musician

4 reasons why empowerment is important for musicians

Everything at Compass for Creatives is about the empowerment of musicians. The importance is so self-evident to me, that I often forget to explain myself to others. I hope that after reading the 4 reasons below it’s evident to you too. 1. Stay motivated even after demotivating comments Using your musical talents brings you lots of fun, as long as everything is going according to plan. You enjoy becoming better and better on your instrument, others enjoy it more and […]

5 golden rules how (not) to treat famous musicians

1. Praise them for everything they do. They are quite vulnerable. And if you want something different, present it as supplement or improvement to their great plan. You can also make the musicians believe that your idea was actually their idea. See it as exercise in seeing the best in everyone. 2. Don’t confront them with open criticism in front of others, ever. You can do it backstage, and even than it’s best to be as cautious as possible, so […]

6 most useful European seminars for musicians

As artist it’s important to network. Conferences and seminars offer great opportunities, especially if you want to address new countries. You can pick a seminar or conference per country, you’ll have to travel quite a lot. Or you can pick some more international oriented seminars/conferences. I’ve put them in a list for you. At seminars and conferences you can also catch up on new developments regarding technology, music business and music. For the international music business in Europe there are […]

Decision time?

I just read about a research of the McKinsey Institute about making decisions in the world of big business. Many decisions go wrong in that world by two psychological factors: confirmation bias and overconfidence bias. Both can be overcome by asking the right questions. If you take both biases in consideration, it helps you to know when it’s the right time to take a decision. Confirmation bias means, that for all of us it’s much easier to integrate new information […]

7 criteria to choose a manager 2

Sometimes you only realize what you know, if someone asks the right question. It happened to me last week, when one of the participants of my workshop D.I.Y. mentality asked me how to select the right manager. He’s made serious progress with his band after the workshop and is recently approached  by various managers. Within a split second I mentioned 6 criteria, and thought of the last one (number 2 in the list) after consulting with my partner. I like […]

Pain and loss

Last month my father in law passed away. I’ve known him for 22 years and we became quite close, especially in the last two years when he needed more and more care. He had a good life,  played tennis until he was 90 years old and could say goodbye to family and life before he died. Still, the emotional roller coaster in the last month was quite intense. I’m happy to have known him for so long and I’m sad […]

Get the audience you want

As musician you want your music to be heard, you want to reach an audience. In the past, the best tool was to record your music and sell it, and than get played on the radio.  Booking a tour was a tool to sell more albums. You needed an expensive studio to record your music, labels and distributors to distribute it throughout the country and record shops to sell it. The infrastructure is still in place, though the situation has […]

4 stages of fame – dealing with success 5

Music business and fame What do Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse have in common? Yes, they all died at 27. They also probably committed suicide, and they all struggled with dealing with their success and fame. They all had a team of dedicated people around them: at their management, agency, record label and more. But the music business doesn’t really know how to help artists in dealing with their success and fame. And as artist it is not […]