Tag: Advice for writers

Categories
Artist Advice Business Advice Editorials Haulix Writing Tips

Learning how to fail is an essential part of succeeding in the music business

music biz, failure, learning to fail
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” - Thomas Edison

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

As much as you may like to believe your career in music is infallible, or that you have a gift for songwriting no one will be able to deny, I can guarantee you there will always be days when your best efforts come up short. Failure is an unavoidable byproduct of any creative endeavor, and regardless of what level of fame you reach in this business there will always bad days. The point of continuing to create is not to work towards perfection, but to take into consideration everything that has happened, both good and evil, and apply it to whatever comes next. Art, like life, is a constant progression, and the best you can do is learn how to frame each failure as something other that is ultimately beneficial to your career.

The number of ways you can screw up in music is numerous, and they range from writing a bad single, to performing in such a way that disappoints your fans. We cannot begin to break down every single instance of failure and how it can be viewed as a positive, but we can offer tips to help you deal with any situation where things do not go as planned. The advice that follows may seem fairly obvious to some, but if applied to your next misstep we guarantee growth will occur. It might not be easy, but it will be beneficial to your creativity in the long run, and at the end of the day that is what matters most.

Start with the truth. Accept the situation for what it is, and be prepared to face it head-on.

Everyone has heard that line about how the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and the reason we’ve all heard it is that it’s entirely accurate. You might have written the best song you believe yourself possible of creating, but for one reason or another, it might not connect with listeners. Likewise, you may give what you feel is the performance of a lifetime, only to look at Twitter after the gig and read tweet after tweet complaining about the sound. In times like this it’s incredibly easy to take a defensive stance, but to do so would be an error. Accept that not everyone will experience things the way you do and try to see things from the outsider’s perspective. Be humbled by the fact you received any response at all, as most never do, and ask yourself how you could improve or change what you’re doing in the future.

The key to this step is honesty. It’s okay to say you love something that your fans do no, but do not blame them for not feeling the same. Art is subjective, but if you listen to your audience, you should be able to find a way to do what you want while still playing to their demands. You don’t have to, of course, but most great artists find a way to compromise that satisfies everyone.

Look for the positive, no matter how small it may be.

Let’s say your new album was expected to sell ten thousand copies its first week and only sold fifteen-hundred. That disappointment would be quite a sting, especially from a financial standpoint, but considering the fact that less than 1% of all the albums released in any given year sell more than a thousand copies then you’re still among the most famous musicians in the world. You may not have ten thousand people clamoring to purchase your new album, but fifteen-hundred consumers are indeed nothing to scoff at. There are towns and villages all over the world that have populations far below fifteen-hundred people, and even fewer people outside those communities know they exist. You may not be where you want to be, but you are farther along than most, and that is something you should never take for granted.

The point is, there is also an upside. Your new demo may have gone over worse than Jar Jar Binks, but at least by sharing it with fans, you learned something new about what they expect from you and what they hope to hear from any future material. This knowledge can and should inform future recordings which, in theory, will be received better than whatever came before.

Do not be afraid to take time away from the internet.

We are convinced there are at least two negative comments for every positive one on pretty much every song, video, or think piece posted online. People are far quicker to complain than they are to compliment, especially in a public forum, which is why you should consider taking time away from the constant barrage of commentary social media provides when things take a turn for the worse. If you know the incoming messages are going to be riddled with negativity, there is no reason to wallow in the hurt feelings such commentary can cause. Absorb enough to understand why people are upset, then step away and take time to reflect on how you can improve your efforts in the future. You do not need the internet to do this, and in our opinion, you shouldn’t use it. Stay offline until you have something new to share, and if that doesn’t go over then feel free to take more time away. In fact, take as much time as you need. The internet will still be here when you return.

Whatever you do, keep creating.

No matter how you initially react to failure, you cannot let the ensuing negativity defeat you. Keep producing, always, and do not stop until you decide you are finished. There will still be someone in the world who thinks you are not good enough, but you cannot let the opinions of a select few stop you from expressing yourself through art. Creativity is a gift that is all too rare in this world, and it should be shared at every opportunity. Don’t let the haters win.

Categories
Artist Advice Business Advice Editorials Haulix News

In the music business, you can never get too comfortable

Succeeding in the music business is hard work, and the only way to get ahead is by doing everything you can to consistently develop new skills.

The goal of every aspiring professional is to land their dream job and feel secure within it. You could say the same for current professionals as well. Everyone hopes to find something to do for a living that compliments their interests and has the potential to last for many years. No one likes looking for work, and no one wants to go through life feeling as though their job may be taken away from them at a moment’s notice, especially if they’re good at what they do. 

Life in the music business is a tricky proposition. On the one hand, finding employment can mean the actualization of dreams that have lived in someone’s soul from a very early age. On the other hand, maintaining a job once employed is never guaranteed. Business come and go in this industry just like trends in music. The label that employs 300 people today could very well find themselves needing only a fraction of that staff in five years time. Consumers dictate which businesses thrive and which companies die. You can be the best at what you do, but if no one is buying or supporting that thing there is a good chance you could soon be looking for work once more.

I tell you this not to discourage you, but to reinforce the need to stay engaged in the industry.  If you want to work in music then you have to accept the fact you the hustle really never ends. That doesn’t mean you have to work 24/7, but it does mean you need to be constantly pushing yourself towards bigger and better things. Full-time employment is not enough. Paying your bills is not enough. It’s not about money and it’s not about things. Longterm success in music is about constant personal development, both for yourself and for those around you.

Several years ago the head of publicity at an iconic heavy metal label told me that he challenged himself to develop a new skill every year that would – in some way – aide him in life. The year we spoke he had set to learning video editing, and by the following spring, he was making additional money creating promotional clips and lyric videos for bands of all sizes. He was also creating more interesting content for work, which in turn helped push the label forward.

We apply a similar practice here at Haulix. We invest in the skills our marketing and sales team need, such as public speaking and graphic design. We encourage our programmers to be creative with their designs, make training available to support team members, and hold weekly meetings to discuss the economics of our market with the entire team present. We don’t want our team to understand our business alone, we want them to understand the industry and our role in it, as well as that of all our competitors.

So ask yourself: What don’t I know?

Got it? Okay. Get to work.

Categories
News

Journalism Tips: Curiosity may kill cats, but it will save your writing

People are not machines. This may seem obvious on paper, but it’s a bit harder to discern when applied to real life. Many people feel they are put on this Earth to do one very specific thing, and every morning they set to doing that one thing over and over, again and again, until they whither and die. If they’re an accountant, they account. If they’re a teacher, they teach. Like machines, these people feel the only have one task and that is the only task they set to do. While this method of living may work in some careers, it is a recipe for disaster, or at the very least lethargy, when it comes to the creative arts. Whether you’re a writer, artist, poet, musician, filmmaker, or working under some experimental title I don’t even know exists just yet, variety is key to your success, and not just in the work you do. Let me explain:

A toaster’s sole purpose is to toast, and in order to do this it needs electricity. You can toast anything you can fit into your toaster, but virtually every toaster on this planet only functions if it has power provided through an electrical. There is no variety in the diet of your toaster. It needs one thing and one thing only to work. If you try and run your toaster of something else, like water or wind, you’re not going to toast anything anytime soon.

People are not toasters, or any other machine for that matter because we cannot rely on a single source of any kind to survive. We need a variety of foods in order to gain energy, just like we need a variety of influences in order to feel consistently inspired. We all have our go-to foods and sources of inspiration, but if we only rely on those things our palettes will tell us they have grown stale in a very short matter of time.

The same idea also applies to writing: If all you do day in and day out is write about the same thing the same way your creative drive will stall long before it should. If you’re a pop-punk critic who only listens to pop-punk your ability to denote the small differences between various artists will abound, but after several months or maybe even years you will find yourself becoming increasingly burnt out on the genre that once felt like your musical home. This is because all great writing, and by that I mean everything from criticism to novel writing, thrives on original ideas born from a variety of life experiences. Writing solely about pop-punk is perfectly acceptable, but if the only thing you’re putting into your ears is the sound of three chords and gang vocals your mind and body will begin to hate the idea of continuing to rely on that musical diet. You brain can only take so much of the same input before it stops responding as it typically would, and the only way to prevent that from happening is by diversifying your musical and/or entertainment palette.

It’s important to remember when you find yourself stuck on a creative plateau that literally every other person who has tried to create something from nothing has found themselves in the exact same place. Creativity stems from original thought, and those are born from your personal experiences, including all the media you consume throughout the day. Your creativity needs nourishment just like your body, and it can only survive on a single source for so long before it begins to breakdown. The responsibility to prevent that from happening rests entirely on your shoulders, and that is something you should never take for granted. We live in a big, beautiful world of creativity, and you owe it to your own career to experience as much of it as possible. So next time you’re feeling down, stuck, or otherwise lethargic toward your passion, step outside your comfort zone and take in something radically different. Truth be told you might not like what you find, but even if that is the case you will walk away with a new influence and a bevy of new ideas born out of what you have just experience. In those ideas you might find your next big move, and if not at least you’ll have a new story to share with those around you.

Life is short. Take my advice and experience as much of it as possible.

Categories
News

Journalism Tips: Save some art for yourself

Music writing can be a double-edged sword as far as fandom is concerned. The fact you’re in a position to influence a group of consumers makes it possible for you to get closer to your favorite artists than you probably would otherwise, but it also means you have to continue following those artists’ every move long after your initial interest in their work has begun to fade. This is honestly a best case scenario because more often than not writing about music means you have to not only know, but learn to appreciate the works of many artists whom you would otherwise not make time to experience. Establishing a career in writing requires that you be engaged with the wide world of music, and that entails keeping tabs on far more artists than those you personally enjoy. Over time this can make the joy of writing feel a lot more like work than most would care to admit. But that’s because writing is just that — work.

This is not a complaint, per say, but rather a matter of fact. You cannot make it in music writing simply by covering the artists you enjoy when you enjoy them. You need follow-through, and more importantly you need to engage the fans of artists regularly in order to ensure people continue to care your writing and/or publication exists.

When I began writing about music I did so because I felt there were artists I knew and enjoyed that most of the world had yet to recognize. If you could find my first hundred articles I can almost guarantee every single one would be based on an artist or group I admired at the time, and if I’m being completely honest I would also wager most of those posts are fairly similar. They each praise a group I loved at the time, and they each argue others should feel the same. I built my initial following by covering bands like A Day To Remember, Chiodos, Secret Secret Dino Club, and The Wonder Years whenever possible, and I made it a point to interview someone from the band every time a new piece of news presented an opportunity for discussion. As word of my work grew, so did interest from others bands and labels about having their talent promoted through my channels. I was completely blown away by these requests, so of course I agree to almost every one that hit my inbox, and as I began to network with the industry at large my writing began to encompass more and more bands. Some acts I enjoyed, but most were perfectly average in my mind, and looking back now I know the only reason I covered them is because I felt that it is what my (arguably non-existent) audience wanted. Whether or not that was true is something I’ll never truly know, but I do know that covering a wide array of talent helped me navigate the industry and secure full-time work in the business I love the most. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Do I continue to cover any and everything that comes my way as a result? Hell no.

It’s incredibly difficult to land a job in music that allows you to share everything you love all the time. Most jobs are far more focused than that, be it covering solely alternative music or perhaps just hip-hop. Finding a paid position that covers everything is rarer than a Morrissey performance that goes off without a hitch, and they are becoming increasingly hard to come by as the demand for specific content curators continues to rise. I used to have a big problem with this because I felt, and still do believe, that everyone is able to enjoy a little bit of everything. I might not love country music, but there are several country artists I enjoy. The same goes for musicals, top 40 radio pop, and obscure shoe gaze bands. None of these areas of music are where I spend the majority of my time, but they each are filled with wonderful talent that is deserving of exposure and praise. Just because this is true however does not mean I am the person to tell you these acts exist. I can tweet about it, sure, but I cannot dedicate every minute of my day to telling you about everything I love as I once did. That is not my job.

At first, the need to separate the work I am paid to do from the work I would like to do was incredibly frustrating. I felt as though my initial mission to help more people discover great music had been compromised by the need for a paycheck, but over time I came to realize that was not true. Having full-time employment gave me more freedom than I had ever had before as far as creative pursuits were concerned, and though I couldn’t argue the need to cover everything I could do more to help a specific set of artists and bands than ever before. Instead of writing about 40 or 50 acts a week I wrote about 10 at most, but I made sure to make each piece released as good as it could be. Having less artists to cover made it possible for me to dig deeper with my coverage and, ultimately, provide higher quality content to my readers.

But what about all that other stuff I loved? Did I turn my back on a world of talent just because they didn’t fit my 9-5 lifestyle?

Of course not.

I still love a wide array of bands as I always have, but these days I keep some things I love to myself if for no other reason than the ability to enjoy certain songs or records without turning that enjoyment into work. Before I had full-time work in music I viewed everything I enjoyed as something I would eventually cover, which in turn made everything I enjoyed some form of work. Maybe it wasn’t hard work, but it was work nonetheless, and as a result my relationship with music began to change. The idea of listening to music for the sake of simply enjoying it became an absurd concept, as I hadn’t purely enjoyed music for years on end. I liked it, and I wouldn’t know what to do without it, but at the end of the day I was trying to put food on my table based on what I was listening to, and that put a lot of undue pressure on myself, as well as the talent.

When I speak to aspiring writers and music professionals today I encourage them to experience as much music as possible. As soon as I do this I immediately tag my comments by adding that not every great song or record needs to become the sole focus of their work moving forward. It’s not only perfectly acceptable, it’s needed. If you lose your ability to simply enjoy music you will be unable to accurately critique it. The reason anyone begins chasing after a career in music in the first place is based on their love of enjoying music in their youth, and when you lose the ability to appreciate music in that way you begin to lose track of why you work in music. It’s not about clicks, and it’s certainly not about being the first person to hear the next buzz worthy release. It’s about celebrating art and the appreciation of art, as well as making others aware of undiscovered talent. You can only do this to the best of your abilities if you too are still able to be wowed by music. If you’ve lost that passion, or even if you believe it has begun to fade, take a step back from writing and unplug from everything except your stereo. Put on the records that first inspired your career aspirations and reconnect with the source of your drive to succeed. Never lose your passion.

James Shotwell is the Digital Marketing Manager for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

Categories
News

Journalism Tips: 5 Unique Way To Cover Vans Warped Tour 2015

This Friday, June 19, marks the official start of Vans Warped Tour 2015. There are more than 50 artists performing over the course of the tour’s near two-month run, and based on what we’ve seen online it appears many of our followers have already been received press credentials for whatever date is closest to them. If that applies to you, congrats! Covering Warped Tour is a fun and essential part of developing as a young music writer, especially if you have any interest at all in one day working in/with alternative music.

Whether it’s your first time covering Warped Tour or your eleventh it can be hard to know just what to highlight in your future blog coverage. I know your basic instincts will tell you to go for your favorite bands, as well as the headliners that will no doubt perform for thousands every day, but if you really want to make the most of your time at Vans Warped Tour 2015 we here at Haulix have a few suggestions that will not only challenge you, but also expand the type of coverage you’re able to offer readers. I know stepping outside your comfort zone can be scary, especially when trying to build a career, but if there was ever a place to take chances and really express yourself it’s while covering the world’s largest traveling music festival.

Warped Tour Now Has a Comedy Stage!

For the first time in its history, Warped Tour is adding a comedy tent to its numerous stages and attractions. This years festival will see Beth Stelling, Chase Bernstein, Dave Ross, Eli Olsberg, Eric Schwartz, Grant Cotter, Sammy Obeid, and Sandy Danto joining the mix of over 100 bands already on the bill. Some may think the combination of music and comedy in a setting like this is strange, but festivals like Bonnaroo and Sasquatch have long-proven the opposite to be true. Comedians, like musicians, grind it out every day to chase their dreams of entertaining crowds of all sizes for a living. The performers on this year’s stage may not all be household names yet, but that could change overnight, and just like the musicians on tour your coverage could help them take their career to the next level. Plus, highlighting this part of Warped encourages Kevin Lyman to bring it back next year, and to be perfectly honest we really want that to happen. So please, help us out!

Did you know you can basically go to school at Warped Tour?

The Entertainment Institute (TEI) is a music education platform that gives people access to musicians and professionals currently working in the industry through customized workshops, both online and in person. During Warped Tour, TEI offers one-on-one classes with Warped Tour artists and staff on a variety of courses, including Entrepreneurship with Fronz from Attila, Vocal Technique with Bradley Walden of Emarosa, and even YouTube 101 with online personality Bryan Starz, all for the low price of $25 per session. For coverage purposes, you could attend a class and report on your experience, or you seek out those who attend a variety of course and highlight a variety of experiences to help future attendees better decide which, if any, classes may be right for them. There are probably a dozen other ways to tackle this part of the tour, but those two should at least get you started. Be creative!

You Can Never Have Enough Feedback From Parents

Warped Tour implemented a pretty cool policy a couple months back in order to encourage more people to bring their young teens to the festival that grants parents free admission. This was a move taken years after the tour implemented a reverse daycare for parents, which features shaded areas, seating, air conditioning, and a variety of other amenities to allow for a small escape from the noise and chaos of the Warped grounds. Most people know all of this exists, but every year only a few outlets have the idea to ask parents about their experience at the festival. This could be done in a very direct fashion or in a fun and creative way, like having parents list the bands they saw, or even challenging them to review certain bands on the tour. Finding adults willing to participate may be a challenge if your date is fast-approaching, but people with weeks left to plan may want to get an early jump on this if its something that interests them. If you need help winning over parents, we encourage offering them money or your services to perform any chores they may need handled.

Nonprofits May Be More Important Than Ever This Year

With all the talk of sexual assault and the allegations made against several Warped Tour performers new and old in the last six months, it’s not hard to understand why Kevin Lyman has made a public statement regarding his efforts to extend an invitation to organizations that focus on sexual abuse, cyberbullying, predator awareness and teen suicide to encourage them to come out to Warped Tour this summer. This is one of many moves the festival is making to try and ensure the safety and well being of all attendees, so it should be a no brainer that those who do participate deserve a bit of your time. This issue has become bigger and bigger in recent months, and the people representing the organizations trying to inform people about these awful things, as well as help these who have been preyed upon, need all the aide they can receive to bring their existence to the attention of young people who think Warped Tour is only about the bands on stage. Your coverage of these groups, or any of the groups on tour (To Write Love On Her Arms, for example) could literally save lives. That isn’t something you can typically claim about artist interviews, especially those captured in a festival setting. Think beyond clickbait and try doing something good for others. Trust us. It feels good.

Offer Readers The One Thing No One Else Can: Your Experience

While I would never encourage anyone to forgo interviews completely, I’ve often found the most compelling content created around Warped Tour are the firsthand accounts of writers on the ground at various dates. The play-by-play to someone’s day at festival filled with over 10,000 attendees, 50 bands, half a dozen comedians, numerous nonprofits, food vendors, and more is the kind of unique content no other site can replicate. By sharing your perspective you’re able to offer exclusive insight on the tour, as well as better engage with your readers in an authentic way. This isn’t you speaking on the tour through a structure discussion with an artist who is doing 5-20 interviews a day, but rather your thoughts, feelings, and experiences as expressed by you in the written word. There may be no better way of connecting with readers than through material like that, but in order to make it great you have to be completely honest with your audience. Be bold. Take chances. Say what you really feel and, with a little luck, people will connect with it and encourage you to share more.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

Categories
News

Journalism Tips: Breaking Up With Analytics

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the one and only Journalism Tips column that will run this week. We have been working hard on diversifying our posting efforts, so beloved columns like this one are going to be running a little less frequently in immediate future, but hopefully in time you’ll understand why we made the changes we did.

This site exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook. 

I spent the first five years of my writing career doing everything in my power to build the most read music blog in existence, and my way of gauging success almost always boiled down to the data gathered by Google Analytics. The number of unique visitors, page views, countries of origin, landing pages, bounce rates, and everything in between became the various scales by which I measured my wins and losses. Good days were only considered as such if we rose above a target traffic point, and bad days were anything that fell short. Feature content was only created if it played into what was trending in recent weeks, and if any attempts at originality-be it a potential recurring column or a random exclusive with a rising talent-failed to bring in a modest boost to traffic such ideas were never attempted again. After all, time is a previous commodity, and the efforts spent on creating that one piece of content could have drafted a dozen or more news posts that catered to a far larger and more diverse audience. Those posts wouldn’t necessarily have performed better, but at least they would be casting a greater net with which to hopefully reach out target market.

If we’re being completely honest, even at my peak I was about a hundred miles from reaching my original goal of building the greatest music site. My team and I never really deserved it, or at least not entirely, and it wasn’t until I was a few years out of college that I began to understand why. We weren’t creating content we were passionate about because we felt the things being said were not being expressed by anyone else, we were writing with the sole purpose of boosting our average monthly readership, and in doing so whoring ourselves out to whatever label, publicist, or artist needed promotion in the moment. We had very few original thoughts to share, yet we were churning out thirty to fifty posts any given day of the week. No one ever copy and pasted press releases in their entirety, but if you called the majority of our posting efforts a collection of press release summaries you would not be too far off base. 

To be fair, the place my team and I found ourselves in is not unlike the position many music blogs around the web are in at this very moment. The age of social media and the immediacy of sharing has lead to a huge upswing in the amount of content being created, but try as science might no one has been able to find a way to increase the length of any given day. Young writers and sites feel pressure to compete with the large amount of content being created by their peers because they believe not doing so will cause them to go unnoticed. They get into a mindset that believes more content means more opportunities to market, which in turn means a higher likelihood of clicks from new visitors and maybe, just maybe, those random clicks will become regular visitors as time goes on. Heck, they may even like your Facebook page, as if the number of Likes a site has in any ways coincides with the quality of their content.

Really though, who said anything about quality up to this point? People trapped in the analytics mindset are not concerned with quality as much as they are quantity, and that goes for content as much as it does the people who read it. They want more readers and more clicks, but they are not willing to build those numbers over time. Who has time? We live in the age of immediacy, and any digital effort worth its weight in coding knows you need to grow or you will shrivel and die on the third and fourth pages of Google search results. In order to keep digital irrelevance at bay, sites churn out post after post of regurgitated promotional phrasing in hopes some small fraction of a band’s fan base misses every other headline boasting similar media and clicks the link to their article instead. It’s a long shot, but that is why sites create so many different posts each day. They believe thirty attempts to reach thirty different groups of music fans are better and, for some reason, more rewarding than creating a genuine dialogue with one, three, or even five of these groups through original, thought-provoking writing.

What no one really says about Google Analytics, or any platform that measures site traffic for that matter, is that none of the technology associated with tracking web performance can gauge the happiness of the content creators. These tools can only give you data, and unless you are a robot that is not enough information to gauge the successfulness of any endeavor. You have to be happy with yourself first, as well as the work you are creating. If anyone tells you they got into music to be the best ever and they don’t need any sense of personal satisfaction to be content as long as the goal of being most popular is achieved they’re lying to both you and themselves. Success without personal satisfaction is a soul-draining experience that will leave you depressed and alone. No one wants to work with someone who is afraid to be themselves, especially if that person has never been confident enough in their beliefs to share them with the world. That’s the entire reason people start music blogs – to share their views and opinions with the world. To begin such a project for any other reason would just be foolish.

Before I decided to stop concerning myself with the numbers being reported through analytics tools and focus on the content I was creating I was fairly certain I would have to walk away from music forever before I turned 30. Years of generating hundreds of posts every month and seeing minimal growth, if any, had drained every bit of desire I had to continue pursuing writing. In truth, I had lost sight of the reason I got started in the first place. I had replaced my desire to be unique with my desire to be popular, and in doing so lost the fire for writing that initially lead me to launch my own site. I had become more concerned with how others viewed me, as well as how many of them gave me their time, than whether or not I was comfortable in my own skin. I didn’t care about being me or saying what I wanted to say, just that people wanted to read the words I wrote. 

Looking back now I know that running a site the way I did was a disservice to myself and my team, not to mention the people reading our work, and in the big scheme of things those efforts wasted a lot of time that could have been spent asking tough questions and taking worthwhile chances. I’m trying to make up for it now, but no amount of future writing can make up for the time and digital space wasted with articles that never really needed to exist in the first place, and knowing I’m responsible for such a large amount of largely useless content really bums me out. I made a promise to myself to create less disposable writing in 2015, and so far I like to think I’m staying true to my word. The number of posts we run on my site has dropped, as has our traffic, but the sense of pride felt by our entire team for the work being done is better than it has been in years. We wake each day excited for the work ahead, and we communicate regularly with one another to help develop and refine original ideas. When the day ends, no one clicks over to Analytics. We check in once a week to see how things performed, but otherwise we focus on supporting one another and believing in the content we are pushing out. We don’t run anything that feels like it wouldn’t be worth clicking tomorrow, and as a result we’ve seen a nice boom in engagement from readers. Turns out, if you give people something worth discussing, they often hang around and have a discussion. Who would have thought?

Everyone is going to have their ideas on what makes a music site thrive, but take it from me when I say obsessing over analytics will only lead you to ruin. The only way you are ever going to succeed in this business, let alone be able to live with yourself as a professional in entertainment, is if you learn to be comfortable being you. I hate to sound like your parents or a guidance counselor who cares a bit too much, but you and your opinions are what makes you that unique butterfly we all tell ourselves we are, even though we know most people are fairly similar. Expressing the thoughts and opinions that make you unique is the only way to gain a true following, and until you are able to recognize that you’ll be swinging in the dark hoping to stumble on click-worthy headlines. I’ve been there, and I wouldn’t wish that position on anyone with a serious passion for writing.

Be you, and be comfortable with expressing who you are. Everything else will follow in time.

Categories
News

Journalism Tips #26: Precision Of Language

Hello, everyone! After several weeks on hiatus in the Florida keys our Journalism Tips column has decided to return to the Haulix blog. The following editorial challenges writers to embrace mediocrity while examining the fears many aspiring professionals feel when tasked with review something they feel is neither good or bad, but rather something in between. We hope this post serves as a launching pad to further conversation and want to encourage anyone with an opinion on this topic to comment below with their thoughts.

This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

There is an adaptation of Lois Lowry’s classic young adult novel The Giver playing in theaters nationwide right now. I don’t know if you have had the time to see, and it to be honest it’s not exactly the greatest film ever made, but there is one idea present in both the original text and silver screen adaptation that has stuck with me. The story takes place in a dystopian future where society has fallen apart and been built all over again, only this time without emotion or color. As there is no emotion, people are taught to speak using precise language, including when describing how they feel. The word ‘love,’ for example,does not exist because it cannot be defined. Do your parents enjoy your company? Yes. Do they take pride in your accomplishments? Yes. Is that the same thing? Not really.

I never really expected to apply my fascination with this concept to writing, but over the last week I encountered a situation that gave me an opportunity to say ‘precision of language’ out loud and I knew immediately that the situation had become fodder for this blog.

Scrolling through social media this week, I stumbled across a link to a new review from a young writer whose writing I’ve often enjoyed. The opening paragraph immediately dismissed the artist’s previous work as trash without explanation or support. Less than 300 words later, that same writing called the artist’s latest release a masterpiece. Not just a good – a masterpiece.

After reading the review a handful of times, I commented on the post and inquired as to why the writer felt the original piece was so disposable it could be considered trash. I also asked about their definition of masterpiece, and if they could explain what changed between the two so dramatically to cause such a change of opinion. Instead of commenting back, I received an email. A long email. In it, the writer accused me of attacking them and tearing them down without reason. I replied I was simply trying to understand what inspired the use of such powerful words, but they took it far more personal than I expected. Frustrated and exhausted, I eventually dropped it altogether.

I’m all for proclaiming one’s love or disdain for a particular creation, but using words like ‘trash’ and ‘masterpiece’ so loosely is flat-out bad writing. It’s something almost every writer struggles with from time to time, yes, but it’s bad writing nonetheless. The use of superfluous language not only makes your writing weak from a stylistic standpoint, but it also weakens the impact your writing will have over time. There has to be a middle ground in reviews, and it has to be the place where the vast majority of entertainment falls. It’s silly for everything to be categorized as perfect or trash, especially without proper support for such generalizations. The idea of perfect infers that it’s possible for something to fall short of perfection, so there must be a middle ground.

I think the problem writers have with embracing the middle ground is that they believe no one likes to read reviews about the middle ground. Entertainment is a an expense that people do not have to budget for, and when they do they want to know their investment will result in something they will enjoy. If a review claims something is ‘okay’ or ‘pretty good’ it does not encourage consumption. It also does not encourage social sharing. On the flip side, if something is praised heavily – or trashed to an absurd degree – people are more entertained and therefore more likely to share the content (not to mention potentially purchase the release). Reviews that fall in the middle can sometimes appears wishy washy, and as a result there is a presumption among many writers, especially those in the younger set, that no one wants to read that type of content.

Let me tell you something: People do want that content. More importantly, you need to create it in order to better yourself as a writer and critic. It’s easily to shout your love or hatred for something from the rooftops, but to sit and dissect something that was anything less is a true challenge because it forces the writer to ask themselves why something only worked to an extent. It’s easy to proclaim something a success or failure, but to explain why it’s neither takes a kind of surgeon like precision that writers of all ages struggle to possess. We like to use big, passionate words to describe our feelings, but when something fall in the middle such words have no place in our work. You can view that as something that stunts your creativity, but it’s far more rewarding if you learn to view it as a challenge.

This week, challenge yourself to tackle the middle ground of entertainment. When you come across a release that strikes you as interesting, but not entirely entertaining, take the time and explore why you feel that way. Capture those feelings and share them with your readers. You may find that you’re able to appreciate what is being created in a whole new light as a result. Perhaps the lyrics are a thing of beauty, but the music turns you off, or vice versa. Perhaps the production is muddy when it would sound better clean. None of this is enough to make a record ‘trash,’ but it is enough to make it less than perfect, and there is nothing wrong with saying something is just ‘okay.’ Embrace the mediocrity, and learn to make the uninteresting interesting. When you’re as confident in your review of an album getting a 6/10 as you are one receiving a 1/10 or 10/10 then you will have a true advantage over the vast majority of writers today, and it’s truth be told it’s not that hard to accomplish. Like most things in life, practice makes not you perfect, but it does make you really, really good over time.

Categories
News

Journalism Tips #17: ‘The Irrational Fear Of Going On Vacation’

Thank you for joining us for another installment in our our ongoing Journalism Tips series. We started this column as a way to help aspiring writers get their start in music, but over the couple months we have been evolving into a place writers come to have their questions about life in the business answered. Today we are continuing that effort with a response to a question posed by multiple reader in regards to taking time off. If you have any questions about developing as a writer/blogger in music, please do not hesitate email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Several weeks ago I wrote in this very column about the benefits of learning to disconnect from the digital world and embrace the chaos of reality. My intentions at the time were to address those that feel unable to walk away from their digital efforts for even a few hours, but a conversation with a relatively young writer this week made me realize I completely neglected one of the biggest causes for young writer panic: Vacation.

We have all been raised to believe that vacations exist so that people are able to disconnect from their work life and spend time with people they love doing the things they enjoy. For many young writers, especially those who have chosen to start their own music blogs, what actually happens when these so-called breaks occur is the furthest thing from rest and relaxation. Writers today are growing up in a world that has a never-ending demand for content and, thanks to the internet, a source to supply said content whenever the spirit desires. For bloggers, this means there is always a potential to win over new readers, and the allure of all those possible clicks can be too much for some to resist.

Here’s the thing too many writers do not seem to realize about those random clicks: They will still be there tomorrow. The anonymous IP address might change, but the likelihood of some random person coming across your site or content today is as high as it will be tomorrow, and the same goes for the Tuesday three weeks from now. More importantly, those clicks don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things unless they are converted to regular readers, and very few people have ever been swayed to regular subscribe to any one site just because a four sentence news story was posted within five minutes of a press release going out. Passerby to subscriber conversion happens when a connection is made through the content being shared. Time is not a factor.

When the opportunity to take a vacation presents itself it is easy to understand why many young writers begin to fret over what kind of negative impact any type of extended break may have for their site/content/brand. These are the same people have come up in a world where they know what all their friends are thinking as fast as those people can post their thoughts to Twitter, so of course they are going to feel pressure to share any new content as soon as it breaks. Getting the first or second post out about a major news items can be great for single day traffic bumps, but the shelf life will likely not extend past three or four days. News is disposable. Any one story is only hot until the next news item breaks, and then it’s forgotten almost as fast as the accompanying embed code was copy/pasted into the initial blog pot. Writers know this deep down, but for whatever reason they convince themselves continuously feeding the news machine will eventually result in a strong, dedicated following. That is entirely a possibility, as there are sites right now who thrive on such efforts, but for the vast majority of individual writers there is little-to-no benefit in forcing content creation efforts. It’s exhausting and offers little reward, especially over the long term.

Becoming a professional music writer requires individuals to be okay with taking breaks from the internet. The digital world changes quickly, but it does not move so fast that disconnecting for a few hours or several days will cause someone to be forgotten entirely. Will your traffic dip? Probably. Will they miss a few big headlines? Almost certainly. Will they also begin to think more creatively and have an easier time brainstorming ideas, which will ultimately lead to better content for their readers? Guaranteed.

Creative people need breaks. Writing content, even brief news posts, forces the brain to work incredibly hard. Over time that constant push to create results in mental exhaustion, which leads to lazy writing and bad grammar. This can be avoided, or at least made to not be as much of a threat against a young creative mind, as long as individuals can learn to step away from their work. They must embrace the true idea of vacations and disconnect fully, including shutting off their phones. The best ideas come from experience the world and determining what can be done to make it a better place. What do people need to know? Who do they need to listen to? What song will be the next to save someone’s life who is currently contemplating suicide? Individuals hoping to be professional writers do not have to seek out the answers to these questions as much as they simply have to spend time in the world, contemplate what they experience, and then share those observations with anyone willing to listen. That is the purpose of being a writer, after all. To take on the responsibility of not only keeping people informed with what they want to know, but discovering what they need and bringing it to their attention.

Take vacations. Seriously. Take them. There will always be a big story about to break and another two or three big headlines in the works no one sees coming. No one news story is going to make or break an individual’s career, but setting a standard for consistently strong and original content will lead to a prosperous career in time. The key, at least for those starting out, is accepting the fact success is a process and learning to settling in for the long haul. Work as hard as possible and take breaks whenever needed. Make the most of the time allotted for creativity and learn what can be done to allow the mind to relax. Success comes to those who are driven, patient, and capable of taking care of their own mental state.

Exit mobile version