Focus on Impact

If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.

What is holding you back from success most? Focus on that first. Is it top level quality recording? Or great song writing? Having a great band? Building a web presence? If you never answer this question, you might pour money and time into solving the wrong problem, and you will fail.

Move Fast

Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.

Protect your art, but don’t be too precious with it either. Say yes to opportunities if they make sense. The worst that can happen is that you learn and are able to better fine tune for the next time.

Be Bold

Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.

The greatest artists of all time all took big changes. Dylan went electric. The Beatles wrote all their own songs and put together a medley of half songs. Sam Cooke broke racial barriers. Coltrane changed jazz. Know that risks taken don’t always pay off right away, but without taking any risks you certainly won’t be paid off either. Dare to be different and don’t model yourself after someone else.

Be Open

We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.

Unless you’re Prince or Kate Bush, it pays off to drop the rock star mystique and open up to your audience. Share with them the life of a songwriter. Let them see behind the curtain, involve them in the making-of, document the recording process on instagram and tumblr, share a demo, talk about your influences. Only then fans will be able to truly connect to you. Unless you’re Prince or Kate Bush, then don’t worry about it and stay mysterious.

Build Social Value

Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.

Music is an incredibly powerful connector. As an artist you can reach directly into people’s souls and bring groups of strangers together at an event or online. The Grateful Dead built social value when they built their community. DMB does it to this day, as do Mac Miller, Lady GaGa,  and many others. Write music for yourself, but know that it can be meaningful to others. Try to build a community around your art and they will support you.

These values are very much big picture in their approach. My translation is just one way to interpret the core values in an artist’s context. Let the values inspire you and please share in the comments your own ways to apply them to your career.

In H.L. Mencken’s words:

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.  [...] The precise form of an individual’s activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity. I do not lay eggs, as a hen does, because I was born without any equipment for it. For the same reason I do not get myself elected to Congress, or play the violoncello, or teach metaphysics in a college, or work in a steel mill. What I do is simply what lies easiest to my hand. It happens that I was born with an intense and insatiable interest in ideas, and thus like to play with them. It happens also that I was born with rather more than the average facility for putting them into words.

There is very little conscious volition in all this. What I do was ordained by the inscrutable fates, not chosen by me. [...] I became a writer [...], and shall remain one until the end of the chapter, just as a cow goes on giving milk all her life, even though what appears to be her self-interest urges her to give gin.

I am far luckier than most men, for I have been able since boyhood to make a good living doing precisely what I have wanted to do—what I would have done for nothing, and very gladly, if there had been no reward for it. Its possible effects on other people have interested me very little. I have not written and published to please other people, but to satisfy myself, just as a cow gives milk, not to profit the dairyman, but to satisfy herself. I like to think that most of my ideas have been sound ones, but I really don’t care. The world may take them or leave them. I have had my fun hatching them.

Emphasis is mine. Read the full letter here.

Related Reading:

• Why We Do What We Do (Or Why Music) (read)
• Stay In Your Basement (Or How To Deal With Success) (read)
• The Reward Is In The Work (Or What You Can Learn From George Clooney) (read)
• Lessons Learned (The Science Of Motivation) (read)

Under a new deal between the two companies, Netflix users won’t just have to wait 56 days to rent Warner Bros. movies on DVD. They’ll have to wait 28 days to add the movies to their queues.

From Marco’s point of view this will not have the desired effect, and I certainly agree with him. In his own words:

If I’m adding a movie to my Netflix queue, I’ve already decided not to buy the DVD. I’m adding it because it looks mildly interesting and I’d like to watch it sometime. If I can’t add it to Netflix, I’ll just forget about it and probably never see it.

We find a clear parallel in the music business. There are plenty of examples of specific releases being kept off of certain download or streaming services for ideological reasons or perceived business advantages. Kid Rock famously doesn’t allow his music on iTunes. Our friend Ingrid Michaelson decided against making her new album available on Rdio and Spotify, in favor of pursuing physical and digital sales only. That’s their prerogative and in the case of Ingrid I see the value there, so more power to them for being in charge of their own destiny.

In the short run, this strategy will indeed likely lead to more income related to direct music sales. However, in the long run I think it will hamper an artist’s growth in terms of audience and ticket sales. If future fans do not have the opportunity to listen to the music in their preferred place, and trust me streaming destinations will race to dominance in the next three years, then future fans will not listen and never become fans. Unrealized potential.

Anecdotally I have come across an increasing number of people that, upon discovery of a new album’s absence from Rdio, just shrug and move onto to the gazillion other new releases. The enormous amount of new and old music available make it so that the perceived importance of consuming a new album, and doing so upon release, is quite a bit more elastic than it use to be.

The existing fans will be there for you. They’ll want your new album on the day of release and possibly in multiple formats or deluxe editions. For the casual fans or new music seekers, it’s very different. If it’s convenient to them, they may end up listening. If not, they’ll forget and move on. The way we handle this for new Family Records releases is that we do a soft release through our own store to our existing fanbase a few weeks in advance of the release going up on iTunes and the streaming services. Later there is a release for press and third party retailers, which then serves to further grow our audience and tap into those markets. This helps those who want to support our artist the most by giving them an option that gives them very early access, with additional content only available to them, and the knowledge that more of their dollar goes to the artists than on iTunes or any other service (by a lot).

This is not much different at all from what Marco described. Some movies we’ll want to see badly and go to the theatre for to support, some we might have an interest in and add to our queue for later, and the rest we may one day catch on cable tv or never at all. Currently there is still a value in doing a phased release that serves super fans first with the higher income releases, but it’s absolutely absurd to do what Warner is doing now by handicapping people’s ability to add movies to their queue for later viewing. By choosing to by-pass the second level consumer, you land your product square in the middle of the long-tail of “maybe one day” consumers, which more often than not means forfeiting income in the long run. I propose a simple rule of thumb: Help your customer consume your quality product. Make it easier, not harder. If you’re not thinking of helping your customer, and instead focus on controlling their consumption behavior or even fighting them, you just lost.

Related Reading:

• The Importance Of Free Music (Or Give ‘Em A Taste First) (read)
• The Benefits Of Streaming (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb) (read)
• The New Way Of Consuming Music (Or A Dollar Less To Rihanna Means A Dollar More To Tegan And Sara) (read)
• Fans Would Love To Pay For Music(Or The Tale Of The Reluctant Pirate) (read)

Below is an excellent quote from an interview that Esquire did with Ricky Gervais in this month’s issue. I propose we combine his point of view with that of Alec’s character, and turn it into a new ABC. Always Be Creating. Whether it’s a song, an amazing short story, a bunch of code, a photo, a meal, or a design for a new bicycle. Strive to affect the world positively by creating something great. A sex tape doesn’t count.

The answer to this question is the fundamental reason that I chose to work in music instead of the more obvious and direct result of the path I was on in terms of my education and location. It’s the reason that I gladly accepted that my monthly income would be much lower than if I would’ve walked the path most traveled, but it’s also the reason that I wake up excited to work every day. It’s both what got me here and what keeps me going.

Rachel: “So why music for you?”
Wesley: “Because at its best, music can reveal truth and beauty like very few other things can, and it can improve lives on a relatively large scale.”

However much that may sound like an overly idealistic sound bite to some, this is genuinely what is at the core of what we’re trying to achieve at Family Records. Our mission is to positively impact the lives of as many people as possible through music, and we see it working just like that on a modest level right now as we try to grow to a high level in the future.

Now, make no mistake. Even if we’re idealist in our view on how music can impact people for the better, we are by no means a non-profit. We’re a for-profit with a social mission. We’re very much a company that operates with the idea that the more revenue we bring in, the better positioned we will be to improve more and more lives as we go, our artist’s as well as our audience and our own. We use everything at our disposal to make this happen, grow and impact the people we encounter and work with positively. We operate very much along the lines of the lean start-up movement, which is somewhat of an exception in the music business, but one we’re very happy to be spearheading for others to see and learn from while we learn ourselves. I’ll be sharing more about the ways we try to accomplish things at Family, and share some business processes and techniques in the future. If there’s anything specific you’d like to hear about please do let me know in the comments. Speaking of comments,  I’d love to hear your own answer to Rachel’s question: “So why music for you?”, whether you’re an artist, fan or (aspiring) music biz person of sorts.

Singer-songwriter David Gray has a few great insights when it comes to motivation and the emotional roller-coaster ride that follows success:

“What helped me is that I’d been making music for a while when the success came,” he says over the phone from Italy, where he is on holiday with his family. “I could handle it better. But the period after the success is always very difficult. If Radio 1 or Radio 2 don’t playlist your record, it has a profound impact on your sales. When the BBC decided to play Babylon, all hell broke loose, but if you don’t keep that up then you end up back in the Borderline – and when you’ve got used to the Hammersmith Apollo, that can be very depressing.”

“[...] it’s amazingly exhilarating,” he says with a laugh. “But success like that blows your compass completely, it’s so heavy, so all-enveloping. You do begin to think that perhaps you are God’s gift. I spent three years touring White Ladder, but when the festivals and the champagne and the private planes suddenly stop, when reality kicks in again, the shock is numbing.”

An artist has to be an incredibly strong and steady soul to be able to deal with going from being a no-name to everyone blowing smoke up your butt and treating you like a famous person. Do not underestimate how difficult it can be to keep grounded and focused when you’re pulled in different directions by different people, all interested in a piece of you. There’s a great quote from an XXL Mag interview with the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA on the period in which he created the group’s seminal debut album, and two of the first Wu solo albums that followed by Raekwon and GZA, also venerable classics:

The only two albums I did with nobody f*cking with me was [Only Built 4 Cuban] Linx [by Raekwon] and Liquid Swords [by GZA]. I was on a mission. To make all those early albums took three and a half years of my life. I didn’t come outside, didn’t have too many girl relations, didn’t even enjoy the shit. I just stayed in the basement. Hours and hours and days and days. Turkey burgers and bluntes. I didn’t know if it was working. But nobody could hear or say nothing, no comments, no touching the board when I leave. Everything was just how I wanted it. (full article here)

Fully undistracted, focused on the work itself, RZA created a bunch of classic albums in his Staten Island basement. That was the mentality. No partying, no opportunity for others to distract him with fancy parties or crazy thoughts and changes. Later of course RZA moved to LA and the period of Wu dominance, creatively, ended a few years later. But he’ll always have the legacy he built in his basement and he can coast on this forever more. This is not to say you can’t have fun while you’re putting in all the hard work of touring, song-writing and more. Just that ones focus and motivation has to be right. Everything in moderation.

Getting back to the Guardian article, the author shares some interesting comment on Welsh singer Duffy’s experience after becoming a huge success with her first album:

“Duffy is an interesting case,” a music industry lawyer says, “because her story applies to a lot of artists. Buoyed by success, they immediately think, ‘Why am I giving 6% of record royalties, a third of my publishing and a 20% management commission to other people? I am a genius! I will do it myself!’ [Duffy parted company with her manager, Rough Trade's Jeanette Lee, and with Bernard Butler who produced Rockferry, and co-wrote and played on much of it] And then make a bad record without any guidance from professionals. And then they wonder why it’s all gone wrong.”

An artist’s personality, attitude and work ethic is so key to their success. It takes true talent to get there in the first place, but it takes the right personality to stay there for a long time. It takes the right personality to resist all the people that will start whispering things into your ear once they see your successes. People will try to poach you, convince you they can do better, or make it all go faster. And if it’s not others, then it might be the artist themselves, like in the case of Duffy above. I feel very fortunate to only work and have worked with people in the past that I feel have the right attitude to accompany their amazing talents so that when they get to a bigger level of success and grow into national and internationally successful artists they will be able to stick around. That being said,  it’s time for me to get to the office and help make that happen with our amazing team by putting in another day of hard work!

Related Reading:

• It’s Not Always The Major Label’s Fault (Or Artist’s Motivation) (read)

Seth writes:

“Some things are bought–like bottled water, airplane tickets and chewing gum. The vendor sets up shop and then waits, patiently, for someone to come along and decide to buy.

Other things are sold–like cars, placement of advertising in magazines and life insurance. If no salesperson is present, if no pitch is made, nothing happens.” – Seth Godin

Not even the biggest stars in music can rely on being in the first category anymore. Not with concert tickets and not with album sales. There is simply too much new music out there, and too much competing entertainment in general. To be able to cut through the noise the quality of the music isn’t enough anymore. Marketing is just as important and needs to be integrated into a release from the start. Know your audience, know how to speak to them, and make them part of your process.

If there’s a new and lasting credo from the Big Shakeout, it’s this: people will continue to pay for quality. They will be less and less inclined, however, to pay for bullshit. - A. Bourdain

This is the new axiom of being a product-based company in the new age of engaged and empowered customers. Interestingly it was also the old axiom. We’re about to exit the short period between the old and the new. The period where mass media allowed for genius marketeers to sell “bullshit” by the boatload. This period will be over soon, and in many ways it already is. Enjoy and please continue to push companies to see its truth reflected in their bank accounts.

Related Reading:

• What If Danny Meyer Worked In The Music Business? (read)
• Hospitality In The Music Business (read)

Gotye is based in Australia and when the album came out, it was exclusively released there. When I checked for it on US-only streaming service Rdio, I found nothing. But I knew it was out there. I checked on my European Spotify account and my iTunes US, and again found nothing. But I knew it was out there. There was no clarity on a US release date and the whole situation was driving me crazy. You can probably guess how I ended up satisfying my craving for the full album, and how my evangelizing failed to have the positive effect on my friends that were interested but not quite as motivated as myself to jump through some hoops and dig up the album. Lets call this experience a set of “lost transactions”.

There is a world of lost transactions out there. In part, due to artificial market separation and distribution delays based on geography, and in part because of release inefficiencies per distribution channel. The latter is most glaring in the world of movies, which often still operates with different release dates per market. I stumbled upon “I Love You Phillip Morris” on iTunes UK in early 2010 while traveling, but wasn’t allowed to buy it on my iTunes US account until early 2011. That seems silly. The movie industry also distinguishes between distribution channels and offers extended periods of exclusivity to those channels perceived to lead to greater value (mostly movie theaters). Fred Wilson wrote about a frustrating experience in his aptly title post “Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model“. A choice quote:

“Film executives [...] insist that they need their windows. They argue they need to manage access to their films to extract every last dollar from the market. That just doesn’t make sense to me. If they went direct to their customers, offered their films at a reasonable price (say $5/view net to them), and if they made their films available day one everywhere in the world, I can’t see how they wouldn’t make more money.”

I subscribe to this point of view, both for movies and other forms of digital entertainment including music. Beyond the fact that many execs are rusted into place and unwilling to change, the challenge here lies in the fact that part of the food chain will strongly opposed this idea as they stand to lose a lot of money. This lobby is so strong that they have come very close to pushing a bill through congress that would potentially break the internet and limit freedom of speech. You better believe if they go that far to “fight piracy”, they will protect their windows of exclusivity with just as much vigor.

If you take away the window of exclusivity, movie theaters will be exposed for what they have become: a mostly mediocre entertainment experience. The window of exclusivity = the emperor’s clothes. Without it theaters would have a much harder time pulling the crowds necessary to maintain their levels of income. Most mainstream theaters no longer provide a superior experience to watching a movie in your home on a big flat screen. Aside from semi-relevant technology** like 3D, the only thing that really keeps them in business is exclusivity. Sure, people also go to a theater to be part of a group experience, and because some movies look much better on a really big screen, but in the big picture*** it’s mostly because of an antiquated set of rules and not because theaters provide an undeniably awesome service we cannot wait to consume.^ That’s when you know you’re in trouble.

As a business and technology geek  I experience lost transactions, even when they save me money,  as ugly and inelegant happenstances caused by the failure to provide a quality experience around content that I am eager to pay for. When we fail as companies to provide these quality experiences we turn fans into reluctant pirates, and we lose their support. I hope that the ever-louder voice of the consumer can push us along to accept that we now live in a single market world when it comes to digital entertainment. It’s pretty great actually, and we should take advantage of it rather than fight it.

* (I actually reached out to his management to see about a US release on Family Records, but they had it locked in already.)
^ Let me emphasize I am talking about most mainstream theaters, and that there are also some great independents out there that provide a much better experience like the Alamo Draft House chain in Austin (TX) and Nitehawk in Brooklyn (NY).
** Semi-relevant because it only really makes sense for a certain type of movie.
*** Get it?

Related Reading:

• “The Importance Of Free Music (Or Give ‘Em A Taste First)” (read)
• The Incumbent Almost Always Loses (Or Earning Your Spot) (read)
• Fans Would Love To Pay For Music (Or The Tale Of The Reluctant Pirate) (read)

• It’s Not Always The Major Label’s Fault (Or Artist’s Motivation) (read)
• The Difference Between A Means And An End (Or Don’t Take Shortcuts) ( (read)