#7 ONE PLAYLIST IS ALL I NEED
The #7 reason you just lost a decade in Hollywood is related to a lack of critical thinking skills, skills we all hope to acquire one day if we are to succeed in an ultra-competitive industry, like showbiz.
In this case the critical thinking skills are "analogous reasoning."
"It's always easier to see what the other guy is doing wrong."
I can explain it in one Spotify playlist with a number of songs which I really like but I don’t expect you to ever listen to, like, or follow. Because like casting offices, you have a strong predilection to artistic performances from artists who are already super-famous.
HERE’S THE ONE PLAYLIST THAT YOU WON’T BOTHER TO LISTEN TO
It would be my thesis that, for most citizens of free countries in the English-speaking world, music “tastes” are in fact the byproduct of the massive pop culture marketing machine known as “Big Media”; in stark contrast to the more idealistic worldview that the best music will organically find its way to the top of the charts, or pure meritocracy. Or that you are a somehow a tastemaker of your own aesthetic.
Some of you may be aware that prior to moving to California I was actively writing songs, recording original music with my band and generally pursuing a dream in popular music creation. My band was featured in the indie artists “back page” of Canadian Musician, I had a track featured on 630 CHED A.M. RADIO in Edmonton dedicated to local artists and I had spent time after college building a prosumer recording studio which I took to California with me in the back of my Toyota Tercel station wagon.
Among the musicians I collaborated with during this early era of my career (which would be directly analogous to the first 10 years you “lost” in Hollywood after moving there to pursue your dream) as far as I can tell, I’m the only one still actively aspiring to a career in “show business.” This attrition rate closely mirrors what we find in acting careers; most actresses in the saturated market category quit acting between the ages of 27-35 after learning such a career is “too hard” or “too expensive” or “too much work”, considerably opening up opportunities for smaller roles to the survivors. In the music business this period of adversity is often described as "paying your dues." This notion seems foreign to the average millennial.
When I started studying feature film screenwriting with the late Syd Field in 2007, I decided to use my screenwriting aspirations to try an entirely different approach to breaking in to Hollywood, predicated on the belief that I had made significant errors in my music career. I may devote an essay to these errors in the future, but believe me when I say, my mistakes were legendary.
Prior to the pandemic, the last real pop song I wrote and recorded was called Astronauts in Love, and I did so using a PC laptop and one of the first loop-based music composition tools called Sonic Foundry ACID.
After starting my Hollywood journey I decided to “close the chapter” of my life story relative to music career aspirations. No real regrets. Being in a hair band is a young person’s dream! One pivotal moment was in 2013 where, in order to continue on the path of talent management, I sold my collection of guitars on eBay in order to “pay the rent” - an unexpected bill - in a manner of speaking.
During the pandemic, while our industry was shut down and the world seemed to be going mad, I contemplated the best use of the downtime and concluded that I would enjoy the pandemic if I was absorbed in writing and recording new music.
I basically stopped listening to pop music in 2005 and decided to nerd out on the electronic experimental music for sale in my local record store, Fingerprints (think Amoeba Records). During this period I listened only to music that I liked, and would randomly buy CDs from Fingerprints that seemed interesting. Discoveries from that era include Boards of Canada and Plaid.
So for my pandemic music career reboot I decided to explore the experimental electronic genre primarily and watched all the house music documentaries I could find.
This was a very creative period and once the pandemic started “winding down”, I decided to learn about self-publishing on Spotify and Apple Music. I owned an indie label in the 1990s and publishing indie music back then was “anything but simple.” Labels like Sub Pop, which broke Nirvana, might be seen through a lens of survivor-ship bias in retrospect. If you don’t believe me, visit Sub-Pop www in 2024 and see if there’s still a white hot buzz around the label.
Before I could self-publish, I had to reboot my label’s website and learn about audio mastering, which is the final production step before uploading to the music distribution website.
Subsequently I self-published a single and during my research about marketing new music in the Spotify era, I learned a staggering statistic: EVERY SINGLE DAY, 22,000 NEW SONGS ARE UPLOADED TO SPOTIFY.
Now we should get back to critical thinking. Like many of you, I have a college degree where I was supposed to develop critical thinking skills. I can’t say that I really did, looking back on it. What ultimately gave me critical thinking skills was buddhism (meditation) - which is the practice of observing one’s own mind. But I digress.
Assuming we have critical thinking skills, it becomes readily apparent that the phenomenon of “acting career failure”, which I currently am witnessing on almost a daily basis, can be easily generalized to include music career ambitions or "music career failure."
I’m sure that every musician uploading a song to Spotify (that’s 22,000 a day) is holding a belief that this democratic medium is somehow going to deliver to them, worldwide fame and success.
And just like the chump economies in Hollywood, you can find thousands of hucksters promising easy success on Spotify “if you would only pay a small consulting or promotion fee.”
But we don’t need any of that to apply critical thinking skills here.
All you have to understand is you are no more interested in the songs on my one playlist than the producers who hire major casting offices are interested in your audition tape. They don’t want to see your unsolicited tape, they want to know if a famous A-list actress who looks a lot like you is willing to be in their movie for whatever budget/schedule they have. The only reason they would ever hire an unknown newcomer is out of sheer desperation.
As I have documented elsewhere, the only time that casting directors are really allowed to draw from the raw talent pool of unknown actors is for “small opportunities.”
So while you’re busy ignoring my one playlist (I chose the first song as the theme of your career prospects if you don’t have a LOOK) ask yourself, “How many hours a day do you devote to listening to unknown artists on Spotify, and carefully adding your favorite songs to your music library?” My guess is none.
That’s exactly how many hours that casting directors and major film directors are spending watching your unsolicited tapes hurled at them from desperate talent reps.
And as to where do international recording stars come from? Justin Timberlake, Christina Aquilera, Miley Cyrus - I think you’ll find that the genesis of their stardom is some kind of international success between the ages of 10-20 from the Disney child superstar umbrella corporation. They are NAMES.
When I was most active as a musician, I lived in San Diego and was familiar with a number of female songwriters who were all part of a songwriters circle in the local music scene. One day, as legend goes, an Atlantic records A&R person happened to walk into a coffee shop where Jewel was playing and within a few years she skyrocketed to stardom.
Personally, my favorite songwriter from that scene is Joy Eden Harrison. I haven’t spoken with her in awhile but the last I heard she was in the Chicago area working as a school teacher.
If you only have time to listen to one song today, it oughta be “Where have you gone Jimmy Dean?” - a favorite of mine from that era now available for streaming on Spotify.
https://open.spotify.com/track/47tltW2SqvdtYwbxjbaVXi?si=c35380bfe4464e6e
I got to know Joy in 2004 when she enlisted me to videotape her one woman show - a wonderful musical about her time spent in Hollywood. During that job I learned that, as a young singer-songwriter, she moved to L.A. and was able to secure Tom Waits' manager as her representation. As far as I could tell, she did everything right.
Names, survivorship bias, market saturation: everyone who thinks they are going to be famous because they are talented is not thinking clearly about their circumstances.
Learn how the industry works, find a way to break in at the ground floor as soon as possible so that 30 years from now, you, too, can be an "overnight success."
For an unknown actor, it starts with having a LOOK.
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