The PR Payoff

The ‘Entry Level’ for musicians is saturated with music school dropouts and the proud owners of Bandcamp domains (but not much else). The best way to set yourself apart and break into junior management is to invest in a PR campaign. While the word “invest” has most likely made you cringe a little, it a necessary evil if you want music to be your full time job. In the meantime, you are your bandmates should spend 6 months to a year focused on working the most lucrative jobs you can find, even if it means pushing your music to the sidelines a little bit. Earn and save as much money as possible and when the time comes, launch your career with a professionally strategized PR campaign to give yourself the best chance for success. 

Read More

Facebook Videos

When it comes to releases videos, YouTube is not the only show in town. Depending on how engaged you are with social media, you may or may not realize that Facebook also offers a video platform. While its service doesn’t carry the same notoriety, if you were going to post your YouTube video on Facebook anyway (which you obviously were), this may be a more direct way of going about it. 

Read More

Tips For Sponsorship

One of the best and relatively new ways to for an artist to breakthrough into notoriety is gaining sponsorship from companies (i.e., Red Bull, Converse) trying to get a foothold in the music industry.  Just a few or the benefits you stand to gain are spots on festival showcases such as SXSW, a song or two’s worth of pop-up studio time, and of course free national/international publicity. However, the number one thing that stands between you and an opportunity like this is knowing how to approach these companies appropriately.

Read More 

Leave Them Wanting More (...But Make Them Pay In Advance)

There is a new platform for music sharing weaseling its way onto the social media landscape. Spawnsong allowed musicians to share 'teasers' of brand new material to get the potential fan engage in your music by showing them a glimpse of your creative process. Not only does it offer a way to gain the best kind of fan, but it also applies a proven marketing and advertising principle to the world of unsigned bands. Most people tend to decide whether or not they are interested in a product within the first few seconds of a commercial, and tend towards a similar decision-making process when it comes to new music. Of course we are also reminded of the adage: “Leave them wanting more.” If you can grab a listener with a 30-second clip, they’ll have the opportunity to buy the work-in-progress, pre-order the upcoming release and will be waiting on the edge of their seats in the meantime. If you can really get them hooked, they may even be inclined to check out your previous work and pick up something to hold them over. The idea is still be being developed but a preliminary version of the website is up and worth taking a look at.

Read

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!

Read Here

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.

Click Here