full speed. The small players, you and me, we have an opportunity to create great products and sell them to people all over the world without any great barriers. The big players also have an excellent opportunity. By adopting the Long Tail principle as Amazon and eBay have done, they too can reap the rewards of this trend. 

Instead of signing a huge act for £1 million, the majors could sign 100 smaller acts who cater to various smaller niches and groups in the market. Independent musicians on the other hand should find their niche and focus on that as opposed to attempting to please every one. Trust me, out of 1 billion people, no matter how niche your music is, there will be a group of people that appreciate it. There is a niche for everything!

The Future

In 20^th century and before, people only trusted the large corporations because they were the only ones that had the capital required to deliver superior quality. Today, armed with an SLR camera and a copy of photoshop, you can create magazine quality prints in your bedroom; armed with a macbook and GarageBand, can create radio quality music; armed with an HD camcorder and iMovie, can create broadcast quality video. Superior quality can indeed be attained from home. This is the future.

So what?

The result of the above is the content outburst we are experiencing (Youtube, Flickr, Digg). This outburst has contributed to a new emerging trend; the need to “discover & share”. People more than ever, want something unique, something not so common. Something that no one has heard of but of which they can then take pride in “sharing” and being the “discoverer” of. This could be a quirky indie tv show like Awesome Town or a brilliant mashup of music by an unheard of musician  in Israel (Kutiman). 

The future is here and if you have something that is not only quality (because we have plenty of that now) but is also captivating, your idea or product/service spread like wild fire as a result of this emerging trend - “discovering & sharing”. All without need for a huge corporate arm to push and market it.

featured picture by sparktography

Dead or Alive?

I think it’s generally accepted that printed media is on it way out, and this trend is nothing new nor is it surprising. The ability for the internet to deliver the same news quicker and cheaper makes it hard to justify the value of printed media, let alone paying for it. Yet in 1999, the Metro newspaper launched, and by ignoring the generally accepted conventions of the industry has grown to be one of the largest in the UK with a circulation of over 1′300′000. The Metro is the UK’s 4th largest paper. What did it do differently?

Price Point (Free)

News on the internet is free, and as the old adage goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. Metro is given away for free, a price point that is hard to ignore for the traveling masses and even the least curious.

Distribution:

Rather than expecting people to venture out in search of their paper, the Metro brought itself to the people. By being distributed on buses, at train stations, as well as areas of high foot traffic. They created an efficient means for people to pick up the paper without the need for diversion from their routes to work.

Content:

Being free and easily available isn’t an instant recipe for success. The paper also had to deliver in content, which it did with it’s easily digestible blend of local, world, political and business news. Add to this human interest stories and sports coverage, as well as entertainment and gossip, and you have content that resonates with it’s readership.

The above elements combined to slot into an area in the lives of the readership - many of whom have nothing better to do while on a monotonous journey - and ultimately contributed to growth of the newspaper into a feature of morning commute.  

Lessons:

The 3 areas, price point, distribution, and content (quality of) are also areas that are immensely significant in the music business. Currently, as is the case with print media, they are in a phase of change due to technological advancement as well as new trends and changing consumer behaviour. 

Price

Can we learn anything from the execution of Metro? Can these lessons be applied to the music business? Well, price point has previously been covered by AfriqueDeluxe here. We are at a point where if people aren’t paying for your music you may find more value in giving it away for free.

Distribution

The question with distribution becomes how do we bring the music to the people? The infrastructure is already out there in the social networks and video sites available. They just have to be taken advantage of in every way possible; which many people are already starting to do. 

Content

The content issue remains the same and the difficulty, in a sense has increased as you are now competing with a much more open field. Myspace and Youtube are platforms that allow anyone to freely offer their music for consumption.

But unlike Metro, which is the only newspaper distributed for free (in most cities in the UK) and so has virtually no competition, you have a million other people offering their material for free aswell. To stand out you must have captivating material, not just gossip columns.

Further Reading:

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=42778

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jun/28/associatednewspapers.pressandpublishing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(Associated_Metro_Limited)

http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/index.php/2009/05/19/london-city-of-frees/

Ok here is something that might be fun. In the late hours of the night I decided to put together a quick beat and song. But since I am a horrible singer I thought why not get you guys to come up with something? Can we open source a song and write it like programers do software? I don’t know how it will work entirely but for now here is the song. Record a verse on youtube, and leave a video response. Leave comments about ideas for the song, lyrics, arrangement, whatever. Let us try to make a hit as a collective!

DOWNLOAD HERE