MIRANDA MULHOLLAND
in music asserts, success is predicated on
the relationship between artists and their
fans, and while the digital space offers many
avenues for artists to promote themselves to
a highly engaged group of fans, touring is still
key to building that engagement.
Miranda Mulholland has been a profes-
sional musician for 20 years. She’s also a
label owner, music festival founder, and a
widely-respected artist advocate. Speaking
out on topics like the value gap – the dis-
parity between the value of creative content
to consumers and the remuneration that
content can generate – and how success for
musicians is defined in the digital market-
place, her message has reached Parliament
Hill, the Economic Club of Canada, the Globe
& Mail, and, on multiple occasions in the past
two years, the pages of Canadian Musician.
Though she is a prime example of a suc-
cessful artistpreneur, she regularly speaks
to the fact that as the artist community has
had to significantly adapt over the past two
decades to maintain music careers, many of
the policies affecting them have not. “I think
a lot of people have had to branch out and
do so many things that they are perhaps not
best suited for,” she told CM about the indus-
try landscape in the summer of 2017.
“For me, one of the hardest parts is
I want to keep building things and really
love being a connector. It’s something I think
is really important and that I strive to do as
much as I can,” she continues. “So [my] label
has sort of become a manifestation of my
thoughts on collaboration and that sort of
thing and has now become [the Sawdust City
Music Festival]. I want to grow and I want to
do these things and take these steps, but
I find it very difficult because it’s hard to fi-
nance everything.”
Essentially, today’s music business is full
of double-edged swords. She offers another
example of hiring a music supervisor based
in L.A. to shop around her catalog for po-
tential placements in films, ads, and other
media, which she called an outlay she almost
couldn’t afford to take, but couldn’t “afford
not to take, either” – and that’s a familiar sce-
nario facing so many of her peers.
She’s certainly not alone in painstaking-
ly carving out a career for herself despite
some unhospitable circumstances. In recent
months, other Canadian musicians like
Danny Michel and Dan Mangan have been
brutally honest about how their careers are
continually affected by industry shifts – most
notably music streaming and its impact on
artists’ revenues for their recorded music.
As these artists and countless others
are proving, though, it’s possible to discover,
learn, and share best practices on how to
succeed within a system while acknowledg-
ing that system is flawed and, particularly in
Mulholland’s case, proactively fighting to fix
it. That, like so much else in this business,
comes back to how you approach your work.
“The reality for any startup, in any sector,
is working smart, boxing clever, and making
best use of available resources,” AIM’s Pacifi-
co told Forbes.
Again, as Barker and Greenwood each
A Conduit for
Career Development
Visit www.nwcwebinars.com to access Canadian Musician’s ongoing
series of music business webinars in partnership with NWC Webinars.
You can register for upcoming sessions and check out recordings of
previous ones, all for free. We’ve covered a host of topics relevant to
artistpreneurs, including:
• Developing a career plan
• Building your professional team
• Record release strategies
• How SOCAN gets you paid
• Getting the call for session gigs
• Scoring sync licenses for your songs
40 CANADIAN MUSICIAN
alluded to, succeeding as an artistpreneur
requires a balance of creative talent and
business awareness, and for many in the
music industry, the former comes a lot easier
than the latter.
But of course, just because you’re in
business for yourself doesn’t mean you need
to go it alone. That’s the reason Tyler Tasson
started her own business, Endemic Market-
ing, after years working with record labels
– most recently as head of label services for
ole following the company’s acquisition of
Anthem Entertainment Group, her previous
professional home, in 2015. Before that, she
was a recording artist herself, so needless to
say, she has a pretty wide perspective on the
industry.
“I’ve got plenty of experience with the
nightmare that is being an indie artist and
doing everything for yourself,” she says, only
partly joking. That’s the idea that spawned
Endemic – that independent artists should
have easy access to services typically offered
by a record label without having to forfeit an
ongoing percentage of their revenues.
“You don’t need a label to do well,” she
says. “There are people out there that will do
the work of labels for a one-time fee instead
of a percentage of your earnings, and you
also get to keep complete control with total
transparency.”
The idea of transparency is central to
what she’s doing. In working with clients, En-
demic basically offers “a la carte” music ser-
vices like project management, social media
auditing, digital marketing and advertising,
album and tour marketing, etc. They’ll also
help to connect clients with trusted freelanc-
ers for services such as design, photography,
web development, and more, that offer a
synergetic fit, letting artists keep their hands
on the steering wheel and reporting how
every client dollar is spent and why.