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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Budgets: Not Just For Your Over-Achieving Sibling Anymore

There are several objective truths that have been established by this blog, ad nauseam. One of these is the need to market your music. Another (though a little less ‘nauseam’) is the need to calculate a budget. There is a lot of shared territory between these two dictums in that in order to launch the most effective marketing campaign you can, you will need to put money into it. This money will be very hard to let go of since you won’t get anything tangible in return and may not get anything in return at all.

The best way to limit your potential regret is to make these decisions carefully. For example, if you’re about to release a new album, you want to seriously consider touring on some scale and possibly have some promotional items like stickers or matchbooks made. While these are fantastic ideas, this wouldn’t really qualify as advice if I didn’t remind you that touring requires money for gas, money for food and usually an unknown amount for something you never could have seen coming. If you take your budgeting seriously, the worst that can happen is that you’re career doesn’t advance and you have to move back in with your parents. That might sound pretty bad, but you don’t want to find out how much worse it can get by being stranded outside Des Moines with a totaled car, a bass player who needs to make bail in Topeeka and all you have is twelve bucks and 833 promotional matchbooks in your trunk. To find out more, follow the link below:

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Facebook is Not a Website

When musicians scrounge money together to give their career a financial jumpstart, sometimes they'll make a list of priorities (that cost money), do some simple math and find out what they can afford. This list often includes things like amps, drum mics, money to have stickers printed and until about a little more than a decade ago, that list usually included a website. Now, most will just set up a Bandcamp, a Facebook page and have it done in almost no time at, and for even less money. But when you think of how many people are doing that, it seems like it just may be one of those situations when it's worth to spend a little more than you want to. A well design and well marketed website will set you apart, and allow to keep ALL of the money from the sales of your music. For more reason to invest in  a website, follow the link below:

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The 20 Most Important Things You Should Already Know

If you’re a young musician, you’re probably already used to the idea that people will expect things from you – bosses, parents, teachers, professors, etc. – which may be why you became a musician in the first place. You’ve imagined a career in which you make your own rules and they are always subject to change. But even if you’ve managed to endure the onslaught of expectations, criticisms and accusations of irresponsibility before finally setting foot on the path to rock and roll freedom, you will still be traveling up hill. There are many rules and expectations you’ll still have to deal with but unlike your parents, teachers and so forth, no one is going to tell you what they are. Some are pretty obvious; like the importance of being on time and checking all social media posts for typos.  Others are still somewhat intuitive, but you could be forgiven for not knowing. Things like showing loyalty to a promoter who took a chance on you and that you’re opinion is the absolute least valuable one when it comes to describing your band to someone in important. For the other sixteen things you may or may not but definitely should know, follow the link:

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Sponsorship Vs. Partnership

Every band needs some kind of help getting off the ground. Some get help from their parents that allows them to build a launching pad, some get help from their parents which completely goes to waste, some take out loans or use credit cards, but it seems that the ideal source of financial support is a Sponsorship. It is not new to see musicians “endorsing” a product, but we haven’t much of this happening the other way around (with the possible exceptions of The Monkees and The Vans Warped Tour). It would seem like a mutually beneficial; the product gets to be associated with youth and underground-ish music, bringing their product to many who would have turned up their nose at it before that cool anarchist bluegrass band who only play in train cars, told them it was okay. The band not only gets financial support (which would be more than enough to make most happy), but publicity and integrated marketing as well. But this is yet another situation when it’s good to think twice and get out the old hairsplitting kit because what you should really be looking for is a 'Partner'. Given the choice, you generally want to choose an equal-relationship over what is essentially, employment. Isn’t avoiding the workforce why you started the band in the first place? 

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Invest Yourself

Aspiring musicians can, for practical purposes, be categorized into one of two groups:

1) I’m super-talented and therefore, should be famous. Why aren’t I rich and famous?
2) I know I should be doing something but I don’t know what it is. I’m already working hard. What else can I do?

The catchall response to the first group is, “You’re an idiot”. The answer to the latter is “A lot more…but you’re probably not going to like it.” There are many resources that Social Media and the Internet in general have to offer but to use them to their full potential takes more work than the average musician puts in or even is aware of.


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