Blasko and Seth discuss DIY, Kickstarter, and Direct-to-fan engagement. Blasko stresses how money should not be a barrier to success. Also, we both cringe when we discuss Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster. Amanda Palmer would totally karate chop them.

Show Notes:

Blasko off on tour with Ozzy in Europe

Seth finished recording single
DIY sucks. Too much money spent. If you suck at it, pay someone else. Save time.
Time is money. Time management versus cost.
Be prepared before going into the studio.
Studios charge by the hour. Be prepared.

Why spend thousands on a full album? Save money on doing a single. Learn how to market it.
Build fan base with the single.
Learn how to walk before you run.

Warped Tour documentary. No room for rockstars.
Bands that can and can’t afford to be on the Warped Tour.
Martin Atkins Tour Smart: need to repeat the process.

Opportunity is capitalizing on the event. Not necessarily the tour or special show.

The Lean Startup. Start minimally.

Myth: The executive waiting for you at that dingy club.

Direct to fan.

Today’s music industry is the wild, wild west. No rules.

Amanda Palmer, Pomplamoose.

Experiment with online tools and marketing.

Take action quickly. If you have an idea, ACT.

Lack of funds shouldn’t be the excuse.
Lack of funds can’t be the barrier.

Making fun of Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster.

Kickstarter. Amanda Palmer’s $500,000 Kickstarter campaign.

CyberPR Carla Lynne Hall.

Kickstart needs the fanbase to make it successful.

It’s not about you as a band. It’s about how you make the fan feel.

Fans are your new team.

This is a guest post by Blasko, Ozzy Osbourne’s bassist and band manager at Mercenary Management.

With the myriad of apps to choose from these days, which ones are the most useful to the the young musician types? Beats me, but here is my top 10. Oh, and who am I? My name is Blasko. I play bass for Ozzy Osbourne. I manage bands at www.mercenarymanagement.com. I blog at www.bloganddestroy.net.

1. Lock Box - My life online has become all about UN and PW’s. On a regular basis I access multiple sites, whether it be Facebook, Amazon, Priceline, etc. and all of which I have different UN and PW’s for. I use Lock Box to keep all my shit straight. Oh yeah, it’s FREE!

2. Things - I am a student of the GTD process, although I refer to it as the GIFD process (GET IT FUCKING DONE!) Whatever ya wanna call it, for me it is imperative to have some sort of “to do list” system. Between management, personal and band responsibilities I use Things to keep my organized. Even though I wish this app was sync-able in the cloud, I do like it’s user friendliness and I also need something that is compatible with my lap top, iPhone and iPad simultaneously.

3. xFeed - RSS readers are essential to my time management. There are so many sites like Blabbermouth, Mashable, Hypebot, etc. that I need to read everyday to stay connected. The xFeed app enables me to skim the headlines without actually having to visit 100 sites a day.

4. Amplitube - For all guitar and bass players I found this app to be essential. In addition to the iRig, you can just plug right in to your iPhone or iPad and jam away. Try out different tones and amp combos, play along to songs, or it’s a great tool for learning new songs. I have our whole live set in iTunes and I use it to warm up for gigs. This will set ya back a few bucks, but totally worth it in my opinion.

5. Instagram - My new favorite social network! Follow me @blasko1313

6. Pandora - This is easy and FREE! Kinda like having your own personal radio station. I also really dig the music discovery element.

7. Facebook / Twitter - These are essentials for bands / musicians. You have to be connected.. BOTTOM LINE! Twitter is easy to get a grasp of and works well in the mobile platform. Facebook is an obvious necessity but I am not totally hyped on their app just yet.

8. Phoster - All bands should get hip to this app. You can make posters for your gigs or events or whatever in seconds.

9. iBooks - I try to read as often as possible and iBooks make’s it easy to breeze through a chapter almost anywhere. My most recent purchases / recommendations – Bringing Metal to the Children by Zakk Wylde, I’m Awesome by Jason Ellis and Why I Failed in the Music Business by Steve Grossman.

10. Pushup Warrior - It can be a challenge to stay in shape on the road and apps have made it much easier. This is a good one that can be done just about anywhere. The pushup is the best exercise and this app makes them fun as well as challenging. Compete with your friends!

Learn more about Blasko at his blog, Blog and Destroy. While you’re at it, check out Mercenary Management.

The following is a guest post from Shaun from Music Industry How To. Enjoy!

Hey guys and girls, I’ve got a very special article for you today! As some of you may know, I’ve already showed you how to set up your very own professional website very quickly with minimum effort. Today however, I’m going to look at a few things that will make your website stand out from the crowd.

The way you present your website is all important. Yes you can simply set up a WordPress site with the basic features (Free theme, standard pages every musician has etc), but if doing that bit more can increase conversions / make your website more sticky / gain you more fans, don’t you think you should put that extra effort in?

As always, nothing I mention below is hard to do. It’s simply a case of knowing what you should be doing. Whether you’ve already got a site or you’re about to make a website, here are some things that will help your site stand out from the crowd.

Please Note: While this guide refers to doing things on WordPress, you’ll still be able to use the theory to make your non WordPress sites better as well.

1. Make Sure Your Website Header Is On Point

When any visitor (Read ‘potential fan’) first arrives on your website, what’s the first thing they see? No it’s not your latest videos or even your picture gallery, it’s your header! It stands to reason then that you should make your header as attractive as possible, and ensure it gives the right impression.

If you can design your own artwork, that’s all good. Get started on making a great one right away! If you can’t however and are on a budget, that’s not a problem. Simply go to Odesk.com, and hire someone to do one for you! There are some great designers on there, and you’d definitely be able to get someone to do you a killer header for $20 maximum.

2. Use A Premium Theme

As well as making sure your header looks great, it’s also a good idea to buy a premium theme for your WordPress website. Yes you can use a free one, but I prefer to buy them for a few reasons:

1. They look better.
2. They work better. You have a lot more customization options, which will in turn help you better convert your website visitors.
3. They offer more support. You won’t have to worry about WordPress updating and parts of you theme not working any more, they’ll keep everything up to date automatically.

There are a few premium themes around, but my favorite are the themes provided by Studiopress. Both beautiful and functional, my last few sites all have their themes installed.

3. Offer An Exclusive Area For Your Members

You know what to expect when you go on a music website. Picture gallery, shop page, video page… But wait, what’s this? A members area with exclusive content and privileges by the bundle?!

Offer your fans something different by incorporating a members area into your website. You can either make this area free for your visitors (Collecting the email addresses of members that sign up) or you can charge a monthly / one off fee. Either way you’ll be offering something a lot of other sites don’t do, and giving them the chance to get really involved in everything ‘you’. :)

4. Place Your Opt In Form In High Converting Places

If you don’t want to use the above membership site method to collect email addresses, there’s still nothing wrong with using the good old opt-in form for email collection.

As many of you know, one of the highest converting places to place your opt in form is in the top right hand side of your sidebar (If you didn’t know that, you’re welcome ;)). You shouldn’t stop there however. Other high converting places are:

• Directly below your posts, and
• Within your About page (They are trying to learn more about you after all, so give them insider access).

Take advantage of these other high converting positions. After all, the more people see your opt-in form at different stages of action, the more likely they are to subscribe.

5. Make Your Website Easy To Share

One final point for making your website stand out from the crowd, is using social share buttons. As well as just displaying them, you should make sure these buttons display how many times they’ve been shared. Not only will these buttons encourage sharing of your content, but they also do another thing: Provide social proof!

If you manage to get your posts shared round a few times, whenever anyone new comes on your site and looks at your post, they’ll see that others have already been there and approved it. If you see that a few people have been sharing it round already, that’s a good sign that the article’s a good one right?

If you don’t get a lot of people visiting your site yet, you could always share it on your own Facebook and Twitter pages, and get a couple of friends to do the same. You could even set up a second profile if you have to, and ‘Like’ things a few more times.

Keep sharing like this, and as time goes on you’ll naturally find more people start clicking ‘Like’ and re-tweeting.

There are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily display these social share buttons, so install one and show people just how popular you really are!

Conclusion

While having a website is all important when establishing your online base, you need to put some love and attention into its set up to make it really do its job properly. Put the above five things in place, and you’ll be well on your way to getting your website to where it should be. If you’ve any other ideas of what can make your website stand out from the crowd, please let me know in the comments section below.

By the way, this is a guest post from myself (Shaun) of Music Industry How To. Music Industry How To is a music advice website for independent and signed musicians alike. If you already have your own music website and want me to write an article for you, check here. If you don’t already have a site, you can see my guide on setting one up here.

As much as people are going nuts over the Facebook Timeline changes, I’m not really caring too much. Personally, I think people pay more attention to their Facebook news stream than they do your Facebook page.

Still, I just discovered a cool tip from Jeff Johnson’s Nonstop Traffic Formula. You can change how the tabs right under your Facebook cover photo look! I thought this was cool because you change boring images that someone like ReverbNation or Bandcamp give you to something that is more along your own band’s branding, changing the layout of Facebook for your page.

I created a video below to teach you how to change these tab images. But for those that don’t want to deal with video, here’s the basic chunks you need.

The tab image is 111 by 74 pixels. Click the arrow by your tabs to access the tab editing interface. Click the upper right corner, with the little pencil icon, and select “Edit Settings” to change the image.

In this video, I used the GIMP photo editor to create the images. (GIMP is free!)

Enjoy the video!

This is a guest post from Praverb of Praverb.net

Song Writing Image retrieved from Blogspot

 

“You write a hit the same way you write a flop.” – Alan Jay Lerner

The quote above suggests that the process of writing a song does not change the outcome. Knowing whether a song is a hit or a flop is based on the response from the audience.

The actual process of writing a song is something that affects a variety of songwriters. The first line or first words provide a stumbling block. We spend time waiting for inspiration as opposed to chasing or hunting it down.

The lack of motivation or creativity leads to a lot of incomplete songs and a decrease in song writing. What if I told you that I have developed a sure-fire way to jump-start your creativity and thus increase your lyric output?

In order to explore this solution we must examine the factors that affect song writing.

What Factors Affect Song Writing?

There are a variety of factors that have an effect on song writing. I will present a list of four common factors that affect song writing.

• Lack of Inspiration
• Life events
• Stress
• Time

Lack of inspiration, life events, stress, and time are four common factors that affect songwriting. A lot of song writers state that a lack of inspiration affects the process of writing a song. We would rather wait on inspiration then chase it (inspiration is always around us).

Life events and stress are two other factors that affect song writing. Stress affects the song writing process because it affects the ability to transfer the lyric from your mind to the paper due to preoccupation on other things. Life events occur and they can stifle the song writing process as well.

Time is probably the biggest factor that contributes to decreased song writing. Most of us work, most of us are students, some of us have kids, etc. Balancing all the responsibilities is difficult especially when your hobby (song writing) is not really that profitable.

This begs the question, what are the benefits of writing a song?

The benefits of writing a song

“I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you’re starting to kill yourself artistically.” – Pete Seeger

Writing a song is very beneficial because it allows the song writer to let go of pent up emotions. The emotions do not have to necessarily be negative. It has been stated that music is therapy and the actual process of writing a song allows the writer to express that given emotion.

Writing is soothing, calming, and more importantly very personal. Everything that we write down does not have to be shared. That is the beauty of song writing. Imagine having a journal that is truly yours. The journal is comprised of your thoughts, your ideas, your life experiences, and more. This journal relates to photographs and revisiting lyrics creates a visual in your mind and allows you to reminisce.

Writing is very fun as well. A lot of song writers write for the love as opposed to monetary rewards.

How do we increase our song writing skills?

“Music breeds its own inspiration. You can only do it by doing it. You may not feel like it, but you push yourself. It’s a work process. Or just improvise. Something will come.” – Burt Bacharach

We increase our song writing skills by writing daily, experiencing life, learning, and more. Nicholas Tozier suggested that there are 6 Ways to Maintain A Steady Stream of Songs. Nicolas stated that we create new songs when we study our craft, read more, listen more, write every day, set clear goals, and seek advice from peers.

I do not write daily yet I write enough to stay motivated. I actually write down a lot of rhyming words (called  rhyming prompts) and I use them when I am stuck. The time factor affects the song writing process so why not break down the process into smaller chunks.

“My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.” – Boz Scaggs

The Solution: Write 4 Lines an hour

“For me, songwriting is something I have to do ritually. I don’t just wait for inspiration; I try to write a little bit every day.” – Sean Lennon

I started using this method last year when I started working on Professional Hobbyist and it increased my lyric output.

Instead of aiming to write 16 lines (or bars, rapper talk haha) a day, I focused on writing 4 lines (or bars) an hour. That’s it! 4 lines an hour. The process proved to be very beneficial because it allowed me to overcome those four factors that affect song writing.

I found that I had a renewed energy, I was inspired, I managed my time better, and the stress was alleviated. Writing 4 lines an hour provided me with the ability to focus on 4 bars at a time as opposed to trying to write a 16 bar verse in one sitting.

I utilized my Rhyming Prompts notebook (book with a look of rhyming phrases) and focused my time and energy on delivering 4 lines at a time.

The good thing about this process is that you can pick the time when you want to write the 4 lines. If you want to write a 16 bar verse then you can space it out over 4 hours.

Here are some of the benefits of writing 4 lines an hour.

• Renewed Inspiration
• Increased time management
• Increased lyric output

Praverb the Wyse is an hip-hop emcee/poet that posts content that is informative and helpful to aspiring artists. You can read more of his material at http://www.praverb.net.

Blasko and Seth cover the principles of social proof and reciprocity to increase your sales, increase your bookings, and also how to not abuse such psychological techniques. When you hear how marketers tell you to give your stuff away for free, listen to this episode to hear how this has a profound psychological impact on your fans that leads to better sales and cool things for your band.

Yep, these “be cool to fans” messages aren’t just feel-good fluff.

Covered in this episode:

Blasko going on tour with Ozzy this summer. Getting ready.
Golden Gods awards show from Revolver.
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive
Use Social Proof to sell items at your merch booth.
Prevent theft at the merch booth.
How to use Facebook for Social Proof.
Using Social Proof to book more shows.
Bitching about the new Facebook Timeline.
Why FREE works psychologically.
How lowering the price of a piece of merch can increase sales.
Using reciprocity to get more in the future.
How using the word “because” to increase your influence.
Use this shit ETHICALLY! Don’t provide shitty things, because you will never get a return fan.

Branding, even though I know it is important, isn’t my specialty. But, I see its power with other bands making themselves a marketing powerhouse. Kiss is one of those bands who can put their name on anything and have it sell.

You may think your band is too pure for something like this. That’s cool. The rest of us will figure it out and make money while you argue it over.

So, if you want to read Michael’s eBook, just visit the Kiss School of Marketing page and sign up. I’ve been a subscriber of Michael’s for a while now, and he’s never spammed me. If that’s your worry, Michael is on the up and up.

Also mentioned in this interview is Brian Thompson from Thorny Bleeder. In fact, TODAY they will be having a FREE webinar on Direct To Fan Music Marketing. You still have time, so go sign up! (Update: This webinar is now sold out, but they will have a recording of it for $5. Cheap!)

Why isn’t your music enough? Your band kicks ass. You are epic gods and goddesses on stage. That should be more than enough to attract thousands of drooling fans to your shows.

Well…except the fact that no one has any clue who you are. And, there are 10 other clubs with other gods and goddesses kicking ass on stage. Also, Netflix and HBO have gods and goddesses with awesome CGI effects, and it costs less to drink beer at home.

If you have the choice of 5 shows going on on Friday night, with each band being equally awesome, which show do you choose?

You only have $30 to enjoy the night. Where are you going to go?

I have to break the news to you, most people don’t know who you are. If you’re not selling out clubs, most people don’t really care.

Your band’s name on a flyer is not enough. Especially if your logo is unreadable.

A theme makes the night a little bit…more. Those 5 shows going on, with all equal bands, but only one band has the crazy theme that makes you curious what’s going on.

You have $30 dollars…and there’s a cool night of craziness happening at that one club.

And you can watch that show on Netflix anytime. The once in a lifetime show with that band is going on tonight. You will never witness crazy shit like this again.

To get people off their ass and notice you, to make the effort to go to your show, you need to go the extra mile. What if KISS didn’t want to wear the makeup that night? What if DeathMau5 didn’t feel like wearing that mask? Lady Gaga wearing sweatpants and a turtle-neck?

Each show needs to count. Each show needs to excel. You need to be the fireworks amongst the house lamps. Don’t be fucking boring.

I just spoke on a panel with Thorny Bleeder’s Brian Thompson the other night. The topic was on “How to Make Money with Your Music”. The discussion was great, and I had a wonderful time. But there were a few things I didn’t get a chance to talk about regarding making money.

I’ve been studying how entrepreneurs make millions of dollars. Well, it’s growing into a bit of an obsession on my part. But I’m seeing some trends from the top entrepreneurs out there that I’m theorizing can be adopted by musicians.

But first, let me lay out how much of your music and live shows you’d need to sell in order to be financially successful as a band. There’s numbers involved, so bear with me.

Scale for recorded music

Let’s start with digital downloads of singles. On average, let’s say you make 70 cents on a 99 cent download through iTunes (for the US). This may or may not be the actual number, but, for this thought experiment, let’s assume this is how much you make.

Now, let’s establish how much money you want your band to make in order to consider yourself financially successful. I’m going to choose $50,000 a year per member as the number that a musician might feel comfortable with. You can, of course, change this number to suit your needs.

Your band has 4 members, so you’d like to make 4 x 50,0000 = $200,000 in sales in digital downloads. So, to achieve this, you will need to sell 285,715 downloads.  ($200,000 divided by 0.70).

Do you have 285,000 buying fans? Hmmmm….

Let’s apply the same formula to album download sales. Let’s pick an optimistic price of $7 for a $9.99 download. To earn $200,000, you will need to sell 28,572 albums.  ($200,000 divided by $7.)

This is better. Still, do you have 28,572 fans willing to buy a full album? From what I just saw on Digital Music News, singles outpace full album downloads.

My point here, looking at the numbers, is you need an extremely large audience to earn money from digital downloads alone. Also, these numbers are optimistic. In reality, you have costs that need to be paid to support your band (your business). Recording costs. Promotional costs. Lawyers and accountants. Managers….

As Brian (Thorny Bleeder) was talking about at the music panel, giving away your music and merch for free builds your audience. The point of giving music away for free is to grow your audience into the necessary scale to make selling your music profitable. Without scale, you can’t be profitable when you finally sell something.

Well…at least at these prices…

But what about live shows?

Live shows are harder to measure. You have traveling costs, promotion costs, and maintenance costs (strings, cymbals, alcohol…). But, we can apply the same formulas to live shows if we remove this complexity.

Knowing that many of you aren’t going to be doing full-on tours every year, let’s say that your band, at the very least, plays weekend gigs (Fridays and Saturdays). If you managed to perform every single weekend of the year, that would be 104 gigs (52 weeks x 2 = 104).

So, to make $200,000 a year from live shows, you’d need to make $1,924 per show. ($200,000 divided by 104).

Professional touring musicians I see perform much more during the year, usually at least 200 shows per year.  Even at double the number of shows, you’d need to make $1,000 per show.

At the small club level, I did a bit more math. One popular club that I love (The Funhouse) has a 160 person capacity. Usually, shows cost about $5 to get in. So, sold out, the door would make $800. Now, divide that payout to 3 bands, and you get $267 per band. At the small club level, it’s not looking good for the $1,000 per show.

With merch, you’d need to sell almost an additional $800 to compensate. With shirts costing about $5 a pop and selling at $10, you’d need to sell 300 of them…to 160 people.

Depressed yet? Well…you shouldn’t be.

Product Diversification

Obviously my examples are a bit contrived. And, as I mentioned, they are leaving out essential details such as travel, promotion, and recording costs.  But I’m trying to make a point. It takes a grander scale for a band to actually become profitable.

Album sales and live shows alone are not going to cut it for most bands. These are the traditional routes for bands, and they require a very large audience to have any success financially. In order to maintain these profit levels, a band will constantly need to have both new music and new live shows constantly.

Fortunately, there are more ways of making money as a band. I’ve seen the secret sauce that raises tons of money in short periods of time. The short of it: Have higher quality products that you can charge more for.

You are not limited to only doing shows selling t-shirts or relying on digital downloads. You have many valuable resources that not only will make you money, but will make your fans extremely excited. For examples of this, look to KickStarter.

I’m not saying do a KickStarter campaign. I’m just saying look at what artists end up offering during a KickStarter campaign. Brian (Thorny Bleeder) talked about one of his artists, Billy The Kid, offering a weekend camping trip with her for $2,500. She sold 3 or 4 of those. $10,000 for camping? Really? (By the way, I still think that promotion sounds creepy, Brian.)

I’ve seen Kickstarter campaigns offering personalized songs, locks of hair, clothing, hand-made items…the list goes on. Specialty items from your band that demand an extremely higher price.

I saw a cool campaign from Carla Lynne Hall where she offered to redo one of her songs with special lyrics for someone paying a premium price.

Where I’m going with this is you can be creative and make fun products at a premium price that fans will love. Will everyone go for it? Hell no! But you don’t need a lot of people going for it to be profitable.

Let’s take Billy the Kid’s example. How many people on camping trips per year would she need to make $200,000 per year? The answer: 80. Only 80 hardcore fans.

On a less extreme scale, what if you put together a multi-disc mixed CD and DVD package. Each package is signed, is limited edition and numbered, and contains multiple live shows, behind-the-scenes footage, and crazy things you’ve done on tour. Sell that at $197. To make $200,000 a year, you’d need to sell only 1,016 of them. A much better number than 28,000.

Your CDs, live shows, and digital downloads are entry level products. They are low-cost and low-margin that anyone can afford. You need to also build mid-tier and premium products for your ultra-fans. What can you sell at the $100 level? $1,000?

Build Value

You may have gotten the dollar signs in your eyes with this, but you have to remember the basics: Make great music and make your fans happy as hell.

The only reason someone would buy something from you at the $1,000 level is because you built a great relationship with your fans. Much if this great relationship actually depends on you going out of your way to please fans and giving them freebies that make them happy.

To build this level of trust and value, you need to steel yourself to not make money for the first few years of your band’s existence. Sad, but true. You need to figure out how to excite people, make magic with your music and live shows, and engage with your fans through social media daily.

If you start off selling, people won’t trust you. Start off giving. Give freely and openly. Build trust. Build fun. Build happiness.

Extra Tip for Selling Your Music:

Finally, this is something I learned from Brendon Burchard. Give away a ton of cool freebies and value added products with any sales you do.

For example, you want someone to buy your CD. Which of the following two pitches sound better?

Pitch 1: “Buy my CD! …It’s new! It has music!”

Pitch 2: “If you buy my CD, you’re going to receive the following: A behind-the-scenes movie showing you the making of the album (Worth $27), a 40 page eBook with beautiful pictures and lyrics (Worth $17), and a free download of the album (Worth $10). That’s right, for only $10, you’re going to receive $54 worth of free extras. These extras are only going to be available for a limited time because we’re going to sell them for a much higher price later this year. So if you act now, you can get the full package (Worth $64) for only $10!

“And just because we love you, we’re also offering a free download of a recording of our CD release show that we’ll be charging $10 for. So it’s really $74 worth of awesomeness for only $10!”

Okay, which pitch sounds better? Which one actually costs more? If you look at it, they both cost exactly the same. The second one is all digital downloads which really cost you nothing beyond making the extra content. And making that content is cheap.

Just a tip!

So start reading up on different and creative ways your band could make money. Look at different things your band could create or offer to fans that would make them really ecstatic. Do it! You are only limited by your imagination and your ability to learn how to market and sell. Both take practice. And neither will happen until you actually do it.

Blasko uncovers the real secret to success. That secret is to just do it, even when you don’t want to. It sounds simple, but most bands don’t do what needs to be done in order to succeed. They wait. They put it off. They think someone else will do it for them.

Suck it up and do it. Keep doing it. Do it long enough and success awaits.