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Making Your Way in the Modern Music Business
Transcription of interview with Sol Tzvi on January 9, 2012.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Sol Tzvi is the co-founder of Genieo and has held several top managerial positions at Microsoft
both in Israel and the U.S. She has written three professional books, and she is also
a fabulous musician and singer. Sol is coming out with a new album called Megia Misham (Coming
from There).
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Tzvi on Arutz Sheva Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: Can you tell me a little bit about your music background?
Sol Tzvi: I started to write when I was a little girl, playing my guitar at home, and
being an artist the way I use to define myself. Music was something that was obvious for me,
and writing was something that was also obvious. After two years in the army, I was looking
for new challenges so I put the music aside. It was really a huge part of my life, and
I decided to do something else where I would feel the challenge or feel that I can do something
else. This is how I came to the high-tech industry, and the music was something that
was always part of who I am or the way I define myself.
I believe that at some point when you’re growing up, you figure out that if you keep
things in your mind and you don’t accomplish them, it’s just in your mind and you have
to go through and define your dreams and make them come true. This is where I’m at the
moment.
Douglas Goldstein: Is this your first album?
Sol Tzvi: Yes, it is my first album. I used to do shows here and there in Tel-Aviv and
places like that, but at some point I really wanted to focus on my high-tech career. This
is why I wrote three books, because that was when my creativity came to a different place.
I started writing a lot of articles, defining psychology and technology altogether and took
all my writing capabilities into a different angle. Now I think I grew up and I think I
know how to do them both.
Douglas Goldstein: The new album called Megia Misham, what type of music is it?
Sol Tzvi: It’s hard to define this music, but I would say that it’s an Israeli folk
music. It’s not really rock. It’s all-acoustic band. My influence in music was of course
international music, but I was really a fan of the local music that happened here in Israel,
and I guess you can feel the roots of the influence of all the Israeli singers in my
music today.
Douglas Goldstein: What’s the music industry like, and what’s the market like in Israel
now?
Sol Tzvi: I think the music industry in general worldwide went through a big evolution. The
evolution happened from the angle that all of the folk major players in the industry
did the recording and labels. An artist had to go through a recording label to fund their
album or the music just like how the Beatles used to make music. Today, you have your own
home studios. It’s really accessible and not so expensive to buy your own recording
devices and all the equipment that you need in order to record your own music. So this
is one thing that changed. The other thing is that everyone with a guitar nowadays can
define themselves as an artist that starts singing so there’s lot of music out there.
And of course, the way the music is accessible to us and the audience has changed. We used
to have several international radio stations and several TV shows like MTV, for example.
If you wanted to watch a video clip, you used to go to MTV and wait until you get the video
clip that you like, but nowadays, you can go to YouTube and decide when and what you
want
to see.
Douglas Goldstein: How you plan to market the CD compared to what other people are doing
now?
Sol Tzvi: I think in a way I’m taking my entrepreneur capabilities or way of thinking
also to my music, I wouldn’t say career yet, but to the music things that I’m doing
around this industry. Usually, when you talk to artists, you’ll see that they’re making
their own music. They prepare the product and they actually don’t care about it in
the sense of not doing a lot with delivering the product to the audience, and they count
on the distribution companies, PR companies, and agencies, etcetera. I think my approach
to my album was a bit different from everyone else in the way that the album has sold already
thousands of copies even before it was launched. The launching is going to be just in January.
It’s like you’re making this baby that’s called your album, but you cannot say this
baby is going to grow by itself. You still need to take it hand-by-hand and make sure
it will get to the right audience, and you’ll build a community around your music.
Douglas Goldstein: How did you pre-sell thousands of copies?
Sol Tzvi: I just offered my album even before I had it in hand to a lot of high-tech companies
and they bought the album for their employees. In this way, the employees have the chance
to listen to this music and later on come to my music shows, so I actually closed this
kind of deals with many high-tech companies.
Douglas Goldstein: How did you choose to do a real physical CD as opposed to something
else?
Sol Tzvi: I have two answers for this question and it’s not an easy one. This album is
actually not a normal album in the sense of a song-by-song album. It’s a conceptual
album that has a story that has been written and it is part of the music. This is the easier
answer. I have at least an excuse because it also has a little book inside it that tells
the story between the songs. This is a good excuse though, because this you can do online
as well.
I think that when you have a dream as a kid to see your book in the stores, it is an emotional
decision that might not be economical all the time. Sometimes, you do something because
of different reasons. I think that when you hold something in your hands, there are still
people that can respect the product as it is. I think in a way because everything become
online and digital, you need to have some kind of added value. If you want to have a
physical product, you need to put into this product some added value that you won’t
get on the online version. I would say that there are a lot of emotional decisions behind
it, and as a dream to have an album a part of it was to be able to hold something when
it’s on the air. Music is something that you will listen to, that’s spiritual in
a way, and suddenly you can hold it in your hand and see it as a product.
Douglas Goldstein: There are many people who never even consider buying music. They simply
download whatever they want from any of a number of sites. Being as this is prevalent,
how do you see the music industry developing over the next five to ten years? Will it still
be a big business, or is it going to shrink because people are just sharing music?
Sol Tzvi: This is the one-million dollar question because there are two sides of this angle.
In Israel, the audience expects to get music for free, not even buying it, and actually
the great thing by enabling the iTunes is that you can actually buy just one song and
not the entire album. On the one hand, it encourages people to consume or buy more songs
in albums. We had this huge pirating issue just a decade before.
The other thing that you can see is that there are a lot of musical stores that are just
gone especially in Israel. There are not a lot of musical stores where you can go and
actually buy a physical CD. You can see that the artists really get hurt economically because
of it. On the other hand, the world has become international. Let’s say that I was singing
in English, and the audience was a worldwide audience, so I could sell my music even to
people, at least in New York and in other places around the world really easily because
they don’t have the limitation of geographical places. You have two sides of the same thing.
In Israel, the problem I think is dramatic just because you see that there’s a lot
of recording studios that are just losing money and the artist is getting poorer every
day. There’s a huge revolution that has happened right now, and I don’t think that
anyone really knows where it’s going to end and what’s going to really happen in
order to keep the balance of the artist making a living and being able to sell the music.
Douglas Goldstein: When is Megia Misham going to be released, and how can people order it?
Sol Tzvi: My first single is going to be released to the radio pretty soon in the middle of
[November], and the album launching is going to be in January but everyone can pre-order.
The album is actually already available in my online store on my website, which is www.solmusic.co.il.
Before it will get to the stores, you can be one of the first to buy it online.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered
through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried
by National Financial Services LLC. Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article. While it is
believed to be current and accurate, divergence from the original is to be expected. The original
podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/. All information on this website is purely
information and should not be used as the sole basis for making financial decisions.
The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas
Goldstein, Profile Investment Services, Ltd., or Israel National News. Readers should consult
with a professional financial advisor before making any financial decisions. Please see
the complete disclaimer at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.