I was on a panel not long ago about the future of the music industry. The moderator came from an organization for mainly classical or experimental musicians. The panel was like a broken record on repeat. Since the moderator is a failed musician, the question was all about how everyone who makes music should be able to live from it.

This question always comes from organizations that don’t have members who are real artists. They are an artist on a hobby level, they do the music they like on a small scale. But it has no commercial value. And in these want then to have the same benefits as the commercial ones.

First, it’s never bad to be commercial, just that more people like what you do. Sure, there will be always people who will look down on other people’s success. And in the end, for you to succeed you need to make music that people want to listen to. Sure, if you go in a smaller niche with fewer listeners, that is ok, but don’t expect to get the same as the successful ones that have many listeners.

This was the problem with this moderator. I know her career and she has gotten more opportunities than most of the artists I know. It’s just that she is not good enough. The music is ok, but nothing special, her stage show is ok but nothing special. Overall, she doesn’t have what it takes to get to the masses. She can do what she likes but don’t expect that you get the same as a superstar and you can make a living out of it. In the end, she is not good enough to make a bigger mass of people like what she is producing to be willing to pay for it.

The problem is that they don’t realize this and keep on blaming the music industry for their left-out success. Instead of looking into making things better and maybe a bit more open to an audience, they blame the audience for not understanding and the industry for setting up barriers. None of this is true, but very easy to blame.

Even worse is to bring it to a panel with an audience of professionals who know that the error is not in the industry instead is that your organization is just hovering to many none good enough artists and trying to make some special road for them to make it to be able to make your organization more powerful. Unfortunately, a lot of these organizations get a lot of public money since they deal with culture, it seems if you are successful, you are no longer culture.

Right now, is where we have to make this stop and reveal the truth. This is a part of what the next generation of showcases will be about.