42 Comments
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Mat Tyrrell's avatar

Heartening to know you only need 1,000 fans to support you, makes it feel more achievable 🙌

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

A million percent! I love thinking of your 1000 fans as people in your neighborhood and not some mythical future thing.

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Makayla McIntosh's avatar

Yes!! I think of the "looking for a guy in finance" girl often. Fame blew up overnight and signed with a label... but then with no true "substance" and art ready, it falls flat fast. I think labels should invest more in artists that have been slowly building their following and craft rather than one hit 10 second trend on an app that's going to collapse in on itself in the next few years. Thank you for sharing this - never thought of a restaurant analogy before!

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

I definitely agree that “sign what’s viral” is a terrible A&R strategy

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Sean Johnson's avatar

Much needed Reminders

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

Thank you!

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Qid Love 🕉️💕🎸🏳️‍⚧️'s avatar

Here’s a thing to read: https://thecreativelife.net/scenius/

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Qid Love 🕉️💕🎸🏳️‍⚧️'s avatar

Also, I love this, and it ties in with Eno’s “scenius” theme, which has popped up twice for me this week. I’m really trying to break out of my chronically online existence this year and build a community around my music and the studio we call home. I dig it! Keep ‘em coming 💕

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

Who’s Eno?

Sorry, just kidding. What’s the scenius theme?

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Hot Thing's avatar

Essentially the "genius" of a creative "scene," a sort of implicit or explicit ethic toward collaboration that leads to the emergence of mutual artistic flourishing.

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

oh yeah this fuckin rules

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Sarah Godwin Murdoch's avatar

I'm so glad I found your newsletter because you're so good at breaking things down in a way that makes a music career seem actually achievable. I loved this, thank you for writing it!

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

Sarah, I'm so happy you're here! It really is achievable without fame and music industry insanity--I've seen people do it!

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L. Cohen's avatar

“Keep it Restaurant”

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

I will, Leonard Cohen. I will.

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Daniela Corona's avatar

Wow, loved this! The restaurant metaphor really puts everything into perspective and makes the journey less overwhelming. Thank you!

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

I’m so glad! Who needs law school when you’re doing something as grounded and achievable as building a beloved local business?

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Daniela Corona's avatar

Haha, exactly!

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Rachel's avatar

I love this reframing! It's so encouraging and also so real.

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

❤️❤️❤️ thanks dude

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Liz Mendez's avatar

As someone who’s worked in and around restaurants for three decades, which includes ownership - I can say with ease that there is so much crossover between the music and restaurant industries, with ample learning opportunities from both sides. Music could use a good dose of hospitality and restaurants could use a reminder that their art and craft must evolve in order to be sustainable.

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

Liz, I love this! ❤️

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Liz Mendez's avatar

❤️🤘😎

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miter's avatar

Great points- thanks!

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

Extreme preesh! ❤️

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Seth Werkheiser's avatar

"Do you have systems in place to make it easy for fans to support you?" - such a key point in all this, and such a bummer to see so many folks link to Spotify and hope they get a million plays to make a .25 cents.

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Luke De-Sciscio's avatar

Thank you for this !

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

Thanks for reading!

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Gabbie's avatar

gosh your posts are fun to read

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

What the heck dude thank you

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Qid Love 🕉️💕🎸🏳️‍⚧️'s avatar

The Friday Zooms are the best! 😃🎸🎵🏳️‍🌈

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

If only people knew how much we’re getting done in there!

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Martin Neuhold's avatar

While I really like the concept of my music as a restaurant, it also comes with some difficulties if you’re not living in a major city. If you open a, let’s say, vegetarian restaurant with tibetan cuisine in the area where I live you simply won’t survive. People won’t come because people in rural areas are different and much less diverse than people in a city. You will only survive if you offer bavarian, italian or chinese food (with a lot of luck maybe sushi).

The only live musix that exists here is cover bands. Rock Classics or Top 10 Hits. There are no locations for something else. So to me the internet was always a chance to finally reach an audience. I guess there has to be a way to turn your restaurant into a delivery service if you live in an area where people simply are not interested in tibetan vegetarian food and be able to deliver to areas where people DO want to eat the very own special and tasty food you want to do. Without toxic social media.

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Dedicate Your Life To Music's avatar

Hey - thanks for sharing this!

Every project has specific requirements and constraints. Some of what I talk about will apply to what you’re doing and some of it fully won’t.

There’s another post I read recently that I think might be interesting to you.

https://open.substack.com/pub/sirenmakayla/p/why-small-towns-might-be-your-movie?r=3nopy1&utm_medium=ios

I guess I’m curious if there might be more freaks like you hiding out in your normieville and if so, how to draw them out.

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Martin Neuhold's avatar

I really enjoy your posts, because you show that there IS a different way than social media.

I guess there are a lot of musicians hiding in Normieville and also there is an audience there. An audience that in parts propably doesn’t even know that it would love „far out music“, because there is no „far out music“ in Normieville. And yes, the big question is how to draw them out. How to built a restaurant or a delivery service that delivers to all Normievilles and that is accessible for the musicians and the people of all the Normievilles out there.

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