drivemyrecords-blog

[drivemyrecords-blog]

+Y O U R MUSIC M A T T E R S

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

I AM ON A MISSION TO OPEN AS MANY OF THE “REAL DOORS” AS POSSIBLE FOR ARTISTS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

Today, I am building a platform where artists can develop their ideas and their careers by truly getting access to what they need. Funding and the services to support their music.

Your MUSIC is your music. Artists should be free to create music. Let’s take down the bars of judgement from those who horde it’s financial support among themselves. 

This is our music. NO other art form is as personal and as powerful as a song. There is nothing more powerful than a song. Nothing.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

+Y O U R MUSIC M A T T E R S

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

YOUR MUSIC MATTERS.

I AM ON A MISSION TO OPEN AS MANY OF THE “REAL DOORS” AS POSSIBLE FOR ARTISTS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

Today, I am building a platform where artists can develop their ideas and their careers by truly getting access to what they need. Funding and the services to support their music.

Your MUSIC is your music. Artists should be free to create music. Let’s take down the bars of judgement from those who horde it’s financial support among themselves. 

This is our music. NO other art form is as personal and as powerful as a song. There is nothing more powerful than a song. Nothing.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

How much is a fan?

It’s amazing how great music proves the industry wrong. It’s a rewarding feeling for artists like you and me, who work quietly at our craft, without anyone watching, as we struggle to discover a moment to capture forever.

Through all the madness, through all the pandemonium, Adele, steps out after a sabbatical to break long standing record sales. I want to use this moment to say something I hope will help you.

Many will believe all of the articles and industry aficionados, that Adele’s recent success is a balance of perfect circumstances. You might read Billboard and see the “unexplainable” explained, vaguely, with industry cliches like “timing” and “great teams”. Some will say her hiatus is a perfect reason to her success. Everyone missed her.

But this is why very smart people never see these things coming. Try it. Go back a few months, maybe a year, look at their blogs and articles. Why couldn’t they predict the Second Coming of Adele?

As an artist you need information, real information. So here you go.

Fans are dealing with more issues in their personal lives every single day. They want more money, better experiences, they want to date the person of their dreams, they want a new car. They want to get married and have babies. They want to get over being sick and they want their loved ones to live forever. And there it is - fans want “forever.” They want to be apart something “immortal”, something that puts them in a place where they feel like they will always have this moment. 

There is no other desire greater in the human experience than to feel apart of something that will last forever. We recognize it the moment it happens. Fans really want to buy “themselves.” In great music, they are grabbing at a little part of themselves. Music is the only art that you can experience as intimately and openly as possible. Fans are buying a little piece of their own immortality. If you put them in your music they will find you.

As artists you have cost acquisition to obtain a following. If no one knows your name, your music, or who you are - your fan cost is infinite. Posting on Facebook isn’t fan engagement. As matter of fact - People do not read Facebook - check the statistics. Social Media is simply a place where everyone wants to be seen. But there is a greater choice. Use the search capabilities to find people who can relate to an element of your music.

If you write a song about a breakup and you have a comforting lyric to share. Engage a person directly who is going through a breakup. In this modern world you can find anyone and with a little bit of effort find out where they are in their lives.

So here is a practical task you can do to lower your fan cost everyday. Meet one person to share your story, music, song, lyric, voice, message, or experience with. Just find one person to help, because you saw them for what they truly are, a person. 

This is the reason for Adele’s success. She’s a singer, period. And whether she writes her songs or not, she has chosen to sing them to you, for what you are going through

Look for someone online to encourage. People post every moment of their lives looking to quench loneliness. A fan is just like a song. They just want to be heard.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

How much is a fan?

It’s amazing how great music proves the industry wrong. It’s a rewarding feeling for artists like you and me, who work quietly at our craft, without anyone watching, as we struggle to discover a moment to capture forever.

Through all the madness, through all the pandemonium, Adele, steps out after a sabbatical to break long standing record sales. I want to use this moment to say something I hope will help you.

Many will believe all of the articles and industry aficionados, that Adele’s recent success is a balance of perfect circumstances. You might read Billboard and see the “unexplainable” explained, vaguely, with industry cliches like “timing” and “great teams”. Some will say her hiatus is a perfect reason to her success. Everyone missed her.

But this is why very smart people never see these things coming. Try it. Go back a few months, maybe a year, look at their blogs and articles. Why couldn’t they predict the Second Coming of Adele?

As an artist you need information, real information. So here you go.

Fans are dealing with more issues in their personal lives every single day. They want more money, better experiences, they want to date the person of their dreams, they want a new car. They want to get married and have babies. They want to get over being sick and they want their loved ones to live forever. And there it is - fans want “forever.” They want to be apart something “immortal”, something that puts them in a place where they feel like they will always have this moment. 

There is no other desire greater in the human experience than to feel apart of something that will last forever. We recognize it the moment it happens. Fans really want to buy “themselves.” In great music, they are grabbing at a little part of themselves. Music is the only art that you can experience as intimately and openly as possible. Fans are buying a little piece of their own immortality. If you put them in your music they will find you.

As artists you have cost acquisition to obtain a following. If no one knows your name, your music, or who you are - your fan cost is infinite. Posting on Facebook isn’t fan engagement. As matter of fact - People do not read Facebook - check the statistics. Social Media is simply a place where everyone wants to be seen. But there is a greater choice. Use the search capabilities to find people who can relate to an element of your music.

If you write a song about a breakup and you have a comforting lyric to share. Engage a person directly who is going through a breakup. In this modern world you can find anyone and with a little bit of effort find out where they are in their lives.

So here is a practical task you can do to lower your fan cost everyday. Meet one person to share your story, music, song, lyric, voice, message, or experience with. Just find one person to help, because you saw them for what they truly are, a person. 

This is the reason for Adele’s success. She’s a singer, period. And whether she writes her songs or not, she has chosen to sing them to you, for what you are going through

Look for someone online to encourage. People post every moment of their lives looking to quench loneliness. A fan is just like a song. They just want to be heard.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

NONE OF IT HAPPEN: Excerpt for #MONEYBALL #MUSIC Free Ebook

“Sidebar - that is not nor was it the important thing. What I wanted was to finally have the monetary resources to sign and change the lives of artists who had real talent and put them out with the major money machine behind them. I wanted to go in there and fight for the artist from the middle of nowhere and make them be heard. I wanted to be an advocate for change. And finally, I made the records because I love the feeling of knowing you have something that will last a lifetime.That was important to me. NONE OF IT HAPPENED.

... I have wanted to write this eBook for a long time. One year ago, I figured out the system of the music business, or so I thought. I had made an impact in the exclusive world of the music industry. I had a chart-topping record that debuted two slots behind Pharrell’s “Happy” song, which was the biggest hit of 2014. ”

[drivemyrecords-blog]

360 Deal: All In. Extinction

Every species serves a unique and very specific purpose in the many earth ecosystems. Once its purpose is no longer needed, once its services are no longer required; the species falls into a steep decline until its ultimate extinction.

Several years ago the music industry took a serious legal bet. The wager was the last fine line holding major companies to copyright legislation. The great legal minds had to make a difficult and desperate decision. After Napster and iTunes had removed the music industry’s ability and one of its most specific purposes, the steep decline began. The purpose was regulation of it’s own price point. In the world of economics when an industry loses its ability to regulate its own prices for its products it can no longer maintain margin.

Critics of Napster have claimed that rampant piracy was the major cause. Let’s look a little further. in 1991 the lawsuit Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. forever rewrote the way music would “repurpose itself”. 

Many think this was a shift to regulate sampling of music in hip hop, but what people do not realize is until that point, the judicial system had not been so exacting. The art of sampling could easily have been a case that focused on musical arrangements, which are vaguely defined by the copyright laws and history of cases. An arrangement based ruling would call for a share in the newly arranged composition. However in this case, this ruling cited willful intent to infringe on the copyright with the full knowledge of violating the original creator’s rights. The commandment of “Thou shalt not steal” was included as well.

Here began the immediate need to get as much money as possible through the door - all of which came from record sales. The ability to right off large sums of capital spent to create the records saved the record labels money in the short term, making very little available if a copyright had been violated and taken to court. This limited the court’s ruling by preventing them from making large sum settlements and  forced the court to only consider the actual profit of the sales. 

This would dawn the 360 Deal. This created a need for the record label contracts to protect themselves by participating in every aspect of the recording artists’ revenue ability. If the label was sued and lost. they could not be sued for the persona, the merchandise, or concert performance revenue of the artist. Take the loss on what’s left of record sale profits, but make up the difference on the 270 degrees left in the circle of revenue.

360° deals have attracted criticism from various quarters. Panos Panay, CEO of online music platform Sonicbids, has said:

"If you want to find out the future of 360° deals, look at Motown in the late 60s. Motown was the pioneer of a 360° deal ... They owned your likeness, your touring, publishing, record royalties, told you what to wear, told you how to walk … It made for great entertainment but if you look at every one of those artists, what happened? Sooner or later they said, 'I’m not going to go on the road for 200 shows because you tell me so. I’m an artist! I’m a creative person!' Eventually all these artists left ... There’s two things we know about creativity: you can’t force it and you can’t really control it."

It’s ALL IN. A serious yet ironic bet. Why risk losing everything by putting the last of everything on the line? Because it’s the natural course of survival. Eating itself to sustain itself.

I asked a really great blogger what the future music industry model would be. Would it be artist dominated or corporate dominated? HIs built in reply was:

“Musicians & organization don't go together. that's why the music biz exists. So a self-directed league of musicians? Sorry, can't see it.”

Well, the media did say the following: “Baseball cards are worthless. Stats would never change the game (#MONEYBALL). Ask the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox. And Fantasy sports would never surpass Vegas Gambling.”

More and more artists can get and are getting very popular by hard work, touring and social media. They are slowly realizing there is little need for record labels and more importantly record contracts - you have to pay the record company to have those contracts anyway. (Google recoupement) 

Here is another nail in the coffin. Two days ago Billboard put out an article called “How ‘The Blockchain’ Could Actually Change the Music Industry”

IT IS A GREAT READING FOR MUSIC FUTURISTS. In it author, Gideon Gottfried, describes the possible elimination of the second most important aspect of the sale of music: the payout system. The Music Industry controls this on a revolving system. The earth spins in a day but it also revolves around the sun in a year. 

Well if you have ever had money come from a record company, like the Incas it is calculated on the cycle around the sun. With the evolution of a transaction system which can zero in on the instant of a transaction in the world of computers, the purchase can get to the copyright owners much faster, like instantly. 

So... iTunes has a little bit of a problem on the horizon. What artist wouldn’t want their money immediately? There is a company which is building it’s platform on this concept and so are we. They are using a streaming in combination with a fantasy sports style fan engagement - business model. Super fun for music fans! I love the idea personally. In any event, the industry doesn’t know they need to send Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler to save them from a comet hurdling toward them at 22,000 km/hr.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

[drivemyrecords-blog]

This is the very reason why I created drivemyrecords.com

I believe there is a way for every quality artist to get there music in front of people. To weave them through the traffic on the internet to get to a waiting audience. We cannot promise fame and fortune but what we can promise is a really good chance at spectacular.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

Question. What is the Music Business?

This is a short and simple blog post.

We booked you a plane ticket - on your FUTURE LIFE. We put you in a fancy hotel - on you. We took you out to a fabulous dinner - again on you. We are going to make YOU a star. We are going to SELL your music and we will own the recordings outright, the masters and we will pay you what we think is fair from all your hard work. 

And then there was iTunes. And a few years ago everyone said how do I get on iTunes?? If I could just get on iTunes I will be legit enough to sell millions of records online. And your family and friends spent a collective hundred bucks downloading your music. They posted and tweeted about how great your music was. Still you weren’t supporting yourself or succeeding like you wanted to. 

Well Copy and Paste the previous paragraph, and there we go. Finally success. But now there is what is called  a 360 deal and now you have zero access to your revenue stream.

What major labels have become and what they really have always been were middle men. I have been on both sides of the fence. There is no grass at all on the other side. It’s carpeted. Shag rug carpet, outdated and from the 70s.

So again what is the music business?

Here is a hint. iTunes is really eBay. Get it. And Spotify and YouTube are Facebook and MySpace. That is far too much information.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FurGFcRBKWQ)

[drivemyrecords-blog]

If you could have it... Would You want it

I am going to make this blog today, short and sweet. If you could have a million dollar record deal would you want it?

Many artists, bands, songwriters and produce dream of the the major deal. I have heard and said myself famous stagnating words, “when I get my deal…”

You see the thought process makes sense somehow. Major deal. Major $$$ equals years of success. It’s hard to come to grips with the idea of making one person believe in you, and if that person is at the level to chain your life, I mean change your life, you feel that somehow you have made it BIG.

This is a fact with a paradigm built right square in the middle of it. That person has made someone, BIG. The illusion is that they can make every person BIG.

The simple truth is they can’t. They can pour millions of dollars into making an illusion of success, which hopefully will make people believe your illusion, but the truth is reality and only YOU CAN make truth.

YOU CAN make it BIG. Later I will discuss how, and real math science behind why making it BIG might have a brand new meaning for your career.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

HOW.

This is one of the most interesting words in all languages. Without this single word the world we know would simply not exist. Because of modern conveniences we have become very out of touch with this word. 

When someone asks you “how are you?” The word actually does not make logical sense because we are using it to question the condition of something. And the condition of something logically refers to something that is not apart of our being. To deep, it gets deeper. 

Originally, before it’s popularized use, the word “how” was used to speculate or contemplate simple and complex ideas or systems. Our use of the word originates from the Old English word “hu” pronounced hue.

2002, Bryan T. McMahon, A terrible book, page 7: "Hu is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in hus solutions of each and all a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural."

Blah, blah, blah. So. With regard to the previous post about HOW you can make it BIG. Here is a simple mathematical expression. 

|A| = |B| This means that whatever is contained in set A is also the same amount in set B. Because they are sets there is no difference between A and B no matter what you attach to them. OK. That’s math theory. So Anyway. There’s more I promise.

In the movie/book The Fault in the Stars, which by the way will make you cry your eyeballs out, there is reference to Set Theory by Georg Cantor which is there are more than one kind of infinities. HOW does that make sense? Well though it is math it does and I won’t bore you with theoretical math. That would be torture. HBOGo the movie. 

And what does this have to do with your career? How does this help or get you to your career goals?

The reason I brought up Set Theory is this: there is little to no difference between one person knowing about you or a million people knowing about you. Stay with me. No matter who that person is, whether that person is powerful or not that individual has to be motivated by YOU to do anything at all for you. Now a powerful person might be motivated by a genuine love for your music or their own greed or self- success management. But you have to advance that no matter what, pun intended. Hence why they give you a huge record deal in the first place.

So here is the gem. If you spend all your time trying to gain the help of a powerful person to influence a mass audience of lets say 100K people who will buy your music (this is an example of a major label deal with total success rate), then hopefully they will be influenced to stay with you for a few more albums

HOWEVER.

There are varying degrees for what people will do for you based upon their level of motivation. Here is the simple math I promised. In one month you could reach nearly 100K people by yourself. I am not talking about on the internet. You can meet up to 100 people/hour if you stood in a busy shopping mall for instance. 10 hours per day times 100 people/hour translates to 1000 people/day. How do we arrive at 100K in a month. Well here is a little bit of math. Every new individual is pretty much the same - and every new person has the potential to have a positive experience with you - the probability “on” that fact is nearly 1:1 odds on. That’s why the expression, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” has mathematical certainty. YOU need to meet people. YOU. Not Sony, Universal or Warner Bros. YOU.

So how did I arrive at nearly 100K in a month. Marketers used to believe in the law of large numbers, until the age of the internet where we can now measure consumer response in seconds; we can measure it and compare it to other things. So if you met a 100 people you have a 60% chance of them telling at least 1 person about you in an influential way. This second layer of meeting Is actually more powerful and influential when that person tells one other person in an influential way AS WELL. That means 3 real influencers per 1 person you personally engaged.

Simply put for every 1 person you directly meet there are six total degrees of separa from a person encountering you through the social sphere, WHAT????

TALK TO PEOPLE EVERYDAY. Short simple encounters with YOU. Not your music, not your voice, YOU.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

If you could have it... Would You want it

I am going to make this blog today, short and sweet. If you could have a million dollar record deal would you want it?

Many artists, bands, songwriters and produce dream of the the major deal. I have heard and said myself famous stagnating words, “when I get my deal...”

You see the thought process makes sense somehow. Major deal. Major $$$ equals years of success. It’s hard to come to grips with the idea of making one person believe in you, and if that person is at the level to chain your life, I mean change your life, you feel that somehow you have made it BIG.

This is a fact with a paradigm built right square in the middle of it. That person has made someone, BIG. The illusion is that they can make every person BIG.

The simple truth is they can’t. They can pour millions of dollars into making an illusion of success, which hopefully will make people believe your illusion, but the truth is reality and only YOU CAN make truth.

YOU CAN make it BIG. Later I will discuss how, and real math science behind why making it BIG might have a brand new meaning for your career.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

Spotify for Free.

This is a new music industry. Great companies like Spotify and services that are emulating them, are changing the way people think of their music. But was it Spotify who changed it?

Now we can stream music to our bodies like Star Trek. Here’s a simple idea. People have always wanted to share music. People always have. It actually is the concept of music, designed to be shared from ancient times to now. Sharing creates trust. And that’s the new business model in entertainment. Sharing. Spotify figured out how to provide the best of both worlds.

In a the new economy with brands like Uber and Airbnb, consumers have a different mindset. They are willing to have access rather than own things outright. The way they are using goods and services has taken a different mold. The share economy will generate nearly $15B worldwide this year alone and by 2017 will be worth an estimated $26B.

This system is built on Trust. We thought that people would become more distrustful in the world of Facebook and Instagram due to the lack of real human interaction. NO. Big No.

The music industry thought the same thing. A little file format called mp3 was dismissed as a joke - People wanted high quality CDs to enjoy their music. The industry is partially correct, the quality of an mp3 is nearly 80% diminished from the quality of a CD. The simplicity of buying an mp3 online is astronomical though. 

At Drive, we want to do this for the recording artist, budding musician or band. We created a service that allows the business to manage the platform for the artist to develop and succeed. Working together taken everyone further at every single point in history.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

The Music Industry Lied to You.

Imagine if you didn’t know what a $100 steak tasted like? Imagine if you compared that to everything in life. The smell of new car. The perfect fit of a new outfit. The dream vacation. An amazing Christmas for your children.

Now I understand a trip to a fast food spot when you are in a rush. Great prices but not your $100 steak. And that is the trade off. Lower price and quality for the fast convenient “tasty” food.

Your tastes in music will fluctuate throughout your life. We plan to be apart of your life as you move through your tastes in life. Rather than build a music industry around $0.99 sales we want to build a brand around the concept of growing up. The industry of music changed years ago. Access should make the process of getting you great music at quality prices matter. There is very little trust. The only way to get that trust is to put the access in your hands, the music buyer.

What do you listen to after a long day at work and you just want to settle down with a glass of wine and some soothing________. Where do you find a good steak metaphorically speaking? 

So here is a solution. We will all invest in music together. Now that takes a tremendous amount of trust. Yet we are willing to start a music culture of trust. 

The answer: trust.

It is at the core of a new economy. We want to drive a movement to be more inclusive and less distrusting; be more democratized and less traditional; to help each other make better decisions about music tastes and the stories that tell our songs.

We want to harness the best aspects of technology. With collaborative business models, we have been sharing music online for years by the way, our hope is that we can all change for the better.

 It's an altruistic idea, but there it is. If people can trust more, you can save money, gain flexibility and richer experience.

At the end of the day we started this brand from scratch. We are not super rich elite industry professionals. We are music professionals working to support our families and kids. We go to soccer practice and gymnastic meets. 

You will never see artists coming from our label that will present an exploitative lifestyle. You will never see a music video where we have made it rain. We want to stop lying to the world about how rich the music industry is and then report dropping records sales. You can’t believe either, so you believe nothing. It’s 50 perCENT Lie styles, not life styles.

This is why we started over. This is what drives us.

Industry professionals are moving in a new direction. What we are realizing is music grows with our tastes. I’m sure you laughed at the music you listened to at 11 when you were turning 21, or 31, or 41. 

If we share what it takes just for a music company to generate that experience... How much would you spend? Would you rather subscribe to s Spotify style service? Let us know what makes sense. Or what would you want us to do differently.

[drivemyrecords-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulroZ4zikX8)