Posts Tagged ‘Music Business’

Melissa Cross is a New York based vocal coach by way of being an actress and musician herself.  Although she teaches all kinds and styles of vocal training she is best known for teaching people how to scream correctly.  She has worked with Maroon 5, The Bravery, Ben Lee, Shinedown, Thursday, Coheed and Cambria, Slipknot, Stone Sour and Andrew W.K. to name a few.

I knew this was going to be an insightful and fun interview when while describing how she became a vocal coach she said:

“The music business is such a bad boyfriend kind of relationship. It’s like the ultimate bad relationship, so toxic. I really stepped over it and found a very wholesome place for my soul to be and my work to be where I could be a performer and be helpful and be a star in my own mind.”

Music Consultant:

Melissa- thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to speak with me. You’ve worked with several platinum artists and while you teach all kinds of different singers you have become known as someone that teaches people how to scream correctly?

MC:

In the music business there has always an underground movement that bubbles to the surface. Rap used to be underground. I happen to have had my finger on the pulse of the bubbling underground but I didn’t do it on purpose. I was there at the right time for some reason.  Metal has always been there. It’s such a tired and true commodity because of the loyalty of the fans. And metal is a lifestyle choice, just as rap is a lifestyle choice. That’s why it survives even in the worst climate in the industry, because of the fans. I was privy to that movement in the early 90s. There was a producer that was trying to get a singer through a recording session without coughing up blood. I went to school with him years back, and he said, “You’re a voice teacher. You can figure this out.” And he brought this kid in and some other kids in, and some of those kids turned out to be well known. One of them was Jesse Leach, who turned out to be the lead singer for Kill Switch Engag.  People started talking and said, “Did you know there’s this girl that actually figured it out?” And then this onslaught of artists just came one by one. There was Andrew W.K. and this whole genre of people that used their voices in ways that most voice teachers would say, “Oh, you can’t do that. Stop doing that.”

Music Consultant:

You also teach people to sing conventionally and not just guttural or Cookie Monster too, no?

MC:

As with everything, there’s more underneath the surface. Cookie Monster is just one kind of scream. Metal has now compartmentalized itself into all different kinds of metal. We have hardcore, we have metalcore, we have metal, death metal, black metal. And each one of these mini genres are defined by different positions in the larynx. It’s absolutely bizarre. Some sociological paper could probably be written about how this developed, and these little tribes and their sounds. Some of them need to sing now. I’ve always taught singing. I was a voice teacher and taught people on Broadway and people in the movies. But I was a singing teacher that was willing to embrace a subculture that most people would say was just blasphemy. These kids don’t have the option to stop. They’re making a living doing this and have to do it sometimes 30 days in a row with just a couple days off. It’s impossible to do it in the way that it started out where they were doing shows on the weekend and would have the whole week to recover. If you don’t do this properly, you will fry yourself. And it’s happened many times.

Music Consultant:

And that’s true for any type of singing, right? If you do it too much, you can burn out your vocal chords.

MC:

Absolutely. Often times these things happen at inconvenient times, where there’s a buzz on the record and a tour coming up. I don’t know if you remember – I’m sure you do – but Chris Cornell in Soundgarden actually in the middle of the tour for SuperUnknown – had to drop everything because he blew his voice out. He’s okay now, but I was often getting people that were on the brink of having to quit. The thing is, vocal damage is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, there are some damaged vocal chords that make millions of dollars, even in the non-metal world i.e. Rod Stewart or Bruce Springsteen. These are people who have nodules and bumps on their vocal chords, and this is what makes them money. The unfortunate thing is they have to navigate that condition. It makes their performance inconsistent. For instance, the top metal band – there are two of them that invariably go gold and sometimes platinum – and one of those, his sound is absolutely predicated on the damage of overuse and cigarettes and drinking and lifestyle and screaming in titty bars. His sound is that. The way he operates, his voice is magnificent, because he gets this overtone on the scream that has a high end and slices right through bass and drums, and he has the darkness of the bottom part because he’s a baritone, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, but it’s damaged. It’s not an option for someone like that to go to the doctor and have an operation to scrape that stuff away, because then he wouldn’t be able to sound like that anymore.

Music Consultant:

I did want to speak generally about vocals. What generally is a first session with you like? What are you telling people? Are there things that people can do on their own that would help them protect their vocal chords?

MC:

The first thing that happens in a lesson with me is that I would give you the manual to your car or your voice. I would give you a brief overview and something that couldn’t be over-thought. If you think about things, you hold your breath, and you need your breath for the sound. The information has to filter through you in a spontaneous way, which means it has to filter through your imagination, which is why all these voice teachers seem so wacky with all their imagery. That’s the only way a teacher can bring forth the behavior is through imagery. Getting back to the point, a person needs to understand that proper vocals depend on the balance between the closure of the vocal chords and the amount of breath pressure in the lungs. Basically, there’s this zone or balance that needs to be second nature or completely intuitive that’s always there. It’s about learning the breathing. But breathing in singing is not “in, out, in, out.” It’s the way to maintain a level of air pressure in the lungs without holding the breath and without locking it down and without letting it go. There is some muscle memory stuff that needs to be addressed breathing wise. It sounds very difficult, but it’s not. The breathing is a very important part of it. And then the imagery about the way the vocal chords work needs to ultimately be something about where you are like an artist painting with sound. Rather than approaching it from a technical way, just like any instrumentalist, like a guitar player – he doesn’t look at his fingers and then calculate which note comes next. It becomes a feeling thing. It combines all the senses. You paint with vowels. I like to think about launching vowels to the back of the venue. Once you start that imagery stuff, it’s funny how everything starts to work all by itself. There is a good way for you to learn all this stuff, and I don’t want to be too self-promoting, but I have a DVD “The Zen Of Screaming” that covers everything.  It explains everything technically and visually, the breathing, and everything else. The second DVD is all about the mechanics of the distortion of actually screaming. The first is basics and the second DVD is extreme phonation. You can’t go to #2 without getting #1. Again, that breath pressure thing is so key to making things work, so you have to start from the beginning. It doesn’t take that long, but you have to make a commitment to be very precise and do it right. Don’t skip or cut corners.

Music Consultant:

What are the common things you see people doing as vocalists that are glaringly wrong?

MC:

The first thing I would say is that they imitate. Instead of being the sound or being inside themselves and making sound, they listen to what they think they are supposed to sound like and try to copy it. What that does is robs the material of all the soul and actually makes you use your throat to imitate. Imitating is the biggest one. Comparing yourself to the sound of a CD – this is particular with pop singers and rock singers and not metal singers – they listen to a CD and think their voice is supposed to sound like that, when actually that is layered and compressed and EQ’ed. No one sounds like a CD in the air live. They say, “I want to sound like so and so” and then so and so has tons of reverb and it’s compressed. It’s ridiculous. You can’t compare yourself to anyone or anything you hear on a CD, so you might as well just be yourself. That is what you need to do first – be yourself.

The other one is, people think you need more air for high notes and more air for long notes and more, more, more. Everything needs to be contained within a consistent place. The strength does not come from the idea of louder or better or sweeter or more beautiful, all those labels that come into the mind when one’s performing vocals. Those labels actually go against proper vocal production, because it operates the wrong part of the body. It goes straight to the throat. If you think or imitate or become judgmental or even make appraisals of what you’re sounding like, your breathing is off, because it’s going through the wrong part of the brain. It’s like driving from the passenger seat. Taking big gulps of breath is the big one.

Music Consultant:

What are some of the common misconceptions about voice?

MC:

A big misconception is that teas and lozenges help. The vocal folds are in the windpipe, so no tea or lozenge will ever, ever reach your vocal folds, because you’d choke to death. It’s in the airway. If you get anything into your airway, you’re calling 911. Hydrating and drinking water is something you need to do over long term, not just drink a gallon of water before you go on. It makes no difference at all. Everything you do to your vocal folds has to be done systemically. The placebo affect is a different thing. Placebos work. Anything that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, go for it. If you think that stuff works, do it, because it’s really all about a mind thing. The lozenges and the teas and all that stuff, what that does is makes a coating of the area above the airway, so there are nerve endings there that receive warm and fuzzy messages. If you have vocal damage and you get hoarse, those lozenges are not going to fix it. The only thing that fixes swollen vocal chords is vocal rest. It’s like a sprained ankle. You have to stay off it and use it a little bit and let it restore itself. Swelling is swelling. It’s inflammation. You shouldn’t take Aspirin, you shouldn’t take Motrin or Ibuprofen – only Tylenol when you’re on the road. Blood thinners are really bad for trying to heal broken chords. You need blood to be blood. Watch out for blood thinning painkillers.

Smoking is bad for you, in case you didn’t get the memo, but especially at a younger age, you can’t blame a bad show on smoking. There is one instance in which that is not the case, and that’s when someone is truly allergic to cigarette smoke. That’s different, because if there’s anything that causes mucous, you don’t want that. But young people that have been smoking are going to get their ass kicked down the road. When you’ve been smoking for 25 years or 30 years, you’re going to start to see the damage. Up until that point, it’s absolute rubbish that smoking is the cause of vocal problems. It’s technique, technique, technique. I have people on the road that smoke and drink and do drugs. The ones that stay up all night are the ones that get into trouble, because lack of sleep and getting sick are two components that invariably lead to vocal damage without proper technique. You’re on the road, you’re not sleeping, you’re innately fatigued and have a cold, and the mechanisms you need to operate the voice are compromised, so you will get damage especially without training. Smoking is bad for you but not necessarily the culprit in vocal problems, especially at an early age.

Drinking is a loss of control, so it works really great for people that are on the anxious side. Drinking is okay, but you can’t go out of control, because you’re going to lose that consistency and control you need.

Music Consultant:

So drinking affects breath control then?

MC:

Well, it does if you’re drunk. It affects everything. It’s also dehydrating, so if you need to drink, then you need to drink a lot of water. The reason water is important and good and even imperative for screamers and people that are on tour for any kind of music, is because water creates padding for when the vocal folds come together, as they do in phonation of any kind. If you don’t have that padding of liquid, you’re much more likely to get damaged because there’s not enough fluid in the tissue, so it hits harder. The vocal folds come together to vibrate at pitches, and even when I’m speaking, if I’m making a sound, it’s because the pair of my vocal folds are coming together, stopping air and creating sound. When they come together, they need a padding and a protective fluid base so they don’t bang so hard. It’s like having something underneath the carpet to give it that protection.

Music Consultant:

Having been doing this as long as you have, do you have any general music advice or advice beyond just protecting your voice?

MC:

I would say that you need to keep in mind why you’re doing this. It doesn’t have to be a verbal reason, but it’s a love. Don’t get caught up in music business bullshit. You’re doing it for love, and just keep doing it and don’t worry. The music business is in a state of flux, and truly the direction with a major label is that they’re looking for the next big thing. The next big thing is something that nobody has seen before. If you do anything derivative at all, and you want to be involved on a larger level with a major, forget it. If it sounds anything like anybody else, it’s not going to fly, because there’s not enough money anymore to promote artists that sound like anybody else. And also, if you want to go the major way, you have to have brilliant, bullet proof songs. If the writing is not bullet proof, forget it; don’t go with major labels. If you have a cool vibe and maybe the songs aren’t great, but the whole trip is very good and you love what you’re doing, you can promote that very easily yourself to a point where someone would take on the distribution of that product. You’ll make a living, but don’t think of it as the Britney Spears path. Just be grateful that you’re not going into debt and can feed yourself and pay your expenses and live off the t-shirt money. You do it for love, not for money, because there’s no money. Forget the money.

————–

If you are interested in Vocal Coaching learn more about Melissa Cross

David Rose from Knowthemusicbiz.com was kind enough to let me republish the article below that I wrote for him a while back.  If you haven’t already please check out his site.  I will have more new interviews and articles starting up again next week.

I was once told a story about Bill Murray and Hunter S. Thompson.  I can’t verify the specifics of the story but I suppose for the purposes of this article it doesn’t much matter.  During the production of the 1980 Film “Where the Buffalo Roam”, in which Murray was to play a young Hunter Thompson, he met Hunter poolside so he could get a good idea of what the famously eccentric writer was really like.  In response to the question “What is it like to be you?” Thompson tied Murray up to a deckchair and threw him in the pool.

Such is the position of most artists in the music business – floundering in the water and trying their damndest not to drown in spite of overwhelming circumstances.

I run a music business consultancy which is what this blog helps me promote – not that I don’t enjoy content creation.  This business was something I put together after having been a musician on and off for twenty years and having done A&R at Major labels for almost a decade.  As a result of actively promoting this business I get contacted by several strangers every day who are looking to make it in the music industry.  It never ceases to amaze me that in this day and age with all of the tools now available to artists that people are still looking for that one person, that one opportunity or a chance encounter that is going to propel them to superstardom.  That’s not to say that I mind being contacted – far from it!  It’s just that the type of questions I get can be really disturbing.  “Can you get me a record deal?” or  “Hey – I just need a manager and I’m going to make millions!  You need to introduce me to great managers.”

Really?  Last I checked it was 2010.

Chances are if you are reading this – it doesn’t apply to you but from what I have seen this is still the prevailing mindset of many aspiring artists.  I believe those with this mindset won’t make it – period.

In my opinion if you are going to make a living making music – let alone “making it”- you have to own the following:

·         There is no help coming for you

·         The age of the “big break” is all but over.

·         The one person who will help your career more than anyone is you.

Harsh? Yes.  Hopeless?  Not at all.

Let this empower you.  You no longer need to spend a great deal of time chasing management, booking agents or labels.   I am not suggesting that any of these types of strategic partners aren’t helpful but I do find that many artists seek to engage partners far too early in the trajectory of their careers.  Before you seek out someone to partner with you ask yourself the following questions:

·         Have you played out locally on a regular basis for at least six months?

·         Do you have a corporate entity and an intra-band agreement?

·          Have you trademarked your name?

·         Are you registered with a Performance Royalties Organization? (ASCAP, BMI, SEASAC)

·         Do you have a professional looking website for your project and a presence on social networks?

·         Have you made “no apology” recordings of your songs that you think are representative of your ability?

·         Do you have a bio on your musical career that doesn’t peak when you were eight years old and taking piano lessons?

·         Do you maintain an ongoing online and offline positive relationship with a large group of people you could call fans without feeling funny about it or including your parents and extended family?

If you answered no then your business is not yet off the ground.  You don’t yet have a viable and fully formed product.  In any business it is very difficult to get an investment for a blueprint concept or an idea.  Getting funding for a start up business becomes much easier the more time and effort (and money) the entrepreneur puts into it.  You have to remember that seeking out management, agents or labels is asking someone to invest in you.  It might not be financial investment but the amount of time a partner like this would need to devote to developing an artist’s career is usually a full time job.  What do you bring to the table other than your talent?

It’s true – people who interact with artists a great deal are often jaded (Yes, me too.  Couldn’t you tell?)  The failure rate in music and the arts in general is astounding.  If you really want to get the attention of competent and experienced handlers you have to be the one to get your career moving on your own.  If you make enough noise long enough people will find you.  Overnight successes that are examined closely are very rarely (as in go by lotto tickets instead) a case of someone being struck by the thunderbolt of fame whilst daydreaming and smoking dope in the parent’s basement.

What’s the good news?  There are now plenty of sites that provide information and insight and dozens of tools to help you get your music heard for low or no cost.  This makes it harder to rise above all of the noise (because everyone with a mic can be a singer in this day and age) but it is still a viable way to start.

Go find other artists and build a community.  Relationships with your peers when starting out are usually more valuable than industry relationships.  If you are able to surround yourself with several developing artists who are in your situation and perhaps even endear yourself to people who have put in a bit more legwork than you this will help a great deal.  Being able to market yourself to the fans of similar acts is almost the whole name of the game in the beginning so along those lines – go make friends!

Long story short (too late?) – before you spend time and effort chasing big league help, make sure you have maxed out your ability to do everything within your reach to convert strangers to friends, friends to fans and fans to fans who will actually purchase your products.  If you do that long enough and well enough even in a small town – industry will find you.

Good luck out there…

Andy Gesner and Rob Fitzgerald are the two principals in the music video promotion company Hip Video Promo.  Andy was a musician who had been in and out of rock bands, created the Artists Amplification community and after doing similar video promotion work with other companies founded Hip Video Promo in 2001.  Rob came on board in 2006.  Hip video promo gets music videos played on music television shows across the country.  Hip works both for major label artists and independents.

Musician Coaching:

So give me a basic overview of your company and what you guys do.

RF:

Well, I deal a lot with the clients themselves in terms of getting all the assets together that we need to get out the door, like the masters and making sure everything is closed captioned, and that we have the proper photographs and bio information, one sheets prepared etc.  That in and of itself can be a hassle to people not familiar with the video.

Musician Coaching:

Mass mailing in multiple video formats has to be a nightmare for someone that doesn’t know the difference.

RF:

Exactly. And, well, it’s also really that technology has really changed the game a lot too. One of the things we have to keep up with is technology, because now we’re working a lot more with digital assets; things aren’t just coming in on beta tapes. There’s a lot of back and forth about how are we going to get the master delivered, how are we going to do this, get it dubbed properly, etc., etc. On that end, that’s a lot of what I do. And then we have another girl whose job is to make sure that the programmers are telling us what they’re doing with our videos. As a client, you certainly want to make sure that we’re sending the video out, but we need to be able to tell the clients who’s playing it. And if they’re not playing it, we need to know either why not or when they’re playing it. The thing with radio is, you have that centralized, universal chart that everyone reports to, whether it be CMJ, etc. You don’t really have that with video anymore. So it’s really up to the promoters to keep up with the individual programmers.

Musician Coaching:

Doesn’t Neilsen or someone one track this anymore? You have to figure out how many spins there are via word of mouth?

RF:

No. There’s no tracking service. There used to be the CVC Report, which did that. But that went under probably four or five years ago. Since then it’s really been up to the individual promoter to keep in touch with the programmers. With that being said, a lot of programmers we work with are very good at sending out their weekly tracking or their monthly or bi-monthly tracking. But there is definitely a certain element of being the heavy hand had that says, “We’re not going to be spending our clients’ money to make these dubs and send them to you if you’re not telling us what you’re using. We need to, aside from supply content to them, give information back to our clients. If we can’t do that, we can’t send you the video.”  Another member of our team is in charge of all the programmer intake and keeping track of address changes, what shows come on the air, what shows go off the air and also getting all the tracking into reports. And then we have a few other people on staff who prepare reports and ascertain all the playlists and get everything ready to go back to the client.

Musician Coaching:

I noticed you mention you’re including a bio in the package. Is this similar to radio promotion in that all these programmers are remarkably overwhelmed, and you really need to have some kind of story that’s interesting, in other words the biographical information for your artists and the product itself are going to do a lot of the sales work for you?

RF:

I think with any kind of promotion, one of the first questions a promoter is going to ask is, “What’s the story? What’s going on with this band?” So, yes, that’s a big part of it. We want to give them every reason, aside from, “Here’s a great video,” “Here’s what else is going on with this band. They’re doing really well with radio, they’re getting great press, they’re touring with so and so.” We also want to get them all that information. As far as them being overwhelmed, for some of them it is. What it is a lot – we were talking about technology before – technology has made it a much more affordable venture to make a music video. With digital and everything, you don’t need a film camera and you don’t need all this stuff to make a video. You can really edit it and shoot it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good necessarily, but technology has made many more people of the opinion that they are music video directors.

Musician Coaching:

I have seen some videos that cost next to nothing that were better than some million dollar videos…

RF:

The thing we love, and one of the things we tell a lot of clients is, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to make a music video, but you have to have a good idea. That’s what kind of separates the men from the boys in music video world. No, you don’t have to spend a lot of money; but a lot of people don’t spend a lot of money and they’re trying to make their video look like they spent a lot of money. A good idea, a good concept, a good execution will embrace the fact that there wasn’t a lot of money spent on it. They’re not trying to make it look like they spent a lot of money on it; they’re trying to make it look like they have a cool concept. So, absolutely, you don’t have to spend a lot of money, but because you don’t, a lot of people that don’t have a good vision or the talent to make a good-looking video are still making videos. With the rise of something like YouTube, video has become a much more important component, whereas maybe six or seven years ago, people were saying, “Oh, MTV’s not playing as many videos. The video format is a dying breed.” Then all of a sudden you get your whole viral element, and video shoots back to the top of being a big priority for bands.

Musician Coaching:

Before we jump into digital, I notice that you guys are sending out a lot of physical different formats, but you’re actually sending something you can hold – a DVD or the various formats – to programmers across the board for terrestrial video outlets. Let’s say and artist made a video and they are looking to use this piece of their marketing toolkit to get them somewhere. Are there a lot of options for people like that to get test spins on different regional or niche video outlets offline?

AG:

I’ll take this one. I would have to say that going back to your question about bios and about presentation, we go to great lengths to present each artist in a way that is unlike a lot of other promotions companies where they might just take the band’s bio and maybe rehash it a little. For us it’s almost as if we’re the band’s team of lawyers and we’re going into the courtroom of indie rock music video opinion. We really have to give these people an intriguing, compelling reason to give these artists – of which many are very independent – programming consideration. What we’ve come to find is that whether it’s a bad like Spoon or Moby or the Gaslight Anthem, that you know are going to grab people’s attention because they are already a known quantity, we have hundreds of success stories of bands that were just flying under the radar but because the video was so incredibly outstanding, it more or less became the anchor of their marketing campaign moving forward.

These are the kinds of success stories that lead to tons of repeat business for us, because radio has really locked the indies out. Press is so expensive that even if you plunk down $5,000 or $8,000, who’s to say that anyone is going to actually write about you and write favorably? A compelling video and a video that really has an impact on viewers is going to definitely help an artist, especially independently, to really get to that next level so when they go out for the next record or the third record, they’re going to be in a situation where they’re a known quantity. There are so many stories like that where people are coming back because they got so much great feedback on the video that they realized, “Hey, people want to see it, they want to hear it.” The attention span of the normal American these days has become so small that they really want a full story, whether it be visual or audio or print so that they can make an informed decision.

RF:

One thing I’d add is that a lot of the programmers we service, on the terrestrial level, or even really on any level, have that independent mentality where they’re going to get the name bands, and obviously those are going to get on there because they’re established and well known but a lot of these guys are just looking for something they like.

Musician Coaching:

I guess my question is are there are still traditional terrestrial video outlets where a independent artist can get spun?

RF:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Musician Coaching:

Again, most people say, “Well, I want this on MTV,” but they don’t know. Fuse you get a little bit of a better shot. If you’re a gay artist, there’s Logo. If you’re a hard rock artist, I’m sure there are outlets like that. There’s Manhattan Neighborhood Network if you want to go really, really small. It’s just good to know that those are out there. Here’s a good question. Where should every artist, whether they can afford your services or not, be online? Is it going to YouTube or TubeMogul to kick it out to the major players? What would you say to someone that has no budget or blew their entire budget on making the video and now wants to get that video exposed?

RF:

The same thing I would say to a band that wants to do anything and doesn’t have the budget – do as much as you possibly can yourself. I’m sure you see it with A&R and stuff. The bands that get the furthest and accomplish the most are the ones that will never let anyone work harder for them than they will.

Musician Coaching:

I guess I meant specifically. Are there outlets where everyone should be? Who are the usual suspects?

RF:

Stuff like YouTube and a lot of those sites where you can upload it yourself and get it on there, there are tones of sties of that nature, whether it be YouTube, Yahoo, AOL etc. On our end, we don’t dive head-first into all the digital realms because that gets into a whole new world with viral marketing teams, and a lot of times when we get into a project with teams, we kind of overlap. They have someone that is more specific to the blogs and everything. We do work with places like AOL, Yahoo.

Musician Coaching:

Those services do have a programming staff is my understanding.

RF:

Right. And we work with sites like that where we feel that we can get them the video, and then we can also do more above and beyond just getting it on their site.

Musician Coaching:

And that’s a good question. Obviously relationships are always necessary, but are relationships the difference between getting spins on serious sites like that vs. maybe getting tested once?

RF:

I think first and foremost your product is the biggest thing. That’s the difference, which we try to stress a lot to bands: “Make sure you have something that you’re totally confident in.”

Musician Coaching:

I didn’t mean to make that sound so black and white. I guess, putting aside talent, and somebody who wrote a single as obvious as say Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” are relationships essential for getting regular rotation for something on those outlets in most cases?

RF:

I think in a lot of situations, it’s a huge benefit, because the guy who is giving your video to them can pick up the phone and get that guy on the phone and have a conversation about that, then your video has just gone to the top of that pile. He now has your video specifically written down on his to-do list for the day instead of it just blindly coming in and sitting in a pile of the other 50-some videos they got in that week.

AG:

One of the toughest parts of my job is, over nine years we’ve had to tell many, many potential clients, “My staff and I have watched your video. The song is good, the video is good, but we don’t feel comfortable moving forward with you.” Basically, I’m trying to say in the best possible way that, “You know what potential client? Don’t lead off with this video.” A lot of times they will say, “So you don’t think the video is that good?” I never tell them that the video isn’t that good. I say, “Look, in this world, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And this video might not be the first impression. You might want to go back to the drawing board.” And sure enough in numerous instances we’ve had bands come back nine months or 14 months later and are really appreciative of us and say, “You saved us from ourselves. You didn’t just take our money.” I don’t want to take bands’ money if we don’t feel confident that the video is going to get them the exposure or the attention they deserve. With that being said, we’re selective on the videos that we promote to our programmers, but the programmer is always the first to say, “We appreciate that you guys always send us the best of the best.”

Musician Coaching:

It was the same for people who would pitch A&R executives – your reputation was everything. When somebody became known as a peddler of shit in the A&R community they couldn’t get a meeting or anybody on the phone.

AG:

You use that expression I use all the time here in the office. Nine years into this, and I still haven’t become a shit merchant. And there are a ton of them out there. Each year I travel the country and visit my programmers and I take them out to their favorite restaurant or we go out to their favorite night club, and I’ve done this tour every year. A month from now I’m going to start my eighth tour of the country visiting my programmers, and yes – the programmers love to be shown love. They’re the first ones to tell me, “Andy, when that Hip video package comes to us it always goes to the top of the pile because we know we’re going to get a ‘Place to Bury Strangers,’ we know we’re going to get ‘Smile, Smile,’ or we know we’re going to get the new Spoon video from you. Don’t you guys have the new Frightened Rabbit Coming up? I can’t wait to get that!” Of course, for a lot of these bands like Frightened Rabbit, when we first promoted them two years ago, nobody knew who the hell they were. The same thing happened with Grizzly Bear. The first time out with Grizzly Bear, it was “Grizzly who?” But when you come back a second time around, boy does it make your job a lot easier.

Musician Coaching:

Good to know.

RF:

Video is kind of like the weird, mysterious cousin in the promotion family. People don’t know how you do video. We definitely know there’s an element of uncertainty terms of what a video consists of.

Musician Coaching:

There’s a lot of this I certainly didn’t know.

AG:

Briefly, I wanted to mention that, whether it’s Jerry at JBTV in Chicago or Shirley at NY Noise in Manhattan or John Faulkner at Notes from the Underground in L.A., or Alternative Currents in Omaha, or Music Mix USA in Florida, these video shows have been around a long time and they really do have a rabid, loyal viewership. TV is a time-tested medium. People still want to sit in front of their TV and be fed it. Not everybody wants to go to the computer and search for it. With that being said, for  anyone that feels that terrestrial TV is going by the wayside, I beg to differ.

Musician Coaching:

Let me ask you this – of all the videos you get, is there a common mistake, either technically or quality wise or anything that you would have people avoid? You just mentioned your screening process is a bit intense. What are some mistakes you see from independent bands making videos? What are some things people should avoid when making a video.

RF:

Well, say they were going to send it to the local, regional channel the thing that a lot of people do – you know when you watch a video and you have your band name, the song title, the director and the label on the bottom left-hand corner? That’s called a Kyron.   That’s something that the programmer puts on and the channel puts on and the show puts on because a lot of times they have a custom-made thing. What we see a lot now is that the director will put it on themselves. So we get a video, and we can’t send a video as far up as an MTV or as low down as a local, regional show, because they want to put their own graphic on there. So if you send it out with s self made kyron (*** Note -no clue how to spell this but I’m sticking with my first attempt***) on there, nobody’s going to be able to touch it. That’s kind of a common thing. With urban videos, it’s a little more black and white, because more of the current trend in the hip hop world is to have the big, splashy graphic on top that says the band name and the song title. That’s okay, because that’s more a part of the video. That’s something that’s part of the video itself. But the white block letters in the bottom left-hand corner.

Musician Coaching:

The floating text in the first few seconds, yes.

RF:

A lot of times the programmer will get a video and they’ll like it, and they’ll say, “That’s great, but you need to send it to me without the kyron.” One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of programmers, if they do a regular show – a show that airs a couple times a week, maybe it’s an hour long – they want to be able to program a bunch of videos. Not that we ever want to compromise anybody’s musical or artistic integrity, but the longer the video is, the less of a chance you’re going to have at getting it programmed. Because if you send a video for a song that’s five-and-a-half minutes long, you might have a programmer say,  “Hey, I could get two videos in this span of time instead of this one video eating up five-and-a-half minutes of the programming.” Personally speaking, it seems too bad to me that there’s the mentality that every song or every single needs to be three-and-a-half minutes long because some of my favorite songs are four-and-one-half-minutes or five-minutes long, but again, I’m not making up the rules, I’m just going with the reality of what people are looking for and what gives the best chance of air play. And lastly, I’d say if you’re looking for television broadcast type airplay, don’t push your luck with potentially offensive material.  Even though the Internet has kind of desensitized people to what is acceptable and what is offensive and what is not, censors think differently. People like to push the envelope, and if you’re going viral with it, that’s great; but if you’re going to have bare breasts or gratuitous butt shots, a lot of people are not going to play it for that reason. And it’s not like I’m telling people what to do with their videos, but that is the feedback that comes back from censors.

Musician Coaching:

Suggestions for what not to do when trying to get your video aired are completely within the realm of the question. Andy, did you have something to add earlier?

AG:

We service over a dozen retail pools, better described as content providers. Whether it’s Club Com who gets the videos into fitness centers and gyms so that when you’re working out you can watch the cool new Spoon video, or if it’s Promo Only in Florida who provides their video reels to night clubs, night life locations, cruise ships, bowling alleys, or it’s DMX in Seattle, who hits all the major retailers in the malls you go to, or In-Store Sports Network who provide video content for Foot Locker and Foot Action …  they have to be cognizant of content, because they don’t want complaints coming back from customers saying, “Hey, I was in with my eleven-year old daughter, and that video had some salacious content.” Aside from the national outlets that will flag a video due to content, you’re also hurting yourself out there in content provider land, because you see videos everywhere you go. I go to my local oil change place, and they have videos playing in there. It’s all very much something bands should consider. If you want to get cute, like Rob says, or they want to get salacious, you’re going to be hurting your chances for exposure.

Musician Coaching:

Just one last question. Are there any parting words of advice for artists out there and their videos?

RF:

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so if you’re going to send your video, make sure it’s something you’ve taken the time to be really proud of. That’s really the gist of it. You can understand that promotion and your team and your contacts can only go so far if you don’t have a good product to work with. Take the time to make it right.

Check out http://hipvideopromo.com for more info

A mentor once told me that being an entrepreneur is about separating the wheat from the chaff.  This should come as no surprise to you as a musician.  If you are reading this the odds are that you are a musician or work with musicians / are related to one.  The point is- if you run in these circles you know how much BS there is out there.  In my experience with both musicians and executives – hollow promises and lack of follow through are too common.  How does one find the services and strategic partners that are going to do what they say they will?

In this day and age – musicians have to be entrepreneurs.  Most people have to take a stab at doing everything themselves.  They have to do everything from being their own label, manager, booking agent and their very own online marketing guru.  This work comes after all of the effort that goes into making great products and self- branding.  It is understandably too much for people.  This is why they turn to outside help – and help is available out there.  As of the typing of this article, Google has 129 million results for “How to make it in the music industry.”  The digital age has made the outsourcing of solutions to what were major obstacles to musicians in the past rather easy to overcome.  For a nominal fee you can get digital distribution.  You can take a stab at your own website for free on sites like Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress or even upgrade to your own URL without knowing how to program for less than $75 / year.  There are music business coaches, online marketing services, radio independents and various other kinds of helpful services out there waving around their contact information just waiting on your call.  Today, musicians have the power and the reach to hire contractors.

Back to the problem though – who’s real?

What is this provider promising?  Does it sound to good to be true?  If so – it probably is.  There are lots of people out there who promise the moon for a low fee or a signature on a contract and they are really just preying on people’s hopes and dreams.   Below are some tips that can help you sort through both potential investments in your career and potential strategic partners

1.  First hand testimony

The first and best choice when thinking about making a purchase of services (or even just the investment of time into a new technology or social network) is the testimony of someone you know and trust.  If it is a large investment or decision I would look around for multiple opinions if possible.

2. Internet searches

Look at this person online.  Try searching for their name in quotes and their company name or their company name and the word “reviews”.  If you are really suspicious try their name and the word “lawsuit” If they have online profiles on social networks like LinkedIn see if what they say is reflected on their resume there and who they are connected to.  This is entertainment – there should be some references even if they are ones generated by the person in question that at least tells you they are wiling to go on public record with what they have told you.

3. References

Still have questions?  Try asking the provider or partner for some references from their other clients.  People unwilling to provide references are suspect to me.  You can also take it upon yourself to cold email someone who has used the service and see if they get back to you with their experiences

4. Presentation

Particularly when you are dealing with services that live online you should see if this person or company has a decent website.  It need not be fancy, it doesn’t have to be terribly flashy but it should be a decent representation of what they do and who they are.  No matter what kind of service or partner you are thinking of working with you want to be aligned with a person or an organization that communicates well.  If someone is using MySpace as a corporate website – that feels a great deal more insubstantial to me.  I would want to be with a person or a company that has made a commitment to their own branding before allowing them to be a part of mine.

5. Metrics

This one is my favorite.  Are you informed when you are surfing the web?  Most people are not.  If you have not done so install the Google page rank tool bar and the alexa page rank tool bar into your browsers.  These are both tools that give you a very rough idea of how important a site is in terms of traffic and how well they have been prepared for search engine optimization.  Google works on a scale of 0-10 and Alexa from 1 to twenty something million.  Neither one is a perfect barometer for web traffic but if you are approaching a web marketing company and they tell you about how great they are at online marketing and both toolbars come back “n/a” or “0″…. Move on.  These numbers are also important when determining whether or not it is worthwhile to invest time writing content for a site, participating in a new social network etc.  Having numbers on your side will definitely help you feel how real someone is – at least in terms of what they know / how much time they have invested into online marketing for their own brand.

Be careful out there.  I don’t want to make anyone paranoid.  There are a number of great people and services in music but sadly there are a few bad apples that make it worth mentioning.

I have a bunch of exciting interviews lined up and several just waiting for approval – thanks as always for reading.

-R-

Eric Garland is the CEO and Founder of Big Champagne LLC.  For those unfamiliar with Big Champagne it is an online media measurement company.  It is a gross oversimplification of what they do but basically they monitor what content moves where online and how often.  How many times is apiece of content (a song, a movie, a video) purchased, traded, streamed or stolen online?  Big Champagne can tell you.

Musician Coaching:

I first met you in 2003, and you were really just starting the company off. Tell me what the impetus was for tracking media and what you did and what you do now.

EG:

The company started as most creative ideas do with an artist. I’ve tried for many years to take credit for the original brainstorm, but it was my friend Glen Phillips – who I’m sure you know of, and if you don’t, his band was Toad the Wet Sprocket. In the late 90’s he had broken up the band to become an independent artist and do a solo album. And Napster happened, and we were friends, and he knew I was into the sort of tech end of the digital music space.

Musician Coaching:

What were you doing at the time?

EG:

I had been a career management consultant straight out of school and had been working for a big HR consulting firm called Towers Perrin. We did a lot of work in the mid 90’s for Anderson and for Enron. I got out of that business at the right time. But I’d always been involved in what was called at that time, the CM^2 Practice of that business – Communications and Measurement. So Glen and I were talking about the original Napster, and it was at that moment when Lars from Metallica was giving press conferences about suing every last Metallica downloader, and Hilary Rosen and the RIAA were making a lot of noise in the initial litigation. I remember Glen saying one night after a little showcase when we were sitting at the bar in L.A. at Largo, “I just want to sell those people a t-shirt and let them know I’m still alive, and if they were a fan of what I did with the band in my major label incarnation that I’m still here and I’m still writing songs, and I’d love to get an opportunity to play those songs for them.” It was just this very human moment where he said, “I don’t want to sue anyone, I just want to find an audience.” Following that, we had some really directive conversations about how to take – not Napster specifically, I think we were already talking about all these Napster-like things that were popping up on the internet – all these internet communities that were growing up around what the industry viewed as wholesale theft of the music and turn it into a community that an artist could leverage.

The early conversations about Big Champagne were very much about social networking before we even had that term. We did a lot of work with Glen and ultimately a lot of artists in the early part of this decade doing things like marketing to Napster users and Audio Galaxy users. There were a lot of p2p’s popping up that had reasonably good community features – things like artist subscription list. Audio Galaxy had these great things you could sign up for saying, “I’m a fan of Elvis Costello, and if there’s any news about Elvis Costello or new music, you have permission to let me know.” We were doing that very nascent early internet marketing stuff, mostly on behalf of bands and artists because labels wouldn’t touch p2p. And then because of litigation, most of those great social features of early file-sharing networks were taken away. They created obvious targets for the music industry’s lawyers. The p2p operators had to adopt this “See no evil, hear no evil” stance. So we looked at what we were doing and said, “Look, if this becomes really anti-social and about anonymous people hunkered over their glowing streams, uploading and downloading music in their solitude. What’s the opportunity? Is it all just lost?”

We looked at what we were doing and said, “The only part of this business that would translate in that world would be broad metrics and essentially trying to do for what internet music what the Nielsen Company did for early television audiences – quantify activity and assign it geographically and start to do audience measurement.” We said, “We’ll push in that direction, and the rest in our small way is history.” We did that and got a lot of attention doing that because it was during the period when the media was fascinated and consumed with internet and music piracy – up, down or sideways. We became a frequent source for information and by the time things like iTunes and Rhapsody and the earlier legit places for digital music plays came along, we were considered an authoritative source for information about digital music. And we ended up going on to do deals with retailers and portals and social networks.

Musician Coaching:

It started off as Napster and the offshoots – all your p2ps. And now you track all the digital download stores and all the sales for the aggregators.

EG:

We do, yes. And broadcasters. We’ve had a deal for several years with Clear Channel. We work with MTV/Viacom. We’re trying now to incorporate information about – and I say this smiling a little bit – “all of it.” I don’t know if “all of it” really exists anymore, but we’re trying to map as much of the measurable consumption of music as one can. As a result of that, people I knew when you and I knew each other will see me and say,  “Hey, Garland, congratulations! You went legit! You came on over from the dark side.” That always sticks with me a little bit. I always want to respond with, “No, we didn’t. We really just followed the marketplace. When people were consuming music on the internet with the original Napster, we paid attention to that. And when they started to consume music on Myspace, before most of the people in the business knew what that was, we paid attention to that … and YouTube and iTunes and all the rest. Our business didn’t change. The ways people consumed music changed, and it’s always been our business to follow them. So that’s what we do.”

Musician Coaching:

I’m not going to dwell on it because I know these questions have been beaten to death – but are we still looking at piracy being 19/20 downloads basically? Are we looking at 95% of all music downloaded is being done without compensating the artist?

EG:

Downloads remain overwhelmingly free and unauthorized, yes. It varies a lot by artist and title. For some artists, 95% is a fair and in some cases conservative estimate to give piracy for certain types of artists.

Musician Coaching:

I didn’t realize. Is there a genre difference or some type of artist that is suffering more from theft?

EG:

Absolutely, and statistically it’s very easy to plot. A big urban crossover or pop smash – a single song that’s dominating the top of the rhythmic or the pop charts – is going to be overwhelmingly downloaded for free and illegally. And you look at the number of records sold compared to those downloads, and it will make you cry. But then you look at Susan Boyle, and not only is there relatively little internet piracy, but you look at her MySpace plays – legitimate, but internet access as opposed to paid traditional retail access – and it’s overwhelmingly traditional bricks and mortar. An upper demo – old folks – love buying records, and a lot of kids don’t even know habitually what that means. It’s rare for them to buy a record at all. As a genre, Nashville, country held out far longer. The big urban records got hit the hardest and fastest and remain by the numbers the most pirated.

Musician Coaching:

Is that because they are more likely to be online in torrent form or for exchange, or is that statistically?

EG:

It’s never about supply. Everything is readily available. You can never say, “Well, Susan Boyle doesn’t get downloaded a lot because it’s hard to find her, and it’s not quite one click away.”

Musician Coaching:

Well sure, at that level. I guess I meant somebody on an obscure indie put out something, and there just weren’t a lot of peers or files out there.

EG:

I think especially in recent years with the rise of one-click hosting sites, which include everything from Rapid Share to Mega Upload and Storage-Dot-O, you’d be dismayed and cry your eyes out if you just Googled “name of indie record” and the word “.rar” or the word “torrent” and “rapid share” just using the Google search engine, without having to fire up any file sharing software at all. It really isn’t about supply, because the internet continues to get better and better about making it all available. It really has to do with two things. The obvious and less interesting thing of the two is age; somebody who is 40 or 50 or 60 is more likely not only to like that Susan Boyle record but to buy it as opposed to grabbing it on Bit Torrent, and somebody who is fifteen is more likely to love the Rihanna record, but is more likely to grab a song – even if they pay for it – for a buck than to spend $15 or $17. That’s the less interesting thing because I think it’s so obvious we can all intuit that.

I think the more nuanced, more interesting thing to me is that it’s not just the demo,  it’s also the nature of the relationship between the artist and the fan; meaning, as the nature or the impression of downloads or listens, Lady Gaga’s piracy rate is much lower than a lot of big urban crossover or pop one-hit wonders. Why? Because even though it’s the same kids and even though God knows the material is easily accessible for free online as it is with Taylor Swift, there seems to be more connective tissue and more expectation on the part of fans that, “Hey, this is more than a song, and may even be worth a couple bucks; and it’s definitely an album experience and not just about grabbing the single.”

Musician Coaching:

There’s definitely always been the sense that a nameless, faceless band that came along with one single was much different from somebody who was a press darling and a fashionista and engaged on more fronts.

I guess what I am driving at is – is there something artists are doing online that correlates to more or less piracy?

EG:

Unfortunately I think the clearest correlation there is, the more digitally-savvy you are – because you are usually a reflection or a mirror of your own fan base – and digitally positioned you are as an artist, the more widely pirated you are going to be. That seems to be the overwhelming correlation. If you are selling vinyl records and CD’s off a website and collecting check by P.O. box only, chances are the rate of piracy will be lower.

Musician Coaching:

Wow. That’s almost a slap in some ways. Be online, be everywhere and get your music ripped off. (I’m shaking my head and laughing bitterly and without joy at this point as is Eric)

EG:

We’re laughing, but it’s so abundantly clear that I don’t want to shy away from it. Digital is dual edged. I don’t use that to recommend against leading and making use of all the digital platforms and being an overwhelmingly 21^st Century artist. I don’t think you have the option to just say no to that, even though it comes with an extremely high rate of piracy, because that’s where the entire business is going. You’re going to have to be able to win in that environment.

Musician Coaching: Let’s get off the happy track of piracy soon… I was at a Christmas party the other night, and I was talking to a music manager who has huge clients and he said, “Yeah, there’s no money in this business anymore.” And clearly he has different standards than I do, but it’s like, “really?”

EG:

I get that at every gathering, especially at Christmas. It’s a Dickensian Christmas in the music industry, because in part, the harder they come. It is I think in some ways most painful in those upper ranks. I’ll certainly put your friend who represents big artists in that category. Because there is so much to lose, and it’s so immediately visible when the bottom starts to drop out. If you are a struggling artist, or a lower/middle-class artist – someone who has quit the day job or barely – I’m not sure all these macroeconomic forces and things like the global piracy epidemic actually affect you as immediately. Your business is a very different business, and you’re actually still just trying to get heard and make connections with a relatively few number of people, some few numbers of thousands or tens of thousands of people who are together going to help you eke out a living. And at that level, I don’t know that you can point to the sea change in the industry from 2000-2010 and say, “It killed me.” In balance, you’re probably about where you would have been or a little bit north of where you would have been. Because with that sea change have come some advantages to the little guy. But if you’re Aerosmith or the Eagles, of course you have some sob stories to tell, because those big checks are still big by your standards or mine, but they’re not as big. And they never will be again.

Musician Coaching:

Do you think there will ever be a diamond album?

***(RIAA classifies an album as diamond when it has shipped ten million copies)

EG:

I read something that suggested that a couple of albums over the last ten years sort of crept into the diamond. I think the Beatles’ Number One is now diamond.

Musician Coaching:

I’m not sure that counts.

EG:

That was the point I was going to make. Some catalogue records may still continue to creep into the diamond category typically; but will there ever be another new artist who genuinely sells ten million copies, an artist that is not already known to all of us.

Musician Coaching:

And you can say that with absolute certainty with all the numbers you have flying around you daily?

EG:

Oh, with great confidence. I tried to dramatize it during the MJ news cycle. We got a lot of calls for number when Michael died and the pile-on of digital sales of his catalogue started; and somebody made the mistake of asking me the question, “Will there ever be another Michael Jackson.” And I said, “No.” And the person said, “What do you mean? You didn’t even take a pause!” And I said, “Well, I’m not saying there will never be another quadruple threat talent or that there won’t ever be someone who captivates the bizarre imaginings of the world the way he did. I’m just saying that we will never again live in a world where so few media channels allowed one artist to dominate the attention of the world n the way that Michael did.” The ascent of Michael Jackson correlates beautifully to the ascent of a monolithic global media structure, and our world will never again see that. You’ll never again have just three channels on television with Michael Jackson on two of them. So when I say with confidence, “No- We’ll never again have a diamond album,” it’s not because we won’t have great artists or very popular artists. It’s just that the world will never be captive to so few signals ever again, so the marketplace will always be more fractured than that.

Musician Coaching:

I definitely want to change subjects and talk about the fact that you’re tracking the evolution of how records begin to creep and sell both indie and major and across the board. Where do these things that go viral start usually? And are there any such places that are not as obvious, or are there channels you believe are underserved where a lot more files are propagating?

EG:

It’s funny, and it’s kind of reductive to say, “Internet viral is just in some ways a new expression of nomenclature for word of mouth.” Because it is really all the same thing it’s always been, only with increasingly powerful tools. You remember in the early days of internet – mid 90’s to late 90’s – there would be these e-mail forward viral phenomena:  “Dog Bites Man’s Crotch” or something. There were these horrible little QuickTime videos, and those things at that point no one was tracking them, because it was just going Outlook to Outlook or inbox to inbox. But we know because we would go to lunch and talk about it that they were viewed tens of thousands of millions of times. In the same way, e-mail is still a key driver of word of mouth. We’re typically not e-mailing Quick Time videos around anymore, we’re e-mailing YouTube links. But e-mail is a huge driver and obviously Twitter and all the various messaging clients of all the social nets – Facebook, etc. – but it’s still fundamentally comes down to a lot of people simultaneously deciding that something is worthy of a few seconds of attention for fill-in-the-blank-reason. “This is curious, this is funny, this is outrageous, this is sad, this is impossible.” When I think about the OK Go treadmill video, I think mostly, while it certainly got a lot of attention for the band, it was not about a pop rock band, that was about nerds on treadmills and executing what I think people thought was an outrageously accomplished and choreographed routine in one take:  an impressive feat of humanity. That’s one of the good ones, because I think people wanted to watch it for the right reason.

Musician Coaching:

So the music was a backdrop for a stupid human trick in your estimation?

EG:

Yeah, but a friendly, empathetic stupid human trick in a sense that I think people were genuinely impressed and cheering these funny guys. It wasn’t, as so many of these things are, strictly Schadenfreude or mean-spirited. There are a handful of things that appeal to some aspect of our humanity, and that just drives us to tell a friend, and we have so many tools that make it “viral internet phenomena.” But I’m not convinced that the hit rate is very high in terms of there being something really additive or it building some asset that an artist can use and capitalize on and realize long term. Sometimes it vaults an artist into a level of recognition or consciousness that they can really benefit from, but I’m not convinced that’s eight out of ten; it may be two out of ten times.

Musician Coaching:

You have all this wealth of information, and clearly, if you release a video you should be on YouTube and if you release a song you should go to one of the many cheap to free distributors and be on all the most popular digital service providers. But are you finding that there are any platforms on the rise that people should be aware of, or any things bubbling up from places that are unexpected?

EG:

I’ll come back around and answer that specifically so I don’t bury your question, but what it makes me think first is, I’m not a big believer in short cuts, cheats, jumping to the front of the line. In other words, I think a lot of artists are thinking, “If I’m one of the first guys who’s using the next Twitter or the next Facebook, I’m going to have this huge advantage and going to have gotten one over or exploited the tools in a way that essentially let me jump the turnstile.” I’m not a huge believer in that, and I say that in part from the perspective of someone who like an aspiring artist is trying to build attention, a fan base and relationships in my case for a little company. We’re trying to do this too, and it’s certainly not a direct analog, but we’re certainly trying to maintain a profile and build meaningful connections and grow the scope of those connections. What we always say to ourselves and what I would say to any artist is, certainly, be everywhere to the extent that it costs you nothing to do that – not even time – to the extent that all the videos are uploaded to a single YouTube account that is clearly identified as being yours and not being even that clever but being diligent about things like managing your meta data, making sure your digital music is available everywhere that someone might meaningfully look for it. You can work with somebody like a TuneCore or a CDBaby to outsource that stuff for you.

But be everywhere not in the sense that you’re spending 40 hours a week as an artist doing things that artists don’t really do, but rather tick all the boxes. Fine. But then your real job is to use that flint rock and create some little sparks and from sparks a little kindling and from kindling a fire, and then fan that fire, and I don’t believe in a whole lot of short cuts when it comes to that. You have to be good, and then you have to focus on that first and second degree of separation and build your Kiss Army, one by one, by one.

Sometimes, without the benefit of the traditional media machine (radio promo and video ads)  an artist makes it through.  It’s so rare though and the circumstances always seem to be so specific to that artist that there seems to be nothing that can be learned from their example or replicated by others. There weren’t really a series of moves on the chessboard. For most artists success is something that has to be earned fan by fan.

Musician Coaching:

I was once told by Ahmet Ertegun  “A hit will find a way.” I guess that hasn’t changed.

EG:

Right. I think that’s true. To your question though about are there any new places, new venues?

Musician Coaching:

You would know if there are places online or tools to look out for. I would love to know your perspective on companies or platforms that would be of interest or are vastly underserved.

EG:

I actually think that one looming opportunity is in these one-click hosting sites, because I’ve never seen artists use those platforms at all. They’re free. You know what I’m talking about, this category of things that includes Mega Upload and Rapid Share. They’re free. You can be the one to create what could in effect be your EPK or content bundle that you want anyone to be the first thing to find or see. You could be the one to upload that and watch. It’s like this brilliant stroke of free SEO in the sense that anyone that searches for your relevant keyword – the name of your band or song – I guarantee you among the top results are going to be these one-click files. Google floats them all to the top. It’s in some ways really driving the piracy problem. But as an artist or manager or label distributor, you could take some control of that.

You can be the one to determine what the content is and how it’s distributed and whether it comes with a file on or an opportunity to get someone to opt in or have a relationship with you. It’s just something where strategically, in the same way artists were loath to use file sharing networks because they didn’t want to get their hands dirty – not so much artists, but management companies didn’t want to work with file sharing companies because they didn’t want to get their hands dirty. In the same way that it’s verboten to work with a bit torrent site, I think we don’t have that luxury with one-click hosting. These are not pirate businesses, these are legitimate businesses. They are sometimes U.S.-based, venture-based, really profitable businesses. And are they enabling infringement in the same way that Google and YouTube are? Sure, all day every day, but they’re not of the variety that they’re going to be easily reprimanded or knuckled under, so I don’t think we have the luxury of saying, “Oh, I don’t want to work with them.” I think there’s too much opportunity there.

Musician Coaching:

I didn’t even think about that, but with Google’s  music initiative anybody who would upload that on several of those sites could definitely drive what the first impression is or what one of the first impressions is…

EG:

To put a fine point on that one, if you are not making streaming music available now – we’re not even talking about giving something away for free – through Lala and what will now be Myspace Music, iMeme and iLike, you’re not even covering your bases fundamentally. And you probably don’t have time for that, nor should you make time for that; but CDBaby or TuneCore or one of the other aggregators will.

Checkout Big Champagne and Follow Big Champagne on Twitter

I got an email from my friend Cameron Mizell who runs the site MusicianWages.com recently.  He told me Musician Wages was going to be doing a blogging blitz where lots of folks who blog about the music business would write about the topic “If you could go back to 1999 and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?”

That skinny kid framed by Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun and Jason Flom, then the President of Lava / Atlantic was me in 1999.  I was an A&R representative at Lava at the time.  Although it wasn’t really that long ago it was quite along time ago in terms of what has changed in music and business.

If I recall correctly:

• The Matrix came out that year.
• The swing music revival was just about at its peak.
• Something called Napster showed up.
• Cher’s “Believe” introduced most people to auto-tune
• No Itunes – no Ipod.

It was slightly later – in early 2000 when the Camp Chaos video went viral – at least in the circles I traveled in at the time.  I never thought that piracy and file sharing would have been so rampant.  I remember thinking this video was funny…I guess it still is in a much darker way.  I can’t say exactly why but it reminds me of that time period a great deal.

That’s more than enough of a stroll down memory lane though.  The question at hand?  What one piece of advice would I give myself?  Other than the suggestion to my mid twenties self that spending a majority of my disposable income in bars was probably not an advisable plan for the future I suppose I would really want to convey to myself the importance of being patient, persistent and consistent.

By nature I’m a pretty black and white thinker.  I have a very addictive personality and patience has never been one of my strengths.  This combination of traits have made for more challenges than I could possibly describe in a blog post.  Thankfully, I have started to find ways around this and forced myself to find some semblance of a normal pace with my work and my life.  It has taken ten years of looking at my life and the lives and careers of my friends and peers to realize that those who never strayed from their goals and found ways of working towards them slow and steady seemed to be the people who have made the most impact.

Patience, Persistence & Consistency.  I have no significant regrets in my life.  In truth I find myself more regretful about the things I didn’t do than the things I did.  I believe that trying my hand at many different jobs and careers was a requirement to help me figure out what I did and didn’t want to do but if only I could hop in to a Delorean and pay my 1999 self a visit I would just try and explain that what I have seen and experienced in the last ten years leads me to believe that there aren’t any shortcuts (at least not ones that tend to last) and that people who become great at whatever they do tend not to chase their goals at an unmanageable pace.  People who become great never seem to take their eyes off of their goals and make small strides as often as they can.  If I could speak to the guy I was in 1999 I would try to explain that just because something I tried to master didn’t happen for me quickly did not mean that it was not worth pursuing… It just meant it was going to take a while longer than I wanted it to.

I don’t really feel the need to translate that into what that means for a musician or a music executive except to say “stick with it” whatever “it” is.  I have been asked  few times throughout my life what I would pay to live the life I wanted to live and my response has never wavered – “any amount of money”.

Happy New Year all…

-Rick-

I just finished reading “So you wanna be a rock and roll star – how I machine gunned a roomful of record executives and other true tales from a drummer’s life” by Jacob Slichter. I highly recommend it.

The business has changed so much in the last ten years that some of Slichter’s experiences as the drummer of Semisonic would be very different than those of a struggling band today (i.e. the band was dismayed by a $65,000 video budget.)  That said, he writes very well and his ability to capture the record label culture and the feelings of uncertainty of both the musicians and the label executives is incredible. If nothing else it provides the reader with an understanding of exactly why the major labels (other than online developments) are in the predicament they are today.

The book describes Jacob’s point of view of the whole process from struggling in obscurity as a musician to his joining Semisonic and the band’s rise off the single “Closing Time” and the aftermath of such a giant single. He reveals a surprisingly vulnerable and humble outlook for an accomplished musician and his recall of the smallest details of their career is just uncanny. Through Jacob’s eyes the reader gets an accurate firsthand look at how radio promotion, A&R and other label executives interacted with artists at the time. It is a funny and often a nerve wracking tale that had me laughing out loud and gave me empathetic knots in my stomach even though I knew more or less how the story would end as I was familiar with the band.

I added it to a list of good music and music business stories that are worth reading on Amazon called Music Business Stories.

I was invited down to the Sound Control event last night at S.O.B’s by a friend (Ariel Hyatt – press tycoon) and saw lots of interesting people from my past. There were several folks I had met while an A&R guy, mostly music managers and record company people. I’m kind of shocked that more of them don’t show up at events like this but I digress…

The panel was called Artists Disruptors and featured Chrisette Michele, Toby Lightman, Rik Cordero and was Moderated by Daniel Weisman from Elitaste. I was most familiar with Toby Lightman as she was signed to Lava just as I was leaving there for Elektra records but it turned out I had seen many of the videos that Cordero had made and as near as I can tell (I can’t hold a camera to save my life) he’s quite talented. The panel started with just Lightman and Cordero being asked questions about what tools they used online and what it was like being a modern artist.

I was better able to hear Toby Lightman – and from her I heard the familiar tale of how being on a major was limiting. She described (accurately from my experiences) the frustration of being tied to promoting only the latest single and not being able to do creative projects out of the scope of the genre that she felt confined to by Atlantic. Since being dropped Lightman has had success with music licensing and even turned around an independent album in three weeks when a last minute offer to be on the home shopping network occurred. She made a point of saying that while tethered to a major she would have never been able to make such a tight deadline.

I understood her feelings completely I had watched the eyes of artists signed to the labels I worked for go from shining with childlike glee to the dull eyes of an animal in a cage that have learned only that it is has no control over it’s destiny. Okay…enough melodrama. Christ, sometimes I make myself sick… The point being there is a lesson in all of this and it isn’t as black and white as major labels suck, be independent (as described we have flogged that dead horse long enough.)

The lesson in my mind is simply “don’t wait.” I watched dozens of artists get signed and undergo the remarkable transformation I began to call the shiny shirt phenomenon. It used to go like this:

1) Band starts making noise locally and / or regionally. Doing great work, directly in touch with the fans, they have self released an album that people are buying, more importantly ticket sales and merch are almost getting these guys to make a living provided they live like college students. They even start getting some support from a local radio station and / or some decent press. The band or artist finally gets the attention of a “real” manager, agent or label…life is good!

2) Band signs with label and appropriately celebrates for several weeks. Best case scenario they pay off their credit cards with the advance and hopefully have enough to put some aside for the proverbial rainy day or better yet they establish a fund for future band projects. Worst case scenario they arrive at their next meeting with their label partners in a new sports car. Artist and label formulate a plan – perhaps re-recording their record, re-writing their bio, helping them find new strategic partners. Publicity department looks over the artist or band and if they are just kind of average looking folks they get new rock n’ roll by numbers haircuts and their flannel button down shirt is replaced by a shiny button down shirt that is a bit too form fitting to make anyone but a CK underwear model feel comfortable.

3) Artist stops doing all of the things that made them a local and / or regional success and stares blankly at label partners with hopeful eyes. Label purchases an opening slot for the band on a huge tour where they are the first of four to go on and they play to significantly less people then they would have on their own regionally. Tour support is spent with reckless abandon lessening the artist’s chance to ever recoup. The single goes to radio and misses.

4) Band is back to where they started having destroyed the momentum they had built with a local album release. They have diminished their local or regional roots by trying to break new markets and neglecting their existing fanbase. Their shows aren’t as well populated as they were before this process and they begin to feel as if there is the stink of major label failure on them or they are “washed up” or “has beens” or “no hit wonders”. Odds were about 50/50 the band breaks up or artist gives up completely and gets a 9-5.

5) Artist tucks old band press photo and new band press photo into a drawer they will rarely open and cover it up with a shiny shirt that never really fit their person or personality.

I am SURE…well…I HOPE it has gotten better than this and labels have adapted but this truly was a common phenomenon as recently as five years ago. If there is an upside to the 360 deal it is that labels are now acquiring bands like major corporations buy smaller corporations and they now have a vested interested in all of the artist’s revenue streams… I somehow doubt they would still make these mistakes again…

The take away from all of this and the lesson, if there is one, is that you never stop remembering that you serve your community of fans and you should never take your eyes of of your goals. The goal for most of us is to make a living doing something we love. Don’t let the sex appeal of the big deal (of any kind) deter you from building your living one fan at a time.

Would love to hear your stories. Email or call.

Rick

P.S. – there was more to SoundCntrl than this…they seem to be an interesting music and technology community building organization.