Personal and Professional Opinions Are Not The Same

In the arts, which you might call passion industries, it’s easy to see how one’s professional opinion gets conflated with their personal opinion.

Saying you like a certain musician or a filmmaker, why, you wouldn’t throw your support behind someone whose work doesn’t really speak to you.

But this is not exactly true, because people who work in the arts, they are not islands unto themselves, and they must be aware of how a particular artist or piece of work fits into the larger framework of the medium the art exists in.

Take music, for example. There may be a musician whose work you enjoy, and you may privately (or sometimes publicly) say — this musician, he/she is the future of music.

But that doesn’t mean that in your day-to-day work, perhaps at an online media outlet, record label or streaming service, you can really do anything with/for this artist. No matter how much you love them.

At best, maybe you can tell others — evangelize and advocate for them — but the artist must have other things going for them, have the machinery, or at least some aspect of the machinery, working in their favor, for you to really go to bat for them.

It’s like this in any kind of work. A doctor’s personal opinion may strongly differ from what is currently en vogue, but there is only so much the doctor can do with that opinion if the medical community does not support it.

Privately, the doctor may conduct independent research or lobby the community to adapt to his/her thinking, yet until there is enough momentum moving in that direction, they have to be very careful with what they advise you to do.

Now, music is not as regulated as medical care — you couldn’t sue someone for telling you to listen to Young Thug over Vivaldi (although you might have a case in that instance).

But in arts, at least at the professional level, you do have to consider that when someone is telling you their opinion, it comes with an asterisk.

In their private lives, in their personal opinion — in their home! — they might not be listening to whatever it is they are telling you to listen to.

You would be surprised by what people personally enjoy vs. what they are telling you is the best thing out right now.

True, these are passion industries. But they are, at the end of the day, still industries.

sign up for my totally not annoying mailing list HERE.