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# The 80/20 rules apply
- URL: https://www.backstagecircle.com/the-80-20-rules-apply/
- Published: 2026-07-10T18:06:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-06T23:25:04.000Z
- Author: Kevin Franco
- Tags: Music, Advice

I know you. You’ve gotten into music for the pure love of it - the creation; taking your instruments and turning their sonic motion into story, right?

Yeah, me too.

You spend hours creating your masterpiece, honing your writing and playing skills along the way then you publish it online for others to hear, only to find out nobody listens to it. Like zero people, zilch, nada, not a one.

As it turns out, "If you build it, they will come." only works in baseball stories. I doubt Shoeless Joe has ever received a royalty rich in the pennies from Spotify (with exception of the two artists that are actually named Shoeless Joe and the other two with Shoeless Joe in their name).

But, WP Kinsella also said, "Go the distance."

I suppose the distance begins with sharing with your friends and family, encouraging them to listen to your fresh new track. But, this only goes so far. You've invested a ton of time into making the song, it just needs to find an audience so you start down the path of sharing your music more broadly, or what the rest of the world calls ‘marketing’ and you soon learn that EVERYthing is marketing.

So, it's not just a song your creating, but now it's cover art and a video and an EPK (after you google what an EPK is) and a press release and photographs and then chasing down playlist curators, radio stations and bloggers. For. Every. Damn. Song. Then there’s keeping up appearances on social media and now you’re fighting a war on many fronts, engagement, engagement, engagement!

You might be thinking this is all a huge time vampire, it is. But what really sucks is that I haven’t even mentioned the admin side of it yet.

That’s right, there’s paperwork involved, too! Have you registered all your works with SOCAN? What's your ISRC? Does your distributor cover SongTrust of do you need to apply on your own? Be sure to take a few minutes to track your expenses for each song, and to work on your release plan, and update your biography and your profiles on a hundred different platforms. Also, somewhat related, why is there no central database for the metadata and song links we can point the various services to? The copy and paste buttons on my Mac will need to be replaced soon.

In the end, you've gotten into this business, yes it's a business now, and you’re spending 80% of your time doing all the things necessary for you to do the one thing you are most passionate about... which you lavishly spend the last 20% of your time on.

And, here I thought being a musician would be more glamorous

*Kevin Franco is the singer/songwriter/producer for The Muster Point Project*

Website: [www.musterpointproject.com](http://www.musterpointproject.com/?ref=backstagecircle.com)