"Blow Your Own Trumpet" – A Q&A with publicist Stacey Piggott
Two Fish Out Of Water’s Director, Stacey Piggott, has been working in the music industry for fourteen solid years.
Working with both signed and unsigned artists, she has help build the careers of bands such as The Jezabels, The Drones, The Waifs, Ash Grunwald and Augie March, just to name a few.
Stacey has recently written a book, titled Blow Your Own Trumpet – A Musician’s Guide to Publicity & Airplay.
It's a book for self-managed artists, budding music managers and music industry students.
The 59th Sound's Cassie Walker recently had a chat with Stacey about her book, discussing her career in the music industry and how the music industry has grown over the years.
Working with both signed and unsigned artists, she has help build the careers of bands such as The Jezabels, The Drones, The Waifs, Ash Grunwald and Augie March, just to name a few.
Stacey has recently written a book, titled Blow Your Own Trumpet – A Musician’s Guide to Publicity & Airplay.
It's a book for self-managed artists, budding music managers and music industry students.
The 59th Sound's Cassie Walker recently had a chat with Stacey about her book, discussing her career in the music industry and how the music industry has grown over the years.
After 14 years in the industry why did you feel now was the time to release a book?
I guess I just got to the point of being so frustrated at hearing such bewilderment in young artists voices when I spoke to them about their PR. There seemed to be a misconception that they needed to pay someone a lot of money to get press coverage, without paying someone they could not get access to media, which is just not true. I just found a lot of my time was getting eaten up with these same conversations so I decided to write it all down in a word document, which got so big I thought it could be a small book. And then after chatting to a bunch of artists about the idea, I thought it might be good to add their experiences and stories in to illustrate the many ways you can go about building profile here. I thought that would be more interesting than a faceless publicist’s words for the reader.
With such a busy schedule running your publicity business, how long did this book take to finish?
From the idea to having it in my hand was around 18 months. I kind of started and got side tracked with other things and went back to it when I had time until it was done.
The book dispels myths of the industry, yet aren’t the best lessons learnt by making mistakes?
In my opinion the smartest people are the ones who learn from other peoples mistakes and save themselves the heartache. Some things have the same outcome, and a long history of that outcome, so why not take on board what your predecessors have learnt from that particular decision and avoid that road altogether. Certain things that happen time and time again baffle me, look at what has happened in years gone by; we humans keep repeating the same mistakes. Doing something that has never been done before and failing is one thing, repeating the same mistake that many before have made is another.
I guess I just got to the point of being so frustrated at hearing such bewilderment in young artists voices when I spoke to them about their PR. There seemed to be a misconception that they needed to pay someone a lot of money to get press coverage, without paying someone they could not get access to media, which is just not true. I just found a lot of my time was getting eaten up with these same conversations so I decided to write it all down in a word document, which got so big I thought it could be a small book. And then after chatting to a bunch of artists about the idea, I thought it might be good to add their experiences and stories in to illustrate the many ways you can go about building profile here. I thought that would be more interesting than a faceless publicist’s words for the reader.
With such a busy schedule running your publicity business, how long did this book take to finish?
From the idea to having it in my hand was around 18 months. I kind of started and got side tracked with other things and went back to it when I had time until it was done.
The book dispels myths of the industry, yet aren’t the best lessons learnt by making mistakes?
In my opinion the smartest people are the ones who learn from other peoples mistakes and save themselves the heartache. Some things have the same outcome, and a long history of that outcome, so why not take on board what your predecessors have learnt from that particular decision and avoid that road altogether. Certain things that happen time and time again baffle me, look at what has happened in years gone by; we humans keep repeating the same mistakes. Doing something that has never been done before and failing is one thing, repeating the same mistake that many before have made is another.
You send young men to war; they will come back mentally ruined. You have an affair on your partner; it will break their heart. You sign a record deal when you are young and have no career, without reading the fine print, you will regret it later when everyone other than you is making money and some desk bound suit is telling you how to make your music. You hand over a wad of cash to a publicist to run a PR campaign without getting a solid picture of how they are going to run it, what they are going to cover and what they will be delivering back to you, you may as well set that wad of cash alight and watch it burn. You sit there and stare at the phone, you will be talking about how great your band was 20 years down the track and lamenting about what could have been if only that phone had of rung.
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"Knowledge is the best tool you can have in this business aside from creativity, which is the ultimate tool. The more educated you are the more options you will have, the better decision you will be able to make and the more mistakes you will be able to avoid." |
“Saying that the best lessons learnt are by making mistakes” is like saying “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”…. What is the point of having cake if you can’t eat it? That is just stupid.
Knowledge is the best tool you can have in this business aside from creativity, which is the ultimate tool. The more educated you are the more options you will have, the better decision you will be able to make and the more mistakes you will be able to avoid.
What was the biggest mistake you made and learnt from in your professional career?
Oh man, there have been so many, I would hate to discriminate against them by highlighting just one or two. I have failed so many times; I have no fear of failure. People who don’t have a list of failures in their lifetime have failed at life. I have tried many things and failed for many reasons, no researching properly, not having the aptitude to do it, bad timing or just bad decision making. It has taught me to educate myself as much as possible, and to have no fear of failure, just pick up and carry on.
The music industry is moving more indie and DIY than ever in the last decade, when did you see a need for a tool like this book?
There is so much information out there, so many conferences, and so many industry people willing to give their advice and time, I just wanted to do something that was easy to access from anywhere and cheap to obtain that gave a simple, clear breakdown so that artists had a starting point when it comes to their PR.
Do you see equipping artists with these tools as a threat to professionals like yourself?
No not at all, all artists who have any kind of success will come to a point where their time is better served elsewhere, and sitting behind a desk setting up interviews and chasing airplay and reviews will not be able to be their focus, the logistics of a band who is touring heavily here and overseas makes that impossible. They will also get to the stage where they need a creative strategy behind their PR that minimizes their time allocated to it, but maximizes their coverage. Those stages are where a great publicist is invaluable, but the artist needs to get to that point first to justify and be able to cover the costs.
The book includes advice from a range of artists such as Henry Rollins, Dan Sultan and Ash Grunwald, having so many talented artists and professionals at your fingertips how did you select the professions featured in the book?
I just approached artists who I knew had really strong work ethics across every aspects of their career. And artists who I knew had opinions and philosophies that contradicted each other. When I contacted Mikey from Eddy Current, he came back to me and said he was keen to do the interview, but that I might not like what he had to say because they had used a publicist once and thought it was a waste of time and money and didn’t see the point of using one again. But that is exactly why I asked him, because I knew that was where the band stood. Having a band like that, who are so, so great, offer that experience and opinion is invaluable to a book like this. I really wanted to show that there are endless ways to make this industry work for you. What works for one band really well, can be the undoing of another. It is a really personal process that should be tailored to each individual band, and then each individual within the band.
With Blow Your Own Trumpet done and dusted, do you have plans for any others any time soon?
No, I am going to spend the next few years doing whatever I can to step away from a computer. If I ever write another book it will be fiction, hilarious and most likely make the NY Times best seller list, we all need to dream! Thanks so much for supporting this book, I really appreciate it.
Interview by Cassie Walker
You can pick up a copy of Blow Your Own Trumpet - A Musician’s Guide to Publicity & Airplay here http://www.twofishoutofwater.com/book
Knowledge is the best tool you can have in this business aside from creativity, which is the ultimate tool. The more educated you are the more options you will have, the better decision you will be able to make and the more mistakes you will be able to avoid.
What was the biggest mistake you made and learnt from in your professional career?
Oh man, there have been so many, I would hate to discriminate against them by highlighting just one or two. I have failed so many times; I have no fear of failure. People who don’t have a list of failures in their lifetime have failed at life. I have tried many things and failed for many reasons, no researching properly, not having the aptitude to do it, bad timing or just bad decision making. It has taught me to educate myself as much as possible, and to have no fear of failure, just pick up and carry on.
The music industry is moving more indie and DIY than ever in the last decade, when did you see a need for a tool like this book?
There is so much information out there, so many conferences, and so many industry people willing to give their advice and time, I just wanted to do something that was easy to access from anywhere and cheap to obtain that gave a simple, clear breakdown so that artists had a starting point when it comes to their PR.
Do you see equipping artists with these tools as a threat to professionals like yourself?
No not at all, all artists who have any kind of success will come to a point where their time is better served elsewhere, and sitting behind a desk setting up interviews and chasing airplay and reviews will not be able to be their focus, the logistics of a band who is touring heavily here and overseas makes that impossible. They will also get to the stage where they need a creative strategy behind their PR that minimizes their time allocated to it, but maximizes their coverage. Those stages are where a great publicist is invaluable, but the artist needs to get to that point first to justify and be able to cover the costs.
The book includes advice from a range of artists such as Henry Rollins, Dan Sultan and Ash Grunwald, having so many talented artists and professionals at your fingertips how did you select the professions featured in the book?
I just approached artists who I knew had really strong work ethics across every aspects of their career. And artists who I knew had opinions and philosophies that contradicted each other. When I contacted Mikey from Eddy Current, he came back to me and said he was keen to do the interview, but that I might not like what he had to say because they had used a publicist once and thought it was a waste of time and money and didn’t see the point of using one again. But that is exactly why I asked him, because I knew that was where the band stood. Having a band like that, who are so, so great, offer that experience and opinion is invaluable to a book like this. I really wanted to show that there are endless ways to make this industry work for you. What works for one band really well, can be the undoing of another. It is a really personal process that should be tailored to each individual band, and then each individual within the band.
With Blow Your Own Trumpet done and dusted, do you have plans for any others any time soon?
No, I am going to spend the next few years doing whatever I can to step away from a computer. If I ever write another book it will be fiction, hilarious and most likely make the NY Times best seller list, we all need to dream! Thanks so much for supporting this book, I really appreciate it.
Interview by Cassie Walker
You can pick up a copy of Blow Your Own Trumpet - A Musician’s Guide to Publicity & Airplay here http://www.twofishoutofwater.com/book