September 30th, 2006
3:12 pm
Money
Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.
“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”
So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.
“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”
“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.
“B-b-but, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”
To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”
If there’s one subject that people know less about than making a living/building a career, it has to be money. Though we have a general sense about the subject – go to work, get paycheck, pay bills, spend the rest – I suspect most people feel money is controlling them instead of the other way around. And despite the fact that musician’s multiple streams of income can provide security, unsteady and unpredictable pay-days make this subject tricky.
Getting Finances Done tackles the subject of budgeting under these circumstances in a post called Budgeting on a self-employed or irregular income. This step by step guide covers everything you need to get started. It’ll come as no surprise that the key is discipline, but beyond that there are some important revelations I wish I had known 20 years ago.
My favorite is the idea of “chunking” out your money to yourself. The goal here is to create a steady paycheck for yourself (You, Inc. pays on the 1st and the 15th) despite the fact that your business gets money in randomly. This does two things that are critical to your survival and prosperity. By creating a buffer between your life and your work, it brings balance in an area that can be unnerving. It also protects overflows from being spent. Any extra money left in the account after the 15th is just that – extra money.
In my experience, extra money was spent before I even knew it existed. And it was usually just a matter of days before I REALLY NEEDED THAT EXTRA MONEY because I wasn’t working or I was waiting on a check. Paying yourself a steady income prevents this delimma by smoothing out the irregularities. It also does one more thing. It gives you a clear and accurate idea of whether you’re making it or not. Once set-up on this plan, it will only take a few months for you to know if you’re working enough or not. If you are, great, if not, you can do something about it. Quickly.
In the end, the greatest advantage of this budget isn’t day-to-day, month-to-month. It’s year-to-year, when the “overage” starts to add up to something substancial and useful – for investing for your long term security.
After all, it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep.
There’s an admittedly long article I’d like you to read over at Fast Company’s website. It’s written by Tom Peters, who’s TP Wire Service I recommend at my squidoo site.
Entitled The Brand Called You, I want you to read it for two reasons: First, it’s an excellent example of the wealth of information you, as a musician/artist, can pull from articles found in business publications. Information that is not being talked about in Guitar Player or Modern Drummer. The article is chock FULL of stuff that will make you think, re-think, and take action.
Second, he nails the concept of Brand, You (or as I call it You, Inc.) by asking five questions:
- What makes you different? “If your answer wouldn’t light up the eyes of a prospective client or
command a vote of confidence from a satisfied past client, or — worst
of all — if it doesn’t grab you, then you’ve got a big problem.”
- What’s the pitch for You? “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.”
- What’s the real power of You? “If you want to grow your brand, you’ve got to come to terms with power — your own. The key lesson: power is not a dirty word!”
- What’s loyalty to You? “Today loyalty is the only thing that matters.”
- What’s the future for You? “A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It’s full of moves that
go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that
makes sense.”
WOW!
Do yourself a favor and go read it now!
As a professional musician, I was often questioned about “job security.” The conversation always centered around insurance, benefits and a “steady paycheck.” I always understood their points (and their concerns), but my dream of succeeding minimized my concern for those things.
When I did eventually get a real job with all those things, I have to admit, I did feel more secure. The first time I got a paycheck, I called my wife, told her I had been paid and said “guess what? I get another one in two weeks!”
But it wasn’t long before I realized something. I am totally dependent on one income stream. And not only that, but there is very little I can do to make quick income of any kind. My company dictates what I make (actually the market does), when I make it, and ultimately, when to stop it.
As a musician, I had multiple people that called me to work, and when one stopped, it wasn’t the end of the world. I could also find extra work when I needed it, and each gig usually paid pretty well.
Something else has happened too. As illustrated in this post, it’s an increasingly fragmented and fractured economy and professionals are abandoning the corporate life for freelancing. They are finding out what musicians have known all along: ultimately, it’s your own hard work that gives you security.
When I was a drummer, I played drums in the music business. My simple understanding of my reality was that I did something that a lot of other people did in a very large industry that was set in its ways. Simply put, I was a commodity – by definition, an undifferentiated product offered by many, many producers.
You probably think the same way.
In order to stand out, however, you need a new perspective, and here are four offered by Duct Tape Marketing. You are in:
- the information business
- the community buidling business
- the experience business
- the transformation business
As an artist, I encourage you to consider which one of these words connects with you and your passions. In doing so, it’s likely one of them will ring true. However, it’s also likely that you haven’t been telling that story to your prospective customers or audience. That’s a tremendous opportunity.
Using myself (a recording and side-man drummer) as an example, here are mine:
Information – a rock solid, “in-the-know” recording drummer specializing in the latest technology, grooves and sounds to give your recordings the energy and power today’s audiences
expect.
Community – a well connected, friendly musician that brings experience, friendliness and the ability to work as a member of a team to make every project a success
Experience – a spontaneous, frenetic and high energy player that brings a spark to every project and smiles to everyone that listens.
Transformation – a creative, exciting, and cutting edge player specializing in tomorrow’s sounds today.
How ’bout you, what’s your story?
Something a little different for today, and more of the same too:
Ultimate Ears is a great tool you should investigate if you’re at all concerned about your ears (and you SHOULD be). Go check it out.
It is also yet ANOTHER example of how you can make money in the music business and isn’t that ultimately what you’d like to do?
In my last post, I used the following quote from Yahoo Finance to discuss the head in the sand mentality of the record labels.
“Free — and legal — music
Universal Music Group has licensed its digital music catalog to a new Web site offering
free legal downloads. The site — SpiralFrog — plans to make money by
selling ads that will appear as songs download. The deal shows how
desperate record labels are to adjust after fighting online
file-sharing networks that let users swap songs without giving the
industry a penny. Universal — the world’s largest record seller –
will get a payment up front and a cut of SpiralFrog’s ad revenue. Any
arrangement is fine, a Universal executive said, “as long as we get
paid.”"
Even though what I said needed to be said, my intention in Part Two is to get personal.
Any Arrangement is Fine
I have no idea whether SpiralFrog is a great site or not – it’s launching in December. It might be the coolest thing since the internet, but I think it’s a horrible move for Universal. And I say that despite the fact that I think it has the right business model – radio meets downloading. The secret to radio (and TV) is that we gladly listen to 15 or 20 minutes of advertising per hour for the chance to listen to music for “free.” SpiralFrog makes the same deal: listen to an ad, and you get “free” music.
The reason i think this is a horrible move for Universal is supported by the last sentence in the story. Here we have an executive from one of the largest companies in the world saying that his company has gotten so desperate that they are willing to sign anything, agree to anything, put their products, support and name behind ANYTHING, as long as they get paid.
Proactive vs. Reactive
Universal, and the entire recording industry, has given up their once dominant control of the business (which of course, is not an entirely bad thing) by making wrong choices when the world around them started to change. They are now in a position of reacting to this world, instead of leading this world. Don’t let this happen to you.
One of the reasons I failed in my music career is that I held onto dreams and ideals despite evidence all around me that the world was changing. For example, I was in college when the first drum machine was developed and I saw every subsequent development of these instruments (the drum sequencers, drum pads, controllers, racks, etc…). I remember being facinated by them and I loved working with them. I even had serial number 55 of the Akai MPC2000, but overall, I resisted this trend. At one point, I actually had the words “Acoustic Drums” on my business cards.
Because of this, I was just like Universal – happy to take any work I could find. And I did work, I just didn’t build a career. Just like the person who doesn’t stand for something so they fall for anything, I had nothing that distinguished me and made me memorable, hireable and desirable in a music business FULL of drummers. Because I had no brand, I became irrelevant (which is happening to Universal too).
As a musician, you bring unique giftings and thinkings to your craft. You also have dreams and ideals about your place in the industry and in the world. As You, Inc., you need to also be aware of the business climate and market in which your business operates and make the right changes at the appropriate times. The process is a delicate balance, put the pay off is worth it.
By knowing exactly what you do, who you are and where you fit in, you’ll set yourself apart from most others immediately. And by telling that story consistently and passionately, people will know who are and call you when they need YOU.
One last thing:
My “Acoustic Drums” idea was actually a good one. That was a clever niche, and I know now it would have worked – probably to this day. The problem was I didn’t tell that story consistently and passionately. I was like Universal: I was simply scrambling to do everything I could think of to survive and missing the opportunities that were right before my eyes.
Don’t let that happen to you.
From a recent collection of business headlines at Yahoo Finance:
“Free — and legal — music
Universal Music Group has licensed its digital music catalog to a new Web site offering
free legal downloads. The site — SpiralFrog — plans to make money by
selling ads that will appear as songs download. The deal shows how
desperate record labels are to adjust after fighting online
file-sharing networks that let users swap songs without giving the
industry a penny. Universal — the world’s largest record seller –
will get a payment up front and a cut of SpiralFrog’s ad revenue. Any
arrangement is fine, a Universal executive said, “as long as we get
paid.”"
Buggy Whips
In the movie “Other People’s Money” Danny DeVito stars as a finance guy that makes money by buying distressed companies and selling off the peices. In addition to being funny and just a little bit heartwarming, it is also has tremendous lessons about economics in times of change.
In the climax of the movie, he is asked to speak to all the employees of a company he is about to dismantle. They are understandably furious that this man is destroying their lives so he talks about buggy whips. He describes a company that used to make the finest buggy whips known to man. A company known far and wide as a success. Until the automobile.
With the arrival of a new age, the company had two choices: they could work even harder to make better and better buggy whips, or they could reinvent themselves (either corporately or individually) to serve the new market. His conclusion is that it’s his job to push them all to change to their new market too. The people are stunned, but he’s right (there’s a great happy ending, btw).
The major labels are still making buggy whips and punishing anyone who drives a car.
“Prior to the Web, bands that didn’t have a major label behind them couldn’t hope to get national or global attention.”
So starts a recent post from Web Ink Now decribing yet another example of how the music business is increasingly fractured and full of new opportunities everyday. If you’ve been curious about Podcasting and spreading your message, check out this post featuring the experiences of indie band Uncle Seth.
One of the band’s members, Jay Moonah, sums it all up nicely: “With TV and commercial radio and MTV-type people, they work and talk
from on high. Podcasting is different. It’s neat that we’ve made fans
out of some of these podcasters…It’s fun when they play our music, and then if I email them it is great to start a conversation.”
The magic of podcasting done correctly is that it is informal and personal. Audiences not only get to hear music, but they get to know the people behind the music – directly and candidly. And that connection is something the major label machines have difficulty duplicating (namely because they are trying to duplicate it).
One last thing to keep in mind though, and I can’t remember where I read it or I’d link to it, but be cautious about rambling podcasts that are more like the idle thoughts from a 12 year old’s diary. Have a general plan in mind and stick to it. You’re personality will come through and you won’t bore people out of their minds.
Hope to hear you soon!
Dreaming of stardom can be a trap. I’m all for following you heart, and I believe that the biggest challenge facing mankind is small thinking, but even so, dreaming of stardom often traps musicians and artists into dead end lives of quiet desperation. Why? Because dreams of stardom muddy up the important distinction between a job and a life.
Despite the fact that you are fortunate to generate income “playing” music, at the end of the day, you are making money so you can eat, drink and be merry with a roof over your head. And I HOPE with some great friends and some free time to enjoy them. Dreams of stardom blind many people to the importance of a life and gazillions of opportunities to make a living using their music.
The night the Gibson/Miller Band won our ACM Award for New Group of the Year, I met an amazing drummer playing for the band at the after show party. While everyone was taking turns sitting in and jamming, he and I struck up a conversation. When I asked him what he wanted to do, he said: “I want to play in a killer club band.” I was stunned. I remember thinking, this guy is living in L.A. and he’s a GREAT drummer, and all he wants to do is play in a club?
Luckily I didn’t say any of that outloud (I encouraged him instead), because I soon realized he was pretty smart. What he was really saying is that he wanted to make great music with an excellent group of people in an atmosphere of appreciation and then go home each night and sleep in his own bed.
Brilliant.
Come to think of it, some of my greatest nights of playing were with club bands – and I made good money too. But, just like I said above, my dreams of stardom kept from appreciating what I had and they CERTAINLY made me act stupid with money because I thought “someday I’ll make tons more when I’m a star, why should I save and invest now? This is just a temporary and fun way to get better until I make it big!” But I digress.
I could make several points to wrap this up, but I’ll just make two:
- Don’t underestimate the joy you can find in doing what you love and making a decent living doing it.
- Do what YOU want to do, not what you might feel the world expects you to do (it took a lot of confidence for the drummer to share his dream with me).
Here are some stories to inspire you:
How a Starving Musician with 78 Cents Started a Million Dollar Business
The Richest Piano Player You’ve Never Heard About
Dream big, but enjoy your life.
