I’ve read a lot of people feeling pretty down about their prospects as either career musicians or at least as producers who command a following and fan base of their own.
People’s main frustrations are to do with how much music and the industry has changed since the advent of computer music. It was an incredibly niche world to begin with, and was initially scoffed at by the non-computer music industry, but it ended up ballooning into an epic community of digital creatives playing at festivals and events popping up all over the world. There were times when it could almost be a bit of a gold rush, with the key players getting in at just the right time cashing in on a buzz almost like a crypto investor might do today.
There is an incredibly appealing allure about it, because if you can make a splash it will afford you some of the coolest experiences you could ask to have. You’ll see the world, showcasing the music that represents your worldview along the way. You’ll go on adventures to places you never would have had the guts or even the idea to go to of your own volition, connect with the locals and discover yourself. You’ll escape the rat race and feel more like you’re on an episode of The Amazing Race, despite having to leave some creature comforts behind and spend a lot of time on the road and in the air.
People come into this world of music from various other careers and walks of life. Some are born into it, and came out of the womb able to keep time and a tune. Others don’t start with initial talent but work fastidiously to learn the disciplines involved. Once we start walking the path, we have to know more. We discover that, despite there being more resources and amazing tools out there than ever to get started making this music, there’s something immaterial about it that eludes us, and we have to find out why.
When we see people who have broken through and established a legacy and maybe even a musical empire, we look at what they’re doing and feel humbled and dwarfed by the gravity it has. Why is that artist’s record 10,000 times more successful than mine is? How on earth did they get it to sound like that? If I could have a song do that well, what would that feel like for me?
I started chasing my star when I was almost 15 years old - around 23 years ago - and have never stopped. Sometimes, I’m amazed I stuck with it, as there were times when the challenge felt far too great to take on, like it was me versus an entire planet of other artists. It was a bit like a roller coaster in terms of highs and lows, and for a five year period my roller coaster kind of ground to a halt on the tracks.
I was stuck, because I had believed in myself all my career and was seeing results up to a certain point, but then my magic powers seemed to stop working for me like they did before. I held on and stayed in the room, but my releases and output were stymied. I couldn’t get my mixes to sound right, and I had no idea what the market wanted from me. I had to know.
What the market wants from you is to witness you, in all your imperfection, on a journey to get closer to yourself. You are the destination, but nobody ever really tells us that and we hesitate to put ourselves in the spotlight as a result of it.
When you sit in front of your DAW and make music, you’re staring into yourself. You’re asking it what your story is, and waiting for it to show up and tell you. You need to learn to listen to what it has to say, but if your project is a mirror and you don’t like what you see, you’ll wrestle against it. You’ll see a mediocre story without the perspective to know that it’s still unfolding and there’s more to come.
Once you’ve learned the tools and they become muscle memory, it’s when you start to forget whatever it is you were supposed to be doing with them that they start to just magically work themselves, as if they were a conduit from your mind directly into the minds of other people who will resonate with you.
And that is the pinnacle - far and away the most valuable experience I’ve had from this whole journey. And the best thing is, you don’t need anyone’s permission to have that. You don’t need to convince the Council of Electronic Music Elders to certify your worthiness as a real artist. You can just start being one, and when you do you still keep learning how to actually do it. That never really stops.
If you still have room in your heart to believe that a - not just working, but fruitful and fulfilling - music career can work for you, please consider the following:
1) Nobody gets to decide if you’re an artist of value but you.
There is no good or bad music, simply music that resonates with people and music that doesn’t. If it doesn’t, learn why and course correct. All musicians write plenty of music that doesn’t end up working like they thought it would. Much great music is cast aside due to lack of recognition of its beauty. That’s okay, and part of everyone’s process.
2) The scarcity mindset and the abundance mindset are both true, but you do have a little bit of control over which one is more true for you.
Scarcity is saying there’s no room at the inn for me. I would love to send my music to the big labels but I heard they don’t even look at the emails unless they recognize the name. You can’t make enough money out of music streaming to even pay your bills. You can’t get playlisted well unless you know someone. Our systems for choosing our scene’s leaders are often less-than-democratic.
Abundance is saying it’s never been easier to get your music to market than it is today. There have never been so many fans plugged into this music and its goings on. Our consumers have never had such a smorgasbord of amazing music at their fingertips that we can help provide. Our production community has never been so knowledgeable, our choice of software for creation so diverse and fine-tuned that it’s almost impossible to pick one.
Both of the above mindsets are full of truths, but it’s pretty obvious which set of guiding beliefs is more like to lead you to positive outcomes. If you struggle with the idea of scarcity in the industry, think of breaking into the market not as a high cliff which must be scaled but rather a beehive-like structure with many entry points. You might find a promising opening which feels like it’ll lead to the honey inside, but it might also lead to a dead end. It’s discouraging, but if you can be grateful for the experience and learn why it didn’t work, you know you’re ready to search for the next way in. This is also how I get to the “center” of my projects and finish records.
3) The market and the industry are not human
Nobody can perceive the market and the industry in its entirety because it’s a global network whose every node is a human being, and the connections between them create the cohesive unit we call the industry. Nobody can predict the market because nobody has total control over it. It makes itself. To lament its shortcomings is like yelling at a cloud in the sky for raining on you. It can also help to think of the market less in terms of flow of money (although money is in important part of its circulatory system) and more about that interconnected network of people. If a fan buys your merch, that is a show of support and connection delivered in a vessel of the energy of money.
4) Again, the destination is you.
You can be easily blown off course if your compass/direction in the industry is influenced too much by what you’re seeing happen to another artist and, more specifically, what they’re getting out of it. We might try and analyze the source of their magic power and see if we can somehow absorb it by going through similar (yet creatively tweaked) motions to them, only to feel like we’re coming up a little short. If it’s an artist who’s done well and legitimately deserves the recognition, it’s usually because they sound supremely like themselves.
All in all, it took me about ten years longer to get where I wanted to be than I was expecting it to, and along the way so many of the good times were peppered with really stressful experiences and absurd amounts of undue pressure I was placing on myself. Maybe instead of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I instead found myself, and also discovered along the way that I really like rainbows.
“Work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the Yoga of wisdom. Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for the reward; but never cease to do thy work.” — The Bhagavad Gita
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