The Hidden Gems of Knowledge in One Hit Wonders with Storm Gloor - Part 1

The alternative is learning from those before us, using their experience to tell us where to cross to avoid being taken by the rough rapids of this business. The next two episodes we dive into the waters with Storm Gloor and explore the hidden gems, these survival tactics, that we can take with us from the data of one hit wonders.

0:00:01.5 S1: Welcome to the show that explores the methods and strategies on Rockin the financial side of your music business with over 40 years combined experience. Here are your host, Chris Webb and Dave Tanka.

0:00:15.6 S2: Welcome musician. Step, job are... We talk about musicians and money here, we sometimes encourage you to temporarily beach your business boat so that you can then be carried by a long lasting career of income flowing using the ORs of new insights, 'cause you're fantastic at these Cross. I am your host, Chris Webb, joined by Mago host and the man who just beached me out the other day. Dave tanks to that. What I saw... Got know what that means. Day, quote of the day in school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test in life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson to... Buda, I got two today. Go one more. Don't let hard lessons hard in your heart. Carlos a radius.

0:01:15.5 S1: I was listening to all partners new book on the way to New Castle, Colorado this weekend. And she was talking about how over the years, she has tried not too hard in her heart, because as a musician, she needs to feel everything.

0:01:32.6 S2: That's really pretty cool, lesson. Some of the most valuable lessons in life often come the hard way, or at least it can feel hard to accept them, even when we know these lessons to be true, we resist their reality as we want a different one, sometimes our resistance is capable of changing the outcome, and sometimes it is just swimming upstream, the alternative is learning from those before us using their experience to tell us where to cross to avoid being taken by the rough rapids of this business. The next two episodes, we will dive into the water with storm glory and explore the Hidden Gems, these survival tactics that we can take with us from the data of one-hit wonders in 2005, but Hendricks and began working on an amplifier to fill what he saw as a void in the marketplace for a guitar amplifier designed to meet the needs of jazz guitar players who wanted a extremely high quality sound and a portable package pennant amplifiers, designs and manufactures high quality analog musical instrument amplifiers in Arvada, Colorado. With the 100% customer SAT is Basin guarantee you really won't believe the tone coming from either your electric or acoustic guitar, any string instrument with a pick-up for that matter, not to mention the volume, these beautifully made compact lightweight amps are capable of cleanly producing...

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0:03:20.1 S2: This is a non-profit that means a lot to him, it's Girls Rock Denver, they were formed in 2007 and held their first summer camp in 2008 with 25 rockers and a handful of dedicated volunteers. They've grown each year, and in the summer of 2019, we're able to support 78 rockers with the help of over 100 volunteers, they are completely funded by the community and is donated based organization, they hold many fundraising events and work with VARS community partners to support their organization. As a 100% volunteer operator project, they are always looking for dedicated supporters to help them sustain and grow their efforts. This is some bullet points that they have listed on the website, and when they say girls, when they say girl, it's a complicated term, and it can be many things, they acknowledge that we do not live in a post-gender world and maintain the value in creating safe spaces of expression and growth for girls, trans and gender non-conforming individuals, so they believe girls should be seen and heard, potential is not dedicated by gender improving girls with a non-gunmen Tal space where they can be themselves. They believe in a girl's right to confidence, self-reliance and courage, girl should be encouraged to express themselves with creativity and enthusiasm, they believe in the power of women's and girls learning from each other, they believe that rock is a verb rather than a Daron, and they support all types of musical interests, check out more at Girls Rock Denver dot-org.

0:04:49.1 S2: Make sure you rate, subscribe to this podcast, leave us a comment and go to our website, set up for a weekly newsletter where we explore the week's topics even further and provide you with other helpful resources for your music business. And without further ado, let's dive out into this amazing journey, we go through it with storm blower on the topic of what we can learn from studying one hit wonders. An avid music fan, passion, a teacher and member of his local City Council, I am convinced that today's guest... So you Denver Associate Professor, storm glory, is the hardest working non-musician in the music business. Storm worked in the music industry for 14 years and holds an MBA degree with the marketing concentration. He has been a featured speaker at many campers programs nationally and internationally, including South by Southwest EDU South, Vice wildest music, the music cities convention, the Mobo conference, the MIA music educators summit, the future of music Summit, the underground music showcase here in Denver, the Denver music Summit and the ED media world conference, the storm developed and instructed what is considered to be the first music city's higher education course.

0:06:09.3 S2: Is the immediate past President of the music and entertainment industry Educators Association, and was a co-founder of the amplifying music conference. Welcome to the musician's tip jar storm. Go.

0:06:21.8 S1: Great Day here. Thank you.

0:06:23.4 S2: And of course, we've got our co-host here, Dave Hampton as well.

0:06:26.7 S1: And someone please define immediate past president. Past President, immediate

0:06:32.4 S2: Past president, got a little wordy, but I was trying to recognize how much work he's put into all that without saying that incorrectly.

0:06:43.3 S1: I mean, that resume was unbelievable and you sleep in during the day.

0:06:52.1 S2: Sometimes the best way to find direction in your career is to spend more time searching for clues and studying the trails of other success and the market by doing so, it very well could tell you where to dig next time you're mapping out the framework for your next single storm, could you highlight the research you conducted in regards to the artists chart careers and what you aim to find... Sure.

0:07:17.4 S1: I have... First of all, a, I am clearly gonna own the fact that I am a nerd when it comes to music charts. I grew up listening to Casey Kasem, American Top 40 weekly. I wrote down every song as he played it and told me the trivia behind it, so this has been a fascination since the age of eight, and academia gave me the opportunity to make it legit. Actually studying this stuff. And one of the things that during my years in the music business, I was always interested in is why some artists would put out a record and never be heard from again, and some could put out a record a year and keep growing their sales and their popularity and that led me to think about what factors plant influence an artist, long-term career being successful, and what percentage of artists actually have a very short career that is... They are known as One-Hit Wonders, we've all heard that term, but yet there was nothing in any research that I could find that established what your chances of being a one-hit wonder were, so I was really curious on both ends what mixed career is so short and what makes them so long, and being the chart gate that I am, I had this opportunity to make this an academic pursuit.

0:08:54.8 S1: I started studying and compiling the data for artists careers on the charts, that is the Billboard charts to be specific, and over a frame of 50 plus years, I wanted definitely a long-term look at it, and that's really what led me to do the research and the way I initially went about it was to gather all the chart data for that time period from the Billboard chart.

0:09:24.1 S2: Wow, I can't imagine how much work that must have started out to become, so what did you discover from this analysis...

0:09:32.4 S1: Well, first of all, I shouldn't say this on record for any academics listening out there, it wasn't work, I was having a blast doing this research, there was no rigor to it, but anyway, so some of the discoveries that I made were actually... And this is good and research, they were not what I expected, and so I discovered a lot about the tendency of everything to be the same throughout decades of pop music, so what I might have thought... For instance, let's look at the one-hit wonders, I figured out how many one-hit wonders they were per year, and the amazing thing is it's pretty consistent, and I also... Yeah, I also found that the percentage from... To define a one-hit wonder, of course, I had to look at when artist first started and then see what happened from there. What was amazing was the percentage of new artists that chart every year in 1955 or 1980 or 1972 is pretty much the same, no matter what music styles have happened, of course, 1964 in 1979, those are sort of ideas because of the Beatles and because of the death of ego. But other than that, really, it's all music.

0:10:57.2 S1: Right, right. So those were some interesting first finds that I had in the research, so when you're talking about the length of when a musician first came out to an hardest first hit the charts, and they had a one-hit wonder, where were they in their career? Had they just started or had they been building that career for a while... Well, that's a great question, and the problem is, that's beyond the scope of a study because I can never... There's not enough data out there. You take a question mark in the mysterons from 1966 and you don't... You don't know who play guitar on the record, you'll never find out who... Where they came from, all together, there's information that's just being on the reach...

0:11:46.6 S2: Well, any band that starts with the question mark...

0:11:49.2 S1: And they're on it.

0:11:52.2 S2: They're not gonna give you too much. It's

0:11:54.3 S1: Amazing. And then you've got folks who have deceived where there's not gonna be any more information and stuff like that, but that's a great question. And the other side of it, I was interested in how much money they were making. What were some other factors? And that no one's ever gonna give up their tax returns either, so I had to draw a line at what was easy, easily measured, and then the other thing is people sometimes fudge the truth, Bob, who knows where Bob Dylan's really from? And things like that, and so I had just had to go with the numbers that are verifiable

0:12:34.8 S2: For context, could you give us a couple of names of some recognizable one-hit wonder groups here, artists... It might be hard for some people to think of it on in wonder sometimes.

0:12:42.8 S1: At least not for that. Yeah, I'm gonna go with is I'm really gonna show my nerd-ness here before I joined you all today, I was listening to the Top 40 broadcast from November 15th, 1980. And at number 38, I think the vapors Davie with The Song turning Japanese, I don't know if you remember that, you could do. And then, so there were several one-hit wonder us on that particular chart that week, the Nielsen person, and for instance, but there's some one-hit wonders that are more popularly known, for instance, Cumbia remember their hit song, and then the biggest one hit wonder of all time lager and Evans, who hit with... Who had number one? There only in the year 2525, the ladies and then disappeared, so there's all sorts of... It wanders out there

0:13:39.7 S2: When, for a musician, what are some practical takeaways that you found from the study and what are the lessons that had been learned?

0:13:47.7 S1: Well, first of all, I'll refer back to that comment I made about the consistency of new artists allowed into the market, and now there is absolutely no gatekeeper, so use the word aloud is sort of an over stretch, consumers don't decide how many artists consciously decide how many artists, how many new artists are gonna check out, but guess what they do, from what I could tell, and nor do record companies, right, they don't say, Oh, we're only gonna put out two out of every 10 artists releases are gonna be new artists. They don't even do that, but what is clear is that a consumer only has room for so many artists for which there'll be a fan or they'll listen to... You know how there are studies in the early days, well, even more recent days of social media, where people have said You can only have so many friends and manage those relationships, the studies that have shown the idea of having friends... I can only be so much. Right, and I think it's very similar with music consumers, so it speaks to not only the competition that you have as a new artist that you're facing, but you wanna figure out how you can be one of those...

0:15:11.1 S1: The number of... By the way, in case I didn't mention is about 20%, so about 20% of the artist who chart, it's so odd that the number is the same for the singles chart as for the album charts, anywhere from 19 to 22%. You gotta be one of those one out over five new artists. Right. So that's one thing to think about. And this is getting... This is almost like for Economics is... But another thing that I found in the study, again, probably a three or four in the morning, I said, You know what, I'm gonna figure this out, and I divided the data up by type of artist, so for instance, I figured out which setup had the longest careers that is a solo artist, a duo, or a band, or what I like to call the ampersand bands or the front bands, that is the day Matthews Band or Florence and the machine, right? So which of those? I won't quiz you, but of course, bands had the lowest lasting chart careers as... Right. What's that?

0:16:21.6 S2: I said, I would have guessed that.

0:16:22.8 S1: Actually, yes, yes, that's easy. But the ampersand fans had the longest, so it's almost a psychology of if you're willing is a band member to recognize that this is the person they are the front person. It's called The Dave Matthews Band because Dave Matthew stands in front, and that actually helps us last longer than a regular band who's got a random name, right. And that's a psychology experiment to be had there, but it was something I found there that I think artists can take home with them and does... Didn't they lasted longer than bands, but not much longer. Right, you got two people, Simon, so that's one thing. And then another... What I just mentioned isn't actually in the research that I published, but I figured it out, and then the other thing was your genre... Again, I want quiz you, but I'll tell you that a temporary artist last longest, it could be lack of competition, who knows, and new age was the second category, Blues was the third category, and jazz was the fourth, the artist and knows genre, have longer chart career and so I thought that was worth taking home too, but ultimately the big number is the number in terms of the career length, and there's...

0:17:52.4 S1: Because of changes in the methodology and the measurements, I actually came up with five or six numbers, for instance, in the Billboard top 200 albums for the first few years was only 100 albums, and then they changed the methodology along the way over the 55 year span, but I always go with the number 524, the average chart, career of the artists that I studied, and there were 2700 of them, 524 years, and that's the number. I'm not saying that being on the chart is the only way you'll be successful, but I wanna make that clear, right. It takes a lot to make the charts as much as like five or six years ago to put it in context, you have to sell about 3000 copies of your album and week to make the bottom of the top 200 charts, about 3000 copies. And that may be a stretch for many artists... Right, and just a FYI, it's also album equivalent, so if you stream so many albums or if you get a number of downloads, that actually translates into sales for the sake of Billboard. Anyway, I'm not saying you have to make the charge to be successful, or what I was curious about was that 524 figure, and I equated that to...

0:19:19.1 S1: I don't know, think of your job. Think of the work you do, you all have a time where we're learning how to do it, we get good at it, but then at some point, we start thinking, I'm ready to move on to something else. Right, right. And think of athletes who are limited actually by their physical limitations... Right, so I wanted to compare, how does that number compare to other occupations, and I couldn't find all the turnover or the average length that people spend at their jobs as an engineer or an accountant or anything, but I did see figures that said, amazingly enough people spent an average of six or seven years at their jobs at one job, right. And then I found that athletes. I just looked at the figures a few minutes ago, but NBA players, I think had the quickest careers, and it was just sort of five years, and Major League Baseball players were like 68... Don't quote me on those last two figures, but you see where I'm going with this, is that we all have a tendency to be at our peak in a role for about, let's just say four to seven years, and so I, as a musician, you need to be thinking, Okay, we all wanna live to be a 100, right, we all wanna live way past four to seven years is a musician.

0:20:53.3 S1: And what I tell my students is that I looked at the top, I looked at the Billboard top 20. So these are the people who really get to a top of the people who are making lots of money, presumably, and they only had that amount of time to cash in, if you wanna call it that, right? So my message from the data is that I know you wanna be a musician all your life, and I hope that works out, but I urge you to think that you're gonna have this time, whether it's that you're big in Denver or whether that you're big in Colorado, or whether you're playing Red Rocks for several years, whatever. There's this natural tendency that you can only be so many years in that zone, so to speak, while you're there, watch what the sound people do, watch what your manager does, watch what other managers do, when you're in the studio, watch what the producer does, because that may be the next step when you reach that point, right, when you're out of your zone, 'cause again, we all wanna live a long time and four to seven years, assuming you start when you're 18 or whatever, put you to the age 65, you gotta be thinking, what's gonna be the next thing after that.

0:22:19.5 S1: And I'll be honest, and let's all be honest, there are factors like age, and I remember there was a panel at sappy Southwest one time where they ask the question, Can you be in an over the age of 35, there is a point at which you start living your life, you start having children, your focus has become different, so... That was a very long way of saying that. Another thing that I drew from it.

0:22:46.6 S2: Yeah, you gotta fill in the time in between your peak career and you come back to her, right in your early 80s there, is that...

0:22:56.4 S1: I'm curious... You put it much better than I did. I'm curious to your thoughts as far as how easily music is attainable now that are there going to be more one-hit wonders because... And

0:23:13.0 S2: Do you think that time span of 524 will decrease...

0:23:17.9 S1: Well, I'm glad you asked because I've got bad news and good news. The time is decreasing. And that's what I found in the study were... You debuted in 1977, 1970. You had about 10 years. That's one of the extremes. But during the 70s, they had better... Longer careers. During the 80s, it was shorter. I had a lot more on it, wonders in the 80s, in terms of numbers of them, still about the same percentage, but as of 2002, 000 exactly. It all started going down hill, and of course, we know why there's more access, more artists during the fray. So the bad news is that time period was, I think it dipped down to 32 in the last year that I'm measured, so it's decreasing the number of times and the odds of being a one-hit lender are increasing. Now, the good news, the fact of the matter is that the more artist charting, so the number of artists entering the picture and getting on to the top 200 albums and getting the hit singles was vastly increasing as I approached 2011 with the figures. So it's exactly what Lyn might expect. The barriers to entry are lower, and you can get that hit single and that hit album, and of course, we know why because you have more access to...

0:24:50.5 S1: Well, we can present why because you have more access to your fans, I would also think that the opportunity, like you said, to become a producer afterwards or just technology has improved so much that it's easier to create an album without having to have all the money that you needed in 1980 or even 1995 to go into a professional studio, there's so many unbelievable albums that are coming out that are just being made in someone's bedroom. Yes, absolutely. And by the same token, music, it can be featured in so many more... So much more media. So there's money there that wasn't there before, if you are a songwriter or wasn't as plentiful as before, I should say, and another side track that I went down, he at one point was looking at the number of song writers involved in a song... There's more of an opportunity for you to be one of those three songwriters or one of those producers of those songs, right. So there's more people actually getting money, if you look at it that

0:25:54.4 S2: I wonder, at this point with the charts having a shorter duration of time when you hit number one and there being more people at number one, if that equates to being less of a take-home pay for the Chart Toppers.

0:26:09.8 S1: Yeah, that's a question I'd love to pursue, but as I said earlier, you never know what tax records would say, you never know if people are gonna be truthful about that either is to money that we'd like to think that there's more of that money that's floating around more, there's a principal called cumulative advantage, if you all ever heard that Cerner, maybe a cumulative advantage is like for instance... In fact, I first heard it in the opening of the book for economics, so if you use a musical example, if you are looking through the back pages of the westward trying to decide which artist to see, science, behavioral, consumer economics, everything is proven that if you recognize the name, even though the band whose name you don't recognize is probably much better, much more talented, your consumer decision is gonna tend towards someone you've heard of, right. So just getting that one hit now, or that one producer slot, or being a featured vocalist on a song, if your name is out there and it's recognized, that helps you get the edge over that local arts, if you're a touring band going into another town, if somebody's heard your name, you're probably gonna get the tickets gonna go to you...

0:27:37.7 S1: Right, so what I'm saying is having more opportunities to get your name attached to something is a benefit in itself regardless of the money, it ultimately it will help you on the back end. So I guess the lesson here is, if some big artist or even some known artist calls you and says, Hey, can you do backing vocals on my track here, get that done, get paid, get paid, but do that track and that song may be a hit and you may be able to say I sang vocals on that, and that just put you way above everybody else. Do you know... Yeah.

0:28:14.7 S2: Yeah, that's excellent. On, this is good place to stop, and we will pick it up next week and have a complete review over our interview with storm glory. Dave, what would you say from what we've listed to so far... That was your main take-away. Well, first off, when someone is not a musician, it's unbelievable to hear how many facts they know about different artists, but one thing that storm went into that you rarely hear about someone who follows music history is that he was very interested in how much money each artist made... And you don't hear that too much when you're talking music and facts in history. Well, I like how you put it in a way that said, there's no way to be sure, but there's a general reality that once you hit a certain level of success, a certain amount of finance is supported behind you, and with that he was analog that there... Or at the time, how many albums needed to be sold a week to be considered in the top... So like 3000, so already there's data that he's talking about that we can relate to now, and if you're looking at how well your album is doing or the music that you're putting out to set goals like that, how many downloads or how many streams are you gonna get a week, and what are you going to do to increase that yourself or hire someone else, see if it's within your budget...

0:29:53.6 S2: Yeah, I definitely gravitate to those kind of numbers too, because it gives you a goal, it is you... It gives you a very clear understanding of what you gotta get to, I have one action step for you this week, make an effort to learn from everyone around you while you're making your art, there's a lot of layers of art around you of other people that are making it possible for you to do what you do. And it's important that we all are learning from each other, we know your time is valuable, and we so appreciate you spending this time with us and being a part of this community, it is our hope that you feel is in a community at musicians tip jar and are willing to get involved and contribute or ask questions you need to answer.

0:30:31.8 S1: So everyone out there, while Chris is really thinking about his date with his beautiful wife tonight, there's a way to connect with us, and how you do that is go to the musicians Tico com or send us some email, a musicians tip jar and Gmail

0:30:45.4 S2: Has always, thank you for joining us and remember there is already enough for everyone, you just need to know how to get it. Until next time, I'm behalf of Dean myself. Chris web Please stay safe stay healthy and take care of each other don't be afraid but the path you find along the way even if it wasn't in your Mathis musicians tepals the peace then you play music so

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