Something I have come to learn about the Music Business is that you can never rest on your laurels. It seems that, especially in this digital world, as soon as you have up-dated your press pack, your website, and all of your publicity material, it's almost out-of-date by the time you have it done! Information, and news, good or bad, now travels around the world so fast, that you really need to check your stuff on a daily basis. A colleague asked me recently to account for what looked like my overnight success in the American market,[ after 40 years!] and he was quite horrified when I told him it was on account of my spending about ten hours a day for the last four years, slogging away at the computer, making sure that as many people as humanly possible were kept informed as to what I was doing with my music. Bear in mind that this was all totally apart from time spent writing and rehearsing and pitching new material. That's a whole other aspect of this business, you are expected to keep fresh, and continue to create new songs and tunes. I am eternally grateful for the fact that the inspiration seems to keep coming, and I find myself writing more and more. If you're reading this from a writer/composer perspective, believe me that the fear of drying up that we all suffer from can be kept at bay by making sure that you practice at your craft every day. Even if it's only for a short spell in the mornings or the evenings, make sure you do some writing every day, and keep your Press Releases fresh ............. In Music and Song, yours, Niall.
