Almost seven hundred thousand people follow her on Instagram, almost nine hundred thousand on Facebook, her clips have a total of hundreds of millions of views on YouTube, she sang over seventeen hundred live concerts. Her most recent album Umami won her not only an enthusiastic reception from critics, but also two prestigious Anděl awards – for Solo Performer and Album of the Year.
She is often her own music author, lyricist, producer, but also promoter or director. Today, Ewa Farna manages her business entirely by herself. Ten years ago, she founded her own production company, agency and publishing house.
“I’ve had some, you could say, success behind me. This helps a person not to be afraid to go to risky things, such as the O2 arena just now,” says Ewa Farna in the cover interview of this autumn’s Forbes Woman. “If I didn’t have seventeen years of work in the industry behind me, I’m not as confident as I am today,” she admits, recalling the sold-out concert on October 14.
Her birthday show was hailed by many critics as the musical and artistic event of the year.
But the O2 arena was also a commercial success. Fifteen thousand people watched the concert in the sold-out hall. When, a few days after the concert, Ewa decided to add another birthday show for March next year, against the original plan, another fifteen thousand tickets were sold out in just fifteen hours.
Why is it that Ewa’s music business still works? Perhaps also because Ewa is today a singer for several generations – the whole family took a trip to Prague in mid-October. “After the concerts, people of different ages come to see me or write to me. I’m just a family comedy,” laughs Ewa with a nice self-irony.
He also belongs to a handful of domestic artists who still sell their records very successfully even in the form of physical carriers. “I don’t really know what to thank for that. Maybe it’s because my beginnings date back to when even YouTube was in its infancy. No one knew about Spotify and records were actually only sold physically,” shrugs Ewa Farn.
He has absolute control over his career. She publishes her own records, organizes concerts herself. “It came with age. I had the guidance I needed when I was a teenager. Years later, I decided to go out on my own. I somehow looked around and had a slightly different view of the next direction. About how I would like to develop my career. And what I would like to be,” says Ewa Farna about the turning point in her career.
“I wanted to focus on all of this more comprehensively and personally. How to write songs, how to release things, how distribution works, how records are actually released and promoted today, what is involved in making music videos. I wanted to understand it in depth. Production, visuals, stage design, light design, of course, someone else continues to do all that for you. But in order to delegate and have an idea, you have to know what you want,” describes Ewa Farna.
“Today, the manager deals with concert bookings, for example. But when it comes to direction, big decisions, I leave that on my shoulders. If we do the O2 arena, if we do it a second time, when, where and what kind of album will we release, what will it sound like, what will it look like, how will our concerts sound and look conceptually, what kind of merch will follow it up,” calculates the singer, who in August this year she celebrated her thirties.
“It’s really a million jobs, sometimes I feel like I can’t handle it, or I certainly don’t have the energy for other things. I have to learn to let go of my control freak thinking and trust and delegate more. But I definitely feel that it’s worth it so far, and I hope that in the end my work will be recognized and I can stand behind it,” explains Ewa and recalls her main principle.
“Exactly in my industry, authenticity is extremely important. I’m not selling a product, but basically my emotions, music, that is, feeling, gut and face. It’s simply not possible to cancel it like a piece of cake, to sell the company to someone else, to start again from scratch,” calculates Ewa.
“You are chained to it for life. No one will steal your face, decisions or statements you have made. That’s why I watch it all. In the end, my name is behind it all. In music or in art as such, there should be that specific person lurking in every project. As it is. To just really be me, and not someone else and his ideas about me,” he adds.
For decades, it used to be that an artist couldn’t just walk away from a record company, because they guaranteed him to perform, get played on the radio, release records, and be known. But this has been changed by social networks, music streaming and the internet in general.
“Nowadays you don’t need a giant team of people to let all the fans know there’s another concert. Sometimes an Instagram post is enough and hundreds of thousands of people who follow me can immediately see the information, including journalists, business people, promoters and even potential partners and clients. The digital age is terribly complex and demanding, but in this direct communication between the artist and the fan, things have been simplified,” admits Ewa Farna.
The concert in the O2 arena was this year’s main musical event for Ewa. “I wrote the concert down to the last detail, we worked on it for a year. Unfortunately for my co-workers, I’m the one who messes up everything. Really. It was big, challenging and it was also expensive. The prospect of not selling tickets is stressful in itself. It’s either a multi-million drop or a PR drop that you cancel out of lack of interest, which is painful. The risk is great,” explains Ewa Farna.
At the same time, concerts are still the main part of a musician’s income. “Live performance is key. It is also financially the same. The concert is what you use to pay for the recording of new songs, clips, and what you use to make a record. Someone can do it for less, but in pop, if you want to do it honestly, the costs of music and clip production are high,” explains Ewa Farna, who still performs once or twice a week, in an interview. “Concerts are what I enjoy most about my job.”
A big profile interview about a twenty-year career in the music business, successes and fuckups, about the necessity of functioning on social networks even at the cost of hate speech, but also about motherhood, letting go and why it is important for Ewa Farna to support other women in their self-confidence, self-esteem even in relation to one’s own body, brings on fourteen pages the autumn issue of Forbes Woman, which is on the stands right now.
2023-11-19 19:34:42
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