Become Your Own Promoter - Earn Money and Play Better Gigs

So you're in a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, you can't get decent gigs until you have fans and a track record, you can't get fans and a track record until you get gigs...

This usually means getting poor gigs with bands that don't compliment each other for ages while you build your own fan base playing gigs at the low end of the gigging circuit. Overall you are working at a disadvantage.

Become Your Own Promoter

The obvious solution is to become a promoter and run your own gigs. Hire a hall or small venue and sell tickets to make your money back, hopefully with some profit.

Pros and Cons of Being You Own Promoter

Pros

• You stand to gain experience gigging
• You get to grow your fan list / mailing list
• You have an opportunity to make some money
• You learn more about how the music industry works
• You have more control

Cons

• You have to work
• You have to Learn
• You have to use your imagination and creativity
• You have to put your money and time where your mouth is

Costs

Typically you might have to pay for:

• Venue hire
• PA System hire
• Lighting hire
• Ticket Printing
• Fliers and Poster Printing and Posting and Distribution
  

Some venues will be happy to let you rent some or all of the venue at no cost. They will just be glad to see their venue busy. Others will insist on payment. Some venues may supply lights and PA, even an engineer to work them, other halls will provide nothing at all. You might have the gear to print up your own tickets and posters.

You might also want to find places that will sell your tickets. They will take a percentage commission and will want to know what you are doing to promote your gig.

You should be able to do this a few times before the whole friends family thing begins to tail off. By then you should have a hundred or so people on your fans mailing list, more than enough to recover the cost of hiring many venues (remember many venues you can get for nothing).

Spreading The Financial Risk

If you are confident enough in your own playing ability, take the step of being your own promoter. Of course you can take this further and create events with multi-band line ups. You get other bands to play on the same bill and take on responsibility for some tickets. This has several advantages:

• You pick the venue
• You pick the support bands
• You spread the risk of selling enough tickets
• You get the opportunity to put your music in front of some new potential fans

Spreading the risk is a fairly straight forward thing. You want other bands to bring along their fans. if you just give them tickets they may sell a lot because it's pure profit. Alternatively you could sell your tickets to other bands at a reduced rate. This encourages them to sell more if they want to make decent money. From your stand point this gives you money to go towards your costs.

Setting up the gig is just part of it. The other main parts are promoting your gig and selling tickets.

Promoting Your Gig

This is a pretty large topic on it's own so I'll only touch on the basics here and leave some more detail for another article.

There are lots of ways to promote your gig. There are a few core groups of businesses and people you will work with:

• Local Press
• Music Press
• Radio
• Internet Radio
• Friends

Here you can approach all of these groups from two perspectives.

• A Promoter
• An Act

Write up press releases, there are plenty of online guides for writing a press release including "Guidlines For Writing A Press Release" on Songstuff.com. Put together an Electronic Press Kit, and a real-world Press Kit to provide the press with suitable background information. Check out my earlier article "Create A Killer Electronic Press Kit (EPK)" for some advice on creating an EPK. A real-world kit contains much the same information, only the medium for presentation is different.

Friends are useful, both real world and on the internet. They can help you spread the word. Word of mouth is a great way to get new fans and a pretty good way to sell tickets too. A quick message can be sent to their social network friends. You can even offer to write a basic post that they can customize. Friends may also be willing to help with fliers and posters.

Selling Tickets

Even if you sell tickets to friends and family that could be quite a few tickets. they bring friends etc too and everyone who sees you is a potential fan.

Having a music shop or ticket center willing to sell your tickets is very useful. Any deal will be a negotiation, but the advantages are many. For start people will know where to go (your poster and flier and radio listings will tell them where tickets are available) to get tickets without you needing to be there. Ticket centers in particular are experts at selling tickets and may be willing to offer more of a push for a larger percentage.

Offer bands on your bill tickets at between 70 % to 30% of the face price, they commit to a number of tickets that you stipulate (part of the deal when you sign them up). The percentage will be decided by how many they will commit to, what percentage of overall tickets that is and how much you need to recoup in order to pay your costs. If they commit to a low percentage of the overall seats then they pay more per ticket. Either way they owe you that whether they sell the tickets or not. It is an incentive for them to make money and to get more people to the gig. Ideally you want to be bringing more fans than all the other bands on the bill added together.

If you are the only band on the bill that might seem obviously not an option, but in essence all the band is is an "affiliate". So you could try recruiting "affiliates" locally and / or online. Same deal, they sell tickets they get a commission, the more tickets they sell the higher percentage profit per ticket they will make. This can be a good way to leverage friends of friends, and their friends too.

Grow and Make The Most Of Your Fan Base


Take along a pad and pen and try to get people to sign up to your mailing list with their email address at the gig. Even better would be to do that using a laptop and an online form. One mistake bands make time after time is to neglect their fans. A mailing list of fans is an ideal way to directly contact fans to let them know about upcoming gigs etc. but they are useful in many other ways too.

Getting more people to sign up to your fan list is so, so important. Have people at your gig dedicated to this task alone. They should not sit and stare, they should be actively encouraging people to sign up, so use anyone with good sales skills in this job.

Remember merchandise is effectively an advertisement, a little reminder of your existance in a fan's daily life, so make sure you take along any recordings and merch you have for sale.


Conclusion

My advice is to always put on a better show than most would expect for a particular venue. People will come away more impressed and with the feeling you should have been on a bigger and better stage.

All this gives you fans, track history, and experience which you can use to get on the main gigging circuit, but I would still continue running my own shows like the way I just described, after all it is what big bands do. My two cents is, if you want what big bands have, do what big bands do.

Any money of course that is left over can be stashed away in your band account. "Of course!" I hear you all say...

Creating a Song Title

Creating a song title can be a daunting prospect. The empty page looms before you, filling you with it's nothingness, draining you of every creative thought you've ever had and branding them cheesy.

The best solution is of course to write, but write what?

This article introduces the basics of creating a song title, and the purposes that song titles should fulfill.


Purposes Of A Song Title

Song titles have to fulfill a number of purposes. Ideally they should

• Be Evocative
• Be Interesting
• Be Memorable
• Arouse Curiosity
• Hint at Something Original
• Refer to Something Universal
• Not Reveal Everything
  
• Be Imaginative
• Use a Small Amount of Words (5 0r less if possible)
• Be Reflected in the Main Lyrics Hook (depending on genre and perspective)
  

This is difficult to achieve in 5 words or less!


Brainstorming Title Ideas

For all your title should ideally fulfill all of the above, don’t think too much about coming up with the perfect title. Once you have your topic come up with several draft titles by brainstorming, work out what you like, what you don't like, why one works and another doesn't etc

There are various brainstorming techniques you can use including:

Lists

Write down long lists of nouns and adjectives, mix them up to create word pairs. Same goes for verb-verb and noun-noun pairs. Select ones you like to develop or to help take your word lists in new directions.

Research Other Media

Read online articles, newspaper articles, magazine articles etc to generate base ingredients of titles and song lyrics. Researching other media for songwriting suggestions is described here in detail

Prose On A Topic

This is a technique I sometimes use. I select a topic I am interested in writing a song about. I then proceed to write free flowing text on that topic, exploring the emotions and emotional perspectives, scenarios and conclusions. I then use that text to create phrases and word pairs as the seed to creating a title.


Creating The Title

Using words and phrases you’ve written down and that appeal to you (selected from your trusty notebook or from brainstorming exercises like those described above) combine them to create a phrase that reflects the premise of your song.

To select the best for purpose, try measuring it against the checklist of purposes a title needs to fulfill near the top of this article. Depending on genre and other factors some may be more or less important, but each should at least be considered.

This at least gives you one or more working titles to choose from. Not only do you have the title but you also have some phrases you can use in your song, a better idea of the theme, a fuller idea of the message you want to send, and perhaps your chorus hook.

Now that wasn't too difficult was it?

Create A Killer Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

The name of the game these days is to stand out from the huge number of online artists. A high quality EPK is one of the essentials artists now need.

Your EPK is your showcase to the industry. Don't cut corners and don't settle for second best. Below I have included 5 Top Tips for creating your killer EPK.

1. Invest In A Quality Main Photo

It's amazing just how much your photo will convey about you as an artist. It's worth getting it right. It takes time and effort to convey the right message in the briefest of glances. Your music does not exist in isolation and the first thing someone viewing your EPK will see is your main photo. It sets an expectation of the music to come (or not if they decide to click away). So make sure your photo compliments your sound, is eye catching but appropriate.

2. Only Use High Quality Audio

This is your showcase! Do not include sub-standard, poor quality audio. No longer can artists expect to provide demo standard recordings to industry professionals. Why? Simple, the music world is a competition of sorts where you compete with other artists to be noticed. With low cost professional recording gear available more and more bands are providing high standard, professional recordings. If all you do is provide a rough demo what it says is "I don't care enough about my music, or believe in it enough, to create a decent recording" but it also says to the listener "I don't respect you enough as a listener to give you something decent to listen to". Not exactly the message you want to be giving out, especially to an industry professional.

3. Write A Descriptive 30 Second Pitch

If you only have 30 seconds to talk about your music, what would you say? True, this is your chance to grab attention, but you also have to give the reader what they are looking for, and that is information about your music!

Whatever you do avoid vagueness. Avoid arrogance or repeating common cheesy phrases, or making huge claims. Nothing turns off more than "This is the best music you will ever hear!" or "You have never heard anything like this before!" etc.

What can work is to include a quote, award or similar to help give credence to your music and your decription of your music.

4. Include A Full Up To Date Gig Calendar

This is one of the most important parts of your EPK. It's valuable particularly to promoters to get a handle on where a band is in their career by seeing what sort of venues they play, on what nights they play, and how often they play.

Include both past gigs and upcoming gigs. Past gigs provide some track record, and future gigs offer the opportunity of seeing a band before they are booked. Don't rely on anyone clicking through to your site, myspace or other page in order to find out more about your band.

5. Select Your Best Press Reviews

Cherry pick the best quotes from the best articles and include them in your EPK. This gives vital credibility as this is someone else's perspective on your music which instantly gets more credibility than you making claims about your own music. This doesn't need to be quotes from the top newspapers, but any press coverage is useful including any comments from bloggers.

Preparing a Mix for Mastering

A small foray into the world of recording today.

Lots of bands and home studio musicians record and mix their music, but few take the step of getting their material mastered, and fewer still prepare their music for mastering correctly.

For example, it amazing how many tracks are sent for mastering that use effects like EQ or compression on the main output / master buss. If you do anything, do not do this!

So, here are a few tips on preparing your mix for mastering:

• Leave some headroom for your mastering engineer to work with
• Make sure that none of your individual tracks are clipping
• Make sure none of your individual track effects are clipping
• Don't put any effects on your main output / master buss
• Make sure your main output / master buss isn't clipping
• When you bounce your mix down, make sure you keep it at the same resolution ie use the same bit depth and sample rate that you recorded in.
• Bounce to AIFF or Wave file, not MP3!

How do you give yourself the best chance of being happy with the mastered track?

Well the best chance is to be able to sit in on the mastering session, but lets face it, if you are working with an online mastering engineer that is just not going to happen! Here is a quick checklist:

• Don't hire a mastering engineer until you have heard their work. You may be able to get a short section of your track mastered to serve as an example, or you may be provided with example works.
• Check whether revisions are included in the price
• Make sure you have tested and are happy with your mix on a number of consumer audio devices including ear bud headphones, headphones, your car stereo, your home hi fi with and without sub woofer, your computer speakers
• Don't just listen to your mix at a high volume. Make sure you are happy with the mix when you play it back at a low volume
• Don't hire a mix engineer to do a mastering job

When you have several tracks to be mastered, why not use one track as a test track and send it to a few mastering engineers to see who does the best job and achieves the best sound? You are looking for a great pair of ears, so don't settle for second best.

That's all folks....

The Internet - The Great Leveler For Musicians

How many times have you heard this in recent years? Is it true?

First off, I will apologize for the rambling nature of this post...

Well like many changes in the way things work, the internet has brought both advantages for bands and writers and disadvantages. A level playing field? I fear that is just an illusion, in fact I know it is.

For example, it is very true that bands have the ability to reach out to fans around the world, but as I am sure many bands are realizing, the same is true for every other band, bedroom band and playstation guitar player. This is one of the main double edged swords. The world is being overwhelmed with bands and songwriters all clamoring for their attention. Add to that bands very rarely take advantage of all the benefits they could, and many that do don't take advantage of them to their maximum or any where near it.

It isn't enough to upload your music and invite your friends. The not so breaking news is - the fact that your music is on the internet does not mean success will find you. Far from it. The challenge now is in standing out from the crowd.

The notion that it is a level playing field is just that. The record labels have access to just the same tools every band does... plus a whole lot more. They have large budgets to spend too, although those are much reduced from what they once were. The large labels also have far more access to other media than they ever did before. TV talent shows are the tip of the iceberg.

So, where can independent artists learn from what the labels do?

Mailing lists. It pays to keep in contact with fans, who are after all customers. Many bands don't even have one! Apart from that what labels have mastered (at least the good ones) is how to mobilize their fans to help promote their products to their friends.

Networking. There are several areas where artists can benefit from networking. For example building industry contacts, building press contacts etc. The most accessible is to network with other bands.

Social Media. You may be detecting a theme, and that is making connections with others and making the most of them. Create pages for your band on Facebook, Twitter, and although much less important than it once was, Myspace.

The fact is that just about every way that you can connect with your fans is important. Each of the topics above is worth a large article in itself, but just being aware of their importance is a start.

Where labels really gain advantage (well one way) is the number of people they can bring to the party when it comes to exploiting and growing the benefit of these tools. I say tools, because that is exactly how labels and promotion companies view them. Nothing more.

A couple more things to mention before I finish this post... labels and promotion companies promote music as part of a coordinated campaign. They don't drip feed songs onto the internet, unless it is part of a coordinated plan. They time releases. They promote according to a formula that works. Everything has it's purpose, and each drives people in the end towards becoming a fan, towards becoming a customer.

For bands, fans are their means of making a living. They also give the ability to launch the next product more easily. Why? Once they are on a mailing list or other contact list they help launch the product. As I mentioned before, labels and promotion companies are masters at harnessing the power of their fans to get the word out there, to persuade others to become fans.

Viral Marketing, the appearance of competition with other bands, the clever use of merchandising, working with the media, these are all techniques and tools used by promo companies, but sadly neglected by independent bands.

There is so much on each of these topics.... but alas this is but a blog post to raise awareness. Who knows, maybe I should write a book?

Nah...

Songwriters On Songwriting

Where better to learn about being a songwriter than from the mouths of the best in the business? Covering many genres of popular music this is a must read for modern songwriters.

Songwriters On Songwriting: Revised And Expanded by Paul Zollo, includes ten new interviews including Alanis Morissette, Lou Reed, Lenny Kravitz, and others, building on the stack of interviews from previous editions which includes Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Sammy Cahn, David Crosby and Graeme Nash, Madonna, Richard Thompson, and Bruce Hornsby to name but a few.

In total 62 of the greatest and most influential songwriters around talk about their experience of songwriting. It's nice for a change to hear such successful songwriters exposing their muse and voicing their thoughts, feelings, and opinions about songwriting.

The author, Paul Zollo is a singer-songwriter and the editor of SongTalk. He has written for magazines including Sing Out!, Acoustic Guitar, and Musician.

Side Note: Interestingly Bob Dylan states his belief that the world doesn't need any new songs. Just what songwriters everywhere want to hear! Way to go Bob!

The True Value Of Songwriting Critique (And Surviving The Process)

I've been involved with Songstuff.com for almost 11 years now. In that time I have seen thousands of writers and artists post up material for critique. Over that time I've come to appreciate the real value of critique, and I'll give you a clue, it's NOT receiving critique for your own work.

Writers do have a variety of wants when it comes to critique, and often the motivations are not one simple perspective but a mix of perspectives.

What Is Critique?

Critique is not simply someone listening, observing, and offering a constructive comment. Critique is a constructive discussion that uses observation, analysis, opion and advice. Please note the use of the word discussion. It is not simply one way traffic. The point here is to achieve an understanding of the points being made and for the writer to make an informed decision. Not seeking to understand the perspective and observations of both the writer and the person offering critique is to tie our hands and wear a blindfold. We fail to see, and we fail to act.

Getting Critique For your Own Work

In some cases writers approach it as a purely transactional thing:

• I post my song
• You tell me what you think of it

and there it ends.

For others it's more of a self-promotion, or an ego stroking exercise:

• I post my song
• You tell me you love it or I will become defensive or simply ignore you

While both of these approaches may fulfill some immediate need in the writer they both completely miss the main benefits of critique. By far the majority of so called songwriting critique or lyrics critique I have seen on the internet falls into these two categories.

Note there is no statement of desire from the writer. The number of times I have seen writers receive comments only to be upset that the critique offered does not focus on what they really wanted comments on, so, state what you want from the critique!

As the writer, be open to suggestions and listen to the comments made. Seek to understand the points being made, the ramifications and any advice that is offered.

As mentioned critique should be a discussion. A conversation between the writer and the person performing the critique. Seek to engage anyone performing a critique and remember to thank them for taking the time to listen to or read your work. It can be very disheartening if you are the one to perform a critique, spending a significant amount of time on somone else's work for your effort to be simply ignored or dismissed.

Invariably writers who show such lack of response will get:

• Less and less critique of their work
• Poor quality critique to the extent that eventually the only people who will respond will provide one line pats on the back

Recommendations For Writers Seeking Critique

• State clearly any focus you desire for the critique or if it is completely open to the person performing the critique
• Listen to comments made and work to understand them and any implied effect
• Work to understand any advice being offered and the implied effect acting on that advice may have
• Discuss constructively with the person performing the critique. It is not an argument, or I am right you are wrong. Listen, discuss, consider, discuss, consider some more, decide in private your course of action to take if it you believe that would in any way descend into an argument.
• Try to avoid being precious (my precious) with your material.
• Try to avoid being overly defensive. Put forward your points for discussion, but avoid being sensitive to the comments.
• Don't take comments personally.
  
• Thank them for taking the time to go through the critique process with you

Offering Critique

Over the years I have read tens of thousands of critiques. Sadly many fall into three categories:

1. One line pat's on the back
2. My opinion rules, I am right and you are wrong
3. I have commented on yours, so comment on mine

Offering critique, and I don't like calling it that in the circumstance of number 1 above, is pretty well a waste of time, and is often offered by people who reading between the lines (or line ) are actually doing number 3

If you take the perspective of number 2 you are more likely to offend, more likely to provoke a defensive reaction. Not only is that unpleasant, but it wastes the time of all concerned as the writer whose work is under critique will be very very unlikely to open their ears and listen to your points and after an argument your opinion is going to be dismissed.

Critiques of the form number 3 require some mutual back scratching. As such opinions tend to be diluted, advice tends to be superficial. All in, a not very productive use of time.

Offering detailed critique is by far the most beneficial aspect of critique (giving or receiving), and by far the most underrated.

I say that because offering a detailed critque has many benefits to you as a writer in your own right:

• You are exposed to many genres, ideas and concepts. Far beyond those of any individual writer.
• You exercise and develop your Observation Skills.
• You exercise and develop your Analysis Skills
• You exercise and develop your ability to Come Up With Solutions

This means that you hone your own skills across a far wider spectrum than you would encounter with your own writing. Your own lyrics, melodies, recordings and productions will benefit allowing you to spot possible issues, and possible benefits at a higher level, way before you seek opinions on your own work from others. This has the knock on that when you do get critique, those performing it are already starting with a more evolved work and the points they raise are likely to be more focused on fine detail.

Offering critique really offers you, as a writer, musician, engineeer or producer, the best chance of knowing and understanding the difference between songs that really work, and songs that really don't. Fundamentally it helps you understand trade-offs, where to adhere to guidelines and where not to, and understand why.

Useful Reference Articles

I have included a couple of links below to articles I have previously written for Songstuff that have touched upon critique. Although targeting lyrics writing in particular the concepts and approach regarding technique equally apply to melody, arrangement, recording, production, and of course the combination of both lyrics and music into a song.

• Improve Your Lyrics Writing
• Lyrics Critique For Songwriters

Other Resources

I am of course involved with Songstuff, so you will not be surprised that I would direct you towards the Songstuff Songwriting and Music Community as a resource. The site staff and members actively help create a comfortable and friendly environment. For critique purposes I would specifically direct you towards two boards:

• Song and Recording Critique
• Lyrics Critique

Lastly

Take the initiative. Don't wait to receive critique from others before you critique theirs. If everyone does that, no one will receive any critique at all! Add to that receiving critique is less beneficial (generally) to you as a writer than giving, so don't wait about. Help yourself, help others and get an all round warm and fuzzy feeling.

If you have any feedback on this article please leave a comment below.