Eric Jensen

The larger music busi­ness has always con­tained a smaller indus­try focused on sell­ing the dream of suc­cess to inde­pen­dent musi­cians. In the Go-Go record label days, this involved access to deci­sion mak­ers and copi­ous amounts of advice on mak­ing your music more “com­mer­cial”. Musi­cians hoped that  Mr. Big would hear their amaz­ing song, fall in love with it, and next thing you know, the band is fly­ing around in pri­vate jets. Today’s pitch is that relent­less, ath­letic Inter­net mar­ket­ing will even­tu­ally build a brand and a full-time career. While many of today’s tools are pow­er­ful and can be very effec­tive, the busi­ness mod­els of these com­pa­nies are built on sell­ing ser­vices to musi­cians and are not nec­es­sar­ily depen­dent on the suc­cess of the artist. Mar­ket­ing is key to the exe­cu­tion of every busi­ness plan, but by no means the whole enchi­lada. Suc­cess­ful busi­nesses cre­ate prod­ucts and ser­vices that meet fun­da­men­tal human needs. DIY Inter­net music com­pa­nies are serv­ing the need of the musi­cian to be acknowl­edged and feel empow­ered. Are you  just as clear about your mar­ket and the needs you are address­ing? Peo­ple don’t buy what you do but why you do it. With­out a clear vision of what makes your music extra­or­di­nary, and who you are serv­ing, all the mar­ket­ing in the world will not cre­ate a mega-successful brand. Most pro musi­cians have multi-faceted careers (per­form­ing, record­ing, pro­duc­ing, writ­ing, pub­lish­ing, teach­ing, orches­trat­ing, etc.) and have spent tens of thou­sands of hours devel­op­ing their craft. If you are seri­ously com­mit­ted to a long term career…