by George Howard

The Sine Qua Non
This article addresses specifics that you as a musician or participant in the music business must face head on. Put simply, if you don’t address these issues, you have little to no chance of succeeding in the music business. These specific details can be referred to as the sine qua non of the music business. That roughly translates to, “without this there is nothing.”

There are two specific details that you must address immediately. The first is a concept that Jim Collins outlines in his fantastic book, Good to Great. It’s called the Hedgehog Concept. The second is an internal factor. Specifically, it’s the belief that your own music, or the music of the artist on whose behalf you work, must be heard. I’ll explain both in some depth, beginning with the latter.

Kurt Cobain
To illustrate the importance of the belief that your music, or the music of the artist on whose behalf you work must be heard, it’s instructive to look at the career path of Kurt Cobain from Nirvana.

Recalling his time before starting a band, Cobain sums up much of what I’m trying to convey. He states:

I had this feeling all the time—I always knew I was doing something special.… I knew it was better, even though I couldn’t prove it at the time. I knew I had something to offer, and I knew eventually I would have the opportunity to show people that I could write good songs—that I could contribute something musically to rock and roll.

Cobain had these insistent thoughts in that hotbed of creativity, Aberdeen, WA, a remote, logging town. And yet, Cobain somehow managed—even in this creative wasteland—to find ways to get his music out. He gravitated to the only band in the area that he felt an affinity for—the ultra-heavy Melvins—and began hanging around with them, while he honed his guitar and songwriting skills. Additionally, through his connection with the Melvins, he was able to occasionally escape Aberdeen for the far more hospitable Olympia, WA.

Olympia is a college town, with a large bohemian contingency, many venues for bands to perform, a great indie radio station (KAOS) as well as a record label that so represented Cobain’s ethos that he eventually tattooed its name and “K” logo on his forearm.

Nirvana—as they were now called, after wisely ditching their first name, Fecal Matter—recorded a demo tape in January of 1988 at Reciprocal Recordings in Seattle. It was not a coincidence that they chose to record there, as some of Cobain’s favorite bands had done so as well.

The owner of Reciprocal, Jack Endino, engineered the early Nirvana demo tapes. He played them for Sub Pop head and founder Jonathon Poneman. It is not surprising or coincidental that Endino played the Nirvana demos for Poneman. In fact, two EPs that Endino had previously recorded were for the bands Soundgarden and Green River, which were released by Sub Pop. Clearly, Endino and Poneman had a rapport. And Cobain, who was aware of the scene that he aspired to become a part of, wisely chose to find a way—however tangentially—to make a connection to it by selecting this studio to record his demo.

Sub Pop is a Seattle-based label that, at the time, was specializing in a relatively specific genre of music that came to be known as “grunge.” This music, in some ways, reflected the regional climate of Seattle: dark, thick, somewhat gloomy. The label became known for releasing records by artists that defined this type of sound. Nirvana was making music that fit—and soon defined—the description of this sound. At the time, Sub Pop was actively looking for artists to help grow their label, and Cobain realized this.

Cobain believed that his music had to be heard. This need forced him to assess how to get it heard. He educated himself about the industry that he wanted to be a part of, and found ways to connect his music to it. He did not simply let his undeniable talent stay in his room unheard. Instead, he learned who the players were, and directed his energies towards appealing specifically to them.

What we see from this case study is that while Cobain’s musical talent ultimately played a huge role in Nirvana’s success, it wasn’t this talent alone that got him signed. We also see that he was forced to really persevere—funding his own demos and finding backers, while the label waffled, in order to bring his music to a larger stage. Additionally, it was his desire to have his music heard that drove him—gave him the fuel—to contextualize it and find other participants in the business who he hoped would grant him entrée into the record industry.

Are you doing the same for your music? Do you have that belief that your music must be heard? It is only this belief that will sustain you during the inevitable indignities that accompany you on your way from obscurity to popularity. If you don’t have this belief, you will not be able to persevere.

The second critical foundation element you must confront is discerning your inner Hedgehog. As mentioned, this is a concept that Jim Collins articulates in his book Good to Great. To find your Hedgehog you must determine:

• what you are passionate about
• what you can do better than anyone else
• what will be your economic driver

You must have all three of these elements defined in order to become great at what you do. The Hedgehog Concept forces you to focus on three crucial elements, and, importantly, to be sure that you don’t focus on things outside of these three elements. As Collins says, “The key is to understand what [you] can be the best in the world at, and equally important what [you] cannot be the best at….The Hedgehog Concept is not a goal, strategy of intention; it is an understanding.”

Consider what it is that you’re passionate about; consider what it is that you can do best or could do best; consider how you will make your money. The Hedgehog Concept lays the foundation for three crucial management elements: mission, vision, and values.

Certainly, your passion will revolve around music, but you need to determine precisely what your “wedge” or competitive advantage is in the music business. If you’re a performer, what precise element of performing are you most passionate about; is it writing the songs you perform, is it playing in front of the audience, etc.? If your passion involves working with musicians in order to get the music you believe must be heard heard, you must identify precisely how you will do this: managing artists, booking artists, financing artists, producing music, or some combination of each?

Importantly, this idea of doing what you’re passionate about is not as simplistic as doing what you love. Unfortunately, many of the things we are passionate about are not things we can be the best at, nor are they things that can generate income for us. The genius of the Hedgehog Concept is that it requires you to make some difficult choices, and even some trade-offs. We all know people who have decidedly found their economic driver, and have made more money than they can ever spend, but who are miserable. In essence, while they have at least one (the economic driver), and maybe two (what they can be best at), they are missing the crucial third circle (what they are passionate about).

By not having each of the circles, they can never truly be great. More frequently, of course, people know (or think they know) what they are passionate about, and tend to believe that they can be the best at this thing. However, they can’t figure out a way to make a living doing this thing. The sad consequence of this is that, because they lack the economic denominator, they are not able to truly focus on doing what they are passionate about and what they believe they can be best at, because they are too busy doing all sorts of unrelated things (“Would you like that coffee as a venti for only a dollar more?”) in order to pay the rent.

The challenge, therefore, is to balance the three circles. You may, for instance, find that you must re-evaluate your passion in order to make it overlap with an economic driver. While this may seem as if you’re compromising your dream, the reality is that it represents the first step towards a strategic approach of monetizing your passion.

So, briefly, before you can begin delving into actual practices/setting goals for getting your music, or the music you work with heard, you must address two essential issues. First, you must make certain that you have the unwavering belief that your music (or the music on whose behalf you work) must be heard. Second, you must begin reconciling the three elements of the Hedgehog Concept. When you combine these elements you drastically increase your odds of success.

The Goal
I want to now attempt to discern a sort of universal goal for all people engaged in the music business; either as artists themselves or as those who act as the support team for the artists. Put simply, the goals for anyone in the music business are simple:

• Make enough money via your music to make more music
• Release music that impacts the culture over the long term

That’s really it. If you do both of these things, you will not only have a long and profitable career, but you will also create a legacy for yourself that will stand the test of time. This simply must be the goal of all those in the music business. Any other goal will not result in long-term success, and will eventually end in either artistic or financial failure (or both).

Looking at each of these goals individually, it becomes clear how they work together. The goal of making enough money via your music in order to make more music can seem simplistic. It’s not. Making money in music is decidedly a non-trivial matter. It ain’t easy, and most people do not make money. Even fewer make enough money to keep putting out music, and fewer still make enough money to make the music they do on their own terms. There are a million reasons why most people fail at making enough money to keep making music, but all of them have one thing in common: lack of disciplined strategy. While there is a world of strategy beyond the above referenced Hedgehog Concept, most artists don’t even achieve that level of strategic thinking.

The lack of disciplined strategy causes artists to engage in the Cardinal Sin of business: random acts of improvement. You’ve heard the expression, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” and nowhere is this more true than in the music business. Most artists, managers, and even labels got into the music business for the most virtuous of reasons, and genuinely tried to do the right things. However, because they lacked the training, discipline, or experience, their efforts were nothing more than a hodgepodge of mis-guided, disconnected efforts that added up to nothing. An artist, for instance, determines that they need a Facebook presence. They spend a good amount of time and effort creating this Facebook presence, and then wait for the success to come. It doesn’t. The artist determines that perhaps a MySpace presence is needed. More time, more effort…perhaps some money spent having someone pimp out their page. Again, the success is elusive. Undaunted, the artist decides that they must get their name out to a wider audience, borrows some money, and takes an advertisement out in Performing Songwriter magazine. More time spent designing the ad (something the artist has no experience doing, and thus does a less-than-satisfactory job), more money being spent, and, again, nothing to show for it.

None of these things—a Facebook or MySpace presence, or an ad in Performing Songwriter—are bad things. On the contrary, when part of a cogent strategic plan, each of these things can be very beneficial in helping an artist connect with an audience. In the absence of a plan, however, these are random acts of improvement.

These are precisely the types of things that, when they fail to generate any result, erroneously convince the artist that their music is incapable of connecting with an audience. In point of fact, they tell the artists nothing of the sort; in fact, they tell the artist nothing at all. Because these acts are not connected to any sort of over-arching strategy, nor are they able to be measured or gauged, they are devoid of any informational value. Artists, however erroneously interpret their strategic ineptitude as musical ineptitude, and throw in the towel out of discouragement.

I find this heartbreaking; particularly when I consider all of the incredibly talented artists who wrongly discerned that their music was no good by viewing the lack of reaction to their random acts of improvement as an indictment against their art.

The Hedgehog Concept is the first step in avoiding random acts of improvement. It keeps you from veering too far away from your core abilities. By combining this with the deceptively simple goal of making enough money to ensure that you will be able to make more music, you begin to create parameters for yourself. You can, for example, determine just how much money is enough money to allow you to put out more music. For instance, if you’re an artist who is ready to put out an album, you should be able to determine precisely how many CDs or downloads you must sell of this album to make the money back you spent producing and marketing, as well as how many you will need to sell to fund the next record’s creation and marketing. The numbers will vary, but by setting goals, you can begin to create strategy to achieve those goals. Perhaps you determine that because you need to make $10,000 to produce and market your next release, you will need to sell 2,000 copies of your album at an average price of $5 per CD. You now have a goal. The next step is a strategy for wow are you going to achieve these sales? You can begin calculating how many CDs you must sell at gigs, how many downloads you must sell via iTunes, etc. From there, you create strategy to achieve these sales. We’ll look closely at specific strategy in future lessons, but the point for now is to simply introduce the concept of strategy, and how it relates to being able to continue creating music.

The second goal is to create music that impacts the culture over the long term. Beyond the karmic virtues of impacting the culture in a positive way, there are concrete business reasons to strive for this goal, and they very much relate to our first goal of making enough money to keep putting out music. Specifically, if you succeed in your goal of creating music that impacts the culture over the long term, you will create a catalog that generates long-term revenue. This, of course, will have a significant affect on your ability to keep putting out music. On the contrary, if you simply try to identify trends that you feel you can profit from, you will most likely be wrong; the market moves too quickly for anyone to jump on the trend bandwagon, and so by the time you enter the market it will have moved. Certainly, people have profited from trends and novelties, but these profits are typically ephemeral. Additionally, trying to capitalize on trends is diametrically opposed to a central conceit of the Hedgehog Concept; no one can honestly say that they are passionate about a sequence of trends. You may be passionate about a specific trend, but you can’t be equally passionate about the next trend. Therefore, these trend-mongers lack focus, and necessarily engage in one random act of improvement after another. Eventually, this results in the only place it can: failure.

By avoiding trends, and instead focusing on creating music that impacts the culture over the long term, and by combining this with the first goal of making enough money to keep releasing more music, you are guaranteed to create a body of work that will provide you the steady stream of income needed to create the music you believe in on your own terms.

Much like the Hedgehog Concept, if you fail at either of the two goals above, you will likely fail entirely. While, as mentioned, people have profited in the short-term by following trends, it never lasts. They will eventually not make enough money to keep creating music. Similarly, even if you are making music that you believe will stand the test of time, but you are not able to make enough money, you will not be able to release more music that you believe will stand the test of time.

Put simply, these two goals force you to confront the delicate balance of art and commerce. Sadly, there are many, many very worthy artists capable of impacting the culture, but because they didn’t make enough money, they never achieved the potential impact they could have had they been able to put out more music. And, of course, there are artists who shot up like a roman candle, selling a ton of music, only to flare out almost immediately because they failed to impact the culture in a meaningful way.

Our first strategic lesson, therefore, is to begin thinking about precisely what it will take to make enough money with our music to keep doing it, and to make certain that the music we make truly is capable of impacting the culture over the long term.

Summary
When asked what the most important quality for success is you hear a range of answers; from talent to perseverance to luck. Certainly, all of those, and many more, are important qualities. However, the one quality that looms above all others is the unwavering belief by the artist that his music must be heard. This belief is the only thing that can sustain an artist through the inevitable travails that they will axiomatically confront. From disinterested audiences to disbelieving spouses, and everything in between, the path from writing songs to having those songs heard by a wide audience is an uphill and treacherous one. Without this internal belief that your music must be heard, you simply will not make it.

Once you have determined you have this belief, and that nothing will cause you to waiver in your belief that your songs must be heard, you must begin focusing on precisely how you will get this music heard. The foundation for this type of strategic thinking is what Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, calls “The Hedgehog Concept.” The Hedgehog Concept forces you to focus by determining three specific things: what you are passionate about, what you can do better than anyone else, and what can make you money. As we noted, it’s the confluence or overlap of these three circles that truly provides focus. While you may be passionate about something, for example, and you may even be the best at it, if it doesn’t provide you with enough income to keep doing it, the passion and ability don’t matter. The Hedgehog Concept provides an illuminating and instructive view on the adage of simply doing what you love. Doing what you love is an oversimplification, and—as many artists have found—just because they love to play guitar, it doesn’t guarantee they’ll ever be the best at it, or be able to make a living doing it. The goal is to find the balance between the three circles. This requires trade-offs, compromises, and maturity. However, the payoff is potentially huge.

This understanding in place, the artist must then dedicate themselves to the true goals: 1. Make enough money with your current record in order to have the opportunity to make another one, and 2. Make music that will have a long-term impact on the culture. By focusing on these elements, you decrease the chances that you will engage in the Cardinal mistake of the music business (or any business) engaging in random acts of improvement which don’t connect to your fundamental goals.

In essence, what all of the above advice points to relates back to focus. You must focus internally to understand your beliefs and motivation, and you must have strategic focus to build a career based upon these beliefs. Is this easy? No. Is there any other real alternative? No.