'Don't Pass THESE By!'

Recently, I posted about some of the most overrated publicity tools in a musician’s arsenal.  As useful as it can be to know what services, endeavors, or acquisitions might not be worth it, it is equally useful to know the sort of things deserve more attention that you may have glossed over or ignored entirely.  Here are a just a few:

Goals – Every decision you make a band or solo artist should be made for a specific reason.  Try to think of each opportunity that presents itself as a rung on a ladder in a long row of ladders.  Before you reach, what you want to make sure of is that all the progress you’re making is on the same ladder.  Pick a trajectory and consider it every time you make a decision.  It’s the difference between training for marathon or just lighting yourself on fire and seeing where it takes you. 

Good Press Photo – This is the face of your music, make sure they see you’re best side.  In short, hire a skilled professional.  Hint:  The woman at the DMV is not a skilled professional.  You might have to drop more than forty bucks on this one. 

Superfans – You’ll get further if you focus on feeding your existing fan base than you will reaching out to strangers and hoping they like the free sample.  Not everything that works in the food court translates to the music industry.  If someone already digs what you do, keeping feeling their shovel until they have no choice but to spread your name around their social circle or bury them selves. 

Daily Habits - Make tending to your music career a daily habit.  Take small but frequent steps. You’ll gain more ground if you keep your operations down to earth than you will shooting yourself from a cannon without training from a proper and nationally accredited circus.

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Welcome to Rock 'n' Roll "Allentown"...Population: YOU!

Like most musicians, you probably thought that your days of living in fear of deadlines were over when you dropped out of college.  If you want to maximize your potential in rock and roll, you’ll need an occasional roll in the dirty world of pandering and menial tasks until it’s almost as boring as your day job.  But doing regular ‘homework’ can be an important part of keeping your band clawing at the heels of success.  The tasks may seem tedious and overwhelming, but just be glad that you don’t have to dissect Plato and Tolstoy on a regular basis anymore.  Start by reading this article, draw up an itinerary that applies to you, then follow it like your parents told you not to.  

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Singing Someone Else's Song

One of the hardest things about being a generally unknown band is getting people to give you a chance.  Sometimes it seems like the only way to a get a song to ‘click’ for people is to land it in a commercial.  There is a vast and deep wealth of information and culture now available to us on the Internet, which has penetrated nearly every facet of our lives including our phones.  There’s a lot of competition out there and people have the luxury of being very picky about how they spend even three and a half minutes of their time.   

One way to weasel your way onto their radar, or at least their YouTube account, is by recording and promoting a song that they’ve already heard.  Now if you’ve paid attention to the ongoing debate over intellectual property rights, you may be worried about a lawsuit, but consider your mind at ease.  Go ahead and bookmark those lyrics and chord progressions you Googled and get to work because the truth is that recording covers is more legal than you think.    

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Be ‘King of the Road’, But Don’t Do It For Free

To an amateur band just starting out, the idea of touring might seem synonymous with fame and fortune, but this is not necessarily the case.  In fact, it almost never is.  Unless you’re an established band with a proven draw, you’re probably not getting paid anything, or at most, gas money.  If you have a contract with anyone other than the majorest of major labels, you’re looking at something like a twenty dollar a day stipend at best.  It may seem fair if you get enough if you get so much joy out of performing that you’d do it for free.  But try to imagine three square meals of fast food a day, everyday for as long as you’re on the road, and don’t even think about setting your gaze on anything but the dollar menu. 

So if touring is such a raw deal, why do so many small time bands do it?  The easy answer is exposure.  The slightly harder answer is that tours can be a great opportunity to sell merchandise.  If you’re in a new city and you’re able to rock a roomful of strangers as thoroughly as you rock your hometown crowd, having enough (but not too many) copies of your albums can be a small goldmine.  People know you’re touring, they know they can’t get your album in stores, they know you’re probably not in iTunes, you definitely don’t have material available for pirating, and they’ll probably forget the name of your band within a few weeks.  Price you’re CDs reasonably, you can even burn your own copies if you want to go for sheer quantity over the illusion of professionalism, which you probably do.  But don’t stop there if you can help it.  Posters, shirts, stickers – whatever souvenirs you can afford/think of can be a great way to earn an upgrade from Taco Bell to Chipotle.  To read more, click below.  

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When They're Not Even Dancing With Themselves...

Nothing can damage a band’s morale quite like the experience of playing to a crowd smaller than your own band.  Anyone who says that they haven’t experienced this is either a liar or has somehow mastered mind control on a grand scale.  Not only does it inspire negativity, infighting amongst band members, and possibly crying (if you’re THAT type of band), but the chances are that you’re not getting another gig at that club unless you have a database of alternate band names and disguises at your disposal.

Afterwards you probably swore to yourself something along the lines of “I’m not playing anymore shows like that!”  But since you have no idea how to avoid it, you most likely wound up eating those words within a couple of months.  The best way to prevent these confidence killers is put in all of the preliminary work that you can possibly think of, and some that you probably can’t.  Because I don’t want to embarrass you by pointing out your lack of ingenuity and know-how, here are a few of the things you can do to make sure the only empty room you play for is your practice space.  

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“The Times They Are A-Changin”…But It Can Pay To Live In The Past

To many it seems that modern music industry has become a dystopian landscape full of oligarchs and pirates (of intellectual property), and where iTunes has become akin to the Skylab Corporation from the ‘Terminator’ movies.  But it may be surprising to those not in-the-know that some people do in fact still buy physically-existing records from physically-existing stores with addresses, cash registers and everything.  Many of these stores specialize in used music and vinyl, but a lot of them also sell new albums, especially by local and struggling bands. 

It’s not recommended to rely on these archaic merchants for the bulk of your income, but it can make your material more accessible to your fan base.  Particularly if they’re of the hipster, liberal arts educated variety.  First of all it may help people to remember your band once their barista-sized paychecks clear, rather than competing with the rest of the Internet and all its distractions.  Secondly, you may get a better deal from a record store owner/manager, who may have a struggling band of their own, than you would from Apple/iTunes who have struggled with nothing.  Thirdly, and probably most importantly, it’s publicity that makes your band seem more legitimate, even if no one buys them.  You probably won’t be able to sell the store any more copies, but if a customer sees ten copies of your CD among the racks it implies that there is demand for your music.  At the very least it suggests that the proprietor has a lot of faith in your band, despite the reality of their indifference. 

So how do you get your album in stores?  It’s a question that’s been asked for decades and although the answer probably hasn’t changed that much, it’s a good bet that you don’t know the answer.  Otherwise you have stopped reading somewhere early on in the second paragraph.  Find out how, here:

 http://www.artistshousemusic.org/expert/how+do+i+get+my+record+in+the+stores