'Money For Nothing' (Sort Of)

Of the many tools social media has to offer emerging musicians, crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter are perhaps the most exciting and most able to jumpstart a career. But when you’re competing with established artists like Amanda Palmer and cult favorite writer/producer/director Joss Whedon, not to mention countless other creative in the same boat as you, you really need to use the site as effectively as possible to get the financial help you need. If you’ve been following Kickstarter for a while, you may have noticed that people who basically just ask to 50,000 dollars because their band is ‘awesome’ (or something to that effect) don’t inspire a lot of faith from strangers. Your goal and deadline must be realistic, but that’s pretty intuitive. The other things you need to do involve getting creative and investing a good amount of time. No panhandler could get away with writing “I’m Homeless, Trust Me” on a coffee can and then hang out behind the liquor store all day expecting to find a small fortune when they get back. On the off chance that you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to try a couple years from now after your Kickstarter campaign fails and your band mates start playing at weddings. You have to get creative with the incentives you offer, get creative (and relentless) with your promotion and in order to show strangers that you’re the kind of person they should get behind, be really creative with your pitch video. For more detailed instruction, follow the link below:    

Click More, Read Here

'Get By With Some Help From Your Friends'....By Making Them Employees

If you’re band is talented (lucky) enough to find yourselves standing at the threshold of serious success, you may have been DIY to the bone since your first practice but you don’t want to throw away your potential by taking everything on by yourself. What you need to do is assemble a team. If you’re really thorough in taking inventory of your needs on the business end of your music, you’ll find yourself short a small army. Even if you’re perfectly capable of booking your own shows and doing your own web design, you probably don’t also hold degrees in business and copyright law.  If you do, then first of all: wow! But I’ll still bet that you can’t do them all at the same time. Some way or another you’re going to have to find a way to fill the roles that you need to ensure success. But if you’re really worried about losing that precious DIY ‘cred’, fear not. It’s often possible to put together a roster comprised of your band mates and friends. If things really work out, you’ll probably want to consider replacing them with professionals but if you’re career is going THAT well, you’ll probably be able to afford a sizable severance package for your friends who helped you on the way up. For a detailed description of what a solid team looks like, follow the link below:

Click More, Read Here

'I Want You To Want Me'...But Not TOO Much

On this blog, we’ve occasionally discussed the legendary nightmare of having your intellectual property rights vanquished by a record label or producer. Some of you who are just starting out maybe be worried about a lower level of copyright infringement and that is the fear of another band or musician stealing your songs. If you are very proud of your songs and feel that they would be more than worth stealing, you might feel like posting them on the Internet where the entire world (minus North Korea) can get at them is akin to walking around with the contents of your wallet scotch taped to your shirt so you don’t have to keep reaching into your back pocket. That would indeed be a bad idea, but the hard truth is that if you’re only recently considering posting your music online, chances are that you’re still kind of new to songwriting. In which case, I can’t say that your songs aren’t good because I never heard them, but I can almost guarantee that they aren’t as good as you think they are. Don’t forget that they also have to find it first, a task for which there is no needle small enough and no haystack large enough to draw an accurate comparison. The long and short of it is that the chances of someone stealing your song off the Internet is more like walking into a bank and being mugged by the teller. For more peace of mind and vaguely insulting presumptions about your talent, click the link below:  

Click More, Read Here

The Kids Aren't Just Alright, They're Pretty D*** Important

When you’re a musician struggling to make a living from your passion, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters. While that sentence is a very predictable way to set up a point and you’re probably ready to stop reading after this sentences if things don’t get more interesting, the chances are that you haven’t guessed the answer yet. Obviously it isn’t money. That’s what a villain from Wayne’s World or Airheads would say. It isn’t your friends and family (thank God), and it isn’t even the music exactly. It’s your fans. Now wrap your ego in bubble wrap and the socks from your last tour because it’s about to fall down some metaphorical stairs. If you really think about, your fans may be even more important than your band itself. After all, your fans are what will, or already do, allow you to make money doing what you love. And if you’re good enough, they’ll still be there footing your royalty checks well after your bassist and drummer sleep with each others girlfriends (or boyfriends) and your guitarist sells half your gear to support his addiction of choice. What you need to do to make sure that your fans stay with you is to take a tip from your ex-whatever and treat them like they’re the most important part of your life; because they are. For further convincing along with some ideas for how to show your appreciation, click the link below:

Click More, Read Here

'Be True To Your School'...Or Better Yet, Someone Else's

One of the best/only ways to make good money as an emerging musician is to book gigs at colleges. Not only do you get a young and somewhat captive audience (if transportation off campus isn’t great) but it is one of the few guaranteed paychecks you’ll get until you hit the big time. But in order to ensure your success and get the most out of it that you can, there are a few things you should be on top of. First, don’t rely on folks at the college to promote your show properly. These shows are usually booked and organized by students working part time and with no marketing experience. Also, they tend to have more pressing things to worry about like term papers and their favorite pot dealer going camping for the weekend. This includes making your own posters and carrying out your own publicity with local papers and so forth. If at all possible, make sure the gig coincides with a campus event of some kind. If it doesn’t, try to organize some minor fanfare like free pizza or snack if you can afford it. For more idea on how to make the most of your college gig, follow the link below:

Click More, Read Here

'Welcome to the Working Week'...Now Choose Your Shifts Carefully

The core aspiration of any moderately functional adult is to be able to support them self. Being that we are no longer hunters and gatherers, nor are we prey for giant bird monsters and sea iguanas, the concept of ‘survival’ has become much more complicated. It doesn’t just mean to keep your heart beating, it means having a stable place to live and preferably owning it. It means being able to feed and clothe your self on a regular basis (daily is recommended). For many it means building a family and being able to feed and clothe them on a regular basis as well. It means saving for retirement and being able to collect social security when the time comes, and it means having access to a doctor who will make sure your heart keep beating so you don’t have to.

It may or may not have occurred to you before, but this equation gets much trickier for musicians. It isn’t just to survive; it’s to survive on music alone. If you think about all the musicians you know personally, you can probably count just as many nuanced approaches to music-fueled survival. Some have been riding a one track mind since high school and resolved not to compromise their integrity by getting a job or moving out of their parents house. Some study music in college hoping to stumble on the last piece they need to make it work. Others get jobs of varying commitment because they know that as good as they are, success in the music industry can take a very long time.

Indie-garage rocker Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices, equal parts prolific and full blown alcoholic, took work as a substitute teacher until his band Guided by Voices got a record deal. And it was a good thing he did since the record deal along with sustainable popularity wouldn’t come until his late thirties. But even his story is the exception. There was a whole slue of 80s post-punk and indie bands (i.e., Pixies, The Vaselines, Half-Japanese) who effectively didn’t see a dime until Kurt Cobain started dropping their names years after they had already disbanded. Worse yet, there are those who never get even marginal recognition until they’re dead or just too old to capitalize on it.

So how do you ensure your survival and also avoid being condemned to decades of obscurity? You definitely need a job, but when get one (or if you have one) make sure it has some degree of flexibility so that one; you have time to keep working on your music and two, you can start reducing your hours according to your emerging success, if your lucky enough to need to. For a thorough analysis, click the link below:

Click More, Read Here