It’s easier if you know who you are

The music industry is an ever shifting landscape (except the bit where artists get the worst financial deal, that bit is solid as a rock!) you have to roll with lots of changes. The skills that are required to promote yourself effectively one week will be slightly different the next. However there is no one size fits all solution to how you scale the music mountain. There are many routes through and you simply have to find the path that best suits you personally, the person you actually are, not the person the latest social media platform says you need to be.

There are endless panels and forums and conferences on how to “effectively network” and “promote yourself” the truth is the best and sometimes ONLY way to REALLY promote yourself is with a tonne of cash. So lets assume you don’t have that…

All ££,£££’s really buys is hype anyways, no amount of cash can buy you a fanbase that grows with you, slowly collecting converts as it rolls gently ever forwards, a slow train on its track to wherever it’s going eventually (you don’t need to know where just now)

This is how I think about my career, it’s how I’ve always thought of it. When fancy labels were telling me hot-air stories of fame and when they were telling me to “manage my expectations” I was only ever on my little train to artistic fulfilment. Refusing to concede to commercial forces because I know they do not work for an artist like me. My fans cannot be hyped into liking my music. Rather they find it late at night on an obscure & distant radio station. It reaches into them, reorganising their atoms with a powerful lasting melancholy that is somehow laced with hope. You cannot put that on a 12.99 truckers cap and sell it at RSD! I’m not selling something garish and fashionable, I’m touting a unique internal experience and that’s just harder to hype, too hard for a corporate label to sell, they do not have the requisite chops. Only I do because I know me best…

You might recognise this in yourself and your own music, (or in many of the artists you love) how you don’t quite fit, how your music never “catches” & inexplicably goes all viral. Well it won’t you see, because it’s not that type of thing. It’s a slow burn, that equally can’t be extinguished. You don’t need to be the next big thing. Be a beautiful, classy, small thing. Be a magnificent rare bird or a flower that only blooms in a tiny corner of the forest.

The music industry can be punishing but it’s easier if you know who you are…