morning advice for music-y people

So, if you are my facebook friend, you've probably seen a flurry of activity on my part. Some of you (like sometimes Chad) think, do you have to post every minute? Your posts are too long, too political, too this or that. To that I say AMEN.

However, every step you watch me take on this road of artistic tech discovery means that you, as a performer or artist who needs to capture your personality and lifestyle in a bottle, will also be that much closer along.

Art as Life

You see, artists choose to make their life their profession. The career artist must make their way through the world socially, making an impact in the world they inhabit....otherwise their art does not sell. They also need to do business with their life, selling bits of soul here, innermost thoughts and brave imaginary fantasies and whatnot.

The price we pay for autonomy and artistic creativity is pretty steep sometimes. The loss of privacy, the rejection, the occasional self loathing, the solitude in which we regularly place ourselves and the way we must interact when not in solitude.

The alternative though is pretty stark as well. Most professional artists (and entrepreneurs) have ascertained they are not good workers, when it comes to having a long term job, cubicle or otherwise. It absolutely is not because they are lazy. I have seen colleagues put in insane hours on a project, finish and start another work, with the same crazy schedule. When people have jobs, many leave their work at work, go home and plan the rest of their lives. Family, hobbies, moonlighting, travel, vacation, you name it, it's there as a fully devotional thing.

In art there is no leaving work at home. The artist is their own work. It's similar with an entrepreneur. My assessment is that I'd rather be making no money (or have the chance of making large amounts of money) on my chosen profession than on something that does not fit my life's passion, or hinders me from pursuing it.

As an artistic director of a fledgling company, I spent those countless hours thinking of ways to make my company successful, to limit cost and make the most impact on the community. I was compelled though to hand my charge off to another however because I could not spend enough time with my art. Even being in a show I produced was disorder and chaos as it takes considerable time to realize a work (learn a part), just as it takes just as much time to budgetize and produce, keeping the knitting straight so to speak.

Try going up on a line in a show you produce, a double tragedy. You messed up your own show.

The business side of things is truly, the easier part. Scheduling, and putting together budgets, even taxes, though I daresay, all an art form, at least have a real and tangible outcome. There's a certain functionality that makes small accomplishments add up to a celebrated whole. Pat yourself on the back and have fun.

But the coming up with the big idea behind the creative grunt-work, much less the other totally mindless stuff, like button pushing and switch flipping, which eighty percent of any project is, once all is said and done, (Just think if there were a TV show called CSI: Paperwork...attributable to someone, can't remember) the every day problem solving to steer that creative idea into the done category It is more than a full time job for an independent artist.

The creative idea.

From square one, inspiration does not come automatically. A problem must be posed, an originating thought...like, It would be neat if Harley-Davidson had a Barbecue joint next to its Sales Floor. That Idea didn't just fly out of nowhere, I actually had to GO to the Harley showroom to come up with that piece of truth, not original of course, but the point is, even the most electric shock , blinding light, eureka moments happen after a situation is posed.

BUT - YET - HOWEVER - Still there is the waiting for the eureka moment to occur.

As in the Harley example, some things are easy to ascertain; other ideas and solutions are hidden deep within many hours of contemplation, observation and examination. One wonders why Nathan looses his keys? A percentage of his brain is working on a solution to a problem, or realizing a part (realization meaning the step further than memorization, the step when you can juggle and do anything and have your part ready).

Point is that even some of my closest friends think I'm hyper, out there, eccentric or even, crazy, but the reality is that I am working toward a real, tangible goal. And it took a while to fashion the solution to the problem that forms the genesis of that goal. And...my knowledge I am totally willing to share, as it is truth. Ideas are competitive, but "knolige" is truth.

...so here are my thoughts on the matter of the chaos in which we in the performing arts world live...

How to be a creative artist (the new term *Generative) and make a living.

OPT-IN

We are so very close to having the technology ubiquitously available for consumer and purveyor to co-mingle into becoming a symbiont pair. An amazing technology specialist and futurist , Andy Huckaba put it like this:

"we now have the technology that, if you opt-in, you can actually get the things you want. With mobile phones- when you go to a mall, if you have opted-in, say, to liking deep roasted coffee, you could pass by a coffee shop and you'd get a text for a dollar off coupon, or even a cup of free coffee. Show your phone and the code and you just got something you already wanted."

How cool...wish you could know who likes your proverbial coffee? You can.

Small World, Eh?

So how does this relate to music?

Metadata and keywords. Metadata and keywords are kind of passe vocabulary, but it's about getting to know one another, kind-of.

Social media is fine as it keeps you acquainted with your family, friends and colleagues and and etc and so forth. however, HOWEVER, if you are interested in sales, the suggestion is, don't count on your acquaintances to buy your record. They just want to know that you exist. They have already placed their opinions of you on their plate and there is a snowball's chance in hades that anything you do will change the fact that, they think you are still THAT guy, or THAT gal and not some super-brilliant fantastic artist like other people who don't know you know you to be.

Odd is it not? One can rely on a stranger to give them a dollar, but if they are asking someone they know for a buck...not only is it more difficult to ask, more difficult to give, but it is also more difficult to be given to. All this time you have been spending on facebook trying to gin up your friends for a gig or other such riches has been a big fat waste of time.

Or maybe not.

Music is fantasy. Imagination distilled into waves and when performed live in a suitable venue, lights and colors and scents and on occasion, beer and other refreshments the senses are overwhelmed and reality is superseded by an emotional torrent (we hope). The muse can be a depressive sedative, a go go fun time or a tranquil way to make a moment last forever , any number of things.

You as an artist must be a fantasy too....not just on stage, but in real life, you must have a semblance of that fantastical. There are places to be normal and mundane, and as a human, one needs normalcy and decompression, but as your career is about YOUR person, your physicality doing something quite extraordinary, you have to be able to OWN that power.

For those with the idea of selling stuff to those who know you (with a caveat to be explained in a moment), your profits are not there. All is not lost however as there is the all important pass-along, or going viral. If you have a good product and your work is given to another, with and I stress WITH some context to what the work is about, something to get excited about, your proximity to a fan is close. If you can convert that one step viral from an acquaintance into a fan in your niche, you are halfway there.

The development of your contact list www.reverbnation.com or www.constantcontact.com through the use of your friends and acquaintances is tantamount to your financial success.

One hundred fans, spending 100 a year on your content is a considerable sum, especially when you think about the Internet technology forming to consolidate many of your applications, the opt-in, and how much more inexpensive to produce a CD and the live act that goes around it.

There's merchandise, www.zazzle.com which you may think is dumb, yet your fans want cool things to hold and wear.

There's subscriber content, special broadcasts www.Ustream.com that allow you to stream live shows or taped shows.

Mobile phone applications through www.ilike.com for an inexpensive iPhone app and www.advamobile.com for a good looking web application that offers lots of goodies for your fans and potential fans.

www.artistdata.com pushes out your performance listings and blogs and news to social networks, in other words, it aggregates your info and pushes it out, so you don;t have to write the same info ten or more times.

These few sites I list will, unless they are truly programming for you to totally and utterly manage your career will become obsolete. For instance, stay away from www.sonicbids.com, they are now considered a scam, yet were at one time the site that allowed indie artists an opportunity to have their materials presented to potential presenters like no other. Today, one has to pay for electronic material submission, and though one is promised feedback, it is rarely substantial, and often does not arrive.

Your website is crucial as you know.

www.bandvista.com has a very odd template system and is html based so with a minimal bit of effort, you can embed widgets and things to enhance your simple site. For limited features and cost, it beats www.bandzoogle.com by a good margin. You can go down the road of spending lots of dough for a great designer and having a basic access to your site to enter info, HOWEVER, for people spending time on your site, that's really risky. Pretty does not equal content. You have to have content. Stuff to do. things to push that actually give information or offer a glimpse into your fantastical world.

If you have a fantastically designed site that has content galore, you will be among the fortunate few. http://www.prod4ever.com/ make truly remarkable sites. Check out their Bob Dylan site.

There is no smoking gun that will be your one site other than your own page. Soon though, very soon, you will be able to find the right tree under which to bark.

More than ever, right now is the crucial time to develop your contacts and divine the fans of your art from there. Other than being in a theatrical company or freelancing, this is the way to sustain your career.

More importantly, if you ARE making your living from being a theater denizen, it is absolutely crucial that you mine each and every town for fans.

Fans are your life-blood. They mean everything to a performer, as they love you and you love them. It is a strange and fantastic relationship and involves lots of laughter and joy, especially when you are on the road. What better way to spend a day or an evening, especially when you have the TIME, than with a fan? Most times they want to make you as happy as you have made them.

It should only be a positive experience there.

So that's an awful long winded way to say the few points I've made. Trust me it took me longer to write than for you to read!

I hope I piqued some interest and sparked some questions and gave you some ideas for problems to solve. I also hope to not have offended terribly. My only intent is to offer the things I have learned to you and in turn, if you have knowledge for me, please feel free to share. I wish I had all of the answers for you, but my imperfect road leaves many stone unturned.

All the best

Nathan