The Road to Change

We suffer for our art, truly we do.

 

Much of what you are going through is painful because it is your first time through it or you don’t take the right approach when you did it previously.  My point is, the work you do now, you get to reap the benefits many times over as you build up on, with future releases already having working methods, tools and templates in place. The pain you feel now is so great because you are having to put it all in place. Were you a smaller artist, with smaller ambition, you would not need do so much. The truth is it takes investment of time and/or money to move onwards and upwards. There is no magic wand.

I totally agree with you @john. In the decade long stint with you on this indie musician thing, every single time I had to go through a whole bunch of learning skills and executing tasks, I felt overwhelmed and sometimes even questioned you about it. This time around when we started working on things, I was pleasantly surprised to have realized a lot of the more rudimentary tasks for the release plan and schedule, I was much faster and comfortable in executing those things. The things that overwhelm me now are relatively more advanced and I guess it is a bittersweet journey. It does set me up every single time to do better and have a more refined baseline for the next release. What a journey!

I think people often focus on how far the next step took them… but really, as artists, we are better thinking about how much capability we add each time through the cycle. After all, if we take a huge step without adding the capability, we are swamped. We need to add capability with each iteration along with the set goals, otherwise we only add a rod for our own back.

 

When I was a kid, parents wouldn’t buy what fitted now. They bought things with room to grow into. Something a bit bigger than you needed, so that you could grow into it. Then by the time it was fitting you, you would ideally be buying the next thing that had room to grow into.

 

Music marketing wise, that is what we need to be doing. Add something into the mix that we can grow into. Each iteration we expand our capabilities and set appropriate targets.