This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
To mark the end of the year, I wanted to put together a post highlighting some of the notable articles and interviews that have been featured on the Musician Coaching site in 2011. I chose the “Best of” listed below not only because they were some of the most shared on social media sites and the Web in general, but also because they covered some of the most important issues I feel artists and others getting into the music industry should be focusing on as they build their careers.
Your Email is an Unwelcome French Kiss from an Ugly Stranger
Are your emails to industry executives being returned? As I discussed in this article about music marketing from mid April, your attempts to reach out could be met with silence because you’re making the following common five mistakes:
Getting Covered by Music Blogs
Last spring, I talked to Fred Pessaro, a contributing editor at the popular New York City-based music blog BrooklynVegan. Originally from Washington, D.C., Fred got his start in the music industry as a fan of hardcore and punk music and started regularly attending local shows in his hometown at an early age. His interest in freelance writing and photography and his love for music brought him to New York City, where he began to write for and contribute photos to music publications including Fuse, Time Out and Decibel. He has been working with BrooklynVegan since 2007 and also does some booking in the New York City area.
In this interview, Fred was kind enough to share some “dos” and “don’ts” for artists that want to get covered in blogs and other publications. As he said, “I think if you’re a young band today, the best thing you can do is put together a record and give it away for free. Let as many people hear it as possible. I think that’s important on the recorded front and the live front. Any time someone asks you to play a show, you should take it. If you’re a Twee band, and someone asks you to open for a metal band, play it anyway. If you’re playing first on a 12-band bill at 3 p.m., play it anyway. At the end of the day, playing the show is important, whether there are five people there or 5,000 people there. But it’s also important that your name is on a show, and your name is repeated as many times as it can be repeated. If I were a young band, I would play anywhere and everywhere as often as I could, and I would give away my music to anyone that would hear it. Also, maybe you can do something like print up t-shirts with a catchy design that someone might wear whether they liked your band or not. And sell them at cost. Basically, the more times someone sees your name, the easier it’s going to be for them to recognize it down the road. It’s the idea of conditioning. The more times you mention a name, the more the name will become a part of everyone’s consciousness as opposed to ‘just another band out there.’”
In August, I spoke with the legendary Art Munson, founder of Music Library Report, a comprehensive directory of music libraries and services for composers and songwriters designed to help them make educated decisions about choosing to which music libraries they should submit their work. With nearly five decades of playing, songwriting and producing experience, Art got his start in the music industry playing guitar with Dick Dale and the Deltones in the 1960s. He has done studio and live work with artists such as the Righteous Brothers, John Lennon, Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams. In the 1980s he built and ran his own home recording studio where he worked with artists such as David Sandborn and Vonda Shepard. Just since early 2001, he has written hundreds pieces of music for production music libraries which have been placed in a variety of films and television shows. He and his wife Robin also run their own small record label, publishing and production company called Munsong Records.
Art shared his own story about getting into the music industry and also outlined some best practices for songwriters trying to choose which production libraries are the best fit for their work: “Maybe the best thing I could say is, ‘Write what you really love to write.’ And there are some parameters to follow with library music. You should have editable music, so the music editor can make really clear edit points. It might be a nice, strong intro that’s no more than four-bars long so you can get right into it. And I fight with that editable point too. Because I want to write songs that are musical and have a nice flow to them. And there’s a place for that also. As I said, there are really no hard and fast rules. But I do try to pay attention to really strong edit points, so that music editor can get in and out cleanly.”
5 Tips about Writing Your Own Band Bio
In late October, I featured a guest post by Julia L. Rogers in which she outlined 5 concrete elements that should go into a compelling artist bio. Julia helps me behind the scenes at MusicianCoaching.com and is a classically-trained musician, a published author and a contributing music writer at Bitch magazine. Julia plays out regularly in New York City in various original projects. She also writes about business strategy, social media and emerging technology for corporate clients ranging from the Huffington Post to American Express … and she can be hired to write artist and band bios through the site.
In “5 Tips about Writing Your Own Band Bio,” Julia said, “If you want to be taken seriously as an artist, you have to have promotional material. And your bio is one of the most critical components – if not the most critical component of your press kit. (Sorry, but no one cares about your music if you can’t introduce yourself properly.) Your bio represents your first opportunity to spark interest in someone who will be a champion for your music. Besides communicating essential information about you, a well-written bio portrays you as a professional that has some understanding of the business you’re in – music. And when you take some time to thoughtfully craft it, you convey to your fans, to press, media and labels that you are serious about making music your career.”
And her 5 tips for artists trying to put together an eye-catching bio were …
Jonathan Mann, on Songwriting and YouTube
Prolific songwriter Jonathan Mann has been writing and recording one song per day since January 1, 2009 for his Song A Day project. For over 1,000 days, he has been posting a daily – usually humorous – song to YouTube that touches upon news and current events. A graduate of Bennington College in Vermont, Jonathan started playing guitar and writing songs when he was inspired by the music of Bob Dylan at age 12. Song A Day has earned him a great deal of press attention and brought him a number of interesting collaborative projects. He has appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show and has been commissioned to write songs for companies including Apple, TechCrunch, Dobly, ChaCha, Cisco, Microsoft, Groupon and AirBnB. Last spring, he used the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise $13,000, which funded his record Song A Day: The Album.
A couple weeks ago, Jonathan was kind enough to tell me the story of how he first started playing music and provide some insight for other artists trying to stay inspired to write new music. He also discussed how people can leverage YouTube as well as other online (and offline!) tools in order to get their music heard, find opportunities for collaboration and build personal relationships with their fans: “One of the biggest things I’ve observed regarding YouTube is that you have to collaborate. If you want to grow your audience, you find people that you like and that you respect from YouTube, and you reach out to them with a good idea, then collaborate with them and make something. That way, your audience gets to see them, and their audience gets to see you. I started making online video in 2005 right when YouTube started. And had I known that collaboration was one of the biggest tricks on that platform, maybe I would’ve done more of that.”
When asked about time management/finding the time to write, Jonathan added, “…it’s really just about commitment. You just have to commit to doing it. I would also encourage people to do a song a day … Just challenge yourself to do it for a month. Once you commit yourself to it, it just becomes part of your life … What you do when you do that is set yourself up to make great music. If you do that every day, just by sheer probability, something you make is going to be great.”
Of course, I have more interviews and articles from some incredibly talented, knowledgeable folks coming up in 2012, so stay tuned. Happy New Year!
Munsey Ricci runs an independent Radio promotion and marketing company called Skateboard Marketing. Skateboard Marketing puts hard rock and metal acts on Active Rock, Album Oriented Rock (AOR) stations and College stations that play metal. Munsey started his career as a guitar player, worked in a jingle house as an engineer and created the Metal department for Polygram records in 1989 before starting Skateboard Marketing. Over the past seventeen years Munsey has worked with Disturbed, Pantera, Megadeth, Black Sabbath, Marilyn Manson, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Anthrax just to name a few. He was kind enough to take the time to be interviewed about how radio and radio promotion works.
What does doing independent promotion entail?
MR:
When you do independent promotion you use your relationships at radio and in the industry to get records played on the radio. So if you’re a radio promotion company, you have your whole list of stations; we have 400 commercial and college and syndicated metal shows. We call radio every week. We have a bulk permit with the post office and do all our mailings in house. I schedule an ad date, set a record up with the trade magazines and from hat point we call radio every week.
We ship a record every week and send a tracking report: these are the people we called; this is where the record is getting played; these are the chart numbers it had. It’s not as easy as everyone thinks it is. A lot of bands could say, “I’m just going to send my stuff out or service my stuff out digitally.” Great, but by servicing yourself digitally, if you don’t have a relationship at that radio station or you don’t know how to get a hold of the PD or the MD or the person that does the metal show, your phone calls and e-mails are falling on deaf ears.
You have to know how to get to them, what they are into, what they like to play, when they like to play it, how to get them on the phone. Then you can be physically accepted and get your records played at that station.
Obviously, every station is different. Every metal show is different and every active station is different. How they program, and what records they put on really goes by the station. If you look at, for example, what Eddie Trunk does in New York at Q104, it’s not going to be the same thing that Full Metal Jackie does in Los Angeles. Eddie Trunk won’t play “Lamb of God.” He will play a Winger record or a Scorpions record. Full Metal Jackie will play Slayer and “Lamb of God.” That’s where the differences come from. You have to know what a station does before you call it up on the phone and give a laundry list; because it’s very counter-productive to do it any other way.
When is the right time to go to radio for bands just starting out?
MR:
There’s never a wrong time and there’s never a right time. You have to time it right. The end of the year, because of the holiday crunch and all the records going for ads is a bad time. If you’re an independent, it’s not that you’re going to get lost in the sauce, but it’s a bad time because radio will only have space for ten records. They’ll pick their ten favorite records, which will usually be made up of mostly more established artists.
If you’re an independent, they’ll say, “I listened to this record and I like this record but I didn’t like this other record, and I only have room for five.” So they’re only going to put in one. If you look at the schedules and say, “I know February and March are going to be pretty light; there aren’t going to be that many releases coming,” then you can schedule the record for February or March.
Really what that comes to is, once the band finishes their record, they have to stop and look at scheduling, see what’s on the schedule, know what’s coming out and what they can and can’t compete with. They have to know their limitations. The only way to know that is to look at the schedule. If someone wanted to go for ads this week [two weeks before Thanksgiving] and they are a brand new band, I’d advise them not to. I’d say, “Let’s go next week or the week after. Or let’s wait until January because there’s less traffic.” But that’s just 2009-2010. 2010-2011 can be a completely different ballgame.
What about timing in a band’s development as far as going to radio? Should a band be at a certain point in their career? What sells a new band to a program director or music director at a station?
MR:
Anything you do is good for hype. A band needs to be visible. There are some advantages to a band of getting a tour today. If you’re a developing artist and you’re not signed, to get a major tour is very hard. It’s usually a buy-on, and not unless they’re going to take you out. The only way to get a tour is to wind up getting on a packaged bill; and the only way to get a packaged bill is through an agency that sees the band has a publicist, a radio promotion company in place and that there is product readily available in the marketplace, because they want to see promotion. If you don’t have any of these factors, you’re not going to get a tour. If you do have all these factors, it’s still going to be extremely difficult if you’re not signed. If you are signed and are an independent, the chances of you getting a tour are better, because obviously you’re going to have a record company that will say, “Hey listen – I need to get my band out on the road, do you want to buy in?” And if a record company goes to them with $5,000 in tour support and asks what they can do, it’s going to open up a lot of doors. On the same token, it depends on the band and the record. Some bands make a great record, but it falls on deaf ears. Other bands make a bad record and other people say, “Yeah, I heard it and I really didn’t like it.” But at least people listen to it and you are able to close a few stations and develop the bands. Artist development always starts on the street level. You have to take the hype that the band did, all the press that the band had and combine it all together and throw it out at radio. Then you can say, “This is who my band is, this is why you should be listening.
How do you recommend approaching stations as a band?
MR:
Twenty years ago, if you didn’t have a house PA system, you couldn’t tour. Now it’s a different story. The smart things most bands could do is take their time with the record. Don’t say, “Come on, we have to get it done!” Go in the studio, take your time. If it takes two months or three months, get it right. Get the tracks right, get the mix right. Get everything right. When you do artwork, don’t do cheesy artwork. Spend a couple bucks and get some really good artwork. Get a uniform barcode and get the album barcoded. Have it pressed from one of the pressing plants, whether it’s Digital Works or Play-It Productions. Bring it to somebody that’s going to do the printing right. When it’s all right, then is the opportunity to go get a publicist and get a radio promotion company to do it.
I take out new bands every week; we have all signed independents and majors. But the bands that aren’t signed need to do it that way. Otherwise it’s just another local band trying to get their stuff played. “Do it right and take your time” is my best suggestion to them. Then they come to me with a record that looks professional, sounds professional, has good songs on it, is shrink-wrapped and has a security seal on it, and retail can take it in. Then you have the opportunity to deliver finished product to a distributor and try to sell some records.
So actually having a physical CD matters?
MR:
You are never really going to abolish physical product. There is always going to be somebody that wants a physical record. Someone is always going to want to see artwork and liner notes and pictures of the band. They’re going to want to have the physical disc. If you look at SoundScan, some titles, downloads exceed physical; and on some titles physical exceed downloads. It depends on the band.
If you want to use this as an example – Dream Theater. Their fans are loyal and faithful, but still, when you go to a record store, fans would rather buy a Dream Theater record than just go and download it. As far as radio is concerned, will look at for digital delivery for radio is that it’s inexpensive and a lot cheaper than manufacturing and serving the old school way where you just throw it into an envelope and send it; but you still need to send some physical to select people.
That’s one of the ways you can cut your overhead on promotion and marketing costs as far as publicity, retail and radio is concerned by servicing everybody digitally, but there are still going to be industry people that want the physical product, and I’m one of them. I have a CD rack that goes from one end of my wall to another and from the ceiling to the floor. Every week I go to the store and buy stuff. I like to have the disc, and then I rip it into iTunes. As far as radio stations go, there are select radio stations I deal with, like Carl Schmidt at WVBR in Ithaca and Joe Wyatt at WEOS in Geneva. These are two prime examples. They’ve been doing the metal show at both of their stations for ions, and they want the physical product. They want to put it in their racks and are avid collectors. You’re never going to eliminate the collector or the real die-hard music fan that just wants to support the band they like. They’re going to go buy the records regardless. If you’re in the band, the most important thing you have is your fans, and you want to make sure you take care of your fans. Obviously ten years down the road there will be more digital than physical, but you’re still not going to abolish physical discs.
Knowing what you know now, if you were in a band today, how would you choose someone to help you bring your product to radio?
MR:
My suggestion would be, whether you’re metal, alternative, pop, urban or hip hop artist is to find out who the key players are first. The way to do this is to call somebody you know at a record company and say, “Hey, I’m an alternative artist, and I want to take my record out. Who are the companies you use?” Then you send each one of them a copy of the record and let them listen to the record. If the person says, “Yeah, it’s great, I’ll do it for five grand,” right away you know it’s not the right person. You want someone that gets the band and gets the music and is a fan of the band first. Then you want to see if this person is the right guy and where are his relationships, what is his past track record and what has he done? These are what you need to look at. Once you see that, then the most important thing is talking to other artists and asking them if they like the person, who they got the best vibe from, if they really like the person, if the person is right for you, etc.
The only way to do this is to physically pick up the phone, call someone, tell them who you are, give them the record and ask what they can do with it. That’s the only way you can do it. Anybody in a band knows people that are signed and have tours. You ask, “Who did you use for your independent radio promotion?” And there’s your referral. It’s a very small community and very tightly-niched.
What’s your opinion of the value of college radio in the current climate?
MR:
If you look at the big picture on college radio, usually about 60-80 college stations in the country have a cumulative audience – a cume – and affect sales in their market. If you look at WSOU in South Orange, NJ, they’re the largest college station in the country. And when they add a record, we see sound scan. There are only a handful of others. The other stations, they don’t really have a cume. If you’re looking at a small 300-Watt station, they have listeners – five, ten or twenty faithful listeners or their friends that listen when they play new stuff. And then you’ll get one fan who listens to the record and says, “Hey, I really like this band.” And then he plays it for two of his friends, and then this person goes out and plays it for two of his friends. If you sell five records, you did your job, and you developed the artist and created five more fans. And then you have five more fans to add to your fan base. All college is important. Because they are supporting what they believe in. If they are supporting my band, then I want to support them. I don’t care if they are 3 watts or 30,000 watts. Support who supports your band.
Do you have any general words of caution or advice for artists?
MR:
Take your time with your record and make sure it’s right. Once you know everything’s ready to go and you’re getting ready to pick the people to work with, make sure they are the right people to work with – the people you feel comfortable with. Don’t be afraid to call someone you don’t know. Pick up the phone and just do it. I take calls all the time from new bands. I’ll talk to anybody looking to make the next step. I just love being part of a new bands career.
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Click for more information about Munsey Ricci and Skateboard Marketing
