Tag: Music Business

  • The truth hurts and vanity kills

    In 1999, my life had arrived at a perfectly acceptable, yet utterly untenable place. I was at a high point in my career and had been nominated for a variety of awards. My marriage had also dissolved and my emotional state was questionable. I was living in a small apartment on the Hudson River and […]

  • There are no bad people, just bad ideas

    World history has come to a unique and remarkable point of convergence. With each new moment, current events are literally recreating, rewiring and redirecting the course of civilization. Technology is playing a tremendous role in all of this change. The capability to distribute information and to communicate with others is unprecedented. Data flows through the […]

  • The work ethic and breeding stillborn artists

    The concept of a work ethic has always figured strongly in the output of artists. It can be seen in every important piece of art down through the ages, from St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican to The White Album. It is implausible that such remarkable things could have been created by people who didn’t […]

  • The unbearable agony of focusing

    Sometimes, it’s so easy to become literally and thoroughly absorbed by whatever creative project I’m working on. When this happens, it’s as if I’ve entered into some kind of alternate universe. Instantly, I lose track of the time and everything around me begins to recede into the background. People simply fade away, objects vanish, appointments […]

  • It’s all about intent

    Modern digital recording technology is as miraculous as it is still relatively new and undeveloped. From a technical and historical perspective, what could be achieved with previous recording platforms is dwarfed by what can be accomplished with current systems. The fact that there are now software programs which can alter the individual notes of an […]

  • The gift

    One evening, I was listening back to a track I’d been producing at Conway Studio in Los Angeles. From out of nowhere, I felt a rush, a great intensity surge through my being. It was like a tidal wave of dopamine- in an instant, all my senses became heightened. My muscles clenched and my teeth […]

  • Red carpets and pots of gold

    In 1986, I was working out of a tiny, makeshift 8 track recording studio on St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan. The studio was in the basement of an old tenement building, and was next door to a shop that sold guitars (which looked suspiciously as if they’d been spirited out of some nearby apartment for […]

  • You gotta give

    I left home at 17, dropped out of high school, became completely indigent, lived with various girls (until their parents threw me out of their homes) and played in a band. By the time I was 18, my band had played all over the country (which was noteworthy, as I could barely play my instrument) […]

  • Ikiru

    To even the most casual bystander, it is clear that the music industry is preparing to breathe it’s last. With revenues consistently falling like the proverbial stone, archaic and bumbling business practices which would be rued in any other industry, a product which no one wants to pay for (or needs to, as it is […]