So What DO I Do Next?

If a Doctor Who-themed notebook makes an amusing and ironic birthday present for a middle-aged bloke, then what better use to put it to than as a repository for his correspondingly fantastical Teenage Rock Dreams, writ-large for the 21^st Century. In felt-tip.

Last time, I rambled on at length about how my research led me to write the New Big Plan for the future of my Bikini Test Failure music and label, Blague Records, so now maybe I can answer the question:

What DO I do next?

It’s five years since I finished promoting the last Bikini Test Failure album “Fleecing The Easily Pleased” and it was already clear then, that the landscape of my backwater of the music industry was shifting so significantly that any hope of clawing back even a fraction of the money spent on producing and promoting my records was fast-evaporating.

The pivotal, eye-opening moment came in 2012 whilst on a promo visit to a small independent radio station near London, to play some of my tracks, do a live interview and acoustic session on their weekly alternative music show. Five years prior, a similar trip for my debut album "Another Day Another Fat Pile Of Cash" would have netted at least a small pile of royalties; the show’s listeners might have numbered a couple of thousand and when my next quarter’s PRS royalty statement arrived, if that hour-long broadcast had featured three or four of my songs, I might see £5 or £10 from it. But on this occasion in 2012 the DJ enthusiastically informed me we had “at least 121 people” listening at that very moment - a precision he had confidence in, as they had all just texted or logged in to his Facebook Group page and told him so. “I know most of them by name” he said. “They’re very loyal listeners.”

The implications of the breakdown of the traditional model hit me pretty hard; I realised that despite doing everything “right”, synchronised and on-time, I was working a plan that was already five years out-of-date. Until that point, I was still confident that my unique, solo working method was sound and would bear at least some fruit. I had built up a ton of experience producing and manufacturing EPs and albums, releasing them worldwide on disc through CDBaby and digitally on iTunes and its cousins, promoting them directly to indie/alternative radio stations and shows, here in the UK and over there in the US, making occasional forays to these stations, chatting and playing live… and in time I’d hoped a minor flurry of royalty statements would flutter through my front door.

As I drove home, back to the North of England late that night, I had to accept the thirty-something-years-long dream was over. I’d been chasing a tiny piece of the pie since my teens and I’d just discovered there no longer WAS a pie.

Any potential income I may have made was of course, never going to be a major influence on my lifestyle, but its importance in justifying my efforts and vindicating many of the life-choices I made over the decades (often quite detrimental to what your average punter might call, “A Happy Life”), was unrivalled. I was never “only in it for the money”, but I was wise enough to know that it was a very good way of keeping score.

Today, no matter how popular my songs, the audience with whom any popularity rests, no longer pays for any of the music they consume. A click on a BTF song in Spotify nets me 0.01 of a penny - in short, I won’t be retiring to Hawaii any time soon.

So now, I have a new plan. It’s simple, concise, definite.

At the centre is an all-encompassing Life-philosophy for the sort of personal fulfilment that comes from knowing you are doing exactly what you should be doing, achieving the things you wanted to achieve. You are, in my case, living the Artist’s Life. You’re on the radio. You have recorded an album. You’re on Spotify. The record is available around the world. You have learnt that new music scale (mixolydian?), you have learnt that new chord (B-demolished?) and finished writing a new song. Directly acting on ideas, doing the things you’ve always wanted to do, despite there no longer being any prospect of income, let-alone “riches”; that must be the new definition of “success” and should be celebrated. With the gatekeepers removed, the process becomes less about luck or opportunity and more about your own hard work and commitment. ‘Twas ever thus, no?

Time to get on with it…

Step 1:

Never mind recording and producing an album once every Sheffield Flood, for now, it’s ALL about the song.

Write and record single songs. Make every one a stand-alone, epic production. All killer, no filler, like they used to in the ‘60s. “Strawberry Fields” one week, “Georgy Girl” the next.

A constant cycle of individual song releases on digital music services, whether free, subscription, streaming or download, just get ‘em out there and keep ‘em coming. Build a narrative, you’re in it for the long haul.

The current concentration on chasing “sync. money”, (the only source of potential income seemingly untouched by all this change) coupled with a decade of “unpicking” albums on iTunes and Spotify and the like, has created an emphasis on the individual song, perhaps not seen for in decades. Coupled with a YouTube-hosted, self-produced compelling video (for every song!), where once the game was all about the Album as Art Statement, this song+visual Art Item is now the new currency.

And before you jump in, yes, anyone under the age of twenty-five has barely known things to be any other way, which is why I’m leaving discussion about my twenty-six-to-sixty-five-year-old demographic and hey, the VINYL bit of The Plan to a later instalment.

Next time, I’ll scale the writer’s block and hopefully write that awkward first song.