The music business is not structured like a closed caste system. It’s more like a quick-paced game of musical chairs. Artists are constantly rising “above their station” and plummeting from great heights at increasingly rapid rates. You’re not stuck in a certain creative class forever. This can be both a blessing for buzzed-about acts on the rise, and a curse for artists who’ve reached their peak and begin preparing for the long decline or the sudden backlash of fickle public opinion. (Though this doom-and-gloom scenario doesn’t take into account the many exceptions to the rule who’ve launched massive career comebacks after a period of creative dormancy or struggle.)
But wherever you’re headed in your artistic life, it is always helpful to know your place right NOW! Where are your feet currently planted? It’s easier to move forward when you know where you’ve been. our friends at Digital Music News have compiled a list of 12 different artist types (with a brief description for each category) called “Where Do You Fit In?” Click to read it HERE. It is by no means exhaustive or set in stone. But we found it entertaining and thought provoking.
Check it out and let us know what “artistic type” you are and where you’d like to be in 5 years.
-Chris R. at CD Baby
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.