Your Music and People

Summary

Your Music and People by Derek Sivers is a guide to how to become successful in the music industry. It's about being professional, yet different and human and not losing the goal of what you want. As such, it has a lot of wisdom to offer, even for people who don't want to become professional musicians. The core ideas transfer very well. To me the most interesting part was that "the music industry" is also just a bunch of people, people you can get to know, people you can interact and become friends with.

Detailed Notes

Art is about context. The same art work in different contexts can have entirely different meanings. Music is no different. But you are in control of the context as an artist. Presentation is an important part of the game.

The stories of your marketing are part of your brand, of your voice, of your creative process. How you sell your music is as much part as the creative act as instrument you played, while recording the song.

Be confident and improvise. Have fun with it.

If you're "just experimenting" you cannot fail. Restrictions set you free to experiment more.

Once people start wondering, they can't stand not knowing.

This is something that can be used for marketing purposes.

Marketing means making it easy for people to notice you, relate to you, remember you, and tell their friends about you.

Asking yourself - what does the other person want out of a given interaction is a guide to be very useful. It is one of the best things to do in life.

Confidence attracts, but vulnerability endears.

Considerate communication is surprisingly rare.

Accommodating for people's preferences in communication that means. Call vs. text vs. in person meeting. Short vs. more information. Ideally you can have both.

People want someone to look up to. Someone who's not of their normal boring world. Someone who's being who they wish they could be, if they had the courage.

You can be that person and become more successful as an artist because of that.

When things are not working, be smarter not louder.

People send business to people they like.

Hanging out with, getting to know and becoming friends with people is what it means to be in the industry.

Ask people what's the hardest part about their job. Remember. Whenever you come across something that might solve their problem. Reach out.

Give give give, and sometimes you will receive.

Friends of friends will know how to get everything you want in life.

Asking people for favors is a good thing, because people like doing them.

Giving gifts to under-appreciated people often goes a long way. Not gifts to suck up to the powerful, but real, meaningful little gestures to the people "on the ground".

Stick with people. Follow up, repeatedly, but friendly. Polite. Assume busy people are busy people and not evil and therefore simply missed your email.

Not knowing who people are is often a blessing. You can connect with "the greats" on a personal level because they are just people, but once you know who they are, you become awkward unless you are already friends.

Pedestals prevent friendships.

The music industry is not a giant machine, it's run by people just like you and me. Getting to know these people and having a good team working on the inside of the industry is how you succeed. A good manager, a good agent, a good publicist and a good label go a long way because they are part of the machine, part of the game.

As a musician, send your music to the high places, even if they reject you. Think of this as rejection therapy. Once you get not-rejected you can use this as a way to get filtered and noticed.

Test markets and refine. Keep what works. If you could succeed on your own demonstrably then the music industry will want to help you. Because they can now profit from you and know that this is the case. Therefore you can also profit more from them, your negotiating leverage is much higher.

All that being said, if you become too wrapped up in the music industry side of things, you should pause. Think what you want to be - a musician or a good booking agent? Then act accordingly. Chose.

When you don't know your next step... When you're feeling unmotivated... When asking someone to help you... When you're ready to make a dream come true... Get more specific about what's needed.

Never wait and assume nobody is going to help you. You can just do things to improve your situation. Nobody needs to give you permission and you don't need anybody to come to you. You can come to them. Your agency is the highest good you have.

The music industry (and most others) are now more open than ever. Thanks to the internet and the cast possibilities it offers.

The only thing stopping you from great success is yourself.

Thought: I think this is more broadly true than we'd like to admit. It is often only ourselves stopping us from all kinds of things. All the potential life paths we could go down are mostly dependent on the day to day choices we make. Different choices => entirely different life. Most paths are reachable.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Thought: This to me is one of the most toxic things in this entire book. It's the epitome of the hustle mindset and as such shouldn't be taken seriously, only metaphorically. You need to commit to something, you need to commit hard to it, but there's a point where it does become unhealthy and where you are entirely unhappy and miserable because of that level of commitment. Saying that this path, this level of insanity is not for you, is a valid choice. And it should be not necessary to point that out.

Realize that broken systems, too, can be fixed. And it is up to you to fix them. Governments, rules, regulations. If you try, hard, you can often influence more things than you think.

If you're not happy with the way things are, don't just complain. Go make things how they should be.

Describing your music has one purpose: to make people curious so that they want to listen more. That's it. But that is damn important.

It's more interesting for the audience if you're the opposite of normal. So be an extreme character. The spotlight is the excuse. You can get away with anything in the name of entertainment.

Thought: The chapters Why You Need a Database, Stay in Touch with Hundreds of People and Meet Three New People Every Week are some of the most interesting chapters of the book. They describe a methodical way of making friends and being in the minds of people, by sort of doing the grunt work that nobody else is doing. Just having a small file for every person with metadata about them that you can then filter on, some reminders for when you last contacted them and then basically keeping in touch and genuinely caring about people. Simply because:

Most people are so bad at keeping in touch that they will really appreciate you doing it.

Basically, the more people you know, and the more people you care about, the more opportunities for interesting shit to happen you have... And the better you can solve problems, because you already know a person who could help you + have a history with that person + trust.

The number of people you meet will determine your success.

Meeting other people and getting to know them is a skill. It's something that for many people (mostly introverts) takes effort and therefore almost nobody does it. In the end it's just being genuinely interested in people. Not as a means to an end but because people are genuinely interesting.

Book Recommendation: How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

When someone creates something that feels important, powerful, and valuable to them, it's hard to imagine that it's not important, powerful, and valuable to others.

Book Recommendation: Purple Cow - Seth Going

Sometimes, counterintuitively, letting people pay more for something, makes them happier. Status signalling. But also money as a proxy for value and quality. Also some people like to spend money because of what it represents => support for a person they like.

Never promote something until people can take action, or you might waste the one moment you had their attention.

I love how the internet has made it possible for anyone to get successful, anywhere. I love the idea of living in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nature, yet being connected to the world.

Thought: The idea that you can lose touch with reality because it is changing if you are too focused on a narrow vision of a goal, reminds me so much of WaitButWhy's How to Pick a Career That Actually Fits You.

Don't let the details distract you from your goal.

For each of your dreams, occasionally ask yourself what the real point is. Then look for a better way to get to that point.

Thought: In other words - half ass it with everything you've got.