Yes you are a failure!

You have every right to fail. I don’t know why failure is such a high thing in the music industry? Okay, it’s high in the rest of the market but still, I just find it very present that you must succeed. Inside the startup world in some cases, it’s a plus that you have done some failure missions. In the music industry, it’s that you changed the style and didn’t want to be a sellout.

It seems in the music industry or at least in artist sections it seems like a taboo. Things like artists think it’s bad that they post videos when it’s not much audience. It looks like failure to them that is was no audience. That can also be a lack of marketing or other things. Same when their lasts single didn’t go as planned, then they did this artistic thing to not be a sellout. If you have any critic against a song, well then you don’t get it, but my 25 000 spins on Spotify prove you wrong. In the music industry, you never fail. That is so wrong, this industry is a big failure in all. So, come and join the party.

In many cases, it seems like at first failure the artist gives up. Seen many bands split up after just some small hiccups. Just because everything is not going totally straight to the top doesn’t mean you should quit.

Even worse is when they become totally paralyzed doing nothing because failure is not an option it seems better to wait until everything is perfect. Then the perfect opportunities never arrive, and they just wait and wait until it just all fades away.

Also not take the risk or a chance in the chance to become a failure clouds the judgment many times. Ask for too many assurances before talking the risk usually ends is doing nothing and ends in the fading sections.

So, what are you risking? You do a small shitty show in the sticks. Is that a failure? At least you played, at least you got out and got booked. Not so much audience. Not the best sound system or lightning? Still, if you converted the few who were there it was a success. I get a feeling that many artists look at it as a failure.

But even if it was a complete failure it's ok. You learned something around it. And that knowledge is good. I guess there is nothing that is a failure if it doesn’t kill you and you learn something.

I have done many failures and I actually have talked about them in panels. In fact, those panels are the most successful ones. So, if you think about it the failures were just the road to success. Stop thinking everything must be perfect. That is the way that your mental health can get deteriorate. Just shake it off, learn from it. I admit that yes that was not the best choice, but I learned from it and now I move on. Turn the failure to a strength.

Who can you trust? The PR firm that f**ks up your track.

I can get annoyed that artists are going through processes and not trusting anything. They act like they live in former eastern Europe and a spooked by everything.

Last week I spoke to a friend that was hiring two PR firms. These PR firms are one of the more famous ones and have a long row of famous artists that use them. My friend had been in long discussions with them and they had made a plan for his new release.

I meet him at a convention and he asked what I thought about these two PR agencies. I told him that they are famous ones and seems to do a good job. My friend then explained their PR plan and each step they will do, and it was full of mistakes. Not just mistakes, rookie mistakes that a PR company should guide their artist not to do.

First, they released the track in the middle of the week, saying it was less competition? Yes, it's a reason for that. Friday is the official day in the world to release music. Most lists, programs, and other things updates on Friday. To release on another day then that is getting a guarantee that the track doesn't get any attention at the streaming services like Spotify, Deezer or Apple. Have less chance to get rotation on radio and less chance to be written about on blogs. Simply since you mess up the process of publishing things for these tastemakers

I asked if they were not doing any PR against the streaming services. The answer he got was that Spotify is not that important. If the track goes well somewhere else it will gain traction.
That is just bullshit! You get a much tougher job if you don't present the music to them. And most sources like press and radio usually don't affect the listeners on Spotify. So it's a must that you do these steps to even have the slightest chance to get anything out of this single. I guess they tell stuff like that since they don't know how to market to these sites.

I asked if he had gotten the codes from the distributor to send to the streaming services? The PR agencies had never asked for any codes, which means they couldn't have been promoting him to the most important streaming services. In reality, they haven't even tried.

Not just that they asked him to release in the middle of the week. They asked him to release it and then they would send out to radio and media since they needed the Spotify link and could only get that after a release.

I was baffled, you can get that link beforehand. More baffled that they were totally crashing my friend's release. Not even a rookie trying to do PR would have done a worse job, and these claimed to be top of the line. Working with the biggest stars in Sweden and all, still, they had very little knowledge how to make PR in the new digital landscape.

I'm not that surprised though. I got an artist I work with myself, hiring a famous PR firm that claimed to be the best. They were expensive and got a few things for him. In a test, I told the artist that if he gave me half of the budget I will try to get a better result. He did and my in-house PR team with minimal effort got three times more result then this PR firm. Especially on streaming services, but also much more on international blogs.

So I apologize all artists, you have all rights to be suspicious. When the most renowned firms fuck things up like this, who can you really trust?

Blind leading blind

Aren't we all failed musicians? I guess everyone that is in the musicindustry is failed musician in some way.

I usually say I'm not a failed musician and that is my strength. It's not totally true. I was in a band rehersing (never made a show) when I got into studio work where I stayed and then went to the business side.

It's worse with the people that really tried to make it and then failed and now gonna fulfill their dreams through someone else.

If you look at it on a business side they didn't have their business plan correct. The sad part is that they transfer this malfunction business plan to a new artist.

Also they are not focused. I just was on a party with a manager like that. He had been an artist. Blamed he failure on lack of opportunities when he was an artist. Now he was working for a new record label that he started with a friend (also faild musician that turned producer). He was happy like a kid in a candy shop when he managed to get into this party.

Of course he didn't have the shit together here. First he was acting like a musician when he was networking, in this case not networking at all. I felt sorry and introduced him to a good contact. Then he started talking about his own failed career and his new label. A contact like that don't care about how setup a label like that is the hardest thing in the world (it's not, the hard part is to achieve something).
The biggest mistake, not a single word about the artist he manage.
Instead he started talking about how his label had got a contract with a distributor (that everyone knows as shit and really you can get a contract with online) like it was the best thing after sliced bread.

My contact later asked me what that guy was doing. It made no sense what he was talking about.

I guess the history will repeat it self. In the end I was talking to him how it all went. It was of course marvelous to have been there. But he couldn't say what he had achieved.
I guess he achieved nothing since the business plan was not ready. His mindset was still faild musician not a artist developer.