Discipline

Being an artist, and even more so, being a solo artist makes you entrepreneur. I know many musicians who would be squeamish of the term, or it would make them run a mile straight away. It’s actually funny how things have changed since I first started to play in my first band. I think even back then, without me acknowledging it, I had a mind geared up for this stuff. I organized school tours, when we were too young to play in the bars. The band I played with back then recorded a cassette tape, and got it duplicated. I know a lot of people like to moan how things where better back in the old days. Well… All of the above would have been in the early nineties, which still was the golden time of record labels and album sales. And let me tell you this, the idea of getting signed back then was a dream… nothing more. The chances of local rock band in Finland making it self known to a major label? Well, let’s just say winning a lotto was probably a bigger chance. So if you wanted to play shows, tour, record, guess what? You had to do it your self! I don’t want to get too reminiscent here, but you didn’t have access to internet and google back then, so information was much harder to come by. My first lessons on music business were from a few books in the city library. But I was hungry for information! And that’s one thing I am glad I never lost 😀

Now twenty years has passed, and the music business has gone through so much change. And you know what? I am glad that I went through what I did in the past. Now that all this information is provided to us, the hardest task is filtering it. No wait, actually the hardest task is the same I had to deal with twenty years ago. It’s discipline! You still need to get off your back side and do it. No matter what you might think, back then the only person to do anything for us was us, and still is. People say to me all the time “I wish I was as disciplined as you are”. When I hear this, all I can do is smile. I love what I do, so why would I not get up early in the morning and organise my day, so that I had as much time to dedicate to my music, the promotion of my career, song writing, recording… Why would I stay in my bed until 10am? or even later? I play every weekend nights, so on Saturday and Sunday I do allow my self lazy mornings.

If you have read my blog posts in the past, you know I have said this before and I will say this time and time again: No one will do it for you! But the good news is you can do it your self. It is not rocket science, it is music business, yes BUSINESS! So little bit of discipline goes a long way. And get organised 😉 But more on that later. Now go and kick some (music business) ass, you can do it!

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get two of his free songs go HERE and click Download