Take Another Little Piece Of Your Heart….And Put It In An Email

If you love music, but not enough to learn to play an instrument, you may have found yourself on the business side of the industry. Maybe you tried being a musician and just got frustrated and needed a more reliable way to support yourself. Maybe you shattered every bone in each of your hands in a bizarre merch-transaction gone horribly wrong. Either way, I won’t judge you. Many aspiring managers, PR reps and so forth utilize email blasts to reach a large number of potential clients with a limited amount of effort. This is known as a “throwing spaghetti at a wall” (...and seeing what sticks) strategy. It’s a legitimate tactic that can work well. But some would argue that you’d get a higher positive response rate with much fewer personalized and researched emails. This would involve spending a lot of time skimming through unsigned bands for ones that you sincerely want to work with/for, then making you’re offer sound like it was written just for them (which it was) and give them the sense that you really enjoy and believe in them. They’re both fine ideas but no solid way of knowing which is better. In fact, it’s probably beneficial to at least try both. There isn’t necessarily a good a reason you can’t do both at the same time. For more a passionate (one-sided) appeal to the slow-and-steady method, follow the link below:

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"Gimme Shelter"…But Somewhere A Lot Of People Can See Me

Here we have a list of an unprecedented 49 free strategies for music promotion.  Among them, we learn about StageIt.com, a platform that is like a cross between YouTube and Skype and a Podcast. This service allows bands to transmit live performance from where ever throughout the ether of the Internet. Also on the list is BandApp. I’ve mentioned in this blog before that creating an App is a great way to keep fans involved/interested in your band but my guess is that you have no idea how to do this, otherwise you’d be in a more lucrative field than music. The list goes on (and on, and on, and on…) about forty-seven more times, so after reading this you should be in no position to whine about not getting exposure. There’s a lot of competition and giving yourself an edge in getting exposure should be your top priority…provided you have at least one song. For all 49 nuggets of wisdom, follow the link below:

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'You Go You're Way And I'll Go Mine'...Also, The Rest Of The Band Is Going My Way Too

When a new band is formed, it’s usually hard for the members to imagine playing with anyone other than those in the room. But alas, sometimes personnel changes have to be made.  But the reasons and ways of going about it can fall anywhere on a spectrum from “Let’s still be friends….seriously, please don’t hate me” to “Wow! What a douchebag!” Here are some on the latter end of the spectrum:

1)   Frank Black did the Pixies in by essentially writing Kim Deal out of the band on their last record (Trompe Le Monde) rather than firing her (which would have been a bad idea)

2)   Lou Reed pulled a similar move, driving Nico out of the band by refusing to write more than three songs for her, despite Andy Warhol’s insistence that his (Reed’s) voice sucked. To be fair to Lou Reed, Nico was kind of terrible. To be fair to Nico, Lou Reed is one of the most well-documented jackasses in rock and roll history.

3)   Ray Davies drive his little brother Dave out of the Kinks by treating him like, well, a little brother

4)   J Mascis kicked Lou Barlow (later of Sebadoh and Folk Implosion) out of Dinosaur Jr. by showing up at his house with their drummer, and making the drummer kick him out of the band by essentially reciting a script designed to give the impression that the band was breaking up, while Mascis sat silently in the corner.

5)   James Mercer of the Shins recently “reformed” the Shins by kicking everyone out of the band and replacing them with slightly more established musicians. He then did a series of interviews in which he simultaneously claimed full credit for the band’s while also conceding that the recently fired members were vital to their sound and mentioned that he invited them all back to write and record parts on his/their new album. I don’t know how much any of you know about borderline personality disorder, but….

These are all pretty lousy ways to got about a personnel change. Try to stay away from passive aggressive behavior and public declaration of justification via grandeur (ego). Amicable departure do happen, but you don’t want to count on that. You’re best bet for getting to sleep at night is putting thought into, treating it like the sensitive subject it is, and hope things work out for the best for everyone. If you don’t see yourself handling this situation well, it might be best to have a rotating line-up and make sure everyone understands that from the beginning. Among bands who have done this successfully are Beirut, Of Montreal, the Lilys, and Modest Mouse (though Isaac Brock doesn’t do too much rotating, comparatively speaking).  For further guidance, follow the link below:

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"It Ain't Easy"...(Some References Write Themselves)

If you’re a struggling musician, you probably don’t need to be told about the problems you meet in establishing a career. But for better or worse…someone is doing it anyway…

A survey was taken recently amongst amateur/semi-amateur musicians regarding what they identify as the biggest challenges they face in making a living from their music.  If nothing else, it may help you gauge where your own band is in relation to the competition. If you're curious, click the link below:

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Pay to Play in Reverse

It wasn’t long ago that the idea of making money from posting a YouTube video was laughable. But now, the time is upon us. I’m not sure how many cats will be starting mutual funds because of this development, but if your band is active on YouTube and not making money, maybe you should be. When YouTube began replacing television, we should have known that commercials weren’t far behind. But the good news is that you can take advantage this and pull in a few extra bucks by putting commercials in your video. It’s understandable if you’re a purist and would prefer to abstain, but is asking your fans to sit through five or ten seconds of a commercial they’d probably watching on any other YouTube channel, really worse than milking the clock at 7-11? For a breakdown of how this is done, and why it should be, click the link below:

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