You just have to be willing to gursh like a con-artist in the beginning and then stick it out. Eventually this virtuous cycle turns perceived success into real success. Then through the magic of something called The Matthew Effect you gain access to a more talented pool of artists thus increasing the odds of your success. If you do this artfully enough you create the appearance of continual success. The easiest way to do that is through gurshing. Thus the high failure rates are rarely discussed and instead we create little stories that make ourselves and our companies seem reliably successful. If you want to sign, produce or co-write with other writers you have to distort your track record. They don’t want to sign with an entity or individual that has a 12% success ratio. However, no aspiring artist or songwriter wants to be confronted with the terrible odds and sheer capriciousness of success in music industry. But because successful songs, artists, records make so much money the high failure rate doesn’t actual matter in the long term to producers, managers, songwriters, publishers and labels. 14% of the albums you record as a producer actually make any money? 8% of the acts you sign make money for the record label? All guesses but probably not far off. Even if you are an extremely talented producer or A&R executive your raw track record is going to suggest a success rate in the low double digits. And we perfected it as an art. This is largely because the music business is built on the illusion of success. Most songs are failures. But since this is the music business we created a word for it: Gurshing. Music industry professionals are no different. It is an evolutionary tool designed to insure survival of the species. It is just in the nature of homo corporaticus. In the offices and boardrooms of any corporation it is not uncommon to find executives wildly overstating their role in the success of some corporate initiative, or conversely radically understating their role in a spectacular failure.
To Gursh: To overstate one’s role in the success of a record or artist or conversely, to understate one’s role in the failure of a record or artist- NY music industry slang dating from at least the early 1980s. “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan” -Generally attributed to Roman Senator Tacitus approximately 98 AD
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