Question: “Should I put my music on LOTS of websites, or just a few?”
Answer: Lots. Here’s why:
Millions of people love Rhapsody. They get all of their music at Rhapsody, so if you’re not there, and they search for you, they will shrug and listen to something else instead. You might have just forever lost a potential new fan.
Millions of people love last.fm. They get all of their music at last.fm, so if you’re not there, and they search for you, same thing. Oh well.
Same with iTunes. Same with eMusic. Same with a dozen different sites.
For me, last year, it was Yahoo Music. I had this amazing little Sansa Connect that was hard-wired to work only with Yahoo Music. I loved this little device and it’s where I did all of my listening.
When someone would say, “Hey you should check out Joanna Newsom,” (for example) I’d search for her, and there she was. Cool! I love it. I’m a huge fan now.
But if someone told me to check out an artist, and they weren’t found on Yahoo Music, well… hm… I’d mean to check them out, but usually wouldn’t get to it, since this little Sansa Connect player was glued to my ears full-time.
Since the moment passed, I forgot their name.
I’ve met many people who are this same way with Last.fm or Rhapsody or iTunes or MySpace or… whatever. (Alas, Yahoo Music Unlimited is no more, and my Sansa Connect is now worthless.)
Point is : just tell your distributor to do them all. There’s no reason not to.
Being un-available on one will not necessarily drive people to leave their favorite music site and go search for you somewhere else. There’s a good chance they might just shrug and forget.
People often asked, “How much does the average artist on CD Baby sell?”
Others would take the numbers on the “about” page and divide them: $85 million paid out to 250,000 available albums = $340 earnings per album. Now we know how much the “average” album sells!
Problem is: the numbers are right but the answer is wrong because it groups together two completely different types of approaches to an album release, giving an inaccurate average for your type.
For some artists, releasing an album is like the starting line in a race. The gun goes off! They work it! They spend hours a day pushing, promoting, selling, striving. For the next few months, they never stop. Reaching new people by any means necessary, whether playing live for strangers in strange venues many times a week, or joining new communities online.
For those types, I’d say the average income (through my one little store) was $5000. (And 50 of them earned over $100,000 each.)
But for many artists, releasing an album is like the finish line in a race. They’ve always wanted to make a record. They did it. It’s done. They give some for free to friends and family, and glow in the compliments. They might do a record release concert and make a website, but in terms of effort spent, they’re done. (Sometimes from satisfaction, but sometimes from entitlement: “Now that my brilliant album is done the world will recognize my genius!”)
For those types, I’d say the average income was $20.
The people who would ask about the average were usually artists trying to predict how well they would sell on CD Baby.
Because 50% of all sales on CD Baby were returning customers just browsing for new music, it was possible to sell a few albums without doing anything at all.
But the important thing is it’s up to you which kind of approach you want to take.
I’m so glad Roger Ebert is reviewing again. If you’ve only thought of him as the “thumbs up” guy, I hope to change your mind.
I feel like I’ve been in part-time film school with him since 1994, when I started reading his wonderfully-written in-depth reviews of every new movie released, every Friday on his site.
His analysis makes movies richer, always calling my attention to finer aspects of a film I never would have noticed. Here’s an example from his review of Dark City:
Sometimes during the shot-by-shot analysis, we simply froze a frame and regarded it. Some of the street scenes echo paintings by Edward Hopper or Jack Vettriano. This is not only a beautiful film but a generous one, which supplies rich depth and imagination and many more details than are really necessary to tell the story. Small wonder that the name Bumstead appears, perhaps in honor of Henry Bumstead, one of the greatest Hollywood art directors. The world created by the Strangers seems borrowed from 1940s film noir; we see fedoras, cigarettes, neon signs, automats, older cars (and some newer ones — the world is not consistent).
Proyas likes deep-focus compositions. Many interior spaces are long and narrow. Exteriors look down one street to the vanishing point, and then the camera pans to look down another street, equally long. The lighting is low-key and moody. The color scheme depends on blacks, browns, shadows and the pallor of the Strangers; warmer colors exist in human faces, in neon signs and on the billboard for Shell Beach. “I am simply grateful for this shot,” I said in Hawaii more than once. “It is as well-done as it can possibly be.” Many other great films give you the same feeling — that their makers were carried far beyond the actual requirements of their work into the passion of creating something wonderful.
That last line applies to Ebert as well. He is so passionate about appreciating films that his reviews go far beyond requirements, always insisting on a thorough insightful review.
Proof of passion: his tough battle with thyroid cancer kept him in the hospital for most of the last few years. His every-Friday reviews stopped. My 12-year-old weekly ritual stopped! But even though he can never speak again, his written reviews have started again a few weeks ago, as great as ever, which is why I’m posting this now. This man lives for movies. Read his Wikipedia page for more details about his personal life, if interested.
Bookmark The Great Movies, where he writes deep reviews of the most important films of all time. Read through some every time you’re thinking of renting a movie or adding to your NetFlix queue. Your life will be richer because of it.
Bookmark his new movie reviews, for those times when you’d like to head out to see a movie. You’ll often disagree with him about fun, dumb entertainment, but his reviews can always call your attention to something new.
After reading The Art of Learning, I was thinking of mastery : committing yourself to years of achieving mastery of one single thing.
My first thought was computer programming, but that didn’t feel fulfilling enough. I enjoy it, but only as a means to a different goal.
Then I realized the thing I could really commit myself to a lifetime pursuit of mastery is entrepreneurship. It satisfies me on every level - much more for personal and altruistic reasons than financial.
But - what the hell is mastery of entrepreneurship? Starting one successful company? Ten? Or is it something else entirely? There’s no championship, no finish line, especially since happiness is a crucial barometer.
And if entrepreneurship is about creating a new company, then focusing on that means starting a company, getting it to proof of success, but not getting involved with ongoing management, since management is a different skill. The focused entrepreneur should then start a new company.
The Art of Learning talks a lot about mastering the simple skills one at a time (“making smaller circles”).
In his chess examples, he would spend weeks competing with his teacher with only 2 pieces on the board, to thoroughly understand strategy with just those 2 pieces.
In his Tai Chi examples, he would spend hours a day for days or weeks on end, just doing one simple arm extension.
But what are the building block ingredients to entrepreneurship? Coming up with ideas? Turning rough ideas into a specific written plan? Turning plans into a working system and specific goals? Working with people to ensure those goals are met?
Sorry I’m all questions and no answers today, but I’m really curious to hear your thoughts. Please leave any thoughts in the comment box, below. Thanks!
Have you noticed how a small action can change your self-identity?
Last week when I was learning scuba diving in Iceland, I took a snorkeling trip to my dive spot first. The snorkelers did everything the divers did, minus the tank and weights.
So a week later, when I returned to dive for real, I felt a little like an assistant teacher. I was helping the other tourists who had never been there before, showing them where to go, and helping them rinse their masks.
Even though the day before, I wasn’t very confident about my diving skills (I had just got my scuba certification that day), taking on this role of assistant-teacher made me feel a bit like an expert. By the time I got in the water, I was confident and excited. (An hour later, I helped a panic-stricken diver get to the surface, really cementing this feeling.)
I think back about the other tiny actions that changed my self-identity.
When I joined the circus at 18, I was unable to sleep in moving vehicles, so I became the designated driver of the circus truck. Having this role made me feel in charge, so I acted in charge, so I became in charge. After used to being the leader in this small way, I ended up being band-leader of all my bands after that, then starting my own company. It just felt like, “Well, that’s who I am,” but how much of that was due to a decision to drive the circus truck?
When I was 22, my girlfriend’s hippie parents (and the book Island by Aldous Huxley) inspired me to quit my safe and happy job at Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, and to never have a job again. I was now an entrepreneur, committed to creating a living from my own ventures.
Hm, well, maybe that last one wasn’t small, but the one action of quitting my job became some kind of proof that I’m the type that avoids my comfort zone to step into the unknown.
Recently, when I quit my company and was riding a scooter around Vietnam, a long-lost friend called out of the blue. When I told him what I was doing he just said, “Yep. That sounds like you!”
Based on what?
A series of small actions I’ve taken along the way, I guess. I could have just as easily made a single different decision earlier at 17, and be married with kids teaching guitar lessons in Chicago quite happily.
Talking to a beautiful stranger.
Helping someone in need.
Starting a band.
Like those life-changing coincidences - (how did you meet your spouse?) - taking a small action can snowball into huge changes that create a new you.
I just spent a few weeks in Iceland, and here’s what I found interesting:
Mossy Lava
If I had to describe the landscape in only two words: “mossy lava”.
Much of the country looks like the lava had just recently dried, cracked open, and grew some moss. Endlessly fascinating. This little video doesn’t show it well enough:
Everyone under 30 is in a band
This is a phrase I heard often: “Everyone under 30 is in a band,” or is doing something creative and artistic in some way.
I never found out why it has such a creative culture, though if you’ve got any good explanations, please let me know, because I think it’s fascinating how this became the norm.
A few musicians I met with said peer pressure challenges you to do something unique, like being in art school. Nothing really felt like it was being done for commerical gain. Just creativity for its own sake.
Very comfortable life
Though Iceland is about the same size as Britain, it has only 320,000 people, as compared to Britain’s 58 million people. People kept saying, “Everyone knows everyone here,” or, “It’s a small-town life.”
Iceland is one of the safest places you’ll ever go. My first day, in a crowded bar, I saw 5 guys leave their table to step outside for a smoke, and one of them left his expensive iPhone in the middle of the table, unattended for 15 minutes. When I mentioned this to my friend, he said, “Oh that’s how you show that you’re coming back to that table.” When I said, “But someone might steal it,” he laughed and said, “This is Iceland!”
I heard many stories from people who had never locked their car or door. Someone told me that in the town he grew up in, they’ve asked people to stop leaving their keys in the ignition, only because a drunk teen recently took someone’s car out for a joy-ride and got pretty hurt.
According to the Human Development Index, Iceland has the highest level of economic and civil freedom and is the “most developed country in the world”.
The ground is about to explode!
Everywhere you go, little holes in the ground are steaming or bubbling. A constant reminder how volcanically and geologically active this island is.
See this video for an extreme example. (The geysir hits me at the end, and it’s damn hot!)
Ancient letters þ and ð
When my ex from Sweden heard someone speaking Icelandic, she was fascinated. She said it was “the ancient tongue”, like a 1000-year-old precursor to Swedish. She could make out some words. Turns out this is because Icelandic is a mostly-unchanged version of ancient Norse language, since they were isolated on this distant island, whereas Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian all came from Old Norse but changed over the years.
Even now, they develop new vocabulary based on native roots instead of borrowing from English.
Icelandic also uses some ancient letters no longer used in any other language:
, called “thorn” (þorn, really), looks like a p, but it’s pronounced “th” as in “thing”.
, called “eth”, a d with a line through it, is pronounced “th” as in “the”.
Everyone in Iceland speaks English with a gorgeous accent with rolling “r”s. Many also speak basic Danish in a way that’s understood by Swedes and Norwegians.
No family names!
Remember in Lord of the Rings, how everyone would introduce themselves like, “I am Gimley, son of Gloin” or “I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn”. Well in Iceland, that’s what their names really say!
If your name is Sarah and your dad’s name is Eric, your name would be “Sarah Erics-daughter” and your brother Jeff would be “Jeff Erics-son”. Get it? (The actual spelling would be Ericsdóttir and Ericsson.)
Since there are no family names, you do not have the same last name as your parents or even other-sex siblings. Because of this, everyone is called by their first name, even politicians.
An interesting contrast from Japanese and many other cultures where people are known by their family name. Read more at Wikipedia.
Family-focused, redefined…
My friend’s wife told me about her 5-year-old son with a previous boyfriend, current daughter with current husband, and she said she has two siblings each with different fathers, concluding, “This is very Icelandic.” Sure enough, my friend told me his family’s story is about the same.
I had read a New York Times article about this last year, so I was prepared for it. Single mothers are very normal. Many women have a baby with a boyfriend, with no pressure to get married, then may often have another baby later in life with a longer-lasting relationship.
That said, it felt like such a family-friendly place. Maybe it’s the safe-and-cozy feeling the whole country gives, but it feels like a great place to raise a kid.
Waterfalls
Of course with so many glaciers, there are waterfalls everywhere. Here are a few I saw in one single day. Of course I’d always run to the bottom to see how close I could get, and always got completely soaked from the mist.
Crystal clear water
The water that comes out of the faucet in any building is some of the best spring water in the world.
Tourists over the last 10 years started asking for bottled water, to which the Icelanders would have to explain that tap water is cleaner than bottled water : putting that perfect water into a plasic bottle would make it worse! Eventually they relented and started putting the tap water into plastic bottles for the tourists at a huge markup and hopefully a good laugh.
Most of the hot water for Reykjavík (the biggest city) comes from the big lake an hour away, where the water is heated with geothermal/volcanic help, and piped into everyone’s homes, already hot. Instead of a water-heater in the home, like most of us are used to, they have a water-combining device that combines the super-hot incoming water with the separate pipe of cold water, to make usefully-hot water for showering and washing.
Now when I saw that lake, the water was so freakishly clear that you could see 20 meters down just standing by it, so I knew I had to go in….
Scuba!
The American continental plate and the Eurasian continental plate meet in that clear lake, and you can go scuba diving in the 20-meter (60-feet) deep fissure between the plates.
Though the water is an icy 2-4 degrees C, and I didn’t know how to scuba dive, I knew I wanted to go in, so I took lessons for a week (also in icy water!), and did my very first dive in this fissure.
At one point, it’s so narrow I could put one hand on America and one hand on Eurasia. Very cool. A little video of the before-and-after of my first dive is here:
Jökulsárlón: the iceberg lagoon
Finishing with the most breath-taking thing, Jökulsárlón is the name of the place where the biggest glacier reaches the ocean. The water makes huge icebergs break off the glacier, but they’re trapped in a lagoon with a narrow entrance out to sea, so you can take a little boat through hundreds of these amazing blue-white icebergs.
Talk I gave to incoming first-year students at Berklee College of Music today (September 5, 2008)
#1 : Focus. Disconnect. Do not be distracted.
My favorite part of the movies is the training sequence, where a young Bruce Wayne, Neo or Kung-Fu Panda goes to a remote location to be trained relentlessly, nonstop, past all breaking points, until they emerge as a master.
The next few years can be your training sequence, if you focus.
Unfortunately you’re not in Siberia. You’re surrounded by distractions.
You’re surrounded by cool tempting people, hanging out casually, telling you to relax.
But the casual ones end up having casual talent and merely casual lives.
Looking back, my only Berklee classmates that got successful were the ones who were fiercely focused, determined, and undistractable.
While you’re here, presidents will change, the world will change, and the media will try to convince you how important it all is.
But it’s not. None of it matters to you now.
You are being tested.
Your enemy is distraction.
Stay offline. Shut off your computer. Stay in the shed.
When you emerge in a few years, you can ask someone what you missed, and you’ll find it can be summed up in a few minutes.
The rest was noise you’ll be proud you avoided.
Focus. Disconnect. Do not be distracted.
This is your #1 most important challenge. If you master focus, you will be in control of your world. If you don’t, it will control you.
#2 : Do not accept their speed limit.
You don’t get extreme results without extreme actions.
Berklee classes set a pace the average student can keep.
If you want to be above average, you must push yourself to do more than required.
There’s a martial arts saying, “When you are not practicing, someone else is. When you meet him, he will win.”
If you are a writer, you should not only write a song a week, but spend twice as long improving it as you do writing it.
Inspiration is a good start, but it’s the diligence to make every note and every word perfect, that will really set you apart.
Luckily, when I was 17, a few months before starting Berklee, I met a man named Kimo Williams who used to teach at Berklee and convinced me that the standard pace is for chumps.
In just 3 intensive lessons, he taught me 3 semesters of Berklee harmony, so on opening day I started in Harmony 4.
In one intensive lesson, he taught me the whole semester of Arranging 1.
Then I learned I could buy the book for a course I wasn’t enrolled in, and do all the examples myself, without even needing to attend the class. I could approach the department head and take the final exam for full credit. I did this for all the other requirements like Arranging 2, and traditional counterpoint classes.
I graduated Berklee in 2-and-a-half years.
Do not accept their speed limit.
Blow away expectations.
#3 : Nobody will teach you anything. You have to teach yourself.
When I first arrived at Berklee, I was disappointed. My teachers weren’t teaching me. I almost dropped out.
I went home to Chicago and got accepted to Northwestern University. Then I realized their music program was more about memorizing the name of Bach’s many children.
So I came back to Berklee with gusto. I decided to squeeze every bit of knowledge out of this place. Nobody was going to do it for me.
Do not expect the teachers to teach you.
They will present some information to you, but it is entirely 100% up to you to either make the most of it, or waste your time here, and go home and get a normal dumb job.
Berklee is like a library.
Everything you need to know is here for the taking.
It’s the best possible environment for you to master your music.
But nobody will teach you anything. You have to teach yourself.
#4 : Learn from your heroes, not only theirs.
When I was here, I wanted to be a great songwriter, among other things.
Berklee’s songwriting courses are amazing! I learned so much about song crafting that made me look at all of my favorite music with a whole new insight, and forever improved my own writing.
But… I remember a lyric writing teacher saying a good lyric needs to use all 5 senses. He’d say, “Don’t just mention your grandmother. Describe the veins on the back of her hands. Don’t just mention a bedroom. Describe the smell of the dust on the curtains and the sound of the creaky stairs.”
So for years I thought every lyric I wrote was crap unless it described all 5 senses.
Then finally I noticed that my favorite songs by Nirvana or Talking Heads were abstract collages of evocative nonsense.
My favorite glitchy electronic music by Björk is nothing they’d ever teach in a Rock Arranging For Live Performance 1 class.
So I finally realized the one important point I missed while here, that I hope you don’t forget.
The teachers are taking their favorite music and using it to teach you techniques.
Learn and appreciate those techniques. They’re great.
But if you only learn the techniques they teach you, you’re only learning their favorite music.
Never think their heroes are better than yours.
You’ll hear a lot about the greats, but whatever you love is great, too.
The same way they will break apart a Shania Twain hit song or a classic Charlie Parker solo to teach you the craft inside, you must learn how to break apart your favorite music and analyze it.
I finally analyzed my favorite Nirvana and Talking Heads lyrics. Finally analyzed the glitches and growls in Björk’s music.
Distilled their ingredients for my own re-use.
Learn from your heroes, not only theirs.
#5 : Don’t get stuck in the past.
While at Berklee, I felt I had to learn Donna Lee, the old bebop jazz standard, to be a good musician.
Got a great gig going to Japan for a month with Victor Bailey on bass.
Here’s one of the best bassists ever, who’s played with Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Sonny Rollins, Sting, and more.
He heard me playing Donna Lee a bit, and said, “Man - jazz was all about inventing something new. For a musician 50 years later to be stuck in the 1950s would be like a 1950s musician being stuck in the 1900s. There’s nothing cool about that.”
A couple weeks later I was at the piano quietly working on one of my own songs, and for the first time he said, “Hey - wow - what is that? That’s great, man. Can you show me?”
Innovation is needed more than imitation.
Don’t get stuck in the past.
#6 : When done, be valuable.
While you’re here, stay locked in the shed.
Enjoy this wonderful isolation, with no responsibility but to improve yourself.
But when you leave here, head to the business aisle of the bookstore and start reading a book a week about entrepreneurial things like marketing.
Never underestimate the importance of making money making music.
Let go of any weird taboos you have about it.
Money is nothing more than neutral proof that you’re adding value to people’s lives.
Making sure you’re making money is just a way of making sure you’re doing something of value to others.
Remember that this usually comes from doing the things that most people don’t do.
For example : how much does the world pay people to play video games? Nothing, because everyone does it.
How much does the world pay people to make video games? A ton, because very few can do it, and lots of people want it.
…
Be one of the few that is clever enough to make money making music instead of pretending it doesn’t matter.
Be one of the few that has the guts to do something shocking.
Be one of the few that takes your lessons here as a starting point, and pushes yourself to do more with what you learn.
Be one of the few that knows how to help yourself, instead of expecting for others to do it for you.
Be one of the few that does much more than is required.
And most importantly, be one of the few that stays in the shed to practice, while everyone else is surfing the net, flirting on MySpace, and watching TV.
, called “thorn” (þorn, really), looks like a p, but it’s pronounced “th” as in “thing”.
, called “eth”, a d with a line through it, is pronounced “th” as in “the”.
