Much like music the speed of innovation has a lot to do with technological advancement. Surely, boards, wheels and trucks must have come a long way since I skated? What I think has changed the most is the speed and level of ambition which is now possible. Yes, technology played a part in the advancements but it is still about the ideas. Rodney Mullen is an amazing skater but the footwork of some of these new skaters is beyond insane, not to mention the fact I can see their newest tricks moments after they happen. Same in music. Look how far electronic music has come since the mid-70s. Or how a group like Migos can record hit records from their closet. Blows my mind. Today’s change is FAST.

Looking back I started skating during its first big wave – Powell Peralta, Tony Hawk and Thrasher Mag. Back in the 80s street was just getting going, the “ollie” was still new. A long time ago now, so it is amazing to take a 30-year pause and see how things have developed. Makes it all the more interesting how I’ve ended up following skating again…via Instagram.

To say that things have quickly moved on since I skated is an understatement. I mean people like Clay Kreiner or Nyjah Huston. There’s another skater who I really liked who rode for Santa Cruz, Henry Gartland. Youtube is full of videos showing how much determination goes into him landing just one trick for Insta. I was sad to hear that he took his own life. That is always so shocking, but it’s, unfortunately, more common than one might think, which is why we donate money to the UK’s Maytree every time we do a #HowWeListen Live. I see this as the flip side of things blowing up faster, they can fade away equally as fast. People talk about how so many famous musicians join the 27 Club. That’s old news. Now you can blow up and die in the same year, long before the big two seven, or even before your first full-length album comes out.

I’ve written about the influence of the 4-track and 8-track recorder on producing and releasing records in the 90s. The result was lots more music being both created and released. I’ve also mentioned my time working at an artist-run label around the same time. Back then the name of the game was trying to get your records distributed. Making music available for people to actually buy as a CD or vinyl was the biggest challenge.

Today, well the barriers to entry are gone. ANYONE can release music then blow up overnight while they sleep, so the legend goes for Post Malone. Though as we all well know, he was making music long before that overnight success happened.

This new world doesn’t just affect new artists trying to break out but every artist out there. In Pop’s need for speed: ‘You have to drop new stuff constantly’, the Guardian’s Aimee Cliff interviews UK artists like Foals and The 1975. Both confess to being affected by the “existential reasons” behind today’s music pace for releases. In the article Foals’ Yannis Philippakis talks about a time when iTunes were the gatekeepers, dictating album formats and release schedules “Streaming has totally dismantled that” he says. A while back, in Complex Mag, I cited the Beyonce album drop as a way larger artists get around piracy. That was only a few years ago, now keeping up your release frequency takes precedent to piracy.

Either way, there will always be a solution for larger artists and their teams, more resources (usually) means better planning. What does this mean for newer and DIY artists? I see two big challenges to overcome; first finding a structure that works, then making it work long-term.

Back to skateboarding. Today there are hundreds of new tricks, but most are variations around the ollie or simple grinds. Like skating, while much has changed in the music industry, the basic building blocks have stayed the same. You need to reach people with your music. At one time you had to convince certain people, be it distributors or labels, to give your music a chance in order to reach people. Now ANYONE can release music via streaming services. I have previously written that this is a good thing but it does come with some challenges. If anyone can release music then everyone is trying to get noticed. Imagine what a record store would have looked like 20 years ago if every record ever released was available to buy on the racks. That is what it is like today. Access has been democratised, now it is all about getting noticed. We focus a lot on how people in the music industry notice or find music in our #HowWeListen interviews. We have realized that while everyone has their own unique ways of discovering music there are recurring themes. This is where planning and finding a structure that works comes in, targeting who you want to hear your music by knowing how they access their music. The best trick is to look around and incorporate those things you see working for others and then make them work for you. Timelines are equally as important. If you want to promote your music when it’s released, some people need to hear it before the release date.

Once you have a plan and a structure, the challenge is making your structure work long-term. The downside to the fact that tracks blow up overnight, is they can disappear just as fast. Before digital democracy, it might have taken a few records to get real attention, that time could be used to get established and slowly develop a plan. Now you need to get traction right away and then find a way to maintain it. I would argue that in some ways this is even harder today than before. This goes back to when I wrote about “Here” and “There”, you need to know where “there” is, and where you want to go. The Thin Sleek Dart is what I call the ideal approach, you need to know what you are aiming for and visualise the path forward. Today’s music ecosystem has removed all the barriers between “Here” and “There”. So it’s up to you to plan on how to make an impact. 

Thinking back I was never a good skateboarder, I was too afraid of the pavement. Skiing and snowboarding were much easier as I was much less worried about slamming into a snowbank than on pavement. Maybe fear is not just about if something will happen but more about how it will happen. That fear I had in skating, I see it in a lot of people I talk to wanting to get into music or trying to move their music and/or their careers forward. The best piece of advice I can give is that I’d be more worried about what will not happen than what will.

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Previously, I hinted that I think the tech world doesn’t get the music ecosystem when writing about decentralised tension. In that post, I also pointed to an article I wrote about our rationale behind #HowWeListen. The post highlighted that the tech world is much better at sharing knowledge.

Music and tech comparisons are effective, in my mind. I have felt for a long time that while both sides actively (and rightly so) criticise each other, they have a lot more in common than they are willing to admit.

The music and tech comparisons I make are not unique though. Cherie Hu is even writing a book about the parallels between music careers and tech entrepreneurship. Cherie is a smart woman with a statistics degree from Harvard. If she is going in the same direction then I must be on the right track.

VCs (venture capitalists) are often critical of the music industry’s licensing system. Their view is that it is backwards and restrictive. Tech start-ups blame labels for streaming services’ low payouts to artists. Ironically enough, however, the VC model operates much in the same way. VCs offer upfront cash in exchange for a piece of future success, sometimes on very onerous terms. Antidilution provisions such as the “full ratchet” are great examples of this.

While I am sure there are many other comparisons, one specific similarity comes to mind.

murderecords

There were no “music business” courses or colleges back when I started working in music. I wasn’t actually “working”. Rather, I dropped out of university to volunteer at murderecords, an artist-owned label in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

After sorting out the mail order for a few months, my first proper task was booking tours. The mid-nineties were a lot like it is today. It was nearly impossible to get a booking agent until you don’t really need one anymore. I am exaggerating of course, though that adage still rings true. I expect the tour booking process is still much the same. Though of course, as I write this, absolutely no one is currently touring. The process is simple. The first step is to contact clubs along a route that makes sense and hope that a booker in each town wants the artist to play. Of course, a booker will generally have never heard of a completely new artist. If so there is another step, convincing the booker why the artist is worth their attention.

I remember enjoying booking shows, especially if they actually ended up happening and went well. Halifax sits on Canada’s east coast so bands always had a long drive to get to the bigger markets in Central Canada. Normally the first big gig would be Montreal, a 15-20 hour drive away. However, I realised early on that Montreal clubs worked under a very different system, Pay to Play.

The pay-to-play model

Normally an artist’s first show in any new city is tough. To get the gig one needs to play for a low guarantee (fee), a percentage of the door (no fee) or no promise of anything whatsoever. Montreal was different though, club owners actually wanted artists to pay them to play gigs.

This is a long time ago but I don’t remember thinking that was a good idea, even back then. It seemed super shady to me, while also being counterproductive. I felt bands should be get the gig by virtue of the promoter feeling they would be a good draw. That they would be booked because they liked them or that they felt the audience would, or both.

This wasn’t the system for all artists and all venues, so why was it the case in Montreal? I am still not completely sure. What I do know though is that it is rare for anyone to make money on those first few gigs. It is about relationship building. Clubs and bookers need to have confidence the artist will draw an audience. Artists and their booking agents need to be sure promoters are reliable. They would also be expected to properly supporting future shows including a decent guarantee and good promotion.

Performing Ideas: Pay-to-play in tech

Conferences are like the tech world’s gigs, a performance of ideas instead of music. I never really liked conferences until I started doing more of them pre-Covid. Recently I was thinking about how many interesting people I’ve ended up working with just from going to Tallinn Music Week in 2019.

Much like gigs, there are more people looking to share their ideas than can be accommodated by fireside chats, panels or workshops. To get the gig in tech, conferences seem to book what is trendy, instead of current. Likewise they tend to look for “big” names, instead of ideas. It seems that those are natural challenges everyone is trying to overcome. In the same way promoters don’t only book artists they like, a packed-out gig is the number one priority. Building a successful conference is the same.

I was however surprised to read recently that one conference was offering seats on panels in exchange for advertising money. I understand, even appreciate, the idea of a sponsored panel. Getting a company’s message across in a focused way, openly and clearly sponsored, can be effective. However, the idea of panellists paying to be placed on panels, either directly or indirectly, is of concern to me.

Perhaps I am being naive here, but this approach had never really even crossed my mind before. Here is yet another example of how music and tech operate in similar ways. As pay-to-play is both shady and counterproductive for artists, conferences charging panellists to speak is shady and counterproductive for start-ups.

At their best, conferences are an exchange and evaluation of new ideas. Much like pay-to-play being bad for artists it is bad for panellists. It devalues their ideas by attaching a price tag to them. It is also bad for the audience because they can not objectively evaluate the context, validity and motivation behind the ideas being presented.

So what it the result?

Another clear sign this is not a practice any artist or start-up will want to take part in is that it only happens when they are just starting out. Artists get paid more and more money for gigs the larger their audience becomes. As speakers deliver more innovative and effective ideas they too are paid higher and higher speaking fees.

Buying a place on stage or a seat at the table doesn’t fast-track your art or your message. In fact, it does the opposite. A venue or conference’s reputation is also at risk. An audience is paying money on the expectation they are seeing and hearing what the agent or curator believes is most relevant to their audience or what should become most relevant. Pay-to-play destroys that trust.

The fundamental reason why I have never understood the idea of pay-to-play is that it pollutes art with commerce. As an artist or speaker, the value of your art or ideas needs to be assessed objectively in order to be taken seriously. Bad ideas should be brought into question, challenged and dismissed. Or simply ignored, just like no one listens to bad music.

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I hang out with my neighbour a lot. She works at an audio company, designing and building speakers and headphones. A few weeks ago I found a book nestled between no less than 9 different-sized and shaped Bluetooth speakers and at least three times as many plants.

The book, titled Range explains “why generalists triumph in a specialized world”. A line of thinking that goes against the 10,000 hours idea – that repeated focused practice is the source of outsized success. There is merit to both perspectives so I don’t find that debate too interesting. Malcolm Gladwell even has a quote on the cover, so they both must be right.

Jack Cecchini and the difference between classical artists and others

There is, however, a chapter around music which I found to be thought-provoking. It reminded me of something I have thought a lot about. The chapter focuses on Jack Cecchini and his being a self-taught musician. The book’s author, David Epstein, quotes Cecchini as saying:

“The jazz musician is a creative artist, the classical musician is a re-creative artist.”

Jack Cecchini, Range

While the quote fits the book’s narrative, I find the statement dismissive. I feel he misses the point. Both musicians are actually creating, it’s just that their processes are different. Let me explain this by way of three examples and then give one further insight.

Comparing a range of musical artists and their methods of creativity

I’ve often wondered what Cecchini is loosely referring to – what is the difference between classical artists and others? Specifically jazz musicians in this case. I was thinking about this exact thing a few years ago. At the time, I was living in London and attended a classical recital by a friend of mine. During the short performance of three classical works, in this grade-1 listed building called Burgh House in London’s Hampstead, I watched my friend play what I considered to be a flawless performance. On complimenting him afterwards I remember him being hesitant, not believing that he performed as flawlessly as I thought he had.

I came across my second example around that same time. I was fascinated by Jimmy Page’s guitar playing and body movements. Most specifically in a live clip of Whole Lotta Love, which must be from The Song Remains the Same. His playing seemed so relaxed, effortless and off the cuff.

I was trying to work through how to articulate the difference between these contrasting performances when I came across Range’s chapter on jazz vs classical. My guess is Cecchini’s view would be that the classical player is re-creating a classical work and that Page is creating a new one, while still not as improvised as a jazz performance. I don’t see it that way. I believe they are both creating, just coming at it from different angles. The classical musician’s goal is to practice over and over again, learning the piece. This is in order to execute their interpretation of the work exactly as the composer intended while injecting their own emotion, and personality, making it their own (new) creation.

Page, and many other musicians, are equally as fastidious with their attention to detail. They put just as much effort into practice and craft to deliver the performance (also a new creation) they want. The difference here is that the non-classical musician practices over and over in order to let go, to be free of the restrictions of the musical workplace on their performance.

The final example I stumbled upon. Though in this case not tied to physical instrumentation it is equally musical. I’ve seen lots of unreleased Biggie Smalls footage. The most impressive of which is a clip of Biggie battling someone freestyle on the street in New York. The footage is grainy and Biggie is using an old-school mic connected to some PA out of shot. The clip is electric, and though his raps are hard to work out the crowd’s reaction says it all. He totally destroys his opponent:

So what’cha got to say?
This mackin word is bond
There’s no other assumption,
I got it goin on I’m not conceited, my friends tell me this
Even my mother, be noddin her head to this
Makes her proud to see her one son get loud
Flip on a sucker, and bow to the crowd
Drink a little Hennessy, smoke a blunt or 2 or 3 or 4

Biggie didn’t train using the exact same phrases over and over again. Though that doesn’t mean he isn’t executing with the precision of a classical musician while creating at the level of a jazz musician. A relaxed delivery yet with a powerful cadence showcases a seasoned performer who has mastered their craft. What makes this even more exceptional is Biggie was only 17 at the time.

So again, I don’t see these differences like Cecchini does; classical as “re-creation” and jazz as “creation”. In all three of my examples, the musicians use the process of creation to build something new and emotional in a live setting. The difference is merely their approach, and how they choose to express themselves. The classical musician through precision, Page with a delivery focused on casual yet grandiose performance, and Biggie presents the confidence of someone at the height of their verbal powers.

Rules to be free

While living in London I got to work with a Scottish visual artist named Martin Creed. Martin (all artists are called by their first name in the art world you see) is probably most well known for winning the Turner Prize with Work No. 227 “The lights going on and off” (2000) and Work No. 360 “Half the air in a given space” (2004) he has also created many musical works (Work No. 409 “Piece for choir and elevator” (2005) being a favourite) and released many albums and singles.

When I started working with Martin he was preparing for his “Mothers” exhibition in 2012. In the press release, Martin talks about being free ‘Trying to do what you want to do, trying to be free and trying not to do what other people want you to do.” Though if you know anything about Martin’s work you would know that everything has to have rules, self-imposed rules – how the works are to be presented, performed, etc. If I remember correctly all the paintings in the Mothers show were created either by Martin or others, each one based on a series of rules.

Rules are the foundations to open up creativity

How can someone be free with so many rules? Isn’t that a paradox? From observing Martin during that time I have come to understand the magic in his approach. I interpret his thinking as the rules actually create order from chaos, which gives Martin the opportunity to be free. Rules are not restrictive, instead, they are permissive, a foundation enabling the freedom to create.

This is why I don’t agree with Cecchini’s creation/re-creation dichotomy. No matter what genre an artist or musician works in, there are rules which lay a foundation. Jazz is not a series of random notes. No matter how improvised a piece is the musician still needs to know how to play those notes, and the same for freestyle raps. What about classical music then? How can they be free if they are not improvising? Well, the classical musician is working to a set series of rules and has worked to perfect their execution in order to be free in the mastery of their execution. Again classical musicians are creating something new, with the emotional power to connect with the listener, a unique interaction between musicians using the musical rules in a much different way than jazz musicians.

Rules to be free, a beautiful way of seeing the world.

MB – Aug 2020

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I wrote about the “post it and they will come” myth and Kerry Trainer’s numbers confirm it. Over half of Soundcloud’s artists don’t ever get played! It is hard to fault Soundcloud for that. It just reaffirms what any artist or anyone working in music already knows: how hard it is to get ANYONE to listen to your music.

It reminds me about the change I started to see in the pre GarageBand world of the 1990s. No one would disagree that the wider availability of 4-track and 8-track recorders produced some exceptional low fi indie rock, more than a few terrible Sebadoh rip-off bands, and great experimental hip hop. It was finally simpler to make music and to release it. D.I.Y. became accessible to all.

The slew of bad indie rock bands was just the symptom of a larger problem though; the easier and more accessible music creation is (good), the harder it is to get noticed (not good). Yes it is empowering being able to record and release your masterwork without needing the approval of someone, be it a label or a distributor, as was still the norm in the back then. That is unless you are one of those 12.5 million artists on Soundcloud who never get played. It’s the digital version of having 10x 100 count boxes of CDs in your flat, albeit cheaper.

As I said I don’t blame Soundcloud but maybe I should? In many ways these platforms, Spotify among them, have taken prominence over the actual artist’s music they provide access to. That’s good for a streaming platform’s stock price but not good for artists.

Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t lament the status quo. I celebrate it in fact. I am writing this while sitting outside during a beautiful Swedish summer listening (on my phone) to Haruomi Hosono who, along with many of my favorite new (old) artists, was surfaced by algorithms, not by trendy friends on Södermalm. It’s just a new world with new challenges.

That challenge today is one needs to know that it is actually possible to do what one wants, be who one wants to be AND be acknowledged for it. Unlike the tech industry, where the culture of sharing “how to” knowledge online is built into the culture, the music business seems to thrive on keeping everything opaque. The “open source” way of collaborating in tech encourages information sharing whereas in music what people don’t know; be it the terms of your deal or your actual streaming numbers on platform X, creates mystique, something that is ever harder to create and hold on to these days.

I’d like to think it’s not a control thing either, rather that change is slow. Music business schools, where you learn less about composing music and more about selling, marketing and promoting music, didn’t exist when I started. Most careers began in record stores or at college radio and things grew from there. It was an apprenticeship system; you learned good and bad habits from your boss and that was it. My “career” started when I dropped out of university to volunteer at an indie label. I got a chance and I took it.

#HowWeListen 

Like all good ideas I can’t really remember who thought up our HowWeListen interview series. I think it came from planning user interviews around the pain points of sharing digital music. Instead we realised it was going to be even better as an interview series about wider music discovery.

We were hoping the interviews could combat that “post it and they will come” false narrative. Again algorithms are great but they aren’t the only source of music discovery. I’ve written that the existence of a simple route from A to B for all artists and musicians just isn’t true. Anyone who works in music knows there is a special mix of hard to organise factors that lead to success, no silver bullet, no system to reverse engineer.

It became obvious from these interviews with people from across the music ecosystem; everyone has different ways of experiencing music. Learning how different people in the music ecosystem listen helps them understand how to build a network. The value for artists was clear; remember each contact they look to for support within music has their own diverse opinions, preferences and needs.

Megaphono was the first conference to suggest #HowWeListen in panel form, as a way to educate artists and their teams on getting noticed. A year later after hosting panels and doing talks from Toronto to Tallinn I feel it is clear we have only started to scratch the surface of the real questions which need answering.

The Tools AND the Knowledge

We built Byta to be the best platform for sending and receiving audio files and streams. Hundreds of hours of interviews and research took place long before a single line of code was written. Our own experiences in the music business re-confirmed there was a major problem to solve.

It’s that same research combined with experience which led us to realise #HowWeListen could directly address many misconceptions around music discovery. “People don’t listen to CDs, people don’t like digital downloads or people only listen to streams”. We’ve heard it all before. Nothing is that simple however and no single answer is correct. I have gone on about this before, all you can do is check out other opinions then come up with your own.

Unfortunately to get it right means a lot of work and we want to help. Our new #HowWeListen microsite is where we want to give you access to more opinions and perspectives, and not just our own or at least not all the time. Rather the thoughts and experiences of the wider music community, from Stockholm to Sao Paulo. Hopefully when all weaved together, reading about each other’s success and failures, you might get a slightly better perspective. They might not necessarily be popular opinions, though ones we believe are accurate.

We hope these ongoing discussions are useful and most importantly break down the binary beliefs perpetuated throughout the music ecosystem; success / failure, insiders / outsiders, even digital vs analog.

It is all about perspective and we are definitely encouraged by those who have contributed so far.

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Literally a day or two after moving to London in ‘98 I started working in the warehouse at a record distributor in North London. Going around “pulling & packing” records wasn’t what I wanted to be doing but being surrounded by literally the world’s best reggae & ragga, UK drum ‘n’ bass and US post-hardcore was a dream.

I remember the people too. Like the guy with the sovereign ring and one of those cool Nokia banana phones. He liked to have a couple strong K Ciders for lunch EVERY day. Then there was the American dude who just walked around off his face ALL DAY.

I got out of there eventually, only took about 9 months till I got a job in Creation Records’ A&R department. On my last day in the warehouse before I left I was wandering around pulling records when I started to sweat. Then I noticed they had some happy hardcore on the PA. I HATE happy hardcore but on that specific day nothing had ever sounded better. I knew something was up when everyone kept laughing at me every time I took a sip of my drink left on one of the record trollies. The American guy had spiked it with an E. I spent the rest of that last shift off my tits.

Everybody knows Brits love to party and that definitely contributes to the vibe. However I think there is a lot more to why the UK feels different than other english speaking countries. Take “club culture” – easy to say that it is (was) a drug thing but it’s really about shared experience. In fact I think shared experience is one of biggest influences on British arts and culture. The conceptual artist Jeremey Deller talks about this in his documentary Everybody In The Place. Deller suggests that the Acid House parties of the 80’s and early 90’s were an acknowledgement of the death of the industrial revolution: communal celebrations back in those same warehouses where it all began.

This shared experience also exists on a national level. The UK, like most european countries, sits across only one time zone. This means when people talk charts and number ones and experience those together they do so in a much different way than would ever be possible in North America. I suggest this is why press and radio were such massive forces for so many years. If BBC Radio 1 played a single the whole country could experience it at the same moment. This is in stark contrast to the US which has 6 different time zones.

“…in the UK, music appreciation is woven into the culture whereas in the US, music is treated as entertainment.”

As much as I see shared experience as a defining characteristic in British culture there is another even more important one. This difference is strongest between the UK and the US, the world’s two most important English music markets. Simply put, in the UK, music appreciation is woven into the culture whereas in the US, music is treated as entertainment. I am not saying music isn’t appreciated in the US, rather it is appreciated and experienced very differently. There’s a feeling of community in the UK because the music experience is instilled in the broader culture. In contrast the US is much more (duh) individualistic and communal, musical experiences tend to be marginalised as fringe or radical (Burning Man) or dismissed by all but those taking part (Grateful Dead, Phish). That’s definitely gonna piss some people off but I think it holds true, especially when described using examples…

Start by thinking about what I am saying in a sports context. I love going to hockey games; the sound of the puck, a body check against the boards. It’s all pretty chilled out aside from a few hosers. My experience with North American sports meant I was ill prepared for my first UK Premier League game back in 1999. Separate turnstile entrances for the away team’s supporters who then sit in a separate end of the stands and flanked by tons of police. When the home team starts chanting they are chanting at YOU. Ask any true football supporter. It’s not about being entertained, it’s a way of life. The results literally determine people’s mood for the rest of that week.

The comparisons are the same in music. In the US you have Coachella where I am told you can’t even have a pint when watching a band. In the UK? You have the dance tent at Glastonbury – another world. Glastonbury isn’t an event people attend just for fun, it’s a right of passage, a yearly pilgrimage. I’ve been reading about the 30th anniversary of Spike island. Does not sound great though I’d take it over Woodstock 99 any day. The list goes on.

I am definitely not saying that music appreciation isn’t present in US culture. That would be denying 50 or 60 years of popular music… Moreover, how music is presented, experienced and appreciated is radically different in the US than in the UK. I know tv isn’t as important any more but think back to the UK’s music tv cultural legacy – Top Of The Pops, The Tube. Performances on these shows are stuff of legend. Sure the US had American Bandstand which ran for 37 years, roughly as long as TOTP’s 42 years. There were also shows like Midnight Special, I frequently watch KISS’ performance and wonder what it would have been like to see that live in 1975. My favourite US tv show was David Sanborn’s Night Music which was produced by Lorne Michaels of SNL fame, though I guess it was Hal Willner who was the real genius behind the bookings. The Pixies debut TV performance is exceptional as is Sonic Youth’s. However it is the true greats – Miles Davis and Dr. John and Mavis Staples – who stand out across the series. Unfortunately, Night Music was broadcast, you guessed it, late at night and ran for only two years.

I think the UK’s music appreciation goes much deeper than those shows ever could. Jools Holland is a great example of that. [Side note, Jools plays with a lot of the artists he has on the show, Sanborn did the same, can’t be a coincidence? Somehow I feel like I already know it’s not]. One of the reasons is Jools like other UK shows are focal points for all music fans. They didn’t necessarily only push the “biggest” or the most obscure, instead challenged the viewer by combining both. I did tv promotion for a couple of years and succeeded in getting Booker T on Jools in 2009. The other guests? Grizzly Bear, Gurrumul, Manic Street Preachers and a very young yet already massive Taylor Swift. This level of focused diversity in music programming simply doesn’t exist in the US. And it’s the diversity which gave the UK media it’s power, be it on Radio 1, Radio 2 or in the press like the NME. The art of pulling in listeners with larger artists and easing in more challenging artists very early in is a uniquely UK skill. One proven by early UK media support for (initially) sonically challenging bands like the White Stripes, who were in heavy rotation in the UK long before US listeners heard them on the radio.

Again though the diversity of the programming is a reflection of uniqueness of the UK which is combined with an earlier time slot, a single time zone heightens the already adventurous listening attitudes. That is why careers were literally made by band’s performances on UK tv shows, covers of magazines or by radio play, just ask bands like The Hives.

The world is a lot different now, time and space is much more fragmented. It would be easy to assume I would be longing for the good old days. Quite the opposite. The world, especially the music world has become much smaller and people are more connected than ever. Shared experience has become something between like minded people instead of those randomly tethered together via time and place. Feels to me like in a lot of ways these relationships are more real even if they aren’t tied to the physical world in the same way as before. Not to mention the power created by the loss of dependency on someone else to tell you when and where to watch or what to listen to. Communities control their own shared experiences, independent of the wider world, if they so choose. The opportunity to create a sense of community in a sea of other communities is something to celebrate. I wonder what effects they have on how people collectively and individually experience music?

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Considering I’m old (45) in music business terms, it is common to hear friends my age say they “want out”, “need a change” or simply “fuck this”. Some, like me, are determined to find new challenges and develop and grow new ideas. Others hesitate and worry they have “no transferable skills”. It’s that last bunch of people I’m always telling that if one has worked in the music business the rest is easy.

Long before I started Byta I was always trying different ideas while I ran my boutique radio promotion company. Side hustles, everyone in music has at least one. I ran labels, did management, some film stuff and even worked in the artworld. The thing I noticed is the music business is a decentralised network, which is pretty unique. That is why I think if you can master that environment, you can handle anything.

Think of what it takes to be “successful” in music, that is to say making a living. You could be an independent artist or a band signed to Universal. For things to work out you need some undefinable combination of talent (I nearly wrote skill yet those are very different qualities) and attention.

Who gets, creates and or demands the attention? You, the artist. When starting out you do everything yourself: make music, release music, book shows while trying to figure out what works for you to get noticed. That is unless you give up because you or no one else cares. Let’s say enough people end up noticing before you give up, then you’ll probably get some help: a manager, a booking agent, maybe a label. With some of the bigger artists I worked with there could be 20 plus people in planning meetings, each representing different areas. We’re talking national radio, press, tv, retail, online, management, label types and international people representing an endless possibility of territories.

Fastforward and things are going well. You’ve got all these people together in some giant boardroom, in the pub or on Zoom, wherever people have these meetings. Each one has an idea about what you should do next. Who is in charge though? Most would say you, the artist, is in control. Though who represents the artist? I say the manager clearly does yet the manager doesn’t hold the purse strings, the label does. Does that mean labels control an artist’s future? No one sells records anymore, artists make money by touring (at least up to March 2020). So do booking agents run the show? They certainly act like they do.

Contrast this to the binary arrangement in the visual art world – where everything is 50/50 artist and gallery. The artist makes the work, the gallery markets and sells it. There are a lot of factors driving success in visual art but nearly everything is arranged by the gallery who perceive themselves as the artist’s caretaker. The artist’s studio is run as a feudal system with external representation frowned upon. Collectors and institutions hold influence though they are simply sales and marketing.

So what effect does a decentralised network have over binary relationships? Tension, meaning mental and emotional strain, is what makes the music business work.

Every situation, release and artist is different. The balance of power isn’t always clear. A small artist’s team might have nothing to lose by pushing as hard as they can, a bigger artist might be afraid to rock the boat. Even worse, those bigger artists might think they have all the answers. Having your ideas challenged, which single to lead with or which support tour to take, or simply being pressured to make a decision increases tension which brings new and unexpected results. I remember many times when someone on the team would pull some crazy result out of a hat: a festival headline, magazine cover, I mean this would happen on a weekly basis. First, my heart would sink, then I’d go deliver the same. These results come first from a belief in the artist but also from the tension created by feeling surrounded by the rest of the team..

Compare that to my art world description. If the gallery is the sole caretaker then there is no tension in their work. There is no one to show them up, embarrassing them to deliver at an even higher level.

I appreciate this is an overly simplified model. One could easily argue the book publishing business works in the same way as music. However, music is unique not just because the balance of power is decentralized but because the revenue streams are as equally decentralized and unique to different artists and genres. Publishers and galleries are selling products, but are they the caretakers of the artists themselves? I would argue not. So here is another way tension is introduced, each key player in music’s decentralized network thinks they have the artist’s best interest at hand: the manager, the label, the booking agent.

A testament to decentralisation being advantageous is the fact that no one can reliably recreate success. I touched on this in my first post. If there really was a winning formula then everyone else would be repeating and refining it – we’d all be successful. This is the reason I get cynical by all the talk of “data”. There has always been “data”, there is simply more of it today. If “data” was all we needed then wouldn’t it be easier to find “success”? I would argue that it is in fact the opposite today, success is even more elusive, even with access to all this new information.

A lack of appreciation for the creative tension in music is why I get a laugh out of tech-startups trying to automate all kinds of processes in the music business. These are the same people who just can’t get their heads around the idea that some people might not need, want or even give a shit about blockchain for X or smart contracts for Y. Automation removes friction, but some systems have this built in for a reason so why remove it. One artist might want to give everything away for free, other artists might not want to give anything away at all, or at least hold out for the highest price. That is their choice.

All this is why I question my “no transferable skills” friends’ thinking they couldn’t work in another industry. Surviving in a decentralised and tension driven environment is no easy task. Getting any sort of meaningful results from it is a constant struggle. People under appreciate the unique skill set needed to juggle managing personalities, information and timing to create something magical. People outside of the music business simply don’t appreciate how its structure is actually the key to its success, and not a hindrance.

MB / Stockholm May 13, 2020

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Byta is run as a distributed team which means I work by myself a lot (think self-isolating but in a good way). Back when I was a radio plugger in the UK I had an office in central London and used to listen to music 10 hours a day. Now I prefer peace and quiet, it gives me time to think.

I think about the same things we all do. Do we live in a computer simulation? Why do people think Kanye West is crazy or a genius or both? Why does Sweden have the best candy in the world?

There’s a theme here. The questions I have (or anyone else for that matter, we all have them) revolve around WHY: “why do we think something”, “why is a certain thing a certain way”, and “why don’t I know?” “Why is that piece of the puzzle missing?” Why why why. Thing is, these are just thought experiments, ways to look at problems from different perspectives, to self-reflect.

In music, we don’t often give ourselves the time to self-reflect, especially about our own work. Everyone is simply trying to get shit done. That’s what it’s like working in music – action action action… with varying degrees of success. That is why the questions I ask myself about music and Byta are a little different.

I think most Artists, be they visual artists or musicians, are asking themselves multiple questions at the same time. They ask the big philosophical questions, while also working out how to find big success. Artists are asking ”who am I?” while needing to know “what do I need to do to get “there”.

I can’t answer the first question “who am I?” and nor should I – you are you and that is yours to own, define and evolve. 

I can however talk about “there”.

Ultimately when talking about “there” we most likely mean successful. Like you, I too have always wanted to get “there”. I’ve even probably been there more than once but I left “there” behind to get to another different (better?) “there”. What does all this really mean? Everyone defines success differently. My “there” might not be your “there”.

I think (actually I am pretty sure) it is this abstract “there” which is the root of the problem for so many artists, especially musicians. Not because I don’t think getting “there” is real or possible, moreover it is in the approach, how artists and musicians think it works vs. how they are told it works.

When one is new to anything one looks for advice which leads almost certainly to the internet’s insights – “Do X and Y will happen” or “10 steps to Z”, or “never do A, B and especially C”. The music business is no different, lots of advice, but how reliable is it really?

So if there is a “there” and the music business is full of “great” advice on how to get “there” why aren’t we all “there”?

That is because there is no “there”, in the physical sense of the word, no ideal point to get to. That also means no single piece of advice that will insure you will get from A to B.

I’ve been travelling a lot (or at least I was travelling a lot) and I read a lot. I see false narratives wherever I go. These are the three worst tips I see on how to get “there”:

1. Streaming, Playlists (insert quick fix) is the “key”

This is the worst one by far. Spotify (other streaming platforms are available) is great, it is the only way I listen to music these days. That being said, the narrative that streaming platforms are all you need to get “there” is just a sales tactic. Look around and the evidence is there, check out Jeff Moskow’s “a playlist is not a marketing plan” or Patrick Ross’ “Dry Streams Paradox”.

Another example. Last year I moderated one of hour #HowWeListen panels at the Halifax Pop Explosion. We had a music marketing expert, an indie record label owner and Canada’s last full-time music writer talking about how they find, listen and experience new music. Halfway through I remember thinking that we hadn’t even mentioned a single streaming service, let alone as a source of music discovery.

Playlists DO help with music discovery but the idea that it’s the epicentre of music discovery is ultimately an out-and-out lie.

2. “Do X and Y will happen” or “Hire me to get Y”

This quick-fix approach to an artist’s career is nothing new yet it’s still a huge problem. Do this, and that will happen. Could work but it’s oversimplifying a very very complex world.

The worst offenders, the ones that really piss me off, are the “hire me to get Y” people. I see this at conferences all the time. This is especially poisonous when combined with the quick-fix: “Do X and Y then pay me Z and you will definitely get “there”. Hard no to that offer.

Consultants are the worst offenders. I know, I used to be one. I heard people try it on all the time.

3. Gatekeepers

It’s natural for us to fixate on those who we feel are holding us back or look for that one person to rush in and solve what we are looking to have solved. I guess there are gatekeepers in music but those people are there to be worked.

All you really need to know is that anyone who has real influence in the music business (and not some bullshit title) actually likes music. Watch out though, the person at the top might seem like they have influence but they actually don’t know anything and only follow the people who actually like music, so follow my original point. If your band, record, or voice is good and they hear it, they will like it and they will want to support you.

Everyone, even these people, long to feel the energy of something new and exciting, remember that.

Now for the good/bad news.

The first part is the easiest to articulate and hardest to execute – your music needs to be good. “Good” is like “there”, it is hard to define but you know it when you feel it. And that feeling is real. Search it out, question it, and work with it.

The bad news is no matter what anyone tells you there is no button to press no switch to flick. Creativity is a big lumpy mass, not a thin sleek dart (yes, anyways exceptions). It’s about the process of “learning by doing”.

The road and the destination are how you define them. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

MB / Stockholm April 10, 2020

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