It Ain’t Easy

I’m referring to marketing in the music business, and specifically to the problems of achieving a measure of creative recognition and consistent success. Fact is, there is a bundle of talent in this world and punching through to the inside of the music business is by no means easy.

This is humbling. Now, maybe there needs to be more humility in the music business, but what I saw in the sessions at the Americana Music Conference suggested that confidence and persistence, not humility, are two of the characteristcs of songwriters and performers who make a living at music. Success requires intensisty of effort, resolute and long term commitment to writing and getting heard, networking with writers and musicians already in the mainstream of the business, and some divine intevention (some call it dumb luck).

There are few places in this world that are more fertile ground than Nashville. That’s why there were many excellent players, songwriters and producers hanging around the Nashville Convention Center last week. And there were a good number of folks from the radio industry, too, who depend on accurate ears to detect the kinds of sounds that appeal to their listeners.

The sessions I enjoyed the most were about listening. The “Music Meeting” included more than a dozen tracks from which attendees heard a minute or so, and then had to justge on a 10 scale whether it appealed to them. Many of the folks in the room were radio-related, and they had very strong opinions on what would get played on their station. There were promotion and record label folks, too, and most were attached to one or more tracks, and interested in getting the “ear” of radio programmers. Many early reactions in the Music Meeting were linked to how well the artist on the track was known. The better known among them received stronger and quicker reactions.

The “Demo Session” featured five great session musicians listening to a new song and then working out an arrangement that would sound good when recorded. That was exciting and illuminating, and showed that solid musicianship often trumped the clever lyric or interesting chord change in making a tune listenable.

Marketing in these sessions was about instrumentation, story line, sound quality and reputation.