People in the marketing, entertainment and business industries also tend to chant the same mantra when asked about keys to success in their respective fields: "know your audience". You could run a google search on the term right now and instantly be bombarded with thousands upon thousands of ways to achieve this seemingly simplistic goals. I mean, that is how people get noticed in these industries, right? All it takes to succeed in such incredibly competitive industries where most people end up failing is to simply read some article online on how best to identify the people who are sitting around just waiting for what you have to offer. That makes perfect sense...if you are about en years old. But perhaps it is a bit more complicated than that; perhaps you have to identify what people are looking for and then tailor your art to their needs. That has to be the right approach, right? I mean, how could it not be? You just identify what people like and then you give it to them. That is all it takes to be successful in any field...again, according to ten year olds with no real world experience. I have been a performer for over twenty years now. I have performed for more audiences than I could possibly remember and I have been fortunate enough to please the vast majority of those audiences. But here is the big secret about performance. It really does not matter what you perform for people, as long as you are committed to it that is. No, I am not bullshitting you to be contrary here. I am providing you with solid advice gleaned from over two decades in the business of audience pleasing. A person who knows nothing of the art of entertainment, when asked how to entertain people, will always go on the same rant about "giving the audience what they want". But, in case you had not yet noticed, what the audience wants changes with every director, producer, publisher, or content creator. That is because these people are simply guessing and, in many cases, projecting their desires on to what they have termed their "audience". But audiences are not irrational mobs of consumers. Audiences are a complex combination of different cultural, spiritual, national, and racial ideologies that, at a particular moment, just happen to simultaneously be interested in artistic expression by sheer coincidence. No two audiences are ever the same and no two people within an audience are ever the same. People often make insane assumptions about large groups of people. They say that young people will always hate classical art, for example, or that older people dislike pop culture. But, as young boy of 13, I absolutely loved classical art and I know many older people who enjoy contemporary pop culture just as much as the average teenager. The art world often makes incorrect assumptions about the consumers of art. Organizations of artists come up with ridiculous rating systems that essentially make the argument that certain types of art are strictly made for certain types of people. But do these organizations ever stop to think for a second that it is the rating system itself that discourages the consumption of art amongst certain groups? Do these organizations ever stop to think that they are alienating their audience by obsessively seeking out an audience? Studies have demonstrated quite clearly that, when we use the jargon of our field of expertise, we tend to discourage people who are non experts from learning about the beauty of our fields. We shut people out with these assumptions; we do not attract new viewers. And so I say to you that, if you really want to attract a larger audience, you should remember that you do not have an audience, that audiences are not set in stone, that they change depending on the month, day or hour. In order to attract others, we must stand out and have the courage to be different. Boiling people down into an algorithmic soup will not accomplish this goal, it will only hinder it. Only innovative knowledge is power.