WELCOME TO the Mountain.

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‍MIC is "Music Industry Connected" because our Mountain connects the puzzle pieces of a music career by healing the damage of overwhelm.
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Those who seek careers as commercial musicians often experience overwhelm. Overwhelm is draining. This drain is bad because you need energy to create a music career (which is how almost all music careers begin nowadays - you start it yourself, before you gain help from teams or labels). For musicians, overwhelm can arise from a myriad of things: self-doubt, lack of business expertise, comparison to others, time and financial constraints. Ironically, overwhelm can be the reason a music career doesn't hit its potential - you're trying so hard, that the thing you want most, eludes you the most.

This low energy kills a lot of music careers - but this world is big. Up to interpretation. Grey area. There is power in every position of a music career, and music is a subjective art-form with very minimal standards on what is "good." The secrets behind solid music careers are usually angles of perspective that some people luck into naturally, and anyone else can also create for themselves: artistic vision for the quality of your product, belief in yourself, and a birds-eye understanding of the big picture and all the potential eyeballs and ears out there. At the end of the day, expanding your mind to see more angles isn't naive optimism - it's a power gain from neutrality and purpose that prevents overwhelm's energy drain.

Since we were tired of toxic attitudes that promoted music careers in needlessly dramatic lights of "should" and "shouldn't's", we created the Mountain. A dialectically-minded, see-both-sides-and-balance-them way of visualizing a music career. We also made it a cool-looking Mountain with the metaphor of climbing, because that is how powerful of a role a music career can feel in our lives.

The Mountain undoes the damage of the overwhelm by showing how a music career is simply a combo deal of Events & Maintenance. It's a way of seeing your world that integrates your Art + Business + Mental Health + Physical Performance into a Mountain pointed towards your unique, personal Definition of Success. This isn't about how-to lists (which are book and google-search abundant, and still often useful when planning Events), this is about gaining a mindframe of strength so you don't waste your energy on doubt, and you can use it on climbing. This type of dialectic, both-sides-of-the-story thinking sheds light on common roadblocks (“Since no one in my life seems to care about my music, does that mean it’s not any good?") and trends (“Do I really have to focus so much on expensive services to push my music to playlists?”) by revealing you what really matters, and what doesn't. It all comes down to your unique Mountain climb.

The Mountain is the visual you see above, explained in 6 Steps for you to chronologically follow for yourself - and we publish those 6 Steps here on our website in the Sanctuary blog. They are so simple and great that we'd rather share them organically than hoard them. Plus, we believe a rising tide raises all ships anyway. ‍

If anyone wants more personalized help, The Mountain's creator Emily Plazek offers one-on-one consulting sessions called Music Career Diagnostics. In those sessions you'll dive deeper into music career mental training principles (for example, we coined the famous “First Circle Conundrum” that explains why the people in your life often can't be your fans), psychological business principles (like push vs. pull marketing dynamics, listener behavior motivation), neuroscientific effects on productivity (like brain wiring, circadian rhythm gaming), and so much more.

Now begin your journey by reading the Introduction to the Mountain, then continuing onto the 6 Steps of the Mountain, all located here in the Sanctuary.
Welcome to The Mountain.