If I had to choose the one reason for my failure in the music business, it would be that I believed talent was enough. As I’ve written before, and will again and again I’m sure, talent (and skill) is not enough to make you a success.
Tom Asacker has written a great peice on this over at his blog: a clear eye. Using a magician and New Coke as examples, Tom succinctly explains why “being the best is not the route to success.
Yes, the “fact” was that the quality of his magic was beyond compare, but the “facts” didn’t matter much to his audience.” What mattered to them was how they were feeling during his performance – their “truth.” And their “truth” was that they were less interested in his technical proficiency and more interested in being entertained.”
Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that you are attempting to make a living in the entertainment industry. Fact is though, everyone is – yours is just more obvious (which actually makes it easier than most). What struck me as particularly interesting in this post was the story about New Coke. Tom sites the taste tests that proved unequivicably that New Coke would be a smash. Yet it turns out that taste had nothing to do with it – the company was asking the wrong question. New Coke failed miserably precisely because it was new. “Classic Coke”, as it later became known, was just that – a classic drink. Folks that drank it liked to drink something with a long history and cool story. They didn’t want anything new.
This all illustrates something I learned many years ago: people always have two reasons for everything they do: the one they tell you, and the real one. If you can figure out the real one (and they might not even know it themselves), you’ve got it made.
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