In your pursuit of music education or online music education, you’re going to study the successes and failures of different artists. Let’s take a look at one very successful music record example: Lady Gaga’s first big record, The Fame.
That record basically had the music industry appearance of coming out. Almost every song on there was a huge single. It seemed almost mathematically impossible that a debut record could really hit all those marks so successfully. We also didn’t know if this would work, but it did.
The truth was they actually took a very different approach. Those songs were heavily, heavily workshopped for many years before that album came out. They were releasing those on different Myspace channels and engaging feedback, then taking them down. They also went through many more songs that came out on that album.
The point that team got to with that record was that they didn’t have to guess how it would perform when it came out. They knew that all of these songs performed at a certain level from having exposed this many people to it. There were some songs we loved, but that didn’t get a good reaction, so we didn’t put them out.
You could argue that that marketing was sort of happening throughout the process. They’re getting that feedback and only putting out what they know will work.
Lady Gaga herself even said, “Whether you’re doing pop or doing rock and roll, I don’t believe that there’s any other way to do it than from the bottom up. So, you have to write records. And you have to record them yourself. And you have to play every venue you can get your hands on. And you have to fail. And then you have to get better. But you have to live and breathe your art. And if you don’t, you won’t get anywhere. That’s what The Fame is really about.”
