So, what’s going on? What do you have planned for this year?

I’ll tell you what I’ve got in the works:

Last year, many of the posts on this site were concerned with what NOT to do. It only seemed necessary considering all the bad advice I was seeing out there that people seem to want to follow. This year we’ll be spending more time on what to do. There will still be posts about what not to do – as wasting your time is a surefire way to get frustrated and give up – but what’s the point of urging you away from things without giving you something to shoot for. We’re going to start looking at specific areas of music promotion and how they relate to what it is that you want to do.

Hopefully, we can get you headed in the right direction.

I myself have some other big plans for 2011. Currently, I’m working on opening a traditional-style coffeehouse that will feature local musicians, artists and poets. This has been something I’ve wanted to do since I was in college and it seems that the planets have aligned and made it possible. Yaye for me!

I’ll probably post something about it when it opens, but if you’re a singer-songwriter type and you’re in the Northern New Jersey area check back for info. We’ll be looking for more mellow types of music so the town doesn’t put the kibosh on the performance element.

Beyond all that, I want to personally wish you all best in the new year. I hope you start to find the success you’re looking for…

…and I’ll do my best to help you find it.

…now get out there and make some music!

Good luck!

-Pat

Not all shows are created equal. Some shows are better than others for an indie act and some shows are worse. Understanding the difference between them and the role that they all play can make a huge difference in how you approach booking and playing live.

The 5 types of shows are (in order of importance):

• Type 1 – A Large Audience of Fans of Your Genre – Opening for a larger act, a festival show, an event or party related to your genre (record label, media, etc.), any show with a larger than normal crowd size made up of fans of your type of music
• Type  2 – A Small Audience of Fans of Your Genre – A show with one or more bands of the same genre, a party within’ the local scene, any show with a smaller crowd made up in fans of your type of music
• Type  3 – A Large General Audience – An event that draws a large crowd with no specific musical preferences (charity events, events for organizations, etc.), public showcases in high traffic areas, opening for larger acts of differing musical styles, publicized talent shows or battle of the bands competitions, any larger crowd made up of the general public or people that aren’t specifically into your type of music
• Type  4 – A Small General Audience – Random club gigs, house parties, public showcases in low traffic areas, any show with a smaller crowd not there for your music specifically
• Type  5 – An Empty Room – pretty much how it sounds. The type of show where the room is empty and you’re playing for the bartender and the bouncer.

Obviously, type 1 and 2 shows are the most important if your looking to promote your music and build a fan base. Nothing you can do on a regular basis will help you as much as playing type 1 and 2 shows.

Type 3, 4 and 5 shows also have benefits that should not be ignored. All shows, regardless of the size and makeup of the crowd, add to your experience as a live performer. Even playing to an empty room provides the opportunity to practice your music in a live setting – you just need to play the show as if you were playing for a larger audience. Type 3 and 4 shows give you an opportunity to try to win over an adverse crowd with your music, showmanship and charisma, which can help you dramatically when you play type 1 and 2 shows.

Another benefit of playing all types of shows is exposure. Most shows get publicized in some way. Having your name out there for the public to see plants the seeds for future encounters. For instance, if someone reads your name in the upcoming shows list at a local club and then sees you listed in the line up of a music festival or hears your name mentioned in passing conversation at some later date, they may not remember where they’ve heard of you before, just that they have heard of you. Getting into people’s heads like this increases the chances that they’ll give you an honest listen.

“How do I start a career as a singer?”

The answer given:

“Put videos of yourself singing popular songs on YouTube so you’ll come up when people search for that song.”

I’ve come across exchanges like this several times over the past few days while answering questions on Yahoo! Answers. The scary part of this exchange is that it’s all too common and the YouTube answer is often chosen as the”Best Answer”.

Frightening.

The Real Impact of the Internet on Music

Over the past several years the Internet has been called everything from the killer of the indie musician to the savior of the indie musician. The promise of reaching the entire planet has worked it’s way into the minds of artists of every medium as being the shortcut to super-stardom.

The only problem – it’s never really delivered on that promise.

A few years ago, when this blog first started, MySpace was the musicians’ obsession of choice. Thanks to Tila Tequila making headlines by getting a million friends and launching a questionable music career, wannabe and professional musicians alike clamored to duplicate her success – and failing to do so.

Other one-shot gimmicks come and go and still people keep biting.

These days it seems to be the Justin Bieber/YouTube technique from above. Believing the whole “if it worked for him, it can work for me” adage, people seem to think they have a shot of duplicating these results. Poor, poor kids.

The thing people fail to realize is that internet gimmicks only work when no one’s ever done it before. Once it’s been done, people figure out how it was done and try it for themselves, thus destroying the uniqueness of the idea and crowding the field past the point of it working again.

So, You Can’t Get Fans Online?

Actually, the Internet does offer plenty of opportunity to gain fans, but there’s just one catch…

…there’s not much YOU can do to make it happen.

The truth is, the only way to get fans online is to get fans offline that will go online and talk about you (aka, a good old fashioned, organic viral movement).

People listen to their friends when they say “buy this record,” or “see this band.” They consider the advice of strangers when they advocate for an artist. It’s called ‘social proof’ and it’s the only thing that can open up a fan to your music.

When you tell people that your music is good and that they should check it out, or buy your record, they ignore you. Why? Because that’s what all musicians do; they expect it, they expect not to believe it and because of this belief, they ignore it.

What You Need to Do Online

The main thing that you need to keep in mind about what you do online when it comes to your music is this – be there for people to find you.

You’re goal online should be to use the web to keep fans once you have them. The internet was developed as a research and communication tool, so you need to set your self up so that people can use it that way to find out about you and your music.

To do this you need to:

• Get a website No matter what you do online, a site is an absolute necessity. No online profile, fan page or social networking site can replace having a fully functioning website. This is your home on the web. Social networking and profile based sites come and go, and then only constant is having your own site.
• That Said, Sign Up For All The Social Networking and Profile Based Sites These sites exist for a reason – people use them. While some site become obsessions and others may fall out of favor, as MySpace has over the years, people do use them to manage their lives and keep track of their interests. Again, be there to be found.
• Interact With Your Fans Whether it’s on your site, via e-mail, on a social networking site, in a forum or on Twitter try to interact with your fans as often as possible. Besides simply being a nice thing to do, it also keeps you fresh in their minds.
• Update, Update, Update Keep the content flowing. Keep your upcoming shows lists current on your site and all your profiles. Put up blog posts. Tweet. Add regular news updates about everything from the production and release of your new album to special shows and lineup changes. The more you update, the more your fans see activity -and the more they see activity, the more heat you generate… And the more attention you get.

1. You Can Play More Shows Because It’s Easier (And Cheaper) If you’re playing locally you can load up your gear, play the show, pack up your gear and head home. If you’re familiar with the area there’s no worries about directions. There’s no hotel bills, or worrying about the gear being stolen. It’s just a matter of showing up and playing. The simplicity and low cost of local shows make it possible to play more often – which is essential if you want to build a following.
2. It’s Easier to Get Fans Locally Part of getting fans for your music is getting your name (and music) out there as much as possible so you can open people up to it. It’s much easier to get noticed in a place that you’re present in often than it is to get your name mentioned by people when you’re not around.
3. Nothing Attracts a Crowd Like a Crowd If you’re like most bands starting out, you’re probably playing to a crowd that’s mostly comprised of your friends. When you book right – which means that you’re playing with at least one other band of the same genre as yours – then you’ll also be playing for the friends of the other band(s). These like-minded strangers don’t know whether these people that are there to see you are you’re your friends or not. Seeing a crowd cheer for a band they don’t know is a demonstration of social proof that will open people up to the idea that you might be worth listening to, liking and following.
4. Local Fans Are Online Too With social networking being what it is today, people tend to talk about what they’re up to. This is especially true when it comes to music. They tweet and status update about what they’re listening to and whom they’re going to see. They blog about bands they’re into. They discuss music in forums. They use social bookmarking to keep track of what they like. What’s great is that these communications go out to their entire networks of friends and followers. So, an easier to win local fan can start the buzz that a harder-to-reach, national fan can tap into.
5. It’s Easier to Enter a Local Scene Than it is to Enter a National Scene If you contact a local band that plays the same type of music that you play, and has the same type of fan that you’re looking to win over, you have a good chance of making a connection that can help you both. Try this with a national act and you’ll probably not find the same success unless you can bring something to the table. The fact is, when you’re just starting out, a local network of bands in the same genre – a local scene – is one of the most powerful tools you can have in building a fan base.
6. A Big Fish From a Small Pond is Easier to Find in a Vast Ocean With an established local fan base that’s behind you, both online and off, and the local media coverage, airplay and recognition that comes with it, you can more easily make the transition to a regional act, and then a national act because you’ve laid the groundwork and built credibility. When someone types your name into a search engine, you actually have third party content (more social proof) that comes up instead of just your website and whatever music site profiles you’ve set up.

As you can see, staying local is not only easier, it’s a more realistic approach to making a name for yourself. Trying to go national prematurely is much harder, much more costly and takes a lot more time than getting things off to a good start locally. Going out as an unknown into the larger world can set you up for disappointment and grind you down quicker than anything.

Don’t Fall Into That Trap

You can’t let yourself fall into the trap of believing that you’re not really doing it if you’re still a local act. Just be patient, play as often as you can, with as many similar bands as you can and work on building an organic following. You’ll dramatically increase your chances of getting where you want to be if you do.

Indie musicians seem to wonder why they aren’t selling more music. They put in the time, effort and money to make a record, put that record out, tell everyone and their mother about the release – and at the end of the day, disappointment.

What’s The Deal?

The fact is there is a common belief among musicians that whatever they put out is worthy of public consumption. The failure of widespread acceptance, therefore, must be because of some type of problem with ‘the system’. The boogieman of the moment is piracy, but old villains like music media and evil and out-of-touch record companies still get their fair share of blame.

These excuses really only have a marginal effect on album sales success. Sure it’s easy to blame outside forces, but in reality you have to look at the core issue to find out what’s really going on.

So, What’s The Real Reason Indie Artists Can’t Sell Records?

In short – a lack of quality.

This isn’t an opinion, or corporate sellout-speak – this is the cold truth. The reality is, if you want to sell anything, you have to have something that people would want to buy.

If you’re completely honest, is every song you write a hit?

Realistically, probably not.

Is every song on every complete album you own equally good?

If you’re like most people, the answer is probably ‘no’.

Fans are hungry for quality.

The business model has changed. New platforms, like iTunes, have changed the way we buy music. The consumer is no longer required to buy an entire album in order to individual songs – and this has made the old single-driven album sales strategy obsolete.

Who needs to spend extra money on songs they don’t want when they can pay less for exactly what they want?

The Solution

The only way to get more people to buy your album – your WHOLE album – is to give them an album worth buying in its entirety. You need to make a record with more good songs than bad (or mediocre) in order to see the value in buying the whole thing as opposed to single songs… or skipping it altogether.

The quick and dirty version of the solution I propose can be best summed up in this excerpt from a comment that I made on another blog, The Music Void:

- Write, demo and copyright songs
- Put streaming samples on website
- Make the songs available for free download (with e-mail capture to build up mailing lists)
- Track download popularity
- When you have enough tracks that stand out to make an album, record higher quality versions for release on CD and paid downloads
- Notify your mailing list when the higher quality material is available for sale

[you can find the whole post and comment here]

This process is for musicians that are serious about selling records – it is not, by any means, easy. It does, however, help to solve some of the problems that many musicians encounter when they release a record:

• It allows you to test your music with the people you’re hoping will buy it
• It ensures that you’re spending your recording budget wisely, only paying to record songs that are in demand
• It improves your chances of selling more records at the release by creating a mailing list to announce when your record is coming out.
• From an artistic standpoint, it let’s you get all of your music out to the public in a cost effective way while giving your fans an incentive to stay interested

Feel free to leave a question or comment about this process below. Good luck.

From everything I’ve seen it’s not making a single song great, it’s about writing enough songs to get to the great ones.

I mean, if you believe in 80/20 rule (which I do) then you know that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort – so it stands to reason that two out of every ten songs you write will be better than the rest.

You always hear people saying that they like a band’s first album the most. The reason is because artists start out writing a bunch of songs early on and settle on the better songs by the time they put something out… the follow up record is, more often then not, rushed out for the sake of momentum and consists of the first 10-15 songs that are written. This is why the second record typically disappoints fans and/or critics.

In baseball you get into the Hall of Fame if you can hit the ball 3 out of 10 times at bat. Songwriters have the luxury of being able to fail privately – so if you can get past the idea that everything you write is a potential hit, and you write enough songs, eventually the gems will start to appear.

Need more proof? Take a look at the popularity meter on iTunes for various albums. Usually, there’s 1-3 popular songs and the rest fall off from there. The exceptions are usually artists’ first records (which might have more than 3 popular songs) and classic records which have several fan favorites that were never released as singles.

My advice: write, write, write and write some more. Look for the stand-outs and polish them up.

Related Post: Songwriting, A Numbers Game?

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
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