NHT Blog

The National Football League’s 2021 preseason got underway this past weekend.  Technically you could say it was the week before, as the annual Hall of Fame game was played.  But all teams were in action starting with games last Thursday night and running through this weekend that we just finished.

In the music business there is an ongoing struggle to get fans to purchase downloads, if not CDs (remember those things?), instead of just streaming songs on platforms that pay only a fraction of a penny to the artist each time a listener clicks Play.  This is nothing new and it’s a battle that indie artists fight constantly.

“The best place to start any transformation is education,” said Thad Bullard (a.k.a. Titus O’Neil of WWE fame). Artists often look outside the box for inspiration for lyrics or melody, but what about for transformation of their craft or career?

There’s an expression I heard years and years ago that I really liked and have held onto all this time.  “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”  It kind of goes hand-in-hand with treating other people the way you’d want to be treated.  Those both also play into what I wrote about on this site last week.

Last night I returned home from Nashville where never more was it so evident that we all need to embrace the message that we seem to have been given over the last year-and-a-half.  You’ve heard the expression before about ‘meeting people where they are.’  While I’m a real networker, it doesn’t necessarily have to be taken in its literal sense, meaning, traveling to wherever someone is.  However, if the pandemic has taught us nothing else, it’s that life is precious, and you don’t know what someone is going through.  So always lead with kindness (which, sadly, we shouldn’t have had to endure these trying times to learn).

So many people want to get interviewed today.  People have a business, a product, or a service that they want to get the word out about, and they know that being a guest on a TV show, a radio show, a podcast, and other media is a great method for promoting.  They are singers and musicians, actors, entrepreneurs, authors, inventors, comedians, spokespeople/experts, podcasters, and more.  But too many of them are going about it the wrong way and, as a result, are wasting a lot of valuable time.

I know there’s going to be pushback on this – perhaps a lot – but it’s overdue to be pointed out.  Sure, the timing feels awkward since yesterday was Independence Day here in the U.S.  But maybe that makes it even more relevant that this finally gets addressed.

As cryptocurrency has evolved, it has become clear that it has the potential to drastically change a number of different industries. One that is often overlooked, however, is entertainment. Cryptocurrency is more commonly analyzed with regard to its potential effect on international trade, investment markets, and even banking.

So, you’re deciding whether you should record your next music project all by yourself at home or head to a professional recording studio. Cost is usually one of the biggest factors in making that decision for most artists, but that is just one of the factors that plays a part in how your project turns out.

In last week’s blog I referred to something I was working on that I’d hoped to upload to the Now Hear This official YouTube channel the next day.  Oops.  I missed by four days.