After I released my drum & bass album back in 2008, I took a long timeout from writing music. I had delivered this huge project with 12 tracks where I did everything myself. I had an amazing time doing the album and independently releasing it was a crazy experience. In the end I sold the entire batch of 1000 pieces and 2000 posters, all over the internet building the entire thing myself, from the music, to the mixing, mastering, to the artwork, to writing the payment processing system, doing all the promotions and folding posters, becoming a publisher to collect my royalties, putting CDs into envelopes and going to the post office on my bicycle to send the new orders off every week.
2008年我发行了我的鼓和低音专辑后，我花了很长时间停止创作音乐。我完成了这个巨大的项目，有12首曲目，我自己做了所有的事情。我有一个惊人的时间做专辑和独立发布它是一个疯狂的经验。最后，我卖掉了整批1000件作品和2000张海报，在互联网上自己建造了整个东西，从音乐，到混音，掌握，到艺术品，到编写支付处理系统，做所有的促销和折叠海报，成为一个出版商来收取我的版税，把CD放进信封里，每周骑着自行车去邮局把新订的CD寄出去。

“Early in the 17th century, a tiny country in Western Europe laid the foundations for what was to be the largest metropolis in the United States. This tiny country was the Netherlands and the city was called New Amsterdam. However, British troops spoiled the fun and invaded the town sixty years later. It was renamed New York City. The Dutch have waited all these years for the right time to strike back. Now four centuries later, that time has come. Let’s retake Manhattan!”
“早在世纪，西欧的一个小国为后来成为美国最大的大都会奠定了基础。这个小国就是荷兰，这个城市叫做新阿姆斯特丹。然而，英国军队破坏了这一乐趣，并在60年后入侵了该镇。它被重新命名为纽约市。这些年来，荷兰人一直在等待合适的时机进行反击。四个世纪后，这个时刻已经到来。让我们夺回曼哈顿！”

The site is still up at http://retakemanhattan.com if you’re interested.
如果你感兴趣的话，这个网站仍然在http://retakemanhattan.com上。

What I learned was that to be successful in music, you cannot do everything on your own. And even if you can, you don’t want to. You are always going to need others, be it tastemakers, big DJs that push your name. The internet has not changed that. Arguably, I could have benefited from actually getting their respect first before releasing my own album. I did some, but not enough I argue. I also learned that you can market your music to success but you can not force people to like your music.
我学到的是，要想在音乐上取得成功，你不能什么都自己做。即使你能，你也不想。你总是会需要别人，无论是潮流创造者，大DJ，推动你的名字。互联网并没有改变这一点。可以说，在发行我自己的专辑之前，我本可以先得到他们的尊重。我做了一些，但我认为还不够。我还学到了你可以把你的音乐推向成功，但你不能强迫人们喜欢你的音乐。

So my advice to musicians all over the world would be: be stubborn and do your own thing, don’t rely on labels to push you, but do rely on tastemakers (be it DJs or niche YouTube channels) to push you and don’t release your own stuff independently too early. Get really good at making music first. Also, people want to at least see you pushed up by others first before you can go your own way. And with others I mean significant people in a music genre’s scene. And significant people will in fact find you when you make good music. They will. Great music is like valuable information, it wants to be free and it will at some point.
所以我对世界各地的音乐家的建议是：固执地做你自己的事情，不要依赖唱片公司来推动你，而是要依赖潮流创造者（无论是DJ还是利基YouTube频道）来推动你，不要过早地独立发布自己的东西。首先要做好音乐。此外，人们希望在你走自己的路之前，至少看到你先被别人推起来。我指的是音乐流派中的重要人物。事实上，当你做出好音乐的时候，重要的人会找到你。他们会的伟大的音乐就像有价值的信息，它想要免费，而且在某个时候会免费。

I believe this point goes further than music. Marketing your product and putting it to the market yourself can get you far, but an absolutely great product pushes itself. So did I make a great product? Yes, but it could be a lot better and if I had dedicated the time I spent on marketing and promoting it on making the music better I think it would have gone much further. (Although, it did spin off into a very popular YouTube channel)
我认为这一点比音乐更重要。营销你的产品并把它推向市场可以让你走得很远，但一个绝对伟大的产品会推动自己。我做了一个伟大的产品吗？是的，但它可以好得多，如果我把时间花在营销和推广上，让音乐更好，我想它会走得更远。（虽然，它确实分拆成一个非常受欢迎的YouTube频道）

So… 所以…

Make a great product. Chances are it will push itself before you even thought about marketing it.
做一个伟大的产品。很有可能在你考虑营销它之前，它就会自己推动自己。

P.S. I’m on Twitter too if you’d like to follow more of my stories. And I wrote a book called MAKE about building startups without funding. See a list of my stories or contact me. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below:
P.S.我也在Twitter上，如果你想关注我的更多故事。我写了一本书叫MAKE，是关于在没有资金的情况下建立初创公司的。查看我的故事列表或联系我。要在我写新博客文章时获得提醒，您可以在下面订阅：