One of the essential things about authenticity while making music is knowing yourself. That self-awareness can come from all kinds of self-help books but also exercises where we can look at ourselves in the mirror and project exactly what we want to see. Looking in the mirror is one of the most critical elements about learning how to perform well and perform authentically.

Each day, you must go to the mirror, and the first thing you must do is confront yourself. It means you’re looking in the mirror, and the moment that you’re about to say, “Oh, my eye, oh, my hair, oh, my face, oh, I need to…,” you must confront all those things. Even when you’re standing there, and you’re thinking, “This is silly. I don’t know why I’m doing this;” you must observe. It would be best to observe all those things. Understanding your inner self should be taught as part of music education also in online music education.

The idea is to see who you are, and you begin to observe them and pay attention. Then, you’re comfortable within yourself. At that point, when you step on the stage, you’re able to make that connection. Do you know what happens? You connect with the audience, and the audience feels your authenticity. It’s essential that they feel your authenticity.

As an artist, you are working through who you are and what you want the audience to feel when you are on stage. That connection that you’re trying to make with the audience, you must do some work where you understand who you are, why you are, how you are, and the purpose of you being that artist. The only way that that can happen is if you have and learn to have that intimate connection with yourself.

One of my favorite authors, Brené Brown, talks about authenticity a lot. I find it to be helpful to look at one of her examples. She often uses the phrase, “Don’t puff up. Don’t shrink down.” Sometimes when we’re in a tense situation, we try to make ourselves more confident than average. Or we try to make ourselves smaller because we feel like we’re acting. We’re taking up too much space.

The truth is that if someone dislikes you for doing either of those things, you’re going to feel worse about yourself. If they dislike you for being who you are, you’re still going to feel good about exactly who you are. The critical idea is to walk out of that situation and know that you didn’t try too hard to mold yourself into what you think someone would want you to be. We want to sit with ourselves in precisely the space that we are.

I speak about not the space of when you think you’re putting on. That’s the mask you wear so that people know you as this when you step out. We’re talking about when you’re alone and you’re standing in front of that mirror. You’re looking at yourself, and you’re taking in all the voices that are inside your head.

To me, a good musical performance is about three things. One is being comfortable with your body. One is being comfortable with your breath. And one is being comfortable with yourself.

One tip I give my students is to listen to their music while they walk around the city, or ride their bike to work, or even take a bath. By allowing your music to, in a way, infiltrate your entire being, you can feel like it’s really inhabiting every cell of your body. Walking out on the street, dancing throughout the day—all of these things are enmeshing the music and your identity together, which is a really important part of your growth as a performer.

Another thing I suggest is to listen to music while you’re working out. If you go to the gym, there’s a musical exercise you can do while on the treadmill. As you’re going at a nice slow pace, for about three to five minutes, just start singing to yourself, “la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.” Sing these notes in time with your breathing, and it will allow you to feel your breath.

Alternatively, you can do the same exercise, but instead of doing it on the treadmill, you can do it while you’re doing sit-ups. Either way, it will allow you to feel connected to your breath. It’s about the breath, and it’s all about understanding how your body works.

During a performance, you’re speaking very quickly. The volume sometimes has to be very loud, and it’s also rhythmically challenging. As a result, the tendency for singers and also for hip-hop artists/rappers is that they sometimes forget to breathe. Then, what happens is that the breath becomes short. No air is getting down. All of a sudden, you’re gripping from the outside, and eventually, the voice reaches a point where it can’t take it any longer, and the performance falters.

We’ve got to breathe deeply and move on that breath. And move on that breath, and move on that breath, continuously. We find the rhythm within the breath. The breath truly sets up the rhythm—really, it’s the breath that creates the rhythm.

I usually tell my students that they should be able to sing their entire set while they’re running, doing sit-ups, on the elliptical—during all of these different types of physical movements that we’re so used to doing. We should be able to do them while singing and listening to our own music.

And eventually, at a certain point, the rehearsing of these movements together will make it seem like second nature. We don’t ever want to walk on stage feeling like we aren’t prepared, so preparing through all of these everyday activities will help us feel like it’s no big deal. It’s just breathing.

With online music education, you can learn much more about improving your musical performances, as well as a wide variety of lessons about building a career in the music industry. Your high-quality music education is right there, waiting for you to seize it.

Many bands don’t even bring a crew on tour; it’s just them. They do everything themselves. As you start to get bigger, though, you might need someone to sell merch for you. You might need someone to run the sound at the front of the house, or someone to run the monitor mix. As you continue growing bigger, you might need a wardrobe person. You might need a production assistant, a production manager, a tour manager. All of these people are very expensive to hire.

So, these are really some things to think about as you start to gain momentum in the music industry. For the most part, your manager is going to help you with this. As for needing a manager, you don’t need one until you need one. If you find that you can’t handle everything by yourself, that’s when you need a manager. At the beginning though, I recommend that you try to do it on your own.

Obviously, selling tickets for your show can benefit you financially. In some cases, though, you’ll really only be making money from alcohol sales at the bar, or from a guarantee that the venue has already given you. This is typically a certain amount of money that you’re guaranteed to receive after the show, no matter what. For instance, a venue may give you a $500 guarantee to play a show, and if they do, it won’t matter how many people are in attendance—you’ll receive the $500 regardless.

Another way that some venues might do it is to give you a guaranteed amount, plus a percentage of ticket sales after a certain amount of money is made. So, for example, after you’ve already made $1,000, you would receive $500, plus ten percent of ticket sales. You might get offered a deal like this as a way to incentivize you to promote the show and bring along as many people as possible.

Ultimately, creating a successful performance or tour is about the following things: finding your true, authentic self, creating your intention, telling your story, finding your audience, and creating a visual element that will evoke a certain energy from the crowd. So, in that vein, there are a few things you really need to focus on deciding, and they are who you are, who you need to bring with you on your music journey, and what kind of story you want to tell. In many cases, exploring online music education can help you get started on the right path.

In the music industry, it’s crucial to find who your target audience is, and it’s important that it’s based on real data. So, what you should do right now is create a profile. Create that John or Jane Doe who you think would love your music. Even if you only have 10 fans on Facebook or any platform, try to look at what the commonalities are amongst the people who love what you’re creating. Whether it be the shoes they wear, or their age, or where they’ve gone to school, all of this stuff starts to paint a picture of where you’ll be able to find your audience in the future.

The next thing to really make sure that you’re doing once you start getting some sort of response, even if it’s only five people following you on Instagram or coming out to your show, is to really start embracing your first followers. You want to do this because those first followers have the potential to become the biggest evangelizers on your behalf.

As much as we can talk about potential marketing strategies that we can do, it’s also really nice to have your marketing happening while you’re sleeping. This is another reason that you want to really embrace your early fans and make them feel like there’s a reason they should be championing you on your behalf.

So, whether you’ve just started performing or whether you’re starting to get plays on SoundCloud, you should really make sure that you’re starting to know who your fans are. For example, if you have less than 100 fans on Facebook, you should try to know all of their names. The people who come out to your show—those are people you should try to talk to afterward.

One of my favorite related stories is about Beyoncé. If any of us went to go see her in a stadium today, she certainly would not stay afterward to talk to all of us. She doesn’t need to. However, if you look at footage from some of the first Destiny’s Child concerts from the 1990s when there were 20 or so people at a gymnasium, she’s staying after the performance and talking to every one of them. She’s taking the time to learn who they are, and she’s leaving them with a great impression. There’s no reason that you and I can’t do the same.

For anyone interested, there is far more to learn regarding a wide variety of music-related concepts by exploring online music education, which is by far the most convenient form of music education available.

You probably got here by clicking on something regarding building your image or music marketing. The truth behind your intention for doing so was probably that you want to build your audience, which is important to keep in mind during your music education. Having a clear image of what your marketing strategy will be is very important, and it should fit into a really clear goal that you hopefully have: finding your fans, identifying them, going out to where they are, and giving what you’ve made to them.

This goes along with any other aspirations you might have about getting a record deal or getting management. All those people in the music industry are just chasing audiences. They’re not chasing you. They’re not chasing the talent. They’re chasing audiences.

That means, your focus should be finding out who your audience is. The really good news is, unless you’re making a really bad product, assuming you have pretty good songs, there is an audience for you out there. There’s an audience for everybody.

One of the first important changes that we all need to go through when we start communicating about the things that we’ve made (and that’s what music marketing is, right?) is to grab your audience’s attention. We’re just trying to communicate and say, “I want to win your trust to take the 15 seconds to listen to my song.” To do that, I need to say something, or you need to read something.

The first big change we need to look at is to refraining from simply just focusing on describing what we’re doing, which a lot of us start out doing in the beginning. We say, “Hey, I’m Mark, and I play guitar.” But that’s sort of a commodity and it doesn’t really resonate on an emotional level with anyone.

A really important hack you might learn in online music education is to actually just change the sequencing of saying what you do and focusing on saying why you do what you do first. Then you just illustrate that what you’re working on, be it your band, your album, whatever project it happens to be, is proof of what you believe in, what your “why” is.

So on one hand, I could say, “I play guitar. I’ve been playing for a long time. I have an album coming out. Please listen.” That doesn’t resonate very hard, does it?

Or I could go a different route and say, “When I was growing up, I didn’t see my brothers or sisters very often. But one day, my brother came around and gave me his guitar, and then everything changed. I ended up writing songs. I have an album coming out with those very songs. Would you like to listen?”

Now, it doesn’t really matter if my style of music isn’t your cup of tea, as long as — on a belief level — if my “why” has resonated with you. If it has, then chances are you’re going to take a moment and check it out, which is all we’re ever trying to do. So this pivot to starting with “why” is really important.

It’s not just rooted in psychology. There’s also a biological component to it. I promise we won’t go too scientific in this course, but the reason we all focus on “what” is because the outer layer of our brains, the first thing that the information I’m saying is reaching, just focuses on language.

So if I know that the first thing you’re going to process when my words hit your brain is “what” I’m saying, I’m going to emphasize “what.” But where we make decisions, where our beliefs and our values live, is actually deeper in the center part of the brain. That’s why “why” is more important than “what.”

What we’re essentially doing, if you can visualize it, is that by starting with “why,” we’re jumping right to the decision-making point and we’re not making all these words go through the processing part of the brain. That’s all happening as well, but we’re sort of taking a shortcut. So it’s literally in our biology that when we lead with “why” in our beliefs, things resonate faster.

Looking at other people’s performances on stage and critiquing them is a really good way for us to grow as a class and also be able to critique people without the fear of them getting upset. So one thing we can look at is Ed Sheeran’s performance with his looping pedals versus his performance of the same song with a band.

We will talk about the ways in which one seems more intimate, but one seems more professional. In one, you can see the errors that are made. In the other one, it’s more easygoing.

It’s really usually split half and half between the classes of which one they appreciate more. But what we’re looking at here is really the ability to do the same song in two different styles: one by yourself, and one with an entire band. And it’s really awesome to see that that’s possible these days. As far as music education goes, knowing the difference between a solo performance and a group performance is important to remember.

We’re in an age of technology where we can make practically anything happen. And depending on who the audience is, we can focus that performance for those people specifically.

A really great exercise I do with my students is that I force them to take out all the elements of the song except for two. So there are only two instruments and a voice. This changes the students’ understanding of their song completely. In a lot of cases, it also changes the way they see the song, and sometimes even all of the music they’re creating.

Just this one little experimentation in minimalism can help see which elements of the song are important and which of them are superfluous. Removing elements that don’t synergize well can greatly improve the quality of a song in creation, remember this as you continue your online music education.

Experimentation with live instrumentation is greatly important to the artist’s development. If somebody comes in with an electronic-based track, we try to make it live because being comfortable onstage in all different ways means that you’re ready for anything.

If somebody comes to you and says, “We really loved your performance, but could you do it acoustic?” We want you to feel like you’re more than strong enough to do that, to take that chance, and feel comfortable with different instrumentation onstage.

This means it could be a symphony orchestra or just playing to a track or singing an a cappella. We want all of those things to feel just as comfortable for you. So we make sure that we collaborate with different people, feel different rhythms, and explore the way it sounds to have live drums next to you versus having drums on track.

All of these things can be complicated to feel safe with on a stage. But making sure that you practice and get used to it is really important.

You know, some people’s sound is so specific, and they don’t want to move outside of this. But for me, I feel like attempting to go for it, and really challenging yourself is an incredibly important part of the process.

Last year, one of my students was a hip hop performer. I kind of forced him to try to play with a live band. He was not initially interested, but he did so. Afterwards, it completely changed his sound. And from then on, that was his go-to method of performing.

So for me, it’s really important to just try this process because it doesn’t hurt. You don’t know what’s going to happen with that song, the rest of your music, and you could even be starting an entire new genre of music.

As an artist, you have to make the choice of whether or not you’re going to be the leader of your band, or whether or not you’re going to have a musical director, or whether or not you’re going to have someone who is basically producing your show and putting you in place.

There are three different types of directions there. If you are leading your band, then your music knowledge has to be on point. You have to understand the arrangements. You have to understand how to start a song and how to end a song. You even have to understand how to talk to your band musicians.

If you have a musical director, then you have to be willing to listen to what the musical director is telling you in terms of when your entrance is, when you should pause, where a solo is appropriate, when you should take a break, and so on.

All of those things are worked out (with your input, of course) with the musical director. If there’s someone who’s producing the show from top to bottom, then it’s pretty much like you’re going to be told when to sing, where to go, when to stand, when to breathe, when to move, and when to bow. All of those things are worked out because you have someone who’s producing the show and they usually know what they’re doing, so you can all put on an amazing show.

When you talk about revenue streams in the music industry, without a doubt, the biggest source of revenue for the majority of major artists these days is live performances and touring. Live performances and touring, if you think about it compared to traditional spins or record sales, for example, maybe you sell a million records. Then maybe it takes a year to sell a million records. Or maybe you get a million spins, but it takes 10 months, or 11 months, or 12 months to reach those kinds of numbers.

An artist who is getting that level of sales and performance royalties most likely is able to sell out Madison Square Garden. An artist will make more in one night in Madison Square Garden than they will in the first six months of releasing a song. So every big artist realizes that the music is the business card that gets you in the door to touring and really generating that income. Because, at the end of the day, an artist will end up making more money in one month of good strong touring than they will in a year of spins and performances on the radio and likewise. That’s a good bit of music education to be aware of.

The best advice I could give to any aspiring artist is to make your live show fantastic, and the way you make a live show fantastic is to simply play live. There’s no secret. That’s how you do it. The old adage in the music industry is a band who plays 100 shows live is a completely different band from the one who plays their first show. A lot of times when big artists tour, you’ll find that the first couple of weeks of the tour, they’re in playing secondary or tertiary markets.

You might wonder something along the lines of why Rihanna is in West Palm Beach and San Antonio as opposed to New York, Dallas, Boston, Los Angeles, or any other major media mecca center. It’s because artists always want to gather some steam, get the machine running smoothly, get the kinks out of a show, and really make it run well. And in today’s shows, that’s no small feat. Don’t neglect the importance of this as you continue your online music education.

Between the pyrotechnics, the sound, the lighting, the staging, and all the things that go on, it’s really important that all pistons are firing at the same time to make the show great. Now, I understand that you guys aren’t all going to be selling out Madison Square Garden like Drake. You need to make your live show compelling on the club level. It doesn’t matter if there are five people there, 50 people there, or 500 people there. You have to make it kill.

That means you rehearse. That means you build your following. That means you slowly build your audience outside the epicenter of your home base. If you’re a New York-based band, you shouldn’t overplay in New York.

You play a show in Brooklyn, maybe a show in Manhattan. Take a little break. Do you play a show in Westchester? Yes. Maybe try and hit Philly. Maybe you go into Hartford. Maybe you go into Boston. Slowly build your center out. That’s how you build a fan base.

This is a great story that I love to tell. A friend of mine was a manager in Chicago for many years. He was a very big manager and managed a lot of really great acts. Artists would call him all the time in Chicago and say, “Hey, we’re looking for a manager.” And he would say, “Can you sell out the Metro?” For those of you who don’t know, the Metro is a historic club in Chicago.

Every great artist has come through the Metro. It doesn’t matter if you’re the Smashing Pumpkins or Kanye. It’s about a 900-capacity room and very famous. Every great artist who’s come through Chicago has sold out the Metro. More often than not, the artists say, “Well, no, I can’t sell out the Metro. I can sell like 300 tickets.” And he would say, “Well, when you sell out the Metro, give me a call again.”

All this to say you’re not going to be the biggest band in the world if you’re not the biggest band in your hometown. So build your fan base locally. Build those fans, the real fans that are going to stick with you through thick and thin before you try to take over the world. Everybody starts with 1,000 real fans and builds up from there, and you need to do the exact same thing.

Get critical feedback about your show. Make sure your show is great, and when you play, make sure it’s an event. If you overplay, nobody’s going to want to see you anymore. That’s going to have a long-term effect on how you’re going to make a significant amount of money in the music industry if you’re a performer. And if you’re a manager, that’s also how you’re going to make commission.

There are a number of other players that may fall into an artist’s orbit that are crucial to long-term development and career management in the music industry. They range from a publisher to a business manager, an attorney to an agent, and perhaps a digital marketing manager, or even a publicist.

Those people should be added to your team as needed. For example, you don’t need an attorney if there aren’t any contracts to negotiate. These people get paid in different ways and should be added at different points. So let’s talk briefly about what they do and what role they fulfill to help you determine when you need to add those people.

What does a publisher do? As part of your online music education, you should know that a music publisher does a number of things. In addition to collecting revenue and income from sync fees, setting up co-writes, and also pitching your music for opportunities, they are an important part in developing you as a writer.

A lot of young writers say, “Oh, I really want a publishing deal.” Publishing deals are really well-suited for artists that have a number of things bubbling under or are showing a lot of potential. Or they may have a number of songs that have already been placed with a number of artists that are being released so that a publishing company can actually collect on your behalf and propel you forward to get other co-writes, to get other opportunities, using their network and having access to their staff.

Publishing has historically been a great asset for many artists. The deals worked very similarly to how record company deals work. They pay in advance. They collect on your behalf. You get a royalty. And they recoup that money.

Publishing entities have been tremendous assets for performers who perhaps no longer want to perform, or aren’t as interested in touring anymore, but still possess a great skill for songwriting and also on the flip side have been true champions of up-and-coming writers and have really helped develop and propel their careers. They represent the writing and the writer, the songwriter, and pushing the song forward.

An attorney negotiates deals on behalf of the artists, oftentimes serves as a confidant or a mentor to an artist, and works closely with the manager. They generally get paid 5% of the deals that they negotiate. That could range from anything like merchandise deals to licensing deals, record deals, publishing deals, and other things of that nature.

Again, none of these numbers are set in stone. Different deals work in different ways, depending upon who the person is and what the circumstances are.

Agents collect money on live shows. They generally make 10% of the gross on your live shows. Artists generally book their own shows until such time as they can no longer do it. Agents are extremely effective at routing tours, booking shows, and help determining what the right venues are for that artist to play in particular cities, both domestically and internationally.

A business manager generally makes 5%. A business manager is an accountant. They oftentimes handle your entities, meaning your touring entity and your label entity. They handle payroll for tours, for your crew, for your band, sound, lights, and other such aspects.

Again, a business manager comes in very handy once you are in a situation where you have a number of different businesses that need to be managed. A publishing entity, a label entity, and a touring entity are generally the three different lanes that a business manager helps coordinate and files taxes on your behalf.

Digital marketing managers are great to add, especially if your audience primarily comes from social media. Publicists are also an option if you’re more of a traditional TV, radio, or magazine type of artist. Publicists can come in very handy.

But record companies also provide many of these services. They have publicists. They have digital media entities as well as business development people.

But all of these people work in concert with your manager. The manager is the closest, most important business relationship you will have in your career. It’s the manager’s job to interact with all members of your team.

So think of it like a football team. As the artist, you’re the owner of the team, and the manager is the quarterback. They’re on the field, calling the plays and running the ball on your behalf.

It’s an important lesson in music education that you have a great relationship with your artist or manager. It’s important that you’re honest with your artists and with your manager. And it’s important that you feel that your manager represents you, your brand, and who you are out there in the world. Because 99 times out of 100, they’re going to represent you long before you ever get into the room.

Once you buy into this version of really pitching what you’re doing by going from “why, how, what,” and not “what, how, why,” and you look around at some successful examples of artists and companies, you realize that the ones that have this wide-reaching effect are doing exactly that. For a great orthogonal example outside of music, I love to look at a couple of technology ads from a while back.

What Can the Music Industry Learn From This IBM Commercial?

There’s a great ad from the ’80s with IBM, which was on top of the world then. They were making great products. But if you look at any of their ads, you’ll see that they’re talking about what they do constantly.

Let’s view this IBM commercial. You’re looking at a small portable computer called the IBM 5100. It’s helping a lot of different people do their work more productively.

From a real estate investor’s point of view: “Managing real estate investments entails many difficult decisions. Pay it now or later? What about the landscaping? Can we afford it? What about taxes? There are many, many difficult decisions to make.

“It’s really nice having a computer to help. It weighs about 50 pounds. You can plug it in anywhere. Bad weather, late deliveries, construction delays of all kinds. We need to find out how it is going to affect our schedule. Now we can find that out fast. The 5100 can help handle some very complex information.”

From a product developer’s point of view: “Jet fuel is expensive. At Simmonds Precision, we’re developing a product that’ll help the pilots save fuel. Flight test time is also expensive. But we do our flight tests right here in the lab on our IBM 5100 and save time and money. The capacity of the 5100 is about the same as some large computers a few years ago.”

From a life insurance agent’s point of view: “We’re a mid-sized life insurance company. If we want to compete, and we do, we’ve got to be flexible. We’ve got to get answers fast. This little machine will help us do it. The 5100 is easy to learn and simple to use.”

From a farmer’s point of view: “There are countless combinations of feed we can mix. What is the most economical for any particular herd? That’s what I’m figuring out now, and the cost of the 5100 is reasonable.”

From a printer’s point of view: “Paper, ink, size, waste, overhead, and don’t forget the shipping costs. Estimating a printing job is not so easy. Our estimators handle 50% more work since we got the 5100. We do it faster and a lot more accurately. And our customers really love it.”

The commercial tells us that the IBM 5100 is bringing the advantages of the computer to more and more people. IBM —helping put information to work for people.

You’ll see that they’re just talking about what they do constantly. They’re saying, this thing will help you. This thing has this much processor power. Blah, blah, blah.

In terms of who they’re choosing to associate with, which is a big part of building your image, they’re associating with, honestly, not the most exciting walks of life. They’re associating with people who are bored with their jobs, people who aren’t excited about what they do. These are people who might say, “I’m unhappy with what I do. This IBM thing will kind of help me.” That’s what we’re left with.

Contrast that with a very famous ad that Apple ran around the same time. It was called the “think different” campaign, and they took a completely different approach.

For Apple, It’s the “Why,” Not the “What”

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

In this ad, Apple doesn’t mention their product once. They only talk about their “why” and what they believe. On top of that, in terms of building their image, they’re associating with some of the greatest human beings of the past couple hundred years. They have video of Gandhi. They have video of Martin Luther King Jr., Amelia Earhart, people that dared to challenge the status quo and believe what Apple claims to be believing.

We’re left, at the end, not really knowing anything about the computers they make, but knowing that, if I think what they think, maybe I’ll go check it out. Maybe I’ll go see what this Apple computer is all about. And so that’s a great example.

How Can These Two Examples Contribute to Your Online Music Education?

When you look around at any marketing, anything from what you see in the supermarket to your favorite band, ask yourself: “Are they aligning with my beliefs, or are they just trying to impress me with what they’ve made?” Because what they’ve made is going to become increasingly less important, in this time of so much supply. For example, on Spotify, I have all the greatest music of all time. Just the fact that you’re telling me your song exists isn’t enough for me to take the time to listen to it. You need to resonate with what I believe, to win the trust that I’ll go and listen to it, and hopefully love it.

After considering these commercials, we need to ask ourselves, “What does IBM believe, based on their commercial? What does Apple believe based on theirs?” I’ll leave it to you to answer. They sort of speak for themselves. What I’m getting at is that we need to think about broadcasting our values when we’re actually communicating what we’ve made. Because even though you might think, “My values, those have nothing to do with promoting my band,” the truth is, all this stuff comes under the heading of trying to win trust, so people will take the time to check out what you’ve made.

You know, there’s no shortage of great stuff. You need to win people’s trust before assuming you’ll be listened to. When you’re broadcasting your values, even though your values might not resonate with every person you meet, there are 7 billion people on the planet. And a lot of people will resonate with your values. They’ll think, “That person believes what I believe. I am going to take the time to check out what they’re saying.” And if it’s someone who might love what you’ve made, but they don’t resonate with your values, that’s OK. They might find your stuff later.

Music Education and Learning To Market

An important thing to remember is an idea called positive exclusivity, meaning that not everybody is supposed to love what you’re doing. More importantly, when you’re starting out, if you’re trying to market to everybody, if you want everyone in the room to love you, most likely no one is going to love you. That’s because people need to feel like there’s some sort of spotlight shown on them. And that’s where broadcasting your values is this tactic to reach people who feel like, “Gosh, I never hear an artist talk about X, Y, Z, that I really care about.” It could be something that has nothing to do with music. But that’s a moment when you can win trust.

I like to point out that this is very different from how we normally think about exclusivity in a negative way. Right? This is not about purposely leaving people out. I’m not saying, “Anyone who is X, Y, Z won’t get to hear my song.” I’m shining a light on people who are normally ignored. I’m saying, “Anyone who loves X, Y, Z, this is for you. And the other people can come check it out, too.”

This is our beachhead to get things started. When we tap out that market, we expand, and we open it up to everybody.

Joni Mitchell began as a folk artist but also incorporated different influences into her own writing and composition and performance.

In her song “Big Yellow Taxi”, she sang, “That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. A paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”

And she ignited a subgenre that we’ve come to call the singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s. Overall, the wonderful era of the singer-songwriter was happening particularly in the 1960s and ’70s. As our country was going through a tumultuous time, and there was a lot of change, we had artists who were essentially in the midst of that and paying attention to all of it.

These artists were speaking to that situation. There was also this sense of freedom where there were many artists who had no problems picking up the guitar and creating and speaking what they did whether it was just them on the guitar or them with a band.

In the song “Something in the Way She Moves”, James Taylor sang, “There’s something in the way she moves or looks my way or calls my name. It seems to leave this troubled world behind.”

We were ready to hear a lot of singer-songwriters. We didn’t come from a period when it only had to be one artist who did this in the genre or who did it in the style. It was the 1960s and ’70s, and in terms of the music listening public, they were open and they were willing, and they were ready to hear a variety of things. And I think that for artistry, that results in incredible music.

From the song “So Far Away”, Carole King sang: “So far away. Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?”

One of the things I’ve seen happening recently is the return to this type of artistry. And when I speak to young artists, it’s one of the things I regularly speak about. Upcoming artists need to know that they have the opportunity now to create and to go outside of the norm. It’s a wonderful thing when artists go outside of the norm, and it’s important that it continue to happen.

Are you interested in pursuing a music education? Well, with online music education, you can learn much more about what it takes to build a career and find success in the music industry, and you can do it all without leaving the house.