You’ve got to be fully old school or new school.
Old school is sell your soul to a major label.
If you’re doing this, you must make music that can be played on the radio. You’ve got to be willing to do what the company says. You must promote the hell out of yourself in order to try and get people to pay attention to you at the same time you’re causing a backlash and make very little money all in the name of fame, which pays fewer dividends than ever before.
New school is do it yourself. With a team that you control.
You give away your music. You stay in touch with your audience. You keep giving them more and more, for free, in the hopes that the bond will get stronger and they’ll support you, buy your merch and recordings and come to see you live. But new school depends on two things:
1. Being good.
2. Having friends.
You’re building a tribe from the ground up. It’s very slow. You’ll slog for years before you find out if you’ve made it. But once you have, your fans will continue to support you, you’re not flavor of the moment, you’ve built something.
You can study and ace one test, but that won’t get you into Harvard.
If you do it new school, you’ve got to have substance. It’s what’s on the inside that truly counts. But, like getting into Harvard, that requires a lot of hard work, over a period of years.
All the hard work at the label has got little to do with you. It’s relationships with radio and TV and songwriters and producers. Which is why they can abandon you so easily, and you end up being famous for being famous, not much more. Take off the blinders, look straight into the future and dare to be great!
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