Ed Sheeran – HuffPost 4.10.12

Mike Ragogna: What is your advice for new artists?

Ed Sheeran: Write as many songs as possible and even if you write a bad song, you’ve already got an album and you’re never going to write that song again. Learn from your worst songs, learn from your worst gigs, do as many gigs as possible. To be the best in the industry is not about how good your whole product is. For instance, I’m in America now, and technically, America has fifteen of me. There are probably fifteen singer-songwriters who do the same thing. But you need to find that edge; I did gigs every night for three or four years just to perfect my live shows, so if you put me up against any singer-songwriter, I’m not going to sing love songs, I’m going to tear them apart and do a very energetic set like that. You have to find different inroads. If you’re a singer-songwriter, don’t just sing love songs; if you’re a rapper, don’t just rap about the hood. Just find different masts. That’s why André 3000 is so successful because he does whatever the f**k he wants. So find different inroads and take yourself out of your comfort zone. I don’t necessarily always go and play singer-songwriter nights. I’ll play hip-hop nights, comedy nights, poetry nights, and R&B nights. So that’s quite important to do.

MR: And that’s how you were discovered by Jaime Fox, playing that unique venue.

ES: Yeah, but that’s the thing. If I’m an acoustic man, I played an acoustic (set) at SXSW and it was awesome. But all the acts on the bill…I was watching them and I was like, “F**k, this guy’s better than me!” You get to that stage where you’re playing with so many PC guys that you just blend in with them. So the best thing to do is go on bills where you really don’t fit it so you’re either going to fail or you’re going to really succeed. Don’t do a hip-hop night when you’re a fat, ginger kid from England with a guitar, you’re either going to have a really s**t gig or be the stand-up person of the night. So it’s a good risk to take.

MR: And you’re using all the social networks?

ES: I wouldn’t say “using.” I’ve never really used them. When you come from a generation that grows up with them and they’re embedded with you… Nowadays, you see labels say to new acts that you need to get Facebook, you need to get Twitter. It was never like that. I just gradually got a Facebook, gradually got a Twitter, didn’t really want to get them at the time. But you need to get them, so you end up getting them. The labels use them as marketing tools. The reason that people buy (my) records–since you can easily illegally download any album–is that people think I’m a nice person, and they’ve worked that out through Twitter. So it’s not so much a marketing tool, it’s a tool to make your fans get to know you better. Once they know you, they want to support you, that kind of thing.