So, it’s actually been a whole … no, wait, two years. Almost two years since the last time I posted in these diaries. Christ, that’s terrifying.

I turned 23 a month ago, and looking back at what’s happened over the past few years it’s weird to see where the successes and failures have been. I’m going to recap some stuff that’s happened, how my opinions have changed (and some vanished completely) and try to figure out where to from here.

I’ve realised what an overidealistic, naive arsehole I’ve been, and it’s quite humbling.

Part of the reason I haven’t kept this updated is that I’ve been too busy doing things to write crap in a diary. It’s a bit like ‘business forums’, where all the people who are actually doing something are too busy doing it to waste time posting stuff on internet forums.

#1: Money and motivation:
At the start of this I honestly believed people would do stuff for nothing more than an ideal. This is such a horrendously false premise that I am amazed I believed it in the first place. People want money, recognition, or a kick-back of some sort for everything… and that’s totally okay. You get what you pay for. We have spent thousands of dollars very recently in the studio for the latest album my band is releasing and it’s shaping up to be worth every cent. Our engineer is fucking unstoppable and he’s doing seriously amazing work for us. Despite being a really good friend, this wouldn’t be possible if we weren’t paying him well for his work. He would feel used if we didn’t pay him for his expertise and it’s likely someone who would do it for free isn’t worth the wasted time and effort.

I’ve also realised that in many situations related to releasing records and stuff the only person who is motivated is you. Everyone else who’s motivated is usually doing their own thing. This, also, is okay. As is proving more and more common in this industry, I am functioning as singer, guitarist, producer, project manager, artist, web designer, album cover designer, etc, etc, all at once. This too is totally okay and leads us nicely to our next point.

#2: Profit and loss:
So far I’ve lost horrendous amounts of money with this label, not only in hard cash form but also in lost time. I’ve spent hours and hours doing stuff for free when I could’ve been sitting at a desk earning a chunky wage in a day job. More sleepless nights than I can remember trying desperately to get some project off the ground, running around postering, building websites, creating samples and art…

Here are the negatives: Pith’s label’s first release was followed promptly by the band breaking up, deciding they hated the album and ‘dissapearing’ the remaining product. Another release is still sitting in boxes, with the band probably unlikely to play another show ever again. Yet another band somewhat closely associated with the label has decided not to put the Pith name on their recent (totally fantastic) release. The festival we ran had a killer lineup, art, backing, and still somehow managed to only barely cover costs. Purely by being too naively trusting and trying to be the “good guy”, I have recently been flat-out screwed out of about $10K in unpaid wages at a day job. Hopefully I’ll get some of that soon though…

Funny thing, and maybe I’m maturing or something freaky like that, but I can honestly say “all of the above is harmless, expectable, and actually kinda positive”. It’s kinda impossible to have any animosity, regret, or anything like that. People have to pay the rent, people often have an overinflated sense of entitlement. People are lazy, people have love interests and other friends and a billion other things in their lives to deal with. It’s all okay. Life gets in the way of ideals and stuff. I feel like I’ve let some people down myself in the past 4-5 years, and the issues I haven’t been able to rectify I’ve had to just put behind me… I feel okay about that too. Even having been a bit of a git is a really strong motivation to do things smarted, nicer and more honestly in the future.

The reason I feel so positive right now is that it seems that the hard work is all paying off…

Very recently I’ve teamed up with an awesome systems architect / coder who I met about a year ago and started a web development firm together. We’ve attracted the attention of an investor / partner with utterly priceless connections and experience and we’re already excitedly scoping the second project before we’re even half-done with the first.

And here’s the great, great thing about this: The positives happened because I put in a shiteload of work for quite a few (rather unappreciative people), did the trial-by-fire thing on many levels with other stuff and got a bunch of experience in business, media, and the fundamentals of managing a project and dealing with people. It’s given me the respect and admiration of some really key people who are actively opening doors for me I never thought I’d get a foot in for years.

I put in the effort, and people noticed. That’s the crux of it. It’s so satisfying to have tangeble results from an un-tested ideal…

It sounds like the crap dad used to tell you, but it honestly looks like the fundamental lessons from all this are:

1. Work your arse off and someone’ll notice
2. Always be positive. Even if you’re undebatebly ‘right’ you become the arsehole if you’re negative, even a tiny bit
3. Expect very little from people you’re paying to do stuff, expect nothing from people you’re not paying, and be really grateful when anyone delivers
4. Don’t care too much about past failures and shitty people, they are inherently less valuable than you are if you can put a positive spin on everything and keep on going (they’ll probably be exactly where they are now in a few years)
5. Words are worth nothing, and opinions even less. As soon as you have the latter, they’re probably wrong and you’ll piss someone off you wish you hadn’t. People respond to positive action, not positive words
6. You can only attract motivated people by being insanely motivated yourself.
7. Anyone who follows through with stuff they say they’re going to do are solid gold and should be treated as such.

So … here I am at 3:30am on Christas eve trying to tie down ideas floating around in my brain about building some kind of interactive indie mp3 distro thing. It might just work. And hey, if it doesn’t, it’s another great experience.

What happens from here:
I feel I’ve been really lucky to have so much experience with the internet as a day job. It’s growing more and more revelant to my passion for music. I have a sneaky feeling that some sort of Music 2.0 thing is going to follow the trail blazed by Web 2.0. It’ll be smarter, younger, more mobile companies that capitalise on this.

The Signal vs. Noise blog by 37 Signals (a company I really admire) said something a while ago that really stuck with me, the crux being that all the awesome web applications built in the next 10 years will be created by small teams in their spare time, the people part of that buzzwordful ‘long tail’ of business.

As far as the music industry is concerned, I wonder if the same thing will happen. Small teams of people producing albums in spare rooms, getting exposure via social networking and file sharing, releasing single tracks online, generating revenue via more innovative new media placement, much more direct-to-customer interaction… I’m not sure, but it sounds like it would be fun to be a part of.

Anyway, that’s all for now. It’s been a weird few years… but the future’s promising.

As for the immediate practicalities, right now I’ve got this idea to launch our upcoming release in a small independent cinema in the city with some ridiculous 45 minute long film clip, a making-of documentary, and limited edition framed artwork.

This should be interesting. I have no idea what the costs involved are, the album isn’t even mixed (let alone mastered and pressed), the artwork’s not even finished, I’ve never made a film clip in my life and I don’t even know the first thing about how to edit video. I somehow have to factor in starting a web development business in the time I don’t spend learning how to mange the above.

I’ve got … less than one month. This is awesome.

This entry was posted by Will Dayble on Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 at 2:20 am and is filed under Start an Independent Record Label. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.