How to Make it in the Music Business Today - An insider's Guide to the Cold Hard Realities! Part 1 of 3

I get at least 1 new singer or rapper each month asking me for advice or help with their music career. I love to help when I can but there are some basics that today's aspiring musicians need to know and do before they approach anyone who might want to help.

So as someone who was successful in the music industry for 2 decades and having worked with top artists including Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney as a songwriter and having worked as a record and publishing executive and having signed thousands of songs and worked as a music supervisor on many Hollywood films and TV shows, I offer some key information and things to think about for new and aspiring artists. Please take notes because this stuff is really valuable.

I am braking this post up into two parts to give you time to think about things in between. You might decide that the business is not for you and perhaps you do want to be that mailman instead (it might pay better and there is a pension). OK, here we go!

1. This is a business about creativity and you should be as creative (and good) as possible. If you work with samples and 4 bar loops you have killed at least 50% of your creativity. So, the other 50% better be amazing. If you are younger than 30 years old and trying to make it please remember, 90% of the great music was produced before you were born (If you think I am wrong about this then you are an idiot).

So you need to do some musical homework and see what music stars were putting out that built the industry that you are trying to be a part of at the moment. If you listen to the music greats, you will find that hardly any of them sound like each other. they all knew music so you should learn music. Take music classes at your local community college or learn to play an instrument. All led with their MUSICAL creativity and this key fact (and the fact that they were talented) got them both rich and famous for decades.

If you idea is to buy the latest AKAI or Maschine production box and becoem the next David Guetta, Calvin Harris or Avicii, good luck with that. First of all , they got lucky and they had good timing. You can count on neither, so stop spending so much time playing video games, take a damn music class and get good at MUSIC, not twisting knobs. By the way, it will take you years to do this and it is called commitment. So you had better start now.

2. The business has been in a decline for more than a decade and is still going down. Yes, I hear what lying ass companies like Spotify are saying about the music industry coming back, but they are only marketing themselves. These streaming companies make no money and the artists on them make less. here is what you need to know. Taylor Swift the biggest artist in the world sued Spotify in 2016 because she was making no money. Here is some math for you. That year Ms. Swift made $75 million (I know wow right). Out of that total all of her streaming revenues from every source which meant billions of steams counted for less than $750K in revenue. Yes the biggest streamed artist in the world made less than $1 million from all of her streaming. Here is an article by Rodney Jerkins who has more music streaming then you will ever have read it now and I will wait: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/10/03/hit-song-justin-bieber-royalties/

Pick yourself up off the floor because there is more.

Spotify (the savior of the music industry is going public next month and they had to release a lot of information they wish they did not have to but here is what they had to tell us: https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/spotify-will-trade-shares-on-the-new-york-stock-exchange-under-the-ticker-spot.html. Yes they lost $1.5 billion dollars LAST YEAR with 71 million subscribers. And the two worse parts of their information reveal is that they do not see an end to their losses and tell investors to expect that they might never be profitable.

HUH? They have a valuation of $23B and may never turn a profit? One thing you can be sure of is that the more they lose, the more they will steal from artists. (I have talked with their higher ups by the way and they are clueless). You should also know that the major record companies all own stock in the company which is why they do not care that their artists are getting screwed, they only want their shares in this gigantic scam.

So as I said in the beginning, the ship has sunk and there is no help coming in the foreseeable future. (any blockchain solution is at least a decade away which will be longer than your music career by the way, so forget about that). You need to understand why this happened when everyone loves music so much and what you can reasonably expect when you go into the business and get signed by a label.

So what you have to do is the following: Screw all of these guys. Follow guys like McLemore or Ryan Leslie. https://shift.newco.co/ryan-leslie-shifts-the-connection-between-artist-and-fans-9986b2487be3

In other words do your own thing and count on yourself to generate you audience and money from your music. As an exercise, create 5 alternative ways for yourself to get your music out to the public besides the major record labels. Start down the path of these 5 ways immediately. If you do not do this, you will never make it in the music business. If you are not this creative or business minded, find someone who is and who believes in you or you are going NOWHERE!

3. If no one in your immediate circle has ever had success in the music business, the odds of you being successful are almost zero. Period. Yes I know about American Idol and the other TV shows discovering unknowns, but most of these people do not ever make it and compare the three or four people who do to the 5 million trying to make it and it still amounts to playing the lottery.

So, you must find some experienced people who will get behind you and get them on your team.Do everything and anything you can to do this. Go to music conventions, send e-mails. Kiss butt (I do not mean literally), but get them on your team. It is a requirement. Oh yeah and when you get them ask for their advice, and then listen to them. Here is a sobering fact: If you cannot get anyone interested, you are not talented enough to make it in this business. Period.

This concludes part 1 of your rude awakening. You can ask any questions in the comments below. Parts 2 and 3 get really serious.