While some budding artists find quick success, they are a small minority. The majority spend years trying to get their music heard by the masses, and some never do. So in the face of not-too-brilliant odds, musicians have to find ways to keep morale high in their pursuit of success.
In a new interview with Billboard, the ever-wise St. Vincent – singer-songwriter and disliker of plugins in the studio – offers some words of advice to those looking to find success in the music industry.
“In order to get good, you have to go through a series of humbling and humiliating experiences,” she says. “On the other hand, you have to have this psychotic belief – an unreasonable belief, truly – that you are going to write songs and make music that is going to matter. And that’s a really crazy thought.
She continues, reflecting on her own approach throughout her career: “I have that thought – with plenty of self-loathing and self-laceration – but I also have this [feeling], ‘If I don’t do this, I’m going to die.”
So there you have it; perhaps an almost desperate attitude is crucial in achieving success in the music industry.
Elsewhere in the interview, St. Vincent – real name Annie Clark – comments on the current streaming model, saying it “incentivises songs to be consumable over and over again”.
“If you are a big pop artist, streaming is fine,” she says. “But there is some music that reaches you very deeply but isn’t music that you put on every single day. I’m not going to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme every day. It’s one of the most pivotal records of my life, but I’m not going to stream it over and over.”
She goes on: “Streaming incentivises songs to be consumable over and over again. Now, certainly there’s great music you want to consume like that – but there’s a lot of music that’s excellent and doesn’t fall into that category. And those artists, because of streaming, are wilting on the vine.”
