Don't do this if you want a successful music career.

[Music] hey it's andrew huang so there's something that has consumed a lot of my thoughts for most of my adult life and it's taken different forms over the years but it generally boils down to the question what more can i be doing for my music career before i had a music career i asked myself some version of that question and over the years as i've navigated so many different ways of making a living with music that has continually popped up it's like an itch that demands to be scratched even after achieving a wonderful amount of success there's still that line of questioning should i be doing something more should i be doing something different i don't think these kinds of questions are bad in and of themselves i think it's a good idea to think about what you really want to be doing and how to do it best but i will say that the period of my life and the work that i was doing that was responsible for the vast majority of my success that was a time where i wasn't asking these questions at all and i thought i would talk about that and what i learned through it because this has been one of the biggest things i've had to grapple with professionally [Music] so first we should define success for the purposes of this video i think on that ultimate deep down level anybody who's found contentment and fulfillment with where they're at is the most successful of all i hope we can all get there we're not talking about that this video is about how to get money so for success success the way society says you're successful uh here's the thing this is what i've learned the hard way multiple times over many many years if you want the most possible success you have to have the most possible focus so to have the most possible focus how many things can you focus on one if you're trying to make the best possible cooking tutorials but you're also reupholstering a bunch of furniture i'm sorry but your cooking tutorials are just going to be better if you never touch that furniture again you can't dabble in a bunch of things you can't be inconsistent you need to have the strongest possible brand and a repeatable product now i don't worry about this so much anymore i no longer have a single all-consuming focus at work i'm no longer prioritizing numbers based success you know money views followers and i'll talk more about that later but at this time in my life that i mentioned where i wasn't questioning myself career-wise at all and i was doing the best i had ever done here's what was going on i had made a decision i had decided that growing my youtube channel would be my one and only professional goal everything i worked on had to serve that goal and i made a giant spreadsheet of all my video ideas and i prioritized them based on which ones i thought would be the most popular and which ones i thought would be the fastest to produce i also decided on a schedule for myself of two videos per week every monday and every thursday this was my best estimate of what i thought i could commit to and i did over the next year and a half i think i only missed three or four upload days it was a new video every monday every thursday and over that year and a half this channel did the best it's ever done i grew by over a million subscribers i think at the height of it i was getting eight million views per month and i wasn't questioning if i should be doing more because i had already decided how much i'd be doing two videos a week and i wasn't questioning if i should be doing anything differently because it was just what's the best thing for the channel i'll do that i had that list of video ideas that i was continually adding to so i always had the next thing to do it was just which of these can i get done next week the most interesting part about it for me though is that i felt like i had found a hack around this issue of branding and consistency [Music] i already took everything out of the box i just thought this would make the video more exciting going to take a quick break here for a sponsored segment this is the lct 1040 a new microphone from luit who reached out recently and asked if i'd be interested to share about it which after learning about it i've been pretty excited about because it's a microphone with a lot of really unique and innovative features so this is a tube mic look at that beautiful tube but it's also a fet mic it's like several different premium mics rolled into one because you can get the clean precision of a fat circuit if you want or you can choose between a variety of more characterful tube responses and you can even blend between the tube and the fet and you can output from both circuits at once so this controller that it comes with is where that happens and on here you can also control all the settings that are normally found on the mic itself like the low roll-off attenuation polar pattern so whoever's engineering can have this with them in the sweet spot listening auditioning these adjustments in real time rather than having to run back and forth between the mic and here's a little detail that i really love the pop shield is magnetic when i first pulled this out of the case i wasn't sure how it would attach so i just kind of held it near the microphone and it snapped into place and i was delighted why did this ever become a thing it's a beautiful mic you're hearing it on all the music in this video and some folks have posted really comprehensive tests between the different settings and what they sound like if you're interested in nerding out about that so thank you lewitt their link is in the description [Music] knowing that you'll never [Music] man [Music] now beyond just showing the mic there's a reason i've been including all these music making vignettes in this video and it comes back to that idea of branding and consistency when i was growing up i fell in love with every new type of music i discovered and i just wanted to absorb as much of it as possible whether it was beethoven or mariah carey or miles davis or aphex twins and so in my own creative process i kind of cemented this attitude of being the no genre guy or the any genre guy and eventually i would actually set my releases so that if i was working on two things that sounded similar i would deliberately make sure to release something completely different in between them i was just trying so hard to break that notion of an artist needing to have a sound or a brand terrible idea it was terrible back then and it's still terrible now as i continue to do it although i'll talk about that hack that i found in just a moment focus doesn't only apply to your work because it'll make your work the best that it can be it also applies because it focuses your output because like it or not branding is half the game if you want people to get on board with what you're doing you need to set an expectation and then you need to meet or exceed that expectation and repeat that's how money and opportunities come your way because the people with money and opportunities can trust and rely on what they will get if they give that money or those opportunities to you and i heard this thing about branding once that really brought it home for me and it was that whether you like it or not you are putting a brand out into the world whatever people see you do it makes them feel a certain way it creates an expectation and that is a brand and it might be a weak brand it might be a confusing brand it might just be all over the place but that's still part of your picture now the next thing someone sees from you if it's completely different from their expectations that can register as disappointment and then they're gonna bounce editing right now uh i feel like i slightly botched that i just want to add a bit of nuance this thing that i heard was more like whether or not you're deliberate about it you're creating a brand with your actions and so you may as well be deliberate about it that i felt like was a major turning point in my thinking about it of like uh who needs branding or like why can't i just do whatever i want um yeah embrace the power of the brand so i've spent almost 20 years putting out all kinds of different music and most of that time has felt like an uphill battle it's felt like for every three fans i gain i lose two and i can accept that now it makes perfect sense if you found me when i was doing upbeat comedy songs you most likely didn't enjoy when i pivoted to folk rock if the first song you liked of mine was a political rap chances are you won't care about my new 45-minute ambient piece and pretty much my whole discography is like this almost every release is like a rug that i'm pulling out from underneath the last one all of my friends in the industry who are super successful have that focus they have the focus of work showing up every day to head towards the same goal and they have the focus of output of bringing their audience along for the ride with them rather than throwing them for a loop every time like this guy so my hack was branding myself instead of my music i was this weirdo who was always experimenting with new things in music so that was the brand i put that at the forefront come to the channel and check out the weirdo who's always experimenting with new things in music and i went all in on youtube and i had that focus of working on youtube every day two videos per week but i still got to be as all over the place as i wanted musically because everything still fit under that umbrella of having fun and experimenting with making music and so naturally my videos became much more popular than my music it was a stronger brand it had more appeal even if the music was super different from video to video even if you hated a lot of the music that i was making you knew that you could pretty much open any one of my videos and be entertained or learn something or hopefully both and i could talk about production or engineering or songwriting or i could explain a music theory concept i thought was intriguing or i could showcase some interesting new gear or i could make any kind of music that i wanted to it was all part of the andrew huang show if you're anything like me with very diverse musical interests maybe this sort of angle could work for you and you should go ahead and start that youtube channel but if you're after the kind of music career that probably comes to mind more readily when people think of music careers i can't stress enough how important that focus is don't change your sound up all the time it's going to alienate your listeners don't spread yourself over multiple endeavors spend all your free time on one thing that's the best advice i can give you you know how every once in a while mcdonald's will put a bunch of salads on their menu or even pizza and it lasts for like two weeks because that's not what most people want from mcdonald's and it hurts their bottom line to keep it available for the few people who do want it mcdonald's wants to be the most successful possible version of mcdonald's so their best move is to just keep offering hot salty garbage same thing applies in the music business maybe even the hot salty garbage party but that strong brand that single point of focus that is the path to the most possible success and this is very much do as i say and not as i do because i have never had that focus musically and then even with youtube after a couple years i got burned out and decided that i would rather be less successful than i could be if it meant i could explore and enjoy more of what i wanted to do so i don't have that intense focus anymore i have multiple career focuses focu foci i'm releasing music i've got my online class i've got flip sampler i'm collaborating with some folks on some music hardware you saw me using that thing with the open circuit board earlier in this video watch out and i'm still making youtube videos on no particular schedule obviously i have the luxury and the privilege of being able to do my career this way because of the massive foundation that i built when i was going super hard on just youtube and making this channel as big as it can be now though growing on youtube isn't a priority for me i still want to keep it going i still love making these videos i just want to make these videos and i'm generally less interested in the types of video concepts that get millions of views i'm okay being the less popular weirdo mcdonald's that has a menu of like mostly salads but also some burritos and so to bring it back i once again have that question that nags at me sometimes of what more can i do for my music career but more often now it's just what do i want to do next in my music career it's a nice place to be i would definitely wish it for any of you but i'll say it again to have the best shot at succeeding in an industry that notoriously chews people up and spits them out intense singular focus is the way to go really tames your existential dread too i miss that part of it but right now i just don't have that all-encompassing all-consuming thing that i want to do with my career and i'm still just trying to break that idea of an artist needing to have a specific sound because as much as i now have a brand or am a brand i'm still just a person who likes to make stuff 80 strokes across the river a couple hours to the top of the hill sad eyes as if they know the future [Music] seven strokes in seven years [Music] every day you're taking the pills [Music] as you've been trying to say goodbye [Music] and if i need to then i will believe in the other side [Music] hope you got something out of this video let me know what you think or if there's anything like this that you want me to cover in the future leave a comment thanks again to luit for sponsoring the lct 1040 is a beautiful microphone they're linked in the description also the moog matriarch giveaway is still happening for another couple weeks that's linked in the description too and uh yeah check it out i'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: ANDREW HUANG

Views: 823,252

Keywords: andrew huang, andrew, huang, music, musician, producer, song, canadian, canada, toronto, ontario, AndrewHuang, producing music, how to, how to make music, music producer, making music, sing, songwriting, learn music, lewitt, mic, microphone, lct, 1040, lct1040, lct 1040, tube, fet, demo, modular synth, rock, folk, beat, hip hop, instrumental, vocal, upright bass, bass, guitar, electric guitar, double bass, drums, drum kit, electronic, music industry, industry, releasing music, how to release music, genre

Id: 3dqRWCruulI

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022