I Am Missing the Special Bond with the Artists

 

I have been spending a lot of time on online conferences again. Last year I did over 30 of them and now they are becoming frequent again. But online conferences will never replace the real meetings at an “in-person" conference. One thing has really stood out though during these times. The online world is a much harder place for the artist to connect and get anything done.

Too many of the people I meet at these conferences are doing two serious mistakes. Mistakes I personally also do, so it’s a human thing. Either they contact everyone they just see at the conference, more or less just asking the person if they have an opportunity for them. A hard question since I haven’t checked you out or know what you are doing. The other mistake is just hanging around and really not presenting yourself to anybody. You feel that you don’t have anything to offer so you mainly just sit there and wait for the persons that contact everybody to show up. In the end, the match between these two is non-existent.

This is the backside of online conferences. My best thing has been talking to people finding them interesting and in the end, we find common ground and do some business. This process can take years of meetings and at the end of it, it’s about the chemistry between you and the other person. You have to like the person that you are working with. This element is taken away totally in the online conference world. Here it’s just what you offer and what the other person demands. It’s very easy to get lost in figures or the latest release.

When the conferences were in person you sometimes just found an artist, saw their show and hit them up, and had a good time. You got a relationship going. When you went back and saw the numbers of that artist it didn’t matter too much what they were, you rather wanted to help this person out since they were doing something you liked on stage and were a genuinely nice human being. In the digital world that chit-chat is lost and the first you look at is the YouTube or Spotify numbers and if they are low you just think I will grab it later when it rolls.

It will never roll. Things get rolling because of that meeting where the numbers don’t really matter.

Instead, I’m inundated with different online videos with concerts I will never listen to or see. I hardly see a whole concert with my favorite band Ramones. To ask me to watch a whole concert with an unknown artist that I might like is out of the question. The online conferences for artists are just like a giant playlist of nothing. So why am I’m on online conferences? Because I can talk to people I already know. Be updated on new stuff around people that I already know about their careers. Yes, I also poke around and look at new artists. Play them on my radio show. Still, I can’t feel any of the magic I could experience when we meet in person and I can help you get your whole career going.

I can just imagine this as an artist. I really feel for them. I just hope COVID goes away and we get back to at least interact with people in real-time.

The original text on Cashbox Canada

Which Artists Will Survive COVID-19?

 I have been talking to many festival organizers over the past weeks. Mainly I wanted to ask if they are going to try to do them in the summer of 2021 or push them to 2022 or just close altogether. That has been the debate the whole time which bars, gig venues, and festivals will survive. The other discussion is which artists will survive has not been covered much in the media but has been discussed behind the scenes activity in the industry.

Many festivals are taking the same line-up with them from 2020 until 2021. Now of course if they move to 2022, that line-up is not that current. Even if you have the line-up from last year who knows which artists will still be active.

Ok, huge artists who have a stack of money will survive. But the middle size bands that you think are making money are at risk. Now when money is low, they are forced to find other jobs with probably better payment. When things clear up in a bit there is a big chance that they have found new career paths and don’t feel stable enough to get back to the uncertain music industry again. Many of these people will be light engineers, sound engineers, and back musicians. Without those, the artist can’t tour. Of course, they can get new ones, but they need to be trained.

Another problem might be that the artist that should have been on the road in 2020 might not be able to do it in 2021. The festivals really don’t know who they can have on their line-ups. The latest gossip is that the really big festivals that need artists from all around the globe will push to 2022 since they are not sure if people will be able or allowed to fly this summer.

My guess is that many artists will abandon their careers. They have felt it’s not fun anymore and this will be the final nail in the coffin. Music is not dying though. The empty slots are replaced by new ones. We need music and there are people that also express themselves through it. I guess we will see a big change in many charts though. A massive thing with a new artist coming up.

Then you have the backside that you always get in these situations with the economy going down and people laid off. Suddenly all these that jumped on a new career years ago in another crisis are picking up their instrument again and trying to make a comeback. Right now, my email box is full of band members from the past doing new projects. The problem with them is that you know already they don’t have the stamina to be in this business, so my attention span for them is very low.

I’m on the hunt for new artists that want to take a chance, really live and breathe music, and want to explore the new opportunities that will be available in the new world after the pandemic.

In these situations, you can see who really wants to be in the industry and likes to work with music. Not just saying that they do, the people that mean it. I can also say that I see the same patterns along with people that tried to get into the business but really never had the full passion. With these positions taken again, you will have new opportunities. The issue right now is to forecast who will stay on and who will fall off the train.

The original column from Cashbox Magazine

This is the worst song ever!

Yes, you who wrote another song around Covid -19. No there is NOBODY who wants to hear your feelings around Covid -19, sorry. Writing in the intro text that the song is about that is just begging the intake on anything to just put it in the trashcan.

In the past days, I have already got fifteen of them. And most is a smelly cat* or smelly dog* crying how lonely they are. Yes, I know that you should be writing stuff about things that you really know. The problem here is that everybody has their own version on Covid -19. And they are so busy that they won't take in what you are singing about. In the truth, we really don't want to be reminded about it either. So my suggestion goes back and writes a happy tune seeing and meet people because that is what people are longing for. Another song that we should come together and break walls, stand up be courageous, been there done that.

If you are a small artist it is even worse because so many famous artists have got together and already done this. And to be honest the famous ones can't even make this a hit anyway. You need to be first. Like Bob Geldof when he did "Do they know it's Christmas" well after that many tried to do the same thing. Okay America with USA for Africa made it a good second, but who remembers the Swedish Hardrock initiative, or Band Aid II or all the others doing the same thing?

Too many are just dead fishes following the stream. If everybody is doing live streaming then they all jump on. Same with topics and release plans. The most amazing is that the artist that always claim to be one of a kind or special in one way are the ones taht are the hardest to convince that you need to get out of that box to be able to get something new. Like everything else, you need to create and be there from the beginning to be able to get something out of it.

So every new thing that comes around in sites, it's only, in the beginning, you have a chance to be there. Like Tik Tok if you think now it's new you are out of your mind. Now it's over, the artists on Tik Tok is already gone and done. We are chasing the next thing.

But the majority of the artists are in that way they are slow they are still on the playlist things on Spotify not realizing that Youtube just got Googel play into Youtube music and slowly like a giant prepare to crush the green bug. Will it happen? We have to wait and see. My guess though is that many "famous" artists disappear. Their fame is just a base on an algorithm on a certain platform.

To be famous in a real way, you have to break out of that box. Try things and fail and then learn from them. It takes time and you have to be doing it over and over. So forget that Covid 19 song and that you are gonna live stream it. That is almost half a year ago.

*Smelly cat or dog is an expression on our A&R teams for bad sing and songwriters, a cat is a sad girl on guitar and a dog is a sad guy on guitar. Hailing from the TV series "Friends" where Phoebe got a hit with the song smelly cat