In this month’s Z Line Model I will discuss growing without expectation. For me as an artist whether you prefer to call me Alize or Zay The Beast things have been a long journey. It has had its ups and its downs. It has even had its stagnant moments where it seemed like being a musician was the dumbest choice I had ever made but I eventually figured something out. Everything has its ups and downs so the music life is no different.
We all want to grow into the top artist but we have to realize these things are not actually in our control. The growth of an artist is entirely dependent upon the consumers. I can be the best artist I have ever heard on the microphone but it is up to the music listeners who do not create music to decide that. There is honestly no way around that.
Growing as an artist is maturing enough to see between the lines of the craft into the business which requires major investment that most independent musicians or labels can not provide to fuel that type of exponential growth so we learn things from unexpected growth instead. This is what keeps a smile on my face. Let’s compare.
An artist with major funding only gets 200,000 streams. In the mind of themselves they have failed because the expected streams based on the marketing budget was 500,000 streams in order to stimulate a quota of expected sales. An artist who depends on unexpected growth gets 200 streams and feels a level of pride because they spent nothing on marketing due to the recording of the music eating up pretty much every spare penny they had been saving . It’s a start.
We must always remember that in this industry we refer to as “the game”. It is simply a game. You can either win or lose but what you base winning on totally depends on you. In my mind I’m always winning because my actual artistry model is based on things such as consistency. Always being able to do music instead of always being able to make a profit. As long as the music is recorded and tangible it can make something. And as long as it can make something it has the possibility of making a profit.
So for my listeners who also read The Sazian Chronicles, don’t think I feel bad about anything except disappointing those who know deep in their hearts, “Zay The Beast always has something in the works”.
