Making It vs. Make It Happen

I recently noticed a posting on a YouTube video. The comment pointed out that the fan loved the track, but wondered if the artist "had made it".

Make it. Its a phrase you hear a lot in the creative industries - especially music and fim/tv, and usually as a way of describing the moment someone enters the mainstream. It is a destination goal, one shared by thousands of X Factor contestants and Hollywood hopefuls.

Making it means you have been chosen, that you are worthy, that you are good enough. Its an external validation, where your career is dependent on others' assessment of your talent. Perhaps that makes it highly prized - but rare, as it is determined by forces beyond your control.

You won. You did it. Congratulations.

(funny how this phrase is rarely found outside creative careers - why does it not apply to any other industry?)

Compare having "made it" to "make it happen".

Artists that make it happen have taken control of their own careers. They are working towards goals that they have established for themselves - rather than trying to achieve a destination determined by other people. It is an active phrase, describing an exciting career that grows rather than just peaks. And it indicates that responsibility is in the hands of the artist.

So - which is more rewarding?

Learning From Our Elders

Pete Townshend chose to use the honour of the BBC John Peel lecture this week to deliver a rant. Essentially without any central thesis, his speech went over the same well-trodden ground that old industry giants find themselves covering - piracy, publishing, copyright, etc etc etc. Definitely not very Manifesto.

Townshend falls into the trap of many of our industry elders who feel that change is happening, but cannot recognise what a new industry offers to artists. Rather than adding a positive vision with their experience of being a creator, they respond from a place of resistance. It stems from the fear of seeing the foundations of how their own careers were shaped being torn apart and rebuilt.

We have much to learn from the forefathers of pop. They developed a blueprint of a creative form that we love, and the new industry is still celebrating. Townshend is apologetic throughout the lecture of speaking about music as art. But this is the area where he should own the platform. I want to know his genius and learn from his ability as a creator, not hear him riff about the price of downloads.

I'm not dismissing the old guard as being irrelevant to building the new industry. There are many who are active in pushing change forward. Brian Eno spoke recently on Channel 4 news about his new project involving crowd sourced creativity. These types of visionaries add immensely to finding solutions. They are using their abilities as creatives to offer something new - not attach to the past and complain that things are different.

The very act of being an artist means you create change. I often think of music as a mathematical problem that I must resolve - like sonic sudoku. Perhaps pop music has made us too comfortable. Even though we now live in the most exciting and productive era for artists, we seem to not all be able to rise to the challenge. For artists like Pete Townshend, it's just too much to let go of the past and embrace what we now have.

Image by Zio Zeta on Flickr

Online Community Building - The Basics

Building your community takes planning, attention, and patience. Here's three key things artists should keep in mind when making connections:

Do Your Research

The fatal failure of any strategy is to get down to work without understanding the landscape - and that goes for social media as well. The tendency is to think that your potential audience is EVERYONE - in order to make the most of your efforts and resources, you need to focus. And a little research goes a long way.

Your research brief should include:

- which artists do you compare yourself to? Pick ones in similar situations to yourself (local artists, with the same musical profile in a similar stage to your career - don't put yourself in the Lady GaGa league!) Choose five favourites to focus on and dig deep into.

- build a profile of their fanbase. What type of people do they attract? Look across the usual channels - MySpace, Twitter, Last.fm, Facebook.

- what does this audience care about? Examine how they react to engagement with the artist. Do they like new tracks? Live shows? Videos? Exclusive interviews?

- look at their tastemaker champions - which blogs have written about them? what radio shows support them? 

Putting all this together will give you valuable insight to create a profile of your potential online community.

Construct Your Content

Now that you know the community you could attract, make a plan of the content you to engage them with. This is key - you need to plan this out in advance to be proactive. 

Think about this as you build online tools, like your website or Facebook fan page - and how it links to the other social media channels you could use (like your own blog, SoundCloud page, YouTube channel etc).

Check out this great post about Lady Gaga's social media success - which points out how she used great content strategically across various online channels. 

Start Conversations

Twitter is the best place to keep the engagement going. Remember that your community isn't just an audience - it's bloggers to support you, potential people to collaborate with, and other artists to form connections with.

Find a tone of voice and topics to chat about that relate to your content (and avoid talking about what you ate/what your cat ate!). Follow people, listen to their conversations, and retweet the things you like. And above all, make a contribution. 

This is jus the start. Eventually the community will build, and will become the megaphone of your voice. Communities support each other. It's about being authentic, and getting involved - and about making a quality - not quantity - connection.

Image from Flickr by alles-schlumpf

Manifesto Fundamental: Artists Connect Communities

Community is the next fundamental of the Manifesto. One of the major differentiating factors of the new industry is the ability of artists to interact with others on a global scale. MySpace was a turning point for this - suddenly musicians had the ability to connect with their audience on a daily basis, build a fan base, and make contact with other artists. Free, simple and easy.

Artists have always been at the centre of networks, and their work has often found a key place within subcultures (think disco, goth, trance etc). The difference now is that artists are connectors on an even greater scale. The rise of social media has put artists at the heart of online communities - where their own participation is crucial to the establishment of their audience.

And audiences are developing an expectation that their participation and interaction with the artist will be valued. In the old industry, where fans would make contact hoping for a response from the band they admired, the artist had the ability to remain removed from their audience - connecting primarily through live performances. Contact was essentially one way, with the artist kept at a distance from direct interaction.

Over the past few years we have seen a dramatic shift in media from passive communication to one where anyone can be active and interact. Social media is based on communities of people involved in conversation. Some in the creative industries, such as Stephen Fry, understand this and invest heavily in building strong communities.

The new industry directly connects artists to their community. It's a powerful way of increasing feedback and building loyalty; for new artists, this power is priceless. Simon Curtis is a prime example of this - building up a community via social media alone that has resulted in tens of thousands of downloads of his material from people around the world. Hard to imagine that only a few years ago that level of exposure would have cost a label serious cash investment.

The fundamental of Community works in conjunction with the first of the Manifesto. If music is art, and artists connect communities, the key principle here is that an artist is defined by their ability to deliver their work to the world.

With creative production democratised, anyone can now make music. Technology makes it easier to output creativity - but this act of creation does not make an individual an artist. Only those with the bravery to ship their work to a community that respects what they have created can be termed an artist.

The ease of production and distribution means a high volume of music is being made - a fact that many musicians bemoan. Their fear is that more music on the shelf means their own work will not be heard or recognised. The Manifesto's fundamental of Community addresses this. Artists that make their own connections - with an audience, partners, and other musicians - and nurture them over time, will benefit. The days of the recluse artist reliant on big label marketing spend are over - the Community is critical to supporting an artist's work.

Manifesto Fundamental: Music is Art

The first of the six fundamentals of the Manifesto for a 21st Century Music Industry holds the central idea of the entire work. If we believe that "music is art" then we will be able to build an industry that is more exciting than the old one that has been crumbling over the past decade.

Music is art.

On the surface this seems obvious and irrefutable. Yet we tend not to think about music in this way. The industry has been working for decades to position music as a retail object.

What is art? It was Seth Godin's book Linchpin which helped me to finally develop clarity. His idea is that we can all be artists, indispensable creators, no matter what we do - and that as artists we create gifts. In the music industry, this is now more important than ever. Music has existed longer than capitalism. Human beings have always been inspired to express themselves through rhythm and sound. It is almost a basic need, found in every culture. Music is universal to the human condition.

Yet music has become a commodity. It's now a product, made by others, for purchase. There is no issue with the idea that creators of art should be rewarded for their work financially, but the intention of music's creation seems to now be focused around how much money can be made - not on the gift it brings to our society.

Something I often hear from musicians is that they are concerned about music being "devalued". This usually comes up when discussing giving away their music for free, streaming services, or people downloading tracks without paying for them.

My response is that value cannot be derived from a price tag. Music is so much more than a retail object. It creates change, inspires, makes us dance and cry. How can we then only feel validated as artists by the receipt of cash - by making what we have created into a product with a price point lower than a tube of toothpaste?

Music is art. You create it, and you give it value. It is not solely a commodity for your own commercial gain. A fundamental of the new music industry.

Manifesto for a 21st Century Music Industry

Here's something new from Gaymonkey. Something we're very pleased to be able to ship to the world ...

Over the past few years it has become clear that the biggest issue facing the music industry is not piracy. It's not the collapse of major labels, or the recession damaging retail sales. And it certainly isn't the public devaluing music.

The biggest issue facing the new music industry is that artists do not believe that they can make their careers happen. 

We know they can.

That is why we have put together the Manifesto for a 21st Century Music Industry. It outlines a vision for a direction for the new industry, and a way for artists to have ultimate control of their own careers.

The Manifesto sets out the Fundamentals of this new industry - the foundation of what must change to reposition the relationships within the business. We set out three key steps for artists to help them take control. And we bust some myths that pinpoint areas that are blocking artists from reaching their new potential.

The Manifesto is an ebook that is free for everyone to download. I'll use this blog to further delve into the key points that make up the book. And I'd love to hear your feedback - so please download, enjoy, share it - and let me know what you think.

The new industry is exciting, and our potential is now limitless. We just need to make it happen.