Mule

I coach JV football and the season is over. At the high school I coach at our freshmen generally come in having never even watched a football game.  There's no grade school football program and the kids come from all over and don't even know each other. And generally we do really well considering.  Four years later they are Seniors who love the game, their teammates, and play great. (Varsity just beat a team with the 2nd longest win streak in the state). At the end of every season we are faced with the question: "What can we as coaches do better?" These are tiring conversations with lots of searching and idea giving.  And it usually comes back around to "well considering our kids had never seen a football before, is this as good as we can do?" So the question is this; "Can we do something different, or is what we are doing successful enough?"  Questions like this pop up all over the place and something I'm trying to be more aware of is the 'actionable option'.  The actionable option in the question above is "try something different". Either it works, or it doesn't. If it doesn't you know why what you were doing previously was working.  By creating that conflict -old idea vs. new idea - you create a system for proof.  Always choose the actionable option. This post is being written mainly with some full time musicians in mind, but the ones who spend some appreciable amount of time lamenting the lack of monetary appreciation of their craft.  People don't go to shows, people don't buy albums, albums cost the same as they did 30 years ago, spotifying and youtube are destroying music.  If you aren't lamenting, continue on  not lamenting. Let it be known I love musicians. I'm not bashing musicians in anyway.  But what I do as a designer is think of questions and try to answer them. I see a few things inside the streaming music discussion and one question is this : what is the actionable option? What are you going to do about it?  Stop Spotify from streaming music?  Maybe you say "of course we cant, but if people really appreciated music, then no one would stream anyways." True.  What's the actionable option for getting the population to appreciate music more so they give more money for it? Especially when the album is also on Spotify and youtube, and you're the one who put it there? The most important question here is not one of right or wrong, it's ""Can we do something different, or is what we are doing successful enough?" Maybe there is a different way, something you can do about it. I hate when people address a problem but don't have a suggestion, so here's mine. One I've thought a lot about.  Typical musician cycle : record album, tour for year or so,  saving money to record a new album in the studio, record new album, repeat. Fans get one album every year or two, one chance to see the band every year. What about monthly singles? Monthly subscription with a new online magazine coming out every month with tour stories, pictures, high quality video and that new song.  $3/month turns into $36/album instead of 15.  It comes with all the good stuff that spotify can't stream-the story. If I knew new songs were ocming out and I wasn't getting them would I wait until maybe I can see the band in April to buy the CD? No of course not. I want to be in on it.  It builds momentum. I'm not just getting a monthly e-mail talking about your tour dates out west (I'm in Michigan, who cares). It wouldn't be just words.  Sure, it would require you to get good at telling the story digitally so that people feel included.  It would have to be high quality. We have iphones and wordpress and hgih qaulity cameras.  This has never been easier. Why the push back at learning something new?  Maybe the only people who can hear the difference in your $20,000 album or a $2000 album is you. Maybe a great video recorded before your gig is just as special (maybe more so) to me the fan as a professionally recorded track.  Maybe the monthly single magazine can be a good project while one of the other guys is driving the van. Or on Tuesdays when you don't have a gig. Maybe it wouldn't work. But you have to try stuff.  It takes ACTION. They say at Toyota "before you say you can't do it, try it." If you're fine with the state of things - why? Why not improve them? Or at least try so you can learn why what you're doing works. Then you can do it better.