The Most Important Asset Towards Becoming Successful In Music

"How To Become Successful" Poll

I recently created a poll under the heading "How to become successful" about what single asset or tool would musicians and artists consider the most important.I see artists promoting themselves in quite creative ways but from discussions between artists I could see that understanding of how things fit together was often a bit confused. Here are the results of that poll.

Voters were given these choices:

• Your Own Website
• YouTube
• Blog
• MailingList
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Myspace
• Access To Forums For Promotion
• Reverbnation
• iTunes
• CDBaby
• Soundcloud

There are quite a few in that list that potentially offer so much to musicians and artists, but only one of the truly offers the most.

Which one would you pick?


Why does it matter?

Surely the combination of these is best? Yes, it is true using these tools and assets together is the best solution but only if they are used together. Artists want to gain and keep fans. Fans buy records, merchandise and they make possible the creation of better recorded songs with better quality videos. They also feed egos too.

The point is, it all depends on getting full value from your tools and assets. Where you spend your time has to depend on what is most beneficial. Your time is valuable, understandably you want make the most of whatever time you spend on something so unmusical as promotion had better be worth it!


What is important?

Artists need fans. Fans buy records and merchandise. An active fanbase helps grow both the fanbase and your popularity. Fans spread the word and recommend you to their friends. Fans need encouraged. Fans need information. You are responsible for getting them the information they need at the time you want them to get it.

Your music and everything about your act has to be provided to your fans in a way and at a pace that they can digest it. They need to know when songs and albums will be available, tour dates and locations, when you will appear on TV etc, and it is up to you to tell them.

In music promotion timing is important, and so is the process. Timing and process are used to form marketing campaigns.

Overall there is a need to control your communication with your fans, whether that is through a website, social media, press, tv, radio, internet radio, email or otherwise. The tools that give us the best coverage, the best control and the most flexibility become your strongest individual music industry asset.

Lets be very clear, it is NOT that you only use one tool, it is that you use the tools wisely. Knowing the most important tool at least helps you put the emphasis of your effort in the right place at the right time.


Growing Your Fanbase

This is a major part of what we are talking about. Getting new fans whilst keeping the existing fans. Even as an amateur artist you need fans. We all want people to like what we are doing and we all wnat those people to come back again, maybe bring some friends who might be interested.


Controlling Communications

This is another major part of what we need to do as artists / labels / promoters. We need to be able to control what we say, how we say it, when we say it, and how it is presented. As we want to communicate at a time of our chosing (to synchronise campaigns for album releases etc) we need to be able to control the time that the message is delivered as best we can.


Durability

We need something that will stand the test of time, where as much as possible WE own and are responsible for method being used. Otherwise we risk being left with nothing should a disaster happen (site closures, changes of policiy or going out of fashion).


The Results

• Your Own Web Site 33.33%
• YouTube 14.81%
• Blog 0.00%
• Mailing List 18.52%
• Twitter 0.00%
• Facebook 7.41%
• Myspace 3.70%
• Access To Forums For Promotion 11.11%
• Reverbnation 7.41%
• iTunes 3.70%
• CDBaby 0.00%
• Soundcloud 0.00%

Social Networks

YouTube, Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, the social networks of our time. Each has it's benefits and drawbacks as far as artist promotion goes. Each gives you the opportunity to communicate with your fans and to grow the number of people who are exposed to your music and to your promotions.

The trouble is that social networks can go out of fashion. You've just spent months or even years building your social connections when the site disappears (mp3.com - ok not a social network but it was the biggest promotion possibility for artists at one time) or becomes unpopular because of band spamming (myspace).

One thing is sure, the majority of websites are only popular for a while, even when they are the largest of their kind. All your carefully nurtured connections are virtually worthless overnight. That is their biggest weakness.

While they have their uses, remember contacts added like this are volatile 3rd party contacts and shouldn't be relied upon.


Blogs

It's a sign of the times that no one thought of their biggest assest, yet it can be of considerable use as blogs get subscribers. In other words you post a message and it is pulled by other sites and blog readers, or notifies via email. People still visit blog sites all the time and subscribe to blogs they like.

Another benefit is that you can import your blog to Facebook and Twitter so from the effort of making 1 post on your blog you can also feed your info to your fans, friends and contacts. Your blog can also be listed on Network Blogs anad Technorati, two main stalwarts of the blogosphere, mixing social networking with blog ranking.


Music Sites

Sites like Reverb Nation (OMDs) allow you to upload your audio files, create an artist page, gain fans, sell your music and gain chart position. Unlike many sites Reverb Nation gives you access to your fan's email address, which somewhat insulates your efforts should the site disappear or become unfashionable.

The big problem with most Indie music sites is that the membership tends to be predominantly other artists. They are not fan centric.

Sites like CDBaby are a bit more focused on fans but they provide less tools for artists and don't provide access to email addresses. The biggest benefit for CD Baby is their integration with iTunes.

iTunes is a mainstream music retailer combining main stream acts with Indie artist releases. Unfortunately they provide no info on the fans you have gained. What they do offer is realistic charting and a broadly used platform that directly interfaces with the most popular mp3 players in the world.

Sound Cloud is still very much in the world of Indie Music, offering uploads and more but saddly lacking when it comes to building fans.


Forums

Forums can be useful, but they require quite a bit of effort to become a high profile member. They don't provide email addresses or fan info but they are excellent places to develop industry relationships, and relationships with other musicians or for getting feedback on tracks in development.

There are plenty music forums out there that do focus on fans but they don't often react well to Indie Music.

Yet again forums as a tool are somewhat volatile. Sites can disappear or become unfashionable.


Your Own Site

Your own site gives you a lot of control, it gives you a place to host your audio and video and fundamentally it gives you a place to call home. The big drawback is that it can take ages to build traffic. They are useful news portals for your music but you have to get people there first. As far as dispersing your promotion messages goes, posting on the site also needs your fans to visit your site first before they get your message. A major drawback (It is better to push your message out at a time that suits you rather than wait for it to be pulled via a newsreader etc).


Mailing List

Mailing lists are collections of email addresses. They give you direct access to your fans (or as direct as you can get). They allow you to push the message out when it suits you. You get to keep the addresses so if the mailing software become unsupported or the mailing server you use goes bust, you are insulated from any damage.

You do need to keep your list up to date as people do change email addresses. This is an ongoing task and with decent mailing software you can deal with this automatically.

You can add sign up boxes to your site and often to other sites too, including Facebook.


Conclusion

By comparison the mailing list beats the other methods hands down. Sure build your Facebook, your twitter, grow your site audience, join forums and music sites, but remember- the gold you are looking for is the fan's email address. The whole thrust of your web sites and web presence should be towards signing people up and getting their email address so that you can keep in contact with them.

Visitors to your site may of course buy or download one of your songs, but once they are gone they are gone, unless of course you get their email address.

Your biggest asset towards success is without doubt your mailing list. Built it and you build a lasting connection directly with your fans.

Having music is of course a pre-requisit!

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!