How to Make it in the Music Business (Not!)

by T. O' Donnell

Published on this site: August 23rd, 2006 - See more articles from this month

Where to begin? How can I put you off this awful profession? Many ignorant people think that any kind of placement in the Top Ten is a guarantee of easy money, easy sex and hard drugs. Let me state at the outset: Most bands are skint, smelly, underfed and too wrecked to engage successfully in sexual congress.

And that's the successful ones.

Pop music isn't a career, it's an obsession, an excuse not to get a proper, paying job. For me it started in secondary school. From then on I committed a number of sins against the great Goddess Fortuna which have doomed me to be a 'never-were'.

Here are the things I should have done. Read on and wise up.

1. Start Young.
   
   Take up an instrument at the latest in your early teens, or don't bother. By the time you're old enough to order a pint in a bar or club, you should be proficient enough to get a gig there and not embarrass yourself. Assuming you have talent, that is. If you leave it too late you'll not be proficient enough to earn a living from your muse.
   
   
2. Have Talent.
   
   Lots of people can get by in pop, it's simple music. If, however, your friends and early audiences think your music is 'all right', if you keep having to make excuses for your performances every effing gig, then take a hint! Give up, get back to college, you self-deluding fool! Better yet, learn a trade that people really _want_, _and_ which you can make good money at.
   
   Listen to that small still voice in the night. It knows.
   
   
3. Pop Music is not Art.
   
   In some ways it's Art's antithesis. Artists strive to authentically represent their own subjectivity. Pop musicians just want to get laid and paid. It's vulgar and Pop-ulist. It's what gets people to crowd onto the dancefloor and what they roar along to on a drunken Friday night.
   
   So don't disappear up your own backside, Mr Marylin-Manson-Morrisey-Wannabe. We won't be sending out search parties.
   
   
4. Save Your Money.
   
   One of the worst ways of spending money in this game is in other people's studios. Most studios in Britain are staffed by under-qualified chancers who say, for example, that, sure, they can sync your two workstations to their 24 track tape machine so you can do some vocal overdubs and a mix all in a 10 hour session at £30 an hour plus VAT.
   
   At hour five you're sweating and trying to work out why the vocals are coming in late. At hour ten you've got a sick feeling, a lighter wallet, and an under-mixed track which will be redundant in a couple of months because your music has gotten 'better', or changed direction. Hell, I feel nauseous even thinking about it. It happened to me. More than once. Take heed, smart guy.
   
   Put your money into buying your own recording equipment. Buy only 'name' gear, as it should retain its second-hand value. You can sell it if you want to up-grade, or buy something sensible, like a roof over your head. Loot magazine in London does free ads for buyers and sellers of almost anything. eBay is good for smaller items that can be sent by post.
   
   Second hand is very good value if it's near new. Electronic equipment, like cars, depreciates as soon as it's out of the shop . This can be to your advantage. Do not, however, buy second-hand from anyone who looks scruffy or lives in a dirty, untidy flat. "Why not, you fascist?!" sez you. Because their attention to their appearance and surroundings will be reflected in their care of their equipment.
   
   The best sort of person to buy from is a nice middle-class, middle-aged English male, who lives in a nice, clean suburban house and who doesn't take his gear out on the road. Trust me on this one.
   
   Put your money towards getting your own bedroom studio together if you're a dance musician. Find a squat, garage, or blag a room on an industrial estate and pad it out if you're in a band. Anything to avoid shelling out precious lolly.
   
   
5. Conserve Energy.
   
   If all the energy wasted in futile self-promotion by young pop musicians were harnessed to political causes (for example) eco-warriors wouldn't have to live in trees, and the Tories would have been out after their first term.

If you must persist in the delusion that you too will one day be Number One In America (or darn close), then do the following:

1. Only play in bands where members turn up regularly to rehearsals.
   
   Whining at, and phoning after these twits ("my girlfriend says I'm ignoring her I want paying gigs Ithink we should do more covers etc...") is a drag. Either fire them or leave the band.
   
   
2. Rehearse Regularly.
   
   Practice makes perfect, slackness leads to forgotten lyrics, bum notes and dire gigs. Be sure that however good you are in rehearsal will lose at least 20% of your proficiency when playing live. And any tempermental equipment will break down on the night, in front of all your pals and the A&R leech you invited along 'specially.
   
   
3. Write Songs at Home.
   
   Rehearse 'em there quietly with other members if possible. Send each member (including the drummer) a bare-bones CD-recording and lyric sheet. Get them to practice by themselves so you don't waste time and enthusiasm when you're all together in your pay-per-hour studio (or see 3. above).
   
   
4. Sack Incompetent Members.
   
   You may only retain them if you have no intention whatever of playing in public, recording, getting radio air-play or a record deal. Resist blackmail. If the bass-player has a van and he's your best friend but he can't play in time, give him the boot. You'll thank me for it later. You can hire a van, and get new friends.
   
   
6. Accept Every Offered Gig.
   
   There's no such thing as bad publicity, even if you wreck someone's wedding, hell, at least there's one family who'll remember you for the rest of their lives. Do enough truly awful gigs and you may be onto something (see: The Stooges).
   
   
7. Study the Top Ten
   
   If you admire and emulate acts in the lower reaches of the Top 30 you'll never make it even that far. Selling 10,000 singles in a week via shops which do chart returns was enough to guarantee you a place in the Top Thirty in the U.K., when I was interested in it. If you copy acts in the lower reaches just how many people will buy into your version of their quite un-Popular Music? Avoid making music to please idealistic journo's or you 'cool' mates. They don't buy records anyway.
   
   Conversely, you should ...
   
   
8. Write Music from the Heart.
   
   Live your dream. Pick genres and styles you're comfortable with. A great whirling eccentric noise will get you more fans than a second rate copy of a top ten hit. And you'll enjoy it more.
   
   
9. Try Every Avenue of Publicity.
   
   Distribute flyers. Return 'phone-calls. Phone newspapers. Put up posters. Strong-arm friends. Otherwise you'll get a one-man-and-his-dog audience. You will die, horribly, and you'll still have to cart your equipment home. You must have no shame. A packed gig at a small venue creates a 'buzz', where one in a larger venue, with the same number of people, won't.
   
   Someone once told me there were 100,000 bands in London alone, which I think is an underestimation. And that excludes the bedroom boffins. How will you set yourself apart from all that lot? (Do you think if I had a Great Sexy Idea I'd put it in this article?). Dress up, go mad. Who cares? Just do it.
   
   Public performances of any kind are an excellent bit of market research. Do your best track first. Thirty seconds into it you'll know if you've got the formula right or not. If it doesn't work, Dump it!
   
   Play only your best songs. Keep your gigs short. Dramatic finish, then leave the building. Leave your audience with a positive memory. Be mysterious. Resist the urge to play two hours of mediocre material and then slope off-stage for a pint with the punters at the bar.
   
   
10. Talent Competitions.
    
    Try 'em, except when they ask for an entry fee. Think of them as a way of getting a nicely set up gig with a different audience. Ya won't win, or the prize will suck, or your studio time will bomb (see above) or your single will disappear without trace, but what the hell as long as you don't pay for it.
    
    
11. Release small numbers of CDs (if you must).
    
    I didn't. £2000 quid in the early 90's (which included recording) for 250 copies of an LP (the vanity!) which I was too knackered to promote, and didn't truly believe in anyway. Piddled it all away. If you're good enough other people will shell out.
    
    The same goes for promo videos. You haven't enough money to make them look smart. Spend the money (via music lessons and better equipment) on making your music good enough for others to invest in. Dance musicians should only press up their music if they are utterly confident they can peddle it to specialist shops or fans without having to make excuses for it. Dance music is strictly 'product-oriented', and relies much less on a good singer to carry the whole track. It can be sold more
    easily.
    
    Still, do not let your thirst to hold your own record in your hands cause you to deplete your pathetic finances unnecessarily.
    
    
12. Management is a Good Idea.
    
    If he's not a moron, wimp or a crook, and he's got some energy and contacts, take him on. It's too much work to write, rehearse, hold down a job/go to college and promote yourself. Just remember, a manager is for life, kids. He _will_ get his bit. It's best to have a total mad brute with a veneer of manners and respectability. Frighten 'em and charm 'em at the same time. Don't think you can do it all. People in the industry are businessmen, and they don't want to do business with precious, pseudo-rebellious, under-educated 'artistes'.
    
    
13. Be Brutal With Your Material.
    
    If your songs don't sound like anything in the top five, or you're not getting ecstatic audience reaction/ media reviews/ a large following, stop what you are doing immediately.
    
    Either it sounds like a current hit (within the last year for rawk, six months for dance music) or your audience want to be like you and to have your kids. Anything else is a waste of your youth. This is POP, as in populor music, remember? If ya got both of the above, hey boy, I want you to sign this piece of paper here, no no, don't bother to read it ...
    
    
14. And there I'll leave it ....
    
    for as I said at the beginning, I am a total failure at this lark. Any advice I might give you on record contracts and such-like would not be based on personal experience. You'll find there are plenty who won't let this stop 'em bending your ear anyway.
    

To proceed further, read 'The Prince' by Machiavelli or 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu and that white book 'How to have a number One' or somesuch by the 90's group the KLF. Set you up nicely for any career, never mind this rubbish. Best of luck, anyway, you pitiful fool.