Here are ten questions your recruiter should ask you if they know what they're doing and really want to compel candidates to talk to you:
1. Why was this role created or what led to this search? Good and bad events, as balanced a version of things as is possible without airing too much dirty laundry.
2. Who does it report to and what does that person expect out of this hire? Or in CEO cases, what does the Board really want to get done in 12, 18, 24 and 36 months. Concrete deliverables.
3. Who needs to be involved in the selection and search process and why? Who are key stakeholders and influencers? What are they thinking about, and where are bottlenecks and disagreements likely to come up (does the engineering team really not want new leadership, for example, because they don't want structure? Do management and Founders not want a new CEO but feel the Board is forcing that person upon them unfairly? Why do people have this view and does their argument have merit?)
4. How many employees do you have, cash on hand, revenues, margins, basic expense line, growth rate, capitalization structure, capitalization strategy, Board makeup, management team backgrounds.
5. History of the company. Why was the company invented, what was the thought process, what is the driving core innovation of forming the enterprise in the first place and what does it aspire to be? "We want to be the THIS of the THAT SPACE" should be covered in some detail.
6. Key challenges and barriers to success?
7. How the organization will change and evolve over the near and medium terms, and how those evolutions will affect the company and this role?
8. What are key opportunities in the market place, key challenges, market dynamics, philosophical camps, various approaches to the problems you're solving, etc.?
9. How do you typically hire people? What's worked and not worked? How do we best work together to ensure success in a reasonable timeframe? What is your hiring philosophy and it is consistent with other key players?
10. Discuss the process. Map out the strategy for identifying the key people, getting them to the table and expediting it so that the process is an advantage in recruiting, and not an impediment.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
10 ways to close hard searches in 90 days
We just finished our first search for a CEO in health care IT. I can't even believe I won the search, much less closed it in well under 90 days. Since I'm passionate about this space, this one really, really mattered. They all matter, but this one was possibly a do or die situation in my ambition to build a killer, dominant practice in this exciting field.
This is a crazy fun space, but like a lot of technology categories, you have the dinosaurs and you have the newcomers, and not a lot in between that would be your sweet spot hunting grounds, which I would define as "companies who grew solidly, delivered great results and exited or developed enough leadership talent that it's worth exploring for CEOs." You don't want people from the old world dinosaur companies like GE, and the newcomers are usually too under developed for a bunch of experienced leaders to be running around and mobile. And they're trying to do what your client is trying to do half the time, get religious about their approach, or are flaky enough to jump from one situation to another before it's an appropriate time to do so. So what do you do? Classic conundrum in a growth space in technology.
Here's what we did:
1. Map the market. No, really MAP IT. No one else in our industry can map markets as fast as we can, because our research arm is LOCAL, not outsourced to India, and they're all Stanford, Cal, come from great schools, MBAs, etc. A client once told me she was impressed by Heidrick's ability to map the market, so I got ahold of one of their maps. It was hard not to laugh out loud. Our maps are vastly more detailed, more thoughtfully developed and rendered, etc. Who are the people who develop this data? People who would have otherwise gone into Financial services in another era, have now figured out that our industry is a better racket than other categories and we successfully recruit and develop these people. We spend 10% of revenue on research. Not a single other firm in our industry does that. And we think it's money well spent.
2. Who are the M&A's that are nine figures and above and who were the top 3 people in those companies? Who IPO'd? Who made money for investors or outperformed peers and were really clever, hustled, took nothing for granted and above all, grew shareholder value. Track the lineage of the out performers and track the people down who made it happen. They could be anywhere. In PE firms, living overseas, about to hit the ejection button after getting acquired, etc. You can't fake this work. It's a grind and these spaces need to be DRILLED hard to get to the "gems" underneath what can, at times, look like massive lumps of coal.
3. Network like crazy. You can't delegate this to junior people as many search firms do. Killer people want to hear from senior people who are genuinely interested in them. The project leader and other senior people need to do this work personally. Talk to everyone you can, as fast as you can, get to the thought leaders out there, the well-known professors on whom the smarter leaders in a given space will lean for advice, get to VC's and investors in the space, find out who they liked, convince them to work with you vs compete with you for this talent, etc. This seems obvious but way too many people in our industry do this in a half-assed way.
4. Your client cannot sit around in "shop" mode for very long. They have to be in "buy mode" where, if you have a tight spec, and you deliver really interesting candidates to that spec, they know they have to MOVE FAST.
5. Sequester the time to do it right. Too many search people just bill everything in sight. You have to have the capacity to do CEO projects the right way. If the search person is overloaded, they won't make that extra call to the candidate between various interviews or events, and they might miss something. Every candidate in a tight spec search is a precious asset and needs to be treated as such.
6. Be prepared for hard conversations, weekend conference calls, late evenings, etc. If you let your calendar have no gaps or aren't willing to chip in a little "free time" to make it happen, you won't make it happen.
7. Be aggressive in comp. Understand it's a buyers's market, get over it and be ready to invest in people.
8. Don't mess around with silly things like change of control on second trigger. You've sold the company, Board voted for it, be aggressive here. And don't get cheap on stuff like relocation. This is where people get angry. The core offer will be what it is. But don't shoot yourself in the foot messing around with the "trimmings" of a deal.
9. Keep your interview team and search committee, small, tight, influential and empowered to act.
10. Resolve that any serious candidate will be "resolved" within 2 weeks max. First interview to final interview. You don't have a month. You might not even have two weeks.
Groupon just grabbed a killer engineering executive from one of our clients who really wanted the guy. A very senior, A player. GROUPON! Yes, the same one that is a spectacular flameout. How? They moved from first conversation to close in 7 days, went "yard" with the deal, focused like crazy and grabbed the guy. That is how you close people. You move fast and you be aggressive. Be focused. It's really not rocket science ultimately, but far too many people are living in a dreamland that there are lots of candidates running around. There really are not great candidates running around. You have to RUN THEM DOWN.
This is a crazy fun space, but like a lot of technology categories, you have the dinosaurs and you have the newcomers, and not a lot in between that would be your sweet spot hunting grounds, which I would define as "companies who grew solidly, delivered great results and exited or developed enough leadership talent that it's worth exploring for CEOs." You don't want people from the old world dinosaur companies like GE, and the newcomers are usually too under developed for a bunch of experienced leaders to be running around and mobile. And they're trying to do what your client is trying to do half the time, get religious about their approach, or are flaky enough to jump from one situation to another before it's an appropriate time to do so. So what do you do? Classic conundrum in a growth space in technology.
Here's what we did:
1. Map the market. No, really MAP IT. No one else in our industry can map markets as fast as we can, because our research arm is LOCAL, not outsourced to India, and they're all Stanford, Cal, come from great schools, MBAs, etc. A client once told me she was impressed by Heidrick's ability to map the market, so I got ahold of one of their maps. It was hard not to laugh out loud. Our maps are vastly more detailed, more thoughtfully developed and rendered, etc. Who are the people who develop this data? People who would have otherwise gone into Financial services in another era, have now figured out that our industry is a better racket than other categories and we successfully recruit and develop these people. We spend 10% of revenue on research. Not a single other firm in our industry does that. And we think it's money well spent.
2. Who are the M&A's that are nine figures and above and who were the top 3 people in those companies? Who IPO'd? Who made money for investors or outperformed peers and were really clever, hustled, took nothing for granted and above all, grew shareholder value. Track the lineage of the out performers and track the people down who made it happen. They could be anywhere. In PE firms, living overseas, about to hit the ejection button after getting acquired, etc. You can't fake this work. It's a grind and these spaces need to be DRILLED hard to get to the "gems" underneath what can, at times, look like massive lumps of coal.
3. Network like crazy. You can't delegate this to junior people as many search firms do. Killer people want to hear from senior people who are genuinely interested in them. The project leader and other senior people need to do this work personally. Talk to everyone you can, as fast as you can, get to the thought leaders out there, the well-known professors on whom the smarter leaders in a given space will lean for advice, get to VC's and investors in the space, find out who they liked, convince them to work with you vs compete with you for this talent, etc. This seems obvious but way too many people in our industry do this in a half-assed way.
4. Your client cannot sit around in "shop" mode for very long. They have to be in "buy mode" where, if you have a tight spec, and you deliver really interesting candidates to that spec, they know they have to MOVE FAST.
5. Sequester the time to do it right. Too many search people just bill everything in sight. You have to have the capacity to do CEO projects the right way. If the search person is overloaded, they won't make that extra call to the candidate between various interviews or events, and they might miss something. Every candidate in a tight spec search is a precious asset and needs to be treated as such.
6. Be prepared for hard conversations, weekend conference calls, late evenings, etc. If you let your calendar have no gaps or aren't willing to chip in a little "free time" to make it happen, you won't make it happen.
7. Be aggressive in comp. Understand it's a buyers's market, get over it and be ready to invest in people.
8. Don't mess around with silly things like change of control on second trigger. You've sold the company, Board voted for it, be aggressive here. And don't get cheap on stuff like relocation. This is where people get angry. The core offer will be what it is. But don't shoot yourself in the foot messing around with the "trimmings" of a deal.
9. Keep your interview team and search committee, small, tight, influential and empowered to act.
10. Resolve that any serious candidate will be "resolved" within 2 weeks max. First interview to final interview. You don't have a month. You might not even have two weeks.
Groupon just grabbed a killer engineering executive from one of our clients who really wanted the guy. A very senior, A player. GROUPON! Yes, the same one that is a spectacular flameout. How? They moved from first conversation to close in 7 days, went "yard" with the deal, focused like crazy and grabbed the guy. That is how you close people. You move fast and you be aggressive. Be focused. It's really not rocket science ultimately, but far too many people are living in a dreamland that there are lots of candidates running around. There really are not great candidates running around. You have to RUN THEM DOWN.
The Interview 2.0
People need to understand that to be effective, interviewing actually matters again. Gone are the days of taking a first meeting to "get to know" people. Candidates getting to know companies, companies getting to know candidates. "Culture fit" is an aging term, and one that in my view is totally useless. No one gets anywhere these days if they have an iffy culture or an iffy, jackass vibe. They wear it on their sleeves if it's an issue, in most cases. So set that aside to later meetings, is my advice and focus on having an effective interview. Otherwise you'll lose candidates, and candidates will lose opportunity. There is little margin for error, so if you want to execute, in my opinion, here are the basics and I believe this is "interview 2.0":
Companies:
1. Read your own job description. Everyone who meets the candidate should have a copy. Read the resume fully, and suspend judgment until after you've met the person. You'd think this is 1.0 but man, so seldom do people in an interview team actually read the job description. They think life is moving too fast. That's just being lazy. STOP. Do your homework.
2. Don't walk through the resume. That's old school. Interview 2.0 is, "here is what we're trying to do. These 3-5 things REALLY matter to us. Can you do it, and have you done it, where, and how might you approach THIS situation?" This is the core of the interview. Asking stupid, demeaning Google-ish questions like how many black cats are in Nebraska is immature, silly and arrogant. Not to mention unproductive.
3. Take a few minutes on the front end to capture the essence of why your company rocks. And then go back to it at the end of the meeting. Re-cap why your company is awesome, a great place to work, could enrich everyone personally and possibly financially (be balanced here, don't set crazy expectations), etc. Offer to answer questions the candidate might have. Talk about your views, if you're possible, about why they could make sense and make an impact, be embraced by the team, etc. If you don't think they're a match, keep that to yourself or defer to item 4.
4. If you're the CEO, tell them if you don't think it's a match. Too many Californians are nonconfrontational and want to "kick the can" down the road saying "this is good, let's keep going" when they really mean "this isn't a fit. I don't want to jerk you around or waste your time." If it is anyone other than the CEO, or a key Board member in the case of a CEO search, then keep your opinions to yourself, tell the hiring manager what you think and leave it to that person to decide whether to agree with you or not. Breaching this rule can cause a lot of internal problems.
5. Talk about next steps and process. What you think the person needs to do to reach conclusion.
6. Stay close to your search firm, because if you're saying different things, the candidate will lose altitude as they lose trust, or they're think you or the search firm aren't paying attention.
7. Sell for the right to buy...You can answer a LOT of questions in referencing.
Candidates:
1. Come prepared. Read the website, read the job spec, and be humble. No matter how bad ass you think you are, be humble.
2. Bring ideas to the table. Be bold with your observations about the space, market, company, etc., as long as it's constructive stuff. You don't want to present like you know the situation better than the person interviewing you, you just want to appear as someone who has thought about this meaningfully.
3. Be an open book. Let them get to know you. They'll open up more, the more they know about YOU. Yeah this is a "candidate's market." But always sell for the right to buy as I mention above. Give them a narrative story. Who you are, where you come from, how you've architected your career and most importantly, highlight where you made maximum IMPACT.
4. Be 21st century! Talk about "marketing 2.0" or "sales 2.0" or "leadership 2.0 for a CEO". Disruptive business models, best practices. Frictionless selling, freemium, digital demand gen, social, how to build a killer product company, etc. If you talk about old school practices, YOU'RE DEAD. And you're irrelevant so just retire now, is my advice. Get smart, get current, or just join silly and tired companies where you can fake your way through, thinking and acting like an old school executive. Growth companies want cutting edge. If you aren't interested in re-inventing yourself and really making an impact in an insanely fast changing landscape, don't even try. Because short stint job hoppers are not en vogue. Never have been, never will be.
5. Put yourself in the job mentally. "I think I'd approach this THIS way," or "this is what I'm hearing so far, what do you think about THIS strategy or THESE priorities."
6. Tell them you're interested, if you are. Tell them if you aren't, and be gracious. It's a small world of technology people who actually matter. And people talk. Be the class act, someone they wish they had, no matter what you think about the situation.
7. Follow up. That one's a basic.
8. Be on time. That one's a basic.
9. Stay in front of the search firm. Don't be aloof.
Companies:
1. Read your own job description. Everyone who meets the candidate should have a copy. Read the resume fully, and suspend judgment until after you've met the person. You'd think this is 1.0 but man, so seldom do people in an interview team actually read the job description. They think life is moving too fast. That's just being lazy. STOP. Do your homework.
2. Don't walk through the resume. That's old school. Interview 2.0 is, "here is what we're trying to do. These 3-5 things REALLY matter to us. Can you do it, and have you done it, where, and how might you approach THIS situation?" This is the core of the interview. Asking stupid, demeaning Google-ish questions like how many black cats are in Nebraska is immature, silly and arrogant. Not to mention unproductive.
3. Take a few minutes on the front end to capture the essence of why your company rocks. And then go back to it at the end of the meeting. Re-cap why your company is awesome, a great place to work, could enrich everyone personally and possibly financially (be balanced here, don't set crazy expectations), etc. Offer to answer questions the candidate might have. Talk about your views, if you're possible, about why they could make sense and make an impact, be embraced by the team, etc. If you don't think they're a match, keep that to yourself or defer to item 4.
4. If you're the CEO, tell them if you don't think it's a match. Too many Californians are nonconfrontational and want to "kick the can" down the road saying "this is good, let's keep going" when they really mean "this isn't a fit. I don't want to jerk you around or waste your time." If it is anyone other than the CEO, or a key Board member in the case of a CEO search, then keep your opinions to yourself, tell the hiring manager what you think and leave it to that person to decide whether to agree with you or not. Breaching this rule can cause a lot of internal problems.
5. Talk about next steps and process. What you think the person needs to do to reach conclusion.
6. Stay close to your search firm, because if you're saying different things, the candidate will lose altitude as they lose trust, or they're think you or the search firm aren't paying attention.
7. Sell for the right to buy...You can answer a LOT of questions in referencing.
Candidates:
1. Come prepared. Read the website, read the job spec, and be humble. No matter how bad ass you think you are, be humble.
2. Bring ideas to the table. Be bold with your observations about the space, market, company, etc., as long as it's constructive stuff. You don't want to present like you know the situation better than the person interviewing you, you just want to appear as someone who has thought about this meaningfully.
3. Be an open book. Let them get to know you. They'll open up more, the more they know about YOU. Yeah this is a "candidate's market." But always sell for the right to buy as I mention above. Give them a narrative story. Who you are, where you come from, how you've architected your career and most importantly, highlight where you made maximum IMPACT.
4. Be 21st century! Talk about "marketing 2.0" or "sales 2.0" or "leadership 2.0 for a CEO". Disruptive business models, best practices. Frictionless selling, freemium, digital demand gen, social, how to build a killer product company, etc. If you talk about old school practices, YOU'RE DEAD. And you're irrelevant so just retire now, is my advice. Get smart, get current, or just join silly and tired companies where you can fake your way through, thinking and acting like an old school executive. Growth companies want cutting edge. If you aren't interested in re-inventing yourself and really making an impact in an insanely fast changing landscape, don't even try. Because short stint job hoppers are not en vogue. Never have been, never will be.
5. Put yourself in the job mentally. "I think I'd approach this THIS way," or "this is what I'm hearing so far, what do you think about THIS strategy or THESE priorities."
6. Tell them you're interested, if you are. Tell them if you aren't, and be gracious. It's a small world of technology people who actually matter. And people talk. Be the class act, someone they wish they had, no matter what you think about the situation.
7. Follow up. That one's a basic.
8. Be on time. That one's a basic.
9. Stay in front of the search firm. Don't be aloof.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
The secret to Citrix's success
This is a blog that I'm going to splash out there, and then work on over time. I love Citrix and want to talk about them as a model for some of our other clients. And I think I've figured out why they're so successful.
Citrix is run by an entrepreneur, vs a corporate animal. Mark Templeton is disdainful of the big company corporate culture, way of life, entitlement, ego's, etc. And this is why he cannot be caught. They just move faster than the herd because it's in their DNA to concentrate on speed of movement vs sheer size, and they certainly don't waste any time talking about how great they are. How big a weapon is humility?
Look at the organization and the bio's of the key players. Do you see a big company in their backgrounds? Not many, and anyone who does, had it some time ago, vs recently. Most are people who came from startups, or were home grown. Mark has an uncanny eye for talent, and he's collected an interesting cast of characters around him, including some "nobodies" who came in through acquisition and are now industry stars, like Mr. Payne. These people were not usual suspects, not "obvious" choices. These people, over the last 5 years, were hungrier than the guys at VMWare and the billions of other players like Cisco with whom they compete. This team just outruns people who are busy pointing to the size of their "P&L" (it's the kiss of death when people start to point to size as a measure of success or relevance). I talk to guys all the time who are more proud of this stupid, irrelevant subject and the Citrix guys would never think like that. Their driving thought? Their standard? Their goal?
WINNING. LEADING. PIPELINE. OF PRODUCTS. AND TALENT.
These guys are tireless, they're hungry. You can see the fire in their eyes. But they're level headed and thoughtful at the same time. And Mark is a horse. The guy operates with the energy of a 20 year old but the wisdom of statesman. He is the most underrated CEO I've heard of in years, probably because he operates out of Florida.
More later. This company continues to amaze me.
Citrix is run by an entrepreneur, vs a corporate animal. Mark Templeton is disdainful of the big company corporate culture, way of life, entitlement, ego's, etc. And this is why he cannot be caught. They just move faster than the herd because it's in their DNA to concentrate on speed of movement vs sheer size, and they certainly don't waste any time talking about how great they are. How big a weapon is humility?
Look at the organization and the bio's of the key players. Do you see a big company in their backgrounds? Not many, and anyone who does, had it some time ago, vs recently. Most are people who came from startups, or were home grown. Mark has an uncanny eye for talent, and he's collected an interesting cast of characters around him, including some "nobodies" who came in through acquisition and are now industry stars, like Mr. Payne. These people were not usual suspects, not "obvious" choices. These people, over the last 5 years, were hungrier than the guys at VMWare and the billions of other players like Cisco with whom they compete. This team just outruns people who are busy pointing to the size of their "P&L" (it's the kiss of death when people start to point to size as a measure of success or relevance). I talk to guys all the time who are more proud of this stupid, irrelevant subject and the Citrix guys would never think like that. Their driving thought? Their standard? Their goal?
WINNING. LEADING. PIPELINE. OF PRODUCTS. AND TALENT.
These guys are tireless, they're hungry. You can see the fire in their eyes. But they're level headed and thoughtful at the same time. And Mark is a horse. The guy operates with the energy of a 20 year old but the wisdom of statesman. He is the most underrated CEO I've heard of in years, probably because he operates out of Florida.
More later. This company continues to amaze me.
Monday, January 7, 2013
How to pick a search consultant
I continue to get several calls a day from clients (entrepreneurs, VC's, late stage privates and public companies) saying "I need a VP of this or a VP of that and tell me if you'd take it on." Some situations are pretty early stage, and as cool as early stage companies are, the earlier you are, the harder it is to attract talent. People want low risk, high reward right now, so to get people who are good, who are willing to take the risk of earlier stage companies, you have to be prepared to dig really deep, hunt very widely, and beg, borrow and steal to get peoples' attention. And the junior VP in a larger company is just as hard. Hard is good and we all like a challenge, but the key for clients: match the role with the search person.
My advice is to really step back and think: "this is going to be a grind and a dogfight, so whom should I use to get this done?" The usual suspects aren't always the right answer in picking a search person, though as a "usual suspect myself," I would hate for clients to stop thinking about me!
Here is how to think about hiring that killer up and comer VP for either a small startup or a public company looking for people several layers below the CEO:
My advice is to really step back and think: "this is going to be a grind and a dogfight, so whom should I use to get this done?" The usual suspects aren't always the right answer in picking a search person, though as a "usual suspect myself," I would hate for clients to stop thinking about me!
Here is how to think about hiring that killer up and comer VP for either a small startup or a public company looking for people several layers below the CEO:
- Use younger, hungrier search people for these projects. They're about DIGGING and CARPET BOMBING, and begging people to talk to you, not taking no for an answer, and being clever about getting in front of people. Higher level projects are much more strategic and require, typically, a senior search person to navigate Board dynamics, convince successful CEOs, or CFOs, or what have you, to talk to your client and ultimately accept your offer because, in part, they trust the judgment of the search person as much as their own judgment. I'd like to believe that my partners and I possess this unique ability and credibility to impact senior people. But the junior VP project is a different animal altogether...When in Rome...
- Senior search people who would take on a junior VP project are not likely good, because they're not highly sought after for higher visibility projects. If they were highly sought after, with great respect for the junior VP stuff, they'd be doing more senior work. It's that simple and basic. Like any profession, the search profession is full of people who are ambitious to climb higher, vs stall out. You work your way UP, not down. Having said that, it is always fun to do the occasional "crazy" project and we all love to mix it up a bit. Sometimes you find an entrepreneur, or they find you, to whom you just can't say no for anything. I'd do a janitor search for Jyoti Bansal, for example.
- The talent at the VP level are typically now a next gen, Millenial or Gen X crowd. Match the candidate population with your recruiter, and you'll find they'll get great results. Again, want to be a Roman (young, well trained commando)? Your search consultant should be able to look/act like one.
- The next generation talent will work 80 hours a week to prove themselves. My partner, Lee Schweichler, still works harder than many 25 year olds I know, and none of my partners play any serious golf. I don't even have a handicap. But we are the exception. None of us were hugged enough as kids, or maybe we're just adrenaline junkies who are paranoid of failure and love a challenge. Most of our peers are playing more golf than working, spend more time selling vs doing projects, etc. If I were choosing a search consultant for an up and comer VP, I wouldn't select myself. I'd select Eamonn Tucker, Mike Doonan, Sean Lucq, Nicole Freitas, Mike Dempsey, Jeremy Levin, Melissa Taunton, etc. It's a dog fight out there. Hire the rabid, hungry dog to win a dog fight.
Good luck. It's a brave, tough, hard world right now in this chaotic realm of technology, Bay Area, recruiting, too much money sloshing around, etc. Things are tense, things are sketchy, things are moving at warp speed. Don't look at your recruiter's resume, look at the fire in their eyes and the clock speed in their brains, because otherwise you're in for a long, difficult search with someone who won't work as hard for your tricky search, and won't crawl through fire to pull it off.
It's an age-old, universal truth that if you give someone who is well trained, hungry and smart a shot, most often it pays off significantly. This applies to just about anything, from football to business. In other words, give our up and comers a shot...I have 1000% faith in every one of them, and the youngest one, with a head injury, would outperform any "veteran" I know.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Internet radio: a conundrum
I love music, am in a garage band, and am finding myself conflicted about the state of this lovely form of art, so I'd like to post a way off topic blog here for anyone who may be unfortunate enough to land on my blog page. Welcome.
I was an early Pandora enthusiast, and then became a big Spotify evangelist and early user. I've got subscriptions to both, because the thought of my music being interrupted or unavailable at any time is appalling to me. I've got sound cloud, sonos, all kinds of stuff. I'm "that guy." And proud of it.
Long ago, I decided not to steal music and not because Jobs told me not to. It just didn't feel good to rip off music and then try to enjoy it. It's just not cool.
So I love these services and feel immensely indebted to those who create the music I enjoy. But I'm beginning to wonder whether these services help or hurt musicians. I can't get this topic out of my mind, so I thought I'd jot down a few pro's and con's to get this thought out of my mind and into the world, in the hope that someone will step in to help sort this out.
Why these services help:
1) exposure of course. Mass distribution at low cost. Easy.
2) you don't sell your soul to a label. The indie movement lives. No cheeseball LA bonehead music executive determines whether you're relevant to the world. Yes, I saw Rock of Ages. Hated that bald guy....
3) a lot of bands who would have spent their lives in obscurity now have a shot at stardom. What's not to like about that?
4) you feel as though you're discovering people all the time. That's gratifying. And then you share your discoveries. Feels great to share good art.
Users, of course, music fans, etc. all benefit immensely. This explosion of music: what does it mean? Were there always this many bands around to delight us? Did digital music services and Internet radio give rise to massive numbers of new musicians, or just amplify their presence? Hmm....
Why the services hurt musicians:
1) musicians make no money now. The only way for musicians to make money is to tour and sell merchandise.
2) we're swimming in music now. Is the super band a thing of the past? You can love a few bands, but when was the last time you felt like part of a cult? Was Cold Play the last mega smash hit multi platinum band? Where is the next U2? the next Zeppelin?
Do we have too much choice? Is dilution a threat to quality? Are we drowning in this delightful and vast realm of sound, that is suddenly such a big part of or lives?
Ultimately I'm happy for all of this but have to admit to a little guilt over the plight of the modern musician. Life on the road can be rough. I hope it's worth it and that the art lives on. But you wonder: like everything, is too much of a good thing actually a bad thing?
I was an early Pandora enthusiast, and then became a big Spotify evangelist and early user. I've got subscriptions to both, because the thought of my music being interrupted or unavailable at any time is appalling to me. I've got sound cloud, sonos, all kinds of stuff. I'm "that guy." And proud of it.
Long ago, I decided not to steal music and not because Jobs told me not to. It just didn't feel good to rip off music and then try to enjoy it. It's just not cool.
So I love these services and feel immensely indebted to those who create the music I enjoy. But I'm beginning to wonder whether these services help or hurt musicians. I can't get this topic out of my mind, so I thought I'd jot down a few pro's and con's to get this thought out of my mind and into the world, in the hope that someone will step in to help sort this out.
Why these services help:
1) exposure of course. Mass distribution at low cost. Easy.
2) you don't sell your soul to a label. The indie movement lives. No cheeseball LA bonehead music executive determines whether you're relevant to the world. Yes, I saw Rock of Ages. Hated that bald guy....
3) a lot of bands who would have spent their lives in obscurity now have a shot at stardom. What's not to like about that?
4) you feel as though you're discovering people all the time. That's gratifying. And then you share your discoveries. Feels great to share good art.
Users, of course, music fans, etc. all benefit immensely. This explosion of music: what does it mean? Were there always this many bands around to delight us? Did digital music services and Internet radio give rise to massive numbers of new musicians, or just amplify their presence? Hmm....
Why the services hurt musicians:
1) musicians make no money now. The only way for musicians to make money is to tour and sell merchandise.
2) we're swimming in music now. Is the super band a thing of the past? You can love a few bands, but when was the last time you felt like part of a cult? Was Cold Play the last mega smash hit multi platinum band? Where is the next U2? the next Zeppelin?
Do we have too much choice? Is dilution a threat to quality? Are we drowning in this delightful and vast realm of sound, that is suddenly such a big part of or lives?
Ultimately I'm happy for all of this but have to admit to a little guilt over the plight of the modern musician. Life on the road can be rough. I hope it's worth it and that the art lives on. But you wonder: like everything, is too much of a good thing actually a bad thing?
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