Rising Music Star TheFatRat On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Music Industry

An Interview With Edward Sylvan

Having great people around you is key. A lot of people say that, but it still took me way too long to fully understand it. Everything gets so much easier if you have the right people around you.

As a part of our series about rising music stars, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing TheFatRat.

Gaming Music icon TheFatRat, best known for songs like “Unity” and “Monody” (feat. Laura Brehm), is an enormously popular producer in the Gaming community for having his music sync-to-screen for popular video games like the top-grossing DOTA 2 and Rocket League, for advertising giants like Coca-Cola, and eSport brands like ESL and Dreamhack. Currently boasting one of the largest followings and most engaging fan-bases on the web for an artist in his genre, with over 6.3 million followers and 1.8 billion streams on his YouTube and Spotify, his forward-thinking approach to lift copyright restrictions on his music has led to him having been featured in 25 million videos from a range of different content creators — collectively accounting for over 30 billion unique views on YouTube. He released his lore-filled fantasy debut album PARALLAX in September alongside unique artwork that holds clues to each song that represents a new chapter of the cohesive fantasy story that the album tells.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

I grew up in Göttingen, which is in the very middle of Germany and in the middle of nowhere. All the bigger cities are far away. I learned music the same way I learned to speak. When I was two years old and my mum played on the piano I was sitting on her lap, hitting random keys. First, she was annoyed but soon she noticed that the notes I was pressing fit to the songs she was playing. This is literally the first memory I have so I can’t remember a time before I was making music.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

I was a music producer for about ten years before I started as an artist. But at some point, I was frustrated with the music industry but also with the position as a producer. So many people were talking into my work, record label A&Rs, managers and publishers, everybody had an opinion and wanted me to change things. Also, I found politics very dysfunctional. Some of the best songs I made were never released and some bad songs were released only because they were made with the right people. It was my wife who convinced me to pursue an artist career myself. I started very small simply with a SoundCloud account. But soon my music blew up and I loved the creative freedom that came with being an independent artist.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

That happened before I started as an artist and was still producing for other people and projects. One of my many small income sources was creating downloadable ringtones. Yes, that was a thing in the early 2000s. Together with a friend, I wrote a silly song that was performed by a fictional character. A farting mole to be specific. I had never put a lot of thought into it, never thought it would do a lot and the final song was done in roughly two hours. But it totally blew up in France. So much that it was released on CD which then went #1 in the charts for 13 weeks in a row. It was my first major success, and it came completely unexpected. I learned two important lessons from that. First, if the music clicks with the audience, for whatever reason, you’ll have a hit song. No matter where it’s coming from. Second, simply keep going, keep creating. Success can come totally unexpected.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

It happened on one of my first live shows. I was performing in a club and had brought some of my own gear which I had connected to the club's DJ equipment. After my show, another DJ started to play while I was disconnecting my stuff. He had an epic intro, followed by a huge and long buildup that was supposed to lead into the first drop. Right now, of that first drop, when the entire crowd was about to go crazy, I accidentally unplugged the DJ mixer. The music stopped and everybody saw that I was the reason for the sudden interruption. Luckily the DJ wasn’t mad at all, and the crowd found it hilarious. What have I learned from that? It’s much easier to deal with embarrassing mistakes if you don’t take yourself too seriously.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

So far, I hesitated to do something in the NFT space. I think it’s great for most artists, but I want everything I do to be accessible for all my fans. And selling NFTs for $2k would cut out a lot of people. But now I have a collaboration with RCRDSHP in the making. They are a platform where you can buy and trade collectible cards. A card pack costs under 10$ which allow everybody to participate. We are creating around 100 cards including some world cards that tell completely new story details and visuals for the world and backstory of my music and art. Fans have been speculating about the lore for years now and this is an amazing opportunity to talk more about the background. We will start releasing packs in December and the platform has been exploding recently so I’m very excited about this.

We are very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?

First, it makes things more interesting. Putting together people with different backgrounds can create completely new ideas that otherwise never would have happened. It also helps to avoid filter bubbles which, if you don’t watch out, you can get into without even noticing. And lastly, it can help people from different backgrounds to identify with whatever you are creating.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.

Having great people around you is key. A lot of people say that, but it still took me way too long to fully understand it. Everything gets so much easier if you have the right people around you.

Don’t let anybody treat you badly. This is connected to the first. The point is: for a long time, I tolerated it when people were disrespectful with my time and my work. The reason was always that I thought I’d gain something from it, but in hindsight, it was always a bad choice, and it would have been much smarter to simply avoid those people.

Take full responsibility for your results. For the first ten years of my career, I usually made music together with other people. I often avoided conflicts by agreeing to things that I didn’t feel ok with. But then I blamed those people for failure, which of course didn’t get me anywhere.

Maximize productivity by limiting work time. I get much more done when I strictly limit the time that I work on music. Otherwise, I often get lost in detail and end up with worse and less results. I found out that four hours of music production work best for me. Of course, I spend more time on other creative things, office, listening to music, research, etc.

Focus on what’s fun. For a long time, I thought I’d have to grind on things that I didn’t like to be successful. Turns out when I make music that is fun for me, other people enjoy it much more.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

There are two things that help me to avoid burn out. I limit my music work time to four hours per day. If I do something else in that time it’s ok. But I know then I won’t have time to produce music. That keeps me motivated because I know when my music production time begins it’s now or never. The second key to avoiding burning out is simply keeping music as fun as possible and don’t think about any business aspects during the creative process. If you’re trying to write songs and you’re asking yourself questions like “how will people react?”, “Does this sound current?” And “does this even have a market” you’ll suffocate your creativity.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

The better we understand ourselves and the better we understand others, the better we get along. One thing that helped me tremendously in life was learning about cognitive biases. The more I learned about it, the more the world made sense to me because I started to grasp why people act the way they do. I think a movement that creates wide awareness of cognitive biases would have a fundamental impact on humanity.

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

By far the most important and helpful person in my life is my wife Svea. As I said she was the one who encouraged me to become an artist in the first place. Without her, I’d never have taken that step. Over the years she has been incredibly important on the creative and on the business side. We can talk about new music, new story ideas and artworks forever, which is my main source of inspiration. We make every important decision together and discussing those decisions with someone smart that you trust 100% is so powerful. And since 2019 she is my manager, making sure that I can fully concentrate on music.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Live wild and dangerously. For me, this does not mean that I must do skydiving or go and tame lions. It simply means that we mostly regret the chances that we didn’t take, and that fulfillment lies outside of our comfort zone. Having that motto was the reason why I chose music as my profession, why I became an artist and why I got together with my wife.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

The music producer Max Martin. He’s been making worldwide smash hits for over two decades now and I’d love to learn as much as possible from him.

How can our readers follow you online?

YouTube: TheFatRat

Instagram: @thefatratoffical

Twitter: @ThisIsTheFatRat

Facebook: ThisIsTheFatRat

Discord: TheFatRat

Spotify: TheFatRat

This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!