💡✍️ADN #183: The music business is four-dimensional.

One of my favorite writers and thinkers is Derek Sivers.
If you’re not familiar, Derek started CD Baby, and eventually sold it.

He has gone on to do all kinds of interesting things since.

Derek recently wrote a blog about geography being four-dimensional.

It got me thinking about the four-dimensional music industry.

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What does that mean?

A vet tells you “how the business works.”

Your manager says “this is what labels want.”

A panelist explains “how to break in LA.”

Somebody’s uncle once knew somebody at Sony.

Ask one question: When?

Because the industry they’re describing is the industry of the year they stopped paying close attention.

Not neccesarily the industry you’re in now.

The label exec who gave you advice last week — when did they actually sign artists?

2009?

That was before streaming was 80% of revenue.

Before TikTok.

Before direct-to-fan was a social media category.

What they know is real.

It’s also a photograph, not a window.

Same with venues.

Same with radio.

Same with publishing.

Same with Nashville, LA, Brooklyn, London.

The scene someone describes is the scene from when they were in it.

I’ve lived this.

The first record my band made got sold in Tower Records.

The last one got swiped past on a phone.

Same business.

Same career.

Different planet.

And it’s not just other people.

Your own knowledge expires too.

The TikTok that worked for you in 2023 isn’t the TikTok of 2026.

The fans you built three years ago aren’t reachable the same way you reached them then.

Where is bound to when.

But old ways aren’t useless — they’re just mislabeled.

The mistake isn’t taking advice from someone whose playbook is dated.

The mistake is using their tactics instead of their principles.

There’s a difference between “what worked” and “why it worked.”

The first expires.

The second usually doesn’t.

Keep:

• The human truth underneath the tactic. Why did fans care? Why did the gatekeeper say yes? What made the artist undeniable?
• The pattern, not the platform. Swap “MySpace” for “TikTok” — does the lesson still land? If yes, keep it.
• The discipline. Showing up, follow-through, taste, work ethic, treating people well, none of this has an expiration.
• The math. Owning your audience beats renting it. Relationships compound. Attention is leverage. Evergreen.

Dump:

• Specific platforms, contact names, template emails, release-cycle prescriptions, dollar figures, gatekeeper rankings. Anything with a proper noun or a number attached to it is suspect until proven current.

How to find what’s actually working right now:

• Study artists one or two steps ahead, not ten. Their playbook is close enough to yours to copy. The ten-steps-ahead artist has a team and budget you don’t.
• Reverse-engineer recent wins. Pick three artists who broke through in the last six months at your scale. Look at their actual feeds, releases, and tour routing from the last 90 days. Don’t trust the press story. Trust the receipts.
• Subscribe to operators, not journalists. Newsletters from active managers, A&Rs, sync supervisors, and tour buyers tell you what’s moving this quarter. Trade press tells you what moved last year.
• Run small bets. Pick one “what’s working now” claim and test it with $50 or one release cycle. Real data from your own audience beats anybody’s anecdote.
• Find a peer two years ahead who’ll tell you the truth. One honest practitioner running current campaigns is worth ten case studies from ten years ago.

Why this works:

Most artists are running playbooks built for an industry that no longer exists.

They’re not behind.

They’re chasing an old map.

The artists who win are the ones who can tell which parts of the old map are still accurate (the terrain) and which are wrong (the routes) — and who keep redrawing the routes.

Do this today:

Pick one piece of “how the industry works” advice you’re acting on right now.

Run it through two filters.

First — would it still be true if you removed the platform name?

If yes, keep it.

Second — is the tactic in use by someone winning at your scale in the last 90 days?

If yes, run it.

If no, demote it from fact to hypothesis until you find a current version that works.

The industry you’re in right now is the only one that matters.

The past and the future may rhyme, but they are almost always a remix, not a replay of an old playbook.

See you next Sunday,

Neil