Samling av notater skrevet av meg, sist endret 12015-06-19 - [ ] #to-do Les ### HVORDAN BLI SUKSESSRIK.txt Herunder følger utvalgte utdrag fra noen av de mange artiklene jeg har lest om promotering og livet som profesjonell musiker. "Some are even clever enough to build their following online and then launch a script on their site that allows fans to suggest where they play next. From there the band can map out a mini tour based on the interest and location of their fans. Very effective if done correctly." http://blog.discmakers.com/2013/12/make-a-living-in-the-music-business-myths-and-methods/ "On the day of the gig make sure you designate some time before the downbeat to get yourself into a music frame of mind. I have found myself struggling through the first couple of songs because I was still thinking about how Iíd find the agent after the gig to give her back the parking passes, how Iíd forgotten to get enough cash to pay the sub after the show, that I didnít have time to eat dinner before the show and I wondered if Iíd be able to eat before 10pm, etc. These are not the kinds of thoughts you want running through your mind as you play your first solo. For me, all it takes is 10 minutes of silence and privacy to get into the musical frame of mind. At crowded venues this is hard to do ñ sometimes a bathroom stall is the most privacy youíll get ñ but it works." "Take the time to promote your gig on Facebook and Twitter, but don’t spam your followers. Be sure to tag the venue and/or the booking agent in your post so that theyíre aware youíre promoting too. Itís also a good idea to list the gig in the entertainment section in the online edition of your local newspaper and/or TV station websites. The listings are almost always free. A couple of years ago, I discovered that the community editor for one of our local newspapers noticed one of my listings and he wrote a short piece about my upcoming show in the events section of the newspaper. It was an unexpected promotional boost ahead of the event and as an added bonus I was able to link back to the article in my social media posts." "Iím a firm believer that all bars and restaurants with live music should provide at least some food and/or beverages to all of the musicians. Sadly, in some bars and restaurants, food and drink is the only form of ìpayî youíll receive ñ no show pay, just a $25 gift certificate and maybe some free tap beer. These venues clearly donít value your time and services, they just see you as a way to keep warm bodies at the bar for a longer period of time. Some venues do buyouts (a small amount of cash per band member instead of food/drink) but usually they wonít do this for you unless you ask. It doesnít hurt to ask ñ the worst they can say is no? If you donít get what you wanted in one area, ask for something in another ñ for example, a small bump in pay for the next gig. Everything is negotiable. One of the best outcomes of good negotiating is that it shows that you take your profession seriously and that you and your band acts accordingly." "Avoid gigs where the sound engineer is paid first followed by the band. There shouldnít be a pecking order because it usually means someone is about to get shorted. In addition, the crowd didnít pack the bar to see the sound guy, they came to see your band. Great live sound engineers are hard to find and are worth their weight in gold, but if youíre stuck doing a gig in a mediocre venue with a mediocre engineer thatís paid before everyone else, make that the last gig you ever do there." http://diymusicbiz.com/gigging-mistakes-musicians-and-artists-make-part-1/ "Studies show that people without deadlines get the least amount of work done vs. people who do. Where is study? I have no idea, just sounds cool to say. Truth is most people are procrastinators and they generally donít get anything done unless thereís a deadline attached to it. Iím one of these people and itís the reason why I give myself 30 minutes to complete a track. Itís not because I pride myself in it or think itís better to push tracks quickly. Itís because it keeps me disciplined and I know if I give myself 5 hours I wont actually start working until an hour or two before the deadline. Thatís three or four hours wasted! When a company gives me a project, I always short the deadline. Give me two weeks, Iíll send the project back in 10 days, one week, four days, etc. I chart everything on my spreadsheet with an earlier deadline. Iíve been me for damn near 30 years and, I know how I operate best. Not to mention, itís a lot easier to commit 30 minutes vs. ìXî amount of hours. Call it a mind hack, self manipulation, a kick starter, whatever ñ it works. When Iím done with my 30 minute idea dumps, Iím full of creative juices as well as more music and ideas to pull from when push comes to shove and a project is due." http://blog.discmakers.com/2013/09/stay-productive-as-a-music-composer/ Strategies for Local Music Promotion: “::Make your gig an event:: If you’re trying to make a splash on a local level, New York recording artist Nisha Asnani recommends a focused approach to your music promotion — plan a single show and make it big. "Early on, once I’d established some self-confidence in my work and writing and was ready to release my EP, I didn’t just want to put on a little release show," says Asnani. "If I was going to do it, I was going to do something that people would really be interested to see, something that they’d remember." For her EP release party, which happened at The Bitter End in New York City in 2011, Asnani planned months in advance, refining arrangements, rehearsing, and gathering musical collaborators, who ended up including multiple string players and a horn section made up of friends and colleagues. "I wanted that awe factor, for people to be overwhelmed and enveloped," she says. By focusing her efforts on a single, explosive event, Asnani created an experience that continues to pay her back in dividends, even two years later. "People still remember that show and talk to me about it," she says. "When they think about me and my music, it’s something that they can reference, and those memories have helped open doors for me. Most of my shows are pretty intimate," she adds, "but this was an example of how large I can go in a performance. I’m grateful that it really seemed to stick with people.” ::Take risks:: If you heed the above advice, take note: The bigger the show you put on, the bigger the choices you have to make, Asnani says, and therefore, the bigger risk you run of making choices that not everybody in your audience is going to like. But that can be a good thing. "When you make a big statement, you can alienate people, and that’s important to do," she describes. "Don’t be afraid to be very specific in what you do. Even if you fail, you have a better chance of learning more and being more powerful and effective the next time. If you just go middle of the road and wishy-washy, and try to make everyone happy, you’re going to end up with more questions than answers." Making strong choices about your music and performance can also help you find your local audience more quickly; if it’s readily apparent who loves your music and who is angling for the door, you can use that knowledge to better focus your next gig towards members of your community who will truly dig what you’re presenting. ::Establish a residency:: The Bravery is just one example of a band that effectively grew its career by playing a residency, a.k.a. a series of regular shows at the same venue. "One good thing about a residency is that, even though people might have busy schedules, it gives everyone who wants to see you multiple opportunities to do so," says Asnani. Playing a residency can also give local friends and fans a chance to see you grow and change show to show. "I have a friend who came to a few of my shows and she told me how interesting and exciting it was," says Asnani. "She felt like she was on the journey with me, getting a glimpse into the process." One key element of playing a successful residency is avoiding, as Asnani puts it, "saturating your draw" — in other words, playing too often in the same area so, eventually, nobody shows up. If the venue you’re playing at is a restaurant, bar, or other locale with a regular built-in crowd, this can be less of a concern. But if you’re the sole magnet drawing people in, consider pushing for a residency schedule that has you playing closer to monthly or bi-monthly, rather than weekly — whatever timetable will allow you to do your music promotion thoroughly and get a reasonable crowd through the door. There’s no hard formula for setting up a residency, but building up relationships of mutual respect with local venue owners and bookers is always a good step. It’s also important to make sure that you have enough material, or can develop new material quickly enough, to keep each show fresh, as it’s a rare fan who will come back to see you play the same eight songs in the same order, show after show and week after week. If you’ve found a venue that feels like it could be a good musical home away from home for a little while, and the folks in charge seem friendly enough to be open to such a thing, bring up the subject and see where the discussion goes. While playing a residency can help you build a reputation and solidify a following, Asnani is quick to point out that a focus on honing your craft is key to the success of any series of shows. "It’s about getting in and doing the work," she says. "You get to try new things, see what works and what doesn’t, and come back and do it better the next time." Host something Whether it’s a jam session or open mic night, late-night community radio show or music appreciation meet up, hosting something musical on a local level can help you build relationships within your community, hone your chops as a performer, and serve as great music promotion by getting the word out about you and your music. "I created an open mic to serve the artistic community that I was connected to and to give everyone an opportunity to network," says Asnani. "It works great, because I get to help other people like me and see what they’re doing artistically. It’s also great that I often get to perform myself and show my work to a new crop of people each week." Asnani emphasizes that the community aspect of serving as a host is key, especially for musical artists with big ambitions. "The label structure isn’t what it used to be, and I believe that artists who band together, come up together, and share resources are all stronger for it," she says. "If you share ideas and do your best to provide both feedback and connections to people in your community, it can make a big difference when it comes to getting known and getting seen." Diversify Even if your true musical passion is your own personal blend of trip-hop and bluegrass, don’t hesitate to get your feet wet with other local artists, bands, and projects. Playing, writing, producing, or recording with other like-minded folks can help your name get out within your area ’ and next time you have a local show of your own to publicize, you have that many more people in the music world to share the news with. Furthermore, don’t forget that more hours logged making music with different collaborators means more unexpected eyes and ears reached. You never know who’s watching or listening, and that killer guitar line you’re laying down to back up your friend’s singer/songwriter set may just be the key to opening up your own next exciting opportunity. Reach out to local media Just last month, I wrote about if or when to start working with a music publicist — but when you’re trying to get noticed on a local level, there’s quite bit of effective media outreach that you can do on your own. Small newspapers, college radio stations, community blogs, and area-based tourism magazines can be good media outlets to target. If you happen to be a member of an ethnic or religious group that has community-specific publications in your area, check out those as well. Generally speaking, the smaller the media outlet, the easier it will be to get access to an editor, writer, or producer in order to introduce yourself and make your pitch. As with any such interaction, keep your story short, focused, confident, and respectful. If you’re doing something that’s interesting and different, any such publication could well be interested in sharing the latest about your new show or album release with your neighbors. Keep pushing There’s no guaranteed timeline when it comes to building a name for yourself and your music on a local level, so persistence and patience are key. "I always think it’s bullshit to wait around for other people to give you opportunities," says Asnani with a laugh. "If you want opportunities that you’re not getting, it’s your responsibility to create them for yourself." Asnani points out that locations like New York City and Los Angeles, by their nature, can offer more opportunities than others. But she also notes that, regardless of whether you’re in a small town or urban metropolis, the same principles apply. "I always produced my own shows, sought out my own venues, found my own musicians, and so on," she says. "It’s important to create your own events and opportunities and cultivate contacts wherever you are, to be as present and positive as possible as part of the musical community in which you want to live and work."” http://blog.discmakers.com/2013/04/seven-strategies-for-local-music-promotion/ “What do you really want out of your music career? Do you want to be known around the country? Around the world? Do you want to hear your music on the radio? See yourself on television? When establishing your music career goals, focus on what you want and know why you want it. It’s OK to “think big,” and I encourage you to do so, but realize that sometimes it’s the small things that will have the biggest impact on you. Once you get clear on your music career goals, it will completely change how you approach your music career and will open you up to new opportunities for success. Focus on what you want at this moment, knowing that you can always revise your list at any time. Your goals can change and will change, because you will change during your process of going after them.” “Martin Seligman, an American psychologist, found that humans seem happiest when they have: - Pleasure (tasty foods, warm baths, etc.) - Engagement (also known as “flow,” this is what happens when you are absorbed in and enjoying an activity) - Relationships (social connections) - Meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself) - Accomplishments (the realization of having specific and measureable goals) This is your music career being sculpted, so set it up any way you want. The generic music career goals, such as selling tons of music and playing for big crowds, while they may be OK for some, don’t necessarily have to be what you choose. If you’d rather give away your music and stick with small, intimate venues, do it. Happiness starts now, right where you are. Once you have a list of things you want to accomplish in the music business, and you’re ready to start working on a task, ask yourself this question: “Is what I’m about to do getting me closer to my goal of ________________?” If the answer is yes, take action. If not, and you’re frustrated that you’re not accomplishing your music goals fast enough, find something else to work on that will help you to get where you want to go. Focus on activities that get you tangible results in the form of helping you sell more music, get more people to your shows, or whatever your specific and measurable goal is. Don’t focus on what might sell more music, might get more people to shows, or might make you money. The Pareto principle, commonly known as the 80/20 rule, states that, for many events, roughly 80 percent of the results come from 20 percent of the actions. This 80/20 rule can be found throughout your music business. For example: - 80 percent of your gig income comes from 20 percent of the gigs you play. - 80 percent of the money you make comes from 20 percent of your fans. The big takeaway here is that not everything you do is getting equal results for you. If you can find the 20 percent of things that are getting you the most results, and then focus the time you have on doing more of that activity, you’ll see a huge increase in your music business success.” “There are three types of business tasks: - Things you like to do - Things you don’t like to do - Things only you can do To find out if you really like doing something, ask yourself the following question: “If money, judgment from others, and needed resources to successfully complete this task were not issues, would I still be doing it?” If the answer is yes, and you can do it without neglecting anything else in your business, go for it. When it comes to doing the tasks you don’t like doing, look at options that will enable you to either have somebody else do them or eliminate them entirely. Life is too short to do a lot of things you don’t enjoy. With that said, if you’re getting started in the music business and have limited resources with which to outsource tasks, it may be necessary and you may benefit from experiencing parts of the music business you don’t enjoy, and there are some things you should handle personally. The firsthand knowledge about the various parts of the business you’ll learn will help you better create a system in which to hand things over to somebody else. As a musician, there are certain tasks only you can do. They include things like performing live, making personal appearances, and anything having to do with product creation (such as writing and recording). The bottom line when it comes to your music business is that when something needs to be done, like it or not, it’s your responsibility to make sure it happens. You don’t want to be the best songwriter or musician the world has never heard of. Do everything you can to get the word out about your music. Anything less isn’t respecting your art and creative talent.” http://blog.discmakers.com/2013/09/get-clear-on-your-music-career-goals/ “Most people play things way more safe than they realize. The only way you’ll know how fast you can drive a car is to accelerate until you lose control and crash. Anything less, even if you back off just before losing control, isn’t your top speed. Like a car, the only way you’ll know how much you can accomplish in your music career is to reach the point of failure. If you feel that things in your music business career aren’t moving along fast enough, you may want to “crash the car.” That’s the conly way to take things to the maximum level. Playing balls-out like this is scary, but also extremely motivating. Most of the time, even when you get extremely ambitious with your plans, as long as you’ve made the decision to “go pro” and have a solid foundation to work from, you won’t crash. You’ll simply find you’re able to work harder, faster, and longer than you once thought. If you do crash, you get up, dust yourself off, and get back on the horse. Then you push forward again, this time, adding what you’ve learned from your previous experience to hold things steady for a longer period of time. Each time you go after something using what you’ve learned from previous experiences, you’ll be expanding your capacity to handle the intensity of the situation, which means that soon, accomplishing what you want will be easy for you. Will you always fail? No. A lot of the time, you’ll try something new and it will work out great. If something isn’t going to work, you might as well find out now. Don’t be the person who sits on an idea for years, only to find out nobody is interested. If no one cares, you want to find out now, so you can either drop the idea or make people care. Failure is good. It’s how you learn what doesn’t work. Embrace it. If you’re not failing at anything, you’re not putting yourself out there enough or pushing the envelope like you should. Don’t play it safe. Don’t get too comfortable. Regardless of whether you prefer impact to ease, you’ll want to be aware of (and keep a close eye on) perhaps the biggest enemy to your music business career: comfort. Comfort is so powerful that it can derail a career before it gets started. Many talented people have given up their music business dreams to: - please a significant other - take a job with more “benefits” - get off the road - earn a “steady paycheck” - have a normal life All of these things are great. The problem is that they’re not always compatible with a music career. Even established musicians can fall prey to comfort. We’ve all seen artists who get too comfortable and take a nosedive when it comes to their art and business. This isn’t because they’ve lost their talent; it’s because they’re following a creative formula that did work but no longer does. 7 ways to get out of your comfort zone and start taking risks A skill that will help you to be more comfortable with the changing aspects of both art and business is to become more comfortable with change in your daily life. How do you do this? Force change just enough so you get outside your comfort zone, but not so much that you get into panic mode and start making irrational decisions. When change happens in life, you’re much better off staying cool and being rational. Your capacity to do this happens as you increase your capacity to handle change. How do you do this? Start simple. As they say, “Little hinges swing big doors.” - Work Yourself Up. Start where you are and work yourself up to bigger things. Success means forming the habit of taking risks and totally embracing growth over comfort. - A baby learns to crawl, and then stand, before he learns how to walk. The first steps are shaky but get smoother and steadier with time. A guitar player learns in a similar fashion. At first the playing is clunky, but with practice, it eventually gets more fluid. - Are you approaching things in a way that is keeping you crawling instead of something more? If so, work to embrace more risks, even if they’re small, to expand your comfort zone. - Do It Daily. When you do something daily, it keeps you from putting something off until tomorrow, because you’ll also be doing it tomorrow. Will you be a better musician if you practice one hour daily or seven hours one day per week? If you know the answer to this, you know the power of daily practice. - Start Something. You need to go first. Don’t wait for other people to join you, even if it’s just the people in your band. Grunge music was popular in 1991. Nobody cared about the grunge bands who came along in 1996. When you go first, you set the pace. - Be Willing to Fail. Your biggest lessons will be from failure. Remember, if you don’t crash the car, you’ll never know how fast it can go. The best way to learn a new language is to speak it. You’ll never do that if you’re worried about making mistakes. Similarly, the best musicians are the ones who aren’t afraid to take risks when they’re playing. Do you want to be good? If so, you have to play, and playing means you risk making mistakes. - Be an Observer. This habit isn’t so you can judge yourself; it’s so you can push yourself out of your comfort zone and grow. Be an observer, notice what works (and what doesn’t), and keep tweaking what you do so it gets better. - When you’re on stage, you have a different perspective of the performance than people in the audience do. Think of things from their perspective. Better yet, record yourself and watch and listen like they do. - Own It. If you’re going to do something, you’d might as well go big. If you take a risk that doesn’t work out, own it. It’s not a risk if you don’t take ownership. Ever seen a musician fall off stage? You can’t act like it didn’t just happen, so you’d might as well own it and have fun with it. - Be Committed to the Process. If you’re constantly getting out of your comfort zone, by definition, it will never get easier. - We are always changing. Nothing is static. As a musician, you know that when you perform, as no two performances are exactly the same, even if you perform the same material. - You’re either getting better at what you do or getting worse. It might not be obvious, because the changes happen slowly and over a period of time, but when it comes to the anchors in your career (writing and recording a new album, going on tour), you’ll notice. Commit to the process, and you’ll always be moving in the right direction.” http://blog.discmakers.com/2013/06/dont-get-too-comfortable/ “‘Likes’ don’t tell you anything. You don’t learn from likes. What you want is comments.” “The goal of a radio station is to make money, and the way they make money is by selling advertising, and the way they get to sell their advertising for a higher price is by getting higher ratings. So how do you get higher ratings? By giving the audience what they want. So what do they want? The answer seems to be music they’re familiar with. But with new statistical tools, it’s become clear that poeple don’t actually listen to commercials anymore. They tune out, or fast-forward, so radio stations are scrambling, trying to think anew and come up with ways to create non-traditional revenue (NTR). This is where you come in.” “People always try to go for world-dominance first. I think that’s wrong. If you can’t be the best thing in your home town, you sure ain’t going to be the best thing in the country.” “This is why I advocate using email-lists. Have your email database find every person on that list inside, say, 50 miles of some town, and then start marketing and engaging with these folks. And the first step in marketing is making sure that they have your music. And the first time they’re going to hear your music, they won’t want to pay for it. Give them your music, and every other week or so, nurture the relationship. When time comes, you tell them you’d like to play a show in their area, and ask them what stages would suit the needs, where they think you should play. They’re going to tell you the clubs that you’ll need to contact. And then you go to that club and you say “Listen, I’m gonna be travelling through town, I have quite a few fans in your area; as a matter of fact, they’re the ones who told me to contact you, I would love to either open for someone, or have a night that I can perform.” Now, if you’ve done the relationship part right, you have a couple hundred fans that can’t wait to get to see you, so you go ahead and book yourself a show, sell the tickets online. Also, find a venue that’s small enough that you actually sell out - those words are golden. Now you go to the local radio station and say “Hey, by the way, I’m coming to town, I’m doing a sold-out show and, hey, how would you like to give my music away on your facebook and twitter page, and maybe some tickets to this sold-out show.” Now you’re relevant! PS: Try and target bars or venues that the radio station already has a relationship with. And remember to thank the radio station for their support afterwards - doesn’t matter if they didn’t give you airtime, include them in hashtags or tags, and they’ll be retweeting themselves. And say, “hey, go follow the local radio station”. And now to the strategy: After the show, send the same email list, now including some new fans, a follow-up, with for example pictures from the meet-n-greet, if you arranged such a thing, and say, “I can’t wait to come back and see you”, (remember, the people who are reading this are engaged with you now; you’re not speaking to everyone, you’re speaking to this engaged group of people), and you say to them “here’s what I need you to do: I need you to comment on your radio stations facebook page, and your radio stations twitter, what a great time you had at my show, and then, when the time is right, I’m going to ask you guys to start contacting them, and request my show.” “The problem that most people have, is that they try to do everything in one day: They try to get on the radio, they try to get the venue, they try to get the fans; it is a process, and there is a tactical strategy involved with this process. Most people just get booked on a show, announce on their website or twitter feed “hey, I’m coming to town to play a show”. There’s really no thought that goes into “what can I do to make this show the best show possible”.” “The key is to become kick-butt in your area, and then step out a hundred miles, and then step out a hundred miles more, and then you’ll have data you can point to and show, this is where I’m relevant, this is why I’m relevant, this is how much I’ve sold, this is the communication I have with my fanbase, this is the support that I have on my social networks; now you’ve become a partner to that radio station! Now it’s time to conquer the next town…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muKZtig014w “There are four pillars to any successful business (and we really need to start looking at the artist as a business): 1. Brand: Who are you, what are you, is there a market for what it is that you have? 2. Build: Build yourself an audience 3. Cultivate: Nurture that audience 4. Sell Most people just record a record and go to the sell mode and then wonder why it don’t sell. It’s because it’s really the two middle parts that are really important, and in the end determine the sell.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGDnywftowI “Too often, we create the product first, and then we go and try to force-feed it to an audience - and the labels - and I hate to say I’m as guilty as everyone else for doing that.” “If it takes one year, two years, three years, heck, if it even takes four years to build a solid fanbase of hungry consumers, why wouldn’t that be the focus?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcDc-LkiTtI “Regarding radio, make sure the packaging is awesome, you’re website looks smoking, you’re recordings are crisp… The only way they should be able to tell that you’re not already signed is because you told them. They’re not looking for any reasons to say yes right now, they’re looking for reasons to say no, because it’s very crowded; don’t give ‘em any!” (How to do a successful radio tour): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcjNCBeDhyA “Whenever someone calls and asks me about anything, one of the first things I do, if not the first, is I go online to see what their online impression looks like. Because if they don’t come off as professional online, which is for the whole world to see, that’s a tell-tale sign. And a lot of people don’t think so, but it is, it’s a tell-tale sign of what’s to come.” “If you see a label person, don’t geek out! Just act like you belong, just go “hey, how’re you doing?”, just act like you know them; they meet everybody, so they’re just going to assume they’ve met you.” “When I was younger I used to sneak into clubs, and we used to say, “if you act like you belong, you belong”. If you wanna be a star one day, act like a star. If you wanna be equals to them, act like you’re equals with them now.” “When someone says to me, “Hey, I’m in the music business, would you check out my stuff?”, the first thing I’d ask them, and I’m training others to ask the same thing, is “What’s your website?”. Then when I get to your website, PLEASE do not make it hard for me to hear your music. Also, don’t give me samples. Give me the whole thing. If you’ve gotten my attention, and I’ve gotten to that place where I can listen to your music, that may be the only chance that you ever get to share your music with me; you better give me all of it. And it may be the only chance that you have to show me what you look like in video; it may be the only chance you get to show me what’s going on with your social media sites; so make sure that they’re ROCK SOLID before you start inviting people there and then say “well, Rick, I didn’t invite you there; you asked me for the information”. Ta-da! So before you get yourself prepared, don’t go out and start advertising to me that you’re an artist!” “Online, you can look like a major label rock star - that’s up to you!” “Get out there, don’t make a fool of yourself, and take control of what it is that you can control, and that’s your look, that’s your image, that’s your appearance, that’s your online presence.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdjuBees9AQ ::Music career killers:: Killer 1: Not working on your music everyday. You can spend your whole life learning music marketing and still fail if you don’t have great music to promote… but you can suck at marketing and still do well of your music is on point. Killer 2: Not having a clue who your fans are. If you try and market to everyone, yhen nobody will feel truly connected to you or feel you’re making music just for them. The problem comes when you’re trying to work out where to focus your marketing, because unless you have a clear idea of where your fans hang out, then the options will be literally endless, and it will seem like a massive mountain to climb. So start off by really thinking about where your music fits into the world and how you could describe it to someone you met in a lift for five seconds. Forget the ego thing about being unique for a minute, sure you have something cool to offer the world but you should make it your mission to find successful musicians who sound similar to what you do, and rejoice when you come across a new one. Because they will probably be surrounded by a whole heap of music fans that you can start to funnel on to your mailing list, using the marketing tactics we’ve talked about. Even if all your songs are quite different from each other, think of each song as a key to another market of fans. The main thing to remember is that when you describe your music or songs to people, you’re really describing the ideal fan for that piece of work. So now when I hit a site to try and get featured I just keep it simple, if I’m trying to pitch a rock song I might just say “I sound like a mixture of Prog Rock and Michael Jackson”. Interesting and simple enough that people will know what they’re getting. Killer 3: Not collecting email adresses on your website, and everywhere else. 90% of the people who have a spark of interest in your music may visit your website once and never come back. So if you don’t do your very best to offer them something extremely cool and try to capture their email address, then your website is like a leaky bucket and you’re fighting a losing battle. Once you’ve got that email capture set up, just follow this simple formula for making money from your music: Entertain your fans, then link to something they can buy. Don’t get all hung up with being he greatest sales person, just show your people a good time and then give them the option to buy. You should also collect addresses on your Facebook page, have a Twitter link back to your fan-capture, and most importantly of all AT YOUR LIVE SHOWS. The people at your gigs have just seen the merchandise (your music) up front and will often come up to you and tell you how cool it was, so whip out your phone or just a sheet of paper and offer to send them your killer freebie to their email address. Forget about selling CDs for now, because the email address is the real asset and will let you keep on making sales for years to come. … and then turn those email addresses into even more fans by asking your people (or giving them an incentive) to pass your music onto their friends. Killer 4: Not selling anything Many musicians produce great music for the fans but then feel bad and don’t ask people to take the next step to buy something. Or they do try and sell, but because they don’t feel comfortable with it they get all nervous and it does not come across in a cool way. Selling is just letting people know about the cool things you’ve set up for them and you should never feel ashamed about it. So if you don’t currently have anything for sale on your website then don’t do anything else until you have. It can be as simple as a 5 dollar per month subscription to get a song of the week delivered to their inbox. Killer 5: Not collecting money from your non-paid fans in the form of ads The truth is that only a small amount of people on your list are going to buy your music. Maybe 20%, if you’re very lucky. But the others might still hit a share button and pass on your stuff to friends who might buy, or click on an ad that you place around your content and that you get paid for. Cool! You just turned someone who never wants to spend a penny into cash, and in my book that is like creating gold out of thin air and a very important concept in the business model of the modern DIY’er. Always be thinking about how you can turn your non paid fans into gold. Killer 6: Not using youtube The cool thing about youtube for musicians is that it’s probably one of the top places on the whole of the internet to find a mountain of your fans hanging out, because quite frankly nearly every musical style that you can think of has a major foothold there. Post up an interesting cover version, create a musical response to something that is buzzing in the news, write a song for a cool blogger that you follow or just take a song that you’ve already written and post it up in a way that people will be searching for in google (for instance, you might find out that a bunch of people search google for “songs about love”, and realize that you have the perfect tune to satisfy that search.) These are all easy ways that you can get started now and have hits on your videos in a few hours, but the real power comes when you have a body of work uploaded over time that are all sending you hits. I can’t say enough in favor of youtube for your music marketing so GET TO WORK! Killer 7: Trying to do all the marketing yourself Sometimes it’s like I know everything that I should be doing but the tasks and workload seem so overwhelming that it’s almost paralyzing. I find it’s very annoying that the more there is to do, the more I feel like sitting down and eating some pie! But then I just accept that I’m a flawed human being like everyone else and set the pie aside in favor of some positive music marketing actions. In that situation, anything is better than nothing and months of procrastination! The other thing that keeps me going in these “grey zone” moments that we all face from time to time is the thought that there are other people out there in the world helping me with my marketing efforts. So even if I have a day off and go for a picning with my good lady wife, my site will still get a bunch of hits because I’ve set up systems that motivate other people to work toward my goals too. This is kind of like an online street team. Like I said at the start of this guide, your main mission is to make incredible music first and foremost and you can’t do that if you spend every hour of every day trying to get hits and writing blog posts. The answer here is motivating your fans to promote your music FOR you. I’ve found that if you take a very enthusiastic fan and sprinkle on a little financial incentive to pass on your music you create a very effective music marketing machine. Killer 8: Not taking at least one marketing action everyday. Just as important as your daily progress with your music is the power of just one thing per day that will get your music out into the world and in front of a targeted, interested fan. See, music marketing is like trying to push a car with your bare hands. At first it seems like it won’t budge, but then you start to get a little movement and before you know it you’re going at a steady and predictable pace. And once in a while you will come across a hill where you can sit back and let things roll, all you have to do is steer. But if you just start to push for 5 seconds then stop for a few days, then come back and try again for 5 minutes, you will never build up enough momentum and it will never get easy. One of the biggest challenges that faces the modern DIY musician is consistency, because things will come up in your life that seem more fun or important than working on your marketing. But a little bit of ofcus on one really cool project can work like magic, all you need to do is remember why it’s important and why you decided to start learning music marketing in the first place. For me it’s being able to work for myself and have freedom from the rat-race. I find that idea always allows me to re-focus on what’s important and always stay in the minds of my fans. Killer 9: Not having you own website. Ask anyone who based their musc career around MySpace how they feel about it now… If I can risk one more analogy it’s like taking your life savings on board a sinking ship and watching with horror as everything you’ve worked for goes into the cold ice water. So get your own site. It’s easy, it’s fast and it’s cheap and it gives you complete control over every part of your career with no weak points. No website is too big to fail and any other site apart from your own may one day kick you out for something that they suddenly decide is against their terms and conditions. Killer 10: Not offering high end products. It takes a lot of 1 dollar downloads to keep you afloat, and that means that you’re constantly in selling mode. The important thing to remember is that not all music fans are created equal. Some will not have an extra penny to spend on your stuff from their pay packet, but a few people on your mailing list will litterally be millionaires and have money to burn. What’s the point in selling a millionaire something for 1 dollar? Obviously we don’t want to charge them 1000 dollars per download just because they are rich, but the idea is to cater to all kinds of bank accounts with higher value products. So have something that you can sell for 1000 dollars, 2000 dollars or even 10 000 dollars! All it takes is putting a link on your site and letting people know what you have set up for them. Most people will never go for it, sure, and if you’re reading this you’re probably highly skeptical about offering these sevices… That’s because you and me aren’t millionaires and we don’t have the same financial perspective as someone who is. These high ticket items usually come in the form of a personal appearance like a gig, or a one off personally written piece of music. You could even give someone a “red letter day”, where they come out to where you live, come and jam with you then you take them out for a slap up meal, basically show them a killer time. That is the kind of offer that you can really charge a premium for. Or you might buy a new guitar, play it at a bunch of shows and get some pictures then sell it on ebay as “signed memorabilia”. … all I can say is that if you don’t have that high ticket button on your site then nobody is ever going to click it. Killer 11: Not creating a second income. It don’t matter which way you look at it, creating enough money to live off your music is a challenge. It can and has been done of course, no doubt about it, but it will take time and commitment on your part to get there. Luckily, there are easier ways that you can make enough money to cover your bills, because there are a whole heap of other things that people do buy on a daily basis where you can jump in on a piece of the action. The way it works is like this: The potential buyer hits the internet with a mission to spend some cash on something cool that you know a thing or two about, maybe it would be a guitar, new piano or even Music Marketing Classroom. They do a few searches and find that you have written a great review or provided some training on the product that they’re interested in. They come over and check out your thing and now feel ready to pull the tripper and click your special link to buy, and Shazammer! You get paid! The key with this is not to create a whole other business seperate from your music career, because that will make you lose focus and take up too much time. But if you can make money from things you’re doing anyway like practicing guitar or even marketing your music then why not do it? Killer 12: Boring your fans and playing it safe. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this happen… You go to a show and see a new band rocking out some amazing tunes, but each time you see them again they just continue to play the same old set over an over again. The bottom line is that one set of good songs does not make a career. I think some musicians feel a fear that they will not be able to match their previous work and this becomes kind of like a block. So again, make sure you write something new everyday and the gems will come by default. You’ll be showing people considering an investment into your music (a fan or a record company) that you will be consistently productive in the far future. Killer 13: Playing every crap gig you get offered. When you first start out you might as well play any show that comes along because this is valuable experience, and can even save you some money on the practice room. This becomes a “career killer”, though, when musicians continue to play every bad show in the hope that they might just convert 1 new fan. Playing to empty rooms with no pay not only sucks ass, but it’s also like a cancer to your career because it will destroy your enthusiasm. Next time you get offered a bad show turn it down, and spend the evening connecting with promoters of popular club nights and venues. One really good gig is worth a hundred empty venues. Killer 14: Forgetting to be a human. This one is simple… If you ever have to write “to whom it may concern” in your messages to promote your career, then you are not on good enough terms to ask for any help. You need to get out there and do a little bit more networking first. Also, try and mix “professional” with “human”, because people in the music industry don’t want to deal with self promotional robots. There is no reason why you can’t pack your promotions with your own personality and have FUN. Most people are sick of corporate bullshit. Remember that there is a real person behind every email address, so stop thinking of your music marketing as a numbers game. Killer 15: Spamming People often start out in music marketing messaging everyone they can on YouTube, Twitter, Forums, Blogs, Facebook and MySpace in the hope that one day so many people will hear about them that they will get famous… … or they find a bunch of contact info for industry people and send a mass email along the lines of: “Hey, we are a cool band and are looking to get signed, please email back if you can help.” But just think about that for a second. If you got an email like that, would you think good things about the band? NO WAY! You have just missed an opportunity with a massive section of the industry and also wasted the time you spent opening your can of spam. A well thought out, targeted promotion will take more time upfront, but in the long term it could get someone interested and move your career forward. Killer 16: Music in a vacuum. As well as making daily progress with your career, you also need to be tracking what’s going on in your music scene as well. This is very important, because when you follow all the latest news you start to notice little opportunities that will pop up from time to time. If you just sit in your bedroom and never get involved with your music scene, then it will be much harder to get your work in front of the right audience. (PS: Use Google Alerts to track your music niche: http://www.google.com/alerts) Killer 17: The curse of the solo musician. Sometimes being a solo act can be great, like when it comes to getting paid at the end of the night! But the problem with being a one man (or woman) show is that you never get to brainstorm new ideas with anyone, and you always have to go with your gut. For instance, you might have a marketing plan you’ve been working on for the last year, then suddenly you speak to a music PR person at a gig and find out that if you just made a few tweaks you might achieve success much faster. So it’s a good idea to find a group of other solo musicians and get together once every couple of weeks for a mastemind session. Talk about new ideas and projects you have going. When you put your brains together with a clever group of people you become a SUPER-BRAIN! Killer 18: Getting fed up. Music can be a bitch and some days you will feel depressed and like nothing is going your way. This is a very dangerous time, because a nice steady job with benefits will suddenly seem a little bit more appealing. At this point you need to take a couple of days off and get away completely. After a little while you will start to realize that things are not so bad, and with that clarity you can plan your attack in a new and better way. Killer 19: Creating the “perfect” music marketing plan. I know that a lot of people like to think of themselves as perfectionists and I used to be the same way, but rather than helping your career this will ultimately kill your spirit. Perfection sucks! Writing the perfect music marketing plan and never actually putting anything into action will get you nowhere FAST. For example, if you are making a YouTube video and mess up a chord or two just laugh and post it anyway. Set a short deadline for planning and then get to work and test your music marketing theories. Killer 20: Getting jealous of other musicians. When you see another musician doing something cool like getting signed or getting press think to yourself “Cool, that means I have the opportunity to do the same thing, because the other musician has just uncovered another potential opportunity for me to market my own music as well.” See, if you track other musicians who have a similar fan base to your own using Google Alerts you get daily updates with new opportunities where you might connect with people who will be open to what you do because they just featured something very similar. This follow up approach is something I call the “Slip Stream” because you get to ride on the wave of the hard work of other musicians and PR companies and takes a lot of the guess work out of your marketing. The Tipping Point: There comes a time in the life of every successful musician, when you have added so much value to the world that suddenly your Twitter and Facebook numbers are going up everyday, and your website traffic is increasing by itself. This is the point at which fans start to become your automatic promotion source, and if you give up before this ever happens you will never know what it feels like. Having reached The Tipping Point you can scale back your music promotion, and focus much more on the creative process. Dilligently promoting your music on a regular basis for an extended period of time will bring you great rewards. Music-Career-Killers-Free.pdf **Mission #1 - Fix Your Website** In a nutshell we're going to fix the holes in your site where fans are leaking out at the moment. We do this by "MOVING THE FREE LINE". This means you give something REALLY COOL away so your visitors are much more motivated to hand over their contact information. And at the end of the day you can generate 10x more income from a lifetime fan than trying to hammer folks to buy a CD the first day they ever see your website. *example* My current freebie is packed with 3 whole albums plus a big package of stuff that I previously SOLD in the past. But you don't have to go as crazy as me. Here are your action steps... 1. Think about something you've put out that everyone loved. 2. Now offer it in exchange for an email address right on the homepage of your site. 3. Remove anything from your homepage that will distract people from giving you their contact info. 4. Once they have downloaded your freebie ask them to pass it along to their friends to add a power punch to your fan generation efforts. BOOM! Your website is fixed. The traditional marketing theory we're borrowing here is that: "The fewer options you give people, the more chance they will take the ONE OPTION that is going to be most valuable to you". You'll be able to capture interested fans and turn them into lifelong supporters like popcorn! Think about the landing page you saw to get on this training, all I did was tell you what you were getting and ask for your email address. And here you are...so it must work right :-) Kilde: Email fra Ben Sword, “Your website is broken :-(“ ::7 keys to building a solid music platform:: Key #1: Change your mindset “You have to understand that the business you’re wanting to get into is very very hard. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. This is a business where your results are not in direct proportion to the work that you put in.” “You have to understand that the odds of ‘getting discovered’ are very small, and indeed against you right now. The labels don’t have the resources to go out and discover new talent and develop them; instead, they’re counting on you to develop a good portion of your business yourself.” “You have to understand that when you walk into a record label you’re saying ‘look at what I’ve done, do you wanna be a part of it?’” Key #2: Who are you? “How are you going to be able to sell yourself to a fanbase or to a record label or to a manager or to a booking agent if YOU don’t even know who you are?” “I want you to really take some time and understanding the branding process of figuring out you as an artist, and find out if everything that you do goes back to who you are as a brand.” “Figure out who you are, get GOOD at who you are, and see if there’s an audience for who you are.” “You have to go out and find people hungry for what it is that you’re offering them, and then bring them inside your world.” “Make sure that your branding is cohesive. Figure out who you are, and stay true to who you are.” Key #3: Understand the business! “You need to educate yourself, you need to understand why publishers and record lables aren’t allowed to accept unsolicited material; you need to understand the proper ways to network; you need to understand the proper ways to put yourself in position to win.” “This business right now is based on the fact that, if there’s ten labels, and they have ten artists, that’s a hundred people, at any given point in time, in any genre of music, that’re getting an opportunity at this business. On average, a label can work on four artists at a time. So that means that sixty of those hundred people that were good enough to make the team, aren’t even in the game. Some of them don’t get in the game.” “When you sign a recording contract, you now are an employee of the label. They tell you what you can record, when you can record, you have to ask permission before you put things out on the internet; there’s a lot of restrictions that are placed on you. Now, trust me, a record label is ultimately where you want to be if you want world-wide mass exposure, but what we’re going to teach you is that in this business now, you can do a lot of the preparation beforehand, and when you walk in to a label, you can move yourself up that chain to become one of those four, and if you’ve set up your business properly, you can maintain that position that you have, and go on to continue great success.” “Understand that when you walk in to a publishing company, or you try to email someone a song, that legally they don’t want to touch it, because they don’t want to be accused of stealing something, so don’t take it personal when someone says that they can’t accept unsolicited material; they’re doing it for your protection, and for their protection.” Key #4: Learn to build relationships! “Learn how to build relationships with your fans. You need an army! You wanna be able to make an impact. You could have 30,000 fans, and if they all bought your single in one day, it would take a long time for you to have maximum impact. But what if you were able to build relationships with these fans, turn them into friends, where you could communicate with them, and allow them the ability to pull the trigger for you, because then build credibility, you build honesty, you build trust, so that when you say “okay, I need five thousand of you this week to buy my song, next week I need five thousand of you to buy my song, the next week I need five thousand of you to buy my song.” Then the record labels and the managers and the booking agents are looking at the numbers and going “who the heck is this? They’re selling five thousand downloads a week!” That’s impressive! That’s maximum impact! But the only way that you can have that impact is either if you get tons of radio play, which most of you aren’t and won’t, or if you’ve gone and built a tribe, a community of people, that are willing to do what you ask them to do, when you ask them to do it.” “Understand too, that you’re not building relationships if you’re just tweeting and facebooking and instagramming all the time; there’s no interaction going on. Engaging is a two-way conversation; you communicating with your fan, your fan having the ability to communicate back. That is the most important relationship that you can have in this business, the relationship with a fan.” “You give your fans 80%, and ask for 20%, and they’ll feel obligated do as you asks.” Key #5: You CANNOT buy success! “If success could be bought, we would have more successful artists. It can’t. If it could, everyone would be doing it; there’s no shortage of money out there.” “If your goal is to ultimately be signed to a record label, you’re not doing yourself any favors by going out there trying to take a song to radio, because 95% of you trying to get to radio, aren’t ready. You happen to have some funding, you happen to have somebody telling you that you can go out and make a difference. Trust me, if you’re ready, and you have what it’s got, and you’re out there selling records and you’re out there playing to fans, a label will find you. A manager will find you. A booking agent will find you. Don’t get in the way of the people that you ultimately want to try and impress. Most labels, and I’m speaking from experience, will be more impressed if you show up selling 40,000 downloads, than if you showed up saying hey, I got to 50 on the charts. Why? Because the 40,000 downloads show them that you’ve got 40,000 people who are willing to spend money on you. That’s how the labels make money. They don’t make money when you’re on stage, touring. They make money when you sell records, so if you show them that you can sell, you now become attractive to the record companies.” Key #6: Become a partner with the record company! “What you want to show anyone that you go into a partnership with, is that you bring something to the table, and it can’t just be that you’re pretty and you can sing. They wanna know, are you very much engaged with your fanbase? Do you have the ability to get folks to shows? Are you selling merchandise? Are you selling music? Are you a business that is moving right now? It is so much easier to get aboard a ball that is moving, than it is to start pushing the ball.” “I recently tried a new concept with a client of mine, by engaging with a partnership with radio stations. I thought, what if I gave them something to give away? So I approached the radio station, and I said “Listen, how would you like to give away music of this artist?” And they’re like “Okay, what’re you talking about?” I said “Hey, tell people ‘go to our facebook page, like us, and we’ll give you some free music.’” The number of stations that came aboard to support her were three times the amount of stations that were willing to play her music. Why? Because everyone was asking for their music to get played! At any given point in time on the program director’s or the music director’s desk there’re stacks and stacks of CD’s, but they have minimal space that’s available. So my artist, in trying a unique approach, got opened a lot of doors. That was becoming a great partner!” “… And Florida Georgia Line basically walked in and said “Hey, remember us? We’re the guys who played for you eight months ago that noone had room for, but now we’ve sold a hundred thousand downloads,” and now they’ve got a golden record, soon to be platinum! So they went out and created their own story, and they went and partnered with their record company, launched their single to radio that they had already put out on their own, and as of speaking they’ve sold close to five million downloads of that one single; they showed their labels that they were a great partner. That’s what I want you to do: Become a fantastic partner!” Key #7: Don’t suck. “You need to spend time honing your craft. You need to study, you need to educate yourself. I find more and more people coming into this business losing hundreds of thousands of dollars because they didn’t take the time to educate themselves; because they weren’t quite yet at the level of performance as the artists that were on the chart; their songs weren’t as good as the artists that were on the charts. But they weren’t willing to go get better, they wanted to try to speed up the process, and speed up the system, because they had funding in place.” “You need to make sure that you’re a great performer, your music is great. You have to have music that your audiences are buying into.” “Do NOT spend money on expensive recordings until you have an audience that’s ready to buy it!” “Don’t record something and then go out and force people into it, it’s not going to happen; they wanna feel like they’re a part of it!” “Don’t move too fast! Our most successful artists right now, on the female side are in their mid-twenties, on the male side, are in their late twenties, early therties. 99% of them have 5+ years of touring experience, or more. It DOESN’T happen particularly fast.” “Take a deep breath. There is no hurry. You are going into a career. If you wanna treat it like a career, put time, energy, effort and resources into learning everything you can about this business, and then learning how to apply it.” http://www.musicindustryblueprint.com/7key/ ::Setting up your website and social sites:: Example of beautiful big-label website: http://www.janakramer.com/ “Probably costs anywhere between 10000 and 15000 dollars, it’s very active because of all the movement and stuff going on in the background… You really don’t need that. Most fans don’t go and click on everything, so what I try to do, is that I try to make everything ONE page, where the fans can get everything they need on one page.” “The music, for an independent artist, is the most important thing that you have. So put that up front, let people find that! Make sure it’s the first thing that they see.” “Let’s see what happens when I click on their newsletter button, what kind of relationship they are trying to build with me… okay, they want my email, my phone number and my date of birth. They didn’t even ask for my name! Probably not going to sign up for that.” Example of website of one of Rick’s own artists: http://www.maddynewton.com/ “The most important thing that you can get from any visitor to your website is their email address, because then they’ve now given you permission to communicate with them. You wanna be able to offer something of value.” “Look at this! Instead of saying ‘sign up to my list’, she’s saying, ‘Exclusive Access! Get 7 free songs! Click here for free music.’ A little more attractive, right? Also notice how the most important thing - her music - is centered on the page, with her twitter and facebook feeds right by, and a photostream below. Everything she needs, all on one page. The cost of this website? 300 dollars.” “This website was built through a tool called Homestead.com, owned by google. We also made sure to skin both her facebook and twitter to look similar - all about the branding, remember.” “Now, when you click the exclusive access offer, what happens? You go to what we call a fan-capture page. It’s got a video, that’s basically Maddy saying “Hey, I’m Maddy, I’d like to send you some music and some videos so you get to know me, just tell me where to send it!” And we ask for a first name, a last name, an email and a zip code. The reason the zip code is so important, is that it allows you to figure out where your fans are, so that you can then start building touring opportunities. Or you can target radio stations and say “hey, I got a lot of fans in your area, can I send you music to give away on your facebook page?” Because most companies have a facebook page nowadays, and they’re always looking for stuff to give away, because most of them don’t create content.” “Fans basically want to know how to hear you, how to see you, and how to communicate with you, but you cannot use facebook and twitter as your only way of communicating with these folks, because facebook and twitter doesn’t give you the opportunity to capture data.” “The more you’re retweeting, the more you’re including other people, the more you’re doing with hashtags, the more you’ll start to show up in other places.” “Twitter needs to drive people to your website. The basis of all your communications needs to be driving people to your website, because that is the only place that you can capture their information.” “In a youtube description, we don’t really need to read what we already know: That you’re an artist, singing a song. Instead, put up links to your homepage, twitter, facebook, and ask the people watching the movie to connect with you. Make sure that what people see is a call to action that will drive them to you.” Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbxwgJa00NQ Kilde: Email fra Rick Barker: [Video Series] How to set up your music business website ::Don’t believe everything you hear!:: “There’s some programs out there stating that you have to go through a particular program before a record label will even consider you; that they’re no longer doing artist development. It’s not true. I know Sony has an artist development program, I know that some publishing companies are currently doing artist development, I know that Big Machine has an artist development program. The problem is those slots are very limited and there’s development that you can do on your own that can give you the opportunity to possibly even bypass their artist development program and get right to the person making the desicion basing whether or not that they will sign you to that record label.” “There’s a 25,000 dollar development programs out there, and I’m not questioning anyone else’s business models, I’m just letting you know that it doesn’t have to be that expensive. There’s a 100,000 dollar, eight months program, that’s out there, and in this particular program they were basically saying “you need to do this”, and what happens when a parent hears that or that their child is chanceless without, all of a sudden they start spending money that they don’t have. I highly discourage that, you don’t need a 100,000 dollar program.” “Look at it like a business: If you invest 10,000 dollars in something, you better have a vehicle in place that will return you more than 10,000 dollars; if you spend 100,000 dollars, same thing! It’s much easier to recoup a 500 dollar investment, or a 1,000 dollar investment.” “Record companies right now don’t control access to the fans like they used to. Years ago, the only way to really get to a music fan was through radio; the only way to get to radio, was through a record label. Well, with the internet, and with youtube and twitter spotify and soundcloud and tunecore and all the other great products that’re out there, you now have direct access to your fans. There are people right now having amazing careers, that are not signed to record labels, and that’s because they knew what they wanted. They knew that their goal wasn’t ultimately to be famous; they wanted to touch as many people possible with their music. So they knew that to do that they had to consistently put their music out, and when you’re consistently feeding people who want something, it tends to spread and grow.” “You must know the finish line before you cross the starting line.” “If your goal is getting a record deal, you will in fact going to get a BETTER deal if you don’t wait for it, and you start building that audience ahead of time.” “Florida Georgia Line went out on their own and created opportunity after opportunity, and that’s what you can do. It starts with the music, they had a brand, they knew who they were and understood what they wanted to achieve; they stayed lazer focused to the audience that they knew would respond to their type of music; they started rolling the ball, and record labels came in and rolled the ball after that, and once the label got on board, it took it to the next level. But it would’ve never happened, had the band not started themselves first! And they didn’t spend money on any development programs, they educated themselves and surrounded themselves with people who could point them in the right direction.” Kilde: Email fra Rick Barker: [Video Series] Today we dispel a HUGE Myth! ::So what can we learn from Taylor?:: “If you take my teachings into practice, and you get a golden or platinum record, would you be kind enough to send me one? I like on my collection!” “A lot of you are recording records before you’ve built an audience, and I’m going to discourage you from doing that. Even if you can afford to do it, and money isn’t an issue with you right now, don’t. A lot of you are putting your songs up on iTunes before you should. As soon as you’re putting songs up on iTunes, you’re allowing people in the industry to go find out whether you’re relevant or not. So until you build that audience, don’t spend a lot of money on recordings, don’t spend a lot of money trying to show people that “Hey, I’m out here on iTunes, you can pick up my music” and things like that. It can actually work against you. Now, if you don’t care about getting a record deal, or you’re not trying to get a booking agent, or a manager, do whatever it is that you like; I’m speaking as if you’re goal is to get to that next level with a label, with a manager, with a booking agent.” “Now Taylor, she could’ve just promoted herself, promoted herself, promoted herself, but what she did, is she took the opportunity through MySpace, to start building relationships. That’s what I’m encouraging you to do. Take some time to put the army in place, THEN create the expensive products to let people know that the army is buying what you’re selling. Now, what she did was that she asked questions, she learned about her audience, she found out what made them laugh, what made them cry, where they shopped, what they liked to eat, she shared with them what made HER laugh, what made HER cry, so when she went into the studio, and she went into a writing appointment, she went in and wrote for her audience. Why? Because she wanted her audience to purchase her product. She created something for that audience. Now what if you did that? What if you took some time to get to know the people that will ultimately buy your products? What if you built such a relationship with them, that when you got ahold of them and said “Listen, I need you to do this because I want the record labels to see that I’m relevant, I want them to see the same things that you see, and I need you to go to iTunes to purchase my product.” When Taylor met with me she said “Rick, I want a golden record,” and I said “Great, let’s go meet 500,000 people.” When she released her record, she went gold in fifteen weeks. Today, it’s easier to meet people because of the internet, because of mobile phones. 88% of the world’s population has a device that they’re attached to, where you can communicate with them. If they give you permission to communicate with them, and you don’t abuse that privilege, it can be very very powerful. What I want you to start thinking of everything that you do, is that it’s a campaign. You’re telling stories; you’re setting something up for down the road, you’re not just dropping a product on them and saying “HEY, look what I did, now buy it!” and then getting frustrated when they don’t. Because you don’t respond that way either; you want to get to know about a product, or do some research on a product, or know that your friends are using the product and they’re getting great results from it. Well the music business is no different! You want to get as many like-minded people enjoying your product, then you wanna put your product available, and make it available for them. You also want to take advantage of all the amazing tools and apps and things that are at your disposal, to collect data and information, to get people on your mailing list so that you can start building that community.” Kilde: Email fra Rick Barker: [Video Series] Today I Show You PROOF! ::The napkin plan:: (because any business model should be simple enough to write down on a napkin) Step 1: Set a goal of getting 10,000 followers on your email list. This is going to give you financial freedom from your day job, and give you the proper time to be the best musical version of yourself. Step 2: Cani! The second part of this is the POWER of CANI (Constant And Never-ending Improvement). So, basically, we just work on our music and our entertainment factor FOREVER! Step 3: Give away your PROUDEST work as a freebie on you web page! Your homepage is no longer a place to hang out; it has ONE job, and that is to collect an email subscriber, and all the interaction is done via email, and then through our chosen social media channel OF CHOICE. The freebie, of course, is the reward they get for subscribing. Step 4: Decide on a traffic plan to get people to our site. … and then we focus on that particular traffic plan until we have 10,000 people on our list! Step 5: Entertain! Once we have people starting to sign up, we create entertaining content to bond fans to your music, and give them the feeling that you are their FRIEND, which you are! ‘Cause they are the coolest people in the world ‘cause they are going to be supporting you! Step 6: Cloning! Now, we have to make everything in our power, to have those new fans share your freebie and your music with THEIR friends, which is a process we refer to as cloning. Step 7: Income Now, it’s time to make som money. First of all, we use the classroom income plugin to create your bread and butter income. This is the income that’s going to pay your rent, make sure you can eat, make sure you can buy fancy shoes and all that. Step 8: High ticket Then, we can start to look at high ticket products, that can boost your income, and be a nice little bonus for ya at the end of the month! Step 9: Optimize That is basically the whole process, so all you’ve got to do from that point is to optimize it, tweak each part, make it work as good as it can, and then repeat to INFINITY! Kilde: Music marketing classroom video 1: The Blueprint ::Website breakthrough:: “… So the new fan, there out in the world, out in the internet, wherever they are, they hear something cool about you and your music, they come to your site! They get offered something really amazingly cool in exchange for an email address so that they can learn more. And DON’T worry if you think you’re going to lose people who don’t want to give you their email address, because our process is like offering a diamond ring in exchange for a potato chip! So, in my case, I offer a freebie worth 70 pounds, and it has sold for 70 pounds in the past, in exchange for an email address, and if someone isn’t interested enoguh to go for that, then they probably didn’t like you that much in the first place, and they’re going to move on, and that’s absolutely fine!” “The reason we developed this entirely new website system, is the Leaky Bucket effect. And this basically means that if an interested person comes to your site, they check out your music and they leave, then most of the time, and in the past, they would NEVER remember to come back and check out what you’re up to again! So you took that valuable spark of interest and WASTED it, because there’s a million and one other important things happening in their life and they moved on. What our system allows us to do is capture someone who has that spark of interest, and then, turn them into a fan, and then hopefully ultimately turn them into a super-fan, and a super-supporter of your music. If you feel like you put a lot of effort into your music marketing, and not really getting much in return, then the leaky bucket effect is probably the problem.” “To achieve maximum impact from our marketing, we go for a process we call ‘moving the free line’. Which basically means you take all the best stuff you’ve ever done, and offer it on the home page of your site for free! So whereas everyone else is going for, you know, “sign up for my newsletter and download two tracks”, you’re going to completely knock it out of the park, and do MUCH BETTER. Now, the contents of your freebie, as we move the free line, is the fuel that powers everything else that we do to get hits to your site, so it’s a crucial first piece of the puzzle. But, obviously, if you’re giving away all of your best stuff for free, you’re going to need to know how to make money from now on… but that’ll be covered later, so do not worry.” “The less information that you ask for, the more likely is it that they’re actually going to enter the email and click on the button. Their name I can learn later!” “Another thing that you should write down, is the word SPLIT TESTING. Basically, right now, I’m running two versions of my fan capture page, to see which one is most successful in getting people onto my list. When I have a winner, I’ll take the loser, rethink it, add more value, and try and improve my results. This is such an important concept. Everyone says you should be testing, and I don’t think anyone is actually doing it, and it means you can keep improving your results forever, and having more and more impact from the precious time you are investing in your marketing! It’s essential!” “After your fan signs up, you should take them over to a thank you-page, and do your very best to have them shear with their friends the thing that they signed up for.” “It’s vitally important that YOU are in control of your own website, and you know how it works, and you know how to update it, so that you can move fast when new opportunities and ideas hit you, and you’re not waiting MONTHS for some web design company to when they can be bothered to make a small change to your website and charge you a bunch of money for it. Kilde: Music marketing classroom video 2: Fix your website ::Get hits!:: Assuming that you completed Mission #1 your website should now be tighter than my underwear on date night :-) (if you missed the previous session you can download it here) Which means it's TIME TO GET SOME HITS...queue exciting music! Truth is there are literally hundreds of different things you could do to get hits to your site, but every single one of them falls into one of two camps... The first is FREE and the second is PAID. Now don't be fooled into thinking that free is always your best option, because "ghetto style" often takes a lot of time, effort and pitching. Personally I like a hybrid of the two... or in other words ADVERTISING THAT PAYS FOR ITSELF!Why Are We're Using FACEBOOK ADS? ============================== There are a ton of reasons this is our biggest source of fans for 2014 but the main ones are as follows: * It's fast - you can have hits on your site in 10 minutes. * It's cheap - the way I do it you can put new people on your list for around 80 cents. * It's easy to understand - gotta love that! You often need a PHD to figure out Google Ads. * But most importantly there is a whole world of hits on there that you can filter to just the people who are most likely to appreciate the music you're promoting. Let me put that into perspective... If I put 100 people on my list for 80 cents each it will cost me $80....experience tells me that using the Classroom income plugin I'll make at least $100 back from that investment. That means my advertising costs are covered and I'm building my audience for free...well in fact I'm even making a little profit :-) Plus over the years if I do a good job and make them happy a few of these beautiful people will buy stuff from me over and over again making my initial investment even smarter. Bonus Coolness: Nobody else in the music business is doing Ads like this...which means you can go in and scoop up all the fans for your genre of music before anyone else even knows what happened. *If you ever wanted to be there are the beginning of something big this is your chance.* 1. Create your Ad Make sure it sticks out. Also a good idea to let them know right away that they’ll have to give up their email address. 2. Laser Target Think of the well known musician that people always say you sound most like and use that in the box where Facebook asks you to select "Interests". Don't be tempted to go for something broad like "music" or use general categories... we want to really drill down to the ideal fan. We selected people over 30 who live in USA, UK, Canada and speak English. But do what makes sense for your target fanbase. (Think about who comes to the gigs) Ninja Tip: Once your Ad is posted go to the power editor in the right hand side of the Ads manager, download your Ads then select News Feed (desktop only). We found this saves a lot of money on people looking at Facebook from a mobile phone who don't have time to really look at your offer properly. 3. Budget and Bidding It's very important that you don't get carried away with your Ads at first...only invest what you can afford to loose. So I suggest you set up a campaign with a lifetime budget of $10 to make sure that you only spend your testing budget with this first Ad. Bid for clicks - going in one cent above what Facebook suggests will mean your Ad gets shown a lot (you never usually pay the top price) 4. Get Some Free Hits Spend a few minutes contacting popular websites to offer them your freebie as a special bonus to their visitors. (Google is a great research tool for this) Music sites get hammered with pitch emails all the time so think outside the box for other topics that might work. For me I might approach a bunch of cooking sites and pitch it in a fun way like: "Donut obsessed musician gives all his music away for free while on a sugar high" Each free subscriber you get gives you an even better chance to break even on your advertising. ============================== How do you know if your Ads are working well? ============================== Follow our stats... * The Ad we use got clicked on at around 1.5%. * Our fan-catcher page converted 60% of people into email subscribers. * We're putting people on the email list for around 80 cents. Now you can turn the fan tap on and off anytime you want to...it's beautiful! Kilde: Email fra Ben Sword: do this, get fans… “For example, I’ll have people come to me that have a single or a record ready, and they want to release it out to the world, and they’re like, “We’re going to release this tomorrow and it’s going to be fantastic and we just need a website to promote it on.” And I go, “Whoa, hold on a sec. You have a record finished, and you haven’t promoted it at all and you want a website to put it on?” Let’s take a couple of steps back, let’s make a six-month marketing plan for how we’re going to start building momentum for this record before we release it. Then let’s release little pieces of it and get you guys fans of each little piece before we actually come out and say, “BOOM! Here’s the record!” It’s hard to see that path when you’re excited about the fact that you just recorded a record.” “For somebody who’s just starting out with a digital recording, I would say the first step is figuring out who your fans are. And there are some interesting ways you can do that, from simply posting something up on Facebook and asking your friends – which sometimes works, but not really – to services where you can get your music played on digital radio stations to folks who are fans of other artists. You can get feedback from them, this was played on a Tim McGraw station and they liked it or it was played on a Five For Fighting station and they didn’t like it. You can start to build a decent demographic profile of who likes and doesn’t like you music from doing things like that. Then you can establish a digital direction you can take to get your music to the right ears.” “I like to think about it as “un-marketing.” If you’re a new artist on Facebook and all you do is sit around saying, “Hey, come listen to my track!” and you’re just pushing and pushing, your friends and potential friends are going to hate it because you’re shouting all the time. The idea is to make your stuff available and put it in the periphery of those people you already know are going to enjoy it.” “The first time I put out a record I was still in a 9-to-5 job, so I didn’t have all this time to tour and play shows and that kind of thing. So I started to think about how I could get my content out there. I decided I was going to do video covers and see if I could find people who would dig the videos and then maybe look back at my stuff. But I didn’t just cover whatever I wanted to, I decided to find some of the top songs in my genre that were doing well, cover those, come up with my own arrangements, and post them on my blog. My blog at the time was on Tumblr, and Tumblr is a fantastic resource to be able to find people of specific demographics because it’s a network of blogs that people post on based on hashtags, and all those hashtags are searchable. So let’s say I post a cover of me doing a Lord Huron song. That day, or possibly the day before, I’m going to go and follow as many Lord Huron fans as I can. Just follow them, so that once they see that they have a new follower, they’re pretty likely to come click back on my blog. And the first piece of content they’re going to see is my cover of a Lord Huron song. So your return rate on that is going to be decently high because you’re already targeting somebody that you know likes this group. They may not like your cover of it, and that’s fine, but you’re going to make way more fans than if you’re just out there shouting. So I did that for probably three months, and every time I did it I ended up with 400-600 fans and a couple thousand at the end of a couple of months. So you picked different artists and applied the same formula to them over these months? Exactly, and the beautiful thing about that is once I had maybe 3,000 people following my music blog, I used interactive techniques to start talking directly to them instead of putting out this content. So I started a campaign called “Song A Week” and I said “I want to know your ideas now, I don’t want to just cover songs by artists that you like, I want to know what your ideas might be. Then once a week, I’m going to take one of these ideas, write a song about it, record it, put a video up about it, and then it’s yours, you can have it for free.” So I tried to get connected to those people I had just brought over to the website.” “Do you think it imperative to have songs online, images? Apart from a hub online, what’s the next minimum requirement? Content, and you would think that would be music, but it doesn’t actually have to be, and that’s the weird world that we’re in. I’ve seen bands go out and play shows and not release digital music and just live off their live show, and even have an online presence that is images and video and not contain their music. It’s weird, and you need the right demographic to make that happen, but the concept of leaving your fans wanting more can work to your benefit.” http://blog.discmakers.com/2014/02/building-your-online-presence/ A self-propelled music PR campaign can absolutely be effective if executed properly, which means you’re effective at managing the three key phases: 1. Pre-PR phase: Planning 2. During-PR phase: Pitching 3. Post-PR phase: The Eagle Has Landed Unfortunately for those new to digital publicity (and even for those with experience) there are several pitfalls that can derail the success of a campaign. I’ve outlined several mistakes that must be avoided in each of the three phases so that your time and efforts are maximized. Music PR Phase 1: Planning Ineffective (or unrealistic) goal setting PR is meant to do three things for you: 1. Build conversations with potential fans 2. Increase overall visibility with a target market 3. Establish influence within a market Will success in these three things lead to sales in some way? Hopefully. Is the purpose of PR to increase your bottom line? No. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that PR will lead to an increase in sales, as the feature placements (blog features, podcast features, magazine features, etc.) only guarantee that you are being seen by more people who could potentially become your fans. These placements are only the beginning of a much bigger sales funnel. With that said, setting unrealistic goals will kill ANY PR campaign, as it sets a campaign up for failure from the get-go. Setting effective goals is a critical staple to Pre-PR planning! Underdeveloped Branding As a full-time digital publicist, I receive inquires on a daily basis from independent artists who would like us to do their PR. When exploring each artist to decide if we are the right fit for them, we look at the music (obviously), but we also take a look at their overall branding with almost equal weight. This includes the messaging in their bio and the assets that they have available for the promotional work, such as photos, videos, and the look and feel of their website and social networks. From my experience, the music must be good, but so must the branding. An artist can have great music, but when it comes to a music PR campaign, if the photos don’t pop, the bio doesn’t weave a compelling story, and the videos look under-baked, getting media makers to sign on for a feature becomes incredibly difficult. Each of these components is an extension of your online brand and will do just as much to help (or harm) you as does the quality of your music. Lack of Targeting Far too often I see artists compile their target list of media makers to reach out to, and it is just a list of the biggest 1% of blogs in the world (i.e. Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, Gorilla Vs. Bear, NPR), along with blogs in the wrong genre and even worse, blogs that focus on the hyper-local (and they are not in that location). It is very important to understand that the type of music you play (specifically the music you are promoting NOW), where you are from, how old you are, how big your fan base is and what passions drive the influence of your music dictate which blogs you should, and should NEVER be targeting. Music PR Phase 2: Pitching A Bad Elevator Pitch The purpose of an elevator pitch is to create a quick description in a sentence or two of your sound that not only gives people a frame of reference (who might you may sound like), but also to paint a strong, compelling picture of your sound that is so intriguing they want to go check out your music: "The raw power of Led Zeppelin meets the danceability of Lady Gaga." On the other hand, a bad pitch gives no frame of reference and isn’t at all compelling: "Eclectic Pop." And a word to the wise, using obscure artists is fine if you are SURE that your intended audience will know who it is. If they have to ask "Who?" once you’ve given your pitch, you’ve already lost them… CCing (or BCCing) everyone pitched This is a HUGE no-no if you are trying to get any media maker to work with you. Besides the fact that CCing dozens of people at once shows an utter disregard for respecting privacy, it actually goes against US anti-spam laws. BCCing people, although respecting people’s privacy, is still considered spam. Another major issue with BCCing people is that it leave no opportunity for you to personally address each media makers, which can play a critical role in establishing new long-term relationships with media makers. If you are going to pitch media makers you don’t know, it is always best to check their website for a submission guideline, and then email each one directly with a personalized introduction and sign off to the email. Poor Timing Timing is everything when it comes to PR, because the hot topic at any given moment within an industry (or around the world) can dictate how relevant your story will be to a media maker’s audience. SXSW is a great example of how music PR efforts can be affected by timing. For a week or two in mid-March, much of the music blogosphere has its eyes on Austin to see who the best up-and-coming acts are. Unfortunately for those NOT heading down to Austin, it means a lack of interest from many media makers. If you’re not going to play SXSW, don’t schedule your PR efforts during this time. When you dive into your pitching, make sure that you do some research in the surrounding area, look at industry-news, and check the calendar for any significant holidays or events. Overly Hyped I can think of nothing that will damage a PR campaign more than when an artist is overly hyped. Not only do most media makers not care, but most often they won’t even believe you when you say that you sound like "nothing they have ever heard before." Especially because, if you’re being honest, it probably isn’t true. With the exception of the biggest blogs in the world (i.e. the Pitchfork’s of the world) most media makers are ONLY doing so because it is their passion. Most don’t make any money at all from it. It is always more effective to approach media makers genuinely with a story that is not only honest and compelling, but speaks to creating value for THEM and THEIR audience. Not Following Up PR is a process and the results are in no way immediate. Once an initial pitch is sent out, it may sit for days in the abyss of the recipient’s inbox before it is seen, if it is ever seen at all. Very often I’ll hear back from media makers that I have pitched three weeks later saying they were so glad I followed up because they had missed my other emails. And that right there is your problem. By not following up, you are leaving your pitch up to the unknown. People may see it and respond, or they may delete it, or maybe they just missed it entirely. Without following up, how will you ever know? From my own personal experience, the only way to make an effective pitch is if you follow up on a weekly basis for a few weeks (typically three or four weeks after the pitch is sent). Music PR Phase 3: The Eagle Has Landed Not Building Relationships With Your Supporters Any feature can be a one time thing if you let it be that way. However, if you take the time to build a relationship with the media maker, there is no end to how often and how long they may continue to support you. If you leverage each feature you get into a relationship, the promotion for each project you release in the future becomes that much easier to execute (not to mention the results of which will be far greater). On the other hand, if you DON’T leverage each feature, you’ll have to start from square one every time you release a new project… Here are a few great ways to turn a one time feature into a new relationship with a valuable supporter: 1. Follow up with the media maker and thank them for featuring you 2. Share the feature on all of your social networks and tag the media maker whenever possible 3. Include the media maker in a #FF (Follow Friday) tweet 4. Share OTHER features theirs on a regular basis Not maintaining a presence where you are featured As mentioned earlier, the purpose of PR is to build new conversations with potential fans. Believe it or not, but the features themselves (i.e. a blogger writing about your music) are often not enough to get a conversation stated. You need to maintain an active presence on any and every place you are featured so you can directly interact with anyone willing to join the conversation. THIS is how these conversations will eventually be turned into more fans — and down the line, into more sales! Not monitoring the virality of your features Quite often, media makers will be involved with a network of other media makers either in a similar niche or similar location and they will support each other. This can lead to posts being mentioned in other places, or even fully re-published on other websites. By not monitoring the virality of a feature, in other words not monitoring where ELSE people are talking about you because of a single feature, you are once again missing critical opportunities to build your fan base. A great way to do this is to set up Google Alerts for yourself so that any time your name (or your name + your single, or your name + your music video title) is mentioned online, you will be notified via email. http://blog.discmakers.com/2013/04/critical-mistakes-that-can-destroy-your-music-pr-campaign/ Setting goals for an upcoming digital publicity campaign can help you to do two things that are critical to success: 1. Hire the right kind of publicist There are many different types of digital publicists, each of whom have a specialty and defined approach to music publicity and PR. Tour publicity, niche publicity, long-tail publicity, short-tail (aka short head or fat head) publicity, and more. Exploring and defining your goals will help you to better determine the right kind of publicist for you. 2. Understand the value of the work Without understanding what it actually means to receive digital music publicity (again, from the right kind of publicist), each feature that you receive – an album review, interview, internet radio spin, tour coverage, etc. – won’t ever truly satisfy you. A good way to look a PR is to understand that each feature you receive is simply a step in the right direction. But without understanding where you are going, these steps might not feel like success. By setting the proper goals for your music publicity efforts, you will be able to truly understand the value, and thus the return on investment (ROI) of each feature. But setting goals needs to be done properly. Certain goals will take more time to accomplish than others, and of course some goals are just completely unrealistic (often the result of insufficient market research and/or lacking music industry knowledge). Unrealistic goals Before we dive in to setting realistic goals, let’s look at some unrealistic goals that can lead to the wrong expectations of what is likely to happen from a successful digital publicity campaign. 1. Expecting unrealistic tangible results, e.g. producing a viral video, selling one million albums. 2. Presuming you can establish a self-sustaining career in music from PR alone. 3. Expecting feature placements from industry-leading tastemakers that are far beyond your reach, e.g. a brand new indie artist expecting coverage on Pitchfork or Rolling Stone. 4. Expecting feature placements that just don’t make sense, e.g. coverage from blogs that don’t cover music, your style of music, or who cover national topics and celebrities exclusively. So now that we’ve covered some of the unrealistic goals, let’s take a dive into what can be a good goal for you to focus on in your music publicity. The goals below are broken down into 3 different time frames: - Short Term (2 – 3 months) - Medium Term (3 – 6 months) - Long Term (6 months – 1 year) This is critical for not only understanding how long it may take for you to achieve certain goals but setting a time-frame around a goal is an important part of actually achieving it. If you were to set a goal of ‘I want 1,000 fans’ with no time-frame around when you hope to achieve that, how do you know you are on the right path? So let’s dive into the goals below and explore several effective goals for all three time-frames that will help you to approach your digital PR campaign with manageable expectations and understanding of the work. Short term goals The theme surrounding your short term goals should be to build conversation. This can be an instantaneous goal, a great short term focus, because the conversation can start to build even after just one feature. 1. Land features that lead to the right kind of conversations. In order to ensure that the conversations that occur with new and existing fans and tastemakers are the right conversations, it is critical that you think about what kind of features you are hoping to achieve. Again this goes back to the idea that there are several types of digital PR, and each one can lead to different types of features. There are several types of features you can expect to get from digital PR, along with what type of publicist to seek out: - Niche coverage about your background and story (not just music coverage) to expand your promotional targets (Niche PR) - High volume of coverage from genre-specific media makers to grow overall visibility (Long-Tail PR) - Coverage from ONLY the biggest industry tastemakers (Short-Tail PR) - Local press for upcoming events (Tour PR) 2. Establish relationships with taste-makers. Although many digital PR campaigns will only last a few months, the value of the work can greatly outweigh the time-frame as it can help you to determine who and where you should be building relationships within target niches. No matter your focus (long-tail, niche, tour coverage, etc.) a great short-term goal to set for yourself and your digital PR campaign is to identify tastemakers so that you can continue the conversations with those who matter to your growth and success. 3. Establish new conversations with your target audiences An obvious goal for PR is to find new fans, so a great short-term goal to set for yourself is to establish new conversations within your target market. This will ONLY happen if you are proactive and get involved. Media makers may cover you, and this may lead to some comments and social sharing, but unless you engage these media makers and fans in a timely matter, the conversation will never get to where you need it to, which is to convert those new eyeballs to real fans who are connected with you directly on your own social networks, blog or newsletter. 4. Build awareness of your band, brand, and product. This is the most basic short-term goal, and is a great jumping off point for any newly established artist. With just a few short months time, increasing the awareness of a new brand is easily attainable and will help to build the strong foundation needed to achieve your medium term goals. Medium term goals With a bit more time invested in digital PR, a great theme to focus on for your medium term goals is an increase in visibility. 1. Increase Google ranking Although you certainly can increase your Google ranking in the short-term, it is likely you’ll need 3-4 months (or more) to really make a big enough difference to rank towards the top of key Google searches. 2. Gain incremental growth on social networks This is the tangible goal that everyone puts in place as the “indicator of ROI” when it comes to digital PR, and with good reason. When you are starting new conversations, the idea is to acquire those fans on your social networks so you can grow the conversations and turn them into real fans. And while you certainly will start to see some new growth on your social networks from the new conversations that are started (by achieving your short term goals), you won’t really start to see the growth happen until your overall visibility increases. This will happen when you’ve been placed on enough features to saturate your market or niche. Again, remember that you MUST do your part in this by engaging within the new conversations in order to acquire these new fans. 3. Strengthen relationships with existing passive fans and establish a greater number of active fans Many of the new (and existing) fans that result from your digital PR campaign will land into the “passive fan” category. This means they are aware of and interested in you, but the loyalty to you won’t be strong enough where they feel the need to engage with you on a regular basis, and ultimately purchase from you as well. A great medium term goal to set for yourself is to build up your visibility enough, where you can engage with fans on a regular basis, allowing you to strengthen relationships ultimately converting your ‘passive fans’ to more engaged “active fans.” Long term goals Once you have built up conversations, and then your visibility, you’ll start to increase your overall influence within your market. This is a great theme to focus on for your long-term goals. 1. Increase in influence within target niches After achieving you short-term goal of increased awareness and conversations, as well as your medium term goal of increased visibility, you’ll begin to get to a point where your goal should be to increase your influence within your target markets. This will be accomplished by utilizing your relationships with key niche tastemakers who are capable of increasing the prestige and value of your brand. 2. Strengthen relationships with existing active fans and establish a greater number of super fans By focusing on offering unique content to niche tastemakers and to your existing base of “active fans,” you will be able to increase the loyalty and influence you have over your fans. This will effectively convert “active fans” to “super fans” who are the life-long, hard core, obsessive fans who will not only purchase one of everything you release, but will begin to evangelize your music and brand to others. In other words, at this point, your fans will increase your influence for you because they will be spreading the word at a rabid level to their friends and family who may be involved in the same niche space. 3. Increase in sales Let’s preface this by understanding that digital PR does not have a direct correlation to sales. This is especially true in a short or medium term basis. But the focus on increasing influence within a niche market over a long-term can certainly increase the level of sales that result from your new super fans and the new fans that they have created through the evangelism process. Keep these goals and strategies in mind when you embark on any PR campaign, and your results and expectations have a good chance of being aligned. http://blog.discmakers.com/2013/04/realistic-music-publicity-goals-pr-campaign/ While artist bios can be written in any number of styles and configurations, Baker recommends a specific approach that has worked for him for decades. “We don’t really have bios or press releases anymore,” he says. “We have a uni-document. It’s a bio, but it’s a press release as well. It tells all about the artist’s background, but it also has a headline and a subhead that share the latest news.” Bio length generally doesn’t matter much to Baker, as long as it tells the core, compelling story of the artist. “Sometimes we shorten bios when we send out paper versions with CDs,” he says. “Online, we don’t care how long a bio runs. We just want the uni-document to be a complete, thorough source of information.” Baker tells his bio writers to start by describing the artist’s new album, or whatever the most current and exciting project may be. “It doesn’t matter that the band started in Chicago in 1984,” he says. “It matters that they have a new album coming out on such and such date, with this distribution and that label support, and this is why the project is important. So talk about the new album for a couple paragraphs to get people excited about it.” A third of the way through, Baker advises, delve into the artist’s history. “This is where you say the band started in Chicago in 1984, recorded a second album two years later, won a Grammy in 1996, and work your way back to the present chronologically. Then discuss the current project again briefly at the end.” “It’s a bit of a formula, granted,” he continues. “We’re open to variations, as long as the writer understands the basics of how we like to see a bio flow.” Use quotes Whether they come directly from the artist or from a blog post or newspaper article, quotes bring a bio to life and give it a unique feel and flavor. “If you have any pertinent quotes from media publications saying how great the album is, include those,” says Baker. Though it’s not a hard and fast rule, Baker also likes to use quotes to bookend Conqueroo’s artist bios. “A good quote from the artist up front can establish a point of view and get people excited about the album,” says Baker. “I also like to end a bio with a quippy quote about the current project.” Write for journalists and the public When you’re putting a bio together, remember that you are creating a piece of writing for a varied audience, says Baker. “Bios aren’t just tools for journalists. They’re usually published on artist websites as well, so write and edit with both sectors in mind.” Furthermore, you never know who is going to see what – a blogger can easily post a bio meant for press for all the public to see online, and a journalist could peruse a band’s public page while trying to decide if they’re worthy of coverage. In practical terms, writing for both audiences means making sure that your prose is catchy and engaging enough to grab the attention of a potential fan surfing to your site – as well as deep and thorough enough to give a journalist what he or she needs to become an instant expert on you and your music. Easier said than done? No doubt – but an important balance to keep in mind. Know what to avoid “When I was working as the head of publicity at Capitol Records, the president of the company commanded that we use no hyperbole in written materials,” says Baker. “So if I see anything like ‘unique,’ ‘best yet,’ or other needless superlatives, it’s gone. Let reviewers be the ones to include superlatives.” One exception Baker notes is if such language is included in a quote from the artist him or herself, or if it truly supports an important theme or story for the subject of the bio. Baker further advises to avoid clichés, wherever they pop up in your bio writing. “It’s easy to fall back on them when you’re tired, under a deadline, or just not paying attention to the craft of writing,” he says. “But stay away from them for sure.” Be specific As a longtime music journalist myself, I’ve received countless press packages containing bios that didn’t grab my attention one bit. Why? They were too vague. A statement like “Artist X has recorded a career-defining album, meshing genres into a sound all his own,” tells me literally nothing. Much more intriguing, vivid, and informative, is something like “Artist X has recorded the first all-kazoo album of his career, combining speed metal and Zydeco influences into a pummeling sound that has rocked the San Fernando Valley.” A simple test is to ask yourself, with each phrase, could this describe any number of artists, or only the music that I’m writing about? The closer to the latter you can come on a consistent basis, the more compelling your artist bio will be. Consider outsourcing Just like mixing, mastering, arranging horn parts, or any number of musical tasks, writing a strong bio is a specialized skill. If you find yourself more comfortable penning thoughtful lyrics rather than crafting engaging PR copy, it may be time to enlist the help of a professional writer. Baker puts it bluntly: “Most artists should not write their own bio. Bio writing is a skill that recording artists – even articulate ones – don’t automatically have. I’ve gotten some of the worst crap I’ve ever read from artists who write their own, and then I have to communicate to them that I can’t use what he or she wrote. It’s just not the tool I needed. My company has four employees, and one is a dedicated editorial director. She doesn’t write much copy herself, but she goes over every stitch of print that we put out to make sure it’s clear and that it abides by the principles I’ve already discussed.” To find a good bio writer, research is key. Check out artist bios on websites and when you find one that resonates with you, try contacting someone on their team to find out who the writer was. “Call upon a journalist in a local paper,” advises Baker. “Just make sure it’s not somebody who is going to run into a conflict of interest later if the opportunity to write about you comes up.” Other options include contacting musicology professors at local colleges or hitting up trade publications for recommendations. When it comes to payment, Baker says that the going rate for a professional bio writer is $300-$500. “If you’re an indie band funding your project on KickStarter, you’ll pay less of course,” he says. “If you’re Sony/BMG or Interscope, perhaps writers will charge a bit more.” While such a figure may seem steep, and you can likely find a reliable source to craft yours for less, it’s a good indicator of how important a quality bio can be. In many cases, your artist bio will be the first exposure a journalist or potential fan will have to you or your band – and a strong bio can prime the reader to engage with your music. Just like quality audio mastering or graphic design, a well-crafted bio can present you in an engaging, professional way and be well worth the investment. Tell a story, but keep it practical You want a bio to be vivid and engaging, says Baker, but there’s no single way to achieve that goal. “Some bio writers really bring across either the sound of a band or the content of a lyric,” he says. “Lyrics are important, and stories behind lyrics are important, too. One writer I work with is a former English professor. He really knows how to explain a lyric, get inside it, and find something in it to talk about. That’s a very different skill from a jazz bio writer, who will be able to better describe the confluence of influences, improvisational flow, and sonic appeal of an album.” Regardless of how you make a bio come to life, remember that the core of a bio is the information it presents. In other words, you want to do your reader’s homework for him or her, says Baker – regardless of whether that reader is a journalist or fan-in-the-making. “It should be the one place where a journalist in particular can look for reference on an artist,” he says. “Everything you need to know should be right there, and be easy to find.” http://blog.discmakers.com/2014/01/how-to-write-a-killer-artist-bio/ The mission here was to remove all the head-scratching from your social media marketing by giving you a set of tried and tested posts ready to go. (It might be a good idea to save this so you got it handy) 1. Behind the music - let people in on your wild ride in the biz...first band, first song, first guitar, first love (ok maybe not), challenges and setbacks, magic moments and plans for the future. 2. Cribs - make a video to show folks around your home town and even your house if that don't feel weird. Travel to important landmarks in your career like where the band got together or where you performed your first successful stage dive. If you can't be bother to actually leave your house you could do this using Google Street View ;-) 3. Interviews with every cool person you meet along the way - producers, managers, your crazy bassist, other bands, family, friends, fans, the sound man, tour manager and the driver who never seems to sleep. 4. In the studio during recording sessions - awesome method of keeping fans in touch while you would normally be off the radar. 5. Video diary updates when you're on tour - where you're playing, how the shows are going, which band member is starting to make you crazy and reviews of the accommodation. 6. Backstage - dressing room shenanigans, the after-show party...and even that particularly tasty treat you got on the rider. 7. Live footage from your latest gigs - there is a cool tool called "Switch Cam" which will turn your whole fanbase into one big massive film crew and then you can come back later and make a wicked movie using all those different viewpoints. It's the future baby! 8. Sound check video - you might think that seems a little boring and honestly I would agree with you but they seem to get a ton of views so once you got your fanbase rocking there should be interested people who will appreciate it. 9. Show people around your gear and how you get your EPIC sounds. 10. Live from the merch booth meeting the fans. 11. Sneak peek clips of brand new tracks from the practice room. 12. Music from your past - dust off those demos you made when you were a kid or in an early band. I think it's cool to show people how you got to where you are now musically. Don't be bashful about it! 13. Covers by you - interesting arrangements of music you love. 14. Covers by fans - post a little "guitar lesson" for one of your most popular songs and then challenge fans to come up with the BEST COVER. 15. Karaoke Version - so folks can blast it out at a party. (Undercover way to have people spread the word about what you're doing) 16. The "Making of" your video directors commentary - like the extras on a DVD. This would basically be a couple of key players talking about how the whole thing came together. 17. Outtakes and Bloopers from your recording session and video shoot. 18. Go thrift shopping - for weird and wonderful stage clothes or props and document the whole adventure on video. 19. Keep a songwriting diary - ask for feedback and new ideas. Turn your fanbase into a giant musical mastermind group! 20. Song-meanings and inspiration - if that does not feel too personal. 21. Say Thanks - make a real personal video to thank fans when you reach important milestones in your career. Jackie Chan did this when he got 50 million Facebook likes. 22. Make a roundup video each week - of anything you see online that makes you laugh, cry or wet your knickers with joy. There is a killer tool called Feedly that will allow you to track all your favorite sites and people in one easy place. Thanks Feedly! 23. Host an "Ask Me Anything Event (or online open mic session) using Google Hangout. Kilde: Mail fra Ben Sword - “Your Facebook Latest Post…LOL :-)” “Physical promotional materials are still incredibly important. Get out into the world and put up some posters and hand out some flyers. Don’t spend all of your time on Facebook.” “Going to other bands’ shows is THE most important thing you can do to support your scene.” “Go out of your way to help others in your scene. It will eventually come back around.” http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/02/27/17-things-local-bands-just-dont-get “Every time that someone leaves a comment, and you don’t respond to it, that’s like walking away and not saying thank you. So take advantage of that opportunity!” “Today, it’s more about the psychology than the technology.” “If people aren’t talking about your music, you’re doing it wrong. Fix it, or get out!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLxyWOnR2NY “What I try to do whenever making a decision, the first thing I always ask myself is: ‘How much time would it take me to learn the process and do it myself? Is there a way that I can learn it faster? How soon will I be able to recoup the investment that I made?’” “If you’re constantly just spending with no way of recouping, it doesn’t add up.” “Those are the three things that I would worry about right now: Vocals, social media education, and songwriting, or, if you’re not a songwriter, performance.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkiIh-dvFxY “When I’m judging songwriting, I listen for a couple of things: 1 - Did it connect? 2 - Was I humming along? 3 - How long was this song? I always tell writers, ‘3:30 and a hook, radio stations want the ability to play more.’” “If you get the opportunity to talk to someone who’s in the business and doing what it is that you wanna do, DO IT. Just go over, ask one question, then shut up and listen. Don’t start handing out music, don’t start telling us about all the other things you’ve done; ask the person a question, and then shut up! You’ll be surprised at how much you learn if you do that.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKsbulWBsso&feature=em-uploademail “I remember the first time I heard Tom give his definition of “loving your audience.” It was soooo good. I remember just saying, “Yes!” His definition goes like this: “Loving your audience is the attitude of giving anything you can for the benefit of each person in the audience.” See, most artists think that audiences come to hear how “good they are” – how well they can sing or play their instruments; or how good their songs are. The problem with that is, that’s not really the reason they come. They came to connect with that artist. People want to see… people! Now, you have to take the time to develop your talent – but that’s a different discussion. When you make “impressing the audience” your focus while onstage, it causes you to focus on yourself and not them. From Tom’s Live Music Method book: “The enemy of love is not hate. Rather, the enemy of love is self-conciousness. We’re preoccupied with our “selves,” and when I am concerned about me, then I’m not concerned about you.” Self-conciousness keeps us from thinking about what will benefit the audience,… from loving them. The funny thing is, a lot of talented singers and musicians get angry or frustrated, when it seems like the audience doesn’t “get them.” They focus on their talent and try to reconcile the audience’s supposed lack of interest; really, they focus on themselves and the audience gets lost in the process. When you make the audience’s enjoyment, their benefit, the first and most important focus, it solves so many other things. There’s a verse in the Bible that says, Love covers a multitude of sins. Well, after working with artists, I think “love” from the stage can cover a multitude of mistakes. The “perfect show” almost never happens even when you learn our method, practice it, and integrate it on a consistent basis. But if your audience experiences you “giving anything you can for their benefit,” then even when you make mistakes, hit wrong notes, forget lyrics, miss whatever, they will still love you. That’s awesome to me!” www.onstagesuccess.com/2014/03/benefitting-your-audience/ “You see, in our school we didn’t have grades, so we didn’t have A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s. The only A’s I got, and this is a little corny, I got their attention, I got their approval, their admiration, their approbation, and their applause. Those were the only A’s I wanted, and I got ‘em!” - George Carlin, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os-phOgsGHY