The Prescription

How to distribute your music

Prescription PR — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:34:41 +0000

The digital revolution presents many challenges for musicians – but fortunately, distribution is not really one of them: it's now easier than ever to make your music available to a big audience (whether they buy it or not is another matter, of course). In this blog post I’m going to look at some ways that you can distribute your music quickly and effectively – and give you some tips on how to maximise revenue from each method of distribution.

1. Use your own website

The simplest way to distribute your own music is by setting up a store page on your website and selling your music – in whatever format you like – direct to site visitors. The big advantage of this is that you keep nearly all of the cash generated through sales; the downside is the time involved in fulfilment of physical products (that, in layman’s terms, means the shoving of CDs into jiffy bags and walking them to the post office). If you think you are going to sell thousands of CDs, and don't like going to the post office, then you need to bear this time commitment in mind.

Selling digital downloads from your site is obviously more straightforward and doesn't involve the dreaded jiffy bag – but don’t forget the bandwidth issue: if you find yourself in a lucky position where thousands of people are rocking up to buy a download direct from your site, remember that they may also knock it over unless you’ve set everything up correctly from a hosting / bandwidth perspective.

As for processing payments, an obvious way to get started on this is via Paypal, but a tool like Shopify might be a better bet, as it allows you to upload and sell digital goods easily, track and fulfil orders, run sales reports and so on - Paypal can be a fiddly business as far as this goes, and not everybody loves buying with it. You can also use Shopify to sell other merchandise and, in fact, build a whole music website on it.

A good thing to do when selling direct from your site is to ‘add value’ to the stuff you are flogging. By this I mean making the products on offer more appealing on your website than on other digital stores – for example, you can let potential customers know that you will sign every CD bought direct from your site; that you will include an exclusive PDF of lyrics with every download of the album and so on.

However, if you think you are going to sell records in quantities that might result in a chart position, then it is better to focus on a distribution solution that lets the good folk who run the charts know whenever somebody buys a copy of your album. Which takes me onto…

2. Use a digital distribution company

There are a host of companies out there that offer global digital distribution on all the major digital stores and streaming services. You just pay a fee, upload your music to their system and they make it available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify etc.

As every online store you sell your music on will be taking a percentage of each sale, you won’t make as much money as you might from selling direct, but there are some big advantages in using an online distribution company, namely:

you will be selling music on sites and stores that have large, existing customer bases
people may be more comfortable with buying music from their preferred digital store than from your site
this method of music distribution makes you eligible for the charts (and we all love being in the charts).

The question is whether you plump for a company that takes a cut of every sale (such as Zimbalam), or use one like Tunecore where you pay a flat fee every year and keep all the dosh generated via sales (after iTunes / Amazon / 7Digital have taken their percentage, of course). You’ll need to base this decision on the number of downloads you reckon you’ll sell.

There is work involved in all this – you’ll need to be prepared to spend a couple of hours gathering and uploading your music, album art, meta data etc. to your digital distributor’s website (and in quite specific formats). It’s time consuming and occasionally technically challenging but once it’s all set up, you will have global distribution and, theoretically at least, a chance of getting into the charts.

Remember that some online music stores provide ‘affiliate links’ that let you get a little bit more cash from each sale of your download. If you are pointing people in the direction of these stores, you should use these affiliate links to do so – this will help you get a few more pence any time somebody buys your music (follow these links for more info on iTunes and Amazon affiliate programmes: iTunes | Amazon).

3. Get a distribution deal

Another approach to getting your music out there is to try to secure a traditional distribution deal, where a distributor takes charge of getting your music into the shops and onto online stores.

The nature of each deal will vary, but generally speaking, this is possibly the most expensive way of distributing your music, so it’s best to do a distribution deal only if:

you know you have a fairly large number of fans, who are very likely to purchase your CDs from record shops or
the distributor is offering to provide you with some support promoting the album (for example, by hiring a music PR firm, printing up posters etc.) or
you are completely and utterly too busy / technically illiterate to upload your own music to digital stores.

Make sure you are aware of all the potential charges from a distributor before doing a deal - delivery costs, CD storage costs, 'sale or return' costs and so on.

4. Forget selling your music

Of course the other way to distribute your music is to forget selling it, and just give it away for free. People are generally more likely to part with an email address / Facebook like in exchange for a download than they are to spend hard cash on a CD, and you may feel it's better to have tight people listening to your music than none at all. Oddly enough this can still generate revenue for you though, because, done right, free downloads can generate a (larger) fanbase that attends gigs, buys merchandise and so on.

And finally…

Possibly the best way to distribute your music is by using a mixture of the above four approaches – for example, give away a free EP in exchange for an email address; sell limited edition, signed CD albums direct from your site; use Tunecore or similar services to get your music into online stores; and see if you can convince a distributor to put your music into the nation's few remaining record shops.

That way, you can guarantee that you’ll end up with your mum’s email address, and that she’ll buy your record in three different formats.

About The Prescription

'The Prescription' is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications and Irish PR at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today. We offer music PR, digital marketing and music web design services.

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How to market your music to a smartphone audience

Prescription PR — Fri, 03 May 2013 20:08:56 +0000

In this Prescription PR article, we look at some of the challenges that smartphones bring to music marketing and offer some tips on how to promote your music to a smartphone audience...

I’d like to take issue with the term ‘smartphone’. If anything, smartphones make people dumb. Try having a conversation with somebody whilst they staring at an iPhone; all you’ll get out of them is an ‘um, yeah, huh…um, huh, yeah, sorry, what was that again?’. Dinner-time conversation in posh restaurants is a particular victim of this, as your squeeze will be too busy instagramming their food to talk to you. And don’t get me started about SUV drivers on the M25 who feel compelled to, yes, check their email whilst driving. That is potentially lethal, not smart – even if it means they’re enjoying a Prescription article at 70mph (sorry, 95mph).

Regardless of the dumbing-down effects of smartphones, these devices are increasingly a fact of online life. We see proof of this every time we send a Prescription article out via email – our stats indicate that at least 30% of the people reading it are doing so on a mobile phone (mainly iPhones – that’s the music industry for you!). Similarly, a significant proportion of visitors to our website – around 20% - are peering at it on their phones. Although we’d like to think that we’re the kind of hip agency that almost demands being experienced through the prism of a glossy smartphone screen, these stats are actually going to be quite similar with regard to any online bumph. (And musicians, as we know, excel at inflicting online bumph on the world.)

So, as a DIY musician plugging your wares, how do you take this new smartphone audience into account and actively cater for it? Here are a few tips:

1. Write copy that works for both desktop and mobile users

Any time you send a band e-newsletter, remember that a large proportion of your victims (sorry, recipients) will be reading it on a phone, with all the reduction in attention span that this entails. Consequently, you probably want to avoid writing an essay to your fans. Put your key ‘call to action’ (come to my gig / buy my record / be my groupie) near the top of the message, and keep waffle to a minimum. Same goes for your website really (particularly if you are not planning on having both a desktop and a mobile version of your site).

2. Avoid flashing

iOS devices don’t do Flash, and increasingly, neither do Android ones. (Try visiting a Flash website on a phone and you’ll just get a helpful blank space where the content should be.) However, for many years now bands and musicians have been big into ahem, flashing: even in the dial-up era, the web was packed full of whizzy sites packed full of flash animations. These sites cost an arm and a leg to build and took an age to load, but bands put up with this because they thought that having a flash site made them look cool. Plus ҫa change. However, these days, unless you deliberately want to confuse or irritate your smartphone audience, there is little point in having a Flash-based music site. Best to concentrate on putting together a simple music website that looks nice, loads quickly, contains great content and (crucially) captures data. If you must use Flash, get a website-building boffin to ensure your site does some OS / browser detection – this works out what kind of device or browser a visitor is using, and serves up the right sort of content accordingly (i.e., desktop users get flash; iPhone users get text etc.)

3. Ensure that your free tracks are accessible on a smartphone

A lot of bands offer free EP downloads – or even free albums – to their fans in exchange for email addresses. A lot of the time these are presented in ZIP format, with all the songs being contained within one ZIP file. This is a neat way of doing thing for desktop or laptop users…but seriously, try opening a ZIP file on an iPhone. It is doable, but it’s a royal pain in the bum. So make sure that when you give away a free track in exchange for an email address, or an interesting encounter in the green room, that the fan will actually be able to listen to the song afterwards (particularly if you’re going down the encounter-in-the-green-room route; why disappoint them twice?). One way to do this is to offer a non-zipped, down-to-earth, old-fashioned MP3 as well as a ZIP file. The former should play fine on a smartphone; and the latter will allow the user to save the content into a music folder on a PC. Another option is to also provide links to smartphone-friendly streams of your EP / album.

4. Check all your ‘online assets’ on a phone as well as a 27” monitor

If you’re a musician, the chances are you’re looking at all your online assets – websites, HTML e-newsletters, videos etc. – on a big shiny 27” iMac screen (all broke musicians have iMacs - it's an odd fact of musical life). But it's vital to check all this content on a phone too before unleashing it on the world (well ideally, on a few phones, and the odd tablet as well). A website that looks superb on the big screen may look rubbish on a phone; an e-newsletter which looks lovely in the desktop version of Gmail may be completely unreadable in the mobile version. With the increasingly large variety of devices in circulation, it’s getting difficult to create online content that works perfectly on everything; however, you should aim to ensure that your content looks good on as broad a range of devices as possible, especially iOS and Android ones.

5. Consider building a mobile site

One way to ensure that your site looks good on mobile devices is to, yes, build a mobile site. There are a truckload of services kicking around the web that make it easy to do this - one of the best-known is Dudamobile, which automatically converts your existing site into a mobile website (which you can then edit further if you so wish). You can find out more about Dudamobile here. Alternatively, annoy a web designer friend who likes your take on death-folk and wants to build your band a mobile site.

6. Be creative with smartphone technology

Don’t overlook the creative possibilities that smartphones offer musicians. Can you create a game that is somehow tied into your music? Can you develop an app that offers your fans an interesting experience which takes your music to another level (man)? Can you use smartphones to capture data at gigs? Can you use text messages to market your music? Can you release your album as an app rather than a download or CD? It’s quite easy to go overboard with this sort of thing – and spend way too much money on developers – but it is still worth thinking about, because some ideas can actually yield great results (and double up as good PR angles).

Now, put that phone down, stop reading this article and concentrate on the M25. Or flying that plane.

About The Prescription

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Typefaces: why they are important and tips on choosing the right one for your band

Prescription PR — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:21:30 +0000

Recently I bought a new pair of glasses. A pair that are a little bit more ‘out there’ than some of my previous spectacles. When I say that, I mean they are big and goofy and more in line with something that Clark Kent would sport than my more restrained, sensible eyewear purchases of yore. And to be honest, they are my sole nod to fashion. The rest of me looks as scruffy, non-descript and as ignorant of the latest trends in clothing as ever, but – oh! – you should see my eye-area. It now looks totally at home in any Dalston bar full of hip-spectacle-wearers that you care to mention. The top of my face has become fashionable; it looks like somebody has done a professional job on styling it.

I’m tempted to just leave this article at that, leaving you in awe of my spectacle-purchasing decisions and imagining what my improved eye-area looks like, but I suppose the purpose of these posts is actually to provide music promo advice, so I’d better try to find a way to turn this anecdote about glasses into something of relevance to the rock-success-craving muso. So read on and I'll explain why the transformative power of my specs is going to help your music career.

You see, a good pair of glasses is like a good typeface. Useful. Possibly sexy. Quite often cheap. Image-changing. And before you put your promo CD in the hands of any A&R guy, or point any unsuspecting music listener in the direction of your website, you need to ensure that you’re using the right fonts on both. That may sound like a ridiculously cautious approach – or overly-reverential of fonts – but there are some very good reasons for ensuring you’ve got your typeface selection right before you unleash your music on an industry contact or a member of the great unwashed.

Firstly, the typeface you use on your promotional material is one of the biggest clues about the kind of music you make. Say, for example, you are in a band called The Folk Poppers and you make polite folk pop. The drummer in the band says he knows a thing or two about graphic design, and he duly whips up a logo using a typeface called Squealer, which is rather reminiscent of the font-du-choix of AC/DC. Not knowing any better, you plaster this all over your album sleeve, your posters, your website and your e-newsletters. In doing so, you become a hard rock band before anybody’s even heard your CD full of tasteful folk-pop ditties. This of course means that you now run the risk of having to deal with some seriously confused hard rock fans who are absolutely disgusted by your CD; and worse, you might never reach the eardrums of those who are into polite folk pop, because they took a look at your album cover and assumed you were a hard rock band.

Secondly, a font can instantly tell an industry contact or potential listener how professional you are as an outfit (and thus how seriously to take you). For example, if you design promotional material that makes extensive use of Comic Sans, you immediately come across as amateurish. Your tracks may sound great – recorded with vintage analogue synthesisers run through valve pre-amps that only accept inputs from cables that end with quarter-inch jacks made of gold – but if the song titles are presented in Comic Sans, well, seriously, you’re screwed. That’s the kind of font that mums and dads get the pleasure of seeing when they receive a newsletter from a playgroup. It screams ‘small time’. Childish. Local. Unambitious. Not very rock and roll. And ultimately unworthy of further exploration. (Note to any kindergarten-users or proprietors amongst you: it's fine, however, for playgroups to use it; probably quite appropriate).

It all comes down to this: in showbiz, preconceptions are everything. And typefaces are actually one of the earliest generators of these preconceptions. Like band photos, they technically don’t have anything to do with the kind of noise your band makes – but they sure as hell make people think they know what you sound like, without you ever playing a note.

So, given all the above, how do you actually get your band typeface right? Here are some tips:

Before you start thinking about fonts, think about your music. What kind of noise do you REALLY make? Try to nail down the genre as best you can as this will eventually inform your typeface choice. (This can be surprisingly difficult in these post-post-post-modern days of ours, but try your best.)
Do some research. Look at the typefaces used by bands that operate in the same genre as you and compile a list of potential fonts that get your act into the right ‘font ballpark’.
Use tools like Myfonts.com to see what your band’s name looks like in a particular typeface (just whack your act’s name into the ‘sample text’ box above font search results). If you see another band using a particular font, and are minded to nick it, you can also use Myfonts.com’s “What the Font” tool to find out what the name of that typeface is (by uploading a screengrab of it).
Once you’ve decided on a particular typeface, gauge opinion on it – ask some music industry professionals, your Facebook fans, etc. what they make of it, and if they think it 1) suits the sort of music you play and 2) looks professional.
Remember that if you want to use a particular font for general body copy on a website, there must be a ‘web font’ version of it available. However, if you are particularly keen on a using a typeface for your band name, but there isn’t a web font version available, you can just convert the band name text to a graphic – for use in headers and so on – and use a similar / complimentary webfont for general text on the site. (A good source of free web fonts is Google Fonts).
If you feel in any way out of your depth with typefaces, do consider getting a graphic designer on board – and preferably one that regularly works with bands (rather than one who does corporate stuff – you don’t want to end up with your band’s name looking like the Barclay’s logo or similar).

And finally, remember this above all else: there is nothing funny about Comic Sans. Even if you are in a comedy band that sings extremely jovial songs, it is still worth avoiding like the plague.

About The Prescription

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How to pitch your tracks to the music industry

Prescription PR — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:58:03 +0000

Here’s a bit of bad news: musicians need to view themselves not just as tortured souls who put heart on sleeve and plectrum to guitar, but sales people. Yep, sadly (and you probably already knew this deep down anyway), as a muso, you are as much in the business of doing a cold sell as you are making that beautiful brand of neo-shoegaze-goth-dubstep-grimey-indie-post-rock.

Once you face the inevitable and embrace your role as a sales rep, invariably you will find yourself approaching managers, publishers, producers, record labels, journalists, bloggers, film directors and tea boys trying to convince them of the merits of your music; you may even end up trying to convince selective radio pluggers and PR companies, who you actually want to pay, that it is worth taking money off you. And, as any sales rep (or hapless Apprentice contestant) will tell you, how successful you are at selling will all boil down to the quality of the pitch.

Fortunately, there is some good news: we at Prescription PR are here to give you some key tips on how to sell your music to the music industry.

1. Know your audience

Research who you are approaching in depth. It doesn’t matter if you are talking to an MD of a record company, a journalist at The Guardian or a teenager who’s doing work experience at a local studio, you need to

be sure that they actually deal with the kind of music you make and
be able to demonstrate to that person that you are familiar with the kind of things they do, or artists they work with.

That way, you can avoid wasting people’s time (including your own) and personalise your approach. An industry contact is far more likely to deal with you if it is obvious that you know about, and more importantly, are interested in, the kinds of things they do. So mention that A&R’s roster / latest project / new haircut and how much you admire it when you are talking to them. We all have egos that need to be stroked.

2. Make it easy for people you are approaching to hear your music

As we now live in a digitised global village, yada yada, most initial pitches these days will take place over email. And people get tons of emails. And when they open an email, they don't really read it in any depth whatsoever. As such, it’s vital that you make it really quick and easy for the people you are hassling to actually hear your music. So, ensure prominent links to both a stream AND a download are present in all emails (so that people can listen to something immediately and also whack it on their iPod and jog to your dulcet tones later). Soundcloud and Dropbox respectively – two excellent free services – are good for letting you do this. (It’s even worth offering to send people a CD upon if they want one, as some people have an odd attachment to and reliance upon this antiquated format.)

3. Don’t crash anybody's Outlook

Don’t attach a 40MB surround sound version of your song to an email to anyone. (You may think the above advice is so obvious that it is not worth imparting, but you’d be surprised at the number of alarmingly huge files that get sent to Prescription PR, and how they bugger up our email. And yes, we're talking music here, not saucy pics.) Even in this day and age of uber-fast broadband, big files crash email programs and there are very few things in life more irritating than the spinning wheel / blue screen of death that invariably pops up when a musician thinks it appropriate to send ridiculously big files to a genial and sexy but unsuspecting, tired and overworked music publicist. Even if you eschew the well-known 'attachment method' of annoying industry contacts, providing links to very big WAV files that take ages to download will also probably ensure that your music never gets played by the people you’re sending it to. A link to a stream and a download of a well-produced but relatively petite MP3 file is generally the way to go.

4. Provide a good range of background information about your act – but don’t overdo it

Include a brief summary of your act’s history and music in your pitch emails. Give your contacts a good sense of who you are, what kind of noise you make and a short list of past achievements. But don’t go overboard and write an essay; if you must wax lyrical about your band, provide links in your pitch email to locations where you are doing said waxing – for example, point people in the direction of that tenderly-crafted biography on your website which says that you’re the best thing since Peter Andre. Other perhaps more helpful things to point people in the direction of include hi-res pictures, videos of you performing live and so on. Or hard cash.

5. Ensure your promotional materials look and sound good

Be selective about what you send people. If you have crappy band pics, it may be wiser to omit them from your pitch than send an A&R a boring, low-res picture your mate took of your slightly overweight band standing up up against a wall in Hackney. And, of course, make sure the music you send is produced to a good standard. Even if you’ve just written the modern day equivalent of Bohemian Rhapsody, make sure you’re not just emailing people a demo of it recorded on a dictaphone. These days, every musician has a Pro Tools setup in their lavatory and music industry contacts generally expect higher production values as a result of these now-ubiquitous studios-in-the-jacks.

6. Don’t pitch until you’re ready

It’s very tempting, upon recording that sure-fire hit, to think “God, that’s an amazing song, I’m so talented, I simply must send this demo post-haste to that A&R called Nigel that I met the other night in that interesting bar in Soho.” But wait a minute. What if Nigel actually likes the demo? Have you any other songs to follow it up with that will further pique his interest? Are there any gigs planned? Do you have 100,000 Facebook fans handy to help you fit into the ‘low-hanging fruit’ category of artist that gets signed these days? Nigel has a short attention span. He’ll listen to your song once. But even if he likes it, if you don’t have any more material, gigs or any sort of a fanbase handy, it’s likely that Nigel will stop taking your calls pretty quickly. The lesson: don't pitch until you're ready.

And finally, after reading this article, don’t send Prescription your latest album and ask us to do our usual great music PR campaign thingy for you. Oh alright then, I suppose you can. Here’s the link.

About The Prescription

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Four things today's bands can learn from David Bowie's comeback

Prescription PR — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:13:44 +0000

Music has come a long way since David Bowie’s legendary 1972 Top of the Pops appearance – the one where he flung his arm casually and camply around Mick Ronson, and proceeded to blast out one of the catchiest songs about a gay alien (Starman) you are ever likely to hear. Yes, things have changed alright. We have (nearly) abolished ‘physical’ music; we’ve shut down HMV; and we give away music for free not for people's listening pleasure but in order to make databases.

Yet amidst all these sad developments, with the surprise announcement of the release of new album The Next Day, Mr Bowie has managed to make a comeback that seems almost as arresting as his 1972 Top of the Pops appearance. And there is a hell of a lot that today’s young musical whippersnappers can learn from it; read on for a few lessons from the still-quite-thin, 66-year-old white duke.

1. Silence is golden

In this instant-communications era of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and whatnot, it is incredibly tempting for today's bands and artists to say something online every five minutes. Whether constantly imploring people to buy their next album or letting their Facebook fans know what they've just had for lunch, bands – both unsigned and established – never seem to shut up (a sin that I, whilst wearing my musician's hat, have been guilty of too)

Contrast that with Bowie, who kept 100% mum for 10 years regarding what he was up to musically, meaning that when he actually had something important to say ('hi guys, I've got a new album out') it was said with maximum impact. Now admittedly most artists are not rock legends like Bowie and simply being quiet for ages and then suddenly issuing a press release is not going to shock the music world to remotely the same extent as Bowie’s surprise comeback. However, there is still a huge amount to be said for the ‘less is more’ approach to communicating music news; and, as mentioned previously on this blog a bit of enigma (read silence) can occasionally do your band the power of good.

The key thing for bands to remember is to use that new arsenal of social media tools judiciously. Ensure every status update is genuinely interesting; don’t hit your mailing list with e-newsletters every week; and only send press releases to journalists and bloggers if there is an absolute need to. The way that Bowie announced the release of his new album was a classic example of quality of communications trumping quantity; and you will note that in his first message about his music in 10 years or so, he didn’t mention that he had a chicken kiev for lunch.

2. Live up to the hype

I still haven’t forgiven the international community of rock critics for persuading me to purchase a copy of Oasis’ Be Here Now album back in 1997, so I’m not quite ready to buy their unanimous conclusion that Bowie’s new album is as good as Ziggy Stardust or whatever. However, even after only a couple of listens it is clear that there are some very strong songs on the album – it’s fairly apparent that Bowie has done enough here to (largely) live up to the hype that the dramatic announcement of the record’s existence generated.

Again, few (if any) bands will ever find themselves in a situation where their next release is accompanied by as much hype as The Next Day, but nonetheless, some artists who have yet to release anything will find themselves in a position where they are starting to get feted by some very cool people indeed (Instagram-food-snapping dudes with a slight tendency to overuse the words ‘subtle’ and ‘textures’ when discussing music). The natural reaction to being talked up by such types is to seize the moment and rush out a half-baked record. This is always a bad move. It is far better to bide your time and concentrate on putting together the strongest album you can rather than release something that fails to live up to the hype. For nothing offends a fashionable champion of your band more than a mediocre record that makes the aforementioned champion look a bit silly. And, if it’s a mediocre album, the average music fan isn’t going to like it anyway.

3. Work with interesting people

Most bands these days have a laptop and a copy of Pro Tools or Logic, which means (in theory) that they have a state of the art recording studio at their disposal. Having this studio on tap often leads these bands to think that they can ‘do it all themselves’ without involving producers, arrangers and engineers (the financial implications of involving such professionals also puts them off). But working with really good people can do wonders for an album, in two ways: firstly, it can seriously improve the quality of the results, and secondly, if the producer / mix engineer etc. constitutes a ‘name’, this can add a dash of kudos to the project and help generate mediate interest around it. Bowie’s choice to work again with the legend that is Tony Visconti certainly didn’t hurt this release; nor did getting Tilda Swinton involved in the video for single The Stars Are Out Tonight; or letting long-time collaborator and guitar hero Earl Slick noodle all over his songs again.

Your band might not be able to get these sort of high-profile dudes on board that easily – but that shouldn’t stop you trying to get talented people to contribute. Even getting a decent mix engineer to do your final bit of knob-twiddling could pluck your record straight out of the amateur division and transform it into something that, sonically at least, could give The Next Day a run for its money.

4. Write / record significantly more than you release

I’ve always believed that whilst music-making involves a lot of artistry, skill, effort and so on, sometimes you just get lucky and a good song seems to pop along out of thin air (Yesterday by McCartney being a case in point – he just woke up one day with it going round his head). Simply put, the more you write, the greater the odds become of this kind of musical serendipity popping up and slapping you round the face (maybe this is because the more practice you get at doing something, generally speaking, the better you get at doing it).

Now, if the good contributors at Wikipedia are to be believed, Bowie recorded 29 tracks for this album – but how many songs made it on? 14: less than half. If the ‘record way more than you need’ way of doing things is good enough for Bowie, I suggest you investigate this approach too. Or think of it as an argument in favour of editing your album heavily: try to make it all killer, no filler; leave out the self-indulgent numbers. This has always been sage (and obvious) advice, but in an era where people can download individual tracks from an album and skip the dodgy stuff, it makes no sense to put duffers on your record.

Can Bowie learn anything from today's bands?

Finally, I think there’s something that Bowie could learn from us er, ‘modern’ musos. Frankly, he needs to improve his website, which is currently more of a brochure than a tool for selling music. There’s three simple things he could do to make it better:

Capture data in exchange for songs (Dave, think about the HUGE database you could have ended up with simply by giving away a download of Where Are We Now? in exchange for an email address)
Add a few social media icons – a few Facebook followers can’t hurt
Add a blog: nothing generates repeat visits to a well-known artist’s website like the occasional blog post which comes straight from the artist’s er, keyboard.

Maybe Bowie and/or his team feel that employing the above sort of tactics would make him less mysterious (the way that he shrouds himself in mystery is of course an enduring part of his appeal); or perhaps he just didn’t hire Prescription PR to build his website. Maybe, for all of today’s emphasis on online marketing, you just don’t need a database or even a website when your single is on Radio 2 every 5 minutes.

Anyway, who am I to tell Bowie how to do things? He has staged a remarkable re-entry into the music industry and showed other musicians – yet again – how it’s done. So much so that I’m now off to plan my own comeback. My fans will be very excited. (That’s you, mum.)

About The Prescription

'The Prescription' is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications and Irish PR at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton. If you enjoyed this article we'd be very grateful if you could share it - just use the 'share article' link below.

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today. We offer music PR, digital marketing and music web design services.

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A bento box of music promotion advice delights

Prescription PR — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:37:07 +0000

As regular readers of The Prescription will know, I generally write articles every couple of weeks or so about a particular topic of music promotion. These are usually full-length, meaty affairs which delve into one particular topic, and here at Prescription we like to think of them as the music promo advice equivalent of steak and chips (complete with a generous splash of pepper sauce) served up to our subscribers. However in the light of the recent horsemeat scandal we’re feeling suddenly less gone on steak, so this week we thought we’d offer you sushi – namely, an online bento box of sorts stocked with links to some interesting music promo advice we have (shock!) come across on other sites. Read on for some delicious and hopefully not-too-fishy articles on the likes of the Facebook v Twitter debate; why small is the new big; the importance of having 1000 true fans; what can be learnt from Michael Bublé; why success in the music industry really is all down to who you know and more. Enjoy…

The Facebook V Twitter debate

Which is better for marketing your music – Facebook or Twitter? Well, over at CD Baby’s DIY musician’s blog, there’s a dude who reckons Twitter is much better, and he gives you four reasons why.

Why small is the new big

I came across an old 2005 blog post by US marketing guru Seth Godin recently which caught my attention; it’s about why ‘small is the new big’. Since small is the new big, I won’t expand on what he’s talking about – read the post yourself and find out. What I will say is that 8 years after Godin started going on about this, the idea is probably more relevant today than ever before, and particularly to musicians. Check out Seth’s post here.

The 1,000 true fans

Another oldie – but a goldie, and one that all DIY musicians should read: Kevin Kelly’s very popular post on how finding ‘1000 true fans’ might be a way to actually make a living from music. Read the ‘1000 True Fans’ post here.

Michael Bublé’s 10,000 hours

Writer Malcolm Gladwell reckons that if you put 10,000 hours into something, that’s when you start to get lucky. And Make it in Music think that Michael Bublé’s career is a prime example of this. Interesting post which also doubles up as a pep talk to dispirited musicians – check it out on the Make It In Music site here.

It’s all who you know

There is much truth in the words ‘it’s all who you know’ – and this delightful post on Music Think Tank explains very neatly why. Read it and find out how simply buying a dude a pizza lead to all manner of opportunities in the music industry.

The money is in the list

Finally, here’s a bit of seaweed to end on: one of our own posts (I lied when we said we would just include links to other people’s work). It’s called ‘The Money Is In The List’ and dates all the way back to September 2011; it’s about how even in this age of Facebook and Twitter, your email database is possibly the most important thing to develop and stay on top of. It’s not one of our most-read posts (odd given that it’s got the word ‘money’ in the title) but it’s one of our most important. Read the article here.

Right, I'm off to get smashed on Sake.

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The demise of HMV and the implications for musicians

Prescription PR — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 21:19:21 +0000

Three letters have dominated music industry news recently: HMV. Much has been written (quite rightly) about the sad fact that thousands of people may lose their jobs, directly or indirectly, if and when the chain disappears from the high street. We’ve also seen a lot of chat about the implications of HMV’s demise for the music industry as a whole. Will any independent stores crop up to fill the HMV-shaped holes on the streets of Carlisle, Dublin, Dundee or Humberside? Is this the final death knell of the CD? With nowhere in Stevenage to buy CDs anymore, will any remaining (and heavily bearded) CD buyers turn to that Amazon thingy, where ne’er-do-wells roam the digital streets selling signed copies of classic albums for as little as 1p?

One question that hasn’t really been asked enough for my liking, however, is this: what does the closure of HMV mean for musicians? You would think that in any discussion regarding the death of a high street store, some thought might be spared for the group of people that are technically the key players in the supply chain – the bands and artists that make the product (that would be, ahem, ‘music’).

But I kind of understand why nobody has really been banging on about poor musicians losing an outlet to sell their wares from. This is because most musicians’ output was never anywhere to be found in HMV. There just wasn’t enough space in there to house everybody’s latest concept album about beans. As a rule of thumb, only stuff that sold in good quantities was stocked, and if it sold ok, it must have been made by a rock star, and all rock stars are loaded and just blow their money on charlie anyway, so why worry about them? To be fair, anyone thinking like that probably had a bit of a point.

The fact is, in a practical or financial sense, HMV’s closure means little for the average artist, who no doubt has global distribution for that album about beans sorted via iTunes, Amazon and so on...but can’t get a single copy into HMV to save his life (not, as we found out, that very many shoppers would be present in HMV anyway to buy that copy).

Nonetheless, I think that the demise of HMV does have a big impact on musicians: a psychological one.

You see, even in this age of digital-everything, being able to invite girls (or indeed boys) into a HMV store – under the pretence of buying some records – and casually hanging out beside the rack where your CD casually happened to be residing was a Very Special Thing. It was a) something to aspire to and b) something that sort of indicated you’d 'made it' to some degree or other. Yet now, the closure of HMV kills that noble dream of impressing girls (or indeed boys) by showing them your CD sandwiched between Simply Red and Jessica Simpson.

If you are still reading this blog post after encountering that last sentence, then congratulations and yes, I jest a bit. But there is a serious point here: making music is a bloody difficult, time-consuming and generally unrewarding business, and if you are in the middle of recording that incredibly difficult twentieth album and you see HMV closing down, you are bound to think ‘oh crap, it’s bad enough that nobody buys music any more but now there are actually NO SHOPS to buy it in.’ This, naturally enough, leads you to wonder what the hell you are making that record for.

Well, I’ll tell you what you’re making that record for: your ears, and the ears of other people. Yes, getting it into the ears of the latter group is a constantly changing process – enough to make you dizzy, give you vertigo and throw up all over the place. But this state of flux is nothing new; the music industry has always been completely entwined with fast-developing technology. Popular music used to be exclusively about playing live; then along came wax cylinders. That gramaphone that the HMV dog stuck its head into. Reel to reel tape. Vinyl. The humble cassette. CD. Minidiscs. The MP3. Pro Tools. The rise of Myspace. The fall of Myspace. Streaming. iPods. iTunes. Autotune. Spotify. The return of Peter Andre. Whatever Apple throw at us next. iDunno.

The difference for musicians today is that the pace of change has got to a point where we are now galloping along at insane speed; computers are doubling in power every 18 months, and as you've probably heard me say before, the music industry all happens on a computer these days. Which is why of course HMV, with its quaint emphasis on shiny plastic discs, bit the dust.

But none of this means that people will stop loving music – it’s arguably more popular than ever (it’s certainly more accessible). And that’s why, HMV or no, you should make that difficult twentieth album. Because it might be your best yet (or your first good one). Because you never know what good music can do, or where it can take you. Throughout history, and despite the music industry’s best efforts, good music has shown itself to have an endearing habit of sticking its head above the parapet and making itself heard.

So I guess the key thing that musicians can take from the demise of HMV is this: put it in context. This industry changes every five minutes. Don’t get too hung up on the methods of distribution and delivery, just make sure the song’s stonkingly great. Above all else, that is the key requirement for reaching all those waxy ears.

(Or just get a boob job and phone Nigel).

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Time to stop inviting friends to your gigs?

Prescription PR — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:41:50 +0000

Friends: just don't invite them.

Being in a new band is a sure way to make sure you stay in touch with your friends. This because as a spankingly new band, nobody will have heard of you…meaning you won’t have any real fans, and will rely on your chums to provide the bums on the seats at gigs you play. As such you will find yourself staying in touch with even the most boring individuals just so that you can invite them to your next gig. We’ve all been there, and irritated lots of people in the process (or been irritated by the aforementioned boring gig invitees).

However, there comes a point where it’s prudent to start looking beyond your ‘friendbase’ and start trying to build a genuine ‘fanbase’. This 'having-a-fanbase' business, of course, is generally the key ingredient to being a popstar, but this essential fact is easy to forget – or wilfully ignore. Making proper fans is difficult and the soft option is to pester friends regularly to come along to your next show. And pester we musicians do – via phone, email, Facebook, letter, carrier pigeon…but it is ultimately a fairly self-defeating strategy.

What generally happens with friendbases is this: your first gig with your new band is a sell-out. All your mates, and your bandmates’ mates come out in force to support you. You feel like a rock star for 15 minutes, you end up getting off with your guitarist’s sexy but impressionable second cousin and, high on success, decide to put on another show a couple of weeks later. This show is reasonably well attended by your friends, but as you start to play your second shoegazing-hip-hop-grimey-post-rock number, you get a niggling feeling that there are quite a few mates who came to the first gig who didn’t bother to come along to the second. By the time your third gig comes around, you’re struggling to pull a crowd. By the fourth show, even your mum and dad are busy that night. No amount of Facebook-ing, tweeting or personal appeals is going to reverse this situation.

You shouldn’t be offended by this. After all, when you became mates with somebody you did so based on common interests; a shared concern for each other; a mutual love of Carry On films; delighting in some sort of bedroom peccadillo that might actually be illegal. Your best mate Charlie Chum absolutely did not befriend you just so that he could attend every single gig you are ever going to play in your life. And, what’s more, Charlie may adore you – but not your music. In fact he might not like music at all. So why subject a mate repeatedly to something he doesn’t like? Frankly, it’s not very nice of you. And besides which, Charlie prefers watching footie at home on a Monday night to trooping down to the local Dog and Duck for a gig, and has a very busy life involving 2 kids…which is why he is washing his hair by gig 3. You can't compete with football and nappy-changing (or both) indefinitely; the nappies ALWAYS win.

Besides all that, friends aren't evangelical about your music - most will view it as your hobby and who spreads the word about people's hobbies? - but real fans, when they get on the case, can seriously wax lyrical about you. So if you want to grow in popularity, you HAVE to build a fanbase (there is also the added bonus that by ceasing to invite your mates to gigs all the time you might stop losing friends and alienating people). The question is: how do you build this fanbase? It's very difficult, and involves loads of work, but based on my experience of building my own, er, shall we say 'boutique fanbase', and watching other (infinitely more successful) acts go about it, these are the main things you need to do:

1 Write great songs, and ensure they are stonkingly-well produced. Easier said than done of course, but if you don’t get the music right, nobody’s going to like it enough to become a fan.

2 Give some of this music away for free – in exchange, preferably, for an email address. Some acts are a bit sniffy about doing this, but people need to hear your tracks in order to be able to like them (hence the freebie) and you need some way to communicate with fans (hence the nabbing of an email address).

3 Find ways of targeting people who will actually like your music. If you happen to be the next Rod Stewart, maybe find some Rod Stewart fan groups on the internet and ask them (politely) to have a listen to your tracks, invite them to give some feedback etc. Find the correct audience: don’t go onto One Direction forums flogging your ‘Maggie May’-inspired EP.

4 Rehearse your ass off, because you will need to be a great live act in time for my next suggestion.

5 Play loads of gigs that are not 'yours' – i.e., where you are not topping the bill (or booking the venue and taking the door etc.). Put your ego aside for ten minutes (well, ten years) and play second fiddle to as many already popular bands as you can. In a nutshell, the aim of the game is to nick other bands' fans. And of course, don't bother playing live at all unless you are truly fantastic.

6 Try to capture as much data as humanly possible at each and every gig. Again, you need to stay in contact with the people who like your music. Use this data to invite people to the next show.

7 Repeat steps 1 to 6 until you are not relying on any cousins to make the crowd look decent.

If you manage all the above correctly, and are finding yourself in that happy place where you have a lot of genuine fans downloading your music and attending gigs, it’s time to take things a step further, by seeing if you can get some industry / media figures enthused about your act. It’s these sort of ‘filters’ / gatekeepers that can ‘upscale’ your project and increase the number of fans. This can be done via a lot of research into who's who in the music biz, creating big Excel spreadsheets of industry contacts, and approaching them extremely carefully and methodically with your music. Heck, you could even consider hiring the likes of Prescription to do the hard work for you. It’s really important however not to overdo the communications – just as your friends will get peeved by being nagged about your music, so will industry figures, journalists and bloggers. Often, the key thing is to ask for advice rather than a record deal – people in the entertainment industry tend to have big egos and love venturing an opinion, so you might have a better chance of forming a relationship with, say, a Svengali by acting like you find him/her interesting and getting their insights on the future of the CD (there isn’t one – you heard it here first) instead of bombarding them with your music.

Now, one last thought on all this: there is still a place for your friends – there are times when you will still REALLY need them. For example, in a crowd-funding project, or to support you at a very important showcase. You don’t need to write them off completely – you just need to think hard about when to blag a favour. And in the meantime, go out looking for real fans. Good hunting.

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10 New Year’s resolutions to kick start your music career

Prescription PR — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:58:52 +0000

Welcome to 2013, folks. The first few days of a new year are generally the time when you start to think about how to do things differently, so in this post I thought I’d share some resolutions to help you kick-start your music career in 2013.

1. I will focus on the music first

Being a musician these days seems to involve dividing your time between making music and nattering about it with your fan(s) on Facebook and other social networks. Your first resolution this year should be to put Facebook aside, and put the music first. By all means keep your online presence, twittering and so on relatively up to date – but not at the expense of producing great music. Lock yourself in a room with a guitar (or indeed any musical weapon of choice, with the possible exception of bagpipes) until you are 100% satisfied that you have some great songs really worth talking about. Then, and only then, go out and talk about them.

2. I will ensure I have a great website

Yes, Facebook, Twitter and so on are all great for spreading the word about your music, but nothing beats a good website. By having a good site, you’ll ensure that you have a professional online presence; options regarding SEO (search engine optimisation); and ultimate flexibility and control over how you present your band to the world. To really understand why a band website is so important, I recommend reading this great article by Make it in Music on why music sites matter, and Prescription’s key tips for building a great band website.

3. I will take a religious approach to capturing email addresses

Capturing email addresses - using dedicated tools like Mad Mimi, Getresponse or similar - is absolutely essential for any artist (regardless of the level of their success), because a) it allows you to communicate direct to fans and b) you own the data. Having this direct link to your fans allows you to maximise music sales and gig attendance. Whilst it’s nice to have large Facebook fan / Twitter follower counts, don’t forget that people will only see your messages if an algorithm lets them and, crucially, if the social network continues to be successful. You only have to think of how much effort bands put into adding Myspace friends in the mid-naughties, and how useless that effort all seems now, to understand why having a large database of email addresses is a much more attractive prospect. Besides which, you can import that list into most social networks anyway. Get clued up about the importance of building an email database here.

4. I will not come across as an idiot online

The internet is rightly seen as the key place where artists forge relationships with fans – so why do so many bands and artists use their online presence to come across as complete idiots? Either they regularly spout inanities or keep posting ‘buy me’ links every five minutes on Facebook and Twitter. This year, make a resolution to stop bludgeoning your friends, family members and fans with boring messages about your music and think before you open your online mouth. Here are some key tips on how to manage your online reputation properly.

5. I will take my image seriously

Too many artists obsess over how much their album sounds like it was recorded on a big reel of tape in the 1970s and mixed on a consule packed full of valves – only to forget that sadly, in addition to sounding cool, you’ve got to look cool too to impress those pesky filtering gatekeeper types. Don’t forget to spend some time getting your image right, and ensuring your band photography is up to scratch.

6. I will blog. And not just about me / my band

One of the best ways to generate traffic to a website is ensuring it is packed full of content that people want to read. And the easiest way to arrive at that happy situation is by blogging about interesting stuff – according to research by inbound marketing agency Hubspot, businesses (and yes, like it or not, you are actually a business) that blog regularly receive around 55% more hits to their site than those that don't. Every hit to your site is a chance for you to expose somebody to your music, or capture their email address. The key thing is this: don’t make your blog all about you – people are searching for other, more interesting stuff. Find out why blogging is so important, and how to do it right, here.

7. I will manage my time wisely

If you’re anything like me, you’re juggling a job, a music career, a baby and a cat. And it’s tough, with music-making and music promo often taking a back seat. But there are strategies that can help you make the most of your time to make the most of your music – find out about time-saving tips for musicians here.

8. I will think creatively about how to get my music out there

There are many ways to skin a cat, as a record store owner I once worked for said about a very unfortunate cat. So instead of taking the bog-standard approach of putting your album up on iTunes and hoping against hope that somebody actually buys it, why not take some time to dream up some interesting ways to fund and release it? Sometimes creative ideas regarding both can actually land you a great PR angle too. You might find our ideas on funding the making of your album and interesting formats to release it on helpful.

9. I will plan my project carefully

You have a home studio. You have 10 songs. You are making an album. You are going to upload it onto iTunes. People will buy it in droves. Simple, yes? Well actually, no. Despite a plethora of self-promotion and self-distribution options now being available, releasing an album is actually deceptively difficult business, and if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. As such, we suggest that you make this the year that you take a bit of notice of project planning – here’s an article about why it really, really matters and how to go about creating a killer project plan. We’d also suggest that if you’re going to release an album independently this year that you check out our guide to avoiding the pitfalls associated with DIY music promotion, and read our checklist of the key things you must do when releasing an album independently.

10. I will talk to Prescription PR

Contrary to belief, we don’t just write articles about music promo – we do it day in, day out for artists we – and many others - love. So if you’re planning on releasing something this year, do get in touch for a conversation about how we can help.

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A look at the music industry in 2013 – and some Prescription goodies to help you cope with it

Prescription PR — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:43:19 +0000

Maybe the Mayans were talking about the end of the music industry...

As I sit here waiting to find out if the ancient Mayans were correct or not, I’ve been pondering two things: firstly, shall I bother with another fancypants coffee (I don’t want to pay for one if an apocalypse prevents me finishing it) and secondly, assuming we’re not all doomed, what is going to happen to the music industry in 2013?

For many musicians, it may seem that the Mayan prophesy is coming true and we are all doomed: with fewer and fewer people prepared to pay for CDs and downloads, and streaming services like Spotify offering paltry royalties for each play, bands might be forgiven for thinking that the Mayans were correct all along and it really is the end of the world as we know it, without anybody feeling particularly fine.

However, there is a flipside. Ok, so bands might not be making as much cash as they used to from sales – and let’s not forget that even in the glory days of the music industry, 99.9% of bands never did – but making and promoting music is getting much, much easier and cheaper. The same digital revolution which has killed off CD sales has also…

made recording equipment incredibly affordable, meaning pro-quality albums can be recorded in toilets
made studio time much cheaper, as pro studios now have to compete with the toilet-studio-owner in question
made global distribution of music a reality for any band
provided all manner of cheap digital advertising and communications tools to musicians
reduced the need for physical manufacture (with an associated reduction in costs)
arguably made music promotion services cheaper, due to increased competition in the music promotion services market
reduced costs associated with music promo (in terms of postage, phone calls, promo manufacture, boozy lunches and so on – much of these can be handled online).

So basically, there’s a weird trade-off. In today’s music industry you are able to make and promote your music more easily and cheaply than ever before, but you are considerably less able to generate any cash from sales. And it doesn’t take a Mayan prophesier to tell you that in 2013, we are simply going to travel further and more quickly in this direction, possibly because the music industry lives on a computer in a shed these days, and computers – as any aficiando of Moore’s Law will tell you – double in power every two years whilst falling significantly in cost.

So as I peer into my crystal ball for 2013, I simply see even fewer people buying CDs, fewer people downloading music and more people streaming it via Spotify of similar services. (And of course if iTunes switches to being a streaming service rather than a download store, it’s really game over for music sales.)

So how do musicians cope with this? What is the point of making music if it’s looking increasingly like something that can’t be sold? Well, I’d start off any coping strategy by accentuating the positives. As a band making a racket today, and as discussed above, you have access to a whole range of things that even 15 years ago would have been completely out of your reach – incredibly affordable studio time / equipment, global distribution, cheap promo deals and direct access to listeners via social media and online communications. It’s incredible how these things (that would have looked like magic back in the late 90s) have become completely taken for granted by a lot of bands, but they are the key (and often overlooked) ingredients to creating something which is at the heart of any successful music project: a fanbase. This fanbase may not pay for your recordings, but they may be able to support you in several other ways – for example, through paying to see you live; buying merchandise; and acting as a street team that delivers vital word-of-mouth marketing.

In order to get anywhere near having a 'monetised fanbase' though, you need to do three things:

1) Create stonkingly great music
2) Work the ‘digital system’ very hard
3) Think like a business (yes, I know, yuck) and explore every avenue when thinking about monetising your music

I can’t help you with the first part of this recipe for success, but it’s my hope that over the past year or so, our Prescription articles have provided some insights into going about the second and third parts. So, as we bid farewell to 2012 (and perhaps existence if the Mayans are correct), I thought I’d provide you with some links to some of our favourite music promo articles from the Prescription archives. May they help you in your 2013 quest for rock/dance/hip-hop/indie/shoe-gazing glory (delete as appropriate). You’ll find them below – think of them as the online equivalent of a box of Quality Street from us to you. Thank you for reading The Prescription in 2012, we hope you have a great Christmas, and we wish you every success for 2013 (and don't forget, that we are always happy to discuss ways that you can achieve this - feel free to contact us for a chat about any projects you have coming up in 2013).

Life is like a box of chocolates - articles from the archive…

Leather pants, rock gods, groupies and er, project planning? Some key tips on planning your music project successfully
Building the perfect music website - our dos and don’ts when it comes to designing your band’s website.
Rock success – the Ryanair way - how – gulp – thinking like Michael O’Leary could bring you music success
The money is in the list - why an email database is still vital to any music promo project and how to go about generating one
Let’s get physical - why musicians shouldn’t forget about cds, tapes and records in a digital age
Managing your online reputation - how to ensure your band comes across well online
The key things you MUST do when releasing an album independently - absolute must-read tips for anyone releasing an album without a label
Getting your fans to fund your album - advice for getting the most out of the new ‘crowd-funding’ approach to album releases
How good is your music marketing? - a simple way to check how good you are at marketing your music
Top online tools for promoting your music - a list of some of our favourite tools for promoting your music
The 80/20 rule and what it means for the music industry - how an observation by an Italian statistician can help your music promo efforts
Getting your act’s image right - advice on how to avoid looking like an idiot (something which is Very Important in the music industry…)
A guide to blogging for musicians - how blogging can help you promote your music – and how to do it right
Inbound marketing and what it means for musicians - an explanation of a very useful approach to promotion called ‘inbound marketing’ and how to apply it
Don’t forget the photography - essential tips on avoiding ending up with bad – or even worse, boring – band photos.