In terms of media, film is the one where there’s usually more time. There’s usually a much more thought-out process in terms of getting what they need and sort of playing with different ideas. Because films take a little bit of time to put together. The music industry has nuances, depending on the type of media you want your music to end up in, so make sure you do your research for the type you want.

Television is usually very short. Very short timelines. So they’re going to want something where it’s going to really be something that is either going to be right there in your face, or you’re going to have to react really quickly to it.

Let’s talk about other forms of media. The first thing I’m going to say is really, really important for your music education. This touches a bit on video games, but it’s really pertinent to all forms of media. Do your research.

Research everything you can get your hands on. Go on IMDB. Go on YouTube. If you want to figure out how to make good trailer music, go and watch a bunch of trailers on YouTube. It’s as simple as that.

Just go on YouTube and look up trailers for films that you want, or that you like the sound of, or that you want to submit to. That’s the first order of business; do your research. Remember to always do your research as you continue your online music education.

Find out if there’s a music supervisor who does some cool stuff. Let’s say we have a music supervisor coming in on Saturday. His name is Chris Mollere! And Chris Mollere has done Get Out. He’s done Pretty Little Liars, Vampire Diaries, a whole bunch of stuff. If people want to connect music to him, first point that you need to do is to research, and find out what is it exactly that this guy’s done.

What kinds of TV shows as he worked on? What kinds of films has he worked on? What are his current projects? Armed with that info, go and listen to that. Get a feel for it.

And then be honest with yourself. Say, “Okay, I know what this person’s kind of music is. Does my music fit? Am I going to give them something that they’re going to use and will make them want to come to me? Or something where they’re going to think that this person doesn’t even know how to research? They don’t even know what they’re looking for.” That’s the first order of business; do your research.

As for the different forms of media, if you want to work with a particular brand or you want to work in ads, look up the ads of that brand. Look at what they’ve done. You want to have trailer music? There’s a specific formula for trailer music. Go watch a lot of trailers and then figure that out from there.

If you want to work with film, the best thing to do is to look at a lot of the films wherein you would want to have your music featured. The same goes for television shows. Research the TV shows and the music supervisors and what they do.

Finally, in video games, if you’re submitting for games, you had better play that game. You should just look at the video games that you like. That’s the best way to start off; if there are video games that you want to put music into, check out what’s been already been done in that franchise or genre.

If you like Super Mario, which goes back probably 30 years or so, it’s got some history behind it. You can take a look at YouTube if you know you don’t have access to a Super Nintendo. Really do your research and see what has Nintendo done during this time.

Or let’s take another example. Let’s take a look at the Metal Gear franchise. Metal Gear’s been around for way, way too long. Probably about the same amount of time as Mario. And they’ve had a certain sound and a certain feel to it.

So if you want to create great music for video games, take a look at the video games that are being created. Take a look at the kinds of music that they’ve used. Try to gear yourself towards that, or gear yourself towards submitting music for video games that is close to the music that’s being used.

That’s really what it comes down to. Out of everything I said about video games and how to submit to them, just play the game. Listen to the music. You should know.

I played Gran Turismo for years. And I played Ridge Racer. I like racing games, so I played those for years. I know the kind of music that they use.

I have to say to myself, “If I was making music, am I going to make music for those? Or do I want to make music for something that’s more like a Warcraft, or something that’s like Civilization? A racing game, a real-time strategy game, or a simulation game?” There are many genres and each have their own sound.

It just comes from doing your research and knowing what kind of project you’re submitting to.

Coming from a performance art background, I can see a lot of times how my music students aren’t really giving themselves the opportunity to work in a more conceptual or abstract direction in regards to their performances. And what I try to discuss with the students is the possibility of creating an entire world on the stage that is different than how they ever imagined it could be in the music industry.

Elements to Consider

Where does the audience sit? Are you on stage? The lighting, the stage, the costumes — all of these elements can be put together during a music performance to create a piece of art in a way that tells a much deeper story than just the songs. For example, somebody like Sia, who doesn’t want herself to be seen on stage, is really creating a new persona using collaborators, such as choreographers to create dance performances, and wild set design with crazy costumes and video.

All of this is leaning towards a more artistic context of the work. And I think it’s really important that students at least try to experiment in this direction once in their career as they continue their music education.

Collaboration is a true art. It can be difficult to make boundaries with other musicians and be willing to let go of control.

DJ and rapper Ali Shaheed Muhammad experienced the difficulty of collaboration first hand as a member of the seminal hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. After a string of successful albums, he and the group’s lead rappers Q-Tip and Phife Dawg had trouble working together.

“The only change I saw was just to see those guys’ relationship deteriorate,” Muhammad says. “Phife had a problem with me. Dude, I’m in a group with you. You’re not my dad. … That was the end of it for me. All good things must come to an end. 20 years, man, I done everything I could.”

Control and collaboration are challenging aspects of working together. You have a sense of ownership over your own creative endeavor, and you don’t want to relinquish it to someone else. However, the people you work with may be giving expertise to the project, which will benefit everyone. Allowing oneself to let go while simultaneously preserving those limits is a really crucial skill to have. This is something you learn through online music education.

Sometimes it’s important for artists to collaborate with others, and sometimes it’s not. Knowing when it’s important is great, and knowing when it’s not is even better. Approaching collaboration as an idea is something that you have to take a lot of care with. Some people are not the right collaborators because they’re too pushy, or they’re not pushy enough.

Of course you also need to right artistic partner, someone who has been successful in the past with their initiatives. It’s crucial to know how they’ve kept their jobs financially afloat. All of their skills should be in areas that you would like to have on your project but are unable to bring to it yourself. You don’t need them if you can bring people to it yourself.

When the process is incredibly intimate, we don’t require a collaborator. You don’t want to be engaged with someone when you know what you want and know it’s so personal to you that you can’t truly have someone else’s opinion on it. This is a big component of being able to say no. Setting limits with your collaboration is critical in music.

And it’s all part of a bigger picture of self-awareness. Creating limits with your colleague in terms of money contracts, how much space to take up on stage, and social media interactions are all critical considerations. You should consider your collaboration to be a marriage.

In music education, I like to discuss the concept of your band as your gang. If you’re forming a band, they are the folks you’d want to hang out with all the time. Those folks should be people you trust to walk your dog, remain in your apartment while you’re away, drive your car, and care for you when you’re sick. All of these very individual qualities are desirable in a collaborator in the music industry.

Billboard has been around for 125 years. It started in 1894. It was focused on outdoor advertisement. That’s where the word “billboard” comes from. It moved to live entertainment, mostly carnivals and circuses. When music and vaudeville started, it began to produce sheet music. You started seeing some charts in the magazine based on the top-selling sheet music in big-city stores.

This went on until our first national chart in 1940 and continued from there. What’s kept us around so long? Any industry needs an independent voice to help spread the word, and Billboard’s been there from the inception of music. We have been tracking it and acting as an independent voice to lend legitimacy. Originally, charts were based on store-based sales. Somebody at the store would tell you what the top sellers were.

Somebody at the radio station would say, “Here are my 40 biggest songs in rank order.” There was a formula behind where they ranked, how big the store was and how big the radio station was. It was a weighted system, so a radio station in New York would be more of a voice than a station in Detroit, for example. It was the same way for retail- the bigger the store, the more weight they had. So it was really a reporting-based model with an honor system.

As with any honor system, it’s not always so honorable. Generally, it was a system that worked, because at the time there were checks and balances. It wasn’t that easy to smell out a fake, and that’s what people did. That’s why they had a position they had. In 1991, we moved to electronic monitoring of radio stations and over-the-counter sales. So when you bought a CD, they would scan it. That UPC number would click, and we would know for the first time ever exactly how many units of an album were sold in a week.

In the past, it was really speculation and the gold and platinum certifications that were accumulated over time. So that was a big change in the early ’90s, and the industry was a bit taken aback at what reality showed. What it did show was that Country was a pretty big genre, and Hip Hop was a pretty big genre. Where those titles might have struggled in the past, now we knew. All of a sudden, we had NWA albums debuting at number one and Garth Brooks albums debuting at number one.

It was a whole new world for everyone, and it made the charts much better. Over time, it’s continued to evolve in the digital landscape to where we are today, with streaming being the main mode of music consumption. Being that independent voice, lending legitimacy as to what is happening, over the past 25 years, we’ve aligned ourselves with great data partners whom we trust. This includes Nielsen music, which has tracked our sales and radio and streaming data since 1991.

We work with the industry to make sure we have the right data sets coming in. If there’s a big streaming service out there, we want them in. Thankfully, as these services started to rise, which also goes back to retail stores and radio stations, they want to be part of what we do. It adds legitimacy to their business. They know that if they’re part of the Billboard charts, then they have some cachet with the labels and the artists and managers as well.

Their business is going to be reflected in what we do. So we have a great system working, and we work hard to cultivate those relationships and to make sure that everyone feels like they’re a part of what we do. Just continuing to evolve the charts. We moved from a pure album sales chart to one that incorporates streaming in 2014, and it was pretty much the right time to do it.

It was right on the cusp of where sales were really starting to decrease and streaming services were really starting to increase their usage and their pay subscribers. Billboard is quite thankful that people still look at our charts as the standard in the industry. Record labels, artists, and managers work very hard in mining the right avenues to create noise, to do well on those charts. We hear about it every week. We’re involved from the production to promotion level, as people try to understand how the charts work, and what they can do to fare better on the lists on a week-to-week basis.

We hear from artists and management all the time, when their artists get to number one, about how happy they are, and how it means the world to them. Billboard has been around for 125 years, and the fact that we’re still standing here today. We mean so much to so many people, which is really something that we take great pride in. We’re not resting on our laurels, we’re continuing to innovate what we do. I can tell you, in the past 10 years, what we’ve done in terms of data and chart measurement has just been incredible.

That’s just due to how music consumption has changed over that time. For decades it was pretty simple. You bought a song, you bought an album, or you listened to it on the radio. Those are your only options. So it’s a pretty simple thing to do. How you bought it might have changed, and we adapted how we did that, but it was a pretty standard set of data.

Now, with streaming and social and how things continue to evolve, we’re constantly trying to evolve with the times and adjust the methodology to how people are getting their music today. We just try to be where the music consumer is, and we’ve done a really good job over the past 80 years in doing that. So we want to continue to evolve and continue to grow with the music industry, and more importantly, with the music consumer. Billboard is a big name in the history books so remember our contributions as you continue your music education.

The ability to critique yourself and others, and hear others’ critiques, is a true art in itself. Most of us tend to forget that this is a part of artistry, but in truth, it’s probably one of the biggest parts of it, especially once you reach a certain level. Keeping your cool, understanding yourself, and really taking the time to sit with every critique is really important.

As part of my class, we focus a lot on critiquing other people and critiquing ourselves, because it really helps us along the process of building our stamina for criticism in general. Our students critique each other on their performances, their songs, and their ability to be onstage and feel safe.

A lot of critique is really about figuring out what you’re good at, figuring out what you’re bad at, and what you need to improve on. What gets in the way sometimes is our instinct to be competitive with one another. We have to think of ourselves like we’re on two different trains moving next to each other. You can speed up and slow down, and that other person can speed up and slow down, but it doesn’t really matter who gets there first.

When providing feedback to other students, we really try to disregard this polarity idea that it’s either good or bad. Instead, giving feedback such as some things that could be worked on, or some suggestions for the future is a really helpful way of critiquing another artist.

This conversation about critique leads us into a conversation about collaboration, because really understanding how other people communicate is a major part of collaboration, as well as a major part of being able to be involved with your community of artists. So, within collaboration, we understand each other’s expertise. For example, this person is a great singer, and I’m a great drummer. Why don’t we do something together?

It’s about being able to trust each other within your creative process. This is really, really important. Sometimes, critique can be complicated, particularly when you’re not in a safe space or when you don’t already trust each other. So, the critique part of this conversation typically happens later on, after you’ve identified that you’re in a group of people that you can feel safe and comfortable around.

In this day and age of the internet, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter—all of these anonymous ways that people can critique you, it’s really hard to not get stuck in what other people think of you. That codependency with your crowd can be really debilitating. That’s where you have to come back to your authenticity, and your story, and your self-awareness, to understand where your confidence lies.

Instead of worrying about that person anonymously criticizing you, it’s important that you see your life and story as it is, wholly, rather than just that one moment.

If you have interest in a career in music, or simply want to learn more about the music industry and how it functions, online music education might be perfect for you. With the convenience of online learning, you can achieve your music education from the comfort of your own home and learn more about the value of critique and collaboration.

Today, we’re going to talk about the philosophy behind production. Of course, we first start with the song. The song is the reason why we’re all here. The song is the reason I have a job, and it’s also the reason why music education and music industry people such as attorneys and record company executives and so forth all have jobs. It all starts with the song.

As a producer, I oversee how that song gets arranged, finished and recorded as well the colors that accompany that song, such as the instrumentation, the emotions, and the performances. I help the artist guide that song to its proper place by finding out what the artist means, who the artist wants to speak to, and the emotional intention behind the song. The process involves having the song and the artist inform me, followed by me guiding that artist through the process of coming up with the best possible version that represents everything they want the song to represent to their public.

Producing music, records, and any sort of multimedia always starts with the song. If you ask 10 different people what a producer does, you’ll get 10 different answers because it’s so ambiguous. Every artist and every song needs a different treatment and help in different areas. Some need no help at all. Some need you to just stay out of the way and pay the bills. Others need intense help with song structure, such as songwriting, arranging, recording, and performance. The song, the artist, the artist’s audience, and the song’s goals define our role as producers.

Who comes to mind when you hear “request a ride”? Uber. Who comes to mind when you hear “order it online”? Amazon. And who comes to mind when you hear “grunge”? Nirvana.

So, what’s going on here? Why do almost all of us think pretty much the same answers to these questions that, honestly, there could be multiple answers to? We could have easily said Lyft, or eBay, or Pearl Jam, right? And they all would have been acceptable answers. However, most of us likely thought of the same names.

What’s going on here is that there is this concept of creating a category that a lot of times inadvertently happens in marketplaces. Whether you’re kind of the first person to start something, or you’re the definitive market leader, categories start being referred to for what you’re doing.

When we’re starting out and trying to build an audience, one of the really difficult things, especially for those of us who write songs and make music, is that we quickly get lumped into a category. Not only are these existing categories, but categories that sometimes have been around for over a hundred years, meaning there’s really no chance of becoming a market leader for that category.

If I say I make R&B music, first of all, you might be thinking of something different when I say it than what I’m actually making. And secondly, the chances of me establishing myself early on as the number one result for the R&B genre are pretty much zero.

So, what we need to think about is this concept called the law of category, which says that if you can’t be first in the category that you’re in, then you need to create a new category—you need to create your own category name. People have chosen to do this in a number of ways, ranging from merging together genre names to just coming up with something that’s complete gibberish.

There was a great artist I worked with who makes a kind of electronic music but didn’t want to just describe it that way. So he came back one day and said “I make Tron bop hop.” I told him I had no idea what that was, but then he played me some of his new song, and I completely understood. Somehow, it sounded like “Tron bop hop”.

Now, after a while of using that in his tag instead of just electronic music, when you search on Google for “Tron bop hop”, he’s the top result. Not only that but as other artists start seeing that tag used, some of them want to use it as well. So when EDM blew up, a lot of people that had never called themselves EDM started doing so. When that happens, what it actually does is push up the leader.

If you create your own category, and then a year later I use that same name, I’m actually, in a way, inadvertently promoting you as well. So, category creation is a really important part of building your image and being seen as a singular entity, and not just one of a million people doing the same thing. Now, you can likely see why it’s important to learn how to identify an existing art form or define a new one. It’s because creating your own category and identifying existing ones is a huge part of being able to really communicate, and to identify who your audience is going to be.

With online music education, you can learn more about finding success and crafting your own lane in the music industry, as well as many other important lessons and concepts that come with a quality music education.

Music has always been sourced from a variety of different places. When I started out, I would stuff physical envelopes with CDs and handwritten notes. I would try to make them stand out by putting them in bright pink or purple jiffies in hopes that they would somehow make it to the top of the stack. I really did have a strategy. It was a little funky but logical. It’s overwhelming to think about how many envelopes people in this industry are getting every day.

Sourcing and Streaming in the Music Industry

The way that we source music now has changed over time. Now the digital download and streaming services are king. In a sense, things were easier before because there weren’t infinite possibilities living within two clicks of a mouse. Now you can get songs instantly on your computer, laptop, phone, iPad, or any other device that you use. So, I think now it’s about curation and filtering.

Certain companies like Spotify have done well to create playlists for people based on the songs and artists they have listened to. I know this is an algorithm, but there is someone programming that. They have figureheads that do research and create lists based on what’s happening around them.

Radio Is Not Dead

A lot of this research is still built around things that have been around forever. One example of this is radio. There are a lot of charts on Spotify that mirror what’s happening in radio. Some people say that radio is dead but that’s not true. Radio is still a great tool for getting music to the masses when physical artists can’t be in a specific place at a specific time.

I believe that streaming services and insourcing are continuing to hone in on this method of curation with better filters. However, I still think there needs to be some sort of human connection or human aspect. Having a human behind the scenes provides emotion, which draws in many listeners. Emotion can’t be captured in an algorithm or on a computer.

Algorithms Can’t Compare to Humans

Do you know that thing on Spotify that shows related songs and artists to the ones you are currently listening to? That feature has a lot to do with human and technology working together.

Studies are claiming to be able to figure out exactly when and why people are skipping specific songs. But, as far as sourcing goes, it’s still about person-to-person relationships and recommendations. However, the way that we do these things has changed over time. Curation is still the most important part of all of this; we just need to dial it in a little more.

The history of the music industry is an important piece of any music education or online music education. What many might not realize is how early folk artists heavily influenced the modern music industry in ways you wouldn’t expect. It began with mobile recorders traveling to find otherwise undiscovered talents.

Reebee Garofalo talks about a division in the music industry and that there was a carriage trade, as he called it. What he meant by that was a very upscale market for music and a cracker barrel trade, which essentially is a downscale market for music. There were sections of the music industry that really catered to this sort of downscale market, and they sought out, essentially, the sound of the common folk or folk music.

What were the songs that eventually made it onto the records? Entrepreneurs like Ralph Peer crossed the country with mobile recorders in an attempt to find hillbilly artists and blues artists to record. These were local singers and songwriters who would not have been known to the outside world otherwise.

As one example, Ralph Peer was the first person to record Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family.

Hillbilly songs and sounds later became known as country or country and western. Two other towering figures of this time were John and Alan Lomax. They were folklorists who managed to record lots and lots of blues tunes from all over the country.

John and Alan Lomax discovered artists like Lead Belly. Alan Lomax was later very much a patron and supporter of Woody Guthrie. Alan Lomax taught a lot of these songs to a young man named Pete Seeger, who then, in turn, mentored somebody named Bob Dylan. There is a genealogy of popular music that can be traced back to the work of these early field recording music entrepreneurs.

At the beginning of each semester in this music education class, we have the students write down all of their favorite performances and why they were their favorite performances. Then, we have them write down all their least favorite performances and why those are their least favorite performances. And then we have these tools to look at for the rest of the semester that really shape what we think is good and what we think is not so good about certain performers.

Before you go on stage, you should be able to look at this list and say, “Oh, well, I’m not going to not care about what I’m doing,” or “I’m not going to be off key when I’m performing,” or “I’m not going to just stand there and look at my feet.” If these were things we didn’t like about other people, then we shouldn’t do them ourselves.

One of those qualities I see year after year is that students don’t like it when the person doesn’t feel into it. What we want to focus on is really getting lost in your music and what can make you do that. Some people need the music to be really loud on stage. Create that for yourself. Tell the sound engineer you need it louder.

Some people say, “I don’t want to hear myself that much. It takes me out of it.” Then, turn yourself down on the monitors. These are all things that we learn so that we can really feel as lost as we can be on that stage and in the music and exactly where we want to be in the music industry.