My Music Marketing Epiphany

Today we have the first in a 3 part series from Seamus Anthony, an Australian musician that I have been talking to via email for the past few months. He is someone that has been a musician for the past 20 years and in his own words “suddenly understood, in a blinding flash of realization, what being a musician is all about – and how to market my music successfully.” I think you are going to like this series and like his music. Enjoy Part 1 below:

Part 1 – Why I Totally Failed At Music Marketing

I have been “in the music biz” for 20+ years. During this time I have tasted a little bit of wild success and a lot of obscurity. To be clearer: I was once in a band that started to get really huge before screwing up, losing momentum and splitting up. After that my music “career” took a one-way train ticket to Nowheresville.

It’s cool though. I take full responsibility for this and I now understand why this happened to me: along the way, I forgot how to love marketing my music, therefore didn’t apply myself to music marketing, therefore … Nowhere.

But recently, in an instant, this all changed.

Here’s the story of how, finally, after 20 years being a muso, I suddenly understood, in a blinding flash of realization, what being a musician is all about – and how to market my music successfully.

My Mind Cracked Open Like An Egg

As I lay back one night on my couch, relaxing, flipping through a book, I read some words that cracked open my mind like an egg and I suddenly felt a massive wave of recharged energy.

Instantly, I was totally set free from all my long-standing depression about being a musician. In just a single moment I understood the whole gig. It just suddenly clicked. I instantly knew:

• What our job actually is as musicians (i.e. what purpose we serve to humanity)
• How important this job is (Hint: as important as any other job in the world) and why it’s so important
• How to use this clarity of purpose go about marketing my music successfully, with the clarity and drive of a highly-motivated entrepreneur, even though I don’t have as much time as I used to.
• And, more importantly, how to love marketing my music all over again, like I haven’t since I was 20 years old.

First let me explain to you why I have done such a poor job of marketing my music for the last 15 years.

Why I Stunk At Music Marketing

Most musicians who have been playing around for a while know that while they may not be rock stars, at least some people love their music. For me, I early on had the gratification of having thousands of people tell me they loved my music and still to this day I get unsolicited emails and the like telling me that my music means a lot to them. So this is very gratifying and it has enabled me to know for all of my so-called music career, that the problem has not been with the quality of songwriting or singing that has kept me back. If I can write songs powerful enough to make a whole roomful of people sing the lyrics back to me so loud that I can’t hear my own voice through the foldback, I figure that I am kind of OK at this aspect of the game. (Of course there is always massive room for improvement.)

So no – the music itself has never been the problem. The problem has been marketing and I have known this for years. And essentially “marketing” just to clear up any confusion is really about working very hard in a strategic way to get your product out there and selling. “Marketing” means making the best music possible, recording it well, packaging it well, schlepping yourself around doing gig after gig, poster run after poster run, social media site after social media site, and on and on – you get the picture.

I knew this but year after year, I just wasn’t doing it.

And why not?

Because I had no motivation to do it.

The idea of becoming a famous rock star had lost its appeal – I might have paid lip service to wanting success, but my actions told the real story – I just didn’t want it that bad any more. If I didn’t want it that bad then why would I bother going through all the pain and hard work involved in effectively marketing my music? More fun to go back-packing, or spend the day in bed with a hot chick, or try my hand at running a night club.

So why did music success become less appealing to me by the time I was in my early-mid twenties? After all, just a few years earlier I had wanted it so bad it wasn’t funny. What happened?

It all comes down to why I wanted music career success in the first place.

Becoming Michael Hutchence

I started out in music as teenager desperate to become popular – sure it was about music too – I was a very genuine and obsessive music fan – but primarily, when it came to marketing music, all it was about for me was getting really, really popular.

Why else would I bother to market my music? I wanted girls and to show all those popular boys from school that I was better than them. They were going to end up doing something lame; I was going to be the new Michael Hutchence (INXS), partying around the world with supermodels while they sat at home with their fat wives watching me be fabulous on TV.

Pretty shallow – but hey, I was a young ‘un, and not that different from the majority of young musicians.

However, unlike the majority of musicians, I partially experienced exactly what I set out to achieve.

The band I fronted, Reckoning, became the biggest indie-rock band in our home city with a fanbase (primarily of young ladies) that bordered on the obsessive. We played in front of huge crowds every week or two. We sold loads of CDs (this was before downloads), t-shirts and concert tickets. We were on the cover of the local newspapers and music rags, everyone I met said I was surely going to wind up internationally famous, and everywhere I went free drink, drugs and girls were offered to me on a platter.

This soon proved to be a very shallow achievement that made me feel hollow, depressed and disconnected from reality.

After that, for the next 15 years until the other day when I had my Music Marketing Epiphany, I did a pitiful job of marketing my music. I just stopped bothering with it all and slid back into obscurity.

I wasn’t consciously sure why, but now I know it was because I was not motivated by what I saw as being the principal reward for music business success: self-aggrandizement.

I have been super-popular and it is a hollow prize, a big empty Nothing that completely fails to make you happy. Elvis. Michael Hutchence. Kurt Cobain. I rest my case.

But then one day, not very long ago, I was sitting at home thinking about Value Propositions (as you do) and all of that changed…

Next Up: Part 2 – The Purpose of Music

Seamus Anthony is a musician from Melbourne, Australia. If you like Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen or the Muppets, go get your free 4 track EP here: www.SeamusMusic.com.

Tags: guest post, Music Marketing, nick cave, promotion, seamus anthony