Community Archives - Haulix Daily

The only thing more annoying than bandwagon fans may be bandwagon haters. People who feel it is their duty as fans of a particular sound or genre to tear down whoever is currently dominating the charts because they believe it makes them unique or edgy in some way. We who embrace the hitmakers know better, as we understand there is a reason certain artists see their star shoot into the stratosphere while others must work incredibly hard for every tiny bit of success they achieve. The reasons for this are as numerous as grains of sand on the beach, but one thing that is almost always true about real music stars, and by that I mean those who are able to hold the public’s attention across multiple albums, is that they always find a way to connect with people in a way that feels personal.

To be clear, what I just said is far easier to grasp than it is to recreate. We all follow our own paths in this life, experiencing practically every aspect of existence in a way that is wholly unique to ourselves, yet for some reason there are certain songs and/or artists who have the power to make us feel as though we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Call it a community, or a culture, or a way of life, but there is something to the biggest material in history that connects with people in a deeply personal way. You may have never experienced the situation being described in the song, and you may never know the story that inspired the lyrics, but something about the way emotion is being expressed cuts through the noise and strikes you right in your soul. It moves you, as it does others, and as soon as it’s over we long to feel that connection again. That is the sign you’ve found something truly great in music, and it’s something that is completely achievable by pretty much every artist working today. That is, if they work hard enough.

The big star of the moment is Adele, and by now you’ve no doubt heard her single “Hello” between one and one-hundred times in your daily life. Her music is everywhere right now, and her new single “When We Were Young” seems poised to push her exposure even further. The production on these tracks is undeniably gorgeous, and Adele’s powerful voice is something that will be praised for decades to come, but what makes these songs work at Top 40 radio and beyond has little do with those factors and far more to do with the feeling you get when the music plays. Adele, like Drake on tracks like “Hotline Bling” or “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” has the power to make you miss people and situations you have never actually known. Something in the way the music compliments the lyrics, which are typically pulled from a deeply personal place, creates an atmosphere of turmoil and heartache that listeners take upon themselves to connect with events in their own lives. It doesn’t matter whether or not the events that inspired the song are the same as the events the lyrics are being applied to by the listeners, and it never will. All that matters is that the performer is able to capture a feeling, or perhaps a better description would be a sense of being, that translates on a massive scale.

What I’m trying to say is that the reason these artists skyrocket into the music stratosphere while others fight over lower chart positions is because people feel like the know them. When you hear the music of Adele and Drake, or even smaller acts like The Hotelier or Modern Baseball, you feel as if you are hearing an update from a close friend about what has been going on in their life since you last spoke. It’s entertaining, yes, but it’s so much more than that as well. You long for those updates, and when they arrive you click play with all the hope in the world that you and this person or group, whom you’ve never met, have been experiencing similar situations in life. You hope there is something in there story that relates to your own, and that kind of connection is incredibly hard to break. Even if the quality of the music begins to suffer, and the radio songs can’t crack the top 10, people who have connected to an artist on an emotional level will continue to follow them for as long as they are able.

I cannot tell you how to create songs that connect with people the way the latest singles from Drake and Adele do, but that is okay because writing material like that should not be your goal after reading this post. Writing music that would work for Drake or Adele is not guaranteed to work for you, at all. Your goal, or better yet your mission, should be to find a way to create the music you want to make in such a way that it connects with people like the material released by your musical peers. It’s not about copying someone else’s formula, but rather finding a way to tap into the same set of relatable emotions that has established countless artists as household names over the last hundred or so years of pop music. Even if you’re writing metal, the goal remains the same. You want to create something that is both personal and universal, which shares a part of you in a meaningful way while still allowing others to add their own meaning to the material. There is no recipe for that kind of creation, nor are the any guides I would suggest you spend time reading. The best way to make material like this is too simply keep creating, and in time you will learn to refine your skills. As your songwriting improves, so will the reach of your music, but you cannot allow yourself to get lost in thoughts of what a song could potentially be or do for you. As soon as you take your focus away from creating great songs that actually mean something to you, the artist, your chances of connecting with listeners begins to drop. Stay true to yourself and people will notice. It might take time, but that’s perfectly okay.

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.

Growing up the only child of two parents who moved from Ohio to Michigan out of necessity rather than choice when I was just making the transition from elementary to middle school, making friends was not something that came easy for me. I was kind, sure, and I had no problem interacting with other kids at school. For one reason or another however, when the final bell rang I almost always went home alone and spent the evening entertaining myself and/or hanging out with my parents. This is not a complaint or another tale of teenage ‘woe,’ just a statement of fact so you know where my story begins.

When I was a teenager my parents urged me to get more involved in church, and I did. I participated in youth group, which met every Wednesday, and through doing so I met other lonely kids who never felt like they fit in anywhere else. Understanding how it feels to be on the outside looking in, even when you’re just a tween, was something that bonded us and helped forge a friendship of sorts that unfortunately does not exist today. We each grew up and grew apart. Some people stayed in that town, but most moved away. I think I distanced myself the most.

Around the same time I got involved in the church I also began growing more interested in music as a business, though I’m not sure I framed it that way at the time. There were venues in our area, though most required a ride from my parents to access, and whenever I could I would beg the people who brought me into this world to accompany me to a rock show. They would oblige because they’re seriously some of the greatest parents in the world, and together we would take in live music from artists at every level of success. Most groups had their roots in religious music, but that mattered little to me at the time. It was music all the same, and it fascinated me. Not just the sound coming from the stage, but the way it brought people together while simultaneously lifting their collective spirits. I remember recognizing the fact there was something special to that from a young age, and in a way I’ve spent my entire life trying to share it with others, as well as better understand it.

What I have learned, and what I was fortunate enough to discover at a young age, is that music cultivates community in a way that few other art mediums are able to accomplish in this day and age. Most think of a community as a physical place, but that is only one definition of the term. A community is also defined as being a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. When you’re in a venue watching a band you love surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of people who feel the same way you are a part of a community. You can feel the energy of the room, both in the roar of the crowd and the indescribable way the sound pouring through the speakers inexplicably improves your mood. You don’t even have to be sad to feel the change. Good days are made better by music, and great days are made unforgettable. Not just because of what is happening on stage, but because of what is around you. There is something beautiful and incredibly powerful about that, and it may surprise you to know that same overwhelming sense of power and happiness can be found on the business side of music as well.

Last weekend, as those of you who read this blog on a regular basis no doubt recall, I traveled to Pennsylvania to represent Haulix at Launch Music Conference. It’s a three-day event intended to inform and inspire those who dream of making music their career, with panels filling each day and unforgettable performances capping off each night. This was my first year in attendance and I admittedly had no idea what to expect. I had been to other conferences, including numerous trips to SXSW, but for some reason I knew none of that would prepare me for a trip to rural Pennsylvania. What I found, and what this trip helped me to remember, is that sometimes the greatest communities arise from the least likely places.

Friday morning I was speaking as a panelist on the second of many panels that would be happening that particular day. The topic of my panel was protecting what’s yours in the digital age, which in my case meant talking about Haulix and all we do to combat piracy. It was a great experience, with a surprisingly large crowd in attendance, but when it ended I thought my day was pretty much at an end. It was barely after noon, but for whatever reason I thought I had said my piece and everyone would just want to move on.

I was wrong.

Not long after stepping off stage I was approached by some people who simply wanted to say they had never heard of Haulix, but would definitely be checking it out. That was more than enough for me, as it meant I had (hopefully) done my job well. Then another person came up with a question about watermarking, then another about piracy in general. All good conversations, but nothing I hadn’t heard before.

Then it happened. Out of nowhere a group of five or six young men approached me with hands outstretched for introductions. We exchanged names, which I immediately knew I would struggle to remember, and one of them began to explain how they were all longing to start their own record label. The catch was, they all happened to be part of a music tech program at their college, and they wanted to use their on campus studio as a place to record the talent they would release on said label. This meant any products made, or releases distributed, would also need to go through the school approval process. They couldn’t just ‘start a label,’ but they also knew a traditional label structure would never be approved by school administrators. It was a question unlike any I had heard before, and almost immediately after hearing it I felt a wave of excitement sweep over me. Not because I had the answer, but because I could sense their drive to succeed and have their label become a reality.

In the minutes that followed, the students and I discussed a few ideas on how they could skirt around a typical business model while still running a quote/unquote ‘real’ label that administrators could get behind. I don’t know that we found an actual solution, but we probably spent upwards of fifteen minutes discussing various possibilities and what might happen if they were further explored. I even met a professor from their program, and he chimed in with some thoughts of his own. After that, I noticed two publicists in the room I knew and asked them to share their thought, and before I knew it our group had almost doubled in size. If everyone at the conference made up a community simply because we all were passionate about music, then this group was a subset of that community who had come together to solve one goal. Most of us had no stake in whether or not these kids could start a label, but we sensed their passion and it made us excited to help them succeed. We wanted it for them as much as they wanted it for themselves, and I don’t think I even put that together until I was alone in my hotel room hours later.

The energy I felt during my time with those students didn’t end when our conversation came to a close. In fact, I walked away feeling as if my mind were racing with fresh ideas for my own projects. Somehow by feeding off the passion and energy of the group I had caused my own thought process to find new paths to creativity, which lead me to solve a number of problems I had been facing in my own professional life. I was so inspired, in fact, that I grabbed my notebook and took it to dinner with me, and spent over an hour in a bar writing page after page of plans for the future of Haulix.

At one point the students who asked for help with their label appeared at the restaurant. We exchanges pleasantries, but no further discussion was had. I think we could each sense the other was using our mental notes from the prior conversation to plan for the future, and we respected one another’s need to get those ideas out of our minds and onto paper before they became impossible to retrieve memories.

I don’t know if it was the fact those students chose me to ask about their label, or if it was being at the conference in general, but something about being surrounded by like-minded people who shared a similar passion for music inspired me to work harder at accomplishing my own goals. Like the scene you find at a great concert, there was an energy to Launch that was palpable, and if you focused hard enough I swear you could feel it propelling you forward, urging you to push harder and fight for what you know you can achieve. I think we all need that kind of energy in our lives, and the only way to find it is by getting out of our comfort zones and interacting with the global music business community whenever possible. This may be possible through computers to an extent, but nothing holds a candle to the awesome power that can arise from working alongside other individuals passionate about music in a shared space. That is where community thrives, and it is where you too will thrive if you give it a chance.