It’s not everyday I can sit through a 19+ minute video and actually pay attention the entire time. The following video, however, is quite interesting and I thought it might interest you, as an artist, as well. So if you have some time to spare, please watch or listen to Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Love, Pray discuss “nurturing creativity” and what we call “creative genius” at the TED Conference.
Is making it in the music business hard?
Of course it is. Ask yourself that question one more time. What important word sticks out the most?
Business.
That’s right kids – it’s a business. If you want to succeed and make a living creating and performing music for the rest of your life, you have to start a business. And it has to make profit if you expect it to work.
Many inspiring musicians never think of the business side of things; they expect their music to be enough work, that some label will come along and do all the hard work for them.
Unfortunately for them, the days of a label signing a band because they wrote a hit song are long gone. Why? It’s just not a smart investment.
There have been several articles, blogs, news reports, etc about piracy, but none (at least none that I’ve read) 
describe it in the way Moses Avalon does in his own blog post, “Why We Steal Music.” I won’t go too much into it here because I highly recommend that you read his post yourself, but I must say that he makes some valid points. I’ve always found it interesting how some of the people who download music the most are huge fans of music and will likely claim that “music is my life.” Unfortunately, for artists, these are the people that they depend on to support them. But it seems fairly apparent that many don’t truly understand or realize the value of music, the dollars and cents kind. In other words, how much time and money (and time=money) it takes to create an album or merch or put on a show. Isn’t it a bit odd that the one thing we base our purchasing decisions on when it comes to merch or concert tickets is the music itself, and yet, we feel the music should be free?
CLICK HERE to read the full article, but please take a moment to share your thoughts in the comments below on piracy or what you think is the reason for why we steal music.
I know. I was a bit shocked myself, but check out the following blog post from Digipendent:
Sean “Diddy” Combs, also known as P. Diddy, digs Facebook. He just launched a new competition show on MTV called Starmaker. The show is similar to American Idol, but Diddy claims the rules of stardom have changed, and that he’ll be putting great emphasis on social media and social networking tools such as Facebook.
“Before, it was just at live shows, now you have to be able to do a great live show, you have to be able to do a great online interview, you need to have a great Facebook page, you have to have a great television performance,” he said.
There’s no arguing with that. Another sentence, however, proves that Diddy is onto something that the record industry as a whole still largely ignores: “You have to understand how to be able to brand yourself,” he said. Exactly. As a musician, today you can do more for your image and your fans through simple, freely available tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, than an army of spin doctors hired by record companies. Learning to leverage these tools, as proven by musicians such as Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Josh Freese, Amanda Palmer and others, will be a crucial part of every musician’s career, while record companies, in their current form, might become more or less irrelevant.
TRUTH!
Audiolife would like to welcome Coffey Anderson! A great performer, singer/songwriter, an educational YouTube fanatic and an overall great person. Coffey is a shining example for other artists on empowerming the craft. He’s currently on tour sharing his good vibes with everyone. For more information about him and to hear some of his tunes, you can find him on MySpace at: http://www.myspace.com/coffeyanderson
(full version of photo by Owen Kelly)
I came across this awesome graphic from Owen Kelly that talks about the Long Tail of music fans. Essentially it draws back into the Pareto Principle that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your clients, or in this case, fans. I am a strong believer in this principle as I saw it happen in my own band, when we had super fans that bought the t-shirts as soon as we pulled them out of the box, the ones that pre-ordered the CD, the ones that bought advance tickets, and so on.
We also see the same results with nearly every band that we work with – the super fans, or “true fans” as based on the Long Tail graphic. So the question now becomes, how do we access these fans without making other fans jealous or giving out information to the wrong people?
There are many ways to do this, but it boils down to segmentation. You need to get your true fans on a separate list and then send them separate messages. Below are two ways to segment your super fans and give them the content they desire while generating income for your band on special items and exclusives.
This has proven to be the most effective and does take a little bit of maintenance work, plus you need an email provider that can walk you through the steps. Essentially, as you send email offers to your email list, for your CD’s, your merch or tickets, you can track who opens those emails and then also see who buys. When you receive their receipt of purchase you can move those buyers into a 2nd list of super fans. Now when you want to run special promos, VIP tickets or exclusive (more expensive) merch, you have a list with the potential to be more responsive and generate you more income, as the price points can be higher to this list. We use Aweber for email communications and their customer support will walk you through the list management so everything runs on autopilot so your fans are not getting too many emails or communication pieces. Many other email providers can offer this support as well.
Create a private Facebook or Ning page that is invite only to people after they buy something from you. You can setup their receipt email to have a link to your “secret invite club” where you let them know of special offers, exclusive downloads and products and give them incentives to check that page every once in a while. The beauty of both Facebook Pages and Ning communities is the ability to bulk message the people in the group, letting them know you posted something just for them.
The goal with this concept is to send targeted messages to to targeted people. The more targeted the message the better the conversion will be. Sending someone an email for a show in Dallas when you live in Miami, does not lend itslef to too many more emails being opened by that person. Identifying your super fans can be easy in some cases (look at digital and product sales – aka customer records) or tough (if you only sell stuff at live shows and do not ask for fan info). In either case you need to start tracking the person who bought, what they bought and see how frequently they buy.
This post was written by Greg Rollett from Gen-Y Rock Stars and Label 2.0, an interactive marketing school for musicians. You can grab a seat in class here. Greg can also be found on Twitter, @g_ro.
I stumbled across this article the other day and thought you might find it interesting. Give it a read, I’d like to hear your take.
Thank you to Andrew Dubber for bringing this to light.
SXSW is conducting its PanelPicker contest right now and we need your help! We’ve submitted two exceptional panel ideas, if we may say so ourselves, and would greatly appreciate it if you could give them a thumbs by clicking here and here.
If either of the panels make it to the final rounds and get chosen then we get to sendour CEO, Brandon Hance, off to SXSW to drop some knowledge on the music industry! So please take 2 minutes to rock your vote. Thanks!
With a plethora of artists out there all trying to grab the attention of new fans on their own it’s becoming harder and harder to become a traditional rock star in the eyes of the consumer (imagine Michael Jackson when I say “Rock Star”). It’s not new news that sales are going down; however, people still appreciate music today as much as they did 50 years ago. The way people sell music today is much different and I’m here to tell you that direct-to-fan is the reason why the untouchable “Rock Star” is turning into a dinosaur. You won’t find a definition for Direct-To-Fan on Wikipedia but most music industry professionals on top of their game will all tell you the value of Direct To Fan. Direct-To-Fan turns the consumer into a True Fan (see Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans) by engaging them through various experiences directly from the artist. It turns ordinary items used to sell an experience like buying a concert ticket into an experience in and of itself through a deeper connection. Direct-To-Fan also leads to word of mouth too, which is ultimately what artists want. The Rock Stars of today (we’ll use Madonna as an example) will probably never need to entice their fans with direct to fan methodology to sell out tours; however, if Madonna jumped on a video stream and sold 100 tickets all personally autographed that would probably create a stir not just amongst the lucky fans able to engage with Madonna but amongst the music community as a whole. It’s that direct-to-fan example that can go a VERY long way and it’s free. It can also make artists seem more relevant (look at Trent Reznor of NIN) because if you’re friend tells you about it you’ll listen. If a TV ad runs you might not tell another sole. Unless they were advertising around direct-to-fan.
My 2 cents.
We’d like to welcome Before Their Eyes to Audiolife! Check out their video for “Life Was All A Dream” off their latest record The Dawn Of My Death here. For more information about them and to hear more of their tunes you can find them on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/beforetheireyes
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