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I have unashamedly stolen this from Frank Kern – a much respected internet marketer – who put it on his blog a few days ago.

I’m not going to apologise too much as I felt that the content of the video is so applicable to the people who read this blog that it’s worth having it hosted here (rather than just tweeting the link to Frank’s blog), since I want to be able to come back and refer to it in the future – I’ve already watched it three times!

What you’ve got is a video compilation of snippets of wisdom from Will Smith. It doesn’t matter what you think of Will for you to get something out of watching this video. Why? Well, you can’t argue with the fact that he has achieved massive success as a recording and performing artist, then as a TV actor and finally as a movie star – maybe the presidency next?

Who knows, but the whole piece is worth a look. In it he gives his own spin on a lot of motivational thinking that you may have heard before. I don’t subscribe to that school of thought wholeheartedly. I believe that you’ve got to set your goals and work towards them but positive thinking isn’t going to get you there on it’s own.

And that’s what Will says here too. Set your mind on the task and go for it, for sure. But, and this is the crucial part that so many people miss (and we talk about it a lot here and in our free eBook), you need to work at it and be focused.

As he says right near the start, Will doesn’t count himself as especially talented, but he works harder than all his competition to learn the skills he needs to get there. His reflection on the lesson his father gave him and his brother by getting them to build a wall proves the point. In short, he sets his eye on the prize, gets his head down and works his heart out until he gets there.

Do you?

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So, another year comes to an end – and, for us, the first year of our blog and our efforts to spread a little of our hard earned wisdom and expertise in the music business.

We feel that we started well when we launched in March but tailed off in the last four  months -but we do have the excuse that we’re still managing 5 songwriters and producers (all of whom have had a very successful 2009) and we also launched an entirely new business that we have mentioned here before – manufacturing and selling the best football gift ever – that’s ’soccer’ for our US readers.

So, time became very short and this site and the  musician’s educational and training business that we are working to build have ended up taking a back seat. To be fair, we didn’t realise quite how successful the football toy would quickly become and how much of the time of all of us in the office would end up being consumed by entirely new jobs in which we had no prior experience – manufacturing in China, warehousing and logistics, customer service and more.

Strangely, the experience, whilst time consuming, has taught us some new skills that we will be using in the music business – particularly the direct marketing and internet marketing stuff. Its also become a ‘hit’ by virtue of both being really good (if we say so ourselves) but also because we applied some of our Web 2.0 marketing ideas to the launch of the product – although not as many as we should have and not as many as we are always exhorting you to do!

So, before I finish with the excuses, here’s another one. The No.1 Fan business is still going to take up a great deal of our time in 2010 – there’s this little thing called the World Cup coming up and the demand for an England version of our toy is immense. So, our best laid plans for ”Make It In Music’ could still go awry, but we hope that we have thought this through sufficiently to be able to cope with all three roles that we now have to fill.

BTW, the reason why we ended up with another business to run that has nothing to do with the music business is a long story for another day, but it’s indicative of how you need to overcome the problem of too little time when you’re working a day job and trying to make it as an artist as well. We looked at that a little bit in this post about needing to make your music career a full-time job. We know how it feels!

As for how we came to be making a singing, dancing football toy – we’ll tell you another day!

So, we’ve spent a good part of December looking at this site and thinking through our plans for what we want to achieve for us and for you.

We were already doing this, but then I read Ariel Hyatt’s post about setting goals and thought that it merited me putting our plan and goals on the site.

So, without going into tedious detail, we’re planning to:

a) overhaul the site and give it a refresh in the design department. Expect that to be in place sometime in February; and

b) post valuable actionable information to help you further your music career a minimum of once a week. We’d love this to be three times a week but the schedule will be entirely down to other demands on our time; and

c) introduce video training wherever possible both on the site and in our products; and

d) build out the content of the site to include the best musician’s resources on the web, both written and filmed by us, but also outward links to third parties whose content we admire and respect – you’ll know who a lot of those we like already are; and

e) we’re going to be applying everything that we teach to two of our own clients in their embracing of direct-to-fan techniques for their albums due in 2010 (and we’ll keep you up to date with our own experiences of what’s working and what’s not); and

f) launch a whole range of in depth training products that will distill our experience and expertise into step-by-step training that you can follow to tackle specific parts of the process of furthering your music career.  A key prodcuct available from this site will be groundbreaking training designed to take you from ‘know-nothing’ dreamer with no material (and possibly not a lot of talent), to ‘know-it-all’ self-promoting artist with commercially viable and critically acclaimed material, bound either for direct-to-fan success or the sometimes still pursued record deal.

That’s a big undertaking but we have the plans to make it a reality. Amanda is a long way into her eBook on how best to use Facebook to promote your music – which will be an essential tool for all. (We still think a MySpace profile is a necessity – Amanda talked about why MySpace is still relevant in this post back in March, but although users depart daily, ‘the industry’ still likes to go and check out that profile for every new band).

I’m writing our Twitter methods down, and am doing the same for YouTube, and we plan to do another piece of training that ties all four sites together and deals with the other web presences you need to have and how best to use them to promote your music.

However, we have felt for sometime that our expertise is about more than handing out training on how to promote your music in the Web 2.0 world – our training is and will be class-leading on those topics, but our knowledge goes far wider and deeper. There are people who espouse that online promotion of your music is the be all and end all of how to make it in music today. And some of their training is fantastic. But they are missing a lot of very important things out that our years of frontline success in the music business makes us uniquely placed to divulge.

After all, we spend a lot of time telling you that you and your material need to be great before you spend ages promoting it – no-one wants to listen to music that isn’t good enough, no matter how much you try and stuff it down their throats.

So, we’re going to be looking at that aspect of your career development as much as possible and our cornerstone product will be training that teaches you everything you need to know to succeed as an artist. Whether you do or not will be down to how much effort you put in and how much of our training you take on board. I’m not saying that you’ll be able to make it if you haven’t got enough talent – but if you haven’t, we’ll tell you how to make the most of what talent you do have and how to find those with talent to spare to help you (and them) on their way to the top.

I’m really excited about 2010 and what we can achieve for this site, the business that I want to build and, ultimately and more importantly, for your career and life as a successful artist in the music business.

What we both need is the much-touted fireworks. No better time to plan for your own than when watching the last ones of the year set off at whatever celebration you’re at today. Just remember that when the clock strikes 12, there’s another year of challenges and goals ahead.

So, Happy New Year and let’s work together to make 2010 the year that you achieve everything you always wanted to in music.

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Apologies for the distinct lack of posts over the last month or two.

Rest assured that we are working very, very hard to get to the next stage of what we’re hoping to achieve with the site. With that will come very regular blog posts and emails to subscribers and a lot, lot more usable information. Believe me, we have been busy (creating and launching the world’s greatest football gift – yes, nothing to do with music, but we felt like it!), but, in the New Year, we’ll bring our attention back to this site and it will be a massive priority for 2010 – we have some great plans and ideas that we hope will truly help you succeed in your efforts as a musician.

However, for now, I wanted to roll out a nugget of wisdom that I remember very clearly from the day that I heard it and which I have trotted out as a piece of second hand advice for many years as well.

Reason being is that there is a whole lot of truth in it, although it won’t take me that long to recount it here.

Oh, and the title of this post has given the game away anyway already!

So, what the hell do I mean by that statement – “You’re not in a band – until you’re in a band!”, and what positive effect can it have on your career?

Well, it means what it says. But, let’s go back to when I heard it – probably about seven years ago.

We were managing a band that were getting really ‘hot’ as the industry phrase says – meaning that they were playing gigs to a growing number of clearly very committed fans and their name kept being heard by people who worked at record companies, press and promotions people, agents and various bits of the media – magazines, radio and such. They were (and still are) a blisteringly good live band with a really unique sound and plenty of exciting performance elements. And they had a lot of good material – although, in hindsight, they possibly lacked that killer ‘11 out of 10′ song that we often bang on about (Subscribe at the box on the top right and read the ‘10 Key Steps…’ eBook if I’m not  making sense!).

Anyway, all the A&R men in the UK started to come to the shows and talk about offering the band a deal and we ended up being offered record deals by several of the major record companies and signing to one of them – this being the days before the possibility of the DIY approach and selling music over the internet – yes, really.

Shortly before the band were signed I was having a conversation with a very old friend of mine who had become an A&R man at a Major and he was telling me that he had decided he was going to ‘pass’ on the band. Although he liked them, he didn’t feel that they were ‘real’ or that they had an interesting enough ’story’. Now, I don’t agree even now that that was the case, and we can look at those two words which industry people will use about you a lot, but that will have to be another time. He went on to say that the reason they weren’t real was because they weren’t a ‘real band’.

These guys had already been playing together for three years – having met up up as soon as they went to college at the age of 18 and playing on and off with the same line-up all the way through those 3 years. We were managing them less than a year after they had left college and all of them had day-jobs. They lived together and had recorded an album at home in a very low-fi way and released it on a small indie and had begun to attract attention. They played regularly locally, maybe totalling, say twenty times a year.

And this was his point – they weren’t a real band as they were living by Plan B rules (they had jobs) and they weren’t living and breathing being in a band. I thought that they’d actually achieved a hell of a lot by that stage and had done a lot of DIY momentum building before it was the norm for every aspiring artist.

But, he did have a point.

They are definitely 'in the band' - no Plan B!

They did all have a Plan B – their day jobs. One was a very much in-demand engineer who was offered jobs by Formula 1 teams but decided, in the end, to be a drummer. However, they were all looking at two possible outcomes – maybe the band would get a deal, they’d get a shot and maybe they’d make it….or, maybe, no chance would come and they’d have jobs to fall back on. Maybe if you have a Plan B, that ends up being Plan A and just that safety net prevents you from really reaching for the stars and making it happen.

That’s one part of the reason. I’m not suggesting that he was absolutely right, nor that you should jack in your job right now and be the aspiring rock star or hip-hop mogul 24/7. But then again, maybe if you live it, you’ll be more likely to make it.

Obviously, there are massive upsides to not having a day job – you’ll have more time to write, record, rehearse, build your web presence, network, hang-out, pester people and so on. And, naturally, you’ll be more committed because of that available time and because you’ve dropped your safety net.

And then there’s the aura that you create around you by being a full-time musician – the people that you deal with on a day to day basis (friends & family, but also those who move in the music industry circles) will take you to be a more serious proposition – because you have laid out your hand for all to see.

Is this going to make it easier for you to get signed or at least attract the attention of those people who can help you further your career, whether DIY or traditional – well, maybe. And it would seem to be the case just by logic. That extra time and more solid commitment ought to amount to something, right?

This also ties in with our thoughts on what we call the ‘Talent vs Drive’ curve, covered in part III of the ‘10 Key Steps….’ eBook. All well and good to have all that extra time on your hands if your self-belief has lead you to give up the distractions of the daily grind. But, you’ve still got to find the application and the drive to use that time profitably. I keenly believe that very few people have spectacular levels of talent and very often those with the most drive and determination are the ones who get to where they set out to reach. This is often true with musicians. Sure, talent is a jumping off point and has relevance but it is not, always, the defining factor.

Before I add my big caveat at the end (It’s not my fault if you give up your job, OK!), there’s another thing.

I’ve just finished reading Malcom Gladwell’s book, ‘Outliers’, in which he talks about the real causes behind the achievements of exceptional people. I won’t precis it here, but he discusses how the most successful people in many fields have put in 10,000 hours of practice or learning. He relates this to music by discussing the Beatles phenomenal achievement and relating it back to their extended stints in Hamburg learning their craft. Not only did they play close to 2000 hours of live shows before they were noticed (has any contemporary artist got close, even many years in to touring?), but they had also learnt how to deconstruct and play every R&B standard of the time as their shows then were mostly comprised of covers. That might have helped a little in developing their songwriting craft, don’t you think?

I’m a slightly stronger believer in the need for talent than Gladwell, but practice, and development of skills and learning from failure are key to becoming great. Can’t argue with that.

It’s weird that we expect our artists, by which I mean music artists / performers, to be at their creative peak in their teens and twenties. We don’t expect it of authors, sculptors and painters – the other creatives. We expect them to have time to learn and grow.

So, how does a musician get that practice and learn the skills? Well, start young for sure, and, like my A&R friend (now a very senior global label President!) said – be in a band ‘for real’.

Every show you play and every song you write and discard is a step nearer the place you need to reach.

Going back to that band we managed. I see them play now, probably 200 or more shows later, and they are unbelievably good. I always notice the guitarist. He was good at the start – an interesting style and plenty of talent. But now he is incredible. His playing is immeasurably better and just so much more natural and innate. But,he struts too, like he really means it. If they were the band then, 7 years ago, that they are now, they would have conquered the world. Whether they’d had an 11/10 song or not!

I hope that this makes some sense.

I’m not telling you to tell your boss to stick his job and live in a squat being the epitome of a 70’s rock god – really, I’m not. You still have to make it to earn that right and it really isn’t my place to put that emotional burden and financial strain on you (you might be free all day, but you’ll be skint!).

But, maybe, if you really are going to be the one to make it and if you really do have the desire and the drive, well maybe you need to be in a band, on the road, being the part 365 days of the year.

Like her or not, it seems that Lady GaGa put in the time to make it – all those videos surfacing online of her paying her dues,seem to prove it.

So, really, don’t walk out of work on my say-so, and, if you do, be sure of your talent and your will to succeed.

But whether you become the unemployed-by-choice wannabe rock star or not, realise that you need to put in a massive amount of effort to make it. That’s what this really means.  And these days, it’s not just musical practice, song-writing and performing – it’s all that web promotion and DIY self-marketing as well. It is a full-time job just getting noticed!

On the upside, there is now a way to be a self financing working musician – like my old favourite, Corey Smith, and my newest discovery, Pretty Lights. If they can find  the way to be full-time musicians without a record company and driving it all themselves, then maybe you can too.

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What’s the best way to get the attention of a music industry executive when sending in a demo? 

Just picture their usual response – a cursory glance at a web page or a CD tossed in the bin without being listened to. I can’t begin to tell you how many thousands of demos I’ve not listened to – and I’m confident that I have never missed a great demo in doing so. 

If you’ve sent us a demo or a MySpace link in the last few months, you may well be reading this post. That’s because we have pointed all people approaching us in our usual job as artists managers to this blog as a shorthand way of telling them some of the basic, but often hidden, information that we think all aspiring artists need to know. If you haven’t already, you should sign up for and download our free guide in the sidebar on the right. It’s really very good and will speed your journey to fame and fortune immeasurably! No, really it will. 

It was only when I started writing the blog posts for here that I realised that one of the things that we get asked all the time is whether it’s OK to send us a demo, how should we send it in, who to, is a web link OK, and all possible variations on that theme. 

So, not only does that question need answering, but unique amongst Internet Music Marketing folk, I can answer it from the perspective of the submitter and the receiver of the demo! 

Is it OK to send a demo? Well, yes of course, and you should be pitching your demos to as many people as possible. But, the failing that we most often see is that what we are sent just isn’t good enough. The two main flaws are that, firstly, it simply isn’t good enough in terms of songwriting and performance. The recording quality shouldn’t matter too much if the material is good enough, but everyone in this industry does suffer from not hearing past the production to a degree, even if they deny it. So whilst it’s not a killer, try to make the production good too. 

Secondly, it’s always too soon. Again, almost without exception, we get sent demos or MySpace links to material and a band that haven’t been playing together long, have recorded a hasty demo and don’t really know themselves yet what they are aiming for. The main symptoms include the aforementioned poor quality songs, appalling photographs (see our MySpace guide for what to avoid!) and a general lack of focus. A band that have been playing together for less than a year or so are unlikely to have worked out a world beating line-up, a catalogue of quality songs, a blistering live show and some sense of where they fit in the pantheon of rock and pop. These are the things you need to succeed and it’s what we and all of our ilk are looking for. 

So, assuming you’ve got that stuff straight, how should you approach a manager, an A&R man, an investor (just as likely these days), or anyone who can raise your career a notch or two?

Well the most important thing is to do your research and make sure that the person you’re sending something to will receive it and have some kind of affiliation to your genre. That means, in short, there is no point sending your Rap demo to a Metal manager. Obvious, but so rarely followed. 

I, and my kind, don’t want to see an email that doesn’t address me by name and that I know has been sent to 100 or so people at once. I want to see that you know who I am and what I do, who my clients are etc. If I can tell that you have bothered to find out why we might be able to help you (you are similar to a band we rep, or something), then I am immediately more likely to listen. This is going to hold true for all people that you approach. So, use a name to address the mail or letter, and start off with a reference to what makes us interesting to you – not ‘we like your roster ‘ but something like  ‘we loved what you did with Nine MM Slayer X and how you broke them through MTV’ ….’and we think you might be able to use similar tactics to help us out’. It not only shows me that you’ve done your homework but also that you’re thinking about how to win the game. 

Next, send me something that tells me all I need to know. And, as I have already had to defend on the blog, I need to know what you look like as well as how you sound. I’m not going to dismiss you out of hand if you look like the back end of a bus, but I need to know so that I can balance all the factors. Please, please, please have photographs that aren’t laughable. 

Let us hear the best song first – ask your mates what that is and tell them to be honest. And then ask a few people in your age and peer group that you don’t know – test it at random on people in the mall to get an honest feel. 

Although I want to know how many friends and plays you have on MySpace, I also want to know where you play, how often and what kind of crowd you get. Virtual numbers can be manipulated, which I’m all for, but real world numbers need to be real. 

Something that people don’t often think about, seeing as most now email a link, is when to send the email. Over a holiday or at the weekend is just dumb. My inbox and everyone like me, is so full on Monday morning that I reckon you have halved your odds before you start. For me, make it Tuesday early afternoon. I’ve just got to grips with the week and I’m predisposed to hearing something new. 

I’d also recommend reaching out when there is good news to report. You’ve got a self financed single coming out, or you’ve made it to the last three of a local Battle of the Bands contest. These days, I’ll also be impressed if you have a track being used on a commercial or in a TV show, or if your weekly podcast is getting 5000 listeners. 

At the very least, I’ll be hoping that you’ve contacted me when you have three or more shows lined up within a fortnight that you know are accessible for me. That way, I have a real chance of coming to see you before I forget about you. Don’t ever send someone an email if you are a live band when you don’t have shows coming up – that’s just stupid. 

Lastly, and this is the killer, can you get someone who knows your target person to pitch it for you? This is the harsh reality. The reason that I am fairly sure I never missed a diamond in a demo pile is that 99.99% of the things that hit are picked up by a recommendation. Managers, promoters and A&R men are to some extent filters of what is good and bad and one of them can filter out acts that will never make it so that only the half decent ones even get in front of people who have decision making power. 

You need to get your stuff in front of one of these people at some point, so you need to cultivate relationships with people who can help you do that – all of the above applies to getting even those people to listen and help – it’s like a vicious circle in reverse – in fact it’s a vicious funnel! 

But, when someone they trust recommends that the people in power listen to your demo and that person’s view has some weight, then you are getting somewhere. Whose opinions count? – venue owners, small-time promoters, local indie record shop owners, music store owners, bloggers, anyone at the front end of the music business. 

Go and find them, polish your act and make your pitch!

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What is the number one thing that you need to know in order to make it in the music industry?

It’s the thing that the greatest artists all know and it’s the one thing that all record company A&R guys and managers are actually really looking for – no matter what other bullshit they might feed you.

Imagine what you can do for your career when you actually face up to this fact and this challenge.

And it’s simple. You must learn how to write a great song and also learn how to identify it when you’ve done it. Simple, but I’m afraid it’s not easy.

This is an edited version of one of the 10 Key Steps that we talk about in the guide that you can get from us by signing up over there on the sidebar at the right.

I decided to cut it down and use it as our second post as it is the most essential piece of advice you will ever get about how to make it as a recording and performing artist. Period!

This is the golden rule. Make no bones about it – without this you may as well pack it in now and go and do something much more sensible.

I’m really just handing on two of the greatest pieces of advice that I was ever given in this industry about songs:

(i) All the greatest songs are either basically ‘I Love You’ or ‘I Hate You / Don’t Need You / Am Better Off Without You’ etc; and

(ii) There are very, very, very few great songs and most bands / acts / artists only have one, or a handful, and that can sustain them for a career.

These are two pretty strong but simple, perhaps even obvious, statements but they need clarification and a pinch of salt for all their brilliance.

On the first point, if you look at your national music chart I guarantee that more than half the Top 40 or 20 or Hot 100 or whatever you have where you live, will be essentially conforming to that ‘I love you / I hate you’ paradigm. If you include general self-empowerment, I’ll bet its more like two-thirds. Not all of them will have an obvious title containing ‘love’ or ‘hate’ words but the basic lyrical theme will be on that topic.

In most cases, great songs are about raw human emotion.

On the second point, look at a career band once they have made four or five albums, and you are likely going to see something around 50 to 75 songs that they have recorded and released. How many of them are poor, how many are average, how many are good, how many are very good and how many are truly great? The answer is, not many, a handful.

It’s such a hard thing to define, but being truly great must mean that it’s a song that emotionally connects, moves you on a basic level and is so hooky that it’s in your head all day long. You know when you hear one, but they are hard to capture, hard to define, and crucially, really bloody hard to write!

But you know from your own experience that it really can take just one great song to break a band or act, and one per album from then on is enough to sustain the career momentum. If that is backed up with a bunch of very good songs, then even better. We all know of bands that seemed to go on and on for years with mediocre material after one huge smash.

Don’t set out at the start of your musical journey trying to write a hit song. You need to do some practice and it’s going to take time. What people forget is that songwriting is a craft.

Like any craft, experience and learning are key. You should study hit songs and try to take them apart and see why they emotionally touch you and why they work. You should try and identify the tricks of the trade. And then, later, you should set the toolkit that you have built to work at writing great songs.

I’m afraid I can’t teach you how to do it though! Sorry, I’ve been behind the scenes in the Music Industry, not out there being creative. There is good advice out there, but what I would hope you’d take in from this post is that you need to learn and perfect the skill.

I do know that for most songwriters I have worked with, they let the melody come first and let it dictate the flow of the lyrics. A melody isn’t good enough if you can’t easily remember it. Simplicity is a key part of their toolkit too. All too often a great talent fails because they over complicate a song and ruining it. K.I.S.S – Keep It Simple Stupid!

One last thing. Don’t think that a song has to be the way you first came up with it – there is always room for improvement. Smokey Robinson, not content with having written ‘My Guy’ for Mary Wells (fulfilling the golden rule above – unconditional love from a female perspective), then went a year later and wrote the flip version of that for the Temptations – ‘My Girl’. But, so the story goes, he and Ronald White knocked the song out in an hour or two and played it to Berry Gordy at Motown convinced that it was a hit.

He wasn’t impressed and they had to go away, rewrite and re-pitch it at least three more times, spending 50 hours plus on it before he agreed. They changed notes around, moved lines from the bridge to the intro, honed lyrics etc. Maybe it’s a myth, maybe it’s all true, but the lesson is clear. Keep honing a song until you know it’s a smash.

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Finally, we get to launch the site.

It’s taken at least three months longer than expected and it may well be a little wobbly and scruffy for a while whilst we get our heads around how Wordpress works!

Bear with us, please. It might not look like we have done a lot, seeing as this is a simple blog with just the one post so far. But, I promise, we have done a hell of a lot of work behind the scenes and have written around 100,000 words of advice to publish here, in email newsletters and eBook guides as we move forward.

Please check the ‘About’ page and the ‘Why’ page for more background about what this is all about.

Then, please go and download the free guide from the sign-up box on the right. In many ways, that is what the work we have done to get this site up is all about. It only exists as an avenue for us to pass on advice and that eBook is the first bit. I’m really proud of it and think that there’s a lot of wise words that you won’t often hear from people in the Music Business. It’s solid straight-forward advice about what you need to do to make it as a musician and artist.

Once you’ve read it, come back to this post and leave a comment. We really value your thoughts and will do our best to find the time to respond and give as much advice as we can.

Go on – download the free Guide now.

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