The year was 1989. I was a Sophomore in High School, 15 years old, attending “The Chicago Academy For The Arts”. The Chicago Academy For The Arts is Chicago’s version of New York’s Fame. An arts high school where all the students who attend, major in one of four things; Visual Art, Dance, Theater or Music. I went as a music major and it was a magical year for me that in many ways helped shape the person I would become.
In the mornings at the Academy we took our core required classes. English, History, Math and so on. Then, we would break for lunch. It was an “open campus”, so we were allowed to leave the campus for an hour to eat where ever we wanted, which was extremely liberating to my 15 year old self. Then, we would all return and spend the rest of the day taking classes in our chosen field of study. I had guitar lessons, music theory classes, ear training classes and so on. It was an incredibly inspiring and informative year. When I was at the Academy, I became friends with someone who would become my first songwriting partner, and ultimately a life-long friend, Mike Malone, or as his friends refer to him, MJ. MJ and I would spend countless weekends together making music, during the one year I attended the Chicago Academy For The Arts and for a couple years after. We would hole ourselves up in MJ’s home studio for the weekend and stay up until the wee hours of the morning working on music together. We wrote and collaborated on dozens of songs during this year. These songwriting weekends were magical times. Music was still relatively new to me at that point. I had only been playing guitar a few years and I was brand new to songwriting. I was filled with a sense of wonder and awe about music that perhaps only someone who had recently discovered music can feel. This was long before the days of worrying about how to make money from music and long before the days of trying to write specific styles that have the greatest chance of “commercial success” and so on. These songwriting weekends were simply about making music for the sheer joy of making music. Nothing else. Sure, we would sometimes fantasize about how rich and famous we would one day become, but ultimately, we were just two friends getting together to share our passion for music in the purest way possible. After my sophomore year in High School I chose to attend my local public High School where I was living in Kanakee, IL. You see, I lived about 50 miles south of Chicago and as much as I loved attending the Chicago Academy for the Arts, I had grown tired of getting up at 5 am to get ready for the commute, getting home around 5 PM, or later, then proceeding to study and practice until bed time, go to bed and then get up and do it all over again. As much as I loved the experience, it was also pretty grueling. That, and I didn’t have any friends in the town where I actually lived, since I wasn’t attending school there. My family and I had just relocated to Kankakee, from Florida where I lived previously. I wanted to get to know people locally and finish my high school years making friends in the town I lived in. So, I made the difficult decision of deciding to switch schools and spent the next two years attending Kankakee High School. Ultimately it was a good decision and I ended up forming a lot of great friendships over the next couple years in Kankakee. I also continued to study and play music locally. But I missed going to the Academy and even would have dreams of being back there for the next year or so. It made that big of an impact on me. MJ and I kept in touch and we kept collaborating as often as we could for the next couple years. Then, after High School, I went to Boston to attend Berklee and we ended up drifting apart for a number of years. Quite a few. A good decade or so. We would occasionally call to say hi and catch up, but we didn’t really start hanging out again regularly until around 2006 or so. MJ had gotten married and had a child. I had lived in a few different areas over the years and by the time I resettled in Chicago again, in 2000, after having spent time in Boston and southern Illinois, I think we were just in different places in our lives. MJ and I have recently started writing and collaborating on music together for the first time in 30 years. Of course, MJ, has performed on many of my songs over the last few years, including on “hits” (to me) like “Headed Home”, "Falling Down", “Where We Were” and “Nobody Knows Us”, all of which have been licensed repeatedly. But this is the first time in three decades that we’ve been writing music together and we’re preparing to release an EP together in the Fall. We’re both excited to be working on music together again, and as a result of our collaboration we’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, in the studio and just hanging out as friends. My collaboration with my friend MJ has really gotten me thinking about the many friendships and relationships I’ve formed over the years as a result of playing music. In many ways, when I reflect back over the last couple decades, I feel like these friendships and connections with people have really been the greatest gift music has given me. Throughout both my adolescent and adult life, music has been the catalyst the has allowed me to form dozens of friendships and relationships with other musicians and people in the industry. Some of the friendships have lasted for a brief period of time, while we were performing or working together, others have lasted many years, and others, like my friendship with MJ, have come in and out of my life at different points. But music, consistently, has been the thing that gets me out of the house and motivates me to get out there and “make things happen”. Whether it’s the desire to get a band together, the desire to go into the studio and record new music, or even something as simple as going to play at an open mic, music has consistently been the magnet that has attracted many of my closest friendships and relationships over the years. As cliché as it sounds, life really is about the journey and not any particular destination. A big part of what makes a journey so enjoyable are the people we meet and connect with along the way. But the catch is, it’s hard to embark on a journey if you don’t have a specific destination in mind. So, set your sights high, and go for your dreams. Just don’t forget to enjoy and embrace the journey along the way. Because, chances are, when you look back on your life, from a future vantage point, it will be the journey you took to get to your desired destination and the people you met along the way that you cherish the most. Even the challenges and obstacles you overcome will be appreciated, if you overcome them with the right people. I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes, by Freud, which is: “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” Musically Yours, Aaron Davison
Speaking of the EP I’m working on with my friend MJ, here’s one of the tracks that will be featured on our upcoming EP. We’re calling our project "Zen Folks". Our music consists of spiritually themed lyrics with elements of folk, rock, new age music and more.
Listen to our first track, "Slip Away (North Light)" here.
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Back in December of 2017 my girlfriend of about two and half years, and I broke up, rather abruptly and somewhat unexpectedly. I’ll never forget that day. I went to a café a few blocks away from our apartment for a couple hours so she could move her things out of the apartment we were sharing together. I sat in a state of shock alone, drinking a cappuccino, as waves of grief, confusion, sadness and a tiny bit of relief that months of arguing had come to an end, washed over me.
I got a message from my now ex saying she was sorry things didn’t work out and that all her things were out of my place and that it was “safe” to go back. I went back to my place and opened the door to a now half empty apartment. A row of empty clothes hangers lined half of the closet, where a few hours earlier my girlfriend’s clothes were. All of her trinkets, photos and “girly” things that she spent months decorating our apartment with were now gone. There was a palpable sense of loneliness in the air, in my now sparsely decorated apartment. As I sat on my un-made bed, my acoustic guitar laid next to me, out of its case. I picked up my guitar and I played with a sense of intensity and purpose that I hadn’t felt in years. I played guitar as if my sanity and emotional well being depended on it. I played for about four to five hours straight. The more I played the better I felt. It felt as if I was “exhaling” my grief with each note I played. The phrases and ideas I played that night felt imbued with a sense of meaning and power I hadn’t felt in a long time. It’s hard to put into words exactly. All I know is by the end of the night, I had a strange sense of peace about things. I wasn’t over the breakup obviously, but I went to bed with a knowing that I would get through this experience and that, as they say, “this too shall pass”. Over the next few months, I returned to playing music with a vengeance. I regularly practiced guitar for several hours each day. Something I hadn’t done in many years. I played out every chance I could and developed a tangible sense of momentum, not just with songwriting, which I had never abandoned, but with my guitar playing and overall musicianship. This sense of progress and forward movement really helped me get through the next few months. It gave me something to focus on and channel my energy towards. It kept me busy and occupied. Whenever I had a free moment, or a feeling of boredom or loneliness, I would pick up my guitar and get lost in hours of improvisation and practice. The great thing about music, is that it will never leave you. It’s there in the good times. It’s there in the bad times. No matter where you are in life, or what you’re going through, if you’ve been blessed with a passion and gift of playing music, it’s always there. About six months after my ex and I broke up, I met my now girlfriend, Shantal, who is hands down, without question, the most stunning and beautiful woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending my time with. As my good friend Francisco always says, “Life has a funny way of working itself out”. John Mayer is one of my favorite contemporary artists. He’s both an amazing guitarist and songwriter. He writes great, catchy pop songs and also has the ability play long, extended, improvised guitar solos with “The Dead & Company”. He’s also really funny, witty and I’m going to say it, pretty damn handsome. It’s true, I have a bit of a man crush on John Mayer. Here’s John Mayer on a recent podcast explaining how whenever things are difficult in his life he always returns to his love of music. He describes playing the guitar as “hammering out the dents” in his psyche. I love that description. Whether it’s getting through a break up, making sense of the world around us, or simply celebrating the good times, music and our passion for music has the ability to help us transcend the ups and downs we go through in life. Music has the power to both save our lives and help save the lives of others. Here’s a song I wrote during my months as a single man in early 2018, about my ex-girlfriend. This one, as always, was produced by Gary Gray. We just signed this one to a publishing/licensing deal a few days ago.
I just finished a new song called “Breath Divine”, which I’ll be sharing below. It’s one of the more personal, introspective songs I’ve written in quite awhile. It’s about, you could say, the search for divinity, the search for something pure, something beyond the day to day monotony of life. Perhaps you could say it’s about the place “just beyond”.
I’m really excited about this song because I feel like I captured, or at least got a little closer to capturing, “that place” music has the potential to take you to. I put “that place” in quotes because I can’t fully put into words what I’m trying to say. I think that’s sort of the point of music, it allows you to express emotions and feelings that are beyond words and language. Music, you could say, transcends language. It reminds me of a scene in the documentary about the band Phish called “Bittersweet Motel”. A Phish fan was asked why he goes to see Phish and prefers to see them sober and responds, “There’s less restriction to “that place” you need to go to appreciate music”. The interviewer asks, “What’s the place?”. The Phish fan responds, “The place? It’s in your soul. That place”. Music takes you to "that place". As comical as this scene was to me when I first saw it, that about sums it up as well as I could. Music takes you to “that place” in your soul. I spend a lot of time writing about and doing courses and podcasts about things like licensing, music streaming and music marketing. I tend to focus on how to make money from the music we create. I plan to continue doing this, because getting our music out into the world and marketing our music services a very practical, necessary purpose. We need, as professional musicians, to learn ways to monetize and promote our music. This is the practical and realistic side of being a musician. We’ve got to pay those bills! I have a real passion for sharing what I’ve learned about the music business and helping other musicians get their music out there and make money from their passion. The world needs our music and if we as musicians don’t have the ability to earn a living from our craft, my fear is that fewer and fewer aspiring musicians are going to go into the music business in the first place, and fewer and fewer great songs are going to be shared with the world. So, it’s an important mission to me, because in a sense, the future of music is at stake. And you could, somewhat easily, argue that we’re already seeing the result of a music industry that has become harder and harder to make a living in. Most people I know would agree, that at least the music that is making its way into the “mainstream” isn’t what it used to be. It’s somewhat subjective and if I had the time I could easily write a very lengthy book on this topic alone. But let’s be honest, the mainstream music of today, compared to 20 or 30 years ago, it kind of sucks. And that leads me to the point of this blog. Which is that even though figuring out how to make money from music is an important part of the conversation, there’s an even more important element to all of this, that I sometimes don’t talk about as much as I’d like. I fear that there’s something that maybe gets a little lost in all of this talk about different ways to make money from music and the music business. And that is, simply the music itself. There’s a much more important side to music than just figuring out how to generate revenue from it. There’s a magical side. A mystical side. My guess if you’re drawn to making music, you sense this. You can feel it. There’s a reason we’re all so drawn to something that is in many way, a much more difficult and uncertain career path. Music feeds the soul. And I think we’re living in a time where the world needs great artists and creative types, perhaps more than ever. Let’s not forget that as we all continue forging our way “ahead” in the music business. Let’s not forget that our true mission as musicians is to touch people and move people in a way that only music has the ability to do. And yes, people may seem a little less likely to be moved by music these days, but perhaps that’s only because they need it now more than ever. Let’s not forget that there’s a “place” beyond making money and paying bills, beyond the man-made system of currency, credit and debt. A place beyond the day to day grind. Let’s not forget that music transcends all of these concerns. Don’t forget the power and magic of music. Don’t forget what it’s really about. Check out my latest song, "Breath Divine", below. [As always, a huge shout out to my producer Gary Gray for helping me bring my music to life. A great producer (like Gary), is like an extension of whatever band or project you’re in and he’s a huge part of helping me see my musical vision through and bringing my songs into the world.] Without further adieu, here’s my latest track, Breath Divine. I’ve got a short and sweet post for you today. I’m super busy behind the scenes here, but I wanted to check in with what hopefully will be an inspiring post. At the moment, my team and I are in the middle of relaunching our new premium site. We’ve completely revamped the look and feel of our site and it looks amazing. Go check that out here.
I’m more optimistic about the music business, the music I make and really just music in general than I think I ever have been. I’ve been hard at work over the last couple years or so really making things happen in both my personal and professional life and I’m starting to really see the fruits of that labor. Things are falling in place. I’m a big believer in that when you really want to make something happen AND you take consistent action towards realizing your goals and dreams, things happen. I don’t want to get to all “woo woo” and “new agey”, but I really feel that when you really want something badly AND you work hard towards making your goals happen, the universe responds. I’ve seen this play out in my own life and the lives of my friends, over and over. Like Paulo Coelho says in The Alchemist, “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” However, the key is that you really have to take action. You have to show both yourself and The Universe that you mean business. You can’t fake it and expect things to magically happen. You can’t just say you want something. It doesn’t work that way. You get back what you put out. I’ve had a good friend who has expressed interest in helping him get started in licensing for years. My friend’s dream since he was a teenager was to be the next “Jan Hammer”. I’ve encouraged and mentored him a lot over the years and have shared as much as I can to help him get started. I’ve even placed several songs of mine that he’s performed on in tv shows. I’ve gone out of my way to try and help him with his own music career over the years. He talks very passionately about wanting to make a career in music. I’ve explained to him everything I’ve learned over the last decade in the music business and what the path to success looks like. He seems super inspired when I speak to him. But yet, whenever I check in with him to see how things are going and how much progress he is making, I’m always met with a barrage of stories and explanations as to why now isn’t the right time for him to move forward. He seems to always set these arbitrary dates and times in the future when things will be aligned in his life in a way that will allow him to finally get serious about pursuing his dream of music. But things never seem to quite line up for him. Last week we had another one of our motivating talks about music and agreed to start collaborating more frequently. It seemed like we were both on the same page and ready to really start making things happen together. We agreed to start recording one song a week together. I even agreed to advance my friend some money with the condition that he would record his parts and send me his stem files by the end of the week. We had a crystal-clear agreement and I was excited to start moving forward. Sunday night about midnight I got the email that I was hoping I wouldn’t receive. His parts weren’t ready he said and probably wouldn’t be for at least another week or so. I received a three-paragraph email explaining all the reasons he couldn’t get his parts to me on our agreed upon time frame and how this was just “bad timing”. There was a noisy drunk neighbor, car trouble, a construction project, he had to move his equipment and so on. He even mentioned the “Polar Vortex” as a reason he wouldn’t be able to get the tracks done quickly. I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised. You see, I really think we as humans our great at talking ourselves out of things we say we want to do. We’re great at rationalizing why we’re not further in life and why now isn’t the right time. I do this myself from time to time. It’s easy to play the victim and blame circumstances and things out of your control. And yes, sometimes life does get in the way of our dreams and goals. Sometimes life really does present challenges and obstacles. But yet, after all these years of pursuing and creating a career in music and building my business over the last decade, I’m convinced the biggest obstacle we all face, is ourselves. For most of us, we are the thing that’s holding us back the most. Not our circumstances, or our individual lives, or where we live, or what we look like or how old we are. All of these things factor in of course. But the single biggest obstacle you will likely face in realizing your dreams and goals is YOU. You are the one who decides to write a new song, you’re the one who decides to record it. You’re the one who decides to try and sell it. You’re the one who decides to make the necessary connections. You’re the one who decides to make things happen. No one else. You are the one who decides to keep going in the face of rejection and setbacks. You are the one who decides if your music is worth pursuing and cultivating. You have the potential to either be your greatest ally, or your greatest obstacle. What's it going to be? I saw a documentary recently about the effects of solitary confinement. It was a pretty fascinating look into the human psyche and what makes us tick. I learned that just three days of solitary confinement has the potential to create irreversible brain damage. Being alone, with no way to interact and engage with our environment, is not just an unpleasant experience, but it’s an experience that in just a few days has the ability to actually cause permanent damage.
This documentary really blew away and also got me thinking. Why would this state of being create such agony and even potentially cause brain damage? What is it about being confined to nothing but our thoughts that creates such a sense of discomfort? Well, I’m not a philosopher per se and I’m certainly not a psychologist, but my own take is that it’s not so much that we’re uncomfortable confronting our inner most thoughts and selves, it’s that we as humans are designed to interact and engage with each other and the world around us. To go even deeper, I think we’re the happiest when we’re engaged in some sort of meaningful pursuit in the world. When we’re deprived of the ability to interact and engage with the world in a meaningful way (as in solitary confinement) we suffer, both mentally and physically. Neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp argues that of seven core instincts in the human brain (anger, fear, panic-grief, maternal care, pleasure/lust, play, and seeking), seeking is the most important. “All mammals have this seeking system”, says Panskepp, “wherein dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to reward and pleasure, is also involved in coordinating planning activities. This means animals are rewarded for exploring their surroundings and seeking new information for survival. It can also explain why, if rats are given access to a lever that causes them to receive an electric shock, they will repeatedly electrocute themselves”. The human desire to seek helps make sense of studies showing that achieving major goals, or even winning the lottery, doesn’t cause long-term changes in happiness. It’s not so much the fulfillment of goals we’re after, it’s the pursuit of the goal we’re really seeking, as seeking is itself a fulfilling activity. In other words, it’s the journey and not the destination. I believe this sort of innate desire to seek and create meaning in our lives is deeply connected to goal setting. We need to have aims in life, otherwise we’re just, well, aimless. If we have nothing at all to shoot for, we’re sort of just blowing in the wind, rudderless and without direction. Sometimes it’s nice to just sort of go with the flow and see what happens. I’ve had periods in my life where I wasn’t particularly goal oriented and was more just sort of open to seeing what life presented to me each day. There’s a time and place for this sort of open-ended exploration, and even when approaching life this way, we’re probably still interacting and engaged with the world, albeit in a less focused way. But over the long term, I find it more satisfying to have specific long-term goals I’m working towards. I find it simply helps orient my life better. It gives my life a structure and a framework. It helps to lay out a direction and clear path I need to take. It helps me avoid getting into ruts and feeling stuck. When I’m setting specific goals, for something like music let’s say, it helps dictate the way in which I’ll be interacting with the world. It lays out a self-evident course of action I need to take. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of how I’m going to spend my time. It orients me in the world. As an example, for 2019 I have the very simple and straightforward goal of creating more music. My main goal, in terms of music, is to simply be more prolific in 2019. I’m already licensing a certain percentage of my tracks and I have connections and people willing to help shop my music in place, so I know that if I do nothing else but focus on creating more music, I’ll be able to increase the income I generate from music. This one simple goal pretty much spells out how I’ll be spending a good percentage of my time this year. Of course, I’ll be recording more music, so I’ll be spending more time in one of several home studios I record in, working on laying down tracks. I’ll need more help on post production, in order to release more tracks, so I’ve recruited another producer to help with mixing and mastering a percentage of the tracks I release. And I’ll of course need to write more music, so I’ll be spending more time in my home studio, guitar in hand, writing and composing more music. When we have goals we’re working towards, it helps us engage with the world in a more meaningful and cooperative way. Very few goals can be achieved completely in isolation. Even something like music, which at least in theory can be done alone, requires team work and people working together to get out into the world. And of course, without an audience to listen and appreciate the music we create, it seems sort of pointless. If I could never share my music with anyone other than myself, I doubt I would be very motivated to create it. In the final analysis, having goals serves much more than just the practical purpose of helping us achieve our desires and make more money. Having and pursuing goals enables us to create meaningful and purposeful lives and stave off apathy and boredom, and in a literal sense, prevent brain damage. The next time you’re feeling complacent and procrastinating, imagine yourself locked in a completely dark room, completely cut off from the outside world, with only your thoughts to help you pass the time, for days on end. Then, when the inevitable wave of gratitude washes over you, as you realize that’s just a fleeting thought and not your actual situation, get back to work on reaching your goals. Your situation could be much worse. Let’s talk about passion. More specifically, let’s talk about passion for writing and playing music.
I’ve been a musician for a long time. I started playing guitar and writing songs when I was twelve. I played music all through high school. I studied music in College. After college I played in bands for a decade. For the last decade I’ve been writing and licensing music and playing shows pretty regularly. These days I feel as passionate about music as ever. In fact, I feel like I’m probably writing and performing better than I ever have. But, there have been times where my passion for music has waxed and waned over the years. There have been times when, to be totally honest, I wasn’t sure if I should keep pursuing music. There have been long stretches of time where it didn’t really seem like I was making much progress at all and I occasionally felt like giving up or just sort of putting music on the back burner. But, I feel like those periods of uncertainty are pretty firmly behind me these days. This last year or so in particular has been very exciting for me as a musician. I’ve had a lot of firsts in my career during this period; first song placed in a commercial (ABC Promo), first song placed in a video game (Catch & Release), first time I’ve had two of my vocal tracks placed in the same episode of a show (The Young And The Restless), my first track to surpass 100 different syncs, I wrote my first album of instrumental ambient guitar music and I launched the premium site for How To License Your Music. Sometimes I feel like, in retrospect, the periods that often feel like we’re stuck and not progressing, end up leading to the biggest breakthroughs and successes. In many ways 2017 felt like sort of a “stuck” year for me musically. It was a slower than usual year in terms of licensing my own music and I felt at times like I wasn’t making much progress. I was also struggling to balance the different plates I had spinning in terms of different business endeavors, in addition to my own music related goals. I wasn’t quite sure at the time, how it was going to all fit together. But looking back, I wrote and recorded a ton of music during this period, a lot of which ended up being licensed the following year and which I’m continuing to license. I also created the framework for what would eventually become How To License Your Music Premium, that I launched in January of last year. A lot of seeds that I planted in 2017 came to fruition the following year. I think it’s normal to experience periods of both contraction and expansion and at times it can feel like we’re not progressing, when often times we’re really just paving the way for good things to come. These periods when we feel like we’re not progressing, are the times when we have to just keep going and keep putting in the work. Trust in the process and know that eventually things will start to happen, if you persist. Sometimes we don’t realize how close we actually are to succeeding. Anything you do for long periods of time run the risk of leading to burnout and boredom if you’re not careful. Even the most passionate musician can end up feeling discouraged and can lose their drive, if they’re not vigilant about nurturing and maintaining their passion. Intense passion for music is sort of like the beginning of a romantic relationship. The initial honeymoon phase is the easy part, it’s what you do when those initial feelings start to fade that will make or break you, both in relationships and in music. Falling in love with music is the easy part, it’s sustaining that love and passion that takes work and commitment. With that said, here are 7 things that have helped me stay passionate about music all these years. Keep Growing And Evolving – Doing anything for long periods of time can get a little monotonous if you’re not growing and evolving. One of the keys to maintaining my interest in music has been learning and discovering different styles of music and trying different things. Last year I started writing instrumental, ambient tracks, which was completely new for me. A few years ago I spent three months in the Caribbean playing solo gigs on the beach, just me, a guitar and a mic. I’ve played with dozens of different musicians in a variety of different live situations the last few years. I’m always pushing myself as a vocalist and trying to grow in that area. For me, part of the fun of being a musician is the growth and the journey of improving, irrespective of any commercial success. There’s a part of me that just wants to grow as a musician first and foremost, regardless of whatever may or may not happen career wise. I think it’s vital to stay in touch with that part of myself and not get lost in simply chasing “success”. Of course, I want success too, success is exciting and rewarding, but ultimately the joy of being a musician for me, is really about the music and the process of growing as a musician. Be Persistent But Patient – The music business is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve been at this a long time, and like I said, there have been a few periods where I used to feel like just giving it all up. At some point along the way, I’ve figured out how to sort of detach from the outcome and just let things unfold however they unfold. I’m still dedicated and persistent in terms of creating music, pursuing projects and so on, but I’ve realized it makes little to no sense to stress or worry about what happens. To the extent that I actually am able to let go of worrying about how everything plays out career wise and just go with the flow, I’m much happier and at peace! The trick is to surrender to the flow. Focus on the things you can control and don’t worry too much about the rest. Take Breaks When Needed – I just got back from a two week vacation in the Caribbean. This was the first extended, legitimate vacation I took in quite some time. We value work in our culture, and we’re right in doing so, but we sometimes forget the power in stepping back and giving ourselves space to rest and relax and allow new ideas to emerge. I brought my guitar on this trip, but I actually didn’t end up playing it once. I sort of made a calculated decision to just give myself a break for a couple weeks from both work and music. As soon as I got home, I started playing again and wrote what I think is one of my best songs in a long time, my first night back from my vacation. I’m also back into the swing of things in terms of creating content for my website, podcast and so on. I’m not sure exactly what the right formula is in terms of work/life balance, but I’m completely certain that periods of rest and relaxation should be factored into our lives. In the same way that sleep is vital for our health, I think occasional vacations, or just periods of down time, is vital for our well-being, creativity and vitality. Find Your Niche – If your only goal related to music is to become a rock star and you feel like a failure if you’re anything other than a U2 or Shakira level success story, you could be setting yourself up for failure. You need to have goals, but they need to be goals that are motivating and inspiring, but also within reach. If you find yourself more stressed and miserable when you think about your goals than excited and pumped, there’s a good chance your goals aren’t quite right for you. I struggled with this for awhile, early in my career. I set my sights high, as many of us do. It was motivating for awhile but after a decade or so of grinding it out in different bands, hoping to “make it”, the thought of trying to become a rock star really started to feel off and incongruent. My original goal, that at one time was so exciting and invigorating, began to feel more like a source of frustration and pain. I had to reassess what I really wanted from music and the music business as I evolved and grew as a person and as the circumstances of my life changed. Develop A Routine – Having some sort of consistent routine is also important in order to maintain growth and momentum. If you’re only relying on making music when you “feel like it” and when inspiration strikes, you could very well be inadvertently stunting your growth. We all have periods where we’re more excited about making music than other times, but I’m a firm believer that we need to actively nurture and cultivate our skills, so that when inspiration does strike, we’re poised to harness and capture that inspiration. Getting into a routine with music will help you reach greater heights and will elevate your passion for music over time. If you consistently put in the work, you’ll reap the rewards that come with that and your passion will continue to grow as you reach new heights and achieve new milestones. Success begets success. Have measurable goals – I also think it’s important to have goals that are at least somewhat measurable. You need to know what it is you’re actually aiming for. Having specific goals, will also help focus your time and energy. If you don’t have any career goals related to music, it’s all to easy to just sort of drift aimlessly, never really getting anywhere. Having concrete goals will sort of dictate what to focus on and will lay out a more clear path to follow. When you actually start achieving some of those goals, this will also likely lead to a huge boost in the passion and excitement you feel for your craft. At least it has for me. To this day, when I hear my music on TV I get a huge rush! It also gives me a sense that the music I’m creating serves a purpose, beyond just something I do for fun. It sort of validates that I’m on the right path, knowing that my music is being heard by so many people and that it’s serving a very tangible purpose. Define What Success Means To You – My definition of success now, in 2019, looks a lot different than it did in 1999. With time and experience, your definition of what success means to you will likely shift. You might set out with an idea of becoming a certain version of what you consider to be a successful musician, only to find out that a different path is actually much more suitable to your personality, skillset, etc. For example, when I was first starting out pursuing a career in music I really aspired to become a “famous” musician. Like a lot of musicians, I thought that success in the music business meant you became a rock star. Over time, I realized there are many different paths within the music business. There isn’t just one way to be successful. There are a myriad of different ways to succeed. My role in the music industry and my role as a musician is much different than what I imagined it would be when I was 19 years old, first setting out to make my mark in music. But, that’s ok. I’m still here and I’m still making music that I’m passionate about.
I recently had two new tracks of mine on The Young And The Restless. These placements were particularly exciting because they were both tracks I sang lead vocals on. I haven’t had a ton of tracks that I sing vocals on placed over the years. I’ve had a lot more success with having other vocalists sing on my tracks and licensing instrumental music, so it was really exciting to see two new placements on my most recent ASCAP statement that both featured my lead vocals.
I’ve worked really hard over the last few years to improve my singing. I would say it’s been the single biggest challenge I’ve faced as a songwriter/performer. I started learning how to play guitar when I was twelve, but it wasn’t until I got into my twenties that I started, reluctantly, singing. It took me a long time to feel comfortable as a vocalist. A lot of times I would end up singing on my recordings just because it was easier to sing my own tracks than to find someone else. I was the lead singer in my first band in Chicago, URB, until we found our front man a few months later. In my second band, Continuum, I shared lead vocal duties with our keyboard player. Same thing in my third band. So, over the years I’ve sang a lot. But it’s always been something that I’ve sort of struggled with. Singing never came naturally, like it seems to for some vocalists. I’ve had to work really hard at it. I’ve taken vocal lessons at different points over the years and those have been helpful. There are definitely techniques, like learning how to breathe properly and doing different vocal exercises, that can greatly improve your vocals. But like a lot of things, I feel like what’s helped the most, is just doing it, a lot. Over the last couple years I’ve been singing every chance I get, both in the studio and in live situations. I’ve been singing at gigs and also trying new songs at open mic nights. Open mic nights are a great way to try new things and practice in a front of a crowd. Over the last couple years I’ve been hitting open mic nights pretty regularly, to specifically practice singing in front of people. It’s a great, no pressure way, to work on new material in front of a live crowd. If you’re not great, it’s not like anyone paid to see you! But of course, you should work on getting great so people will be willing to pay to see you? I still have a lot of room to improve when it comes to my singing, but I’m making verifiable progress and for me half the fun of being a musician is the journey and the process. It’s exciting to reach new heights and be able to look back and see how far you’ve come. All of this is to say, I placed two new vocal tracks. I might not yet be a good enough singer for The Voice, but I’m good enough for The Young & The Restless, and for now at least, I’m happy with that! I’m working on creating new podcasts, videos, etc… I’m excited to see where our musical journey will take us in 2019! In the meantime, check out the two tracks I placed recently.
This track, Headed Home, was used recently in one episode.
This track, Nobody Knows Us, was used in four episodes.
I often get asked to share more of my music with readers of my site and blog.
I just got my newest song, "Another Way" back from my producer, Gary Gray. This is the first track from a new album in the works that marks a return to my roots of more guitar oriented, bluesy, "jammy", rock tracks. I'm sharing this with you before I share it with anyone else. I wanted you to hear it first. I'm really excited about this track and the entire project. Check it out below and let us know what you think.
Another Way
I dreamt of you again last night It’s been so long time just moves on And though I chose to walk away I wish you knew that I wish I stayed But all the choices that we’ve made Have all been made And yesterday is gone and tomorrow waits and right here where I am I know it’s not too late to turn this page and find another way And in my dream it felt so real It felt just like It used to feel And all my sorrow went away when I realized it was not too late But then my dream it turned to grey I lied awake And yesterday is gone and tomorrow waits and right here where I am I know it’s not too late to turn this page and find another way Do you ever find yourself so focused and fixated on earning money to pay for your bills and to survive that you end up focusing on doing things that you would rather not be doing with your time, but feel you have to do in order to pay your bills? Do you ever feel like reaching your goals is almost impossible because you have to worry about this money issue? Do you feel like money is holding you back from living the life of your dreams?
My guess is that most of you reading this will answer yes to these questions, to one degree or another. The vast majority of us are probably spending at least some of our time doing things that probably isn’t our first choice, in order to meet the needs of the world we live in. Many of us are spending a lot of our time in ways we probably would rather not, in order to just get by. We live in a world that requires money in order to survive. You could, theoretically, live off the grid somewhere in a cabin you built with your bare hands and grow and catch your own food. But even this option is becoming increasingly harder and harder to pull off, for those of us who would even dare try. Laws and regulations, especially in the USA and the “first world” make this sort of lifestyle close to impossible for most of us. Not many people are able to pull of a Henry David Thoreau style lifestyle in our modern times and spend time simply contemplating the nature of our existence. I doubt many of us would want to, even if we could. In a sense, we’re all sort of forced to play the money game, at least to a certain extent. We’re forced to dance the dance that is making money, paying bills, saving money, spending money and so on. And hey, don’t get me wrong, it could be a lot worse. In fact, it could be much, much worse. We could be in parts of poverty-stricken Africa, or war town Yemen, or any number of God forsaken times and places in very recent history that were exponentially worse than the situation the majority of us reading this find ourselves in today. But yet, if you’re anything like me, there’s a part of you that strives for something “better”, a part of you that isn’t content with just paying the bills and getting by. If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to just survive, you want to thrive. If you’re like me, you want to live your “best life” and live a life that’s in flow and oozes with meaning and self-actualization. This urge is what I suspect draws artists to making music and pursuing a career path that we know, full well, is harder and more challenging than the average career path, in the first place. I believe that it’s our innate desire to self-actualize that inspires us to pursue the path of an artist. But, it’s easier said than done right? After all, we have this money thing to contend with… Two Types Of Money Stress I think there are essentially two types of stress, related to money, that are possible, and that people typically experience. On one hand, there’s the stress of not having enough money. Maybe we have a lot of free time, but we lack the resources to do much with the time we have. Maybe we even have so few resources that we fall behind or struggle to pay our immediate bills. I’ve been in this situation, and it sucks. On the other hand, there is the stress of working so much that we’re not really enjoying the fruits of our labor. Maybe we’re making sufficient money to meet our needs and then some, but we’re so busy and stressed by our crazy, fast paced lives, that we don’t have the time or energy to actually enjoy ourselves. I’ve been in this situation as well and it also sucks, although I would argue it sucks a little less than simply not having sufficient resources or money. Sometimes we have to go through periods where we push ourselves and work harder than we would like in the short term, in order to reach our long-term goals. We work hard and push ourselves to our limits, so that one day we won’t have to. Or something like that. As an entrepreneur/musician, who hasn’t had anything resembling a traditional career or boss for the last ten years, I’ve erred on both sides of the money/stress equation. There have been periods where I’ve erred on the side of not working hard enough and taking it a little too easy, and I eventually paid the price that came with that. There have also been periods where, in retrospect at least, I feel like I pushed myself too hard and became overly stressed and worried about making money. Both extremes are a sort of tactical error. There’s a more balanced approach. The Middle Way I think the Buddhists got it right when they came up with the idea of the “middle way”. The idea of the middle way is basically that we need to find a balance between the spiritual world and the material world. The concept isn’t specifically about making money per se, but it’s entirely relevant. In periods where I erred too much on the side of wanting to not work and simply relax and enjoy life, I inadvertently denied the material reality of the world we live in. On the other hand, when I erred on simply being consumed with business and making money and the pursuit of success, I denied my spiritual side. Both sides need to be in balance, hence the term, “The Middle Way”. Finding the “middle way” in life is of course, easier said than done, but I think it’s entirely possible. Each and everyone one of us can develop a relationship with our lives, our vocation and our place in the world that is healthy and in balance. How? Well, each of our paths will be entirely different and unique and what works for me might not necessarily work for you. But with that said, let me tell you a story about something I experienced recently that has led to one of my biggest breakthroughs in how I approach “working”, both when it comes to my business and making music. Liberation Through “Work” And Art I went through a period not too long ago, where to be entirely honest, I was feeling “burnt out”. I’ve had mini burnouts over the last decade or so of running my business. I think that's pretty normal among self employed entrepreneurs. But this was different. A part of me hates to admit that, because I pride myself on having a strong work ethic and working hard. This part of my personality has served me well over the years. But, I also have another side to my personality that wants…. more, and wants it now. A part of me wants more success, more money, more accolades, more achievement and so on. Although I’m a pretty positive person most of the time, I have a tendency to sort of beat myself up when things aren’t going how I think they should. Early in 2018 I started to feel sort of stuck in terms of my business and making music. During this period I started to really question the path I was on and started to feel more stress than usual. I’ve spent ten years making money devoted to more or less one topic (music licensing) and twenty years making money related to playing, teaching and writing music. Although I love music and the music business, twenty years of doing anything can start to get boring and bit uninspiring. However, it wasn’t as if I could just stop and completely shift gears, and I wasn’t even sure if that’s what I wanted. I just knew I needed to make some sort of change. So instead of quitting anything or making any drastic changes, for a month or so, I sort of did just the bare minimum and delegated as much work as I could to my assistant, as I reflected on where I was in life and why I was feeling so discouraged and burnt out at this particular time. During this period I would take long walks every evening and contemplate my situation. I think I was hoping that if I slowed down enough I would have some sort of light bulb, “aha” moment about my situation that would bring a renewed sense of clarity and purpose. I thought that if I slowed down and allowed some space in, it would allow new ideas to emerge. After about a month or so of walking and/or meditating pretty much every day, my aha moment never came. Then, one day, during this period, I read an article that helped lift me out of my funk and was a turning point in getting back on track. You see, part of the reason I was feeling discouraged was that I felt sort of trapped by the business and lifestyle I’ve created. I wanted to feel more inspired and excited about things, as I had in the past. I felt like I had sort of lost my spark and my motivation for doing what I was doing. I started to feel like I was just going through the motions in order to pay the bills and maintain what I had created. Even making music, which I've always loved, started to sort of feel like a chore. Like something I had to do. When I first created my business and started down the path of adding “entrepreneur” to my resume, it was truly an exhilarating time. I would spend hours and hours at my local library reading everything I could get my hands on about business and internet marketing. I devoured multiple books on marketing and how to create a business online. I was on fire and super motivated to figure out how to replace my income from teaching music with something new and more exciting. It was a period that was in many ways similar to when I first discovered the joy of making music. In the beginning, I made progress really fast and was able to create a viable business in less than a year that fit perfectly into my path of being a musician. I figured out how to create a business that supplemented the income I made from music and also fit perfectly into my overall trajectory as a musician. I was pretty damn stoked, to say the least, that I figured out how to pull this off and this sense of momentum I created carried me forward for many years. But fast forward ten years into my journey and I started to feel a little stuck. I was feeling burnt out and uninspired and I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason why. My instinct was to stop and rest for awhile and this did help recharge my batteries. But it didn’t occur to me then that ultimately, the long-term solution would be to actually push myself harder and immerse myself more in both my work and art; to go even deeper. But that’s exactly what ended up working. Let me explain… How To Escape Wage Slavery The article I read that day was called “How To Escape Wage Slavery Through Work”, or something along those lines. The idea is basically that we can’t escape the economic system we’re a part of. Not fully at least. You can try, and I do think our economic system needs a major overhaul, although that’s another blog post for another time. But, until our Utopian economic system arrives, since we can’t really escape it, what we can do is find liberation and meaning through the work that we do. Instead of trying to escape and run from work, we can instead find liberation and meaning through our work by going even deeper into the work we do and the parts of our vocation that bring us the most joy and growth. By pursuing work and projects that we find the most meaningful and by simply having a more positive mindset about whatever it is we’re already doing, we can create more meaning and joy and fulfillment in our lives, right now. In other words, instead of trying to escape “working”, we can embrace it. I put the word work in quotes, because I'm not even sure it's the right word. Maybe instead of referring to what we do as "work" we should replace it with "doing our passion", or "fulfilling our dreams", or something more eloquent. When I read this article, something sort of clicked. I realized I wasn’t so much burnt out from “working”. I was burnt out from my own negative thinking and lack of perspective about the work that I’ve been doing. You see, I make a pretty good income, relatively speaking. I’m definitely not a “high roller”, by any means. I live a fairly modest, but comfortable life. I make a salary above the median income in the USA, one of the richest countries in the world, doing something that I love and am passionate about. I have a beautiful girlfriend. I have great friends all over the world. I have plenty to be grateful about. But somewhere along the way, for a brief period of time, I lost perspective. And I think perspective is ultimately how you avoid the “money trap” in the first place. We live, in many ways, one of the most amazing times in human history. I truly believe that. But it’s easy to forget. There’s an expression that sums up our problem that I’ve always loved, which is, “It’s hard to see the spot you’re standing on”. We sometimes get so lost in the drama of our own lives, culture, politics and ultimately our own minds, that we fail to see the big picture. We fail to see just how great we actually have it. I think now is one of the greatest periods in human history to be a part of. We live in amazing times, strange times you could say, culturally, but an amazing period nonetheless that is filled with opportunity and abundance. So, how I got back on track and found my own “middle way” was by simply realizing how great I had it all along. Yes, I sometimes have a bad month, business wise, and I occasionally get a little stressed about money. So what? And yes, sometimes I want more for myself and my loved ones. And that's ok too, but it's nothing to get down about. I think we can both appreciate where we are now in our lives and also strive for more. These two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. What worked for me, ultimately, was simply changing my outlook on my situation. Instead of moaning about the fact that there I things I have to do to make money, I’m grateful for the fact that I’ve discovered a way to support myself doing things related to my passion of music. Instead of bitching about the fact that I don’t make more money, I’m grateful for the fact that I make more than many. Instead of stressing about not selling or licensing more music at times, I’m grateful for the hundreds of placements I have had over the last few years and the new opportunities that continue to come my way. Instead of running from my work and business, I’m choosing to work harder and enjoy it even more by continuing to look for and find new projects and new topics that I’m even more passionate about. Instead of trying to escape my life and my role in it, I’m embracing it. As we head into another New Year, I’m excited for the new year that’s coming. I have a renewed sense of passion and purpose going into 2019. I have several new projects and goals related to music, that I’ll be sharing with you all soon, that are a direct result of the “soul searching” and reflection I did earlier this year. My wish for all of you is continued success and happiness. If you’re a regular reader of my blog and listener of my podcast, I’m grateful for your support. To all those who have bought my courses and supported my work over the years, my sincere wish is that my work brings you as much value as your patronage has brought me. Your support has helped me to earn a living and stay connected to my passion for making music for over a decade now. And for that I’m forever in your debt. Here’s to an amazing 2019. I don’t know about you, but I’m just getting started!
One of my favorite quotes about music, came from Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, he said, “When you treat it like a job, they pay you like it’s a job.”. I always loved this quote because I think it really sums up the mindset you need to have to turn your passion for music into a full-time career. If you simply dabble in music, whenever inspiration strikes, and take a half-hearted approach to your music career, chances are your income that you generate from your music is going to reflect that.
If your goal is to make music a full-time job, that you can live from, you need to approach it as such. This entails getting up every day with a strategy and a game plan that you execute on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. I think where a lot of musicians get stuck, is not knowing exactly where to focus their energy and not know what the best plan of action is. Making music is sort of the easy and obvious part. But what do you do once the music is made? As I’ve often said, music is different from other, more traditional professions, in that there isn’t always a clear and concise path to success. This can be confusing and frustrating. If you’re not sure what to do on a regular basis, that will help get you closer to your goal, how do you know where to best focus your energy? How can you confidently work towards the realization of your goals? Well, there isn’t one clear answer to this, but in the hundreds of interviews I’ve done over the last decade, and in my experience with all the musicians I’ve connected and collaborated with in a variety of different capacities, there are a few clear commonalities that most success stories share. For the sake of this article, I’m going to assume you already have music that is amazing and ready to be shared with the world. This is obviously a gigantic subject and one which is ultimately subjective. Which makes it sort of hard to talk about in the context of a “how to” article. How do you make “great” music? How do you know if your music is “great” and ready to be shared with the world? Well, I’ll leave that up to you as an artist to figure out. I personally think you sort of just know. When you write a great song, or complete an amazing composition, you can sense it. If you’re not really sure whether or not you have great music, there’s a pretty good chance you don’t, yet. Marketing And Connections Success in the music business, apart from the music itself, comes down to marketing and connections. That’s really it. Look at the music business around you. Look at the acts that have become enormously successful. Start to ask yourself why certain band and artists are successful and you’re not. Start to actually investigate the back stories of what led to successful artists becoming successful. You can often times reverse engineer the relationships and connections that led to an artists’ success. For example, did you know that Taylor Swift’s Dad was an early investor in Taylor Swift’s record label (until a few days ago), Big Machine Records? Swift’s Father reportedly invested around 120k in Big Machine to help launch the label and Taylor’s career. Does that mean that he bought her career? I don’t see it that way. The public voted a resounding yes on Taylor Swift and I think it’s her music, drive and personality that ultimately cemented her success. But did her Dads connections and money help get her started? Absolutely and I think there’s a good chance you would have never heard of Taylor Swift had her parents not invested in her career early on. For an artist to become successful in the mainstream, there needs to both be a “product” the mainstream public wants, and it needs to be marketed successfully. Money and connections open certain doors, but the music itself obviously plays a huge role, that really can’t be denied. Whether you like music that becomes popular or not, there is something about popular music that works and results in becoming successful. For example, in the case of Taylor Swift, her Father’s support in launching her career no doubt helped, but it’s undeniable that Taylor Swift is immensely talented as a songwriter and performer and has an incredible work ethic. Money and connections alone don’t create one of the world’s most successful artists. If they did, there would be a lot more Taylor Swifts. Apart from the actual music itself, the common denominator I see that separates the vast majority of successful artists from those who are not successful, all other things being equal, is how well their music and brand is being marketed. If no one knows you, then you’ll never become “successful” in the public eye. The public needs to know about your music, to know whether or not it likes it in the first place. Part of your job, if you’re an indie artist, is to figure out how to better promote and market yourself to more and more people. HOW?? Now I know what you’re thinking. Ok, great, it makes sense and is sort of obvious, but how? How do I get my music noticed and heard in a sea of unknown artists? Well, that’s the 64 Million Dollar question we’re all trying to figure out. If it was as simple as do X, Y and Z and then you’re a rock star, we’d all just do X, Y and Z and be rock stars already. It might not be simple or easy, but I do think a few conclusions can be drawn. Here’s what I see working among all the success stories I know of, both in terms of mainstream success and success on a smaller scale, among indie artists who are able to make a living from their music. These are the areas you should be focusing your time, every single day, if you want to make a full time living from music: The Music – Again, it all starts with the music. Regardless of what your thoughts on contemporary music, whether or not you like it, and whether or not you think the public has “good” taste in music, the music itself still plays a critical role. Public tastes change and trends come and go, but the performance, emotion and feeling you put into your music matter as much as ever. Focus on the music you make, first and foremost. Write great songs and build up a body of work you can license, stream, perform, sell and so on. Without great, marketable music, nothing else you do will really matter. Whenever I’m not quite sure what to focus on, I focus on simply writing the most amazing music I’m capable of. Money/Connections/Networking – Money and connections help, as they always have. Knowing the right people or connecting with the right person, can make a huge difference in your career. We might not all have rich fathers that are willing to invest six figures in the launch of our careers, but all of us can do things like attend industry events, network, shake hands, make phone calls and so forth, in order to connect with more people in the business. Don’t come from a place of trying to use people or get something from them. This is almost always the wrong approach. Instead aim to make connections with people that are genuine and authentic. Money, as in the case of Taylor Swift, can buy promotion and attention. Money buys things like recording time, promotion, advertising and on and on. Of course, if we all had an unlimited supply of money, we could simply buy our way onto the public’s radar. But, do your best with the resources and money you have. Things like Facebook advertising, google ads, Youtube, Reddit and more, can all be great ways to promote your music on a small budget. Of course, it will be harder with a smaller budget in many ways. But the good news is that you won’t be able to simply waste money on a product that isn’t ready to be promoted. Hone your music and your marketing skills and make every dollar count, winning over new fans, one at a time. As your success in music grows, you can increase your marketing budget accordingly. Working on shoe string budget will force you to really focus on what works. (Yes, my glass is half full.) Outside The Box Thinking (Branding) – This is probably my favorite part of the conversation in terms of marketing and branding. It’s what I call “outside the box” thinking. This is my favorite part of the discussion, because it’s something we all have access to. We don’t get to choose our parents or what kind of wealth and connections we’re born into, but we can all choose to look at the world in a more creative, “outside the box” sort of way. For an artist or brand to become talked about in the press, there needs to be something extremely compelling to discuss. Again, clearly the music you make needs to be great. But, the problem is that there is so much music out there, that even if your music is amazing, it can be hard to break through the barrage of music that exists, if you’re not doing something unique and original and branding yourself properly. Having an interesting and compelling story and brand, will make it easier for people to remember you and make it more likely that you’ll get featured in the press, on people’s blogs, playlists and so on. Don’t just release your music and hope that’s enough. It won’t be. Tell people why you’re creating music. Reach out to bloggers, playlist curators, press outlets and more and tell them what makes you different and unique. Be creative not just in terms of the music you make, but how you present yourself and your music to the world. I find that often times adding fairly minor details in terms of what inspired you to write specific songs and release specific albums goes a long way in getting bloggers and play-listers to pay attention. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a super elaborate back story. For example, I’m going to be releasing a new EP of all instrumental, ambient guitar music soon, and I’ve been contacting blogs and playlists to get some help in promoting my new release. In the last few days alone my first single, Rays, was picked up by two new blogs and is going to be added to a pretty large playlist (several hundred thousand followers) next week! I simply reached out to a few different places and told them about my new release and how I’m inspired and driven to create music that is positive and uplifting, in order to combat all the darkness and craziness in the world. Which is entirely true, but I had never really taken the time to articulate that until recently. What’s your story? Why is making music so important to you? How can you better convey what inspires you and motivates you in your branding? Improving your branding and marketing can actually be a really fun and insightful process. It forces you to really get in touch with what motivates you and drives you. Check out the first single from my upcoming, instrumental, ambient guitar release, called “Rays”. I was talking to a client a few weeks ago, who was trying to figure out how to make more money from his music via licensing his tracks in tv, films, etc. This particular client informed me that he had made about $2,000.00 from ten of his tracks over the last five years or so. The problem though, was that these particular tracks were signed exclusively to a publisher and for many years he couldn’t get the rights to these tracks back.
He hired an attorney and spent several years fighting to get out of the contract he had signed. Eventually, after what I can only imagine was quite a bit of money, time and frustration, the publisher representing these tracks agreed to give him the ability to sign these tracks to other companies and license them elsewhere. In the end, he was able to make a little extra money with these ten tracks, but he still wasn’t thrilled with his results. This particular client came to me, mainly looking for advice on how to improve his success in music licensing and figure out how to make more money with his music. One of the things I love about working with clients like this, is that I often have epiphanies and realizations as a result of listening to someone else express their challenges and frustrations. I’m sometimes able to express ideas in new ways, that lead to greater clarity for both myself and my clients. I often have “aha” moments that help both myself and my clients better understand this crazy business of ours. With this particular client, I had a realization that I guess you could say was a twist on something I’ve known for quite some time but had never quite been able to articulate as succinctly as I did with this particular client, during this particular coaching session. What was the realization? Well, to put it very simply, your musical output will determine your income. In other words, the more tracks you create, the more money you’ll make. Pretty obvious right? It should be, but I think a lot of us have blind spots and get stuck on our musical journey, getting bogged down in worrying about things like getting out of bad deals we’ve signed, worrying about our rights and how to best monetize our individual tracks. And these are all valid concerns. We should think about these things, at least to a point. We should be careful about signing bad deals and not getting locked into deals we can’t get out of. I’m sure we’ve all probably signed a few contracts along the way that we wish we hadn’t. I know I have. If you’ve been in the licensing game long enough, you’re going to learn along the way, and sometimes we have to learn the hard way, by making mistakes, or by making what seem like mistakes in retrospect. With this particular client I was talking to though, he had spent a lot of money and time trying to undo a deal he had signed. He got sort of stuck on trying to undo this deal he had signed an in his mind, right a wrong. These tracks were his and he wanted them back. In my estimation though, his energy and effort would have been much better spent had he focused it elsewhere, on more productive things, like writing and creating new music for example and developing new contacts in the business and generating new revenue streams with his music. It's better to look forward, than look behind. I broke it down for this particular client, like this: If you’re able to make $2,000.00 from ten tracks, (which isn’t a bad return in the grand scheme of things) what if you had a catalog of 100 tracks? Assuming the same rate of return, you’d make about $20,000.00. Now extrapolate that even further. What if you had 500 tracks earning the same amount of money? This would net you $100,000. What if you had 1,000 tracks that brought in the same amount of money per tracks? This would earn you about $200,000.00 and so on. I think you can see where I’m going with this. To a large extent, our income in the music business, and in particular for things like music licensing and music streaming, will be determined by how many tracks we have in our catalog. Now of course, there are a lot of other variables. The size of your catalog isn’t the only determining factor in licensing. There are other things, like the tracks themselves, how “license-able” and accessible they are, the connections you make and so on. There are a lot of different factors that will contribute to your success. But, the size of your catalog and how many tracks you have available to be licensed is a key factor. One of the things you should be focusing on, at all times, is creating more music, so you have more music to license into more opportunities. It’s also one of the few things in this business, YOU have complete control over. A few years ago, on my podcast, I interviewed a musician who made a full time living, based solely on this realization alone. His name is Matt Farley and his entire strategy is to make a ridiculous amount of music based around every imaginable, silly theme and idea he can think of. He has songs about poop, pee, UFOs, singing random people’s names over and over, writing songs about specific cities based on Wikipedia posts and much more. Thousands and thousands of tracks. His focus is more on making from streaming on platforms like Youtube and Spotify, as opposed to licensing. He doesn’t make much per track, but he makes so much music that, when I interviewed him in 2016 he was averaging about 2k a month in revenue. That was a couple years ago. I googled him to see what he’s been up to since and discovered he’s up to about 19,000 tracks and records under 17 different aliases, such as:
He’s also up to making about 65k a year from his massive catalog of almost 20,000 tracks, according to this article in INC magazine: https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/work-from-home-spotify-itunes-amazon-music-alexa.html Matt is an extreme example, and it’s debatable whether or not much of his music would be considered great works of “art”. But, he’s paying his bills with music alone. Are you? If you’re trying to make more money from your music, a great thought experiment is to simply look at how much money you’re making per year from your music, divided by the number of tracks in your catalog. This way, you can get a per song average of what your tracks earn. Then just extrapolate out. So, for example, if you made $1,000.00 from your tracks last year and you have ten songs in you catalog, each song is earning on average about 100 dollars. Want to increase your income to $10,000? You’d need 100 songs, based on this rate of return. To get to $100,000.00, you’d need 1,000 tracks. Like I said, there are obviously other factors, but one of the easiest and most straightforward ways to grow your revenue from your music, is to simply make more of it. This was the exact epiphany that Matt Farley had. He noticed one of his tracks earned almost 74 cents on Spotify, so he thought to himself, that’s not a lot of money, but what if I had thousands of tracks each earning tiny amounts of money. Eventually it would add up. Of course, in something like licensing, there’s the potential to earn much more than 74 cents per track. I’ve made as much as 5k per placement and there are placements that earn much more than that. The problem though, with focusing on how much you earn per particular placement, is that you don’t entirely control when and where your tracks are used. You can influence this by more actively pitching your tracks, making new connections and so forth. But you can’t directly control it. What you can control is the music you make. How much of it you make. What you make music about. Where you make it available and so on. To a very large extent, your musical output = your income. I’ll never quit music. Ever. This is a path I’m on for life. My entire life. I’m firmly committed to the path, for better or worse, in sickness and health. My commitment gives me a sense of clarity and calm. It also give me a sense of direction. I have my life purpose figured out, or at least one of them. Whereas many people struggle their whole lives to “figure themselves out” and “find their calling” and discover their purpose, I got that shit all figured out.
However, it hasn’t always been easy. It’s still not easy. Figuring out my life purpose hasn’t translated to a life of ease and leisure. To the contrary, I sometimes feel like figuring out my life purpose has brought with it an enormous weight and an added sense of stress and responsibility. After all, now that I know what my purpose is, I feel an obligation and pressure to pursue it, to make progress towards my goals, to not rest on my laurels and to keep advancing. This extra pressure is, in my view, a net positive. There is extra work and stress involved, but it’s worth it in the end, because of the meaning and depth music provide. I could just skip all the work and effort and not be bothered with any of it, but I would be missing out on something that also brings with it an enormous sense of reward and satisfaction. But, there is a clear price to pay for being a professional musician and a career in music is filled with challenges, obstacles and typically, many setbacks along the way. If you’re pursuing a career in music or are thinking about going into the music industry, I don’t think this reality should be glossed over. I’ve seen multiple studies that show that musicians, on average, have much higher rates of things like depression, anxiety and substance abuse than the general population. I even saw a recent study of over 12,000 musicians that concluded that professional musicians, on average, die a full 25 years year younger than the rest of the population. That’s a significant difference and this reality of the music business shouldn’t be ignored. Ok, so being a musician is hard, or at least it can be. Now what? Why on earth would anyone go into a business that’s fraught with so many challenges? Is there a way to mitigate the risks involved with pursuing a career in music? Well, that’s what this article is going to explore. So, let’s get to it… Let’s start with talking about the upside of being a musician and why a career in music is, at least potentially, so rewarding. First of all though, let me preface all of this by stating that what works for me, might not work for you, and vice versa. We all have different things that drive us and motivate us. Some people are quite content and happy to lead very simple, somewhat mundane and conventional lives. Nothing wrong that. Who am I or anyone else to tell you or anyone how to live? We all get to figure out what works for ourselves and ultimately, we’re the ones most qualified to decide how we live our lives. After all, no one knows you better than you. With that said, if you’re also drawn to making music and share that passion with me, it’s probably safe to assume we’re at least somewhat alike. So, why pursue something that is so difficult and risky? Well, doing something that is difficult isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I would suggest that what plagues many people living in modern, western society, isn’t that their lives are too difficult, it’s that they’re too boring and lack meaning and depth. Many people spend their time, or much of it, doing things they don’t find inherently meaningful or interesting, but that they feel they have to do in order to survive. A life spent simply working to pay bills, with occasional periods of relaxation mixed in, probably isn’t that fulfilling for most people. As Thoreau said, “most men live lives of quiet desperation”. Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist who came up with the idea of the “hierarchy of needs”, aka Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs, observed that “the healthiest and most motivated among us, are those that are motivated by trends of self-actualization”. This was Maslow’s conclusion after decades of studying the psychology of those who excelled in life, in a variety of fields. Notice that he didn’t say anything about money or one’s net worth in relation to their well-being, although I’m sure many of the people he studied did quite well financially. Maslow defined self-actualization as “an ongoing actualization of potentials, capacities and talents, as fulfillment of a mission”. Does this sound like something that could apply to musicians? Way before I had ever even heard of Abraham Maslow or his theories and research, it was self-evident to me that this was true. From a very young age, I sensed a deep sense of satisfaction from the process of struggling to get better at the guitar, putting in hours of practice and eventually progressing to higher and higher levels. It just seemed obvious to me that this process was somehow connected to my happiness and sense of fulfillment in life. By directing my energy towards something concrete and tangible, like progressing as a guitarist and musician, I grew as a person, which brought a deep sense of fulfillment and helped shaped my identity and path in life. Maslow was so convinced of the importance of self-actualization in life, that he boldly stated, “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life”. This idea resonates deeply within me. When I go through periods where, for whatever reason, I’m not working on and progressing with music, I feel a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness, that becomes more pronounced over time. It’s a feeling that grows and grows, until eventually, I’m motivated to pick up my guitar and get back to the process of exploring new song ideas, finishing existing songs, writing new music, and so on. I can’t go too long without returning to my love of writing songs and playing the guitar. Reconciling Art & Commerce So, if pursuing a craft like music can be so deeply satisfying, why does pursuing a career in music often times feel so frustrating and uninspiring? Well, this is a big question, and there are a lot of variables. But let me try to unpack this conflict by sharing a few things I’ve learned on my journey. I think the biggest and most obvious conflict is that learning to play music, learning to write songs and so on, and progressing in these endeavors, is very different than learning to make money from music and learning to excel in the business of music. They are obviously related. You need a certain amount of talent to make money from performing and writing music. But getting good at an instrument or getting good at songwriting, is not the same as getting good at marketing and monetizing your music. They are completely different skill-sets. So, one way of reconciling this conflict is simply seeing this dichotomy for what it is. If you’re struggling to make it in the music business, don’t allow this to take away the joy you get from craft of writing and/or performing music. Realize that your lack of success in the music business might not have anything to do with your lack of success as a musician and the talent you possess. This should be rather obvious, but it can be easy to forget. You might be an amazing musician whose time simply hasn’t come. You might be doing everything right but for whatever reason things just haven’t lined up for you. There are countless examples of this having happened in the music business. I’m sure you probably know plenty of musicians that fit this description yourself, right now. This is why I think the most important barometer for success should really be your own internal sense of whether or not you’re getting better as a vocalist, guitarists, songwriter, etc. Are you getting better at your craft? Are you writing better songs today than you were a year or two years ago? Self-actualization involves realizing your full potential. How much money you make may or may not be connected to that. For many it will be, especially if you go far enough and excel enough. But it shouldn’t be the primary thing you focus on, especially when you’re first starting out. After all, I’m sure we all know plenty of well-off people, financially, who are far from self-actualized. Financial well-being and self-actualization don’t necessarily go hand in hand. One way a lot of musicians come to terms with this reality of the music business is by simply not going into the music business. It’s hard to fail at something you’re not really even trying to be successful at doing. There are plenty of musicians who are actively performing and writing music who aren’t really trying to “make it” in the music business. Yet, they still get a deep sense of satisfaction from playing music on a regular basis. Maybe they have a completely different career or day job, but yet music remains an important and consistent part of their lives. This is one way to deal with the conflict, and for those that are happy and content to approach music this way, I think it’s completely valid. But what if, like me, you do want to make a career out of playing and writing music? How can you focus on the benefits of reaching your full potential as a musician without letting the struggle and the grind weigh you down? Is there a way to reconcile the conflict between and art and commerce? Well, no two paths are alike, but my general suggestion, if you do want to make a living out of music, is to keep your day job and consistently chip away at creating revenue streams from your music until they reach a point that allow you to sustain yourself. Then, make the leap to doing music full time and devote even more energy to it and keep building the revenue streams you’ve created. This will obviously take a sustained effort to achieve, but the good news is that in many ways this is becoming more and more possible and easier to attain. I think that in the near future we’ll see a rise of more and more indie musicians who are able to make a respectable living from their music. I really believe that. In many ways, it’s already started. I might be a little biased, because I work in the music industry, but I’m meeting more and more musicians who have figured out how to create a career out of writing and performing music. Most of them you’ve probably never even heard of, but they’re quietly building sustainable and growing careers in the music business, doing what they love. To me, this is the ideal scenario for musicians and is really the best of both worlds. It’s what I feel most musicians are shooting for; the ability to make a living doing what they love. When you can combine the benefits of self-actualization and striving for and reaching your potential as an artist and musician, and also figure out how to make enough money to sustain yourself, well, it doesn’t get much better than that, now does it? Yesterday I interviewed Swedish based “Chillstep” artist Christoffer Hylander, aka “Killigrew” for my podcast, about how he’s been able to generate over 20 million streams on Spotify and has created an income stream from streaming alone that he’s able to live off of. If you haven’t checked out that podcast yet, you can do so here: https://musicmoneyandlife.podbean.com/e/how-one-artist-generated-20-million-streams-on-spotify-and-makes-a-full-time-living-from-his-music/ In the beginning of the podcast, Christoffer said that his success on Spotify basically was a result of good timing and luck. He said that he wasn’t actively trying to get on Spotify playlists, but that a curator that runs a gigantic playlist just happened to discover his music and featured Christoffer’s musical project, “Killigrew” on his playlist and as a result, Killigrew’s music blew up, and to date has had over 20 million streams on Spotify. Christoffer has been living off the royalties he makes on Spotify alone, for over four years now, in Sweden. Christoffer’s story is great, but I was a little disappointed at first, to learn that Christoffer basically concluded his success just boiled down to luck. That’s the way he described it at least. I wasn’t disappointed because I don’t like it when people are lucky and have good things happen to them, for no apparent reason. I love stories like that. It’s just that, from the standpoint of my podcast and website, I’m always looking for the takeaway. I’m looking for specific tactics and techniques that can be replicated by other artists, myself included. I want to know what the lesson is in each success story I hear so that we can applies these lessons to our own lives and careers. I almost always find at least one nugget of wisdom in each interview I do. There’s almost always something to learn from everyone I talk to. Sometimes I have to keep digging though before I strike gold. As Christoffer and I kept talking, he eluded to his being lucky several times. I continued to question him about his success and what led up to it though, determined to find some practical advice and ideas that would apply to all musicians. Although I appreciate Christoffer’s humility about his success, I eventually found, as I suspected I would, three key things Christoffer did that led to his Spotify success. Here they are… Big Fish In A Small Pond – What’s Your Niche? Christoffer told me that one of the keys to his success,was being one of the first “Chillstep” artists. Full disclosure: I knew more or less nothing about “Chillstep” until connecting with Christoffer. Christoffer discovered this genre in its infancy and according to Christoffer, he was one of the first dozen or so artists making this genre of music early on. We might not all be in a position to be pioneers in a new genre of music, but the takeaway for me here is that it’s much easier to stand out when you’re a “big fish in a small pond’. If you’re making a style of music that there is a ton of, it doesn’t mean you won’t succeed, but you’re going to have much more noise to cut through. If you’re doing music that is more niche oriented, you’re going to have less competition and a greater chance of succeeding. What’s unique and truly original about your music? Is there an abundance of very similar music? These are important questions to ask yourself if you’re trying to promote your music on platforms like Spotify. Leveraging Youtube This is the part of Christoffer’s story that was really an “aha” moment for me. Although Christoffer chalked his Spotify success up to luck, he told me that prior to getting featured on the Spotify Playlist that catapulted his success, he spent weeks emailing thousands of people on Youtube his music. His strategy was finding other artists in his genre, Chillstep, and reaching out to fans of other artists who were making music similar to his. Christoffer said that although a few people would get upset and accuse him of being “spammy”, the vast majority of people were positive and receptive and he gained thousands of new fans using this method. Here’s where it gets interesting. Christoffer said that it was a connection he made on Youtube that led to him inadvertently being featured on the Spotify Playlist that ultimately led to millions of streams. Someone who discovered his music first on Youtube, was the curator of the playlist that Christoffer was featured on that led to his Spotify success. So although he wasn’t actively trying to promote his music on Spotify, he was on Youtube, and the work and effort he put into promoting his music on Youtube, led indirectly to his success on Spotify. Although I can appreciate Christoffer’s sentiment that luck played a role in his Spotify success, it’s also clear to me, after hearing his story, that had he not exerted so much effort in promoting his music on Youtube and in general, he never would have had the success he ultimately found on Spotify. Branding Finally, the last thing that Christoffer pointed to that led to his success was that deliberately created very distinct imagery and branding around his music. Christoffer’s project “Killiigrew” features an emphasis on nature and the beauty of nature and the outdoors. Like his music, his branding and the imagery he uses illicit a very calming, and relaxing feeling. Here’s an example of some of the artwork he uses to promote his music: It’s important that you have clear and consistent branding. Think about the kind of images, artwork and story would best fit your music and the message you’re trying to convey with your music. Good branding will help you stand out and make it easier for people to remember you and the music you create. There’s a reason major corporations work with ad agencies to help promote their products; because it works. Advertising and branding are a huge part of success in any industry, including of course the music industry.
So, what’s the ultimate takeaway? Does success in the music business simply come down to luck and being in the right place at the right time? I don’t think so. It’s clear in hearing Christoffer’s story and the countless other success stories I’ve heard over the years, that success in the music business is usually the result of both hard work and often times, what seems and feels like luck. Perhaps it’s better to say that success in the music business often arrives in unexpected ways, but if you re-trace the steps that led to most artists becoming successful, you’ll find that a lot of hard work was done along the way. A few days ago I sent out an article I wrote, called “The #1 Problem With The Music Industry” to my email list. In that article I articulated why I think the biggest problem with the music industry is that there are too many musicians, in the sense that the supply of musicians outweighs the demands of the marketplace. I see this as the biggest hurdle most musicians will face, when it comes to creating a career in the music industry. This was a really well received article, I received quite a few positive responses via email and many people who were in agreement with my assessment of the music industry. However, I also received a few replies from people who seemed pretty discouraged by some of the statistics I pointed out. I even got one response from someone who had decided to basically quit the business because of the statistics I pointed out. I would like to address those that were discouraged by that article in today’s post. Knowledge Is Power In order to make an informed decision about anything in life, we need to take in as much data as possible. Of course, we’ll never be able to assess all the data related to any given situation. There’s simply no way of knowing all the different variables that are at play in something like the music industry. There are far too many people involved in the industry, and far too many factors at play to be able to dissect all the different moving parts that make up the music business. It's sort of like sizing up a potential dating partner. It’s impossible to know everything there is to know about another person. So, instead, we get to know people the best we can, we meet their friends and family, we spend quality time with them, and in the end we make decisions about people using a combination of logic, intuition and heart. If we’re lucky, we make good decisions and surround ourselves with quality people and with quality partners. Sometimes we let our emotions over ride our logic and we ignore red flags that are warning us to move in a different direction. Conversely, sometimes we let our logic and intellect convince us to not give people a chance that would actually be very good for us. We don’t always get decisions right. We live and learn. But, the more information and data we have going into a situation, the easier it is to make a decision that is right for us. There are a lot of marketers and bloggers that gloss over certain realities of the music business in order to sell books and programs. It’s easier to sell a program about how to make money in the music business, when you convince people that it’s easy to make it in the music business. But, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my primary goal with my website and resources isn’t to make money. My primary goal is to educate and inform people about the realities of the music business, and in particular the music licensing business. The good, the bad and the ugly. I don’t think the competitive nature of the music industry or the fact that it’s a relatively hard industry to succeed in should be overlooked. In fact, I think it should be embraced and fully understood. You need to be able to look at this business, for what it really is, square in the eye, in order to make an informed decision about whether or not you want to enter into it. You’ll also have a much better chance of success if you fully understand the reality of the business and what you’re up against. Perspective With that said, you still need to have a healthy, big picture perspective of the music business. For example, in my previous article I pointed out a study that indicated that 90% of artists are completely unknown. Some of you took that to mean you only have a 10 % shot at any sort of success in the music industry. But, of course, that’s not how statistics really work. The study I pointed to simply reported that the vast majority of music artists out there are basically unknown. But that doesn’t reflect your individual odds of succeeding in the music business. Maybe 90 percent of the artists surveyed are completely slackers with no work ethic. Maybe the vast majority are hobbyists who are also balancing families and careers. Maybe half of all the artists surveyed don’t even aspire to be full time musicians. The problem with statistics and data is that it’s impossible to tease apart all the different variables. Can we really know hard the competition wants to succeed? Can we really quantify how badly someone else wants to make it in the music business, compared to your own desire to make it as a musician? Maybe you are part of the 10 percent who have what it takes to succeed? Or, maybe you’re part of the 1 percent that go on to become ultra-successful in the music business. There’s really know way to know these things using statistics alone. Defining Success You also have to really look at the big picture, in terms of how being a musician factors into your overall life satisfaction. In other words, how much happiness do you derive from spending your time playing and writing music? Do you prioritize money and security over pursuing meaningful work? Would you be happy earning slightly less than the typical American or European (or elsehwhere) worker if you were able to make your living doing something you love? The average professional musician earns $39,899.00 per year in the USA. That’s not a ton of money, relatively speaking. But the average person in the USA only earns $44,564.00. For an even larger, big picture perspective, consider the fact that if you make over $32,400.00 you are in the top 1% of income earners in the entire world! I realize that in certain areas of the USA, or other parts of the world, that would be very hard to live on, but I find it incredibly helpful to take a step back and look at just how much money, even a modest salary in the west is, relative to the rest of the world. Part of being successful is having perspective and knowing just how good you have it, even if you haven’t “made it” on the level of someone like Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande. Again, these statistics are averages, and you could earn much more or much less than these figures, in or out of the music industry. But, success isn’t just about overall money earned, it’s also about other things, that are harder to quantify, like a sense of personal meaning and overall life satisfaction; things that are harder to measure, but are of vital importance to the quality of your life. Summing Up My goal is to provide the most accurate, up to date information about the music licensing business and the music business at large. It’s easy to get cynical about the music business and it’s easy to get discouraged. But in many ways, I don’t think succeeding in the music business is that much different than succeeding in other industries. A small percentage of people make it to the very top of most industries. How many multi-millionaire CEOs are there compared to minimum or low wage workers? How many rich entrepreneurs are there compared to entrepreneurs that struggle to get by? I’m not going to bore you with more statistics, you can look them up if you're interested, but I think you get the point. Succeeding at a “rock star” level in the music business is hard, because it’s special. It’s not something everyone gets to do or can do, and that is what makes the goal so appealing. If it was easy, everyone would just decide to be a rock star, and then it wouldn’t really be that special. Being a musician isn’t for everyone. In order to know whether it’s right for you, you need to deeply understand both the business and be very self-aware about how much talent you actually have. Do you have something truly unique and special to share with the world? Do you have a burning desire to share your talent? If so, in my opinion, you owe it to yourself and the world to chase your dreams! Because remember, even if you don’t “make it” in the way that maybe you dreamed about when you were a teenager, even if all you ever become is a musician who succeeds on an “average” level, you’re still doing pretty damn good by virtue of the fact that you’ll be making way more than 99% of the entire world, doing something you love. Think about that. Here’s a video that sums up this article pretty well that I posted to my Youtube Channel recently. On a positive note, here's a video I posted to my Youtube Channel a few years ago, that breaks down a straightforward way of making 60k a year as a musicians working 25 hours a week. In my most recent webinar for How To License Your Music Premium, with composer Dario Forzato, one of the topics we discussed was the idea of luck vs hard work in the context of licensing. One of the topics Dario focused on in our webinar is how having a consistent routine and schedule that facilitates creating a consistent output of music will lead to consistent results over time. Of course, along the way, you might just get lucky here and there and stumble upon the right opportunity at the right time. There is an element of luck in the careers of most successful musicians and artists. But it’s the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly work you do, that over time will lead to the most consistent results and will greatly increase your “luck”.
My favorite expression about luck, that I’m sure most of you have heard, is that “luck is when preparation and opportunity meet”. I’ll give you an example. When I first got into licensing, I was lucky in the sense that my former songwriting teacher had gone on to form a successful publishing company and was in need of the exact kind of music I was making at the time. It was lucky, you could say, that I even knew her in the first place and that she just happened to need the kind of music I was into at the time. Of course, I had spent years writing and recording songs prior to our working together, which is where the work part of it comes in to play. Had I not been diligently working on the craft of writing songs and recording music for several years prior to reconnecting and working with my former teacher I wouldn’t have been prepared for the opportunity that presented itself. According to Dario, and I concur 100 percent, hard work and consistency is what separates those that are able to do licensing full time from those who just get lucky and land a placement here and there. I did a podcast with Composer Eddie Grey recently where he more or less said the exact same thing. If you make enough music and submit it to enough places, chances are you can get “lucky” and license a few random things. But it’s the composers and songwriters who diligently set out to create an amazing catalog of music and build ongoing professional relationships they cultivate and nurture over time, that end up in the “lucky” position of creating music for a living. I recently created a Youtube video talking about this topic and someone left a comment along the lines of “Here’s another video that doesn’t really reveal the “secret” of licensing and doesn’t really say anything”. It was something like that. I sometimes get the feeling that musicians imagine there is some sort of insider, top secret, confidential knowledge, that only musicians “in the know” are privy to, that if they only knew would instantly lead to success in the music business and in music licensing. Maybe there is. Maybe the Justin Biebers and Bruno Mars of the world know something myself, and the hundreds of musicians I’ve worked with over the years don’t know. What I aim to do with my website, podcast, webinars and so forth is share what’s worked for me over the years and also to find other successful musicians that have carved out successful careers in the music licensing business and find out what’s working for them. I came up with the novel idea of simply asking people who do music for a living to tell me how they do it, and I share that information with the growing community of musicians who read my blogs and are members of my website. We all have slightly different paths and we sometimes get “lucky” in different ways. But what I know is true, across the board, of all the different people I’ve interviewed and worked with over the years who are successful in licensing, is that they’ve worked hard to get where they are. If I discover some sort of “top secret” formula to success in licensing, believe me, I will gladly share it with you via my podcast, courses, webinars, etc. But, in the meantime, keep putting in the work. Hard work is the only thing that I know that works consistently and it's much more reliable than luck.
I've had a nice string of placements over the last several months. I've had songs placed in commercials, several tv shows and even a video game recently. I thought I'd share a few of my recent placements, so you can get a better idea of the kind of tracks I write and some of the places my music has been used recently.
Here are some of the highlights in terms of placements I know about. I've had a few other incidental uses of my tracks, but here are some of the more prominent placements I've had recently.... Note the diversity in terms of styles, vocals, instrumentals, etc. Joy To The World (Instrumental Rock Guitar Version) - I recorded this version of Joy To The World a few years ago on spec for one of my publishers. It took a few years, but last December this track was used several times in different ABC promos for the movies Mary Poppins, The Great Christmas Light Fight, The Middle and ABC World News Now. ![]() "Where We Were" - I recorded this track in LA with producer Gary Gray back in 2015. This was licensed for use a few weeks ago in a new VR video game called "Catch And Release". This was my first video game placement! I sing lead vocals on this one and my buddy MJ, sang the harmony vocal part. I never imagined, when I wrote this, that it would end up being used in a video game, no less a video game about fishing. But, now that I think about it, it does have a sort of, spending a day on the lake with a friend, casting out the line, drinking a couple beers, sort of vibe. This track is also featured on a corresponding soundtrack for the game, so in addition to an upfront licensing fee, I'll also be getting payments for the soundtrack going forward.
Closer To You Now - Here's another one that I sang lead vocals on. This was recorded a few years back with a full band in Chicago. You can really hear my Phish/Jamband influence come through on this one. I never imagined when I recorded this that it would end up on an episode of The Young & The Restless, but there it was on one of my recent ascap statements with a corresponding payment for a usage on The Y&R.
How Many Times? - For this track I recruited a friend of a friend to sing the vocal part. For certain songs, my voice simply doesn't work. I try to be as objective as possible about vocals and find the best vocalist for each track. Sometimes that's me, but a lot of times I use outside vocalists who can better capture the vibe of what I'm looking for. This track was also used on a recent episode of The Young & The Restless. I've had a lot of music used on this show over the years.
Falling Down (You Went Away) - Here's yet one more track that has been used on The Young & The Restless recently. I recorded this track with producer Gary Gray in 2015. My friend MJ sang lead vocals on this one. This one was has been used several times on The Y&R over the last two years, including a recent placement several months ago.
Up To You - This song holds the record for the single track of mine that's had the most placements. I don't know the exact number, but hundreds of uses over the years. This song has been heard on Fox Sports, The US Open, Rangers Insiders and several other sports shows I'm drawing a blank on at the moment. I just got my most recent Ascap statement, and sure enough, there it was again!
Retail Outlets - Blanket License Deal-Here's a few more of my songs that have been recently licensed into a blanket licensing deal for use in retail stores around the world. I don't know the exact details in terms of stores/locations yet, but should be receiving payment for these later this year. All of these tracks were produced by Gary Gray. I sing lead vocals on all of these, with the exception of "I Will Fly" and "Shooting Stars", which features vocalist Travis Nilan. Awakened Venus And The Moon At Night I Will Fly Shooting Stars I'm Gone Do you feel like your music career is on the right track? Or, do you feel like your spinning your wheels, not really getting anywhere? Are you sure your on the right track with your music career? Are you sure your pursuing the right goals for your particular set of talents? How can you be sure? I had the revelation many years ago, that as long as I feel like I’m moving forward and making progress towards my goals, I feel satisfied. I’ve never been overly concerned with reaching a specific destination, as much as simply wanting to continually progress. For me, it’s always been more about the journey than the destination. Not that I don’t have specific goals, I do, but my over arching goal is to keep progressing and growing. But how do you really know if you’re making progress in something like the music business? Is it enough to just have a vague sense of moving forward, or should you have specific, concrete goals you can gauge your success by? Is it about financial success? Is it about artistic satisfaction? Both? Enjoy The Journey, But Know Where You’re Going Ultimately, I think you need to have both specific goals and targets you’re shooting for, as well as a deep appreciation for the journey. The mistake many musicians seem to make is setting goals that are too distant and too lofty and then getting disappointed when they don’t reach those goals quickly. If you’re obsessed with the idea of playing stadiums like U2 or The Rolling Stones, you’re probably not going to really enjoy playing small bars and clubs for many years, although it will be required in order to reach your ultimate goal of playing stadiums. If you have no appreciation for sweating it out in smaller venues and paying your dues, you’ll likely get burned out and give up way before every reaching your goal. If your goal is to make a full time living licensing music and that’s all you think about, it might be challenging to appreciate the years it takes to get there by improving your tracks, writing more songs, spending days and months networking and building relationships, and so on. If you don’t truly enjoy the process, it will be much harder to push through the challenging times and ultimately reach your goals, whatever they are. Redefining Success I used to fall victim to this sort of thinking in the past and it derailed me for several years. I felt frustrated because I wasn’t moving forward fast enough and wasn’t reaching my, admittedly, very big goals. It wasn’t until I redefined my own definition of success and changed my approach to making music and the music business, that I started to actually make progress and began to appreciate the journey. Now, I know what you might be thinking. Because I’m thinking it even as I type this. Isn’t this just some sort of a trick to get your mind to accept settling for less? And the answer is a definitive no. I don’t want you to settle for less. I want you to push as hard as possible and give everything you have towards reaching your goals. In fact, you might even need to set bigger goals for yourself, to give yourself the proper motivation to truly grow and move forward. BUT, you also need to be truly in touch with yourself and with where you are in the grand scheme of your career and life, in order to set the right goals. You need to learn to enjoy the daily, weekly and monthly process of grinding it out and moving forward. And most importantly, you need to be sure you’re pursuing the right goals, the ones that are a best match for your particular set of skills, your personality and your desired lifestyle. Part of success, in any industry, is being realistic about where you actually are and the things you need to work on to improve, on a daily basis in order to reach your goals. If your dream is to perform in stadiums in front of 50,000 people, but you can barely muster up the courage to perform for 40 people at your local bar, you clearly have some work cut out for you. If you don’t look forward to the incremental steps you need to take to inch your way towards your bigger goals, it’s going to be hard to move forward at all. Even if you get extremely lucky and somehow manage to skip the necessary steps you need to take in order to achieve success, there’s a good chance you won’t be ready for it when you get there, if you’re not prepared. Self-Awareness You also need to be realistic about how much you actually enjoy the work required to reach your particular goals, whatever they are. If your goal is to become a famous touring musician, but you don’t actually like being on the road and being away from your home for extended periods of time, you might need to reassess your goals. If your goal is to perform for thousands of people, but you don’t really enjoy performing or feel comfortable in front of large crowds, you might need to reassess you goals. If your goal is to license music full time for television, but you don’t actually enjoy the kind of music that’s used in TV, you might need to reassess your goals. If you want to be a famous songwriter, but you’re not comfortable with periods of struggle and uncertainty, you might need to reassess your goals. Even though we live in a time where there are, perhaps more musicians than ever before, making a career out of music is still a fairly unconventional and risky career path. Although there are plenty of examples of people who have figured out how to turn their passion for music into a viable career, doing music for a living requires and enormous amount of both self-discipline and self-awareness. You might have a dream of becoming a famous touring musician, but do you really, truly want that deep down? Is your passion and love for music strong enough to overcome the enormous obstacles and challenges that will inevitably present themselves on your journey? Only you really know the answers to those questions. Only you know if you really have what it takes to make it in the music business. Only you know what part of the music business your particular temperament and interests are a good fit for. If you’re not sure what you really want and what you’re a really good fit for, perhaps some soul searching is in order. It took me many years to really figure out where I fit best in the music business and to learn how to turn my passion for music into a viable career. I’m still tweaking and modifying my particular formula for working in the music business, to this day. Changing Goals Also, keep in mind your goals and interests may very likely change as you move forward and grow as both a person and musician. When I was younger, I was dead set on forming a band and becoming a famous rock guitarist in the vein of Carlos Santana, Trey Anastasio, Jerry Garcia, etc. So after I finished Berklee I formed a band in Chicago that lasted several years and played a lot regionally. After this first band broke up, I formed another band and continued to perform. This band lasted about two years. After that band broke up, I formed yet another band, that lasted about a year and a half. After that band broke up, I formed yet one more short-lived band, that only lasted about six months. After a decade of playing in different bands, none of which became “rock star” level successful, I was forced to reassess my path and goals. I loved my time playing in bands, but as I got older, there were things about this lifestyle and path that started to feel incongruent to me. For example, when I was younger, I used to get pretty bad stage fright and my solution at the time was to simply drink alcohol until I felt comfortable enough to perform. After all I thought, I’m working in an environment where drinking is not only permitted, it’s given to me for free! Drinking alcohol is a really effective short term solution to stage fright. It works in the moment to relieve nerves, but like many “quick fixes”, it comes at a price. Negative health consequences, hangovers and social costs, are all part of the fun of using alcohol excessively. So, after a decade of performing live I decided to step away from playing in bands for awhile. In retrospect, it was a much needed break, because it allowed me to really focus on myself and get healthy. I took a trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua during this period, where I ended up actually performing a lot, particularly in Nicaragua, where I befriended a fellow musician and bar owner. Except this time, I was performing mainly for fun, so I didn’t really feel the pressure I felt before when I was trying to “make it”. I learned how to perform either with no alcohol or very little. To this day when I play gigs, I will often have one or two drinks. I’m not against moderate drinking, I’m just against using alcohol as a crutch, to the point where it becomes a problem and bleeds over into other areas of your life. This is an easy and common trap to fall into if you’re not careful. In fact, I read a study recently that said the average “famous” musician has a life span of about 25 years less than the general population, mainly due to drugs and alcohol.
These days I perform live frequently. Usually at least once or twice a week. Sometimes I play solo. Sometimes I perform with different bands. Over the last several years I’ve performed in a variety of different contexts. Playing live is probably my favorite thing about being a musician. I love the immediate feedback and immediate gratification of getting up in front of an audience. But, it took me a few years to really learn how to perform in a healthy way. Ultimately, the best cure for stage fright, is simply experience. I don’t necessarily aspire to live a life on the road, but I’ve learned to love performing and it remains an important piece of the musical puzzle for me. The point I’m making, is that the path you choose to pursue, will potentially impact your entire life. You need to know yourself well enough, to know which path you should go down and which path is really right for you. Being a touring musician, for example, isn’t for everybody and if you come to the conclusion that it’s not the life you desire, there’s no shame in that. I’ve talked to many musicians who have had considerable success touring who decided it wasn’t what they actually wanted after getting a taste of success and life on the road. A few years ago, I interviewed the former Saxophone player for Sublime and “Sublime With Rome”, who also happens to be a medical doctor, who decided after more than a year on the road with Sublime, playing venues like Red Rocks, that the touring lifestyle wasn’t what he wanted! He said ultimately, that he missed his family and didn’t really enjoy the extensive travelling and the lifestyle that went along with playing in a band as successful as Sublime. Many Different Paths The music business is comprised of many different roles and career paths. Becoming a famous musician ala Justin Beiber, Beyonce and The Rolling Stones, may be what many of us think of when we think of “making it” in the music business. But, it turns out there are many different ways of “making it” in music. There are songwriters who simply write music for a living. There are musicians who have carved out careers in only licensing their music. There are producers who produce music for a living. There are music publishers who publish and license music for a living. There are artists who make a living performing only regionally. There are music teachers who inspire and teach other musicians. And there are artists who do any combination of the above that make a good living though several revenue streams. There are many different ways to make it in the music business. What path is right for you? I played a gig a few nights ago that was one of “those” gigs. If you’re a performing musician you probably know the kind of gig I’m talking about. It was one of those gigs where something just clicked between myself, the other musicians on stage and the audience. During gigs like this it feels like I couldn’t play a wrong note if I tried. All apprehension and nervousness fades away, and the music seems to flow out of me, without my thoughts or ego getting in the way. It doesn’t happen every time I perform. Sometimes multiple gigs go by without getting into that “zone” or reaching that place. But when it happens it’s undeniable and palpable and the crowd responds accordingly. This feeling, this “zone”, whatever you want to call it, is the feeling I’m chasing every time I get on stage.
Things didn’t click until the second set. It started during the opening song. A song I sang lead vocals on. I could tell the crowd was into the song, which gave me the confidence to sing with even more conviction and excitement as the song progressed. The song ended and there was thunderous applause. I can’t remember ever getting that enthusiastic of a response to my vocals. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by the crowd’s over the top reaction, which set the stage for the rest of the night. As I thanked the crowd, a huge grin came over my face and we launched in the next song, an instrumental funk number that lasted about ten minutes and was built to a dramatic climax. As I launched into my solo, I stumbled upon a simple, but catchy melody that I continued to come back to throughout the jam. The saxophonist in our band latched onto the same melody and together we weaved in and out of this motif for the next several minutes. We played it in different octaves, with different rhythmic variations, sometimes together, sometimes more of a call and response, for several minutes, until the jam seemed to reach a natural conclusion. Again, when the song stopped, there was thunderous applause. Mot of the second set was like this, until things seemed to peter out a bit towards the end. But by then, it didn’t seem to matter. Every one was clearly enjoying themselves, band and audience alike. After the show, different people came up to me to tell me how much they enjoyed the show. I got a lot of “great job”, “you play great” sort of compliments, which is always nice to hear. But one conversation in particular struck me as particularly poignant. A girl I’ve know for a couple years came up to me and said how much she enjoyed the show. I thanked her and said something like, “thanks, I love to play”. “Well”, she said, “it shows”. I had an end of the night drink after the show with a few of the musicians I performed with and went home. When I got home, I still had so much adrenaline and excitement from the gig that I couldn’t sleep. It was strange, because I’ve played so many gigs at this point that I’m usually not that amped up after shows anymore. But for some reason I was strangely excited and my mind was racing more than usual. It reminded me of how I felt when I was younger, in my early twenties, after a really good gig. I used to get so excited that I would stay up until the early hours of the morning, reflecting on the night’s performance and de-briefing, in my mind, the good and bad elements of the show. When I woke up the next morning, my mind came back to my friend’s comment about how she could see how much I enjoyed playing music and it struck me, that that was probably about the best compliment anyone could give me. The show was great, because myself and the band I was performing with, we’re having a good time. The audience had a good time because they fed off the energy of the band. The band picked up on the audience’s response and we got even more excited and as a result played even better, with more confidence. And that, is essentially, what live music is all about. It’s an exchange of energy, if you will, between musicians and audience. It’s an opportunity to escape from the problems and stress of our day to day lives for a few hours, let our proverbial hair down, and simply have a good time. When I was younger I used to be really into the band Phish. I saw them live dozens of times. Love them or hate them, in their prime, they were an amazing live band. They toured with Carlos Santana in the early 90s and Santana had this great way of explaining the live concert experience at a Phish show, and at concerts in general. His analogy was that music was like water, the band is like a hose, and the audience is like flowers. Yeah, it sounds like some super hippy, stoner talk, but it’s a beautiful analogy if you think about it. Here’s Trey Anastasio from Phish on Santana’s idea: “When we went out with Santana, he had brought up this thing about the Hose. ... where the music is like water rushing through you and as a musician your function is really like that of a hose. And, and well his thing is that the audience is like a sea of flowers, you know, and you're watering the audience. But the concept of music going through you, that you're not actually creating it, that what you're doing is -- the best thing that you can do is get out of the way. So, when you are in a room full of people, there's this kind of group vibe that seems to get rolling sometimes.” I love this idea that as musicians, especially during moments of improvisation, we’re not actually creating the music. It’s more like we’re channeling the music from a deeper part our ourselves, or from somewhere out there in the cosmos. This rings true to me in my experience, because in moments where I feel in the “zone” and things are flowing particularly well, a guaranteed way to screw it up is to start thinking too much about what I’m doing or over analyzing things. It’s better to not think about things at all, or as little as possible and just let the music come through. If you think about it, that’s what stage fright or nervousness is all about, it’s about focusing too much on yourself. When you an learn to redirect that energy towards the music, your stage fright and nerves will naturally dissipate. I think that’s why music, at its best, is so enjoyable. It’s a way of getting outside of our egos and problems and transcending them, to experience even greater joy and reach greater heights than possible, when we’re stuck in our egoic, “monkey minds”. That’s why playing music is so enjoyable. Because, when we’re truly in the moment, in what’s known as a “flow state” we’ve transcended, albeit temporarily, the stress and problems that tend to permeate our day to day lives. When I was younger I used to have this grandiose concept of what it meant to be a musician. I looked up to artists like Hendrix and Dylan and saw how music, at its most impactful, could change the world and impact culture. Of course, that’s still true. Music and art have that potential. Music and art have the potential to both reflect and shape culture in profound ways. The Beatles certainly impacted culture. Beethoven certainly did as well. As did Dylan, The Stones, Pink Floyd, Coltrane, Radiohead, Paul Simon and countless other great artists over the years. But music also serves a much more practical and perhaps less dramatic function, which is to simply lift people’s spirits and help them enjoy themselves and well, as Prince said, “get through this thing called life”. If you accomplish nothing else a musician, other than simply entertaining people and helping to elevate their moods, even temporarily, know that you’ve still done something truly great. Life is hard in many ways and on many levels for many people and the world needs as many people as possible sharing their gifts, lifting each other up and inspiring each other. If you have the gift to do that through music, you should, you know, like, keep doing that.
I did a live webinar a couple weeks ago, exclusively for members of How To License Your Music Premium. I’m doing one live webinar a month for members of the new premium site, focusing on different topics related to music licensing. The most recent webinar focused on how to build connections with music libraries and music supervisors and featured myself, TV composer Eddie Grey and music producer Gary Gray.
During the webinar, one of the questions that came up at the end was about how to stay motivated when you’re new to the industry and things aren’t going the way you want them to go. How do you stay motivated when you’re trying and trying to get your music career off the ground, but you haven’t yet achieved the success you’re hoping for? This is a good question, because I think it’s all too easy to get thrown off track when you’re new to licensing, or even if you’ve been at it awhile, if you lose sight of a few important things. If you’re only focused on your lack of results, it can easily prevent you from taking the necessary steps to reach your goals. So, with that in mind, here are a few things to keep in mind and help you stay motivated and positive, even if you haven’t yet reached your licensing and music career goals. It Takes Time One of the things that you have to keep in mind related to licensing, is that it takes time. Almost everyone that I’ve interviewed and worked with over the last ten years that is doing licensing on a full-time level, has indicated that it took at least a few years for things to get to the point where they could live off the income they make from licensing. The exact time frame varies from person to person. I’ve heard two years, four years and even longer as the length of time it took for different composers to reach the point of making a sustainable income from licensing their music. As my friend and composer Eddie Grey stated on a recent episode of my podcast, this business is a marathon not a sprint. Don’t get discouraged if you’re not seeing a ton of results right out of the gate. It’s normal. It takes most writers a couple years or more to really get things rolling with licensing. If you think about the way the business works and the nature of the music licensing business, this makes complete sense. Even in the absolute best-case scenario of writing a song today and licensing it tomorrow, it still takes time to get paid, collect performance royalties and so on. Music Licensing is a slow-moving industry. Of course, you probably won’t license your music that quickly. Most likely it will take time to write and record tracks, build connections, start getting placements and so on. You can avoid a lot of frustration in the beginning of your licensing career if you’re aware of this fact and go into the business with open eyes. Focus On The Work Because things do take time to get rolling in the beginning. The best use of your time will be focusing on doing the work. Focus on building and growing your catalog, making connections, signing with different libraries and so on. It makes no sense to get discouraged about not getting the results you want immediately and letting that throw you off track. Instead, focus on the things that need to be done, that you can actually control. The more you do this, the quicker results will come. With a few exceptions, most of the writers I know that make a full-time income from licensing, have very large catalogs. Think anywhere from 500 to 1,000 or more tracks and cues. Licensing is a numbers game and the more tracks you have that will potentially work in a broad range of applications, the more money you’ll be able to make from licensing. Again, there are exceptions and some types of placements pay considerably more than others, but you should always focus on growing your catalog and continuing to write great material. When you write new tracks, you’re exponentially increasing your odds of getting more placements. Don’t rest on your laurels once you start getting placements and become comaplacent. Instead, keep writing new music, so that you’ll always have more tracks you can license down the road. Stay Connected To Your Passion For Music One of the best ways to stay motivated and positive about your music, when you’re not getting the results you want, is to simply stay connected to why you love music in the first place. I think most musicians have a love for music that transcends simply wanting to make money from music. Stay in touch with that. I’ve had periods in the past where my frustration about the business of music led me to temporarily losing touch with my passion for music. Don’t let that happen to you. The music business and the music you make, that comes from you heart and soul, are two very different things. Don’t ever forget that. Whenever I find myself getting discouraged or down about music, which fortunately doesn’t happen that often anymore, I simply go back to writing music from a place of joy and passion. I’m more prolific when I’m in touch with my passion for music, I tend to write better music and ultimately I end up licensing more music and making more money from my music as a result. First and foremost, I’m in touch and connected with my love of music. I’ve often said, that as much as I love licensing my music, I’m not overly concerned or even that excited with any particular placement or usage of my music. Don't get me wrong, I of course am super grateful for every opportunity that has come my way and getting paid for my music is extremely satisfying. But, ultimately, it’s more about the joy of writing songs, building my catalog and trusting the process. In the end, all you can really do is write the best music you’re capable of writing and connect it with as many people as possible. If you’re persistent in doing this and you do this consistently over a period of several years, you can realistically reach a point where you can live off the income you’re making from licensing, or at the very least, supplement your income in a substantial way. But to focus on the business of music at the expense of your love and passion for music doesn’t make sense to me, because even if you end up becoming successful, if you’re not enjoying it, you’ll end up with just another “job”. I don’t know about you, but that’s not why I got into the music business.
Speaking of my love for music, check out my latest track, produced by Gary Gray, called “You’ll Be On My Mind”. We just finished this track a couple weeks ago and just signed this to a new publishing/licensing deal this week.
I just found out another one of my tracks was licensed for use in a video game! My track “Where We Were” (produced by Gary Gray), from my CD "Shooting Stars", will be featured in the upcoming VR video game "Catch And Release" from developers Metricmind and publisher Advanced Interactive Gaming. This track is one of 30 that will be featured in the game and will also be released on a corresponding soundtrack.
Check out the song here: This latest license is, I believe, the 15th new license in the last three months or so. I’ve built quite a momentum lately with licensing my own tracks, and as they say, when it rains it pours. I also have around ten or so other tracks that have been shortlisted for various projects that I should know more about soon. I don’t say any of this to boast, it’s simply the result of a lot of hard work over the last couple years. In today’s post I thought I’d explore how to build and sustain momentum with your tracks and licensing. It’s all too easy to get discouraged when pursuing something like licensing. Results can be incredibly slow going in the beginning. There are simply no guarantees in this business and all too often writers sign with a few libraries, sit back and wait and then….. crickets. Nothing! I’ve been there and I know the feeling. It’s not a good feeling! However, the flip side, is that once you start to see the results of your efforts pay off it’s an incredible feeling. When you work towards something for a sustained period of time and you start to actually see the results you want, that’s a hard feeling to top! It also gets easier over time. Success begets success, and once you start licensing your tracks, it become easier to license more and more. You still could have times where things slow down, like in all industries, but once you get how the business works and realize what works and what doesn’t, it becomes much easier to build momentum and move forward. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re getting started and building your own momentum. It Takes Time Licensing takes time. You have to understand that going into this industry. This isn’t an instant gratification business. Many of my recent licenses have been songs that I recorded several years ago or more that are just now getting picked up. It takes time to build a catalog, build contacts in the industry and ultimately to get things licensed. You have to remember this in the beginning when you are getting started. A great analogy is to think of it like planting a garden. You do the work now and things come to fruition in the future. This can be frustrating if you’re trying to turn this into a full-time revenue stream, but it is what it is. You have to think long term and focus on the things in front of you that you can actually control. Things like building your catalog, writing and recording new music, making new contacts in the industry and so on should be your focus in the beginning. Another good analogy is to think of it like dating. When you’re single you never know when you’re going to meet the next person you click with. You can’t really control it or predict it. What you can control are things like taking care of yourself, focusing on your purpose and mission in life, where and when you socialize and so forth. When you focus on the things you can control, things tend to fall in place. Licensing is a lot like that. There are always things you can do to move forward and set the stage for things to go well in the future. Too many musicians get discouraged when they don’t see instant results. Don’t get discouraged. Instead keep focusing on the thing you can do that will get you closer to realizing your goals. If you’re not getting the results you want, here are things you can focus and work on, RIGHT NOW: Grow Your Catalog The more songs you have, the better your chances are of licensing your tracks. Of course the songs need to be good and the production needs to be good. But, in general, the more tracks you have the better. The more tracks you have, the greater the chance that you’ll have something that meets the needs of different projects looking for music. Of course, no single artist will be able to cover all the different, potential needs for licensing. But the larger and more diverse your catalog is the better. Keep Expanding Your Network Another thing you should focus on, at all times, is the network of people you have pitching your music. The more tracks you have the greater the chances of something landing, and the more people you have pitching your tracks, the greater the chances of someone landing you a placement. If you have a great catalog, but it’s not earning you substantial money, focus on growing your contacts. I have my music with quite a few libraries and publishers at this point, and usually when one quiets down another one will pick up. Again, to use the dating analogy, think of it like meeting ten people and getting ten phone numbers. They probably won’t all pan out, but if you meet and connect with enough people, eventually you’ll make a solid connection. Dating is a numbers game. So is licensing. Stay Positive! This part really applies to life in general. But, while you’re doing all this, stay positive! It’s easy to get frustrated about the things you can’t control in life, but everything seems to flow better when you have a positive mindset. By simply focusing on the things you can control you’ll get much better results and you’ll be a lot happier. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely been through periods of extreme frustration when things weren’t going the way I wanted them to. But, looking back, I wasted a lot of energy getting upset about things that I had little or no control over and ultimately, my frustration did zero good. The only thing that’s really helped me move forward is just doing the work. If you aren’t where you’d like to be, you have more work to do. It’s that simple. So, keep putting in the work and effort until you get there. Do you ever find yourself feeling discouraged because you haven’t gone as far in your music “career” as you’d like? Do you sometimes find yourself obsessed with thoughts about when and where your “big break” is going to happen? Do you wish you made more money from your music? Do you wish you were more known and respected for the music you make?
For some reason, a lot of musicians associate being successful in the music business with being “famous” in the music business. I think a lot of musicians even start with this being their primary goal. As if being a great musician and being a “famous” musician were somehow the same thing. It’s sort of weird if you stop and think about it. There are few other professions where the goal is to get famous for doing said profession, apart from the entertainment industry. If you aspire to become a great doctor, you’re probably not also hoping to get famous in the process. Unless you’re Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil perhaps, but do they even count? If your goal is to open a restaurant, chances are you’re not looking to become famous for it. Ideally, fame, if it comes at all, should be a byproduct of being a great musician. If you’re really, really good at something, and enough people find out and appreciate what you do, there’s a chance fame will come as a result. But, to pursue fame as the ultimate goal, is a bit like putting the cart before the horse, in my mind. I’m not really sure if I would even like being famous, it seems like a lot of pressure. Especially if you’re super famous like Shakira or Justin Bieber. Although, there are obvious perks, I can only imagine that fame would also come at an extraordinary price, in terms of having very little privacy, having increased demands on your time and the pressure to maintain the success you’ve achieved. When I was younger I used to put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed and become famous as a musician. To me, it seemed at the time, to be the ultimate goal. I wanted to be famous like my idols that I looked up to. When I didn’t have the success I aspired to have after several years of playing in bands and doing everything in my power to make it happen, I grew disillusioned. I started to feel really negative about the music business and my role in it. I can remember the awful feeling of playing gigs that weren’t well attended and feeling like a failure. This isn’t how this is supposed to be going I thought. Music, for awhile, stopped being fun and started to feel like a giant source of frustration and pain. My goal of becoming a famous musician seemed to drift further and further away. This feeling lasted a few years, until after about ten years of gigging, I took a break from playing live and playing in bands, in my early thirties. For a couple years I sort of put music on the backburner, not really sure what to do with my passion or love for music. I still wrote new songs during this period and continued to pursue things like licensing, but music started to seem like more of a glorified hobby than a career. This feeling continued for the next few years until I noticed something sort of strange, which was that I reached a point where I wasn’t trying to “make it” in the music business anymore and didn’t really think about it anymore. As a result, I no longer felt the frustration associated with trying to do something and falling short of my expectations, but, my love for music remained. In fact, untethered from the need to “make it” in the music business, I realized I enjoyed writing and playing music more than ever. It was as if I rediscovered what drew me to making music in the first place, which, at least in the very beginning, wasn’t to become famous. I simply loved music! I think for most musicians, there’s something that drew us to music, before the idea of “making it” in the music business entered our minds. When I grew up listening to music, I wasn’t drawn to bands and artists because they were famous, I was drawn to different bands and artists because I enjoyed their music. They became famous, because a lot of people enjoyed their music. I was drawn to making music, because I simply loved music and wanted to follow in the footsteps of all the great musicians I grew up listening to. It wasn’t until later, when I was in my early twenties, that I started obsessing over and worrying about becoming famous. Benefits Of Detaching From Your Success I’m about to get all zen and philosophical on your ass. That’s right, here it comes! There’s this idea in eastern philosophy, and western philosophy for that matter, of detaching from the outcome of things. The idea is that as you pursue your goals and desires, it’s best to do so from a place of non-attachment. In other words, go for what you want, but relax about how things unfold. This isn’t the same as not caring about the outcome at all, but it’s just that things aren’t always going to go exactly how you want them to go, so you’ll be a lot happier if you just lighten up and not worry too much about how or when things happen. Do you really want to be successful, but worried and stressed out all the time? One of my favorite quotes, is a zen proverb that sums up this idea: “the hungry don’t get fed”. Think about this and how it rings true in your experience. Think about people who want things so much that they come across needy and desperate, as opposed to ambitious and confident. You obviously don’t want to simply throw your hands up in the air and become completely apathetic about your life and your goals. That’s not what I’m suggesting. But you also don’t want to be so fixated on your goals that the thought of not attaining them causes you to become crippled with fear. I think there’s a middle ground where you can simply pursue the things you love and let things happen, however they’re going to happen. Back To The Music When you shift your focus away from being overly concerned with success and back to your love of making music, you take your power back. You see, there are people in the music business, who in some ways can hold you back from success, although not as many as there used to be. But, there are still gatekeepers that can reject your music. Maybe it’s a music publisher who doesn’t think your music has what it takes, or maybe it’s a music supervisor who doesn’t think you have the right “sound”. But, when you stop worrying so much about success and just focus on making great music, well, no one, and I mean no one can stop you. Only you can decide whether or not you’re going to keep making music, keep writing better songs and keep improving your craft. You are completely in control of how good you become as a musician. Maybe you haven’t had the success you’ve desired so far, but it’s up to you whether or not you want to keep improving and growing as a musician. This is what’s so exciting about letting go of the need to “make it”, it puts you back in the driver’s seat and puts the focus back on the only thing you ever really had control of in the first place, the music! And of course, the better you get as a musician and the better your music becomes, the chances of attaining “commercial success”, or success in general, become greater. It’s easy to be cynical about the music business and there are plenty of examples of uber successful musicians whose music you might not respect, and we probably all know musicians who are uber talented who, for whatever reason, haven’t found much success to speak of. But, in my experience, when you work hard, and stay focused on growing as a musician and doing what you can to move your career forward, opportunities do come and doors do open, eventually. It might not happen exactly when or how you think it should, but when you persist at something like music long enough, success, in varying degrees will eventually come. And when that happens, you can take a deep breath, relax, and get back to making great music. Today’s post isn’t directly related to music licensing or the music business, but yet I think it’s completely relevant to all of us as musicians. The topic I want to discuss, is the importance of being positive in both your approach to making music, the music business and life in general. A few days ago, I hosted the first in a series of live monthly webinars that I’m offering via my new website, How To License Your Music Premium. This webinar featured TV composer Eddie Grey and music producer Gary Gray. As Gary was introducing Eddie and I at the start of the webinar he highlighted how, in his estimation, Eddie and I are positive, optimistic people that others want to be around and how our optimism, in his opinion, is at least part of why we’ve been able to carve out successful niches for ourselves in the music industry. Later in the webinar, during Eddie’s presentation, Eddie told the story about closing a recent, lucrative deal for one of his tracks, and suggested that one of the main reasons he was able to close this particular deal was that the person he signed the deal with simply likes working with him. He said that obviously his music was good as well, but that in his opinion his attitude and positivity had as much to do with his success in this particular instance as the quality of the music he makes. Later that day, I skyped with one of my publishers in LA for about an hour and our conversation drifted to the topic of my producer, Gary Gray, who we both know and work with. We both talked about how positive and upbeat Gary is and how nice it is to work with people like this. Then my publisher spent several minutes talking about how, in her own career and life, being a positive person has been a big part of her success and has served her well. This theme of being positive, kept coming up over the course of this day and it inspired me to reflect on my own life and how positivity, and the lack of it at times, has impacted my life. I consider myself a “glass half full” sort of person. I think most people that know me would describe me as an upbeat and optimistic person. I always look for the positive in situations and do my best to stay optimistic, regardless of what’s happening in my life at the moment. I can’t say that I succeed at staying 100 percent positive, all the time, but I definitely lean in that direction. Endeavors like running a business and working in the music industry, are both pursuits that can knock the strongest of us off our centers, if we’re not diligent about maintaining a positive perspective. To be honest, this is something I have to work at on a daily basis, despite my own generally positive demeanor. Sometimes, in life, things happen that challenge our disposition. It happens to the best of us, which is why it’s so important that we actively work on developing and maintaining a positive outlook. I think the more we’re striving for in life, the greater the chances of things happening that we perceive as negative and the greater potential for losing a positive perspective. If you’re the kind of person who has no goals or ambition and are generally content just coasting through life, well, it’s pretty easy to stay upbeat if that’s your outlook on life. If, however, you care about where you’re going, the progress you’re making and desire to advance in life, it can be easier to get thrown off course when we face the inevitable setbacks, rejection and so on that are part and parcel with a life well lived. If you’re aiming for success and growth, you’re going to face setbacks. It’s unavoidable. I don’t know anyone who hits 100 percent of the shots they take. Do you? I could mention several of the cliché quotes about success and failure that I’m sure you’ve all heard a thousand times. You know, like, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, and so on. But, just hearing these sorts of ideas does little to comfort us when we’re in the thick of life, dealing with the ups and downs we all deal with. It’s easy to just tell people they should be positive, but what about when things aren’t going our way and we're feeling really discouraged? As I mentioned in a couple previous blog posts, I went through a break up recently. And by the way, I don’t mention things like this to evoke sympathy, I ‘m just sharing the experiences of my own life, in the hopes that my own realizations and insights will be helpful to you. I went from seeing and living with someone every day for two and a half years, to simply not having them be a part of my life. It’s pretty intense, and as anyone who has gone through an experience like this can attest to, it’s something you have to really experience to understand. Platitudes like “it’s better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all”, are of little comfort when you’re dealing with the immediate aftermath of a break up. Advice like “don’t worry man, there’s plenty of fish in the sea”, do little to comfort a broken heart, at least initially. Although with time, they start to make a whole lot more sense! When we face challenges in our careers and personal lives, we’re presented with an opportunity for growth and an opportunity to truly flex our positivity muscle. It’s how we deal with these inevitable challenges and setbacks that define who we are as people and inform and shape our character. It’s easy to be positive when things are going well, but it’s when the proverbial “shit” hits the fan that we find out what we’re really made of. Here are a couple strategies I use on a regular basis to maintain a positive perspective. Both of these philosophies have served me well and have helped me stay upbeat and optimistic in the face of challenges in business, music and in my personal life. The Obstacle Is The Way One of the ways I’ve trained myself to stay positive, in the face of challenges and adversity, is to adopt a sort of stoic philosophy to challenges in my life. There’s an idea in stoic philosophy, that any challenge we face in life is an opportunity to advance to even greater heights and move closer to our goals. As the great Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, wrote: "Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." In other words, like author Ryan Holiday declares, in his book about stoicism, “The Obstacle Is The Way”. The idea, and it’s a beautiful idea really, is that any event we initially perceive as “negative” or “bad”, can be turned into a positive and actually help us get closer to our goals. It’s a matter of perspective and how we choose to look at the situation. How can we apply this philosophy to our lives? Let’s take something most of us our probably familiar with, breakups, to start with. When my girlfriend and I broke up recently, I was pretty shaken. I wasn’t really devastated, because to be honest I saw it coming months in advance and had contemplated how I would react if and when it happened. I had even considered ending the relationship myself for a variety of reasons that ultimately contributed to the demise of the relationship. It was more or less an amicable decision. But, I was still pretty upset when it finally happened, as can be expected. However, with time, I’ve come to see what happened as a positive event. It’s been an opportunity to grow in many ways that I wouldn’t have, had the relationship continued. It’s given me an opportunity to really reflect deeply on the kind of people I want to allow into my life on an intimate level. It’s forced me to grow in ways that I don’t think I was really capable of within the context of the relationship. It’s motivated to step up my “game” in different areas of my life. I’ve embraced things like going to the gym, working harder on my business and socializing more. Part of these changes are simply a result of the extra time I have by not being in committed relationship, but most of the changes have been positive and are leading me to an even better place in life. The breakup has been a catalyst to move in the direction of my desires. How can you apply this philosophy to something like music and the music business? Pretty much the same way. When you have setbacks as your pursuing a career in music, these setbacks will generally point you towards what you actually need to focus on to reach your goals. Are you trying to license your tracks over and over, but they keep getting rejected for the same reasons? Maybe you keep hearing that your tracks are strong but that the vocals are not on point. Or maybe you keep getting feedback that your production is not up to speed. Whatever the case may be, whatever setbacks you’re facing will most likely point to what it is you actually need to focus on in order to succeed. In other words, the obstacle is the way! As I’ve gotten older, I’ve trained myself to look at life this way and it’s helped me stay positive and upbeat, almost irrespective of whatever temporary setbacks I’m confronting. I’ve faced a lot of challenges and continue to, but I no longer see setbacks as some sort of permanent state or a reflection of my worthiness as a person. I see setbacks and challenges as feedback. Our setbacks either point us in the direction of areas we need to focus on and improve, or they indicate we’re simply on the wrong path and need to try something different. Either way, our challenges can be seen as guideposts, pointing us in the direction of our goals and dreams. Gratitude Another strategy I utilize in order to remain positive, is good old-fashioned gratitude. So often in life, we’re so focused on things that don’t work out, or don’t go the way we’d like them to, that we lose sight of all the things that are going well. It’s easy to get bogged down in a sea of negativity if all we’re focusing on are the things that aren’t working out the way we’d like. But, I think if you’re honest with yourself, it’s pretty easy to find plenty of things to be grateful for. Start with simple things. Are you alive? Check. Are you breathing? Check. Do you have internet access? Check. Do you have goals and dreams? Check. Do you have at least one friend or someone you’re close to? Check ( I hope, if not go make some friends!). It’s so easy to lose sight of things that we should be grateful for. As I mentioned in a previous blog post I wrote about gratitude, half of the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 a day. If you’re reading this, then most likely you’re in the other half of the population. Be grateful for that. Be grateful for the many things you most likely already have going for you in life and let that gratitude carry you forward to even greater heights. I make a list of things, on a daily basis, that happen that I’m grateful for. This could be a positive interaction with a friend, having a good day in terms of business, having a good date, maybe licensing one of my songs and so on. I look for things to be grateful for and I take note of them throughout the day. I find that by doing this, I’m training myself to look for the good in the world and in my life. It becomes sort of addictive, the more you look for things to be grateful for, the more you’ll find. The opposite is also true, it’s pretty easy to find things to bitch about. But, why would you do that? Focus on the things that motivate and inspire you. You’ll find plenty if you look. Check out highlights from our recent webinar on writing instrumental cues for Television, available exclusively for How To License Your Music Premium members. I sent out a survey last week, asking for feedback about the types of issues musicians are struggling with in terms of getting their music licensed and moving forward with their careers. To my surprise, the issue that musicians brought up, more than any other issue, that they said they needed help with, was help or advice on how to manage their time.
With so many things to do as indie musicians, it can be overwhelming trying to juggle so many different tasks. How do you know what areas you should be focusing on or prioritizing? How do you find the time to do so many different things? How can you best manage your time on a daily basis, so you’re both moving forward, but also enjoying your life and avoiding burn out? These are the issues I’m going to be addressing in today’s post. As someone who both runs a business and is simultaneously working as a professional musician, both gigging and recording/licensing music, I’ve learned a few things about how to manage my time effectively over the years. I can’t say that I have all the answers, and every situation is different, but allow me to share some of my best practices for managing time, staying organized and moving ahead, without losing it in the process. I believe in both the value and power of hard work. There’s something about the feeling that I get at the end of day, where I know I gave it my all, that I find incredibly satisfying. It’s one of the things that has allowed me forge ahead and not give up in both business and music, both things that require an incredible amount of dedication. With that said, I also enjoy “down time” and other aspects of life that don’t revolve around work. Things like relationships, friends, family and just good old rest and relaxation, I find incredibly important and so I do my best to make time for these things as well. I’ve been really getting into going to the gym lately and I find the extra energy I get from working out, as well as the changes in my physique and health, well worth the effort I put in. However, as anyone who works out knows, or should know, there is a point of diminishing returns with exercise. You can work out too much and actually get worse results than you would have had you allowed time for your body to rest. Or, worst case scenario, you can actually cause damage and injury to your body if you overdo it too much. Your body needs periods of rest to recuperate and repair itself from the stress and tension working out puts on your body. Without these periods of rest, you won’t get optimal results from your workouts. I like to think of work in a similar way. You need to put in “the work” to get results in anything, whether it’s a business you’re starting, or a new CD you’re releasing. Obviously, you have to put in effort to get results. But I think any conversation about time management should take into consideration that you also need to factor in periods of rest and relaxation, in order to get the most out of your periods of hard work. Like Jack Nicholson’s character famously said in the movie The Shining, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. So, with that said, let’s talk about ways to effectively manage your time so you can get the best results, achieve your goals and kick ass in 2018. Define What Your Goals Actually Are Before you can effectively organize and manage your time, you need to know what it is you’re actually trying to accomplish with your time. The more clear you can get about what your goals are and what it is you’re trying to do, the more effectively you’ll be able to break down the steps you need to take to get there. I like to think both in terms of long term goals and short-term goals. In other words, where I want to be, and the steps I need to take to get there. I have a document that I’ve created, that I go over daily, where I break down my overall “life vision” and then break down things to do on a weekly basis in several different categories, including business, music, health, finances and so on. I find that by breaking things down into different categories, I get a real clear picture of where I need to be focusing my time as it relates to my most important goals. Here’s an example of what that looks like from the actual document I use. I start with my “Life Vision” because I think it makes the most sense to start with an overall vision that I’m trying to realize and then break it down into smaller steps. Life Vision Thriving Member site that delivers tremendous value to musicians thriving indie Music career with lots of placements, play shows regularly (minimum weekly) 10 K monthly from music and business combined Nice place that I love living in with a Podcast / Recording Studio Three rooms – studio/office, bedroom, guest room Plenty of money in bank at all times – grow savings In great shape amazing primary relationship that I feel great about, trust, love, connection, support great relationships/friends that I love Live in area that I love Travel and connect more Life that flows with ease and love and peace debt free Ability to travel several months a year to cool places As you can see, The Life Vision part of my goal setting is fairly broad and relates to several key categories of my life; business, music, relationships, health and money. In other words, the areas of my life that have the biggest impact on my quality of life. After I’ve established my overall life vision and the kind of life I’m trying to create and bring to fruition, I then start to break down each area that I want to focus on, and figure out the things I need to focus on in each category. Here’s the Music category as an example: Music To Do This Week - Finish NCIS Song And Record New Cue” -One guitar jam recording or video weekly -Upload music and artwork for new EP, Chill -And new Vocal EP -One Youtube video weekly -Post to reddit (Weekly) -Facebook ad (weekly) -Submit to five new places daily -upload tracks to Ad Rev -New Music Video -Send Beth Wernick Music -Get tracks featured on Spotify -Launch boom goes the music, podcast and make playlists Each week, I change the things I need to do and focus on for that week. Right now, I’m recording an average of two new songs a week, for specific projects I’m working on. I’m also releasing a new EP, working on creating new content for my Youtube Channel and in the process of launching a new Podcast featuring other artists. I’m also continuing to promote my music and reach out to new contacts as well. There’s a lot to do, but by breaking down so clearly what I’m trying to accomplish, it makes it much easier to determine the steps I need to take. After I’ve determined my overall life vision and the things I need to do on a weekly basis in each key area, I then I make a daily list of things to do each day. I tend to do this each night for the following day. As an example, here was the list I made for myself for yesterday: Tuesday 8 am - Workout get to office Work on member site Create new videos, content, add new leads, etc Music Pitchers Make 5 submissions My Music Submit to five places Work on new music video Send 90 day leads Write new instrumental cue and make demo Promotion: Email colleges, universities, etc 6:30 Call with Senne for 90 day challenge 8:00 – Finish recording with Eusebio I tend to start my day by working out, then head to the office and focus on business things during the day, and then at night I tend to focus on my music, writing, recording etc. I continue this process more or less the same throughout the week. I usually factor in at least one day a week, normally Sunday, where I don’t do any work and spend the day, normally relaxing with friends, going to the movies, going out to eat, etc. I also typically have at least two or three nights a week where I go out somewhere, either on a date, hang out with friends and so on. Overall, I would say I’m a pretty busy person, but I feel like I lead a balanced life. I’m busy, but I don’t feel overwhelmed or out of control. I know what I need to do and I focus on getting things done, but I also make sure to take time to “stop and smell the roses”. I think when you give yourself regular periods of rest, at least one day a week, when you do return to work, you’ll find that you’re more focused and rejuvenated, and you’ll be able to get more done.
Have you ever seen the movie “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey? In the film, Carrey’s character attends a self-help seminar where he learns about the idea of simply saying yes to every opportunity that comes along. By saying yes to every invitation and every opportunity to do something new, he transforms his life and lifts himself out of a deep rut he had been in.
In today’s post I’d like to explore how you can apply this same principle to your music and your music career, in order to lift yourself out of ruts, or simply move forward and push your career even further, if you’re already experiencing some success. Regardless of where you’re at in your career, by saying yes to more opportunities and seizing more chances that come your way, you’ll experience more success, grow as a musician and move ahead more quickly. For the last year or so, I’ve taken this approach to my career, without really thinking about it deliberately. I didn’t sit down and say to myself that I’m going to start saying yes to everything, I’ve just found myself starting to embrace more and more opportunities and trying new things. As a result, I’ve made new connections, expanded my catalog of music and have made more money. I’ll give you a few examples of how this has played out in my life. Think about how you can apply this approach to your own music career. I think most of us have opportunities to move forward that we miss out on, because we’re so focused on what we think we should be doing, or what we would simply prefer to do. There are lots of different ways to be successful with music, that are outside of the realm of the conventional ways we think of “making it’ in the music business. For example, a few moths ago I started, for the first time in my career, writing instrumental compositions. Of course, I’ve been very aware of instrumental music and its role within the context of sync licensing for years, but I never really considered writing this style of music? Why? Looking back I think I was simply too locked into a very narrow role I had defined for myself and my music, which was that of more a less, a singer/songwriter. I’ve always loved this kind of music, and so I set out to create and focus solely on this genre. For years I dedicated my time to writing songs with lyrics and vocals. Of course, I don’t regret any of this and clearly this style of music is a valid and popular genre of music. I’ll continue to write this kind of music forever, because I love it. But, now that I’ve started to get into writing instrumental music, it’s opened up a whole new genre and style of music for me to work with and pursue. I really enjoy writing instrumental tracks and I never would have known if I hadn’t said yes to a recent opportunity to create instrumental tracks for a TV show a friend of mine works on. In the past, I probably would’ve said no, that’s not really what I do, or “I don’t know, let me think about that”. I can think back to similar opportunities in the past that I turned down or didn’t pursue with much conviction, because it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. I recently heard back about a batch of new instrumental tracks I’ve submitted and was told I would most likely get several new placements as a result of these tracks. This particular show goes into production next month, so we’re still waiting for the exact dates/episodes. As a result of this project, I also now have basically a CD’s worth of instrumental music I can release on Spotify, Youtube, Itunes, etc. All by just saying yes to an opportunity. I’ve also had another opportunity to write music for the show NCIS, and I’m creating several new vocal tracks this week and next to submit to this particular connection. The great thing about saying yes to these types of opportunities, is that regardless of how things pan out, whether your songs get used or not, you’ll grow as a musician and of course end up with new songs that you can market and sell to other places. Another great thing about saying yes to more opportunities is that it creates momentum with your career and music. When I have specific projects to write for and specific goals related to my music, it gives me something concrete and tangible to aim for. I find this incredibly inspiring and motivating. When I go through periods where I don’t have these types of goals related to my music, I of course still write and create music, but I have a tendency to get more complacent and lackadaisical with my approach to making music. Sometimes having no restrictions or parameters on the music you make can be incredibly freeing, but it can also lead to a very aimless approach to your music that doesn’t really lead anywhere, if you’re not careful. As musicians, we need to have goals to aim for, to both motivate us to grow, and on a practical level, just to have something to shoot for and focus our time. I think I was resistant to approaching music this way in the past, because I didn’t want my music to simply become a product or commodity to be exploited in the market place. So I clung to the idea that I have to write music that I’m passionate about and believe in, regardless of whether or not it fits into the box of what is “commercially viable”. I felt like I had to write music that first and foremost, I love, and then try to figure out how to monetize it. Now, I look at it this way: Of course, I want to write music that I’m passionate about. After all, if I don’t love and enjoy what I’m doing, it sort of defeats the point of being a musician. However, as a professional musician, I also have to write music there is a need and demand for. So now, what I try to do is find the place where my passion intersects with an actual need. For example, with the instrumental cues I’ve been creating, there is a specific format for these types of tracks that works best. The music can’t be too busy or have too many notes, because it needs to support the dialog of the scenes. So, I have to keep this in mind when I’m creating these tracks. This minamalistic approach is different than what I would do normally, but I still love creating these tracks and find plenty of room to be creative and express myself artistically. By saying yes to more opportunities, I’ve been able to grow my catalog and discover a new side of my musical personality that I didn’t even know existed. If you’re feeling stuck or not sure what direction to go in, seek out more connections and opportunities, then when opportunities present themselves, as they inevitably will, say yes! Check out one of my newest instrumental tracks, Flying, here. This one, as usual, was produced by Mr. Gary Gray. After I finished Berklee, I returned to my home town of Chicago and continued studying guitar under the tutelage of the great Jazz guitarist John Mclean. I remember one day, during one of our lessons I asked him if he ever got cynical about the music business and his place in it. I asked him if he ever got frustrated that although he was (and is) an amazing, accomplished musician that he was relatively unknown, compared to groups like the “Spice Girls” (who were big at the time) despite having, at least in comparison to Mclean, little talent.
I’ll never forget his answer. Without a hint of bitterness or cynicism, he said, there are two different mountains to climb in the music business. One is that of becoming a “big”, known artist. The other is the mountain of becoming a “great” musician. Both mountains, he said, were difficult to climb and both had their rewards and merits. But, he emphasized, they are different mountains, that have little to do with each other. I hadn’t thought about, or reflected on this conversation in a long time, but for some reason this morning, as I was in the gym, getting my morning workout in, this conversation came back to me. I played a gig last night, on a sidewalk, for about 50 people, in front of a Tex-Mex restaurant in the Dominican Republic, where I’m back for I think the 5th time in the last four years, spending several weeks playing music in the beach town of Cabarete, on the north coast of the island. I love coming here and taking a few weeks each year to play music and re-calibrate my psyche and perspective on the world. I always feel like spending time here is sort of like hitting the “reset” button on my life. It’s a time to reflect and unwind a bit, before returning to the many projects and endeavors I’ve decided to purse in both business and music. After the gig, which was with a 28 year old guitarist/singer from Savannah, Georgia and a 64 year old harpist/Saxophonist from Montreal, Canada, the three of us hung out for a bit, shooting the “proverbial” shit. Of course, at some point, the conversation turned to the music business and how hard it is to “make it” in the current music industry. The harpist, Michael Freedman, who due to his age, has a broader perspective than either of us, in terms of the ways in which the music industry has changed, basically has concluded that the live music, bar scene is dead. I’ve heard this sentiment echoed pretty much my whole adult life from older, more experienced musicians. I don’t doubt that it’s changed. Even in the 20 or so years that I’ve been playing music things have changed. But to conclude the scene is dead because it isn’t what it used to be seems a bit bitter and jaded. Although, I can understand Michael’s stance, compared to what it used to be, I’m sure things pale in comparison. But, here’s the thing, live music isn’t really dead and music certainly isn’t dead. The show we played last night, was to around 50 people. Almost all of them stayed the entire show. They were captivated and clearly enjoyed themselves and the music. I play shows like this all the time. No, playing live music for 50 people isn’t the same as playing live music for 500 or 5,000 people. But the point is, people still clearly enjoy live music and there are plenty of bands and musicians who make a living performing live that can attest to this. In my mind, there’s no point in lamenting the fact that things aren’t what they used to be. The current music industry is the music industry we have, for better or worse. Focusing on the fact that it used to be better or different is as pointless as being single and focusing on the fact that you used to be in a relationship and were happier in the past. You are where you are in life. It’s as simple as that. Speaking of being single, I recently became single again, after being in a relationship for several years. It was a hard adjustment at first, but I hit the ground running, started going to the gym religiously, got back to focusing on my business, socializing more, playing more music, etc. Now, two months into the breakup, I feel a clear and resounding feeling that things are going to be ok. Better than ok in fact. I actually feel great. I feel much, much better than I expected to feel at this point, but only because I’m embracing where I’m at and accepting the challenge of growing and improving myself, instead of trying to fight it. I look at the current state of the music industry in a similar way. I write and play music, and this is the climate I find myself in. I can fight reality, deny it, get angry and so on. Or, I can accept the fact that things have changed, adapt, and do what I can to make it in the current music industry. I can get up every day and approach music with the same tenacity that I approach things like going to the gym, working on my business and so on. Or, I could lay down and just give up. It’s not easy, but back to my former teacher’s idea, the mountain that’s most important to me to climb, is the mountain of becoming a great musician. My guitar teacher and I had this conversation close to 20 years ago. And yet, this advice and philosophy is as true today as it was then. I find thinking about music this way incredibly helpful and motivating. Climbing the mountain of becoming a “great” musician is something you can actually navigate and control, to a large degree, regardless of what’s happening in the music “business”. You can put in the hours and the work needed to become “great”, and chances are that if you persevere long enough you will achieve a degree of greatness, and in one way or another you’ll be recognized for it. The mountain of becoming a “famous’ musician has faded a lot for me, into the background of my life. I can still see it from my vantage point, off in the distance, but I’m less and less motivated to make the trek between here and there, and I’m not even sure it’s a mountain that I really want to climb anymore. Perhaps one day, if I truly become a “great” musician, the mountain will come to me, or at least move a little closer. |
AuthorThe blog of musician and thinker of deep thoughts, Aaron Davison. Archives
January 2021
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