Kevin Thrasher for Show4me:
“Being smart and being honest to
yourself about your business is
important in growing your music career”
Kevin “Thrasher” Gruft, a talented musician, songwriter and lead guitarist for American rock band Escape the Fate, Las Vegas, Nevada. Here at Show4me, we’ve been lucky to have him join our music community of creative artists and create his official Artist Club on the Show4me Music Interaction Network. We’ve had a chance to chat with Kevin personally in London catching him in the middle of his Europian tour. Here is what he shared with the Show4me team…
Show4me: Being a musician is not an easy path. What were the challenges that you had to go through as a musician?
The main challenges I’ve had, growing up as a musician, are the changes in social media and the way we present music. When I was first starting out, we would just do local concerts. As I got a bit older, we would do tours across the country. But then, the times have changed… We had Facebook, Myspace, Pure Volume and all these other sites that were so complicated. Now we’ve got Instagram popping up and Facebook is still happening, Spotify and iTunes. Some of the challenges were finding the way to organize all the content and I think that’s what makes Show4me really cool — you have all the content in one place.
Show4me: Any situations you’d like to have handled differently in your music career?
If I were to go back in time and change a few things to help my career path… I would’ve really taken control of things, looked at numbers and statistics to make all my moves based on them. Being smart and being honest to yourself about your business and your brand is important in growing your music career. I wish things like Show4me were available to me back then, but even Instagram wasn’t a thing when I was first starting out. Today, a lot of the technologies are out there to enable musicians to have full control over their music careers.
Show4me: Name some business skills you think most of the artists are lacking today…
A common business skill that I see artists are lacking are simple things like branding, being consistent with who you are as an artist. It’s all about really searching deeper in discovering who you are as a person as well as getting your music on the right platform, on the right places to be seen, heard, and connecting with fans on a regular basis. You know, it sounds simple just messaging everybody back… but that message is you. If you can do these simple things, I think it’s a great tip to expand your following. Then, if your fans are interacting with you, you build relationships one at a time and it naturally multiplies.
Show4me: What would you change in order to make the music industry better?
In order to make the music industry better, I would definitely change a few things. Some of them have been slowly changing… But being a songwriter myself, I see writers & songwriters as a very important part of the music industry and I can really connect with them. We’ve just passed music monetization act which allows writers to have a larger percentage of the income that comes in because after every song is sold, they get only a tiny fraction of that income. These laws have been passed so many years ago. But now, the times have changed. We really need the music monetization act to change and update those laws. For these writers — it’s their career to write music. Everything that business comes from, all of these extra things like concerts, shows, selling merchandise — it all starts at a great song. And without the songwriters, I don’t think you would have anything. So being a songwriter, I think I would give the songwriters more credit and give them the shares they deserve…
