What advice do you want on how to make it in music?
We’re starting to get into our stride with the blog now. It’s been a lot more hard work than we originally envisaged, but we are getting to grips with the technology and loving passing on our advice and thoughts.
But, right now, we really want some feedback from you about what you want us to cover on the blog.
One thing that we are now doing is trying to think constructively about posting the best information that we can – information that you want and need. Instead of randomly telling you what we think you ought to know!
Some topics are too big for blog posts to cover and between us we are working on eBooks on various larger topics: Amanda is writing about Street Teams and how to use them, and on Facebook for Musicians; I’m writing about how to use Twitter to promote yourself as a musician and am trying to devise a follow along 52 week course to lead you from no songs, no band to an album release properly promoted and distributed. That is a major piece of work and might take a while to get in place.
Meanwhile, we are aiming to post four times a week. Two pieces of career and promotion advice, one piece on useful tools and products that we come across and one piece on whatever else takes our fancy.
The core of what we are here to do is the advice on how to turn yourself into a successful artist – from learning to write, record and perform, all the way to self-releasing a record and promoting it to the fanbase that you’ve learnt to grow.
We’ve got a pretty long list of ‘How to….’ posts that we’ll get to as we go on (How to get airplay; How to copyright your songs; Should I give away free music? and loads, loads more).
But, what we want to know is what advice do you want and need?
So, please leave a comment and give us a good description of what advice and help will make a difference to you right now. We’ll then do our best to cover as many of the topics that you raise as fast as possible.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:53 am
You could word this so it doesn’t seem like you’ve run out of ideas.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
If only!
Our problem is not lack of knowledge or ideas, it’s that we have so much to write about we want your help in focusing on what you want and need. We are simply trying to provide the things that you say you need rather than what we think you need.
Perhaps you could suggest something that you want to know about.
May 7th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
How does one get out of the BS cycle of catch 22’s? For example, I’ve got 6 self-released albums, have performed at numerous fairs/festival/events/gigs, etc. since 1983, but seem to be caught in the circle of “pion-status” because I’ve never toured before and I don’t have physical product in stores, even though I have national distribution through Super D’s affiliation with CD Baby. I’ve had radio airplay, video play, performed in front of 300,000 people, but can’t get a booking agent, or a decent paying gig for that matter, and since I’m a solo artist that has to pay a backing back, well, makes it a little hard to tour if the clubs don’t want to pay you, etc….this industry is so backwards at times.
May 7th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
One thing I would really like to see is an article about major label recording contracts. From what I’ve heard and read, very few artists actually get reasonably compensated for their work because of the nature of these contracts. Maybe a contrast between artists that got screwed over by their contracts and ones that did Ok in spite of their obligations, and an analysis of why this was. I would like to see some detailed discussion of alternatives to major label recording contracts that artists have with the advent of the internet. You should talk about how royalties actually work, recoupable vs. non-recoupable, who ends up really owning the music, etc. The more details the better. IMAO, artists can learn about something like using myspace to promote their music on their own, not that the really solid advice on this blog isn’t extremely helpful. But there are pitfalls the young artist will face when they get to the point of having to deal with the conglomerates, and they should know what they’re getting themselves into. And hopefully have some ideas about how to protect themselves.
Thanks so much for the great info already up on the blog. And good luck,
-D
May 7th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Firstly i thnk its important (see cheryl hill- two posts above) to make sure when telling people to promote themselves in such areas you should also warn about the possibilities of over-exposure in the wrong places. i think people can take it upon themselves to do too much and ergo tar themselves with the kind of ‘been around the block and never setlled down’ brush.
though you guys are doing a sterling job and not mis-directing people, in fact youre telling them all the right things to do. perhaps always have a flipside, like a ‘DO’s’ and ‘DON’T’s’ with each bulletin. so when people take your advice they dont take it too far! sometimes less is more.
i would suggest to cheryl (above) to stop releasing 6 of her own albums and stop pluggging them so much and instead pick the best 8 songs from all 6 albums, record them properly then do a few choice gigs, maybe under a different pseudonym so its a fresh start. it may seem like youve done a lot of hard work for nothing, but it wont be for nothing, it will be for a really concise album choc-full of gold that will grab peoples ears, and you’ll have a wealth of material for b-sides/future albums etc.
back to makeitinmusic – your e-mails are lovely, they never feel intrusive, like most spam, and are always written in a nice informal tone thats inviting.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
At the end of the day making it in the music business is who you know, right place, right time! So I would like to know who is the “in” person/people to know at the moment, and where are the “in” places to play, cos these seem to change on a regular basis! Presumably you are better off living in London? Also how do you get hold of a manager when your music doesn’t fit into the recognised genres and your band is different and doesn’t fit into the boy band, girl band scenario! Everyone can love your music and love you playing live but that doesn’t make for success. Its difficult to get fans as well if you don’t fit into a genre.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
@ D
Check this article out by Steve Albini. It’s been around the web for a while, and was originally written for Maximum Rock & Roll magazine in the 90’s.
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
It gives a great insight on how recording contracts work.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Having a lot of my network still on MySpace, I’d like to see some industry insiders like yourselves address whether it’s a good business move to either ignore an established (but dwindling) MySpace profile or even bother to create one at this point in it’s life cycle. I’ve seen a few very negative ones and no positive so far so am trending toward advising my network to move fans and associates to another profile asap before they all move on their own. Advice?
May 8th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Thanks very much to all of you for leaving detailed comments. The feedback is very, very helpful.
We’ll try and tackle all the questions raised as soon as possible.
In short:
Molly – yes MySpace is still vital. You need to have an active profile but it MUST be about building active and committed fans, not just pointless friend adding.
D – we’ll do something in detail about record deals. My speciality – I used to be a music lawyer!. Lou is right though, that Albini article is fantastic.
Cheryl – that’s a tough one and is more about a whole approach to how you market your music and about thinking sideways to create opportunities. I think Billy makes some good points about your kind of situation, but we’ll see if we an come up with a ‘Career rejuvenation’ set of ideas.
Billy – I like the idea of Do’s and Don’ts.
Ian
May 8th, 2009 at 10:54 am
@ D
Looking at a contract done it the 90’s is not the best example. With the onset of what has been referred to as ‘360 deals’, agreements currently look quite different. Here’s an example of why you might want to ignore whatever a label has to offer anyway.
http://ow.ly/5Lan
As silly as it sounds, some people do actually need help learning about MySpace. Mainly because they think the work is done once you’ve created a profile and customised it with your artwork/bio/music etc. The reality is that that’s when the real work begins.
@ Molly
Don’t ignore any profile. You either have a good one or delete it – otherwise you’re going to look lazy and uncommitted when that may not be the case. Ensure all your profiles look similar – having the same artwork and colour scheme helps build your brand. Have as many profiles as you can manage – the more you have, the more opportunities there are to be discovered by a new fan. Link them all back to your website where they can buy your products and join your fan club – i.e. treat each profile as a doorway back to your own website. If you can’t create your own website, then MySpace is fine… but Bandcamp seems to be really hot right now.
Essential sites for a decent online presence currently include:
Facebook
Twitter
Bandcamp
MySpace
The real work starts once you’ve got the sites – leave comments on the sites being read by your target fans. Molly, as you didn’t post a link to your website/MySpace, it’s unclear which genre you fit into and that subsequently restricts the advice I can offer. Yes, EVERYONE (even @Kitty) can and should be pigeon-holed into a genre to begin with, it focuses your attention on the highest density of people most likely to support you and reduces your exposure to the risk of time wasting / failure (i.e. posting a link to your metal band on a pop website = waste of time).
@ Cheryl Hill
Have you thought about stripping it down and just going out with an acoustic?
Weird as that may sound, great songs have the uncanny ability to still sound as great when they’re done acoustically. It would enable you to do more gigs in total. Stop playing at the clubs that don’t pay. Billy Childish made some interesting and very positive points about putting your best tracks together as an album (not necessarily a physical one) and playing under a pseudonym etc. – worth a try if you’re really feeling stuck in a rut.
Kindest regards,
http://DIYMusicians.com
http://Twitter.com/@DIY_Musicians
May 11th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
For me, I think all avenues are important. I say definately start a facebook page, group and get on Twitter.
I think it also depends on what genre of music you want to promote/perform. For me, since I am promoting a Renaissance Festival, I’m trying to get on as many Renaissance Faire/Festival sites and other free sites in order to promote.
I also do like http://www.whofish.org in the New England area, as you can post there for free. http://www.guidespot.com is pretty new, but I like it as they really did help me promote my faire as well. I also like http://www.goboston.com and http://www.livejournal.com to promote things and make friends along the way.
I am glad I found this site as well, great tips all around!
May 14th, 2009 at 3:22 am
DIY:
I’m not in a band. I assist a small network of bands/musicians in learning to manage and promote themselves. Recently I’ve been concentrating on learning CSS, SEO, etc.. as I build my website. I’m an online research assistant by trade. I maintain contact w/a few of ‘my’ bands on MySpace still and would like to continue assisting them as I have time. Their questions lately have been centered around the viability of MySpace in their future, which is why I asked the question. I’ll pass your advice on to them.
As their careers didn’t stop w/my getting busy elsewhere, I am sending them to industry insiders like yourself, Ian and Amanda to continue their ‘education’.
Thanks for being here for the indies.
I’m already on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, StumbledUpon, FriendFeed, ReVerb and Flickr All under either Mollyinfolode or infolode Come join me (though we’re friends/follow on most of them already)
btw, you might want to check out http://www.feedtheband.org
A couple of young girls wanted to do something for bands and set up this site to take donations to help bands in any way that they need. Feedtheband.org doesn’t keep any donations for administration as far as I can tell.
Keep helping the indies!
Molly
May 14th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
I think all aspects of what you have talked about so far have been very useful, most of which I have been aware of already as i do have industry experience, not to say I know it all. What I would like you to bring up for a future newsletter the subject of sponsorship, how to approach potential sponsors and so on.
I would like to add that the advice you give is most appreciated as you guys are taking time out of your industry jobs and giving this advice FREE! of charge. I think its great what you are doing.
Keep em Coming!
Best wishes,
Linda
May 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am
I would be interested in seeing some of the pit falls and law issues surrounding bands/musicians in the industry. Trying to find a well outlined and informative ‘laymans’ guide to these issues online seems to be a struggle.
For example, if a member quits a band what rights do they have over songs/lyrics, how are royaties agreed on and best way to do this, why sign up to the PRS and MCSPS? – I know some of these are basics and are talked about a lot but it would be nice to see a simple but detailed guide to reference from someone with so much experience in the music industry and especialy from the law perspective.
Many thanks again for a great site – i have enjoyed reading through all the articles so far and appreciate the effort you are all going to in helping out our industry.
Jay
May 18th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Hello,
Can you speak to getting gigs to develope buzz and a local following? I’m finding alot of “venue” owners don’t want to book people (especially original songwriters) unless they already have a following. It also seems difficult to get a following without gigs…bit of a catch 22.
Thanks,
Jordan
May 18th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Thanks for these latest ones folks.
Jordan – there’s a post that covers this here – http://makeitinmusic.com/do-you-know-how-to-get-gigs-and-play-live, but we are also going to look at that Catch 22 as soon as we can too.
Jay – That’s my speciality, so we’re covering that as soon as we can too.
Ian
May 18th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Many thanks Ian, I look forward to your post and im sure a lot of other people will be grateful of the information as well.
Another thought is branding, working in SEO and online marketing i am constantly aware of how companies need a good branding to stand out from the crowd – that can sometimes even over shadow the quality of the product (which is not always good for the consumer but very good for the company). Music seems to work in a similar manner, but how do you go about ‘branding’ your product. I have a few ideas im kicking around for my own band, making not just the music – but the brand a viable commodity and product so I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on things they think could / should be a potential selling point (good songs / image aside) for a musician / band.
many thanks again for the wonderful work and contributions to the community.
Kind Regards
Jay