Creating an artist

Over the years the artist benefited from a music industry swelling with a backroom of talent. It was the creative infrastructure of the music industry and what I like to call ‘The Engine Room.’ It’s where collaborations were born and where the road used to begin.

When you signed to a record company it was the beginning, it meant the start of a relationship. And the better the relationship the greater the chance of success. You see success was something everyone used to share and it was an industry that drove people to succeed. The pleasure was shared with everyone because everyone played an equal part. Today with a rapidly diminishing return I don’t think it’s a unity, it’s a jungle mentality. Eat or be eaten, artist against the record company. They want a piece of every part of the pie.

Many of the things that worked so well in the past seem to be lacking today. Yet so many of these things are quite simple when you think about it. Everyone is scared of losing their jobs and even the artists nowadays are scared of being dropped. Why should that be any different though? It’s supposed to be a risk business, it’s supposed to be about taking chances and pushing out that little bit further. We lost our mavericks and we lost our risk takers. We lost our innovators and we lost our way. We are not creating anything anyone is going to remember. And before I hear you say Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift or Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce, Justin or even Jay Z. They’ll be here next year but I doubt they’ll be here next decade.

The relationships were everywhere, the artist with their manager, the manager with the label, the label with the publisher. Then the producer and the A and R manager and it went on. The only thing that may have changed as we face up to the demise of the ‘pop star’ is that the fan has a closer relationship with the artist. Or they should have if both parties are reaching out like they should.  Today artists should be connecting with their audience, a bit like John Mayer until he has his sudden whacko swings towards lunacy and he over communicates to the detriment of others and damages something he worked so hard at creating.

Filed under: About The Engine Room, Managing Creativity, record companies, social networking, A and R people, artist development, creating talent, record companies

Being a fan

Back in the day we connected with our favourite artists by buying all their records and going to see their concerts. In doing that we felt a close affinity with our heroes, it was like we had a part of them. Some of us, myself included wanted even more so we’d buy their bootlegs. I have inferior quality recordings by Neil Young , Dylan, Tom Petty etc that I paid almost double the price of an album for just because I wanted more of them. The point being it didn’t matter what it cost it was needing to have as much as you could of them and about being a fan. As a 15 year old I went backstage to meet Led Zeppelin and I felt I had it all.  I won’t recount the story here in case I already have but I might come back and devout an entire blog to it, maybe several. Let me tell you it was worth it, a defining moment for any teenager and an ultra defining moment for me.  As a fan it’s something you don’t ever forget and especially as the years go by you start to understand what those moments mean to you and how much music mattered.

In those days you paid for everything, you didn’t tape your friends records or if you did it was because you were going on some dumb camping holiday where you had nothing to plug your turntable in to so you needed everything to be battery operated. But above all else we cared about our artists and we wanted to be a part of that success, we wanted to help. We wanted heroes, the bands were our heroes and whatever part of them we could have we did. The pleasure they gave us we wanted to pass on to out friends, we wanted to share what we had discovered. It was important to stake your claim, to let people know you were first but after that then whoever you could play those records to you were round like a shot. Endless evenings spent huddled round the turntable watching it go round as though your life depended on it, waiting for that next track. ‘No stop, listen to this one first’ as you carefully picked up the needle and placed it on another track too impatient for it to take it’s natural course. Simple pleasures but totally fulfilling ones. Music was your life.

Fans can get to their artists now with social networking and that can only be a good thing. You can talk to more artists than ever and the ones who reciprocate are the ones most likely too. No artist today is too big to talk to their fans. Even good old Bono said, ‘without our fans we have no job.’  Before it was backstage or catch the band leaving the venue , a quick autograph and that was about it. Some had fan clubs but it was usually just a general letter to all the fans. How cool now that someone could write to you. But remember if they do to be courteous, don’t think they’re there to instant message you for the next 5 hours. You could turn in to an obsession and make them pull away. They have lives even if you don’t!

Plenty more to say on this subject but we’ll save it for another day. Be gone, I have things to do.

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, social networking, fan clubs, led zeppelin, social networking

Facebook, to infinity and back

I was trawling through my Facebook page trying to think back to how long I’ve been a member but there doesn’t seem to be a ‘member since’ section, shame. The thing that did occur to me though is how could we ever do without it now? It has had so much of an effect on people’s lives no matter where they are or who they are. Who hasn’t experienced something happening via Facebook that just would never have happened in real life. Real life, don’t you just love it, like any of us have real lives left when we turn the computer off! And yet our ‘new best friend’ is Facebook itself.

Initially I had my doubts, never been a My Space fan and without a demo to hawk around, why would I? But Facebook is totally different. My debut friend request came from someone even older than me which I have to confess made me sit up and think because to start with I thought, ah just for kids. I do admit  though it is a great way to find your children and connect, especially when they’re on a different continent. But then I can go on about the wonders of  Skype also. Stop!

It’s great to think the largest growth area on Facebook is now the over 35’s who have embraced it big time. Suddenly this demographic aren’t writing letters the way they used to and didn’t really even embrace e-mail for that purpose. Facebook is for everyone , everywhere. It does exactly what it says on the packet, it re connects people. We have people who we speak to regularly on there but that’s not the important bit, we have people on there who we thought we’d lost. For ever!

Every time you see a friend request you wonder, who could this be? Sometimes it’s someone with a need for popularity and who is just after numbers, the My Space disease. But then up pops that ‘Oh My God’ moment. I’ve had them as friends requests but I’ve also had them arrive as random e-mails. Either way don’t you just love those ‘Oh My God’ moments? I cannot count how many people I have reconnected with who through time or distance you just thought had gone. And then all of a sudden it’s like they never left. I’d never done ‘Friends Reunited’ at all and was delighted to be  a Facebook boy before most of my friends, I added them! To some I even had to explain what it was. Now there’s a first.

Just last week I received an enquiry from a lady by the name of Emily Liebert who had a very interesting book out culled from inspirational stories that came from Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/FacebookFairytales) Sadly mine didn’t qualify but my being back in touch after 41 years with a girl I used to walk home from school was pretty darn freaky. Now how on earth would she have found me? Actually I tell a lie, someone told her that I mentioned her in my book. Still it had to be Facebook that re connected us.

Of course we dare not think about all the lunatics out there who are seeing it as the ultimate tool for praying on young innocents. Fortunately though I don’t think Facebook has suffered as badly as it could have done considering how huge it has become. Also I think parents are being a little more vigilant as to what their children are up to on the internet nowadays as well. And of course the police have done a good job trapping them by posing as juveniles on the web.

It’s actually quite strange when you meet people who don’t have a Facebook profile. I actually saw someone the other day who looked completely dumbfounded when someone confessed, the look on their face was priceless, ‘You what?’ So where will it all end up, it’s hard to see anything really replacing it though something probably will  in this tech crazed world we live in. If I had one criticism I suppose it would be why change stuff that works well and confuse some of us in the process. If it ain’t broke then don’t Facebook fix it!

Filed under: social networking, Emily Liebert, Facebook, Facebook Fairytales, social networking