It’s very easy to get caught up in minutia, especially when you’re running a royalty free music business. Heck, any business can do that to you. But this one is especially meddlesome. The key to surviving all that minutia is to not getting yourself caught up in it. Easier said than done? Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be impossible.
One of the things that’s easy to get caught up in and the most common is clients overly concerned about usage rights. Unfortunately, we live in a society where everybody and their grandmother is looking to sue you just for looking at them cross-eyed. No, it’s not pretty out there.
What you need to understand is that as long as you have the proper licenses printed up and have your stuff copyrighted, you don’t have to worry about clients getting all bent out shape because they’re afraid that the music they’re getting isn’t protected. Assure them it is and move on. If they can’t accept the documentation and are still concerned, let them move on to another vendor. You’re not going to change someone’s mind once it’s made up.
Another area that’s easy to get all wrapped up in is technology. I call it the shiny object syndrome. You see a shiny object and you have to have it. Then time goes by, you get tired of the shiny object and you have to get yet another shiny object.
Typical scenario goes something like this.
You download a free DAW. Maybe something like Reaper. It’s not actually free but you can evaluate it forever and everything works. You just get a nag screen after 30 days. Anyway, you use whatever free DAW you downloaded and it works perfectly fine. It does everything you need it to do. But you get bored with it after a while so you go out and get another DAW. Maybe you buy Cubase.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with getting a new DAW per say, but if it’s just out of boredom, here’s the downside. You now have to learn how to use that new DAW. This means lost work time. How much lost work time depends on how big the learning curve is to learn your new DAW. Can you afford to take the time to learn something that may only marginally help you.
Of course getting sucked into shiny object syndrome is easy to do. I have to fight it every day of the week. Fortunately, I’m hard up enough for money these days that I’ve learned to limit my purchases to things that I really need to improve my business.
For example, just the other day, I purchased two guitar VSTs that even blow Revitar 2 away. They are amazingly flexible and cut down the amount of time I have to put into creating a track.
How?
Revitar 2, as good as it is, can only play major and minor chords in one instance of the VST. If you want to play like major 7ths or 9ths, you need to load up another instance of Revitar 2 for each type of chord you want to play.
With these VSTs that I just bought (Strum Electric and Strum Acoustic) you can play any kind of chord combination that you can think of in real time and the chords are intelligently strummed using real guitar voicing.
Sure, they cost $299 (if you buy the bundle) but they’re worth it. No more having to load multiple instances of a VST and playing separate parts just to get one complete guitar part.
That’s the kind of purchase that makes sense because it vastly improves your productivity.
Ironically, I was talking about how great Revitar was the other day in another article. And don’t get me wrong. It’s still great. You can do things with Revitar that you can’t do with Strum, like one note chords. With Strum, each chord has to be completely voiced out.
Sound wise, there’s not a ton of difference between the two though I have to admit that Strum sounds better.
But even I sometimes succumb to shiny object syndrome. All the VST synths that I have are living proof of that. Fortunately for me, most of them were free. But I’ve spent a pretty penny on a few things that maybe I didn’t really need.
Welcome to being human. It’s a great way to get lost.
Then of course there is the business in general. This is where people have the most trouble. Granted, there are a lot of things to concern yourself with when running a business. There’s the music, the admin stuff, the client relations, and so on. And each area has its share of things that you need to deal with. Problem is, sometimes you can stress over things that, in the long run, aren’t that important.
For example, let’s take the client stuff. This involves everything from taking initial requests to meeting deadlines to walking them using the music you’ve made for them. Not everybody is technically adept and some people need help.
Where vendors get all caught up is with the little nagging problems that can happen during any of those steps. The initial request isn’t clear and the vendor gets all bent out of shape trying to figure out what to do when all they need to do is contact the client and ask them to clarify a few things. Why don’t they do this? Believe it or not, because they don’t want to come off as looking stupid. They’re afraid that if they admit to the client that they don’t understand something the client will think that they’re not a professional at what they do. That’s just plain nonsense. Sometimes things aren’t clear and they need to be clarified. Don’t be afraid to ask your clients questions.
You need to step back, look at the big picture and do what needs to be done in order to assure that the big picture gets completed as efficiently and as expertly as possible. Otherwise, you’re just going to stress yourself out over a whole lot of nothing.
Don’t let the trees get in the way.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim