For those who don’t know me, my name is Kimmy Dickson and I am the Founder of HyperTribe. We started this platform to help music artists develop quicker, with expert advice and less of a cost than university. With knowledge comes power to avoid getting screwed over in complex business deals and give artists the knowledge to make a sustainable income from their music. I’ve experienced all of this first hand. I have been a manager, run a live events company and also still run a music studio. I have worked with hundreds of artists over the years and I took 4 years of research to find the biggest problems in the music industry and then I launched HyperTribe to solve them. During those research years the first thing I did was speak to 100 artists to find out, what their biggest pain points were. Some artists came up with predictable, but important statements and other answers that I didn’t even consider to be a problem.
But the most insightful understanding of what artists needed, came from one question. “How well do you think you understand the music industry?” The answer to this would vary greatly all depending on how long the artist had been in music or doing it professionally. 1) Those who were starting out – majority in this bracket had been doing music for 0-2 years and the majority would say they knew the music industry really well. Then I would follow up with ‘Can you tell me what a manager does and how much they should get paid?’ and they wouldn’t be able to answer the question. Most would come up with “they are kind of like a PA right? They do your social media”. This was not to shame them in any way, I was just trying to confirm that they really understood what I was asking. 2) Those who were emerging – the majority of artists that were in this bracket had been doing music for 3 to 5 years and had struggled a little with confidence. I would ask them the same question but their reply would be completely different. It was almost as if in these few years they realised how complex the music industry is and how fast it moves. Their answer, “I actually don’t know it well enough”. Of course there were a whole host of answers to this question but there was an undeniable correlation between experience and knowledge. Less experience = falsehood of knowing the complexities of the music industry More experience = realisations of the complexities of the music industry I cannot stress how important it is to know the music industry, learn your industry, obsess over your industry, so that you can play game the way you want to and not by other people who can take advantage of your ignorance. Any thoughts on this feel free to leave a comment. If you’d like to be an artist that knows the music industry basics and beyond, enrol on our Incubator Course under ‘Courses’ on our platform.