How to become a Rock Star in the 21st Century

Welcome to The Jamplifier’s Manual – How to Become a Rock Star in the 21st Century, the incredible manual that teaches you how to become a successful artist on your own, by making music that will be relevant and revolutionary again.

You’re just one step from learning how to write insanely great songs, how to produce killer albums, and how to successfully promote and sell your music all on your own, without the help of any record company.

Your time has come – let’s start a revolution!

Quick FAQ

What is this book about?

This book will teach you how to become a successful artist by greatly improving your songwriting, production, and marketing skills.

THIS IS A BOOK FOR UNDERDOGS, IT’S A BOOK FOR MUSICIANS WHO ARE DIFFERENT, AND WHO WISH TO MAKE MUSIC THAT MAY CHANGE THE WORLD.

You will not only learn what’s wrong with today’s music industry and with today’s music itself, but you will also get step by step instructions on how to become a much better artist and on how to overcome all possible problems and obstacles on your road to eternal fame. This is why it’s called a “manual” by the way.

And in this manual, you will learn that you can indeed become a successful artist all on your own, even in the age of streaming and online piracy, without the help of traditional record companies, and you won’t even have to produce mainstream pop music.

THIS MANUAL IS ABOUT BECOMING SUCCESSFUL BY MAKING GREAT AND REVOLUTIONARY MUSIC THAT WILL BE REAL HANDMADE ART, AND NOT BY PRODUCING COMMERCIAL CHART POP CRAP.

You will need to create music that will be innovative and relevant again, and you will have to produce a killer album that will make music lovers go crazy and that people out there will absolutely have to buy – and in this manual, you’ll learn how this can be done.

But if nobody’s buying records anymore, how can you become successful by selling albums then?

Everyone’s complaining about the “fact” that people don’t buy lots of records anymore, that you can no longer make a lot of money by selling records, and that you can’t ever make enough money with streaming alone.

In this book, you will learn that while people may generally be buying less, the music buying population is now also larger than ever before and that some good (or even great) albums sell even better nowadays than many albums did in the 20th century. Sounds unbelievable, but it’s a fact, and some of today’s records even still set sales records.

Nobody in the music industry is talking about those numbers, as they contradict the dogmatic views the industry is trying to enforce. Once you will free your mind and use your brain to analyze the numbers by yourself, you will start to understand the problems of the industry and you will learn how to become a successful musician.

YOU CAN STILL MAKE A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY BY SELLING COMPACT DISCS, ONLINE ALBUMS, AND VINYL RECORDS — YOU JUST HAVE TO LEARN HOW IT CAN BE DONE.

The music industry’s real problem is that good (or even great) records have become really, really rare nowadays, while you had about 25 so-called “killer albums” a year in the second half of the 20th century. This is why the music industry made billions back then, and this is also why they’re in trouble right now.

GOOD MUSIC STILL SELLS VERY WELL, SOMETIMES EVEN BETTER THAN EVER BEFORE — THE PROBLEM IS SIMPLY THAT GOOD MUSIC HAS BECOME VERY RARE.

That’s the number one problem we’ll address in this manual. So please stop complaining about low sales, read the book, and learn how to produce a real killer album that will be relevant or even revolutionary again.

Why is this book so big?

It’s funny to see that so many musicians wish to become successful without knowing anything about their business (the music industry) or their product (the music itself).

Popular music (which includes all genres by the way, from rock and pop over alternative and indie rock to punk, heavy metal, and hip hop for example) is a highly complex industry, and making a living out of your hobby will be similar to starting a small business.

AND IF YOU DON’T KNOW EVERY LITTLE DETAIL ABOUT THE BUSINESS YOU’RE IN, THEN YOU WILL FAIL.

Furthermore, you will learn that most of the things musicians (and all other kinds of people in this industry) believe to be true are in fact completely wrong. If you listen to what your friends, to what "music industry experts" and to what the media will tell you, then you will certainly fail because in the end it’s all bullshit and all of this “fake knowledge” will lead you into the wrong direction.

This is why this book has to be so big, because you’ll need to learn EVERYTHING, and you’ll also have to understand why all of the “facts” and “truths” you believed in may not be the real deal after all.

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS THE ONLY BUSINESS WHERE EVERYONE’S DREAMING OF BECOMING INSANELY RICH WHILE NOBODY’S GOT A CLUE ABOUT ANYTHING.

Most successful painters, sculptors, writers, directors, and actors have been studying for years and they have been working their asses off in order to make it, while most musicians won’t even take the time to read a single book while they expect to become millionaires overnight.

So please take the time, read the entire book, even if it’s quite big. Don’t forget that it features almost all of the information you’ll ever need, and reading it may save you a lot of time later on, as you won’t make all of those stupid mistakes everyone else is making.

And what does the author of this book know about music or the music industry?

In the mid 1990s I played in a band that was locally quite successful (while “locally” doesn’t mean anything if you live in Luxembourg, which is one of the smallest countries in the world), at the same time I was working as a graphics designer in our country’s biggest recording studio (which featured an SSL 4000G console back then, and so it wasn’t just a small amateur studio).

In the late 90s, I planned to start my own studio and record company, but then my first software project started to become successful, and I had to drop the idea as I needed to fully focus on web platforms.

I developed Luxembourg’s most successful educational platform of the 2000s, and in 2007 I created a collaborative platform for science fiction authors centered around a virtual galaxy that won several awards in the United States (2nd place in the SeoMoz Web 2.0 awards, project of the week in Linux Journal, Yahoo’s pick of the day, ...). In 2011 I created another successful educational platform that has now been licensed by Luxembourg’s government and that can be used by all of the country's students and teachers.

I experienced the rise of the internet and of web technologies, I was lucky to be part of that revolution to some minor degree, and I am grateful for the success my platforms had so far, even if all of this was only on quite a small scale.

AT THE SAME TIME, I WAS ABLE TO WITNESS THE DOWNFALL OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, AND I MUST ADMIT THAT I AM NOT THAT SURPRISED ABOUT HOW THE ENTIRE MUSIC BUSINESS ENDED UP.

Technology and the internet are highly innovative industries, and some companies are run by some of the most clever people on Earth. Many of them are real geniuses, and there are tons of intelligent, creative, and talented people working on all levels of the hierarchy. So it's not really surprising that many tech businesses have been growing like crazy during the past 20 years.

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS RUN BY ... WELL, LET’S SAY THAT MANY PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF THE RECORD INDUSTRY ARE NOT THE BRIGHTEST STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY.

And this is not only true for record company leaders and top managers who have mostly been taking hilarious decisions within the past few decades, the problem goes all down in the hierarchy, and it’s even a problem with many of today’s artists who are nothing but talentless puppets hoping to make some quick money by selling pitch-corrected vocals and cheap beats.

And it's also true for most amateur musicians, who still believe that they may become famous and make some real money by simply recording some boring songs they randomly wrote in their rehearsal rooms. This is not how the greatest artists of the 20th century created their music, and this is not how the greatest albums of all time have been recorded.

When I planned to restart making music in 2008, the first thing I wanted to do was to analyze the problems of today’s music and of today’s record industry in detail, as I didn’t want to make the same kind of stupid mistakes everyone else in this business was making, and I didn’t want to produce yet another irrelevant record that everyone would ignore and that nobody would ever buy.

Shortly after, I stalled my own music project as I had noticed that the entire problem was way more complex than I had initially thought, and I started working on the Jamplifier platform and on the ebook you’re just reading. I felt that it was more important to analyze the core problems of the industry and that it was a good idea to share all the information I had with other musicians out there (although I probably wouldn’t have started writing this book if I knew that it would take me 10 years to finish it).

So here I am now, offering you all the information I gathered within the past decade. I may not be a “music industry expert”, but soon you’ll learn that all of those “experts” are absolutely clueless and that most artists fail exactly because they’re following the recommendations of people who know nothing about anything.

And now that work on this ebook has been finished, I will also be able to finally relaunch my own music project, and I will also apply all of the recommendations and strategies that you’ll find in this manual to my own music, of course.

So what’s the final verdict?

Well, you may either believe in the recommendations you’ll find in this manual, or you may continue using the same strategies the music industry has been unsuccessfully applying during the past 20 years.

It’s up to you!

Read the book, make your own judgment, and share your experiences on www.jamplifer.com.