"I Can Tell That We Are Gonna Be Friends" (But Probably Not With Jack White)

One of the keys to establishing a strong fan base (who you can sell things to) is forming/simulating a close relationship with them. For example, your band’s Facebook or Twitter page is one of the few places you can tell the world what you ate for lunch without inviting them to hate you at the same time. Unless you’re touring deep in the jungles of Southern Asia, there’s a good chance some of your fans have the same taste in sandwiches. Crowdfunding is a great platform because you not only get and album or tour funded, but you engage fans directly and they can claim (to their friends) partial responsibility for your project once it’s completed and everyone loves it. Up and coming Vermont garage rockers Happy Jawbone Family Band have a note on their website: “Want to be a real BONEHEAD? Join our fan club!” and go on to instruct fans to send drawing, poems or “pictures of stuff (they) like” and in return send them cassettes of unreleased demos, handmade mini-pillows in the shape of jawbones and other knick-knacks. This time-intensive but creative and very personable move helped get them a rather glowing write-up in SPIN. The bottom line is if you’re sincere, authentic, and creative when reaching out to your fans, they will reach back in a big way. 

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121 Mistakes You May Have Already Made and Probably Plan to Make Again

Rock and Roll is often associated with freedom and the breaking of rules. This is not only an inaccurate association, but may be dooming your possibly for a future in the industry. While writing, it's easy to get wrapped up in the narrative method on conveying information. However, sometimes it's more effective to work in the potent combination of concise sentences strategically paired with numbers - also known as a List. Here 121 "Don't"s if you want a future in the music industry.

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You're Doing It Wrong...

Anyone who has anything to say about the state of the music industry today, particularly the Indie sector, is likely to mention the benefits of social media. The problem is that potential "weapon" one might have - whether its for a band, an athlete, a politician, or just a literal weapon - has the potential for backfiring, and this is exactly what happens when most Indie musicians login to Facebook or Twitter.
Despite seeing little or no results from posting "Check our new album" three times a week for six months, most bands continue to do so. This is a somewhat of a curious tactic considering the fact that seeing ads for the Gap eight times a day hasn't worked on them or their friends so why do they think it will work for their music? There's got. To be. A better. WAY!

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Practice Makes Perfect (or Better)

Some musicians will cringe at the thought of going over the same songs week after week during rehearsal. Some bands are terrified of straying from their routine, living in fear of hitting a wrong note on stage or seeming amateurish to people who haven't heard them before. Intuitively, it may not seem possible to "screw up" a rehearsal but if your band is described by either of these extremes, that is exactly what you're doing. Yes, you need discipline because you don't want to be too sloppy on stage if a last minute gig comes up but you also need to be making forward progress and trying new things.  Each rehearsal should consist of at least a warm-up of some kind, a run through your set (exactly as you would play it on stage, leg kicks, banter and all) and some amount of time devoted to developing new material.

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The Results Are In...

All of the music industry's measurable results from last year are in and the good new is, I was right...a lot. It's still somewhat of a mixed bag for amateur musicians but frankly, that's par for the course. A company called "Next Big Sound" performs analytics on this like YouTube views, Facebook "Likes" and other forms of non-currency measurements of success. According to them, the main-est of the mainstream dominate pretty heavily in all fields which should be no surprise to anyone. But the interesting thing (something I've been right about) is that streaming services seem to be the places they promised to be; platforms for lesser knowns to gather speed. YouTube, though still dominated by the mainstream, there is still room for undiscovered artists to go viral with a song recorded in their bedroom. Although no social media platform or streaming services has made up for the money/potential money lost in the industry's flux, it seems that we're on the right track.

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10 Steps to Safer Sampling

Sampling is a song production (and sometimes writing) technique that has slowly appreciated in universal legitimacy over the past few decades. Although it is still far from epidemic-levels in the music community as a whole, those who are in-the-know have been hearing it in almost countless hit songs every year. For those who compete in a genre that lends itself to this practice, it can be very tempting since it is essentially a critically validated shortcut through the songwriting process. But be forewarned; the road ahead of is littered with legal issues and aesthetic pitfalls - then, more legal issues. The short answers is that you need to do by the books but the best advice would be to learn all you possibly can before planning to make even a dime with the unwitting help of another artist.

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Send Lawyers, Guns and....CPAs?

If you're music career has recently become lucrative, than I do not need to congratulate you since you've already probably gotten slightly more kudos than you deserve. I also do not need to tell you to hire a lawyers since several people have told you this already. On the off chance that no one has; stop talking to everyone you know immediately and go out to meet some new people who know about lawyers. Once you've done that, the next person you should consider hiring is a CPA (Certified Public Accountant). It may seem a little "lame" or "grown-up", but when it comes down to it, the point of having a lawyer is to protect/collect money. So why wouldn't you want/need someone who specializes in exactly that?

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Know Your Audience

One of the most important parts of a well-designed marketing strategy is a confidently made estimation of who you are marketing to. Musicians are sometimes asked (or dream of being asked) who their music is for and the most common answer is “anyone who wants to hear it”. There are several things wrong with this. First, very few people are particularly interested in hearing any new music, especially when there’s thousands upon thousands of musicians stating the same generalized purpose. Second, if you’re marketing to anyone and everyone, then you might as well be marketing to no one. Have you ever seen a restaurant advertisement reading: “We have food! Eat here if you’re hungry!”? What about a clothing store ad declaring: “We have clothes! You can wear them!”? Those sound like some pretty stupid ideas, right? So why would it be okay for you to say it as a musician? It wouldn’t. You need to start thinking about what other bands your fans might like, what they’re interests are outside of music, consider and identify their general demographic. Once you have answered these questions and others like them, dig deeper and assemble a picture of how these people see themselves, how they see the world, what they want out of life and most importantly, what they want out of music. To learn more, follow the link below:   

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Don't Leave Home Without...

Touring is a fundamental component of any musician’s career. Many young bands are chomping at the bit for their first chance to go on tour. However, if they’re not fully prepared to deal with the day-to-day realities of touring beyond the romance of highway rest stops and an ongoing car-party, then they quickly learn why many more established groups dread it. There are quite a few things you’ll need to bring beyond the obvious (clothes, instruments, merch) or the experience will take a very quick nosedive. Having a smartphone and external battery pack are still in the ‘fairly obvious’ realm. So are sleeping bags, pillows and air mattresses, but there are a few things that may have crossed your mind as luxuries but they are just as important as your instruments. First of all: extra instruments. Take two or three of everything – guitars, drumsticks, guitar strings – these may seem like things you’ll be able to borrow from another band if something goes wrong but it’s one of the many lessons about touring that you REALLY don’t want to learn the hard way. Also on the not-so-obvious list is AAA/car insurance and a 24-hour gym membership. The value of AAA/car insurance is self-explanatory but the gym membership gives you, at the very least, a near-guarantee of near-regular showers. You may already be practicing near-hygiene but you won’t believe what it can do to your positive attitude (another important ‘item’) when you’re on the road for weeks at a time.

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Time Is On Your Side…If You Know How To Manage It!

When people start a band or begin an endeavor to become a solo artist, there is usually a selective imagination comes into play. It is easy to let the mind frolic among images of tour buses, trashed hotel rooms, sold out clubs, hanging out in recording studios and of course, piles of money. In fact, I would be highly suspicious of anyone who claimed to dream of things like booking tours, marketing or content creation but nonetheless, in order to make the aforementioned dreams come true, you’ll have to endure the aforementioned nightmares as well. The key is balance and managing your time effectively. Layout your goals, arrange your priorities and commit to them! To learn more, follow the link below:  

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A Musician's Economy: The Math and Beyond...

Recently, I posted about the necessity for investments of both time and money in your potential music career. While we've all heard the maxim; "Time is money", you might want to put the objective truth of the statement aside during rehearsals and the songwriting process as both activities have famously slow turnarounds. Moving on...each investment decision should be accompanied by the question, "Is it worth it?". This is true of projects you might carryout yourself such as merch or hiring a promoter, as well as any opportunity that is offered to you. Not every show or tour you're asked to play is going to bring enough new fans to offset costs like gas, time off from work, or lack of guaranteed payment. However, it is not all about money. Sometimes playing a benefit for a non-profit can be rewarding on its own if you share an interest in the cause and can also serve as good publicity. Sometimes you might want to play a show that may hurt you financially but because of who might/will be there, may be a fruitful networking opportunity. I would even advice that either of these situations are good times to strongly consider a pay-to-play situation. What it comes down to is a need to establish your own metrics to refer to whenever a proposition comes along to keep your career moving in a positive direction.


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In Case You Didn't Believe Me...

One of the underlying messages I have tried to convey on this blog is that for a band/musician to reach success in the music industry, you need a multi-faceted marketing approach to carve out a space for yourself in the daily lives of the ever-fickle record buying public. This transition is crucial towards making your music a sustainable career. Canadian singer/songwriter Robyn Dell'Unto has launched herself from moderate popularity and critical acclaim to being a force in the Canadian music scene by exactly that. In the interview linked at the bottom of this post, she describes her income as being 30% from live shows, 40% from publishing and licensing, 25% from an online songwriting workshops she started and 5% from music sales (a typical figure these days). She laid the groundwork for all this through a longterm, ambitious and well-presented crowd funding campaign and she keeps her fans engaged by not just being active on Twitter, but interactive. She is not afraid to show her fans pieces of herself and is more than willing to respond to them personally, creating a connection that someone who might otherwise be a passive appreciator can't help but become invested in as a True Fan. To find out, follow the link below:

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