Boston based heavy metal guitar player and singer Dave Reffett (SHREDDING THE ENVELOPE) recently unveiled an ongoing blog column with Guitar World, called Equipped To Punish: In Music, Business, And Life.His column covers topics ranging from playing tips and lessons, inspirational life advice, and career advice based on Dave's days working at record companies like Virgin Records/EMI Music and through his work in his own career.

Following is an excerpt from the second installment:

I want to address tons of topics in this column, but one thing I always get asked by new students, music lovers and fans at clinics and trade shows is, “Dave, what would you recommend for a new artist coming up today who is trying to get out there and get discovered?”

When asked this, I usually want to hear a little bit more about the project from the person so I can best suit their advice needs, as everyone’s goals are a bit different.

Nine times out of 10 I hear something like, “I’ve been in a band for a while and we really love our sound and we are doing OK and getting some cool gigs here and there, but we just can’t seem to hit that next level, and we can’t stir up any real interest from label. What do you recommend? Facebook promotion? Touring?

I look at them and simply say, “Let me ask you this: Why would any record company want to put your music out?”

They usually look at me for a few seconds and 99 percent of the time come back with something like, “Well, man, because I think our music is really good. We are on to a new sound that is crazy, something no one is doing out there yet.”

I tell them, “Yeah, that’s awesome, but WHY would THEY want to put it out?"

This is the part of the conversation when they are usually trying to figure out what it is I want to hear. Then I tell them, “Look, they want to put music out that is going to make them money.”

They often look a little stunned as I proceed: “if you can show these companies how they are going to make money on your music, they are going to love your music; bottom line.”

I know that’s a stone cold harsh way of putting it and something us musicians don’t really want to think about when talking about our music, but if you can take the emotions out of it and put your businessman’s hat on for a second, then it’s pretty simple stuff.

Let’s say you send your demo tape to an A&R; guy, (the person at the label who signs artists) and the person loves it. This will be enough to get you in the door, but in order to land a record deal many other pieces of the puzzle need to be figured out. Just like any business, record labels have to make money to stay afloat. And today especially that is insanely difficult to do with music piracy being as prevalent as it is.

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