MADE

I was looking at music sales for the week of 1/3/10. Susan Boyle’s “I Dreamed a Dream” was on its sixth week and sold 3, 103, 828 copies. Mega-selling records like this are becoming an anomaly, but I think there’ll continue to be a place for them in our culture because people still like a star.

Susan Boyle is an interesting case because people spend money on her despite the fact that she’s ugly and doesn’t have any tricks up her sleeve. The record era turned quirkiness into a marketing asset. But that hasn’t worked too well in the long run. The problem with getting people to buy into your musical brand because of your quirky and bombastic style is that it tends to have a short shelf life. Lady Gaga is at number two behind Susan Boyle with over 2 million albums sold, but I don’t think she’s going to be around in 2 or 3 years. Her attraction is based far too heavily on style.

I think that one of the reasons style has such a short shelf life in the music business is because fans grow up and move on to adopt more serious attitudes. But because musical taste is so subjective, new young fans won’t necessarily catch on to you like your old fans. The musical acts with the longest and most lucrative careers tend to have the humblest personas. Norah Jones has sold over 36 million albums. Sade has sold over 50 million and her career has spanned over two decades.

One of the reasons humility produces such long music careers is that humility is often a byproduct of a serious mind and a sense of purpose. It’s an adult manifestation. And since adulthood is such a long phase of our lives, if you can appeal to loyal groups of adult fans, your career can last a long time.

Adults will always have to deal with with things like love, temptation, loss, faith and struggle. These are the things that make life what it is. Sade has made a lucrative career off of love. It never gets old. She comes across as humble because love and other adult issues are ordinary and play out over such long periods of time…lifetimes. And the thing about humility is that you can’t fake it. That’s why it’s so hard to be a Sade or a Norah Jones.

There’s another more direct reason why it pays to be humble. People don’t like people who aren’t humble as much as they like people who are. The reason for this is that people don’t like being reminded that you’re better than them. The more fundamental reason for that is that adults don’t like to be reminded of what they can’t do or don’t have. One of the reasons most people grow out of hip hop music once they reach adulthood is that most newer school hip hop conveys pre-adult messages: “Look at what I have and you don’t”. It’s condescending to ordinary people who struggle in their daily lives. Nobody wants to be reminded of what they don’t have.

One real life rule of humility is to never boast about yourself. It’s a universal constant. One way to do that is to never say too much. And when you do say something, make it good. We all respect the guy who can say more with fewer words. Saying less makes you more exclusive and exclusivity is interesting because it’s not ordinary. Osama Bin Laden is a good example of someone who has mastered the art of mystique; even before the CIA went looking for him. Sade releases an album every 5-10 years. But when she releases one, people perk up.

There’s a practical lesson in all this. Let’s take Twitter, for example. I think that the most unproductive people on Twitter are the ones who tweet all day long. Not only does it distract them from doing other important things, but the more content you put out in any given period of time, the lower the average quality of it will be. Anything that’s real good takes time to make. If you tweet, say, 4 or 5 times a day as opposed to 50, people will be more apt to pay attention to you because you’re rare. That rarity makes every one of your tweets more unique. And it can work as long as your posts are good. Garbage in small quantities is just as bad as garbage in large quantities.

As long as you’re humble, act like an adult and produce quality material, you’ll do just fine.

By: Twitter Buttons