A list gives you something concrete to build.  A list, you can interact with.  A list is your asset, the measure of where you are in your career.

And call me old-fashioned, but when I think of a list I still think the best list is an e-mail list.  A list of real people with their e-mail addresses is so valuable, because these are the people who gave you permission to directly send messages to their inboxes (don’t ever put people on your e-mail list without their explicit permission — being tagged as a spammer has dire consequences).  Hopefully you have copies of that list backed up so you will never lose it.

Facebook fans are great and so are YouTube and Twitter followers — more power to ya if you got them.  But there are at least two problems with relying on a certain proprietary platform:

1. You are at their mercy.  If you violate one of their policies inadvertently, poof!  They have every right to nuke your account, and with it goes your list.
2. Trends come and go.  MySpace, anyone?  Even the Roman Empire didn’t last forever.  A lot of these platforms won’t let you back up your friends/follower list.  They may stop using those platforms, too.

So if you’re planning for a long-term career as an artist, I still recommend a good ol’ e-mail list.  It’s simple, it’s yours, and it’s most reliable.  There are many affordable vendors who can help you manage your list and send messages.  I’m using Your Mailing List Provider but I heard good things about MailChimp, too.  Or you can just use ReverbNation.

In the other words, you really have no excuse for not owning and growing a list.  If you have it, you can see, in concrete numbers, where you are in building your audience, plus it leads to specific strategies on how to grow the list.  If you don’t have it, it’s a lot harder to gauge how many fans you have out there.

So, get a list going.  Sooner the better.

After watching her well-put-together videos and participating in her one-hour free phone lecture, I came away with the impression that of all the music career instructions out there, she may be one the person who has the most comprehensive, most universal package that’s applicable to everyone.  I had mentoring calls with Bob Baker, I participated in Tom Hess’ Music Career Mentoring Program, bought books by David Nevue, so I’ve seen some material on this topic.  But while most books and training courses focus on the technique of music business (and I’m sure Cari Cole’s offering has plenty as well) few talk about strategy and even fewer discuss inner skills.

To me, what musicians really need first is not some “100 guerrilla promotion tactics” or “how to promote yourself on Facebook.”  We first have to focus on the inner skills — the character it takes to sustain a focused, multi-faceted and ever-changing endeavor — and then after that, a career strategy, one that’s specifically tailored to each artist/act.  Sort of a business plan, that outlines what kind of music you make, who your audience are, how you plan to reach them, how you plan to monetize your activities, and so on.  Then some of the techniques become more relevant, as you figure out how to find and reach out to and commune with your audience/customers.

Tom Hess’ program was a 2-year comprehensive course that included a lot of inner skills and strategy.  But Tom is a guitar player and teacher, so it’s easiest to adapt his strategy and approaches when you are like him.  Cari Cole’s overview, on the other hand, gives me the impression that it’s a lot move universal.  For example, here are the 3 “S”s she touts as the key ingredients in a musician’s Success:

1. Skill: put the time in to develop your signature sound, get feedback/guidance from appropriate sources to hone your craft.
2. Soul: know yourself, be authentic, align your life so that you have the capacity to succeed.
3. Savvy: figure out your positioning/branding, run a sound business, study the latest best practices on promotion, learn industry tricks and trends.

As you see, most music career stuff focuses solely on #3, but that’s really beside the point until you figure out #1 and #2.  And the world is littered with not-so-great music because nowadays it’s easy to get your music out there with a little savvyness even when the music itself is not that great and you aren’t really cut out to be a professional musician.

Now, Cari Cole is presenting herself as an upscale, slick offering — it’s a bit hard to to gauge her authenticity when everything seems so candy-coated and packaged.  With Tom Hess, I had no problem believing him because he was raw, intense and in-your-face, brimming with authenticity if not as pretty as Cari.  ;-)  Either way you go, you’ll probably get what you pay for — neither of them are cheap — so if you’re starting out and don’t know anything about developing your signature sound or how to strategize your career, I’d think about investing in one of their programs.

As for me, my needs can probably be better met by a long-term personal/artistic coach than somebody who gives me more information — I’m at a stage where execution is the most critical factor, not figuring out what to do or how to do it.  But I will be watching how Cari Cole establishes herself in the crowded marketplace of independent music industry.  If you end up investing in her offerings and have comments about them, please let me know.

I just went to Cloud Cult‘s triumphant hometown gig at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.  It was my first-time seeing them, and I only own one album out of their lengthy catalog — 2010′s Light Chasers — so I wasn’t sure if I was going to really enjoy it.

Enjoy, I did, as the show featured basically “Light Chasers and some hits” set list.  And while the show in no way seemed fully realized — the big projection screen in the back of the stage sometimes enhanced the show, other times detracted — but they did many things right, and more importantly, they did things in their own unique ways.

Below let me pick out some of the lessons I learned from watching them:

Engage Multiple Senses

More effective than their projection screen was the presence of two live painters.  Yep, two of the eight-person band don’t really contribute to the music, except for occasional participation to choruses — they just stand in the back of the stage, with their backs facing the audience, and they paint during the show.  They start with blank canvases, and by the end of the show they complete their paintings, which are auctioned off to audience afterward.

Now, many things set Cloud Cult apart from other acts, but this I have never seen done before.  Their emerging paintings added great visual engagements to the show.  Their canvases were racked up on this special easel that allowed painters to spin the canvases rapidly.  And in the beginning of the show, they both spun them wildly, just letting their brushes taint the whiteness randomly with splashes of the color.  As the show progressed, the canvases spun less often, as the painters focused on making more concrete shapes and filling in specific spaces.  But at more raucous moments, it seemed they’d just spin the canvases while they were mixing new colors or something, adding to the sense of movement in the music.

It really added an organic, unique touch to the show.  I really enjoyed seeing paintings emerge out of nothing in the course of the show.  Somehow, their presence lifted a mere concert into a true show, much more so than their hit-and-miss video projection did.

Interact with Audience

Which brings me to the next point — the first few songs of the night, I could tell, were tightly scripted because they had to synch with the video.  On one hand, I enjoyed the brisk pacing and it’s good not to dilly-dally, especially at the beginning of the set, so that the momentum can build.

But the show definitely took a turn for the better when that portion ended, and the leader Craig Minowa started talking to the audience, for the more casual, acoustic segment of the night.  Suddenly the show seemed to change from mono-directional performance to two-way conversation.

It’s worth remembering that people are more engaged in situations when they assert a bit of themselves, instead of just being passive spectators.  I’m not saying you have to make up your setlist as you go depending on what’s working each night, but you just relate more to an act who responds to the audience.  You wouldn’t want to be a friend to someone who just talks your ear off and never listen to you, right?  It’s nice when the performer addresses the crowd, and let their presence and interactions affect the performance.

The Primal Power of Drumming

Another really effective element was when the band congregated around a couple of floor toms, with drum sticks in hand, banging out tribal beats together.  I always knew that percussions are powerful, primal instruments, but seeing them just pound the living daylights out of those poor drums really hit me hard.

Rhythm is the foundation of any music and strong beats really affect us in more instinctive way — if you hear great grooves, you can’t help but react by moving your body.  Loud drums, you feel their vibrations with your body, rather than just hearing the sound.  And the act of putting your whole body into hitting a drum unleashes powerful energy that quickly got the audience up on their feet, immersed in music.  That sound, that sensation is something you really can’t recreate with any recordings.

It’s easy for anyone to beat simple rhythms on drums.  Get a few beaters — how they sound don’t matter as much as the manner in which you hit them — and get your whole band to just strike a simple rhythm together.  It’s a really powerful element and I think any acts that want to energize their audience should incorporate this into their shows.

How You Play Matters More Than What You Play

Which brings me to the final point.  Seeing the whole band congregate around a couple of drums, creating unified, simple groove together, is a great visual metaphor of togetherness, a moving way to create a sense of community.

Truth be told, Orchestral Hall is a very live environment, designed that way for acoustic performances.  The reverbs were too much for amplified band, though, and a lot of the details really got washed away in muddy reverbs.  But then, what rock concert has crystal-clear sound where you pay attention to every detail and nuance?  Once again, a live gig at its best is a two-way interaction between the performer and the audience, through multiple senses.  It will not make a great show if you stood perfectly still and played your part perfectly.  What engages your audience is how you play, from your body rocking to the beat to your gazing out into the crowd to your smile on your face.  How you play matters more than what you play. Engage your audience by letting your body express how you’re pouring everything you got into playing your music.

Conclusion

There are many other techniques to making each show unique and organic, and you should experiment and employ as many as you can.  It creates more incentive for someone to come see you.  The above are some of the highlights I got from seeing Cloud Cult, a band very much homegrown by their own hands.  They used what they had in creative ways to make their show engaging — you should discover what your particular assets and interests are, and use them in your own ways, to engage your audience.

Start with the End in Mind

As with all other goals, I believe finding the right collaborator starts with a clear picture of who it is that I want to work with.   I draw up a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves.  In the process of making the list, I often make a number of discoveries — qualities that I originally thought were must-haves sometimes end up being nice-to-have, and vice versa.  It’s a useful exercise in figuring out which qualities are the ones most critical, where you just can’t have someone even when all else feels right if the must-haves aren’t there.

Spelling It Out Achieve Two Purposes

Once I figure out who it is that I want, then I put together a pretty comprehensive description of my project and what I’m looking for.  This serves two purposes:

1. By spelling out everything, the prospective band member can approach me knowing everything there is to know about my project.  They come into the picture with the right expectations.
2. It serves as an excellent screening process.  Unless s/he is really interested, they won’t make it through 4-page document to fill out the contact form at the end.  I don’t want my inbox bombarded with not-so-close candidates.  Also, you can tell from their e-mail if they read everything or not — a good indication of how they pay attention and follow directions.

One Central Description

Because I am a web developer, setting up special web pages with the descriptions is easy.  Having one central description also makes it effortless to get the word out in multiple places, as all each ad needs to do is to point to your dedicated web page.

E-Mail Conversation

The first e-mail from a prospective collaborator is a great indicator of whether that person is a good match or not.  E-mails reveal a lot about the person writing it, as people often write them in a similar style to how they orally communicate.  Passionate people often write longer messages explaining how they’re excited about the project — but then, brief initial message is not necessarily a bad indication, either, as some people choose not to write any lengthy messages initially, saving that for the time when the other side actually responds.

It usually doesn’t take many e-mails to reveal any fundamental incompatibilities.

Phoning Logistics

If someone really sounds promising even after a few e-mail exchanges, then I proceed to calling the person.  If I’m getting a good vibe from e-mails, usually moving on to phone doesn’t encounter any surprises.   Setting up the first meeting (usually a casual chat at a coffeehouse) is, however, a great test for the logistics compatibility.  People have different ways they go about organizing their schedule.  Unless it’s an online collaboration, a musical project involves people getting together, so the process of setting appointments and being there at the right time is a very important.  If this happens flawlessly and effortlessly, you can feel assured that you’re dealing with a mature and reliable individual.

In-Person Chemistry

Notice that thus far there’s been no discussion of music.  It’s because I believe that when two people have a good chemistry personally, then making music together is the easy part. Of course, it’s possible that two people who get along can have a wide gap in terms of skills or interests, but those differences should be fleshed out by the time we reach this point.  Even if I don’t hear the person making music, I can gauge their technical level by just paying attention to how they describe their own abilities.  Really able people often don’t need to tout their accomplishments, but have quiet confidence about themselves.  That’s not to say, though, that I don’t ask to listen to their previous recordings or don’t go see them play.  I’m simply saying that playing together is the final destination in my search process.

How Will It Turn Out?

I plan to find a singer, and then move on to the search for a cellist, so I’m sure this process will get refined even more.  But all in all, I feel very comfortable, confident and optimistic about my search method.  As long as I take my time, stick to my strategy and don’t “settle” with someone who doesn’t meet all my must-have qualities, I’m sure that sooner or later I will find the perfect person.

Sign up to the e-mail list to learn how my searches turn out, and I’ll continue to share any lessons learned in the process.

Because in today’s landscape of disposable music, you can’t just rely on your music to convince your fans that you are an entity they want to support, or even buy from.

I’m not saying your music doesn’t have to be good.  In fact, it has to be remarkably good.  Mediocrity is not allowed anywhere in your operation.  You can’t go out there and promote a turd.

But even if you are astonishingly good, new, and different, that still may not be enough for you to sustain your career.  You need to offer an identity that your fans deem worthy of owning.

One of rock’n'roll’s perennial mantra is anti-establishment.  In the early days of Metallica, all the kids wearing the black Metallica T-shirts were making a statement.  Metallica was their voice of anti-establishment, the middle-finger to the big and the bad.  (Now that Metallica itself has become big and bad, they function less as such a symbol)

Cloud Cult’s thing is their environmentalism.  An extreme one.  Their self-owned label is a non-profit organization, designed to promote and educate change.  Their music?  Amazing.  But the fact that they champion a cause dear to some of us really clinch the deal, in terms of their supportability.

Vista Print is a good online printing company.  I’ve had business cards printed by them, because they are cheap and easy.  Then I just learned about Parisleaf.com.   I haven’t done business with them yet, but I intend to.  Why?  Because not only do they print and take orders online through attractive user interface, but they’ll plant trees for me.  Similarly, I enthusiastically promote AcornHost, the company that runs the server hosting this web site, because they are green hosting — they buy renewable energy to power their servers.

But don’t just make up a cause to make yourself look good.  It’s not a ploy to validate yourself.  It has to be authentic, it has to come from the heart.  And you include that aspect of your being in your public persona, primarily so that your audience has something on top of music to latch on to.  Something to relate, something that represents their voice, desire and worldview.

Here’s how to do it: use your music to make a change.

It’s not that your music has to be about the change you want to create.  But the change you want to create has to be an integral part of your artistic creation.  Perhaps you play benefit concerts, perhaps you make donations, perhaps you write a song or two about it.  It can be anything, but make it a part of your conversation with your audience.  Make it clear what change you want to create.  Again, don’t get all phony and conjure stuff up you don’t truly believe in.  But find something that you wholeheartedly desire, and be transparent about it.

I can see an argument saying, well, I don’t want to appear manipulative, I don’t want to give an impression that I’m trying to make myself look good.  Those are understandable concerns. When I make donations, I don’t need to tell the world how I did a good deed.  I made donations because I wanted to help, not because I wanted that act to serve myself.

But look at it this way: it’s a win-win scenario for everybody.  So you have a change you want to contribute to.  By talking about it regularly, you are promoting your cause.  Your music becomes an agent of promoting that change, and perhaps play a small part in gathering people to get behind it.  And the bonus part is, it’ll help you be a supportable act.  Your cause gains, the audience gains (by finding a change to contribute to), and you gain.

I agree that there is a fine line, you don’t want to cross it and appear self-serving.  But you can avoid this if the desire for the change is authentic.  You live that desire.  You’re working for that change, when in public view and when not.

So in short, find a bigger cause to serve through your musicmaking, and let that be an integral part of your authentic artistry.  And you get to be an agent for change, and benefit your musicmaking at the same time.  Really, there’s no reason not to go about it that way.

It may be a slight stretch of an analogy, but the same applies to a career of a music artist.  Cook it slow, if you want it to last.

Generally speaking, artists that slowly build their fan base over a long period of time have more staying power. Their fan base will stick by them when radios, record labels, and even band members, don’t.   The slower they build, the slower they go away.  And the opposite is true as well (one-hit wonders, anyone?).

Why is that?

Well, think about the joy of unearthing an unknown act.  Whether you found them through a friend, social networking, local gig or internet radio — you immediately feel a sense of ownership.  You discovered them.  It’s like a secret gem that nobody else knows about.  You like them because their music is great, and for no other reason — not because they’re famous or they’re on the radio or a TV.

On the other hand, fans who discover you because of a hit are a fickler bunch.  They didn’t unearth you.  Your music was just handed to them, via radio, TV or movie.  The less effort it takes to own something, the less attachment people will have. In order to keep their attention, you have to keep producing hits, so you can remain on their radar.  Otherwise, they will not seek you out once you drop out of sight because they are just not the kind of people who trudge off the beaten path to discover something new and cool.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to make it difficult for fans to find you.  You have to be findable.  My argument is to caution those acts who strive to get big, fast.  I can appreciate their haste, but it’s not the best strategy for a life-long career.  If you want it to last, then build it slowly. Avoid the temptation of shortcuts.  Win them over, one by one.

Now, there is one key ingredient in there that can make an immense difference in keeping people interested in you, whether you try to score a hit or build a small, home-grown fan base.

Uniqueness.

If people found you on the radio but if you sounded like countless other hits that came before, then there’s really no reason to seek you out once you stop producing more hits.  Acts such as Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dada, and King’s X have had varying degrees of hit-ness, but they have one thing in common: they are each unduplicatably unique, and their fans are fiercely loyal.  Years and possibly decades after they had any kinds of hits, fans around the world are clamoring for their music.  Maybe there aren’t that many of them, true — but enough to mount a worthwhile tour.  Enough, perhaps, not to have to return to a day job.

If no other acts can do what you can, then you have a monopoly over your corner of the market.  People have to come to you to get That Thing You Do.  When they unearthed you first and realize that you scratch a spot that no other acts can reach — that’s when they’ll stand by you.  Through thick and thin.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have 1000, nay, 100 of those True Fans, than millions of casual listeners.  True Fans can help me build a lasting career.  Casual listeners — well, they are here today, gone tomorrow.  And you have the choice to go after one group or the other.  And the slow build attracts the former, while the fast ascent attracts the latter.

The choice is obvious, don’t you think?

In one chapter, he describes how his friend got a start in film business in NYC.  He shot porn.  No, not by scouting pretty girls from eastern Europe.  By making himself available to shoot your very own lovemaking, with multiple cameras and mic setup and all, edited down, burned, and deleted on the spot.

It’s a good story.  The catch?

He made it up.  None of it’s true.

Ha!  The audacity to make up such a story says a lot about the character.  No, I’m not condoning lying.  But the audacity does count.  I was once at an indie film workshop and a seasoned pro said that the kind of filmmaker that succeeds tend to put everything into their films: max credit cards, take out 2nd mortage on their house, take out new mortgage on their grandmother’s house.  Audacious, bold and yes, crazy.

Are you crazy?

If you aren’t, it means one of two things:

1. You really don’t have that much invested in your music career.  You may think you’re giving it everything you got — but there’s probably more, where it came from
2. You are truly giving it everything you got, but your Everything when it comes to music isn’t that much.  It’s better if you do it as a hobby.

If music is The Reason God Put You on Earth, the pursuit of it should, and it will, drive you crazy. It will push you to take some risks, stretch, extend, and reach deeper than you thought possible.  I’m not talking about talents here.  Some people are so talented, music comes easy to them — and there’s no need for them to pursue it as a vocation.  Why should you spend your lifetime doing something so easy?  We all pursue something because it’s a monumental challenge, one worthy of spending your life pursuing.

Back to our lying SOB filmmaker here.  He wanted to get into film business so badly, so desperately, that he risked his personal reputation to come up with a lie.  Completely unadvisable, but once again, that audacity counts for something.  In his case, it counted enough to get his foot in the door.

Some of your songs should tell good stories, but what I’m talking about here is your artistry, or your artistic identity, should tell a story.  A darn good one, in fact.  My favorite internet phenomenon Your Favorite Enemies has a story.  They are human-rights-driven, ultra-earnest modern-rock band that sold tens of thousands of copies of their self-produced EP on the wings of their relentless MySpace campaign.  The second part of that sentence was created by the first half.  My producing client Marc Gunn is an autoharp-slinging Celtic folk musician who rewrote many classics with lyrics about cats.

And in case you’re wondering, not every YFE song is about human-rights.  Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers is only two of the albums among Marc’ extensive discography.  So their music isn’t about a single story.  But their artistic identity is.  Our friend Hugh that I mentioned above — he’s a cartoonist who draws on the back of business cards and posts them on his blog.  That’s not all he does, but that’s his central identity.

My story?  I’m an approaching-40 rock guitarist family-man who’s crazy enough to think that he can still build a living with his music through maintaining 6 blogs while holding down a day job and freelance gigs as a web developer and without neglecting my wife or kids.  Oh, and don’t let me forget the tagline for my music: Hard Music Is Good for Your Soul.  I’m telling the world that they were wrong when they thought that heavy metal was evil.  It’s an agent of peace and healing, that allows us to channel our baggages in wholesome, healthy and beautiful ways.

Crazy?  I feel that way, yes.  I go to bed with my son at 8-9pm, often get up in the middle of the night to work on my own blogs and sites, catch a cat nap before dawn and then spend the whole day catering to my employer, clients and family.  And do it over again.  Sleep deprived and more than a little crazy.

If you don’t have a good story to tell with your whole artistic identity, then you’re not trying hard enough. The world doesn’t need just another folky songwriter, a pop/rock band, or a chick who can sing in skimpy costumes.  Keep pushing, keep searching until you come up with a good, original story.  One that’s wholly your own.  Find your story, and relentlessly tell it, over and over again.

It may not make you a success, but it’s the right first step toward it.

We tend to believe that because we work so hard on our arts, we deserve to make a living from it.

Boy, just writing it down like that, I can clearly see the flaw in that logic.  I so wish hard work equated to value, but that’s simply not true.

Creating Value

So, what creates value?  What makes music worth paying money for?

This follows the thread I started in the previous article, but in order for music to create value, it has to meet audience’s need.

For example, today I was attending a cultural event for Asian Americans with my family.  It featured dances by various ethnic groups.  I was struck by how dance, and hence music to accompany them, plays such a central role in any cultures.

In order for dancers to dance, there has to be music.  For each of the dozen performances I saw today, there was someone producing the music.  Sometimes there were live musicians, but most of the times it was recorded.

If you create music so that people can dance, that creates a value.  Your music is useful.

But let’s just say you are an electronica artist.  And your music fits squarely in that genre.  You work hard to make sure that your music meets expectations, that it fits in in that genre, that you do all the expected. In the other words, you really sound typical.

Is that really valuable?

Not really, even if you work hard at it.  They can get the same kind of thing from somebody else, too.  So in order for you to win the edge and have them pay you money as opposed to the next artist, it becomes a competition.  Do you compete on the production value?  Price?  Either way, it’s really hard to compete on such subjective scales.

But let’s just say, you are a Karen and you produce Karen dance music, mixed with modern electronica.  I’m going to admit my ignorance here, I had never heard of Karen people until I saw a huge, powerful dance ensemble today, complete with live musicians.  I am guessing that the fusion of Karen dance and electronica haven’t really been tried before.  Maybe it has, but probably not very mainstream.

But if someone was to look for that type of music?  There are few others who make that kind of music.

All the sudden, your music becomes very valuable.  Supply is scarce.  If the Karen dance troops around the world relies on you to create the music only you can create, then it’s in their best interest to make sure your music-making is supported and sustained.

Where Your Need and the World’s Need Meets

On the other hand, I’m not advocating that you start music by trying to conjure up some obscure combinations that hasn’t been tried.  Who’s to say that there is a demand for it?  Or more importantly, are you that interested in making that music?

There is nothing wrong with churning out products to meet market demand, but music is ultimately an art, an act of self-expression, so many of us feel that it’s not genuine when you do it from that sort of business-first outlook.  I myself tried to operate from that point of view before, and I just couldn’t remain interested.

But the good news is, it’s possible to make music that you’re interested in making, and still create value.

Keep this in mind: not every piece of music you’re interested in making is valuable.

Eric Clapton, for example, is a very in-demand blues guitarist.  Many of us guitar enthusiasts can tell it’s his playing, just from hearing a guitar solo.   His mastery is awe-inspiring and engaging.  He’s unlike any other blues guitarists, though there are imitators.  His blues guitar playing has value.

He once ventured out into more electronic direction.  Have you heard it?  Me neither.  Apparently, his electronica doesn’t command the value that his blues guitar playing does.

There’s no denying that Eric Clapton loves playing the guitar.  He loved it so much, that he worked hard at it, and he became so good and so unique that his playing became very valuable.

Love and dedication creates mastery.  Mastery is valuable.  But while you’re pursuing it, focus on the scarcer elements of your craft.  Which pieces of That Thing You Do is atypical or unique?  Figure that out, and make them more pronounced.  Make more music like it.  Find other people who agree with you that that little thing you do is different and valuable.

So here’s a step-by-step formula:

1. Start out by making music you’re passionate about.
2. Identify the scarcer elements.
3. Focus/expand those traits.

Keep working at the 3 steps above, until your music reaches a level at which both the execution and the uniqueness score exceptionally high.  Get it to a point where you can honestly and wholeheartedly believe that what you’re doing is both unique and well-executed. (Don’t lie to yourself.  I believe that if you’re honest and level-headed enough, you can spot where you fall short on those two scales. )

Conclusion

This is how you can go about creating valuable music while remaining true to your artistic integrity: take the music you love, then distill and emphasize scarcer aspects.  And of course, the execution has to be high — not all kinds of music require virtuosity, but the performance and writing have to be mature, expressive, and of professional production value.

And that’s where we musicians start.  Once, and only after, you create valuable music, then you can go about looking for the audience for it.  You can start promoting yourself before then, too, but really, the audience won’t care that much for you until you create valuable music.  It’s like trying to play gigs before you have songs to play.  Oh sure, your buddies and girlfriends may come see you — but they do because they care about you, not your music.

But the good news is that creating valuable, artistic music is very possible.  From Laurie Anderson to the Mars Volta, the history is filled with artists who created valuable music, and a lot of it isn’t what we consider “hits.”

Let’s face it.  Making “hits” involve a lot of elements that aren’t exactly within our control.  But creating valuable music (and finding audience who consider it valuable, once you make it) is mostly up to us.  We just have to have the correct understanding of what makes music valuable, and the rest, we rely on our passion and dogged determination.

We’ll get there.

That got me thinking about how music, and artists in general, cater to these needs.

The problem with art is that in essence, we’re not creating to meet our audience’s demand.  Now, you can argue that most artists, in fact, do create for demand — it’s not entirely driven by the desire to artistically express oneself.  I agree with that, and don’t think that’s wrong or anything.

But until you create a demand for your art, the initial motivation comes from within — an artist’s need to create the art.

So the challenge comes where, once created, how to use that piece of art to meet one of the drives of our audience, so that we can build a business around our art and make our artmaking successful.

So here’s a bit of brainstorming.

Five Core Human Drives and How Music/Art Can Meet Them

Drive to Acquire: It’s the desire to collect material and immaterial things, like a car, or influence.

If you have a large body of songs/music, you can become collectible.  Or, if you win any prestige with your work, then your art becomes desirable to own or collect.

Some people do collect, for the sole reason of completing a collection.  Is music one of them?  Absolutely.  So, if you belong to a certain, identifiable faction of artists — like New Wave of British Heavy Metal — perhaps there are collectors out there who set out to own all music by that group of artists.

So, you are creating a value by making your art collectible.

Drive to Bond: Desire to be loved and feel valued in our relationships with others.

Perhaps your music can be a glue that holds a community together.  Many bands have fan communities that organize itself and are very active.  As an artist, it’s in our best interest to foster and encourage such movements.

This is more true for acts that identify itself with a specific thought, cause or lifestyle.  Political bands like Rage Against the Machine or novelty interest like my client and Celtic American folk musician Marc Gunn and his Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers.

Some bands have forums on their web site yet seems clueless about how to foster or engage its fan community.  Other bands don’t do any such thing yet the fans so strongly identify with each other that they self-organize communities.   I don’t know what differentiate these two types, but I hope that I will learn.

Drive to Learn: Desire to satisfy our curiosity.

Ah, this one is easier to connect to music or art.  By displaying mastery/virtuosity/highly advanced skill, you are creating a demonstration that others can learn from.  Teaching music is a very viable career because it caters to this need.

This is particularly true if your music relies on mastery and virtuosity.  People want to learn how to play cool music, of course, so it’s in our best interest to encourage and help this drive.  Offering songbooks/tab books of your songs, creating lessons around how to play your song, or even sharing how the songs came together in writing and in studio — all these cater to our audience’s drive to learn.

This bit is obvious, and I think we can easily tap into this desire.

Drive to Defend: Desire to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our property.

This bit, I don’t think is an artist’s realm.  I can’t think of how musicians contribute to this drive.  Can you?

Drive to Feel: Desire for many emotional experiences, such as pleasure or excitement.

Yep, this is probably the favorite drive for us musicians and artists.  We create our art to express something, and while expressing and experimenting with certain logic or technique is perfectly a valid reason to create art, I think most of us come from more feeling-oriented place.

We create art to express our feelings.

So a piece of music becomes more valuable and marketable, the more it packs the emotional punch.  Some feelings are perhaps more easily marketable than others, but I think there’s a market for just about every feeling, be it “positive” or “negative.”  Feel good music is easy to digest and market, of course, but we all have desires/need to express more unpleasant feelings, like anger, shame and guilt, too.  I think the latter is a place where metal, punk and other aggressive music can provide value in spades, perhaps more so than any other products/services short of psychotherapy.

Conclusion

Knowing the five Core Human Drives is essential in any business, and music business is no exception.  While specific services like teaching music has a clear market value, it’s always been hard for us artmakers to figure out where in the world lies value for the art we create.  By keeping these five drives in the back of our mind, we can look at our art and start to figure out how and why it holds value in today’s marketplace.

The true secret to a successful strategy is to make it sustainable.

This applies to everyone but particularly true for musicians.  We get into this because we like music — playing it, making it, recording it, etc.  But with it comes the rest of “business” — promoting, schmoozing, booking, tweeting, and so on.

There are many how-to info out there that claim to make you successful.  But the problem is, they don’t take who you are into account.

Back when I released my first album, I promoted it heavily on MySpace, because Your Favorite Enemies was very successful with that approach.

9 months later, I got so burned out that I just couldn’t go on.  I did many things right as far as I could tell, and my fan base was growing — if slowly (YFE has 7 members, I was by myself) — but getting burned out and not logging in for a long time just burned down most of what I built during that time.

Definitely not a successful strategy.

Derek Sivers says it well when he says “Do what excites/scares you.  Don’t do what drains you.”

I’m still trying to figure out what a successful strategy for me is.  But one lesson I learned: it better be sustainable.   If it’s even half way effective, if I can sustain it, it’ll build.

So, don’t blindly accept other people’s success methods without taking compatibility with yourself into account.  If you hate parties, don’t attend them.  If you hate going online, stay offline.  If you like drawing, incorporate that.  If you like biking, incorporate that.

Make up a career strategy full of activities that excite you, and boldly ignore the rest of good advices.

So that you can sustain it.