In any business, a good manager should be able to tell you the ‘end-date’. The end-date is a hypothetical day in the future when cash reserves will run dry if expenses continually exceed revenues. Knowledge of the end-date is a huge (negative) motivator. When the boss says: "We need to generate X by next Thursday or else...", people respond like soldiers going to battle.

Written in 2013: Today, a great wireless device has to be a phone, a camera, a computer, a GPS, an e-book reader, an application ecosystem, an entertainment center, a social instrument, a business toolbox, and a great music service. Music probably consumes more device-time than any other phone feature. So, it’s clear that device manufacturers understand that music-as-a-service (MAS) is a core feature that’s essential to competing. However, the current music stack that includes: MP3 acquisition and management, playlist management, playback control, music discovery, music recommendation, and social sharing is outdated and cumbersome.

Does death by obscurity really happen to great songs, or does lack of traction only happen to mediocre songs?

I think this is one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves. Do most fans just want your music, or do most fans want something else from you beyond your music?

Music absorption is the process that occurs between music discovery and the (self) conversion of an average music consumer into an active fan. I believe the music absorption process is radically different now than it was just two years ago, and understanding how this process has changed should impact your approach to succeeding in the music industry.

Music is now the most naked product on Earth. Music sits upon the shelf unwrapped, raw and void of packaging. Consumers can fully try it before they buy it; they can take it home unmolested; and they can pay for it randomly, or not at all. I can’t think of another product that is so fully exposed and vulnerable to quick and precise, pre-purchase decision-making as music.

You don’t need to hit home runs. 10% weekly growth will get you where you need to go.

Here are some of this best startup articles I read in 2013:

A narrow value proposition does not equate to a narrow market opportunity, it's just harder to build.

Every time I go out to move a pile of firewood, I think this is hard labor, but it's not hard work.

Artists, labels and rightsholders, tell the nerds the Internet is already broken. The web is balkanizing around huge ecosystems run by giant companies and paranoid governments.

Facebook is positioned to become the world's attention banking infrastructure. We live in an attention economy where the capacity to attract attention is given, sold, bought and traded daily…transparently and otherwise.

Over the years, I have quit caffeine for years at a time. I slip back into the habit when I forget how unnecessary it is to functioning at a high-level. A big desert after lunch…coffee. Too much booze the night before…coffee. Not enough sleep…coffee. Lots of time behind the desk and not enough time at the gym…coffee. Staying out extra late…espresso martini. Not making time to meditate…coffee. Not enough fruit…coffee (beans). Caffeine paves over bad habits, and conversely, the absence of it makes living...calmer.

Art requires investment, as somebody always has to pay the bills.  Investing in artists has to appear attractive on a cost-to-scale analysis basis.  Every attempt: legal, cultural or otherwise, to weaken copyrights is an assault on every artist's capacity to scale via minimal incremental investments, and thus the capacity to compete for investment dollars.

When it comes to music and advertising, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. What works for some artists will not work for others, and vice versa. However here’s one thing I can tell you for sure: too many artists are using advertising as a blunt force instrument. Simply dropping a picture of yourself, your band, or your album art into an ad unit and then indiscriminately campaigning nationwide for clicks will rarely generate the advertising ROI you need to justify spending on another campaign.

What do you call the person that has decided to surrender an email address, follow you on Twitter, or Like you on Facebook? If the word ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’, or as someone said last week: “a fan is someone that buys all your stuff”, then we need an intermediate descriptor that sits between a potential fan that has yet to learn about you, and a fan or fanatic that is already buying your stuff. ‘Pre-fan’ seems like it will work, but why bother? As more and more labels and artists use advertising to bridge the gaps between social media islands, it’s essential to get the advertising return on investment (ROI) calculation correct. If a potential fan is not yet a fan, and if a pre-fan is not really a fan, then you need to apply TWO conversion rates to your ROI calculation.

Creating album art? Thinking about advertising your band? Over the last year, I have been working within the intersection of behavioral targeting, the music industry and ad design. I can tell you that artists everywhere submit images for inclusion in banner ad campaigns that are less appealing, more boring and exceedingly less mysterious than a box of Cheerios.

This post demonstrates why it's essential to use advertising and strategic PR to 'bridge' potential fan groups that have overlapping music preference profiles but remain entirely disconnected from each other on the Internet.

One might be misled into believing that the equation: decent artist + solid business support = success. However this formula is about as a sound as building a table that only has...one leg. If you are ever thinking about financially backing or supporting an artist, you should know that there are two other legs of the table that are of equal or greater importance. In fact, if these first two legs are solid, the third leg, the business leg, almost organically grows itself.

In my experience, dividing ownership equally is mistake. Without fail, things always happen that prevent or enable project participants from contributing more or less resources than they originally pledged.  You want a plastic (cable of expanding and contracting) ownership structure that enables participants to contribute as much or as little as their ever-changing (financial, time, family, health, etc.) situation dictates.  A plastic ownership structure, governed by an ownership earn-in formula, is the best way to align motivation, commitment, value delivery, timing and expectations.