PAPER LIONS
As Tasson emphasizes through Endemic,
one of the most significant and appealing
advantages of being an artistpreneur is
maintaining control of your career, and not
having to bend to anyone else’s will creatively
or commercially.
Whether you decide to personally take
on any one of the many tasks and challenges
that come with running your business or to
tap outside help will depend on a myriad of
factors – most notably your skillset and bud-
get. Compromise is a necessary evil in many
cases, but as Barker warns, don’t let that
skew your reality of what needs to be done.
“When an artist says something like,
‘What’s the least amount of time that I have
to put into my social media?’ that’s like me
saying, ‘What’s the least amount of time I
have to put into my kids to be a good dad?’
or ‘What’s the least amount of time I need to
put into my customer service in order to run
a successful business?’”
As he and Greenwood touch on several
times in their discussion, the internet is the
great enabler for all of this – the disruptions
that cause the industry to continually have
to adapt, and the tools that have emerged to
help it do so. It has democratized the indus-
try and lowered the barrier to entry, but also
made it harder to climb to a level where you
can comfortably sustain a career. Again, the
double-edged sword metaphor is an apt one,
though Barker and Greenwood focus their
attention on the positives.
“If I hear one more Canadian say to me, ‘I
have to get out of Canada in order to be suc-
cessful’ or ‘I’ve got to get signed by an Ameri-
can label in order to be successful…’
The American labels aren’t having success
with all the damn Americans they’ve signed,”
TYLER TASSON
Barker stresses. “Justin Bieber, Shawn
Mendes, Drake, The Weeknd, and the list
goes on and on and on – they became who
they are, where they are. You can become
who you are where you are.”
And what’s more, you can do it on your
own terms. “What I found happening early on
with the artists that I was working with, was
everyone put their faith into someone else,”
Barker adds. “It’s like everyone was waiting
for the record man to give them permission,
or the radio person to give them permission,
or FACTOR or SOCAN or someone to give
them permission. It’s like, ‘You don’t need
anyone’s permission anymore.’”
Technology, government policy, shifts in
consumer behavior – all are parts of a long
list of factors that will continue to transform
the music industry, and largely, it’s up to the
people working in it to generate ideas and
develop new solutions in their wake.
As Pacifico told Forbes, “We are moving
away from old world, top down, supply side
economics, and music entrepreneurs in the
21 st century are using technology to work
much more dynamically and creatively than
artists in the previous century were ever
able to do.”
That sounds optimistic, but fails to note
that many of those new tools and resources
have been reactive to challenges and hard-
ships instead of proactive towards a fair and
sustainable industry model.
Having built his business to this point,
Greenwood is in a position where he can
enjoy some downtime and refocus his ef-
forts on things that interest and appeal to
him. “This year, I emailed my booking agent
to actually cancel all of my future upcoming
shows for this year,” he says. “I’m taking a
year off, but yet I’m still continuing to sell
tons of music and grow my music career
right from my home, and that’s all because
I’m leveraging the power of the internet
and social media and online advertising. I
can only play Newfoundland or Whitehorse
once at a time, but when I put my music
video or a performance online and I run
ads to it and put that music video in front
of millions of people on the Internet, I’m
making money while I sleep. I’m making fans
while I sleep.”
It takes a lot of hard work, mistakes, les-
sons learned, and more mistakes to get to
that point – and most won’t – but the music
won’t ever stop, so neither will the drive of
artists looking to share theirs with as many
people as possible.
Mulholland advises artists to keep fo-
cused on the seemingly smaller details, no
matter how grand their aspirations. “Keep
going out and meeting people and talking to
people on a very micro level,” she says. “The
micro stuff is actually what matters. Chasing
that big dream at the end is important, but
it’s actually the little connections that you
make on a day-to-day basis that you never
know will help you. It’s always like you can
connect the dots looking backwards but you
never can going forwards, so just keep mak-
ing those connections.”
After all, just like taking calculated risks
and not being afraid to fail, valuing your
relationships has long been a key to success
for small businesses – especially so in a
tight-knit community like ours.
Andrew King is the Editor-in-Chief of
Canadian Musician.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 41