An Artist Ships

Oh, Seth Godin.  Your book Linchpin is ruling my life right now.

"An artist ships."

This idea seems simple enough.  It could be a DUH statement.  Not a difficult concept to wrap your head around.

But then you analyze it a little bit more.  "An artist ships."  Okay, so what does that mean, exactly?  Are you not an artist if you don't ship?  Is shipping the most important part of being an artist?  Do the shipments need to be successful or does the mere act of shipping denote success?  Does the fact that I use multi-syllabic words and the Socratic Method expose me as an intellectual who enjoys the sight of his own typing...?

"An artist ships."  You devise a project, set a deadline, initiate, tweak, analyze, tweak, retool, finish, and ship.  Regardless of whether it's a success or a failure (and in reality, doesn't everything that we do contain varying degrees of success and failure?), you are an artist.  Once you finish the project, you are no longer on the sidelines.  You are a part of the game.  People read your business book and decide whether or not the ideas and arguments are valid.  Web-surfers peruse your blog and subscribe or hit the back button, relegating it to internet anonymity.  Forward thinkers mentally ingest your manifesto and spread it like a virus throughout their tribes or leave it to die a slow and forgettable death.  Audiophiles listen to your song and rush to download the mp3 or flame you on twitter.

"An artist ships."  And learns.  What works, what doesn't work, how to do it more efficiently, where her weaknesses are, what strengths she can depend on, what ultimately leaves her fulfilled and proud and chomping at the bit to ship again.

"An artist ships."  Duuuhhhhhhh...

I'll be shipping with Oh Girl next Monday night.  And I can't wait to be an artist again...

DUH... Music should be free... And the rules are changing

Chris Knab is a music industry insider with a blog focused on the music biz: http://miyb.blogspot.com/.  His insight is extremely helpful for the working musician, and he covers a whole slew of topics from knowing your typical fan to how the music biz is changing.  A must read for anyone serious about making money with their music.

My favorite part of Chris's blog is his DUH series: a collection of statements that make you slap your forehead and go, "Duh!  It's so simple!  Why didn't I think of that?"  A collection of DUH statements can be found here.

He also occasionally posts DUHs on his Twitter.

One recent DUH caught my eye more than others.  It relates to one of the biggest developments for not only the music business, but the newspaper business, the book publishing business, the television business, the movie renta... you get the idea...

DUH:157:“Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet. “.Bruce Schneier

Simple enough.  A digital file can never be fully protected from copying.  There will be a genius out there that can get past the safeguards and bypass the protections and get through the encryption... and the digital file will become fair game to anyone with a computer, smartphone, iphone...

Daunting for the music business to say the least.  Once it's out there, it is out there for the taking.  Songs get passed around from user to user, from hard drive to hard drive, using flash drives or portable hard drives or email or ftp servers or torrent or p2p or... and nothing is protected, everything is free, all the money the label and the promoters and the publicists and the marketing companies, all of their money spent on pushing a product to be sold... all of that money is never recouped because less and less people are actually spending money on the product.

You might think that I've been brainwashed by Bob Lefsetz, and you wouldn't be completely wrong.  But it's not a brainwashing, it's a realization, and an acceptance that the rules are changing.  Hell, it's a completely different game.  The physical album is a thing of the past.  The Smashing Pumpkins are embracing it.  They'll be releasing a 44 track album, one track at a time, all for FREE.  Yep, free.  Gratis.  No charge.  Put your wallet away.

This means two things:

- The Smashing Pumpkins are counting on their fans to compensate them in other ways (touring, merchandise, collector's editions of the album)
- The music had better not suck otherwise there's the "the only way they could get people to listen is by giving it away for free" joke that will get driven into the ground

Well, it also means that more and more bands are going to have to adapt to the new business model that will be evolving over the next couple years.  Your music had better be free and it better be amazing and it better make people want to come see you live and buy a t-shirt and a hoodie and a special physical edition of the FREE music they already have.  Because if the music sucks, you're going to be up shit creek without an income.

This is what has the music business (and the newspaper business and the book publishing busine... you get the idea) so scared shitless.  How are they going to make money?  How are the majors going to maintain their bottom line?  Where are the platinum selling albums going to come from?  These questions suck for the majors, but don't suck as much for the indies.  Because indies are agile.  Indies don't need to go platinum.  Indies need to serve their niche, need to connect with the true fans that bleed for the music, the fans that know all the lyrics and read the liner notes and put up flyers and tweet about tour dates and post pics from the show straight to facebook from their iphones. 

I'm an indie.  Albeit an indie barely out of the womb, as helpless as a newborn, incapable of supporting my head and barely able to suck on my mom's boob.  But it's okay.  Because I'll be learning at a prodigious rate while the old, old dinosaur majors will be struggling to play the old game, with their walkers and hearing aids. 

I'm looking forward to it.  I hope you are, too.