Unwelcome & Unsolicited Advice

802 artists are always complaining, but that's natural: artists everywhere are always complaining. Because they're fucked. So completely fucked that it's actually difficult to grasp the extent of it all at once, so their careers are long, lurching journeys of discovery, with shitty new revelations every week. It's a wonderful life.

There are better uses of your time available, but it's not irrational to complain. You're right. Let's start there, then take a minute or three to examine just how right you are.

One of the most frequent complaints is about platforms and exposure. There are not enough outlets, not enough spotlights, not enough opportunities for local artists to get attention and reach listeners. This is usually framed as a bias -- framed as Vermont being more friendly to other genres, like rock.

So it's weird that rock artists in Vermont all have the exact same complaints, right? Hell, even folk singers & heavy metal heads go through the exact same speech that rappers do about how unfriendly Vermont is to the music they love. I have heard it a hundred times in a dozen bars.

And on that much, they're all simply wrong, just like you.

You're not fucked because Vermont is a small rural state with less than a million people. You're fucked because the entire English speaking world has been shrunk into a single city, thanks to the same smartphone you're using to bitch about Burlington on Facebook.

Music consumption is completely dominated by global corporations, more than ever before. There are great music reviews in the Times Argus, but nobody is checking the Times Argus for music recommendations.

Local music consumers don't care about local music creators because they are saturated in other choices, every second of every day. They're paying Swedish nerds to feed them corporate product through their phones -- on a platform where sixty thousand new songs are uploaded every twenty four hours. Your potential fans are discovering new music through video games and TV shows and movies that are created by multi-billion dollar conglomerates.

So let's reframe the problem here: any Vermont artist in any genre is competing with the entire entertainment industry -- that's your competition, not 99 Neighbors or Street Religion. If you think your struggle is against other local artists, you have yet to really grapple with how fucked you are. Start doing that soon.

The internet didn't democratize the music business, it added billions of cheap seats in the back of the exact same big arena the music business has always been. There is only so much room on that big stage, just like there is only so much room in the NBA. And there are more and more people competing for those spots every year.

Getting into the NBA is almost impossible. Even if you have natural genetic talent, you have to work your ass off for a decade straight to even have a chance. Becoming a rapper, though? You're literally getting paid just to talk. (And as the mumble rap renaissance has proven, you don't even have to be particularly good at talking.)

The downside of having so many aspiring rappers is that the more popular that dream becomes, the more your product is getting devalued, even as it gets harder for you to get attention. When demand stays flat and supply skyrockets, prices drop.

The same is true for those of you who make beats, perhaps even more so. Just Blaze can still secure big checks for placements, but the gap between the big names and the $5 exclusives on Soundcloud is vast and unforgiving.

This is pretty grim stuff, but it's not all garbage and tears out here, bud. True, the "musical middle class" got wiped out just like the actual middle class did. Yet if you can get someone's attention and impress them with your work, it is easier than ever to sell them music, immediately, anywhere in the world.

Not only is this good news, it also leads us directly to the second most common complaint: there's something wrong with the 802 scene. On that much, almost everyone agrees, but from there, details get fuzzy. Some say the scene is too welcoming, with no real standards or competition, some say the scene is too undeveloped, others insist the scene is an insular clique of mean girls with mics.

Given the cold cruel realities of human behavior and the intergroup dynamics of a primate species who evolved through warfare and genocide, you have to admit, the "insular clique" argument makes for an easy sell.

Especially when you factor in that competition for limited resources. This leads to the classic "crab in a bucket" dynamic, something any aspiring anthropologist can witness for themselves on the Vermont Hip Hop Artists Collective group on Facebook, any given week.

Now, this has never gone over well for me, in person or over email, but I'd like to propose a different frame. Yes, the Vermont hip hop scene, like any other in this sweet, sad world, is a bunch of overlapping and often in-fighting cliques. But that's normal. There's nothing wrong with them. There is something wrong with you.

After all, why are you wasting your time seeking validation from your competition? Think about that. You don't need anything from those artists. If you want to improve your music, talk to the hip hop fans you know and ask them for feedback. If you want to get gigs, talk directly to venues and promoters. If you want to help improve the scene, create your own platforms, book your own shows, and work with the audience, not the artists, to determine what they want.

You don't need props from local artists, you just want it. That's insecurity, and it's counterproductive. You don't need "support," you need fans who are willing to pay money for your music and tickets to your shows. And even as stylistically diverse as the 802 is (and it really is) in the long run, most of the artists you're going to vibe with, and benefit from working with, are far away from these Green Mountains.

Now, it's undeniably true that few artists can go it alone and get very far. Any success story in our marginal history up here in Vermont was a team effort. But please note, carefully, that almost none of those teams were composed of other artists who were also trying to make their own careers. Sure, you can get a supergroup or a collective going -- and hell, you probably should, since that's a winning play -- but the actual team that will drive your success won't be other artists.

They're manager types who will focus on the business, and they generally start as fans who believe in you. They're graphic designers or video visionaries who see a mutual benefit in helping to develop your brand and get more eyeballs on their product. They're promoters who recognize your ability to show up on time, every time, and deliver the goods, so they help you keep getting opportunities.

This has been a bleak read, but despite all that, right now, you are in a moment of unprecedented opportunity. This Fall is likely gonna be a hot mess of panic and cancellations again, sure, but when the world has ground to a halt, it's eventually, inevitably going to start back up again. Whenever the powers that be decide COVID is something they can and must live with, the demand for entertainment is going to be unprecedented, a global block party that lasts for years.

Now is the time to prep for that. Keep that Big Picture in the forefront of your mind instead of worrying about anything local outside of the local connections that will help you get there. This is true for producers, too: getting a tight live set together is just as much of an asset for your career as getting a placement on the next Big Rapper Chungus album.

This weird limbo we're living in is also a great opportunity to workshop and hone your live set. You can construct a stage in your room, work out a short playlist, record that puppy until you nail it, and get eager eyeballs on that product all winter long. The feedback loop of perpetual improvement should never stop.

There is also marginally good news on the Big Picture front: being an "influencer" has become a much more popular aspiration for young kids than being a “rapper,” yet at the same time, hip hop's 20% stranglehold on music consumption has held steady. That means your statistically impossible chances of making a living off this have eased up a little bit because there are fewer malleable & photogenic adolescents lined up to get involved and take your spot.

So sure, things are looking grim, but all that just washes out into new opportunities for you. And the single biggest factor in your success accomplishing those goals, is you. Not them.

And if you think this entire podunk essay has just been a cheap bait and switch to tell you, once again, to stop complaining and keep working, well, you're completely right. Nailed it, bud. See? You're getting smarter every day! Go forth and conquer.