So each week I talk to a lot of you on consultation
calls, and then I go out and drink with some of my friends who’ve had success in music
and in the past few weeks its become very obvious that theres a difference in the attitude
of those who get to the point of being successful and those who don't. And while I love that music has become so
democratized and we are really in an unprecedented era of fans choosing who gets popular instead
of gate keeper dweebs, The one downside is that when musicians are DIY they don't get
some of the mentorship and that leads to then being unnecessarily miserable and disapppointed
when they shouldnt be. So in the video I want to discuss that number
1 difference between successful and unsuccessful musicians. Hi I'm Jesse Cannon a music marketing nerd
whos teaching musicians how to grow their fanbase from zero to 10,000 fans and this
is Musformation. So this weekend I was watching the new documentary
on HBO Max Judd Apatow made on my favorite comedian of all time George Carlin. And in it – right at the very end of the first
part it pinpointed an attitude difference between those who succeed compared to those
who never get anywhere.
At one point in George’s career Cheech Marin
you know a comic mostly known for making stoner jokes called Carlin Obsolete since he was
a real heady thinking type of comedy and the tide had changed and people just wanted to
have fun. And at another point in his career where he
made relevant comedy for 5 decades continually reinventing himself he saw the stand up Sam
Kinison and instead of being insulted a clown like Cheech was insulting him, he saw someone
whose talent he was impressed with. But in both instances what he did was he challenged
himself to get better and go deeper within his work and hone his craft to be so great
no one could ignore him.
Instead of going negative, giving up, fearing
rejection or hiding from people he instead kept working putting himself out there but
when he would go home at night hed consciously work to take his work to a whole new level
to surpass other people. And when you watch the documentary you see
everyone of the biggest comedians of the eras he did comedy in say it again and again that
no one and I mean no one reinvented themselves and became the best over and over again and
it was that attitude that enabled that each time.
And while I don't really like to hold someone
up as an example that's as clearly in need of mental help as Kanye is in the present
day, when you watch the netflix doc on him you see this same attitude in the era where
he was truly making some of the most challenging music of recent times, he was looking around
at the musical landscape and challenging himself to being the best each time. But I can already hear so many of you thinking
that's great but they were already successful and how tough it is when no one even appreciates
you. But here’s the thing that's the time this
attitude is most important. In Stephen Kings amazing book On Writing he
talks about his time before he got his first novel published. He would send his novels out to publishers
and every time he got a rejection letter he would hang it on a nail since he would read
their criticism and learn from it and he saw this as the path to learning how to be a great
writer and well obviously we know what happened from there, one of the most unprecedented
success stories in book publishing history.
But his attitude was that he knew getting
used to rejection was the only way you get through all the disappointment so he turned
it around and instead started to look at rejection as awards on his way to winning the biggest
award of all well um actual awards and praise for his work. He got so many of them he had to buy another
nail cause the first one started to sag in his wall. And these attitudes are what my friends who
have had success have as well. But this is the thing when I talk to you all
on these consulting calls or even in the comments of these videos since I answer every question
you all leave. There tends to be two different symptoms some
of you have – The first is fear of even putting yourself out there, you don't send your music
to people, you fear putting it out or even worse both. You are so paralyzed by the idea of getting
rejected but you're ignoring that everyone in music gets rejected all the time. I’ve mentioned this before but if you get
3 out of 5 of the opportunities presented to you, you're killing the game and even 1
out of 5 is a pretty decent batting average.
Theres so many times musicians don't even
understand what success is. The other week I made a video where we analyzed
some of the new data Spotify put out into the world and when so many musicians learned
that if you have more than 5,000 streams of your song you’re in the top 20% of songs
on Spotify well they all of a sudden felt really good about themselves instead of down
in the dumps. And since theres a lack of mentorship in DIY
music so many things can be so disappointing, a musician will tell me only 25% of their
fans opened their email list and I have to tell them that's not just good its great.
They tell me they pitched Spotify playlists
and are getting on 2 out of ten of them and they are so depressed when that is basically
hitting a grand slam. And it goes all the way up to the top I have
been in the room with a band with countless platinum records as they got rejected as the
openers for U2 and yeah they were bummed for a second and then they kept on and you know
what the next record they got that U2 tour. And if this helping you well You should be
subscribed and get notified since this is what we talk about here But the second type of personality is one
I have a lot less sympathy for. So many of you particularly a type of know
it all keyboard incel that resides all day on TikTok comment sections loves to talk about
how they are just as good as any of the biggest artists in the world yet when I click play
on their music they’re off time, out of tune and their performance is about as nuanced
as the arguments your high school friends post about how cool Elon Musk is on Facebook.
Here’s the lesson – It’s great to be confident
but even Kanye a guy who if anyone put his picture on the wikipedia for the word arrogant
it may take some time before anyone scrolled there and questioned why his picture was there. Kanye while believing in himself knew the
competition is stiff and his greatness partially came because his attitude was always to look
around challenge himself to make the most compelling work that he finds emotionally
powerful he can and while I can see many bad things about his current era, the man truly
had an unprecedented run at being successful with this attitude. I can say this very confidently cause I have
been around so many of the great creators in music. If you think you are just as good as the professional
musician's odds are you haven't done enough of what creativity science calls “Trained
Noticing” which is when we study a craft as we keep going down that 10,000 hours of
expertise we learn to see more and more of the nuance of how to consistently achieve
greatness.
They have learned to notice tons of subtleties
in songwriting performance or general artistry and as they accumulate those subtleties they
stack up like a haystack into greatness. And that is the key you can get lucky with
a great performance early on in your career but the trained noticing allows you to replicate
it so you're not a one hit wonder who was only able to pull it off a few times. One of my favorite quotes comes from arthur
schaupenaur when he said greatness hit the mark but genius hits a target no one else
can see.
And that's what I’m saying here, so many
of you who think you're as good as the pros haven't yet learned to see and hear all the
tiny subtleties that go into performances and for must of you once you stop being a
teenage or worse 20 something know it all you start to see what a fool you are. There is a reason that all the smartest people
in a field say they know nothing because they keep seeing how they notice more and more
and can see what they don't understand and wish they could understand but don't yet have
the words, yet fools think they know everything and really they should google Dunning Kruger
Effect and really think about where they fall in that study.
But all of this is to say confidence and belief
in yourself is good, in fact necessary or else you're going to give up with all the
disappointment in this business but you need to acknowledge disappointment and rejection
is something everyone of your favorite creators experienced but they learned this attitude
in order to push through and get to the great place you admire them for. You need to always be looking for how you
can challenge yourself to do your best work and continue the work of being the best artist
you can be who makes songs that are most powerful to you and visuals that alight with that,
well that's the way you get through this.
OK On the screen now is a video on I think
you will love if you loved this one.Click and keep learning thanks for watching..