August 27, 2019: "Artistry Tuesday" featuring Lance Allen!



“Artistry Tuesday”
Featuring Lance Allen
August 27, 2019

"www.randalsview.blog"

It is with some trepidation that I write a little about Lance Allen and for an article about a musician, strangely I’m going to focus more on his story than on his music.

There are many great guitar players today and Lance Allen is certainly among them, but that is where the story of Lance Allen begins. 

It has always been difficult for musical artists to find an audience and/or make a living at their craft of “music”. Out of the millions of would-be professional musicians on this planet only a handful at any one time ever “make it”, that is manage to find a way to pay all their bills with the earnings from their craft. Decades ago if you talented enough and driven enough that meant finding a way to convince a studio to let you record yourself and somehow manage to pay to press that recording onto an LP and then getting in the car and driving around the country, guitar in hand, plying your record to radio stations, and if you successfully convinced a DJ or station programmer to play your record, or put you on live, you could be heard beyond the walls of any one physical venue.  Perhaps along the way you’d find a few places to “gig” at and earn a few bucks in tips. That success, however, would only guarantee you an audience within the radio wave range of that one station. Then it was moving on to the next town, and the next, and the next ad infinitum. Somewhere in between you needed to make a new record so you had fresh material for the next road trip, and then do it all over again, and again, until you either gave up or you were “discovered” and sold your soul to a record label.

That was the world Lance Allen was born in to along with the rest of us. Love of the guitar and the passion that goes along with it can be a dangerous thing as far as a stable hone life is concerned. The highways and motels of the world are littered with the remains of “would-be” stars who just didn’t get the right break along the way but suffered all the inevitable consequences of “life on the road”. A tough gamble at best, a life of misery, divorce and despair at worst. The probable outcome of that tough gamble convinced most of us in the “maybe I could make it” category to pursue something seemingly less satisfying but more sure and more sane! We just accepted that there wasn’t another way and the remote chance of being “discovered” didn’t justify the gamble.

In the midst of that world was born and raised a big guy with a big talent, big passion, a big heart and a vision that eluded the rest of us. It is that vision more than anything else that separates Lance Allen from the rest of the pack!  In the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s the internet became a household word and personal computers started to arrive and become affordable. Lance took advantage of this in the world of music by reaching out to would-be guitar students through online lessons and sales of guitar related items. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram  followed and Lance used each and every one to try to connect with as many people as possible while foregoing the traditional “life on the road”. Then along came Spotify and the online music streaming world. 

Established artists, record labels, and record stores all cried about the horrors of this new world and new way of distributing music. Lance saw through it all and decided this was a fantastic opportunity. He pursued every opportunity to secure a place in this new medium: The Spotify Playlist! While everyone else was moaning about the few tenths of a cent that Spotify paid for each stream of their music, Lance saw that if you multiply a few tenths of a cent by hundreds of thousands or millions of streams, hey, this could add up. And Spotify reached worldwide, not just a few hundred miles. Wow! What an opportunity! 

After some success achieved by doggedly pursuing every opportunity for a Spotify Playlist “add” Lance found his music on some of the most popular Spotify playlists and those streams started to add up to real money. With a few million streams under his belt in 2017 Lance calculated that it would take approximately 60 million streams to earn enough to “pay off his house”, and he was going to do it! Two years later that goal of 60 million streams is achieved through sheer will and becoming possibly the world’s biggest Spotify advocate. If he could do it, others could do it he decided and rather than hide what he was doing and how he did it, he began sharing that knowledge with anyone interested from DIY Musician, bloggers, and anyone else interested. He didn’t hide a thing and gave away everything he learned to anyone interested. Wow! No “pay for me to tell you how to do it” seminars, no “paid online courses”, just an open “here’s what I did and how I did it”. That sort of generosity is rare and unique.

Now none of this would have worked without the ability to create great music. Lance has this musical ability and has proven it with the hundreds of recordings of originals, covers, and collaborations that he has delivered in just a few years. His music is wonderful and among the best out there in the acoustic guitar world and he has evolved and changed that music to capture whatever moments, opportunities and trends developed along the way. With the highest level quality his body of work is now epic and played around the world to the tune of 100,000+ streams/day on Spotify alone! And he did it all, while being able to be a stay-at-home dad!!!!

Lance’s story would be inspiring and amazing if we stopped with just his artistic talent, his drive to succeed and the resulting success. But that’s not the end of the story of Lance Allen. It is his big heart and his willingness to share what he has learned that is perhaps the most amazing part of the story. He could have just sat at home gloating in and hiding his success and his methods. Instead, he has made every effort to tell the world how to repeat for themselves what he has accomplished.  Like the “treasure map” in Treasure Island Lance has given all would-be musicians a clear map of how to follow the trail he blazed and succeed in this new world of online streaming. A great talent, an inspiration, an icon, a visionary, a trailblazer, a selfless mentor, and a guy who has conquered the music world all while getting to stay home with his kids: this is Lance Allen - “The King of Spotify!”

You can find Lance Allen’s music on most every guitar related playlist or on his Spotify Artist Profile on Spotify & Apple Music!

On Spotify: Lance Allen!

On Apple Music: Lance Allen!

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