1.) Your favorite producer didn’t go to audio recording school.
Some of the most popular, successful producers today don’t have any formal education in the art of production and recording. Timbaland, James Wisner, N.E.R.D., Stargate, Diplo, Jay-Z, Rob Cavallo, (the list goes on, and on) didn’t attend any sort of university, or recording school.
2.) Digital Recording Exists.
One of the primary reasons to go to a recording school back in the day was to gain access to the equipment and tools. Much of the analog equipment used was too expensive to own, and was much more difficult to record on and edit. Now days many albums are recorded with the very same computers that hundreds of us have sitting at home on our desks. The obstacles today are more related to distribution and raw talent, not equipment. Gaining access to ProTools and a soundboard is no longer a good enough reason to go to recording school.
3.) Recording school is expensive.
It’s easy to justify spending five to six figures on an education, because you’re investing in the future. Plus you’re able to get loans and the like, so you’re not paying all at once, and there’s a vague promise of a job once you have a degree in hand…but tuition is incredibly expensive, and you’ll be paying it off for years to come. You could be spending all of that time, and money, more to your advantage.
4.) The Internet.
The biggest difference between today and 20 years ago isn’t the advent of digital equipment, but the advent of mass, free distribution like last.fm, Pandora, and hundreds of other online sites. You could have taken all of the courses available in the world of production, and a master’s degree, but without the ability to put it out there for some recognition you’d be out of luck. In today’s era of producers being snatched up off of the web, you can rest easy that there is a way to have your music heard.
5.) Availability is at an all-time high.
Classic, avant-garde, and generally obscure albums used to be difficult to get your hands on. Recording school, once upon a time, was a great way to hear albums that you couldn’t hear anywhere else. Now, 90% of the albums you hear in recording school are available to purchase, one way or another. You can chalk this up to Myspace, indie record stores, or what have you—but the fact remains; music is more accessible than ever.
6.) You can’t teach talent, can you?
Can an art form be taught? No. Yes. A little? There is something fundamentally insincere about teaching how to create. An instructor can teach you how a piece of art was created, and you can further a students’ understanding of the art form as a whole (along with refining their technical know-how), but there is no right or wrong way to create. Many instructors teach formula as a technique, and you want to make sure it’s your idea coming out of the speakers, not your instructor’s.
So what are these schools really selling you? They may be teaching you how to work a console and they may teach you a few engineering tips too, but where are the jobs? Many of the big studios are hurting. This means there are less and less big time recording jobs available. So where are the thousands of 20 year old kids who owe $15,000 in student loans going to find jobs in the audio industry? Most of them will not be working in recording studios. The sad part is most of them are going to have trouble finding a decent paying job at all. Graduating from “tech school” doesn’t look the best on a resume. You may be able to run a Neve console, but the only job that needs that is an audio engineer and those jobs are getting harder and harder to find.
7.) You either have it, or you don’t.
If you’re talented, you will eventually make it, regardless of whatever obstacles you encounter along the way. Of course there are great people and products that will help you in your journey; but it comes down to pure raw talent. If you don’t have the creativity, ability, and motivation from the start—you’re doomed even if you have a degree or certificate in hand.
8.) Learn by doing.
This is the most important reason on the list, by far. Rather than paying to learn, you can get paid to learn. You are supporting yourself (without going into major debt), you’re building your resume, and you’re gaining an understanding of how the real world works. Take it from me, someone who went to school for music production; I learned ONE THOUSAND times more by sitting in my room, on my Mac, fiddling around with various programs than I learned spending however many credit hours at the university.
These are only eight (of many!) reasons that recording studios are not as advantageous as they may seem. Remember, if you’ve got it in you, you don’t need some pretentious instructor telling you something you could’ve figured out within fifteen minutes yourself. Good luck!

Music Industry School is designed for musicians and individuals who want to achieve an actual career IN the music industry.  We show you how to make a career out of your music. How to grow your fan base, how to promote your music, how to survive each dip and turn that you can expect in this screwed up music industry.  I called it screwed up because it is.  The only way to have massive success is if you have a strategy, a plan, and specialized knowledge. (more…)

But what you’ll find, even when you do your own research, is that the biggest pitfall most artists fall in, is they think they know everything, know enough of “this” and are ready to get more of “that”.

What you have here is an artist on the Music Industry School mailing list who bombards me with an email alleging that I basically am not helping him achieve his goals.  His name is Thomas Foust.  He believes anyone with a computer these days can do what I’m claiming.

One of the policies of Music Industry School, is that I will not send you an email or point you to a blog post or a video lesson - for the hell of it. Sure it’s easy to do everything perfectly when you’re selling e-books for $37 but I have decided against selling E-books here.  I simply do not believe in releasing information if it is not useful in some way or another.  Which is why I have taken time to re-arrange the way our (more…)

Neither will tomorrow.

I would like to tell you to give up, but if I do that… well. (more…)

I don’t mean at your 9-5, I mean from your job; the place where you spend your time working.

Now is the time to ge amazingly daring in the way that you go about advancing your career. Not just because of the money, because it’s likely that the money (the good money) won’t come until you’ve been following along with a consistent type of plan for at least a few years, but because you need to capture mind share before it becomes impossible.

It is June 2008, three years from now, it will be much harder to get 100 people to buy your music, let alone 10,000.

The longer you wait to implement a solid strategy that will help you accumulate fans and build relationships, is the longer you delay your profits. People who buy music are not getting dumber, they’re getting smarter and more demanding in their expectations; and their preferences and values are changing faster than ever before. (more…)

But I know someone who gets it and I know someone who understands that being a music superstar, REALLY is more than just the music. I’ll tell you about that in a minute.

I am not sure that the general population of any educational institution truly wants to learn enough about their skill to obtain the success they rabidly crave.

Going to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) seems like it would be a great idea, because it is a well known school and you will be among the “who’s who” of upcoming tech moguls; but it would be a boldface lie to believe that 99% of the students really put in enough effort to really become great (aka beyond average) at what they claim they want to do with their life after skill.

I am saying this, but I am lying to myself. (more…)

If you are not willing to invest in the basic elements of promoting your music career but you are rejecting simple ideas of music promotion and success tactics, then it is likely that you are asking for more help than you are realistically prepared for… and that can be insulting to anyone of value who can help you get to the next level in your music career.

Why walk up to Donald Trump and ask for investing advice, if you have not already acquired a bank account? (more…)

It is important to get help with music promotion from as many trusted sources as possible when you are building a music career and there is perhaps no greater teacher of how successful you can be, than CD Baby owner Derek Sivers.

Derek is an all around helpful guy and easily accessible, he doesn’t sit in some armchair distant from his fans or other business partners, he is more willing to help indie artists than many people far less successful than him.  Which brings me to a great point.

CD Baby is a powerful tool for indie musicians in so many ways (more…)

It is boring to listen to Hilary Clinton, but that doesn’t mean she won’t make a great president. It is boring having sex… (more…)

This “fantasy superstar” mindset is a definite path to disappointment, as it hides the real facts of effort, discipline, assistance, strategy and skill required to achieve the sought after “Big League” success especially considering only a fraction of artists on today’s Billboard charts achieved big league success by being born into super stardom or by achieving it overnight.

What if you were sure you had competitive songs and you were ready for publicity?

How would you start it? What would it be like?

Now tell me… is it more important for you to make money or grow your fan club? Let me by the way clarify, that you can browse the web day and night and discover that most attempts to tackle music publicity are outdated by now, seeing that we’re in the middle of 2008.

To make money you simply need to put your CD on sale.

WRONG!!! To make money you need a plan. You need to direct traffic from each distribution channel, to one central location. Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, Internet Radio, this is all pointing to your official website…and from there you need to start building relationships.

You can build relationships through blogs or emails.

To make money you need to sell merchandise.

WRONG!!! To make money you need to develop a science that gets as many of your fans as possible, to tell someone else about your music. How do you do this?

You need a plan, a strategy.

You need something you can give away, something that’s valuable to THEM not to YOU. Now we’re talking about an investment. This is the lesson of the day… As the future moves forward, it will COST you money to attract and retain fans. Its not a cost, its a temporary loan. You are taking out a loan for your fans, but they will pay you back when you give them an…

EXPERIENCE.

An experience is not just a 3 song demo. An experience is the website, the merchandise, the tour, the YouTube videos, postcards, lights, the behind-the-scenes photos. It’s the combination of these things, which will form an experience that fans want to be a part of.

How do you do that?

Get on the edge. Are you the artist who shows up for a gig and just performs live? Handing out business cards is so boring… BUT… WHAT DO YOU give your fans when they see you live? Nothing?

Then expect nothing in return. When was the last time you gave 100 Fans A T-Shirt, 20 fans a dinner to the movies, or maybe you took the time to develop a partnership/joint venture with a restaurant so you could get 50 or 100 free gift certificates.

You can still miss the mark when it comes down to the strategy. All of that is just WASTEFUL PUBLICITY…because it doesn’t do the ONE thing Major Labels are Good At…

Telling people what to do…and why.

You knew about Madonna’s album in 2007, you were told to buy it, you were told to expect the impossible.

You need to get people to talk.

What are you saying, what punch line is in your lyrics that’s going to be the household phrase of the year… what melody is so catchy that people will hum it on their way to work. What slogan are you using that is so powerful even George Bush has to pay attention.

Generate attention by doing something remarkable; let your personality set you apart from everyone else. The good news is, the best weapon you have right now is TIME to PLOT a perfect album release. Time to plot a perfect campaign that’s centered around the 2008 presidential elections.

Start collecting relationships and fans, and when you collect them remember that you MUST keep them busy and gradually promote them from window-shoppers to customers.

Everybody “thinks” they have a plan…I mean a plan that you can be persistent with and a plan you firmly believe…on a daily basis, is not something you can do in 48 hours.

Artists who had a plan?

Ask Jordin Sparks why they pulled her out of high school and put her in home school so she could develop her voice better. You only do that if you really believe the talent is worth the big leap.

Ask Simon Fuller, the creator of American Idol. The guy has real estate property across the world. PLUS he manages the acts who have the highest sales, for the past 3 years since 2005. Before American Idol, he already had successful TV shows overseas.

Don’t believe the lies that…

Jordin Sparks was an Amateur…WRONG- even though she was on a somewhat amateur contest. She followed a plan.

Kelly Clarkson didn’t earn it…WRONG- she took her share of risks including giving up a chance to go to music universities.

Who else? Sarah Bareilles…plan. Took a solid 6 years to get where she is today. That’s including 2 years of being signed and waiting.

Madonna? Madonna’s first band dismembered because they knew it would be more successful if they pushed her as a solo artist… Plan. Plan. Madonna has always been the center of controversy and of course that is always a great buzz-builder.

As Americans, as humans, we are addicted to this three letter word called

NEW

When you can do something NEW, present something fresh to something “old” and you do it right, then you don’t have to worry so much about publicity and marketing. You will always have to earn it, work for it, and work to keep it…but when you understand the psyche’ of the human mind, you will know how to position yourself and your products to gain the recognition you need to achieve higher levels of music success.

A new pair of shoes is more exciting than an old pair of shoes with a stripe down the middle. Don’t be the stripe on the old pair of shoes.

Success is NOT an accident.

———–

Music Superstar Formula

Need ADVANCED training? I’d love for you to be one of the 300 artists who uses the world’s FIRST Music Industry super course, but I must warn you… This is not for newbie’s, and it is not some cheap e-book you buy for $49 bucks. This life-changing super course will only be available from July 14th-18th, or until it’s sold out. Get more details click here.