

The secret to success in the arts - smokel
http://www.felixsalmon.com/2012/08/the-secret-to-success-in-the-arts/

======
randomdrake
Before adopting programming as my job and passion, I was a professional actor
and I plan on continuing to act professionally when I move back to to a place
where it is more avaialble. Working professionally in many capacities for many
years, I can tell you that luck certainly helps, for some people. This author
completely discounts artists who trained, worked and pushed themselves for
years and years to get where they are: regularly hired for awesome roles,
being paid well, and doing it professionally day after day for their
livelihood.

 _The fact is that pretty much every successful novelist, every successful pop
star, every successful artist is successful mainly because of luck. Oftentimes
there’s skill involved too, but if you look hard enough, you’ll find just as
much skill in the millions of unsuccessful strivers as you do in the tiny set
of people who make it huge._

There are a few things I find very wrong with this paragraph:

1) The definition of success. Even under the assumption of monetary gain, this
just isn't a good statement. Success, for an artist can be measured in many
other ways. That aside: plenty of successful actors got to where they were
because they tried harder than others. They showed up to more auditions than
others. They worked hard training themselves in schools or other avenues. They
were simply better at the profession with a greater understanding of how to
get hired. This brings me to my next point.

2) _Just as much skill in the millions of unsuccessful strivers._

This statement is just not true. You will only find handfuls of people that
are capable of pulling off, even basic, performances necessary for a
professional venue. They are the exceptions and they are skilled and talented.
They get work because of this uniqueness. They don't appear in shows over and
over again because they are lucky, they appear because they present artistic,
or even monetary, value to the production.

I appreciated and enjoyed reading the article but the definitive nature of the
statements from the author regarding "pretty much every" successful artist
didn't sit well with me.

For the reasons that the author illustrated earlier in the article, yes people
do get lucky. But I don't think the conclusions are appropriate to apply to
the skillsets of artists in this way.

Artists can, and do, achieve successes on their own accord without lady luck.
Sure, luck is helpful but for every 1 successful Hollywood star, there are
scores of other successful artists working because they are simply better and
more talented. You may never see these people on the silver screen. They are
successful; in their own minds, and the minds of artists. All of this without
regard to an agreed upon definition of success.

~~~
thenomad
I'm a professional film director. I also agree 100% with this statement.

There is a huge variance in skill in all the creative professions.

I've had the opportunity to work with some extremely well-known actors. Within
five minutes of starting working with them, it was obvious why they were so
well-known - their skill at the craft was, to a man/woman, extraordinary.

That's something I've found to be the case in other contractors on films, too.
Most of the time, in my experience, the 3D artists who get the top jobs or
command the highest contracting fees are the most skilled and the easiest to
work with, for example.

If you want a really good basic guide to success in the creative arts, I
recommend Neil Gaiman's University of the Arts speech:

<http://vimeo.com/42372767>

~~~
nateberkopec
Salmon's point isn't that there is no variance in creative skill, it's just
that there isn't enough to matter in the scheme of being "the best in the
world". There's not nearly enough variance to compensate for the luck required
to be in the top 100 out of several million.

What you're describing is a "3-sigma" difference, but to be an A-list
Hollywood star you'd need to be in something like the 50th sigma. That just
isn't explainable by skill.

~~~
lazerwalker
My problem with his article is that he seems to only define "success" and
"recognition" in terms of being within that top 100.

There are a lot of startups that are profitable and have users loving their
products that will never sell to Facebook for $1 billion. Using Salmon's
argument, it takes pure luck to get to that Instagram-level of success. I buy
that. I don't think it follows that all of those small profitable startups are
therefore financial failures, which seems to be the conclusion he's drawn.

~~~
nateberkopec
I don't think he does. You have to take the argument in context - he's talking
about Nassim Taleb, who's interested in "Black Swan" 50-sigma outcomes.

------
loso
This article lack of detail derails the point that it is trying to make. Yes,
there are millions of people who try to enter certain creative fields at any
one time but a very small percentage truly have what it takes to enter the
business. And when I say have what it takes, only a small percentage of that
is talent. Talent is important but it is only the first step.

The lucky part is impressing the right person at the right time that you can
become a star. After that you still need to be set up with the right team,
proper motivation and yes some talent. But the most important part of that
equation is the right team, especially the marketing team. If you look at the
music business, they usually try to sell you a rags to riches tale when it
comes to their artists. They want you to believe that the person was found on
the street, signed to a record deal, and now millions of people love them.
Very rarely is that true. The music business has a formula and they try their
best to stick with it.

You can see that happening right now with an artist named Azealia Banks. I use
her as an example because she is in the middle of that process now. Not
mainstream yet but on the cusp of it. Her label(Interscope) is pushing her as
an independent artist that just happens to be getting some attention. They
want you to believe that luck and her talent is why she is getting any
attention at all. The truth is her marketing team is doing a tremendous job at
getting her name out there. No luck at all. A well planned cosign by Kanye
West, the use of Twitter to get into well publicized problems (beef) with
other artist ala the 50 Cent strategy, Several big name magazine covers or
articles before anyone knows who she is, a "just so happens" controversial
Dazed and Confused magazine cover that is getting a lot of attention now,
another cosign by fashion designer Alexander Wang, and all of this before she
has even put an official album out.

None of that is luck or because of talent. When a label thinks it has a hot
property then they step up the marketing gas. Gone are the days of putting
gigantic posters up & magazine ads and catering to radio stations. Now the job
of marketing is to fool the customer into thinking the artist popularity is
all organic. The web is used to break the star, traditional forms of media is
used to mass market them. So to the outsider it seems lucky but it really
isn't. It is really the music business equivalent of SEO.

------
kens
To make this quantitative, there are some interesting studies that show the
popularity of music depends largely on luck. Researchers built a music sharing
site that showed the popularity of different downloads and found not
surprisingly that people downloaded the popular songs more. The interesting
part is they randomly showed different users different popularity rankings.
The songs that became popular with one set of users weren't very correlated
with the songs that became popular with another set of users - basically once
a song randomly gets more popular, positive feedback sets in.

To summarize the abstract:

"Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and
unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by
quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but
any other result was possible."

<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5762/854.short>
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_watts08.pdf>
[http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.pdf)

It would be interesting to test this with Hacker News, showing different users
two different sets of comment rankings. This would show how much top-rated
comments get voted up because they are popular versus voted up because they
are "better".

------
potatolicious
Luck is certainly a big part of success - but IMO the author has misclassified
a lot of skillful execution as luck, and that's a shame.

> _"Carly Rae Jepsen has a catchy pop tune, but is only really successful
> because she happened to be in the right place at the right time."_

No, publicity like this is practically never accidental. Every news article,
blog post, radio station play, magazine mention, is highly deliberate and
evidence of a good publicity and marketing crew at work.

Whenever the NYTimes writes about some new app, some new startup, or a new
product, suffice it to say some marketing legwork has been done. This isn't to
insinuate some kind of payola, but rather that "getting noticed" is 90%
putting your product in front of important people - these leads are rarely
ever organic.

To bring it back into our tech-world for a moment: do you really think that
getting featured by Apple in an App Store "guide" is accidental? That it's
strictly Apple deciding who makes the cut without external influence? Or is it
a whole lot of interested parties pitching their product in the background?

So no, Carly Rae Jepsen wasn't "in the right place at the right time", she had
a catchy pop tune, an incredibly well-executed music video with just enough
shock/controversy to go viral, and incredible timing.

And luck. But let's not shovel everything under luck.

~~~
ebiester
She's actually an excellent example. She is a Canadian performer who placed
third on a season of Canadian Idol, and it happened that Justin Bieber was
listening to the radio, heard "Call Me Maybe," and tweeted about it. Perhaps
the song would have spread later on its own, but Canadians can probably point
to five or six other well-played pop songs that never really crossed the
border.

~~~
autophil
But how many times did Carly practice and rehearse and sing that song in
public before that happened? Dozens? Hundreds? And just to make it on the show
Canadian Idol and get that exposure - was that luck? Or did it take a lot of
courage and gut churning effort?

She EARNED that chance to be heard by Bieber. Luck doesn't and never does have
anything to do with it. Luck doesn't exist. The word luck is just a way to
discredit hard work and unseen efforts.

~~~
ebiester
The luck is that he happened to hear _that_ song at that time. What happens if
there's another channel on, not playing that song?

Think of it as a 6 sided dice roll. 3d6 simulates a bell curve of skill + 1d6
simulating luck, and you need 18 or more to "win." The top of the top talent
will rise to the top with or without luck. Those without the drive or talent
won't "win" even if they have the best luck.

But to ignore that luck exists? Talent and hard work are a pre-requesite, but
everything from winning the genetic lottery (passport from an Industrialized
country) to being attractive.

For another example... in 1999, a Canadian band called The Tea Party had a #1
single called "Heaven Coming down," and had a great run in Canada, but they
never became the global sensation Nickelback did, despite having talent. (That
is not to disparage Nickelback -- that band worked _hard_ , and had talent.
Why did one make it in America, and one only in Canada, and Europe/Australia
to a lesser extent?)

King's X was rated one of the top 100 artists of hard rock by VH1. They toured
their ass off, yet somehow never captured the attention that others expected
them to get. Sometimes, it isn't all about talent and hard work.

Again: talent is a prerequesite. Luck does not cancel talent out by any means!
Luck does not describe Bill Gates -- he likely would have been successful even
if his parents weren't millionaires. However, we might all remember CP/M a
little better if Mary Maxwell Gates isn't on the United Way board with John
Opel.

Now, that doesn't mean Gates and Microsoft doesn't become massive in another
way. However, that small bit of "luck" helped tilt IBM to trust a less known
entity. ___

The way I look at luck is not like the lottery, but rather a dice roll. You
may have to roll yahtzee, but if you give yourself a thousand chances, you're
better off than the person who only gives themselves one chance, or resigns
themselves to failure because they figure only someone lucky can roll yahtzee.

You still may have to be at the right place at the right time, but if you work
hard to stick around the right place, the right time is significantly more
likely.

------
barkingcat
I think this article suffers from a lack of understanding of what exactly
artists do, and how they become successful. From several of the excellent
replies, luck does have something to do with it, but just because the OP
doesn't understand the skill put into getting a gig or putting on a successful
spoken word performance piece, for example, doesn't mean that an artist is
just "lucky" to be successful.

Lots of armchair handwaving here.

~~~
barkingcat
There is also another factor: allowing yourself to be lucky.

While I can not attribute my experience to be anything like an artist's, I
find that at least for myself, my artistic endeavors are much more successful
when I am open to types of creativity different from mine.

Working with other people and allowing their art to change my art, but at the
same time holding onto the kernel that my art is about results in more
opportunities to "catch that particularly important editor's eye" or to become
more "lucky" so to speak.

------
Spearchucker
I'm amazed every time I read/hear Nassim Taleb being quoted [1]. His black
swan (outlier) "theory" [2] made some people rich, and it gained him fame.

He spent a lot of time pitching that "theory" (backing the _least_ probable
outcome) at economists at the likes of the ECB, BoE, the Fed, and so forth,
and in the process pissing them all off very, very much.

Outliers are just that. Outliers. If, as an economist (or any other role that
predicts anything), you went with a least-probable scenario you'd probably
lose your job. So, instead, your recommendation is based on the most probable
scenario. If you're thorough you might note outliers as a footnote.

[1] People who perpetuate and then capitalise on "bullshit baffles brains"
annoy me.

[2] Predicting a one-in-a-billion probability that happens to come true is not
a theory.

~~~
simonh
The outlier theory didn't 'make' anyone rich, it just explains why some
outliers got rich and why other outlier events lead to the crash.

Taleb doesn't advocate backing low probability outcomes, because he can't
predict which of them will occur any more than anyone else. That's a
fundamental misreading of his approach. All he's saying is that some of those
low probability events are going to happen, and you need to develop strategies
that are survivable given low probability events. Strategies that assume no
low probability events will (ever) happen are doomed.

The problem is, and he's very much aware of this, that strategies that are
survivable against many low probability events are never optimal for the
actual way events play out. The question then is what degree of non-
optimisation (risk protection) are you willing to tolerate. A single trader
might tolerate extreme risk for short periods of time. Too big to fail
institutions should tolerate very low risks. Taleb is arguing for more
realistic and practical ways to calculate and account for risks.

------
wtvanhest
EVERYTHING can be put in a distribution. Showing that something is X standard
deviations away from the mean does not explain at all how they got there.

Take SAT scores for example. Are the top scorers just lucky? Luck may explain
one’s 1500 relative to a 1490 or 1510, but luck doesn’t explain the difference
between 1000 and 1500 except for maybe some extreme tail case. More
importantly, the fact that SAT scores fit on a distribution does not in any
way show us how they got in that distribution.

Whether fund managers and artists are lucky or not is not proven or disproven
by this blog post.

~~~
mertd
But SAT outcome for individuals is deterministic by design. If there was any
significant luck component, it wouldn't be a good measure in the first place.
Yet you can't deny the possibility that some fool could score 1500+ by merely
circling the correct sequence of bubbles without having much skill.
Furthermore winner doesn't take all in SATs. They just go to some college and
that's the end of it. Contrast that with the stock market where there is a
much more significant luck component and compounded effects of winners taking
all and losers getting pruned out year after year.

~~~
wtvanhest
Your statement, while widely believed has not been proven or disproven by the
fact that people's success can be shown on a distribution.

 _Contrast that with the stock market where there is a much more significant
luck component and compounded effects of winners taking all and losers getting
pruned out year after year._

------
K_REY_C
Patton Oswalt’s recent comments concerning "luck" are worth adding to the
discussion. Talent may be worth more now than ever before. We've heard this
before, but it certainly seems to be true: "Our careers don’t hinge on
somebody in a plush office deciding to aim a little luck in our direction.
There are no gates. They’re gone." --
[http://thecomicscomic.com/2012/07/27/patton-oswalts-
letters-...](http://thecomicscomic.com/2012/07/27/patton-oswalts-letters-to-
both-sides-his-keynote-address-at-montreals-just-for-
laughs-2012/#.UBQY0Apz6og.twitter)

------
_lj
Most of the discussion here is focused on skill vs luck. Those are far from
the only two variables is success, however. There's Networking, the ability to
sell yourself and the ability to target a specific niche (which in art, means
not being too different, but not being exactly the same as everybody else,
either). These factors influence success more than skill and luck combined.

------
tagawa
tl;dr: Be lucky

