Your content has to be good!

I have been travel lately, more than usual and seen so many good panels, keynotes, and masterclasses. The knowledge I and the other visitors are getting is phenomenal. I wish I would have these things when I started in the business. back then there was not even a school for professionals in the music industry in Sweden.

But all this advice and knowledge is useless if the content is crap. The problem is that it usually is. I can just look on my own vlog here. Content vise many time they suck. Sure some turn out great, but we are talking 2 out of 10. It's ok content and fun for the people that are in it. Still, it's not that good content and I know it. That is the reason I won't contact any Youtube firm to get it released or invest money to get it out to people. I know the limit.

And it's not easy to be on the top all the time producing content. In the end, also is all this content producing drag you out from your actual goal? in my case, it's extra to my real blogging that is here. A part of the blog that is more humor and more carefree. As an artist though?  If you doing videos about your videos where is your time to do the music that the video should promote? In the beginning, the video should promote the music now you to a behind movie about the video that should promote the music?

I have the same problem. Should I do vlogs to promote the blog that is written? Or just focus on the written part alone?

As an artist, you can go crazy about all these different opportunities coming from the industry. But there is no good answer what you should do, spread out thin or thick? I guess my best advice is going what you feel good with. I usually test everything but if it takes to much time or feels forced or not right I leave that thing pretty fast. Right now I like my vlog.

The modern DJ

It takes time.

I just got a supervisor that I have worked for years with but never got a placement. It has been close several times but it has always missed. Finally, we got the placement done. After working together for at least eight years it's finally here.

I was curious about which song it was. And he sent me the whole brief. This must have been one of the first songs we ever sent to him. The band was a band that wanted everything very fast. They signed off an EP on to us talking that it would fit on a movie. After just four months they left us since we hadn't placed any of the songs. In reality, it's very rare to get a placement that fast. At the same time, they were always in a hurry and had kind of very strange opinions on what a publisher should do for them.

Now ten years later the song is placed. I had forgotten about the band and now I went out to see if they are still active. No, they have even tried to take off all traces of themselves online. No homepage, not even a Spotify account, and their SoundCloud is gone. But you can follow their hurry to jump to the next things. You can see them put out things to then take them off to put out the next. Changing manager and booking agency twice in one year. All gathered in small pockets of digital information they have forgotten to take off.

I wonder what would happen if the song now with the placement take off?

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The producer won't get you streamed.

It's not actually that important who produced the record as long as it sounds good. Too many are looking too much onto the name dropping. I got my third mail just today with bands being produced by a producer name. Yes, producer name, to the main public these producers are unknown. I bet if I went down to my local grocery store and ask random ten people, name a famous music producer I bet that eight can't. One will say ABBA, which was not the producer. And maybe one can say a name like Michael B Tretow who actually produced ABBA. Maybe also Rick Rubin would get on there. But I doubt it.

So when bands come up and say, well this is produced by so and so that produced Terence Trent D'Arby, Unknown Indie artist and some local band. It's like, who cares?

First with crappy songs the producer can't really do anything. It's like polish a turd. And many of these producers need money to stay afloat so they might do a job, and keep quiet themselves. Then they might be good songs and the producer let them shine. But that hit they produced was accompanied by a great PR team which is missing here. And even with the best songs without PR, it's tough to get them going. Is actually better to have a bad song and a good PR team than a good song and a good producer.

In many ways, it feels like the producer is just a teddy bear for a nervous artist. Especially if it just comes down to namedropping that the producer has done this and that.

To get the right producer, don't go by name go by how the producer can enhance your sound. And that can be a rather unknown producer that is right over the ones with big names.

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Minor problems.

Don't mind the small things when you still have to do the big stuff. I know I'm that way in so many ways. I rather do the small fast things and if I get stuck with a problem then I keep on trying to solve that small problem for a whole day. Everything just to ignore that big problem I was supposed to do.

Much of the questions I get from the artist are those small problems. How do I pimp my MYspace page was one big question a couple of years ago. Why pimp that page when you don't have any people there. Yes, it becomes much easier to send out that newsletter if you can talk about how cool you MYspace page is. At the same time, you don't have any readers to your newsletter and that is where the big task is. So it's more fun to pimp the page then go out and get real fans.

And since that stops you yes, you keep on nagging around that page even though it won't take you anywhere. But in reality you don't need a pimped page, 99% of your fans don't mind the page or even care if it's pimped or not. This is just in your head.

Which leads me to get on and get to the bigger problems that I avoid.

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It's just one opinion

I talked to one of my artists that was a bit jaded over a review that wasn't that good. With the new digital age, bad reviews have become more and rarer. Mainly because if you as a blog write a bad review you can get the whole fanbase of that artist making your life miserable. The new approach is just to write about stuff that you like and write a good review about. Or in the lazy cases the things where you just provide that the song is out there.

At the same time do we need it? I mean today I can just go in there and hear the song for my self. Is it good or not in my ears? Maybe it's just enough with people telling what songs they found great and post?

I'm not that sure. Before there were music journalists. Today it's some random dude that just put a blog up that claims to be a critic. Rather they only make a good post on bands they already like and have opinions that really don't match with anything. Do I care what John, forty years old and is grown up on 90:s punk music thinks of Arian Grande? Really no, and I guess the bloggers know that so they mainly just post good things on artists with strong stories that will break soon.

Sure a bit like my Blog, a random dude saying anything. Okey, I prove myself in the Vlog to at least attend and speak on big music events. And I give some bad reviews on everything from time to time.

Still when I send in things through Submithub to different of these dudes you always get such weird feedback. Yes you pay so they should get your feedback, and after listening to music that you probably think is crappy you get a bit cynical and just write something. I get it.

So tada! I will post these here as extras when I find them. Of course not out them, I'm impressed how they can keep up with all shit they get. Some are too good to miss out on.

My first one is this:

Decline: sounds a little bit like Christian rock to me. Very easy listening.

From a blog in Austin, Texas. The mother of all Christian Rock is in Texas. I guess this dude goes in a church just battering with bad language.

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Work ethic

One of the more read blog posts is "Management is not a booking agency". One of the comments was that you as a manager can choose the artists that have the work ethic. Yes, you can the problem is to find the artist that has all three things you looking for. in many cases you have to compromise. if you just waited for the right to move along you probably would wait for a lifetime. This is what you need to get an artist off the ground.

Good songs. The best is if the artist actually can write good songs and be updated with the latest in production. This is really not easy to find. Many of the good examples of the next two things are usually the victim of this, that is also why I put it first. You can keep up all other things but with crappy songs, it's hard if not impossible. So many times I see really hard-working artists, managers, and others get forward when the problem is that the music is really crap or the production is really out of date. Yes, you can buy good songs but in the long run, the economy will be the problem.

Work Ethic. Yes, the second is work ethic. In reality, I'm investing time in your business dream. The artist should work hard and work as much as possible. An easy task like answering four questions that you need the same day should not take a week which I encounter quite many times. Update your own homepage and promote gigs in social media should not be that hard either. Much of the problem here is usually that you are several people in the band and no one takes responsibility for the different tasks. Many cases it's the same person doing everything and the rest just tag along, or no one is doing nothing. Here I see many doing the right things when the music is wrong also very many talented songwriters just sleeping on the sofa.

Endurance. You won't be a star overnight. It never happens. Endurance is the key and to be able to keep up good songwriting and work ethic over a couple of years is really not an easy task. I bump into many that try to squeeze all in a year. Never works out. The problem when the success is not showing up immediately they just fail off. Another thing is they do just the races while they release something and think that it can make up all the loss of time before.

To get all these three at the same time is actually one of the hardest things.

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Peter goes to Guimaraes part two

Peter goes to Guimarães part 2. 30 Hashtags! Don't puke in the castle. Sandy teach Peter to dance. Sam makes art. Did Chris forget his Octopussy?

Trailer for ENEA Springbreak who is joining?

Peter goes to Guimarães and Westway lab part one

Peter goes to Guimarães and Westway lab. Mango Bosch teach Portugal
real music and becomes a DJ and play Sator.



Part two comes tomorrow.

Your will stands and grows in the forest.

Yes you feel that your project is important, we know that but there is a proverb that my grandmother always used - Your will stands and grows in the forest!
Which means you have a will but it's not powerful or important enough.

That will can get you in deepshit trouble. I was just called up by one of my co-workers. Her son is seriously sick for the moment so she is not in the office taken some days off. Suddenly an artist comes up in the feed that he so urgently needs to know the ISRC code for one of his songs. He couldn't find it on the distribution page. Around five minutes he starts to call my co-worker. She doesn't have her phone number on the page, but if you search you can find her number in other press coverage. She is trying to decide which medication to get for her sick child and this artist is calling on and on again. In the end, she had to call me to get the code out there.

First of all the ISRC is put there by the artist. He should know what the code is. He should have his own record over that. Second what is so in a hurry that you need code the same five minutes? It's an old song from years ago. He would have gotten the code from us during the day. But there is no reason for us to drop everything that we are doing just because an artist doesn't have their shit together.

Then calling people with a number you just found online is not ok. This is the reason we don't have phone support any longer is that people misused it. To many just go for the phone. And even if she had answered, she doesn't know the code and had just said you have to wait. Another thing about this it's also happened during lunch hour. So you would expect people to be at lunch even.

In this case, sure it takes me one minute to find it and send it over. Still, the silent closing door was shut on this artist. I'm definitely not gonna do any favors for him. It's not ok that my colleague had to deal with this small crap of shit because an artist doesn't know or understand the manner.

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Nice behavior takes you far.

If you read yesterdays post about attitude. Today I will get you the opposite, the nice artist and how they succeed.

Just my weekend at the showcase festival Westway lab is a good example. I was approached by a booking agent very nicely and he wanted to personally invite me to his band's gig. Yes with that approach I really took my time to see that band even though it was just an hour before I had to leave for the airport.

Then it was the fan that use to read my blog. He hadn't added me on facebook because he didn't want to harass me. But he read the blog very often and like the content. Of course, you can add on Facebook, especially when you are nice and genuinely interested.

Another nice artist helped one of my bands with their equipment. Of course, I looked after to see their show as well. My artist was nice to a booker and what do you know today she got a message that she is booked to his festival.

To be nice will take you so much longer. In fact, many of the big artist knows this and is always nice and then send their manager to do the criticism. By doing that they always see as nice and the good person. And that is important for their image and their career. Like I wrote yesterday, the door is fast shout silently and they know this.

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Attitude, will close door silently.

Just confronted an artist that had a very bad attitude against our employees. He was being stupid for no reason at all. One of the uploads on the homepage happened to get the wrong bio. It happens, it's hundreds of bios that should be uploaded. This artist noticed that it was the wrong bio and wrote an angry mail saying that we should change. He forgot to put with the mail what we should change it to. So the wrote back and asked what the correct bio should be. We never got an answer. Maybe we did we don't know but it was laying around for a while until three weeks later we got another angry mail again. the same mistake though didn't give us what we should change it to. Since they were tired to get angry emails they just took the artist off for the moment until they got the right text.

Then we had to change the homepage. The artist was screaming to get up on the page again, but this time we had to wait since the new page had to be built. And still, we hadn't got the right text from the artist. Finally, we got the text but had to wait a week more for the page. In the end, it was right on the page.

Still, the artist kept on writing angry emails, was now complaining about other small things that had nothing to do with his artist page. In a classical way, he was an asshole.

When I confronted him he was like, yeah you need to have an attitude to get things done!

No, the attitude will close doors. But in this business, these doors close very silently. Of course, the staff is not doing any extra for this artist. We also discovered a way to get him off forever which they will use. We will also internally talk around him which will spread to several channels.

Many times when I get an artist that I might think working with I check with people that has worked with them before. It's really not unusual you get these attitude horror stories and silently just close the door on them.

And attitude only works in a short while. If you bring in money for the company they can put up with it. As soon you are not in the top the doors close very fast. And people also then enjoy seeing your downfall. An artist with attitude falls much faster than a nice one.

A quite good example is Oasis, sure they had some years, but nowadays they are not even booked to small stages. They are treated as a pariah and really have not much of a career. My professional guess is that many wanted them to fail after all their attitude problems.

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Tired of fakes

I was just checking out an act that I have worked with. A good band but they have a horrible manager that thinks everything should be cheated or those big companies would solve a problem. For a beginner or a person outside the business, it looks really good for them. But since we live in the digital age for me is easy to see how the manager is trying to cheat on everything.

You can easily see how they released a single on a major label. You can also see how the major label has pumped up the numbers on Spotify but forgotten all other numbers. Then they were dumped by the major label and after that, you can see the number drop to some real figures.

Then they probably realized that without live shows nothing really go forward. So now they have got on to a booking agency. The problem here is that the agency is famous for not getting you any gigs. The manager is more or less trying all the wrong things in the battle to do nothing.

The sad part the manager has already sabotaged their chances to go abroad by acting like a jerk to several showcase festivals. At the same time, the manager has not the network to get any success in that environment since they are just looking for the next opportunity to look cool, not to get things done.

Then in the bio, you can easily read the cool things they did is things you easy can buy. Not cheap but still it's just a price tag to it nothing that you are good.

In the end, I see a lot of this right now. Things that are bought or fake and just desperation to look to something when in reality you just have to bootstrap your self and get on with the real thing. In this case, it's sad, the mange is wasting the artist time and when they get that it will be too late and their opportunity is gone.

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The obvious mistakes

It's hard to get an audience. No shit Sherlock! To get an audience you need to be good. This is the ground for everything. Either you are really really bad or really really good, in between you are totally lost. The main problem is that most are actually in that midsection. I would even guess my blog is in the midsection. I try to make it as good as possible. But I know there are people writing really good that has the upper hand on this.

So what do I do, I try to make my blog coming up to that upper section. Not language wise I won't manage to do that, maybe in Swedish but not in English, I know my limitations. To know your limitations is also good. Too many try to reach things they can't reach in the way they think. No, I try to find ways to entertain people in my own way. see what works and not work.

Will I get out of the midsection. I guess with hard try I might do it when I find the right formula. A problem is that many people tell me the "right" formula. In the end, though I'm the only one who can make the formula works. You have to sort out what people are saying. Some you keep some you just forget. I guess the hard part is to know to do with what.

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Know what favors you ask about!

Imagine that I write you an email. You know me but not that well, we meet on your consert and had a beer afterwards (that you paid). That was also two years ago and you haven't heard from me since that.

Hello, hope everything is ok. I was just wondering a couple of things. I'm trying to become a musician and was wondering if it's smart to start a song with a D-accord or is it better if it is an A? I read that many hits start with a D so maybe that is good.
Also, I struggle to write songs. Can you write a couple of good songs that I can put my name under? I don't have any money but I would rather just give out music where it says my name. Can you also record them? I find it hard to record songs and I don't have the time. I was thinking since you like music you can record them and then I just come in and sing the vocals, and the vocals have to be written so it suits my voice.

We are thinking to get gigs, but it's really hard. I saw that your band had a couple, can you cancel it and then we can get them? The gear would be nice to borrow for those gigs. Can you drive them out for us and how much will they pay us to play there?
Regards.
New guitar hero.

Now you think that this stupid letter I would never get. I received three last week. It's just that I have transformed the letter so it fits to a musician.

First one was asking for advice for a good distribution system, sending it to our distribution department asking for advice since his distribution didn't take care of all the things. the funny part is that we do but we really don't want such idiots in the system.

Another one was sending me the info sheet to claim a song. Thinking that I should fill it out for her because she didn't understand or had the time.
In the next sentence, she asked for advice on a good  PR company, well I run a PR company so I should send the work to someone else?

The third one was asking for gigs. Tell me that he had seen that my bands got a lot of gigs so he wondered if he could get the emails to the places where my bands played.

And this is just last week.

I just wish there where a drivers license to give out music so we could get rid of the damn idiots. Sure I know they don't mean to bother, but some thinking should go into it.

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We don't have all the time in the world.

I can understand why artists become stressed about time. When they are releasing they can go nuts just becuse everything is not going as fast as they want to. Making them taking kind of irrational decsions. On the other hand between the releases, it seems like there is all the time in the word and nothing really happens.

It's like highest gear and then the slowest gear. There is nothing in between?

With these new systems, we have and the digital world we live in. A pattern like that is not very efficient. The releases are not that important that you think it is. The social media updates are not as important that you think it is. In the end, is how smart you communicate your message and in what way that counts.

You should not burn out yourself. At the same time you can't really have a vacation from what you are doing. The whole puzzle becomes quite strange.

I'm in the same situation. I feel my time is not enough. I don't have time to do things that I enjoy. Still, I need to keep up the brand and do the things I need to do. The solution is to take off the heavier time thieves. Now I'm just in the mood to find these time thieves and how I should select them.

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Changing opinions

I was at a mini-festival here in Sweden not long ago. I meet an artist that is nowadays is working a bit in the industry with an event. One of the band s I wanted to see was a band I have been helping out for a long time. It's just friends but I have helped them with stuff and advice from time to time.

When I started to help them we wanted to get into my artist friends event. I bumped into him on an industry event in Stockholm and gave him the suggestion to add this band to his event that he had later that year.

- No, they are not good enough, they are really lousy. Never become anything. Would never enter them on my stage. Was the answer I got. I countered with that that is just an opinion many people like them and they have the backup with quite many good people from the industry. But no.

I later that year got them on to a much bigger event then my friends and from on there, their career went straight up and now they are one of the more shining stars of newcomers.

So here three years later we are on this min-festival. My friend goes up on stage and presenting the bands. To my surprise, he uses so many superlative words around the band. In the end, he reveals that he is inviting them to his event later this year.

Suddenly they are not that bad. Of course, if I confronted him he will just say that the band has developed and he didn't see that back then. In fact sure they have developed but part of your job is to see that the band can develop and see the potential in it.

So suddenly he is going around and telling everybody how he discovered them. In fact, he was doing nothing and just jumped the train when it was in movement.

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Don't put make up on a pig in production.

Seems like today's artists think production is everything. We see how they compete to have the most perfect production all the time. In this process, they have forgotten that it's all about the song. If the song sucks already from the start production just becomes like putting makeup on a pig, it's still a pig. I get too many pig songs for the moment, yes the production is slick but the song is as ugly as my Macarena dance.

A good song you can transform into anything. A good song becomes great acoustic, or with a symphony orchestra or even as a metal version. And that is because the song which is the ground to the whole thing is good. Today it feels more like the artists and songwriters try to hide the bad songwriting behind a cool production. Then they try to get it online and buy as many streams they can and think they done a hit.

Another bad side effect of this is that when you start to criticize the song they already have done so much production that they feel they don't want to lose that work they have already put down. They instead start to fix small things in the production thinking that it gets me like the song.

I'm pretty tired to send out stuff that is just halfway. The competition is so hard out there that at least the song as to be good. The production is just the icing on the cake that is the last you do. You don't start with the icing and then start to get the cake inside. If you present a cake like that the consumer directly sees (in this case hear) that it's something wrong.

Right now I miss good songwriters. Good producers are like snowflakes everywhere and plenty of. mainly because most tools are digital they are also like snow, white and empty there is really no thinking like in the old days when if they need a sound they had made it up. Today you just download a plugin. There is no thought or handcraft behind it.

Yes, all this devalues the music industry for the moment.

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Peter goes to Bucharest day 2

Panel day on MMB, Peter get starstruck twice and is picked up by a new manger. Pronto Pronto.




Also the new trailer for the Vlog for Westway Lab next week.

Vlog Peter goes to Bucharest and MMB day 1

Peter goes to Bucharest Day 1 and visits mmb2019, learn that the most famous Romanian song is from Moldavia. And goes on the red carpet.

The career screwers

A friend of mine was reading to a become psychologist and said that quite many that started the semester quickly jumped off. In reality, they wanted to find out more about their own problems then become the profession. he said every starting semester was the same game to who was there for their own problems. Of course, people with problems always thought they were masterminds of helping others. In reality, it was blind leading blind in many cases, just because you have gone through it makes you a great person to help others.

This is the reason I'm pretty skeptical when former musicians take places in the professional industry. Yes, there is many that are great on it, but a rather high percentage is really not good at it. Just this week I have been forced to "re-program" some artist that former musician had got into so many strange ideas and things.

Also, age is a matter thing. Not the number just when you did your things. For example, just found a book by a guy that just had one hit ever in the early nineties. Probably that hit was more a lucky stroke since he only did one. The hit was not done by him, it was a good marketing team and the right place and the right time. Suddenly he thought he was a mastermind of giving out music and has spent the rest twenty years screwing peoples careers with strange advice that is really not good for an artist. Like here his claim to fame is a hit made over 25 years ago. it's before the internet, it's before cellphones. There is no reality to it, and all the things he is teaching is more or less for that era. Which of course doesn't fit in what is going on today.

Later on, he also became a teacher in a music school. Of course, these people never make it, they end up in schools, government programs and sits around and still proclaim disinformation. I got a question the other day why the students from this school sucked, and I had to tell the story. The person I talked to was really upset and wanted me to expose the whole thing here in my blog.

I can't do that, there is no crime being sucky. Sure I feel sorry for the students that put in a lot of time an effort and don't get a good education back. Still, I can't put people on the line here. can't tell which school it is or witch teacher. Age is the key to it though to check things out. If your teacher never left the school environment, or the last time they worked in the industry at all in a more professional way more then five years back. You should think twice if they really have the knowledge any longer. Or if they are just like the psychology students just seeing the education as a platform to make money before heading back to become a musician.

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It's called chain error, stopp bugging about it.

I was sending out a press release for an artist. Of course, I told them to check the text before it got out so it was correct. Sure it was and I started to send the stuff out. When I had gone through two email lists the artist messed me and told me that one of the links was wrong. I stopped and corrected the link and started all over again. This time the whole list was sent to.

Then I spoke to the artist and told him that around 2 out of 15 email lists got the wrong email, but they also got the new so they will update. Since it is automatic it might happen that the wrong comes out and then replaced by the new message.

Suddenly the artist sends me a link with one page with the wrong message. Yes, I told him it will change. Then he sends another one and another one. Yes, it will be the same mistake on each one of them. And it will be corrected in the same way.

Now the artist is sending stuff for the past hour and it's annoying like shit. The people in the office is starting to get angry at him. First, the error was his own. Second, we have told him how it works no need to send all errors you find it's a chain reaction so it will be fixed.

Time flies, don't stress about it.

I was ahead with things for the blog and for other parts. Then suddenly we had to move the office, not that far just a room away. Moving a whole office takes times. When you then discover that the new room doesn't have any internet connection it takes a bit longer to fix everything.

In total, I guess I have been offline for five days. two of them was a weekend. I have redone a lot of thing to three different rooms.

First I felt stressed every time my phone blips or messages comes in and updates. Then I just thought, well nothing is that important that you need an answer on a Thursday afternoon. During Saturday I felt, well I have a weekend and this is my priority.

Now when it's Sunday night, hell my brain feel rested. My arms and legs are sore but that is from all moving. I post this on Tuesday since I need to make some sort of joke on April fools day. I hope you went for it yesterday, and no I won't work for Lady Gaga even if would be cool.

In a way, you need these escapes sometimes. The whole society is so stressed out to get information instantly. I guess we really don't. Do we?

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I'm going to work with Lady Gaga!

It has been a really long time when I wasn't allowed to tell anything, but today it's open. I'm moving forward to work with Lady Gagas management and her new album G6. I sought out this position to move to NYC and also spend time in the LA office. I will work very close to Lady Gaga and take decisions around the whole album all from covers to press pictures and the whole PR work.

What sucks is that I have to leave the missions I have in Sweden there is no room for more artists or festivals when you work with a star like this. I also have to change all my social media accounts to be one of her "monsters" all her employees go under the name little monster.

This will be great! Let the next chapter begin.

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