Doers vs. Talkers

I was talking with a fellow "industry professional" today about how there are soooo many people in our line of work who love to spend HOURS at panel discussions pontificating (or listening to others pontificate) about "the future of music." You know what the future of music is? Continued massive upheaval and disruption. Now get back to work.

Seriously, do you think we as a company have time to wring our hands about where music is headed? No, because we're in the trenches every day trying to do work, chase down clients, respond to 18,000 emails and generally do all of the things that people who run businesses need to do. I don't have time to sit around in an ivory tower wondering where the Industry will go. If all of the people at these panel discussions devoted more of their time to actually working, they might arrive at a sustainable model, instead of lamenting that fact that they don't have one.

Now, don't get me wrong. I enjoy lively discussion as much as the next guy. And I also know firsthand that lively discussion leads to great ideas, which is how we progress, both as a society and an industry. So far be it from me to poo-poo creative thought and intellectual discourse. But there comes a time when you need to stop talking and start working. And for many of these folks, that time is way overdue.

With the music business, the only thing that's certain is uncertainty. Yes, there will be pivotal individuals (Steve Jobs, the MySpace dudes) that will change our way of thinking and steer things in new directions. But we cannot all be those people, at least not all the time (even Jobs has to answer his email at some point).

Ironically, Chris and I have been working on our own potentially game-affecting concept. It's called BrandsForBands and it'll launch soon. But even though it's required hundreds of hours of discussion over the last 2 years, we still managed to increase our company revenues by 10% last year. In other words, we talked about The Big Picture - and are poised to contribute to it significantly with B4B - but not at the expense of getting our everyday work done.

So, fellow music professionals, I beseech you to spend more time on your work and less time worrying - and talking - about where things are headed. That's important, but it don't pay the mortgage. Less talk, more rock. ~ Tim