It's High Time the Music Business Got Obsessed With People Metrics

On my journey to now, through working with artists at different levels, I’ve come to understand that being successful is much more about the mindset and the 'heartset' of the individuals than it is about the talent.

I would go as far as to say that the talent component only equates to 20% of what is required to be successful.

This belief has been compounded by the work I have done to connect with artists through the sale of my book ‘Zero to Record Breaker’, which has seen me personally undertake over 5,000 one-to-one video calls with artists (and people who work with artists).

I've come to a place where I now readily talk about mindset and heartset components as being 'People Metrics' and so as you read ahead, I'll be referencing this term extensively.

The music industry is (and always has been) incredibly focused on vanity metrics, to the point where there is little to no consideration of the artist’s ‘People Metrics’. Today artists will get signed because they had a viral moment on TikTok, who, from a 'People Metrics' perspective are not ready to truly embark on building a career and making the biggest possible impact with the art they create.

This approach, alongside the short-term perspective of the music business and overall lack of care towards 'People Metrics', leads to a situation where, figuratively speaking, the wheels fall off the bus at some point.

What it means in real terms is that the artist has had a breakdown.

Such a breakdown will have manifested itself physically and mentally, oftentimes meaning the artist can no longer continue or they need an extensive break - which leads to a massive drop in their overall momentum, making it hard or sometimes impossible to recover.

The traditional music business doesn't care much about this, because the exploitative nature of their business model, means that they always have plenty of other artists who will make up for artists who drop off the radar.

We unfortunately still live in a world where the mention of the word 'self-development' are often met with a negative reaction; be it through a lack of belief that it's important or worse that it's a sign of weakness if you admit that you need to spend time on your 'self-development'.

Further, the music business is by design, driven by a culture of 'ego control', meaning that artists and indeed everyone who works within the business are constantly subjected to situations that create vulnerability and feed into the human instinct of feeling important.

This culture is powerful for the big machine because it creates the perfect recipe for exploitation.

Some great initiatives are happening within the music business toward trying to improve the situation and it's fantastic to see people like Babyshambles drummer and artist Adam Ficek work to tackle the problem head-on.

However, most of these initiatives are focused primarily on tackling the symptoms and like with many things within the music business, I believe that trying to change a system and culture, that simply does not want to change, is fighting a losing battle.