What not to do in Music Industry

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT

1. Don’t ever stop practicing your instrument.
2. Don’t be an asshole.
3. Don’t WANT WANT WANT WANT. Learn to give back first.
4. Don’t get defensive. Learn to take constructive criticism.
5. Don’t forget to learn how to take destructive criticism, too. You’ll get a lot more of it than you think.
6. Don’t forget that everyone’s an asshole.
7. Don’t stop learning.
8. Don’t lose your ambition.
9. Don’t lose touch of where you came from and who helped you out.
10. Don’t stop reading. Read more. Read a LOT more.
11. Don’t ever stop trying to meet new people and fans.
12. Don’t stop practicing. I fucking meant it.
13. Don’t make excuses.
14. Don’t make commitments you can’t keep.
15. Don’t say what you can’t back up.
16. Don’t exaggerate, everyone will see right through it.
17. Don’t be afraid to get into it.
18. Don’t owe anyone money. Pay it off as soon as you can.
19. Don’t think that they won’t fuck you over just because they’re a friend.
20. Don’t shit on the few friends that you do have.
21. Don’t be the guy who just floats along. Actively help your band out as much as you can.
22. Don’t rely on everyone else, make it happen yourself or lend a hand in getting it accomplished.
23. Don’t forget that you can’t change certain things, and bitching about it won’t help either.
24. Don’t forget how fucking stupid you are.
25. Don’t be afraid to listen to those who are smarter and more experienced than you.
26. Don’t forget that sometimes you’re wrong. In fact, more often than not, you’re wrong.
27. Don’t pretend you’re innocent.
28. Don’t pretend to be above something. Get your hands dirty. Hurt your back. Get scraped up and some real work.
29. Don’t live in the past or the future. Learn to love the moment and what you’re doing. You’re in a band. Love that fact.
30. Don’t lose sight of what you started your band for to begin with.
31. Don’t lose faith in yourself or your friends. They’ll help you out more than you think when you need it.
32. Don’t be naive. Believe it when you see it.
33. Don’t forget what it’s like to just be starting out in the industry. Explain things to people. Take on someone under your wing; teach someone something good.
34. Don’t blame the label. As a fan, you have no idea what the circumstances were. As an artist on that label, there’s always something you did that was probably shitty, too.
35. Don’t blame the manager, either. Same goes for them.
36. Don’t think bands are these innocent angels. They rarely are as good as they make themselves out to be. They’re people just like everyone else, and that means they can be just as shitty as anyone else.
37. Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand.
38. Don’t get into arguments with people on social media. Stay away from it. It’s pointless.
39. Don’t judge a situation before you’ve heard both sides. This means you should basically never judge a situation or someone.
40. Don’t forget that everything is a joke and that you shouldn’t ever be too serious. No one gets out of life alive.

THE GENERAL BAND STUFF

1. Don’t assume anyone will care about your band. They won’t.
2. Shit talking doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
3. Don’t be that band that starts to do it for the money. It’s not that money’s bad, it’s that we can all tell you’re forcing it and no one appreciates a forced art form.
4. Don’t ask too much for your merch. It’s just a damn t shirt.
5. Don’t order too many CDs. It’s not worth having tons of them laying around.
6. The same goes for merch. Don’t order more merch than you reasonably think you can sell on a tour or in a small timeframe such as a month or two.
7. Don’t spend your money on stupid stuff. Spend it where it counts.
8. Don’t buy likes on Facebook
9. Don’t try to buy your way to the top.
10. Don’t skimp on gear, either.
11. Don’t forget to practice with a click. Drummers and guitarists, this goes for both of you.
12. Don’t ever stop interfacing with the people that buy your music. No matter how big or small you are.
13. Don’t forget to do cool little things for fans while you’re on tour. a small note or a signed drumstick will go a lot farther than you think.
14. Don’t expect respect.
15. Don’t forget that you have to do your time.
16. Don’t assume. Make everything as clear as you can, and get it in writing at every chance you can get.
17. Don’t stop creating. Not just music, either. Create in every format you can. You are a creator, after all. Photos, blog posts, new music, share music, share ideas, just put out content.
18. Don’t forget just how many ways there are to reach out to your fans.
19. Don’t forget to post on every social media network every single day.
20. Don’t forget to engage with your fans. If you master this, you’ve mastered the music industry.
21. Don’t stop trying to improve your sound and tone, both live and recorded.
22. Any publicity is good publicity.
23. And, additionally, people will hate you for anything and everything. Don’t worry about it.

BOOKING  & TOURING

1. Don’t ask for too much.
2. Don’t book a tour for your band unless you have the emergency fund to support it
3. Don’t book a tour with too little notice. You’re just shooting yourself in the foot.
4. Don’t turn down a door deal because you think you can do better.
5. Don’t blame the promoter when you haven’t helped promote the show, either.
6. Don’t blame the promoter when you haven’t helped, period.
7. Don’t expect to play to 100 kids a night. Be grateful for 5.
8. Don’t forget to say thanks to the sound guy.
9. Don’t forget what it feels like to be the opening band.
10. Don’t forget what it feels like to be shit on by the touring band.
11. Don’t get a rockstar attitude.
12. Don’t kiss ass, but don’t forget when to say thank you, either.
13. Don’t forget that the touring band usually needs a place to stay.
14. Don’t forget that they could use a place to shower, too.
15. Don’t think people will help you out just because. You have to give them a reason.
16. Don’t pretend to be better than the local bands you used to play shows with.
17. Don’t stop booking or helping to book your tours. Just because you have an agent doesn’t mean you can’t help out.
18. Don’t be the diva in the van.
19. Don’t be too cool to say sorry. Come on, dude, you and I both know you were being an asshole.
20. Don’t let what someone said get to you. Keep your cool.
21. Don’t forget to have fun on tour. That’s what it’s really all about, anyway.
22. Don’t skimp on buying your van. Quality counts when it’s the only thing getting you to your next show.
23. Eat at cool places and do cool things on tour. Those memories are just as good as the rest of tour.
24. Don’t stop drinking water on tour. Dehyrdation causes fatigue and you’re dehydrated before you even know it.
25. Don’t pass up the chance to shower. Ever.
26. Don’t buy anything that can go bad in the van. Meats, dairy, anything that’s perishable is a no-go in the van unless you eat it immediately. If it can’t sit for more than 30 minutes, don’t bring it in to begin with.
27. Don’t leave your dirty laundry everywhere in the van. Keep it in a sealable bag.
28. Don’t step without looking. You’re gonna break some shit.
29. Don’t gas up without checking the gas prices with the GasBuddy app. Find the cheapest gas.
30. Don’t get under a half tank of gas if you can help it.
31. Don’t pack too heavy, and I’m not talking about just your bag. Cut everything out of your life that you don’t need. Emotions and unnecessary clothes alike.
32. Don’t forget to call your loved ones back home. Family loves to hear where you’re at. Girlfriends love to hear that you’re not kissing another girl.
33. Don’t spend all your money on stupid stuff on tour. You don’t need that sombrero, homie, your money can go to better places while you’re being poor on the road.
34. Don’t forget to wipe a couple extra times. You can’t afford any leftovers, man.
35. Don’t forget to masturbate. That shit relieves stress. You’re a god damn musician, get creative and find a place.
36. Don’t forget to experience the locations you go to on tour. Find good food to eat, visit a national monument, go the Grand Canyon, check out Mount Rushmore, and take pictures.
37. Don’t forget to stop at cool places along the road on tour.
38. Don’t be a dick to the person who gives you a place to stay. Say thank you at every chance and try to do something in return for them. Clean the room you stayed in a little bit, help them do dishes.
39. Don’t be loud and obnoxious at 3:08 in the morning when you’re staying in a stranger’s house.
40. Don’t be the band who only cares about getting drunk or high after the show. Learn how to have a good time sober.
41. Don’t try and get out of driving duty.
42. Don’t stop talking in the van. Late night talks are food for thought and soup for the soul.

RECORDING

1. Don’t expect your drums to sound like Lars off the Black Album when you haven’t tuned them and put new heads on.
2. Don’t expect your sound engineer to work magic. This goes for live shows, too. Your instruments must sound good first.
3. Don’t show up to the studio without extra guitar strings, drum sticks, guitar picks, and drum heads.
4. Don’t forget to bring a source of entertainment. Studio time is 90% of waiting-for-someone-else time.

LOCAL SCENE AND SUPPORT

1. Don’t talk shit on your scene when you’re not doing anything to help it.
2. Don’t be an asshole, okay? Do you fucking get it? Stop that shit.
3. Don’t think you’re band is the best. You’re not.
4. Don’t stop trying to improve your live show.
5. Don’t shit on local bands because they’ll hurt you more than you think.
6. Don’t steal from other bands; Learn the subtle difference between paying homage and stealing.
7. Don’t show up late for the show. This goes for touring bands, too.
8. Don’t dip out before the show is over. Stay for all the bands.
9. Don’t be an elitist. If a band is doing well, then they’re doing something right, whether you agree or disagree with it.
10. Don’t stop supporting local music. If you start to get big, help out the local bands that you used to play shows with. They’re the same as you, and as much as you don’t want to admit it, they might deserve it just as much, if not more than you do.

AND FINALLY….

1. Don’t forget why you got into this.
2. Don’t stop putting your entire heart and soul into every show. It’s cliché, I know, but it’s true.

And there we have it. A cumulative list of 121 things to completely avoid.

Mobile DJ

Typically, mobile DJs play for a wide variety of people of different ages, backgrounds and different musical tastes. This means that in most cases, you'll need A LOT of different types of music (big band, jazz, swing, top-40, country, oldies, R&B, rock, Motown, modern rock, old school, classic rock, alternative, disco, techno, rap, Spanish, etc...).

How do you know what to buy? When you're first starting out, your best bet is to get all of the standards or "catch" songs. These are the most popular and recognizable hits that everyone knows and loves. If you don't have them, you'll be in trouble. These are songs like Old Time Rock and Roll, Twist and Shout, In the Mood, YMCA, Love Shack, Mony Mony, etc... Luckily, a lot of these can now be purchased on compilation CDs so you won't have to buy a CD for just one song which can get expensive quickly. Another nice thing about the hits from such styles as oldies, big band, classic rock, old school, disco and Motown is that once you have these songs, you'll rarely have to purchase another song from that style of music. Think about it, when was the last time you heard a new oldie but goodie?

For the newer songs, there are services that you can subscribe to that provide the latest releases. In many cases, these songs are available about the same time you might start hearing them on the radio. This also means that they may or may not be hits.

Some DJs brag about how many CDs or songs they have with some collections being upwards of 50,000 songs which is really quite an impressive number. Seriously, though how many songs are they going to play in a night? Today, the average song is about 5 minutes. If you look at some of the older songs, they averaged 3 minutes in length. There are 60 minutes in an hour and the average party is about 4 hours. This means that the average DJ is playing 50 to 60 songs a night and that's if they don't stop the music to talk occasionally. Hopefully, these guys with the big collections have gone digital and have all of this music on a hard drive somewhere. Can you imagine dragging all of these CDs or record albums from gig to gig?

More important than the number of songs in your collection is that you have the music that your audience wants to hear. This is where those standards come into play. Who cares if you have a bunch of songs that nobody has ever heard of or wants to hear? On the other hand, if you don't have the songs they want, you'll hear about it. The key is to have the right songs.

A good place to get a list of the top songs played by mobile DJs across the country is to look at the Mobile Beat Top 200 List. This contains a list of the top 200 songs that DJs have said that they play at parties and events. Another good resource is the top songs provided by DJ Intelligence. These are the songs requested by guests using their exclusive availability checking software. 

Is DJ an artist????

People often ask: is a DJ an artist? This is a difficult question. Sure, there is a certain skill involved in DJ'ing, but does that make the DJ an artist? There is skill involved in driving a car but no-one would call driving an art-form. Is the same true of DJ'ing?

I believe that DJ'ing is a form of art. The purpose of this short piece is to explain my reasons for holding this belief. My goal is to convince the skeptics that DJs should be put into a similar category with other artists. Musicians, composers, painters, and photographers are all artists that have learned a skill. They use their skill to bring about emotion in other people. They do this by either creating something new, or by capturing a unique scene or moment in time, and then making the result available to an audience. DJs are the same. They use their skill to create mixsets, and in doing so they are capturing something unique which can be made available to an audience. To strengthen my point, I will draw an analogy between a photographer and DJ. I believe that if photography is a form of art, then so is DJ'ing.

So, what does a DJ actually do?

At its most basic level a DJ selects a range of musical pieces and plays them to an audience. The primary goal is to make people dance. But is this art? Surely an iPod on random shuffle can do this. We wouldn't want to call an iPod artistic--especially if it is random. Of course, this is a naive view. An iPod on random shuffle cannot keep people dancing. Occasionally it might play an agreeable song, which some people will dance to. But that is just blind chance. Its pure luck. An iPod is not an artist.

So what does a DJ do that an ipod does not do? There are two important aspects to DJ'ing. First, there is the process of mixing. Second is song selection.

1. Mixing
A good DJ will blend songs together in order to create a suite of music in which the audience is unaware of the transitions between tracks. Not only does this keep a dance floor energy on a constant flow, it can also sound very good when elements between two songs interact. Mixing is a technical skill that many people can learn. It is important, because it gels the music together, but ultimately it is a mechanical process and therefore not artistic in itself.

2. Song selection
The most fundamental aspect of DJing is song selection. A DJ selects a range of tracks that mix nicely together in order to create a "mixset" (sometimes simply referred to as a mix). When a DJ does his job well, not only will the set be seemless, it will also take people on a musical journey which is almost symphonic in structure. The set will start in a certain place and take people through highs and lows, light and shade, through major and minor keys. This is not done randomly. It is done by carefully considering the mood of the people on the dance floor while also considering which songs mix well together. DJ sets often build up to a peak in energy before gradually coming back to the same level at which they started. Other DJ sets can start off subtle and continue to build people up, increasing the energy and excitement to a crescendo before rapidly dropping back down. Sometimes a DJ will end his set at the crescendo.

The important feature of the DJ mixset is the journey that it takes its audience on. And it doesn't have to be live. A DJ can mix a set on radio or in a studio which will take its audience on just as powerful a journey--though this is more difficult because most mixsets are constructed in reaction to the audience.

So, how is this art?

Well, it is art insofar as the mixset is a unique suite of music, which can be considered as a complete unit. It is built out of a range of separate tracks that the DJ has consciously chosen to include in the greater whole. It is not a random selection. The DJ has chosen the tracks for a reason--to generate emotions and feelings. Furthermore, this is not something that anyone can do. DJs are like music filters. There are thousands of tracks released every year, and the DJ has to filter through them and decide what is good, and what is not good. The DJ has to decide what to put into his set for people to hear.

But is this art or just musical taste?

It is art in the same way that photography is art. Consider a photographer. She will go in search of scenes that she believes have certain qualities. Often the scene a photographer finds can look quite ordinary to other people. In fact, many people might walk by without noticing. The photographer sees something unique and beautiful in the scene and uses her technical skill with the camera to bring out its best qualities. The resulting picture is then made available to an audience. The same is true for a DJ. The DJ finds music that he considers to have certain qualities. The DJ then uses his technical skill to blend his chosen music together in a way which brings out the true beauty of the individual pieces. In this way the DJ is like a photographer. If a photographer is an artist, then so is the DJ.

Conclusion

My goal in this article has been to show that a DJ is an artist, and the mixsets he produces are a form of art. There is more to DJ'ing than the mechanical act of mixing. Good DJ mixes do not consist of random song choices. There is an artistic process at work. Just as a photographer picks scenes that already exist and packages them in a way that makes them appealing to an audience. A DJ picks music that already exists and packages it in a way that makes it appealing to an audience.

A mixset is a piece of art.