Your Music and People

Your Music and People

Author: Derek Sivers Created time: April 13, 2021 9:01 PM Page No.: 146 Progress: ✔️

A philosophy of getting your work to the world by being creative, considerate, resourceful, and connected.

What I am going to to do after reading it?

• Make database of people & and how often I should contact them.
• Build some persona for people to look up to.
• Never give to I am contacting someone.

Points

• Socialize
  • How to use friends database?
  • Every person you’ve ever met has the potential to help you.
  • A list: Very important people. Contact every three weeks.
  • B list: Important people. Contact every two months.
  • C list: Most people. Contact every six months.
  • D list: Demoted people. Contact once a year, to make sure you still have their correct info.
  • Normal World & Business World
  • As teenagers, we learned the hard way that if you contact someone and they don’t reply, they’re just not into you. If you keep trying, you must be a total loser.
  • But in the business world, it’s the opposite. If you don’t keep trying, you’re a loser!
  • How to be cool?
  • But people want someone to look up to. Someone who’s not of their normal boring world. Someone who’s being who they wish they could be, if they had the courage.
  • It takes some extra effort to look and act cool instead of normal, but it’s considerate and part of your art.
  • Look back at artists like Andy Warhol or Miles Davis, who were not only great at their art, but also knew how to play their image — to be cool.
  • You have to give people a good reason! Say a few words to make them curious.
  • Make public persona — the image you show the world — should be an extreme character. It can be a version of yourself, or it can be a mask.
  • About People
  • Are fans telling friends? If not, don’t promote.
  • Even if it starts professional, get personal as soon as possible. Be a friend. That’s how things are done
  • We love when someone hates the same thing we hate — especially if that thing is popular.
  • Take some of that searching time, and spend it on keeping in touch with your existing contacts.
• Business
  • How beat competitor?
  • Look at what your competitors are doing, then vow not to do that.
  • Don’t try to beat them at their game.
  • Play a completely different game.
  • Be radically opposite
  • Early adopters & Late adopters
  • Give a few early adopters the courage to jump in together with the first. Make sure they stick together as a group.
  • Now it’s not about you, it’s about them. Publicize the group, not yourself. Make it fun to join.
  • Make sure all late-adopters can see what fun the early adopters are having.
  • Don’t reinvent any of these wheels. Focus on what’s left — what hasn’t been done.
  • Video aspect? Let YouTube handle that part. E-Commerce aspect? Use Amazon’s system. Payments? Use Stripe.
  • If you do it persistently enough, you will own that niche. People will not be able to imagine that niche without you.
  • Ask yourself why a certain headline or photo or article caught your attention
  • My advice is to assume nobody is coming. It’s more useful to assume that it’s all up to you. This is not hopeless, but helpful and empowering.
  • Pour your personality and philosophy into the way you do business.
  • Nobody knows the future, and anyone who pretends to know can’t be trusted

Meaning

Market mindset - strictly business: being paid for time and effort, competition, you get what you pay for, and cost/benefit analysis.

Social mindset - is warm and fuzzy social human nature: helping friends, being a good generous person, doing what’s right.

Money - neutral exchange of value. If people give you money, it’s proof that you’re giving them something valuable in return.

Marketing - Marketing means making it easy for people to notice you, relate to you, remember you, and tell their friends about you.

Stories

How dealt with the flood:

Whenever someone sent their music, it would go into an inbox. That inbox was completely ignored.

Whenever someone contacted her to follow-up the first time, to ask if she’d received it, she would take their music out of that first inbox, and put it in a second inbox. That second inbox was also ignored.

Then if they followed-up with her a second time, asking again if she’d had the chance to listen, she would take their music out of the second inbox, and put it in a third inbox. That third inbox would get a listen if she had some spare time.

Finally, if they followed-up a third time, she would take their music out of the third inbox, and make it a priority to give it a real listen.

One of the top music industry lawyers in Los Angeles was speaking at a conference.

She’s an expert in copyright law, so someone asked her advice on a licensing problem. They had recorded their version of a famous song, but were unable to get the rights to sell it because they couldn’t get a response from the publisher.

The lawyer shocked the audience when she said, “Sell it anyway. Don’t wait for permission. Save the proof that you tried your best to reach them. If they contact you to ask for money some day, pay them then. But never wait.”

Coming from a copyright lawyer, that was a bold statement.

It was a reminder that your career is more important than its details.

Success is your top priority. Never let anything stop you.

Many musicians get into music because they love playing their instrument. They love it so much they want to do it full-time. But then well-meaning people say, “If you’re going to be in the music business, you have to read this book on music business law, and you have to learn networking skills, and marketing, and tech skills, and accounting, and writing good newsletters, and blah blah blah.” Soon those musicians are spending all their time doing everything but playing their instrument, and decide it’s not worth it! They give up, get a dumb job, and lose interest in their instrument, because a career in music seems tedious and overwhelming.

Resources

• Predictably Irrational — Dan Ariely

Quote

Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it.

— Derek Sivers

Once people start wondering, they can’t stand not knowing.

— Derek Sivers

When things aren’t working, be smarter, not louder.

— Derek Sivers

You have to make your own success first, before you ask the industry for help.

— Derek Sivers

If you’re not happy with the way things are, don’t just complain. Go make things how they should be.

— Derek Sivers