4 Reasons You Need To Keep Up With Music Industry Trends

PART I

In any system, community, organization or organized unit, there will be the quest for money, power, and some sort of fame/respect and the Music Industry is no different than the United States government.

Look I don’t want you to sit down and write songs because you think it’s cool or because you think it’s going to be easy. It’s not. Being an artist is not that cool… all the time. The whole philosophy behind Music Industry School is that I want to help artists get the training they need to reach their musical dreams. MISS is about self-mastery, music-mastery, and achieving new opportunities with your music career – so you can WIN! But…

If you don’t keep up with trends – you are making this much harder than it needs to be, for me… and for you. I know you probably don’t want to compare yourself and you don’t want to kep up with the trends, but you have no choice.

The reason why you may want to take a closer look and listen to everything, is because your music – is governed by 4 people… Even if you are signed, you still have to follow the guidelines that these 4 people set. Even if you’re desperate to get a record deal, you still have to follow these guidelines.

Here’s a break down of the Music Industry Government. These are the four people who have the biggest and most direct influence of your career (whether you are signed or unsigned):

1. Fans
2. Executives
3. Producers/songwriters
4. Immediate friends – you yourself and you.

This is not what they teach you and this is not what you learn in the school books, these are just the fact.

Fans

Fans filter music based on their personal taste (however they might feel in a particular moment or season in time) along with the taste of a group of friends. (ie a group of friends like Hanna Montana means over time more people will begin to like it just to stay in the “in-crowd”)

Executives

Executives including many A&Rs, label heads, and deciding teams filter music based on a) statistics of what worked on previous albums/artists which reinforces a forecast of monetary gain or b) their “magic-ball” psychic reading of what they think fans/listeners will like.

Producers

Producers and songwriters filter similar to executives and similar to fans, although they are kind of more neutral. Producers have their musical knowledge of what could be hot based on feedback from artists, and vibes from a sampled listening community.

Immediate Friends/You

Your idea about your music is important, but to the upper three categories, it is probably not all that important – especially if you are just starting out. Your friends probably do not have an accurate picture of what’s hot and what’s not, which is clearly proven by exhausting long lines YEAR AFTER YEAR at American Idol auditions. Over 95% of the contestants can not sing and should not even try, but some one on the back end is encouraging them and giving them juice to continue to push out piss-poor music.

This is the government of the music industry, and any SONG that makes it to mass distribution is going to go through some sort of filtering cycle Perhaps not in this order all the time, but it will go through these levels of filtering. What does that mean?
So while you are thinking about writing a hot song; remember that what you think is hot may not be hot to the executives who ultimately determine what goes on your record and what does not. While you are thinking about getting signed, be thinking that you are going up against artists who submit 100 songs and boil them down to 30 and then to 10 just to wind up releasing a product that barely goes gold (500,000 copies)