I got a message from a friend to look up an artist she thought was so good, maybe I would interested in developing her? As soon as I saw the name I just shook my head. I booked this artist eight years ago to the showcase festival I worked for. We were not sure to have her, since she was ok but not that good back then. But then she worked for one of our sponsors, so we more or less had to take her in.

You would think if an artist got an opportunity, they would jump on it. She came she played she didn’t make any noise at all and was not visiting the conference either. Here you have it, an artist who gets chances but won’t take them for some reason.

When I left, I knew that showcase had a habit of re-booking old artists, and I think she has been on there a couple of times more, still doing nothing. Treating the showcase just like another gig. When she sought out my new festival it was clear not to have her on. Same as last time she tried to go through the government sponsors but managed to avoid that. Because there is really like throwing pearls to swine to have her on.

In these eight years, she has released several songs. None has ever gone over 30,000 streams in fact the last single released three months ago has not got over 1000 yet on Spotify. On YouTube, it’s even worse not a video over 500 views. On the other side all these eight years she has only released eight videos, that is one a year.

She is not bad, don’t get me wrong. Over the years she has gone better. That is why friends to me who don’t really know so much think she is a find. The problem here is that she is not making a career. She is doing some musicianship as a hobby working for government organizations and trying to grab anything to play live. But has no attention to building a fan base working on PR or going somewhere. Over eight years something should have happened.

The music industry is full of artists like this. These are the ones that you try to avoid. You need an artist that really wants to play music full-time. Really enjoys being on stage and grabs every opportunity to spread their music as much as possible. And then having an artist just mumbling around doing nothing and taking up space for the artist who really wants something bothers me.

What artists also don’t get. The opportunities come early, just that you need to be able to grab them so be careful what you wish for too early.