Derek Thinks Music

Two Kids Spend $100,000, Disappointed They're Not Famous

2012-01-31T13:21:00.002-06:00

Over at Time's "Entrepreneuerial Insights" section, the brothers that form the band Two Lights write an op-ed about how their music career has cost them $100,00 so far and it's really hard, man.

Quoth the band,

"What meets me backstage is nothing like what I pictured. No fountains of champagne, no elegant lounges. It's just as dingy as the venue itself, with a printed sign taped to the star's dressing room door. The band is hanging out on a couch that someone obviously found on the street, and there are some catered snacks that look like they could have come from the NYU dining hall I try to avoid.

It occurs to me that if any part of me is doing this for the good life, I should let that go."

They then go on to elaborate on their expenses, ending with:

In short, the School of Rock is expensive. Then again, class can be a lot of fun, and some of the homework is pretty cool. And of course, if we do graduate — if we make it in the music business — we'll soon be earning a lot more money than even doctors and lawyers. Or so we tell ourselves...

Surprise! It's almost as if we make music for the love of it, shocking!

Lefsetz does a much better job of dissecting the article than I would.

1. If you think backstage was lavish back in the pre-Internet heyday, you were never there. Maybe in New York and L.A., but rarely there either. Just a ton of cold cuts, potato chips and beer on ice. As for who was there? A ton of hangers-on, who believed if they could just be close to the icons, they’d be cool.

2. Training. Irrelevant of whether you need music and voice lessons, complaining about the price is like me bitching how much it cost to go to college and law school. At today’s price, my college is $200k for four years. Add three years of law school on top of that and this guy is bitching about fifteen years of piano and guitar lessons for 30k? (And oh yeah, I had those too!)

3. Rehearsal. We all need an office. And if you’ve got no money, make it in your home. And if that’s too noisy, move where it’s cheap and you’ve got some space, like back to Maine. You don’t have to live in the metropolis anymore to make it. The Internet is everywhere.

3. Gear. As everyone online is saying, you spent $500 to move a piano? How’s the gas mileage on that Lamborghini? Either get an electronic keyboard or buy something used or rent. Don’t put the lifestyle in front of the success.

4. E-mail blasts. You wasted a grand. I ignore that stuff, and so does everybody else. We get hipped to quality and success by our network, we hate self-promoters/hypesters.
I could go on and on but you not only get the point, you know the story as well or better than I do.

It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.

And you don’t make it by complaining, you make it by knocking them dead. And you can do that on a Japanese guitar as well as a Les Paul. Talent is much more important than equipment. These guys are just being ripped off by an old system which is trying not to die. They’re being bitten by hucksters the same way you get ripped off on the street by the guys playing three card monte.

Laughable.

P.S. If you’re so damn great, why do you have only 98 Twitter followers?

Lessons From Louis CK's MIllion-Dollar DIY Experiment

2012-01-26T19:00:00.000-06:00

For those of you who missed it, on December 10th Louis CK released a self-produced, self-financed comedy special for a $5 download on his own website. No restrictions, other than asking you "please don't pirate this."

He made a million dollars in ten days, no middlemen required.

Louis C.K. said he was shocked as he watched the orders come in -- and then began to feel guilty about the amount he'd netted.

"I've never had a million dollars all at once. I grew up pretty poor and I was like, this is not even my money," he said. "This is just a five-dollar impulse that 220,000 people had, and now I have it. And I felt uncomfortable about having that much money."

So Louis C.K. set aside $250,000 to cover the cost of the expenses of producing the special, then doled out another $250,000 in bonuses for his staffers.

He then donated $280,000 to five charities: The Fistula Foundation, The Pablove Foundation, charity: water, Kiva and Green Chimneys.

"I was going to [donate] $100,000, but it's like blackjack -- I just kept dishing it out," he told Fallon.

That leaves $220,000 left over.

"Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my childen [sic]. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business," Louis C.K. wrote in a statement posted on his website.

He's not the first artist to make a killing without a label, this just serves as more proof that you can make it on your own. Radiohead's In Rainbows made the band more money than they've ever made for a record even though it was a pay-what-you-want record.

1 Direct-to-fan sales mean cheaper products AND more money going to the artists.

For a large company, $1,000,000 is break-even. For a DIY artist, it's a smash hit. Rembember $18 CDs back in the 90s? Each CD you bought from a third party only returned cents to the band.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather keep my first million.

2) Fans will pay for great art from the artists they love.What with all the crap the MPAA and RIAA are throwing about to justify the Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act, you'd think people will only pay for art when they're forced to.

Nope.

As the video game distribution platform Steam has shown, making legitmate purchase a better experience for consumers opens their wallets.

Piracy is a service problem.

Louis CK allowed you to download and watch his video using any platform you wanted.

He didn't even bother copy-protecting the video.

He didn't have to.

---

"I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'Fuck you' to this decaying business model." - Thom Yorke

Megaupload Shut Down

2012-01-19T20:24:00.000-06:00

Wow. Megaupload, a New Zealand company, was just shut down by US officials for copyright infringement.

Last month, Universal Music Group forced a copyright take down of a music video featuring artists supporting Megaupload. UMG didn't own any of the copyrights, they just took it down because they could.

The UMG-YouTube agreement grants UMG rights to effect the removal of user-posted videos through YouTube’s Content Management System (‘CMS’), based on a number of contractually specified criteria that are not limited to the infringements of copyrights owned or controlled by UMG,” the record label states in its filing.

What that means, in case the preceding paragraph wasn’t clear enough, is that UMG has a private outside-the-DMCA agreement with YouTube that it can take down other people’s content from YouTube even when it doesn’t infringe their copyrights.

Indeed, in UMG’s 18-page filing not once does the company give any reason or even a hint why it had Megaupload’s Mega Song taken down from YouTube. At no point does UMG claim that the video infringed its copyrights and the previous claim, that the video featured one of its artists, is completely absent.

This isn't about protecting you, the artist. It's about protecting a dying business model.

From Seth Godin:

When the world changes...

It's painful, expensive, time-consuming, stressful and ultimately pointless to work overtime to preserve your dying business model.

All the lobbying, the lawsuits, the ad campaigns and most of all, the hand-wringing, aren't going to change anything at all. In fact, instead of postponing the outcome you fear, they probably accelerate it.

The history of media and technology is an endless series of failed rearguard actions as industry leaders attempt to solidify their positions on a bed of quicksand.

Again and again the winners are individuals and organizations that spot opportunities in the next thing, as opposed to those that would demonize, marginalize or illegalize (is that a word?) it. Breaking systems that benefit your customers is dumb. Taking money from lobbyists to break those systems is dumber still.

This isn't the first time music companies freaked out.

The industry flipped out about the invention of radio until they (begrudgingly) realized it could actually make them more money. With all we know now about the history of radio, can you look back and think "Wow, radio sure did destroy music!" Of course not, radio drove demand for artists' products. Music is marketing for the artist.

It'll be interesting to see how much longer the old industry will attempt to fight piracy before accepting the fact that the world has changed and deciding to profit from it.

UPDATE:
So more research has turned up the fact that Megaupload offered financial incentives for users to upload stolen music, movie, and warez. This complicates the issue because it means Megaupload was a a whole lot shadier than a simple "file sharing service". While I still see the raid as being a little over the top, there's not doubt that Megaupload wasn't into some shady business.

Is It Time To Trash "Support Local Music"?

2012-01-12T19:00:00.000-06:00

A Fan Says Goodbye to "Local Music"

-----

I'm sorry "Support Local Music", but I've fallen out of love with you as a phrase.

It's not me, it's you.

I've seen you with every half-hearted facebook invite, pleading for me to come join you.

Remember the last time I followed your advice?

I drove to an unfamilar club, paid for parking and cover, and gave up a night of my weekend to see you.

I wanted to feel like I had discovered a hidden treasure of the local scene.

I wanted to have a personal connection with you as an artist.

I wanted to feel special.

Instead you manipulated me into seeing crappy shows and asking for money.

I thought what we had was meaningful.

You've spent all of my good will and didn't give me any great local music in return.

All you've taught me is that I'm really not that interested in you.

I'm through with you, "Support Local Music."

Goodbye.

-----

From personal experience, hearing someone promote a show using the phrase "Support Local Music" tends to be a good indicator that the show will be lame. It's a throwaway phrase used by people who didn't put any thought into promoting the show.

What's the value proposition with "Support Local Music"? Is proxemity reason enough to make people interested in a show? Not usually, especially after being burned by a few lame shows.

An effective value proposition talks directly to the desires of the fan. Unless someone centers their identity on being a "local music supporter", saying the reason for coming out is to "Support Local Music" is a weak value proposition. Some people want to show off a new band they discovered to their friends Other times people come out simply because they know the band. The answers will vary greatly between different fans and bands so the exact answers you'll have to learn from experience or research.

So should we scrap using the phrase "Support Local Music?" What are some marketing concepts that you think would be more effective?

Link: Interview with Indie Genius Gabe Roth (Daptone Records)

2012-01-12T15:58:00.000-06:00

Absolutely worth the five minutes to read.

My favorite line:

Musician Coaching:
How on earth did you just take playing around NYC with a bunch of guys living in Brooklyn into an international experience?

GR:
Firstly, we did no promotional gigs. I never played for exposure. We never played in exchange for exposure or to meet somebody. We actually do it more now than we ever did then. We played for cash and valued what we did. In this market there are too many people that are too hungry, and you can’t rely on marketing yourself. You have to rely on having something people want. We really tried to concentrate on creating demand by having something people wanted. We spent our energy thinking about how we could make the show better, not how we could get more people there, and let the people figure out how to tell their friends how good the show was.

Negotiation Without Being a Jerk Vol. I

2012-01-05T19:00:00.000-06:00

Whether it be predicting how much merch to purchase, choosing whether to book a larger or smaller venue for your release show, or what time you tell everyone to load-in, how you manage the expectations of everyone involved can be the difference between resounding sucess and abject failure.

I'm continually reminded of how all-encompassing this concept truely is.

Managing expectations is when you EXPLICITY outline the criteria to be used to evaluate an experience and the how everyone involved wants issues handled. This is why getting written contracts are so important. A contract serves as a visual aid outlining the expectations of all parties involved so everyone is crystal clear on what exactly to do.

Until you've worked with someone a couple times, you need to be painfully clear with how you want the deal to go. Not to the point of being patronizing ("and you'll play the guitar with your hands, correct?"), but the more work you put in up-front about your requirements, the easier your life will be when money starts to change hands.

Van Halen added a now famous clause hidden deep in their contracts that the band must be served M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. They added this clause not to be capricous rockstars, but to verify that the venue thorougly read through the contract. David Lee Roth explained that a venue not matching the expectations of the contract could lead to their road crew having to deal with life-threatening safety oversights.

Last year I was going over show details for my heavy-metal band Onward We March with a venue we booked a show at, only to find out that they "didn't want any of that screaming stuff" for the show.

No. Can. Do.

Not matching expectations can ruin your credibility, stall your marketing, or even cause your band to collapse.

When people aren't sure exactly what you want/offer, they fill in the gaps with their best guesses.

Your goal with managing expectations is to minimize hearing phrases like, "Oh you guys wanted a sound check? Sorry, we don't have time for it. Didn't think you'd want one because our last band didn't care."

Be clear.

Two Year Recap

2011-12-29T19:00:00.000-06:00

Two years into writing this blog, I'm starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of things. I'm endlessly greatful for all my regular readers and feedback I've gotten for my writing.

It's crazy how much has changed for the music business in the last year. Here are some highlights (and a lowlight) from 2011:

I outlined a strategy to manage the coming dominance of streaming music services.

I broke down how to sell out properly. My most popular post to date! I'm proud of this one.

I took a stab at creating a rough formula for predicting a band's success. I believe this is a great lens to view your band's performance through as is, but I'm still tinkering with revisions on this one.

I discuessed challenges to the 10,000 hours to mastery theory.

I pissed off a lot of people by criticizing BMI for suing a restaurant for playing music without a license. This post was a sore spot for me. Readers misunderstood my prediction that the payment of traditional royalties will decline and my disapproval of suing a small business as me saying that I believed music should be free. Far from it. This was written with the assmption that, whether we like it or not, we have to adjust to the new realities of the business. Piracy is here to stay. At the time of posting, I backed off my position due to the massive blowback from music think tank, but the more I ruminate on this post the more I stick by my predicitions of waning influence for traidtional royalties as digital music continues gaining marketshare.

I wrote about how being too polite and nice can hurt your career.

It's been an eventful year. I'm stoked to see more and more people getting value out of this blog.

Thanks for making all this work worthwhile.

-D

Facebook Is Not A Website

2011-12-22T19:00:00.000-06:00

Facebook is not a website anymore, it's an operating system. Same with Google and Apple. Amazon plans to follow suit with the recent release of the Kindle Fire.

And these platforms are becoming increasiingly interconnected with many other websites you use daily. Ticketmaster, Spotify, CD Baby, and eBay have either already integrated ot plan on full integration into Facebook. Youtube just added a "buy it now" button for songs wo work with Google Music. All of Apple's products are designed for integration.

In order to survive as a musician in the digital world, you need to make your music compatible (available) with these big four platforms (not that big four, sorry). Most all internet traffic will be centered around these behemoths and if fans cannot get your music here, you'll either be pirated or worse, ignored.

How important is it to be on the "operating system" as your fans?

Magazines have been reluctantly making the transition to digital subscriptions for years, but with low renewal rates and slow growth, it was not as profitible a channel as it could be. When Apple released the Newsstand icon as a default on the iPhone and iPad, sales of digital subscriptions went through the roof.

PixelMags reported a 1,150 percent growth increase in the first week after Newsstand and iOS 5 debuted on Oct. 12. It’s now sold over four million digital magazines.

Why? Digital magazines finally aligned with the same platform that fan's were using. The Newsstand app moved magazines from being buried behind apps, to being front and center on the home screen. The product stayed the same, only the platform changed.

New music/tech websites form and disppear every day. Some will grow large, but most won't. A majority of your online sales will come from major platforms, as that's where most of your customers spend their time.

Make sure you're available on the same "operating system" as your fans.

What Can Music Learn From Video Games?

2011-12-12T19:00:00.000-06:00

In an interview at a recent tech conference, Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve (the video game company behind Half-Life and Portal), gives some fantastic hard data on the economics of sale pricing and freemium models of digitally distribution.

For those of you who aren't gamers, Value has a web service called Steam where you can purchase a game online and have it download directly to your computer instead of having to buy a physical copy of the game. You can download the game any number of times, but you have to be signed in to your account online to play. Simple, unobtrustive DRM (digital rights management) that protects creators but doesn't screw legitimate customers.

Beautiful.

With an estimated 70% of the digital game distribution market, Steam has access to more data than you could ever ask for on pricing and consumer behavior.

And they decided to share some insights with us. Groovy.

From the Geekwire transcript of the talks, Gabe Newell on piracy:

One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market.

...the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia. … So that, as far as we’re concerned, is asked and answered. It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.

Pay attention to your customer's wants and needs and they'll pay you for the effort. This business knowledge is far from new, yet it's also ludicriously easy to overlook. Don't do draconian DRM as it'll chase off paying customers and move them to less-hassle piracy.

Software-as-a-service / cloud platforms such as iCloud and Spotify seem to be the way forward as they balance DRM with customer service and price. However, royalties from these sources are small and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Use them as entry-level services for new fans but don't put your entire catalog on them.

Gabe goes on to talk about the company's pricing experiment by making Team Fortress 2 a free-to-play (aka freemium) game:

Why is free and free to play so different? Well then you have to start thinking about how value creation actually occurs, and what it is that people are valuing, and what the statement that something is free to play implies about the future value of the experience that they’re going to have.

And then the conversion rate, when we talk to partners who do free-to-play, a lot of people see about a 2 to 3 percent conversion rate of the people in their audience who actually buy something, and then with Team Fortress 2, which looks more like Arkham Asylum in terms of the user profile and the content, we see about a 20 to 30 percent conversion rate of people who are playing those games who buy something.

So that’s a fairly surprising and fairly recent statistic, which is that there seems to be something about the content that significantly changes how your monetization occurs, with apparently much broader participation than you would see out of something like FarmVille.

They first get the customer interested in the product, then increase the value they offer to the customer as the customer become more commited. Again, it's a simple concept that's simple to forget.

No matter whether your're talking about video games or music, It's all about making it easy to become a fan.

Major Labels Don't Care About Their Artists Or You

2011-12-10T09:19:00.001-06:00

Despite what their emotional ads say, the RIAA's attempts to police the internet are not about protecting artists' work; they want only to create a legal structure where they alone benefit. This is about an old business model resisting change.

Remember, record labels are venture capitalists, not patrons.

Pro-Piracy website TorrentFreak describes UMG's campaign to shut down the website MegaUpload:

MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support in a brand new song.

It's almost as if the artists and labels have different interests, gasp!

Here's the video in question:

Block This from TorrentFreak on Vimeo.

UMG forced YouTube to take down the video. No surprises there.

But wait, there's more!

The video is legally owned by MegaUpload as part of a marketing campaign.

Wait, so Universal can shut down videos simply because it doesn't like the message? I thought copyright-infringement laws were put into place to help me as an artists?

Would it ruffle your feathers if a major label tried stealing royalties from an independent artist? Does it surprise you that the same people who wrote the SOPA act are entertainment lobbyists? Are you shocked that the head of the MPAA used the great firewall of China as a shining example for a way to help artists? (Ai Weiwei would disagree.)

It was never about protecting artists. It's about labels defending their competitive advantage through any means necessary, legal and otherwise.

When an argument rests heavily on an emotional appeal, be very certain you understand who actually benefits from the agreement.

UPDATE:Megaupload sued UMG. UMG reveals that it has an agreement with YouTube that it can issue takedown notices for ANY video without any proof of ownership.

The video is back on YouTube.

Spotify Takes Another Shot at Pandora

2011-12-09T12:22:00.001-06:00

Spotify added a radio feature where you can build stations based on your favorite artist. Unlimited stations, unlimited skips, and access for both free and paid subscriptions.

I don't see any remaining competitve advantage for Pandora that Spotify can't match. Spotify is going to be the new heavy-hitter for the digital music marketplace.

My Crash Course for Streaming

Why Being Polite is Overrated

2011-12-05T19:00:00.000-06:00

Negativity as a tactic is severely underrated.

We're taught to say something nice or not say something at all. After all, art is subjective so even if we don't like something, we don't have the right to critique, right?

But what do we do when the execution of the song is obviously flawed?

Sometimes, however, the best thing you give someone is a piping-hot plate of uncomfortable truth.

Steve Jobs was notorious for his outbursts of anger, but there's not a person in the world who wasn't affected by the inventions he shepherded into the market. He busted heads because he had to bust heads in order to release high quality products.

To make a masterpiece you must be willing to disagree.

Sometimes forcefully.

In fact, arguing and sarcasm make you more creative by forcing you to view concepts in a different light. Negativity improves group performance on idea-generation tasks. Competitive tasks improved creative output, (like Eric Clapton competing for the love of Layla). Moderate rule breaking is positively correlated with number of leadership roles. Anger at people who slacked off can make them up their effort (assuming they cared in the first place). Being angry also makes you process information more analytically.

Being negative will also help you be more persuasive.

Negative reviewers were perceived as more intelligent, competent, and expert than positive reviewers, even when the content of the positive review was independently judged as being of higher quality and greater forcefulness.

However, don't storm into your next band practice, punch a hole in the wall, and go full-on Ghaddafi expecting magic to happen. A willingness to be negative when needed is different than oppressive pessimism. As anyone who has worked in a dictatorship of a job knows, pervasive criticism without positivity leads to learned helplessness. This is about the necessary balance between being emotionally sensitive to the needs of your band mates and being assertive enough to push through hard decisions to get serious work done.

Negativity is a tactic, to be used in some situations where strong analysis or action is needed. Breaking deadlocked negotiations, evaluating new opportunities, critiquing new songs: all of these are times where a little negativity might be needed to push through resistance. Trying to write new songs, improvising, networking or marketing: these activities would be much better served by positivity.

The next time you're stuck, step back and ask:

Should I be using a soft or firm touch to solve this problem?

---

*Shout out to Eric Barker at Barking Up The Wrong Tree, almost every link referenced was from research he found.

Will Too Much Growth Kill Your Band?

2011-11-28T19:00:00.002-06:00

Growth consumes resources.
Whenever an opportunity arises, you have to make an honest assessment not just of the benefits, but of the costs to following through.

Although money is the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about affordability, that's not all we have to consider. Credibility, motivation, man-hours, and even sanity are all limiting factors to growing your band.

Even if you do have the funds and credibility to play a festival show on short notice, would your drummer have to cancel her first vacation in six years?

Burnout is a very real issue, especially for a DIY band that can't offload extra work to a management team. Pushing people beyond their burnout threshhold is dangerous. Push too much and you risk losing band members's effort or, even worse, band members. (Made this mistake.)

Remember how hard it was to find and audition new members of your band? There's a limited supply of musicians who would be a good fit for your band, so constantly churning through members is rarely in your best interest.

As you begin to grow your music career, more and more opportunites will begin to innundate you.

Not every opportunity is a good one; 50 fans in a 50 capacity room is better than 75 fans in a 150 capacity room.

Are you pursuing good growth or bad growth?

Credibility Dollars

2011-11-21T19:00:00.001-06:00

Let's invent a currency.

We'll call it Credibility Dollars, CD$, and it represents the credibility of your taste and recommendations.

Each time you recommend something to someone, you're risking a little bit of your CD$.

It's an investment.

If they like your recommendation, people being to trust you. You get your investment of CD$ returned, plus some extra. Great success.
Lead friends to a crappy show, however, and you don't get any CD$ back and you've wasted that investment.

How selective are you when spending your credibility?

In the last month, have you gained or lost credibility?

You Don't Need More Gear

2011-11-14T19:00:00.000-06:00

I've been critiquing lots of local releases as of late, and I'm noticing how much time is wasted chasing phantom progress. Some recent examples I've heard as of late:

"I'm not ready to start playing more shows. I don't have pro gear."
"Once we get signed, we'll start building a fan base."
"We just need more exposure!"

Sitting down and creating is hard. With each artistic effort we face nebulous goals, irregular progress, hazy feedback, no deadlines, mercurial collaborators and an endless list of setbacks. We may get better, we might not. One of the awful realities of creative work is that it's possible to spend six hours writing and still get no useable ideas. It's easy to feel like you're held hostage waiting for a slim visit from the muse.

The only way through this resistance is hard work.

However, it's much easier to say that something else is holding you back. (If only I had a $1200 guitar, I'd really be able to shred!)

By laying blame elsewhere, we rationalize the fact that we're not doing work by saying "There's no point in doing the work, because _____ is preventing me from succeeding." Believing that your success is subject solely to forces outside of your control is a lot less stressful than facing fear of uncertainty.

I'm not saying chance has no part, far from it. Luck very clearly factors into many, if not all, success stories. What I am saying, though, is while we have to deal with the hand we're dealt for variables such as luck and inborn talent, hard work is one of the variables related to success that we can actually influence. We have only so much mental energy we can expend per day before becoming less and less productive. As such, it's paramount that we focus our energy on what we can change instead of wasting precious effort complaining.

So what's your excuse?

---
Bonus points: Here's a great read on Internal vs. External Locus on Control i.e. whether you believe the outcome of events is more related to personal effort or external influence.

Killer DFW Bands: Playdough

2011-11-09T21:16:00.001-06:00

I haven't been this blown away by a local group in at least a year.

Playdough, a local MC, joined forces with Heath McNease to spit over Wu-Tang beats.

Brilliant flows, exquisite production, and superb lyrics. It's hip-hop bliss.

(Full disclosure, I'm a sucker for the Wu-Tang Clan)

What IS Exposure?

2011-11-07T19:00:00.000-06:00

"Getting your name out there."

Some are willing to give away their entire catalog for free in hopes that the extra exposure will build loytalty and gain fans.

Other artists insist that every piece of music should be paid for and don't care about exposure.

What, exactly, is exposure worth?

My thoughts:

A) The exact value of exposure-for-exposure's sake is nebulous at best.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to calculate an exact value for each additional unit of exposure, so to speak. Much like advertising, the benefits are only visible over the long-term and are often difficult to directly quantify.

For example, how many additional fans would you expect to get for making an album available for streaming online for free? Would these additional fans buy enough of your music, merch, or shows to make this trade-off a net benefit for your band? This great post by Frank Woodworth does the math to estimate profit per stream, but attempting to discern the value of increased fans and their propensity to purchase is strictly guessing.

As much as I'd like one straightforward answer, it seems justifying a decision based on the value of exposure is a subjective choice. In the case of streaming, I choose a blended approach.

B) Some types of exposure are more valuable than others.

Hypebot: I understand you gotta get paid,
but both you and I know this ad you run isn't
worth anything to 99% of DIY artists.

Paying your own tour expenses in order to tour with an internationally popular band that fits your genre would (probably) be worth it. Paying to get your music tweeted about by a local music blog may be worth it. Paying to get your music available on a Chinese web store if you're a Tennesse-based funk band will not be worth it.

C) Opportunities that tout "exposure" as their primary selling point should be looked at skeptically.

Often, the word exposure is a red flag that a service or person is trying to take advantage of you. We've all had fantasies that if we get our music in front of the right A&R person / magical wizard, our entire musical career would be solved forever. Companies who base their value proposition on offering bands exposure are playing to this fantasy.

In our early days, my own band bought into one of those compilation CD rackets where we had to pay $200 for a box of compliation CDs which one song of ours would be on. We were going to be taking baths in exposure-flavored champaigne!

After dropping the cash and getting the compliation, we quickly realized that the other tracks on CD were awful and didn't have any rhyme or reason as to why they were all included. It was a mess and we couldn't, in good conscience, charge people for that collection of debris. I'm pretty sure we ended up throwing the box out.

Our email inbox is so flooded with these kinds of "opportunities" you'd think we were one email and a thousand dollars away from a world tour. That exposure must be some pretty powerful stuff!

---

How do you feel about the concept of "exposure"? Does your band give away free music or not? Why do you make the choices you do?

Link: Want to Screw Over a Label? Own A Trademark.

2011-11-01T18:26:00.002-05:00

Great video to explain why you need to own your trademark.

http://musformation.com/_wptest/want_to_screw_over_a_label_own_a_trademark/

Fake Artists Worth Millions

2011-10-31T19:00:00.000-05:00

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. - Marcel Duchamp

Pietro Psaier did well for an artist, selling over 5,000 paintings in the last 10 years and grossing well over a million pounds from auctions. He traveled the world and regularly hung out with famous artists like Andy Warhol and John Lennon.

However, Pietro Psaier probably never existed and attempts to verify his identity have been fruitless.

Does it even matter if he was real or not?

We buy emotion, not product details.

We care about Evel Knievel not because he jumped X number of feet, we care about him because he jumped over 19 cars. Same distance, but using something we could easiliy visualize (the cars) instead of hard details (distance), he was able to capture our imagination by triggering an emotinal response.
The better you craft the emotional context that people experience your music through, the better people will pecieve your music.

So go ahead, crate fake persona or start a beef with another band.

Be an entertainer.

How to Sell Out Properly: Update

2011-10-25T08:14:00.002-05:00

The Economist just put out an article describing the new function of A&R staff at major labels, and covers a few familiar ideas along with some new ones.

With less returns to album sales, labels want to reduce the risk of their investments:

One is by outsourcing the discovery and promotion of artists to television. Sony Music was quick to realise that singing competitions such as “American Idol” and scripted shows such as “Glee” were a uniquely powerful means of touting artists, especially in America where most radio is local. As The Economist went to press, Scotty McCreery, an “American Idol” winner, was perched atop Billboard’s album chart. Earlier this year Universal Music signed a deal with “The Voice”, a new competition show.

An even better way of reducing risk is to bet on acts and albums that have already hit the jackpot. Mr Joseph describes himself as “fairly obsessed” with what is known as catalogue A&R—repackaging old albums. Universal has done splendidly with new editions of the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” and Nirvana’s “Nevermind”. Next month it will release anniversary editions of The Who’s “Quadrophenia” and U2’s “Achtung Baby”. The 30-, 40- and 50-somethings who buy such records have more money than teenagers, and are less likely to pirate music.

TV compeitions are playing the lottery and catalog A&R is recycling old major label material. Both of these methods are about major labels trying to sustain the old business model as long as they can.

"Getting signed" isn't as lucrative as is used to be, either. Average first-album advances are stagnant, with increasing demands on rights.

Those longed-for record contracts, when they finally appear, are seldom lavish. Robert Horsfall, an artist manager at Sound Advice, says the normal range for a first-album advance in Britain has been stuck at £75,000-150,000 ($119,000-237,000) for many years. And record companies increasingly demand a slice of live-music and merchandise revenues. Bidding wars for talent have become rare, partly because there are fewer record companies. There may be fewer still when EMI is sold, as is expected soon. Small wonder that a few artists, having reached the point where they could get a record deal, decide to go without.

Is there any doubt that a huge part of being a successful band is being a solid small business?

How Can I Improve A Student's Motivation to Learn?

2011-10-24T19:00:00.000-05:00

Don't call them smart.

I'm serious.

Jonah Lehrer goes over some classic psychology research by Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller showing how calling students "smart" can backfire.

Her most famous study, conducted in twelve different New York City schools along with Claudia Mueller, involved giving more than 400 fifth graders a relatively easy test consisting of nonverbal puzzles. After the children finished the test, the researchers told the students their score, and provided them with a single line of praise. Half of the kids were praised for their intelligence. “You must be smart at this,” the researcher said. The other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

The students were then allowed to choose between two different subsequent tests. The first choice was described as a more difficult set of puzzles, but the kids were told that they’d learn a lot from attempting it. The other option was an easy test, similar to the test they’d just taken.
When Dweck was designing the experiment, she expected the different forms of praise to have a rather modest effect. After all, it was just one sentence. But it soon became clear that the type of compliment given to the fifth graders dramatically affected their choice of tests. When kids were praised for their effort, nearly 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. However, when kids were praised for their intelligence, most of them went for the easier test. What explains this difference? According to Dweck, praising kids for intelligence encourages them to “look” smart, which means that they shouldn’t risk making a mistake.

Dweck’s next set of experiments showed how this fear of failure can actually inhibit learning. She gave the same fifth graders yet another test. This test was designed to be extremely difficult — it was originally written for eighth graders — but Dweck wanted to see how the kids would respond to the challenge. The students who were initially praised for their effort worked hard at figuring out the puzzles. Kids praised for their smarts, on the other hand, were easily discouraged. Their inevitable mistakes were seen as a sign of failure: Perhaps they really weren’t so smart. After taking this difficult test, the two groups of students were then given the option of looking either at the exams of kids who did worse or those who did better. Students praised for their intelligence almost always chose to bolster their self-esteem by comparing themselves with students who had performed worse on the test. In contrast, kids praised for their hard work were more interested in the higher-scoring exams. They wanted to understand their mistakes, to learn from their errors, to figure out how to do better.

The final round of tests was the same difficulty level as the initial test. Nevertheless, students who were praised for their effort exhibited significant improvement, raising their average score by 30 percent. Because these kids were willing to challenge themselves, even if it meant failing at first, they ended up performing at a much higher level. This result was even more impressive when compared to students randomly assigned to the smart group, who saw their scores drop by nearly 20 percent. The experience of failure had been so discouraging for the “smart” kids that they actually regressed.

Totally counterintuitive, yet research since the original paper (1998) bears these findings out.

So when you're trying to motivate someone to perform better, praise and reward hard work (which can be changed) and not innate talent (which can't).

What Do We Do About Streaming?

2011-10-17T19:00:00.000-05:00

There's been quite a raging controversy over Spotify over at Hypebot as musicians across the industry chime in with their opinion on the streaming service.

Zoe Keating, Cellist and brilliant DIY musician, talks about how independant artists are treated unfairly.

That’s it. That’s my complaint: fairness.

If Spotify would level the playing field and make the distribution equal to all artists. I would lay off (since I am sure that my constant complaints are a total priority for them!). Now, if Spotify was to make those royalties algorithm-based, they’d have my full nerd support. For example if, thanks to their 'related' algorithm, people listen to small-artist X after listening to large-artist Y, then I could see that a particular play, not all of them, of artist Y could be ‘heavier’. However, if people end up at artist Y by searching for them directly, the play-weight should reflect that. Data, do it with data!

But just to pay tracks from major labels more because they are major labels, that is so OLD. Where is the revolution in that?

Four indie labels have already withdrawn from the service. Sam Rosenthal of Projekt, the most recent label to pull out, issued a public statement explaining the label's decision bluntly:

For a stream on Spotfy.... NOW READ THIS CLOSELY..... on average $0.0013 is paid to Projekt's Digital Distributor. 5000 plays generates around $6.50. In comparison, 5000 track downloads at iTunes generates $3487. To be clear: I am not suggesting that every stream would have been a sale at iTunes. Believe me, I understand the reality of the music business. I am providing that as a comparison for you. Let's look at this another way: To earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage - $1160 - 892,307 plays a month are needed at Spotify. This is not a viable number for artists.

Spotify responded to Projeckt by changing the subject:

Spotify does not sell streams, but access to music. Users pay for this access either via a subscription fee or with their ear time via the ad-supported service [just like commercial radio] - they do not pay per stream. In other words, Spotify is not a unit based business and it does not make sense to look at revenues from Spotify from a per stream or other music unit-based point of view. Instead, one must look at the overall revenues that Spotify is generating, and how these revenues grow over time.

Spotify is generating serious revenues for rights holders, labels, publishers and the artists that they represent. We have paid over $100m to rights holders since our launch, and the overwhelming majority of our label partners are thrilled with the revenues we're returning to them. Spotify is now the second single largest source of digital music revenue for labels in Europe, according to IFPI.

But is this current royalty structure sustainable? According to Spotify's filings in the UK, it lost $42 million on licensing fees in 2010 alone despite a five-fold increase in revenues from the previous year.

What does all of this mean to an independant artist? Is streaming worth the loss in income so more fans can listen to your music? Can you ever break even on streaming? Is it better to just ignore the whole deal?

Here's how I see things playing out:
---

1) Streaming services are similar to radio in that both benefit major labels with more money and muscle than independant bands.

When it comes down to corporation-level negotiations, a DIY artist will always be at a disadvantage. Self-sufficent bands don't have legal departments, lobbyists, consultants, piles of cash, or a fanbase ranging into the millions that can be used in negotiations. If Spotify can't sign a DIY singer-songerwriter it's no big deal, but if Spotify doesn't have access to the entire Universal Music catalog, the streaming service will be severely crippled. The streaming service has to make that deal.

As such, these large entities leverage their influence and power to ensure that they maximize their benefit from negotiations. Organizations not at the table miss out.

It sucks, but I don't see a solution to this problem without either a PRO stepping into negotiations or a coalition of DIY artists forming their own right's group.

2) There's no turning back, the cloud is here to stay.

For better or worse, streaming services figured out how to monetize piracy. Judging by the success of Rdio and Spotify, businesses have made their services more appealing than piracy. Unless there is a game-changing method of piracy to replace BitTorrent, the ease of use of the cloud will continue to draw in customers. (Piracy in Sweden is down 25% since the Spotify's introduction.)

Businesses won't give up this revenue stream without a fight.

3) Streaming is marginally better for indie musicians than radio.
Radio was a passive music experience, with a song selection heavily influenced by who had the most cash for promotion.

Streaming/cloud services/piracy enable an active music experience by allowing curious fans to give new bands a try. It won't pay much, if anything, but it does benefit smaller and niche bands that wouldn't get much airplay on traditional radio.

A minor win.

4) Streaming an album is a moral dilemma.
As a fan, it was absolutely awesome to hear the new Mastodon the day it came out for free on Spotify. Now I've got no qualms about throwing dollars at Mastodon, I've bought every studio album because they're that gravy. But. having spun the album a few times, there wasn't any reason for me to buy the actual album anymore.

This is a mammoth moral dilemma.

Instead of Mastodon seeing my entire $10 for a digital download (minus iTunes' cut), the money is instead spent on a subscription to an intermediate who only offers the band a fraction of the $10. The middleman (streaming) scoops most of the profit off of album before it ever hits the band.

Owch.

How do we cope with this?

5) Delaying and limiting releases to streaming is an effective compromise.

By delaying release of new material to streaming services, we ensure that super-fans who are willing to pay for a "brand-new" album actually pay for the album, while not excluding casual listeners who may convert to a sale later down the line. This is the same method of price discrimination that movie companies use; movies don't come out on DVD/Netflix until months after they've left the theaters. This ensures that movie-buffs willing to pay a price premium to see a movie in theaters actually pay.

For the same reason, any b-sides, rarities or limited-edition material shouldn't be released to streaming services as this would discourage willing fans from paying at the cost of providing the material to casual fans, who really won't care about "extra" material.
---

What are your thoughts on streaming?

Do We Really Need 10,000 Hours to Achieve Mastery?

2011-10-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

(Warning, long post)

By now you've probably heard about the 10,000 hours theory popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers. According to Anders Ericsson's work on expertise, to attain mastery in something (such as playing bass) you'd need the equivalent of 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. (Three hours a day for ten years) This message, like many disseminated by Gladwell, has reached audiences far and wide. The Freakonomics team of Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt even uses this theory to propose an explanation for why so many all-star soccer players are born in the first few months of the year (age cutoffs).

But Ross Tucker and Johnathan Dugas of Sports Scientists took at a different look at Ericsson's data in the context of athletic performance.

"Let me start out by saying that culture, training, diet, opportunity are all crucial to producing sporting champions or elite performances. But the problem with the debate as it stands is the relative dismissal of physiological factors like genes, and also the extremely oversimplified view that "it's all about the training", or that science suggests genes don't matter. My purpose with these posts is thus not to dismiss the role of training, culture or belief, but rather to balance out the argument with the facts.

And in so doing, to give an indication of just how complex it really is - the only certainty is that whoever says that success is due to one or two things is wrong."

Tucker and Dugas point out a huge omission in Anders Ericsson's work; the 10,000 hours theory talks only about averages without regard of variance. Even though the average practice time needed is 10,000 hours, it's possible to get that average by having one person practice 17,000 hours and another practice only 3,000 hours. That's a few practice years worth of difference.

Concerning a study of high-performing darts players by Duffy and Ericsson, Tucker and Dugas note that practice alone doesn't tell the whole story:

What is most interesting about this is that 10 years of practice explained 25% of variability, while 15 years explains 28%. So clearly, the more you practice, the more you can explain performance. That's not surprising, but the question is this: How many hours of practice would it take to explain "most" of performance as a result of practice? Look at the quote in the figure above, where Ericsson writes that "the development of expert performance will be primarily constrained by individuals' engagement in deliberate practice" (Ericsson, 2009). Well, 28% is not "primarily constrained" and even though more practice explains more of performance, there is clearly a lot missing from this practice argument.

Tucker and Dugas propose a different theory that is equally valid using Ericsson's data:

Ericsson concludes that these children just accumulate more training time and that this explains performance. The difference between the "best experts" and the "least accomplished players" is the training time.

But what if it is exactly the other way around? Let's take two children at nine years old. Do they have the same ability to play on first exposure? Ericsson's model says yes, and that the difference comes later, when one child practices more, gets better teaching. But what if the difference is present from the very first note, the first exposure to the activity? The parents of a child who shows some ability encourage further practice, they invest in teaching and training, and this child, by virtue of the fact that he/she has more ability to begin with, accumulates more practice.

But the child who has little innate ability makes the violin sound like the death march of stray cats, and their parents do not encourage more play. In fact, they discourage it - the "go play outside" syndrome takes over, and the child is never exposed to teaching or practice. His trajectory is set precisely because he has less innate ability.

Same data with a wildly different conclusion. For anyone who has taught before, it's very obvious that some students have more innate talent and drive than others.

Clearly, practice will always be important to success. You can't pick up a Squier at a garage sale and become Frank Zappa over the weekend. That'd be crazy (awesome). But denying that people have differing levels of innate talent is as silly as denying that tall people exist.

In fact, I even saw a tall person last week!

What Happens When Someone Jacks Your Swag?

2011-10-03T19:00:00.000-05:00

Musicians aren't the only ones who have to deal with piracy, this'll make your head explode with righteous fury.

Two websites were ripping artists' work off of their DeviantArt websites and reselling them on canvas for hundreds of dollars a painting, giving no money back to the artists. The offending website even bragged about how much it was "helping artists.'

The same thing happened recently to a group of graphic designers as well. (My favorite part is where they point out the scammers trying to re-sell the Time Warner Cable logo. Wow.)

This is heinous.

What can we do?

---

A) Was DRM right? Is the only way forward to continuously develop new ways to manage access to our art?

Not quite.

Treating your fans as criminals by default might discourage the occasional theft but it comes at the cost of punishing people who legitimately purchased your music. Even control-loving Apple had to relent on pushing DRM through iTunes when the customer outcry grew too strong.

There will always be pirates and there will always be paying customers.

Guilty until proven innocent? Or innocent until proven guilty? (aka Type 1 or Type II errors)

Who will you favor?

B) Patrol the web ourselves looking for signs of our work being stolen? Maybe hire interns? Lawyers?

The probability of this time/money investment paying off is slim. The internet, like the universe, is infinite. You could search 24 hours a day and still miss infringements. Launching satellites into the unknown is for NASA. You're a musician, you should be creating music!

As I said previously, people can steal your songs but they can't steal your brain. Longevity as a musician comes from consistently producing great work.

That being said, however, TinEye is an awesome reverse image search that is a great tool for finding people using your images. An occasional check on TinEye would be a good idea to check and see where your visual arts are being used.

C) Give up?

Nope.

D) Copyright your work?

If you're worried about someone stealing your work, copyright it. This won't really stop a pirate, but it gives you recourse should you discover someone stealing your work.

Under US law you automatically own the copyright to any work of art/music you produce as soon as it is recorded in a tangible form, like a recording or sheet music. However, actual time of creation is difficult to establish in court as it essentially would come down to both parties saying they created the work first.

Thankfully, around $35 you can get a Performance Right (PR) and Sound Recording (SR) copyright to your music through the US Copyright Office. Any question of ownership is solved and should you need to take the claim to court you'll stand a good chance of winning sweet cash money from whomever is stealing your goodies. (note: I'm not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of the basics)

Copyrighting songs isn't perfect by any means, but it's cheap, effective, and simple enough to be well worth the effort.

---

Back to the top story, the group of aggrieved artists is filing a class-action lawsuit against the website. With the help of copyright and strength in numbers, these artists will probably prevail. At the time of writing, the offending websites were down.

Right on.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Do You "Support Local Music"?

2011-09-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

We're going on a bit of a detour today.

Over at the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed Yong takes a look at a fascinating study by Christopher Bryan on using the power of words to create action:

"Countries around the world have tried many tactics to encourage people to vote, from easier access to polling stations to mandatory registration. But Christopher Bryan from Stanford University has found a startlingly simple weapon for increasing voter turnout – the noun. Through a simple linguistic tweak, he managed to increase the proportion of voters in two groups of Americans by at least 10 percentage points.

During the 2008 presidential election, Bryan recruited 34 Californians who were eligible to vote but hadn’t registered yet. They all completed a survey which, among other questions, asked them either “How important is it to you to be a voter in the upcoming election?” or “How important is it to you to vote in the upcoming election?”

It was the tiniest of tweaks – the noun-focused “voter” versus the verb-focused “vote” – but it was a significant one. Around 88% of the noun group said they were very or extremely interested in registering to vote, compared to just 56% of the verb group.

In two later experiments, Bryan showed that these claims translate into actual votes. The day before the 2008 election, he sent his survey to 133 Californians who were registered to vote but hadn’t yet. After the election was over, Bryan used official state records to work out what his recruits had actually done. The results were clear: 82% of the people who read the “vote” question eventually filled in their ballots, compared to 96% of those who read the “be a voter” question."

Why is this so?

"Bryan thinks that the subtle change from “vote” to “be a voter” plays off two psychological quirks. First, when we use predicate nouns to describe ourselves, we see the words as reflections of our essential qualities. This creates a far stronger impression than verbs do – it’s the difference which defining who we are, versus to what we do. As Bryan writes, “People may be more likely to vote when voting is represented as an expression of self – as symbolic of a person’s fundamental character – rather than as simply a behaviour.”

Second, when we use predicate nouns to describe future behaviour (“to be a voter”), we not only reflect on our qualities, but on the qualities of the people we could be. These words offer a vision of a future identity that’s up for grabs. And voting, regardless of whether people do it or not, is generally seen as positive and worthy – it’s something that people feel they should do. “Using noun-based wording to frame socially valued future behaviour allows individuals, by performing the behaviour, to assume the identity of a worthy person,” writes Bryan."

(Emphasis mine)

What we learn from this experiment is that people make decisions based on their own concept of identity. This topic keeps recurring in this blog because it's a fundamental aspect of human behavior. (Previous posts here and here)

Identity is the frame through which we view the world and make decisions. Do you listen to metal or are you a Metalhead? Do you like delicious food or are you a Foodie? Do you support local music shows or are you a Local Music Supporter?

There's a huge difference between the two.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What is a Fan Worth?

2011-09-19T10:00:00.001-05:00

New fans are expensive. You have to pay for fliers, press, merch and your songs in addition to social media, email lists, networking, bear costumes, pyrotechnics and everything else.

A super fan that's been digging your music for months is cheap. Send a quick text or email and you have an extra body at a show.

Smart businesses have known forever that it's worth spending money to retain customers. It's about Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), a wonderfully self explanatory business term.

A fan who only buys one ticket to your show has a lifetime value of $10. You're not going to retire on that, but it's appreciated.

Now say this same customer loved your show so much they'll see you whenever you're in town. Assuming you tour the city once a year and you only plan on touring for ten years or so, that same fan's lifetime value shot up $100. Now that's groovy.

It's easy to get caught up in short term thinking, especially in the early stages of a music career when you're making negative dollars. If a fan comes back a show later and wants to return a shirt for whatever reason, it's easy to justify a "No Refunds" policy since you're already behind a couple hundred dollars because of the shirts. They'd be annoyed, walk away, and that would be the end of that. How did this action affect that fan's lifetime value? Will they invest more or less on your band in the future?

However, you can make an arguement against being fan friendly goes like this: You say it's cool to return the shirt. The fan says thanks, but doesn't buy anything else and walks off. It's a monetary loss, sure. And what if everyone did this, you'd be broke!!!

To be fair, some people are just jerks. If bunches of people try gaming your good will, then by all means cut it off. But remember, how you treat your fans affects how they percieve you. Even if they returned the shirt, they still thought highly enough of you to buy it in the first place. It's better to err on the side of being too good to your fans than too tight with finances.

Fans fill up your wallet, not the other way around.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

How Much Merch Should You Stock?

2011-09-12T08:05:00.000-05:00

I've changed my mind since writing that merch problems are an insult to your fans. While I still agree that losing revenue and bumming fans is bad karma, I'd like to refine my position.

When you buy inventory, you're forecasting demand. Easy for Walmart, difficult for musicians meeting at Taco Bueno. So when you decide how much to buy, you can either err on having too much or too little merch, so let's take a look at the costs and benefits of each decision..

Excess Inventory (Pro):
   Less risk of lost sales / bummed fans.
   Bands with larger fan bases can still possibly sell excess inventory.
   Bulk discounts.
   Less waiting for fan orders.
Excess Inventory (Con):
   Higher up-front costs.
   Higher risk of having unsold inventory (taking a loss).
   More inventory to track and haul around to shows.

Limited Inventory (Pro)
   Lower up-front costs.
   Less risk of unsold inventory.
   Easier to experiment with different items. (Top sellers are easier to scale up, bad merch is easier to drop)
Limited Inventory (Cons)
   More risk of lost sales / bummed fans.
   No bulk discounts.

Personal experience: We waaaaaay overestimated demand on our initial release. We could have saved a significant amount of money by buying less merch in preparation for our first release. Since our first release was paid out of our own pockets, overpaying was not only a bummer but it's left a chunk of our capital sitting idle in the corner of the practice room.

IDLE MONEY MAKES ME A SAD PANDA.

---

My advice for your band?

For an entry-level to mid-level band: It's better to err on the side of too little. In this stage you're still experimenting with merch, sound, marketing and whatnot. Since you're not relying on your legacy material as much as a more established artist, you should always experimenting to find what your fans want the most. Having demand drive your decisions will save you money AND help you get a feel for what sizes/things your fan base actually wants.

For a mid-level and above band (extended tours): It's better to err on the side of too much. Esetablished bands have breadth of both material and fans. If a shirt doesn't sell on one tour, you can carry it over to the next one with a better shot at selling than only a local band. And since larger bands rely more on merch, the risk of missing a sale hurts much more than a smaller band that's still building out a product line.

What's your take?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Going Viral is a Waste (Pt. 2)

2011-09-05T10:00:00.003-05:00

As I've said before, don't build your band's strategy around "Going Viral". It's a short-term strategy, and speed of adoption is inversely correlated with longevity (The quicker you rise, the faster you fall). Wasting your brainpower and creativity on ineffective strategies instead of building a solid musical catalog will burn you out fast. A music career is built on making superb music, not making superb stunts.

Tim Harford gives us a great analysis of the research work on social media marketing by Duncan Watts from Columbia University.

...we notice the successes simply because they are successful, and overestimate the likelihood of success. And there’s a survivor bias: in our analysis of what works we ignore what fails. “People think it’s all about videos of cats or cute children,” says Watts, “But there are millions of videos that have these attributes but haven’t spread.”

...The first surprise, then, is that the typical Twitter cascade is both rare and tiny. Ninety per cent of tweets are never retweeted, and most of the remainder are retweeted only by a person’s immediate followers, not by those at two or three removes.

The second surprise is that beyond the mind-numbingly obvious, it’s impossible to predict which tweets will start cascades. Simply knowing that a user has started previous cascades tells Watts and his colleagues almost everything they can divine about the likelihood of future cascades – which is not very much. (It is not especially useful to know how many followers a user has if you know about their previous success in starting cascades, because the two pieces of data overlap.)

Viral videos are the lottery. High payoffs, but essentially infinite players and loooooooong odds. Doing sustained, fan-focused marketing isn't sexy but it's been working for generations.

Am I saying give up social media altogether? Never! Just remember it's one of many tools in your marketing toolkit. Don't expect spending 4 hours a day crafting "the perfect tweet" is your ticket to becoming famous for your music.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Food for Thought

2011-09-04T14:38:00.002-05:00

For less than $20 a month, you can get unlimited streaming songs (Spotify) and movies (Netflix) whenever you want.

Twenty years ago this would get you one CD or one movie a month.

Has your band adjusted to this reality yet?

Your Fans Have Your Back

2011-08-30T21:56:00.002-05:00

There's a fantastic happening making the rounds among nerd-ish websites today. A writer for Gawker went on a date with world champion Magic: The Gathering player Jon Finkel, and she called him a loser.

Fans of Magic: The Gathering, a delightfully addictive collectible card game, rained down hellfire and righteous fury upon the unsuspecting writer.

But this wasn't a PR disaster at all.

We can learn a couple things from this ordeal:

1) Fan/Nerd-Baiting builds buzz and strengthens fan's devotion.

As this article in Forbes points out, it's a possibility that she knew this would happen.

Gizmodo’s readership is hugely male, and hugely tech savvy and therefore mostly “nerdy” in the traditional sense. To post something trashing a “geeky” activity like Magic the Gathering would be the equivalent of their video game blog Kotaku writing a post trashing professional eSports. Oh wait, they did that too.

... as of the time I’m writing this, that article has 529,280 views.

She probably benefited quite nice from the number of hits generated by the article, but the real story is about fans of Magic and Jon.

This is the same as rapper feuds. Being a fan of music, Magic, or nachos is a part of our identity. When someone talks smack about your band, it's an affront to your taste. You gotta back up your people. (In group bias)

And as fan's come to the defense of their favorite artist, both devoted and casual fans begin to see the vast numbers of people who are dedicated to the artist. Current fans connect and bond, prospective fans look into the artist to see what all the hullabaloo is about. Remember how everyone came to Michael Jackson's defense when he went to trial for some seriously nasty allegations?

Nearly one BILLION people watched his funeral service.

Social Proof. Learn about its power.

A beef could be good by drawing out your committed fans.

2) How you respond to a crisis determines the outcome.

When word of this broke, Jon Finkel took it like champ and created an IAMA on Reddit to control the message. (IAMA stands for I Am A _____, Ask Me Anything! It's popular format on Reddit where the famous and not-so-famous can talk directly with fans.)

In the thread he responded, coming across like a normal, chill dude. No lashing out at fans, just an average guy with some cool stories to tell.

In a heated argument, the person who remains calm and collected is in control.

Considering he had an article written about how crappy a date he was, I'd say Jon came out on top:

The topic of "controlling the message" is a big 'un. Expect more on this later.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Would You Sue a Restaurant for $30,000 If They Didn't Pay You Royalties?

2011-08-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

Edit: Oof, this post has been the most negative feedback I've gotten.

I'll gladly admit I'm wrong, and simply leave this post up only for reference. I still appreciate the feedback, however. Getting my thoughts on track is very important.

Read below if you really care to.

------
~~This makes me queasy:~~
~~Restaurant Owner Ordered to Pay BMI $30,450 For 'Illegally Playing' Four Unlicensed Songs~~

~~This is not about feeding musicians, it's about feeding the "Royalty Collection Agencies".~~

BMI began sending communication regarding the restaurant's lack of proper licensing back in September of 2009, but it wasn't until May of 2010 that BMI even bothered to visit Fosters to verify that the business was actually playing unlicensed music. (From page 32 of the PDF.)

~~So without verifying anything, BMI starts demanding payment from a restaurant for "Piracy".~~

~~This is how the mafia demands "protection".~~

To which BMI would retort: "But it's all 'For the Artists'!"

~~Would you sue a restaurant out of business for playing your songs and not paying you a few dollars?~~

Of course not, that's terrible business! The restaurant is playing your music to a captive audience, this is a good thing. From psychology we know that people prefer things more simply by repeated exposure. ~~(The Mere Exposure Effect)~~

~~From Wikipedia:~~

~~In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likeable that person appears to be.~~

~~Music is marketing material~~, ~~not the profit driver it once was~~. You want more people listening to your music, this is a good thing!

~~The traditional performing rights organizations (BMI~~, ~~ASCAP~~, ~~SESAC~~) are scared; the era of terrestrial radio domination has passed as competition for ear-time has shot up exponentially. They somehow decided it wasn't important to deal with the issues of streaming internet radio, satellite radio, and cable TV so now ~~SoundExchange~~ swooped in to become the only entity in the US allowed to collect digital royalties.

~~Oops. Their business model just got OWNED.~~

~~Better start suing fans!~~

These traditional performing rights organizations made sense thirty years ago, but not anymore. Without the concentrated market of old-school radio, songs don't get as famous as they used to since people listen to what they demand, not what they're fed. (Jeff Bridge's new album sold only 13,000 copies, which is now enough to break into the Billboard top 25!) Without monster-hit songs, the amount of royalties collected on a per-song basis will continue to drop, shrinking the margins of these agencies as they have to chase down royalties for more songs for less pay. Unless they fundamentally change their business model, I don't see traditional performing rights organizations having an important role in the future of music.

My suggestion? While I'm registered with ASCAP, I'm not counting on the $50 registration breaking even. SoundExchange will probably play a bigger role in your career, so I'd make that a priority over traditional performing rights orgs. Still, I don't really figure royalties into my business plan as they'll only become significantly large long after I'm making better money from other income streams.

~~This work is licensed under a~~ ~~Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License~~.

Why do videos go viral in the first place?

2011-08-19T11:48:00.001-05:00

Alrighty, I gotta admit I'm surprised.

I wrote this post last week with the intent of posting it in late september, but Lefsetz beat me to the punch. He even made the "empty calories" analogy I make. Glad to know he thinks the same though.

So it goes.

---
Having said my piece on viral videos before (Part 1) let's take a different approach this week and look into how and why media "goes viral".

Have I mentioned that Jonah Lehrer is one of the best science writers out there today? Here's his analysis of Jonah Berger's (University of Pennsylvania) recent research into media sharing.

It’s one of the most popular online videos ever produced, having been viewed 355 million times on YouTube. At first glance, it’s hard to understand why the clip is so famous, since nothing much happens. Two little boys, Charlie and Harry, are sitting in a chair when Charlie, the younger brother, mischievously bites Harry’s finger. There’s a shriek and then a laugh. The clip is called “Charlie Bit My Finger—Again!”

Three hundred fifty-five million views.

But why?

In his study, Mr. Berger demonstrates that such states of arousal make people far more likely to share information. For instance, when he had subjects jog in place for 60 seconds—Mr. Berger wanted to trigger the symptoms of arousal directly—the number of people who emailed a news article to their friends more than doubled. He also boosted levels of “social transmission” by showing his subjects frightening and funny videos first. “Levels of arousal spill over,” Mr. Berger says. “When people are aroused, they are much more likely to pass on information.”

This builds on previous work by Mr. Berger in which he analyzed 7,500 articles that appeared on the most-emailed list of the New York Times between August 2008 and February 2009. While Mr. Berger initially assumed that people would share articles with practical implications—he imagined lots of pieces on diets and gadgets—he discovered instead that the most popular stories were those that triggered the most arousing emotions, such as awe and anger. We don’t want to share facts—we want to share feelings.

In a piece The Atlantic did on this same study, social psychologist Kim Peters says:

"What we share may have as much to do with the stimulation provided by the environment as with the information itself."

And that's why viral marketing is dumb.

There's an infinite number of ways to arouse emotion. Creating a classic album for your fans arouses emotion. So does a video of a guy getting hit in the crotch. Both activities will get you huge amounts of hits.

But hits / "friends" / retweets are not dedicated fans. Viral marketing is junk food; full of calories (hits) and not much else. These numbers are transient fans who saw a cool video of "that band that fell down the stairs a bunch". And now they're bored with your video and don't remember your name.

The real danger of "friends" is that these numbers are easily quantifable whereas actual fans can't easily be counted. My facebook feed is full of bands touting how many facebook "likes" they have. It's fun to compare, sure. But don't treat it like a measure of your band's "true" worth. Correlation doesn't prove causation.

Focus on creating real fans with brilliant music.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch videos of dogs on skateboards for the next hour.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Link: Lefsetz' New Rules for the Music Industry

2011-08-16T09:48:00.003-05:00

Lefsetz write a concise and illuminating list of the New Rules for the Music Industry. (Yes, I linked to him last week but this article was far too good to ignore)

My favorite point:

8. Social networking is for fans.
Twitter and Facebook are irrelevant until you get traction. They’re rallying points for those who already believe. Once you’ve got fans, feed them information about gigs and goings-on. Once you’ve got a plethora of true believers, tweet and post about your inner life. No one cares until you approach stardom.

Thoroughly worth the read.

Everything Is Connected (Continued)

2011-08-15T11:00:00.002-05:00

Touching off of last week's post, I'd like to share with you how getting personal training helped improve my musical skills.

I've been into lifting weights for a couple years now as a way to blow off steam and keep myself healthy. After hitting a frustrating plateau in my weight lifting for a couple months, I decided to get over being stubborn and ask for help from a personal trainer.

I've had more progress in these last six months than in the last four years. Wow.

Lessons I've learned:

   -There's a limit to how long you can have an effective workout. Anything over an hour and you're getting diminishing returns. 30 minutes of optimal practice a day is more effective than two hours once or twice a week. Not only will you be more focused, but you'll retain more of your practice over the long term.

   -Change your workout every 6 weeks. Your body adapts to how you train it. When you hit a plateau, it's time to change your patterns. P90x calls this concept muscle confusion, but that's primarily a marketing term for what trainers have known for decades. Plus, constant change keeps you from getting bored and not focusing intently on your practice.

Even better, midway through a workout, an idea pranced through my head. What if I were to take what I've learned from my trainer and applied it to my practice?

---
My Current Bass Guitar "Workout"

Grinding on scales can get boring, so this practice regimen aims to sandwhich in the boring drills with fun improv stuff. Practice sessions are to last ONLY 30 minutes. If I'm "in the zone", I go on to the next day's routine because Practice is more effective if you vary between different tasks, such as between dexterity and improvisational exercises.

   -A Day, Speed Scales: One scale, two octaves starting at bottom, 3 different fingerings, fast. Then do it in 3rds, arpeggios (135 and 1357), picked and fingered.

   -B Day, Ear Training: I'll pick a song solo I like, preferably not a bass solo so I'll expand my style, and try to learn it by ear. Miles Davis has brought my solo game up a few notches already.

   -C Day, Slooooooo Scales: Same scale as A day, two octaves starting at top, all conceviable fingerings, played painfully slow, arpeggios (135 and 1357), played as eighth notes, triplets, doubles, and triples both picked and fingered.

   -D Day, Brain to Instrument Improv: This exercise is to help improve the connection between what I think and what I can play, which has been something I've been wanting to fix for some time now. First, I listen to a 30 second segment of a song I want to work with. Then, I'll sing an improvised bassline into my computer's sound recorder. After that, I'll try learning the part I sung on my bass.
Two important things I've learned:
---

Everything is connected.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Link: Lefsetz Says Festivals Are the New Radio

2011-08-08T15:11:00.001-05:00

Lefsetz kicks some serious ass in this post, with his prediction on the direction of the industry:

Let’s revisit the formula. You hone your chops, barely able to break even until a festival organizer booking a city-based event makes a deal for you to perform. Then this same booker makes sure you’re featured on the YouTube stream. With this imprimatur, people pay attention.

Festivals are the new radio and bookers are the new deejays. It’s just that simple...

The more technological breakthroughs we develop, the more important it is to get back to our roots. I love my computer, but it’s the opposite of music. It’s cold and unthinking, whereas music is warm and fuzzy and positively alive.

And the best place to demonstrate this is live.

And the best place to do this is where everybody is watching.

We can spread the word so quickly online. But no one wants to hear about anything that isn’t great, that doesn’t have substance.

City festivals are the launching pad. Bookers are the linchpins. Food and amenities add to the experience, but the real drawing power is the music. When done right, it’s enough.

Music is
Alive.

Everything is Connected

2011-08-08T10:00:00.001-05:00

It's disheartening when you plateau in your playing skills. Guitar in hand, skillfully dodging doing scales by watching youtube videos of amazing musicians, which only makes it harder to practice.

Once you're stuck, it's hard to see a way to get get unstuck.

But the secret to getting unstuck is reminding yourself the true nature of creativity: Creativity is about mashing up disparate ideas in totally new and strange ways to develop something amazing.

Translation: The best way to get over writer's block is do something totally unrelated to what you're stuck on. The answer will come to you from the unexpected connection your mind makes between disparate activities. Everything is connected.

Need to improve your stage presence? Learn to dance salsa. Dancing is all about body language, confidence and rhythm. These may or may not be relevant skills for a musician.

Need to write more clever lyrics? Take an improv comedy class. Improv comedy is about quick thinking, using tropes effectively, and creating strong emotions within the audience.

Need a new way to improve your playing? Talk to a personal trainer. They deal with motivation, self-improvement, and overcoming plateaus all the time.

Everything is connected. There's a reason geniuses have so many interests. They feed one another.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

DIY advice

2011-08-03T21:21:00.005-05:00

I came across this video via metalsucks.net a few weeks ago. It is a VERY interesting interview of how a band can basically be DIY and be able to become successful.

How To Sell Out Properly

2011-08-01T10:00:00.001-05:00

Continued from last week's discussion on Cash vs. Control
---

So you've got it in your head that you must be signed to be happy. As you know, I am very much against labels as they are 95% of the time a terrible financial decision.

However, you don't care.

Cool, let's work with that.

Since you've got your heart set on getting signed, let's get our heads around how to look sexy for a label. As I've mentioned before, getting signed and getting bought out are exactly the same thing. A larger entity with lots of cash is willing to supply you with some sweet, sweet cash money in exchange for future profits and oversight. Not all of these investments (bands) will return as much cash, so a venture capital firm (label) will have a diverse portfolio (artist roster) in the hopes that a few investments (bands) will make enough money to cover the losses for all the failures.

The label's interest in you is contingent upon how your band performs as a financial instrument. An advance is essentially the label loaning you money for a set period of time with the expectation that you'll be able to repay the loan plus interest, thus making the label a Return On Investment (ROI).

If you're making the label less money then they're spending on you, consider yourself on the short list to get dropped. At this point they may suggest you change your look, sound, or direction. It's not really a suggestion. Once a label has thrown cash at your band, it's your duty to help them recoup their cost. Often, a band is given an advance to record an album with the stipulation that the band will not receive any additional compensation until the label makes enough cash to cover the advance. After that thresh hold is met, you'll still earn only a percentage of profit from each sale. You have to make them that skrillah or you're gone.

So if you really want to be signed, you want to position your band in a way that signals to labels that "this band is a solid investment."

Let's talk about some ways to preen your band for getting signed.
---

1. Study the Labels You Want To Get Signed On: Each label has a distinct personality, and your band needs to be careful about who they choose to do business with. (Death Row Records was affiliated with The Bloods and hired crooked cops/gang members!)

Pay attention to the sounds of artists already on the label. Do they already have forty bands that sound like you? Or do you think you'd be a good way to round out their lineup? Remember, it's about portfolio diversification.

Pay attention to the marketing and tone of communications the label uses. Do they like proper press releases with careful wording, or are they more punk rock-ish? This will help you determine if the personality of your band would be a good fit.

Pay attention to how satisfied artists are with the label. Does the label actually listen to the artist, or do they chew bands up and spit them out on a regular basis? (See the Victory Records Hawthorne Heights lawsuit)

Pick out a list of a possible labels in your genre that might be a good fit for your band. Tailor your band's "pitch" to fit each label's personality, and you're more likely to catch their attention.

2. Find an "In": Getting a label interested is infinitely easier if you can find an actual person to listen to you, as opposed to sending in a demo EP in the mail. Look around the label website, music publications, blogs, and local music industry directories to see if you can get a name.

In most cases, phone will tend to be ideal since emails and physical mail are much easier to ignore. Better still would be having a friend introduce you. Be polite and to the point with your pitch.

3. Pitch: Label or no, you need to know how to describe your music in under 10 seconds with a solid pitch. The goal of a pitch is to only get the "main ideas" of your art across and interest the listener enough to have them say "Hmm, ok. Tell me more."

This is good: "We're The Wigglin' Waggles, a danceable Nirvana-sounding band from Dallas. We'd like to ask your permission to send a demo CD so we can talk further about possibly signing with your label."

This is bad: "Hey, dude. Where do I send our demo?"

Expect more posts on building an effective pitch in the future. This is a BIG topic.

4. Get a High-Quality Demo: Your music needs to be its best to get someone to pay attention. If you have to apologize for your sound recording (It's just a demo, man, so ignore the skipping sound), you need a new recording. End of story.

5. Minimize "Distasteful Behaviors": Pure-bred businesspeople are uncomfortable going too far outside the norm. Musicians and artists live to push the boundaries, as that's where artistic growth comes from.

But be aware of this disconnect.

There's an limited amount of 'edgy' that a firm will be willing to tolerate before you cross a psychological thresh hold where people become uncomfortable. the 'edginess' works against you. Venture capital firms are less likely to help fund totally new enterprises in wholly unproven markets, as they have to defend their decision to their bosses. It's much easier to defend investing $10 million when "the market for all-natural pet nutrition has been growing at 12% yearly, and this young company is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this growth." It wasn't until after Nirvana and Pearl Jam blew up that it became incredibly easy for a grunge band to get signed.

This thresh hold exists even in corporate life. Even if the official company policy says "tattoos and piercings are ok", having ostentatious sleeves and plugs will permanently stunt your career at a corporation. We (humans) like those that look like us. We identify and help those that look more like us, consciously AND unconsciously. Being "too far out" makes others uncomfortable with you AND themselves. Just the same as if you were wearing a full suit to a punk rock show, looking like a punk rocker in a cubicle is asking for others to distrust you. Don't.

So how do we apply this knowledge? First, cut the songs you have called "The AzzHol Commandoz" and "Shoot Heroin Into My Eyes". That's not mass-market material. You can still keep some swearing and vulgar material in your songs because, hey, it's rock and roll. But you don't want to get too avant-garde with your performance or too offensive in your lyrics that your songs would not be playable on radio.

You don't have to water down yourself completely, but be aware that you'll want to polish your rough edges so that an A&R rep will spend her time selling you instead of explaining/defending you. And ditch hard drugs. Drugs signal unreliabile people which makes it difficult for a label to trust that dropping $20k on an album won't end with someone in the band freaking out and ending up in rehab. Don't be stupid.

6. Maximize Your Draw: Adding a band/company to your portfolio is risky. The larger an initial market you can show your investors, the easier it is for them to justify signing you up for a few albums.

Put yourself in the A&R rep's shoes. Even if you loved this new band you saw, how would you defend your decision to sign the band if the only people in attendance at the show are the band's significant others?

Same decision, now assume the band can regularly pull 60 people at regional shows.

Get your pull up. Don't assume that a label will "discover" your no-name band at an open-mic night. Get a big enough fan base and buzz that the label hears about your music and have to check it out themselves.

7. Already Be Making Money: Less risk for investors. Same as above.

8. Take Any Contract to Your Lawyer Before Signing: Yes, lawyers are expensive. But so is being trapped in a crappy contract for five albums. If you're not finished with or currently working on a law degree, you'll save yourself years of heartache by having a professional review the contract to make sure you're getting a fair deal.

Labels assume (correctly) that most musicians don't know about or care to know about contracts. While there are benevolent labels out there, there's also malevolent labels out there. Protect your band so you don't become trapped in a terrible marriage.

9. Know Your Band Member's Intentions: Have a serious, sit-down talk with everyone in the band to work out all the details you can think of before you sign anything.

   -Does everyone want to get signed?
   -Is everyone willing to relocate?
   -What is the minimum offer we would accept?
   -What is our goal for getting signed?
   -Where does everyone want the creative direction of the band to go?
   -What would make everyone happy?
   -How much control will we give up?
   -Will everyone be able to work around getting signed, or will some have to quit their jobs?
   -Would the band member's spouses approve?
   -Would each band member be able to take care of their dependents?
   -How much touring is everyone willing to tolerate?
   -What would cause someone to want to quit the band?
   -Are there any current issues with/between people that must be taken care of? (Skipping practice, not paying rent, fights, medical issues)

10. Be Respectful: You'll get turned down.

A lot.

The Beatles were turned down by Decca, HMV and Columbia because "Guitar groups are on the way out." It happened to them, and odds are your band isn't the next Beatles.

That's perfectly ok.

Deal with rejections gracefully. Say thanks, and scurry off. Don't get mad, don't act crazy, and don't bad mouth the label; the industry is all connected. If word spreads you're jerks, it'll be much harder to gain an audience with already-overloaded label professionals.
---

There's millions of other considerations to make, but these are the red-flags you need to take care of before earnestly pursuing a label. Anything else you think should be added to the list?

P.S.: Are you noticing how improving your band in order to get signed sounds awfully similar to how you build a career as a DIY artist?

I thought so.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Music Sales Predicted to go Up

2011-07-28T13:56:00.003-05:00

Hypebot Passed Along This Study:

Global digital music revenues will more than double from $7.4 billion in 2010 to 20.1 billion by 2015, according to the new Digital Music Market Outlook by Companies And Markets. That's a compound annual growth rate of 22.1% over the period. Subscriptions will be the fastest growing segment, growing at a 60.8% CAGR to 2015.

There was never going to be a "music apocalypse" as predicted, just a change of business model.

Music is eternal.

How much control are you willing to trade for cash?

2011-07-25T10:00:00.001-05:00

There's a tradeoff that must be made, and your choice will determine the ultimate strategy your band uses to achieve it's goals.

How much control are you willing to trade for cash?

Money isn't free.

If a label gives you $20,000 to record an album, you're not going to be able to change your genre midway through the recording sessions. No replacing the drums with a sitar, either. Likewise, if an angel investor funds your startup with $500,000, you can bet your life that she'll want to have a big say in how your business is run. That's how the whole shareholder thing works. Cash is exchanged for control.

The addition of cash to any transaction carries with it an expectation. Failure to meet that expectation is a breach of trust at best, and a catastrophic breach of contract at worst. Either way, it's not good.

So you must find a balance. How much control are you willing to trade for cash? Are you willing to give up publishing rights and royalties for a fully-funded album? Would you change the way you dressed on stage if it meant your next merch order was free? Would you adjust the style of singing your songs for a shot at a bigger show?

There's no right answer for everyone, this decision is personal. Your music might be perfectly served with a 40-60 split for rights in exchange for an album and you not having to deal with the "business" of your music. Your music might also be too niche or personal to attract investment, so total control might be your only option.

In business terms, are you aiming for a buyout (Label) or not?

The choice you make defines what strategies your band should use. More on this next week...

How Much Does it Cost to Make a Hit Song?

2011-07-18T10:00:00.032-05:00

According to this NPR article on the Rhianna song "Man Down", it costs $1,000,000.
Some highlights:

-Pay to Play (aka Payola) never disappeared.
Majors labels are venture capital firms, and they need smash hits to cover all the money they've spent on their unsuccessful artists. And it's in the interest of radio to convince the music industry that it's THE kingmaker. "Court us, or suffer irrelevance!"

'Treating the radio guys nice' is a very fuzzy cost. It can mean taking the program directors of major market stations to nice dinners. It can mean flying your artist in to do a free show at a station in order to generate more spots on a radio playlist.

Former program director Paul Porter, who co-founded the media watchdog group Industry Ears, says it's not that record labels pay outright for a song. They pay to establish relationships so that when they are pushing a record, they will come first.

Porter says shortly after he started working as a programmer for BET about 10 years ago, he received $40,000.00 in hundred-dollar bills in a Fed-Ex envelope.

Current program directors told me this isn't happening anymore. They say their playlists are made through market research on what their listeners want to hear."

-If you're a DIY artist, radio is a waste of your time and money.

Radio plays what majors push, it's a symbiotic relationship (even though labels HATED radio initially and used the same arguements that level against today's music piracy). With competition for listener's ears from iPods, satellite radio and internet radio, advertising dollars in radio aren't what they used to be. The cash has to come from somewhere.

The return on investment for radio plays doesn't make sense for a DIY musician. You'd be throwing your money away at what is essentially bribes, when you could hire a manager or a publicist at a fraction of the cost and have a much bigger impact on your fan base through targeted marketing.

One caveat: Sometimes radio will play more independant music, but only once the listeners begin demanding to hear the music. It's cheaper and better to have your fans convince radio through their voice than you trying to convince radio through your wallet.Let's be fair to radio, though. If I could figure out a way to legally get $40 thousand dollars sent to me without any questions asked, I'd be all over that like mayo on a gas station tuna salad sandwich.

-The major labels are built on old economics.

Too much overhead.

Back when there were only a few major distribution channels in the 50s, you could reasonably count on huge acts selling tons of CDs because there weren't as many bands to choose from. Now that there's an infinite number of bands, the industry isn't concentrated anymore. You can't "gurantee" a hit even by throwing millions of dollars at it (the Rhianna song has been met with lukewarm reception and flagging profits). A fan doesn't have to have taste dictated by the masses anymore, hence the arrival of fantastic niche players in genres such as Gypsy Punk and Cello Rock.

Good for our ears, bad for majors.

-Throwing dollars at a mediocre song can only do so much.

Have you guys even listenered to her new song?

"rum pa pum pum pum"...

Come on now.

Music is about the music.

Spotfy is Beautiful

2011-07-17T13:45:00.007-05:00

I've only had it for 24 hours and already I'm a raving convert. Spotify is the promise of cloud music delivered.

From the Hypebot article interviewing Spotify's CEO:

Has Spotify, as some have said, helped eradicate music piracy in Sweden?

Lagerlöf: Yes it has. Or to clarify, it has eradicated music piracy almost on its own. Sweden was the home of Pirate Bay. They even had their own political party and made the prime minister in national television declare "Off course the youth shall be able to download music for free".

Three years later, The Pirate Bay is not mentioned by anyone anymore. Spotify is, on the other hand, mentioned by almost everyone - including the old Pirate bay fans.

This did not happen because some new radical law or brutal police force were implemented. Neither because a confused prime minister changed his mind again and embraced the music industry. It all happened simply because the users found a new legal service that they actually thought was much better than the old Piracy one. Now, some time later, when they have

invested their time and effort in making playlists etc. and would like permanent and unlimited access to it - they are starting to pay for music. For the first time in their lives - music is worth paying for.

That's the core of the issue. Piracy was faster, better, and easier than any legit offering, so it won. Now, for $5 a month I can hear anything I want instantly with no DRM or glitches.

Spotify is another reason I'm optimistic about the future of the music industry. I was giddier than a twilight fan at a premier when I first tried this service. It's intuitive, simple and it works.

It's a great time to be alive for a music fan.

Anti-Marketing

2011-07-11T10:00:00.008-05:00

The Atlantic did a killer piece that highlighted the trend towards band's using Anti-Marketing.

Short Version: Some indie bands are purposely obscuring their names, hiding their faces, and refusing interviews as a means of image-management.

Love it.

As I mentioned previously, speed of adoption is inversely correlated with longevity.

Buzz magnifies people's expectations, which in small doses is beneficial for a band. But if too much buzz is laid on, the gap between fan's expectations and the actual music is too wide, and the fan is left with a foul taste in their mouth.

In the same way the US Federal Reserve will adjust inflation rates to either stimulate growth or limit inflation, smart bands need to adjust how much hype gets pushed on them. Too little and the band's fan growth stagnates but too much and the band's fan base deflates. It's all about managing expectations.

From the article:

From that point on, there has to be enough substance to the group to sustain them through the post-hype phase. Look at Die Antwoord. The South African rave-rap duo baited the media for months with a lewd web art, bizarre videos, scarce information, and exotic promise. Once people learned that they were a satirical act helmed by Johannesburg performance artist Watkin Tudor Jones, who had released music under other personas in the past, excitement for the group largely vanished, right on time for their Interscope debut, $O$, to debut at 109 on the Billboard 200—a flop by major-label standards.

Anti-marketing is a valuable tactic. It's a pressure-release valve for when you feel that the press is going a little too far in their promotion of you. How to make the call when you're getting extravagant praise is the real challenge here. Intuition is all you've got here, and that's easily clouded by the ego getting all warm-fuzzy from the attention. In all likelihood you won't need this tactic though, since most artists don't get explosive hype storms.

Anti-marketing, like all tactics, needs to fit within the strategy of your art. Using a tactic that doesn't fit your strategy is not a good idea. Self-aggrandizing rappers probably don't have much use for anti-marketing. Bedroom produced indie-electro-pop is a different story.

Keep an eye on how much hype you get. Anti-marketing may one day be just the tool you need to keep buzz under control.

Sell out with me tonight

2011-07-07T18:42:00.006-05:00

Hey guys, this is Tito, one of the guitarists from Derek’s band Onward We March. Derek and I started the band a few years ago and have always exchanged ideas on how to run the band as a business. We studied business in undergrad, and went on to get MBAs. Needless to say we talk a lot about the band in a business sense. I do all the booking, internet marketing schmoozing at bars, etc.

Derek reached to me a few weeks ago and asked if I would like to contribute to this here blog.

The other day I was at a bar having a conversation with someone I had just met. They had just listened to some of the new songs we had written. Throughout the conversation it became evident that we both came from very different schools of thought on music. I am a very selfish musician. I feel that art in itself should be very selfish. Write what you feel then deal with the business of it later. The other person came from a very consumer minded point of view. She started asking me about who we market to, what our target market was. This is a legit question. I should preface this by saying that most of my MBA courses were in marketing, so I get the importance of running a band as a business, but that question rubbed be the wrong way.

Now before you get all up in arms about a marketing major getting upset about a marketing question, think about the context. This person wasn’t talking to the MBA at that point and time, she was talking to the artist. A selfish artist at that. I told her that I don’t create my art with a specific audience in mind. If you think about the target market before you create your art you are compromising the integrity and sincerity of said piece and thus not creating an honest piece of art. Honesty, sincerity and integrity are vital to what I would call "real" art. I told her that we do in fact create a marketing plan for our music, but not until after our art is complete.

This is backwards from how most products come to fruition. Business identify a demand in the market place and try and create a product to fill that void. Businesses hope to sell out of that product and profit off of it.

I had an epiphany that night, selling out isn’t making signing to a label, playing huge concert halls, making a profit from your art or any of that. It’s putting your passion second to what someone else wants you to do.

Are you creating your art to a marketing plan? Or are you creating a marketing plan to fit your art?

Your Fans Love You (Fan Velocity)

2011-07-04T10:00:00.004-05:00

Following up on a great article from last year, let's talk about some direct ways to improve your Fan Velocity.

-Make your artistic world fascinating.

Why did you create this song What was the creative process like? How did you come across this idea? What's the story behind your music?

People are hungry for stories that connect, amuse, or repulse. We live through stories. If a fan asks you "Tell me about your recent album." and all you have to say is 'It was kinda hard, but fun." you just lost an opportunity to get a fan more invested in your music. Why not explain a great story like "Well, the sound library the studio had was missing disks of sound effects, so we duct taped a mic to our legs and ran around a park at midnight screaming like a madman."

Cool story = people tell that cool story = more fans.

-Make it easy for fans to share your music.

Music sharing is inevitable. In five seconds a fan can find your music on The Pirate Bay and in five minutes they can have the album on their iPod. Customers have become to expect being able to hear music before they buy it, and effortlessly share music with friends. If your band freaks out Metallica-style over music sharing, all you'll do is turn off fans from your music.

Accept that your music will be shared. This is a good thing.

Music has always been about people sharing an experience. When we find music that affects us on an emotional level, we want to share that emotion with the people that we care about. Anyone who has to ride in a car with me will be exposed to a new band, like it or not. I'm built that way, haha.

Album sales won't provide the income stream they have in decades past. Most of your income now will come from other sources such as shows, merch, and licensing. As such, when a fan shares your music you're not losing much income. What you are getting, however, is a word of mouth recommendation for your music.

This is a good thing. You can't have super fans willing to shell out $20 for a limited edition vinyl of your album without them hearing and falling in love with your music first.

While you don't have to go as far as to upload all your music to bittorrent, making your music and art share-able will allow you to maximize the spread of your music. Upload a few tracks to youtube so anyone who hears about you from a friend or article can immediately give you a listen before your name is forgotten. Make sure fans can share/download your promo pics instead of putting them in a flash viewer that prevents this.

-Help fans connect with similar artists.

It's not a mistake that Pandora, 70000 tons of metal, and Bonnaroo are famous. Communities form for those with like interests. Artists that are similar to your style are allies not competition. Share great music you discover with your fans and play shows with relevant acts. Not only will joining up with a community help build relationships with your current fans for introducing them to other cool stuff, you'll gain many additional fans from the other bands' fanbase who will likely dig your work.

-Manage public relations.

Be kind to your fans. If a show gets cancelled, you'll want to give refunds or tickets to your next show. Yes, it's painful to have to eat a big monetary loss when you don't "have" to, but the way you treat your fans is how they're going to remember you and, more importantly, how they're going to color their impressions of your music.

One of my favorite examplesof great PR is from one of my personal favorite hip hop artists, P.O.S. I was stuck in a huge line outside of a show that formed because the venue's computer was broken, so every check-in was manual, regardless of whether you already had a ticket or not. Even worse, the venue insisted on running the show at normal time, so half of the audience was outside waiting when the opening act went on.

So Stef (P.O.S.) walked out of the venue and started chatting with the people in the line. Nothing fancy, just saying hi and talking about music to pass the time while things got under control. He absolutely didn't have to do this, as many musicians hide in the green room until the show, but it was classy how he was talking with the check in guy trying to see how he could help his fans get in faster.

We remember little interactions like that.

That's how lifetime fans are born.

Review: Vegan Black Metal Chef

2011-06-29T18:54:00.000-05:00

Hat tip to Aaron for suggesting this video

This is simply too good to miss. For those of you who haven't seen it yet; enjoy.

I've been thinking about black metal lately. When I first heard black metal a few years back I couldn't stand it, which is kinda the point I suppose. Extremely aggressive, awful production (on purpose), and tremolo picking at wrist-breaking speeds, black metal prides itself on being the most extreme and evil (or KVLT) of metal genres. The songs usually follow demons/mythology/cold/evil and has music videos in "frost-bitten forests and mountains". They wear makeup, kinda like KISS, but it's called Corpse Paint so it's "eeeeevil". (Although a small percentage of these bands are actually evil, Mayhem's band members killed each other because they're insane. Idiots.)

What I find fascinating about the genre is the exaggerated portrayl of evil, ridiculous to the point where it reaches self-parody. Grown adults wearing face paint making videos in the woods while singing about warlocks sounds awfully like a high school LARPing club.

Yet, that's what is so enthralling about the genre. It offers a release of raw frustrations with the world, hence the fast, sloppy style, extreme distortion and lo-fi production values. It's punk wearing all black, announcing to the world that "I've had enough of your crap!" It's glam-rock with demons instead of spandex. It's the perfect music for unapolegetically venting frustration.

This video's juxtaposition of metal with veganism is magic. The irony of someone wearing giant spikey bracers singing about death but who won't eat meat isn't lost on the guy who made the video. This tongue-in-cheek video revels in the passionate silliness of the genre. This tofu isn't weak, it's KVLT.

The songs are unnecessarily well done, as is the recipe which is pretty close to the one I use (fish sauce is a necessity).

Well done. I'll be looking forward to future episodes.

P.S. Anyone else notice how well-decorated the house is? There's clearly an interior decorator at work in this den of evil. Is this the work of the infamous BeheMartha Stewart?

Podcast Update

2011-06-29T12:40:00.000-05:00

First draft of Marketing 1 podcast is done, but it needs significant retooling before I release it into the inter-tubes.
I've started writing Marketing 2 and Finance. Planning on also doing Negotiation and Internet Marketing.

Any other business-y topics you'd want to hear?

Tear Down

2011-06-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

We tore it all down. Everything.

Two years of blood, sweat and beers washed away. After painful deliberation, we decided to drop every song Onward We March wrote for our first EP, The Golden Vine. No more playing these songs live.

It hurt, mentally and financially,

But it had to be done.

The idea for our music was to have a concept running through all our albums (similar to Coheed & Cambria), since we're all about depth in our music. But this story was the child of our departing singer, and it felt wrong to try and raise it as our own. The lyrical style, too, was all his.

It hurt, but we realized we would have to give up all we've done so far to start fresh with our new singer.

Which is ok.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post about getting songs stolen, it's not an individual item that makes you important, it's your entire body of work. If you want long-term success in music, you have to have a legacy of great work.

Otherwise you're just a one-hit wonder.

The Cloud Cometh

2011-06-23T19:00:00.008-05:00

Big things shaking in the music industry today.

Apple just announced its entry into the cloud music game with the iCloud service to compete with Amazon's music cloud, Google's cloud, and Best Buy's cloud platform.

What's is a cloud? Short version: you move your digital files to a company's distributed servers (the cloud) so that you can access your entire library anywhere (instead of only the songs you can fit on your iPod). Neat.

With Apple being the dominant digital download service, Apple's movement to cloud-based music is essentialy an edict to the music industry that "clouds are the future".

But that's not even the most interesting development.

Apple is allowing both legal AND illegal downloads on the service, no questions asked.

And the major labels like it.

Huh?

Apple thinks they've found a way to monetize music piracy by adapting the old-school royalty methods used in traditional radio.

From Reuters:
"The $25 annual fee is collected into a pool, from which Apple takes its 30 percent cut. From there, sources say, 58 percent is set aside for labels and 12 percent for publishers. How those portions are distributed within the labels and publishers is entirely based on consumption. Apple monitors which songs users are accessing through iTunes Match, and identifies which rights-holders are then owed what portion of the pool. That same data is provided to the label or publisher to determine what portion of the cut is then owed each individual artist."

While I find the idea of artists being able to get paid for illegal downloads groovy, it's likely that in execution this system will screw indie artists and labels. Apple has already earned itself a sour reputation for not paying independant artists royalties. Ken Shipley of the indie label Numero has already chosen to refuse signing up for the iCloud service:"

Arguing in the comments section of the Hypebot article, Ken elaborates:
1. The money is shit. Actually, less than shit: .0035 cents per "match" if you've got a library of 5000 songs, .0006 of which you need to break off to the publisher. For a publisher to make $1 a track would have to be matched 1667 times.

2. According to Robert Kondrk at iTunes, who spent 30 minutes trying to convince us to join, the majors actually received $0. We corrected this last week. Regardless, as a label that has been sampled by, and has licensed to all four major labels, we know that none of this money is coming back to the artists. We can't even get regular statements, what makes you think they're going to spend the time to break out 15% of .0006?

3. Apple isn't calling this streaming because they don't want to pay current streaming rates. But they're also not calling it downloading because they don't want to get sacked with a mechanical every time someone puts it on a new device. As this Cloud boom popped up a year and half away from the next meeting of the Royalty Advisory board, Apple, Amazon, and Google are all operating in the wild west, setting their own rules until a proper rate can be set. The bottom line is, if Apple can put this onto 10 devices, be it a mobile or a desktop, but is not paying to replicate it, then the service has more in common with streaming than anything else.

4. No one is even talking about how this is essentially legitimizing pirated music by replacing it with perfect replica on 10 machines.
We're fine with being alone in the crowd, always have been, always will be. Our artists are paid regularly and well. If the rest of the industry wants to further marginalize itself by taking less than it's worth, they can go right ahead.

Depending on how Google, Apple and Amazon deal with rights and royalties, The Clouds could be either a boon or a burden for the independant musician,. I suspect that this new technology will be primarily a structural relocation of where fans hear music, similar to the transition from radio to casettes or from CDs to MP3 players. As an artist, I'm not counting on any additional revenue from a cloud.

But with plans for adding recommendation engines and integrating internet radio in the near future, "The Clouds" might very well be the future of the digital music industry. We may stop interacting with only our devices and instead tap into a universal music interface to access and enjoy our music.

Pay attention.

This is big.

What Does Enjoyment of Music Come From?

2011-06-16T19:00:00.009-05:00

Making science accessable to a layperson is a gift. And once again, Jonah Lehrer delivers in this thought-provoking article on the psychological effects of price on perception of wine quality.

Excerpt
---
Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. Our results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine consumers.
...
The taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of that alcoholic liquid in the glass. It cannot be deduced by beginning with our sensations and extrapolating upwards. This is because what we experience is not what we sense. Rather, experience is what happens when our senses are interpreted by our subjective brain, which brings to the moment its entire library of personal memories, wine shop factoids and idiosyncratic desires. As the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars pointed out, there is no reasonable way to divide sensory experience into what is “given to the mind” and what is “added by the mind.”
---

Emotion depends on context.

Your music can be brilliant, but if it sounds like it was recorded in a garbage can, less people will like it.

If the show is sold out and crowded, people will tend to assume your music is better.

If someone you loathe trys getting you to listen to their favorite band, you're probably not going to like the band.

Lesson: The better you craft the emotional context that people experience your music through, the better people will pecieve your music.

Ways to do this: Genuinely engage with fans (live show, twitter, website, merch booth etc), explain stories behind your songs, build a band mythology, play with bands that fit your sound, etc.

(Previous posts on this topic here, here, and here.)

Link: Quick Guide To Timing Twitter & Facebook Posts

2011-06-16T09:14:00.000-05:00

Hypebot points out some of the highlights from a free webinar from Hubspot. The fact that Hubspot is willing to offer free research-tested advice for increasing fan engagement is fantastic.

(From the Hypebot article's summary of the webinar)
Twitter:

•Retweets are at their highest between 2 and 5 pm and late in the week.

•Clickthroughs are more even throughout the week with lots of weekend activity. Saturdays and Sundays are actually better than Mondays and Thursdays.

•Clickthroughs also occur more evenly throughout the day than retweets though there are spikes at around 11 am and 5 pm.

•People who tweet a lot, peaking at 22 tweets a day, have more followers. That includes tweeting the same message in different forms multiple times.
•People who tweet no more than once an hour get higher clickthroughs.

Facebook:

•Pages that post every other day have the most likes! Zarella feels that it's much easier to overdo it on Facebook than on Twitter.

•While more stories are published during the week, more are shared on weekends so weekend posts are best for encouraging sharing.

•Morning posts are shared more than afternoon posts with posts around 1 am to 3 am doing the best.

Andy Warhol, You Brilliant Bastard

2011-06-09T19:00:00.002-05:00

I have a hate/fascination relationship with Andy Warhol.
His pop-art is nothing special. (A soup can? A banana? Groundbreaking.) Warhol loved the "ready-made" asthetic espoused by Duchamp, an artist known for a piece where he simply bought a urinal and turned it on its side (It's called Fountain). THESE GUYS ARE WHY PEOPLE DESPISE MODERN ART.

On top of that, many of Warhol's pieces weren't made by Warhol. He had work-for-hire artists produce his art at The Factory. This started the awful trend towards art factories.

$38,400,000

But,

Warhol was a genius of marketing.

From The Economist:

The most expensive work of the week was a four-panel self-portrait from 1963-4, which hit the block at Christie's. Warhol himself had arranged the four crisply silkscreened canvases in various shades of blue. Moreover, the image had been made in a photo-booth; a ready-made format that affirms Warhol's place as the heir to Marcel Duchamp. Only three bidders went for the work, but two of them were fervent. After a 15-minute duel, an anonymous buyer on the phone with Brett Gorvy, Christie's Head of Contemporary Art, prevailed over a client of Philippe Ségalot, a French-born New York-based dealer, and secured the work for $38.4m, the highest price ever paid at auction for a portrait by the artist.

Let that sink in.

He made a self-portrait in a photo booth and silkscreened it blue.

It's worth $38.4 million dollars.

But the real nugget of wisdom in the story is this; The market for high-end art is small (most of us don't have a couple million to throw around), but dedicated. One of the collectors, Mr. Mugrabi, owns over 800 Warhol pieces. At a price range of millions of dollars per painting, this guy is both rich and a HUGE fan of Warhol.

There's nothing more important to your band than your super fans.

The average fan will only drive up the value of your art so far, but it's the super fans who stretch the high-end of what your work is worth. Deluxe edition of your album? They have it. Limited tour T shirt? They have it. Signed drumstick sold on ebay? They want it.

And these super fans signal to the rest of the world that yes, there is something very special about this artist/band. Remember the Fan Velocity concept I introduced?

Super fans are your disciples. Make them happy and they'll stretch the value of your work beyond anything a marketing campaign could ever do.

Link: The Lefsetz' Letter

2011-06-03T15:39:00.000-05:00

The Lefsetz Letter

Lefsetz is the best music analyst there is. Read his dissection of the music industry and you'll instantly feel smarter.

I'll be posting links to his stuff regularly in the near future simply because his articles bear re-reading.

Music Sales Are Up!

2011-06-02T19:00:00.085-05:00

:Cue record scratch:

Music sales are finally up again.

Yep, that's right. The "inevitiable music apocalypse" was another false alarm. Overall music sales are up 1.6%, digital album sales were up 16.8%, and digital track sales were up 9.6% but there's two real juicy bits of data within these numbers.

Point One: Vinyl album sales were up 37% from 2010.

Vinyl, as in the giant plastic discs that most teengers have never actually heard.

Do all these music lovers actually own a vinyl player? Probably less than you'd imagine.

It's all about the artifact, the actual collectable experience it offers the fan. Most vinyl editions of the album feature large-scale artwork and, more importantly, limited copies. It's this scarcity that transforms the music from a cheap commodity that can easily be distributed at no extra cost (mp3) to a much more profitable good. You can't pirate a limited edition copy of your favorite album any more than you can pirate a T shirt. This is econimics/business at its simplest.

I'm calling it now: expect vinyl albums to become a more prominent and important feature of bands' income streams in the future. Likely this will be more for collectable reasons than actually hearing the audio (most vinyl albums come with free digital download now).

Point Two: Record Store Day was a smashing success.

"2011 saw the most successful Record Store Day in the event’s four-year history. Album sales at independent record stores increased over 39% the week of Record Store Day (April 16) from the prior week – an increase of 180,000 units – and 12.7% compared to 2010."

I love the idea behind Record Store Day since it is a great solution to a parallel problem that charities face daily.

There's no shortage of people who want to help out the world whether it be helping cure cancer or as simple as supporting a local arts community. But it's difficult to mobilze and allocate this goodwill. Each step of the process of finding volunteers all the way to completing a task increases the complexity of the operation, and increases the chances of a volunteer giving up, essentially wasting the goodwill.

To put it more simply, assume you want to "Support Local Music". Where are the venues? Where do I hear about events? Do I have to actively watch a bunch of websites to find out when something might interest me? What kind of support do they want/need? Will the events I go to suck? <== Big one.

And so on.

Each "complexity" requires more effort from the people wishing to help, increasing the chance that she decides her time would be better spent watching Good Eats reruns. (I'm guity of this one forty times over)

What works so well for Record Store Day is how it simplifys the process for "Support Local Music". It's a national event that builds awareness of these record stores with the help of large local acts who release limited-edition vinyl/cds/merch. (This last year Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips hand-delivered copies of their new album to Good Records!) Cookouts, body-painting, and of course live music all centered around celebrating local record stores. How do you "Support Local Music?" This entire event tells you how to do it.

Rule #456138 of marketing: "The easier you make it for someone to buy, the more sales you'll get."

All Musicians Are Family

2011-05-26T19:00:00.060-05:00

I saw the cry for help on their facebook.

One of my favorite progressive metal bands The Ocean had their tour bus break down on the first half of their US tour with Job For A Cowboy and Between the Buried and Me. They didn't have anywhere to stay other than a van and, as always with a tour, cash was tight. (On one of their last European tours, they were even robbed at gunpoint. Now that's bad luck.)

I'm a fan. I had to help.

Within a few hours of texting them, I got a message back from Robin thanking me for a place to stay. Everyone was really humble and seemed incredibly pleased to not be sleeping in a van. With 10 people in their crew, it would have cost a couple hundred dollars for enough hotel rooms to sleep everyone. Losing that much money in one night can destory the profits of a tour, especially when tickets or merch sales are thin.

At times I got the vibe that they thought "I can't believe this guy is letting us just stay with him. Oh well, we'll run with this."

But I was excited to help! This was a perfect night for a fan! I got in on the guest list, bought them some beers and heard stories of life in the band. Nerd-vana.

We both won.

All musicians are family. We help one another. This is the oil that keeps the music industry's engine running. Not fancy promotions, not top-of-the-line gear, not even kickass merch is more important to keeping the musical world turning that people.

Give that guitarist a fresh set of strings if you have an extra. Share some free pizza you got with the other bands on the tour. If you've got space in your van, offer to help take some of the other band's junk and load out. Help, so that one day when you need it there will be someone there for you. Your reputation is all you have.

Similarly, don't be afraid to ask for help. Your fans love you, and love being able to support your art. It's fun for us! I'm glad I was able to do my duty to help the band. (Ulterior motive: this makes it more likely that they'll come back to my town, haha).

What an awesome night. Thanks for coming out to Dallas, y'all.

Link: Who Can Make A Hit?

2011-05-26T08:09:00.000-05:00

I know I link him a lot, but this article on Kingmakers by Seth Godin perfectly encapsulates the transition from major label dominance to today's fractured marketplace.

From the article:
---
Years ago, getting our products on the table next to the check out at Target and Lechmere was enough to make the year at the software company where I worked. Two big retailers picked our product and that was enough.

Retailers want to be kings and they want to annoint kings. They want the lever to decide what sells and what doesn't, because it earns them power of pricing and profit (if the retailer can make your product a hit, she can extract better terms. If all she does is sell what sells, then the manufacturer is in charge).

Thanks to the long tail, the digital world ignored this thinking. The iTunes store, and Netflix, for example, take the position that, "We're going to sell everything, and a lot of it. We don't care which thing, because it's all the same to us. Just put everything in the store and the market will sort it out."

As a result, they have far less promotional power. They didn't build a lever. The app store doesn't make a hit, it contains hits. Most long tail retailers are staffed around this idea and have a culture that reflects it. They'll sell everything/anything, because the longer the tail, the better.
---

As I keep reiterating, don't wait for your "big break" to be handed down from some benevolent entity. A solid music career is made through sustained fan engagement and hard work.

(Not that I would complain if one of our songs became world famous, mind you. But I'm not counting on it.)

There's Nothing New In "The Business"

2011-05-19T19:00:00.029-05:00

"The Business" of promoting art isn't remotely new. Artists have always had to hustle to market their art. So it's silly to keep talking about the current music business as if it's a radically new web 2.0, crowdsourced, fan engagement monster.

The goal of engaging people has always been the same. Only the tools have changed.

Check out this New York Times book review for The Sinner's Grand Tour, a book about how famous writers have promoted themselves through the years.
"Crowdsourcing" isn't new:

"Perhaps the most astonishing P.R. stunt — one that must inspire awe among authors today — was plotted in Paris in 1927 by Georges Simenon, the Belgian-born author of the Inspector Maigret novels. For 100,000 francs, the wildly prolific Simenon agreed to write an entire novel while suspended in a glass cage outside the Moulin Rouge nightclub for 72 hours. Members of the public would be invited to choose the novel’s characters, subject matter and title, while Simenon hammered out the pages on a typewriter. A newspaper advertisement promised the result would be “a record novel: record speed, record endurance and, dare we add, record talent!” It was a marketing coup. As Pierre Assouline notes in “Simenon: A Biography,” journalists in Paris “talked of nothing else.”

As it happens, Simenon never went through with the glass-cage stunt, because the newspaper financing it went bankrupt. Still, he achieved huge publicity (and got to pocket 25,000 francs of the advance), and the idea took on a life of its own. It was simply too good a story for Parisians to drop. For decades, French journalists would describe the Moulin Rouge event in elaborate detail, as if they had actually attended it. (The British essayist Alain de Botton matched Simenon’s chutzpah, if not quite his glamour, a few years ago when he set up shop in Heathrow for a week and became the airport’s first “writer in residence.” But then he actually got a book out of it, along with prime placement in Heathrow’s bookshops.) "
Now that's some groovy promotion.

You don't need to be a "Social Media Guru" to understand that No one cares more about your music than you.

There's nothing new in "The Business".

Becoming "Content Providers"

2011-05-13T15:00:00.002-05:00

I read this fantastic article by comedian Stewart Lee against the push to turn artists into "content providers".

As much as I enjoy reading all the various music-business blogs, one philosphy that frustrates me is the conviction of "new media" bloggers that an artist must always be available. "Fans won't tolerate a band who isn't always connected. You should always be tweeting, facebooking, and emailing about your music. Perfect your SEO daily. Release across every platform and have a presence on all social networking sites or risk missing fans.”

This is counterproductive. An artist should not serve anything but their art.

Art is the master.

Yes, the business side is vital. That's a given. But the spotlight should be on your music. Period.

Sometimes it's better to choose a medium for your art that forces the viewer to become engrossed in the art instead of being able to easily digest it through tweets and sound bites. Stewart Lee purposefully wrote the book How I Escaped My Certain Fate to require constant cross-referencing of pages so the reader is forced to interact and connect with the book. This doesn't translate to an e-book at all, and that's exactly what he wants. Pink Floyd’s album Animals can’t be turned into a 3 minute radio version, it’s designed to be an extended, introspective experience.

It’s all about the art. Compromising the vision is an insult.

Only by trying to please everyone will we please no one.

If you are sacrificing the integrity of your art for “new media”, STOP IT. Integrity is what we respect about you.

There's enough mediocre songs on the planet. We don't need a live-blogged, ustream video of a song that sucks; we need a album that will stand up for thirty years as a testament of greatness. Sometimes you must ignore the world to concentrate on your art.

Make amazing art.

THEN think about business.

Fun. Fun. Fun. Fun. Fun. And so on.

2011-05-05T19:00:00.000-05:00

File this one under "Learning Experiences."

Recovering from losing our singer back in January, the band was understandably a little shaken up. Each of us responded to the stress in out own way.

My response was to keep pushing hard and working on anything possible to keep up our momentum. New songs, putting up flyers and messages trying to find someone new, managing the album release... anything to keep moving.

You could feel the negativity slinking thick through the air at practice. Progress on new material was frustrating and everything felt sloooooooooooooooooooooooow.

We decided to take a month off from the band.

I spent time talking to everyone to see what we could figure out was the cause. We wanted to get the energy back, but until we knew what was sapping it, we were stuck.

Finally, it came out.

It wasn't fun anymore.

My initial response to the stress of losing a singer was to push hard, and it was this push that drove the fun out everything. Practice was somber because we were "not making enough progress."

You can feel when a song is lifeless. Even though every note was spot on, there wasn't a heartbeat to a single measure.

With all the business advice and focusing on "getting things done", it's easy to get caught up in 'work mode'. But, above all else, music is about Love.

So I tabled my "to do" list, forgot all the grandoise plans, and we started jamming for the sake of jamming.

And all was right again.

You Just Gotta Fight Your Way Through

2011-05-01T17:19:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Reddit user malmc, a stylized wallpaper of this Ira Glass quote:

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through this years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting our or you are still in this phase, you gotta knknow that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And it took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through." - Ira Glass

Seth Godin is a Marketing Champ

2011-04-29T12:50:00.000-05:00

Seth Godin is a master marketer. No matter what he's promoting, Seth feels so likable because he bases his life on trust and permission.

If you want to know more about marketing, there's no quicker way to learn than reading his blog.

Check out how he handled the recent release of his book Linchpin as a paperback.

Don't Get in Car Wrecks With Your Fans

2011-04-28T19:00:00.011-05:00

Guilty admission.

Yes, we've probably met before but I'm sorry, I don't remember you. It happens often, so don't take offense.

But I can rap every word of I Like Big Butts like a champ.
I've got my priorities.

And so does everyone else.

We've only got so much room in our brains. Things we consider relevant stick, everything else tends to float away. It's efficient and helps our mind stay organized. (In fact, perfect memory is a miserable, horrible existence. Check this Radiolab episode about the man who couldn't forget.)

So it's eaaaaaaaaaaaaasy to forget about Local Band #A2496BBQ21. If you wrestle bears for a living, you probably don't have a local band that high on your mental priority list. Even the rest of us with less dangerous careers have a lot on our minds.

It's all about Mind Share.

Whereas market share (another good term to be familiar with) is the % of total sales within a market that your product sells, mind share is the % of a customer's mind you occupy. To put it more simply, when a customer thinks about bands, how likely is the customer to think about your band? The more likely you are to be remembered, the more business you get.

For example: Your homie asks for a good restaurant in the area. The names you remember get 100% of the business. Simple.

If you've got a HUGE mind share, your brand essentially becomes the name of the product. In the US, people ask for a "Kleenex", not a "facial tissue". (How's that for some awesome marketing?) If you've got NO mindshare, your band essentially doesn't exist for this consumer. That's being a little too underground of a band.

Soooooooooooo how do we build mindshare?

Mindshare is all about building memory, so it's a matter of salience, repetition, and context.

Salience is how powerful an impression the memory makes. Remember when you got into that car wreck and you remember every single moment in slow motion? That's a salient memory become it was powerful and your brain told you hey, pay attention! DO NOT GET INTO CAR WRECKS WITH YOUR FANS. KILLING THEM IS NOT GOOD FOR YOUR BAND.

TRUST ME.

Getting your band into a fan's memory without mutilation is ideal and not too difficult. Simple things like responding to a fan's tweet says "Hey, I'm the band and I actually care about you."

We remember people that care about us, because obviously they have good taste in people.

Or if you know it's a fan's birthday, tell em happy birthday from the stage. Simple, but it adds the personal connection to the memory that builds salience. (Or you can take the brute-force method of physically connecting with your fans. GWAR)

Memories are also context-dependant. Back to the earlier example, when you're thinking of restaurants to suggest to your friend, not only does your memory call up a list of restaurant names, it also remembers what the food was like, how the service was, what kind of dress code the place has...

All things tangentially related to the experience reinforce the experience.

So to build mind share you can also interact with fans in different contexts. If the only way you connect with your fans is facebook (see next week's post), that's only one context they'll remember you through. Now say you happened to do a cooking show on youtube as well. Then when people mention cooking there's a possible "I know a band that cooks" connection as well as at a show they can think "I've seen those guys cook". Essentially you're creating more "things" that people encounter that will likely "trigger" memories of your band. There will be more on this topic in later posts.

Finally, repetition is the part of marketing that gets the most focus because it's the most obvious. The first time you hear a band name, it's new. Then when you see it in a magazine you go, "Hmm, I've heard of them." Then after you see their name on a poster on every street corner, you're more likely to think "Those guys are everywhere."

Putting up flyers and getting your name mentioned is good, but repetition alone doesn't mean squat if there's no salience or context. Then all you'd have is the "Oh yeah, I recognize that name." While mere recognition does improve liking of something (mere exposure effect), you want people to actually take action when they run into you. There's many bands you recognize the name but haven't even given a listen to because there's no real reason you're compelled to listen on just a name alone. Nevertheless, the more people hear your name, the more likely they are to remember you.

Phew, good post. Nap time.

No Monitors

2011-04-21T19:00:00.013-05:00

I saw a show a while back where the sound crew was way behind on setting up stage. No power anywhere until 10 minutes into the set, and then no monitors for the remainder of the set.

It was an acoustic act so it wasn't a devastating blow to the set, but the singer made a BIG deal about it. After every song, a half-hearted joke about not being able to hear herself. You could feel her unhappiness dripping through her pores.

It got me to thinking.

In the world of art, you'd better get used to having no "monitors". Getting regular, constructive criticism of your work is in no way guaranteed, even if you're in art schools. For large spans of time in your artistic career you may hear only haters, idiots, and sadists talk about your work. They can be suffocating, and it's easy to beciome a slave to the cult of negativity.

The measure of a true artist is whether they are able to persist past the onslaught of negativity and indifference to create their beautiful art.

No monitors.

Can you play without them?

Link: How to Increase Engagement In Facebook Wall Posts

2011-04-17T22:07:00.000-05:00

Hypebot ferreted out this fantastic study: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/04/how-to-increase-engagement-in-your-facebook-wall-posts.html

It's short, and FULL of gems like this:

Posts outside of regular business hours, identified as 10 am to 4 pm EST in this study, saw engagement rates 20% higher than the overall average.

Killer.

How to Audition for a Band

2011-04-14T19:00:00.023-05:00

We've been running auditions for a new vocalist for the past few months (with steadily improving results thankfully), but it appears the world needs this post.

Bummer.

An audition is a JOB INTERVIEW. Sure, it's not usually super-formal and often involves beer, but your goal is still to impress complete strangers enough to want to work with you multiple hours a week, for an indefinite amount of years.

And 90% of what we make our decision upon will be our first impression of you. That's the way the human brain works. It's not fair; the true measure of a person can only really been determined over the course of years. But that's the way the human brain works.

Research on first impressions from Barking Up the Wrong Tree: "The findings indicate that getting off on the wrong foot has devastating long-term consequences. Although later breaches seemed to limit cooperation for only a short time, they still planted a seed of distrust that surfaced in the end."

Artists, even more so than the average person, make decisions on intuition and emotion. If the band gets bad vibrations from you, there's no way you'll get in the group.

So what are ways we can give off good vibes to help increase our chance of getting into a band? The same ways that help you do a kickass job interview:

-Show interest in the band you're auditioning for.

Unfortunately, this does need to be said. You want to show genuine interest in this band, not a band. Even if you only listen to a couple songs and read a bit of the website, this is very important.

Mention to us "I really like what you did with the harmonies in The Golden Vine, how does that relate to the direction your music is going?" and we'll be ecstatic. This shows you've at least thought about what we're trying to achieve with our music, and you're intrigued enough to ask for more information.

If you send us an email or text saying "Hey man, I can scream. What do you sound like? When can I come in?", you're not going to get an audition. It's not hard to google the band so we assume if you won't make that little effort, we assume you'll never make any effort.

This is why good job interview advice always says "Ask questions at the end of the interview." It's not the questions that are important, it's all about signaling to your interviewer that you care enough to know more about the position. You want to convey that you want this job, not any job.

Other examples of good questions/conversational topics:

"Where do you draw your influence from?"

"I come from a background of _______, and I could use that to add some _______ to your music. I think it would improve your current _______ influences."
"Between your last album and your most recent album, I see you went more in a ____ direction. Why did you decide to make that change?"

-Look like the band. Even if you have the technical skill, bands are as much about talent as they are about personality and artistic fit. Don't show up to an indie rock band wearing all black. Conversely, if you're a perky, positive drummer who loves wearing sun dresses, you're probably not going to get the gig for Metallica.

The whole "you shouldn't judge a book by its cover" argument may have moral merit but it's counterproductive to getting the position you want. Unless your mom still dresses you (NERD), you're in complete control over how you present yourself to the world and, therefore, how you would like to be perceived by the world. THIS IS YOUR CHOICE. AND IT WILL AFFECT PEOPLE'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF YOU.

People like people that look like them. The friends we associate with have a similar level of attractiveness as us. If someone has a similar trait or interest, we tend to ascribe other traits to them without any other information.

Be conscious of what the band's image is. Act accordingly.

-Ask them what they're looking for and why they're looking for it

Sure, the musician wanted ad they posted had good info, but this question is very important to determine the big reasons the band is looking for a new musician. Did their last bassist have a super-dramatic ex who constantly fought on stage? Did two guitarists have a drug problem? Did the drummer not have "the band's look?" This is important for you to know, since it lets you know what the band values.

In a similar vein, if you found the ad on craigslist, make sure to reply back to the message saying how you fit the criteria. You don't have to mention everything, since that would become tedious, but if the band says they're looking for a serious musician, tell them how your serious. Telling only that "yeah, i'm serious" doesn't convey the same conviction as "I'm ready to throw everything I have into the band."

Want ads are a golden opportunity that lets you know what values are important to the band.

If you want to get the gig, you'll have to know how the band will determine if you're successful or not. It's an easy issue to over-step Which brings us to the next step:

-Once you know what the band values, either say that you're (a Ask for the Job or (b Walk Away.

In the nervousness of an interview it's easy to forget or wuss out and not ask for the job/position. Trust me, I understand how it sometimes feels emotionally awkward to be so forward and ask for what you want. I've spent a large portion of my life afraid to ask for what I want and what was important for me. Once I got over the fear of speaking up for myself, (which turned out to be baseless) I began to get ridiculously awesome results in both my business and personal life.

So if you want the job, and you're a good fit, ASK FOR IT. It's scary, but once you finally internalize it you'll see crazy results. Promise.

On that same point, if what the band values isn't what you feel is important for your art, walk away. Trust your artistic gut on this one. If your values aren't aligned now, you'll eventually have to compromise or argue over what's important to the project.

-Don't talk smack about your last band.

Even if there were terrible, awful people (like some of the stories I heard, wow), do your best to spin it as positively as possible. If you come across as bitter and negative, it only reflects poorly on you and shows off your bad side. Since this is an interview, you should probably be playing up your good side. Just an idea.
---

That's all I can think of now, but I'm sure I'll come back to this as more ideas come up.

How to Steal Like an Artist

2011-04-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

You know when you read something so good you think "Damn, why didn't I write that?!?"

This is one of those articles.
http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/

My favorite point is "Don't wait until you know who you are to make things!"

Side Projects

2011-04-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

I'm currently working on putting together short youtube videos to teach the basics of the arts business for free. No paying $60,000 and having only 30% of the information be relevant to you. The goal with these videos is distilled and easy-to-understand business knowledge you can apply to your art right now.

Naturally, production time on these videos is much longer than a traditional blog post. I apologize if updates are sporadic, but you'll see the quality of information in the videos will be well worth this.

Thanks for keeping up with me!

DFW Bands: The O's

2011-03-24T19:00:00.046-05:00

Most bands aren't worth your time.

Having attended billions of local/national shows for both business and pleasure, I really can't stress this enough. Unable to play their instruments, bad stage presence, insulting the audience, derivative songs... Crap, everywhere. Bleh.

The real shame is that lame bands scare people away from seeing the AMAZING local talent we actually have! There's brilliant, life-affirming beautiful music out there, waiting to be heard!

So I'm gonna make life a little easier on you and I'm going to introduce local bands worth giving a shit about. This series will be sporadic, since I'm only going to talk about bands actually worth seeing and not have "filler" updates. All genres included; I may be in a metal band but I love (almost) all music. You'll thank me.
---

So I saw these guys a few years back at the Dallas Observer Music Awards Festival. I was currently in a big Wilco, Drive-By Truckers and Heartless Bastards kick, feeling the alt-country vibe pretty hard after denying it for so long.

So I sauntered in Bandera Bar and saw The O's. These two guys are blowing up on the scene with their heartfelt and genuine folk/bluegrass/indie music. The songs are quite a departure from the unnecessarily complex music I often listen to, and I think it was the simplicity of their songs that drew me in. Bought their CD immediately after they got off stage, and I was singing along with the songs within a week.

Honest music. Makes me smile.

Be a Fan

2011-03-24T19:00:00.027-05:00

It's easy to get caught up in the business of running a band. Promoting, writing, keeping everyone from stabbing each other... There's an infinite list of things to do, and it's easy to lose why you're doing this in the first place.

We make music because we love music.

When's the last time you were a fan for someone else? Whether it's a simple as saying to an artist "Hey man, I really dig what your music is saying. It's inspiring!", buying a beer for the drummer, or something as involved as starting a tribute band, being a fan is what music is all about, and it's what will keep you pushing when you go through The Dip.

All we have are our fans.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: This week, show three bands you adore the love they deserve. Extra credit if they're a smaller, lesser known band and they don't get love as often. How you express love is up to you. (Please, no stalking though. Rooting through their garbage is not advisable either)

The Entrepreneur's Brain: Learning from Failure

2011-03-21T00:31:00.002-05:00

I won't embellish it, it was a failure.

A few weeks back, I attempted to make the leap from selling guitars personally to selling over eBay. I was in no way prepared for the negative response. Coming from the safe bubble of my friends and family's support, I already envisioned all the "Great Bass!" remarks and, even more, the profits rolling in. I completed a full time-study on the bass, tracked every expense and ran profit projections.

Mmm... feels good to lounge in dream-land, doesn't it? Nothing but feel-good nacho cheese waterfalls and day long naps.

Actual responses:
"Is this a joke?"
"Great job on the 'custom' bass?"
"Really..."

Owch. What happened? I had yet to ever hear any comment about my work other than a "That's awesome!" so I was a little unsure of what to think.

The issue was this; I made this bass by hot-rodding an entry-level SX Jazz Bass a set of awesome pickups, a custom paint job, and a tune up correcting simple manufacturer issues that happen on low-end basses (Such as fret leveling & crowning). (Protip, the two most important things for a guitar's sound are wood an electronics.) I'm proud of this bass for sound, looks, and playability.

So naturally, I wrote a powerfully written ad.

However, I decided to get all MBA fancy and call it a DM Custom Bass instead of what I should have called it, SX Bass - Upgrade or HOT-ROD SX Bass.

Bad move.

People read the ad about a custom bass guitar and expected everything to be hand-crafted. The market thought different things when it saw my ad than I expected. When the customer saw the dissonance between what was an upgraded bass and the custom bass they expected, they lashed out with full-on internet-hate.

Lesson 1: Improper or inaccurate marketing is a searing insult to potential customers.

So it's back to the drawing board on developing the right sales environment for my guitars. Lesson learned.
---

This event brought to mind a fascinating article from INC that made the rounds on the blogs recently about the difference between how successful entrepreneurs and successful corporate businessmen think.

The study essentially took in entrepreneurs and corporate folk, and had them make a business plan and deal with "problems" as they arose. Through the whole process, everyone thought out loud and recorded their thought processes.

The big takeaway from this study: Entrepreneurs had fluid goals and eschewed "fancy modeling" in favor of trying to sell the product first to get market information directly from the customers. The corporate businessmen used models, created hard goals, and created "structured plans to success." Both are very effective strategies. Like penguins and ostriches, each individual developed strategies that was effective in its own environment but would be useless in any other climate.

If you're a corporate musician, you don't need this blog because someone is paid to do all this for you. For the rest of us, we need to think like entrepreneurs.

Lesson 2: Musicians are entrepreneurs selling an unproven product. To be successful, they must maintain flexible goals and adapt to the marketplace to survive.

There's many ways to the top if you wanna rock and roll. Remember that.

"Idea People" Are Worthless

2011-03-17T19:07:00.015-05:00

You've met them.

Enthusiastic and often intelligent, they approach you with their grand idea. Create a documentary to build a community, design the ultimate educational video game, construct a pyramid, release a four-album progressive rock masterpiece etc. But they can't get started just yet, they "need some help, man. You know, and some cash so, like, we can do this thing, you know?"

Or the guy at your office who is "totally gonna start his own business to get away from the boss, you know?" Or someone who says "I really want to eat healthier, I just don't have the time though..."

And they want you to do all of the work because they're too weak to do it themselves.

As you develop a reputation for actually accomplishing things, these self-identified "Idea People" begin to smell success. And they begin to circle, hoping to get some table scraps thrown their way. Waiting for someone else to do the work necessary to achieve their goals.

Listen: Anyone who identifies themselves as an "Idea Person" will not achieve their goals. They're too weak.

People define themselves through story (more on this in later blog posts). One of the ways we attempt to make sense of our identity is through the use of labels. I'm a mom. I'm a musician. I'm a politician. I'm an Idea Person. These labels help give us a means to interact and make sense with an endlessly complex world.

So let's look into the connotations of an Idea Person. This label emphasizes creative, innovative thought. Great, swell. But it also hints at helplessness. If you're an idea person, your only job is to "come up with a good idea". Then you have someone else do all the work because your job is done. 'Idea generated, my work is done." you rationalize, "Now someone else do something." And then you take credit because it was "your idea, as the resident idea person".

Do you see the passive-aggressive behavior? If the idea is a success, thank the Idea Person. If the idea fails, it was someone else's fault. That's not the job of an idea person, so they can't be held liable for failure.

Idea Person, Noun: Someone who wants all the credit for doing no work.

Famous artists are not idea people because they actually do something with their idea. If they sat around thinking about ideas all day but never did any work, they would not be an artist.

If you do not push, strive, hustle, and fight for your idea, you are the reason it failed. If you care about your child, you do everything you can to ensure their life is a success. If you care about getting in shape, you go to the gym and work out until you can't stand any more. If you care about your music, you practice until your fingers blister, promote until you can't talk, write, perform to an empty room, fail and keep trying because you care.

ONLY ACTION MATTERS. IF YOU ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT YOUR GOALS, YOU'D BE ACTIVELY PURSUING THEM ALREADY. Anything else is worthless talk.

Bring The Beef!

2011-03-10T21:34:00.000-06:00

Once again hip-hop, still one of the youngest major genres, delivers us new strategies for the new music economy.

Being positive all the time is dumb and can even hurt you. Sure, as a general rule it's better to have positive relations with the local names in your industry, but when someone craps into your cornflakes you'd better be willing to stand up for yourself.

Sometimes you have to get mean.

Enter the promotional genius that is the diss track.* (Note: This is not to make light of the Biggie/2Pac murders. They were terrible and took things way too far. I speak only of the less-violent and more 'for show' beefs.)

For those of you unfamiliar with the idea, a diss track is a song a rapper writes solely for the purpose of insulting another rapper and usually results in a volley of tracks between each rapper until both either make amends or get bored of it all. (See Jay-Z_vs._Nas) Hip-hop is built off being tough, so what better way to enforce that image than throw some insults at someone who, for some reason or another, you don't like?

Not only is a great move for living the image of your music, it's also brilliant business move. Even more so than doing a collaborative track, a diss track builds visibility for both actors because it creates drama for fans of the music. No one wants to watch a tv show where everyone is happy and nothing goes wrong. It'd be boring and dumb. Professional wrestling is built off the principle of beefs between its larger than life personalities. The conflicts between characters are what make everything so interesting. (Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant anyone?)

Drama creates stories lead to emotional investment.

And stories are how we make sense of our lives.

Never forget, The better a story you give your fans to tell, the more devoted they will be to you.

Ever thought of starting a beef with another musician for mutual marketing gain? Being angry with someone might be the strategy your business needs.

Quick Link: How to Trademark Your Band's Name

2011-03-09T20:22:00.000-06:00

Great post over at Digital Music News on the how and why of getting your name and symbols trademarked. It's written by a copyright and trademark lawyer so I won't bother summarizing the article since he does a much better job of explaining things.

http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/020311samename#YCebBWm-zg9czgjiprj0AQ

The Music Success Formula - Rough Cut

2011-03-03T20:48:00.000-06:00

So I got the idea of creating a "back of the envelope" formula that will be a quick way to determine a band's potential of "breaking through" to the next level. This has the potential to be very useful to many musicians, but I need your help refining the idea. Please, poke holes in this so we can strengthen the idea!

What i've developed so far is based off the simple equation for force (force = mass X velocity) except replacing the variables with things related to bands. It would measure, on a scale of 1 to 10 the band's potential to reach their ""fan goal" (which goes into the equation)

You'll notice music quality is not central to the formula. The reason for this is, due to the subjective nature, it's often difficult to tell which music will sell or not. The goal of this formula is to get bands to focus on improving their strategies of getting their music out to the world. The formula makes little distinction on the music itself, it's up to you to ensure your art is as refined as it can be.

Band's Potential of Reaching their fan goal (scale of 1 to 10) = quality of the band X quality of promotion.

This would be broken down further into:

quality of the band = music quality + music production quality + live show quality + merch quality

where each item would be on a sliding scale like so

-Music quality (this has to be subjective, on a scale from 0 to 3)

-Music production quality (0 = home recording, 1 = midrange qualty, 2 = professional quality)

-Live show quality (0 = mojque, 1 = crowd interaction & presence, 2 = effects light show & "crowd pleasers", 3 = Lady Gaga Sized production)

-Merch quality (0 = no merch, 1 = some T shirts-OK quality 2 = run by merch girl with lights & pro level equipment)

qualty of promotion = {current "pull" at shows + (fans contacted monthly X conversion rate X 12 } / "fan goal"

By filling this out, the band would know what their relative chances of meeting their "fan goals" within a year are.

I need your input. This could help MANY people if we get this refined!

Quick Triple Post: Science!

2011-02-24T19:00:00.005-06:00

A shotgun blast of science.

Lab results confirm what a smart musician already knows: dressing inappropriately for your genre hurts people's opinions of your music (consciously and subconsciously). Hence why I don't play metal in hot pink spandex.
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/does-a-musicians-clothing-affect-how-much-we

Ha ha! So the singer isn't the king of the band! Sadly, that still means diddly squat for bassists.
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/are-the-lyrics-or-melodies-more-responsible-f

Finally, be kind to your fans. Even insincere flattery works.
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/does-insincere-flattery-work

Case Study: Doomtree

2011-02-10T19:00:00.000-06:00

I love hip hop.

Although I've only recently discovered the genre, the wealth of talent and surprisingly, business savvy, has drawn me in. What struck me most was how many of the artists regularly performed as part of a collective, even the solo acts. Groups like the Wu-Tang Clan  allowed its members to create an unorthodox structure by releasing albums as both a group and as solo artists.

One of the best recent examples of a group embracing the harmony between art and business is the Minnesota collective Doomtree. Formed in the early 2000s by high school friends Cecil Otter, P.O.S., and producer MK Larada, Doomtree began as a loose collective and eventually developed into a group of musicians forming an indie record label.

All of the members of the group work under the Doomtree name and on under the name of their solo projects. Each member of the group contributes something different; Dessa is a spoken word poet, Paper Tiger does graphic design, Lazerbeak produces the artists. It's half a label and half a performing collective.

I love all of the artists on Doomtree. And their do it yourself style of running their group is fascinating and, I like, the direction many indie labels should be headed. (For a more in-depth discussion of the group, check their website. I'm not going to re-type interviews and such.)

Let's take a look at some of the ways that the Doomtree collective benefits every one of its members.

   -Label is run only by artists involved. No contract or conflict of interest issues.
   -The group periodically releases their False Hopes compilations featuring all their artists in between major releases to keep up momentum and build fan interest for all the artists.
   -Shared overhead expenses among artists reduces costs for everyone (website development, merch, recording, etc). Paper Tiger does the graphic design for everyone in the collective.
   -Cross promotion. The Doomtree crew promotes Doomtree. More voices promoting the same group = more and better promotion for everyone. Everyone benefits from the growth of the one brand instead of everyone pushing their own name.
   -Varied talents of each member allow the collective to build fan relations in unconvential, and effective ways. Dessa started a book club. Lazerbeak does weekly Tuesdays with Lazerbeak blog posts to consistantly connect with fans.
   -The selective nature of who Doomtree allows on their roster serves as both quality control and branding. What this means to fans is, if you see a Doomtree show, it'll be good. This cannot be stressed enough. With so many crappy bands in existence, going to a show is a gamble. With a consistent Doomtree brand, a music fan can reasonably trust that even if they don't know all the bands playing a show, it'll be worth it to go out to the show. They obviously understand this by holding a yearly Doomtree Blowout show in December.

However, there are some key points that must be in order for this collective to work.

   -The group has to be selective about who can enter for personality reasons. For a collective to work, the roster has to be carefully chosen to ensure there are no free riders or negative influences who would tarnish the entire group's reputation. Say for example the artist that runs merch decides to quit and takes all the passwords and merch with him. This could easily devastate the group.
   -The group also has to be selective about quality. If one of the artists isn't carrying their weight or is performing below the standards of the group, the entire collective suffers.
   -As with all organizations, the danger of group-think is always present. The group must maintain an atmosphere of being constructively critical of itself to ensure quality decisions.

I seriously hope these guys make infinity billion dollars. For a much more in-depth interview of how the group started, check this interview from way way back.

Now think about this:
How can you use the Doomtree model to help both your community and yourself?

Phantom Progress

2011-02-03T19:00:00.000-06:00

The more time I spend working on the business side of Onward We March, the more I begin to see what all those entrepreneurship teachers were talking about in terms of the dizzying complexity of running a business. From constant spam emails offering "We'll Get Your Band Famous in One Month!" services, to getting our copyrights correct, to passing out promo CDs, the list is NEVER ENDING.

It's becoming more and more clear to me that it's nearly impossible to run out of things to do to run a band. There's only so much effort one can exert in one day before the cost of effort exceeds the productivity. We all know what it feels like at the end of a practice sessions where there's no point in playing anymore because our brain is gone.

So, with limited time and effort, I've noticed a bit of a problem. There's a million things you can "accomplish" that will have no impact on your business. I called this Phantom Progress.

Some examples:
   -Cleaning your practice space
   -Sending myspace messages (Yeah, I said it. The website is spam.)
   -Promoting your band through craigslist ads (I see people do this all the time and it makes me nauseous)
   -Signing up for yet another "Hey, we'll promote your band for free!" website
   -Applying for royalties (at least in our current stage of development)
   -Reading music strategy blogs but NOT APPLYING what you learn

The reason phantom progress is so insidious is because it gives you all the warm fuzzy feelings of "I accomplished somthing!" while not contributing anything to your business and, more importantly, wasting your time and effort. Filling out a checklist doesn't mean anything if the items on the list aren't important.

I will admit I'm quite guilty at times of procrastinating on more important issues by crossing off "easy" items on my to-do list. It's an easy emotional payoff. But take the easy route too often and you'll end up burn out with nothing to show for all your work.

Interview with Brothers Highhorse

2011-02-01T07:54:00.000-06:00

A few months back we were kicking promotional ideas for the album. One of the more involved ideas was to create a short-form metal 'zine, but after realizing how much additional work that would be, the idea was scrapped.

That being said, it would be a waste not to post this interview with my homie Dan of The Brothers Highhorse, a Dallas-based metal band we play with all the time. The odd formatting and phrasing on my part was supposed to be a part of the 'zine's flavor and I didn't want to change that for this repost.

Q: WHO the hell are you and what’s a High Horse, Brother?

We are a 5 but soon to be 6 piece deathcore band from Denton, Texas. We like black metal and breakdowns and we have a chick keyboardist, whose our second guitarist sister. Thats who we are.

The name came from an inside joke from years ago and we decided to use it instead of having a generic sounding metal name. We felt it had a job for a cowboy like feel in that it doesnt obviously sound like the name for a metal band.

Q: WHERE are y’all going with your music?

We are currently writing a full album and it has a theme. The theme is based on the concept that the ancient gods of now lost civilations were actually aliens and now they have come back to reenslave our civilization. They attempt to do this through turning humans into cyborgs and implanting mind control mechanisms into our brains, but fortunately their is a sole survivor who the mechanism fails and he leads a rebellion to take back the planet.

Each song on our album is going to be a part of the story.

As far as our sound progressing, we recently went through a significant line up change in which our old singer and drummer left because of musical and creative differences. So we added a new singer and new drummer and our bassist switched to second guitar and we added keyboards. (We have been looking for a bassist and we think we have one but we arent solidifing his position in the band untill after he has played several shows with us.)

I suppose if you had to label us we would be a deathcore band but unlike most deathcore bands around the area no one can seem to pinpoint any one band we sound exactly like, which we are fine with. The adding of keyboards has pushed us further our black metal elements which we all love. We still have breakdowns but we have keyboard melodies in our songs because sarah (our keyboardist) can actually play and doesnt just hold ond handed chords like most other bands weve seen around that have keyboards, lol. We are influneced but a variety of bands and we feel we take parts of all of them and fuse them together to sound unique.

Q: YOU just got sponsored by Uproar! Apparel. HOW did that happen?

The sponsorship with them happened by luck actually, they messages us and saw that we were friends with another band they sponsored and they said they were always looking for new bands if we were interested. So we started talking to them and gave them our gameplan so to speak and now we have a sponsorship deal with them.

Q: TELL us a story.

A: We played with Upon a burning body in may and they were amazing and because we were so impressed we gave their vocalist one of our shirts for free. We played with them again in September and they actually remembered us and we never mentioned what band we were and they remembered that we gave them a shirt and they like our design. That was pretty awesome that a signed band remembered us after only playing with us twice.

Another awesome story is, Mark (Second Guitarist), John (Vocalist) and I went to see Depised Icon's last US Tour at the Prophet bar. They started playing their set and one of their singers started handing out the mic to people in the crowd to sing the words and mark and I looked up and we see John on stage screaming the words of their song with them. It was pretty badass and I believe there are some videos of it out there so hopefully whoever has them will post them pretty soon.
Q: WHO is your fav local to play with? Why?

A: Our favorite band to hangout and know their on a bill is Onward We March because weve known those guys forever and their just really cool fun dudes. Whenever we know theyre going to be on a bill with us, we know its going to be a party.

Our favorite band to watch is Descendant, if you dont know who they are you need to check them out at a show. They are one of the very best bands in DFW. Their lead guitarisr/ vocalist Richard Dale is a beast and will solo circles around you. Everytime weve played shows with them they are as solid as can be and if you like melodic metal you owe it to yourself to check them out.

The Golden Vine is Done!

2011-01-29T10:14:00.000-06:00

Last night we played the best show we've ever played to announce the release of our debut EP, The Golden Vine. After all those years of work we've finally done something to be proud of.

Sadly the night was bittersweet as it was our singer Logan's last show: who is leaving for reasons of creative differences.

I'll return to normal updates next week, for now I'm taking care of all of the logistics of the release.

For this week only, we're streaming the whole album on our website, go give us a listen!
http://www.onwardwemarch.com/

One Year Anniversary!

2011-01-22T10:38:00.000-06:00

Whoa snap, it's been over a year already?

When I initially started this project, my goal was to deliver insight and get people talking about how we can make the music world a better place for everyone through business and psychology. I hope you'll agree that I've done that.

If you're new to the blog or haven't kept up, here's some of the best ones I've written over the last year to get you up to speed. Thanks for reading my blog.

As always, I want to hear from YOU! Good ideas don't come in a vacuum, the more we talk the smarter we all get.

How To Make Fans Faster
On the Efficacy of Flava Flav
Going "Viral" is a Waste
Why is Heavy Metal and Acquired Taste?
The Musician's Secret Weapon

Quick Science Update

2011-01-20T19:00:00.000-06:00

The ever-awesome Jonah Lehrer on how its the anticipation of our favorite parts in the music that gives us the chills. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/the-neuroscience-of-music/

"According to Meyer, it is the suspenseful tension of music (arising out of our unfulfilled expectations) that is the source of the music’s feeling. While earlier theories of music focused on the way a noise can refer to the real world of images and experiences (its “connotative” meaning), Meyer argued that the emotions we find in music come from the unfolding events of the music itself. This “embodied meaning” arises from the patterns the symphony invokes and then ignores, from the ambiguity it creates inside its own form. “For the human mind,” Meyer writes, “such states of doubt and confusion are abhorrent. When confronted with them, the mind attempts to resolve them into clarity and certainty.” And so we wait, expectantly, for the resolution of E major, for Beethoven’s established pattern to be completed. This nervous anticipation, says Meyer, “is the whole raison d’etre of the passage, for its purpose is precisely to delay the cadence in the tonic.” The uncertainty makes the feeling – it is what triggers that surge of dopamine in the caudate, as we struggle to figure out what will happen next. And so our neurons search for the undulating order, trying to make sense of this flurry of pitches. We can predict some of the notes, but we can’t predict them all, and that is what keeps us listening, waiting expectantly for our reward, for the errant pattern to be completed. Music is a form whose meaning depends upon its violation."

How Deep is Your Merch?

2011-01-13T19:00:00.014-06:00

Math time.

What is the maximum cash a fan can spend on your band in one year? (Assuming nobody buys the same shirt three times.)

How much of that is profit?

Now, how many fans must you have to:
   -Break even?
   -Work only a part time job?
   -Become a full time musician?
   -Drive a limo into a swimming pool and not care?

What happens to your profit when you introduce one additional product a year?

Makes you think, doesn't it?

MATH.

I'm Your Fan

2011-01-06T19:00:00.019-06:00

What do I get by becoming a fan of your band?

Will you say 'Hi!" when I go to your shows?

When do you tell me about your upcoming shows?

How will I know the stories behind your songs?

How often do you have fresh, awesome merch so I can show you how much I appreciate your music?

Do you respond to my facebook messages?

What do you say to me when I come up to the merch booth?

How do you help me stay a fan?

How do you make me feel like I belong?

The Musician's Secret Weapon

2010-12-30T19:00:00.000-06:00

"Life can be very, very hard for a musician. You're competing against millions of others, desperate to be heard over all the noise. And you've got no money.

But you've got a secret weapon. To outsiders, the music industry is sexy. People with day jobs are fascinated with the mythos of "The Rock Star".

Make the person you're talking to feel this. Make them feel like a part of this world.

If you give people a story with them as a hero, they will help you. Much more so than you would ever expect."

- Patrick Keel, one of my mentors. I didn't remember his exact wording, so I rephrased it with a little of my own flourish.

The "Total" Musician

2010-12-23T19:00:00.002-06:00

What is it about some musicians that makes them seem to have so much more staying power than others? What is the difference between

I use the term Total Musician.

The full number of factors involved in success make it impossible to predict success absolutely. However, there are some traits that seem to be more prevalent among successful individuals than unsuccessful ones. This is my initial attempt to qualify what exactly it is that makes some musicians special. This is an informal, working list.

I'd like you to contribute to this list.

The more broad our viewpoint the better we'll be able to hone in on what it takes for us to become a Total Musician too.

Here's the list so far:
   -Maturity. Playing within their abilities.
   -Confidence, albeit in different forms for different people.
   -Wide Interests. True innovators cross pollinate ideas.
   -Practice.
   -Hustle. Whether it's business acumen, a charismatic personality or compelling story-telling.
   -Works with many other creatives.
   -TEAMWORK

Let's see what we can do with this list, eh?

What Do You Do For Your Band?

2010-12-16T19:00:00.001-06:00

Besides your instrument. Any musician can do that. What makes you irreplaceable in your band?

This is important.

Music is a highly competitive industry, and it's no secret band lineups change all the time. Unless you happen to be a prophet of the guitar like Hendrix, being "good" isn't enough to ensure you stay in a band. Youtube practicly has a dedicated channel called "12 Year Olds Who Are Better At Your Instrument Than You Will Ever Be". A Total musician, the kind of person you always want in your band, contributes something that can't be replaced by someone who can read guitar tabs.

What would qualify as something making you more valuable to the band?
   -Writing the entire story behind a 4-album sequence. Would Coheed & Cambria have existed if the story writer left?
   -Being a master promoter. Do you run the merch booth like a boss and have a knack for getting people excited about your music? That's magic, baby.
   -Managing inventory and planning all the shows for the band.
   -Doing all the graphic design and website building for the band.
   -Recording good to great demos all yourself at the band practice space.
   -Knowing boatloads more about business/money than the rest of the band.
   -Repairing all the band's instruments.
   -Illustrating all the band's merch, posters, and albums.

All of these things are more difficult to replace than simply "doing your job" on your instrument. Skills like these add value to both the band and yourself. The more business your band can do in-house, the less time and money you need to spend on outside help, allowing you to spend money on the really important things.

The best way to ensure your stability is to be invaluable.

Merch Problems are an Insult to Your Fans

2010-12-02T19:00:00.008-06:00

As mentioned in a previous post The Album is Marketing Material, a band doesn't make its money on music. The margins necessary to finally support five or so smelly musicians come from touring and merch. Once you've got your music up to the standards it needs to be, you must get merch details right if you want a stable career in music.

Picture this for a second: you just decided to see a friend of a friend's band at some dingy bar that smells worse than a harbor at low tide. You're not expecting to enjoy the show, but you promised to go see them at least once.

Turns out the band is amazing.

So much so that you make the conscious decision to open your wallet and throw dollars at the band. Excited, you walk over to the merch table and... their merch blows.

The shirts look like an iron-on decal of a toddler's finger painting. They don't have shirts in your size. No change, "Sorry dude."

How do you feel about the band now?

When you mess up merch, you:
   -Insult your current fans.
   -Lose new fans. (If they don't have something to remember you by, it's possible you'll be forgotten)
   -Lose revenue from the sale. (Bad sizes, ugly/cheap merch is the same as taking the money the fan was going to give you and throwing it in the toilet).
   -Miss the opportunity for advertising. (A fan wearing the shirt passively increases your name recognition and mindspace.)

How much thought do you put into your merch?

Why Do Some "Supergroups" Fail?

2010-11-25T19:00:00.022-06:00

It's a sad day when a brilliant musician leaves the band that made them famous. The band is never the same. Some bands break up (Zeppelin, Nirvana), some bands keep marching on (Pink Floyd), but it's never the same.

But what of "Supergroups"? When you take the best members of multiple bands, why do some flourish and some fail? It's clearly not lack of talent, these supergroups are the MVPs of the music world. Stick the greatest guitarists on the planet together an you get a platinum record, right?

Not always.

So what is it?

What makes a band "magical" is the quality of their interactions as a group.

When dealing with projects alone (musical, school, business, etc), the only input is skill. Obviously, the skill of the individual is the primary input into this project so that's what determines success or failure.

But when we introduce group dynamics, the formula changes. Who writes the guitar part at the bridge? Do we add a five-minute drum solo? What is the song trying to say? These decisions are made as the result of negotiations between the band members. The term negotiation usually conjures up images of "playing hard ball" and the like, but almost every interaction is a negotiation of some sort. "Should we add a second vocal part to stress these syllables?" is a question that people skills determine the outcome of.

Musical talent and people skills are TWO VERY DIFFERENT SKILL SETS. Some people have one, some have the other but the truly intelligent musician takes the time to develop both skills.

I'd never be in a band with Yngwie Malmsteen, the guy seems like a wanker bent on showing off. Sure, he's got skills, but I'd argue with him just on the principle that he's so pretentious. There's a reason he's a solo artist.

Have you ever played with a guitarist who heard an idea and immediately said "I won't play that. End of discussion."? Aside from making your head want to explode, how do you think this guitarist's personality affects the quality of the music he'll end up writing in a group setting?

Jack White, on the other hand, happens to make great music with every project he touches. He's not the most technically insane guitarist on the planet, but he writes good songs with good musicians. He's able to deal with the people side of a project to get the best music possible.

If you want to make better music, you must work on both MUSIC and PEOPLE skills.

Learn to listen to your band mates and open yourself up to new ideas and directions. Read some books on management or organizational behavior. TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOUR BAND. You'll be rewarded, both in terms of a happier band and a better songwriting process.

(The new song we're currently practicing I had to be convinced to play initially, but now I love it. You only make progress in a band setting by learning how to best utilize your group.)

The Album is Marketing Material

2010-11-18T19:05:00.050-06:00

Last weekend, the band and I sat down to hash out plans for our album release and the issue of album pricing came up.

For those of you who know me, I am never one to be a wuss about price. If you do hard work to create something amazing, you should be compensated properly so you can do it again. That's what it takes to be an artist who continues to create beauty for their fans. Naturally, I pushed to have our EP priced where we would get a decent margin on each sale.

My guitarist disagreed and chose a price about half what I wanted. While I was initially dismissive, I listened as he said this:

Bands don't make their money from their music any more. With the birth of Napster and the freedom of distribution afforded by the internet, the fundamental economics of music changed. Supply of music was no longer limited by physical CDs, anyone who wanted a song could get it fast, and easy, for free. At the same time, millions of new musicians spread to Myspace to spread the word of their art. In both cases, the supply of music became nearly infinite, and the price adjusted accordingly. People still loved music, but they were less willing to pay for it.

Where would the revenue needed to keep artists performing come from?

Experiences.

You can't download the feeling of being in a mosh pit. A limited edition concert shirt can't be heard on the radio. These real experiences, unlike MP3s, are scarce.

In the music business today, the money isn't in albums. It's in merch and touring. If you can create an experience that your fans are willing to pay for, you will be able to survive as an artist. (Assuming you're not an idiot with your finances, of course)

An album is a marketing tool that tells your fans We are an experience you want in your life.

(Props to my guitarist Tito for this idea. He's the sriracha to my leftover Chinese food.)

Rethinking Practice

2010-11-04T20:40:00.002-05:00

With the album release AND graduation coming on strong, these next two months are going to be lighter on updates but I will try as hard as I can to make time to keep delivering quality content.

This weeks I've got two great articles on how to practice/study more effectively. With as hard as it is to squeeze in practice time, getting the most out of this time is important to every musician.

From Jonah Lehrer:

"A great deal of previous work has shown that simply presenting the stimuli to the participant is usually not enough. They actually have to do the task. This is where our group comes in. Basically, what we say is, yes you do have to do the task, just not for the whole time. The main result is that if you practice for 20 minutes, and then you are passively exposed to stimuli for 20 minutes, you learn as if you have been practicing for 40 minutes. You can cut the effort in half, and still yield the same benefit. This finding could be important for clinical training programs, such as the ones that attempt to treat language-based learning disorders."
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/how-much-should-we-practice/
---

From NPR's Piece:

Test yourself: Doing practice quizzes can help you retrieve information on test day. "Tests have a very bad rap as a measurement tool," Carey says. But psychologists have found self-tests slow down the forgetting of material you've studied. "If you study something once, and then you test yourself on it," Carey says, "you do better than if you study it two times over." (Practice playing your parts unaccompanied, then try writing out the tabs/notation of the part without touching your instrument, mentally rehearse fingerings when you're bored waiting in traffic. I practice right hand dexterity drills using a the side of a pen to mimic my strings)

Move around: Changing up where you study can help you retain more information. "If you move around and study the same material in several places," he says, "you may be forming ... multiple associations for the same material, the same words and so on. So it's better anchored in your brain, and you can pull it out easier."

Mix it up: Think about a football player who does strength training, speed training and drills. Carey says alternating between different facets of a subject in a single sitting can "leave a deeper impression on the brain." For example, when studying French, do some verbs, some speaking and some reading. Spending your time in deep concentration on just verbs, say, isn't as effective. (For musicians, practice scales, warmups, technical exercises, soloing, improv, music writing etc to keep your skills well rounded.)

Space it out: Information learned in a hurry is lost just as fast. Carey likens cramming your brain to speed-packing a cheap suitcase — it all falls out. So if you really want to learn, space out shorter, hourlong study sessions. "There's no doubt you can cram your way through an exam," Carey says. The problem is that it's so easy to forget what you just crammed — and once it's gone, Carey says, "It's gone. You're not getting it back." (One 3 hour practice session a week is nice, but not as long-term effective as six 30-minute practice sessions.)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130728588&ps=cprs

Why is Heavy Metal an Acquired Taste?

2010-10-28T19:00:00.063-05:00

Who wrote the first metal song?

Forget Sabbath. Blue Cheer? Yeah right. Not even Celtic Frost has anything on Igor Stravinsky.

Back in the misty land before vinyl, Stravinsky wanted to challenge his audience like never before. He wanted to reshape the public's opinion of what a song could be.

On May 29th, 1913 he premiered The Rite of Spring (Wikipedia).

There was a riot.

Police couldn't stop the fights. It was a classical mosh pit.

What was so different about this piece? Classical concerts are't really known for these shenanigans. The few times I've been they feel so proper that even clapping seems inappropriate.

First off, this piece features heavy doses of dissonance and polyrhythms. Sound familiar?

(side note, one year later The Rite of Spring was a smash hit with the public. That's like Blues Clues featuring Slayer as a musical guest)

When music is totally predictable and simple, it's reallllly boring. When music is totally unpredictable, it's stressful because your brain is trying desperately to find patterns in the chaos. (Previous Post) The music that really takes us over is music that walks the thin line between predictable and unpredictable.

All your expectations for what music can actually be and do are constructed from what you've heard in the past. As you become more and more enthralled with music, your library of knowledge grows. There's a reason that effective children's songs are simple and repetitive. Kids don't have the vast mental library of musical ideas like adults do. Because of this, the songs are simple and pleasing so the patterns are easily recognizable. (Infants smile when they hear perfect fifths and frown when they hear diminished fifths. Can't find the article at the moment.)

Now take that same baby and have it grow up with dad playing Judas Priest and Opeth on the ride to daycare and the child will start to become more familiar with the patterns and cliches of metal. The child would, so to speak, build up a tolerance for thrash, scream and lyrics a teenger would write in the margins of history homework.

Metal is an acquired taste because things like dissonance and polyrhythms don't come naturally, especially to non-musicians. It's all about developing an understanding of the bitter flavors of the beer and how they play off each other to create a symphony of hops and alcohol.

So you see, liking metal is a sign of sophisticated taste! (Haha, kidding!)

---
Hat tip to Radiolab for introducing me to the Rite of Spring. If you want to REALLY stretch your brain with one of the best produced podcasts on the planet, I HIGHLY recommend you start listening.

Selling Guitars for Pain and Profit

2010-10-21T19:00:00.000-05:00

It hurt. A lot.

I barely let go.

Unh, so good. So good. I got youuuu!

Recently I sold my first custom guitar and the empty-nest feelings began right away. I loved this guitar. It was lightweight (what with all the holes drilled into it), had a diiiiiiirty metalicious tone and looked really freaking sweet. It felt magic as soon as I played the first note on it. Hell, every single track on our first album was done on this bass. (For my sound engineer readers, it was recorded straight through a DI box. That's it!)

I was proud.

But I wasn't prepared to get multiple offers on it so quick. Wow. I knew it was good for me but the fact that someone wanted to buy it without me even asking... I was flattered and defensive at the same time, haha. Flattered that it was good, but defensive because of all the attachment I had to this guy. It was my bass.

I decided to sell it anyway.

Art is a gift to be shared with the world. That's the joy of being an artist, seeding the world with beauty. It's a gift.

Which is all well and good, but this was my guitar! What actually made me decide to share it is that it served our long-term business strategy.

1. This guitar is a billion times better than a business card. When people see something far out of the ordinary they often have to ask "What the hell is that?" And then the owner of the guitar spreads the word about Onward We March and the guy who built the guitar. Word of mouth, baby. Marketing is best when you're clients do it for you. You don't even have to put on pants!

2. This guitar meant more than a sale. I absolutely adored it so I was initially reluctant to let it go. The guitar had value. The buyer understood this. And then I decided to give it up. Relationships are built off of exchanging value, be it in the form of good conversation, rides to work, time spent, or guitars. This is a relationship that I definitely wanted to continue. Selling my beloved guitar was an exercise in relationship-building.

Nurture your most important relationships, even if it's difficult. The gifts you give will come back to you twofold. Relationships are all you've got.

What's the Frame?

2010-10-14T19:00:00.038-05:00

Note: I realize I'm digging in to a little more psychology than usual, but as we're finishing the mixing process for The Golden Vine it's becoming more and more clear that understanding group dynamics is of the utmost importance in creative endeavors. That being said, let's get on with it.
---

So I foreshadowed a little bit.

In last week's post on addressing negotiation issues from a logical versus emotional standpoint, I exposed you to this week's concept: Framing. A frame is the name for the biases and preconceptions that people view a certain issue through, thus affecting their overall judgement of the issue. Framing is the process of choosing how one presents an issue by imposing a certain frame upon the issue. For example, last week I described logical versus emotional resistance in dealing with people. The frame that was implied in my discussion was that this is the way to interpret the examples I presented, leading you to further apply this (logic versus emotions) mindset to other real-world problems. Although it was a very obvious example, the way I presented my Phở joke in the last post is another good example of framing.

While I really do believe that the frame I presented last week is useful, always be aware of how issues are being framed and how that is an attempt to influence your thinking. There are millions of ways to approach every problem, framing is a tool that can just as easily lead you to a good conclusion as lead to astray. Logic versus emotion is a useful frame, but if we take it as the only frame then we miss the true robustness of a question. What if the someone acts in a grey area between reason and emotion?

Let's look at some more examples of framing and see how that affects us.

Example A: You're playing around on an excellent bass at a music store and you start chatting with a guy next to you who mentions he plays 6 instruments. You only play the good one (bass guitar). He asks why you don't play more instruments.

Notice the frame taken by the multi-instrumentalist; "Playing multiple instruments is good." Is it? Does it matter that you can play a djembe? It does if you recorded every track on your album. It doesn't if you're a live band and can physically only play one instrument at a time. What about the amount of practice time you have available per instrument; is it possible to be amazing at multiple instruments? Does being good at one instrument make you better at another?

The questions keep piling up when you question the frame the six-instruments guy uses. The big question: How does this frame affect your answer? Would you be apologetic for playing only one? Would you be proud? Would you make excuses?

These are the considerations you should take when evaluating a frame.

Example B: You finish your conversation with the six-instruments guy and are approached by a salesperson. She begins to talk to you about what you're looking for in a bass guitar and makes the statement, "So how's the sustain on your current guitar?"

Frame: "Sustain in what you should be concerned about in your next guitar." Every good salesperson knows how to frame a question perfect to get their customer to start thinking their way. Is sustain even relevant for your music? Punk rock doesn't need sustain, everything is eighth notes! How much more do guitars with "good sustain" cost?

How does the way this question is framed affect your answer? It's not hard to envision how the salesperson wants the conversation to go from here.
---

SO

That's a primer on framing. We'll be coming back to this.

THIS IS A BIG AND IMPORTANT TOPIC TO EVERYTHING: LIFE, MUSIC, JOB INTERVIEWS, DATES, TACOS...

Logic And Emotions

2010-10-07T19:00:00.007-05:00

It's no secret that every person has a different world view and different way of approaching problems. Some people think Phở is one of the best foods on the planet and other people are entirely wrong about everything. It's the nature of dealing with people.

When trying to persuade people to our viewpoint, we must first understand how they view the world. It is only then that we can actually speak in a language that they will understand.

One way of framing this problem is whether people rationalize their decision on an issue through logical or emotional terms. This is a key indicator of how best to talk to the person on the issue.

Make a guess at how best to talk to your fellow band mate who says these statements:

"I don't know guys. Adding the E-bow sustain during the ballad section of the song clashes with the fluid, legato 6/8 feel of the section." - Example A

"Of course this part needs a bass solo! I just bought this brand new Modulus and I spent last weekend practicing non-stop" - Example B

Sure they're cheesy examples, but you get the point I'm trying to convey. When someone has told you (explicitly or implicitly) how they evaluated the merits of their position, they're conveying how you will have to talk to them. Would the person in example A really care if you got the EBow because you saw another band do it and it sounded cool? How do you think the person in example B would react if you started trying to explain the idea of "sunk costs"?

When you're trying to talk to people about their positions, make sure you speak the same language. Otherwise you're wasting breath.

---
Here's a quick article by Eric Barker with some research showing when it's important to say "I think" versus "I feel".

Copyright: A Curious Case of CD Confusion

2010-09-30T19:00:00.003-05:00

As we drift further and further away from physical mediums for art and become more connected through the internet, the real purpose and value of a "copyright" blurs. In this periodic series on copyrights, I'll take various angles on the idea of copyright and see if we can wrap our heads around the whole idea.

---

It's 1991, and U2 is at the top of their game with the reinvention of their sound on Achtung Baby, which later went on to go platinum EIGHT times on the US Billboard 200 Top Albums list.

Life was good.

Then this started appearing in stores.

Fans were furious.

It was an EP featuring a remix of the song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" that the band made so famous. Except this version featured the original song mangled, kazoos, and Casey Kasem (of American Top 40 and Scooby Doo fame) shouting profanities at his staff.

Uh, what?

Turns out it wasn't U2 releasing an album called Negativland, it was Negativland releasing their EP named U2, with a picture of a U2 bomber on the cover. But people at the stores didn't know that. If you see the words U2, you expect Bono and crew doing their thing.

It was a joke.

Needless to say, U2's lawyers unleashed their full legal fury on Negativland. Negativland (obviously) expected this lawsuit. That was the point of this artistic endeavor, to question the nature of intellectual property. The band's defense was that it fell under the umbrella of Fair Use.

They lost, but that leaves an interesting question: Is this fair use appropriation of the music of U2? Where is the line between outright stealing (Ice Ice Baby not giving writing credits for the bassline) versus using samples in an entirely original way (Girl Talk and other mashup artists)? Should we have to pay royalties to write a song in the pattern of the twelve bar blues? What do you think?

For a more in-depth covering of this incident, check out Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 that Negativland released later in the 90s.

Why Are So Many Musicians Crazy?

2010-09-23T19:00:00.083-05:00

Charles Mingus, Buddy Rich, Jim Morrison... There's a long, loooong list of geniuses who went back for seconds at the craziness buffet line. Sadly, people have come to accept this from artists.

The same goes for the entrepreneurs that shape our industry. Henry Ford, Jack Welch, John D. Rockefeller...

Yahoo finance just put out an amazing article on how certain types of mental illness (specifically Mania in this article), when present in milder forms, actually help entrepreneurs. Jure Robic has broken countless ultra-endurance events (8 straight days of racing across 3,000 miles) by quite literally driving himself insane. (See also my previous article on artists as entrepreneurs)

Let's think about the parallels and why this is.

Most musicians fail at becoming full-time musicians / getting famous. Most startups fail within five years. A new band is competing with every major label band for attention. A new computer is competing with every other computer business in the same field.

The odds are against you.

From the yahoo article: "You need to suspend disbelief to start a company, because so many people will tell you that what you’re doing can’t be done, and if it could be done, someone would have done it already,” says Paul Maeder, a general partner at Highland Capital. “There are six billion human beings on this planet, we’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we’re a couple hundred years into the industrial revolution — and nobody has done what you want to do? It’s kind of crazy.”"

And there we have it. It does take a little bit of crazy to think you can do something better than anyone else before.

But that's how absolutely everything we know and use everyday began.

---

So where does that leave us? Should we make the "rational" choice and just give up because our chances at success are so small? Should we sniff airplane glue until we believe we're the lizard king here to deliver the tastiest riffs ever picked out of a telecaster?

Not quite.

What we do, is balance.

Believe in your music, against all odds. Work, practice, hustle, sweat with the conviction that it will pay off. This kind of confidence inspires others and, more importantly, makes them confident that you actually can do the things you say.

But do not get lost in hubris. Be aware of your place in the world and what you can realistically accomplish. Set goals that are within your realm, don't plan on selling out a stadium when you can only pull 7 people to your shows. You'll get burned out.

Success is a long distance race, not a sprint. Believe in yourself, but be real.

Balance.

Courtney Love on "The Biz"

2010-09-22T18:30:00.000-05:00

Out of the many musicians on the planet, Courtney Love is not who I expected to write such a brilliant article on the current state of the music business. It's a brilliant macro-level view of what's been going on in the last decade. Most importantly, she gets to the heart of the issue. Record labels are distributors. That's it.

And this was written back in 2000.

Without further ado:
http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love

Of Unicycles and Songwriting

2010-09-16T19:00:00.001-05:00

Unicycles seem magic. Somehow a stick with a wheel on it being used as a means of transportation seems inefficient. But it works. A good friend of mine decided to take up unicycling as a hobby (?) a year back and now regularly commutes to work on it. He wants to start a unicycle crew and roll around town clowning on those with two or more wheels.

Yeah.

To an outsider, unicycles seem magic. But really it doesn't take anything more than practice and strong knee pads. It's a skill. Sure, you can read articles on unicycling, watch youtube videos of professionals in action, or purchase "super high-quality" unicycle accessories to try and get better. But it's a skill. You get better at unicycling by unicycling

The same goes for songwriting.

Is it any surprise that the great songwriters of our generation have massive song catalogs? Sure, there's trash in all vast archives, but that doesn't matter when you create songs that become cultural touchstones.

Let's get down and nerdy.

Think of song writing skill as a percentage of good songs, similar to a free throw percentage. Assume you've got a songwriting skill of 7%, meaning whenever you write a song you've got a 7% chance of it being "good" as determined by your audience. If you only write five songs a year, what are your chances of putting out a decent album? What if you write five songs a month? A week?

What matters is both your songwriting skill percentage AND the number of attempts you make. There are limits to how good you can make your songwriting skill through laboring over a single song, studying, or otherwise avoiding writing songs. If you want to be good at a skill, practice it! This should not be hard for musicians to understand.

And as you increase the number of songs you write, you'll get better too. Going from five songs a year to ten songs a year gives you more practice writing, performing and editing these pieces, giving you a stronger idea of what a good song is and is not. You'll understand your strengths and weaknesses, and how best to leverage the talent you've got to create a memorable piece.

If you want to write good songs, write more songs.

Being in a Band is Marriage

2010-09-09T19:04:00.000-05:00

I was talking with another musician about dealing with band issues, and he let slip this little gem:

"Pfft, that's not bad. The only time my band gets along on stage. We're always fighting!" Then he smiled and laughed.

Wow. Isn't that appalling? Only on stage?

A few months back I watched as a strong, decent-pulling band imploded. All the sweat, callouses, and brilliance poured into the band evaporated in a flash. It was band dynamics; corrosive personalities ate the band alive. It was terrifying.

This can happen to any band at any time... You can lose everything at any moment. This is a truth.

A band is an artistic vessel that requires the strong cooperation of personalities. But creativity is disruptive by its nature. There will be conflict. And it is how you handle these conflicts that will determine your success or failure as a band. It's about relationships.

When you join a band, you're married. Instead of a wedding ring you get cheap beer, but it's a full-on wedding. You must understand your partner to have a successful marriage. Does your bassist have trouble with directions no matter where he's going? Does your guitarist get touchy when you talk badly of a band he likes? Does your singer smell really bad and scare off fans? Every person has their own personality quirks and habits that range from mildly irksome to a full on terror. Your decisions and actions must take these issues into account. The only security you have against a band breakup is how well you manage your relationships to keep everyone happy.

How do you get better at this?

1. Outside Learning

Start reading relationship advice and management columns/blogs. Study books on keeping your marriage strong (I'm not kidding!). Take a class at a community college on organizational behavior to learn the psychology of how people behave in groups. Anything to help you decode the dynamics of people interacting with one another can help you learn how best to handle drama when it shows up for a visit.

2. Inside Learning

Every issue you have is an experiment. You respond according to your hypothesis, and the result either confirms or disproves your hypothesis. Take notes on band issues, how you handle them, and the results of your actions. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn how to best manage your band mates, but it's sooooooo easy to ignore. If your bassist doesn't respond well to a direct criticism during practice, you now know you'll have to adjust how to talk about issues with them. Keep tinkering until you get the response you want, then take note of what works for future purposes.

A band is a marriage. If you want it to last, learn everything you can about your spouse and your relationship. It's all you've got keeping the ship afloat.

Side Project: The Great Nothing

2010-09-02T18:50:00.012-05:00

To blow off some creative steam while the The Golden Vine slowly coalesced, I decided to buy a bare bones copy of protools and put together an ambient / doom side project to give my OWM writing skills a rest. Sometimes the best way to get fire up your creative energy is to do something new and totally unrelated to what you're accustomed to do.

I'm very pleased with the result of this project, and I feel very revitalized to start writing for our next album already.

The Great Nothing is a 20 minute, four movement piece about the creeping of nihilism that haunts our steps towards improving the world. Time coldly erases all. It is about facing the part of ourselves that wants us to fail at any cost. It is a scary piece, for sure, but ends with hope. The fight can never be won but we must fight regardless, for all we have is our actions. We must be good.

We must be good.

In this song, I play using only guitars I've built (a doubleneck bass/guitar and a p bass), my voice droning, and sound effects from objects in my reach including a squeaky chair and a computer keyboard. I avoided doing multiple passes on each track to correct mistakes, it felt better with chopped and chipped notes. The musical lines are threads of thought, attempting to make sense of The Great Nothing, with imperfect results. No matter, minute details are of little importance. It's about the journey, and it's about the cause.

====
This EP/really-long-song is best administered in a quiet room with headphones. I made the track downloadable so you can carry it to wherever would be best to listen to it.
====

It's a personal journey.

I won't name the movements. I won't explain the stories behind each section. I won't impose any more meaning beyond what I've said.

Like all of life's experience, it's only you who can imbue it with ultimate meaning.

It's a personal journey.
====

http://soundcloud.com/derekowm/great-nothing