John Snyder: Finding Your Place in the Industry

John Snyder came to McNally Smith last week and spoke to my Creating a Life in Music class. what he had to say was so inspiring. He told stories of working with huge names in the industry as well as giving great advice on building your own business. (as a musician you yourself are a business and you should run it as such). He gave some great suggestions for books that we should read. They are:

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

The Cluetrain Manifesto

The Business of Art

All of these books talk about how to run your own business, including business plans, and where the industry is heading. I plan on picking up all of these books in the near future.

Johns background is also very interesting. He was a trumpet player who went to music school and then to law school. He got into the industry not for his performance degree but for his law degree. From there he went on to be a producer and worked with some of the best in the business (i.e. Stevie Wonder, Etta James).

His talk was very motivating and informational.

Here is a link to a youtube video of Guy Kawasaki talking about business

Ron Sobel a snapshot of reality for musicians

Ron Sobel, the new chair of the music business at McNally Smith College of music came to one of the college's classes, CaLM (Creating a Life in Music). The class consists of students who want to be musicians and performers of their various instruments. Ron basically shed light into the business world of music. He hit the nail on the head by saying that as musicians all we want to do is play music, but if that's all we actually do we will be setting ourselves up for trouble. So many artists get taken advantage of and end up losing money because they say "Oh my manager can take care of that" or "My attorney can take a look at that" when in reality you don't even know if you can trust your manager and attorney. Ron made it very clear that musicians need to know about the business they want to get into. They need to know the dirty gritty stuff that goes on behind the scenes. If not, your career is not in your own hands.

Here is the website for Ron Sobel's company North Star Media. its very fascinating. Northstarmedia