Visions of the Music Business
The thing about the music business is once it gets into your blood, there’s no cure. There is no real life transfusion available once you are infected by it.
Like I often tell my lovely wife who has been in record retail for 25 years now, the only people left in this business are the really passionate ones. And of course, those unqualified to do anything else.
There are many avenues one can embark on in the music business. There are those who strive to play a musical instrument or sing. There are those whose talents aren’t necessarily in making music, but in reviewing it, promoting it or managing its artists. There are also those foolish enough to embark on the path of making original music. God help those sorry souls.
I have in some way touched all of these music business facets with varying degrees of success. But it is the latter which has captured my soul whole.
I’ve been writing songs since I was 15 years old. Along the way, I adopted many instruments to help in my composition and many techniques to help me bring it to life through recording, engineering and production. I have spent sleepless nights pondering the perfect rhyming scheme, the nuances of a bass line or whether the reverb on the vocals has too long a tail. Its a tough slog, a largely personal journey of progression and betterment with scant opportunities for public appreciation.
As the digital age cannibalized the music business in the name of broad-banded progress, writers like myself were faced with both opportunity and full-scale diminishment. The lowered technical bar meant more artists than ever were able to record their music. Digital distribution and the internet’s wide reach meant that your competition wasn’t limited to the musicians in your town, or state or even country. But coupled with that came new distribution channels. A trade of sorts.
You can make better music more affordably, but you have to compete with the whole goddamned world.
If this sounds like I am sour about the way things are, I am not. In fact, I am making the best music of my life at the age of 42. It is getting into more hands than ever and I am doing it my way. It is an altogether brilliant time, particularly if one isn’t concerned with monetizing your art.
In fact, I am intensely excited by the prospects of opening up my record label, Wild Iris Records, to more artists. I am more intrigued than ever with ideas of music distribution, internet marketing and live internet video broadcasting. Every day that goes by, the fabric of this new music business unfurls itself to me, clear and functional, and ready to be made into something new. I may even figure out how to monetize it!
I often tell my friends that I will be making music when I am 80 years old. In my head, I see it as the Rockwellian cliche, and old man on the porch sitting in a rocking chair strumming an acoustic guitar. But in reality, it will more than likely be a scene from a Gibson novel, nodes wired into my head and MIDI cables strewn about, uploading my newest composition to the net.
No matter, one thing will still be the same. Finding that perfect bridge wil still be a pain in the ass.
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