Breaking Into The Music Business Today

Breaking Into The Music Business Today

By Mika Salmi, CEO of creativeLIVE.

Whether you love making music, or love listening to it, there are now more ways than ever to break into the music business.

It's been 14 years since Napster emerged, marking the start of an industry-wide revolution. Today, more music is being made and listened to than ever before, and the flow of both money and opportunity has changed radically.

Once upon a time, six major record labels controlled the music business. Now there are only major three labels — and they don't control the industry like they used to. With the traditional gatekeeper model all but destroyed, what opportunities are available to the aspiring musician or manager?

Musicians As Entrepreneurs

In the past, if you were a musician, getting signed to one of these labels was your only goal (okay, besides sex and drugs). That's not because it was easy to do; it was straightforward. The only way to make it big was to land a major deal with a major label.

Today, as an artist, you have a multitude of options — all starting and ending with your own bare-bones initiative. You can create music in your bedroom and distribute it directly via online platforms like Beatport or Soundcloud. You can play it like Macklemore did and spend years on the road, playing hundreds of live shows, building a fan base that will eventually fill arenas and land you on Billboard charts. You can try the old (and hardest) way and sign to a label. Or you can do all three.

Your path depends, first, on your talent and, second, on how much control you want over your career. Today, musicians have choices that hardly existed pre-Napster. You can now decide.

Music Fanaticism Is Now a Career Path

If you are not a musician but a music junkie like me, your only option in the past was to get a job working for a record label. These jobs were in short supply so they were hard to get, but you once your were "in", you were set. And then sometimes you'd have career-defining moments like I did, when I discovered the Nine Inch Nails back in 1988.

Today, after a few decades running music and entertainment companies, I'm the CEO of creativeLIVE, an online education company. And guess what channel we just launched, because we see such a huge opportunity? Music.

If you are a music fanatic, you have as many choices as the artists themselves. You can go work for a technology-based music company like Spotify or Pandora (there are hundreds of these companies popping up every day) as a product manager, engineer, or in business development. Or, you could choose to work at an ad agency or media company sourcing music for commercials and TV and movie soundtracks (many, many companies here too). Or, you can go work for a label and help them figure out how to stay relevant in this ever-changing industry.

Anyone Can Try to Make a Career in Music

Alternatively, whether you see yourself as a music artist or a music fanatic, you can now learn how to make music on your computer. creativeLIVE is bringing a world-renowned DJ, Big Chocolate, in to show you how to make Electronic Dance Music (EDM) tracks in Ableton Live. EDM is the hot thing right now, permeating all genres.

Due to the democratization of the industry over the last two decades, music is alive and well and the opportunities are numerous. The days of being a "cigar-smoking fat cat music exec" are pretty much gone, but the music lives on. Music "careers" are now more creative and exciting, taking a number of shapes, both on the artist side and the business side.

Whether you are an aspiring musician, a marketer, a deal maker, or a coder, there are more, and, in my opinion, better opportunities today to follow your passion for music and make a good living doing so.

Former label exec, current Incubus manager, and all-around man-in-the-know, Steve Rennie will be on creativeLIVE on September 12 teaching a workshop about networking. While the landscape of the music business is constantly changing, one thing remains the same: it's all about who you know. Steve is a candid and insightful expert who has seen it all and managed to stay both relevant and honest.

Hisham Dahud is a Senior Analyst for Hypebot.com. Additionally, he is the head of Business Development for Fame House and an independent musician. Follow him on Twitter: @HishamDahud

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Trent Reznor Dismisses DIY, Ridicules Musicians Shaking Their Cups For Scraps

Trent Reznor Dismisses DIY, Ridicules Musicians Shaking Their Cups For Scraps

In a fairly revealing interview with Spin, Trent Reznor reminds us of why it's often dangerous to turn musicians into ideological symbols. Reznor has had a strong association with DIY music but recently chose to take his work to Columbia Records. In opening up about his choices he ridicules current DIY approaches and reminds us that he's on a serious fantasy trip about Beats Music.

It's interesting to read this post by Trent Reznor from 2009 on getting known in music when you're an unknown. You can tell he's totally immersed in web-enabled DIY business for musicians. It's not just an opinion piece.

He also raised questions about social media that revealed how hands on he was:

"The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don't live there. They don't get it because they don't use it. What you've seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly."

"There's no handlers or PR people here, it's me and my guys - that's it. There's no real plan, even - it's just trying to do the right thing that respects you the fan, the music, and me the artist. That's the goal - a mutual and shared respect."

Trent Reznor's Journey Back From DIY

Since then Trent Reznor has chilled on his absolutist stance regarding record labels and seemed to be going in a direction that recognized that different artists need different options depending on what they're trying to accomplish.

Yet he also seemed to be losing a bit of his technical edge as he bought into what still seems like Beats Music Kool-Aid, that Beats Music was taking a radical step forward by including human curation.

In his feature interview with SPIN, Reznor briefly references his views about Beats Music:

"I'm working on something with Beats that's a marriage of humanity and technology, which is sort of what my music has always been about."

I still think that's the Kool-Aid talking but it's important to feel good about what one is doing.

Is Reznor's Real Problem His Rigid All-or-Nothing Stance?

Reznor definitely feels good about working with Columbia Records but when he discusses the difference I start to get the feeling that he took DIY to an extreme:

"Being in control of your own destiny was great...It felt good to have my own neck on the line. But you spend a lot of time figuring out who the influential blogger at some radio station is. Market research is not a sexy thing to think about. More than that, when you're self-releasing, you have this walled garden of people that are interested in what you do, and to everyone else you're invisible."

I don't want to read too much into a situation with which I'm unfamiliar based on a few random comments but there are so many quality indie firms ready to help musicians with any aspect of what needs doing that I have to wonder if he got lost in DIY as Do-It-All-Yourself. It's as if he believes that one either does everything oneself or has to make some sort of record deal.

The Reznor Binary: Or Go Fuck Yourself

Taking an all-or-nothing stance actually fits Reznor's public presentation over time. From his early aesthetic to his later statements about DIY to his rude dismissal of DIY successes in the SPIN interview:

"I know that what we're doing flies in the face of the Kickstarter Amanda-Palmer-Start-a-Revolution thing, which is fine for her, but I'm not super-comfortable with the idea of Ziggy Stardust shaking his cup for scraps. I'm not saying offering things for free or pay-what-you-can is wrong. I'm saying my personal feeling is that my album's not a dime. It's not a buck. I made it as well as I could, and it costs 10 bucks, or go fuck yourself."

The line "it costs 10 bucks, or go fuck yourself" has found some resonance on Twitter with its punk veneer and whatever else is going on there for respondents.

But the about face in perspective, one that at first did not appear so extreme, now looks at documented successes and makes fun of them. Sure, he dismissively says it's okay for other people, but his message that "my way is the best way or fuck you" is quite clear.

I guess that's just what passes for punk rock these days.

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