Arts & Entertainment, Music, Business
Securing Your Band’s Future
Lesson time 08:35 min
Musicians often feel tempted to give their work away for free. In this lesson, Metallica shares inspiring guidance for how to value your work and time as an artist and how to support your band.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Value Independence · Supporting Yourself Doesn’t Mean Selling Out · Sustain Your Tour With Merchandising
Preview
[MUSIC PLAYING] - Your song is written. Your music is there. How do you get it out to people? In any way and every way possible. On your home pages, on your Instagram, on your whatever. You know, blasting it at a stoplight, rolling your windows down. Putting it on at parties. If you're proud of your music, you're going to want to get it out there, and why would you not use any form possible? Don't be afraid of all the new media forms that are out there. There's plenty of opportunities, and if you limit yourself, you might regret it. Learn about what it is. And if you need that knowledge-- and of course, that is important, learn about where your music's going and why-- but yeah, use all media forms you can to get your message out there. [ELECTRONIC TONES] - As far as Metallica is concerned and the business side, we've always prided ourselves and strive for to be as independent as possible. In our career, early on in many people's careers, there are some practical elements, resources. Obviously studio time, pressure from outside sources of record companies or managers. "There's a tour that's been booked, and we need to have new album or we need to have new product," as they call it. Draw some lines in the sand very early on, but we've managed to keep most of the business stuff at bay. Keep it away from the creative process. And so there is obviously a whole world with responsibilities and dates and resources and all this stuff. But if you can kind of put a barricade or dividing line between that and the creative process and really keep those from each other, then you're very lucky. One day we got all our records back and started our own record company. Everything that we do, that we strive to be, independent, autonomous, and not owe anybody anything. Because that way they can't come to you and go, "That song should have a different chorus," or "Maybe that song should have a different lyric or a different vocal." Nobody can tell us what to do or how to do it because we don't owe anybody anything. And it gives us the freedom. We equate that with the freedom to kind of pick our own projects and to sort of just chart our own course. [MUSIC PLAYING] - I've been in Metallica since the beginning, the guy that would sort of take care of the practical things. Started off by I would sit and copy the tapes and write the song titles on the tape. I would put them in envelopes and take it to the post office and send seven people in seven different countries a copy of our demo tape, send them a t-shirt. I'll even go as far as to say that I enjoyed that part of it. I like communicating, and I like talking to people, and I like problem solving, and I like to figure shit out, and I like to make shit happen. And so I think there were times along Metallica's career where-- it's not cool to talk about this stuff. But listen, I've done this for almost 40 years, and I would be lying to you if you said that it's...
About the Instructor
With 28 albums, 8 Grammy Awards, and a home in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Metallica have been creating iconic music together for over 40 years. Now, they’re teaching what it takes to build and sustain success as a group. Get an exclusive look into their process for songwriting, building an album, and performing, and how they took charge of their creative destiny so you can do the same.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Metallica
8x Grammy Award–winning rock band Metallica teaches you the keys to communicating, collaborating, and successfully creating as a group.
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