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J Sider is a guitar player, singer, songwriter and the Founder / CEO of RootMusic  Prior to founding RootMusic J booked and promoted bands in a variety of venues and on tour.  I had heard great things about the RootMusic Application for Facebook and J was kind enough to take the time to speak with me about his career path and his relatively new company.

Music Consultant:

J- Thanks again for your time.  Tell me how you became involved in the music business?

JS:

I grew up in a musical family and I’m a musician myself.  I wanted to start to take my career a little bit more seriously. I grew up in a small town, and I asked around among the folks that play music and said, “How do you make it in music?” Nobody gave me a really straight answer, so I decided that understanding the business of music would help me meet my goals as a musician. I started working at a local coffee shop, booking bands and paying them out, marketing for them and getting lineups ready.  It was there I began to see how that whole process happened and why people decided to book certain shows on certain night and what the best marketing practices were.  I was just starting to get out into the world of music and take it more seriously. That was in Virginia. Over the next six years, I just kept stepping into the next level. I went from that coffee shop to a small venue, getting my foot in the door, mopping floors, whatever I needed to do while showing them I had a little bit of knowledge about how to do things from the previous experience. Then I went on to the medium-sized venue and then a larger venue and then the last venue was a 4,000 person capacity.  I oversaw a 30-person team and managed everything from ticketing to the lights and sound. That was the Great Salt Air in Salt Lake City.

Music Consultant:

Were you able to continue your own music while doing all this?

JS:

I kind of got wrapped up into understanding and working inside the business side of things and really loved it. It gave me the opportunity to have a paying job and get to be around everything I loved. Because I was managing these venues and had access to the stage at every level – whether it was local bands at the coffee shop or regional bands at the medium-sized venue or bigger bands at the larger venues – They would come to me and say, “Get us up on stage and get us booked.” I started to make friends with different bands and started managing a few bands as well in the different cities I was working in. I certainly kept writing and recording music. I was thinking that the more knowledgeable I could be about how to be successful as a musician by learning through these different experiences, the more likely I would be to really take my music and do it right. I’m still at that point where I’m still writing songs and playing music, but right now my time is wrapped up on RootMusic, but I still play music and play with friends.  I grew up singing a lot in choirs and picked up guitar and started writing songs.

Music Consultant:

. What did you learn were the best marketing practices for getting people out to shows? You started at a coffee shop where most nights you are dealing with the hardest job of all – getting people out to see an unknown commodity – what did you learn doing that gig?

JS:

There are a number of different marketing strategies depending on what level you’re at, what resources you have and what kind of a budget you have. What it boils down to is being creative and authentic. Instead of just getting out on the street and putting up posters and fliers- you need to understand the type of people you’re marketing to. At the coffee shop level, see which of your friends are coming to shows and what kind of people they are, where they hang out, what type of music they like and try to meet that demographic.

Be authentic and go up to them and say, “Hey, we have this show tonight. I know you haven’t heard us before, but we kind of sound like this, and we’d love to see you. We’ll buy you a beer.” Some of the best turnouts I’ve seen are when bands get really creative. For example, there’s a band that had a show and there weren’t a lot of people supporting them at that point. One of their shows was in the middle of the week, and of course it is hard to pull people mid-week.  They found a house that was just around the corner from the venue and threw their own happy hour at the house, so when people got off work, they invited all their friends and their friends’ friends and had a keg or two. The band went to set up at the venue, and when the band was about to go on, the person at the house got called and shut everything down. Everyone had to leave the house, and the whole group went straight to the venue, paid at the door, enjoyed the show and the band got to have a great crowd and expose them to their music.  You can’t pressure people to go to your shows but making them want to come to your shows is essential.

Music Consultant:

Does this apply as much as the shows get bigger?  I would imagine it becomes more about advertising, right?

JS:

To a certain extent but for the bigger shows you can also run specials.  Depending on what State you are in you can do things like telling your fans that if they come in groups of three or more, they get specials at the bar, or they get to meet the band with a group of five. There are a number of incentives you can give to your fans. They love you already, but give them a few reasons why they should bring friends, and you’ll get more people through the door. The marketing that’s used these days is still traditional, and there’s a lot of room for people to be creative and authentic which goes a long way. You need to understand that your fans are similar to you and would love to come out and be entertained, but you have to give them something different. The most important part of course is the music, and making sure you have great tunes.

Music Consultant:

Jumping forward to the recent past. You were booking a 4,000 capacity in Salt Lake City. Where did you head from there?

JS:

Intermittently through these different venues I was managing I went on some big-budget marketing tours which helped me even understand more to how people reacted to things I put out there. I went on the road for six months and set up a big display that was two tractor trailers long for different companies. It would be at music festivals, and you’d have about 4,000 people at these festivals and would be able to interact with people and understand what they respond to and what they don’t. After that, I came off tour and had some money saved up and for six years had been thinking about different ideas and how they could be more efficient. I looked at a couple different industries that were using technology to really improve the way the work was done and make things more effective and efficient with day to day activities. I kept getting frustrated with the lack of solutions there were out there for musicians and venues. I was going to manage a band or start this company, and I decided to start the company.

Music Consultant:

Tell me what  RootMusic is about…

JS:

RootMusic is all about being authentic and being creative to the point where we’re finding solutions for the real day-to-day needs. I feel like a lot of music companies out there are either too tech heavy or too music industry heavy, and there’s not a good balance there. But I also feel like they’re trying to come up with a new way of doing things or some grand idea that’s going to solve all these problems. What I was always frustrated with was that nobody was helping me solve my practical day-to-day needs as a musician or a band:  to get in front of my fans; to organize my e-mail better; to do all these different things. That’s what Rootmusic.com is about as a whole.

Music Consultant:

A good way to go about it might be to go over the key problems you chose to tackle first and how your company is proposing to solve them.

JS:

The first one and the biggest gap we saw was on Facebook, where all your fans often are quite regularly.  There was not a good way to represent yourself. The way Facebook works is you sign in and go around and look at friends’ photos, etc. But the reason it works is because you are also sharing your photos and showing what you’ve been up to. We also wanted to build in music into that experience. You generally trust what your friends send you. We started Rootmusic to directly address that issue, whether you’re a local band just starting out or a hugely popular act. You have to represent yourself if you’re a local band, you want to have a place to point to where you can say, “Here’s the sound, here’s what we look like, here are a few songs and videos. And if you like what we’re doing, please send our music around.” We built in that functionality where anyone can go into your band page on Facebook and share it with their friends, and they will send it directly to their friends’ wall and it can be played directly off the wall. The same thing goes for major artists that have been using this already. The Grateful Dead and Snoop Dog have sent out their songs to their fan base and in only a few hours have 100,000 listens to the music player.

Music Consultant:

I have to ask the tough question – there are some companies out there that do similar things. ReverbNation has a music tab, iLike has a music tab. I don’t believe either of those have the viral sharing mechanism you just mentioned, but I noticed that yours is also a paid service. Why RootMusic over the other solutions?

JS:

There are a few things. First, we allow you to represent yourself and have a professionally. Right now if want to do what we allow you to do anywhere else it would cost you $500-$5,000 to hire a design firm. That’s what it costs minimum for you to get a custom tab made for you. Working with bands at these different levels, I know folks don’t have a lot of cash to spend so we wanted to make it possible for them to do that. At the same time, we wanted people to take it seriously. If you make everything free, your customers aren’t really dedicated to your product. Some other companies might have more tabs implemented, but we’re now the second largest music app on Facebook. Bands are using the marketing tools we built in to get in touch with fans and the fans are coming to the page, spending time there, getting more fans and higher fan engagement. It’s a professional look and has a viral feel to it, and you’re paying more attention to it, even if you’re only paying $2 to have it up. It’s $2 per month or $20 per year.

Music Consultant:

Where can people learn about your service?

JS:

www.Rootmusic.com. We have a tour and info videos. We focused a lot on making the user experience really great, so you should be able to find all the information you’re looking for within a click or two.

Music Consultant:

How long has RootMusic been a company?

JS:

We’ve been up and running for five months. I think it’s the same thing as promoting a good show. If you have a great product and it’s really about making it easier and putting something great into other people’s hands, it will work out. It’s just getting the word out. As of today (8/31/2010) we had over 25,000 bands that have signed up all over the world. It’s really interesting to see some of these bands that sign up. I’ve seen a few of my friends’ bands that I haven’t seen in a while pop up, and it’s great to see.

Another thing – we’re always open to suggestions. This is all about the musicians and the managers of the bands and what you’re looking for. There have been a number of times where we’ve completely switched what we were doing because there have been hundreds of e-mails coming in asking for something. The video tab was one. We took time out of what we were doing and built that out. We’re very much all about listening to what you need as a musician and building exactly that and nothing less.

Music Consultant:

The Facebook app with the video functionality are the first steps by the sound of it.   Are there other products that are live yet?

JS:

It’s just the band page application right now. We’re adding to that every day. Once a month, we roll out with new features. We just integrated with YouTube, so now on the music player itself, for example, if you go to the Grateful Dead or 50 Cent’s page, you can play the music player with the sound cloud track. But if you want to get paid performance royalties for those songs that are streaming, you can drop a YouTube link into the music player at RootMusic.com and then on Facebook it will show up and the music will start playing as it does with any track, but in the banner page above the track, the YouTube video will start playing automatically. So your fans are getting some extra content to watch your video. But if you’re a bigger artist, or you’re getting paid royalties, you as the artist will get paid for having the video stream itself. You can actually make money off this platform by just having people stream your songs through that YouTube integration. Of course the music keeps playing while your fans look at your photos or write on your wall or look at your Twitter.

Music Consultant:

Tell me what the future is for the company. What are you looking to tackle?

JS:

I can’t go too far into that right now, but it’s very much built on what we hear from our users.  I can’t wait to get more ideas from them. We have a number of things we want to build out and have talked to tons of musicians and managers, all the way from the ground, up. Just to make it more efficient.  We already know you’re looking to represent yourself and distribute and market yourself.  Some of the next steps are trying to market more efficiently and understanding where your fan base is and making sure you can get in touch with them easily. You can look at the product we have out today as a very basic version, and just know it will become much more powerful the more we have to work on it. Any ideas and thoughts are greatly appreciated and sincerely looked at as options to build out.

Music Consultant:

From your rather unique vantage point- do you have any suggestions of things people should be doing as best practices or common mistakes you think are easy to avoid when promoting on Facebook?

JS:

The first would be don’t spam your fans on the wall. If you’re just constantly throwing stuff out there, they will turn you off and not come back. One of the main things to remember about Facebook specifically is, if you have 500 fans and then you send out something to the wall that syndicates out to your fans’ news feeds, your 500 fans only get that if they’re interacting with the page. You have to give them reasons to come back. That’s why with the band page, we’ve made it so that you can share a photo, video or a song or upcoming show to all your fans from that page. What we suggest is sending out a song and then above that in the message box say, “We have some new tracks up on our page. Please make sure to send a few songs out to your friends and let us know what you think.” Always give a little bit of direction to your fans when you send something out and give them a reason to interact with you. Not only does that help spread your music, but it also makes it so when you send a message out through your wall, more of your fans are more likely to get that message in a news feed.

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Learn More about J Sider and his company RootMusic

Craig Levy is a musician, studio owner and producer based in Brooklyn New York.  I first met Craig when we were in the A&R department at Atlantic records together in the late 1990s.  Craig has run a profitable studio from his home for the last five years and has recorded well over three hundred artists in that time.  I thought Craig would make an interesting interview because he has carved himself an interesting niche working almost exclusively with aspiring artists on tight budgets.

Music Consultant:

Craig, thanks for taking the time to speak to me today.  How did you put this business together?

CL:

About ten years ago I was a bedroom singer/songwriter guy and I finally got the courage to get on stage. Of course, nobody came to the shows, so I thought, “Let me get some songs recorded and put them up online, and maybe people can see I’m not so bad.”  So a friend of mine gave me some software, and I started recording basic acoustic guitar and vocal versions to a click track. I sent them to a friend of mine who was a little more advanced to flesh them out.  For about six months I had to keep prodding him to finish even one song.  Nothing was getting done so I took matters into my own hands.  I was at some horrible temp job at the time and basically read the recording software manual instead of working.

In the evenings I was reacquainting myself with the little bit of piano I knew and was having a drummer friend of mine talk me through drum beats.  I would play him what I had over the phone and he would explain, “Ok, put the kick on this beat and the snare on that beat.”  I learned to program drums that way.  Basically, I ended up learning how to do it all myself and I fell in love with taking a simple acoustic song and making it three-dimensional.  I also fell in love with being in the studio as opposed to being on stage.

About a year later I set up a simple website with some of my songs and put up an ad on Craigslist offering my services.  I first started out as $100 per song and my first client took 25 hours to finish a song.  I was ready to retire after that experience!  I promptly switched to an hourly rate.  I feel if somebody needs to do a lot of vocal takes or wants us to experiment with sounds I can’t be frustrated with how long things are taking.  Unless you are a punk band and your live show is the same as your recordings, songs take time to come to life in the studio.  It’s always fun to take a song from a seedling to a tree.  Keep in mind I do go as fast as I can, but I don’t want to sacrifice quality.  There are different levels of “done-ness” for everyone.

The funny thing is that before I recorded I had all these acoustic songs, and I kept telling myself, “Oh, these are completely done. These don’t need to be fleshed out. This is exactly the way they should be.” Then when I started adding instruments, I thought, “Okay, this is why people have bands and why people record!”

Music Consultant:

What kind of setup are you running right now?

CL:

A lot of things are virtual these days so my setup is mostly software based.  “In the box” as they say.  I do have a good Universal Audio LA610 preamp and compressor combo and an Apogee Rosetta 200 digital audio converter.  I’m running Cubase, not Pro Tools.  That’s simply what I started with and I love it. 

Music Consultant:

What were the things you learned through trial and error and working with musicians that most improved your sound? How did you really learn to capture songs so they sounded like what you heard in your head?

CL:

I guess it was just all the different styles and different personalities that were thrown at me that helped me get my feet wet fast.  One of the first artists I worked with was a five piece vocal group.  We wrote and recorded over 40 songs from hard rock to country to pop, all with R&B flavored vocals.  Super interesting. And in terms of translating what I hear in my head, while we are getting the simple scratch version down it starts to reveal itself to me what could be interesting to add.  It’s hard to explain any other way.

Music Consultant:

What advice would you give someone just starting out in recording and engineering?

CL:

I got so lucky I had a quiet brownstone I was living in already that I was able to make a little noise and neighbors weren’t making too much noise.  I have Auralex foam on the walls for sound absorption and also for sound shaping.  It makes for a better mixing environment.  I just want to get a dry vocal signal and I can add effects later.  There’s also a thing called a Reflexion Filter that goes behind the microphone and helps with the reflections bouncing around the room.  It helps if you have both.  Unless you’re set moneywise it takes time to accumulate quality gear.  First I started out with a $200 microphone, now it’s a $1,000 microphone. I started out with a small preamp and moved my way up to an LA610. I was able to make a living doing this pretty early on and I’ve put every dime back into it.

Sure, If you have GarageBand and a microphone and if your songs are great- these days lo-fi is cool  so who knows what could happen.  In terms of getting a professional and clean sound though, I’ve had to dedicate my life to working at it.  I’m still working on it.  I’ve always considered this my recording school.

Music Consultant:

You run a high volume business and get a great deal of work through Craigslist – that must provide some challenges. You must be fleshing out songs around half-baked ideas quite often. Tell me about that process for you?

CL:

To be honest it really doesn’t matter what they bring.  It’s my job to make sense of it. I help give what is perhaps cloudy a clear focus.  Everyone is different. I have artists that come with songs fully written on acoustic or piano and vocals and I have others who don’t play any instruments at all.  I have an artist that comes to me with short vocal melodies and we make full songs out of them.  I also have people that play most of the instruments themselves.  Except for the occasional solo trumpet or violin I can cover the rest by playing guitar or bass or programming virtual instruments. They’ve come out with some mind blowing software and virtual instruments over the past ten years.  When I was starting out it always bothered me when someone would ask for a sound or instrument I didn’t have, so over the years I’ve made sure to never get stumped.  Whether it’s suggesting a chord change, adding a bridge, cutting a section completely, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell someone exactly how I think the song could be improved.  Basically I’ll get as involved with the songs as the artist wants me to be.  At first I felt bad criticizing people’s babies, but I soon realized that’s exactly why they were coming to me.  Very few people in your life will tell you the truth about your music.

Music Consultant:

How does the recording process start for you or what kind of communication goes on during your first meetings with prospective clients?

People e-mail me after seeing my ad or get my info from a client of mine that has recommended me. We talk on the phone and I set up a meeting.  During our hour or so chat I try to get to know them and ask them what kind of music they like, what kind of music they want to make, what do they have song-wise already, do they play instruments or just sing?  Are they a rapper are they going to bring tracks?  Everyone has different needs.  I ask them to explain as much as they can about their vision for the first song we’ll be recording.  If necessary I ask them to send some YouTube links or mp3s a couple days before the session of other artists that can help me know where we’re going to go with the song.  They might say, “I like the drums in this song,” or “I like the piano in this song,” “I like the overall feeling of this song,” just to get me in the vibe.  I need to do my detective work. This is also in case I need to do research on how to get a specific sound.  I feel like my job is to extract what my artists have in their head, whether they can describe it clearly or not.

My clients are here for the entire recording process.  Everything through the mixing stage is a collaborative effort.  I’m here to please them, not a record executive.  I encourage my artists to make music that excites them, not what other people think they should do.  I feel like it is the one place in artists’ lives where they can be 100% selfish.   On average a song can get finished in 6-8 hrs, it’s just really how deep the artist wants to get. People come and go as they please, and there are no contracts. A negative vibe can ruin everything so I try to make it as comfortable in here as possible.

Music Consultant:

Do you find that the recording process improves people as musicians? In other words, is the process more fluid when people come back to you for a second time, and do their songs get better?

CL:

Absolutely.  Sometimes it is as simple as them having a little more of a spring in their step because in some way their dreams are coming true.  Dreams are not necessarily getting to the top of the charts. Dreams to most of my clients are just bringing their ideas to life.  I started the same way as most of my clients – I just wanted to get my songs recorded.  There are a lot of interesting stories that bring people my way from other producers that didn’t care what they had to say.  I’m malleable and really they are running the show, but I do know after all these years what may work best or the workflow that works best with what they’re trying to do. They get better as musicians and writers and get excited because they know how much more is possible for their songs than they originally thought.

Music Consultant:

You’ve marketed your business primarily through word of mouth, relationships and Craigslist?

CL: Yes.

Music Consultant:

Why did that work?

CL:

I don’t know. All I can say is that the first thing I did was put up a website so people could hear my work. I see a lot of people on Craigslist who are trying to find bands without having music up.  Producers without websites containing examples of their work are probably weeding out about 90% of the people who could be interested. Without any music up, you’re not going to find the best possible clients for your production or the best band members. You’ll get super lucky if anything happens from that.  I’m really proud of the music I’ve made, but the only thing that matters in this case is that people who want to work with me like what I do. From the get-go, I had a website up, and I had my songs up, because they were all I had. Then, within three or four months I was able to put up songs from some of my artists. And over the years, I’ve put up hopefully better-sounding music. And then I got more business from that.

98% of the time I’m working with a solo artist. The other 2 percent are bands that maybe recorded the drums in a proper studio and we’re doing the rest of the instruments at my place and I’ll mix and master.  My goal is to sound legit with any genre I’m trying to pull off.  Whether I’ve succeeded is up to the potential client.  I’ve tried to be as well rounded as I can.  I’m aware there are producers who have tons more experience than me so I’m humble and in constant learning mode.  I’m not trying to make demos for a bigger producer to do-over, I’m trying to make records.

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Learn More about Craig Levy and Little Pioneer.

Marc Hutner is a musician and producer and currently the Director of Membership at ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers).  I normally summarize people’s biography in the first paragraph when doing interviews but Marc’s biography is a lesson in and of itself.

Music Consultant:

Marc, thanks for taking the time. I know you started out as a musician but how did you become Director of Membership at ASCAP?

MH:

I’m originally from L.A., and I am and was a musician who got signed (Marc was the singer and guitar player for a band called Sugartooth) to Capital/EMI Publishing in 1991. We went from Capital to Geffen in a classic A&R shuffle. We put out two studio records on Geffen and then I just continued doing music and producing. The Dust Brothers took me under their wing and taught me how to do sampling and computer recording back when it was still the wild frontier. Then I produced a band called Bicycle Thief, which was the singer from Thelonious Monster’s new band. That went on the road, and I went with them as a touring guitar player as well. Then I was in another band called Pleasure Club from New Orleans. That was a bit of a punk/gothic thing. We put out two studio records and one live record.

Music Consultant:

Was that through a label system or on your own?

MH:

We put them out on our own and then got picked up by an indie label out of Atlanta.  We ended up selling more on our own than we did through a label.  As a musician I’ve been on major labels, indie labels and released music completely independent.  I’ve toured the world many times over for many years and have played in front of tens of thousands of people, and also had to cancel shows because nobody showed up. I feel like I’m in a good position to advise songwriters at ASCAP because I’ve been around a bit.

Music Consultant:

How did the job at ASCAP come up?

MH:

It actually came up because in the late 90s, Geffen was going through all kinds of awfulness, and my band had basically disbanded, and I was a little bit lost as all my other friends that weren’t musicians had gone and pursued an education and now were working. I was in my later 20s and without a formal education.  So, I was trying to figure out a way to earn a living and stay in music. I knew an ASCAP rep in L.A.  We met, and the stars aligned, and I got hired two weeks after that on a temporary basis, and then temporary turned permanent. I worked for about five years there in L.A., and then I quit to go back out on tour for a few years. Then I decided to move to New York, and the job opened up again, and I moved right in. I’m coming up on five years working there in New York. I’ve been on and off at ASCAP for about a decade.

Music Consultant:

Do you have anything active playing-wise these days?

MH:

I actually don’t play anymore. My stuff still gets licensed in film, TV and video games occasionally but I don’t pursue it at all and rarely pick up the guitar at this point.

Music Consultant:

Tell me in your own words what your job is as director of membership?

MH:

I sign up writers and publishers to ASCAP, and try to help them in anyway I can.  Sometimes it’s in the form of advice, other times it’s helping them refine their songwriting skills through workshops, or helping them meet managers, labels, publishers, etc. The idea is to help ensure that they have the ability to earn a living through creating music.

Because ASCAP is a member-owned, not-for profit, we can operate very differently than most other music industry companies.  If one of the writers I work with became the most successful writer of all time, I wouldn’t get a percentage, a raise or a bonus.  That’s just not how it works.  So what that means is, there isn’t a sense of territorialism with our writers, so we utilize all of our co-workers’ knowledge and connections when we need to – We have an L.A. office, a Nashville office, a UK office and an office in Puerto Rico. You get the advantage of a company that has a network all over the place. It’s a unique situation.

Music Consultant:

ASCAP is a not-for-profit company, right? Tell me about how the money flow works. An artist signs up for ASCAP and then they go out and their music gets played on the radio or on film and TV and…

MH:

A songwriter or publisher joins ASCAP, and because it’s a non-exclusive agreement, they need to register their songs with ASCAP… it’s the registrations that enables us to go out to the marketplace and represent the song, the artist or the publisher and collect the monies. Otherwise, if they don’t register it, we have to assume they don’t want us to because they have the right give away their music for free.  So they register their songs, and then our purpose is to monitor the public performances and pay them performance royalties.  This includes radio, TV, Internet, sporting events, etc – any time you go into a public area and you hear music, whether it’s in an elevator, in a shopping mall or in Central Park, a license fee has been paid to ASCAP for the right to play that music.  We survey those performances and pay the writers and publishers for them.

Music Consultant:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but there are still people whose jobs it is at ASCAP to wander in and out of different public or retail places and make sure that licenses are in place or that music is not being played or it’s royalty free. Is that right?

MH:

Yeah. It’s our licensing department. It’s a serious undertaking if you can imagine.  You walk into any restaurant in Manhattan, and you’re most likely going to see a little ASCAP sticker in the window saying they’ve paid their licensing fees and can have a live band, a cover band, the radio on, CDs playing. etc. The job of the licensing department is to make sure that happens. If you’re not paying a license fee, you can’t legally play ASCAP music

In films and TV, we receive cue sheets. A cue sheet is a sheet that lists all the music contained within the film or movie in chronological order. It tells us the song title, who wrote it, who published it, how long each piece of music was and how it was used. Was it background, vocals, off-camera, a theme to a show? That’s how we know what’s aired and how to pay it. All the different factors from who aired it, how it’s used, to the duration of the use factor into the amount of money that it generates.

Music Consultant:

Ball park, how many artists are registered with ASCAP?

MH:

We are approaching 400,000 at this point.

Music Consultant:

Really?  I actually expected more.

MH:

Yeah. It seems like it would be. But it’s actually grown exponentially in the past few years.

Music Consultant:

As someone in membership you probably have thousands of artists who know you by name and want your attention, what’s the best way to get the attention of somebody at the membership department? Is it best to meet you in person at an event or cold call or get a referral? What works?

MH:

It can all work. You can make contact with anybody at ASCAP by putting a phone call in or showing up and asking to speak with somebody. If you’re an ASCAP member, you’re entitled to all that membership entails, which certainly includes being able to speak with an ASCAP representative.  But you can attend one of our events and you’re sure to see one of us there, easily accessible

Music Consultant:

And announcements of those ASCAP events are through the newsletter or on the website, right?

MH:

Yes, exactly- but we are also at a lot of shows that aren’t our showcases, seeing bands and trying to stay current.

Music Consultant:

Here’s the tough question – ASCAP, BMI, SESAC … why ASCAP in your opinion?

MH:

When you join ASCAP, you’re a member. The terms of our contracts are one-year… very artist friendly.  At BMI, you’re not a member, you’re an affiliate. You don’t have the same rights that you have at ASCAP. Their contract terms are two years as a writer and five years as a publisher. Therefore, if you want to resign from BMI, and say, join ASCAP, you are able to resign every two years, but you can’t take your songs with until the two-year writer contract and five-year publisher contract coincide, which is every ten years!  Imagine that! At SESAC, their terms are three years.

Music Consultant:

From either your position at ASCAP or your years of being on the road, do you have any advice you could give that you wish someone had told you when you were just starting out – lessons you had to learn or seen learned the hard way?

MH:

I see the same mistakes over and over again. Generally, don’t get a manager until you actually need a manager. From my perspective, you don’t really need a manager until just before you have a label.  That way the manager can still commission the deal, which you want, because the last thing you want is a manager who works for no pay.  Because trust me, that won’t continue as a positive arrangement for very long.  I always see people get managers way too early, and they’re usually really terrible managers or newbie managers who can easily turn people off or even burn bridges.  I would also say, just do the very basic research on publishing and songwriting and performing rights. The way the industry is now, it’s moved to a world where the ASCAPs of the world are one of the few ways you’re going to be able to earn a living anymore. So knowing what that means is important. I highly recommend the book Making Music Make Money: An Insider’s Guide to Becoming Your Own Music Publisher by Eric Beall.

Learn more about ASCAP

So – you have a product in hand, plenty of b-roll footage, photos and videos of the making of your newest music release – that was part 1 of this series.  We went over what the breakdowns of marketing, sales, promotion and PR were in the traditional record label days (because the digital age has blurred all of these activities together) in part 2.  That, hopefully, leaves you with product in your hands and an understanding of some of the basics that need to be covered in moving forward in getting people to care about you and your music.

Where does this leave you?  At the bottom of a very large mountain to scale but hey, at least you brought your hiking shoes and found the mountain – you’d be surprised how many people don’t make it this far because they are looking for a chairlift of a helicopter that won’t ever arrive.

Before I jump in to this I want to clarify something about DIY.

Begin Rant This won’t make me very popular in many circles but DIY is a condition of last resort.  In no way am I now or ever suggesting that you should handle your music career on your own if you can avoid it – you’re going to need help.  That is not to suggest that you run out and sign away 20% of your career in perpetuity to the first manager who approaches you who has that kind of creepy “stay away from my sister” kind of vibe.  (Laugh if you want – we’ve all met that guy.)  There are people to hire, interns to find, friends and family to convert – whatever it takes.  When I talk about DIY I am usually suggesting that no help is coming from people who are established in the industry unless you prove yourself up for the journey by beginning said journey on your own.  Far too often I see artists in the position of a lonely hitchhiker who knows town is in one direction down the road but refuses to even begin headed that way and opts to sit there with his thumb out hoping for better.  The odds of a ride are much better closer to town – there is more traffic there. End Rant

At the beginning of part two I discussed departments that were not yet prominent at labels ten years ago namely the Film & TV and the digital departments.  Digital?  Well digital is everything you do when you are on your own so let’s just say a little piece of that department is part of everything you do.  As for film and TV, you can now outsource these tasks to a whole host of non-exclusive music libraries that specialize in placement.  I am of the opinion that music placement is a full time job and is best left in the hands of people who have a larger catalog of music than just a single artist’s catalog.  Partnering with these libraries is a good idea especially if you form a good relationship with one of the song pluggers at these organizations.  I am fond of Musiclibraryreport.com for getting more about what libraries do what and hearing other first hand experiences that musicians are having with getting their music placed.  I am not saying you shouldn’t work these opportunities on your when the opportunity arises to meet a music supervisor but it has been my experience that music supervisors take people who have large catalogs more seriously than individual artists and that music supervisors get a great deal of their leads from ordinary music consumers.  Long story short – partner with 1-2 of these libraries and focus on making great music and getting fans.

Here are some more things to think about when readying yourself for getting your product out into the world.

1. Research – it’s amazing to me that people don’t spend more time looking into where they want to be, who they want to write about them and what other groups, brands or niches they should be in contact with.  This process includes making a methodical list of your existing relationships and how they can be leveraged to make new ones as well as just making lists of different types of people you need to contact.  What other bands in neighboring markets do you need to know who are on your level or slightly above?  What club owners do you need to meet?  What blogs write about artists of your genre and stature that really need to be writing about you?  What message boards, festivals, meetup.com groups or other gatherings do you need to be a part of to make this work?  If you don’t know – that’s step one – go find out by doing your homework and seeing what people who are just slightly ahead of you are doing that is working for them.
2. Marketing Materials- In addition to having all of your content together and a sketch or your next several months of activity I think many artists forget about getting their pitch materials tight.  Sure – you can approximate many of the sales functions that used to be handled by the sales departments at record labels (at least digitally) by getting your new music distributed through tunecore or reverbnation or partnering with one of the aggregators and of course – making sure that the positioning of your products is front and center on your homepage and social network pages but that doesn’t mean the “selling” is over.  To make this work you are going to pitch yourself over and over again and you had better get a form letter, a one sheet and / or bio about your project together ASAP to make you sound as good as possible.  You will be pitching yourself to journalists, club promoters and other bands over and over again – Sharpen your pitch and have marketing materials ready to go long before your release date.
3. A Reasonably Paced Rollout plan – I see people trip over this one all the time.  An artist or band has a new record coming out so they quit their jobs, max their credit cards on several weeks or months worth of promotional efforts and throw all of their resources behind one of their early releases.  This is a surefire way to land yourself in trouble.  Don’t quit the day job just yet, don’t plan a US tour when you’ve never left your home market and don’t spend all of your money around a six week push of an album.  Your career has to be sustainable – sure hiring the philharmonic to back you on your CD release show could help you move the needle with local press but you had better make sure that you are not breaking the bank because at the end of the day you have to figure out a way that you can continue to make live and recorded music on a regular basis – invest in that first.  Regional touring, home recording gear and cultivating relationships with studio owners and producers are great spends of your money and time.  It is about building a house one brick at a time not about going to get a gold plated roof when the foundation isn’t built.  Pick a few markets you need to start with, find a touring schedule (or webcast schedule for that matter) that has you maintaining contact with your home market on a regular basis and slowly expanding in concentric circles outwards.  You have to figure out a way to make music, video and content related to your art on a regular basis and for most of us this means finding a way to be consistent with a slow and steady approach.

More soon,

R

In Part 1 of this article I outlined the importance of having prepared properly for a new music release.  This covers everything from having captured video, stills and writing about the making of your new music to making sure you have your social networks and website sorted so you have places where said footage can live and work to your advantage.  I also neglected to mention that it is important that your bio, press clippings and photos are up to date at least several weeks if not months prior to your release date.  Long story short – there is a ton of set up to do for any well marketed and promoted release and there are a ton of moving parts to keep your eyes on.

Yes, like a game of whack a mole.  If you are releasing your record 100% on your own- chances are you are going to miss some of these metaphorical moles but I thought it would help if you at least knew them by name.  An easy way for me to go over this believe it or not is to go over in very broad strokes the way record companies functioned around their releases over a decade ago.  It is easier to break them down from their old terrestrial functions because the digital age has blurred the lines of what is PR vs. marketing vs. sales vs. anything else that moves the needle for an artist’s career.  The solutions the different record label departments use today (and that you will use on your own) are very different than they were ten years ago but the needs that these departments addressed are still the same.  You will note of course I am leaving out finance, business and legal, art, A&R – because they are slightly less applicable and there is no mention of a film and TV department or digital / online departments because ten years ago such departments were very tiny if they existed at all.  They will be covered in a follow up article.

Meet the old moles:

Marketing:

It was the job of the marketing person to have relationships with various other entertainment entities and brands, to find interesting opportunities for their artists, to communicate with the band’s management and agent and make sure that all of the other departments at the label were performing their functions on a schedule that maximized the impact of everyone’s efforts.

Sales:

Sales departments at labels made sure that the chain record stores had product in stock and they cut deals to ensure that this product was priced competitively and on a priority project they spent money to ensure it was positioned in a way that made it more attractive than most albums in the rack.  You know those big cardboard displays at the end of the aisle in old school record stores?  Those cost labels a pretty penny.

Publicity:

It was the job of the publicist to work with artists on their image, their biography and photos and of course to make sure the press wrote about them.  A publicist made sure that an artist’s press kit was as compelling and slick as possible.

In my experience great publicists were that they were able to take elements of an artist’s life and persona and magnify or mythologize them in a way that made for a compelling story or several compelling stories that they could pitch to different kinds of periodicals for write ups or appearances on morning television news shows, talk shows etc…

Promotion:

The job of the promotion department (both video and radio although they were usually somewhat separate) was to get the artist played on radio (or video outlets) – develop relationships with all of the programmers who were the gatekeepers to these stations or channels and to make sure that their artists appeared not only in terms of getting their single or video spun but played at live events put on by radio stations, showed up on air in radio and video studios and generally maximized their artist’s presence at these outlets by leveraging their relationships.

I will come back around for part three on how the hell these different departments are translatable to you doing your own thing in the digital world and of course introduce you to some newer moles.

More soon,

R



Jodie Ferneyhough is the Managing Director of Universal Music Publishing Canada, the chair of the Canadian Music Publishers’ Association and sits on the board of SOCAN and the CMMRA (Mechanical licensing organization similar to Harry Fox).  Prior to working at Universal Jodie worked for Peer Music Publishing and managed artists.  He has been in the business for twenty-two years.

Musician Coach:

Jodie thank you for your time.  Can you tell me is there a major difference between the way publishing in handled in Canada and the way it is handled in the United States?

JF:

No. It’s pretty much identical. There are subtle differences. We do have different laws. I think it’s often forgotten that we are a separate country. It’s convenient sometimes to be a separate country when you work in this company, and then other times it’s like, “It’s just Canada. If we do a deal, we’ll do it for America and just include Canada in.” They don’t necessarily give us extra money for it, include us in the conversation or find out if there’s a tariff or some other legal obligation that we have in Canada where we may not be able to do it or it conflicts with a deal that might be done out of America. It is a separate country, and the Americans tend to forget that.

Musician Coach:

Your mandate with Universal is to find and sign artists who are going to generate a lot of publishing income off sync or something similar isn’t it? Tell me what the criteria for signing and act looked like ten years ago, and how it has changed.

JF:

The easiest way to explain how the whole business has changed is to say that ten years ago, I would get phone calls that said, “Hey, we’re in this band. We’ve opened up for so and so and toured here and one this and that.” It was all about live and how many records they sold. And that was even different from 10 years before that, because ten years before that, you went out and found indie bands, they didn’t find you. They played at clubs and might have had a cassette they sold on stage, but it wasn’t about how many records they sold. It was just were they good or not. Ten years later it was how many records did you sell and how many tours did you do. And ten years beyond that (now), the first phone call I get is, “We’ve placed this song in such and such a show.” That is what everyone is leading with.

Musician Coach:

Is that the right approach? Does that get you interested?

JF:

No, actually, it doesn’t. It’s interesting to know that they are willing to do film and TV placement. But it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing or that it’s going to work, because you can’t measure anything. You can’t measure the amount of money someone is going to be able to make. In the world of music publishing right now, it’s really hard to judge how to sign a band and what kind of advances to give and what kind of work you can do for a band. It’s still predicated on a formula of “How many records did you sell?” and “How much of the album do you own?” and “Are there any samples?” and “How many songs are on it?” and “What’s your mechanical rate?” and all those questions you ask. You come up with a formula and say, “This band sounds like that band and that band has sold this amount therefore this band might sell this same amount.” You do a guesstimation.

Musician Coach:

I have to interrupt you there. How can you still base publishing deals on the sale of recorded music when that doesn’t mean nearly as much today as it used to? Is that not flawed?

JF:

Very flawed. But it is the way the industry is still working. It is the only real measure we can have. Downloads and Rhapsody and those sorts of things – and we don’t have streaming services in Canada like you have in the United States – are too hard to measure. They’re not big enough sales. Digital sales don’t equal album sales. So the only thing we have is this sale of records, and it is a flawed mechanism by which to make advances. It’s one of the hardest times to be in the business because the upper crust is saying, “We need to see these numbers, and then we’ll do a deal based on these numbers.” And that’s logic from 20 years ago. Probably where it should be is, “Is it a good band, and can we do something with it ourselves? How can we build this? Where are we going to be able to take this and build and develop it and base it on what the business used to be, as opposed to where the business is now, which is pure numbers pure stakeholders and stockholders and a board of directors that demands more money each year on a dramatically shrinking business and budget?” How do you do projections on shrinking? It’s impossible.

Musician Coach:

Have you felt that as record labels have diminished in their influence that you as a publisher have more sway and ability to get acts broken than you used to? When I came up in the business the publishing was an afterthought and everyone went for a record deal. Do you find that in the new economy, aligning with the right publishers is important and getting with the right Film /TV people can be a lions’ share of what your income can be?

JF:

In the company I work for, and I’ve spoken to the other publishers too, so it’s not necessarily just this company- a lot of what is going on right now is based on charts and hits and numbers that somebody can wrap their head around. Nobody is interested in doing development. A lot of unsigned artists are coming straight to publishers with the notion that they can get into a publisher and the publisher will get them film and TV work but the bands that are breaking come to the publishers last now. The publisher is not quite so influential as it was in the development world. They are seen as being able to get film and TV and these other areas of income, but they are looking for huge multiples. They are looking for really big numbers on both ends of the spectrum – the small bands, the bigger bands and newly signed bands. They are all looking for this big million-dollar advance, and it’s really hard to give anybody any advance money because it’s almost impossible to predict anything.

Musician Coach:

Have publishing deal sizes diminished?

JF:

They have, but what I’m finding is happening a lot is that the deal sizes are diminished or don’t exist here for example. What happens is that the band goes and blows up and they can get the advances, but by then, they’re already talking to the Americans and so personally I’m losing the deals. If they are doing smaller advances, they’re typically doing them with UK/small publishing companies. A lot of the mid-sized or smaller artists don’t want to deal with a Universal or a Sony publishing, they’d rather go to a Spirit or somebody smaller like Bicycle or Songs music publishing. Even more surprising and disheartening is that a lot of artists are going to their friends, who aren’t really publishers whether that be the indie label their buddy started or their manager. Many of these new publishers don’t know what they are doing in the publishing world, because as you know it’s convoluted, so they collect some money, because anybody can collect money in a given territory, but there are a lot of other parts of publishing that they don’t understand. They miss a lot of money and a lot of the lobbying and efforts that go on at government to increase how much the mechanical rate is and those sort of things.   Guys in bands are more interested in working with a publisher who is a friend or someone they know because people at Major publishers are still the big, evil guys. There’s a huge dichotomy still after all these years on what bands want and what they don’t want. They still hate the Man, but they want a record deal or a publishing deal. They won’t do a publishing deal but will if it’s a million dollars, even if you tell them they will never recoup. They don’t care. They want it. The record world has just collapsed. The bands are apathetic about the industry. The general public is apathetic about the industry and wants the records for free. The record companies want to sue kids and won’t move into the 21^st Century; they still think they can put the genie back in the bottle.

Musician Coach:

I’m jumping around a bit but what about people trying to get your attention or a publishing deal, and the value of trying to get a co-write and having money in the pipeline? Is that something that if you’re a songwriter or in a band you recommend? Should you spread your create abilities around in this way?

JF:

Absolutely. As I just said we have to look at numbers and all that. It’s actually an interesting point in the life of the music industry that bands now should and can and I absolutely encourage them to do this on their own. They should build their own base and their own sales and companies. As the record industry continues to collapse, the most stable spot to be is with yourself, controlling what you do, building your database and being able to increase your value every day because you are worth more every day that you build on your own. This is exactly what I talk to bands about. Go out there, do it yourself, sell your own business, hire somebody who is really good to work with you that will work for you and is either a marketing or promotion person or just a really great administrator, so you have the ability to do your job. Your job is to go out and write songs and go out and be a band and perform. Your job is not to chase me, the publisher, or me, the A&R director. That’s my job, to chase you, the artist. Your job is to create great material and build your business.

Musician Coach:

Do you find priorities are out of whack that way? Do you find that bands spend too much time chasing the deal instead of making their own?

JF:

Yes. Especially songwriters. These songwriters come to me and say, “Hey, I want to be a songwriter.” And I say, “OK, so go and be a songwriter.” But if I find you, it’s like it’s magic. It’s not magic. You’re some guy that lives in Ontario, Canada, or Wherever, Ohio. You don’t know anybody, have never gotten a song placed by anybody, have never co-written with anybody, you don’t really like people so you sit in the basement. You may write really good songs and may be an undiscovered talent, because some of that does happen. But it’s very few and far between, as we both know. The best way to get known is to get out and do co-writes and work with people, even if you don’t necessarily want to be a co-writer. It’s such a great way to learn a skill and get out and meet people that will then say, “Hey, I work with this guy, Bob Jones, and Bob Jones is a great writer and has some great ideas.” Frankly, that’s how it works. Once you start to be in the studios with other writers and people that are doing the creative bit, that is more important than people that are sitting with the publisher who is doing pitching and what have you, because it’s a blind thing. Someone might say, “I have this guy named Bob Jones.” And a person will say, “Who is Bob Jones?” But if Bob Jones is out doing his own work, he’s going to get the work and become attractive to a publisher and other writers and producers and other people down the road.

Musician Coach:

Most of my readers are in the U.S. so I have to ask- is it really a viable option for people to approach the Canadian arm of publishing company and go in through a back door of sorts? How does that work?

JF:

It doesn’t really work. It’s not that we don’t look at those people, but we’re put here – the publishing companies and the record companies – to get better rates and fight the good fight and of course to sign and find and develop talent when we can. But we’re here to sign and develop Canadian talent. A lot of times, if you’re coming from the U.S. into Canada, especially if you’re coming Florida or somewhere that’s far away from me, I’m wondering why. I’m wondering why you’re coming all the way up to Canada for a publishing deal. If you’re not necessarily good enough for the U.S., you’re not good enough for Canada. I don’t mean to be harsh about it, but if everybody has turned you down, and you call me and say, “Hi, I’m so and so from Florida,” I am going to say, “That’s cool. You can send me your stuff.” But I’m going to hang up the phone and call my New York or my Miami or L.A. office and say, “Do you know this guy?” And they will likely say, “Yes, and he sucks, and we passed.” And then I will call Nashville, and they will say they wouldn’t do anything with him. There’s no need to come to me. If you called and thought, “Hey, let’s go to Canada,” and nobody’s ever heard of you, I would still call the U.S. and ask what they thought of that. There may be an opportunity for a way in, not necessarily signing through the Canadian office. In other words, I would take an act, walk it through and call New York and say, “Hey, I got this, and you should listen to this. It’s a really cool project.” Part of the reason for that is that my boss would also question, “Why are you doing a deal for a band in America that would make more sense for Nashville to do?” So, I really have to have a good argument for signing an American band. If that band is from Windsor or Buffalo or from maybe even Erie Pennsylvania or somewhere in the north region where their music bleeds back into Canada through radio from somewhere in America. They may have a great following here and not have something in the United States. I’m more inclined to look at something like that.

Musician Coach:

What do you see going on with people that strike up deals with companies like Pump Audio or MusicSupervisor.com or any of these aggregators that lock in bands for non-exclusive deals for several-year periods? Have deals like these ever hampered your interest in a band?

JF:

No. As long as it’s non-exclusive and there’s an opportunity to get out. They pay a higher service fee for that, but I see it as proof that they are trying and getting out there and making something happen. They don’t know how to reach a music supervisor, so they found this group that takes care of it. I don’t know what the stats of placement or how effective such placement companies are though.

Musician Coach:

I don’t think everyone has a uniform experience with placement companies. Some people get placed, some people don’t and I would imagine it’s based on song quality.

JF:

Jumping back to your comment about if the way things are getting signed is flawed.  The question we’ve been getting lately a lot is, “Do you do film and TV and can you place our music?” That’s great. But in 1965 or 1975 or 1985, we would not have signed a band that would put this stuff into commercials. We’d say, “What is wrong with you, and why would you do that? This music is supposed to be anti-establishment or rock and roll or whatever it’s supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be selling diapers.” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, but is that the only premise we’re selling bands now, whether or not they’re going to be able to be placed in a TV commercial? Because if that’s the only premise we’ve got left, I think it’s pretty pathetic.

Musician Coach:

I hate to sound that way, but whenever I hear about a publishing deal, it’s always, “What’s the sync situation?”

JF:

I know that’s what it is. But I’m saying, “Really, is that what we’ve been condensed to here?” The problem is that it doesn’t necessarily mean the band is good or bad. I have a band up here called Hedley.  Hedley has sold 500,000 records over three records in Canada. To put it into perspective, we are ten times as small as America in population. So, if you do the math, that’s five million records in America. That’s a substantial amount of records. We do have a release coming out on Island at the end of the summer. But, we have not had a release in America and have never had a major sync from this band.  The songs would lend themselves very well to Disney or a lot o the pop kind of tween TV that’s going on, and I cannot get it placed, and I’ve knocked on every single door. On the other hand, I can have a band that literally nobody knows who they are. But we’ll get tons and tons of music placed. Being in advertising is not necessarily something that we need to or should be benchmarking. On the other hand, there’s a band out of Canada that signed out of France because they are from Quebec called “Creature.” We didn’t sign them because we didn’t feel they could sell any records, and they haven’t. I wasn’t wrong in that prediction. But what happened is that the Canadian office was able to recoup the band’s advances from France through advertising. So, on the other end of the spectrum, why weren’t we looking at this through advertising? But again, my mandate is based on sales.

Musician Coach:

Is there anything else you haven’t covered that you’d advise an aspiring artist to do when it comes to publishing?

JF:

I think building your own business and your own band, not relying on anybody else to do anything for you. You are the only one that can make it work, whether you’re a songwriter or a band. I wouldn’t, as a young band, rely on a manager. Managers at an early stage are just taking money and a lot of times they are your friends and don’t know what’s going on. You might want to think about an administrator – somebody who can go to the bank for you and take care of the needs you need done. But right now as a young starting band I’d suggest you do as much as you can on your own, give everyone in the band a job, figure out what merch is and what can go on and what everybody’s strengths are and give everybody a job until you start establishing finances and money in the bank and a tour route where people are starting to come see you and the job becomes too big for you. I would suggest never chasing a record label and never chasing a publisher. If you are good – and that is your job- to become good and become a better songwriter – we will chase you. Go out and co-write with other people and don’t be afraid to take your songs apart. Have a listen to it, then put it away. Make sure that it is the best song you can write. You are now competing, because of technology, against the world. You’re not competing against somebody else in your town, you’re competing against everybody. If you are a songwriter, you have to be better than Timbaland, because that’s the only guy that’s getting cuts these days. Unless you’re better than that, you’re not going to get the cuts. You have to work on your craft.

——–

Learn More about Universal Music Publishing

I’m sure I am preaching to the choir when I say this but there are just too many places to be when you are an artist.  Just off the top of my head are Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, ReverbNation, Last.FM, Sonicbids and Bandcamp.  I sure as hell don’t have a solution although I am fond of Ping.fm and artist data in a pinch.  In what follows I am not suggesting that you not be in all of those places but I am certainly suggesting that you have a plan on how all of these sites and your website work together towards a cohesive plan.  If you don’t have a website for your band…  stop reading this and go spend the money on the domain name for your project and figure it out.  Consider it an investment in your education in the way the digital world works.  It is just as much an educational experience as it is an investment in your music career.

As is I guess obvious (albeit not as obvious as it should be by the pure volume of “Wait, what do you do?” or “Hey, can you get me a record deal?” calls I get) I work with musicians in trying to make sure they have a plan for moving forward in their careers.  It never ceases to amaze me how the vast majority of musicians lack a focus with their digital strategy.  I have had musicians wonder ask me why no one was buying music from their website when none of their well trafficked social networks linked to their homepage and their music was available for free on external sites that were easy to find through search engines.

In a pitch with Warner Music Group where I was consulting for a large Russian financial institution who wanted to start an Itunes Competitor (don’t ask – I’m just happy I didn’t wind up in a barrel in Siberia) I was told the following information about music consumers that I believe whole heartedly.  Apparently there are three types of music consumers:

• Those who will only buy music or download it for free (I believe these are on the endangered species list)
• Those who will only steal music or download it for free.
• Those who will pay for music only if finding it for free (legally or illegally) is too much trouble.

What is the Moral of the story?  If you are planning on selling your music – don’t put it up for free elsewhere!  I know – it sounds basic but look around at your peers.  There are too many artists make this mistake.

Which brings me to the point of this article.  Here are some things to think about when coming up with a basic digital strategy that makes the best use of your content.

Have a plan.  Any plan is better than no plan. Ask yourself what the goal is for your online assets – are you trying to sell music?  Great – than make sure you place premium content or the full offering of content near a point of purchase – preferably on your own website.

Are you just trying to get your name out there?  Okay – well make sure if you are giving away music absolutely free that you are getting an email address in return.  If you only have one product and are giving it away…  can I make the suggestion that you have to be in business somehow?  If you only have one 4 song E.P. and no live show or merchandise to sell then it’s time to ask your self -what are you actually promoting?  Isn’t the idea of freemium giving something away in the hopes of getting people to ultimately purchase something else?  Did you think the free samples at the supermarket were given away because you looked hungry?  God knows I would write much less often on this blog if it didn’t convert a few readers to consulting clients.  (Not that I don’t adore you – I really do)

I see great musicians doing this all the time –blogging on their MySpace page which has no purchase button rather than on their website where even the people who don’t wind up being converted into buyers leave important data when analytics are looked at.  Amazing band photos wind up on Flickr – and they should be on Flickr – but shouldn’t your website be the flagship for all official news?  Shouldn’t a collage of new photos or videos in addition to living on photo sharing and video hosting sites also make an appearance on your website where (hopefully) people can sign up for your mailing list, purchase your products or at least leave you with information as to how and why they arrived on your site?

Every song, photo, video or blog post is another chance to engage your fans.  All I am suggesting is that you make the most of this engagement-

• Give impulse buyers the chance to be impulsive and make your best content available near a point of purchase.
• Give would be fans the chance to get to know you by offering them a song in exchange for their email and providing them a great news product
• Take from the casual visitor to your site the data on how he or she arrived at your site through analytics.

The hardest thing with all of this is consistency.  Keep remembering that being a musician is a grind and that the vast majority of start up businesses of any kind take time to become profitable.

The New Music Seminar begins this evening a 6pm.  Music conferences have always seemed very strange to me and I’ve come to view them very differently over the years.  Below are my experiences at my first music conference and let them serve as  perfect examples of what NOT to do.

When NYU’s Independent Music Festival rolled around in 1994 I was amazingly excited…and amazingly clueless.  At the time I was a member of an eight piece funk band, an NYU student and someone who believed whole heartedly that I would be able to “make it” as a musician even though I had never defined what “making it” would entail – I just knew it sounded better than getting a real job.  I sat in the audience for a few of the panels (which ironically was in the student center at NYU – the exact site of last year’s New Music Seminar), I signed up for some demo critiques with independent label A&R people and was generally bewildered that there could be so many musicians in the world.

You see that last part was important for my perspective.  Sure – I knew a ton of musicians but it always felt like we were a very small subset of the population when I was starting out.  The first time I saw a thousand musicians milling around I was… speechless.  These people all look lost!  I remember thinking “Oh, this is why everyone assumes I’m stoned when I mention that I’m a bass player…”   At the time there were other reasons for that assumption but that will come up again later.

I began to see the telltale signs of different groups of musicians.

• The guy with the Zildjian shirt – drummer
• Long hair, hightop sneakers and acid wash jeans –metal band (usually NJ or Long Island)
• The collared shirt tucked into belted jeans with tennis shoes – horn player.

For all of our creativity and originality it’s funny how many of us choose to wear a uniform.

Here are some things I didn’t do-

Find like-minded peers:

Often the real value of these conferences is that you meet like-minded people in the audience and form relationships with them which can be as important if not more important than getting relationships with the speakers at a conference.  I spoke to no other musicians but made a note that I had never seen so many black Zildjian tee-shirts.  Oddly enough – other musicians who are doing well tend to know a hell of a lot more practical and ground level contacts and advice than executives do.

Make sure you and your product present well:

I made a dash for the independent label demo critiques.  I had a hot off the tape deck 2^nd generation dub of 4 of the best songs from my band’s last live show.  I quickly hand wrote my contact info on the cover and included the names of the songs.  It didn’t occur to me (How could it?) that as quickly as two years later I would be getting demos sent to me as a major label employee and ignoring the ones that were presented this poorly.

I don’t recall 100% but I believe that:

• I was wearing one of the two pairs of pants I owned at the time that were stapled together where they had ripped (Yes- stapled)
• I was wearing a baseball jersey with the words “Junkie Coach” stenciled across the front of it (Oh sweet, sweet irony)
• I was either intoxicated or hung over

Needless to say that was how I presented my band and I to a potential independent label partner.  I can only imagine that looking into my red-rimmed eyes that the label executive must have thought “This kid is more likely to make progress eating a bale of Twinkies than making progress in the music business…”

Have a plan

• I had no clue about just how many musicians there were
• I spoke to no other musicians at the conference
• I dressed like I was an extra in a Cheech and Chong movie
• I handed out a sloppy, hand labeled cassette tape

Apparently that was my four-point plan in 1994.  Please make better use of your conference time than I did!  Look me up if you are at NMS – I’ll be sober, dressed well (albeit casually) and talking to people.

Rick