Celebrity is like a room – The Room!
If you’re already in the room – this post is not for you.
Celebrity is like a room, The Room! Once you’re in that room many more opportunities are presented and you have way more negotiating power. That’s not to say that once you are in The Room that you can’t get kicked out or that life is easier in The Room – its not!
The skills and work needed to stay in the room are a huge jump from the skills and work needed outside the room.
There are many doors into The Room.
The nicest door is, that everyone loves your music so much and they buy it without you having to do much more than just create it, but very few artists get in through that door. Some other doors you have to pay for, in hard work or in money or effort spent on marketing. Some other doors are opened with free passes from TV talent shows or from record label deals. Others make it in through the most risky door marked notorious, having done something which caught massive media attention (the stakes are high with this door, get it wrong and you might never work again or even get in through the door to be laughed right back out again).
Whichever door you use to get in The Room, if you don’t have game and if your skills are lacking once you are in The Room – the door marked exit comes all too soon.
The basic fact which underpins becoming successful in the music business (and getting into The Room) is that people need to be talking about you – ideally talking about what great music you make – but actually just talking about you is okay.
People talking about you means you’ve been noticed, and if that energy is handled well it can lead to success
Marketing yourself into The Room – answers to standard excuses
Marketing is not something you do after everything else on your list is done, marketing can’t start once you are in The Room, it’s what you need to do to get you in The Room – it’s not something you leave till later when you have money – it’s something you need to embrace from the outset to get you there.
It’s no good waiting till you understand it better or till it feels more natural, of course marketing feels easier when people are responding to it, but it’s more important when they are not.
The less money you have to buy marketing expertise, the more you need to do yourself.
The less people are talking about you or your music, the more you need to get serious about marketing.
If you want the honest truth, marketing is more important to getting in The Room than talent! (sad truth)
“You think you’ve arrived, don’t you? Hate to break it to you, but you’re only in the first room. In about a year, maybe longer, you’ll discover a secret doorway at the back of the first room that leads to the second. And in time, if you’re lucky, you’ll discover another doorway in the back of the second room that leads to the third. There are seven rooms altogether. You’re in the first. I’m in the seventh. Don’t you forget it. “
a quote from the movie How to lose friends and alienate people.
Make a commitment to the ‘artist’ you, to start marketing you – and start doing it differently.
