The Music Industry: What Nobody Tells You Before You Start
By Written by Peter McVeigh
The music industry can be extraordinary. It can also be genuinely dark. Here are the things that don't get said loudly enough, from someone who's seen them.
Welcome to the Music Business
Nobody tells you this clearly enough when you're starting out, so I'm going to say it plainly at the beginning of this article. The music industry is a business. It can be a brilliant one, a life-changing one, one that connects you to people and experiences you'd never have found any other way. But it can also be a dark and damaging place, and the people most likely to get hurt are the ones who walked in without knowing that.
This isn't a cynical article. I love this industry. I've spent my career in it and I'dn't change that. But I've seen enough to know that the version of it most people carry around in their head when they're starting out is incomplete. So consider this the conversation someone should have had with you earlier.
The Rooms Nobody Talks About
I've been in a lot of rooms over the years. Some of them were extraordinary. Some of them were genuinely grim.
I remember standing backstage at a show and telling a record label head that the artist currently on stage was someone they'd come to see. The response was immediate and completely matter of fact. "No, we've our female on the label." That was it. That artist didn't exist to them as a person with a career worth considering. She existed as a category that was already filled.
I've worked on tracks with labels and publishers where a vocalist was inserted into the project who, to be honest, wasn't the right fit for the song. When I raised it and suggested we bring someone better in, the response I got was that the choice had been made because she'd sell the music video. Those were the exact terms used. Not her voice, not her artistry, not what she'd bring to the track. The transaction was explicit and nobody in the room seemed to think it required explanation.
I'm sharing these things not to shock you. I'm sharing them because they're ordinary. These conversations happen constantly in this industry. The people having them aren't unusual. They're in offices with nice furniture and they're making decisions that affect real artists' careers every day.
The Drugs Conversation
I've lost count of the number of times someone has offered me drugs before or after a show. It becomes background noise after a while, which is itself a strange thing to say.
There's a part of this industry that everyone who's spent any time in it knows exists. You read about it eventually in a Rolling Stone retrospective or in someone's memoir after they've retired or got sober or both. While it's happening it's rarely acknowledged directly. It's just there, woven into the fabric of certain environments, certain tours, certain label cultures.
I want to be clear that I'm not talking about recreational choices people make for themselves. I'm talking about something more specific, which is the way substances get used as a management tool. When the schedule is relentless and someone needs you to keep performing, and all of a sudden there's something being pressed into your hand with the words "it'll just get you through tonight," that's not a friendly gesture. That's a business decision someone else is making about your body.
When Everyone Needs You to Keep Going
Here's the dynamic that makes the music industry particularly susceptible to this. When you reach a certain level, a lot of people's livelihoods depend on you continuing to perform. A manager, a booking agent, a label, a tour manager, a band, a crew. Sometimes dozens of people, sometimes more.
When that many people are financially dependent on you keeping the machine running, the incentive to keep you functioning at any cost becomes enormous. Not for your benefit. For theirs.
Then it's tonight. Then it's tomorrow night. Then it's the next week. And the thing that was offered as a shortcut to get through one hard night becomes the thing that gets you through every night. Some people will stop at nothing to make sure they get paid, and "nothing" can include choices that put you in serious harm.
This isn't a secret. Everyone in this industry knows it happens. The artists who end up in real trouble are almost always the ones who didn't have anyone in their corner who was looking out for them rather than profiting from them.
Your Gut Is a Professional Instrument
I turned down a lot of opportunities over the years because something felt wrong. Not because I could articulate what was wrong, not because I'd evidence, but because the people involved didn't sit right with me. Because the environment felt off. Because the way an offer was being made told me something about the person making it.
That instinct is worth developing and worth trusting. The music industry, like any industry built on relationships and reputation and informal power, is full of people who are very good at presenting themselves well. They know what to say. They know how to create excitement and urgency. They know how to make you feel like this is the opportunity you've been waiting for and if you don't say yes now you'll regret it forever.
Slow down when that happens. Talk to people you trust. Sleep on it. Ask yourself whether the excitement you're feeling is genuine or whether it's being manufactured. Ask yourself what you'd have to give up or compromise to take the opportunity. And then ask whether you're comfortable with that.
Knowing Who You Are Protects You
I know I'd never have made it as a major label artist. I'm too vocal, I've too many opinions, and I wasn't willing to just say yes and do what I was told. That's not a complaint. It's an honest self-assessment that I arrived at fairly early, and I think it saved me from some of the worst of what this industry can do.
Because the artists who are most vulnerable are often the ones who want it most. Who'll agree to anything because the alternative is losing the shot they've been working toward for years. The label or the manager or the promoter knows that. Sometimes they exploit it consciously. Sometimes it's just the natural logic of a negotiation where one party wants something more than the other.
Knowing who you're, what you'll do and what you won't, before you walk into those rooms is one of the most protective things you can do for yourself. It doesn't mean you'll never be tested. You'll be. But having a clear sense of your own values before someone starts pushing on them makes it much harder to get lost.
Your Moral Compass Will Be Tested. Nobody Gets Them All Right.
I want to be honest about something here. None of us navigate this perfectly. There are decisions I look back on and wish I'd made differently. Compromises that felt necessary at the time and look different in retrospect. Moments where I went along with something I wasn't comfortable with because the situation made it hard to do otherwise.
That's the reality of working in any industry that operates largely on informal power and relationships. The situations aren't always clear. The pressure isn't always obvious. Sometimes you only understand what was happening once you're out the other side of it.
What matters isn't a perfect record. What matters is that you look at your career honestly and ask whether the choices you made were yours. Whether you got the thing by being yourself or by being a version of yourself you're not proud of. Whether the opportunities you took left you feeling like you'd grown or like you'd given something away that you didn't get back.
Build Your Foundation Before You Need It
Everything I've described in this article is exactly why the other things we talk about on this site matter so much. Your band agreements. Your honest people. Your manager who actually has your interests at heart rather than their commission. Your bandmates who'll tell you when something's wrong. Your friends outside the industry who knew you before any of this started.
When you're in the middle of a gruelling tour schedule and someone's offering you something to get through the night, that's not the moment to be figuring out who you can trust. You need to have already built those relationships. You need to already have people around you who are watching out for you.
A solid foundation won't make the industry less complicated. It won't stop difficult people from being in it. But it gives you something to come back to when the pressure builds and the room gets murky. It gives you people who'll say "actually, I don't think you should do this" and mean it.
The industry you're trying to get into is full of extraordinary music and extraordinary people. It's also, at times, an absolutely dark world. Go in with your eyes open. Build your team carefully. Trust your instincts. And know that the best protection you've against the worst of it's knowing clearly who you're before someone else tries to tell you.