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What was the magic behind The Dillinger Escape Plan’s skyward success?
Hint: It wasn’t because they got picked up by a label who championed their music; they got picked up and championed by a label because of what they did on stage, and how even a room of 10 fans responded to their energy.
There are a lot of themes and strategies that Ben Weinman unpacks throughout his course, The Business of Uncompromising Art, but in today’s video he shares how honesty, belief, and passion contributed to every milestone that the band achieved — and how artists like you can follow their lead.
Here are some of Ben’s words of advice.
1. Do things for the right reasons.
In his course, you’re going to hear Ben talk about this often. If money is the reason you make music, this course probably isn’t right for you. For Ben and Dillinger, things only started to take off when they chose to make music for themselves — music they loved and were passionate about.
You need to make music for the right reasons so you can approach your audience and fanbase with honesty and authenticity.
“What we realized was: the second we stopped trying to please people is when it started to work.”
2. Play the same for 10 people as 10,000 people.
Dillinger treated every show like it was sacred. They opened for System of a Down one year right as they started to become very famous. A lot of the audience didn’t really connect with them — but they didn’t care. They played as if it was their show anyway, and by the end of the tour, they’d grown their fanbase by a huge amount (and word of mouth contributed greatly to that).
Make sure you show up for every performance, and we hope you too will have the chance to play for 10,000 people someday.
“We made sure that every single person that left that room telling somebody else, either: ‘this was awful’ or ‘this was amazing.’”
3. Recognize the mistakes that work.
When Dillinger started out, it wasn’t as innovative as it’s now thought to be. One major key to their evolution and to finding their voice in the music world was recognizing which mistakes were actually successes, and how to replicate them.
That helped them discover their sound, cultivate a die-hard audience, and develop good business practices.
If you’re already a fan, what drew you to The Dillinger Escape Plan? If not, what are some of the things that jump out to you about their music and their vibe already?
Feel free to share your thoughts in our Soundfly community Discord group. There’s a channel called #the-business-of-art that’s a great place to post anything related to this course throughout the course.
Rev Up Your Creative Engines…
Continue your learning with hundreds of lessons on songwriting, mixing, recording and production, composing, beat making, and more on Soundfly, with artist-led courses by Kimbra, RJD2, Com Truise, Kiefer, Ryan Lott, and Ben Weinman’s The Business of Uncompromising Art.
