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Eight Essential Music Business Principles You Need To Know

Music Business Principles

No industry is harder to conquer than music, but following these basic business principles will help anyone stay ahead of their competition.

Don’t let the glitz and glamor of superstars lead you to lose sight of the truth — music is a business. Like any other industry, the music business makes, packages, and sells products to consumers. It is not that far removed from fashion, tech, or even pharmaceuticals.

Too many people, ourselves included, lose sight of the business element in music. We want to believe that success is a result of creativity and that the most artistic person is the one who ultimately gets ahead. But we all know that is a lie. We know that the best songwriters and most skilled musicians rarely reach the top of the charts. Even when they do, they often align themselves with a person or group that culture sees as a hot commodity. Talent alone is rarely, if ever, enough.

It’s important to view music as a business because there are countless principles that — more often than not — dictate who succeeds. These are rules and theories that any person studying business in college would learn, and they’re widely available in countless variations published through any book promising “get rich” tips and “guaranteed success.”

In this episode of Music Biz, host James Shotwell shares eight timeless business principles and how they apply to your music career. He offers examples of success and explains where people often make mistakes. There are many more principles to share, and we will continue to post them here as time allows. 

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

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Why Dunbar’s Number Is The Secret To Success In The Music Business

Dunbar’s Number claims we can only sustain 150 meaningful relationships at once. Is that enough to build a career? We say yes.

Too many of us spend our days chasing numbers that don’t mean anything. We develop content to build our email list or grow our follower count. We spend money on playlist pitching and social media ads that may or may not attract new listeners. We worry about our monthly audience size on Spotify while simultaneously complaining that Spotify doesn’t do enough for the artists on its platform.

Is this what we want? Do we want a bunch of passive fans who occasionally engage with us only and potentially stream our music? Wouldn’t you rather have fans that serve as ambassadors for your music? Fans who go above and beyond to make sure everyone they care about knows of your music? If the latter is true, then we have a number for you.

In the early 1990s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggested a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. That figure, which we now call Dunbar’s Number, is 150. We have and maintain one-hundred and fifty personal relationships.

Dunbar didn’t pull his now-famous number out of thin air. He studied data on communities and relationships dating back to the hunter-gatherer age. He looked at how corporations and schools function, as well as the relationships of those within them. While we undoubtedly meet thousands of people in our lifetimes, we typically only develop meaningful relationships with a select few. Those we’re close to may change over time, but the total number of real relationships rarely exceeds 150.

More recent studies from the 2010s found a similar truth in social media. We may have millions of followers, but we only feel a connection to a select few. Those individuals are the ones whose posts we seek out and whose opinion we look for when sharing news or ideas.

Dunbar’s number can also work with music marketing.

Do you know how books become successful? Marketing and celebrity endorsements may play a role for some titles, but most books that reach the bestseller list do so through book clubs. Small groups of people who buy and discuss books select a title, fall in love with it, then tell others. Those who hear of the book then bring it into their book clubs, and the cycle repeats until thousands or even millions of copies are sold.

We may want the world to know our name our music, but casting a wide net rarely gives us the results we seek. Instead, focus on those who already care about what you’re doing. Find your biggest fans and work to improve your relationship with them. Engage with them, give them special access to your career, and make them feel as indispensable to you as your music is to them.

Think about how it feels to tell others about your music. You probably get excited when you recount your story, and others can sense that excitement in your voice. Your passion for the music you make is addicting, and it leads others to seek it out.

The same is true for your biggest fans. They have a passion for your work that is similar to yours, and if you can get them to share that passion with others, your audience will grow.

By developing a close relationship with your biggest fans, you will begin to build a community around your music. Those fans will get to know one another, and as they tell more people about your art, some of those individuals will join the community. If all 150 get a single person to feel similar, your engaged audience will double in size. That process will repeat as more and more people begin to feel passionate about your music and the people who support it. They will believe they are part of something bigger than themselves, which will create a sense of purpose that they cherish and actively work to preserve.

If you don’t have 150 fans right now, that’s ok! Focus on the ones who care the most, build those relationships, and the numbers will rise in time. As long as you emphasize the connection with your audience over your fanbase’s size, you will see your career take off. It may take time, but it’s better to spend years building lasting connections than to waste your efforts on engaging a passive audience who feels indifferent to the longevity of your career.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

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A crash course in avoiding music industry burnout

Everyone in music works too much and has a million things they feel they must accomplish, but taking time to recover is just as important as getting ahead.

Movies and television based on the life of music professionals and the artists they support make the entertainment business seem like a nonstop party highlighted by epic highs and perilous lows. It’s true that there is a lot of fun to be had in this industry, as well as plenty of opportunities to cut loose, but work is work. Music professionals often put in 45-80 hour weeks, every week, for as long as they can convince their body to continue getting out of bed. It’s like the postal service motto about how no weather can stop the mail from being delivered, only without the exercise.

There are many professionals working in music today who are great at their jobs. These individuals are the movers and shakers of the industry. They pour every ounce of themselves into their daily tasks, exceed expectations, and quite often find themselves being praised for all they do on industry blogs. The entertainment business tells us to admire those professionals because they have the power to make dreams come true, but far too often celebrations of talent overlook one key to success that anyone who makes a lasting career out of music possesses: Avoiding Burnout.

If 100 people decided to pursue working in the music industry at the same time, how many would eventually have a career? Of those that make it, how many would last more than five years? Ten? Twenty?

These are questions I think about a lot. Having worked in music for a decade now, longer if you count unpaid work, I’ve lost count of how many friends and acquaintances have chosen to pursue other careers. Some feel they will never find stable employment, while others run themselves ragged trying to establish a presence in the industry.

Not long ago, a magazine Editor I had worked with for nearly six years abruptly exited his role. When I inquired as to  why he stepped down his response was simple, “I’m just tired.”

Anyone who chooses to pursue a career in music is told from the day they make their desires known that success is a rarity guaranteed to no one. We are trained to believe music is a battleground where the hardest working people trample one another to uplift the most creative minds we can uncover. We are told to network, but also keep our cards close to our chest, and because of all this the stress involved in pursuing a music career can be downright overwhelming.

When you pour everything you have into something you’re passionate about results will happen. The problem is that no one is able to pour themselves entirely into their passion for as long as they have air in their lungs. Human beings did not evolve to be creatures of habit, living to work and working to live. To borrow a phrase from the band Switchfoot, “We were meant to live for so much more.”

But the music industry doesn’t recognize that. No business or industry does because businesses and industries exist to profit above all else. From a business perspective, time off equals time spent not making money, and who doesn’t want to make money?

Money is great, but it’s not everything. Your happiness and peace of mind are worth more than any paycheck could afford, but the need to realize that falls on the professional and not the people who employ them. If you allow it, working in music or any other industry will drain you of your passion, work you ragged, and keep you away from those you love. In a business as fickle as music, it’s hard for those working to feel strong enough to express a need for a break or vacation, but it’s something that must be done to ensure longterm success in this business.

With all that in mind, here are a few tips to help ease the burden of the nonstop pace of the music industry. The advice outlined below should be viewed as a treatment and not a cure. You need to get away from it all in order to remember why you gave a damn in the first place. Don’t lose hope.

1. Put a priority on face-to-face social contact with supportive people

Social media is a fantastic innovation, but all too often we confuse the connections the digital world provides with being a replacement for legitimate human contact. Too much time alone can cause legitimate sickness, sometimes with life-altering consequences.

2. Set a time each day when you completely disconnect from technology

You are addicted to technology. We all are, in fact, and because of this, our brains are rarely given a chance to decompress. Set aside a part of each day, even just 30 minutes, where you exist without the aide of a screen or device.

3. Move your body frequently—don’t sit for more than an hour

You don’t have to go to the gym, but it certainly won’t hurt. Physical activity increases the endorphins in your body, which in turn alleviates stress. Try to never go more than two-hours without fitting in physical activity of some kind. Take a walk. Try yoga. Be active.

4. Reduce your intake of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine

In other words, “control your high.” You may think you need these things to function or fit in, but too much of anything is not good for you. In some instances, as with cigarettes, any amount is not good for you. Try to limit mind/body altering substances so that your body does not have to work as hard to reset your system from day to day.

5. Get all the restful sleep that you need to feel your best

The average American adult currently gets just 6.7 hours of sleep per night. Medical studies have related a lack of sleep to health problems and cognitive impairment. With this in mind, try to get anywhere from 7-9 hours a night. If you cannot make that work, maybe carve out a cat nap in the afternoon.

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News

Maintaining Your Sanity While The Industry Is On Holiday Break

If you are reading this post, then there is a reasonably good chance you are feeling more than a little bored. Maybe you’re a blogger with no new stories to publish, or perhaps you run an indie label where business has slowed in the days since Christmas. Whatever the case, you still have several days until the industry is back in full swing, if not longer. Some industry businesses do not return to a regular work schedule until the week after New Year’s Day, which for 2019 means January 7.

While we admire and applaud your dedication to the craft, we also feel we must tell you that no one person has to be on top of everything all the time. Sometimes it makes no sense to try and do so. The music business is a difficult place where most professionals, meaning those paid and those working for free alike, put in long hours to help those they believe in getting ahead. The daily grind can be killer on even the most dedicated souls, but for two to three weeks every year, there is a lull that almost everyone has agreed to maintain. It is a safe place where people can exhale and stretch and return calls to the family that they have been putting off since before the leaves began to change. That period is the one we are in right now, and it stretches from the days before Christmas until after the start of the new year.

You can work as much as you want during this time, but unless someone is telling you to complete a specific task (or tasks), we encourage you to disconnect. Yes, the company that exists entirely online and relies on clicks to keep the doors open is inviting you to detach from the very thing that keeps its lights on. Some may say such comments are an exercise in self-destruction, but we tend to disagree. We see how much time people put into their work, both on the label side and on that odd the media, which means we also appreciate how much (most) people need a break. They deserve one.

Those who find the most success in life often cite their breaks or vacations as one of the reasons they perform so well. These people subscribe to the law of diminishing returns, which states that there is a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. In simpler terms, just because you work nonstop does not mean your success is also everlasting. You may succeed for a while, but at some point, you will no longer be able to do whatever it is you do as well as you did when you first started. The reason for this is relatively simple: You are a not a machine. You are not programmed to do one task over and over until you break down and/or are replaced by a superior device. You are a human in need of food, exercise, and – above all else – rest.

So as you stare at this post and continue clicking over to the tabs containing your various social media feeds we encourage you to consider taking a step back, even if just for one day. Turn off your notifications, leave your inbox unread, and instead spend time doing something solely because it sounds good to you. It can be anything, from time with family and friends, to reading a book, binging a new series on Netflix, or finally learning how to make that upside-down pineapple cake you’ve been talking about for months. Choose anything that interests you, just as long as you cannot turn it into work. You want to get the music business as far from your mind as possible. Not music, mind you, but the music business. Don’t write content. Don’t draft content. Don’t even think of things as potentially becoming content. Just focus on being present in your individual life and reconnect with the person you are away from the internet. After all, that person – the one you are when existing outside the grind of the industry – is the one who started you on this journey in this business. If you lose that part of you, there is no getting it back. As Against Me once sang, “Don’t lose touch.”

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The simple, yet effective magic of making lists

What are you doing today? How about this week? Do you have a set of goals for the days ahead, or are you simply wading through the waters of life while checking things off a non-existent list of tasks you claim to maintain in your head? Are you sure of where you’re going? Do you know what needs to be done?

For the vast majority of my adult life I was lost in nearly every sense of the word. I did not know where I wanted to be professionally, and my aimless pursuit of recognition from the industry lead me to strain relationships with those who cared about me most. If I tried to make up for it I inevitably let things slip on the professional side, which in turn caused the whole cycle to repeat. “There’s never enough time,” I would proclaim. “I’m too busy for _______.”

But that wasn’t the truth, or at least not the entirety of it. The reality of the situation was that I had poor time management skills, aided in part by a complete lack of planning, and as a result I was placing time and energy in places other than where it was needed most. In terms of growth and progress I was essentially walking through life blindfolded with little more than the hope of doing well to keep me afloat. I never knew for sure where I was or wasn’t going because I didn’t have a plan. I simply did, and when I finished one thing I moved to another and another until I fell asleep. When I awoke the next day the cycle would continue as it had every day prior for as long as I could remember.

The funny thing about trying to make your way in this world is that we as humans often ignore obvious tips and tricks because we desire to blaze our own path. This is a mistake as old as time itself, since the first young people tried to escape the shadow of their ancestors. The thing most up and comers fail to realize is that those who succeeded before did so for good reason. Their success was no more a fluke than your own, and there is always something to learn from the paths they traveled. You don’t have to duplicate someone’s behavior in order to learn from their experiences, but you do need to recognize how developing certain skill sets will help you get ahead.

This brings us to lists. Say what you will about Buzzfeed and their overuse of list-driven articles to bring traffic, but you know what? It works. People like lists, and not just for entertainment purposes. Lists make life manageable in a very literal sense. Lists make it easy to organize daily, weekly, monthly, and lifelong goals. Lists also make it possible to plan a day, or two better understand where there are needs going unmet. Lists can help you do just about anything as long as they’re specific, but for some reason many — including myself — feel that are not needed. I don’t know why, even though I subscribed to this way of thinking myself, but I can tell you I have changed my stance.

Every week I make at least 8 lists. The first is week-long overview of goals and projects. These are big idea items, like finishing a new tutorial for Haulix or writing another thousand words for that novel I hope to one day finish. The next seven are lists created before each work day begins. Somewhere between seven and nine every morning I outline my goals for the day. In these lists I am as specific as possible, setting detailed goals and ranking them based on urgency. Under these items I add 2-3 more ambitious goals, just in case time allows for it.

You can do the same, and I guarantee if you stick to the goals you set each day and week you will see results. Any time you find yourself drifting into that lazy river of relaxation you can turn to your list and recognize whether or not that time off has been earned. Furthermore, you will find in time that you are able to accomplish more and more. As you become accustomed to working with lists you will learn to better manage your time, and with that understanding you can better plot each day. Better days lead to better weeks, and before you know it you’ll be making a list of new goals because the ones you set originally were already met.

One last thing: Be patient with yourself. Establishing new behaviors/routines is no easy feat. You have been living life without list making for as long as you’ve been on this planet, so don’t be surprised if you struggle with making lists daily when first starting out. Take things one day at a time and don’t be upset if you fall short from time to time. What matters most is that you continue trying each and every day.

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Job Board News

It’s all about how you react

Few things are harder on young music professionals than the first problem to their progress without being directly a result of their action. Until that time, every mistake or setback was their own fault, which created a learning experience that ultimately benefitted their development. The same cannot be said in situations where a third party is the cause of the problem. Here are some examples:

  • The indie label you put your faith into folds
  • The band your indie label invested thousands into breaks up before the album they recorded is released
  • The tour announcement gets delayed because a agents are slow to respond
  • The startup that was going to revolutionize the industry suddenly loses all funding
  • The site you contribute to as a budding writing goes offline due to an error that goes beyond the staff’s understanding of how websites work, thus leaving your unpublished content stranded in purgatory while you await a resolution
  • The vinyl you paid to have press six months ago is delayed an extra two months
  • The PR person who guaranteed to secure your exclusive premiere needs another week

When these things happen it is very easy (and extremely common) for young professionals to get upset. After all, they have done nothing, yet their work has been stifled. They are unable to chase their passion because of something out of their control. for the first time in their careers – maybe their lives – they can do nothing about it except wait and nobody likes to wait.

These moments can be so infuriating for some young professionals that they choose to make rash decisions in hopes of more or less getting things back to normal. The desire to at the very least send a snarky email or tweet is too much for many to resist, and it’s hard to blame them. Setbacks of any kind are infuriating no matter where you are in your career. This is true for all work anyone is doing on Earth right now. What separates people is how they respond in these moments and what they do with the extra time it creates.

Here’s an example:

A writer contributing features to a publication on a regular basis wakes one morning to find their latest article has not been published because the site is offline. It’s early in the day, but the writer is upset, and the site own claims it may be hours or even a couple days before the site is fully functional once more.

In this moment, the writer has a choice: They can either complain or get back to work. Complaining will get them nowhere, and if they sound off to the wrong person or in the wrong place they may even lose their job. Worse yet. if other editors and site owners see the writer speaking poorly of a publication that may make them think twice before hiring that person themselves. Working, on the other hand, provides the writer with a chance to stockpile content and get ahead of their ever-increasing workload. When the site returns they will have content ready to go, and if for some reason the site goes down for good they will have content they can pitch to other publications.

There is no way to avoid having your professional plans go awry because of things out of your control. It happens to everyone on a fairly regular basis, and most people know this to be true. Those who wish to get ahead should see these moments as opportunities rather than hurdles and make the most of the time provided. Their peers will take notice and their professionalism will be rewarded.

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News

Don’t quit your day job (yet)

This morning I came across post from a young industry professional hoping to offer guidance to those aspiring to follow their path into the music business. The article outlined four things everyone should do in order to pursue a career on the business side of entertainment with the highest likelihood of success. The first two were fairly obvious, referring to networking and settling on a specific goal, but the third tip made me do a double take. I’m not going to link the post in question, but here is a screenshot:

Whether your goal in music is to be on stage or work with the people on stage, here is something anyone who has found lasting success in the industry will tell you:

Don’t quit your day job unless it is an absolute must.

While it is true that the industry is a demanding place where professionals often spend extended hours at the office, newcomers to the field should not feel pressured to dive that deep from the jump. Furthermore, most cannot afford to abandon their current life in hopes of creating a new one, especially in a field where the vast majority who attempt careers never make it.

There is simply too much risk involved with music to be ignorant about the reality of the situation, and any good professional can recognize that. You can fully commit yourself to making connections and developing an identity in the world of music while at your current job. Maybe you cannot do it as much as you would like, or as much as some of your peers, but you will be able to do it while also keeping a roof over your head and that is a big deal. Bigger than most realize, in fact.

The music business thrives on creativity, both from artists and the professionals who work with them. You need to be able to think on your feet, spot developing talent, recognize emerging cultural trends, and always be looking toward the future. In order to the do that to the best of your ability you first need to cover the more necessary part of life, such as housing, food, clothing, etc.

Some will say that comfort is the cousin to laziness, and that those who are the most successful in music get that way by constantly forcing themselves out of their comfort zone. While there is some truth in this, those driven to succeed in music always find a way to make it, and that drive is an essential part of what makes any music professional great. That drive exists in all of us, regardless of what we do in music, and it pushes us to work hard each and every day.

Still, that drive will only get you so far if you are constantly worried about bills, and until music is bringing in enough money to cover your expenses your drive will be (rightfully) stifled by concerns over your quality of life. If you can work and work on your journey into music, do so until you can no longer maintain a healthy work-life balance. Before you jump altogether, consider asking for less hours. At least in that scenario you still have some money coming in, which is always better than nothing.

Having a career in music is a dream for many. It can be your reality with hard work, good networking, and smart planning. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, as they say, and in time you will find a place to call home in this wild, wild industry.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also the host of the Inside Music Podcast and a ten-year music industry veteran. You should follow him on Twitter.

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