Beethoven’s fifth symphony has something called Fermata, which means 'play it as you feel'. What this implies is that a musician must have a point of view when expressing himself.

In this internet age when music recording, gear, and production is commoditized, the only way to thrive is to be yourself, that is having a point of view or niche.

“Your POV as a creative is like your handwriting: it’s your unique aesthetic fingerprint that you unconsciously put on everything that you make. It’s the way that you see things— your point of view. It’s what sets you apart from everyone else, it’s the thing nobody else in the whole world can copy, and it’s what ultimately makes you valuable.”

So, how do you find your POV?

“The stuff that you enjoy the most and comes easiest to you is in your POV. The stuff that never comes out well no matter how much you grind at it isn’t in your POV. Do more of the shit that works and less of the shit that doesn’t, and eventually you’ll figure out what your POV is.

Note that your POV may not end up being what you expected it to be, or what you wish it were. You might have thought you were going to be the dude who is really good at super clean, hyper-perfect guitars only to find that what comes naturally to you is raw, natural organic drum sounds.

But you don’t really get to choose your POV, you just find it. So get comfortable with it.

You also need to be careful about where you invest your energy. Learn to say no to anything that takes you off that path!”

That said, in the age of Wikipedia where no one is an expert, abandoning your POV can sometimes be useful in curation, which is a form of authorship/creation in itself.

“All these elements — the abandonment of “point of view,” the willingness to consider the present with the same urgency as the past, the borrowing “of wit or wisdom from any man who is capable of lending us either,” the desire to understand the mechanisms by which we are made to understand — are cornerstones of intellectual innovation in the Internet age. In particular, the liberation from “authorship” (brought about by the emergence of a “hive mind”) is starting to have immediate implications.”