What To Do With All This Music?

What should we do with all this music? This is a question that I hear often fro managers, artists and D.J’s. Often time’s artists find themselves with an extensive catalogue but no real outlet or platform to share all the music. Sites like Sound Cloud and MySpace are a great platform to share music and YouTube is a great place to share videos. The sites I have previously mentioned offer a way to expose yourself to the public but its hard work to make your songs go viral.

I have noticed that many artists overproduce. These artists simply spend too much time and money recording and producing music. The time and money these artists spend creating music could easily be better spent marketing past or current projects instead of starting new ones. Too many artists record just for the sake of recording. I believe an artist should feel free to create at will but consideration for the marketing plan should take precedence of perpetual recording at a considerable cost per hour.

Every artist must decide whether they simply want to be a working musician or a celebrity/ superstar. There is considerably more work from a marketing standpoint that goes in to creating a superstar. For instance, image reigns supreme in the pursuit of superstardom. Accessibility to the public is also very important and the seclusion of studio recording does not lend it self to a sustained marketing campaign. In my opinion an artists should treat recording like athletes treat sports, never stop practicing but save your energy for the game and don’t over exert yourself in preparation.

So what do we do with all this music? We test singles with our core audience and pick the ones that garner the best reaction. Market your single to the best of your ability by performing and perhaps finding ways to cross promote the song through commercials, movies and other forms of entertainment. Stop finding new singles to promote half heartedly while the first is still under promoted.   

Why Separate The label From management?

The TLC biopic on VH1 created a lot of outrage due to the questionable practices by the former manager of the group Pebbles. Most of the problems that occurred should have been foreseen considering that LA Reid who at the time was pebbles husband also owned the label they were signed to. Most people would call this a conflict of interest but technically its not since the companies are separate entities. Managers play a big role in the career of an artist and they should also be a level of confidentiality between the two.

A husband and wife are as close as two people can be and having that level of intimacy between management and the label cannot be healthy for the artist. Record labels are known for being shrewd but if they have such an advantage they will be at an unfair advantage. The movie depicted a group who were grossly underpaid and overworked. The problems they had were to be expected because their manager basically worked for the label.

The record company is a business and their goal is to make money. An artist has many other goals such as stardom or just simple creation of art but while the artist is focusing on these things a manager must handle the business to ensure the artist is taken care of financially. A record label should never hire managers, attorneys or accountants for their artists those people must have your best interests in mind. The group suffered many financial hardships due to management even though they were one of the top selling groups of all time. Artists have to learn how to say yes or no to certain proposals from the label but the person who’s responsible for teaching the artist should be management. Because of the closeness of management and the label TLC suffered.