Maybe I’m the only one who sees it, but I think the Flashlight is the ultimate X-factor in the music business.

Anyone who has tried to build software tools or other products for the independent artist has surely, whether they know it or not, dealt with what I call the Flashlight.

The Flashlight refers to the dream of stardom, the intoxication of being a rock star, the recognition of the public and most specifically being such a big deal that you have a roadie with a flashlight guide you up the dark stairs to bright lights of the stage.

Business people don’t understand the Flashlight. When they present a perfectly good idea to an artist they are always surprised by the artist’s reluctance to take advantage of a product or service that would clearly advance their career. Or when the artist says “that’s awesome, let’s do it”, then leave the meeting never to be heard from again.

This is because being a success in music isn’t about the money, it’s about adoration and worship. Kids who are good at baseball dream about hitting a home run in the ninth inning of the World Series, not playing for a minor league team in a small midwestern town. Musicians who receive their first guitar when they’re ten dream about playing in stadiums and having the Rolling Stones open for them.

Perhaps the only difference is the age factor. By the time most of us reach our twenties, we are fairly sure we won’t be drafted by the Yankees, but artists hold onto the dream of being led around by their handlers for a lifetime. They always feel like they’re one “big break” away from being discovered by the uninformed masses who, if they only heard the new record, would immediately thrust them into superstardom.

The Flashlight it that special treatment reserved for the rock star. Rich people don’t get the flashlight, baseball players don’t get the flashlight, movie stars don’t get the flashlight. The Flashlight is the right of passage from opening act to headliner. The Flashlight means you have made it. The Flashlight is the dream.

When you get frustrated by artists who seemingly won’t help themselves, against all logic, don’t blame them, blame The Flashlight.

We’d love to hear your Flashlight experiences. Please comment or email us with your stories. We could write a book!

The music industry is full of fear. Fear of customers as thieves, fear of technology run amok, fear of loss of control. But for the music industry to do more than just survive, fear cannot be the answer.

The answer lies in listening to customers and letting them inform what and how they want to buy. The answer lies in experimentation and a willingness to fail. And key to it all is to stop grasping desperately for control and to stop acting out of fear.

All too rarely do I read an article in an industry publication that leads with curiosity and possibility when covering new technology. From every streaming service, to novel new music players, to self-driving cars, it would seem the sky is always falling.

Fear also comes in great supply from rock and roll royalty. While their arguments are worth careful consideration, artists like David Byrne and Thom Yorke have, in many ways, become the industry’s version of town criers gathering villagers with torches, set on destroying Frankenstein’s monster.

To me, the irony is this: just as artists embrace fear daily as they make their art, why shouldn’t the industry be expected to do the same with their business models and operations?

So, what’s the good news? Examples of companies and artists pushing past fear and taking risks are out there, if you know where to look. Neil Young’s Pono is a great example of both. Unsatisfied with the state of digital music quality, he crowd-funded a new music player that is now the third highest-funded campaign in Kickstarter’s history. There are plenty of skeptics, us among them, but Neil is to be saluted for trying something new.

Closer to the ground, we’re fortunate to work with deeply established music businesses like Zavitson Music Group, who are turning music publishing on its head with MusicPubWorks, and Lyric Financial, who are bringing progressive financial practices and technology from outside the music business to labels and artists alike.

These and other companies like them in Nashville and beyond are taking big risks and bucking the status quo. In doing so, they’re setting examples the rest of the industry would do well to study.

In 1904, the French mathematician Henri Poincaré declared his eponymous conjecture: Every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere.

This famous problem remained one of mathematics’ great mysteries for nearly 100 years. In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute included the Poincaré Conjecture in its Millennium Prize Problems, a set of 10 unsolved math problems with a $1,000,000 prize attached to each of them.

Three years later, the problem was solved by a Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman. To this day, it remains the only Millenium Prize Problem that has been solved.

When he was finally awarded the Millennium Prize in 2010, Perelman refused. What’s more, Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for the same work, the equivalent of winning a Nobel Prize. To this he responded:

I’m not interested in money or fame. I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I’m not a hero of mathematics. I’m not even that successful; that is why I don’t want to have everybody looking at me.

Say what you will about reclusive geeks, Perelman is nothing if not passionate about his art.

Musicians don’t turn down GRAMMYs. Director’s don’t turn down Oscars. Writers don’t turn down Pulitzers. Sure, all of these things have happened, usually as a matter of protest, but it take balls of steel to turn down a friggin’ Fields Medal because you just want everyone to piss off and let you keep doing your work.

I believe this is something missing from music.

I often ask an artist, “Is there anything I can do right now to make you stop playing music forever? If I handed you a billion dollars, would you put your guitar down and never pick it up again?”

If the answer to the above question is yes, then you should just stop now.

Artists shouldn’t play music because it’s their job. They shouldn’t play for the money or the fame or the women. They shouldn’t play because it makes them happy, or makes them feel important. And they sure as hell shouldn’t play because someone else told them they should.

Artists should play because they have to play, because they can’t not play.

Perelman doesn’t do math for the fame, the prizes, the awards, and he doesn’t even do it because he loves it. He does it because math. Because it’s the only thing.