https://www.facebook.com/robindavey/pos ... xN1QB4fWBl
I see so much misinformation flying around about the music industry so here’s some perspective from my 35 years of doing it:
1. Recorded music has never made the majority of artists money, 95% of record deals were unsuccessful. The label only paid the artist around $1 of each record sold, and it was only that $1 per record that went to pay off your advance, the label kept all the other income. If your advance was $100,000 you had to sell at least 100,000 records to be taken seriously as an artist by the label. Streaming is just the same problem different structure.
2. If you are so upset by Spotify, take your music off the service. Yes the payouts suck - if you are not successful - but guess what, successful artists do get paid, but the percentage of artist that make money on streaming is probably the same percent who found success with old school record deals, 3-5%.
3. Venues, festivals, and anyone else that uses online metrics as a basis to booking acts, you are causing your own demise. Bands and managers use services to inflate their plays, follower counts etc etc. sometimes these are bots and sometimes they are more sophisticated and playlist integrated that use real accounts to inflate, but what they are not doing is creating the band actual fans. Even when an artists plays are driven by official Spotify playlists, this only inflates play numbers and engagement can be very fragmented, it doesn’t create fans, and certainly doesn’t sell tickets.
4. If you want to grow outside your local scene you are going to lose money as an artist for a good few years. Pre-covid it was a little less hard, but now that is the reality. All these bands you see seemingly arriving on the scene to great success, have a ton of financial backing in one way or another. But it was always this way. Stevie Ray Vaughan had millionaire backing and was hugely in debt until the tail end of his career. My band The Hoax most significant rise was when we signed to Warner Brothers, we personally made about $1000 each from the deal but when we left the label we had a $170,000 debt from advances, tour support and various other costs. If you want to compete, even on a lower level, you have to invest.
5. We as artists need to stop putting the blame of a dwindling live scene on apathetic audiences, poor industry payouts, and lack of government support, and artists need to look at themselves as to why people are not coming out to shows. If bands are not entertaining enough, audiences won’t want to buy tickets. It’s called a show for a reason, this doesn’t mean you need pyrotechnics and a stage full of backup dancers, but it doesn’t mean you have to look at yourself from an audience perspective. If you think that people should dig your show because the music really means something to you, guess what, nobody cares. They want it to mean something to them. Trudging through tired blues rock riffs or unimaginative lyrics are going to result in a lack of connectivity with an audience who want to be entertained and feel involved. They care when the story is relevant to them. Play the same set night after night and people are going to see one show and be done, play for the moment and vary what you do depending on the room, the night, the mood of people, and audiences will want to be a part of that moment night after night. They don’t want to hear the record as it was played, they want to hear why the songs are relevant to them, in the room that night, they want to feel alive and be transported from their daily routine for a couple of hours, they want to smile, laugh, sing along, cry. They are not going to do this unless you understand what they want and why they are there, not be wrapped up and blinkered by what you want and your own self importance.
6. Quit chasing fame, it means zero these days. If you are an artist or musician and think you are special or deserve special treatment because of it, this just spells out entitlement. Leave your ego at the door. Sorry to break it to you but you are no more special than anyone else, and to be honest you are probably paid a lot less than most of the audience members in the room, respect that, because they are the ones who are enabling you to chase your dream.
7. If you are unhappy on tour, don’t go on tour, it’s not going to get any better, this is probably not the life for you.
8. You are only as successful as the amount of tickets you can sell to your show. There are success stories of people building online followings that translate to ticket sales, but they are rare and specialized cases. And if you don’t have the experience of putting on a live show, they’ll come once and never again.
9. Word of mouth is the best and most effective form of advertising.
10. There are no short cuts to a long lasting career in music, it takes time building a fan base one person at a time. Even if you have great reviews, even if you have decent radio play, even if you have millions of streams, it doesn’t mean anything until someone sees you play and leaves the gig wanting to tell all their friends about the amazing experience they had that evening.
11. If you haven’t achieved the level of success that you desire, you are not good enough yet, if you strive to be better with every gig, every record, every song, you will continue inching yourself towards your goals. If you ever think you have done enough and the fault in your lack of success lies elsewhere, then you have failed.
