Taken from the great Bob Lefsetz Letter blogs. Bob Lefsetz is a music industry insider and former consultant to the big record labels. You can read all his stuff at http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/archives.php

From My Side Of The Screen

Just because you believe in yourself doesn’t mean I should.

I’m constantly inundated with people frustrated that they haven’t made it. Everybody says how great they are, their family, their friends, how come they can’t break through? If only they were on the radio. Won’t someone invest in them?

You’d think that record companies are the enemy. I know, I know, they’re not what they used to be, but do you really think they don’t want to sign stuff that sells? That’s easy to sell? Do you really think you’re being given the brush-off unnecessarily, that the big bad man is out to screw you? Not only the record company man, but the radio guy too?

And sure, both those outlets are now only interested in a narrow category of performer. Probably a pretty face with a number written by a song doctor or the latest urban delight. You’re right, that’s fucked. But the reason they don’t want to sign you isn’t because they’ve got a personal vendetta against you, but because they can’t SELL YOU!

And what’s worse, they can’t sell the records of an established act either. Do you think you’re as good as Elton John? He’s gone on record that he’s not going to release any more albums because no one cares, no one wants to buy them. But since you’ve dedicated your life to music, somehow you think you’re entitled!

Chances are you’re not that good. Or, if by some weird quirk of fate, you are, you’re making music that most people just aren’t interested in. Please accept this. And stop acting wounded. Frustrated that you haven’t gotten your chance. Talk to the big time managers, the ones you wish were pushing you, they’re flummoxed too, they’re having a hard enough time keeping legendary acts working.

But no, the system’s out to get you.

If you’ve hit a wall, chances are most people just don’t care. And I don’t care either. Do you think if I write about your little ditty it’s going to insure mega-success? NO ONE has that power. It’s like the world’s brain-damaged, and the neurons are not firing properly, it’s hard to get a message from one end to the other. You think you’re one gatekeeper away from worldwide acceptance, accolades and dollars, and Madonna’s new album tanks sixty four percent the second week out and she’s getting more publicity than you EVER will.

If you want instant success, write a hit tune. A hit tune is one that’s not very different from what the radio, TOP FORTY, is already playing. If you’re trying to convince the system to come over to your side of the fence, to see how your music is unique and deserves a chance, you’re living in the sixties, and even though you were probably never exposed to free form radio, that’s what you want…AND THAT DOESN’T EXIST!

A hit tune has a catchy chorus. Memorable verses. Today, it’s heavily rhythmic. STUDY THE CHART and deliver this exact sound. And be good-looking to boot. Sure, it would be great if it were different, but IT’S NOT!

If you want to take the other path, your music has to be able to be understood, digestable, HOOK PEOPLE on one listen. I mean one damn listen. I’m not talking about falling in love with someone over time, there’s not enough exposure in this world anymore. Your one chance at being heard, you must deliver a Michael Jackson or a Joni Mitchell performance. You must positively blow people away! They must not want to leave, they must buy your CD, your merch and if you were playing the next night in town, your audience would be double, because they brought everybody they knew down to the club. If you’re not getting this response night after night, you’re not good enough to be rich and famous! Maybe you can be a working musician, but you’re not going to float above the fray, you’re not going to be on the cover of "Rolling Stone", as if that mattered.

You think there’s a system. There’s no system anymore. Just a lot of people fighting for their slice of the pie. Warner Music cuts its dividend, Clear Channel can’t be sold because the buyers can’t lay their hands on the cash, superstars release albums that don’t go gold, but the system is out to screw YOU!

No one cares about you.

And I don’t either.

I’m not going to listen to your crap, I’m not your lackey. If you’re that good, I’m going to hear about you from someone else, who I trust, who does not have an investment.

Hell, we’re all frustrated. The listeners as well as the acts and businessmen. There’s no coherence in the system. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff? How do WE find out about great new music?

In the future, a trusted filter, like record companies and radio in the past, will emerge to do this job. Right now, in a time where everybody can create recordings and a label, the landscape is chaos. It’s chaos for EVERYBODY!

If you love to play music, and you’re willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING to make it, play on. But please stop bitching that you haven’t gotten your turn. The road is littered with acts light years better than you that haven’t gotten their turn. Some gave up, some retreated to journeyman status, some, like Randy Newman, went into the movie soundtrack world, where life was easier.

Maybe you love John Hiatt. But he didn’t write "…Baby One More Time", someone else did. Nor did he write "Save The Best For Last". I’m not saying he should be unhappy, just that he’s a bit of a square peg and he’s having a hard time fitting in the round hole.

You can’t even see the hole. And your peg is flaky at best. But somehow YOU deserve success.

Fuck off.

Your One Big Break

Will probably never happen.

Chances are, even if you’re supporting yourself playing music and have a hard core fan base, most people in your neighborhood will have no idea who you are.

Used to be there were markers. Getting signed. Hearing your song on the radio. Going to #1 on SoundScan. All those things can still happen, it’s just their significance is ever-smaller. You can achieve ALL of the above things and still be a one hit wonder. Odds are the band playing live every night of the week will have a longer career than you do. In other words, as the Firesign Theatre once said, everything you know is wrong.

If you’re waiting for acknowledgement, acceptance by the powers-that-be… I hate to tell you, but the powers-that-be no longer exist. Last week the "New York Times" let Jeff Leeds go. Not because he was doing a bad job, but because they needed to reduce their headcount. What, there’s no longer going to be any music industry news? No, it’s just that the paper of record can no longer afford to cover it, the paper of record is trying to avoid a hostile takeover, going out of business itself.

The radio station? You have to ask yourself, do YOU listen to the radio? Do your FRIENDS listen to the radio? Chances are, the answer is no. So, if your demo is not listening, what difference does it make if you’re getting airplay there. If you are garnering fans, chances are they’re not the ones you want. And Top Forty fans, the only format that truly means anything anymore, are notoriously fickle. A number one radio record is akin to being the star magician at the old folks home. A minor figure in a dying world that most people want no part of.

The label? Everybody hates the major labels. They’re the ones suing their customers, right? The ones who tell you what to record and when. Your mother might be impressed that you’ve got a lawyer and a record company, but the public still has no idea who you are, and chances are, never will.

And without the mainstream media attention, the record company push, that breakthrough gig…that can’t happen anymore either.

In other words, if you’re playing with the old scorecard, you must be mightily confused, because that’s for the old game.

The new scorecard is all about fans. How can you make more fans, and make them stick! Collecting friends on MySpace is quantifiable, but MySpace is about getting laid and there’s almost no loyalty involved. If MySpace friends made music careers, you’d be spinning Tila Tequila’s record right now. You might have a desire to have sex with her, but you don’t want to listen to her music. She’s got no talent.

Who has talent?

You’ve got to believe you have talent. Doesn’t matter if the label thinks so, chances are they won’t sign you and if they do, they can’t break you. If you’re looking for some powerful person to wave his hand and say you’re great, you’re delusional. If you believe in yourself enough to put you and your music out there, you’ll continue to be able to play it if people want to hear it. It’s just that simple. Doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad, but whether you’ve got an audience. If you get an instant audience, great, you’ll probably have a career. If not, chances are you suck, or if you don’t suck, you’re not making music most people want to hear. Don’t cry in your beer, either give up, change your act or accept your fate, as a marginal artist.

The big breaks today?

1. Being able to give up your day job. Used to be, you got signed, you thought you’d made it, you were just a year or so from going back to McDonald’s, behind the counter. Today, since you’ve invested in yourself, built everything yourself, if you can shitcan your day job and make it playing music, kick back and have a drink, congratulate yourself, you’ve truly made it. Carly Smithson had a record deal and national TV exposure and she’s still pulling drinks in a bar in San Diego, or will be again soon. That’s the first hurdle, earning your freedom from the everyday grind.

2. Which may come before 1, getting an agent. It’s hard to book yourself. The road is where you make money. If someone’s interested in booking you, they think they can make money on you, they want their 10%. This is a good sign. This is more important than getting a record deal.

3. Owning something besides an amp and your instrument. Maybe it’s a car, maybe it’s real property. But once your musical enterprise is generating enough extra cash that you can acquire extraneous items, you’ve truly made it.

4. And this can happen anywhere in the food chain, really. An act YOU respect says it likes YOUR music.

5. You play larger and larger venues and your merch numbers grow.

And that’s about it. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if there’s even a rainbow. It’s just you, playing music, for people who love it. There’s no awards show, no instant cash, no front page story, nothing that you can show to your relatives that will make them finally realize you’ve made it.

It’s now about being a musician, not a star. Savor the little victories, because that’s all you’re going to get, that’s all that’s out there. The night you were in the zone playing for 3,500 adoring fans. It’s not about the coverage in "Rolling Stone", they’re putting bimbos on the cover. It’s about what you feel inside, the self-satisfaction. You’re not only a player, you now own the game. It’s a big responsibility, are you up to it?

And...finally RockEruption's take on becoming successful in todays' music industry:

Reasons why bands get popular

This may be of interest for certain bands or musicians with enterprising minds or who are more business-oriented. I am not a musician nor a manager but if I was one I would take note on what I have observed over my time watching the music industry. There seems to be a few main factors on why certain musucians become famous, sometimes its one factor, sometimes its a combination of these factors.

So without further adeiu, lets dive into these factors and explore each one in a little more detail:

Connections:

This is a HUGE one. I'm sure we can all name a few bands who we have encountered over the years and told our buddies "there is no way these guys are not gonna become famous!" -only to never hear of them again or perhaps see them have less than mediocre success. Connections can reap the rewards of getting a band in the right direction to start with. Traditionally you required a good manager, and perhaps your manager got you noticed by a record label and negotiated a good deal for you with that label -allowing you to earn money when your CD sold some copies. Plus that record label negotiates with radio/video programmers who decide to put YOUR stuff on heavy radio/TV rotation so people can hear and see your songs and videos. Then, if your stuff is good the band will catch on with people and your shows start selling out. This happened to a few bands like say -Van Halen. It was Gene Simmons who was their connection and got them noticed by Warner Brothers records back in 1978.

It unfortunately did not happen for a lesser-known band like Anvil. Anvil was touted as revolutionary heavy-metal back in 1982 and caught the attention of a young band called Metallica. Metallica actually listed Anvil as one of their early influences, but alas, Anvil did not have the connections for proper management and did not get the much needed radio/video play to get them to where they needed to be. Is Anvil still around? Hell yeah, but they achieved a fraction of the success that a band like Metallica achieved. Ya gotta have connections!

Songwriting :

Your songs need to be GOOD! Your core fan base NEEDS to believe that your songs are GREAT! If they're just mediocre songs, you tend to get mediocre responses by your fans. Sometimes your main connection (see above) will get a band all the right management they need as well as radio/video play but if the songs are mediocre then the fans will eventually let you know that -the music will not sell! Think of the last Arctic Monkeys CD -tanked.

The music needs to make your fans FEEL something. Maybe the songs will make the fans feel good, like partying. But the music doesnt necessarily need to make them feel good, it does need to make them feel POWERFUL emotions however. For example, lets take depression. Now who the heck wants to feel that?? Think Depeche Mode, or some Nirvana, or early Pearl Jam. If we examine the psychology of WHY these bands' depressing songs are so popular, perhaps its the lyrics and mood that people can identify with. Perhaps its simply in the knowing that someone else has felt similar to you, or maybe you were holding back some feelings and the song 'Jeremy' by Pearl Jam allowed you to get those feelings out. Perhaps it was an angry song like Marylin Manson's 'The Beautiful People' that allowed people to get aggressions out.

Maybe the music will make you feel all moral and you'll feel more connected to people and their everyday life situations. -Think U2 hits, or even Boston's 'More Than A Feeling' and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Nevertheless, these bands got an emotional reaction out of people that made them hooked -for life.

Some songs just need to be melodic. A song that you hear once and it sticks in your head, you can hum along to it because it's just so darn good. Think of Oasis, those hits of theirs were so melodic and it reminded people of earlier bands like the Beatles. Melodies can also come out in heavier rock like Iron Maiden's Number Of The Beast. You may scoff that this is a melodic song, but if you know it you can hear Bruce Dickinson's voice carrying the melody in this song -and it sticks.

Even if you HATE rock n roll -you cannot NOT like a nice melody. I believe its human psyche to be attracted to a sound that is melodic. Its hard-wired in our brains and in our DNA.

Other times a song just needs an element of catchiness. This I believe is also closely tied in with melodies, but this does not necessarily need to be so. Sometimes if a song is catchy enough it will stick. Catchiness in my opinion often comes from a nice guitar riff. Think of any AC/DC song -that undeniable gritty guitar style from Angus Young creates nice riffs on almost every one of his songs. Take the opening riff to 'Highway To Hell' and you'll know what I'm talking about.

And again, same arguement as above: Even if you HATE rock n roll -you cannot NOT like that riff. I beleive its human psyche to be attracted to a sound that is catchy.

Image:

By image I'm only going on pure looks. Today the image is to look like a library geek (see my former blog called "The Era Of Nerd Rock"). But in the past, rock bands LOOKED like something -usually outlandish or shocking. Think back to when punk rock first started with the mohawk haircut and ripped up shirts with pins. Think heavy metal with leather and studs. Think early glam with David Bowie and T Rex. Rock n roll NEEDS a theatrical element. Going to a rock show is exactly that -a SHOW. You go see a play or movie often not just for the storyline, but you want to be entertained with special effects. Bands who look outlandish have the effect of people going to work the next day and telling people at the office stuff like "Oh my GOD did you SEE what those guys looked like?? Did you SEE those boots?" You catch my drift....

I beleive that the pop-punk 'bands' are now failing because they got tons of hype and looked great image-wise, but their songs mainly suck and adults just arent interested in them. The kids who turn 18 quickly lose interest and hence we have some former major acts (Avril Lavigne, SUM41, Kelly Clarkson, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte etc etc) scaling back from doing arenas down to theatres and some cases even clubs! (http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/S/Sum_41/ConcertReviews/2008/03/28/5129361-sun.html)

Hype/Radio Play/Video Play/News:

The band that gets on the radio stands a better chance of making it than those who do not. But wait! -you may be saying...what about earlier bands who got ZERO radio play when they were first starting out and STILL managed to create huge underground followings? Think Metallica, Black Sabbath, RUSH, Dream Theatre etc. The answer is simple -see the part on songwriting. These bands were THAT DAMN GOOD. However, with that being said, they probably would have evolved into superstardom that much faster had they had more exposure.

Now with that being said... some good bands have come a nice long way with a combination of these factors listed above but not necessarily ALL of the factors. Think The Trews, they had great connections, hype and radio play -but they looked like geeks and have no image. But that didnt matter to the college crowd who primarily makes up their fan base. The Trews songwriting appeal is still good enough for older rock fans as well.

We can also think of a few bands whose songwriting sucked but managed to survive for a little while due to a ton of media hype. Although 'songwriting' is an art form, and I fully respect that the quality of art is in the eye of the beholder. But again, fans will let you know if they think a bands' music sucks -they wont buy it and wont show up to shows. Its that simple. Think Will.I.Am -the dork from Black Eyed Peas. Tons of hype, tons of video and radio play but the album TANKED.

Now think of all the legendary rock n roll bands that everyone knows and loves. Here's a few who had ALL of the factors above:

:

KISS: Image up the wazzoo!! Songs are catchy and melodic as anything, Tons of radio play and Gene Simmons is a marketing genius

ACDC: Great bar band image plus of course that schoolboy uniform that Angus wears is one hell of an image boost. Combine that with a cannon that fires on its audience,

Rolling Stones: They were BAD ASS back inthe 1960's sporting long hair along with the Beatles. Legendary hit songs that people identified with.

So...if ya wanna be a rock star... heed some advice and follow the factors!! They cant hurt if you do them right!