The music business, as with most businesses, is changing rapidly.
How does one keep up with all of the changes? How do you take in, analyze and apply all of the latest and greatest ways of doing business, make money and remain true to your art? In this article I'm going to touch on two things which are extremely important and very basic: prioritization and focus.
To prioritize means to arrange or schedule in order of importance, and, focus means to bring into focus or to concentrate.
First, it's important to understand that I'm not implying a right or wrong way of doing a thing; I will leave that type of judgment up to you.
However, there are efficient and inefficient ways of accomplishing things.
The more efficient your process, the more you can accomplish and, conceivably, the greater the results.
Let's start with the first question I posed above; how does one keep up with all of the changes in the music business? The answer is; you don't! You keep up with the areas which affect what you do most.
The music business is multi-faceted, and, while it behooves an artist to be informed regarding his or her affairs, your value lies in doing what you do best and paying or allying with others to do the equally important jobs that are outside of your expertise.
I've touched on this before in my article entitled "The Team Who Will Help You Win" but this bears repeating.
Many of the things we do as artists, producers, songwriters, etc.
, are done alone; just us and the art.
Writing, rehearsing, refining and motivating ourselves are all part of what we must do to prepare for presentation to others.
However, let me state redundantly what you already know, or at least should know, being ready and having phenomenal skill won't necessarily get you noticed.
Countless numbers throughout history have gone unnoticed, not because they lacked skill, but because they didn't have the right connections.
Every person who has reached the highest point in their field had a team supporting them.
Choose any giant in the game; Jordan playing ball, Tiger golfing, Jay Z rockin mics or T Pain producing tracks.
They all had a team supporting them.
Let's look at this another way.
Consider again any player in any game that caused you to ask; how did they get there? He can't hoop, she can't sing, or whatever.
They got there for the same reason; their team! I wrote every word of this article; however, with all that I have to do you would never have received it without the expertise of one of MY team members.
As your career grows, there will be an ever increasing need for "The Team.
" Having said that, I move on to prioritization: If you are a song writer, your most efficient area of operation is writing songs.
Also, within your area of prioritization should be developing an understanding about performance rights companies like ASCAP and BMI.
If you don't know these acronyms or what a performance rights company is then now is the time to look them up.
It is in your best interest to know about copyrights, publishing income and a publisher's role in getting your songs placed with artists and companies seeking new songs.
Knowing about song placement services such as "Taxi" is also part of the basics for a songwriter in today's music business.
I will touch on priorities for producers and performing artists in another article.
Lastly, I will touch on focus: Focus on those activities you do exceptionally well and from which you produce excellent results.
You must find ways to invest most of your time every week doing what you do best and allow the team to do what they do best.
You may ask; "what if I don't have a team?" I will get into team building another time, but in the case of a song writer, ASCAP or BMI have a wealth of information to point you in the right direction.
We all wear a lot of hats in a world that says multi-tasking is the only way to keep up or get ahead.
However, at the end of any given day the fewer things I have to focus on, the more things I get done.
The more things I have to focus on, the fewer things I get done.
Go figure.
Wisdom from the grind: with prioritization and focus you will get more done!