Debra Russell: Success Coaching

If you missed today’s #musicbiz tweetchat – here’s the conversation (first name is their twitter handle):
artistsedge Hey everybody! Welcome 2 tweetchat! http://status.twitter.com says they’re working on stuff today. Hopefully we’ll be ok #musicbiz
artistsedge How do you, as an artist, engage with your fans? What creative things are you doing? #musicbiz

I’ve started doing a weekly tweetchat on Thursdays at my lunch time. We chat about the music business and use the #musicbiz trending topic and the tweetchat.com application to track it. You can get instructions on how to join us at the Events Page. Join the conversation next Thursday and every Thursday that I’m not on the road traveling – at 12:00PM PT.

Here’s a recap of the conversation. The first name is who is speaking:

This is a post I put up on the FAR-West list-serve (Folk Alliance Region-West).  It got a fair bit of reaction and so I thought I’d share it with you. Warning – a bit of a rant here… And I expect I’ll be flamed, but that’s just fine with me, because one of my jobs [...]

Got behind in my blogging again – here are the two lessons from American Idol – Top 7. In Idol 7 – Alicia Keys was the Mentor and she talked about how she intended to help the contestants find out what they’re made of. And that “Idol Gives Back” will help them discover what their character is and how to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

This was a very juicy week for Lessons from American Idol!

The first 2 lessons were pretty clearly expressed by Usher in his role as mentor. I have to say, I think Usher is my favorite American Idol Mentor so far! He wasn’t just interested in the arrangement, he really gave the Contestants constructive and immediately applicable lessons for their performance as well.

Are you accomplishing all you want to? Many people make the mistake of thinking that Time Management is about cramming more stuff into your already full to overwhelming life.

And so you resist creating your time management systems. Because you already feel so burned out and overwhelmed you just want to cry thinking about doing more. Does this sound like you?

Or perhaps you think, “I’ve tried a million things and nothing works for me – I’m hopeless!” Or, “Those time management systems aren’t for me, I’m too artistic.” Or, “If I really get myself systematized I’ll loose all my creativity and spontaneity.”

In last week’s episodes, I felt there were 2 themes worth exploring. The first has to do with the choices the Contestants were making – and you’re making as an artist whenever you create.

The format of American Idol requires artists to create cover versions of other people’s music. This is only slightly artificial as many independent artists perform songs written by someone else. And so, the ability to take a song written by someone else and make it your own is a critical skill for your success in the music industry.