The hardest challenge facing musicians today is getting people to listen to their new music. Awareness campaigns are a thing of the past. They make people know you’ve got new music, but it doesn’t make them listen to it, at most it gets them to sample a few seconds of a track. Which is fine if you’re not about the new music, if you’ve got enough old hits to power a show people want to see, but not if you’re starting out or truly want people to know what you’re up to.

1. YOU’RE A FULL TIME MUSICIAN

You practice every day, right? So why do you only drop new product every couple of years? Open the doors to the public, show your warts, reveal your personality. The key is to keep people engaged on a regular basis. This is a huge sea change, but the most notable one in the business today. YouTube is the medium of choice. Put up a video of you practicing, doing covers, works in progress. The key is to speak to your hard core fans, who will continue to talk about you to their buddies and will spread the word on anything truly great. And don’t worry if it’s not great, it just gets plowed under beneath the endless tsunami of clips posted every single day.

2. KNOW WHO YOUR FANS ARE

Selling/promoting to those who don’t care is completely worthless, it’s so 1980s. Everybody’s so busy that if they don’t have an interest in you, you won’t be able to convert them via endless publicity, which is either namby-pamby whitewash or shock value quotes. Never forget you’re selling your music, your only goal is to get people to check out and keep listening to your tunes, everything else is irrelevant. Fame won’t put asses in the seats.

3. REACH OUT TO YOUR FANS

This is what the youngsters do so well with social media, primarily Twitter and Instagram. If you’re an oldster and you want people to check out your new tunes be on social media a year in advance, a minimum of six months, revealing truth, bonding your fans to you. This is much more important and dividend paying than a story in any newspaper. The paper is one day only, tomorrow they’re flogging something else, social media when done right is an ongoing conversation.

4. HONESTY

Credit to Bono for admitting U2’s Apple mistake, but not only did Mr. Hewson apologize, he gave an explanation, he humanized himself, which made me feel warm about him and his band. Don’t let your handlers speak for you, Guy Oseary never should have taken that victory lap. You have to stand up for yourself.

“Bono apologizes for putting U2’s new album in everyone’s iCloud library”

5. HITS

This is the most important element. You have to create a track that those who know you, that those who are interested in checking you out, will hear once and need to hear again, it’s just that simple.

It’s not about what radio thinks, it’s not about what you think, it’s about what the consumer thinks, and the consumer pays your bills.

We’re all listeners, we all know what grabs us. Stop asking your friends whether they liked your new music, but how many times they listened to it. If it’s once, you’re toast, sorry.

Forget about radio, forget about filters. You know who your fans are. Do they want to hear the new track again and again?

Taylor Swift has embraced this paradigm, realizing how tough today’s landscape has become, unfortunately she has gone lowest common denominator with “Shake If Off.” You too can do this, if you know Max Martin and the usual suspects, but that does not mean you cannot do it yourself, that you cannot shoot higher. But we can only listen to one song at one time so what you cut has to have the catchiness of “Shake It Off.”

No bitching. This is the story of all media today. Check out the movie business, it’s either a blockbuster or it’s a stiff. If you’re happy with a stiff, be my guest, but you’re not allowed to complain you’ve got no audience, that no one cares.

6. ALBUMS

Stop thinking about them and stop making them. You start with the hit, if you haven’t got one, keep trying to make one. Without one, you’re sunk. If you have a hit, people will want to hear more of your music, so then you can build around the hit. You can release four other tracks that are ear-pleasing but might only be listened to by fans. Then you need another hit. And know in the streaming universe, the album makes no sense. The CD allowed shuffling, the ability to play only the songs you wanted to hear from the collection, streaming doesn’t even force you to buy the LP to begin with! Don’t overload your audience on Spotify and its ilk, it’s too confusing when someone goes to check you out. In other words, put a plethora of material on YouTube, but only the limited, authorized stuff on Spotify. You’re not making albums, you’re creating a body of work. Listeners don’t care if you cut it yesterday or a year ago, or even five years ago. And to force people to wait for years to overwhelm them with product is a mistake.

7. TELEVISION/EVENTS

I’m not a big Foo Fighters fan but their HBO show is a masterstroke, going with the true Tiffany network to showcase excellence without commercialism. The same show is a stiff on another network, the Foo Fighters are piggybacking on HBO’s cred. And with no ads, HBO is the antithesis of the modern world. People hate the endless selling and commercialism. It burnishes your image to avoid it. But, once again, you must have hits. And, once again, a hit is something that many people want to hear over and over again, it doesn’t matter if it’s played on the radio or not.

8. GENRE-HOPPING

The rappers have been doing it forever, dropping in on pop songs. Today’s country is yesterday’s rock and roll. Want to expand your audience? Play with today’s country stars, who can play, and likely are fans of your material. We’re all in it together, and only the biggest of stars can go it alone.

9. NO SHORTCUTS

They leave the audience with a bad taste in their mouth. If your face is everywhere, if you force your music upon them, backlash will begin. Money and connections will get you press, but the truth is in today’s music world it might be working against you. Used to be the press was tied in with radio and MTV, which everybody listened to and watched. Today, your music can be completely ignored. When your face appears in a non-genre-specific publication, trolling for fans, the readers laugh and make fun of you.

10. TAKE A JOKE

We live in hater culture. If you’re going to respond at all, have not only a sense of humility, but a sense of humor. There’s no need to immediately apologize, then you look like one of the TV drug addict nitwits. Stand your ground, but be three-dimensional, wink your eye.

Everywhere I go I quiz people on the new releases. Consensus is the Thom Yorke album is already over. The inane press release wherein they said there were a million downloads, was laughable, they had very few PAID downloads. This is the worst case example, where the press trumps the music.

At least U2 got to perform their song at Apple’s shindig. If only it had been a hit. It was very good, but you never needed to hear it again.

As for Tom Petty, I’m a huge fan, but when he appeared in every publication known to man and exuded grumpiness in the process and came out with an album without one repeatable track, it was just sad.

That’s right, your A&R man said he couldn’t hear a single.

But today your A&R man is your audience. And it’s not their job to listen to your new music. And chances are there is no radio single…radio, radio that counts, doesn’t play your music, your single is for your fans. And your single is a repeatable track. Because no one’s got time for less than great.

And we’re constantly in search of great, which is how Lorde can come out of nowhere, but now, more than ever, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past, but what you’ve done for us lately.

Once upon a time television was like radio, something you received over the air for free via an antenna. But in the eighties, TV moved to a subscription model, people paid for cable, for a better picture and more and better programming. So, customers became inured to paying a subscription fee, every month, in perpetuity. And they still do, despite all the hoopla about cord-cutting, the truth is you’re paying for access, whether it be with the cable company of yore or via FiOS or LTE wireless, all of which you pay for each and every month.

And then came home video. Initially an ownership market, it didn’t burgeon until it was turned into a rental market, which flourished until it became a dirt cheap ownership market which threw off tons of cash, then Netflix brought back rental and then went streaming and the cash cow ownership model crashed.

Music was always about an ownership model. And this was resented by consumers when DVD prices dove down to nothing and included all the music on the CD for a lower price than the music only disc.

And then the internet hit. All media were unprepared. And music was affected first, because of the small size of the files. But TV learned and created Hulu and Netflix flipped its model to streaming, which, if you remember, customers hated, but have now embraced. Furthermore, streaming is cheaper than all its predecessors, and it’s all you can eat.

In music, we stayed with the sales model deep into the twenty first century, way too late, with the iTunes Store. We broke out the single from the album, Steve Jobs tried to keep the prices low, but the labels lobbied for an increase, which they finally got, driving their enterprise right towards the cliff when YouTube emerged.

There was no viable alternative. Yes, Rhapsody existed, but most people had no idea what it was, and unlike in TV/movies, people were not in the habit of paying a subscription fee, which they’d already been doing in visual media for decades. So with no viable alternative, the youngsters, who are cheap and have loads of time, flocked to YouTube, which the rights holders eventually monetized.

Now visual creators and actors get paid in the new streaming era, just not much. The rights holders bundle their products and license them to distributors. Actors and writers agitate, even go on strike, but it’s seen as a battle between them and the studios, not them and the distributors.

But it’s different in music. Because despite hefty advances, artists got royalties, which were frequently a laugh in visual entertainment, owed, but not paid.

Now visual entertainment is screwed because it believes it’s ahead of the game, believes it’s got it all figured out, when the truth is you need multiple subscriptions to get everything you want and as a result piracy is rampant. In music, one subscription will get you everything, so piracy has tanked. But in both worlds, streaming rules. It’s just that ownership fell by the wayside eons ago in visual entertainment.

Also, visual entertainment is still holding on to windows, it’s still trying to figure out how to replace DVD sales revenue, never mind make its nut via streaming income, whereas windows are passe in music, but the reduction in income…creators are still bitching about that.

But consumers don’t care. They’re in heaven. And they’re never going back to the old ways.

So where does this leave musicians?

Believing that the barrier to entry is so low, the ability to get your stuff streamed so easy, that they should all be millionaires, not realizing consumers have very little time and infinite choice and they probably won’t choose you but the hits.

Whereas in visual entertainment, the hobbyist doesn’t believe his productions should be offered on Hulu or Netflix. And doesn’t believe he should make bank on YouTube unless he’s got millions of plays.

The song remains the same. If you’re popular, if you’ve got leverage, you’ll make money. Actually, popularity now rules because of the suddenly seen metrics, no one with 1,000 plays is bitching they’re not getting rich off of YouTube, but somehow people with the same number of streams on Spotify believe they should.

So what we’ve learned is that access has won. And in this case, TV preceded music by nearly two decades, it trained people to pay, every month. Furthermore, the public was weaned from ownership by insanely low rentals, like Redbox, and nearly as cheap streaming. This is the future of music too.

So music has to train its audience to pay. It was blindsided by YouTube, which has become the music destination of choice. Blame the labels, who didn’t license Spotify, et al, earlier, forcing Spotify and its clones to offer free subscriptions just to get people to try them out, because YouTube is free.

But movies were never free. There did not need to be a free Netflix. The only thing the visual purveyors are fighting is piracy, which is incredibly significant, but convenience is helping them,  because you can watch so much instantly, at your fingertips, on all your devices.

Yet in music, the makers abhor convenience. They trumpet CDs and vinyl. They insist people listen to the album when they don’t want to. They’re pushing the ball uphill, they’re fighting their own best interests.

So get with the program. Know that streaming has won and the goal is to get everybody to pay for a subscription and that winners will be paid handsomely and losers should just thank their lucky stars that they’re able to play.

And, now that visual entertainment is everywhere, along with video games, it’s incumbent upon musicians to make art that trumps its competitors, that is better than “Homeland” and the rest of the cable shows.

That’s quite a challenge, but I know you’re up to it.

Some of you.

When you think you know where the road will go
There’s another mystery around the bend

Every night I lie on the floor and listen to Deezer Elite and my old favorites come alive.

It’s funny, it doesn’t work during the day, I’m nocturnal anyway, I’d prefer to live in darkness, when the world slows down and no one contacts me and I can let my mind drift.

I used to wake up at noon. That window from 10 PM until 4 AM was my own. It made it very hard to book appointments, with half the day scraped away, but I now realize it made sense, that it was me, because I’m happiest in my own cocoon.

I do thrive in crowds, when I don’t sink. Used to be I talked prodigiously, now I usually listen. I’m fearful of alienating others, I marvel at their ability to speak uninhibited, demonstrating their flaws without realizing it. I used to be one of them, but years of psychotherapy changed me. Every encounter is a puzzle, one I enjoy most when others involve me, when I feel inspired and unleash a torrent of words that cannot be stopped. But that rarely happens. I get worn out engaging, I look forward to retreating. But happiness comes from being a member of the group, so there’s the conundrum.

Look into the western sky

Hope. That was what leaving the east coast was all about. Shedding skin for big sky country. But the truth is you do take your problems everywhere, along with your music.

But people are different as you move through the time zones, they speak the same language, but they emphasize different mores. On the east coast education is important, everybody’s checking their spot in the pecking order. Further west it’s more about personal fulfillment, and I like that.

So I’m on the floor in darkness, with e-mail slowed to a crawl, before Europe wakes up, and I push through all my old favorites to see how they sound in high quality, what will be revealed.

And what was revealed Monday night was the above lyric. To the point where it haunted me all day Tuesday.

You get to the point where you think you have the answers, that you think you’ve got it figured out, and then you’re surprised.

It does require engagement. You must leave your house, however daunting that might be, but when you get on the road, despite maps being on your smartphone, you might have an idea of where you’re going, but that’s not necessarily where you’ll end up.

Just like listening to a track. I’ve heard Wendy Waldman’s “Cast Your Soul” oodles of times. It’s always been the sound that got to me. And then this lyric jumped out.

Ain’t that how it always is. When you think you know everything, it turns out you don’t.

And that’s what we like about life.

So, cast your soul upon the wind. Be human. Take chances. Know fame is an illusion. And despite being so connected electronically we’re really all alone. Own this, and know the job of art is to reach out and make us feel part of humanity, the link between music maker and listener is the one that keeps on giving, inciting us while being insightful, riding shotgun as we encounter the vagaries of life, which thrill us but scare us all at the same time.

“Cast Your Soul”

The artists are ignorant and Spotify is clueless.

I feel like I have to be the lone voice in the wilderness, the correction factor, to all the b.s. strewn by the artist community, because Spotify has no cojones and sent in the B team as opposed to Daniel Ek.

That’s right, kids who are thrilled to have a job, who’ve got no idea of Spotify’s generation and its road map to success. Drones thrilled to have a job in the music business who don’t understand they’re caretakers for a revolution as opposed to worker bees at the label.

The truth is you have to know how to think. That’s the goal of an education. That’s where America has let us down. Because you don’t want to pay taxes, you want everything to be quantifiable, so you’re tearing down the old edifice not realizing there’s no new.

Which cracks me up completely. Has everybody lost their memories? Only a decade ago this same artist community was decrying the iTunes Music Store which is now suddenly their savior. And I’ll note that iTunes decimated the CD model just like streaming is killing downloads, but what bugs me is how art, which is supposed to be cutting edge and challenging, is now populated by wusses who abhor change and want everything to remain the same even though the world is moving faster than ever before as a result of new communication techniques fostered by technological breakthroughs.

Daniel Ek is a rock star. You remember them, don’t you? People who broke all the rules and did it their way? This nobody from nowhere had a vision and camped out and convinced labels to give him the rights when piracy was devastating the business. Have you noticed that artists have stopped bitching about P2P and have now made Spotify the bogeyman? It’s like someone has to be the enemy, and it can’t be them.

And then Daniel Ek hires a team, positively awful in most cases, refugees from the music biz who can’t get a job anywhere else who believe their gig is to schmooze as opposed to lay it on straight, and on top of this he layers a patina of niceness akin to the execrable seventies campaign “Have A Nice Day.” Makes me squeamish, the way Spotify wants to be my friend. Steve Jobs never wanted to be my friend, he was providing tools, so good people clamored for them, and Spotify is doing the same thing.

Spotify has eviscerated piracy. But the artists don’t like this. They’d rather keep the old declining model and bitch about the unknown and the uncontrollable as opposed to vie for a solution.

So what’s their solution?

HAVE CONSUMERS PAY MORE!

Ain’t that a laugh, ignorant of the fact that Apple is lobbying labels to bring a music subscription down to $5 a month, they think if they can just convince the public which used to steal to overpay, like they did for one good track on a CD in the nineties, everything would be hunky-dory. While you’re at it, why don’t you make the public use rotary telephones, give up texting, bring back ringtones!

Can we all look forward people?

The truth is successful artists make more money than ever before. It’s just that not that many artists are successful and none of them make what techies and bankers do.

Welcome to the world economy, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, where the excellent stand out and the good get no traction.

Used to be you overpaid for records because you were captive to your local store. Just like rarities used to be such and commanded top dollar before eBay. The world has shrunk, and it’s not Spotify’s fault but it is reality. Everybody’s competing against everybody else. You cannot carve out a small territory for yourself.

So middle class artists are anathema. People would rather overpay to see stars, and since you can only listen to one song at one time they want to hear the music of the stars too. Artists tell consumers to play their godforsaken album ten times to get it. Why don’t these same artists sit in a club listening to a bad band play originals for ten hours straight! No one’s got the time for anything but excellence, and that’s nobody’s fault but it is reality.

So what we’ve got here is Luddite artists who’ve declared the enemy to be Spotify the same way writers have declared Amazon to be taboo. You don’t want what you wish for. What you wish for had an ignorant government fining publishers and Apple for colluding on price under antitrust law, only increasing Amazon’s power. Get the government involved and you know you’re screwed.

I’m not saying publishing royalties shouldn’t be higher on Pandora, a horrible service if there ever was one, but I am saying don’t screw with the flow of progress, it just might come back to haunt you.

Those agitating loudest about Spotify payments are the never gonna make it and those who have who say they’re doing it for the little guy who comes thereafter, what a load of crap. Are we gonna let fans run baseball? Do we really believe today’s players care about tomorrow’s?

And if they did, wouldn’t they be holding out against their labels for better terms? At least the labels have room to pay. To try to squeeze more cash out of Spotify is to kill the golden goose, to drive the service bankrupt. Credit card and hosting/streaming costs and you want them to work on less than 30%? Or to put it in a language you can understand, do you want Apple to work on less than 30%?

But who cares about the details. It’ll all work out.

But what I have to do here is take the unpopular stand, the one against the crowd, which has worked itself up into such a frenzy that truth can never out.

Streaming won. Hell, it won in movies/TV first. We’re never going back to ownership. We’re never going back to windows. Can’t we all at least start on the same page?

As for labels getting an ownership interest in streaming services, that does not mean Spotify, et al, pay out any less in royalties. And I could explain economics to you but the truth is you signed that deal and whoever told you nothing changes is an idiot you should never pay attention to again.

Your enemy is obscurity. Any way to reach people is to be applauded. Nowhere is it written that recorded music should generate as much revenue as it did in the past, nowhere is it written that you should be able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars making an album, nowhere is it written that you’re entitled to make music at all!

So throw your sticks and stones. I don’t care, I’m on the winning side. I’m aware of progress. I can see where I’m going. I’m not an ostrich with my head in the ground. Agitate against label payouts if you’re complaining at all. Otherwise, just do me a favor and write a hit song. And if you can’t, please get out of the way. Because we only have time for hits. And yes, once upon a time we had time for marginal, but now we’ve got almost no time at all! And that we do possess we want to spend listening to what everybody else does. And yes, there are exceptions, but marginal artists are not entitled to put food on the plate. Maybe they have to get a day job. Maybe they have to give up.

And that’s just fine with me.

“Spotify’s Artist Outreach Mission Leaves Some Wanting More”