NHT Blog

If you’re thinking about producing music, now is a wonderful time to start. Not only are tools and learning materials more accessible than ever, but the listening population is also growing larger and more hungry for new music by the day.

Collaboration doesn’t necessarily have to mean co-writing a song with someone or being a guest musician on a song they record or at one of their gigs.  Granted, what I’m about to describe is going to be a bit generous in terms of loosely expanding the term 'collaboration,' but the bottom line here really is more about always focusing on not viewing everyone else as competition.

Even though today is yet another holiday, with all due respect to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it’s time to start taking action and stop using “it’s the holidays” as a reason to continue hibernating.  As warm and fuzzy and tempting as that sounds, it’s no way to be productive and get ahead.

Last week I gave you a recap of the ten most read blogs on this site in 2020 that were written by me.  This week it’s time to look back at which guest blogs attracted the most eyeballs last year.

My thanks to those who contributed.  Be sure to note further below how you can write something for me to publish too!

Although I’ve been publishing weekly blogs on this site every Monday since late September 2014, this is “just” the fourth annual “Best Of” entry, recapping, in this case, the most read blogs that I wrote in 2020.

While some folks are on a long, extended vacation, for many of us others, it’s back to work this morning after the Christmas holiday and thus back to reality.

For our friends in Nashville, though, it’s not that simple.

It’s a sobering thought.  This year has forced performers to put on live shows from home, streaming through Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or some other platform.  All with the hope of viewers tipping them electronically or streaming their music – or both.

The problem is that neither of those have a high percentage of likelihood.

You’ve been beaten up by the now nine-month long pandemic.  You feel ignored because everyone is focusing on the homestretch leading up to Christmas in approximately a week-and-a-half.  And you feel lost in a sea (or, more like, ocean) of others doing exactly what you do.

Welcome to the world of being a creator in 2020.

Last week I hit what I called in the weekly e-newsletter an accidental milestone.  Mind you, it’s quite, quite notable.  Yet because of its construct, it wasn’t waving its arms and flashing all kinds of lights at me.

Last night I was watching television.  I have a Google Home Mini sitting right next to the TV.  So, when a commercial came on in which someone said, “Hey Google,” and then gave it a command to start playing certain music, yup, you guessed it, my smart speaker started playing exactly what the person in the ad asked for.  As Homer Simpson would say, “D’oh!”