Zoe Keating Releases Her Actual Pay

Add another item to the growing list of why Zoe Keating is one of my favorite artists. Hypebot discusses the numbers with her:

During a six-month period from October 2011 to February 2012, Zoe earned $84,386.86 before taxes.

Here's a breakdown of where that money came from:

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A good chunk of Zoe’s support comes from her regular and super fans, who she feels remain loyal to her due to their interest in her story.

“They seem interested in my DIY-story,” Zoe told Hypebot. “Or the mechanics-of-how-I-make-music-with-a-cello-and-computer-story; or the classical-musician-gone-rogue-story; or the radiolab-Amanda Palmer-Imogen Heap-Rasputina-connection; or the I'm-a-geek-too-story, etc. The casual listeners might not know my story or anything about me.”

“Casual listeners won't [support], but they never did anyway,” Zoe added in her Google Doc. “I don't buy ALL the music I listen to either, I never did, so why should I expect every single listener to make a purchase? I think that a subset of my listeners pay for my music, and that is a-ok because... and this is the key... there are few middlemen between us.”

As an artist, you are kept afloat by the connection you have with your fans. Nourish them and they'll nourish you.

Evil Works

As does good, but it's easy to overlook that fact.

True Change requires force. Structures and habits roost upon study foundations of inertia and fear. They won't be moved except through sustained, herculean force.

Often, the only tactics that comes to mind to clear blockage are conflict-driven. You can't smooth talk a form, so getting angry at red tape at the DMV seems like the most obvious solution.

But there's a selection bias at work here.

We view our world through the lens of stories. Naturally, more memorable stories affect us more than the boring ones simply because we can recall them easier (aka cognitive fluency). .

Conflict is far more interesting than snuggling.

In fact, a 2010 Wharton study confirms that

“the most powerful predictor of virality is how much anger an article evokes” [emphasis mine]. I will say it again: The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger. ...

...Anger has such a profound effect that one standard deviation increase in the anger rating of an article is the equivalent of spending an additional three hours as the lead story on the front page of NYTimes.com.  (Except from Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, via Barking Up The Wrong Tree

It's easier to recall famous artist meltdowns than it is to recall skillful mediation, leading us to more easily make the connection between "aggression" and "success".

Throwing a guitar at your band mates in the recording studio makes for a fantastic story, it's "emotionally loud". Sitting down with your bassist over drinks to talk about what's been bugging her lately and where her creative block came from makes for dreadfully boring reading, it's "emotionally quiet".

You can accomplish great things by being a jerk. I'll be first to admit, that sometimes you have to get aggressive to break past resistance.

But pay attention to the leaders you admire and you'll begin to pick up on their methods. Sometimes all you need to get someone to put forth their best effort is to get them to publicly commit that they'll put forward their best effort. (see my Negotiation Without Being A Jerk series for additional tactics)

Real, positive leadership power isn't about using deception and coercion to meet your ends. "Light Side" persuasive methods use soft force, so that even if the target of the message understands exactly what you're doing, they wouldn't be mad at you. The same could not be said for gaslighting, an effective but terribly manipulative method of planting false memories and instilling doubt.

As you dig deeper into management and psychology, you'll begin to see the framework that managers act within. Most are of mixed style, only rarely will you see a pure-evil or pure-good individual.

Be aware that people are naturally attracted to others like themselves.

The strategies you use will create your environment.

The Presale Ticket Scam

Justin Herring dropped some knowledge over at Hypebot about how required ticket presales can be, and often are, a raw deal for bands. Personally, whenever we hear the words "presale tickets required" it's a good sign to pass on a show.

The simple math breakdown is my favorite part:

We’ve already established that the pre-sale tickets are $14 apiece, but the door price is $17 the night of said show. If you get a walk in that mentions they’re at the venue to see your band, you get $4 out of that $17 door charge. Which is obviously more than the $1 per ticket you sold, but remember, if you don’t sell all 40, you don’t get to play. And, since the venue is so thoughtful of your band, they tell you that you have to include a tally counter and keep track of every person who comes in and mentions your band name. (Wonder if the door guy is even told to ask?)...

...After all of that is said and done I pose these questions, why aren’t venues being told this practice is uncalled for, unfair, ridiculous, and a downright scam? Out of $560 you turn in you keep $40 dollars!? You put on a four band bill all selling 40 tickets that’s $2,240 the venue is collecting, minus the whopping $160 cut to all four bands the venue is collecting a total of $2,080 for every band's hard work. Not to mention the amount they make at the bar.

If four bands tossed in $100 each to rent a venue and each sold the same 40 tickets, each band would make $460.

Once again, the math for DIY look a whole lot better than established channels.

Electronic and Hip Hop Better Suited to The New Music Industry

Electronic Dance Music (EDM), and to a lesser extent Hip Hop, are much better poised to thrive in the new music industry than traditional bands (live guitarists, drummers, vocalists, etc). Lefsetz has been talking about this phenomenon for a while but it's only been recently that the truth of his claims have become apparent.

Traditional bands have, and always will, exist. I'm not arguing that. What I am saying is that the environment for the new music industry is far more favorable towards electronic music than it is traditional bands. If we take equal amounts of each type of band, over time we'll see more electronic groups for all of the reasons listed below.

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-Economics
   True, the cash outlay for a decent studio setup is much larger than buying a crappy guitar and combo amp. Much larger. But electronic music doesn't need to rent out recording studios and engineers to put songs, all of that is part of the studio setup in the first place. Putting out a new single takes much less time and much much less money for electronic music than it does traditional bands.

And as unfortunate as it is to say, the less people in the band the more everyone gets paid. The same $10,000 show fee will feed a DJ and two techs a whole lot better than a five-piece band each with their own roadies. Touring is expensive and isn't always a good idea.

Low variable costs make a big difference. Profit is easier to come by for EDM and Hip Hop.

-Speed of Release
    EDM & Hip Hop artists put out many more singles than they do full-length albums. Less production time and more frequent releases keeps the artist in the fans' mind more easily.

-Cross Promotion
   Within a large majority of traditional bands, cross pollination between members of different acts through split EPs and remixes is rare (except for the Mastdon / Feist split, which was excellent).

The exact opposite is true for EDM and Hip Hop. It's hard to find a new single that doesn't either have guest artists or remixes of the track.

Cross promotion is a fantastic way to get potential fans of your music to discover that they actually like your music as you're essentially being endorsed by their current favorite artist. Hearing a new artist work with your favorite artist is even better than a friend's recommendation since it's coming from the source of your admiration. It wasn't until I heard Nas spit on the track Classic that I even considered getting into him. Cross promotion is one of many reasons groups like Doomtree are able to out-hustle and out-last many unconnected artists.

Fans are to be shared, not hoarded.

-Less Gatekeepers
   Electronic music isn't on mainstream radio yet it can sell out 30,000 person festivals. Electronic music, and to a lesser extent Hip Hop, grew up and thrives through the internet. Friends and bloggers pass music that resonates to one another, there's not radio spots or billboards hawking the newest Deadmau5 album. The movement is fan-led.

-Electronic Music Is Built Around Giving Away Music for Free
   DJs have long since known that getting your track the spins it deserves is more important that making a few extra bucks. Fame comes from people knowing and loving your work. Albums sales, like retweets or "likes", are indicators of fame, not the totality of fame. It's much easier for these acts to survive with the "music as a commodity" reality of today than it is traditional bands simply because the architecture for EDM wasn't built around album sales.

The album is marketing material for live performances now, not the primary product.

Which leads me to my next point.

-Cooler Shows
   Now I adore traditional music groups; they account for at least 80% of my listening. But Messhugah's five piece crushing metal blast couldn't compete with the spectacle of Skrillex riding a giant, smoke-spewing transformer in front of a throng of ten thousand fans dancing and drenched in the soft light of LED hula hoops.

Maybe I'm jaded from seeing so much live music, but if all a band does is stand on stage and play their album I feel ripped off. If I go to see a performance, I want to see a performer. It wasn't really until I saw an electronic music show that I began to actually appreciate the genre.

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Negotiation Without Being a Jerk Vol. III

(Previously vol I, vol II)

A photographer friend got an unsolicited call from a major client, a hair care company. After a back and forth went into the info for the shoot, both parties agreed it sounded like a good fit. The photographer sent off the quote and waiting a few days.

The reply came back "We could only do it for 1/8th of what you quoted. Period."

Owch.

After recovering from the shock, the friend weighed options.The friend knew that this would be an awesome, high-visibility client that would further their business. At the same time, the counter-offer was so low that death by discounting was a very real fear. Not only that, but if they accepted this offer to such a huge client, word would get out about their low photography rates among other large clients and this would permanently stunt the friend's business.

Is this deal already at an impasse?

Where would you go in this situation?

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Having been reading me for a while, I'm sure you've already guessed no.

My photographer friend came back with their counter offer. "I'll do the gig for the low price plus five years of hair care products."

The company jumped on it.

They had a deal.

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Negotiation is about total value, not just price. It's easy to get caught up on dollar figures since dollars are easy for anyone to understand, but money is only one of many sources of value. In this case, the hair care client didn't have the budget to pay the full amount but they did have endless amounts of shampoo and conditioner. Adding the hair care products didn't cost the company much since they produced them at cost, but for the photographer who would otherwise have to pay retail, it was a huge gain in value.

This is why we should be explicit about what we want; value is defined on a personal basis. Even with concrete items such as money, value is personal. A billionaire will value a hundred dollars much less than the musician would value a hundred dollars in the same way the billionaire would value a private concert more than the musician.

One of your goals when negotiating should be to figure out if the other side has anything that costs the other party nothing but has a huge value to you, and vice versa. Big wins like this are not only excellent bargaining chips but they allow you much more flexibility in your bargaining process.

Value is personal.

Music Industry News- June 2012

-Guitars are on the verge of getting much, much cooler.
3D printers are getting cheaper and more ubiquitous. No longer will you need a C&C or full workshop to make custom guitars, anyone with a few grand will be able to become a quality custom guitar maker. Check out this New Zealand professor who makes hollow, mesh guitars full of scarab beetles and butterfly designs. (Extra cool note, his guitars are using a material that is much stronger than traditional woods os they're durable too!)

The Pirate Bay already has downloads for object files to be printed. Once someone specs out a fender or a gibson, if they haven't already, the artists / makers are going to create some wild and crazy designs. I for one welcome our coming super-wild guitar overlords.

This is gonna create some copyright headaches though. Count on it.

-Songza is fantastic. Pandora continues to lose its edge.
New-ish internet radio service Songza got 1.15 million new downloads since releasing it's iOS app for iPhone and iPad. Pandora stock is down to $11 from $17 from its IPO a little over a year ago.

For me, Songza blows Pandora out of the water. Instead of Pandora's auto-generated playlists, Songza offers up human-curated playlists served up through an intuitive "concierge" menu that helps select playlists based on mood, genre, and time of day.

The difference between the two services is night and day.

Songza has better song choices with better playlists. Songza has a significantly higher hit-to-miss ratio than Pandora in terms of the percentage of artists I favorite over the total number of artists I hear on the station total. The human touch to Songza playlists makes all the difference. (Spotify just announced a free radio app for iOs, but the song selection algorithm is much weaker than Pandora or Songza)

My current "music discovery stack" on my phone is Songza for guided discovery and Spotify for targeted discovery. Pandora I only use to listen to stand up comedy radio. iTunes I'll use sparingly for releases that are essential to purchase, such as bands like Intronaut whose label Century Media left Spotify. This leads to my next point.

-Spotify pullouts
This is my primary method of listening to and developing fandom for new bands. For bands fans are crazy about, this leads fans to buy the digital album instead of stream it. But Spotify pullouts disincentivize new artist discovery on the label. While they get the increased revenue for one band, the label loses

-Where's my swear words Spotify?
When I search for Killer Mike on my phone it defaults to to the clean version of his album R.A.P. Music! Getting every other word removed is no way to experience an album.

I can't blame the label for making this the default version of the album though. This strikes me as a method of price discrimination similar to the delayed Spotify release as an incentive to buy the actual download. It's a smart business move actually, especially for rap where abrasive lyrics as an intergal part of the art.

But come oooooon man!

(Edit: If I search for the album itself and not the artist I can still find the dirty version. Phew. My point on it being a useful method of getting true fans to buy the digital download still holds. Censored albums won't fly with this musician.)

Link: Is Stealing Music Really the Problem?

Jay Frank lays down some serious knowledge:

Despite the economic number that David Lowery quoted of the number of professional musicians falling by 25%, if you took “album releases” as an indicator, it seems like the number of pros has increased. In a decade, we’ve gone from about 30,000 albums being released to over 77,000 last year. And that’s just albums going thru legit channels. The problem, as noted by Chris Muratore of Nielsen on the previously noted New Music Seminar panel, is that 94% of those releases sold less than 1,000 units. Indicators that I have examined showed those low sales aren’t because of people stealing them. They come from too many releases causing most people to not even realize they are out.

For example, 80s rocker Lita Ford has a new album that came out yesterday. As of this writing, it’s the 91st most popular new release on Rdio. How many of you have the patience or time to sift thru the other 90 releases to get to #91? Let alone decide to even put in the effort to steal it? Whether you were going to listen to it or not, I’d be willing to bet that almost everyone reading this found out that Lita Ford had new music from this paragraph. Stealing it is even further down their priority list.

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So while all these independent artists argue thievery, do you know who’s winning? Major labels. This week, of the top 100 tracks on Spotify, only 6% are on independent labels. Major labels have figured out that the game is about exposure and awareness, two things that they are actually quite good at. It’s not about royalty rates, thievery, or even quality of music. It’s all about how I get people to know I exist. Major labels aren’t ignoring file traders, but they have moved past how much of their day they concern themselves with it. Instead, they focus on putting energy behind making music that the public wants and marketing the shit out of it so it rises above everyone else. While you’ve spent the last few years claiming the major labels are “dinosaurs” who are going to be “out of business”, they’ve actually become stronger behemoths who are more progressive than you realize.

Definitely worth the read.