Don’t Fear The Mistakes. Just Do The Right Ones.

 

One of the bands I work with once said, “Better to do something than do nothing at all”. Another quote is the circus owner Phineas T. Barnum that said, “There's no such thing as bad publicity”. Of course, in the worst situations, there is bad publicity and doing things totally wrong. In most cases, it’s not. And I feel many withhold themselves just by being afraid making a mistake.

Doing nothing is really safe, I can admit that. Progression wise though it’s pure stupidity. Without taking chances you are not going further. My biggest successes have been through mistakes. Also, a lot of knowledge comes from making mistakes. There is a difference between making mistakes and making mistakes.

I sent out a newsletter today. It was very fast because I had just two hours between two different quite important panels and today was the last day we could get the letter out before we got new numbers to send to in our mailing system. Of course, I had to put things together in no time. No chance to double-check. Not even the links and spelling were just through the spelling program.

So, I had a choice. Send it off and see it as a promotion thing. Or just abandon the opportunity to make some noise for my festival?

I was more like, well if there are any mistakes, who cares? it’s just one of the hundreds of newsletters that I send out in a year. And the promotion is more important than the safety of having someone going through it. And in a newsletter that is over three pages long, there will be mistakes, especially when you don’t have time to proof read and just copy and paste and adding things.

Off it goes. And of course, I see an error in the header that is not corrected by the spelling program just as it went off. Well, what the heck it’s not that it can be misunderstood just a wrong letter.

That is the thing, if I feared the mistake there would be no promotion. In today's media, everything goes very fast. I worked for a company that had that problem. The boss was a very weak leader and afraid of any mistakes. By that, we only sent out two press releases a year, of course, went through 20 people for corrections and proofing. The problem was that it never went well because people tended to forget about the company in all these times that went by each message. In the fast lane we live in today you just have to go ahead in more cases than just sit on the break.

Then a mail came in from an artist that has applied to the festival. With just the line “Please spell right”. The funny part is this is an artist we booked for another festival I worked with. He and his so-called manager was a pain in the ass the whole time so we never rebooked him. They didn’t understand jack shit about how the industry worked. He was a running joke in the booking department of old farts that shouldn’t be playing music any longer. He used to be a big artist in his home country, but that was over thirty years ago, and he still thinks he is some kind of star. With 197 followers on YouTube, I rest my case.

Of course, this is a real mistake. Just give me a reason to reject your application and you get rejected. I even deleted his address from the system, so he won’t ever get any mail about opportunities that we give out from time to time.

So I leave you with another line that one of the talented bands I work with wrote “I'd rather be wrong if they are right.”

Original text on Cashbox Canada

The highest of stupidity.

I sent a contract to an artist to take a look at. I got it back with a lot of lines just crossed out. In the email, he said I did some changes.

The things he had crossed out was all the lines that said we would earn some % on the song. He had even crossed out lines that are there since they refer to parts in the law. In the end, he had crossed out so much that it was not even legal.

I wrote back and asked why these were crossed out. He answered that he thought that was not good so he had taken off everything that was not for his advantage and all the stuff he didn't know that well since he didn't have time to hire a lawyer.

Of course, this is so stupid that you even with the greatest song you really don't want to work with this idiot. So I just wrote back that ok, well then it's nothing for us.

Now he has mailed several times trying to change different lines in the worst way. The horrible part is that this is not an amateur musician, this guy has his own studio and work out of this and has this low knowledge. It seems like silence doesn't get him to understand he blow it. I'm afraid of this kind of stupidity in the business today.

The audience search they way you search!

The most pointless things you can do as an artist is just looking so things look alright. I don't know how many times I get calls from people want to change things on Spotify (or other sites) so they should look good on just their device. It can be all sorts of things they think should be there like a photo or bio.
The tragic part is that they think people won't listen to the songs if this piece of information is not there. Or the picture looks a bit out of shape.I can't really see any audience saying: Ohh the picture look awful so I won't listen to their song.

One of the key ellenments is iuallay that the artist that goes around complaining of small things like this is the  ones that dosn't have so much streams. Reality behind that is two things.

One is that they spend all this time fixing things that really is not necessary instead of taking the time to promote the song so people actually listen to it.

Second is thinking since it's wrong doesn't spend the time to promote it to the audience.
In both cases the end results qwill be few listeners and that they blame on that the picture is a bit out scale.

Same with genre. Ohh we went to be in Country/metal/jazz fusion. The genre is nothing to care about. I have never met anyone that actually goes into Spotify and look up pop and start to browse through all the things that are under pop ( i don't know if it's even possible). So stop being a dumbfuck around genres. In reality you can almost put it under anything. The only thing the genre is doing that some site that only holds a certain kind of music won't pick it up. But hey if you don't do that kind of music. Nobody care tat you are not on that site.

You know what, good music will find its listeners if someone is talking about it. That we have seen with songs that people try to hide. They still find them.