Music Consultant:

J- Thanks again for your time.  Tell me how you became involved in the music business?

JS:

I grew up in a musical family and I’m a musician myself.  I wanted to start to take my career a little bit more seriously. I grew up in a small town, and I asked around among the folks that play music and said, “How do you make it in music?” Nobody gave me a really straight answer, so I decided that understanding the business of music would help me meet my goals as a musician. I started working at a local coffee shop, booking bands and paying them out, marketing for them and getting lineups ready.  It was there I began to see how that whole process happened and why people decided to book certain shows on certain night and what the best marketing practices were.  I was just starting to get out into the world of music and take it more seriously. That was in Virginia. Over the next six years, I just kept stepping into the next level. I went from that coffee shop to a small venue, getting my foot in the door, mopping floors, whatever I needed to do while showing them I had a little bit of knowledge about how to do things from the previous experience. Then I went on to the medium-sized venue and then a larger venue and then the last venue was a 4,000 person capacity.  I oversaw a 30-person team and managed everything from ticketing to the lights and sound. That was the Great Salt Air in Salt Lake City.

Music Consultant:

Were you able to continue your own music while doing all this?

JS:

I kind of got wrapped up into understanding and working inside the business side of things and really loved it. It gave me the opportunity to have a paying job and get to be around everything I loved. Because I was managing these venues and had access to the stage at every level – whether it was local bands at the coffee shop or regional bands at the medium-sized venue or bigger bands at the larger venues – They would come to me and say, “Get us up on stage and get us booked.” I started to make friends with different bands and started managing a few bands as well in the different cities I was working in. I certainly kept writing and recording music. I was thinking that the more knowledgeable I could be about how to be successful as a musician by learning through these different experiences, the more likely I would be to really take my music and do it right. I’m still at that point where I’m still writing songs and playing music, but right now my time is wrapped up on RootMusic, but I still play music and play with friends.  I grew up singing a lot in choirs and picked up guitar and started writing songs.

Music Consultant:

. What did you learn were the best marketing practices for getting people out to shows? You started at a coffee shop where most nights you are dealing with the hardest job of all – getting people out to see an unknown commodity – what did you learn doing that gig?

JS:

There are a number of different marketing strategies depending on what level you’re at, what resources you have and what kind of a budget you have. What it boils down to is being creative and authentic. Instead of just getting out on the street and putting up posters and fliers- you need to understand the type of people you’re marketing to. At the coffee shop level, see which of your friends are coming to shows and what kind of people they are, where they hang out, what type of music they like and try to meet that demographic.

Be authentic and go up to them and say, “Hey, we have this show tonight. I know you haven’t heard us before, but we kind of sound like this, and we’d love to see you. We’ll buy you a beer.” Some of the best turnouts I’ve seen are when bands get really creative. For example, there’s a band that had a show and there weren’t a lot of people supporting them at that point. One of their shows was in the middle of the week, and of course it is hard to pull people mid-week.  They found a house that was just around the corner from the venue and threw their own happy hour at the house, so when people got off work, they invited all their friends and their friends’ friends and had a keg or two. The band went to set up at the venue, and when the band was about to go on, the person at the house got called and shut everything down. Everyone had to leave the house, and the whole group went straight to the venue, paid at the door, enjoyed the show and the band got to have a great crowd and expose them to their music.  You can’t pressure people to go to your shows but making them want to come to your shows is essential.

Music Consultant:

Does this apply as much as the shows get bigger?  I would imagine it becomes more about advertising, right?

JS:

To a certain extent but for the bigger shows you can also run specials.  Depending on what State you are in you can do things like telling your fans that if they come in groups of three or more, they get specials at the bar, or they get to meet the band with a group of five. There are a number of incentives you can give to your fans. They love you already, but give them a few reasons why they should bring friends, and you’ll get more people through the door. The marketing that’s used these days is still traditional, and there’s a lot of room for people to be creative and authentic which goes a long way. You need to understand that your fans are similar to you and would love to come out and be entertained, but you have to give them something different. The most important part of course is the music, and making sure you have great tunes.

Music Consultant:

Jumping forward to the recent past. You were booking a 4,000 capacity in Salt Lake City. Where did you head from there?

JS:

Intermittently through these different venues I was managing I went on some big-budget marketing tours which helped me even understand more to how people reacted to things I put out there. I went on the road for six months and set up a big display that was two tractor trailers long for different companies. It would be at music festivals, and you’d have about 4,000 people at these festivals and would be able to interact with people and understand what they respond to and what they don’t. After that, I came off tour and had some money saved up and for six years had been thinking about different ideas and how they could be more efficient. I looked at a couple different industries that were using technology to really improve the way the work was done and make things more effective and efficient with day to day activities. I kept getting frustrated with the lack of solutions there were out there for musicians and venues. I was going to manage a band or start this company, and I decided to start the company.

Music Consultant:

Tell me what  RootMusic is about…

JS:

RootMusic is all about being authentic and being creative to the point where we’re finding solutions for the real day-to-day needs. I feel like a lot of music companies out there are either too tech heavy or too music industry heavy, and there’s not a good balance there. But I also feel like they’re trying to come up with a new way of doing things or some grand idea that’s going to solve all these problems. What I was always frustrated with was that nobody was helping me solve my practical day-to-day needs as a musician or a band:  to get in front of my fans; to organize my e-mail better; to do all these different things. That’s what Rootmusic.com is about as a whole.

Music Consultant:

A good way to go about it might be to go over the key problems you chose to tackle first and how your company is proposing to solve them.

JS:

The first one and the biggest gap we saw was on Facebook, where all your fans often are quite regularly.  There was not a good way to represent yourself. The way Facebook works is you sign in and go around and look at friends’ photos, etc. But the reason it works is because you are also sharing your photos and showing what you’ve been up to. We also wanted to build in music into that experience. You generally trust what your friends send you. We started Rootmusic to directly address that issue, whether you’re a local band just starting out or a hugely popular act. You have to represent yourself if you’re a local band, you want to have a place to point to where you can say, “Here’s the sound, here’s what we look like, here are a few songs and videos. And if you like what we’re doing, please send our music around.” We built in that functionality where anyone can go into your band page on Facebook and share it with their friends, and they will send it directly to their friends’ wall and it can be played directly off the wall. The same thing goes for major artists that have been using this already. The Grateful Dead and Snoop Dog have sent out their songs to their fan base and in only a few hours have 100,000 listens to the music player.

Music Consultant:

I have to ask the tough question – there are some companies out there that do similar things. ReverbNation has a music tab, iLike has a music tab. I don’t believe either of those have the viral sharing mechanism you just mentioned, but I noticed that yours is also a paid service. Why RootMusic over the other solutions?

JS:

There are a few things. First, we allow you to represent yourself and have a professionally. Right now if want to do what we allow you to do anywhere else it would cost you $500-$5,000 to hire a design firm. That’s what it costs minimum for you to get a custom tab made for you. Working with bands at these different levels, I know folks don’t have a lot of cash to spend so we wanted to make it possible for them to do that. At the same time, we wanted people to take it seriously. If you make everything free, your customers aren’t really dedicated to your product. Some other companies might have more tabs implemented, but we’re now the second largest music app on Facebook. Bands are using the marketing tools we built in to get in touch with fans and the fans are coming to the page, spending time there, getting more fans and higher fan engagement. It’s a professional look and has a viral feel to it, and you’re paying more attention to it, even if you’re only paying $2 to have it up. It’s $2 per month or $20 per year.

Music Consultant:

Where can people learn about your service?

JS:

www.Rootmusic.com. We have a tour and info videos. We focused a lot on making the user experience really great, so you should be able to find all the information you’re looking for within a click or two.

Music Consultant:

How long has RootMusic been a company?

JS:

We’ve been up and running for five months. I think it’s the same thing as promoting a good show. If you have a great product and it’s really about making it easier and putting something great into other people’s hands, it will work out. It’s just getting the word out. As of today (8/31/2010) we had over 25,000 bands that have signed up all over the world. It’s really interesting to see some of these bands that sign up. I’ve seen a few of my friends’ bands that I haven’t seen in a while pop up, and it’s great to see.

Another thing – we’re always open to suggestions. This is all about the musicians and the managers of the bands and what you’re looking for. There have been a number of times where we’ve completely switched what we were doing because there have been hundreds of e-mails coming in asking for something. The video tab was one. We took time out of what we were doing and built that out. We’re very much all about listening to what you need as a musician and building exactly that and nothing less.

Music Consultant:

The Facebook app with the video functionality are the first steps by the sound of it.   Are there other products that are live yet?

JS:

It’s just the band page application right now. We’re adding to that every day. Once a month, we roll out with new features. We just integrated with YouTube, so now on the music player itself, for example, if you go to the Grateful Dead or 50 Cent’s page, you can play the music player with the sound cloud track. But if you want to get paid performance royalties for those songs that are streaming, you can drop a YouTube link into the music player at RootMusic.com and then on Facebook it will show up and the music will start playing as it does with any track, but in the banner page above the track, the YouTube video will start playing automatically. So your fans are getting some extra content to watch your video. But if you’re a bigger artist, or you’re getting paid royalties, you as the artist will get paid for having the video stream itself. You can actually make money off this platform by just having people stream your songs through that YouTube integration. Of course the music keeps playing while your fans look at your photos or write on your wall or look at your Twitter.

Music Consultant:

Tell me what the future is for the company. What are you looking to tackle?

JS:

I can’t go too far into that right now, but it’s very much built on what we hear from our users.  I can’t wait to get more ideas from them. We have a number of things we want to build out and have talked to tons of musicians and managers, all the way from the ground, up. Just to make it more efficient.  We already know you’re looking to represent yourself and distribute and market yourself.  Some of the next steps are trying to market more efficiently and understanding where your fan base is and making sure you can get in touch with them easily. You can look at the product we have out today as a very basic version, and just know it will become much more powerful the more we have to work on it. Any ideas and thoughts are greatly appreciated and sincerely looked at as options to build out.

Music Consultant:

From your rather unique vantage point- do you have any suggestions of things people should be doing as best practices or common mistakes you think are easy to avoid when promoting on Facebook?

JS:

The first would be don’t spam your fans on the wall. If you’re just constantly throwing stuff out there, they will turn you off and not come back. One of the main things to remember about Facebook specifically is, if you have 500 fans and then you send out something to the wall that syndicates out to your fans’ news feeds, your 500 fans only get that if they’re interacting with the page. You have to give them reasons to come back. That’s why with the band page, we’ve made it so that you can share a photo, video or a song or upcoming show to all your fans from that page. What we suggest is sending out a song and then above that in the message box say, “We have some new tracks up on our page. Please make sure to send a few songs out to your friends and let us know what you think.” Always give a little bit of direction to your fans when you send something out and give them a reason to interact with you. Not only does that help spread your music, but it also makes it so when you send a message out through your wall, more of your fans are more likely to get that message in a news feed.

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Learn More about J Sider and his company RootMusic

Music Consultant:

Nikki, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.  Tell me about which clients you are currently working with at Translation.

NH:

The four who are current clients are McDonalds, Wrigley’s, State Farm and Target. I’m working on multiple projects for all of them right now.

Music Consultant:

So you have been in marketing for over ten years and have seen both the product side and the music side of the playing field.  Has the way that brands engage with music changed?

NH:

About 15 years ago and more there was a negative perception when artists were aligning themselves with brands. I don’t think it was received well by fans and the public. You didn’t see a lot of big branded initiatives the way you see them now.  I think with the industry being in the state it’s in and sales being down more than 54% in ten years you’re seeing a climate where artists and labels are more reliant on brands than ever. I think that notion has trickled down to the consumer and fan where they are a lot more accepting of artist endorsements today. That’s not to say everyone is accepting of it. I think there are some musical purists out there who will dump an artist when they see them aligning with a brand but I think it becomes fewer when that alignment has authenticity and doesn’t feel forced. I think it’s just becoming more widely accepted by fans because they realize that sometimes you need the brand dollars to get the music into your iPod.  I think we’re seeing it become a lot more acceptable and that the stigma has been removed.

Music Consultant:

Can you tell me more specifically what the actual brand – music engagement looked like several years ago? What did brands used to do with artists and was it efficient?

NH:

I think the endorsements they were doing were largely before I was getting into the business. Because when I started in 1999, the Internet was in a position where it was really starting to change everything.  Prior to that you saw a lot of tour sponsorships. That was probably the mainstay once you got past the traditional artist endorsement, like Pepsi and Michael Jackson, where Michael Jackson was featured in the commercials. I think the broadcast component and the tour sponsorship component were the main pathways through which brands utilized artists. You saw banners on stage scrims and signage on stadiums, which you still see today, but we try to stay away from it because it’s a little “cookie cutter.” You saw a lot of shallow integration back then. You didn’t see the type of campaign we recently did with Chris Brown and Doublemint.  In that campaign Chris remade a vintage jingle and practically turned it into a brand new song.  The song was then promoted in a way that it wasn’t obviously associated with the brand.  Only after the song was out there in pop culture was the association made know.  You also never saw anything innovative online because music didn’t exist online. “Online” was barely a word.

Music Consultant:

You’ve already touched on sponsored content or branded content which I was going to ask you about. Is branded content the prime example of the deeper engagement you mentioned, or does it look different in different cases?

NH:

I think it’s one of the ways we’re seeing brands work with music. They say content is king. It’s always a large component of every deal we put together, because that’s what the brand wants. Everyone is trying to get their hands on something exclusive, some kind of visual or video or song element that the consumer can’t get just by buying the record or going to see the artist perform on their standard tour. Content is playing a big role and has been in the past ten years but even more so now. Now we’re diving deeper than content. Now it’s that content is a given, it is about what can we do above and beyond that is new and groundbreaking and has never been done before.

Music Consultant:

What then does modern brand engagement with music looks like?  I know Justin Timberlake wrote the McDonald’s jingle (ba-ba-ba-ba-ba I’m Lovin it) but how else does it play out today?

NH:

Something that is really interesting is product innovation. I don’t know how familiar you are with Gwen Stefani and the Hewlitt Packard Harajuku camera.  It was before my time here, but people at this company played a role in bringing that to life.  They were leveraging the celebrity of Gwen Stefani, and it was larger than just “We’re going to utilize her music” or “We’re going to utilize her image and likeness.” It was, “Let’s bring her in to these product development meetings and create a brand that is tied to Gwen Stefani, but make it something that is really unique and own-able for Hewlett Packard.” And that was wildly successful. That is a deeper level of engagement that you don’t typically see.

Music Consultant:

I heard Polaroid hired Lady Gaga in some capacity?

NH:

That’s another great example. They made her creative director.

Music Consultant:

Tell me about what this space looks like for the independent artist. Other than Free Credit Score’s recent initiative, I can’t think of any other examples off the top of my head but several brands have used an unknown piece of music or an unknown band. I am also starting to see the contest theme and brands leveraging the entire independent music community by having artists compete for some kind of prize.  I guess this brings attention to a brand’s products in musician circles.  Is that something you’ve noticed?

NH:

I think there are certain brands for whom that kind of contest element makes sense. And then for some of the clients we work with it won’t make sense, because it’s the kind of campaign where you’re going to need a label to help you take the project and put it through the traditional industry marketing channels, or you’re going to need the artist to have a label to make sure the manufacturing and distribution is happening and that it’s not the brand’s responsibility. When you look at the music syncing space, like when you see a company like Apple take a song or an artist that is virtually unknown and feature their song in a campaign, that song almost always goes on to have some success. I think in the syncing space, especially in regards to soundtracks or featuring songs on shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” I think it’s definitely a great idea to utilize independent artists.  First of all because you have that mystique and cachet of featuring someone nobody knows yet, and you can own that as a brand.  Then you have the obvious factor, which is that it’s cheaper. In some cases the artists will own their own publishing because they are not signed and you can do a much less expensive deal with them. I think if it’s that type of proposition where you’re not looking to do a deeper integration other than using the music, it’s definitely a good idea to look into the independent landscape.

Music Consultant:

Have you seen any examples of independent artists doing deep integration with brands, even if it’s small brands or local businesses? I can ask you this from both sides, because you have worked with small and large artists and brands.

NH:

There actually is a great example that was just brought to my attention the other day by one of my strategists here at the office. She sent me a video that was the car company Fiat, who had partnered with an unsigned artist. Fiat was looking to do product placement in their video and there was a little deeper integration element. They were maybe putting their band in their TV spot. I remember looking at that and thinking I didn’t know if I would recommend one of my brands get behind a completely unknown and unsigned artist like that, because they are unproven and have no business backing them to help with the necessary components a brand or ad agency might need to make the brand successful. For example, say we needed product. Who is going to make it? Say we need online promotion. Who is running that? Say we want to utilize the social network of those artists. If it’s just their brother James and their cousin Joe, who is going to buy into the brand? I thought it was interesting they’d made that decision for those reasons…

Music Consultant:

Is there any advice you would have for artists that want to approach brands or points of entry you know of that are not the front door or traditional way to approach?

NH:

First I would say from a philosophical standpoint, it’s important for artists to start thinking of themselves as a brand. That’s not just, “What genre is my music?” but it is “What do we stand for?  What are our brand attributes? What is our value proposition?” That’s how the brand side is thinking of things.

Music Consultant:

Flesh those out for me. Tell me how you would answer those questions?

NH:

Let’s take Lady Gaga. Say we were talking about the brand that is Lady Gaga. If I were defining it, I’d say that brand is edgy, dramatic, avant-garde, cutting edge, bold. I would take more time to define my target demographic. It’s not just predominantly female, 12-34. It’s club culturists, gay/lesbian/transgender, fashionistas, cultural influencers. And then I think the artist should then define the brand as, “Philosophically if we were to align with a real brand, what would that look like? Who would make sense and who wouldn’t make sense?”

Music Consultant:

What about value proposition? How do you look at music in terms of a value proposition?

NH:

I think that is subject to interpretation. Is it, “our music aims to do this?” For example, Rage against the Machine. Did they ever sit down in a room and say, “We’re providing a viewpoint on modern politics in America?” I don’t know. If you think about it from the standpoint of, “What do you want your music to do?” Do you want it to inspire? Do you want people to be reflective? Do you just want to give them something they can shake their booties to in a club? Do you want to brighten their Monday? Do you want to make them somber and to think about their lives and what’s going wrong? I don’t think artists really think about those elements from a brand and marketing perspective. I think they look at it more like, “I wrote this song about my ex girlfriend and it’s going to make you sad.” It’s a very subtle distinction. And at the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to a lot of times is that nuance.

Sorry if that sounds fluffy, but unfortunately I think that’s a lot of what marketing is. I think artists really need to give that some thought before they set out to align themselves with brands. Because when you don’t have that clearly defined and you don’t know what you stand for and what it is you are looking to bring into the world, how are you going to figure out what brand it makes sense for you to align with? How are you going to distinguish between the idea that “Converse is a fit for us, but Chrysler is not.” If you don’t know what you stand for, how do you expect the brand to know whether or not you make sense for them? I think if the onus could fall upon the artist to set that up, it would make things a lot easier for people like me in the agency world to align them with brands. It’s those authentic partnerships that really make sense.

I remember years ago Eric Clapton did something with Michelob, and when that went to market, he was in AA. So that’s not an authentic alignment. One that we talk about here was one that Steve Stoute (Founder and CEO of Translation, LLC) used as an example of a bad partnership when he did the Billboard Conference last year. We like to throw it into our case studies as an example of what not to do. That was when Victoria’s Secret partnered with Bob Dylan. You watched the commercial and it was creepy, and the takeaway was, “What does an old, rugged, Americana crooner have to do with young, fresh ladies lingerie?” The answer is, “Nothing that’s not going to make you nauseous.”

I think when you’re coming from a standpoint of brand alignment those are two examples of things that don’t make sense. Should the artist use the product? Yes. Ideally the artist should. Some of the products we represent on Wrigley’s, we have Orbit, Juicy Fruit, Skittles. I get calls from people all the time where the person will say, “Common loves Orbit.” And I will say, “Great. I love knowing that.” Because now when I’m thinking about people that make sense for the Orbit brand, I can keep in mind that Common loves it and chews it and has a favorite flavor and has real loyalty to that brand. That is the foundation of a successful brand partnership.

You can learn more about Translation LLC at their website.



Howie has been responsible for building more acts on a local or regional level than any three people I know.  The Lion’s Den  (now Sullivan Hall) was one of the stepping stone clubs that most bands who wound up on Bonnaroo or  the H.O.R.D.E. tour played before becoming big regional or national acts.

Howie's Venue- Sulivan Hall

Musician Coaching:

How has the process of band /artist selection changed at the clubs in the last 10-15 years both for established artists and for the audition nights or slow nights when you are trying out new local talent. (online vs offline, more or less competition for slots etc…)

Howie:

It’s changed significantly. The immediacy of the web is mind-boggling. Almost all bands post samples of their music online. The old way was for bands to make initial contact over the phone and follow up with a press kit. By the time we received that press kit, details of that initial conversation were fuzzy at best. Besides music being immediate, there are many clues online that give a good idea as to whether or not a band has their act together so to speak such as having a robust website. Also, whether or not there’s some buzz and awareness about them like having a lot of Myspace plays, Facebook friends, Twitter followers for example. I’ll occasionally do random searches to see if there’s any interesting press about the act.

Musician Coaching:

How do you prefer to be approached by an unknown artist trying to get a
show at the clubs you book? (referral, cold calling, how materials should be
presented and where i.e. Sonicbids, myspace etc)

Howie:

It’s really best for bands to include links for all of their sites they have EPKs on – MySpace, Sonicbids, Reverb Nation, etc. Just depending upon the buyer’s preference of site(s) they like to review bands on. A band should state the basics that talent buyers would like to know: where they’re from, what genre(s) they consider themselves to be in, when and where they’ve played the market before and how it went. If a band has friends, family or any roots to New York City that will insure a decent draw, that’s a good thing to mention. Also, anything noteworthy that may garner attention – album release show, TV or radio appearances, notable press, etc.

Musician Coaching:

For a new band with few or no references that you can call to get a feel
for their following – how is the best way to approach you and how often so
as to be heard but not to annoy the hell out of you?

Howie:

References aren’t necessarily important, but professionalism and a good attitude go a long way. The other day I booked an out-of-town people who drew only 20 people to a show, on a Wednesday. Their manager followed up with a great email of thanks, but also noting how he felt strongly if we gave them a chance on a weekend night, he knew they could do 50 people at minimum. Then he followed that up with something to the effect of ‘I understand if you’d like to keep us to a week night and we’ll work hard to get to a weekend night eventually.’ His non-demanding positive attitude implored me to give him a weekend show despite the smaller draw. It also helped that their music was really good.

Musician Coaching:

Describe the volume of submissions you get on a daily or weekly basis for
artist who want to play shows at Sullivan Hall and what percentage of those
actually get in the door to play?

Howie:

There are three of us that book the club so it’s hard to say exactly. I’d estimate we probably get around 20-25 submissions a day on average. Unless a band’s music or attitude is really terrible, we give most bands a shot. First time in though, it may be on a Monday or Tuesday.

Musician Coaching:

What traits in a band member or manager make you feel like this is
someone who is serious about their business and makes you want to help them
build their following (both for you and the club)

Howie:

I alluded to it earlier. Positive attitude, non-demanding, carrying themselves professionally, strong work ethic all go a long way with me. That hard work ethic is essential if a band wants to take it to the next level. Nothing should be beneath them. I love walking out of a show and seeing a musician handing out hand bills or CDs or MP3 cards promoting their band. If I see that, and its 30 degrees and snowing, no matter what they sound like, I’ll book that band.

Musician Coaching:

Describe some of the frustrations you have with they way musicians
approach you for a gig and things that people should avoid saying / doing.

Howie:

One of the most frustrating things is when you book an act, and discover afterwards they have multiple gigs lined up in town, and they’ve never bothered to mention it. I can understand a band wanting to get out there and play a lot (although I don’t feel that’s the right approach), but they should mention it during the booking process. I think acts should be more focused on the quality of shows they do versus quantity.  Acts should be thinking in a reciprocal manor – not just ‘what can I get out of this?’

Let’s say your band can draw 50 people on a week night in New York. Your draw may be predominantly friends and fans at that point. Which is fine. Almost all bands start with friends and family. If your band starts booking 2 or more times per month, you’ll start to have diminishing returns. Now we book you after you’ve played a number of shows in town in a short period of time, and we put you on a good night on a good show, and almost no one comes out. You’ve benefited from the exposure but have offered nothing in return. You’ve spoiled your relationship with us. Bands should be thinking in reciprocal terms. Not only ‘what can we get out of this?’ but ‘what can we do for the club, or promoter, or the other bands on the bill for that matter?’

——————-

Part two of my interview with Howie is available here.  You can also check out his management and marketing company Creative Entertainment Group.

Music Consultant:

Irwin, thanks for your time today.  Tell me a little bit about how you came to music. You were a guy who started out with a fairly corporate background and then got more and more involved with music.   

IK:

I started in publishing, but since I was a child I was a hack musician and a garage band player. It’s a love that doesn’t die easily. It also made me a strong fan and a critical listener. And when my publishing career led me to Billboard Magazine, it just seemed to be a wonderful opportunity to match location with avocation.

Music Consultant:

When did you go from Billboard to doing your own thing? You now publish several music education and music-related magazines through two separate companies.

IK:

Yes. We do magazines. We also have quite a few electronic products and produce events for our own portfolio and our media clients. Billboard was just a fantastic opportunity. It was a way to get close to the music industry and see how it worked, at least at the time. Then, as it began to change, I saw media’s role change with it, or we could see it would be changing in the future. I was doing advertising and sponsorships and business development for a franchise that was locked into the recorded music business, as we all knew it. That was of great concern to me. I went out and took a job to feed the family but at the same time established a side project that today is my primary gig, Music Media. We create an integrated suite of media products and services to serve independent artists, music teachers and their students.

Music Consultant:

As someone working with multiple outlets that cater to music education, the aspirational music business and music teachers, what is that climate like? Is there less education, more education, more of a need for established mentors? What is that side of the business like of late?

IK:

The music business itself is all about education today, because so many elements of it are changing or new. So whether we are serving independent artists, teachers or students, it’s really all about figuring out how to succeed in a rapidly evolving environment. In that sense, music education is needed and our business is good. If you’re asking about the economic aspects of music education, I think a traditional scholastic education is as much under fire or more under fire than it’s ever been. But we also see a lot of change within that frame, because the industry is dictating which skills people who come to it have to have. We’re noticing a tremendous change at the collegiate level. We see more schools offering music content, music education at the higher ed. level, and the subjects and degrees that are being offered are more real world and innovative.

Back in the day, the only popular music education program at least that is recognized was at Berklee. This summer we got together with ten universities that are creating extraordinary, relative and robust music education programs. Now the high school teachers know they have to prepare their students for these courses and the educational programs they have to offer have to be different from the original curriculum. There’s a trickle down that changes the industry, the college, the trade level where recording, engineering and sound engineering programs are concerned, down into high schools and even lower. Young graduating music educators are beginning to understand how much fun and how impactful teaching using popular music examples can be. We notice a closing of the gap between what young people like to listen to and what is used in school. Once educators understand that a popular music illustration can be used to teach bedrock music theory and technique, you just get a better program, a student who plays longer and practices harder which leads to more and better musicians. I’m very optimistic right now about the music education business and its prospects in the foreseeable future.

Music Consultant:

I am curious what your thoughts are either personally or professionally about all these music business education programs that have popped up. There are more of those than ever and seemingly less paying jobs in the traditional industry. What do you make of that discrepancy? What are we preparing people for?

IK:

I think there are fewer music business jobs in what you and I know as the traditional music industry but as that industry crumbles, the DIY industry is changing.  People like you are getting the call for coaching or marketing / product management because that’s where there’s a vacuum. We need to train more people in the product management that DIY musicians need and want rather than the kind of people the majors are going to hire. I think there’s more opportunity than ever, we’re able to carry more music, more people are listening to more music. I don’t think there’s been a change in the volume of music consumed, I just think there’s been a change in the way it’s recorded, produced, distributed, marketed and sold. I think there are lots of interesting music jobs, they are just not traditional. I think many people who go through music business programs are going to be performers or music educators and they will benefit from a music business perspective. I don’t necessarily think people who graduate from music business programs go to work in recording, management or publishing. I think if you’re going to be an artist you better have a music business background, and as a music educator, you will benefit from a music business background, not only because you will need to diversify your revenue stream as a music educator, but also because of the need your students will have and the need you will have to teach music business at an earlier age just because of the proliferation of independent opportunities. That’s my holistic view of music business education. The more, the better.

Music Consultant:

What are the goals of the publishing businesses you run and how did the Miami Music Festival come into being?

IK:

The businesses I run are really about artist development. I think that’s the best way to phrase it. Whether we’re creating a magazine for a fourth or fifth grader and talking about songwriting, a subject we pretty much don’t teach to music students today or doing something else, it’s artist development.  Most kids have no idea the people singing the songs haven’t written them and don’t have an appreciation for the skills involved and the way music finds its way into every nook and cranny of our lives. There is the need and interest to expand the four walls of the music room. We knew a horizontal source of information about musicianship did not exist, and certainly one did not exist that was dialed into the tone, voice and sophistication needed to capture the interest of young music students and provide ancillary text for their teachers. To do that all in a very appropriate space, trying to be fun and interesting and relevant at the same time and not deal with themes and lyrics and behaviors that are all over the music industry and product won’t work. We don’t want to sanitize it because then it’s not cool. Getting that right was something we felt we could do because we recognized the challenge. That’s been our hallmark with our In Tune Monthly magazine. Now we now publish In Tune’s sister music magazine that has been started and published by Cherry Hill Music for years called Music Alive. In Tune is grades 7-12, and Music Alive is grades 4-10, primarily.

We have been publishing ASCAP’s Playback for about eight years now. That magazine and our relationship with ASCAP brought us closer to the music creation community, which was good for everything we do. We began business development with ASCAP and five years ago created a broad based music creator conference – the ASCAP Expo.  Last year we had 55 companies and about 2,800 musicians and creators attend and every year it has been getting better.

So I had this event background from working at Billboard’s events and more recently with ASCAP and had done trade shows and conferences and one of my business partners is very active in the Miami market. He was asked to chair the Miami Dade Advisory Committee on Culture and Entertainment. The conversation in that group became, “What can we do to stimulate live music?” Miami as a town has had great success with recorded and DJ music and its club scene is as vibrant as any in the country. But some of that has happened at the expense of live music, just because a lot of clubs have turned their stages into DJ booths.

Music Consultant:

I certainly don’t think of Miami as a live music town.

IK:

What’s happened is that the whole South Beach scene has matured to a certain extent, where it was very Bohemian and insider with fashion designers and photographers running around. Now it’s more of an attraction to a more mainstream group. As the scene on the beach maturef, a lot of the locals were looking for other experiences. The pioneers who hung out there are no longer looking for the same club scene that takes place on the beach. The live music scene needed some support, so this committee that my partner chaired scheduled a town hall meeting to talk about stuff. He got the flu, so I came down on a plane to moderate a panel, and it was a roomful of people that wanted to see more live music in Miami. I was thinking about the cycle that’s kind of hard to break. You need stages, club owners with the confidence that live music would fill their clubs the same as DJ music. Bands don’t know the stages exist and it goes around and around.

I thought what we needed was an event and some way to turn the spotlight on live music and the emerging live music scene. And I thought what this town needed was a multi-cultural version of South by Southwest where Latin and Caribbean as well as rock and singer/songwriter music can be featured at another time of the year. I thought, the music industry is changing to the extent that the DIY and the independent artists need the opportunity to get in front of the press and network with one another and try stuff out in a live environment made for showcasing.  Everybody wants to go to Miami when it gets cool in the North of the country. So, we floated the idea of doing a multi-stage emerging artist festival and conference that catered to the kinds of music that people in Miami enjoy but have connections all over the world. We put 250 acts on 25 stages in 17 clubs last year and did some things very right and very wrong, but we were able to see right afterwards exactly why we had success and why we didn’t. There were enough people that thought it was a good idea, our partners liked, it, our industry partners liked it, we had support from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Sound Exchange, the state, city, county and we had corporate sponsors and a lot of local music fans that just wanted to see it happen again.

We wrote a plan for this year and we widened our footprint and picked up a daytime venue –  an all ages venue, because the clubs are 21 and over – and made a commitment not to present mixed genre shows but book the kind of music people want to go out to see live in the clubs they want to go to.  November 12-14 we will be in 35 clubs on 435 stages and present over 300 acts with a wider array of sponsors and partners and media companies than we had last year.

Music Consultant:

Tell me about the selection process. Tell me about what caught your attention. Was it purely the audio recordings or was it that people had gotten some notoriety for doing the DIY thing on their own?

IK:

There are two ways to get on our stages. One is to be invited by a sponsor or a media partner or a producer we’re working with. The other is to go on the website and pay the $35 and send us your electronic press kit. Obviously with the sponsors, while we have approval, we’re listening to a third party. In many cases, the third parties are pretty plugged in. When BMI comes and wants to do a Latin showcase, we can be reasonably certain we’re going to get five pretty great acts. For the half of the festival talent that gets chosen by the organizers, we pulled together a diverse listing group. We have one in New York and one in Miami and a couple of artist managers and a couple of artists, and a couple of recording engineers and an attorney. We probably have had about eight or nine people who sit and listen first to the music. We’re interested in live video, and obviously the tracks are carefully recorded, and sometimes people don’t arrive with the same instrumentation as the recording. We’re mindful of that, and every time we can see a live video, it’s helpful. We’re looking for a balance, so if we get a good jazz act, because they’re harder to come by for our festival, that’s a great thing. We might been have a little bit wider leeway. We’re looking at photography and at social network traction. You’ll see people’s profiles, and if you have people that have six friends rather than 6,000 friends, that often tells you something. That’s not always an indicator, because sometimes you have people that are great but just starting out but it’s something we look at. It happens relatively quickly. You can hear in 30 seconds this is an act we want to hear more of, and we start digging through the press kit. It could also be someone that is recording their first track, and either their voice or instruments are really flat, and we move on.

Music Consultant:

You’ve seen many different sides to the music business and music business education. Do you have any advice for people hoping to make a career?

IK:

There are three distinct areas of the business right now and there’s opportunity in all of them.

If somebody were to burst on the scene as a truly dedicated and high-impact music educator who can truly capture the challenge and opportunity for students they are going to be in great demand. On the business side – setting up artists who need to help themselves and need to be left and right brained and be business people and at the same time creative is a great thing to do.  I think people who truly offer service and can find an economic model for helping artists navigate these waters can do very well.  For artists themselves – we always tell artists the way to make it is to find an audience and the rest will follow. That is as true today as it has ever been, but I also think there’s an opportunity to come to the attention of the media and the industry just because there are so many opportunities for communication. I think being a student of communication right now is a good thing for an artist to be. I don’t just mean hyping yourself, but being in the right place at the right time with the right music. There’s no substitute for a great song or for musicianship but if you’ve got those things, learning how the media works is probably as valuable as anything else you might do today as an emerging artist.

—

Learn more about Irwin’s work at In Tune Monthly and The Miami Music Festival

Music Consultant:

Snake, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.  You’ve been working for McGhee entertainment as a manager for the last five years and Doc and Scott McGhee used to manage Skid Row, correct?

SS:

Yes, they were both very involved but Scott was really involved. Doc is like a big brother to me, and Scott is too, but we’re more friends. We became so close in the time we worked together it was like we were siblings. We would yell and fight with each other, quit on each other, fire each other. One of the things that was always true is that I was always a sponge and wanted to learn the business side of the music business, because it intrigued me and I loved the idea of how it worked and all the different moving parts. People see a band that goes out o stage for a couple hours, and they go home and go back to doing what they do. I don’t know if people realize that it’s a 24-7 moving machine. That really intrigued me from a really young age, from the time I was 17 years old starting bands and being in bands and playing in cover bands. Whatever the case was, I was always interested in the business side of it. Throughout the whole time we worked together I was always over their shoulders. Doc used to call me “The Gnat,” because I would always be over his shoulders. I was the guy who right after a show when we were on tour with Bon Jovi or Aerosmith going over the merchandise sheets and seeing what we did per head and what the building got. I made sure I knew how to read contracts, because I wanted to know what I was signing. Not that I didn’t trust anybody- I absolutely trusted Doc and Scott implicitly, but I wanted to know. I need to know why. I’m the guy at the computer who can be in deep and working on editing music, and if my clock is wrong, I will spend two hours trying to figure it out. That’s my OCD.

Music Consultant:

You had an enormous amount of success at a time before there were a lot of artists handling their business on their own. You were either a local band in a club or signed to a record label getting onto a tour. Did being observant of your business dealings serve you in your career?

SS:

Absolutely. It served positively and negatively. There’s something great to be said about an artist who is just an artist and goes out and has been able to position themselves with a team. They just go out there and do their gigs, write the songs, go out and perform to the best of their ability, tour and record. In that case their business would be handled by their team. There are a lot of artists out there like that. I wasn’t one of them. For some reason, I always want and need to know how things work.  I was always interested in statistics and things of that nature from the time I was really small. When I was playing in bars in NJ, I was the one collecting money, going out and booking shows, dealing with the club owners and getting screwed over, getting taken advantage of as a 16-year old kid underage. What legs did I have to stand on? All I could do is stand there and be strong and respectful. It’s funny, because even while you’re getting screwed, sometimes as a kid, if you just stand tall and are not a dick, that reputation begins to follow you. People say, “He’s a good guy to work with and a good guy to deal with.” I always think regardless of what has happened I’ve been a pretty stand-up guy doing the right thing and have been good to people and treated people with respect and I have never taken myself too seriously. That fell into every project I worked on from the time I was playing in cover bands to the time I was starting Skid Row.

In the beginning it was more of the same; I was dealing with the club owner or dealing with a booking agent on a very local level. You still had to go through the business of it though and I liked doing that. As the business of Skid Row got bigger, my interest and participation in that also grew. And it was great because I had and have two amazing teachers in Doc McGhee and Scott McGhee. And also learning from John Bon Jovi and his work ethic, and the amount of knowledge he amassed and passed on to me. In that aspect, it helped me out immensely in that at least I understood what was going on around me, and I wasn’t in the dark. So I was able to make educated decisions. Whether I was right or wrong, at least I was able to be educated in where my decision came from.

I loved all that and still do. I think the progression from being in Skid Row to being in management was a very natural progression. The trick of it was, “How do you actually make that leap?” Luckily for me, the McGhees are my family and have been for the last 23 years. No matter what, the one thing I can say is that we’re not a corporate company and are more of a boutique management company- it’s a family atmosphere. I know and have always knows that if anybody is ever in trouble with anything, they can always come to me. And I know if I’m ever in trouble, I can always go to them. Doc and Scott have been there for me many times.  There are so many other people that I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and get to know in this business who have been able to impart their knowledge and wisdom and experience upon me. I take all this as a gift and a blessing.

Music Consultant:

You do work with Down, who is the product of an older system. But you have a new project, Meghan Kabir. You were a part of the business when record labels were the only game in town. You were signed to Atlantic in 1988 at the height of the business. The metal scene was well established, it was before the alternative scene was built up and of course many years before digital changed everything. What are you doing with Meghan to make it work in this new climate that is different from what you had to do in the past?

SS:

The one thing I love that I think we’ve gotten back to in lieu of everything that has gone on with P2P file sharing is that we’ve gotten back to making sure every song is a great song. It used to be that way. In Skid Row we looked at it that way. Every song on that record had to mean something. It was that old stupid line “All killer, no filler.” The thing is, it’s very true now. Every song has to count, because people aren’t relegated to going out and spending $15 on a CD of ten songs where only two or three are good. The consumer has gotten smarter, and technology has given way to the fact that you have to make every song great in its own way. I love that. It’s the way it should be and the way it used to be. You used to buy a Zeppelin record, and every song on it was great, or at least good. Any artist that stood the test of time was that way – Aerosmith had great albums.

Now, that philosophy has been forced upon us again as artists and managers, and I love it. Things are different from a distribution standpoint, and you have to be creative, which I love. Necessity is the mother of invention, so for me it’s trying at times to figure out how to get your artist exposure and different ways to distribute the product in a manner that gives them the maximum amount of accessibility and availability. So, how do you do that in this day and age with a new artist when radio doesn’t mean as much as it used to and we have mostly big box retailers with very limited floor space? You have to figure out new ways to get the music out there, and it all starts with making sure the music is great. There are different ways of doing it, whether you release a single for an artist like we are doing for Meghan Kabir.  The way we look at her is she has great songs with great melodies, and she’s a great performer. Our job is to make sure we give her every opportunity to be seen and heard because her music and her artistry deserves that.

Music Consultant:

What tools and promotion and marketing techniques do you deem are absolutely necessary today that may not have existed previously?

SS:

Dealing with Down and how we work their product and dealing with Meghan Kabir are in a lot of ways the same but in a lot of ways very different. The thing with Meghan is we want to spread out her releases over the course of 18 months. So three songs or four songs every four months. I’m saying this theoretically because it all depends on which songs we’re choosing and how much life they will have. She’s an artist that if it’s going to happen, she’s going to need support from radio. We want to build her fan base through modern rock radio. She has the ability, at least in our minds to cross over to Top 40. She’s unique in the sense that I think it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this amount of talent in such a young person. She is so driven and smart and keeps you on your toes. I was saying earlier, the one thing I love about Scott and I working with her is that if you don’t keep up with her, she is going to run you over. That’s the way it should be!

I believe gone is the day when an artist can lay back and let it happen. You have to be so much more involved in every aspect, but you have to trust the people you surround yourself with. That’s remained the same. You need to have a great core of people around you and allow them to do their gigs to the best of their ability. She’s on top of everything, and I’m inspired by that.  She’s signed to Warner Brothers. One thing I’ve learned is that A&R and management and artists are always going to have disagreements, but I think they’re productive and valid in a lot of ways. At the end of the day if you’re working with people you trust and that you’ve known for a long time, I believe you’ll get to an endpoint where it makes sense to the artist. Meghan’s songs have the capability – though who knows in this day and age, because I just know what I love and what moves me, and I hope that translates to a mass audience.

Our theory is that if you start out going to Top 40, you live and die by each single. And today it is very much the case of “here today, gone tomorrow.” People like Paramour and P!nk, those people have done something that gives them longevity in their career because they’ve worked very hard to build up a loyal fan base and are not necessarily going to live or die by their next single. By the same token, you have to make sure the next song is great. That’s what I love about where we’re at right now.

Music Consultant:

I’m hearing a lot about a push at radio and releasing songs in a grouping as opposed to an album, which is smart because it gives the press more to talk about with each new batch of songs that comes out. What about the grassroots and the touring?  What are you doing to ensure success if the first or second single misses?

SS:

I believe every artist has to build from a live standpoint. We want to be entertained and be able to go to a show and see these songs and be entertained. I still believe in real artists, artists that are not just about a song, but are great performers as well. I think everything needs to tie in together for someone to be successful on a long-term basis. Meghan has the goods, and we’re going to put her out on the road as much as we can, and she’s going to learn by that. She’s a very good performer now, but being a performer myself on many different stages, I don’t care how good someone is at 22. They’re going to be that much better at 23 and so forth. I know I was. You do that by going out and playing every place you can possibly play. That’s an old school mentality, but I still believe in it. You have to play the dives and build your persona and comfortability in front of an audience. She has that X-Factor that connects to people. Coming from Nashville, she isn’t a country artist, but she has people in that community respect her and go see her play and react to her songs.

Music Consultant:

Do you think technology has made it considerably more difficult for people to have time to practice. In theory I can go out to Guitar Center tomorrow, buy a guitar – “me” being not being “me” but “someone who’s never picked up an instrument before” – and plug into Garage Band, record a song and put it up o MySpace and have everything everywhere. Do you think technology has made it more difficult in some ways for artists to develop?  If so, is there a workaround?

SS:

Technology is a blessing and a curse. What I loved about what happened when Skid Row was starting out is that you wouldn’t get signed to a deal until you rose above everything else that was out there. There was a brutal competition between bands and artists in the Tri-State area, and it was like that all across the country. We didn’t have the access to throw our stuff out there all over the Internet. We had tape trading. If you traded tapes, people would turn you down if they didn’t like it and pass it along if they did. It was this word of mouth thing that was happening that wasn’t out there contributing to so much damn noise, people had the choice of whether they wanted to pass that tape along or not. Now, technology is beautiful and I love it and utilize it, but there’s no gatekeepers to sit and say, “This stuff is good enough for people to hear.” I think people now have become lazy and generally don’t sit there and take the time and work their asses off and have people telling them, “No it’s not get enough” to help them raise their game and make it so they have worked hard enough and honed their craft enough where people need to hear this music and hopefully will respond to it in a positive light. That’s when the whole marketing machine would come into play back then.

Now, I’ve made records for 20-some years. But I could just sit there and throw anything I want up on the Internet no matter whether it sucks or is great. All that does is contribute to the noise pollution out there. Most artists throughout history were lucky enough to see people that have talent and nurture that talent, instead of just throwing stuff out there. John Hammond, one of the all-time great A&R people in this business who signed Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan saw that these people needed time to nurture, and he helped them become the artists they would become because there was an inherent talent. Now I think people aren’t critical enough of themselves as artists starting out. We don’t sit there and just have people telling them, “No, this is not good enough yet, and it could be better.” When you don’t have a sounding board, I don’t know how you go from good to great.

That bums me out, because that work ethic I have was built through all those years of being in the shitty clubs in NJ and Philadelphia and New York City. You could tell if you were a good band or not, because people would be truthful. I’m not talking about the 20 friends that would come out that you would bring with you. It was the other people that didn’t know who you were. You could look a t their faces and know whether what you were doing was good enough. My story is a perfect example. When the five of us in Skid Row came together, myself and Rachel, Scotty, Sebastian and Rob, you could tell we were onto something. You get that feeling. I don’t know if that happens a lot anymore, because I don’t think there’s a standard that people have to adhere to. I’m not saying that from a major label standpoint at all, because I don’t believe you need to get signed to one. But I just don’t know if people work hard enough now at their craft and then finally get to a point where they say, “This is good enough where I could throw it out there in public and it will stand above everything else.”

Music Consultant:

Too much instant gratification?

SS:

We live in a fast food nation, unfortunately. The idea of “product development” has really gone by the wayside. I can’t say that about Meghan though and thankfully she has so much talent that it’s not an ass-ache, it’s a pleasure.

Music Consultant:

You spoke early on about many of the things you were taught along the way. What stands out as stuff you wish you’d known as an 18-year old kid just starting out on this journey?

SS:

In all honesty, I reflect on things pretty honestly with myself. I never looked at success as something that life and the world owed me. I looked at it (and still do look at it) as an absolute blessing and a gift. It has to do with being humble and being fortunate enough to have a modicum of success in this business. And I swear on my life I never took that for granted ever. That being said, I knew that at some point it was going to stop and go on the decline. It’s easy to have faith when things are good. Having faith in yourself is difficult when times are tough. I never lost faith in myself even when the band broke up, because I always believed there was something I had inherently that would allow me to stay in this business. That’s just from the fact that I believed in myself. I never thought I was the greatest guitar player or the greatest songwriter. I just always felt if I believed in myself I could be somewhat successful in this business. I’ve always maintained that attitude. It was easy to be happy when I was selling millions of records. They say that adversity builds character. But that’s B.S. Adversity reveals character. For me, I had the opportunity to see a lot of people’s characters revealed when things got very bad.

I was happy that my upbringing was such that I was raised to be a humble guy and to do the right thing and not be so egotistical that I believed the world owed me whatever good came my way. It’s always been a gift. To answer your question, I look back on it and think that everything that happened was the right way for it to happen to get to this point. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, no doubt. I compromised myself at times I shouldn’t have, etc. But at the end of the day, it is about the journey. I’m going to be going through this when I talk to you 20 years from now. I’m sure my experiences will be completely different, but my attitude will remain the same. Sure, I probably could’ve sold more records if I made different decisions or made more money, but I am a lucky guy. I get to work with people I love, I get to work with music I love and to be around people that are great people that I learn so much from. I’ve always been a sponge and I take every opportunity to learn whatever I can from whomever I can. A lot of people walk into a room with their chest and shoulders up and say, “Look at me,” but I walk into the room and I’m wide open to learn everything I can possibly learn from the people I’m with…

Follow Snake on Twitter or learn more about Mcghee Entertainment and Snake’s clients Down and Meghan Kabir.