The Spotify Way of Sorting out Good and Bad Clients

When I discuss music with friends, it becomes more and more evident that so many people still don´t know what a bliss Spotify is.

A friend recently mentioned to me they have not the time to get through it or assume it consumes more time, when in fact the opposite is true.

If you´re like me, you want to enjoy music, whenever, wherever, without the hassle of piracy and without the waste of time to go into a shop or worse, shop DRM protected iTunes products for that matter.
And I don´t need fancy booklets or CD-cases from most artists. I also don´t need crowded record shops which don´t have what I´m looking for anyways. If you are freelancer and / or have children, you know that time is precious. I don´t want to own music, I just want listen to it.

I often gave radio stations a try but can´t stand the blurbs, news and commercial breaks in the long run.
In this aspect, my guess is that Spotify will change a whole generation if their success continues.

Spotify is a great example on how good marketing can work.
Good marketing makes you enjoy the experience, while promoting it wherever you can, because it has a lot of pro´s that outweighs the costs.

As of May 2011 they plan changes to spotify free/open, in my opinion this step is absolutely important to separate the wheat from the chaff. Everyone wants a super awesome service for free but only a few want to pay for it, as a service provider, who do you like more?

• Those who love your products, make free of charge promotion for your service and come back often?
• Or those who love and want everything you do for free and bother if you start to charge anything?

Applied to the work and service a freelancer offers, there are a obviously some similarities, no one wants clients from hell. And from time to time its important to show that.

My decision was clear from the onset of using Spotify, and after a year of using the free service, the change in their system had made me switch to the unlimited account instead of leaving them.

For me the use of the service outweighs ten times what the unlimited membership does cost me.
On my workstation I don´t want to save or collect music and I always want to learn and stumble about new songs, without having to spend hours in a record shop or Amazon / iTunes, I just want to listen to songs while working.

Also when I favorite a song on my workstation, automatically I have it in my playlist at the living room - hi-fi or mobile.

The related artists feature makes it really easy to access many new artists.
And even if not every album is available right now, they do a lot to make it available in the near future, and the more labels and artists get onto this, the more will be available.

The benefit from all this is a lightweight program that delivers a whole world of music without having to worry about disk/space or money.

What Do You Like LEAST About Being An Artist?

Quite recently I read through the interesting post by Christopher Burdett about " why artists do what they do", its a huge post interviewing several artists and professionals from the industry about their motivations behind being an artist.

The first thing I read, was the answers to the question: "What do you like LEAST about being an artist?"
And find it intriguing, that a lot responses shows a big aversion against the "business side" or the paperwork.

Note: I´m not looking at this to see how bad someone is at something, rather I try to find what problems are out there, what can be solved?

I also did a poll about this matter here, to go through each topic with a different blog post, this one is dedicated to help with the business aspects of being an artist. 
 
We should not judge people by how they deal with the things they hate, but if you turn any aversion into the opposite, you´re up for a win.

Seth Godin has a very nice post about that matter:

The worst moments are your best opportunity

That's how we judge you and how we remember you.

Its indeed a great opportunity to tell people how you have dealt with something that most people hate. In my case, well, I do not love the business side and paperwork, but I embrace it, everyday more.

Every signed contract is a bliss.

Since I started to work in a career as full time freelance artist, I understand how important this aspect is in my daily life and now I see it just like color-theory or a new software that I can use to optimize a workflow.

Even if we are not aware of it and a lot people do not know how to utilize it right, blogging is also a business aspect and part of promotion, but in my case, I turned the blog into a personal thing to have more fun and less pressure.

Marketing is also a part that most artists hate, I grew a personal interest in how to develop marketing that actually works for artists.

When it comes to communication, a lot peole are afraid to get direct responses from the clients and prefer an agent as a middleman, who knows which words they have to use in order to keep the artist going.

I skip this part, I enjoy honest clients who know what they want and even more if they can articulate their desires directly to me. Thats the reason I appreciate to work with authors directly in most cases.

What many artists forget is another important thing:

When they are sitting in their studio, office, whatsoever, they imagine a commission as a long neverending task that is just tiring and one-sided. always with the client in mind.

But reality is: its communication and its two-sided!

And even if you are locked in your studio, this doesn´t mean you cannot deliver a performance like an actor. You guess what? Clients expect a performance!

Not directly related to the one you´ll most likely see in a theatre, but close.

See it just like this, the process of a commission can be a wonderful experience and enlightenment for both, but it can be also a dull experience that buries creativity faster than an eagle can say good bye to a stealth fighter.

But it has not to look like that. You are the actor and opposed to an actor you are even an artist, you can put a certain amount of control into a communication by articulating authority.

And to come back to the actual topic of how to deal with the paperwork, lets face it: most business CEO´s would really love to change with the little paperwork artists have to do. And probably can´t understand why any artist is bothering about 1-2 hours a week of that.

I do not have fixed times for that, since its always depending on the workload, but there are weeks where I have to deal with 3 contracts at once and I deal with them like with a bunch of emails: I go through them, one by one in a row. This can for sure take up a hour or two, but after this time I can focus again on the work that matters.

Do you stand or sit at work?

After reading this article about health on the desk: http://health.yahoo.net/experts/menshealth/most-dangerous-thing-youll-do-all-day which I came across through a tweet from a twitter friend. I was kind of enlightened and felt frightened at the same time. Mainly because I have found the source of my main problem - the ongoing feeling of doing no actual "work". I was used to stand and move at work constantly before switching to the full time freelancing work, two and a half year ago.

The first time it wasn´t a problem either, to be honest you have other things to worry abnout if you start to do self-employed business, but after a year I found out that I havn´t really any fitness or hobby I can turn to. Doing WII-fit excercises doesn´t count, really.

Realizing that I roughly sit for around 60 hours a week, the effect can be enormous.
I´m not overweight, but after just these two years sitting on a desk, I feel a lack of constitution, which is not a state I want to keep forever.

This article confirmed my assumption that I have to change something in my working day: http://smarterware.org/7102/how-and-why-i-switched-to-a-standing-desk

I don´t wanted to incorporate a ready -built standing desk or a treadmill, but I am really fond of ergonomic workstations and how to change things for better.

Below is a before and after shot of my current work place, which promises more movement and productivity:

Before 

After

So far it has been the best decision ever.
The total cost for this ergonomic change was around 100,00 Euro, but the effect is an improvement measurable in even 48 hours.

So if you´re not a plein-air painter who is always on tour this might be a good advice for any desktop artist or freelance designer.
The benefit from a changed posture and habit can only be told after years of working, but its up on you to decide what consequences you might face.

In times when my day job kept me physically active I was happy to switch on my mind and PC in the evening and doing what I love the most, and relaxed while sitting. But now where the passion has turned into a day job, and it seems I´m there for the long run, its time to change.

When do you switch?
If there are any concerns, I´d really like to answer any questions about that matter, or like to hear your experience.

The Power of Doubt

Doubt is, without a doubt, powerful.
It can be destroyer and a honest critic at the same time!
Doubt is unlikely one of the most interesting states of the mind.

But what is doubt?
Is it just lack of confidence?
It occurs in very different situations and can obviously be labeled as a dialog.

The bad news first: its a part of you, the good news: you can learn to put it in control!

Whenever we experience the feeling of satisfaction, there is this little voice in the corner of our mind that asks if its not a little unfair that we are satisfied after a great meal while other people have to starve?
Doubt is the thing that makes a vegetarian and inflames protest against politicians or their decisions.

In its existence, its neither good nor bad.

Imagine doubt as a cop
Well, obviously these are very common scenarios and it seems that doubt is just the watcher of our consciousness, but somehow not a counterpart of the unconsciousness.

I imagine doubt as a cop, the prosecutor who is sitting next to both in my humble mind and observing the processes that are going on, with a succinct comment thrown in about whats happening every here and then.
I describe doubt as an independent prosecutor and not as judge, because its purpose is not judgement. But to put the status quo into question.

While very often doubt is useful (take the vegetarian or protest aspects for example) it can be a nagging bitch at times.
There are only two things in my opinion that can keep the prosecutor in a warm & fuzzy state:

1. Knowledge - the definition of knowledge that something is true, or has happened, or will happen
2. Intuition - the kind of intuition that is based upon knowledge

Intuition as I imagine it, is a real-time-engine that pulls out results from an "experience-database" , considers mood, unconsciousness and the conscience to verify information and allows reactions based on these factors at an alarming rate.

This means it is important to learn and grow on everything you can get your hands on.
To make the best use of intuition as possible you should never stop learning. If you let intuition judge what doubt puts into question, doubt will not longer be a fat and lazy bum who knows he is always right.

He has to run, verify and compare informations a lot, that keeps him busy and at the end he is not the first to raise his hand. He does it only if things really seem to be dangerous or on the edge of morality.

This leads to two conclusions:

1. Doubt is not always bad, it just puts your behavior into question, or in the best case into a dialog.
2. Self-doubt and too much doubt can be counteract with intuition, and prevent success.

This might be a personal conclusion. I´m just an observer, who is fascinated by how our mind works and I use my imagination to illustrate these processes to others.

Probably someone has a more valid explanation how these psychological aspects work, but I find this imagination quite interesting.

My approach is just to make living with these techniques easier. Especially for artists doubt and self-doubt are destructive, acquired and every too often unnecessary. In short: its the most known preventer of success.

From experience I can say that keeping the prosecutor busy, makes life soo much easier.