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.
An older interview from October 2009 but it still has advice useful today.
Gregg Nadel is the Vice President of Marketing and A&R at Atlantic records and the head of an Atlantic Imprint label called F-stop records. He has worked with O.A.R., Zac Brown Band, Marc Broussard, Jon Butler Trio, Paolo Nutini and Trans Siberian Orchestra among others. I was fortunate enough to work with Gregg many years ago when I was in A&R at Lava / Atlantic.
Musician Coaching:
Gregg, thanks for taking the time to meet with me. I often tell people that the best way to get an A&R person’s attention is to self start and to start getting out there on their own selling CD’s, downloads and tickets and developing their online presence, which is the way it was when I was doing A&R. Is this still the most reliable way to get an A&R person’s attention?
GN: Yeah. I’m always really impressed with bands that are able to get something started on their own. For example both O.A.R. and Zac Brown Band were able to develop a regional following and you can see hard work paying off with more fans coming and buying records and tickets. You can see a direct relationship. Usually that’s just a clear-cut sign that there’s a hard-working artist and real self-starter at the core of what’s happening, and that’s always a really promising sign for me – that an artist or band is out there and working really hard and has what it takes to build something.
Musician Coaching:
I’m assuming there’s still an internal sales process in getting a band signed. In other words, you have to go to the heads of the company to get approval. I would guess most people kind of do in this climate. Does the evidence of this hard work you mentioned make it an easier sell?
GN: I think so. There’s actual quantitative information that something’s happening around a particular artist, and it’s not just, “Here’s a song I really like” or “I think there’s potential here.” There’s more information and more to stand on that you can actually evaluate and say that you’re going to be able to build something. It’s harder and harder nowadays and I think it just really takes an effort between the artist and the label and management and a great surrounding team from all sides to really build something.
Musician Coaching:
What would you say are the factors that you’re looking at most? Obviously, you can look at Myspace plays, Twitter followers, but what are the metrics that you put the most stock in when determining if an artist is viable in the marketplace?
GN: Probably a combination of everything, but the biggest thing to me most of the time is the live show and people that are able to start selling tickets, either locally or hopefully even regionally. And also I’m looking for that special magical thing that is happening at a show that is sort of a community being built. That really is, at the end of the day, what makes the light bulb go on for me.
Musician Coaching:
You’re also doing marketing in addition to A&R. Given this unique perspective, can you tell us what it is you think about a band that makes you think they have the kind of appeal – be it broad or niche – that makes you feel like you can expose them to even broader audiences? Is there something about these artists you select that you look at and think, “I can market the hell out of this?” What is this “intangible” to you?
GN: I try to find artists that are built on real fan bases and not necessarily upon the traditional channels of radio and video, especially in today’s world. I’d rather do everything else and then come to radio and video as the final piece of the puzzle. No matter how great a song you think you have, or how great an artist you have, everything needs to line up absolutely perfectly for to actually connect it at radio and at video and at the mainstream channels. For an artist to have a long-term career, it’s much more important to build the foundation properly and make sure you’re going market by market, winning fan by fan and while you’re doing that on the road, following that online. Number one is finding bands that I know can play and knock people out live. I need to feel confident that if I’m going to go into a city, the next time we come back there will be more people at the show. It’s just patience and hitting the same cities over and over and being really concise in planning.
Musician Coaching:
Does the 360 deal change your selection process at all or how you launch an artist? Was it different 5 years ago than it is today?
GN: For me, personally, no. I’ve always gravitated towards the type of bands that have been able to build touring followings, so for me it’s really an exciting place to be in the business and an exciting future. Now we are partners with the artists on the touring and on the merch and on the fan club, and – all these ideas we’ve been working on and building over the past 10 years – now we’re actually partners on these things. I’m really excited about the next 5 years. For example, there’s a young band I’m working with called Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights; starting from being a local thing down in Texas and watching it develop regionally and then nationally on a touring front is the kind of thing I’m really super excited about at the moment.
Musician Coaching:
Along the same lines, how are labels or how is Atlantic specifically contributing to those other streams of revenue above and beyond the old way a record company functioned? I know companies like Warner Music Group was purchasing outside companies to support touring and publishing and merch, but how are you seeing that work?
GN: We have in-house partnership deals now and have our own merch company for retail, touring and online, and we’ve got a VIP ticketing and fan club company. The most exciting thing is that an artist now is never off cycle. As an example, Marc Broussard is in the process of making a new record, but we’re doing this really intimate acoustic tour. We’ll have a full company marketing meeting on the tour – naming the tour, creating merch around the tour, all these things. In the old days it would sort of be off the grid and off the radar. Management would be dealing with that tour, but now it’s just as important 12-16 months after a record for the company to be focusing in and making sure that artist is playing to packed rooms and the tour is doing well and the career is growing as if you were starting to launch a record. It’s a great time for the right artist in these deals because they’re going to get that type of support all the time and on every tour, and managing their Web sites and merch and tour posters and making sure the street team is covering everything. We’ve also brought street team companies in house as well.
Musician Coaching:
I’m also told that Atlantic has allowed you to manage some of the artists you’re working with as well. How are you managing that workload, and how are you seeing the role of a manager changing?
GN: I think the workload is a functionality of only taking on as much as you feel you can handle and really do a great job. Whether it’s management, signing a new band or taking on a different project internally, that all falls under the same category for me. It’s how much I think I can do. From the management side, I’m not necessarily looking to manage stuff that’s signed to F-Stop or Atlantic only. It could be things that are either unsigned and continue to be independent, or at another label. It just has to be the right project and feel the right way for me to want to get involved.
Musician Coaching:
Could you tell me a little bit about the philosophy behind F-Stop and who is signed there and how it works?
GN: So far we have an artist named Matt Hires and Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights. I think the philosophy is to create a small internal team around a small roster of artists that can live off the radar and really develop from the baby stage of their career and get their feet under them with our help before having to go into the bigger system. Then at the right point in time we pull on the different levers within company to start helping out and building and then – whether it’s a year or two years or two albums down the road – depending on each project and each artist, we want to get them into the Atlantic system.
Musician Coaching:
You’re getting tons of unsolicited calls and e-mails. Any other advice you’d have for artists about things you wish they’d have together that would impress you?
GN: Honestly, this sounds silly, but if I stumble onto somebody’s website or Myspace, the first point is to make sure you have contact information. It seems crazy, but I’ve stumbled upon things where I can’t get a hold of the person. Stuff comes in all different shapes and sizes, and I’ve learned not to be turned off if someone’s Myspace or Web site doesn’t look great or if a song isn’t recorded the right way. It’s about listening to a song and seeing what’s really going on.
Check out Gregg’s label F-Stop Music
Ariel Hyatt is Music publicist who started her Career in the 90s as a traditional publicist doing PR for Artists like Lee Scratch Perry, George Clinton, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Project Logic, which was a project that featured John Popper of Blues Traveler and DJ Logic. Several years ago she decided to bring her business exclusively online and developed proprietary software that enables her to do Cyber PR campaigns for artists that focus on getting her clients reviewed online in blogs and websites and placement into popular podcasts.
Prior to you creating the software that allows your clients to track the music that goes out to the blogs you work with, what was the process of PR like for you? What were you doing to get your artists talked about?
AH:
The process of Cyber PR was born out of the utter frustration of being a traditional publicist. For ten years I was just a traditional publicist, writing press releases, pitching music journalists, newspapers, radio, magazines, TV and after September 11th I noticed the pitching wasn’t going well at all and there seemed to be fewer and fewer music journalists writing at local beats. The AP Wire seemed to have taken over running pieces in smaller magazines that were nationally syndicated, and my artists were getting fewer and fewer results. So I started looking online, and as I was doing all my business, in the back of my head a little voice would say, “Wouldn’t it be great if I had a system that would track all the people in Detroit so I wouldn’t have to go hand-pick a list every time” or “Wouldn’t it be great if while I was sleeping there would be something that would send out e-mail alerts about my bands” or “Wouldn’t it be great if I could actually see who was opening the envelope, and who was listening to the music vs. the people that were just taking it directly to the used CD store?” So Cyber PR was basically just a software that answered all my “Wouldn’t it be great if” questions.
So you contacted a bunch of developers, and what you just described is what you designed?
AH:
Exactly. I contracted many developers. And also, I must give Derek Sivers credit, because he was the first person to come up with the concept of Cyber PR. He came to my house one night and said, “You know why I’m doing so, so well with CD Baby and you seem to be doing okay but not doing as well as me with Ariel Publicity?” And I said, “I’d love to know why.” And he said, “Because I invented something that everybody is invited to the table for, and you do something that you have to be very careful and very exclusive about who you work with. If you could just come up with a PR solution where anyone that wanted it could have it, you would have tremendous success.” And I cried, literally and said, “Oh my God, that’s not possible.” But luckily for me, with the advent of the Internet and as broadband started becoming more and more available and as more and more people started blogging and more and more opportunities started happening, that’s exactly what did come to pass. Under Derek’s tutelage and guidance, he helped me discover Ruby on Rails, which is the language in which it’s written, and we went to several different teams of people who at the end of the day delivered a web-based boutique PR firm management system, and that’s what Cyber PR is.
Talk to me about the results of these campaigns – I am guessing they vary greatly because there’s nothing you can do when somebody doesn’t have a story. Should artists actually sit down before contacting a publicist and ask themselves, “What is our story? What is our press focus?”
AH:
Absolutely. I think the problem with any type of work for hire in the music industry is just because you can afford it and pay for it doesn’t mean it’s going to actually yield you the result you want. I think even before you look at your story, which of course a publicist or a marketer does need, you need to ask yourself, “What do I want? What is my end goal?” I think this is the part a lot of musicians struggle with because they don’t actually know. They work so hard to create an album, get it produced, get it mixed, get it mastered and get it out into the world, that they don’t think beyond the creative process of making amazing music. They just work so hard at their craft and don’t then think, “What am I going to do after this album is finished? What’s my goal? Do I want to tour and touch a lot of people live? Do I want to sell a lot of digital copies on iTunes? Do I want to place this music in film and television? Do I want to have just a physical thing I can sell when I play locally?” These are all things you need to begin to ask yourself first. What would the reason be for hiring a publicist? In order to do that you need to take it back even a step further and say, “What is the result when I hire a publicist?” I think literally nine times out of ten when people would come to me when I was a traditional PR firm, they wouldn’t even understand what a publicist did, they just somehow knew they needed publicity, so it made sense to hire a publicist.
I guess that leads to a good question: As someone that has done this her entire adult life, what does a publicist do?
AH:
I think a good publicist is one of the invisible members in your band. It’s the person who is the mouthpiece and helps you craft your story. Of course you have your story, but a publicist is the one that should be able to pull it out of you and position it. Your publicist should be able to leverage his/her connections and contacts they’ve had that they’ve built and connect you to them. And a good publicist should help you with strategy. It shouldn’t just be, “Here’s a list of 100 places we’re going to mail your CD.” What’s the strategy? Is this a music tech conversation you’re having? Should we be going for music tech blogs and publications? Or is this a lifestyle kind of thing? Are you also a fashion designer, and we’re going to try to get you placed in fashion magazines? Is this a human interest piece? Does your music somehow benefit a charity, or are you singing about something that is beneficial to other people? Are we going to go for humanitarian publications and magazines? I think just having a list of 100 random music people that like to review albums will yield some results, but with over 2,000 records coming out every single week, your publicist should really help you get a vision and help you say, “Here’s what’s special and unique” aside from just, “Here’s yet another good album.” Is it a local angle? Are you doing something very locally? That could be a good jumping off place. What’s happening in your local town? What other local bands are you playing with? Are you making an impact in your local community? And the more fodder a publicist can get to help you start to build your story, the better.
I guess that supports what I tell clients fairly regularly. “Dude releases record” is no longer newsworthy, so I would say even before you get to a publicist you have to think about what you’re doing that is newsworthy or setting out to do newsworthy things. Would you agree?
AH:
I would agree 100%. I look at Matthew Ebel, who is an artist I’ve been blogging about recently on Music Think Tank in my 1000 True Fans series. When I met Matthew, he had a really, really good idea to do a subscription-based website called MatthewEbel.net, where he was doing a weekly concert on YouStream, which now he has over 300 people come and tune in every week, which is amazing. He had this idea of recording a song a month and having people on a paid subscription basis gain special access to him and his music and his videos. And that was such a good and compelling story, and he started having success. All of a sudden the Boston Globe was calling me and saying, “We heard about this local artist, and would you comment on what he’s done?” He didn’t go after all the press in his local area and say, “Hey look what I’m doing.” He just created something that was compelling enough. And this goes back to of course the classic Seth Godin blog where he says, “Unless one person is telling the next and telling the next and telling the next, you don’t really have a viable, great product.” So in Matthew Ebel’s case, his project started taking off, and the media came to him. I’ve seen this time and time again. The national media will come to you, or any type of media, if you actually have a story that’s buzzworthy.
Tell me about some of your traditional publicity experiences…
AH:
When I was a traditional publicist, I worked with larger artists like Lee Scratch Perry and George Clinton and P Funk. What’s fascinating about those types of clients and so true is that you as a publicist are literally, in my humble opinion, only as good as your clients. So the day George Clinton got arrested – and I was representing him at the time – all of a sudden every single newspaper and magazine and music journalist started calling me. Rolling Stone called me, Spin called, Random Notes called. It was insane. And these were music journalists that I couldn’t get on the phone for years, and music journalists that I had sent literally 10,000 packages to over the years. And here was this big news story – which was a sad story – about one of the godfathers of modern music getting arrested, and this was when the press came to me.
The other thing where I had a really interesting journey was working with Sally Taylor, who had an enormous pedigree as the daughter of James Taylor and Carly Simon. Getting publicity for her was not difficult. All I had to do, unfortunately was lead with, “Here’s who this girl is,” and the phone would ring off the hook. So I managed to place thousands of articles. And with Lee Scratch Perry too, yet another living legend. It’s not hard to be a publicist for those type of clients. All you have to do is literally put the word out and sit back and wait for the phone to ring. I’m not saying you don’t strategize for major artists, because of course; Marilyn Laverty beautifully strategizes Bruce Springsteen. Every time he has a release, it’s artful to see how it all unfolds. But when you’re not at that level, what do you do and how do you get the attention? That is where a whole lot of misunderstandings tend to happen. And if you ask any publicist that’s ever worked for an independent musician or an artist that does not have an enormous buzz-worthy story or something crazy like a famous parent pedigree or a human interest that’s so strong, they’ll say it’s difficult. I remember once I got an editor of People Magazine on the phone and he said, “If your client survived cancer and came back from the brink of death, I might be interested in talking about their music. Otherwise, it’s not big enough for us.”
I remember feeling really humbled when he said that. I also will never forget when I sat down with David Wild from Rolling Stone after sending him thousands of CD’s. He knew who I was, he’s a huge music fan, he knew all or most of the clients I represented. I did one of those mentor sessions with him at South by Southwest. I was a young publicist, and I had fifteen minutes with him, and I was really upset when I sat down and said, “Why won’t you ever call me back? Why won’t you ever acknowledge when I send you all these artists?” And he said, “They’re not ready for me. I am at Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone has a readership of over two million, and your artists aren’t newsworthy. They’re very good, but they’re not newsworthy. And when they become newsworthy I will call them. And please tell them that the best place to get coverage is local newspapers, local beats.” This was back in the day when there was local beat. It doesn’t exist anymore, because when newspapers started to get into trouble, the local beat music reporter was the first on the chopping block. So that was a very long-winded answer, but your publicist should be able to strategize that type of conversation that David Wild had with me: “Where are we going to start? What is the story going to be?”
What are some of the success stories you’ve had since Cyber PR started? How have you built some of these people into getting regular press?
AH:
You know, it’s been really, really fun. One of our success stories where classic online publicity feeds major publicity is, we work with an artist named John Taglieri. John is an artist who for many years has been doing his own blend of classic rock. He took to Cyber PR like a fish to water, totally fell in love with the system, and he worked every contact that we introduced him to. He became a chart-topper on the PodSafe Music Network, and he got his music played on hundreds of podcasts. After that happened, Billboard Magazine was doing a story on podcasting and musicians and saw he was on the chart. They called him, and he ended up getting featured in Billboard. Now I could’ve Fed-Exed his album to Billboard and said, “Here’s this great record,” but it wouldn’t have meant anything to them. He built a story, and they came to him.
So it really is important in terms of building blocks. In other words, I just interviewed a radio independent who said as well, “We have to start with all the small stations and then the big stations look at the small stations” or agents who say “If you’re on tour, you get the opening slots or the Monday nights and then you build up from there.” I suppose it’s the same thing.
AH:
That’s absolutely right. I agree. Each thing feeds the next, and it’s so hard I think to determine what is the thing that’s going to hit. When I started publicizing John through Cyber PR, I publicized him the way I publicized a hundred other artists, but it was John who understood how to use the system and who went and introduced himself to every single podcaster and got himself fully involved in the system. And they liked him, and we had a national PR win. That was really exciting. I have a couple of case studies. One of our artists Omar Alexander said he saw a 20% increase in CD sales, both physical and digital since he hired us. Dudley Saunders, who’s from Los Angeles increased his email list by 102%. Kelly Richie, who’s a blues musician from Cincinnati received 90 placements on blogs, podcasts and internet radio stations. And Will Danes created a portfolio of all his exposure, which helped him sign to a national booking agency. And one other artist e-mailed us, which I was so excited about. Her name is Josephine, and she’s from France. She was about to be deported and by showing what we got to the NIS, she obtained an Extraordinary Ability Visa to stay in the United States. It’s funny, Cyber PR seems to achieve different things for different people. If I can just help an artist go from 23 followers to 1,000 in Twitter, I feel like we’re worth our weight in gold.
So, you’ve had this book Music Success in 9 Weeks for a couple years if I’m not mistaken.
AH:
Yeah. Music Success in 9 Weeks came out in June of 2008.
And you just released the second edition. What did you change, or did you just reflect the fact that technology has changed so much?
AH:
Well, when I first wrote Music Success in 9 Weeks, Facebook didn’t even have fan pages. The net changes at such breakneck speed. And when I first released it also, I was going on and on about how wonderful Twitter is, and everybody looked at me like I had seven heads. Now that Twitter has hit the mainstream, I sort of updated that as well and talked about some other musicians that have actually used Twitter to make money like Amanda Palmer, or musicians who have millions of followers. Of course I talk about John Mayer, who I think uses Twitter beautifully. I also added a lot about Facebook and the fan pages and why it’s so important to have those. I also completely rewrote the blogging chapter because blogging has evolved massively, and the NYU study that happened in 2007 was very interesting, but there have been some other studies that we’ve been paying close attention to here at Cyber PR including the 2009 Musicadium study. And so I wanted to talk about these new findings from an academic standpoint as well as from a musician youth standpoint. Also, there are so many new apps. iPhone wasn’t even really in the mainstream. All these apps that help people on their phones like Tweetdeck and Tweety and Tweet Later and all these amazing Twitter applications; none of these were really in existence, so there was a lot to update.
Any final words of warning for musicians if someone is not yet at the point of hiring a publicist? Any advice about approaching bloggers?
AH:
General advice is, “Don’t hype yourself.” The days of hyping are over. Don’t hype, don’t sell, it will just land horribly. Understand that we are now in a brand new world. PR 2.0 is here to stay, and it’s all about two-way conversations and understanding who you are talking to. The thing that’s amazing about social media – which is why I’ve completely moved my company over to be a social media PR firm – is, that is about understanding other people and understanding that you can’t just approach them with a “Me, me, me” attitude. So my number one piece of advice is, “If you can contribute and contribute in a way that makes people appreciate you, you will succeed with online publicity.”
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You can find out more about Ariel’s Cyber PR Service, her book Music Success in Nine Weeks or Follow her on Twitter
Panos Panay is the Founder and CEO of Sonicbids, a site that helps connect indie artists and bands with promoters looking to book them. A native of the island of Cyprus, Panay came to the U.S. in the early ‘90s to attended Berklee College of Music as a guitar performance major, with aspirations of becoming a jazz guitarist. While at Berklee, he got interested in the school’s new Music Business Program and became fascinated by the structure of the music industry and the relationships between managers, agents, record labels, publicists and publishers. An internship with Ted Kurland Associates led him to a career as an agent booking bands and artists including Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Sonny Rollins, Branford Marsalis, Isaac Hayes and Patti Labelle.
In early 2001, Panos quit his job as VP of the International Division at ted Kurland and started the next phase of his life as entrepreneur and business owner. Sonicbids was launched on February 25, 2001 with the mission to empower what he deems the “artistic middle class” to help them build their careers through the use of technology. Through Sonicbids he helps artists fulfill their needs and answer what he sees as their three biggest questions: 1) How do I make a living? 2) How can I connect with a larger audience? 3) How can I get my music out there?
As he enters his tenth year at the helm of Sonicbids, I had the opportunity to talk to Panos about his company and its future, his mission in the music world and some advice he has for artists and bands trying to get noticed amidst the noise.
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Why did you take the giant risk of becoming an entrepreneur, maxing out credit cards and starting Sonicbids ten years ago?
Panos:
Besides the normal insanity that possesses anybody that decides become an entrepreneur, I think being an agent and obviously coming to the States to be a musician, I had experienced firsthand how difficult it was. Back in about 1999, I started to notice it was unnecessarily difficult for bands who made under a certain amount of money to be in contact with people who wanted to book them. As an agent, we had an informal rule that unless you made $3,000 a night, we couldn’t really do anything with you. We couldn’t book you because it just didn’t make financial sense for somebody who was getting ten percent to go out there and make a bunch of phone calls to try to book somebody for under about $300 gross take. And after you deduct your expenses, there’s just not a lot of money left. I thought, “Not everybody I know makes $3,000 per night, and in fact, I don’t know anybody that makes over $3,000 per night except the people I’m booking.” All my friends who were in bands and all the people around me made $100 a night, if that. I thought, “Why should it be this difficult for people to connect, especially in an era where you can buy airplane tickets, books and even trade stocks online? Why can’t you find a gig or book a band online?” That was the impetus to start Sonicbids.
I know a lot of people have an image of people who start businesses. You start a business because you want to become uber rich, or you start a business because you want to be self employed or have freedom. To be honest with you, I didn’t start a business for any of these reasons. I started a business because I had a vision of what I wanted to create and what I wanted to provide and accomplish. This vision was very intense, and I don’t think it’s dimmed at all in the last ten years. I think it’s even intensified. It’s just like it is for an artist: You have a song in your head, and you’re really eager to put it down on a piece of paper and compose it and record it and then go out into the world and play it for people who will really enjoy it, and if you’re lucky, you create a song that hundreds of thousands or millions of people love. It’s a similar thing with an entrepreneur: You have this vision, and it’s like a mission from God that you want to accomplish that thrusts you every day out of bed. That’s what’s been keeping me going for ten years. I tell a lot of people that maybe the second craziest thing to being in a rock band is starting your own business. There are a lot of similarities between the two. I think besides being a musician, being an entrepreneur has always enabled me to relate to the people that we service.
I left a fledgling career as a musician to become an A&R guy, thinking that would be the safe thing to do. Little did I know …
Panos:
Maybe that’s the third craziest thing to do, after being in a rock band or running a company.
It seems as if Sonicbids is a company that is still true to your original vision. You really have built a platform where you’re helping people get gigs, although it seems like the company is expanding in different ways as well. If I had to guess, I’d say that one out of four opportunities you offer are licensing based or related to music placement. Then of course you guys are branching out, and you just launched Facebook enhancements page and the recent acquisition of artistdata.com, so you are also in the marketing tools business as well. Is the direction changing at all, or is it just getting more comprehensive?
Panos:
I think it’s evolving more than anything else. When I started the company, my passion had always been and still is for empowerment. I grew up in a very small country. So when I was growing up in the ‘80s, the ability to connect with people, and the yearning to reach out there and access opportunity was very limited. I think in many ways that’s informed the stuff I’ve done in my life. This concept of empowerment has always been very much part of the DNA of Sonicbids. I defined the vision early on. The mission was surrounding empowering this new class of artists that back then I thought of as a “middle class.” We want to empower this class to go out there and connect with any opportunity that exists and develop a career in the manner they deem fit and not in the manner someone else tells them.
For me, I feel at the end of the day every artist and every piece of music yearns to find an audience. It yearns to find somebody that’s going to listen to it. For Sonicbids, whether that music is consumed by somebody that goes to a festival and sees your band on that stage, or it’s somebody that sees a show on MTV and connects with your music through the background track that’s going on or accesses your music through a video game, or connects with your music because of an awesome brand campaign that we helped you create, fundamentally to me doesn’t make a difference. We’ve defined a gig as not just a “live show,” but as success or a deal or a way to expose your music – a conduit for you to get your music out there. Whether it’s on a blog, or a series at a winery in California, or a gig at South by Southwest, it doesn’t really matter. A gig is a way to put you in front of an audience and get your music in front of that crowd. Many times people will say, “Not everything on Sonicbids is something that pays artists.” And I’m the biggest proponent for artists getting paid, but I also know as a guy that has run a business for many years, sometimes I get more value by doing a relationship where money didn’t change hands, but it gave me a platform for exposure or it gave me something I really valued.
So I have neither a torch nor a pitchfork in my hand when I ask the following question but I know there is a lot of concern about just how much and how often musicians are paying different services (my services included) for the chance to get heard, get a gig, get marketed etc. How did you arrive at the concept – aside from the fact that the market would bear it – of creating a community where you have musicians paying for these opportunities, rather than the talent agencies that source these opportunities paying the fees?
Panos:
I think that’s a great and legitimate question. Submission fees have existed long before Sonicbids came into existence, and certainly submission fees will exist in any business. If you’re an architect and you’re submitting your drawings to somebody for consideration, you pay money. If you’re a college student and are looking to gain admission to a college, you pay money. Fundamentally, it does take effort on the other end for somebody to review it.
Definitely at the beginning of the company, I felt very strongly that paying a token fee of $2-$5 to apply to something acted as a filter. It makes people think twice before they apply to something and clutter somebody’s inbox with a submission that is totally inappropriate and adds so much noise that even the ones that are legitimate don’t get considered. If somebody opens their inbox and they have thousands of submissions, and 955 of them are complete crap, the 45 that are really appropriate don’t get considered whatsoever. The fee also puts the pressure on the other end and even almost guilts those folks into listening to stuff. Does it always work? No. I think there have been situations on Sonicbids where people have been illegitimate and have tried to prey on artists and we have always taken the hard line and booted them.
Do I think artists should pay $35, $40 or $50 for stuff, or even $25 or $15 for things that don’t add value? Not at all. The average gig listing on Sonicbids costs $6. You have the big ones like South by Southwest or others that cost $40 or $45. But those submission fees have existed long before we were around. It costs you $30 or $35 to submit for song contests. These fees too have always existed. And if you apply through Sonicbids, it doesn’t cost you a penny more than if you were to send your CD through the mail like you had to in the old days. My philosophy is, you don’t pay a penny more to go through Sonicbids than you would’ve otherwise. But the fees, when they work – and I would say they work very well about 90% of the time – are a small cost for the musician. But for the promoter, it gives them the ability to hire and pay a band that normally they wouldn’t necessarily have the flexibility to hire.
I’ll give you an example. Summerfest in Milwaukee is actually one of the world’s biggest festivals. They get 1.2 million people over the course of ten days to come to the festival. Prior to working with them in 2004, not a single band playing there was an indie band. Fast forward through the past six years of working together, and there are 60 bands, all emerging artists that are playing there and getting paid. The reason they’re able to do that is not because the sponsors give them money to go and book emerging artists. The sponsors give them money to go book the big, flashy names. The fees we charge are making it possible for these guys to book and pay 60 emerging artists and put them in front of an audience and on stages where they normally wouldn’t play. I can go on and on about the tours of China or Scandinavia we have or the tens of thousands of opportunities that exist out there.
The important thing is really just how it works philosophically. And I think you explained that- thank you.
Panos:
Let me clarify one more thing also. Our thinking has evolved. Actually, we realized that one of the disadvantages of these submission fees is that they can discourage people from experimenting. They think, “I could pay $10 to apply to something I really know – for example, Bonnaroo – but there’s this opportunity that I haven’t really heard of before that costs $5. Even though the $5 option seems like a good fit for me, I’m going to submit to Bonnaroo.” We realized in the past ten years that more people tend to apply to the “hits,” and the bigger opportunities like Bonnaroo or the tours of China where only one band is getting selected. This is a staggering figure, but 60% of the gigs on Sonic Bids in a given day wouldn’t receive a submission. We thought that was weird.
Last year we had 70,000 gigs booked through the site, which is great. And we knew that one out of twelve bands that submitted got selected, which is not really that bad when you think about it. But then I thought, “There’s something really ridiculous here. So, 60% of our gigs don’t get submissions in a given day, but only 10% of our membership on a given day gets selected to something they apply to? That’s bullshit.” So, what we decided to do is eliminate fees for gradually 90%-95% of our gig listings. We will segment our gig listings – and you’ll see this in the next few weeks – into premium listings that cost money and then all other gig listings will get moved to a system where based on your membership, you’ll be able to access a certain number of them entirely for free.
We’ve seen it through the beta tests we’ve done over the last five months: it substantially increases the selection numbers of people, because they’re no longer afraid to experiment and submit to things. They figure it doesn’t cost them a whole lot. We’re putting these filters in place by effectively limiting the number of gigs you can apply to every month for free, based on your level of membership. So, if you’re a “Sonic” member, you’ll get a certain amount, if you’re a “Super Sonic” member, you’ll get maybe two times the amount. We’re very excited about this direction. At launch, about 65% of the gig listings will be free, and then gradually over the next three or four months we plan to convert about 90% of them to this system.
The biggest complaints / requests I get – aside from the lofty “hail Marys” I get via my website like “Can you help me get a record deal and a hot girlfriend … and a sandwich?” – is about getting an agent. I know bands who can draw 200 people in twelve markets but still can’t get an agent. I was wondering if from what you’ve seen as an agent and as a guy running a live opportunity platform, which best practices you’ve come up with for getting and booking their own gigs? Are there some dos and don’ts you can share about what is getting people better gigs and what is not?
Panos:
As far as Sonicbids goes, you might be amazed, but it’s the most obvious things. For example, make sure it looks like you’ve actually taken care of your EPK when you’re putting it together. I can’t believe how many people just slap things together and throw in some photos to create something that looks like it took three minutes. The person on the other end thinks, “If you don’t take this seriously, why should I assume you’re going to take the gig I risk my night on seriously?”
I think it’s so very important, whether you’re an artist trying to reach a promoter or a business trying to do business with a customer, to not think of yourself. Put yourself in the mind of the person you’re trying to engage. A lot of people tend to think of these promoters as these big, wealthy powerful people. That’s absolutely not the case. In fact, most people I know that book music in clubs are often as poor if not poorer than the average musician. They’re taking a bet every time. It is a labor of love. Most people that run clubs don’t make a lot of money. But they do it because many of them genuinely really love music. They take a bet every single night that people are going to show up to see the band they booked and have a few drinks, and based on that, these people are going to make some money. It’s really not a business that anybody tends to get attracted to because they’re trying to become millionaires or billionaires. If people want to get rich, they go into other businesses or go work on Wall Street. I find that taking care of the way you put together your press kit, and indicating that other people have taken a bet on you in the past by filling out your calendar or even putting in a simple video shot with your iPhone that shows your band’s energy and photos that show energy and that you care. The included bio should be witty. These things make a tremendous difference.
Regarding the video, I have it in my head that showing a band in front of a crowd does something psychologically. Have you found that to be the case?
Panos:
Yeah. We talk to our promoters all the time, either directly or through surveys. And everyone says, “The thing that makes the most difference for me is not some fancy video that someone shot that looks like they spent ten grand doing it. I like to see raw footage of a band in front of a crowd with the crowd getting really energized. That tells me everything I need to know.”
Sometimes I see bands obsessing over the songs they’re going to put up there and saying, “Oh man, the production isn’t quite ready yet.” And the truth is, music today is not consumed through $5,000 Bang and Olufson speakers. Most of us consume music either on crappy headphones, crappy computer speakers or crappy car speakers. I’d much rather have people worry about the way their EPK looks, the kind of video and media they put up there and the reviews and links they include rather than worrying about how good the production on their song is. Ultimately, nobody will ever hear the song the way you’re hearing it in the studio when you cut it and won’t listen to it as closely as you do when you hear it through your own headphones. It’s certainly not the way a promoter listens to music. Sometimes a promoter is going through hundreds of these and needs to pick one or two.
The other advice I have is to spend time on your social media. You’ll be amazed, but people do care about how many Facebook friends and “likes” you have, how many Twitter followers you have and what the general Twitter buzz is about you. I think there are a ton of different tools out there to help you with this. I think dismissing social media or not minding your online presence is akin to suicide today. Most promoters are 25-30-year old kids who just really dig music, so of course they’re going to go online. The first thing they’ll do probably is Google your band. Even promoters who use Sonicbids say, “I use Sonicbids as an entryway. It helps me know which things I’m not interested in, I narrow it down to the people I am interested in, but then after I listen to their EPK and it draws my attention, I’m going to spend a little bit more time.” That means they’re going to go online and see what’s going on. We give promoters a lot of links in their submission view when they’re looking at it. They don’t just see a band’s EPK. They also see things like Last FM plays, Twitter buzz, Google blog buzz and all kinds of other aids that help a promoter make a decision.
For me this is high-level advice for the average band. When I was an agent I had a very simple philosophy: “I’m going to out-work everyone else around me and be the guy that makes more calls and spends more time and charms more people so I can book this tour.” I think it’s the same thing as an artist. It comes down to how much you want it. Are you willing to make one more call or one more submission than the guy next to you? I know everybody says they want it. But it takes a certain level of dedication. If it was easy, most people would be successful.
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For more information about the services Sonicbids offers, visit the Sonicbids website. Also check out Panos’ blog, Panos’ Brew.
Jeff Gandel is an experienced music and entertainment attorney with is own practice based in NYC. Jeff also founded a company called Royalty Recovery that helps artist collect on Royalties they are owed – a problem that is far too common. Jeff’ specializes in intellectual property law including music, digital media, technology, videogames and movies. His clients include producers David Bendeth and Jason Nevins, artists Warren Haynes, Gov’t Mule, Jared Scharff, Scott Schreer and Serge Devant, music distributor The Orchard and many others. I caught up with Jeff recently to discuss some of the things he felt musicians should be aware of from his fifteen years of practicing law.
Jeff, thanks for taking the time to speak today. Tell me, how did you get into the Music business?
JG:
I’ve been around this my whole life. When I was growing up, my grandparents owned a record distributor. I remember being three or four years old and running around their warehouse in stacks of records higher than the biggest buildings. My whole life, I’ve been around music and was lucky enough to find a way to have a career in it.
I always remember you as a music attorney. What was your first legal job?
JG:
Tuff City (records) was the first legal job, but during law school, one of my good friends and I opened up a company called Gravity Hits, where we did merchandise and touring and booking and that side of it. That’s how I first got back into it during law school. And then I got out of law school and did it in house at Tuff City. I was there for a while, and while being in-house there I started my own practice, since it was a small indie label, and they didn’t need a full-time attorney. I had the benefit of being in-house and having a steady gig and a place to learn, but being able to get out and be an entrepreneur and build my own thing.
What kind of practice have you had for the last 15 years? You’ve been really doing this in that kind of format on your own and taking clients. What kind of practice would you say you have? I know you represent a lot of labels, producers, music tech companies, etc. Do you have a specific area of focus?
JG:
It’s pretty general for the most part, though we focus primarily on the music industry. I’d say 90% of my clientele fits in some relationship to the music industry. I’ve represented a couple of movies, a couple of books etc. over the years. But generally, whether it’s technology, a website company or a delivery or tracking company or a band or musician or one of the corporate entities I represent, somehow they tie into the music world. A lot of them aren’t traditional, so I’m not a lawyer always representing the traditional band stuff you hear about. But everything for the most part ties back into music.
When did Royalty Recovery come about, and tell me what the problem is that that’s a solution to.
JG:
Our industry has a volume problem. When I say volume, I mean the amount of information that goes through it. Because of the number of songs, artists and record labels out there, a lot of artists and writers and even smaller record labels are not properly accounted to. For the most part, it’s just because people change addresses, don’t sign contracts, etc. Most of it is not malicious. But then again, there are some people that have disputes over rights or are stealing rights. I continued to see the combination of these things for almost the first 10 years of my law practice, and represented a number of people within that, most notably the estate of a writer named Harry McClintock, who wrote a big song called “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” I worked with him within my law practice to make sure he was getting paid, particularly by the “Oh Brother Where art Thou?” movie. I worked with the estate to try to clean it up so they could get paid on that and a lot of other uses.
For a number of reasons, working with people that weren’t getting paid didn’t necessarily fit within the normal law practice model. So, almost seven years ago, I started a company called Royalty Recovery that works with any people in the industry who are not receiving their royalties. And some of it is as innocent as people don’t know that in the U.S. you collect your money directly from the record labels. It’s the same in Canada. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, you have to go to the local society to get your money. It can be something as simple as not having the knowledge or the tools to understand where your money is, or something as bad as, I’ve had clients whose parents were managing them and their parents are not passing through all the money. It runs the gamut of stuff. And we’ve been very successful. We’ve been in business about 7 years, and we’ve helped correct and recover over 2,000 royalty streams and copyrights. We’ve recovered several million dollars in unpaid royalties and have thankfully been successful in helping clients reclaim what is theirs.
Are there things that artists doing things for themselves can do to ensure they don’t have slip ups with registering and paperwork that are preventing them from getting what is due to them? Are there common mistakes that you see musicians making?
JG:
I think it’s important to understand the structure of where money gets paid and who pays that money. I think that’s the biggest problem I run into with young artists: not understanding the place in the world all these different societies fall into. I’ll run through that quickly.
The first set of rights that falls within music, which is the one we all think about, is tied to sales. You sell a record and you get paid. If you sell it yourself on iTunes in the U.S., they send you the money and it’s all good and all taken care of. If you sell it in Canada, you get some of the money as an artist, but if you’re also the writer, that money is then taken and sent to a society, and as a writer you need to be signed up with the society to collect that money. And it’s the same in most of the rest of the world. If you sell a record in the UK, that money is then collected by a society, and if you’re not signed up with that society as a writer, you’re not getting that piece of the royalties. iTunes will send you the artist side, but you’re not going to get your full share if you’re both the writer and the artist.
The second category we look at is performance rights for the writers. Those are your typical Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) in the States. We have three, and we’re one of the only territories in the world that has more than one: BMI; SESAC; ASCAP. As a writer, you want to be signed up for that. What those societies do is that if there’s a public performance of your songs, they will collect a fee from that. If it falls within their parameters of collectible use, you’ll get the royalties on it. As a writer, you want to register all your songs, make sure all your songs are in the system correctly with your and their names spelled correctly. And if you get a performance, you want to keep your eye on that and try to understand where that fits into it. Particularly if you get on TV in the U.S., you need to have a cue sheet filed with the PRO by the company that is putting out the TV show or the movie to make sure that money is going to flow through. You also need to check that cue sheet to make sure it’s right. One of my clients – a company called Tunesat – fingerprints people’s music and tracks it through to make sure that every time it’s getting played, the client knows about it so they make sure they’re getting paid.
The second kind of performance is a much newer right here in the U.S., and some of your users that are European will know about this. Until recently, U.S. artists were not entitled to a similar performance royalty. In the last ten years, a company called SoundExchange opened up. What they do is for a performance of a song – the actual sound recording of a song – they monitor it in any place it’s performed digitally and pay a royalty for it. Any of your readers that are not signed up for SoundExchange, I highly recommend it, and it’s very easy. Just go to the website, sign up with your name and address and not too much more. They hold money going back a couple of years, so especially if you’ve had some performances, there may be some money there. If you’re European based or Canadian, you’re entitled to a much broader base of performance royalties outside the United States that most Americans are not entitled to. I speak with a lot of generalities, because some Americans can qualify and some can’t. But for the most part, the same royalty – which is a master performance royalty collected by societies in the UK and some other societies in Europe – is available to people outside the U.S. The nice thing about these societies is that there’s no cost to them. It’s really just about getting registered, and if there’s money there, they’ll get you paid. For most indie artists, there’s not a ton of money there or any money in a lot of these places, but considering it’s nothing more than filling out your name and address, I always tell my clients, “You never know where a paycheck will come from, even if it’s $20.”
So, if you’re an artist that gets a TV show in Asia or Europe, would you register with the local PRO, or would you have your performance royalty organization chase after that? I was under the impression that if you register directly with a non-U.S. PRO, you’re going to be subject to taxes two different times.
JG:
As far as the tax issue, that’s definitely something musicians should talk to their accountants about. I can give you a structural answer to that though. The local PROs have reciprocal deals with all the foreign PROs. If you supply them with information, they will chase after them and ensure you get paid and do what they want to do. Truthfully, that’s extra income for them if they can drive it back to the U.S., so they are pretty aggressive about going after the foreign societies. The one detriment to having a local society – and I think it’s a very minimal detriment – is that it takes a little longer. Let’s say the show is in the UK. First it has to get processed through the UK society, which takes a few months, and then it has to go through the U.S. society. It takes a little time, but for the most part, very few artists are big enough that they’d want to have individual deals in different territories. If you’re a very large artist or are getting a huge number of uses in a particular territory, you might want to think about having a local society. But for the most part and for most artists it’s simpler and less confusing to have one direct society.
Do you have any advice about how to choose a lawyer?
JG:
Depending on what you’re looking for in a lawyer you are looking for different things. I think the one general thing you want to look for is someone you trust. This is someone you’re going to want to rely on for advice and to help steer you, so you have to feel a connection and believe that what they’re saying to you and speaking about is in line with your view of the world and how you want to move forward. That said, I think it depends what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a lawyer that can shop a deal and bring you to a label, then you want a lawyer that has some experience doing that. You want a lawyer that has some history doing that. If you are just looking for someone to look over your contract and make sure you’re covered, you don’t need to know as much about what bands they had and that kind of information. The best advice I can give is to ask friends and ask people and find someone you know they’ve worked with for a while. We can all refer you to a million clients. We all have people we trust and who can give you numbers. But it’s always good to have a personal connection to a lawyer. If you know someone that is already represented by a lawyer, that’s a good thing. It’s a personal thing, and as with many things in your life, and especially when you’re going to have someone manage your career and your life, sometimes you have to use a little bit of gut. It has to feel right.
You’ve been in the business since the days you could hand somebody five or ten CDs, and that was a real gift rather than some annoying clutter. What are you seeing changing with artists deals and developing artists? Is there a general piece of advice you could give artists about the digital age related to common mistakes you see them making?
JG:
I don’t know that there is. Every artist has so much more of its own structure and own identity now. A lot of artists are very good at being artists. They may have people around them that can help them, but they could use a bigger structure. There’s the temptation to stay independent, because you can get your music out there. But I think for a lot of artists having a team that knows what they’re doing and has been doing it for a while can help them. And there’s a downside there, because you have to know what you’re getting and what you’re giving up, but most artists aren’t set up to be able to become superstars without an organization around them. It doesn’t have to be a record label, but for the time being, those are the structures that are set up to do it and have had success. The only advice I can give an artist is be well represented and have good people around you that can make good decisions, whether it’s a lawyer, a manager or someone from the inside. Make sure you have people around you that can help you see what you’re getting and what you’re giving up. Understand what is being put in front of you at all times.
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For more information on Jeff be sure to check out Royalty Recovery.
Stuart Kollmorgen is the co-founder of Big Yellow Duck, an audio post production facility located in New York City. He is an experienced composer who attended Berklee College of Music. Stuart got his start in the performance arena, playing in several bands in Boston and New York City before developing an interest in television, advertising and film music, a major area of professional focus for him for the past two decades. He has composed the score for the Playhouse Disney children’s shows Stanley and JoJo’s Circu and Johnny and the Sprites and is currently working on a third season of Imagination Movers. He has also worked on several Discovery Kids shows and recently finished up a season of the Chorion animated series Gaspard and Lisa, based on the popular children’s books by Anne Gutman. With Big Yellow Duck, he has done soups-to-nuts audio and music production work on The History Channel program Battles B.C. as well as the Discovery Channel hit Tyrannosaurus Sex.
I spoke to Stuart about his company Big Yellow Duck, how he fell in love with long-form television and post production, and the skills he believes musicians and composers need to have to actually work lucratively and experience real longevity in the music industry.
Stuart- thanks for your time. So, what is Big Yellow Duck?
SK:
It’s an audio post production facility, but as we move forward, we find that what that is an umbrella for is getting larger and larger. We started this business with a schizophrenic focus. My partner’s in advertising, and he worked as an agency producer for 15 years. He has very good people skills. I am a composer and have been concentrating on long-form animation for the past decade.
How did you start off in music, and how have you arrived at a place where you’re making a good living just being a composer and running an audio production facility?
SK:
I consider my post production with with Big Yellow Duck to be my grown-up job, my “day job.”
I found a guitar teacher that I admired when I was 14. I had taken lessons in a church basement – nothing special. But then I met this dude named Dave Cleveland, and it just took. I said, “This is what I want to do.” I went to my parents and said, “I heard of this college called Berklee, and I’m going to go to Berklee when I go to college.” This was in junior high school, and they were hoping it would wear off I think, but it didn’t. I did go to Berklee, which was enormously helpful in some ways and enormously unhelpful in others, because there were more career options as a regular musician at the time, and now those have really dried up. The chances of playing in a pit band or playing in a live situation where you can make a living seems to be very difficult these days. Those union jobs have been largely been replaced with other forms of entertainment.
Originally I was a songwriter, and I wanted to have bands. I had a couple little bands in Boston and moved to New York to start a band with my brother, which we did. But the amount of apathy in New York City is huge. You don’t go out to clubs to see bands here, and it just turned me off to the whole scene.
My brother and his buddy had a huge dilapidated loft on the LES and lived there and rented it out. It had been a printing facility, so it had a huge dance floor-like area in it. They rented it out for parties and did performance art shows there under the name “The Gusto House.” John Leguizamo, Karen Finley and Blue Man Group went through there. This was where I started getting interested in scoring theatre. It seemed cooler and expanded what I did into a more interesting and viable art form. Then I met some guys who were doing films, and I started doing a few films. I opened a tiny studio downtown and then some of these film people were working on commercials, and I got introduced to some people in the commercial world. That’s how I got started, and also how I got ruined as a songwriter, because I started making money selling music. Once you start doing that, you don’t really want to stop. You don’t say, “What do I do in my downtime? I think I’ll write some songs for no money.”
What was the process like getting in front of people that wanted your music?
SK:
It was fairly haphazard at the time. I started to get a reputation as a guy who could do a little bit of film scoring. I was working with an engineer who introduced me to a guy that was working at a company called PDP radio that put jingles and advertising into the Musak feeds going into supermarkets. They wanted me to personalize it to the stores, so they hired me to write radio stingers for all these grocery stores. They had 120 grocery stores, so over the course of a couple years, I was recording a bunch of things for Piggly Wiggly Radio and Schnucks Radio. It was a ridiculous gig. But it paid money and gave me custom advertising experience. I was also starting to record voiceovers and sound effects for these commercials.
Then I met a bona fide TV producer, a guy named Tom Pomposello. He had gotten into the ground floor at MTV back in the old days, and he had done a bunch of music for them. He was parlaying the coolness, even though he wasn’t a cool guy. He was a blues bass player, and certainly not a New York hipster by any stretch of the imagination. He parlayed the coolness of working at MTV and then Nickelodeon when it came around and helped me get into advertising work. I was introduced through him to a bunch of ad agencies and started getting kooky ads. It was when samplers were becoming available to the masses and everyone was throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the samplers and playing it along with the music track. We were doing Burger King spots and spots for Dunkin’ Donuts.
Were you always on your own? Did you ever partner with bigger houses, or did you just go from gig to gig and meet different people, getting work through working?
SK:
I got work by working, and I got involved in a co-op. It was very organic. I’d opened my studio downtown, and next door to me, unbeknownst to either of me or the person next door, another studio built a facility. We knocked down a wall and wound up as one co-op facility. It made sense, since we had three or four guys working in the same business. We had three or four other guys that came in and out. But in this situation, you wind up being “close to the river.” There’s business coming in and out through the studio, and you meet people there. I’ve never really looked at it this way, but I think having the studio and being in a facility like that was what sustained me, because you just wind up meeting people. You get exposed to all these other things you’d never planned on doing, and you even find out, delightfully, that you like them.
Why do you think you persevered on your trajectory when others didn’t? Why do you think that several decades later you’re still making a living and supporting a family in New York City making music when so many others could not?
SK:
Clearly, it’s the TV work that sustained me, even though I’ve recently seen the budgets spiral down. Once you didn’t need a big studio to do what I’m doing anymore, the clients quickly caught on that you could hire someone working out of home to do it, and the budgets took a hit.
I think what sustained me was that I lost my lease downtown, but I realized the model for me was, “Get close to the river. Get close to where there’s a lot of business coming through.” In the late 1990s, I moved up to Midtown into another audio post production facility. I had lost a job working on a show called Little Bill. They were going to have me do not the music, because Mr. Cosby and his people were going to take care of that part. But they wanted me to do the sound design on it, and I had been doing a lot of that work as well. I didn’t get the gig, and it turned out to be geography and their perception that because I was a one-man operation, I wasn’t going to be able to handle this job. It was a little eye-opening to me. I decided I was going to find a place where they do this kind of work. I was hoping to get into long-form TV. At that point in time, I was doing a lot of promos: “Coming up tonight;” “Coming up next Tuesday.” They were a lot of kitschy jobs, and not anything you’d really want to hang your hat on. That kind of work is even worse than advertising. It’s great to do those spots, but they’re very temporary; they disappear. The promos are turning over money because they usually pay great, but they’re nothing you want to show anyone.
I found an audio post house and made a deal with them, hoping to get closer to the long-form work. I wound up landing a cartoon that they were posting there. The owner of the place, who was going to get a piece of the action, was pushing me to his clients to allow me to demo on the cartoon, and I did. I spent 14 hours on the first 14 seconds, because I figured, if I don’t get them there, I won’t get them. I needed to really nail it, and a lot of it was just coming up with the right aesthetic so it flowed. And I wound up getting that gig.
The “close to the river” concept is great, but obviously you have to be social and part of some kind of community. And being a studio-driven business, that meant having a studio that was either adjoining or in the same building or a collective of people. It sounds like that’s been a great part of your success.
What other advice based on your experience would you give someone that is looking to make money on music? You did a lot of live performance as well. That’s not your current expertise, but what mistakes did you see over and over again along the way that you think are easy for musicians to avoid?
SK:
If I think I have a shortcoming in this business, it’s my ability go out and sell myself. I’m not great at that. My advice in terms of that is, “Don’t do what I did.”
The people I find in this business that still have some juice tend to still know what’s going on in the scene and tend to not be in a bubble. This is funny, because it’s counterintuitive to what I do I tend to get on a show and then not spend as much time as I should maintaining the relationships I have and keeping my eyes open for what is available out there. People come to me out of school that are probably way better composers than I. They say, “OK, I have everything, I have the tools. Now all I have to do is get a job.” But, no, the whole gig is the job. Going to college and learning all that music stuff is unimportant. Getting the gig is the whole job. There is a misconception: “I have my band together, and we’re really tight. Now let’s go out and find a job.” My son is now a musician and is having trouble getting his band together. I just said, “Go book a gig somewhere.” It doesn’t have to be big and it doesn’t have to pay money. It will make you get your act together.
I see a lot of musicians who get dismissive and say, “I’m not going to deal with this thing because it’s beneath me.” People’s pride gets in the way, but they also might get a little miffed about something. For example, they might be at a club somewhere and say, “I’m not going to get in touch with that guy because he’s an ass.” Sometimes you just have to hold your nose, because after all, it’s business. You don’t have to marry the people you deal with who have what you need. But sometimes you have to work with them.
Do you have other pieces of advice about things you think people should avoid? Did you see people just go by the wayside because of something specific they did or didn’t do?
SK:
I’ll give you an anecdotal story about sitting with my buddy Paul and listening to music demos. The band has been working and is good. They are tight and have really interesting things going on. The intro is epic and lasts seven minutes. But nobody is going to get through it. My job is to get to the people. When I do a demo for something, I have to think about what they want to get back out of it. As a songwriter, if you have a “good” part of the song, put it up front. Don’t make people wait very long to get there. If you read any of the stuff about people that analyze the most successful pop songs, they say the best songs get to the hook in 20-35 seconds in tops. You can’t let people turn it off. If you have a good part of your song, don’t give people enough time to change the channel, because we all bore very quickly. Ten seconds is an awful long time in this day and age. And that’s what I try to do with my work: I just get to it.
Is there anything you can say about the pitch? Is it really just about having a body of work that builds on itself, or is it being easy to work with? What keeps someone employed over time?
SK:
I have to go back to one of my personal foibles, which is not keeping the light bright outside the door. You have to keep the beacon lit up bright for your brand. You can’t lay off your self promotion. It’s the job. As a musician, the music part of it is the fun part you want to do, and the whole gig is getting that job.
To learn more about Stuart Kollmorgen and Big Yellow Duck, visit the website. You can also follow the company’s latest news on Facebook.
Bennett Kaufman is a seasoned music industry professional who currently owns and runs a Los Angeles area music management company called The BK Entertainment Group. The company specializes in managing the careers of record producers, mixers, songwriters, recording engineers and artists as well as providing consulting services. Bennett got his start in the music industry in the mid-1980s, when he worked with the small A&M-distributed record label Gold Mountain Records. From there, he went on to do A&R for RCA Records. During his decade-long tenure at RCA he was responsible for signing and developing artists and bands including Treat Her Right (which eventually became Morphine), Michael Penn, Lita Ford, Stacy Earl and one of his self-proclaimed all-time-favorite bands, The Smithereens.
I recently Interviewed Bennett to ask him about his career and what it takes to be a producer in the modern music business.
You’ve worked with a lot of big names throughout the course of your career. You went from RCA to producer management with Steven Moir. What is the business of producer management all about? Is it a simple as getting your guys work and getting them the best fees?
BK:
My approach has always been more of a creative approach – really looking and trying to understand the talent of the guys I represent and getting to really know them as people. I think one of the largest parts of hooking up artists and producers is matching the personalities. I could recommend five multi-platinum producers for a particular act that all work in the same genre, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right people to get on with for three months in the recording studio. I still look at the creative side. I listen to the music, and I try to ask questions about the artist and their temperament and really what they’re trying to achieve, so hopefully I can make a recommendation of one or two people as opposed to, “Here are ten guys that really make good records.” That’s really the challenge of it for me. The deal part just comes over time. You learn how to do that. But bringing the A&R background into it I’ve found to be really helpful.
Has your business changed much since you’ve gone from working with Moir to on your own?
BK:
I don’t think anything has really changed that much. I was fortunate that after leaving the majority of the clients chose to follow me and asked me to continue to represent them. I was blessed about that. And we’ve added new great clients as well, so we’ve been able to expand, and I get to work with more people than I did before. But it’s fairly similar.
It must be harder to get people work these days. And you really do represent the crème de la crème. Even though there are more records being made, I’m going to guess that it’s much harder for you to find opportunity for them to get paid what they’re worth.
BK:
That’s exactly right. The challenges are certainly different than they were. From a major label standpoint, there are fewer records being made. We have so many less labels and fewer A&R people at those labels, so less artists are signed and less get the opportunity to make multiple records. It’s all less and less and less. Budgets are smaller.
You’re one of the few guys I know that aren’t at a label, but can still knows what’s going on with major labels. How much are major label recording budgets down?
BK:
Honestly, they really vary so widely. There are still expensive recording budgets of $200,000-$300,000. And I’m speaking in the alternative rock world where our clients tend to live. I won’t speak for the urban or pop world, which still have massive budgets and a lot higher than that. I guess the biggest change is in the past, rarely did we see a $50,000 budget from a major. We see those more and more. The bands getting signed that are new are getting fewer funds to record with. But once they have some success, there are healthier budgets. I guess the range is what’s changed.
I remember the low end of a recording budget when I was doing A&R between 1997 and 2003 was in the $200,000 range.
BK:
You never saw $50,000 or even $75,000 recording budgets from a major before. You’ll see some of those now. You’ll probably more likely see a $75,000 than a $50,000, but they are out there. There are smaller things. We’re seeing more EPs to start off than we ever did. Things are definitely changing.
I have so many questions for you, because your vantage point is such a unique one. What are you looking for when you’re picking up talent now? Is it people that are working regularly as far as you picking up clients? I know you don’t have much or any room in your roster.
BK:
There’s always room for somebody who is super talented. I haven’t changed the process much from when I first started, which is for the most part, “Let me listen to what you do.” The only caveat to that may be to a certain extent, even if I believe someone has talent, it’s a catch-22 when they haven’t been able to do much that means much. Then, I may not be so interested in picking them up now, just because I have other folks I’m representing that are all working for work. There aren’t as much opportunities out there, so to take on more people and make it a vying business is not something I’m interested in. I like keeping it fairly manageable and make sure everybody is working. Certainly if there are people that are established and looking to make a change for whatever reason, I’m always happy to sit down with those folks.
What advice would you give to somebody that is coming up as a producer? Is it “work all the time,” or “build relationships”? That probably seems to have changed, as there aren’t necessarily enough people making big records to get those engineer and second engineer gigs on major records.
BK:
Advice to an up and coming guy: I don’t know if the advice has changed from in the past. It’s a harder road for them. You hook up with any and all bands you can that make sense for you musically that you understand and try to get in the studio and make records, whether you’re recording, producing, mixing. You just need to be working. Don’t be afraid of spec opportunities – working for free or for low money. I’d just get anything and everything you can and hope as the band reaches a higher plateau of success, they are willing to bring you along. If they get signed to an indie, you get that opportunity, or if they get signed to a major, they bring you along. That would be the goal.
If it hasn’t changed, it hasn’t changed. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been out for 20 years as opposed to five.
BK:
I don’t know if it has changed in that respect, in terms of advice for somebody young. Certainly it’s a much more challenging environment than we had several years ago, without question. It all keeps circling back to the fact of less records being made and certainly less records being made that are well funded. There are a lot of records that come out, and bands on indies or not even signed at all have the opportunity to record now, and technology has certainly played a role in that. But I don’t know how many of those are paying gigs for producers, engineers and mixers.
You’re also in a unique position to comment on advice for picking the right producer. I’m sure you’ve seen some disasters, just by virtue of the fact that you’ve been involved in probably thousands of records at this point.
BK:
It happens. I haven’t been involved in that many that haven’t worked out either from the management or the A&R side, but it happens from time to time. And you try to rectify it and move on.
What’s your advice for picking the right guy, as opposed to just avoiding disaster?
BK:
At first I try to get the temperament of the band and figure out what they’re like and what they’re not like, and make sure the clients get an opportunity to both speak to them and meet with them, preferably multiple times so they can get comfortable together and see how that goes. Everybody should be as honest as possible up front about how they want to record and how they don’t want to record. Other factors are that – and it sounds silly – alcohol and drugs come into play. You may have somebody that is really into something and someone that is really against it. You need to identify that up front so that’s not going to be an issue. Personalities and recording styles are really important.
I guess it would be the same as it’s been, where band members sit down and listens to some of their favorite records and intelligently discuss which aspects of which different producers they like. Being able to make an informed decision in that matter is probably still par for the course.
BK:
I think so. I think there is a lot of technical stuff I don’t take part in that takes place between the artists and the producers: “How are we going to work?” “Are we setting up live?” “Are we overdubbing everything?” “How do you like to approach this?” “How do you like to do vocals?” All of that part of the process is important to get up front. Some producers are very flexible and will change their ways of doing things to fit an artist or a band, and others are very definitive in the way they work. Sometimes you find out in discussions early on that this probably isn’t going to work because of those choices. I said it before, but I think personalities and temperament are really important to address. I try to get that matched up right.
One last question. Of the guys you have worked with, do worked with or will work with, have you identified any certain character traits or practices and habits that distinguish the people that are successful from those that aren’t?
BK:
Two of the biggest factors or differences I see and not in this particular order are the ability to communicate, and having a real handle on and understanding of songs and song structure. I think the guys that are really successful have a handle on songs and being able to identify what works and what doesn’t work, and get that right before even getting into the studio. I think the ability to communicate is also key. You often hear producers talking about being a psychologist, or the old “fifth member of the band,” so you can quickly get that relationship and earn that respect with people and communicate. When you’re going to be critical of their performances or ideas, you have to do it in a way that is respectful and motivating. I think those factors separate those guys that never get to a certain point. All the guys I see seem to have great work ethics and great work habits in terms of being able to put in long hard hours, and having a real love for the music. That personality – to be able to get on with the band and be able to get what you want out of them in a way they’re willing to do it and that challenges them so they want to work with you again – is really critical.
You can learn more about Bennett and his management company’s services for producers, mixers, songwriters, recording engineers and artists by visiting The BK Entertainment Group website.
#1 – Waiting
#2 – Unreasonable Expectations
#3 – Poor Planning
#4 – Comparing Apples To Oranges
#5a – Black and White Thinking (Day Job)
#5b – Black and White Thinking (Career Trajectory)
#5c – Black and White Thinking (The Industry)
Perhaps the most stunning example of black and white thinking for musicians is the way they interact with or react to the industry. A large percentage of the musicians I encounter either despise the industry for reasons that don’t seem to be well articulated or are enamored with the industry and desperate for the attention, validation and information that these executives may or may not really have.
I know I am not stating anything that isn’t obvious but sometimes stating the obvious is helpful. Simply put- record label executives, music managers, music supervisors, booking agents and music publishers are really just people like any other group of people. There are those who are brilliant and others who are dim, those who are really good and caring and others who seem to be fashioned out of pure evil. Why mention this? I guess because it’s important to have some perspective on what elicits such strong feelings from the musician community. Mind you, I’m not saying anyone’s feelings are unjustified but I do believe they could often be tempered with a bit of perspective that might make things feel a bit less personal and unpleasant.
So why demonize the music industry? Yes- there are many people out there who prey on the entrepreneurial hope of musicians- so please be careful. The monetary losses aside it would just take one of these awful experiences to sour anyone on the music business and / or humankind in general. It’s a bit more subtle than that though. Everyone knows going in that there are long odds in “making it” in the classic sense of the term otherwise everyone would be a famous musician. That said when artist and executive partnerships don’t work out both sides like to play the blame game. Can executives poorly handle and in fact harm an artist’s career? Sure. Can music executives do everything right and still have an artist not connect to an audience in a meaningful way? Yes- Absolutely. So is it the fault of the industry if things don’t work out?
Even if there were no industry this is a game of long odds so what good would finding someone or something to blame really do for you? One thing is for sure if a partnership doesn’t work out and the artist gives up on music as a result (this is far more common that you would think) – that is not the industry’s fault.
As for executives who have gatekeeper jobs like music supervisors and A&R executives – well – these people are easy to resent. I know first hand- I’ve been both. These are weird jobs and it is a difficult balance to even inquire about someone’s music without feeling like you are leading them on. People who hold these roles often feel like being too personable isn’t in their best interest. It is overwhelming and uncomfortable to always question what people’s motives are when they are being friendly. Yes- these types of people can do significant things for your career and are worth pursuing relationships with provided you are spending much more time connecting with people who buy music and tickets. Keep in mind with gatekeepers that their decision isn’t personal. They select artists not always based on talent but on what would fit their needs at that moment in time. Also keep in mind that these people have to spend a huge amount of their time making sure they play politics with clients or senior executives to ensure that they keep their gigs so it’s not as comfortable as it may appear from the outside.
Why Be Enamored with the Music Industry? Well, in truth, I don’t think you should be enamored with the industry nor do I think that you should believe they have the holy grail of music and marketing promotional ideas for developing artists. I think many of the strengths in the industry are centered around maintaining or growing existing brands rather than developing new ones. This is no one’s fault really- one never knows if a new artist will convert fans when exposed to new audiences. This being the case I think many musicians put too much time and effort into looking for partners and industry help rather than in figuring out much of their development on their own.
I remember signing my first band at Lava / Atlantic when I was about twenty-four. I was thrilled because not only did I really believe in the group but I was beyond excited to have a first hand look at what really went in to marketing and promoting a band. I had all the knowledge that a total of two years being an A&R assistant and whatever I learned from self-managing a band I was in at college at my disposal. Through the process I learned the following (and not much else):
1) People and opportunities will flock to an artist that is perceived to be on the cusp of success and the same people and opportunities will vanish when people think a project isn’t going anywhere. (The phrase “Success has a thousand fathers” comes to mind)
2) An interesting press story (even ten years ago) is not “Artist releases Record” the best publicists will help pull a story out of the soul of an artist and make it interesting before even making a call to the press.
3) Marketing plans seem to compile existing information, cover very general objectives and often present more questions than answers.
4) Publishing splits between band members should be made while the money is theoretical. Real money on the table can make things very ugly.
5) The more I learned about radio promotion – the less I understood it and the more I resented it.
6) The vast majority of industry people I encountered at the time had never played a live show after high school let alone gigged regularly. As such, they weren’t much help with grass roots and developing artists.
When I say that was all I learned – I’m not exaggerating much. I met some interesting people along the way but as far as the information I found it was a major disappointment. I kept on thinking there was going to be some great reveal. There never was and I have yet to find one even twelve years later. It has been a series of little pieces of information that have been the most helpful to me over the years.
Many people in the industry are capable of guiding an established business. Very few are willing or able to build one from scratch. Long story short (Too Late?) The Industry like most things is never as good as it seems and never as bad as it seems. Industry relationships are worth pursuing but I’m of the opinion that such relationships are of much more value to the artist who has developed even a small following than those who have yet to build one.
That does it for this series – I will be back with some interviews very soon.
If you missed the last installment check that out here.
If you wanted to start at the beginning of the series you can do that here.
* #1 – Waiting
* #2 – Unreasonable Expectations
* #3 – Poor Planning
* #4 – Comparing Apples To Oranges
*#5a – Black and White Thinking (Day Job)
*#5b – Black and White Thinking (Career Trajectory)
It’s a very odd thing to talk to your average musician about their career goals. As I have mentioned before I often hear things like “getting to the next level” or wanting to “make it”. Part of the problem is that statements like these aren’t specific enough to be of much use to those who utter them. I’m not here to tell anyone that the music business isn’t difficult or isn’t filled with frustration – it is absolutely frustrating and the pace at which it moves (especially when you are starting out) makes glaciers look like Ferraris. Many musicians need to get a grip on what the majority of career trajectories look like and stop comparing themselves to so-called overnight successes. The harsh reality is that yes- some seemingly talentless people get rich and famous doing music and as much as that can mess with your sense of justice – there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I should mention that I don’t blame anyone for their perception of what the music business really is and what making a living making music looks like. Pop Culture and Hollywood have done a number on us all by presenting us a constantly whispered message that anyone can be a celebrity for seemingly no reason at all. The VH1 behind the music series (which I loved and still do love) was a classic representation of what is broadcast about a musician’s career. It had an hour slot and usually was about 43 minutes long. It usually looked like this:
Minutes 1-4 – Where the musician grew up, who their parents were and how they always wanted to be a singer / guitarist / rockstar / rapper
Minute 5-7: – Quotes from Mom, family and friends about how this person was very driven
Minutes 7-10: some footage from a talent show, the chance meeting of a collaborator or label executive – perhaps some brief mention of the artist gigging in obscurity for an unmentioned period of time and at least once getting close to calling it quits.
Minutes 10 onwards – Minor problems in the studio and then rocket ship ride to superstardom including the obligatory dark period (usually someone close to the subject dying or a drug habit) followed by the redemption of them still being on top – and everything being okay.
The point is it is not an interesting Hollywood story that it took a ton of hard work and someone built their fan base one fan at a time over years and years. It is not an interesting Hollywood story that people slowly but surely got better at the craft and kept moving forward. The hard work, the struggle, the doubt, the waiting for better… this is a great deal of the process but it is presented as little more than a footnote in the folklore of being a successful musician.
What I mean to say is that it is easy to think in absolutes when this is the cultural message we receive every day. Try to avoid this. If you don’t avoid this it becomes far too easy to be that older crabby musician or ex musician who has a chip on his or her shoulder about how the business (and everything else) sucks.
Try to remember you are slowly building a business and that as long as you are slowly aligning your work life with your passion for music you are on the right track. Your career isn’t nowhere if you aren’t drawing 500 people a night nor is it nowhere if you aren’t 100% self-sustainable yet. Startup businesses take time and very often the ones that survive are the ones that are flexible enough to adapt to whatever is put into their path. Your career in music might not look like the one you envision. God knows when I was a nineteen and getting my first tattoo I thought I was going to be in a touring band for the rest of my life.
The biggest lesson I think I ever learned about the business or probably even life in general (and it hit me like a ton of bricks) was when I interviewed an old band mate of mine who had gone on to be very successful. He said quite simply “I haven’t done anything different in 15 years”. It was when I realized that I had never worked towards anything with consistent daily effort for more than 2-3 years without losing my focus and that I lost my right to bitch.
Click here for the next and last of the series.
If you missed the last installment check that out here.
