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Artists think that they are just one hack away from getting it all right.

Who have I watched get this wrong? Fucking everyone.

Musicians tend to overvalue other types of marketing. Publicity, media coverage, definitely advertising, socials. But what moves the needle is what gets people talking, because those people post it, they bring it up themselves, whether that's in forums, but also when they hang out with others.

And that's where discovery happens. I cannot tell you how many songs, artists, records I still listen to regularly that were shown to me by friends.

If fans are already talking, then press follows. It's not the other way around.

So you're probably gonna say, "Well, so press is a waste of money. Skip the PR, get your fans to talk, done."

It's not that simple.

You have to give your fans something to talk about. Something that they can coalesce around, like the latest piece of coverage. That's something that shows them, hey, look at this win that we got for my community, for us. That's how you have to position it.

And I don't care if you have literally no one yet. Just place a rubber duck in the middle of the empty stage and say, "Hey rubber duck, isn't this great we got this little piece of coverage?" If that's ludicrous, then that's because the premise that you have no fans whatsoever is ludicrous.

Having a viral moment doesn't really mean anything unless there's something to hold on to.

Why AI-generated anything sucks is because there's no depth to it. It's surface-thin. You're never going to actually buy a shirt or go to a show of anyone peddling AI anything.

There's an illustrator that I spoke with at a graphic novel book club last night. She mentioned that kids were tearing pages out of these AI-generated coloring books because they would be coloring, and then the lines just suddenly wouldn't make sense. They would get frustrated and tear it out.

If you lack depth, if it isn't all there, if there's nothing for people to talk about, then you're not going to have any of that support. Good luck to you trying to find shows. Good luck to you trying to sell merch, sell albums, get any sort of support whatsoever.

And when it isn't working? It's always the algorithm. It's all the AI, it's all the bots, or it's this damned industry, or it's my management or not having management, it's my label or it's not my label. Everybody else.

Finger-pointed in every other direction, but you get three pointing back at you when you do that.

When you externalize the blame, you also give away your power. It costs you peace of mind. It costs you your ability to think creatively, to act with confidence.

Acknowledge that those things are real, yes, and so what? Now what?

If you don't even have something to talk about, something clear, something different, something that is true and unique to you, something that could only be said about you, why would anyone else care?

Why are you creating? Are you a lifer? Are you really in this for the long haul, or is this a hobby for you? What is compelling about your story? What's so different about you?

If you don't have the why, the what and the how will not matter. You'll be going for every type of strategy in the world, but you won't actually know why.

If you don't have your internal self figured out, everything that you do is going to be half-cocked in terms of strategy.

That's why the dive inward is the very first thing.

Let's get into it.

MAKE // BREAK: Joel Gale Turned Down Amazon and Built a Career on Word of Mouth

Toronto photographer Joel Gale (Joel Gale Imaging) on the studio dream that collapsed into $200-a-day product shoots, the pandemic pivot to corporate headshots, turning down Amazon, and building a decade of steady work on word of mouth alone.

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