Nothing Goes Viral

To begin with, there is no such thing as viral – songs don’t go viral, nor do YouTube videos of cats – they simply go through ‘compound sharing’. There’s a reason I emphasise this, and it’s to stop people saying ‘we want to go viral’, which does nothing but put ‘viral’ on a pedestal. If you want your song to ‘go viral’ you must have a high compound rate. Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say that 1 in 100 people who listen to your song share it, if you initially reach 5,000 people, and each person who shares it exposes it to an average of 50 new people, your song will reach an extra 2,500 people through sharing, and when those people share it you will reach 1,250 people and so on, until your song doesn’t compound any more (it reaches less than 100 new people). In total your song will have reached 10,014 people with an initial exposure of 5,000 people and a sharing rate of 1 in 100.

If your sharing rate was 1 in 10, an initial exposure to 5,000 people would compound and ‘go viral’, because for every 10 people who receive the song, they are sharing it with 50 new people.

There are only two ways to increase your song sharing

1) Increase the initial exposure
2) Increase the rate of sharing

Of course, there are hundreds of factors that contribute to each of these factors, but in the simplest form these are the only two things that determine whether your song gets shared by hundreds of thousands or a hundred people. Let’s look at each one in detail…

Increasing the initial exposure of your songs

If 100,000 hear your new song release, you will have a better chance of ‘going viral’ and reach millions compared to if you just showed your song to 20 people, because a proportion of your initial audience will be responsible for sharing the song.

This is where major record labels have typically had an upper hand in history (huge generalisation, I know – excludes the genuinely awesome signed releases). When a label produces a song that isn’t actually very good i.e. it has a low rate of sharing, they can still get the song to reach millions by funding a huge initial exposure – even if a tiny percentage of that audience shares the song, it’s still likely to reach millions more people.

This is why I think indie music is typically much higher quality than signed releases – because independent musicians usually can’t afford huge initial exposures, they have to rely on creating music with an incredibly high rate of sharing (in other words, awesome music).

Increasing the rate of sharing

This is where things get a bit vague – what impacts the rate of sharing? Well, we’re dealing with art in the form of sound waves, so I can’t tell you which combinations of sound waves works better because to my knowledge things don’t work like that.

A better way of answering this is, what makes it more likely for a fan to pass my song on to their friends? Here’s a few ideas:

• Ease of sharing (do you have share buttons, clean URLs, copy and paste sharing or do fans need to download a song and burn it to a CD to share it?)
• Quality of the song – hard to define this, but in general if your song sounds good, more people are likely to share it (no shit Sherlocks!)
• Fan perception – if fans like you and want to help you get known, they’re more likely to share your releases. This comes down to reputation and fan-artist relationship building.

On a final note, I want to highlight a point that my friend Greg Rollett shared on TMG a few years ago. While it’s important to have decent gear that you like, having a custom PRS, a DW drum kit (drool…), or decent microphones won’t really help you when it comes to making it big.

If you want your music to be shared, focus on what makes people share and increase your initial exposure and rates of sharing for your songs.

Since this business is based not only on band PR, but exclusive t-shirt designs & sales, I did some research on other shirt-based businesses that had run a successful campaign.  One of the patterns I had noticed was that most of them offered backers 1 t-shirt per pledge increment.  We kind of stuck to that format, but wanted to sweeten the pot for bands / brands as well by offering some worthwhile promo opportunities.

Founder/CEO, Brian Shields, has put together a compelling video on Kickstarter, but here’s a rundown of what Great New Metal is all about:

For metal fans, wearing t-shirts from their favorite bands is an important way to show support for musicians, for artists, and to identify themselves as part of a larger community.

That’s the message from entrants in Great New Metal’s recently concluded video contest where we asked “Why do you love wearing metal shirts?”

One tangible way fans are showing that support is by earning a permanent spot on the Great New Metal Wall of Honor through contributions to the site’s Kickstarter campaign.

“The reason I love wearing metal shirts is just because I love supporting my favorite bands and the people who are behind the music,” Senam Palmer of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina said in his entry for the contest. “I love supporting what I think is good metal and I will constantly and continuously do that until the day I die.”

“It shows you support the musicians who are behind it and maybe even the artists who did the design,” Dan Hall of Mesa Arizona said in his contest winning video submission. “I really appreciate all of the hard work that goes into the music and the artwork on the shirt. I really don’t feel the artists get enough recognition for all of the work that they do.”

Hall won the most support from the hundreds of people who watched the video and voted in our contest.

Great New Metal helps to fulfill the dreams of dozens of metal bands each year by providing them with professional content that builds a buzz around them while partnering with those bands for exclusive licensed signature design shirts that will help them make some cash to further their careers.

Paul Waggoner of Between the Buried and Me, Paul Masvidal of Cynic, and Brian Fair of Shadows Fall are among the well-known metal stars showing support for Great New Metal.

All donors to the campaign will have their name featured permanently on the site’s Wall of Honor. All donors at the $25 level or higher will receive at least one of our signature t-shirts for a band that they support.

Pledge what you can.  Even $1 dollar gets us that much closer!

Wicked D Harrison – Metal Head | Entrepreneur | Blogger. Author of TAKE THE OATH: A Practical Pocket Guide for the Career Indie Musician.

Here’s my take on it.

Yes, you should be paid. But it shouldn’t matter if you’re not, and it also shouldn’t matter if you have to pay to perform some gigs.

When we offer a service that we’re passionate about, the traditional ‘business model’ of receiving payment for providing a service is allowed to turn upside down once in a while, that is, it’s okay for us to pay to deliver a service, why? Because we enjoy doing it, and the real source of anything we do is to be happy. If you’re truly a passionate musician, you won’t mind – as long as you have enough money to carry on doing what you love.

Another way to look at it is that performing gigs can be a great investment. If you get the opportunity to perform and sell your CDs to 5,000 music fans, and it costs £200 to perform the gig, so what? If you can hustle, you’re going to make your performance fee back in no time, and the exposure is invaluable.

Okay, if you’re playing the V Festival 2012, or some other large national festival, it’s probably fair to say that the promoters have very little excuse not to pay you, but if it’s your local pub or venue, or a mini-festival, consider it an investment in your career.

The light at the end of the tunnel – all gigs end up paid

The metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel for musicians is that eventually, when you have a large and passionate enough fan base, all gigs become paid in plentiful quantities.

The reason why some gigs don’t pay is because they have the bargaining power – they can still get you to perform without paying you (which is fine – it benefits you), but when your options begin to open wide, and you receive multiple gig opportunities per day, you will naturally be able to select the ones which work best for you.

Work hard now, forget about the money and pursue your passion. Eventually, things like ‘having enough money’ will become irrelevant if you’re great at what you do.

Image Credit: Elawgrrl

In my opinion, there are three levels of websites to consider when developing one for your music project or band. Those three levels will be explained in a three part “Musician’s Guide to Websites”. Part I, will go into detail on the idea of using your website as a hub for all of the content you’re posting around the internet. Part II, will be on the idea of using your website as a place to release exclusive content, while still importing content from your social media accounts. Part III, will detail the idea behind creating an actual social network for your website.

That all being said, here is Part II detailing using your website as a place where you combine your social media content with your exclusive content from your website…

For part 2 of this guide, I would like to focus my advice to artists who are able to draw out a consistent crowd of between 50-500 people in every city you play on tour. If you’re an artist that is online only, it is a bit harder to put a hard figure on it since there is a distinct difference between a social networking fan and an actual fan of your music. BUT, if you want me to put a number on it, your “talking about this” number on Facebook should at least be in the thousands, if not more.

The reason for the above figures is because I would not recommend this type of website to artists or bands that are just beginning their career. Why? Well, this type of website will likely only be affective for artists that have fans that are willing to leave their favorite social networks to consistently view content on an external website. Remember, the goal for 2012 is to start taking control of your content and that means starting to develop exclusive content for your fans!

To begin, you have to get yourself into the right mentality as a content creator. The mindset I’m referring to is to start thinking of your artist website as a type of website like any typical news or media website. Exclusive content has a lot of value and now you take advantage of that value. By this point in your career, people enjoy finding out what you do in your daily life, which means you get a consistent amount of @replies on Twitter and interaction on your Facebook statuses. If this is happening to you, it is time to start transitioning some of your content from social media to exclusive to your artist/band website. Why? Because you have a fan base that is worth rewarding and that is willing to visit a site that doesn’t start with “face” and end with “book” or where the posts are called “tweets”. This doesn’t mean that you should start ignoring social networking; that is the opposite of what I’m saying. What this means is that you are now feeding your fans into a hub for not only your social media content (as presented in part 1), but into a hub for both exclusive and social media content.

The first step to do this type of website successfully is to develop a plan for the type of content you want to release and stick to it. For example, for my website (www.digitaltourbus.com) we have a few standar features, like our “tour bus videos” and “tour tips”, that we release every week. At the same time, we still release videos, including previously exclusive “tour bus videos” and “tour vlogs”, on our Youtube Channel. This allows us to stick to our goal of gaining new fans from social networking, but also providing our continuous viewers with awesome exclusive content on our website! For your website, you will want to focus your efforts on posting content that will keep your fans wanting more and wanting to come back to your website for more! So, while you’re in the studio, keep a studio blog. While you’re on tour, keep a tour blog. If you have an awesome show coming up, post about it on your website and make sure you give all of the details! Check out the list of exclusive content ideas below.

Exclusive Content Ideas:

Studio Blog/Vlog – While you’re in the studio, write a blog about what is going on or film a series of short videos.
Tour Blog/Vlog – While you’re on tour, write a blog about the experiences you are having or do one better and actual film them!
Interview other Bands – Interview other artists/bands you enjoy and that you think your fans will enjoy. This helps to create more of a community for artists. Also, it might be a good idea to just trade interviews with a band, so you both get the exposure.
Daily Life Blog/Vlog – What are you thinking about today, this week, lately, etc? Give your fans an insight to your mind.
Music Recommendations – Whoa are you listening to lately? Your fans want to know where you get your inspiration for the music you write, so this is a good thing to tell them.
Press You Receive – This doesn’t mean that you should make a separate blog post every time are press outlet covers you, but maybe just make a daily, weekly or monthly roundup of the press you’ve received. Or, just develop a press page for your site where you can host links to the interviews you have done. The press will love you for doing this! Trust me, I’m one of them!
Upcoming Shows/Tours – If you have a big hometown show coming up or a tour, make a blog about it. Maybe make the announcement exclusive and then post it on your social networks shortly after.
Special Announcements – Are you collabing with an artist for your new album? Is anything special going on in your personal life? Write a blog about it and keep your fans in the know.
Songs You Cover – It’s almost expected these days that artists will record covers of songs they either enjoy or that are popular at the moment. If you do one, make a post about it and include a way to stream it either via Soundcloud, Youtube, etc.

Overall, your website should provide your fans with content that makes visiting your website worthwhile. If it isn’t, they won’t come back, so plan carefully! The focus for all of the content should be to give them more of information about your daily life and about you as a person. Fans expect to know more about the artists they listen to these days and if you don’t give it to them, you can just kiss them goodbye. The days of it only being about the music are long gone!

Now that you have a content strategy, you need to develop a way to host this content exclusively on your website. You can host the content on your own server or you can use special hosting services. Personally, I would recommend that you don’t use your own server because it will slow down the speed of your website. Fans don’t like to wait for content to load and if they have to they might just leave the site. Instead, use Soundcloud to host your audio and Vimeo for your video. Both services allow you to block other domains from being able to embed your content, which forces people to view it on your website. Then, after your set exclusive period is over, you can use their settings to open up the content so it is embeddable or just upload the content to Youtube and the various audio websites. For pictures, it is a little more difficult. For exclusively hosting pictures you might be forced to use flash, which some devices don’t support, COUGH iPhone/iPad COUGH! A better way to do it is to use a service like TinyPic or Photobucket since most people don’t browse photos on those websites, they will just view them on your website. Then, after your designated exclusive time period is over, use services like Flickr to expand the reach of the photo. For the backend and the blogging feature for your website, I would strongly recommend that you use WordPress because of its versatility. Plus, most web developers are familiar with how to use WordPress, so the price to get a WordPress website developed is much lower than many other backends out there. Also, it has a kick butt blogging feature that makes posting new content easy and pain free.

Now, let’s switch focuses to your social media strategy for this type of artist website. Of course, you want to still use websites like: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, and Tumblr. Use these sites to help in the process of obtaining new fans and entertaining current fans. Also, I still recommend using Bandsintown to host your upcoming concert list and MailChimp for your email list. I would recommend that you have social media have a significant allotted space on your website for your social media. Placing icons linking to your different social networks in the top navigation of your site will help people discover your on the different networks you use and you will also want to put the various widgets for Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Flickr on your website, which will help bring in more dynamic content to your website besides the exclusive content ideas I listed previously.

After looking for over an hour and visiting various band websites, I finally find a good example of a website, but unfortunately the band doesn’t occupy this website with content as much as they should. So, please ignore the fact that their website isn’t updated and just focus on the layout and use of both exclusive and social media content. The band’s name is Big D and the Kids Table and they are a ska/punk band out of Massachusetts. They have been around since 1995, so they have been around the block a few times.

If you take a look at the screen shot above or their website at www.bigdandthekidstable.com, first off, I would like to give them props on getting their actual band name as a .com domain. That is not a luxury that every band has, but it definitely helps and if you’re a new band forming, one of the first things you should do is buy your band’s domain name. Okay, so there is a clearly defined navigation at the top of the site with icons to their social networking accounts. Below that, they have a slide of feature posts, which are basically just the posts that they really want you to read. Under that, you can see their exclusive content blog posts to the left and their recent videos, upcoming shows and Twitter feed to the left. This is how your website SHOULD look. Don’t use anything flashy because that could potentially drive people away. The only thing Big D should do is get rid of their splash page and update their site more often and they would be on the right track to taking control of their content in 2012.

Does this sound like a type of website that fits the current state of your career as a musician? If so, I wish you luck on creating and utilizing this type of website. If not, be sure to check out part I and part III of this blog for details about the other two levels of websites for artists!

What do you think should be included in an artist’s website? What does your current website include? Did I forget anything? Please leave your thoughts, comments, questions and opinions in the comments!

I’m Joshua Weidling, the Founder and CEO of DigitalTourBus.com. In the past I’ve managed bands, booked shows, worked for a music magazine, and posted news for an online music news site. You can keep up with me on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, Facebook, Get Glue and SoundTracking!

In my opinion, there are three levels of websites to consider when developing one for your music project or band. Those three levels will be explained in a three part “Musician’s Guide to Websites”. Part I, will go into detail on the idea of using your website as a hub for all of the content you’re posting around the internet. Part II, will be on the idea of using your website as a place to release exclusive content, while still importing content from your social media accounts. Part III, will detail the idea behind creating an actual social network for your website.

That all being said, here is Part I detailing using your website as a hub for social media content…

We all know that social media has become the focus for musicians since Myspace was brought into the mainstream in the mid-2000s, but these days it seems there are too many social networks to choose from to post content. This type of musician website should be implemented by artists who are just starting their career. If you are an artist that can draw at least 50 people in every city you play or have a substantial social networking fan base, please consider the content presented in part II and part III.

Musicians and bands that are just starting out should use their websites as “social media hubs.”  Artists who are just starting out should focus on developing a web presence before forcing potential fans to visit their website. Lets face it, many potential fans will not take you seriously as an artists until you’ve obtained some sort of online fan base. At the same time, trying to force potential fans to obtain all the information about you from completely separate website is unrealistic. The artist should instead be using social media as a way to attract potential fans and use their website as a hub for their web presence, so curious fans can find out what other social networks they are using.

Here is just a taste at what social networks exist -

Traditional Social Networks: Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Myspace, Bebo, Tagged, and Hi5

Blogging Social Networks: Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress

Micro-Blogging: Twitter and Path

Picture Focused: Flickr, Instagram, Daily Booth, and PicPlz

Video Focused: Youtube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion

Live Video Streaming: Stickam, Ustream, JustinTV, and BlogTV

Music Focused: Purevolume, Soundcloud, and ReverbNation

Other: Foursquare, Soundtracking, GetGlue, Formspring, and Yelp.

The social networks listed above are nowhere near the number of relevant websites currently in existence, but it gives you a general idea of some of the major networks and in what categories they may fall into. Where everything gets complicated is when potential and existing fans are all using one, some, or all of these services, so they expect/want the artists they love to use them too. If you can get one thing out of this blog it should be this, do not get in over your head as an artist and try to use all of the services out there because you will likely fail. Instead, pick a few to focus your efforts on.

The goal of 2012, artists are supposed to take control of their content again, well, at least some of it. This, in part, can be accomplished by not relying on the social networks as the only place for your fans to view your content. Provide them with an alternative way, like your website or email list.

A lot of what I’m talking about in this post can be done by creating a Onesheet page and upgrading from a “free” to a “pro” account. If you have never heard of Onesheet, watch the video here. Basically, it is a service that allows you to create a web page that, or Onesheet, that pulls in content from a number of services. You never have to update your website, you just need to keep updating your social networking accounts and it will feed your Onesheet. For example, check out a screen shot of Paramore’s Onesheet below. As you can see, they have their most recent music video and promo picture displayed. Also, there are buttons to follow the band on Twitter and like them on Facebook, as well as a link to buy their music on iTunes. Finally, by clicking the links on the top of the page, you can check out the band’s most recent pots on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as the band’s upcoming concerts (via Bandsintown) and videos (via Youtube).

If Onesheet doesn’t fit your fancy, you can go ahead and create your own website using one of the many cheap/free services that currently exist on the web, like Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger, etc.

To start, you want to pick the social networks you will be focusing on to create content, which will in turn update your website. The key to doing this efficiently and effectively is to pick social networks that serve different purposes. This will also limit the number of networks you focus on, which like I stated before, is very important.

Use these social networks for your website –

Facebook is pretty obvious. It’s the largest social network in the world, so you need a artist page on there and try to get some fans.

Twitter is another obvious one. It’s a huge website, plus it differs from all the other sites since your posts can only use 140 characters.

Youtube should be used for uploading videos. Check out this blog on the types of videos you should be posting.

Flickr should be used for hosting photos. I know, Flickr isn’t the ultra-hip service like Instagram, but it uploads pictures in WAY higher quality and has a bigger, more universal user base. Use Instagram as a way to feed your Twitter with more pictures!

Tumblr is most viral way to blog, so using it will be the most beneficial.

Bandsintown – This will keep your website updated with all the shows you have coming up.

Soundcloud – Use this site to host your music and then embed their player it into your website.

Mail Chimp - For email list sign-up forum on your website.

When trying to occupy your website with the content from the websites listed above, you have to figure out the best way to display the content so fans can easily access what they want to see. Most of the web services I listed previously provide you with widgets that you can place on your website. Also, there are ways to make those widgets have a cohesive look and follow for a website. For example, just check out the Digital Tour Bus homepage. There is a Twitter feed, Facebook fan page widget and a Flickr photo displayer. All of those widgets update automatically without the website owner having to do anything more than making the post on the social network. Another way to accomplish this is by importing using RSS feeds, which is pretty basic, so I won’t go in depth on that.

After figuring out a way to import all of your content to your website, you should still place simple icons that link to your social media profiles, so visitors can have the option of keeping in contact with you via subscribing to your various profiles. For example, by visiting the Digital Tour Bus website, you can see that the major social networks that we use are conveniently displayed in the footer of each page. Also, adding a navigation bar that displays links to “Videos”, “News” and “Pictures” can also be linked to Youtube, Tumblr, and Flickr respectively.

Putting some of these ideas to action is the pop/punk band, We Are The In Crowd, out of New York. On their website, screen shot below, they have used Tumblr as both their form of blogging and to host their website. At the top of the page, you can’t miss the huge band logo and album artwork, which tells viewers what they are looking at. Below that, on the left hand side, you will find a navigation including links to: Merchandise, Facebook, Twitter, tour dates, iTunes, Youtube, and contests. Under that is a widget for their upcoming tour dates, a Soundcloud player, and an email list sign-up. On the right hand side is their blog including a variety of posts that take you into the life of the band and its members.

Does this sound like a type of website that fits the current state of your career as a musician? If so, I wish you luck on creating and ustilizing this type of website. If not, be sure to check out part II and part III of this blog for details about more complex types of artist websites!

What do you think should be included in an artist’s website? What does your current website include? Did I forget anything? Please leave your thoughts, comments, questions and opinions in the comments!

I’m Joshua Weidling, the Founder and CEO of DigitalTourBus.com. In the past I’ve managed bands, booked shows, worked for a music magazine, and posted news for an online music news site. You can keep up with me on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, Facebook, Get Glue and SoundTracking!

These are all questions I often think about when entering new emails into the Digital Tour Bus email list. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying social networking isn’t important, I’m saying that artists should put more of a concentrated effort into their email lists! The big trend of 2012 will be artists taking control of their content and this can be done on the internet mainly via a artist’s website and their email list.

There are three lists below: One list containing the pros of email lists, another containing the cons and a third containing advice on how to maintain your email list and get more subscribers.

Pros:

You control your content –

This is an opportunity for artists that doesn’t come around as often as it used to. Controlling your own content has slowly faded since the emergence of social networks into the mainstream nearly a decade ago. With social networks, you have to follow their rules on what you can and can’t say and even if they don’t enforce all of their guidelines strictly, they still exist. Take control of your content and grow a large email list following (legally of course) and you will have the control you have been waiting for.

Low maintenance –

Unlike a social networking profile, you don’t have to worry about updating the people subscribed to your email list on a daily basis, unless you choose to. Keep in mind that people don’t like their email inboxes to be clogged with a bunch of emails. Also, it is very easy to get yourself listed as spam by major email providers if you’re abusing your email list. Try to update once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month. Choosing one of those options will ensure that you can stay consistent with sending out your email blasts.

You can include more than 140 characters –

Personally, Twitter is an addiction of mine, so this is really tough for me to say. 140 characters are usually never enough to get your entire intended point across for a specific tweet. Even Facebook has a character limit; you just don’t hit it as often because it is significantly higher than 140 characters. Email blasts don’t have a character limit, unless the email list provider enforces one. You can also include as many videos, pictures and links as your heart desires. I do suggest you keep it short and sweet, but if you like to write a lot, then email lists are perfect for long/detailed updates to your fans.

Ability to collect emails offline –

Can someone “follow” or “like” you without having an internet connection? I don’t think so… Until this is possible, email lists have the edge because you can collect emails while you’re away from a computer or smart phone via a paper sign-up list. Once you have those emails, the only thing you have to do is manually add them to your list! Okay, you are going to find that some people will unsubscribe after the first email blast you send out, but the majority of them stay subscribed to your list and therefore updated with everything you are doing as an artist.

Privacy –

You can’t go to any news source these days without finding a story about the concerns of worried parents, individuals and companies about their privacy on the internet. With Facebook now making nearly everything about you public via their new “timeline” design and the ability for private information to become public by copying or sharing information, joining an artist’s email list has now become more attractive.

Forced acknowledgement –

When you get an email in your inbox, you have four options of what to do with the email: (1) Open the email, (2) Delete the email, (3) Mark the email as spam or (4) Leave it unread. Yes, only one of the four options is a desired outcome, but the point is that the person must acknowledge that the email exists in order to do any of the three undesired outcomes. The acknowledgement can potentially create brand (in this case, artist) awareness. So, the next time that person sees your name, they will remember the name, which could lead to them checking out your new song, album, concert, etc.

Personalization –

With a social networking status updates, there truly isn’t a way to personalize the update so that every receiver sees their name addressed and acknowledged in the post, is there? Not that I know of. Well, with most email list providers, they allow you to use specific codes to place an individual’s name into one or multiple places in the email. This makes the person feel special and appreciated, while generic social network updates make a person feel like they don’t matter. So, make sure you get at least the person’s first name when obtaining their email.

Geographic Targeting –

You might want to grab the person’s city, state or country that they live in. Why? Because most email list providers allow you to geo-target an email blast to a specific region of the world. For instance, if you’re going on a tour in Europe, why send an email blast to all of your U.S. subscribers, vice versa. Yes, Facebook does provide pages with some geo-targeting features, but they a pretty limited.

Cons:

Very low viral factor –

When the term viral comes to mind, I doubt that many people think of an email list being viral. Of course, an email list can get people to start talking about a topic, but that isn’t the general intention. If your goal is to create something that could potentially go viral, try using Tumblr or Youtube.

Too private –

When receiving an email blast, the receiver does have the option to forward the email to another person or persons. I don’t know about you, but that option has never once come to my mind. The post isn’t on a public network like Twitter or Facebook, so it can’t be stumbled upon by random internet surfers and it isn’t searchable on Google or Bing, so it can’t be searched for even if the person is searching for info contained in the email.

Low tolerance to multiple emails –

Although sending very small amounts of emails to your list makes it “low maintenance”, it doesn’t make it update-to-date on your daily activities. This is where social networking comes in handy since people have a low tolerance to receiving too many emails from a list they’re subscribed to.

Advice:

Consistency –

This is vital to the success and interaction you receive from people signed up for your email list. If you say it’s a “monthly” email list, then don’t send an email ever week and alternatively don’t send an email every 3-6 months. This inconsistency will ultimately affect your list in a negative way because your subscribers aren’t getting what they were promised when signing up.

Avoid “spam” looking words and messages –

Don’t use your email list as a simple sales pitch to sell to your fans. Use the list as a way to inform them about what is going on in your professional life and non-professional life. Avoid using words that people consider as “spam”, like: Viagra, Uggs, equity loans, etc.

Be genuine –

If you sound genuine in the message you are trying to spread, you will most likely come off as genuine to your subscribers. People can tell when you aren’t being yourself.

Offer an incentive to join –

This is an easy one because it is very common. Offering people an incentive to join your email list, they will be more likely to subscribe. Give away a free song to everyone who enjoys or since the people subscribing probably already own your music (obtained through legal or illegal methods), give them something they couldn’t possibly have already. Give them a B-side track, a remixed song, or an acoustic version of a song.

Don’t include too much information –

It’s always a good idea to include all of the information that you think your subscribers will enjoy, but don’t go on forever. These days a person’s attention span is smaller than ever, so if you type a novel for your email blast, they will most likely just delete it. Keeping the email short, will maximize the effectiveness of the email.

Include social networking links in email blasts –

I know, this comes off as the exact opposite of what I’m trying to convince you of right now, but if a person subscribed to your email list offline (at a concert, etc) then telling them other places they can check you out can help. Plus, since a lot of potential fans have internal biases when they check out new music, the more likes and followers that you can obtain can only result in more potential new fans.

If you’re an artist without an email list, did I convince you to start one? If you’re an artist that already has an email list, but doesn’t use it, did I convince you to put more time and effort into yours? If so, here are some suggestions for potential email list providers. Mail Chimp and Your Mailing List Provider (YMLP) offer great services for both beginners and pros. Both offer great free options and YMLP offers a very low monthly options. ReverbNation provides an awesome option that is specifically for artists. Fanbridge is also a good option, especially for bands who only want to send one email blast a month. Also, HostBaby provides ListBaby free of charge to their website hosting customers. Other email list provides you can research and potentially use: Constant Contact, iContact, PHP List, Experian, and Topica, just to name a few. I suggest doing your research before committing to a service provider because once you’ve settled into one, you probably won’t want to switch when you find a better fit.

What email list provider do you use? Are you happy with your provider? Do you think email lists are useful or pointless? Do you have any pros, cons or advice to add? What strategies have worked for you in the past? Please post your comments, thoughts, opinions, and questions in the comments!

I’m Joshua Weidling, the Founder and CEO of DigitalTourBus.com. In the past I’ve managed bands, booked shows, worked for a music magazine, and posted news for an online music news site. You can keep up with me on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, Facebook, and SoundTracking!

Many engineers focus completely on mastering and it’s a highly skilled process requiring specialist knowledge and equipment. You can do it yourself, but it’s one area probably best left to professionals unless you are willing to spend a serious amount of time learning the skills. Before agreeing to use a mastering engineer ask to hear examples of their work and see testimonials from clients.

Mastering happens when you have recorded and mixed your project but before duplication or uploading tracks to the web. The benefits of mastering are:

• Levelling out the overall volume – There is always debate about how loud mixes should be and how much dynamic range they should have. It’s the job of the mastering engineer to set this level. The mastering engineer often applies some compression and limiting to the entire album to normalise levels and prevent digital distortion. This gives your album an overall consistent sound and puts all the songs into the same dynamic range. It’s wise to agree with the person doing the mastering how loud you want your album to be before starting the process. In the last 10 years albums have got louder and louder (the so called loudness war) and some people feel this is to the detriment of the music. Agree this in advance by giving examples of albums you like the sound of for reference to the engineer.

• It adds EQ – The mastering process will add EQ to the entire recording rather than specific songs (this should be sorted in the mix down process before mastering). This overall EQ will give the entire album or EP a consistent overall sound.

• It finalises the running order and timing of the tracks – These decisions are normally made at the mastering stage, so make sure when you get to that point you know what the running order of the album is. Also agree the amount of time between tracks as this is set at this point. Deciding the running order is really important to the way the album will be received, ensure that you put your best/most interesting song first. Try and keep songs that sound similar or are in the same key apart. Be conscious of the BPM of songs and don’t put all your fast or slow songs together (unless this is the effect you are going for). The recent trend has been to top load albums with all the best songs/singles at the start. How you want to do it is up to you, but spend some time on it. Try a few different running orders using iTunes playlists to see how they work at home so the decision is made long before you start the mastering process.

• Adding additional effects – Some people have been known to add effects during the mastering process, although this is not standard practice. One thing worth doing during mastering is running your digital mix through some really good valve pre-amps to give the recording some warmth and a more analogue feel. Once again agree with the mastering engineer how you want this to sound.

Use a mastering engineer that has been recommended by a friend or someone you respect, be very careful as this is an important process. Ideally get one song done before you agree to have the entire album mastered so that you can make sure you get the result you are looking for. Agree in advance what will happen if you are unhappy with the mastering and make sure that you are happy with what the overall price will be (watch out for hidden extras). Some bands ask to attend the mastering session and although it’s not essential it can be useful. Avoid automatic online mastering services, they just apply a standard pre-set process to your music, use an experienced engineer with a good reputation.

Ensure the final mix downs you want mastering are exactly as you want them long before you start the mastering process. Ensure there are no errors, level problems or digital clipping on the mix down as this can’t be fixed in mastering. Don’t worry about making your mixes loud, that’s what the mastering process is for. Bring them the WAV files of your mixes (never MP3s) and let the mastering engineer sort out the volume of the overall album. When the process is completed you will have WAVs ready to present to CD replicators or to upload to the web.

When done by an expert mastering makes a huge difference to a recording, it’s often what makes an album stand out from the standard home recordings. If you want to deliver a product that sounds as good as what you hear from “signed” bands it is essential.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

You need a press kit, a standard pack you can send to journalists or anyone interested in your band (including promoters/podcasters etc). A press kit can be electronic or sent  as a physical promotional pack. If it’s an electronic press kit you can have it on a specific part of your website that is password protected (you can also keep your press releases here). Generally speaking they will contain the following elements:

• A covering letter (offline press kit only) – This must be personalised with the name of the person who you are sending it to, make a phone call and find out who deals with reviews if you’re not sure. Explain why you are sending the package and specific information about the release you are asking them to review. Bonus points if you can say something nice about the publication you are sending the press pack to (and make sure its sincere and specific to the publication).

• A biography – Only include relevant information, nobody cares what your first pet was. Make it chronological and include information on the band members, important gigs played, albums released and some quotes from the press. It shouldn’t be longer than a few paragraphs and only include details of your previous bands if they were successful or remarkable. Avoid hyperbole (journalists will see straight through this) and focus on the facts of where you are at with your career. Include your contact details, website and online profiles (including your Twitter/Live Unsigned profile etc).

• A CD, or for an electronic press kit a few download/streaming songs  - Don’t send a CDR, get some professionally printed ones (a digipack ideally) with professional packaging if you want to stand out and be taken seriously. Make sure your contact details are on the CD itself as well as on the case (they do go astray). Put your best song first, without a long intro, it sounds obvious but people do make that mistake.

• An information sheet – Including some basic information (band members, etc), your discography, website, radio plays, successful gigs, press received and what the band has happening in the future. Keep it to a few lines for each subject, well spaced out in bullet points to make it easy to locate information quickly. Journalists are busy people.

• Some press cuttings – Stick to a few press cuttings from the last few years and make sure they are not just good but glowing and very positive. Try and include live reviews as well as album reviews and remember national press is better than the local free paper.

• Some decent promotional photos – Not your mate on his iPhone round the back of your garage. Decent promo photos, with the best looking/most interesting person at the front of the picture. Get them taken by someone who knows what they are doing, well lit and preferably in a studio. Anyone can look good with decent photos. For online press kits the photos will need to be 300 DPI Resolution JPEGs, you can set the DPI in most photo editing software. Would you like someone to ignore your music because the photos are rubbish? A good photo makes all the difference.

Of course, none of this guarantees that your press pack will get looked at but by presenting yourself professionally you will stand much more of a chance.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

The reasons that bands fail to gain an audience are numerous, but here are 6 of the main ones:

• The music isn’t good enough. The number one reason why most bands haven’t got any fans is that they aren’t interesting/remarkable/great. Bland rehashes of what has gone before won’t get people talking online. If you sound like everyone else, why will people tell their friends about it? Weird/bizarre/ scandalous/controversial/talented will work more quickly. Better to go away and practice and get better, then try playing your music to a few people you respect (not your friends). If they like it then start promoting it online. Repeat this until you’re ready to really impress an audience. The better you are the less money it will cost to build an audience because word of mouth will take you further. Its fine to be a musician without an audience if thats what you want, its your decision.

• They lack consistency or don’t put the time in. If you go on to social networks once a week/month you won’t get many results. If you put in a lot of effort for a few weeks then give up, nothing much will happen. Building a following online happens over months and years, not days and weeks (unless you have a weird viral hit or are prepared to spend serious money in the right places).  Sites like Twitter and Live Unsigned are great ways to build an audience but it won’t happen overnight.

• Not talking to fans/spamming fans. Spamming people on social networks and never replying to other peoples Tweets is one sure way of failing.  Tweeting “@yo check out my music” isn’t a way of building an audience, you will just annoy people and possibly get banned from Twitter. Listening to your fans and replying to them will build a more authentic relationship over time.

• They delegate their social media. You have to do it yourself. Fans want an authentic connection with the artist not a PR person, they want to feel part of it. You can’t outsource it, its you they want to talk to. If you just talk about product and sales you will just annoy people. Open up and talk to your audience, tell them how you really feel and make them laugh. Once you have a relationship with the fans then you have permission to sell them downloads and talk to them about gigs.

• They don’t know who their audience is. If you think you’re a metal band but the people who like your music are indie kids, go with that. When you find an audience that loves your music continue to build on that. Find out who likes your music and hang out where they hang out, from forums to gigs by artists in the same genre.

• Charging for music when they haven’t got an audience. If you have less than 2000 people on your mailing list ensure your music is available free in exchange for an email address. You can’t sell to an audience you haven’t got, without a decent sized mailing list you haven’t got a business. Make it free until you have an audience, then you can sell more than a just downloads, such as merchandise like T-shirts, Box Sets etc. If you want a career you need to think of the long term opportunities not a £1 download. Also bands who only offer 30 second downloads are just making life harder for themselves, its like stopping a radio station from playing your music. Let the fans hear what you do, piracy isn’t the problem, obscurity is.

Every band will use the web in different ways to grow an audience, but saying that social media doesn’t work is just another excuse along the lines of “we didn’t get the breaks”. Of course luck does come into any bands success, but to allow those breaks to happen you have to put the work in. One thing that you can guarantee, success in the music industry won’t come looking for you.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

The conventional way of getting press is either to send off lots of press kits and hope someone happens to read them or hire a PR company who will use their contacts to try and get you press. PR companies are very useful if you don’t have time to build relationships with the press yourself but are expensive. None of this guarantees a review, especially not a positive one.

There is another way, what you need is permission to present your music to the relevant journalists. Many of the freelancers who write the articles in magazines have their own blogs or Twitter feeds. The names of the journalists who write for a magazine you want to be featured in are normally listed at the front of the magazine. Use Google to search online to see if the people you want to contact have a blog or twitter profile. Subscribe to the RSS feed on their blog or start following them on Twitter. Now you are part of a smaller community than the thousands of people who read the print magazine.

Don’t simply send them a generic “check my music out” message, take the time to read their blog and reply with intelligent, relevant comments (not mentioning your music). If you follow them on Twitter reply to their Tweets, re-tweet their links and interact with them on a daily basis. Focus on building a positive relationship, often you’ll find that you forget its about getting press and you’ll find you are just talking to somebody online. The best thing that can happen is that they find your music without being prompted by investigating your Twitter profile or website, but this is very rare. After a few months of talking you can mention your own music and ask permission to submit it to them without being another random spammer. You can even mention your gig listings on Live Unsigned. You’ll still need a good conventional press kit to send to them, but now you’re not just another name, giving you much more chance of getting a review (and hopefully a positive one).

When you hire a PR company all you are doing is paying for access to the relationships they have built with the press, why not build the relationships yourself?  These relationships can have a positive impact on your career for years to come so are certainly worth the investment of time it takes to build them.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

One main argument amongst audiophiles is the preference of music recorded on an analog format to that of the digital realm. With music and technology now in the digital age, the once standard record-making process has been altered to adhere to a more convenient workflow. Digital audio workstations such as Avid Pro Tools and Apple Logic save us from spending hours on splicing tape to compile the ideal vocal take, or sequencing a simple drum beat to lay down the skeleton for a song.


The arising question amongst audio-enthusiasts, however, is this: Does the digital audio workflow sometimes hinder the final product? Many audio engineers who started their careers recording on analog formats remain advocates of analog, the way of working they deem standard. Details such as tape saturation, hardware synthesizers, and analog signal paths can make the difference between a good sounding record and a great sounding record.


In this edition of Indie Ambassador’s Tech Resources, we profile Robert Yen Jr. of the Musician’s Development Institute and his thoughts on analog recording, as well as the recording process as a whole.

Indie Ambassador: When you started as an engineer, was tape the main format that records were being recorded to? When did you notice the switch to digital audio?

Robert Yen, Jr: Yep, when I started, during the late eighties, analog tape was in its finest hour.  The format had been perfected in many ways, such as tape formulation improvements and the advancement in the analog tape decks themselves.  Digital stuff was around, but it was mainly VHS and such.  Actually, at some point we started to drop mixes onto VHS tapes as backups to the reel to reels.  In the mid nineties, digital multi-tracking started to gain some ground, but the analog stuff still held its own very strongly.

IA: Do you prefer to use hardware sequencers and synthesizers to software-based production tools of the same function?

Yen: Well, actually I prefer human beings playing real instruments.  Real instruments have character.  For example, you could have two identical pianos from the same manufacturer, same piano strings, etc., but these two pianos will still have their own variations – character in tone, playability, etc.  And come on, a synth orchestra module compared to the London Symphony Orchestra … I’ll take the London Symphony, thanks.  So, that’s how I feel about it. But to answer your question more directly, I prefer hardware synthesizers to synth software, cause they’re more likely to have that variance that I’m talking about. Some synths may have a weird quirk makes them unique.

IA: What aspects of an analog signal chain do you prefer to the digital domain, and what do you feel that the digital domain lacks?

Yen: Well every aspect on the analog chain pushes voltage.  The circuits come alive and character / uniqueness of sound manifests.  For example, take a Black Face 1176 compressor vs. the software version of it.  The analog unit has voltage running through it, and as the circuits heat up a type of hotness and warmth is achieved in the sound. The digital equivalent is synthesized; if you try to push a hot signal into a digital device it just craps out and gives you this terrible noise.  Music is not meant to be sterilized; it needs the harmonic structure that exists in nature.  Digital is limited to sampling rate, analog is not limited in this way and it is able to capture complex harmonic structures.  The only thing really that digital has is in its editing capabilities.

IA: What was the last record you had recorded strictly using analog recording formats? Do you continue to use a mix of analog and digital audio production?

Yen: I reserve analog only recording for musicians that really have their stuff together.  Most bands and/or solo artists lack so much that everything has to be digitally edited.  A highly regarded Flamenco artist by the name of Jon Gordon and a country artist by the name of Duncan Walters were albums I did completely on analog.  Mind you, especially in the Duncan case, almost all the musicians were GRAMMY and Country Music Awards winners.  These cats were “one take” AAA super musicians.  Yeah, these days a lot more digital recordings occurring at MDI, what a shame since we have more analog recording formats than any other studio in the world.  2” 24trk, 2” 16trk, 1” 16trk, ½” 2trk, Trident analog console etc.

IA: Do you feel that analog audio processing will make a resurgence in the way records are produced in the near future, or do you think it’s a fading art?

Yen: Yeah it’s a fading art for sure.  The level of analog engineering skill is an art form unto itself.  There’s only a handful of production grade engineers that are able to make analog stuff work right and sing out, and I know who they all are.  As far as a resurgence of analog recording, of course the musicians and artists out there that have real skills in their creative endeavors would seek to record albums totally analog.  What I mean by that is – are you or is your band really worth it for me to record you on my analog machines? Music is my life and I demand the best from the musicians, songwriting, recording etc. Nothing but the best is acceptable.

IA: Any other comments? What are you currently working on?

Yen: I’m working on something that is going to rock your world – due to be released in the spring / summer (can’t talk about it in detail right now… still in the production queue).  Final thought to the musicians / artists out there, JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE AN “ARTIST” DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO SUCK!


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The Musician’s Development Institute is a one stop, full service album production facility and Artist Development center located in Plymouth MA. From basic music lessons through songwriting development, production and music publishing, their World-Class production studios and staff give clients the edge they need to effectively compete, and survive, in the dog-eat-dog business of music.

Indie Ambassador Resources is an educational series produced by Indie Ambassador. Through our video panels, industry profiles and articles, artists and music professionals can educate themselves on general business topics, new technology and current industry trends.

Their is much to be learned from their DIY punk ethic, setting up tours themselves and releasing records on their own SST records. Here are a few ideas that they used:

• Get in the van. Black Flag’s tours were legendary, epic trawls across the US, Canada and Europe. They were an incredible live band. Through the arranging of their own tours they opened up a whole network of venues that the following generation of alternative bands from the Pixies to REM could play at. Being great live and touring constantly (in horrible conditions) allowed them to build a loyal following.

• Retain your integrity. Black Flag never sold out, that’s why their work resonates through the decades and is so influential. Everything about them is credible.

• Innovate musically. Black Flag started off as a straight Ramones influenced punk band but later went on to incorporate elements of Jazz, Metal, Hendrix  and atonal guitar soloing. As their career continued they evolved, continually pushing the boundaries getting slower and more complex along the way. They took chances outside of generic punk.

• Innovate with your marketing. Always try new ways of connecting with an audience. They went out flyering everyday, often going without food to keep on the road. They sprayed there logo all over the LA area (attracting the attention of the Police). Their work ethic of touring, flyering and putting out new material was unrelenting. They even tried advertising on local TV.

• Be careful what you sign. Black Flag’s career was held back because of a legal dispute with MCA over the distribution of an album. Always seek the advice of a lawyer before you sign anything.

• Take a stand. Black Flag constantly clashed with the authorities who tried to crack down on Hardcore shows, they took a stand and carried on. This dedication inspired a loyal dedicated following.

• Put out your own music. Black Flag set up their own SST label and put out the records themselves. Don’t wait for someone to offer you a career in music, make it happen yourself.

• Build a community. SST didn’t only put out their own records, they put out music by Husker Du, Bad Brains, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jnr, Sonic Youth and Soundgarden. SST and Black Flag were at the heart of a scene that changed the world, eventually entering the mainstream via the Pixies, REM and Nirvana.

• Have a great logo. Raymond Pettibon’s four bars logo is iconic and has sold thousands of T-Shirts, tattoos and stickers. The ongoing use of Pettibons artwork for later releases gave them a distinctive look through all their work. Controversial,innovative and distinctive.

For further information the books Get In The Van: Black Flag tour diaries by Henry Rollins and Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 by Michael Azerra are both highly recommended. This was long before the days of easy digital distribution through the internet, you can only imagine what they could have achieved with sites like Bandcamp, Live Unsigned and Twitter. Black Flag were a truly inspirational band.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

Led by people who can legitimately claim to be the first to ever sell a concert ticket on the Internet back in the 90s, the company is currently capitalizing on social media and the data it provides to improve business for their clients and all those around them. We caught up with Ticketfly Biz Dev aficionado Ryan O’Connor to talk about the tactics his company is currently using to make headway in an industry sector plagued with antiquated business models. Give the interview below a read through — you’ll see that there’s reason for optimism if you’re fed up with the ticketing status quo!

IndieAmbassador.com: Concert-goers often complain about the way ticketing is done for the majority of concerts today. What about the system needs fixing?

Ryan O’Connor: For starters, service fee pricing needs to be more transparent. That’s an issue all concert-goers can get behind. The market demands it, yet some companies charge as much as $3.50 per order to allow people to print their own tickets at home. There’s no argument to defend that delivery channel: it’s complete BS.

Second to the services fees, would be the transactional experience, which lacks insight into the consumer. It’s amazing how much data ticketing companies sit on without leveraging it to their client’s advantage. You would think in the age of Facebook and Spotify, there’s no reason why ticketing companies shouldn’t combine my purchase history with my likes, and playlists as well as the likes of my friends to serve me a curated list of shows I would be more likely to see. It makes me aware of what’s going on, while helping the artist reach a larger audience. It’s win-win.

IndieAmbassador.com: What is Ticketfly doing to break the mold that was put in place by companies like Ticketmaster during the 20^th century?

RO: Ticketfly’s founders are the godfathers of concert ticketing. They were the first to ever sell a concert ticket on the Internet, which is a pretty substantial claim when you think about it. Ticketfly plans on continuing that tradition of innovation.

With that said, not much has changed since Andrew (Andrew Dreskin, CEO) and Dan (Dan Teree, President and COO) got in the game in the mid 90’s. As you can imagine, the model that was once cutting edge is now completely inadequate for today’s promoter, whose marketing channels are hyper fragmented and require constant upkeep.

This is where Ticketfly comes in.

Instead of listing your show data over and over to promote across your marketing assets, Ticketfly’s solution comes fully integrated with the client’s website, smartphone app, email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well a over 150 event listing websites that drive consumers to our client’s events. Additionally, Ticketfly is the only company that provides clients with our proprietary Artist Database, which contains the bios, headshots, audio and video files of over 100,000 artists that will automatically upload as you create your event.

Beyond the content integration what ultimately sets Ticketfly apart is the quality of our data. We sit on a tremendous amount of information and are uniquely positioned to combine that information with other platforms because of our technological advantage. This results in compelling actionable insights for our clients. Put simply, if you want to know how many tickets you sold through your Facebook page, and what the demographics of those buyers are, we can show you. Instantly.

IndieAmbassador.com: How does Ticketfly feel about secondary ticketing agencies like StubHub? Are they good or bad for the live music industry?

RO: Secondary ticketing agencies face a dilemma of perception, meaning they’re largely viewed as perpetuators of scalping. Ticketfly is obviously anti-scalping. What we’re not against is the idea of one ticket buyer exchanging his ticket on an open platform. We think that’s fair.

With that said, you can’t deny the impact of the secondary market as a channel for ticket re-sales. What we’d like to see is an integrated approach to helping the primary market push their tickets first. Thus far, there’s been little integration in that regard which is surprising when you consider the upside potential to create a new revenue stream and perpetuate a better image amongst buyers and promoters.

IndieAmbassador.com: Concert revenue has gone up in the first half of 2011, but the number of tickets sold has decreased since the same time last year. What does this mean to you? Are promoters getting greedy and making tickets too expensive?

RO: Looking at absolute figures, you’re correct, but I think that skews towards Live Nation given their market share.  If we look at it in terms of percentages, it tells a different story.  By quickly comparing the top 20 US promoters using the recent 3Q figures from Pollstar to the same period in 2010, I see AEG is up by 8.79%, C3 by 12.26% as well as Another Planet, AC and Knitting Factory up by 36%, 18% and 119% respectively.

With that in mind, you might conclude that the bellwether promoter is losing while the smaller, independent promoters are gaining ground. That’s not a function of greed, that’s a function of Live Nation’s model failing.

IndieAmbassador.com: Do you think the concept of VIP ticketing packages will continue to grow and play a large role in the live event arena moving forward?

RO: Consumers are always looking for more value and a more enriched experience. Not just in music, but in all forms of entertainment. Look at the rapid growth of Gilt City, Living Social, or Groupon. It’s about the upsell, not the discount. The same will hold true for concerts, especially large destination festivals like Rock the Bells, or Life is Good.

IndieAmbassador.com: To what extent does Ticketfly harness social media to help sell more tickets? What other creative techniques have you seen being employed by ticketing agencies and promoters alike?

RO: Ticketfly’s infrastructure was built with social in its DNA. It’s a distinct advantage to our timing into the market. Beyond the code, we’ve built our product, marketing and business development departments to make sure that the overall Ticketfly ecosystem is top notch when it comes to leveraging new trends.

A great example would be Ticketfly’s invitation to participate in F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference. This is where Zuckerberg announces the latest new features that change the way people utilize the network, the implications of which can have a real affect on your business if you’re not up to speed. This year Ticketfly was asked by Facebook to participate in the early stages of these new releases, where we were able to provide feedback and get a head start on developing before it hit the masses. It was a real privilege.

As for specific techniques, we’ve been implementing giveaways via social since the company’s inception. For example, this year the Virgin Mobile Free Fest wanted Facebook to be the only channel to get tickets. We did this by setting up a custom splash image on the VMFF Facebook page through Buddy Media. Customers then had to go to the VMFF page and “Like” it to access tickets. The event sold out in minutes, Virgin gained thousands of more Likes, as well as all the social data attached to each buyer.

IndieAmbassador.com: What excites you most about the music industry today?

RO: Outsiders getting into this business. I get calls almost every day from people who are looking to improve the model, many of whom don’t have a background in the industry. To that point, almost all of them are focused on the issue of discovery like SongKick, Spotify, ShareMyPlaylist, SeatGeek, Fansnap, etc. They’re all about driving eyeballs in new and innovative ways. When you consider that over 40% of our inventory goes unsold, we need every advantage we can get.

• Make great videos and upload them to the web with Tubemogul. Tubemogul allows you to upload to Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook etc just by clicking one button, saving you hours of time. Some people use Youtube as their main way of discovering and listening to new music, make sure your tracks are on there. Don’t post cheesy videos that are going to make you less credible, cheap camera videos are fine if they are gritty and real and honest. Don’t post an attempt at a big money Hip Hop video made for £20. Posting video blogs and gritty live footage will work better and be more real.

• Share your journey. Using the web open up and tell your story, not everybody’s life is as dramatic as Notorious BIG but tell your story through blogs, Twitter, Flickr Photos and Youtube. Be honest and really connect with the fans, then when things start happening for you its their victory as well as yours. Share your successes and failures and let fans be part of the drama of your life. Don’t forget its not all about you, share interesting and funny stuff you find and ask your fans questions and for feedback. Its called social media for a reason, its about getting people talking.

• Make a mix tape. A high quality mix tape with the latest popular tracks, including a few of your own, will help you to connect to fans more quickly because they know the other artists. This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase your skills. Sell or give away mixtape CDs on the street. Go to Hip Hop shows and give away CDs to the people in line, if you can make some cash and get email addresses its a bonus. Artists like Rhyme Asylum are using this to build a fan base on the streets, one person at a time. They are out there making it happen while others complain that they can’t get the breaks.

• Get some sponsorship. Approach brands you use and honestly like for sponsorship of projects, many brands want to be associated with a credible Hip Hop artist. Try a few, you never know what an afternoon sending a few emails to company’s PR departments will bring. Mention any high profile shows you have played and how many fans you have across social networks if you want to gain their interest.

• Motivate your street team. At first your street team is you and your friends. Get them out flyering and spreading the word online across social media, blogs and forums . Remember to show respect and say thank you, buying people a Pizza goes a long way. Once you have a few people on your mailing list ask them to join your street team and give them exclusive tracks, free entry to gigs and free mix tapes.

• Play live and post your gig listings on Live Unsigned and across social media. Get in touch with all the local Hip Hop promoters and build relationships, offer to help flyer and set up nights. Go to the local nights and meet the people making things happen, its all about who you know. This way when a live opportunity does come about you won’t just be a name on a list of demos, you’ll be their first call because they like working with you and they know you. When you do get a chance to play live tell everyone you know and ask them to bring their friends. Make sure the place is rammed, if you don’t you won’t get asked back.

• Don’t spam. Random emails or Twitter @ messages won’t work and will just annoy people. Build your fan base one person at a time and focus on building real relationships. You never know who the people in your network will know, one great contact can change everything for you. Build slowly and look after your fans, treat them well and they will tell their friends about your music. This is especially useful if one of your fans has thousands of Twitter followers.

None of these things will make you famous overnight but working every day toward achieving your long term career goals will make things happen if you have the talent and drive.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

“I’ve actually been doing stuff like that for a year,” Darren points out. “It began with me doing video blogs about making the record, and then I started using Morse code and sending out secret messages via Twitter. We then had a competition where there was a treasure hunt, and fans had to work out a code and find a password and enter a competition to be flown from anywhere in the world to London to hear the record for the first time ever. That happened, and we then put clues in bottles and hid them in Rome, New York, London and Sydney. Fans had to find them and they’d win a collector’s edition of the album, but when they combined the four clues it unlocked a part of the record – it’s a ten-minute video preview of all the music on the record. It’s been incredible, and it’s been a year-long journey to get to this point.”

Generally speaking, within the digital age it’s arguably more important to communicate with the fans and encourage their involvement. “I think it’s always been important,” the singer feels. “I just think it’s easier today with social media, but I’ve always embraced that. I used to go into IRC chatrooms and message on message boards back in the day, and 15-20 years on Twitter and Facebook are obviously the tools of today, and who knows what they’ll be next week. But yeah, it’s definitely important. I think it’s important to communicate really. I don’t come from a generation of performers where I feel like a celebrity, and I certainly don’t feel above my audience. I am a fan. I’m a fan of other artists, and I find it difficult to even refer to the people that buy my music as fans. I find it a bit degrading, except they know what I mean by that because I was the kid who waited outside Michael Jackson’s hotel for an autograph. I totally understand it, and I try to break down those walls a bit. That’s why I try to use social media to do that.”

Darren is the owner of a uStream account, a service whereby you can stream live videos to fans. “I’ve only just started video streaming actually – I enjoy it,” he admits. “To be honest nothing really beats the live show, but uStream’s great for people who live in places where you will probably never be able to get to. They get to see you live essentially, so I’m going to be doing more and more uStream stuff for sure.”

How effective has your foray into social media been Darren? “To be honest, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know. All I know is… to be honest, I’ve only just really focused on my Facebook page six months ago; we went from 2,000 followers to 110,000 followers, and it’s just slowly grown over time. Twitter has been a similar thing; I started with one follower, and I think I’ve got about 45,000 or something. To me it’s not necessarily about an immediate spike, or about something that a marketing person would tell you – to me it’s just about having a presence there. For me, when I think of an artist… If I wanna check out their latest release, I’ll probably go to Twitter and YouTube. I’ll go to a separate YouTube page and then I’ll check out what they’re like on Twitter, and that’s a lot different to the way that I used to check out music, which is I’d just go to a record store and flick through albums.”

Interview by Robert Gray, for DottedMusic.com.

Written by Jem Bahaijoub

Album finished? Check. Tour dates? Check. Press photos? Check. Press release? Check. Biography? Urgh!

If you’re not a spectacular storyteller or wondrous wordsmith, then the task of writing or updating your biography can seem like an arduous task. However, a biography is an essential item in any musicians marketing tool kit. It positions your brand identity, communicates your key achievements and provides background info to fans and media alike. Here are a few pointers to help you on your way…..

Interview Yourself

If you’ve not yet put pen to paper, the best thing to do is put yourself in the position of a journalist. Devise a list of questions covering your career and interview yourself. Gain ideas and angles by reading up on blog Q&As, or identify interview questions you would ask a favorite band or artist. This will make the process of gathering your bio content a lot easier. While you are interviewing yourself, write down as much info as possible. You can edit this all later.

Plan Your Structure

Your bio is not your life story. It’s a concise and well structured over-view of your music career. This is why planning the format is key. Think carefully about what you want to include in each paragraph and keep the following in mind:


1. Define your key achievements. If you have performed with well-known artists or received awards or accolades, then now is the time to rave about them. List them according to their newsworthiness.


2. Your bio does not need to be chronological. In fact the first couple of paragraphs are often the most important as they’ll determine whether a journalist or fan will read on. Ensure that the beginning of your bio provides an effective summary of your sound. For example, the Mumford and Sons bio conjures an image of their offering from the outset.


3. If you’re in a band, stick to writing about the band’s overall story, rather than each individual member in detail. It’s okay to dedicate some space to each member as long as the bio starts and ends with the band. Don’t kill the reader with detail – keep it focused.

Find Your Narrative Style

If you’re not a naturally gifted writer, than discovering your “writer’s voice” is one of the most difficult tasks. But don’t panic! If you write with passion and personality you are half way there. If you get stuck, utilize press quotes or even quote yourself. Adele’s biography is a good example of this.


Alternatively ask your friends and family to provide descriptors, and get feedback from them on your writing style. If in doubt, keep it short and simple. Balance style with substance.

Create a Work In Progress

Make life easy for yourself and write a biography that is easy to update on a regular basis. Adopt a style and format that is timeless and easy to add additional information to as your career progresses. Keep your bio as concise as possible — make every word count. If you struggle fitting all relevant information in to one page, create both a short and long version that can be used accordingly.


Now get cracking….it won’t write itself.


Jem Bahaijoub is the founder of imaginePR, a music marketing company based in Washington DC. Connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.


Indie Ambassador Resources is an educational series produced by Indie Ambassador. Through our video panels, industry profiles and articles, artists and music professionals can educate themselves on general business topics, new technology and current industry trends.

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• Whether you are a Producer, Singer or MC now is a great time to build an audience, here are a few ideas to make it happen, if you are prepared to put the work in:Be remarkable, brilliant, original and controversial. No one wants to hear a song called “In the hood” again, you need to innovate and come up with great tracks. Being original, honest and better than anyone else will get people talking. Often being controversial will also start people talking, but how much you want to do this is up to you. If its not honest and part of who you really are don’t be controversial for the sake of it. Authenticity is more important, fans can see through someone who is fake, you can’t keep up an act forever.

• Offer to remix or collaborate. If you meet an artist you like online let them know you like their work via email and offer to collaborate or remix their tracks. Don’t send them a standard email, make it honest, personal and real and make sure the people you are going to work with are going to make you seem more credible, not less.  Working with other artists gives you a chance to expose your talents to their audience. Also look out for remix competitions, a really good opportunity for producers to showcase their work.

• If you want it to go viral with a video get an emotional response. Viral video is really useful if you can make it happen but its hard to do. What makes things go viral is getting an emotional response. You have to make people laugh, cry, happy or freak them out with something weird if you want them to share or re-tweet your video. If you can do that you’re half way there. This is how videos get thousands of hits a day, do something remarkable.

• Give away your music and make the money in other places. Let people download your tracks in exchange for an email address (perhaps via Bandcamp). Once you have an audience you can start to make money by selling music, merchandise, live performances and endorsing products. Even 50 Cent advises on shares and has his own brand of bottled water called Formula 50.  Its not a business until you have an audience.

• Use the latest technology. Snoop Dogg uses Ustream, playing tunes and talking to fans. Use Mashable and Techdirt to stay up to date on the latest social media trends, often the first people to use new technology get the best results. Remember to post your live shows on Live Unsigned.

• Use Twitter and social media to engage with people. Follow a few people on twitter and build a relationship with them, don’t talk about yourself all the time. Talk about funny stuff, what you care about and be honest and real. Ask your fans questions on Twitter and reply to what they say. Reply to all @ messages and listen what others are saying and reply to them. If Kanye and 50 Cent have time to use Twitter so do you. Look for inspiration on how to use Twitter by following your favourite artists, there is a more in depth article on Twitter here.

• Set daily tasking and long term goals. Do something to grow your fan base every day. You can use our check list here. By setting goals for your music career you have far more chance of making things happen.

In part 2 of this post we will look at mixtapes, sponsorship, street teams and more.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

HIGHWAY TO HELL

Matt Souza, a freelance drummer in the LA area, hit the road with the band Broke on Friday in 2008 and returned with a tour story that is every musician’s worst nightmare. After a roll of shows in Colorado, the band was driving their rented RV through the desert of Nevada when all of a sudden smoke started billowing out from under the hood. With just enough time to pull off the highway and get everyone moved a safe distance away, the RV exploded into bits and pieces with a mushroom cloud reminiscent of the A-bomb.  In the end, the band lost its PA system, generator, and all individual band members their instruments, computers, clothing, etc. There was over $35k in damage, and with no insurance, none of the lost equipment was covered. Matt was kind enough to talk to us about his experience, and what steps could be taken with musicians insurance to prevent running into a situation like this.

IndieAmbassador.com: Prior to going on tour, were there any precautions taken to ensure the protection of your personnel, gear, or transportation?

Matt Souza: No. We were completely ignorant at the time. We had insurance on the RV and just assumed that it covered our gear and belongings.

IA: Were there any telling signs of the coming doom before the explosion?

MS: No! That’s the crazy part. The tour was going great. We’d had no problems with the RV for the entire trip and we were literally 4 hours from our house when all hell broke loose. We honestly didn’t know that it was a legitimate fire until a good samaritan came along and helped us. We thought it was just the radiator smoking!

IA: In your accident, what equipment (if any) was covered by the vehicle’s auto insurance?

MS: Absolutely nothing. We all lost our instruments, our PA system, a brand new gas powered generator we had just purchased for the tour, iPods, Laptops, clothes, shoes, blankets, wallets, toothbrushes, etc. None of it was covered by the RV’s insurance. Not a thing.

IA: With over $35k in damage, what steps were taken to recover the equipment lost in the accident?

MS: Well, we tried everything we could with the insurance company. We talked to about a half dozen people in total. We even sought some legal advice but, in the end, it was all for nothing. We got NONE of our money or gear back. We all had to take personal loans just so we could buy clothes, let alone get new instruments.

IA: In hindsight, is there anything you could have done to prevent the incident?

MS: In hindsight, I guess we could’ve gotten renter’s insurance on our gear and everything else we own. I’m not so certain personally that we would’ve gotten the full value for our stuff, though. In my opinion insurance companies are scam artists… You pay and pay into them every month for your whole life, and when the time comes for you to use that “protection blanket” you’ve been paying into, they do everything in their power to NOT fill your claim. It’s all one big sham that everyone buys into, and in the case of auto insurance, are REQUIRED BY LAW to buy into. That said, it would have been nice to get even SOME money back to purchase new equipment.

IA: What projects are you currently working on in your music career?

MS: Currently I live in LA and am playing with a live karaoke act called ‘With the Band… Karaoke’. I also teach drum lessons privately in my studio and am in the process of building a website with tons of instructional drumming content and internet drum lessons. It should be ready to go in early 2012. It’s called ProDrumInstruction.com. If anyone’s wants more info, they can contact me at matt@prodruminstruction.com.

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Taking care of your safety, as well as the safety of your gear before you embark on the road is a process that is often overlooked.  As we look into the Insurance Company’s side of things in Part 2 of this article, we’ll be interviewing the Vice President of MusicPro Insurance to clarify what’s covered and what’s not in their various plan offerings. Stay tuned for that interview coming soon!

Indie Ambassador TV is an educational series produced by Indie Ambassador. Through our video panels, industry profiles and articles, artists and music professionals can educate themselves on general business topics, new technology and current industry trends.

Disclaimer: The views reflected in this article are the views of  Matt Souza, and do not necessarily reflect those of Indie Ambassador.

Creating a strong brand for musicians is something that I’ve been talking about for some time now. But what better time to talk about branding mistakes and the horrifying damage that can be done than the scariest day of the year… Halloween!

If you haven’t been following along, here are a few of my previous articles for you to explore on the topic of branding that will help you to do the correct things.

• The Musicians Guide To Monitoring Your Online Brand
• Is Your Music Marketing a Blind-Folded Cliff Jump or a Well Executed Dive?
• How an Emotional Connection Can Create a Cult-Like Fan Base
• Virtual First Impressions That Will Get Your Music Heard
• 10 Ways You Are Unknowingly Marketing To Your Fans

Once you’ve got a good grasp on how you can properly brand yourself, check out these 4 mistakes that you’ll want to avoid at all costs:

Making A Promise And Not Delivering

Part of every brand is the promise made to the fans, followers and customers that the experience of the service and/ or product will be high-quality. As a musician, you are ultimately trying to sell your existing and perspective fans on this promise. Sometimes this promise is mentions organically through word of mouth and blog features that your music is great or your live show is the best of the best, and sometimes it is you who will have to actually speak of this promise in order to attract attention of listeners.

But no matter who makes the promise, you have to be able to deliver. And this goes for all aspects of your social media presence, your music and your live show. Here are a few examples:

• Posting a call to action such as ‘Get this status to 1000 likes and I’ll release some new music’. This is an easy way to get your existing fans excited about something new… but as simple as it is for someone to like a page, they are still pledging their loyalty to you and you better make sure that the reward is worth their time or they won’t do it again. Ultimately this comes down to knowing your fans through and through, and giving them something they will truly want, be it a song, a video or anything else you’d like.
• Online Ads. Many artists have dabbled in online ads in hopes of finding new fans locally or across the globe. But if there is one thing that will truly scare anyone away is from your music is making a promise you simply can’t keep, such as not just comparing yourself to legendary musicians, but calling yourself ‘the next so and so’. I can’t tell you how many jam bands I’ve seen take out ads that say ‘The Next Phish’ or ‘The Next Grateful Dead’, yet when I click through they sound like a generic funk band.

Long Story Short… never over promise and under deliver. It is a sure-fire way to drive people away.

Not Understanding Who Your Brand Appeals To

I can’t stress this enough, and it is something that I feel as though I have been preaching for some time now. You HAVE to know your target market (aka your fans). In regards to branding, its critical that you know who your audience is to be sure that your brand is properly aligned with their wants and needs. Now, Im not telling you to change yourself and your music just to grow fans and make money (these actions are synonymous with the term ‘sellout’), but rather Im telling you to make sure the way your brand is perceived online and off through content on your blogs or fb pages, the videos you produce, the covers you do at live shows, etc. all work towards creating a stronger brand and a more loyal fan base, not the other way around.

Branding Isn’t Everything

This could seem to complement the idea of not over promising and under delivering as discussed above, but I think it is worthy of it’s own section. As great as branding and marketing can be, without a strong product (your music!) you will be left behind every time. So for those who think that creating a strong recognizable brand online is everything… know this! It isn’t. A strong brand is only there to make what is already great (again, your music!) even more great. It is a way to complement the music so that it becomes easy to recognize and easy to support. Strong music complemented by a strong brand can be an unstoppable force, but a strong brand with lackluster music won’t do much.

Focusing on ‘Me-Too Branding’

So we sort of touched on the idea of being ‘a sellout’ above… the whole idea of doing something and changing what you are and who you are in order to make money. When this happens on a big scale it is obvious and people label it as being a sellout. But what about the smaller scale? It happens all the time and is just as bad. It is called ‘me-too branding’. This is when someone tries to enter an existing market, say the emerging hip-hop market, by attempting to siphon off fans of other artists by looking and acting exactly as they do. Of course, there are trends to follow and act on and ways to attract fans and not attract fans in any market that you should be aware of – that is just good research. But ultimately when you decide to enter a market, you need to have an edge, something unique that you can call all your own for your fans to become loyal to, or else there will be nothing remarkable enough about you to succeed.

In the words of Seth Godin ‘If you’re unremarkable, you’re invisible’.

What SCARY Marketing Mistakes Have You Come Across?

Please contribute to the discussion by leaving your input in the form of a comment below.

The following is an example of things you can do regularly to make things happen (and it goes without saying your music has to be brilliant and remarkable for it to work). Some bands may do things at different times (i.e. only blog once a week or post videos more often) but this is a general example of a social media tasking sheet for a band:

Daily:

• Post updates to Twitter/Facebook.
• Re-tweet and share the links of other bands within your genre (then they will be more likely to do it for you).
• Update Your Blog.
• Upload Photos to Flickr.
• Tell one person about your music and thank them for listening (someone you know, not spam).
• Comment on a blog you are looking to have review your music (relevant content, not spam for your music).
• Post on a forum (not spam) and engage with people who enjoy the music in your genre.
• Reply to fan mail/@messages on Twitter and Facebook posts (essential).
• Check Google Alerts to see who is talking about your band online and engage with and talk to them.

Weekly:

• Update your gigs on Live Unsigned
• Post links to your music and ask fans to share them with their friends on Twitter (keep this to once a week to avoid it seeming like spam).
• Hang out at a gig where bands within your niche play and hand out fliers.
• Post a Youtube video (perhaps an acoustic cover/video blog/live footage).
• Submit your music to a music blog (that you are commenting on daily and engaged with)
• Upload a rough demo/rehearsal or live track/remix to Soundcloud.
• Contact promoters about booking gigs
• Contact local/national print press about interviews and reviews.
• Contact podcasters about playing your music and post an episode of your own podcast.
• Update band website with news and the other content generated in the week.

Monthly:

• Post a new song/EP on Bandcamp (and allow people to Download it in exchange for an email address).
• Upload a high quality video to Youtube.
• Do a UStream concert and post the show on Live Unsigned.
• Send out an email to fans.
• Review band finances.
• Review where the band is at with regard to long term goals.
• Start a contest for fans (perhaps to make videos or remixes)
• Create a new line or merchandise (T-Shirt/Mug/Box set/Multi-buy). A monthly time limited special offer is a good idea (i.e. 2 CDs for £10 etc).

Long term goals:

• Get 5000 people on the email mailing list.
• Release an album and sell 1000 CDs
• Do a national tour.
• Collaborate with a major artist.

These are only examples and will be different for every band. Napalm Death and Jay Z will require different plans. If you don’t enjoy writing, don’t write a blog – focus on video or photos or a podcast. If you don’t enjoy doing something its far less likely that you’ll do it. Do the things you’re good at and enjoy and really push them. Focus on building a fanbase rather than making money at first, get a few thousand people on the mailing list then you will start to see financial rewards when you put your product out.

The key is to be doing stuff regularly and setting goals. Review where you’re at and keep pushing yourself to get things done and you’ll soon see some results.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

In Part I of this interview, Thinking Aloud asked Kristen Thompson about the purpose of the ARS project.  In Part II here, the interview gets into what will happen once the results are analyzed.

Thinking Aloud: In what ways do you plan on using the results from your survey?

Kristin Thompson: We will likely release the results through a series of short papers that focus on particular findings, and rely heavily on visualizations. We’ll use the FMC website as our primary repository of papers, but I expect we’ll also be releasing findings at events and through journal articles throughout spring 2012.

Thinking Aloud: As you mention, there isn’t a past survey to compare the results from this survey to anything in the past. Do you foresee future surveys on musician revenue sources to see how things are trending?  How often would this happen?

Kristin Thompson: While there has been some great research done on specific musical genres or communities, no organization has ever tried a research project of this scope in the US. We’re keen on hearing from musicians working in any genre, playing any role, from emerging to professional.

We see this as a vital benchmarking effort — a snapshot of what it’s like o be a musician or composer in 2011. It’s our hope that it could repeated
five years from now, but the project would need some institutional support and funding for that to happen.

Thinking Aloud: How can musicians empower themselves with what you find?

Kristin Thompson: We’ve heard from a few participants that simply taking the survey was “enlightening” or “mind-opening”, which is a wonderful ancillary outcome of this work.

Once we get to the point where we’re able to release findings, we’ll make sure to present the information in ways that musicians can learn from it.
We’ll make it interactive, and provide musicians with some tools to compare themselves to others. We’ve also been testing webinars and presentations that can further educate musicians about all the possible revenue streams, and how to access them.  We hope to push ahead with all of these options in 2012.

Thinking Aloud: Looking ahead, are there other music surveys the team may be developing outside of focusing on income derived from music?

Kristin Thompson: We are always thinking about research projects that would benefit musicians and songwriters. That’s why we’ve done research in the past on musicians’ access to commercial airplay, and the barriers to getting health insurance. Artist Revenue Streams is our most ambitious project to date, and one that is likely to generate additional research opportunities.  We’re already talking with colleagues in Canada and the UK about replicating this study in their countries, which would provide an amazing set of comparative data. But for now, we are focused on finishing up ARS here in the United States and releasing findings in 2012. We hope that more musicians take the survey before it closes on Friday, October 28, so their experience can be captured in this important benchmarking effort.

You can take FMC’s Artist Revenue Stream survey HERE until Friday October, 28th when it closes.

Thinking Aloud thanks The Future of Music Coalition and Kristin Thompson for their time in doing this interview.

Brian Franke is a Washington, DC based singer/songwriter who writes the Thinking Aloud blog.

Here’s how it works:

• First, sign-up for an account. Yes, they do offer a free version for those who want to try the service or can’t afford a pro-account. Trust me, once you use this service, you will find it worthy of paying for a pro-account.
• Second, sync your Facebook page, Twitter, Myspace and Souncloud accounts. You don’t have to sync all of your accounts, but I suggest you do to get the most out of using the site.
• Third, obtain “band bucks”, which is the site’s form of currency, from either accepting other band’s promotions to post on your networks OR buying them.
• Fourth, create a promotion with the band bucks you obtained.
• Fifth, see your fans grow.

Tips when accepting promotions:

• You don’t want to clutter your feed with posts about artists that aren’t relevant to your fans. Why? Because your fans might consider this spam, which could lead them un-like, un-follow, un-friend your account.
• Don’t accept too many promotions. Headliner.fm helps with this by limiting you to only accepting 3 promotions a day, one for morning, one for afternoon and one for night. It is really up to you to choose what is right for your fans.
• Check out the URLs within the post before accepting because the post might say one thing and the URL may lead to another.
• Take into consideration whether the artist has accepted one of your campaigns in the past when you are choosing to accept or deny. It’s always good to reward the artists that are feeding the site’s ecosystem.

Tips for creating your promotions:

• Make it short and sweet. You only have 140 characters and about 20-30 of those characters will likely be used for the URL. If you’re do a promotion for Twitter, keep in mind that people still do physical RTs, instead of using the RT button, so try to leave 10-15 characters for that use as well. After the URL and the RT leeway, you are left with 95-110 characters to work with, which isn’t a lot.
• Make you post sound like it is coming from another artist. It is all too common on the site to receive a post that says “Check out my music at [INSERT URL]”. The only problem with that post it is your music, not the artists’ that will be posting that message. A better message would be, “Go check out [INSERT ARTIST NAME]’s music at [INSERT URL]”. Short, simply, and sweet.
• If you’re posting about a Youtube video, put that link in the post. Why? Because people can now watch your video right in their Facebook and Twitter feeds.
• In my opinion, don’t send out any promotions to artist’s Myspace. Until Myspace gains some momentum again, any post sent to Myspace will be wasted points. Plus, a lot of artists have very high friend numbers on Myspace for reasons you’re probably aware of.
• Do separate promotions for Twitter and Facebook because an @reply on Twitter means absolutely nothing on Facebook. If you choose to do campaigns on both networks within the same campagin, I would suggest not including an @reply.
• Only send the promotion to genres that are relevant to your post. If the song or video you are suggesting people to check out is a rock song, do you really think rap fans will enjoy it?
• Name your campaigns so you can easily go back and check the impact that each campaign had.
• Use the URL tracker. This way, Headliner.fm can tell you when your posts are liked, commented on, retweeted, etc.
• If your event is specific to a certain city, use the location feature to target artists from that area. This can be very useful when promoting upcoming tour dates and events. If you do not want to target a specific city, just select “All Locations”.
• Depending on the context of your message and your desired campaign length, you can choose between 3, 7, 14 or 30 day campaigns. If you’re using a free account, you can only run one campaign at a time, so it might be worth it for you to run a 30 day campaign.

Maintaining your account:

• If you already have your Facebook or Twitter posts synced with each other, keep that in mind when using Headliner.fm. The last thing you want is for a promotion you accepted to post on Facebook to also show up on your Twitter just because your accounts are synced.
• I would suggest actually accepting promotions because if every artist just relied on other artists to promote their campaigns there would be no artists actually accepting promotions. As long as you accept wisely, I think your fans will appreciate the music you’re suggesting them to listen to.
• Check your account at least on a weekly basis; it wouldn’t hurt to login daily. This will give you the chance to accept the most relevant promotions to your fans, since promotions only run for a select number of days.

I hope you give this site a try and eventually add it to your marketing campaigns. It is a great way to reward artists with promotion and have artists promote your music at the same time. Just imagine a community of artists helping each other out. Wouldn’t that be nice?

What are your thoughts on Headliner.fm? Do you like it, hate it, or are you undecided? If you’re already a user, did I miss anything important? Please post your comments, thoughts, opinions, and questions in the comments!

I’m Joshua Weidling, the Founder and CEO of DigitalTourBus.com. In the past I’ve managed bands, booked shows, worked for a music magazine, and posted news for an online music news site. You can keep up with me on Twitter, Tumblr, and Google+!

While it seems these opportunities are being taken advantage of, how do we know these opportunities are leading musicians to a fruitful life of creating and living off of their art?  In music circles, we often hear about the “middle class musician” and how much easier it is to be a musician today than it was 15 or more years ago.  Yet, most of the evidence backing these claims in anecdotal and does not give a complete picture to the changing landscape in the music industry.

The Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a Washington, DC based non-profit organization, providing information and tools to musicians on issues directly affecting them at the intersection of music, technology, policy and law, just may be able to answer these big questions.  The Artist Revenue Streams (ARS) project at FMC is an ambitious effort to survey individuals who derive the majority of their income from music.  The survey seeks to pinpoint the different types of income different musicians can derive their earnings from (FMC has identified 29 types of music income) as well as how ones income has changed in the last ten years.  The survey was implemented this September and concludes this Friday, October 28th.

Kristin Thompson of The Future of Music Coalition is the Co-Manager of The ARS project and took the time to speak with Thinking Aloud about the survey and why it’s critical musician’s be a part of their effort.

Thinking Aloud: What is the back story on how this survey came into development?

Kristen Thompson: Back in 2009, we published a blog post on the Future of Music Coalition site called The 29 Streams.  It was our first attempt to itemize all the possible revenue streams for US-based musicians and composers.  But this blog post was just the tip of an iceberg.

Since our inception, FMC’s mission has been to ensure that musicians are fairly compensated for their work. With ten years of technological development, 2010 seemed like the right time to ask the question: what percentage of musicians income comes from each possible revenue source? Has the ratio changed over time and, if so, why?

The Money from Music survey is one component of a multi-method research project called Artist Revenue Streams (ARS) that we started in fall 2010 to examine if and how musicians’ revenue streams are changing.  Surveys, in general, are a good way to collect data from a wide range of people but, for our purposes, we knew that just one method wouldn’t be sufficient in addressing the complexity of the question at hand. That’s why we have also been doing in-person interviews with a small but diverse set of musicians and composers, as well as financial case studies.  Through the interview process, we’ve gathered rich information from about 70 different full-time musicians, from Grammy winning Nashville songwriters to hard rock bands that play 200 shows a year.

When we report findings, we will be drawing on all three sources of data to tell the story.

Thinking Aloud: Why do this survey now? What makes it significant for the music industry?

Kristin Thompson: Clearly, there have been profound changes in the music landscape in the past ten years.  There are now a multitude of new platforms and services that make it possible for music fans to discover and purchase music, and it’s increasingly easy for musicians to have a presence in these online outlets.

While I think it’s fair to say that musicians’ access to the marketplace has improved in the past ten years, there has been no systematic attempt to understand if and how artists ability to generate revenue based on their creative work has changed in this new environment.

There are a lot of assumptions made, like “bands don’t sell records any more”, or “bands make all their money touring”.  There are two big problems with this.

First, it lumps all musicians into the “touring band” category.  What about the songwriter who doesn’t tour or play live? What about the
orchestral player who doesn’t compose? They are clearly part of the musical landscape, but they’re completely left out of the conversation. What’s their life like now?

Second, and more obvious, the assumptions are largely based on anecdotes and singular instances. Perhaps this is very true for some segments of the US musician community, but we are sorely lacking empirical evidence to verify or disprove anything.

In order to truly understand how musicians are earning a living based on their compositions, performances, recordings or brand, we needed to really dive in and do this work. Which is why we started the Artist Revenue Streams project.

Another point on the question of “why now?” I think we’ve reached a point of maturation in the marketplace. There’s been just enough time that we’re able to ask questions about money from iTunes sales, or YouTube plays, or SoundExchange royalties and have it make sense for most musicians. It’s been ten years since the iPod arrived. Now that we have some perspective on the changes, we can start to measure the change.

Thinking Aloud: What can you tell a musician about the importance of doing this survey if they are uncomfortable about providing music revenue and other data or don’t feel like filling it out?

Kristin Thompson: We know that answering questions about money is a sensitive topic…for all of us! But we’ve put a number of safeguards in place to make our participants feel comfortable.

First, participation is voluntary and anonymous. We don’t collect names, emails, or any other identifying information in the survey itself. If you
want to be entered to win the iPad 2s or the gift certificates, you’re redirected to a different data set that’s not connected at all with your
survey responses.

Second, the vast majority of the questions on the survey involve percents, ratios and reasons for change, not hard numbers.

Third, all the data will be aggregated with the answers from thousands of other musicians, so we’re not looking at specific submissions to tell the
story.

Thinking Aloud: So, I have taken the survey and noticed after some initial questions, there are actually three separate surveys to complete–long, medium, and short versions.  What is the reason for this and how does it affect the results we will eventually see?

Kristin Thompson: We provide survey takers with three paths — essentially a short, medium, and long path that are about 10, 20 and 30 minutes. We built it this way to make it possible for as many musicians and composers to complete it. We know that musicians have different amounts of time to give, and different levels of knowledge about their revenue streams. By building it this way, the busy musician can spend 10 minutes and provide us with topline data. But the musician or composer who has a complex income picture, or who plays many roles, can spend 30 minutes and really dig into detailed questions about their participation in a range of revenue streams.

Once the survey closes, we plan to develop a demographic snapshot of those who chose particular paths to perhaps understand why they took certain paths, which may be an interesting data point of its own! But the questions on the medium and long path are identical — the only difference is the number of questions a survey taker is presented with. So the data should be compatible.

Part II of Thinking Aloud’s interview with Kristin Thompson of The Future of Music Coalition’s ARS project focuses on what happens after the survey is finished will be up shortly. You can take FMC’s Artist Revenue Stream survey HERE.

Thinking Aloud thanks The Future of Music Coalition and Kristin Thompson for their time in doing this interview.

Brian Franke is a Washington, DC based folk rock singer/songwriter who writes the Thinking Aloud blog.

You think you know how many different revenue streams are available to musicians, but you have no idea. That’s not because you personally are clueless, it’s because no one knows. Not even the “experts.” The digital era has changed musicians’ financial landscapes so drastically that in 2011, most musicians are baffled not only by how many methods there are to generate any amount of revenue, but also by the transparency these methods lack. The Future of Music Coalition is trying to change that with their Artist Revenue Streams Project. Kristin Thomson, ARS Project Co-Director, was kind enough to walk us through the study’s mission and give us all the details musicians need to know before participating. Give the interview below a read through, and then take the survey before it disappears from the Internet on Friday!

IndieAmbassador.com: What is the Future of Music Coalition, and why should musicians pay attention to it?

FMC: Future of Music Coalition is a national non-profit organization based in Washington D.C that advocates for musicians. Since 2000, we have worked to ensure a diverse musical culture where artists flourish, are compensated fairly for their work, and where fans can find the music they want. We’re guided by a firm conviction that public policy has real impact on the lives of both musicians and fans, and we advocate for a balanced approach to music in the digital age — one that reflects the interests of all stakeholders, and not just the powerful few.

For musicians who haven’t checked us out before, FMC’s work falls into three program areas. We organize events – like our annual Policy Summit – that bring hundreds of musicians, technologists, attorneys, policymakers and industry representatives together for cutting-edge discussions about the changing music landscape, making sure to include a variety of voices in the conversation. We submit testimony, participate in legal proceedings, publish articles and speak on panels to make sure the creators’ experience is heard. We also distill and translate information for musicians, and keep musicians informed about the changing music landscape through our blog, newsletter and social media. Finally, we generate original research to more completely illuminate the mechanics of the music industry.  Which leads us to…

IndieAmbassador.com: What is the Artist Revenue Streams Project, and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

FMC: Artist Revenue Streams is a multi-method, cross-genre research project that’s examining how musicians’ sources of income are changing over time, and why.


Back in 2009, we published a blog post called The 29 Streams, which was our first attempt to itemize all the possible revenue streams for US-based musicians and composers.  But this blog post was just the beginning of our thinking on this topic.


I’m sure everyone reading this blog can count off the drastic and profound changes in the music industry we’ve seen in the past eleven years, from Napster to iTunes to Facebook.


Many observers have characterized these structural changes to the music business as positive improvements for musicians, particularly when compared with the music industry of yore. While it’s true that musicians’access to the marketplace has greatly improved, there has been no systematic attempt to understand if and how artists’ ability to generate revenue based on their creative work has changed in this new environment.


There are lots of assumptions made, like “musicians make all their money from touring,” or “nobody makes money selling records any more,” or “YouTube plays don’t amount to anything.”  But we are sorely lacking on empirical evidence to verify or disprove these assumptions.
That’s why, in 2010, we launched the Artist Revenue Streams (ARS) project. We wanted to assess if and how musicians’ revenue streams are changing in this new music landscape.

IndieAmbassador.com: What methods is FMC using to gather this data? What types of musicians are you targeting?

FMC: We are using three methods simultaneously: in-depth interviews with a diverse range of musicians in 2010-11; a review of financial records of a small set musicians to create financial case studies; and a widely distributed online survey that’s open right now. We feel that this multi-method approach is the only way to capture the subtleties and complexity of the question at hand.

Our population of study is – broadly – US-based musicians and composers who are 18 years of age or older.  But, we are very aware that musicians who play different roles or work in different genres have access to various sources of revenue.

Prior to starting our interviews, we identified about 25 musician types that we expected to have different musical revenue pies. Based on the contours of US copyright law and business practice, we know that the revenue streams available to a songwriter who doesn’t perform are different than those available to a touring rock band member, a pit orchestra musician, a film and TV composer, a jazz performer who plays standards, a classical ensemble and a high profile hip hop artist. We used networks and referrals to identify individuals that fit these musician types, then used a technique called snowball sampling to find peers that also match these characteristics.

We’ve completed about 70 interviews to date, covering everything from major hip hop acts to journeymen jazz players. Almost all of our interviewees have been with full-time musicians or composers who generate nearly all of their income from their craft.  It’s been fascinating to conduct the interviews, especially as we’ve gone through the snowball sampling process and been able to talk to such a vast range of musicians.

We launched the Money from Music survey on September 6, 2011.  The online survey is collecting information from US-based musician or composer who is 18 years old or older about how they’re generating revenue based on their compositions, performances, sound recordings and brand. Through more than 150 music organizations and businesses, we’re reached out to musicians working in every style of music, those who are on major or indie labels and those that might be self-releasing their work.

Response to the survey has been really inspiring, but we encourage any US-based musician or composer to take the survey before October 28:http://futureofmusic.org/ars. We provide survey takers with a choice of paths, which means you can spend anywhere from 15 minutes to a half-hour on the questions.  And, your participation is voluntary and anonymous; all the data collected will be aggregated together to provide a rich snapshot of the revenue patterns of musicians.

IndieAmbassador.com: Should musicians be wary of giving you this sensitive information?

FMC: We know that asking questions about money is a sensitive topic, for all of us! But we’ve put a number of safeguards in place to make our participants feel comfortable.

First, participation is voluntary and anonymous. We don’t collect names, emails, or any other identifying information in the survey itself. If you want to be entered to win the iPad 2s or the gift certificates, you’re redirected to a different data set that’s not connected at all with your survey responses.

Second, the vast majority of the questions on the survey involve percentages, ratios and reasons for change — not hard numbers.

Third, all the data will be aggregated, so we’re not looking at specific submissions to tell the story. We’ve heard from many musicians and composers that the fact that it’s anonymous and confidential has helped them feel more comfortable being honest about the numbers; they’re not trying to impress anyone.

IndieAmbassador.com: How do you plan to publish the study’s findings when it’s completed?

FMC: We will likely release the results through a series of short papers that focus on particular findings, and rely heavily on visualizations. We’ll use the FMC website as our primary repository of papers, but I expect we’ll also be releasing findings at events and through journal articles throughout spring 2012.

IndieAmbassador.com: You talk about this survey ensuring that policy makers are aware of the financial realities of being a musician in today’s economy. Any policies in particular you think could be amended to better serve today’s artists?

FMC: Policymakers and the public are generally unaware of the complex way that most working musicians cobble their lives together. There’s a prevailing thought that “all musicians are millionaires”, which is clearly not true for 99 percent of them.

As far as specific policies go, it’s really hard to say, especially without having survey data in hand. What’s more important is that musicians and composers be considered stakeholders in ongoing and future debates, whether it’s about webcasting rates, copyright termination, free speech, access to radio, or licensing issues.  We hope that this research helps to enrich the public conversation and tells a more accurate story of what it’s like to be a musician in the 21^st century.

IndieAmbassador.com: What excites you about the music industry today?

FMC: Although all the change of the last 15 years has been disorienting to musicians and the industry in general, I think it’s exciting that the digital era has brought out the entrepreneur in many musicians and composers. Like any job or career, it takes having certain skill sets to succeed. Musicians and composers now need to have a certain skills in order to start and sustain a career in music. I love Erin McKeown’s approach, who says she looks at every activity she does for music as a creative activity, so rather than having a disdain for some of the actions you have to do, you look at how to do them tapping your own creativity, your own style.

As a social-savvy musician, it is your goal to create a strong enough presence online to build a significant fan base. Of course, this presence is built through developing a recognizable brand and creating a proper content strategy to nurture its growth. And it is the execution of this content strategy that will lead to strong engagement from existing fans (hopefully increasing their loyalty and thus increasing the sales from each fan) as well as the retention of new fans through social networks and blog posts.

This is the social cycle that every musician hopes they can achieve, as success here could mean a sustainable career in the music industry.

But what doesn’t get explained here is the importance of finding your online voice – that is the voice from which all of your writing, tweeting, posting, commenting, etc. comes from. Without a consistent voice, you will have trouble becoming recognizable and may find yourself floating under the radar, sort of trapped within the immense clutter that social media has created.

So before you begin to develop a content strategy, or even simply start a blog or Twitter account, or even a Youtube page, you need to find your voice. The following are 4 simple ways to help you discover your online voice that can be used to create the strong, recognizable online presence you’ll need to succeed as a musician:

Determine Your Natural Approach

The first and most important part of finding your voice is understanding yourself and determining how you naturally approach different topics. The reason for this is that, like it or not, the internet is filled to the brim with skeptics. If the message you are trying to deliver doesn’t seem genuine and/ or honest, you can be sure it will be called out and the issue will be pressed ad nauseum.

Your natural approach can be determined by simply testing the waters and seeing what fits you best. One way to do this is to take a few songs, or products, or movies, or whatever you’d like, and try to review or even just discuss them. Make sure it is something you find interesting, as discussing something you don’t care about will more often than not come off as dry and skeptical, even if thats doesn’t at all describe your voice.

Do you find yourself approaching the topic sarcastically, optimistically, skeptically, intelligently, etc? The answer here should be used as the basis for your voice.

Let Your Passion Shine!

No matter how you naturally approach a topic through you writing, you should always put your passion on display. Without passion, your writing will indefinitely lack excitement and interest. And if there’s one thing you should never forget, it is that if you find your writing or content boring, your reader (or viewers) will too.

Writing from a place of passion also goes back to determining your natural approach. As we speak or act on passions, a much more accurate version of ourselves is revealed. This will help you make your voice unique and distinguishable from others who may be writing about a similar topic.

Write All The Time

Chances are you won’t find your voice right away. This is simply because it may require that you look back at all of your writing to see the common voice that sticks out… almost like reading in between the lines. By writing all the time on a topic you are passionate about, you are allowing yourself ample time and writing samples to be able to discover what your written voice actually sounds like.

Tip: This same advice goes for writing lyrics too!

Strive to Be Better

If you are comfortable in your writing style when you first begin, your voice will never fully develop and it will come off as lazy and indistinguishable. Similar to when you first started learning how to play an instrument, sing or write music, you want to push the boundaries of what you are comfortable writing in order to truly grow. By taking your efforts to the next level, you will begin to learn from all of your mistakes and the proper techniques will start to become second nature.

… when I first started writing for MicControl, it would take me two days to put together an article no bigger than this. But now that I’ve found my voice, and pushed myself to grow (I forced myself to write a 53 page ebook on blogging within a 5 day period), I can write articles like this one in no more than an hour or so.

How Did You Find Your Voice?

Though the above will certainly help you get on track to finding your voice, finding a voice is most certainly a personal experience. How did you find your own voice? Leave your response in the form of a comment below.

There are a few things you can do but as usual its never easy and may involve spending money and lots of time:

• Work harder and smarter. Easy to say but this is really the thing that will make the most difference.  Focusing on building an audience within a specific niche (often of fans of an act which sounds similar to yours) is the way to make this work. By using forums, Twitter, Live Unsigned, social media and real world interactivity like flyering other bands gigs you can make a difference. You can’t connect with everyone and most people won’t like your music, focus on building a relationship with the people who will.

• Give your music away free at first. Swop your music downloads for email addresses. The more you charge for your music the harder it is to get people to download it and often the more you will have to spend on marketing to get them to do so. As Ian from Topspin has said don’t even think about trying to sell things until you have at least 2500 people on your mailing list and if you can its a bonus. Once you have a fan base you can then start to think about making money on the next release, tours and merchandise.

• Write amazing songs and be great live. Easily said but being really good will further your career more than everything else. Before spending money and starting promotion, focus on creating great, original, remarkable music that other people love. Many musicians do all the right things but get no results, often the reason is the music is just not good enough. Get feedback from other people who like the music in your genre (not your friends) by posting tracks onSoundcloud and asking for opinions. If reactions are positive then start to promote your music online, if not write better songs.Don’t forget to list your gigs on Live Unsigned.

• Spend money on niche advertising. Use adds on social media, web searches and banner adds on sites specific to your genre. You can start a small campaign for under £5 a day and only pay per click. Make sure you target a very specific demographic and if you don’t know who your audience is find out before paying for ads. Find out where people who like similar artists to your band hang out online and focus your efforts there. Be careful to focus on a small niche of people to make this effective, especially if you have a small budget. Its really easy to waste money on online advertising if you are not targeting it correctly. Marketing people say that fans need to see your name 9 times before they will investigate you, this is another chance to get this process going.

• Be innovative. Use the latest technology as it becomes available. The first acts to use Youtube got some of the biggest benefits, how can you use the latest technology (like UStream) to promote your band? You need at least one tech savvy person in the band and if you haven’t get a friend involved. Read Mashable andTechdirt and keep up with the cutting edge of social media and tech. Be ahead of the game.

• Hire a PR company. You can do everything yourself but when you hire a PR company you gain the connections and relationships they have built across media in many cases over years. Make sure it is a company that has successfully broken an act in your niche recently. Be careful about turning your online campaign over to a PR company, often they don’t keep up with the times with regard to social media. Agree a spend and expected results with the company, this can be expensive if allowed to run out of control. If you have a good story it helps. There is no guarantee of results and if the press doesn’t like your music, you can end up with bad reviews!

• Be friendly and approachable. Treat your fans well and ask them to tell their friends. Make friends with industry people and you’ll get better results. The music industry is a people focused business and nobody wants to work with idiots.

• Ask for help. If you get friends and family involved either financially or just in terms of spreading the work load you can get more done. Don’t be afraid of asking, they often enjoy being part of the music world. You could even advertise for an intern, someone who wants to gain experience in social media or the music industry and ask them to help.

If you don’t ask you won’t get what you want. At the early stages of your career you will need to use every resource you can from friends to the latest technology to guerilla marketing to build your career. Its not easy but when it works its worth it. You can build your career online but only if you work hard and have great music.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

We’ve all been there. The drummer overslept, the guitarist is late, and the bass player has to leave early to hang out with his girlfriend. None of us enjoy being in this kind of a situation, and that is why having a planned out recording schedule can help improve session flow and save you time (and money). Assuming your band is well rehearsed and prepared for their recording session, there are several steps you will want to take to prevent the session from coming to a screeching halt. The key factor to preparing for a productive recording session is a Session Schedule.




In an interview with Dr. Susan Rogers (Producer/Engineer; Barenaked Ladies, Prince), we learn about the importance of having a plan when entering the studio.

IndieAmbassador.com: When starting a new recording project, what steps can an artist take prior to the first session to familiarize the engineer with their music, instrumentation, and sound?

Susan Rogers: Artists should discuss the upcoming work with their past and future works in mind because in the fullness of time, every recording contributes to your body of work. Discuss some of your past recordings with your producer and engineer to point out what you like and dislike about them.  Distinguish between how you regard the material, the performances, the sounds, and the mixes.  In this way you begin describing the parameters of your new work — what it will and won’t include. Play other artists’ recordings for your producer and engineer to show them what musical and sonic elements you value.  It is very important that everyone understands what is meant by “massive” or “sick” or “tight” or “compressed” or “distorted” so that you have as singular a goal as possible before starting.  Describe the vision for the project, even including an aesthetic idea for the artwork.  This can help the producer understand the project’s overall tone (i.e., powerful, confident, antagonistic, rebellious, brooding genius, sensitive soul, fun guys, angry young men, etc.).  The band should do this collectively and not each corral the engineer and producer to describe an individual vision.

Decide whether you want your recording to be 100% reproducible on stage in a live setting, or whether the recording will stand alone.  In the latter case, discuss whether the recording can include outside musicians or not.  If a harp, a harmonium, or tablas will be used, for example, will you hire a studio musician or play these from samples?

Pre-production is fun because the pressure is light, costs are minimal, and everything is possible.  This is the stage where ideas should flow without self-consciousness or hesitation.  The producer who encourages ideas from artists is the one who is most likely to have his own ideas respected.  The producer must listen very carefully at this stage to identify each player’s performance characteristics and the band’s working dynamic.  Who keeps great time?; Who is continually revising parts?; Who works the most tirelessly?; Who is always on the phone during breaks?; Who gets easily frustrated?

The engineer with the band and producer discusses the purchase of new strings and drumheads; the engineer may prefer certain brands.  If guitars need to be intonated or if amps need to be retubed, this is discussed and done in advance.  Piano tuning is arranged with the studio and included in the budget.  Will you need to hire a drum tuner?  Discuss this together.

IA: Assuming you’re going to be recording several instruments (drums, guitar, bass, keys, vocals) in one session, how much time should be allotted for setup, and should all of the players be present for this stage?

SR: The traditional paradigm allotted at least half a day (6-8 hours) for set up.  With today’s smaller budgets this is not always possible.  The engineer visits the studio in advance and plots out the lay out and mic selection with the assistant, minimizing set up time.   Drums take the longest so the drummer should arrive earlier than the others.  It is vitally important to tune the drum set carefully prior to getting sounds.  Hire a drum tuner if the project’s drummer is not a master of this technique.   The producer monitors set up time by making sure the engineer has the conditions he needs (e.g., don’t let the guitar player be tweaking his amp at full volume while the engineer is getting drum sounds).  Vocalists can take advantage of this time to rest or prepare because they will be needed later in the day.  Engineers and assistants know not to play another artist’s work during set up unless it is expressly for the purpose of listening to a specific sound.  Producers know to keep the band out of the control room so that the engineer can work in peace.

IA: Assuming the band would like to overdub additional instruments, how important is it to abide by a strict timeline that will ensure you’re not spending too much time on any given part?

SR: The timeline of an album depends on the budget and available studio time.  It is the producer’s responsibility to manage both.  Drums, vocals, and mixing are all critical stages that suffer the most from being rushed.  If time must be cut from a project, try to avoid shortchanging any of these.

Typically, parts are worked out “offstage” before bringing a player up to bat.  The engineer should be prepared to give players a 2-mix sound file that they can use to rehearse their parts offstage.  Producers and other band members should give a player enough time to work out a part privately.  The player must recognize that just because he spent time working out a part doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t be changed. Smart players come up with ideas and run them past other members before getting too committed to them.  Smart band members and producers are tactful when critiquing a part and consider the work that went into it.  If you don’t think the part works, say WHY. How does it conflict with the overall goal of the track or the project?

In the early stages of a project there is enough to do that at any given time, you can do an overdub pretty quickly.  In between instrumental parts, keep the vocalist on standby so that you can always spend an hour or two on vocals.  Having the vocals spread out over many sessions rather than all in one or two days is vital to the singer’s strength and psyche.

IA: If a musician is struggling while recording a particular part, when is it appropriate to shift concentration onto other players or parts still needing to be recorded?

SR: Producers must understand the nature of the struggle. Is it a performance issue or an ideas issue?  If the former, producers must ask gauge the distance in hours between where you are at this moment and where you need to be.  We say to players, “We are hours away from getting this” as well as, “We are nearly there.”  If the producer estimates that progress is being made and the part will be done in minutes or an hour, it is best to keep going.  More than an hour away means that you could do a vocal in that time so send the player to another room to work out the part and move on.  If it is a drum track on a basics session, the same 1-hour rule applies.  Move on to another song and work out the part at the end of the day.

IA: How important is it to factor in time for lunch/dinner breaks, as well as short breaks to give the musicians and engineer a rest?

SR: A fact of studio life is that studio time is very expensive; so are the services of a producer and engineer.  The latter two should expect to work with minimal breaks throughout a day that is at least 12 hours long, in most cases.  Musicians should work as long as they are being productive.  Creative people must rely on craft when art fails them, which it will most of the time.  In other words, when your ideas run dry, there are still things you can do that take craftsmanship alone, such as editing, playing an over-learned part, planning for the next day, etc.  Make the most of every minute in the studio because somewhere out there, your competition is….



That said, being creative means being on “output” and we simply cannot be on output all the time.  Artists need time to soak in life — to be on “input” — so that we have something to create with.  If everyone is mentally and physically exhausted, do not record. Use the next few hours to go to the movies or go bowling or listen to music or read or take in life.  Do not use the time to make phone calls or pay bills or run errands.  Take time to be on input.

IA: As the band completes the recording stage, how can they work with their engineer to prepare a timeline for the mixing and mastering stages of the record?

SR: For mixing, figure on a minimum of 8-hours per track.  When negotiating with a mixer, decide if he/she is to be paid per track or hourly.  If per track (the better way), discuss how many recalls and how much time should reasonably be spent for this price.  It is very important that the band and producer reach a consensus on mixes and convey their thoughts to the mixer through one spokesperson (usually the producer).  It does not work to have many people each giving the mixer a different idea.  During mixing, the band should be preparing photos, artwork, the website, and booking shows.



Given that today’s projects are often self-financed and budgets are small, the mixer typically relies on other sources of income and cannot devote his/her attention to the project on a full time basis.  He or she must be prepared to give the band a realistic timeline to complete the mixes and then stick to it.  Any major delays should automatically grant the band the right to choose another mixer.



The engineer and producer typically choose the mastering engineer and a mastering date is booked once the mixes are nearing completion.

IA: Are there any other important factors to keep in mind while planning a Recording Timeline for an upcoming recording project?

Pay your bills, call your mom, water your plants, and generally plan to move the world out of your way as you enter a recording project.  Significant others should be on alert that your body and mind will be elsewhere for several weeks.

Under the traditional paradigm, a record took approximately 700 hours on average from start to finish.  That’s roughly 10 weeks of 12-hour days, 6 days a week.  Eight weeks for tracking and overdubs and two weeks for mixing.  (Many great records were made in far less time; this is just an average.)

Mixing an album will still take around 150 hours, or twelve 12-hour days.  Plan  on another 150 hours for tracking and overdubs.  Many of these hours can be spent working in a project studio.  The more you do in preproduction, the fewer hours this will take but be careful not to over-learn the record in preproduction.  The danger is that the recording will sound as though you are just going through the motions and the end result will be stale.  Leave enough time to be creative in the studio.

IA: Thanks Susan!

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Dr. Susan Rogers got her start in the record-making business in 1978 as a Studio Maintenance engineer. Throughout her career she has served several roles as an Engineer and Producer, engineering Prince’s “Purple Rain” and producing Barenaked Ladies’ “Stunt,” to name a few. Susan currently teaches classes in the Music Production & Engineering department at Berklee College of Music, and is a partner in the Boston-based, non-profit recording facility The Record Company, offering youth classes in recording technologies. She has also earned her PhD from McGill University in Experimental Psychology.

The type of people who probably spring to mind are highly connected managers, record label executives, venue promoters, and other big-time music business professionals who work alongside successful musicians on a day-to-day basis.

However, have you ever considered that the best people to meet might be other musicians just like you?

• Other musicians like you will be able to get you access to music business professionals they know, which is easier than trying to meet those professionals directly.
• Other musicians like you will have a better idea of what you’re going through and will be in a better position to recommend tips and advice on promoting your music and developing your music career, as they will be doing the same thing, too.
• Other musicians like you will have access to an audience who could also be your fans. By meeting and befriending them, you have access to their fan base through collaborating, or doing a cross-promotion.

This blog post is introducing my new book Get Noticed, which is a how to guide on getting noticed by people who will make you successful. Get Noticed will launch on Thursday 20th October.

Perhaps most importantly, other musicians like you aren’t going to want your money, they’re happy being your friend because you share interests, values, and can help promote each other’s music.

As a musician myself, founder of this website and a former record label manager, I’ve met a heck of a lot of musicians and music business folks, and the ones who I’ve kept in better touch with are musicians, simply because they’re friends, not business acquaintances. Friendship involves longevity.

How Can You Meet More Musicians Like You?

You know me by now, I don’t like giving advice without an actionable to-do list that’ll get you kickin’ ass. In Get Noticed there Is a process called ‘The ACE Process’, which is a process that if followed allows you to meet any single person on this planet. Let me give you the basics:

• To meet someone you must be in their ‘Zone of Awareness’ i.e. the same geographical or virtual location as them.
• They must be accessible to socialise.
• You must initiate conversation with them.
• You must engage them into a long-term relationship.

That is a simplified description of The ACE Process (for a more detailed explanation see the website). What this means is that the first step to meeting more musicians is to be in the same place as them: go to their gigs.

You have to make them accessible, so rather than standing in the crowd waiting for an opportune moment to go up and speak to them, send them an e-mail or a tweet prior to the gig telling them you’d be interested in chatting before or after the show about a cross-promotion.

From then on onwards it’s your job to genuinely help them achieve their goals and develop them as a friend, only then will you truly develop your network with like-minded musicians.

• Often artists look to stylists to sort out their image but fans are looking for and expecting more and more real connection with bands. You just need to be yourself but more so. Authenticity is essential, there is no possible way you can keep up a fake image over social networks, live and other interactions with fans. Everything you do in the public eye is marketing.
• Get some decent photos. Use a photographer who gets what you are doing and ask for examples of their work. Get someone who knows what they are doing, preferably in a pro studio, not taken on a phone against a wall round the back of the rehearsal studio. If you decide to shoot outside check the weather and spend serious time on scouting for locations. Stick the best looking/most interesting looking person at the front of group photos. Photos are worth investing in, you can make anyone look good with the correct lighting and camera angles (plus Photoshop), they are as important as a high quality recording. Ask for proofs and the highest file quality available. Make sure you agree the cost of the photo shoot upfront including the costs of any touch up Photoshop work. Do you look as good as you sound?
• Image isn’t just what you wear. Its everything you do, this is your brand. You need to be consistent across everything you do from Twitter to playing live. Use the same photos/logo/colours across your   posters/social networks/website/avatars/Live Unsigned page and everything you do.  If you want a web site that is better than a “cookie cutter” use a pro designer, good web design is an art. Try and focus on keeping everything simple and clean in your design.
• Ask for help from friends, especially if they are stylists. But keep it real to you, a second opinion is always useful but remember its you that will have to wear it!
• Is there one thing that makes you stand out? When At The Drive-In came out everyone was talking about afros and Lady Gaga has a new image every few weeks. Be different but make sure you’re comfortable with the way you look. Not everyone is David Bowie or Paloma Faith, maybe keeping it simple is exactly what you are, just try exaggerating it a bit. Someone very wise once said if you look like your audience but slightly better dressed you’re doing okay.
• Don’t try and be what is fashionable at the moment. If you’re not comfortable in what you are wearing you’ll feel ridiculous. If you chase what is happening now you’ll always be one step behind, have your own style and focus on that.
• For bands its best you all project the same image, not one person from The Libertines, one from Carcass and one from Public Enemy. Consistency here will make you look more like a band than a group of individuals. It doesn’t need to be a uniform but some sort of overall look is very useful.
• Have a great album cover that fits your image and niche. Keep it in context with the expectations of your genre but also try and be original (yes its really hard to make this work). It goes without saying the photos of the band on the cover or inside the CD fit in here with the overall consistent image of the band. Show rough versions to friends and fans online and in person to get feedback. You’ll soon find out what works.
• Think about the fonts/logos you use across all your promotional material. You’ll notice that certain fonts are popular with certain genres, whether you want to go with the trend and or be remarkable and do something new is up to you.  You can get some good free fonts from FontSquirrel or www.dafont.com. Try and keep the font you use consistent. And don’t use comic sans, its famously rubbish.

Some people have a definite sense of style and know what their image should be, for others its more difficult. Anyone can look good given the right conditions, a consistent image and a good photographer. Make sure you know how you want to be presented and that you are comfortable.

This post originally appeared on LiveUnsigned blog. Article by Matt Stevens, illustration by Paul Linus Claassen.

Applications

This presented a conundrum of the ‘how should I go about this?’ type. Recording in the field can be applied to live gigs (where legal), band rehearsals — uploading impromptu recordings/videos of your band is a great way to connect with fans – interviews, on-location podcasts, capturing great sound effects and everything else in between.



Though ideal, transporting one’s entire studio setup would be simply impossible for the majority of field recording that takes place. Even in situations where we might have the luxury of a power supply or even a table to set it all up, such as a venue, it just wouldn’t be practical. The answer of course, is to use a portable recorder. Not only this, but with a plethora of audio software aimed at cleaning up the undesirable elements encountered whilst recording in the field, you are well on your way to some great audio experiences. It sounds expensive, but is it?

Affordability

Thankfully for all indies out there, this solution proves extremely cost effective and affordable, with even the low end solutions creating fantastic results. I’m not even talking about small project-studio style portables with onboard effects and mixing capabilities, but rather handheld devices meant simply for use in sound capture, since you can do all the editing once you get back to your computer. If you do a quick search of any major music retailer, like Guitar Center and Sweetwater for instance, you’ll find these devices for anywhere between $100-300. Worth noting is the fact that some of the larger companies only stock certain brands, and as such carry a smaller selection leading to less of a choice. In this case, the Internet is your friend!

Things to Consider When Purchasing

Certain decisions you should make whilst purchasing a portable recorder depend on the intended purpose. Are you trying to capture an entire band, or just yourself? Do you need a lot of the included features, or just the basics? If for instance you are working with any form of audio for visual media, you’ll want to ensure your portable recorder is capable of at least 48KHz. Most come with a stereo pair mic setup, perhaps with variable angles, but some add video recording capabilities, have up to five microphones in different arrangements and even XLR inputs with +48v for plugging in your own microphones. Typically, the included SD cards are small and of poor quality, so you’d want to invest in a larger card if you think you’ll be doing longer recordings. With that said, if you can manage without the full quality audio files, many recorders will record to and encode MP3 files as well. Make sure it is compatible with your operating system, though most will be universal.



If we pause for a moment and recognize there are many solutions out there that could be right for you, I’ll then proceed with a mini-review of the one I own, the Zoom H4N. Though definitely on the higher end of the prosumer budget, this thing has more than paid for itself in my experience, and is often the gadget of choice for significant professionals too. The following is a great example of audio quality from the onboard microphones, as well as some serious street cred for field recording thanks to Richard Devine‘s Field Recordings from Teufelsberg Listening Station Berlin, Germany. Not only does it come with these two onboard adjustable microphones, but it has two XLR/TRS combo inputs and supports up to four channels of simultaneous recording anywhere up to 24bit/96KHz. You may take it for granted at the very least they’ll be capable of 16bit/44.1KHz since this is CD quality.



Other key features include the ability to slow down/speed up and replay audio files on the fly (I use this as a practice tool), the add marker feature, whereby you can bump the record button in the middle of recording to drop a marker that will be read by your audio software upon import (incredible time saver). Durability certainly isn’t a problem with this device, since I dropped it from quite a distance on only my second day of ownership and it still works with no problems whatsoever. Though it does have an ‘efficient mode,’ one down side is the battery life, which is pretty poor when using +48v. The unit does respond noisily to handling, which can be frustrating, but not insurmountable and when using it as an audio interface the noise floor is elevated.

General Tips

Whatever device you do end up purchasing, please be patient and take the time to familiarize yourself with it. Experience will teach you how to get the best results specific to your purpose.



A few words of advice:



1) Always monitor your input, because without setting the correct recording levels, you may be stuck with distortion, wind noise and even operator noise (if you handle the device in a certain way whilst recording). This is key! I’ve freelanced as an audio restoration consultant, a position that would never be necessary if due care had been shown in recording to begin with.



2) Pay close attention to battery life, since it can run down fast. Should you lose power in the middle of recording, you’ll probably lose your entire audio file.



3) Don’t just set it up and hope for the best. Experiment with mic position and really see how you might get the best sound for your environment.

Editing

So you’ve collected a whole library of different recordings, and now are back at your computer. What next?



There are a great many tools out there designed specifically to help you edit audio. Bias Peak Pro and Sony Sound Forge are two commonly used ones, for Mac and Windows respectively. These and all the common DAWs (Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, Cubase) not only possess the tools for performing the basic audio editing tasks, but often the more advanced, too.

Noise Reduction

You might have a great deal of noise in your recording, or background noises that interfere. These days, technology is out there (again, for only a few hundred dollars) to enable you to reduce elements like this. It is used day in and day out by everybody who records in the field simply to clean up and better present their audio recording(s). First, I’d recommend using anything you may have, even EQing, just to get a feel for how you might go about polishing up your audio, since even the best tools are useless in the hands of the clueless. Then, if your program of choice doesn’t come with any noise reduction tools, or even if it does, check out some third party tools. iZotope’s RX2 is a brilliant example. If you have a moment, check out this video and you’ll see what I’m talking about.







As with any software, if there exists a trial version, then I’d highly recommend taking advantage of it. Then if it does prove useful I’d strongly urge purchasing versus downloading a cracked version – not only do you get the support and the updates, but the tools are becoming very affordable for the everyday musician.



Most important – get out there, and have fun!



- Matt



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In Indie Ambassador’s Tech Resources, we let the gear heads of the office talk about their favorite equipment and techniques.