5 lessons from Q&A with Garth Brooks

When one of the world's best-selling music artist of all time (having sold more than 190 million records) spends an hour making a case for the future of music to a group of entrepreneurs: you listen. Not just out of natural respect, but because the sheer gravitas of his passion for the music business is captivating. His ideals come from a place of conviction. And Garth Brooks fully believes that music's very life-force is critically low.

Project Music is the world's first music-technology accelerator. Accelerators are 14-16 week-long intense bootcamps designed to prepare startups to be as investable, and thereby as successful, as possible. (Or, is it the other way around?)

At the end of the program you're rewarded with an opportunity to pitch your disruptive new technology at a high-profile, "demo day" in front of eight hundred investors from all over the world. If that weren't sexy enough for you, Project Music adds the allure of having the worlds largest and most powerful music organizations behind it. Giving us unprecedented access to executives, music managers and the stars themselves. Case and point, Garth Brooks made a surprise visit

As I'm sitting three feet away from the first country artist I really discovered, I had no real conception of how big of deal it was. Sure, the mayor of Nashville came out to personally introduce him, and last year I purchased two of the 183,535 tickets for his Chicago-area shows (which broke the North American ticket sales record for a single city with an estimated gross of $12 million)...but I still didn't get it.

When he walked in, all smiles, he casually took his hat off and allowed for the welcoming ovation to continue for a few short moments before motioning everyone to sit down. The staff setup a chair for him front and center, but he stared at it like there was no possible way he could imagine himself being confined to such a small space for so long. So he paced, and talked, and paced, and talked - passionately. While I now know he's a huge fan of Bruno Mars and thinks Beyonce is today's Michael Jackson...it was the business points he spent the most time on.

After completely open Q&A with Garth from these "musicpreneurs", here were 5 key takeaways:

1. The music business has lost a vast majority of it's top songwriters because every time people listen to music for free it weakens the business that used to support their livelihoods.
   
   
2. "There are two deals out there when you first start." The deal they are willing to give you now, and the deal you know is fair. Take the one they're willing to give you, work your ass off, and then go back to renegotiate the deal that is fair to you. (Garth Brooks owns the rights to his music which is extremely rare in the music business. An arrangement he renegotiated after his first contract.)
   
   
3. In a world of singles-only music we lose the story and context that really produces deep connections between the fans and artists. Many of our favorite songs were never singles at all. Focusing on commercial singles prevents music from really moving forward into new themes and genres. We need to continue to support artists who have visions for entire projects.
   
   
4. The music business shouldn't be the only entertainment industry to apologize for being a "business".
   
   
5. Everyday we spend money on small things we will never miss but all of us will miss good music. We should invest in the future of music for ourselves and the generations after us by purchasing the songs we love, going to the concerts of the acts we love and thinking twice about the true value of music.

At the end of the day he seemed most passionate about a perceived misalignment between what music means to all of us and how we express what it means to us. Playing music isn't the ultimate form of appreciation...paying a fair price for it is.

And it's not just Garth Brooks. We're going to see a major shift in how streaming services work. As one example, Jay-Z's Tidal service pays artists twice as much as services like Spotify! Which is why business minded artists like Taylor Swift have made the move to the service.