Musicians Are Never Just About The Music
from the welcome-to-the-modern-world dept
Recently, I wrote about how musicians need both good music and marketing to be successful. That was in response to Bob Lefsetz' recent complaints that too many musicians with neat business models these days seem too focused on the marketing side, rather than promoting the music. But I think it's unfair to play down the importance of the marketing side. While not specifically jumping into that discussion, Hypebot's Bruce Houghton is making a very similar point by debunking the myth that there was some era when musicians could just focus on being musicians:I'm sorry if this comes as a surprise, but it has never been enough to just make great music. Every generation of musicians has had to face their own challenges which forced them to go beyond creation and recording.
Frank Sinatra made movies to reach a bigger fan base. Elvis's hips and haircut were as much a part of his success as his recordings were. David Bowie learned that image and imagery could propel him to greater heights. After Saturday Night Fever, dance steps helped propel many live shows and for a time MTV made being visual an important component of success.
Whether it's getting in a van and giving an endless string of memorable performances or sitting on the phone for hours talking to journalists, there have always been skills beyond just making music that, if not required, certainly made success more likely
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Re: Classical Composers
Those composers were no doubt *very* concerned with making sure their patrons remained happy with them (not to mention having to make a name for themselves in the first place in order to *attract* those wealthy patrons).
So, no, it wasn't just about the music even then. Although note that those composers weren't in the business of selling music - they were in the business of selling the service of creating *new* music at a patron's behest. Each new piece then acted as an advertisement of their abilities in seeking their next patron (or in retaining the interest of their current one).
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No one's questioning what defines music. We're questioning what a musician has to do these days if they want to make a living in the music business.
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(it's not going to be answered anywhere to everyone's satisfaction, but the debate could be fun)
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It seems (to me at least) that it's the Audience that decides if it IS "Music" and not just some random collection of sounds. A person may have a desire to learn an instrument, to learn how to sing. They may have the desire and drive to perform.... but unless there are people willing to listen (paying or not) then I'd argue that it's not music that's being made, and if you're not making music, I don't think you can be called a musician.
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This isn't unique to the Music Industry
Being able to communicate effectively in sales calls, being able to negotiate price, contract, and payment terms, Being able to instill the confidence in the client that I can do what I promise, and being able to solve the customer's issue is all more important than producing good code.
I think that music is very similar. Making sure people have fun at your shows is more important than being a technically complex musician.
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Did you mean "producing the music" or "promoting the music"? "Promoting the music" doesn't make much sense in context with the rest of the sentence. Promoting music is not much different from marketing music.
However "producing" music sets up a contrast between the creation of music and the marketing of music.
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Despite so many people trying to get him to conform, he kept doing his thing and made lots of money for it.
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Of the names he mentions, only one ever depended on aristocratic patronage. Ives had a very successful insurance agency and made his music for himself in his leisure hours. Cage and Feldman have both received grants, but if you listen to their music, it will quickly disabuse you of the notion that they were ever trying to make sure their patrons were happy. Nor did they ever make music at their patron's behest.
Really, there have been musical artists who had honest to goodness integrity. Who were genuinely original. Who followed their muse wherever it led them.
It's just that no one really gives a shit about such artists. That's what makes the constant talk about 'originality' in the context of singer-songwriter X or hiphop act Y so fucking grating. No one really wants originality. They use the word in a positively Orwellian sense: to convince themselves that the pablum they consume isn't as vacuous as they know it really is.
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The Team
Otherwise I think you would too often end up with an unfocused strategy. Kind of like a guitar player trying to play drums. They could probably come up with some cool ideas, but a true drummer could turn that idea into a truly great performance.
I do think that artists have to be visionary and have a knack for this stuff themselves. But I also think achieving a significant level of success requires the pairing of a visionary artist with a visionary marketing team.
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I personally have little patience for musicians who feel they should only be pursuing their personal muse and that they should get paid for doing so. I also find those folks are generally not very good musicians. You have to listen to a lot of music and imitate a lot of music before your personal muse has much talent. I'd much rather jam with somebody who can play in a wide range of existing styles than someone who is busy following their muse.
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Well if they have a sense of entitlement then that is childish, sure. But if you have a vision, not a childish simulacrum of a vision, but a real live artistic vision, developed over years of training and apprenticeship and study, then setting that aside to write jingles might lead to unhappiness in the long run.
I mean, should Tolkien have written advertising copy, or was he better off following his muse?
"I also find those folks are generally not very good musicians. You have to listen to a lot of music and imitate a lot of music before your personal muse has much talent. I'd much rather jam with somebody who can play in a wide range of existing styles than someone who is busy following their muse."
This is a spurious dichotomy. You don't have to be a silly poseur to believe that there is more to art than making a roomful of drunks say 'that was great!'
And I agree, it takes years of work to have a muse worth listening to. Most people who claim to have one are lying. But not all of them are.
Anyway, sorry for the threadjack. Back to discussing business models for the new millennium.
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Maybe it's the love of the music...
Musicians that do it part time either aren't good enough at the business side, aren't good enough at the music side (or both), or aren't willing to sell out to let someone else handle the business side.
Those that sell out are, I think, viewed as being in it for the money. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but the integrity just isn't there. To some people the integrity is important, and I tend not to support artists that don't have integrity. (Side note: this isn't me making a judgment on these artists or their fans. If you like music that I consider to have no integrity, too bad for me. At least you enjoy it.)
The musicians that are good enough to do what they want either have a label behind them (that they have to fight with and make compromises with like doing ads or compilations) or they have to be their own manager and promoter.
Here's where I'm going with this long, rambling post: the title is "Musicians are Never Just About the Music." This struck a chord with me (bad pun, yay!) because I have this naive, fairy-tale notion of artists with integrity (I also believe in people who don't like to lie, zombies, AND unicorns!) Blah blah blah, point is that maybe the ones who are willing to make calls, schedule their own gigs, answer emails, blog comments, Twitter, Myspace, etc. (be their own manager) are the ones with the most integrity. So I guess what I'm saying is that these are the musicians that are MOST about the music.
For the tl/dr crowd: Maybe the musicians that act as their own label (do their own managing and promotion) are truly those that are most "about the music."
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The Real Tolkien (response to herodotus, Sep 18th, 2009 @ 5:16pm)
The hobbit material seems to have begun as bedtime stories while his children were growing up, and it was considered strange enough that publishers were not interested for a long time. He was able to pursue it because it was his spare-time occupation. At the same time, the hobbit books were based on Tolkien's deep knowledge of medieval literature and linguistics, the product of his "real" occupation. However, it was about thirty years before the hobbit books made him any appreciable sum of money. Many people have attempted to imitate Tolkien, the most recent being J. K. Rowling, but their work is generally second-rate because they are impostors. They are not really medievalists, they know no dead languages, they have made no contributions to the scholarship of the middle ages, and they are not really steeped in the requisite background.
(See: Daniel Grotta-Kurska, _J.R.R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle Earth_, 1976. )
In a very real sense, Tolkien was an amateur novelist. He worked at a level where no professional could have afforded to work. A professional writer would have needed to put something out, quick and dirty, to pay the bills. Granted, Tolkien had the advantage of timing. He survived the First World War, and about ninety percent of his contemporaries, the class of 1914, did not. Tolkien's war experiences formed a major element in his novels, of course. If the war had not come along, he might have wound up taking a job teaching in a good secondary school instead of a university. In that case, he might have spent a lot of time doing things like coaching sports. This would probably not have altered his underlying interests very much. At that date, there were lots of serious scholars who taught at secondary schools. He would inevitably have worked, first, on serious work, such as translating old manuscripts, building up dictionaries of dead languages, etc. The "playful" writing he did after that was done might have gone in different directions than it did.
A lot of the people here seem to want a short cut. They want the kind of literary or artistic success Tolkien achieved at the age of sixty, only they want it at the age of twenty. They don't want the kind of literary or artistic success which is a distant byproduct of mastering some high profession or other. They want a literary or artistic success which means that they do not have to be good at anything else.
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So much judgement
I wouldn't say Kurt Kobain possesses the same talent as Bach, but he is still a revered musician. Music is in the ears of the listener. Just as any subjective and relative truth, the majority rules. I'm not a great musician, but I love playing. I love learning more. When I meet someone who possesses a greater skill level, I seek to learn, not to compete. It bothers me when said musician takes a superior attitute towards my "inept" hands (or ears).
Despite the negative comments about "part-time" musicians, I play music for the joy of playing music. Perhaps, because I am not starving, I'll never be taken seriously, but having a "day job" that ensures relative economic stability is just as important to me as playing music.
Just my two cents.
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