"...Talkin' 'Bout The Government"...Not Just For The Pavement Anymore!

Generally speaking, musicians don’t tend to see a connection between politics and their personal efforts to break into/navigate the music industry. But maybe once in a while they/you catch a few minutes of the news by accident; in a subpar pizza place, while getting your oil changed, in a dentist’s office, wherever. And maybe you hear a sound-byte or catch a few keywords while flipping through a magazine that make is seem like something might be happening in politics that directly affects your career. But often times any effort to invest yourself in finding out more, is quickly rivaled by frustration and boredom with the way journalists and pundits talk about these issues, so you really on eventually picking up a rumor and using your imagination to decide what it might mean to you. Everyone knows that the Internet has brought earth-shaking changes to the music industry that are still playing out, but in addition to obviously major players in the debate (i.e., record labels, file sharing sites, bands, Pandora, Spotify, etc.) the government also plays a major role. Especially because they, for all intents and purposes, have the final say...if they can manage to ‘say’ anything. There is an organization made musicians, politicians and various people with other roles in the music industry called the Future of Music Coalition who aim to get musicians involved in the politics that effect them and put the current events in terms they can understand. To find out more, click the link below:


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“Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes….”

The mainstream of the music industry has always been a shallow arena, but since the turn of the century it seems to be getting worse. There are more and more conglomerates (i.e., Red Bull has a record label), more and more money being thrown in the same direction, the proverbial “rich get richer” scenario and so forth. The good news is that there is strength in number and although smaller outlets yield smaller results, if enough people are involved, the tides can force a slow and steady but drastic change. To read more on the subject, click the link below:

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YOU CAN GET BY WITH SOME HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS, BUT FIRST YOU NEED FRIENDS

There are obvious ways for a band to climb the rock ‘n’ roll later, and some not so obvious. Touring, recording/releasing albums and taking advantage of social media are all vital and obvious parts of a successful strategy. But equally important is networking. Whatever scene you’re in may seem like small potatoes now, but you can never tell who might know who and a short cut to the top could be as accessible as the dive bar headliner whose loading area you blocked and microphone stand you stole while you were drunk.  The fact is that no matter how good your band may be, the proverbial “Rockstar” attitude won’t get you anywhere until HBO is making a movie about your against-all-odds rise and your subsequent well-deserved downfall. Follow the link below and find ten great tips for networking within the music industry:

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WAKE YOURSELF UP BEFORE YOU ‘GO-GO’

Anyone who doesn’t think that touring is (9.7 times out of 10) a vital bend in the road to the top (or at least high enough to point and laugh at your former classmates) has either not paid a lick of attention to the music industry in their entire lives, or has an ego too big to live. But it’s not as simple as some bands might make it sound in classic rock songs. The days of just loading up a van with twenty bucks in the tank are gone, if they were ever here and probably weren’t. First off, tours must be booked months in advance in order to ensure a logical and efficient schedule. Whether you decide to go through a booking agent or do it yourself, patience is a virtue in waiting for agents or clubs to respond as they will often take a few weeks, but you need to be ready to respond to them as immediately as possible. Another basic tip is to make sure your any and all of your website are up to date with full contact information (meaning email and phone number). After all, there’s a chance that a booking agent will find you and you can blast all the distortion you can muster into your brain until you forget every word of the advice you’ll read if you click the link below:

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“Some of Shelley’s Blues” Are Better Than Others…Hope You Like Wearing Headphones

The depths of the impact that advancements in home recording technology have made on the music industry cannot be overstated. This is because a recording is in almost every case, the best tool a band has to get discovered. But the problem a lot of bands and musicians run into while recording is that they sometimes don’t fully understand the scope or more often they understand the importance too well and go a little overboard putting extra effort into areas they don’t need to like a getting a perfect take on the first try. This often leads to overlooking much more important, but seemingly smaller decisions like microphone placement or which tracks to use. But the true test of your recording chops is that you have to be prepared to listen to your song over and over for hours on end. This is the best and probably only way to make good decisions and the key is to maintain objectivity. If you and everyone else knew that a certain song was your hands down best, that fact is not changed in the process of listening to it a hundred or so extra times. You might get sick of it but people who haven’t heard you before haven’t had to opportunity to feel the same way. This is the easiest and in some ways mistake to make. You may only have one shot at a would-be fan’s eardrums so offering them something that you like mostly because you aren’t sick of it yet isn’t the best move. Enduring through this part of the process can potentially make or break it for you so if you don’t think you’re up to it….get yourself up to it. Follow the link below for more comprehensive nuggets of recording wisdom:

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“Out In The Streets”....Of The Internet

Back in the bad-old-days-which-sometimes-seem-good, the cutting edge technology of outreach marketing for bands was to have some or several poor schmuck stand on crowded but hip street corners handing out flyers and trying to make people delay whatever they were about to do in order to talk to said ‘poor schmuck’ about your band. This was a daunting and frustrating task for the schmuck, or street team as they preferred to be called, but frustrating on a different level for those bands expecting grand results from this tactics. But now the Internet has surpassed the literal street to become the most crowded and hippest street of them all.  There’s lots of good news here; for one, it’s obviously faster. Two, your ‘team’ has more than one chance to talk to someone. Three, they’ll work for free and probably already are. To find out more, click the link below:

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