While the article itself does discuss the notion of whether bands from prior decades would make it today, the bulk of the article actually focuses on how artists need to look at and approach the music industry of today.  Much of the advice and observations are things that I’ve posted about before and plan to explore more fully once the site’s at 100% – ideas such as the importance of playing locally and the death of the major labels, which are prominently mentioned and are ideas that I happen to agree with.

John Hartmann, a former record company executive and manager is quoted as saying:

“If you can’t make it at home, you can’t make it anywhere,” he explained. “If you can make it at home, you can make it anywhere. You don’t need a record company, you don’t need a tour.”

Hartmann recommends concentrating on a 100-mile radius around where you live, noting that if you’re act doesn’t have an impact there, then something may be wrong.

I’ve found that artists that concentrate on where they are now and what they’re doing tend to do better than artists that try to take on the world all at once. If you’re just starting out and you obsess over national exposure and “getting signed,” then you probably won’t get either. If you set your sights on your local scene and getting exposure there, then your chances of success greatly increase… and if you make enough noise locally, someone will hear you in the larger world.

But, I have to warn you that while it’s up, I haven’t officially relaunched yet. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s complicated. You see, I had a lot of really good stuff built into the site, and it’s going to take a bit to get it all straight. Plus, I’m taking things in a new direction – sort of – and I need to announce that as well.

So if you’re interested by the new site and promise of things to come, please sign up for the feed or the mailing list and stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to showing you the new site.

-P

I have a teenage son who tells me his pirating music is no big deal. Since he is a musician himself, I point out to him that someday that’s going to be his money people are stealing. But he remains unphased.

He tells me the record sales make money for the record label, not the artist. He says that the artists make all their money from touring and live concerts. He thinks the pirated music promotes the concerts and therefore helps the artist make more money. I still don’t allow pirating in my house.

But tell me what you think – as artists out there having your work “shared,” are you just glad to have it being enjoyed, or does it bother you? Admittedly, he is stealing music that is recorded by major record labels, so maybe its different than the independent musician working for his living. But I’d still like to hear what you think.

Thanks,
Valerie

The good new is, you’re right.  The bad news is, you’re wrong.

You’re right in that your son shouldn’t share music and make himself prone to getting sued by the RIAA.  It seems that in going after file sharers, the record industry has created an income stream.  By taking part in file sharing, your son would be liable to pay thousands of dollars in a settlement fees to support an obsolete industry.

It sucks but it’s true.

Your son, however, is completely correct in his assertion that he is not stealing from the artist.  The truth is that the record industry has been milking the artist since it began.
The business end of the record industry essentially exists for manufacturing and distribution and that’s it.  The artist creates a product and handles most of the real heavy lifting as far as making a salable product.  Once that’s done, the rest of the industry takes it, packages it and sends it to the world for a profit.  Once they’ve done that, they begin to collect the proceeds; but the money that comes in doesn’t get split up just yet.  In fact, the initial sales of the record never really make it to the artist because the record company usually turns to the artist to recoup the costs of producing and promoting the record.
Now the term “piracy” assumes that there’s a monetary component to downloading music.  While it is true that this material is copyrighted intellectual property, your son has neither paid for it nor is he profiting from it.  If he were taking this same music, burning it to a CD and selling it, or heavily sampling it, or somehow reproducing it and calling it his own that would be piracy, bootlegging or violating a copyright.  He is simply sharing the music, which is where some of the controversy comes in.
Labels argue that this sharing eats into their bottom line.  While it may true to some small extent, chances are that a track downloaded from a file sharing or torrent site would not have been otherwise bought by the person doing the downloading.  It’s simple math really; the typical file sharer might download several thousand songs, the majority of which they would probably never have purchased due to how much it would cost.  A typical downloader might download an entire album that contains one song that they know or like just to see if they’d be into the rest of the album.

Back in the day, before I owned an iPod and could sample and buy individual songs on iTunes, I bought countless CDs because I got into one or two songs and wanted to check out the band.  Sometimes it was worth it and sometimes it wasn’t.  The thing is, I couldn’t afford to do this with every song that I liked and I had to pick and choose the albums that I bought.  Often, I tried to get recommendations from friends or I’d keep my ears open for other tracks from the album (it helped when record stores started adding open listening stations).  While I bought a fair amount of music, I couldn’t afford to buy it all – and since I go to live shows as often as I can, would it have benefitted some bands if I could have given them a chance in my record collection?

Many bands are experimenting with various models that include providing free downloads of their album.  Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails released his album, The Slip as a free download with a collectable version that was later sold.  The album made enough to cover costs and even turned a profit.  Radiohead also had some success releasing their album with a name your own price model with more standard releases afterward.  Again, they were able to cover costs and turn a profit.
So to sum it up, you shouldn’t let your son download music on peer-to-peer networks for the simple reason that he might get sued, he’s not really “stealing” from any artists, the music that gets downloaded usually doesn’t get bought and the industry will probably end up giving the music away in the long run.  I hope that clears up the situation as it currently stands.

… And may your son have widespread demand for his music be his largest problem.

Depending on what exactly you are searching for you should find an excellent music consultant. There are companies locally that are available to assist you in determining what music would best suit you, or how to best go about presenting your music you have either written or had written for you. Your performance is directly related to your ability and your presentation and if you have someone that is qualified in that aspect, it will help to move your career further ahead in the right direction that much faster.

The ins and outs of the music industry can be extremely overwhelming to the layman and offers no respite to singers and performers alike, regardless of your talent. You need a music industry consultant to help you understand everything you will be involved in and help you keep a fresh perspective on what will be involved in your journey to the top. With their help and assistance you will be able to better understand everything surrounding your endeavors. Although they can only show you the way to a certain limit, their input will be helpful toward setting your goals and accomplishing them.

Looking at things from the other end of the business spectrum, engaging the assistance of a music business consultant is another excellent way of getting a handle on the music industry from a business perspective to better fulfill any goals you are trying to achieve. There are various fronts to the business aspect of music, and knowing the right people can raise your chances of succeeding. The business end of show business can be confusing, but hiring the right consultant can put you in a better place to understand and use the benefits to move up and forward toward the career you desire.

Keep these in mind when you are beginning your music, singing, or acting career. There will be many ups and downs during your journey, why make them any more difficult than necessary?

About The Author

Ty Cohen
Platinum Millennium Publishing
PO Box 644
Garner, NC 27529

Ty@PlatinumMillennium.com
1-866-752-9968
Want Free Music Biz Advice?

Who else wants to receive free advice from “Mr X”, a man who has helped artist such as New Edition, Madonna, Quincy Jones, Puff Daddy, Prince and More, including up an comers just like you, to sell nearly 150 Gold & Platinum Albums Worldwide!

Now he wants to help you, by offering you private consulting as well as giving you a free copy of his audio CD “7 Golden Secrets to Succeeding in the Music Industry” Visit http://www.MusicBizCenter.com/freecd1 to get your free CD mailed out to you right now.

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If U2 makes this kind of deal, along with the Stones and Madonna, soon all bets will be off at the majors over long term or heritage artists. The Eagles are already on their own through Wal-Mart, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell have jumped to Starbucks Hear Music, and Radiohead deserted EMI for their own company.

It’s a sign of the times, really. The economics of the business are changing and people are starting to realize it. You need to start handling your music career differently than you would have in the past. Why waste your time or energy trying to make things happen the old way when you could work smart the right way and take things into your own hands?

Copied from Sonibids – see site for more details.

Have your songs heard by a panel of professional songwriters and other music industry professionals from the Nashville Music Community as well as earn the chance to perform at MerleFest, the Americana music celebration, by entering the 16th annual Chris Austin Songwriting Contest. MerleFest now involves more than 80,000 participants including some 100 artists and bands that perform on one or more of the festival’s thirteen stages. All 2008 songwriting competition finalists will receive lodging for 4 nights at MerleFest, with first place winners receiving a performance at the Cabin Stage at MerleFest. All finalists will receive cash and other prizes for their winning entries (see prizes below). The Chair of the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest is Jim Lauderdale.

Entrants must submit songs in one of four categories – country, bluegrass, gospel, and general. We received 1,088 entries for 2007. The Chris Austin Songwriting Contest invites three finalists in each category – based on judging by panels of Nashville music industry professionals, to come to MerleFest for the finals on April 25, 2008.

The Chris Austin Songwriting Contest is open to those whose primary source of income is not derived from songwriting or publishing. First place winners during the past five years may not re-enter in the specific category in which they won. Co-writers are subject to the same eligibility requirements as the entrant.

ALL FINALISTS WILL RECEIVE:
Lodging for 4 Nights at MerleFest
All Access MerleFest credentials for three
One box of D’Addario Strings
One-year subscription to Acoustic Guitar magazine

1st PLACE WINNERS WILL RECEIVE:
A performance on the Cabin Stage at MerleFest
A check for $300
An additional box of D’Addario Strings

2nd PLACE WINNERS WILL RECEIVE:
A check for $250
A slot in the Songwriter’s Coffeehouse at MerleFest

3rd PLACE WINNERS WILL RECEIVE:
A check for $50
A slot in the Songwriter’s Coffeehouse at MerleFest

A then unknown Gillian Welch was one of the winners of the initial Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest in 1993. Recent winners have included Tift Merritt, Michael Reno Harrell, Adrienne Young, Martha Scanlan, David Via, and Johnny Williams. Sarah Lee Guthrie, Jason Harrod, Dave Wilson, and Holly Lowman judged the finals of the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest, which attracted a record 1172 entries, 18 more than 2005.

First round judging from submitted recordings produced twelve finalists who competed with the following winners:

• General Category: “Am I Still” by John & Michelle Law & Regie Hamm;
• Bluegrass Category: “Enough of You” by Jeanette Williams;
• Country Category: “The Roadkill Bill” by Brant Miller, Dave Woodward & Don King;
• Gospel Category: “Blessed by the Day” by Korby Lenker.

Net proceeds from the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest go to support the mission of Wilkes Community College.

Official Website: http://www.merlefest.org

So, I found a link to a music promotion course that features a long bit of sales copy stating much of what I preach. Now, I’m not endorsing this course; mainly because I haven’t actually taken it, but I think the copy is worth a read.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed it is that people seem to like a second opinion. If this helps to sway you to the dark side then so much the better. The point here is that
you need to understand the paradigm shift that’s going on and get in the position to take advantage of it. While I’m not fan of sensational clams (yet another reason I’m not endorsing this program), there is still a message that you need to her. So check out the copy and think it over.

…and if you do buy this course and there’s something to it let me know and I’ll look into it.

Disclosure/Update

As you can see from the comments section, I did in fact receive access to this course and several other courses on Mark Joyner’s Simpleology site, which are still available to me to this day.  I have not received any further compensation beyond access to these courses from Mr. Joyner or his associated companies.  While I have reviewed the course personally, I have no intention of posting any further coverage of the course on this site.  Please note that I DID NOT receive access to these courses prior to writing the original post and the original post was merely a link to the product’s ad copy, which contains comments about the music industry and Independent music that I happen to agree with. The course, however is not endorsed by myself or RockStar Machine, LLC.

This is a great service because if you have a professional looking setup (ie. a website, a press kit, a record, etc.), you’ll be able to project your band as a serious act and maybe get some coverage in the music media.

The reason I stress being professional is that the people that receive these releases get several of them all the time. Services like this make it easy for anyone to send them anything that they want and the majority of what that they get is unprofessional crap.

You need to distinguish yourself and the best way to do this is to put your best face on when you make contact. You should only send out a press release if you have something news worthy to promote. If you’re touring, releasing a record or have something else to publicize you can and should issue a press release. You shouldn’t send one out if you just finished a demo or formed a new band – this is bush league and the people that are neck deep in the business don’t have the time.

In running a music related site I can tell you that there are people out there that don’t much care where they’re sending things, they just send them. If you’re reading this site, you probably know that it is a music promotion site, yet I get countless form e-mails from musicians that ask for reviews or stories about their new demo. Besides having these e-mails sent to me with less than a thought about who they were actually sending them to, they failed to send out anything worth writing about. No one who can do anything about a great undiscovered band has the time to seek out every undiscovered band to see if they’re great. You need to impress them or you’re wasting your time.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what to release, think about the bands that you see covered in the music press. Not the Amy Whinehouse-tabloid end, but the business side. They get coverage for all of the business end stuff.

As for writing the release, you can also have them write it for you if you’re not up to it. This is probably best if you aren’t much of a writer or if you don’t know anyone who can write. The press release is written much like a news story and can look amateurish if not done well. There are many books on the subject, but if you need to get your release done and out it’s worth checking out their writing service.

So if you have your act together, and you have something worthwhile to promote, check out Beat Wire.

As you can imagine, this has gotten lot of people’s attention-namely bloggers, small site owners and the netroots. For musicians and indie labels this means that the majors can again enjoy an edge by being able to pay to get this preferred access.

This is just an example of businesses trying to figure out how to bring in additional revenue streams to grow even larger. The internet service providers already make money off of you, the internet user, so now they want to make money off of content providers.

This would be like a car company making a car that only drives well, if you’re going to a mall or a certain shopping center, but the car wouldn’t drive as well if you were going to grandma’s house. You, as the car buyer, don’t want that, do you?

Of course not-that’s just stupid. In their quest for higher returns, the ISPs are overlooking the ones that pay the bills… all of you out there in internet land.

Personally, I love when companies like this get greedy; it means one thing…

Innovation is on its way!

You see one of the great things about the internet is that it tends to help “The Man” realignment his perspective when the blind quest for cash makes him do stupid things. It’s amazing how an entire industry can seem to find their soul when they’re staring down the barrel of the next big thing.

Let’s take a little trip back in time shall we…

It’s the late 90s, there’s a lot of great music coming out, and the major labels are rolling in it; and why not. They’re charging a whopping $20+ for their entire catalogs. I distinctly remember this because I learned about a new internet thing in the same week that I bought my copy of Magical Mystery Tour.

I was complaining to a computer savvy friend about how I wanted to buy a bunch of albums that weekend, but the sticker shock resulted in my only buying one. He agreed and mentioned a little service called Napster that let you download music for free. Now, at the time, I commuted to school, I only had a 56k connection and my desktop didn’t have a CD burner – I really couldn’t do much with this info. People on campus, with the school provided broadband connection, did take advantage of Napster.

A few months later, Metallica and the record companies saw their profits shrinking and cried fowl. Their outrage was not met with much sympathy from the public; after all, we were the ones getting shafted.

Napster wasn’t the cause of the problem, it was the result.

When I walked into that record store a few moths earlier I had $40 in my pocket and I was looking to buy two or three CDs at around $12-15 each. I left with one, because it was $21 dollars and that didn’t leave me with enough for another $20 CD. The record companies lost out on $19 of sales, not because of piracy, but because of greed.

The birth of the MP3 lead to the discovery of electronic transfer of music via the internet.It started with piracy, but turned into capitalism when the iPod came out and iTunes (as well as other services) started selling individual songs at a fraction of the price. Record companies had to drop their prices because the masses decided that they didn’t like what was going on.

This is why Net Neutrality will ultimately win out over greed. We don’t want a slower connection to the sites that we want to go to. Broadband companies use their speed as an advertising point, why would they intentionally slow down part of their service?

If they did what they seem to be threatening to do, some ambitious nineteen year old nerd is just going to figure out a way to set things straight and make things better. They’ll get tons of venture capital and start a new, completely neutral broadband company, steal all the customers away from the non-neutral ISPs and make billions – and chances are the new service will have some other innovation that the current crop of ISPs can’t offer.

So I say if they want to kill net neutrality, bring it on. I can’t wait to get net neutral broadband Wi-Fi from cell towers anywhere in the country – god bless innovation.

“Greed is good.” – Gordon Gekko, Wall Street (1987)

1. Real music management agencies will never, ever ask you for money up front. Managers make commission on their clients’ earnings, and experienced managers understand that an unknown artist doesn’t have much money. By taking on “developmental clients,” music management agencies cultivate both business and goodwill that they hope will pay off when an artist enjoys a modest breakthrough. On the other hand, fly-by-night music management agencies run by rip-off artists know that there are plenty of talented people who are willing to believe that a fee of a few hundred dollars will get them attention from record labels and from radio stations. While it’s legitimate for a very small music management agency to ask for a small retainer to cover overhead expenses, this fee should be negotiated in advance and should be billed after the agency has done some work on a client’s behalf.

2. Real music management agencies can point you in the direction of successful clients, or can admit that they’re still so new that they haven’t had any breakout stars on their roster. Believe it or not, some of the most influential music managers of the last five decades had little or no experience in the music business. They just had the drive and the stamina to do great work for equally talented clients.

Meanwhile, you can tell most rip-off music management agencies by looking at their web sites or at their offices. If your potential managers seem to have collected hundreds of “grip and grin” photographs of themselves with some major stars, ask whether the manager did any actual work with that artist, or whether the just love to snap photos at industry “meet and greet” events. Many Nashville con artists stuff their offices full of artist photos to deliberately overwhelm the senses – and the judgment – of potential victims.

3. Real music management agencies handle business at the office, not at the gig. Professional music managers understand that live shows are the best possible marketing opportunities for bands to grow their audience and sell their merchandise. After all, the more money a band makes, the more money a music manager makes. Professional managers will, most often, grab some contact information from a band member or from the merchandise table, so they can make contact during business hours.

Unfortunately, many bands get taken in by the rip-off music manager that trades on the adrenaline rush after a live set. These scam artists often slide up to the stage right after a set, buying drinks (or even supplying drugs) to their targets. They play off the notion that many musicians love to party, and that signing with their (bogus) music management agency can lead to plenty more party nights. Before long, the so-called manager has snagged a hefty retainer, which they usually use to fund parties with their new marks.

Remember, professional music management agencies recruit new clients based on measurable results, not just based on a band’s performance at one club night or at one music conference. Just as sporting talent scouts keep an eye on potential pro athletes throughout their high school and college careers, real music management agencies may be watching your band grow from a distance. In the meantime, rely on your friends, your family, and your street team to provide the foundation you need to attract the right professional manager for your career.

About The Author

Joe Taylor Jr. has written four books about the music business for aspiring musicians, including Music Management for the Rest of Us. You can learn more about finding professional music management agencies at: http://www.musicmanagementfortherestofus.com/agencies/

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