Posts Tagged ‘how to make it in the music business’

Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CD baby but he is also an experienced musician and Berklee college of music graduate ­ something he accomplished in only two and a half years.  Derek recently sold CD Baby to Discmakers and is now building up some new businesses.  I had the pleasure of meeting Derek recently through a mutual friend and I continue to be more  and more impressed by his drive and ability to focus.

Musician Coaching:

First of Derek, thanks for your time.  Just a bit of background for the few people who might not know ­ can you describe how you became a successful touring musician?

DS:

I just said yes to everything, and pursued everything.  Soon that got me a well-paid gig in a circus, and as a guitarist for Japanese pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto.  In 1995 I learned about the college market and got some tips on how to crack that nut, so I threw myself into that completely, and ended up getting hired by over 300 colleges in the Northeast.  That’s about it.

Musician Coaching:

What do you think you did differently or better than your peers that got your music career off of the ground (and the same question for your business career)

DS:

I read a lot of books about marketing.  I learned how to take books that were written for straight-up MBA business types and adapt their lessons to a music career.  This single thing probably set me apart from my peers.

See my recommended book list (and detailed notes)

If you’re not putting aside the time to read lately, you should.  It really helps give you all kinds of new insights that aren’t just influenced by what everyone else in your industry is doing.

Musician Coaching:

Did anything about being a touring musician teach you the skills you would later apply to being a successful business owner?

DS:

Yeah – it’s not much different, is it?  Learning about working with people.  Setting expectations, communicating clearly, being strict but not an ass, keeping motivation up, taking responsibility for everything, and understanding that a lot of people just flake out.

Musician Coaching:

During your time at CD Baby you worked with tons of musicians who went on to great success ­ Did you identify a trait or handful of traits (other than talent) that lead you to believe someone was going to be successful as a musician?

DS:

Definitely.  The successful indie artists are almost always looking at everything from the other person’s point of view.  When contacting the media, they’re thinking of it from the point of view of the writer.  They talk in terms of helping that person make a great story that readers will respond to.  When contacting venues, they’re thinking of it from the point of view of the venue owner trying to make it a big profitable night.

It’s a funny balance of selfless and selfish.  Ambition through selflessness.  Or a selfish realization that the best thing you can do for your career is whatever’s best for others.

Musician Coaching:

I noticed that you have extraordinary focus.  When you set your mind on learning something or doing something ­ you seem to be able to shut out the world and focus on the task at hand.  You also seem unconcerned with what other people are doing in the space you are working in.  Was this something that came natural to you and if not ­ any advice on this front?

DS:

Focus is hard but important.  It’s so tempting to just surf and check for the next email.  But I’ve found all the big rewards come from the times you shut out the world and do something difficult.

Maybe it comes from being a musician, which requires thousands of hours locked away in a practice room, working hard on your technique.

Musician Coaching:

You have managed to build up quite an online following for yourself as an entrepreneur both on your blog and on social media sites.  While some of this probably had to do with your hands on approach building a thriving company- was there more to it than that?  Any advice for musicians on how they should be communicating with fans and potential fans to gain followers based on your experiences?

DS:

Ah…. I think it’s something about being comfortable and casual, while still trying to make every sentence really worth someone’s time.

My online presence isn’t about me – it’s about them.  Every time I post something, whether blog or Tweet, I’m thinking, “What could I post that’d be really useful to people?”

Whether I always achieve that or not, it makes me a pretty useful person to follow.

Musician Coaching:

From your website I notice you are pursuing a number of new ventures ­ which of these do you think will be the first to launch and when can we expect to see it?

DS:

I’m really focusing on Muckwork.  See http://sivers.org/muckwork and http://muckwork.com

The other ones didn’t get a huge response, so I might just let ‘em go.

Musician Coaching:

The big dumb question…  What do you think is next for the music business as the value of recorded music continues to decline?  Have you seen any models out there that give you hope?

DS:

Oh I write all about that, here

——
If you haven’t already- check out Derek Sivers at  http://sivers.org

I was fortunate enough to meet with Jacob Slichter, the drummer from Semisonic and the Author of “So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life”.  Jake is actually the first person I am interviewing that I didn’t know whatsoever before interviewing but I found his book so accurate and intriguing that I tracked him down.

Musician Coaching:

Jake, First of all thanks for your time.  I guess let’s start at the beginning or close to the beginning.  What was it like at the time getting the attention of label guys in 1993-94 for Semisonic?  What did you do correctly to get their attention?

JS: We (Dan and John) already knew them through Trip Shakespeare. Trip Shakespeare had been signed to A&M Records years earlier, so they had gone around and met A&R people from various labels, and so by the time Semisonic came along they knew a bunch of people who had all traded labels and were on the carousel of A&R people. So, number one, they already knew them.

Number two, we made really good-sounding tapes. I think also our biggest advantage was also our biggest disadvantage, which was that we were swimming against the tide at the time stylistically. Really at that time the landscape was dominated by Nirvana and then everything that was in that end of the spectrum – dark, angry, huge, amazing music that we were never going to be able to make. We weren’t interested in making it; it just wasn’t who we were, even though we were huge Nirvana fans.

Musician Coaching:

Talk to me about that. Did you feel like there was ever a temptation to say, “Hey, maybe we should knock that off”?

JS: We just never could’ve pulled it off. Never in a million years. It would just have been stupid to try. I think a lot of bands did try, and some of them did a fairly good job. There were a few bands that took the Nirvana direction and did great with it. We were never going to be that, and early on we realized that. I think when we were dealing with A&R people, ours were some of the few tapes that were bright pop music when all the A&R guys were looking for the next Nirvana. So our tapes stood out, and I think that helped us get attention. I think they were good tapes, and that was probably the main thing. Dan is just a really great songwriter, and I think we had pretty concise arrangements, and it sounded like radio-friendly music, so I think that also helped. I think the fact that we sounded as poppy as we did really made us unappealing to a number of labels, like Interscope. We had an A&R person there who really liked our tapes, but she knew it was really swimming against the tide of where the label was at. So she very wisely said, “Hey, this won’t be the place for you. If I sign you, you’ll just be buried.”  So we ended up really with two labels that were most interested in us – MCA and Elektra.

Musician Coaching: I guess that was a tough ride through that first album cycle. That must’ve been really difficult on your interpersonal relationships. I know a lot of bands break up over that first record, because they’re pushing you at breakneck speeds, etc.

JS: I don’t know that they were pushing us at a breakneck speed, but we were going around the country. It wasn’t a strain on band relations anymore than any kind of touring is. Just being on the road with people is stressful. You don’t have a lot of personal space, so that’s why it’s such a strain. The band felt pretty tight, personally I think after that first album. I was frustrated, but I think Dan and John were kind of used to this because they’d been through it with Trip Shakespeare. I was kind of on a learning curve about how disappointment works in the music business. I probably took it the hardest. Actually everyone probably took it hard in their own weird way. I took it hardest in the sense that I probably was the most believing that the first record was going to break through. I always thought FNT would’ve done it. That was always my thought, but we’ll never find out.

Dan had written a bunch of songs, and I think it’s natural to feel disappointed when it’s the music you write. And John had been on the road for years with Trip Shakespeare, so I know he felt disappointment after that. And we all really felt proud of the record.

Musician Coaching: You toured with a lot of bands, played with a lot of bands. You were on tour for about ten years.

JS:  On and off, sometimes 200 plus days out of the year.

Musician Coaching: Of the people you met, was there a defining or unifying quality of the ones who made it vs. the ones who didn’t?

JS: It’s hard to say. Not necessarily. There weren’t many bands that we toured with that I didn’t think were pretty damn talented on one level or another.

Musician Coaching:

Talent is an X factor but were there personal habits of successful artists?

JS: There were all different shapes and flavors in terms of personalities, etc. But there has to be a ruthlessness of commitment. You can be a very nice person on the outside and still have that. I think they all had that. It’s more than drive. It’s a belief on some level in your own intuition. That’s the hard thing about the music business. You can only really make good things if you are trusting your own intuition. But in the end it’s not your own intuition that matters, it’s someone else’s. So I think people get kind of hung up trying to tap into the intuition of the masses. It generally never produces great music. I think a lot of people think that massively popular music is made with the public in mind. I don’t think so. It’s made by people that have intuitions that are very much like what the public’s intuition is at the moment. But I don’t think you can do it by trying to guess where everyone else is at. I think you really have to commit to a belief. And if you’re lucky, the stars align and you make it. So that’s what I would say they have in common – a ruthless belief in their own intuitions. Some of them I was kind of amazed at how wrong they obviously were, and there might be some cases where eight months later that band was rocketing to the top of the charts or having some form of success come along.

Our first record sold 30-some thousand records, but in the universe of rock records it was pretty successful. It got written up in all kinds of places. So I think our whole experience was one that was a privileged existence in the world of rock.

Musician Coaching:

You got to take the ride while there was still a mechanism.

JS: They were putting money into it back then.

Musician Coaching:

What’s your philosophy on social networking?

JS: I don’t understand it. I’m a Facebook member. I don’t use Twitter, and I don’t understand why anyone would be interested in what I Twitter, and I am not really interested in what other people Twitter. I was interested in the Iranian uprising, reading the Twitters when you couldn’t get news coverage. But, “Hey everybody, I’m going to Colorado to go skiing” or “Hi everybody I just had stuffed grape leaves for lunch” … I think they’ll figure it out, and they probably already have. Twitter and Facebook, since I know about them can’t possibly be the cutting edge of where this stuff is. They’re always catching up. I don’t think it’s possible to say, “What would’ve happened with Semisonic if we had been around when Twitter was around?”  We would’ve been a different band.

Musician Coaching:

I was curious if you had used them extensively, but if you haven’t …

JS: I think the thing I would have to say there is, you have to have a really clear idea of who you are, and then you have to have a really clear idea of who you think wants to hear or read what you’re up to. The social networking just gets plugged into that knowledge. Even faking requires a bit of self knowledge and knowledge of who you’re faking out and what they want to be faked out about.

Musician Coaching:

Were you writing this book the whole time, or was this something you did completely in retrospect?

JS: I wasn’t thinking as I was writing the road diaries, some of which got incorporated into the book, “This could be a book.” All I was thinking was, “Well, if I can’t write as many songs as Dan, maybe I’ll write some road diaries and get my writing up in that way.” And then once we decided to press the pause button, I said, “OK, I have to write a book.  That will be my next thing.”

Musician Coaching:

What was the experience of re-purposing a musician’s skills to a different commodity?

JS: What did I learn by being a musician that I applied to getting a book deal? It’s all the same stuff.  To get a non-fiction book deal you have to submit a book proposal. And a book proposal is very much like a demo – “Here are the things I’m going to be talking about, here’s a sample chapter, here’s my outline, here’s who I think I’m talking to,” etc.  It’s very similar to music because whether writing a book proposal or submitting a demo, they serve different purposes to different people.  For a band or an author, a book proposal or a demo is like a map – “Here’s where I’m going, here’s what I’m going to do.” If I feel like I’m getting lost, I’ll come back and consult this and think about what my original intent was and just try to stay on track with that idea.  For a publisher or a record company, these things serve a very commercial purpose – “How are we going to market this thing?” These are things most bands aren’t really thinking about.  I almost think you shouldn’t think about them. You should try to focus on making the clearest thing that is truest to your vision.

Musician Coaching:

More often than not now when I read about an artist I’m reading about their marketing and not their music.

JS: I think that’s the era we live in. Some people are really good at it, so if they are good at it, why shouldn’t they? But I think you do run the risk of getting off target.  That’s one reason I don’t really talk about what I’m writing. I don’t want to get into thinking about who’s going to read it and what their reactions are going to be.  I just have to sort of go away in my head and write it. It’s either going to be accepted or not, but I have to cross the finish line in my own mind along the path that I set out on, not someone else’s.  I know a lot of bands that say, “Here’s our marketing strategy.” If you’re marketing strategy is more interesting than your music, you’re really in pretty big trouble. And maybe you shouldn’t be a musician. Maybe your real gift is to be an A&R person.  There’s a kind of magic to that – how to put together musicians with people that are going to like the music. And figure out in the flow of the world, how is all this going to work? That’s an important decision. I get e-mails from a few bands that send out these really dazzling e-mails and have all these bells and whistles around their promotion, but the bottom line is, the music is just not that great. If I want really great bells and whistles about something, there are all kinds of fun Web sites where I can waste time. If I want music, I’m not so interested in how well a band markets itself. I’m only interested in the music. I think everybody else is pretty much the same.

Musician Coaching:

Would you say as Semisonic was winding down, the landscape had become competitive?

JS: No. We started out in the grunge era, and then there was a softening of the radio that happened right before “Closing Time” was released where there were things like “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve and “Brick” by Ben Folds 5. “Closing Time” sailed through that open moment. And then it got as soft as N’Sync and Backstreet Boys and then it took a hard turn back towards Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Korn – really loud impressive music. And our last record came out in that era, and it was not an alternative rock record. Our record company thought it was, and we were unclear ourselves. Regardless, I just don’t think it was the right time for that record. I really think that’s what it was about. I think we were lucky with “Closing Time” and our other two records had a lot of great songs on them, but just weren’t lined up with where people’s heads were.

Musician Coaching:

What changes have you noticed in the way the industry functions or in the way we consume media?

JS: One change I see is that people conceive of coming up with one great song as the arc of their band’s life. I think that’s a little more possible with YouTube. You make a cool YouTube thing, and you may not ever see another great YouTube from that same band, but that’s fine. People go on and make another one. I think that may be one thing we’re heading towards; instead of having an enduring band identity you break off and do other things.

Musician Coaching:

Some combination of the singles model vs. what movie studios do with other combinations of producers, directors and actors.

JS: One great thing about the music business now is that it’s so much cheaper to record that you don’t really need the studio. Most people don’t. They are at home, have their computers and are making recordings that 15 years ago would’ve cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. There’s probably a lot more music you can get to right away, but that makes your job harder as to how you’re going to weed through it. I think they’ll figure it out eventually. I don’t know how, but maybe someone with really cool tastes will gain followers and point out what’s good. I think one thing about the Internet is that it seems to me that there’s more impermanence. Things are more fleeting.

Musician Coaching:

So people will only get 15 seconds of fame rather than 15 minutes?

JS: I never bought the 15 minutes thing. Many people have been famous way longer than 15 minutes.

Musician Coaching:

What do you make of the fact that there hasn’t been anyone that has risen to icon status in the last decade or so?

JS: Give it time. I do think someone’s going to come along and think of the perfect way to think of the perfect way to exploit all the things the internet has to offer. It’s complicated, it’s tricky and it’s always changing. There are so many things you can do with it. That just makes it harder.

Musician Coaching:

What do you make of the pay-as-you-will Radiohead premium model?

JS: An important thing to consider in the case of Radiohead – I think it’s awesome they did it – is the way they got to it was in part by being a major label band. What I’d like to see is, who will be the first band that will rise up from the Internet with no label backing?

———

Please check out Jacob’s book “So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life”

David Garrison is the Chief Marketing officer at Indaba Music which is a…well, it’s sort of a …

Musician Coaching:
What is Indaba Music?

DG: Indaba Music is  the leading online collaboration tool for musicians.  We make it possible for musicians in different places to find each other and then make studio quality music together all online. No download necessary.  We have a variety of tools, so there’s a community side to the site, which is 300,000 members right now, 185 countries, growing double digits each month.  That’s where you find people who you discuss things with. That community is pretty robust – it’s everybody from 13-year old garage bands who are just learning their first chords all the way up to Grammy Award winners. The common element of them all is that they’re all serious musicians and they are passionate about the music they’re making. The community piece is the lifeblood of Indaba that makes it work. On the flip side, there’s the technology piece, which is the suite of tools to enable a musician to manage their digital life online. And that’s primarily on the music creation side right now.

Musician Coaching:
What is the feedback you’re getting from your community?

DG: We have success stories.  For example, recently we ran a campaign with the Derek Trucks Band, which is a bunch of musicians’ musicians, an awesome group.  Derek Trucks is an amazing guitarist. One of the people who entered the contest was a guy named Mike Gannon who just graduated from university, was a guitar player and had always loved Derek Trucks.  He entered the contest and did a cover of the song. At the end of it, Derek and the band chose him. They thought it was a really awesome version of the song that they’d made, really different, unique, good sound and so they gave him the prize, which was to go up and meet the band backstage during a concert. So he went up to Boston, met the band and hung out with them for a while and they had a bunch of great talks, went backstage with them as they got ready. The band went out on stage and the sound check guy said, “So, Mike, did you bring your guitar?” And the sound check guy gave him Derek’s Les Paul ’59 and pushed him out on stage, and the band started playing in front of a large crowd. And this young guy that had just graduated from undergrad whose hero was onstage just started playing with the band. And everyone took a solo, and he ended up getting a solo in front of a big live audience and got a standing ovation.

Musician Coaching:
There are a lot of good success stories like that?

DG: There are definitely success stories through the contest, but each campaign is different. When we dealt with Mariah Carey, she wanted to retain all the rights to the song so people when they submitted gave up their rights to the music. Other artists like Carmen and Camille —  this little unknown duo from Canada – used a Creative Commons license that was basically just attribution. So you could actually go out and sell your remix of their song and make a profit off it as long as you just said it was their vocals. It runs the whole gamut. Depending on the artist, you give up some of your rights, but that’s the price you pay for participating in a really cool collaboration and getting a lot of exposure and getting noticed. There are lots of A&R people hanging around the site and paying attention to the contest.

Musician Coaching: Are there things that people are using the site for that are getting them exposure?

DG: Yes. There are things we intended for them to do with it. But what’s always surprising to us is how people take a platform we’ve created and use it in a way we hadn’t expected. The things we intended for people to do are to find someone to make a piece of music with, collaborate, promote it on the site, and people hear it and more people collaborate on it and it becomes this big thing. A good example of that is Peace Partners, which is a group of musicians who got together, founded by a guy in Quebec who wanted to donate music to the cause of peace and freedom. He got together what’s now a group of over 150 musicians from across the world who are donating songs to an album the proceeds from which will go towards organizations that have a demonstrable impact on peace in the world. Amnesty International Canada Francophone signed on. There are some interesting stories about how people use the idea of coming together to collaborate to do really interesting things.

Musician Coaching: So you’ve started to garner brand attention, and I’m guessing someone participating in a community has a better chance of getting the attention of a brand or a strategic partner and ultimately getting a shot on their own. Have you seen people use this community to procure strategic partners?

DG: That’s another way people have used it. For example, there’s a duo out of the UK called -Felsite-. -Felsite- is this pair of guys who had never met. They met on Indaba and created a song on Indaba and then created a whole album on Indaba and had never met. And then they were heard by a small UK label who really liked the sound and signed the album and the duo. They’re on their second album now. There are absolutely stories of people getting exposure that leads to commercial success through the site. The thing I like about that one is that it’s not like a major artist came out and said, “I’m going to use this site to do something really cool and get exposure for my stuff on it” when he already had a world of listeners. These are two people who had never met each other, didn’t know each other.

ARTISTS THAT HAVE USED THE SITE:  Mariah Carey, Yo-Yo Ma, The Roots, N.A.S.A., Third Eye Blind, K-OS,  John Legend, Rivers Quomo (Weezer), Marcy Playground, Kennedy, The Crystal Method, Erik Truffaz, Deerhoof, Alkaline Trio, The Derek Trucks Band, Coallesce.

Using Indaba as a marketing tool for them and getting extra exposure is leveraging a bunch of assets they already have. What I like about the -Felsite- example is that it’s creating a reputation from something that really didn’t exist before they met on Indaba. So it’s starting from scratch. That’s the stuff we imagined would happen. And then there are a lot of people using it for things we never would’ve thought of that make total sense.  For example, a middle school music teacher in Seattle uses it as a practice mechanism for his choir to look at how the different parts go together, they can use it for homework because it’s taking a rehearsal session that they can record directly into Indaba and then review on their own time and you can comment on specific points in the wave form. It’s really useful as a pedagogical tool.  Does it make sense? Of course it does. Would we have thought of that as an application immediately? Maybe not. I think there are a lot of cool things that happen because this exists and there’s a really strong community around it.

Musician Coaching: You’re an MBA, chief marketing officer and have been in the music space for quite a while. Do you have any parting advice for a musician pursuing a career?

DG: If you’re a musician – especially a rising musician – right now, you should be on Indaba, largely because it’s growing so fast, it’s an easy, untapped source of inspiration, exposure, tools to support your creative process.  More broadly than that, I think one of the things a lot of musicians don’t recognize is the degree to which their fans want to be involved in their creative process, even at their infancy. There is immense appetite for understanding how music is made. We don’t just listen to recorded music because it’s a cool sound. We listen to recorded music because for us it represents insight into the recording process, in the same way that the live music industry is still big. People like to be around created music. What that means is that Indaba is a creative tool and a forum where you can talk about it and actually watch people create. I think with all the social media that artists have at their fingertips – Myspace, Facebook, Twitter – a lot of artists forget that what’s interesting to audiences about those is this constant insight into what you’re thinking about as an artist, into how you’re making the music, into your life as a musician – things that don’t necessarily occur to the artist. We were talking before about how few people actually do things on a regular basis. Someone said to me once that the thing that defines a blog that’s worth following and will be popular is that you may not know what topic they are going to talk about, but you know what stance they are going to take on it. That’s something that social media gives people the capability to do – just talk about a range of topics and then engage fans. Being in touch with people on a regular basis feeds itself. And it doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t have to be hard to be involved, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, but I think a lot of these tools are built for, but not necessarily used for, this pinging.

My advice is, particularly for rising musicians, to create a relationship with your audience – no matter how big or small it is – by creating a persona so they know what your opinion is going to be. And give them a sense of when you’re going to talk to them – whether it’s once a week, once a month or once a day.

—–

Please check out Indaba Music, it is a very cool collaboration tool.

Dane Venable is the head of marketing for Atlantic records.  In addition to overseeing several product managers Dane still handles his own roster of acts that he does marketing for personally including James Blunt, Death Cab for Cutie, Jason Mraz, Rob Thomas and Matchbox 20 and a new artist named Robert Francis. I worked with Dane when I was at Elektra and he was kind enough to give me his time and insight on what music marketing looks like today.

Musician Coaching:

Tell me in your words what you see marketing a band at that job entailing for you. Marketing is a broad term, so how do you see your job or your role in marketing a band?  What does that look like for you?

DV:

Providing a consistent direction for the artist with the ultimate ability of cutting through the clutter.

Musician Coaching:

Let’s talk about the clutter.  When you’re first sizing up a project obviously there’s going to be a lot of creativity involved, but is there a strategy to make a band stand out among all the thousands and thousands of bands out there?  Have most of the bands that come to you already identified a niche to market to, or is that something that you try to identify/try to connect them to?

DV:

It always differs with the artist.  Some artists come in with a very strong vision of who they are, where they want to go, because some bands have already been out there building touring bases.  And by that I don’t mean, “Oh yeah, we played the past six months once every two weeks in Pittsburgh.”  The Zac Brown band is a perfect example.  He’s been out there ten years throughout the Southeast building a club base.

Musician Coaching:

So funny, yet another time I thought that was an overnight success that turned out to be years and years of hard work

DV:

He’s been doing 150 shows a year for ten years; that guy knows exactly who he is, he knows exactly where he wants his career to go.  Sometimes you get a group that is just out of art school and has been practicing in basements and just kind of putting together their music.  They may have general ideas, but they need it fully fleshed out, and that’s where we try to help them, because the days are long gone of trying to hang an image on an artist and then make it work.  Even though a lot changes year to year with the amount of clutter and noise that’s out there, one thing that’s gotten even stronger is a band’s sense of credibility and what that means in the world.

I think the smell test with audiences is stronger than ever.  If you take a look at some of the most trafficked and active websites, they are websites that really do have artist involvement if not complete artist control.  Kids go to those sites and know that it is the artist’s voice.  It’s not somebody in management, it’s not some uber fan that’s just putting stuff up.  That credibility I think really matters for a lot of bands.  Look, if you’re an artist that writes big pop smashes or big hip hop smashes and you want to go directly to radio, that’s one route you can take it certainly; that’s always been there.  But a lot of the bands we deal with are not looking to go directly there, not that they don’t believe in their songs in the same way, but they want to build their audience, they want to have a sense of discovery before they get to just be known for a song.  And so in that way, credibility really matters, the way you approach things matter.

And by the way, when I say credibility, it matters on the other side too.  I just got done having this conversation the other day.  We want artists to be active with their fans.  It’s crucial today. However, it has to be sincere and feel natural.  To have an artist on Twitter where it’s not a natural fit and they’re doing it because they think they need to is a horrible idea because it’s not going to come across as sincere or compelling.  What we try to do is say, “Let’s choose a medium you are comfortable with.”  With some artists it’s writing words, with some artists it’s using video cameras, with other artists they love Twitter, it’s made for them – little short blasts of stream of consciousness.  But what we try to encourage is just interaction with the fans in some way that feels completely natural and we completely respect and work with artists that also want to keep some sense of mystery.  Maybe there’s an artist that doesn’t feel natural talking about what they’re doing every minute of the day.

Musician Coaching:

How do you compensate for someone who isn’t communicating in these ways because clearly when that is working for somebody it’s a very powerful tool.

DV:

Twitter works amazing for Jazon Mraz.  He’s got 350,000 followers but that doesn’t mean Twitter is going to work for a different artist.  Why would it?  It’s hard to look at a Chad Kroeger Nickelback song and say that doesn’t work, because they are all big hits.  But you wouldn’t say, so why wouldn’t my artist just follow that formula?

Musician Coaching:

Well of course, but what are things you do when a band wants to retain its anonymity in some kind of way?  How do you end up compensating most often?  Do you just look for other ways of connecting through different mediums?

DV: Well, that kind of depends.  I like to think in a lot of ways artists whether as diverse as Bjork, Sigur Ros, Tool, even Radiohead, all like to keep their anonymity in some way, shape or form.  But all of them have some creative ways of connecting to their fans.  With Bjork, it’s usually in art.  She does five or six videos per project, or every design she puts out is something that really speaks to who she is as an artist.  With Trent Reznor it’s really about just his timing and the inventive way he connects with his fans.

Musician Coaching:

You were talking earlier about bands that were fresh out of art school vs. those that had built a following over ten years.  Have you noticed over the last several years that it’s become more one than the other or is the split pretty much the same?  The stuff that’s getting signed and winding up on your plate, is that stuff that tends to be more established or less established, or is it the same old 50/50?

DV: Really I wish I could say it’s changed appreciably, but really I think it ultimately comes down to someone’s belief in a song or in a group of songs.  As much as in the marketing template or the “Marketing 101” book, I would love to have bands who have had experience touring or have been out there for a while building a fan base or through one or 2 indie releases – that’s the dream come true – so you don’t have to completely start from scratch.  But a lot of times an A&R person just hears the song, hears a demo, sees a show and that overtakes everything. It overtakes every other factor.  And that happens time and time again, and that’s not a bad thing, because if our company got to a place where we said, “OK, we’re doing 360’s, therefore touring is a huge factor for us so we only want bands that have begun to build a touring base,” that’s kind of dangerous because then it probably means the nature of the songs or the nature of the music is down in the mix, even just a little bit. The music and the song always have to be first.

Musician Coaching:

It’s good to hear you say that, because it can appear sometimes on the outside like it’s something different.  Let’s talk about if you’re starting out with somebody brand new.  What are some of the low- or no-cost marketing techniques that you consider a must for every band that wants to get noticed?

DV: Building and maintaining your own Web site. And trying to actually market yourselves and build it to a point where, when anyone goes on it, whether it’s somebody from a label, an attorney, another musician, it actually feels like it’s active.  It actually feels like you’ve done some work and you’re not just sitting in your bedroom creating these great demos but you don’t have really any motivation to take your music outside your own bedroom.

Musician Coaching:

Along those lines, do you guys spend a lot of time on SEO or is that just not really in the per view for what you guys do?

DV:

We have someone over at Warner Music Group who actually specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and online advertising.  He can flip your head back and forth with the amount of research he’s done on it and how you can target advertising to a project.  Almost all of our online advertising now is done this way.  We rarely just do banners for static placement at this site or that site.  The advances in technology and actually trying to be able to reach exactly where you want to reach are like a dream come true.

Musician Coaching:

How are those keywords then determined?  It must be kind of hard when you have a middle of the road rock band.  Do you keyword tag other bands?

DV: It depends.  I’ll give you an example.  We have Death Cab for Cutie in the “Twilight:  New Moon film.”  There’s a person upstairs that comes up with 50-100 word associations that we register and when those hit, “Boom.”  You have to just envision yourself and what you do and how you search Google. If you put it in your mindset, it’s not that hard.  It’s not like a science.  How is anyone going to search:  “Death Cab Twilight;” “Death Cab New Moon”?  Whatever.  There are a thousand different ways.  Are you going to get them all?  No.  But the odds of actually reaching your target as opposed to just reaching all these eyeballs that have zero interest in what you do are light years ahead. It’s completely changed.  Print ads are rare, few and far between with the exception of Alternative Press.

Musician Coaching:

Are most of your marketing efforts on or offline at this point?

DV: It depends what you mean, but they all have to start online.  Online is where everything starts, it is Ground Zero.  Atlantic was the first major label to garner over 50% of our annual revenue from digital sources.  That’s a huge accomplishment.  If you think that the physical market still takes up 75% of people’s purchases, and 50% of our revenue in the last year came from digital sources – meaning ring tones and digital sales – it’s a really big accomplishment.  What that says is that everything we do has to start with some digital structure.  That’s where everyone is.  That’s where everyone’s living and breathing. So that takes up a lot of our time, especially for developing artists.  Certainly then you go to traditional methods depending on your timing.  If it’s an established artist, you go a lot quicker.  And by traditional I mean, you go to radio and traditional press and there’s touring and tour marketing and hand-to-hand combat out there.

Musician Coaching:

Speaking of traditional, there really aren’t many record stores anymore…  Has anything really replaced a band playing in local record stores before a tour date?  Where are you guys going when you have a band on the road?

DV: Web chat is the new in-store.  You get to see your artists, you get to see them talk, and if we’re doing it right there’s a pre-order or an order right there, and somebody orders their music.  Secondly, though if you’re still talking about things that are done more traditionally is that any developing artist that we have, they are out there at the merch booths immediately after their shows signing, meeting, kissing babies, taking e-mail addresses.

Musician Coaching:

Tell me more about Web chat.  Do you guys have your own proprietary software for that or are you using something?

DV: There are various methods we can use.  One of the ones we’re doing right now on a consistent basis is this guy Jason Castro, and he was in the fourth season of American Idol – he’s the guy with the dreads – and we’re making a debut album with him right now. His first single just came out.  Because of his notoriety that stayed around his fan base is exceedingly strong and has remained so.  Throughout the process of this album we have bi-weekly Web chats with him.  It’s almost like “Date Night.”  He goes on camera for an hour and answers live-time questions from his fans.  It works, it keeps people connected and it keeps people coming back.  The last chat we had we were shut out of three rooms.  Three rooms were completely full and we don’t know how many people were waiting.  Each one of our rooms would hold a maximum of 1,000 people.  I have no idea how many people were trying to get on there, but 3,000 were there.

Musician Coaching:

Anything else you can think of as advice for things that make your job easier when somebody shows up at your door?

DV: An artist that actually wants to work and realizes that they are part of their career.

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Please check out the new artist that Dane is working with Robert Francis.

Other than How do I get a record deal? or How can I License my music? the question that comes up the most is How do I make it in the music industry?”

“Making it” to me just means making a living playing, writing and recording music.

Top 5 Behaviors that will help you make it in the music business:

#1 PRACTICE & LEARN: It is ALWAYS about the music.  Practice your craft daily.  Learn everything you can about music theory and writing and reading music- this will make you much more employable than the dozens of hobbyists out there. Never ever stop learning and finding people to learn from.  This has to be your number one priority no matter what happens.  You have to keep finding new ways of challenging yourself because just keeping callouses on your fingers is not enough.  If you really hit a wall with your instrument – pick up another instrument or get better at home recording techniques.  Sometimes taking a break from your primary instrument can help but there is no reason to stop learning all together.

#2 NETWORK – seek out and befriend people who make a living making music be they session players, band members, music executives (at labels, publishers, management companies or booking agents) or producer / engineers… The music business is all about your talent and who you know. In many cases people can get away with less talent if they know the right people and can convince them to participate in their projects.  Find conversation currency with these people and a way you can collaborate with as many people as possible even if it is just throwing networking events.  A note about “conversation currency” – talking exclusively about yourself and how you want to be a star could put Sominex out of business – stop it already.

#3 PLAY AND RECORD OFTEN. Play live, get basic home recording gear so you can preserve your ideas and share them with other people. Join a band or two – co-write with anyone and everyone who will let you. Start simple with open mic nights and work your way up. Meet and keep in contact with everyone who is doing what you want to do.  Your songs and recordings are like viruses – make sure you have lots of them out there and have the help of people with a vested interest in making them get heard.  The best way to do that is to collaborate.

#4 BE PROFESSIONAL. The music business if full of flakes. Don’t be a dude, there’s a million dudes out there. Be a man.  (please replace Dude with Chick and Man with Woman if this applies to you).  Do you know why Spinal Tap is so F*cking hysterical?  Because it’s based on too much truth.  Start by being punctual.  More than just punctual make sure you are paying attention – it’s your career!  Ask questions rather than nodding your head as if you already know and remember the people you are dealing with when booking shows or making records or whatever are making a living in music too so be considerate of them and their time.

#5 LEARN ABOUT BUSINESS. Look at and learn all of the ways that money is made in the music business. A good starting point is Donald Passman’s “all you need to know about the music business” – if you understand where the money comes from in the music business it will be much harder for people to take advantage of you…and they will try.  To this end- find knowledgeable people you trust and surround yourself with them.  Nothing is more terrifying than things we are vague about.

This last one doesn’t need to be advanced accounting either.  Take control of your financial life.  Keep receipts for everything and make a spreadsheet of everything you spend (I do this – it has saved me lots of $$$).  Most people find they are spending too much in some areas and not enough in others.  I once advised someone to do this who realized after three months of record keeping that he spent more on beer than he did on his career…  He is much farther along in his career now.
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Got other practical suggestions for me or your peers about how to make it?  I’d love to hear from you.