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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