INDUSTRY NEWS

Collaborate!

Collaborate!

The Tunedly Team

Humans have actually never been meant to do anything on their own. External input from other humans, other living things, or even man made products have always assisted humans in creating their products, establishing their ideas and simply in living their lives in general. The notion that no man is an island has been in existence for time immemorial and has not changed in recent times and will not change in the nearest future. By default, we are created to collaborate in merely achieving a sustainable existence in our ecosystem. Collaboration will therefore always be intricate in our everyday lives and our creative processes and thus, it can not be ignored.

Collaboration is defined as a process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. It's that simple and straightforward. There’s always a goal to achieve, a task to be completed, an idea to be expressed, a song to be written and produced, a company to be run, or even some house chores to be done. These are activities that require helping hands, even at the most basic level. By the end of the process, when the task has been completed and the goal achieved, everyone involved is satisfied and will have benefited from it in one way or another.

Collaboration is very important in music and it’s many branches. The whole music industry thrives on an elaborate interdependence scheme, a collaborative atmosphere. Everyone needs everyone. There's no music business without the creatives, and the creatives can’t sustainably create without those at the helm of overseeing the business intricacies. Even in situations where music is being done for the fun of it, it is rare to find someone who does everything by themselves. It’s not impossible, but it’s rare. There's always a part to be played and there is always someone with more specific knowledge in an area than you.

Sharing ideas, and by extension, improving ideas, is one of the significant benefits of collaboration. Working with other creative individuals, you accord yourself the opportunity to be able to see a song idea from another person’s perspective. See it as adding some little fine tuning to the song. A few chords here and there that you didn’t think of could be the reason why a good song becomes a hit. The texture of one singer’s voice could be the exact requirement for a song to have a more significantly heart-felt meaning to an awaiting audience. You probably can’t count the number of times you’ve heard that one baseline changed the entire structure of a song. Collaboration affords us the opportunity to improve the quality of our crafts easily.

It also gives us the chance to learn new skills and techniques for carrying out our tasks. Every creative is unique in their own right, having their own process and work ethics. More often than not, when we work with someone on a project, we get to find out how they do what they do and what specific spice they add in their work. They also find out how we carry out our own processes, and we end up either learning new things we have never imagined, or finding out new ways to do things we already know how to do. We most likely even learn what our strengths and weaknesses are in the process of collaborating. Yes your strengths will always stand by you, learning your weaknesses and addressing them would definitely aid in pushing beyond your limitations and getting your music to the next level.

A lot of great friendships and long-term relationships have been built from just working together on a song. Some people find their life partners. Some find someone they can rely on in matters beyond music. Collaboration definitely helps to make creatives build deeper connections and bonds between themselves. This helps in increasing their social interaction, and expands the scope of their conversations. The more memories we can create collectively and the more we understand the people we work with, the easier it will be to relate ideas to them, and most definitely the more easier it is to reach deeper into our senses when we create.

There are other ways collaboration can be helpful. Increasing our network is for one another in such ways. Everybody can know everybody, because somebody knows somebody that somebody doesn’t know. Haha. read that again. One phone call from a co-producer you’ve collaborated with can get you on the set-list of a show you’re dying to perform at, or can link you with a singer you’re interested in working with. Cross interaction of fanbases is also a great benefit of collaboration. At the end of the day, the 2 or more collaborators have the numerous chances of increasing their fanbase strength by working together. Direct feedback is also a great way to exploit collaborations. As a professional musician, learning how to make music for other people is key. So having useful feedback and constructive criticism from people in your field, which can be gotten by regular collaboration, is very important for artistic development.

Collaboration is key in growing in an ever changing world, especially in the music industry. Working with other professionals can be exciting and fruitful. There are a lot of platforms that offer the opportunity to work with other creative-minded people in the music space you can explore, Tunedly being a major platform that has helped achieve a lot of music growth amongst songwriters and musicians. Collaboration does more for the music ecosystem, and brings out better music for the world to enjoy. So as you look towards working on your next project, consider working with other people. Collaborate!