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.
People seek me out quite often to get some sort of advice. Suddenly you are feeling that they are trying to take the advice and fit it in to their confirmation.
What they want is confirmation of something they think work in a certain way but when my advice goes in a totally wrong direction it becomes lika a argumentation.
In the end they will do the thing they thought instead of following the advice I gave.
By the years I have become better to read what they want so when I notice it's just a confirmation I just go along. I know they will come back later when their plan didn't work out. My hope then is that they will have a more open mind.
Before we start you can get the latest post in your mailbox just by putting your email in the box up in the right corner.
Trust the people you work with or stop working with them. Many times I meet people in the music industry telling the same thing. Artists seek out their advice but then just go in and try to question the advice.
In some cases is just the advice should be what the artist wants to hear. In others, it just seems the artist wants to get even by going against the advice you just gave.
In the end, you just feel frustrated. Much would be more simple if you just trusted the persons you work with.
PERSONAL: since we are in the thing about right partner and the career choice. I get more here.
I wrote we live in our own universe we have created. It sounds amazing?
When I write this it's my birthday. I'm 10 000 meters in the air flying from Taiwan to The Netherlands. The good part is that the stewardess offered me a glass of free champagne since it's my birthday. Still, I celebrate my birthday on a fricking airplane. I woke up alone this morning. No singing, no cake, no presents. Actually not even a party to look forward to. Even the time in Sweden was so early that the usual people saying happy birthday hadn't got up. I just skipped breakfast to sleep until noon.
Since there will be no presents I went by myself to the electronic Plaza in Taiwan to buy some stuff in the office and might find some cool present to myself. I found a puking elephant in a vending machine. Best birthday gift I ever got.
I went back checked out of my hotel room. Then I found some of the new people I meet at this conference, they were going out to eat so I joined them. Here I have already forgotten it's my birthday. Great food, great people that I have just known for 48 hours.
Then it was time to go to the airport. The organizer of the conference knew it was my birthday. So they had bought a present, also the whole staff sang for me before we left in the cab to the airport.
I know that I will not get a party. After Facebook have gossip that it is my birthday people forget about it. I guess without Facebook 95% wouldn't have a clue that it is my birthday. If I'm lucky Ulrika remembers to buy a present, to get to me when I get home, but I'm not sure she has time to do it. It's quite many training camps right now with the dogs.
I'm I sad about it? No, its a choice! I could have a normal 9 to 5 job and we could have had a really big barbecue with my friends today. I would have been home, got presents and cake.
Then I would have been forced to take off the other stuff. I wouldn't be to Taiwan getting new friends meeting amazing people. Feeling proud of the great performance The Magnettes did. Go on the red carpet in front of 3.1 billion viewers. Exploring new exotic food. I choose to live my life to the fullest every day. With that means that some special days can't be that special. But I don't want to change, just accept that I can't get it both.
No, it's not what you think, that I will give you the advice to go your own way. Artists that actually go their own way discarding the advice doesn't go that far.
This is about all the advice that people like me give you online. Most of them actually have an agenda and the advice might not fit what you are about to do how good they seem to be when you read them. Right now I have bumped into several artists that are information junkies. They read all they can come over to make everything right when they should release music or take the "next" step in their career. In the end, they mix a lot of the advices and it's like ending up mixing ice cream with ketchup. Both are good but not mixed together. Also, they are focusing on the small tweaks instead of the big elephant in the room.
Same with lawyers, they are there to give you advice. The problem that they seldom know what their advice could lead to. If you negotiate a contract it will be good for you but uninteresting for the counterpart. Many times this advice can destroy a career rather get it forward. In many situations this contract where a lawyer said this and that and I did what I felt for, I went the right way. Today I got a really big paycheck that many gave me advice not to. Still, I knew what I was doing and as long I didn't write off to many rights or any important rights it was a great deal. And the proof now four years later.
Take also the advice of people that are out there in the industry. I just heard one of the dumbest advice from a lawyer. The advice was built on old stuff that was in the industry years ago, for example, give out a CD and don't release it digitally until six months later. Of course, this lawyer is not out in the reality. He is still thinking that Midem is the meeting point for the industry. Just that says that he is not in the position to give any advice.
The worst advice usually comes from other artists. In these things, it's more like blind leading blind. In so many ways an artist career has been smashed into pieces for a bad advice from another musician. A career is never like another career but the mistakes are usually the same.
So who should I trust? You can't you should what feels right and collect people you like to work with you and go from there.
One thing that really is annoying is people that seeks you up for advices and then do the things they should not do anyway.
So just an example (it’s an example of course not true). You seek me up asking what kind of shirt would be best on a show to get people listening. I give you the advice that wearing a blue shirt would make the audience not listening to your music and there are researches that back this up. A red shirt is good, but a yellow shirt is really the best option.
This person then just goes and play in a blue shirt anyway. Because they like blue shirts. That is fine, but why ask for the advice? If you already has decided what you should wear, just stick to that and don’t waste peoples time.
The worst ones is the ones that ask around until they find someone that will tell them that the blue is okay. Or even worse nag you with different theory’s that the blue shirt will work.
If you have that idea go for it, still don’t blame us later when that blue shirt never got you anywhere
