One of the hardest things about being an emerging artist is that it can feel like it’s taking forever to get your shit together. Here’s Daniel Sax’s important video, The Gap, on the topic, incorporating the words of Ira Glass, host of This American Life.

Ze Frank has a lot of advice for those starting out, and reminders for those who’ve been at it for a while. He also does a great job explaining the difference between ‘easy fun’ and ‘hard fun’, and why anyone would want more of the second than the first.

The only secret to success is to keep learning, no matter how much you know already.

Being an artist is about creating something new. But the only way to create something new is to understand the old.

Writing songs for a living isn’t quite like writing songs just for fun – in both bigger and smaller ways than you might think.