Artist Empowerment

I saw Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl last night and I was blown away…

Here are several things that I found interesting/remarkable:

1) Radiohead fans are hard-core and that is an understatement!  Right before they went on, the fans all around us were arguing the specific date/venue of the last public performance of “Creep.”

2) More smoke emanated from the audience than from the smoke machine on stage.  I don’t smoke the kind herb but I think everyone in the audience left with a bit more haze than when they came in.

3) The sound was close to perfect and the stage/lighting enhanced the experience tenfold.

4) Just when you thought the show was over, they played another song…and they played…and they played.  They must’ve performed at least 25 songs!

5) The fact that they didn’t play “Street Spirit” and “Paranoid Android’ was my only complaint.

As artists, we should all strive to reach that standard of entertainment.

Everyone in the corporate world talks about how critical leadership is for the success of an organization.

People rarely talk about leadership in the context of a musical act.

I’m not talking about a Band Leader in the traditional sense, I’m talking about the leader of the commercial enterprise that is your band.

The leader is ultimately accountable for the success of the band.

She understands the vision and can rally people around it.

She knows that 4 or 5 heads are better than one and involves her band members in the decision-making process.

She embodies everything her band stands for and is willing to put her ego and personal agenda aside for the greater good of the enterprise.

She works hard to cultivate her leadership abilities knowing that effective leadership is a never-ending cycle of self-reflection, study and learning in action.

I can’t stress how important leadership is - think long and hard before you decide who will lead your band!

The same object, feeling, experience, argument, task or opportunity can be framed from a number of different perspectives and some frames are better than others in helping us achieve our goals as artists.

According to Encarta World English Dictionary, a mistake is an incorrect, unwise, or unfortunate act or decision caused by bad judgment or a lack of information or care.

An experiment, on the other hand, is a test carried out in order to discover whether a theory is correct or what the results of a particular course of action would be.

When things don’t go how we expected or hoped they would, we have a choice:

• If we view what happened through the “Mistake” frame, we often get discouraged and lose hope.

• If we perceive the same event through the “Experiment” frame, we are not as negative and see it as an inevitable part of the process of finding our way.

I have founded many bands and have learned so many invaluable lessons along the way. I view each of my previous bands as experiments and as such, I am wiser, more self-aware and more positive than I have ever been.

Artist Empowerment isn’t a perfectly smooth ride, it is journey with peaks and valleys ultimately leading us toward the apex of our potential.

How we frame our experiences and how quickly we learn from them is critical to our success.

We all know how much time kids spend playing video games, but what amazes me most is the growing percentage of adults who spend their time battling Paranoid Androids.

And I’m not just referring to adults in their 30’s and 40’s, I’m talking about adults in their 50’s, 60’s and older!

One of the biggest reasons why video games are so popular is because they are interactive, meaning, players can affect the outcome. Add the collaborative nature of gaming to the interactivity and you can see why people have no problem dishing out $60 for a video game.

Music and movies, on the other hand, aren’t interactive in the same way. They are linear, one-way experiences; they are pre-determined journeys that take us from a beginning to an end.

So, as artists in the music industry, what can we learn from the popularity of video games?

Though you might not want your fans deciding whether you should go into a chorus or a third verse after your bridge, there are plenty of ways to incorporate the idea of fan interactivity into how your fans experience your band.

• Let your fans vote on the set list for your next show
• Let them determine the design of their next T-shirt
• Let them determine which song you will release next

We can learn a lot from paying attention to other industries that are booming (Gaming) in addition to industries that are failing (Major Label system.)

Feel free to comment with other ideas of how we can incorporate interactivity into how fans experience our band!

A short while ago, I met the guys who founded Taltopia - a free, fast-growing social networking site geared toward helping independent artists get exposure, build a fan base and stay connected to fans.

A challenge that all artists face when they are ready to present their art to the public is finding avenues of exposure. While there are many places to promote your music in cyberspace, most sites are over-saturated and have already lost their luster and credibility as places to discover new talent.

When I met the founders Allen and Anthony, Taltopia had around 5,000 members.

In a matter of months, that number has rapidly grown to over 25,000, which is a testament to their incredible work ethic and dedication to helping talented artists find their audience.

Taltopia has contests with valuable prizes, ways for users to rate content and several means of networking with industry professionals. I am the featured Music Producer on the site and they have since partnered with several high profile companies to extend their reach.

Allen and Anthony are really good guys who have created something very exciting which has a lot of momentum.

I highly recommend that you guys check out www.taltopia.com, set up profiles and interact!

Every great artist needs a great website even if they have a myspace page because:

1) You have complete control over all of your content and layout on your website.

On myspace, even though you have a certain amount of flexibility in this regard, you will always be limited to their constraints. These constraints become bigger issues when you start thinking of your band as a “brand” with its own look and feel.

2) All things being equal, a band with a great website is considered more professional, more developed and more attractive than a band that doesn’t have a website.

Naturally, a great website elevates your status and shows that you are serious about your career.

3) Myspace is a social networking site meant to connect people so that the owners can make a profit on advertising revenue. As such, you have no control over what they advertise on your page.

Your band might be a hippie jam band from Portland called “Peace, Love and Harmony” and the graphic banner ad on top of your myspace page is of the newest Rob Zombie horror movie called “Kill, Kill Vampire Zombie - Die.” On your website, you won’t have any such issues.

4) Given that your purpose is to build your “brand” to the point where other third parties have an incentive to get involved in your career, you have to do everything in your power to minimize their risk.

When you minimize others’ risk, you become more attractive. The better produced your songs, the better your live show, the better your website and the more defined/developed your “brand” is, the more likely you are to attract others who can help take your career to your next level.

Think of myspace as a great marketing tool, not your home base. You want to pique people’s interest in your music and drive them to your website, where you have complete control of the look, feel, navigation, branding elements, etc.

Your website is “Your Space.”

Myspace is “Rupert Murdoch’s Space.”

The empowered artists of tomorrow are those who work hard to cultivate all of their faculties, not just their creative side.

I have known many talented artists who have defined themselves as “Right-Brained” - by the visual, creative, non-linear, emotion-centered part of the brain.

On the surface, there is nothing wrong with this, especially since those characteristics are those that inspire our art in the first place and are celebrated by fans, media, and almost everyone around us.

What is equally interesting is that most artists who I have worked with are also highly intelligent - they have the “Left-Brain” qualities as well (linear processing of information, drawing conclusions from facts based on logic, etc.)

As artists, we need to develop both sides of our brain and not be defined by either one.

Even if the “Right-Brain” faculties come easier to us or we’ve spent more time developing them, a “Whole-Brain” approach is integral to our success.

The “mysterious artist” persona is great for the stage and for interviews but what will really set you apart is what you do in your day-to-day life to advance your career.

We need to learn about what it takes to start and run a successful business, basic leadership, legal, management and marketing principles as well as how to effectively assemble a team.

Many sit around and hope for a manager or record label to come in and handle all of the “Left-Brain” aspects of their career…and they wait…and they wait…

The more we accomplish without a manager or a label, the more attractive we become to third parties who can take our careers to the next level.

The “Whole-Brained” artist is the empowered artist of the future.

I just read an interesting article on www.hitsdailydouble.com about how Nickelback signed a 360 Deal with Live Nation as opposed to signing a deal with a traditional record company.

This is yet another highly successful recording artist who opted out of the major label system in favor of Live Nation.

A 360 Deal is a deal where a record company, or other third party, has a stake in all of an artist’s revenue streams. In this case, Live Nation will have a share in Nickelback’s publishing, touring, merchandise, CD sales, sponsorships, etc.

Traditionally, record companies:

• Financed the making of the albums because it was so expensive to make albums
• Controlled all of the distribution outlets because they had all of the relationships with retail stores
• They oversaw the marketing and promotion of the albums

This model worked in the past and has nothing to do with the realities of the current marketplace.

It no longer costs a million dollars to make a great album, people don’t buy CD’s at retail stores anymore and there are many other outlets/options for marketing and promotion.

This means that record companies can’t provide value in the ways in which they traditionally added value and until they figure out how to offer more value than a company like Live Nation, they will be seeing more and more of their A-level artists opting out of the major label system.

So as artists, we have to be aware of these changes and understand what it means for us and our careers.

The future is in our hands now.

It is up to us to find ways to independently build our brands to the point where other parties have an incentive to come in and help take us to the next level…and there is a pretty good chance that a major record label will not be a part of the equation.

This is very empowering…

This past winter, I was a Teacher’s Assistant for a great class offered by UCLA Extension called “The Music Industry: Where is it Headed?”

The teachers were:

• Jeff Jampol (manages the Doors and the Janis Joplin estate)
• Lenny Beer (co-owner of HITS, manages The Bravery)
• Tom Sturges (V.P. of Universal Publishing)

Each week, we had several high-profile guests share their insights about the music industry. We were lucky enough to have the heads of MTV, XM, Epic, Live Nation, Linkin Park’s manager, and so many others.

The one recurring insight that almost every guest shared was that the music industry is a relationship business.

While our industry does have its fair share of vultures, at the highest level, it is not a business of fleeting “connections” or opportunists trying to use one another for their own personal gain.

Rather, it is a business built on strong, real, mutually beneficial relationships that are cultivated over time.

As artists, we have to develop real relationships with real people and patience is a virtue.

If you are an empowered artist and you treat people with respect, act with integrity, and truly care about their well being, the sky is the limit, especially in our industry.

Aristotle said that true happiness is a state of being, not an emotion. Many people think that the opposite is true, but in this case, he was onto something.

Think of happiness as a healthy, balanced way of seeing the world, not a fleeting emotion that comes and goes. Truly happy people feel sadness, frustration, and other unpleasant emotions like everyone else, but it is all in proper perspective, never too much, never too little.

Similarly, Artist Empowerment is a state of being, a life-long journey.

We often forget that a goal is merely a milestone, a passage to the next level, to a higher level.

Sometimes we will hit our goals and sometimes we won’t. The question is, how quickly do we learn and how quickly do we improve?

There is no such thing as a failure - there are missed targets that turn out to be invaluable learning lessons.

We just have to learn to see them that way.

I often meet young artists who say, “My ultimate goal is to get signed to a major label and become a famous recording artist.”

While there is nothing wrong with setting such a goal, it would be wiser to say:

“My goal is to become an empowered artist so that I can share my music with as many people as possible, to function at my fullest creative capacity and to live the life I want to live.”

This subtle shift in thinking makes all of the difference because you become the master of your destiny, not a major record label.

Though a major label might play a role in your career at some point in the future, it is up to you to start with the right mindset and to take your career in your hands.

Artist Empowerment isn’t a destination, it is a journey.

You don’t wake up one day and think, “Wow, I am an empowered artist!”

You commit yourself to a process, you set goals along the way and if you do it right, you accomplish your goals and continue to set higher and higher goals and the cycle repeats as long as you are committed to the journey.

Pretty soon, the process becomes integrated into your life to such a degree that it becomes a part of you.

You become Artist Empowerment.

Artist Empowerment becomes you.