"One Way or Another" Worked For Blondie, But You Might Want To Be More Specific...

Although many (I’d hope ‘most’) musicians play because they love music, just about everyone wants to make a living at it and a slightly smaller percentage want to make several livings-worth of a living at it. In other words, most people who pick up a guitar have one eye on the fret board and the other on a marquee. But it isn’t enough to just say, “I want to be a rock star” because every other person you see in Guitar Center is thinking the same thing. If it were that easy, many of us would have much better relationships with our parents.

If you really want it, you have to work at it. But it’s not only about working hard, it’s about working S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed). This means you need to form a strategy as intricate as a jewel heist, or a small business plan if you prefer to stay on the boring side of the law.  Everything you do as a musician/band needs to be designed to maintain forward progress, maintain morale, and make every move as effective as possible. This applies live performances, studio session, album release parties, and even Facebook and Twitter posts. Don’t just aim for the sun and give up after hitting a street lamp, make your climb to the top a steady and meticulous venture and give yourself the best chances possible to succeed. For a holistic and detailed breakdown of this very important acronym, follow the link below: 

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If You “Guess You Just Weren’t Made For These Times”, Guess How Many Albums You’ll Sell

Everybody loves the music they grew up with. Many established artists still site their favorite band from high school as their formative influence. Even if they sound nothing like them on the surface, the artist still often feel their influences in the songs they right. For example, indie super-icon Kurt Vile has a deep, deep love for Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Although you would never guess this from listening to his eight-minute psychedelic drones back-dropping his disjointed pop songs, somewhere in his head Dylan and Springsteen are still working through him. But he’s smart enough to know that trying to sound like them is a futile effort. Why? Because Bruce Springsteen already sounds like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan already sounds like Bob Dylan. It’s the same reason that contemporary classic rock bands are inherently doomed, because even if they’re technically better than Led Zeppelin, a Zeppelin fan is always going to pass up their demo for a rare bootleg of Jimmy Paige yelling at a cat and pay ten times the price for it.

The moral of the story is that if you want you’re band to be successful, you have to stay on top of the proverbial music fan’s ever evolving taste or doom yourself to obscurity. I know some bands who outright refuse to do this and bring up anecdotes of playing for a packed house in New York and people loved them there, but they can’t seem to catch on anywhere else. While I’m sure that was a rewarding and encouraging experience, there’s over 8 million people in New York. Finding a hundred people or so who love classic rock or grunge is not quite the accomplishment it seems to be. Ask yourself, how many of them bought your CDs or merch? The old mantra “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” doesn’t refer to filling a dive bar in Bushwick. It refers to making a living, which you’ll never do if you’re still playing music that, as good as it might be, peaked before most of your target audience was born.  For tips on how to stay ahead of the curve, or at least ride its coattails, click the link below:

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A Band Named Who?

What’s in a name? Well, it all depends on a number of variables. For instance, what it’s the name of or for.  If it’s your band’s for example (as if that was leading anywhere else), it can be pretty important. But what do you do if you want to or have to change it? Depending on the stage in your career, the consequences can get a little dicey but it often turns out okay.

When Radiohead signed their first contract, the label made them changetheir name from ‘On a Friday’ because it was terrible. Sometimes the change is necessitated by a change in style. The Avett brothers (from the pop-bluegrass band of the same name) changed their name from Nemo when they traded in their pop-punk power chords for banjos. Emerging Brooklyn indie-rockers and Pitchfork.com darlings DIIV changed their name from the phonetic spelling (DIVE) when they became aware of an archaic European avant-garde artist of the same name, whom they developed a great deal of respect for. It isn’t entirely clear that they had to in this case, but 50,000 Facebook fans later, it seems to have worked out. Then you have more whimsical stories, like that of 70s underground folk favorites the Holy Modal Rounders who used a different name every time they performed until someone they didn’t know referred to them as such, so they kept it.

But not all name changes work out as well as these. Many bands have to tack their country’s initials onto the end because they come across competition on the other side of the Atlantic (usually a USA/UK problem), and these tend to lose ground pretty fast. Bob Pollard of Guided by Voices has released albums under at least twenty different names over the years because he was recording five or six (or more) a year and didn’t think fans could keep up (and most couldn’t), but didn’t feel the financial hit until he dropped the flagship moniker after two decades and changed it to Boston Spaceships for reasons no one seems to understand. He wound up having to go back to the old name so he wouldn’t have to quit drinking.

The bottom-line that it’s a common problem that can turn out a number of different ways. The best advice is to Google your name before it’s too late. If it’s already too late, read the follow article to before/while you decide what you’re going to do about it.    

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You're Not In 'Rock N Roll High School' Anymore...

Those who are in-the-know will tell you that college gigs are one of the best ways to make money as an emerging artist. Not only to colleges usually offer guaranteed payment, but it’s likely to be more than you’d pick up in several weeks of club and basement gigs. But be forewarned, it’s not quite the gravy train some make it out to be…more like a packaged hollandaise sauce. There’s a lot you need to be prepared for when you start booking these kinds of gigs. Poor turnout due to poor publicity, frustrating sound and electrical setup, last minute venue and set time changes, and the always endearing frat boys demanding Skynard until they forget there are other words in the English language. For in depth list of potential pitfalls on the college circuit, click the link below.  

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A 'Paperback Writer' Should Be So Lucky....

If you’re a musician who has been chasing career advice for a while, you’ve probably heard about the benefits of adding a blog to your social media repertoire. It may sounds intimidating, maybe even like a waste of time. But the true waste is whatever you’re using you time for instead. While Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are crucial tools, they often add up to one-tick-ponies of sorts when it comes to promoting your music. Sure, they’re great for getting the word out about your upcoming tour or new single, but they don’t necessarily create excitement around them. One of the best (and probably least obvious) benefits to blogging is to deepen your work. If someone is already a fan of your music, well written accounts of your life as a/in a band (i.e., stories from the road or recoding studio) can only serve to grow their appreciation for you and your work. There are plenty of other bands out there so it can only help to establish your selves as MORE than just a band.

Additionally, there are a host of other, more intuitive perks. For example, including Hyperlinks (links to brands or other bands imbedded in text) can boost your search engine results. You can hide exclusive information in your blog to keep people reading and hence, interest growing. You can also use it to increase the visibility of your YouTube videos, Bandcamp site, crowd-funding campaign and so forth. To learn more about these benefits, and just how to use the medium properly, follow the link below:

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