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You're fucked the second you start doing it for the audience.

I had an artist ask me one time, "Which genre should I be trying to hit next?" They brought up that “Country seems to be enjoying a moment, but maybe if it was [some other genre I can’t remember them saying], that could also work.” They were thinking like a business person. I just don't want that for you or for them, and I told them as much. Absolutely not. We're not in the business of looking at this like a business. (We're broke as fuck as a result, but at least I can sleep at night.)

There's tab 1, and then there's tab 2. Tab 1 is where you're creating. You are in the zone. Tab 2 is everything else. When an artist tells me that they are considering which genre, what sound to go with based off of what is currently out there, it's ass backwards. They're working from tab 2, not tab 1.

It's really tempting for artists to say, "Well, I'm just considering the market. I'm trying to be a good business person." That's true up until the point that it interferes with the actual thing that you are creating. Artists who get into this mode think that they're being astute. It's a distraction, because it's so much easier to deal with things that are in your control. Far better for you to get certainty from bullshit like, "Oh, what time of day should I post, and what genre is performing well?" Fuck all that shit.

The door stays shut between those two tabs. If you let the second one in, it starts to fuck around with shit that it has no business doing. It's the same as if you let a studio exec come onto set, or you let some asshole start looking over your shoulder while you're writing. You can clean, polish, and refine later. Get the creating done.

This idea that the market is saturated is absolute fiction. “Oh, but it's been done before.” Okay, great, so now we wait. What will you think when someone else comes along and does precisely the kind of combination of things, the specific sound that you're going for, years later down the road? Are you going to resent that band for being in that space that you nobly thought you should not occupy?

This market is saturated. A music industry newsletter? Wow, that's never been done. Yet I do it because maybe the configuration of words, the attitude and perspective that I can bring to it might possibly help. If it doesn't, what the fuck ever. I have put myself forward.

"The market's oversaturated. Everybody's doing this thing, so I won't do it." There's nothing noble in that. There's nothing useful to you opting out. I know this, because I've done it myself.

The realization that I’ve always come back to is this: If you believed in it enough, you would fucking do it.

Am I telling you that what you're going to create is always going to be heard? Nope. Don't think that because you put it out there and because you've been brave that you're owed anything. You're not. The reward was the doing of it.

Figure out why you’re actually caring about a market being saturated. Do you actually need a permission slip? What are you really trying to fight against? What's the actual problem underneath all this?

Let's get into it.

In this episode of Ampocalypse, Damian FitzGerald is joined by Petrol Girls at 2000Trees Festival to find out how they would survive when festival life suddenly becomes permanent.

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