Shifting Your Music Into a Career: The Meet Up Analysis
Man, it feels extremely good to write a blog again. I think it’s been about a year since I wrote a blog or something along the lines, but I am back now haha. If you don’t know who I am, my name is Anthony Obas, author of Shifting Your Music Into a Career Volume 1. Shifting Your Music into a Career Volume 1 gives self-releasing artists insights, tips, and advice on how they can turn their part-time music career into full time sustainable career. These insights are based on personal observations, case studies, and music data from all over the music industry. The goal of the book is for any artist or even brand inside the music industry to gain a little bit more knowledge within the industry. Today, my goal is to apply some of these concepts from the book such as The Performance Effect , The Music and Performance Rubric, and Mirror, Mirror of an Artist to the live performances I saw at The Meet Up on Sunday, an annual networking event that is curated by Guided by Obas, Underscore LLC, and Children of the Summer. If you have the book, this should be relatively easy to follow. If you don’t , I hope to make you a fan of the book . So let’s have fun.
Before we get into the actual dissection of the performances, let’s contextualize the terms I mentioned before.
Mirror, Mirror of an Artist: The essential idea behind this term is that a brand or an artist image should be a direct reflection of influences from where the artist or brand come from, what they listen to, who they buy their products from, etc. If one takes their influences and connect it to who they want to be, then one should be able to distinguish themselves among peers creating that brand image.
The Music and Performance Rubric: You can’t find this on Billboard or DJ Booth, so don’t try to find it. Both The Music Rubric and The Performance Rubric is a way to analyze what went well for an artist and what can be improved for an artist. We look at audience engagement, stage presence, fashion, lyricism, and many more to gain a full understanding of these rubrics. If an artist fulfills the categories of these rubric during their performance, then the performance effect should happen right after the performance.
The Performance Effect: Very simple equation here. Perform well = new followers, new fans, increase in revenue generators. That’s it. You can accomplish this through the performance and music rubric.
Again, all of this information can be found in the book with more details. Now, we need to use these basic concepts to dissect the performances from The Meet Up!
The live performance section of The Meet Up featured 7 artists from very diverse backgrounds. These artists utilized the various concepts from the book to enhance their music career. How? Let me show you!
Clark Wayne: Clark Wayne is a very passionate artist. The topics he was getting across to his audience were battling toxic relationships, overcoming mental illnesses, and enjoying life . These were topics that the crowd was also passionate about. Despite some technical difficulties that occurred, Clark Wayne maintained his composure and was able to continue to engage with his audience create a memorable experience.
Shah Leezy: Shah Leezy was a shocker for me! I honestly didn’t expect so much energy from him. The way he utilized the stage, expressed his lyricism, and engaged with the crowd gave him an opportunity to gain new fans. People who didn’t know him were bumping and promoting him a day after the event. He hit some of the categories of the performance rubric strong, which gave him an opportunity to gain that performance effect.
Julius Caesar: In the words of DJ Spotlight Smoove, “Julius Caesar should be a songwriter”. I have been preaching it for a minute, and I am glad people saw it. You can tell that this man has a real relationship with the pen. People were able to hear the lyrics and understand references because he had a performance track. The performance track lowered the production and enable Julius Caesar to project his lyrics.
Rubay: A fan of Rubay goes, “ I wanna see the Lil Uzi Vert guy”. I start laughing, but this is the Mirror, Mirror of an Artist concept. If you know Rubay, you know he loves himself some Lil Uzi Vert. By drawing from his influence, Lil Uzi Vert, he was able to utilize auto tuning in various parts of his performances to hook the audience in and define who Rubay is.
Adriiian: Adriiian humility might be the best characteristic for his brand. He engaged with the crowd as if he was having a normal conversation. The conversation was hyped one minute and the the next minute extremely calm. By having a supportive fan base, Adriiian was able to bring himself to a level where the crowd and him were equal.
GIANNI: Gianni is so interesting to find out where the influences come from. I was trying to figure out where it comes from, but as I was listening to the music, it just sounded smooth, calm, and marketable. By creating this distinct sound, Gianni created his own image, which is perfectly fine.
True Pax: True Pax came to the set and needed to dress the part. No one except me really saw this, but True Pax was performing in his own merch. What happened subconsciously is that people recognize the brand before they could ask questions. By doing this, he was able promote his brand, R.T.D., without saying much.
This was a very intense and long blog, but it was needed. I needed to demonstrate how the book’s concepts can come to life. By analyzing each performer using the concepts, you can see how they all established their own performance effect. These concepts brought the artists one step closer to becoming a full time artist. That is the ultimate goal right there: to shift one’s part-time music career into a full-time music career! If you love the analysis, click here to purchase the book, but if not, thanks for the read!
To either relive the moment or live the moment you missed, go hit that play button below of The Meet Up 2019 Recap made by Zain Elwakil, Founder of Zulu Echo Initiative.
With love, I’ll see everyone for 2020 Meet Up! Peace