Everyone who finds even a tiny bit of success in any field has no doubt worked their butt off to reach that point. Music is no different, and some might say it’s harder than most fields in terms of finding success, but just because you quote/unquote ‘make it’ in some way does not mean your life will get any easier. As people, change is part of our DNA. The same inexplicable power that caused one cell to become two, then three, and so on until people were formed lies in you now, and it thrives on change. We must change in order to grow, and we must grow in order to truly live. This post, written by our good friend Ian Baldwin, discusses the point in life where one must realize change is necessary.
This past week I made the decision to sell my drum kit. In the past year I have made playing drums less of a priority. I’ve been focusing on buildingmy business, learning photography, and spending time with my wife as well as friends and family.
We only have the capacity to do so much; make what is important to you a priority and don’t spread yourself too thin.
I decided to cut out drums to focus what matters to me most; connecting people and communities through design. Drumming was a huge part of my life up until about a year ago so I felt like I had to write something to close this chapter of my life.
A Brief History of My Fairly Local Music Career
Half way through high school I decided I wanted to grow up to be a full-time musician and travel the world. The idea of getting played to play music and travel was exciting to me and became my dream job. A dream job for many that only the most persistent and patient musicians get to live out.
Believe me I was willing to put in the work. I have been drumming for a little over a decade, played in almost a dozen bands and also did some touring as a merch guy and photographer to see if that was a lifestyle that I would even enjoy. Right out of high school I put off going to college to move 3 ½ hours away to Canton, Ohio to join a band. Looking back I loved every minute of it and wouldn’t change a thing. I learned a lot about myself and who I wanted to become.
If I wasn’t playing drums in a band it was fun to just support hard working artists and help them stayed connected with their fans. I had my fun and fair share of gigs that I will never forget. Some of my favorite bands to be apart were Hemisphere and States Away. We played shows with bands that went on to do great things like twenty one pilots, Wolves at the Gate, the Orphan the Poet, Come Wind and many more.
It was great to become friends with the people I did while being in bands and going to shows. Many of those friends don’t live as close as they used to or we have just grown apart because life gets busy. I do know that we will always be friends and can normally pick up right where we left off.
So What’s Next?
I started a business at the beginning of the year called Hear&See. The focus of Hear&See is to provide design services and marketing materials for bands and brands that are within the music industry.
I won’t truly ever quit music. I promised myself that I would work in the music industry full-time one day and this is me deciding to work towards that. I may not be in a band but I can support my friends who do play as well as other musicians by designing graphic for them to connect on a deeper level with their fans and grow their audience.
I am currently overlapping my day job at ACCO Brands as I am building my business the rest of this year so I can create a solid foundation before making the jump as a full-time entrepreneur. I am building up my clientele and refining my process the remainder of the year.
Maybe someday I’ll buy another drum kit but for now I am content with having my sticks and practice pad to play on at home and air drumming in the car to my favorite songs.
If you enjoyed reading this and want to talk about music, building a business from the ground up or want to hire me to work on a project you can email, reach out to me on Twitter or Snapchat.
The following opinion piece was written by Haulix Digital Marketing Coordinator James Shotwell. We’d love to hear your opinion on this piece, so once you finish reading head over to Twitter and tell us what you think.
Before I dive too deep into this piece I want to stress that I am a huge supporter of streaming services in general. The age of streaming has made it possible for artists at every level to continue making money on older releases long after consumer interest in purchasing those titles has been depleted. We can argue all day about whether or not the royalty rate is acceptable (it’s not), but that is another conversation for another. Streaming provides a steady stream of income for artists even when they have nothing new to promote, which in turn makes it possible for more artists to continue creating even when their latest release is less than well received by the general public.
Okay? Okay.
The more I think about the digital age and how it has impacted the entertainment industry as a whole the more I realize that the film industry may have handled the war against piracy far better than those working in music. Unless a film is being released on VOD (video on demand), those interested in seeing a new title still have to buy a ticket and visit a theater in order to experience the film immediately following its release. Those who are not willing to do that must wait for the film to hit VOD (usually three months after a theatrical debut) or wait for the title to be made available on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime (which typically happens six-nine months after the theatrical debut). Some may choose to pirate the film before that happens, but if they do their only viewing option is a significantly lower quality product, often captured by handycam or similar home video recording device.
This is not the case with music. Aside from a very select number of releases, every new album is made available on streaming services and in stores at the exact same time. More often than not, full streams of new releases hit the internet days before an album goes on sale, so even if you bought a copy through pre-order you are able to access the music as the same time as everyone who didn’t bother to support the artist in question. As long as you have access to YouTube you can more than likely hear a new release in full 2-3 days before it’s available for sale, and if you have an account through Spotify, Tidal, or AppleMusic you can hear the vast majority of all music ever made available in the digital format for less than the cost of one album in stores.
This is a long way of saying new release streaming on release day is a bad recipe for financial success. The ease of access does not raise the value of a product in the streaming age, it diminishes it. Why should consumers even consider paying $10 for an album they can essentially access for free? If I pay $10 a month for a streaming service and stream at least 1000 songs each month that means each song stream cost me one cent. As we already know, artists do not receive even a penny per stream, so the actual value of each song played is less than a cent. Add offline streaming to the mix, which is the equivalent to downloading an mp3 onto your computer or mobile device, and you’ve basically got an endless supply of digital albums at your disposal whenever you need them.
One could argue that cost to produce a movie is far greater than the cost of producing an album, which justifies the need to push direct sales and rentals longer than music, but cost of production matters very little in this situation. No artist or record label releases music hoping to make just enough money to cover the cost of production. Artists and their labels want to make as much money as possible, and I believe they may be selling themselves short by rushing to streaming services on release day.
If you think about it, the promotional efforts for new movies and new albums are basically the same across the board. A trailer for a film is like a music video or single for an album. Filmmakers and actors do interviews to build awareness for their upcoming release just like musicians. Stills from the movie are like promo photos for an artist or group. Posters are album covers. The difference is, when release day comes you still have to go to a theater to see the film. It’s not available on your phone as soon as you wake up unless it’s purchased in advance on a VOD platform. Your excitement for a new film may been building for weeks or months, just like it would for new music music, but on release day there is still a barrier to entry because studios understand those who really want the product are still willing pay for it. Those who are not as excited will wait for the cost to decrease or for the title to hit streaming platforms. Some will pirate the material, sure, but those people were never likely to buy a ticket or purchase the film in the first place.
If I had to pinpoint where music went wrong I would wager it happened somewhere around the dawn of the new millennium. Napster targeted music long before film piracy was a hot topic, and no one really knew how to respond. The music industry panicked, and soon the powers that be decided that the best way to fight piracy was to give everything away themselves in hopes of controlling the conversation. Their reasoning in this action was sound at the time: If labels and artists control how people access free content they can directly interact with and market to fans that are eager to hear the material.
As time carried on however, the ability to control the conversation by granting immediate/advance access began to shrink. Streams went from being hosted on an artist’s website to being available through third party platforms like Soundcloud and YouTube, which in turn made the material embeddable for anyone with a website. As you can guess, and as we now know thanks to numerous studies, this approach didn’t really solve anything except how easy it was for people to access music. According to a 2015 report from Cisco, music piracy is currently 48% worse than it was in 2008, and it’s expected to double by 2020.
A great example of immediate streaming hindering the sales potential of a record can be found by examining the rollout of Kanye West’s latest release, The Life Of Pablo. The album, which allegedly received 250 million streams during in its first week of availability in February 2016, was released exclusively through Tidal without an option for fans to buy the record. This lead to a surge in Tidal signups, which in turn garnered a good deal of press for the platform, but it also lead to a surge in music piracy. According to a report from TorrentFreak, a rip of the The Life Of Pablo was pirated through torrent sites more than half a million times in that same first week. This does not take into account direct downloads of the pirated album – AKA downloads from services like ZippyShare or MediaFire – which would likely place the number of stolen copies closer to, if not above, one million in a single week.
The Life Of Pablo was eventually made available for download on April 1 for $20. The album moved the equivalent to 90,000 units and hit number one on Billboard with more than half of its ‘sales’ being generated by streaming equivalent albums. That means Kanye actually sold, at most, around 40,000 downloads. Compared to the 327,000 first week album sales (pure album sales, no streaming) of his previous release, Yeezus, this is a dramatic 87% slide in first week sales. Furthermore, The Life Of Pablo has not sold more than 1000 downloads in a single week since its second week of availability, which puts Kanye’s total pure sales for this release to date (May 31, 2016) around 55,000 or less.
Kanye is not the only one covering low actual sales with big streaming numbers. The rate of streams is impressive, but the payout most likely is far lower than the total that could have been made from actual album sales. With this in mind, I posit that streaming’s impact on overall sales would be much lower if new releases didn’t hit streaming platform for a month(+) after their initial release. We cannot undo the last decade of content being made available instantaneously, largely for free, overnight, but we can adjust our release efforts moving forward in hopes of creating greater demand for downloads and physical product.
Some believe people are not willing to buy albums anymore because they do not want to risk purchasing something they might not like, but again that is exactly what happens in the world of film. Trailers for new movies can be very misleading, and we’ve all been fooled by a good trailer for a bad movie. Still, consumers spend billions of dollars every year to see new titles of all sizes in theaters or on demand. One could also argue the risk is even greater with film, as most ticket prices – especially for 3D films – are far higher than the cost of a record and they only allow for a single viewing/entertainment experience. Downloads and physical sales allow consumers to spend time with material, and more often than not repeated plays of a record have a tendency to change people’s views of the material.
Fans who are unwilling or unable to purchase an album outright can and will wait for the record to be available on a subscription platform. What artists and labels alike need to do is create demand up front, push sales hard for a short period, then – only after the core buying market has been depleted – make the content available everywhere. Once your product is a click away, especially at little to no cost to the consumer, you’re forever fighting an uphill battle for sales where consumers win far more often than content creators.
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.
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.
I woke up at 5 AM on a summer morning to the sound of rain pounding on my windowsill, building in intensity by the second. Two hours later, I arrived at Manhattan’s Webster Hall, armed with ponchos, umbrellas, and enough food to survive an apocalypse. Despite the torrential downpour, I took a rush hour train, navigated the subway system by myself for the first time, and walked in circles in NYC’s East Village just to sit outside of the venue for 12 hours.
Nobody seemed to understand. Passerby’s stared at me as I sat alone on a city sidewalk with the bitter wind chill and rain drops soaking through my clothes and into my skin. My mother called me every 20 minutes with a sense of worry and confusion in her voice, wondering why her child would do something so crazy. My friends rolled their eyes when I told them where I was…and they all asked, “Why?”
Why did I want to wait half a day to see the band PVRIS? It is because concerts give me the self-confidence that I have been unable to find in any other section of my life. Being in that crowded venue allots me a few hours to be myself, but the waiting in line and finding new friends can be just as exciting.
As the line wraps around the block, I share my ponchos with a few fans who soon become friends. The small talk slowly turns into conversations usually shared with best friends after months (maybe even years) as trust is built up. Before I know it, we are exchanging stories of middle school bullies who left us crying on the bathroom floor and how it fueled our internal fire to become better than those broken fragments.
Suddenly, all the weight on my shoulders is lifted. How is it that these people who were just strangers a little while ago are the reason I feel less alone? I can’t even begin to tell you about the relief that comes from knowing that someone else has fought off the same demons as yourself. The concert community taught me not to be ashamed of the nights I spent questioning who I was or the petty mistakes that I kept hidden in the depths of my chest. And to think, all this empowerment before I even step inside the venue!
Once the wave of darkness overtakes the sweaty room, the real magic happens. For me, this isn’t the music. It’s those brief moments in between where the drummer and guitarists are tuning their instruments and the vocalist has to entertain the rambunctious crowd. While I’ve had a plethora of amazing encounters during these fillers, a few have sent chills through my bones despite the blazing heat created by being in close contact with sweaty kids.
Since this all started with PVRIS, it only makes sense that I talk about Lynn Gunn. In a music scene lacking in female representation, Gunn is the much needed bright light–even though she wears only black–that will inspire a younger generation of girls to pick up a guitar. Watching her on stage, I am mesmerized. Not only by her impeccable vocals, but by the confidence she has in herself that somehow makes me feel just as secure in myself. As someone who has struggled with identity for way too many years, there’s some comfort in seeing an openly gay female musician proudly sing a song she wrote for her girlfriend (Love, Robot vocalist and fellow role model Alexa San Román.) People say it gets better, but I only actually felt the potential for things to improve after seeing someone who has probably gone through similar tribulations and emerged on the other side.
Speaking of “the other side,” I must also bring up Tonight Alive vocalist Jenna McDougall. Like Gunn, McDougall transforms a concert from a night filled with music into one of hope and fading feelings of self-doubt. She doesn’t use the lulls in a set to just interact with the crowd, but to inspire them. On the Future Hearts Tour this past spring, McDougall adopted a mantra: “From this day, I refuse to live in fear of someone else’s judgement.” I may have been to a few shows on that tour, but the words hit just as hard each time. When she repeats this phrase with passion and asks the audience to recite it back, I scream it while tuning out the world around me. It’s one thing to hear someone else say it, but hearing the sentence roll off my tongue actually makes me feel and believe every single word.
Before discovering concerts, I was always a quiet, soft-spoken kid who hated seeing that reflection in the mirror. Then music came crashing in and welcomed me into a new world where I was encouraged to wear those pizza converse my friends made fun of me for and where nobody cared who slept on the left side of my bed. From the petty to major things, concerts gave me the confidence take the person I was inside the venue and bring her into the light of day.
I will forever be grateful for the songs, band members, and music-obsessed friends who broke through my thick skin and pulled out a person I never knew existed. Because of these events, I can look at myself and smile, because I love me just the way I am and I no longer live in fear of anyone’s judgement.
Emma stumbled into the music journalism field when she saw an ad for a blog in need of writers. Since that day in January 2015, she has been a founding member of the team over at ShuffleBeatMusic, a blog that interviews musicians and reviews shows. While cataloguing the success of performers helps her to stay engaged in the scene, Emma’s dream is to some day be on the other side of the industry. A self-taught musician who plays drums, guitar, bass, and keys, she has just recently formed the band Heartless Bones and hopes to grace the stages of Warped Tour someday. Of course, there must always be a backup plan. Emma is currently studying Public Relations and music business at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Wherever life leads her, it will always circle back to music.
In recent weeks it has dawned on us that even though we preach the importance of creating exciting original content built on unique ideas that both entertain and challenge the reader, we rarely take the time to highlight the best new content being developed around the web. We knew a change needed to be made, and today we’re taking steps to correct our lack of promotional efforts by highlighting the latest op-ed from Alternative Press writer Cassie Whitt.
The term ‘fan girl’ has been associated with everything from ruining music or flat-out ruining music for as long as the internet has been offered hubs for anonymous (and not so anonymous, thanks to companies like Disqus) assholes. Today, Cassie Whitt asked the world to question why this has always been the case:
“What is so wrong with being a 15-year-old girl?” has been my mental response to such venom even since I was, well, a 15-year-old girl. Now I say it with sass, narrowed eyes and a few swear words thrown in and can write off those comments for what they are: blatantly ignorant.
It’s a great read. Check it out in full over on AP.
