me*dia*or

Never Trade Your Blog For A Job | Musicology.fm

I launched Musicology.fm with the intention of keeping people updated on the writing that I published at Billboard and ideas I’ve been thinking about. As it turned out, my former employer wasn’t too keen about me doing this, so I’ve left this blog dormant.

Since the early days at Hypebot, I had my own login and access to the publish button. I never had to ask Bruce about what I wanted to write about or when I’d post it.

Things didn’t work that way at Billboard and there’s good reason for this. But I’d never worked under an Editor and that took some time to get used to. I learned a lot. I fought a lot. I eventually stopped pitching my ideas and started writing and turning in whatever I wanted. This upset my Editor, but it delighted him too. He didn’t like it when I turned in writing he hadn’t approved of, but he seemed to love the boldness of my ideas.

I blame (and thank) Bruno for this approach. After months of banging my head against the wall and getting nowhere, I called him and after hearing me bitch long enough, he finally told me that I didn’t actually need to pitch my ideas and get them approved.

What?!?

Bruno is known for doing things his own way and being averse to oversight, so it’s not surprising that he gave me this advice. But this conversation changed everything.

I naively submitted to the idea of having an Editor and tried to follow the rules, but doing so killed me. Everything went slow and I wanted to move fast. I turned things in and waited to get an edit back (in part because I can’t write anything shorter than a thousand words). I’d get inspired and want to start another piece before he finished the previous one. He’d push back and make me wait. I’d pitch another hundred big ideas.

And then, I stopped.

I chased my ideas to and turned them into essays. I spent hours walking around and pondering the future of the music industry. I read books on my Kindle and never asked permission to write anything again. I published some of my best work this way.

Welcome to capture culture: Where music is not solely bought from a store and collected in our home, but captured from our environment through mobile apps and instantly stored in the cloud.

But it couldn’t last. As much as I loved breaking the rules, I knew that I couldn’t get away with it forever, because I spent a majority of my time at Billboard working on projects that no one knew about. I managed my charts and wrote my weekly column, but after that I determined how I spent my time. There were many moments, however, where I felt guilty and sought out actual work, such as magazine stories and chart related projects.

Herein lies the problem: I love what I do. I burned through weeks and months at Hypebot, publishing thousands of words of copy, because it never felt like or became work. There were things I didn’t like doing (see: press releases) and Bruce always tried to broaden my horizons by forcing me outside my writing comfort zone, but I loved it.

I didn’t love writing about Taylor Swift and her new video. I didn’t love working behind the scenes and feeling unable to bring my ideas to the world. My passion turned into a job and I started to hate my life, because I worked and I didn’t like it. Suddenly, I became the person who bitched to everyone they met about their “horrible” job and problems.

I had a great, supportive boss and a job that I couldn’t quit — until I did.

Kyle Bylin Exits Billboard, Joins Big Champagne + Live Nation Team

I left Billboard, which means this blog is fair game now. Writing that sentence makes me absolutely happy, because I have an amazing new job and missed having my own blog.

The lesson: Never trade your blog for a job — unless you have to.

I had to trade Hypebot for a job at Billboard, because I had to learn things Bruce couldn’t teach me. I had to keep this blog silent for nearly four months, because I had to submit to the reality of having a job and working in the corporate world. But this blog is mine now.

And I couldn’t be more thankful for everything that I’ve learned.