This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
MING (a.k.a. Aaron Albano) is a New York City-based DJ, producer, remixer and owner of Hood Famous Music, Habitat Music and co-owner of Afire Music. Starting at the age of nine, he trained as a classical and jazz guitarist and played in hair metal bands throughout high school. Because of his passion for production and interest in building a solid career in the music industry, he decided to pursue a degree in electrical engineering with a focus on audio at the University of Miami. While in college, he continued to fine-tune his production and DJ’ing skills and upon graduation, looking for a way to fund the development of his home studio, MING found work in the burgeoning Internet industry. During this time, MING met renowned musician and DJ FS and together they formed the duo Ming+FS, a collaboration which went onto produce four studio albums and over 30 singles. Eventually, he founded the record label Hood Famous Music. As an artist, MING is managed by Stephanie Lafera at Atom Empire, which counts huge artists such as Lady Gaga among its talent.
MING talked to me about his multi-faceted experience in the music business and delivered some “sound” advice for artists looking to market themselves, hone their craft, grow their fan bases, achieve balance and build long-lasting careers.
How did you first get into the music industry?
MING:
I have basically been involved in music since I was nine. I was a classically- and jazz-trained guitar player. I always wanted to be in the music business. I played in an all-star hair metal band coming out of high school and thought I was going to make it big. That’s when hair metal got killed by grunge.
My parents were great, you know, those Jewish parents from the suburbs who wanted me to have something to fall back on. And I was really good at math and science and interested in designing recording consoles. So, I went to school at the University of Miami for electrical engineering with an emphasis in audio. Because electrical engineering is a very serious course of study, it really gave me the view that everything in life has a process. And it’s not just about the dream, rather about whether or not you can live the reality of the dream. For example, if you want to build websites, you learn how to build websites. You don’t just talk about building them. You get the books, learn the code, etc. It was the same sort of thing for me when it came to production.
When I graduated, I moved back to New York and wanted to focus on production. The money I was making money in the Internet business went right into my home studio. I was playing in a bunch of different bands when I met Fred – FS – through some other friends and eventually joined his band, Millis. I heard some of the hip hop he was producing on the side, and said, “Wow. This sounds like British trip hop. We should make some music together. I bet I can get this signed.” So, we made a bunch of tracks and totally by chance, I found myself meeting with a label to talk about working on their website (this was in the early days of the Web). To show themlabel that I understood the music they were doing, I played them some of the music Fred and I had been producing, and they signed it on the spot. I was really just trying to get the Web gig. But that was the start of our electronic music career.
From there, we did a bunch of singles deals. That first project was with Brooklyn Music Limited (BML). We did some stuff for Ubiquity in San Francisco, then a few singles for Om Records which led to a three-album deal.
People often talk about the deals they do. And our deal with Om was probably really bad. This is a point that I try to drive home to people: Putting out your own record is all fine and good if you understand the business – if you have your social marketing down, have good networks and a good fan base, if you understand business and can manage money. You know what it’s like to run a record label, a touring business and a merch business. There’s a lot to understand. And most young musicians at 22 do not know how to do all that. They play to 50 people in their home town, have 100 Twitter followers, 50 people following them on Facebook and think people know who they are. From a global business perspective, you’re basically invisible at that point. So, if you look at doing deals with labels – be they good or bad – as promotion, you get the marketing power that a label has behind you. You may do a record and get absolutely nothing for it, or get stuck in a deal where you do two or three records basically for free. But if you gain the followers and fans and are able to have a live touring career, then you actually have a real career.
I’m always telling young musicians that it’s not enough to make your own record and put it out on your own label. You haven’t been put through the system, and you haven’t been validated by fans or the other people who are going to help sell your records. You’re an army of one. Some of these deals you do in the beginning won’t be good. Make sure the deals you do in the beginning are short term or limited to a certain number of years. But it’s valuable to do records on larger labels and have other people validate your music.
How many deals did you wind up doing with Ming+FS?
MING:
We had a lot of singles deals and that three-album deal with Om. Then, we had a one-album deal with Spun Records, which is defunct. So, we did a total of four full-length albums, probably about 20-30 12” records and lots of remixing for other labels. Since then, I’ve done a ton of stuff.
So, you did all that stuff as Ming+FS, and now you have a music licensing company, your own label and are managed by the same management company as Lady Gaga. All of that is pretty phenomenal.
Then, of course, you’re also a DJ. I don’t get to talk to DJs that often, and I’m kind of an outsider when it comes to electronic music. Can you speak a little bit about what it’s taken for you to become a regularly-working DJ?
MING:
When I started DJ’ing in college, I didn’t have any of my production equipment. I sold all my production equipment when I went off to school. And I started DJ’ing because I wanted to get back into it. The electronic music community was really tight, and there was no such thing as being a touring DJ. You played your local parties, traded mixtapes. There were a few people like Josh Wink, Frankie Bones, Adam X, Heather Heart who were big in the early days. But you never saw yourself as being a famous DJ in the same way you would see yourself as being a famous rock star. So, it was really for the love of the music. And when you were making electronic music back in those days, you didn’t really bring all your gear out with you. You played the records you made to support the music you were making.
I think the distinction for me is that there are some DJs that just play records – other people’s music – to be a DJ. And that’s really never what I was about. I was always a producer first and playing other records that helped support the music that I was making, so when I put out music, I could surround my music with other records that would help rock a party and keep people interested in dancing. Being a DJ for me was always about promoting my own music.
To make a living being a DJ, you start out hand to mouth. You play any local party you can, throw your own parties, do promotion so you can open up for other DJs. You go on the road taking the terrible slot so a couple years later, you have a following and can actually make money being a DJ. I think this goes for any part of the music world: You have to really be willing to put it all on the line.
I always ask young musicians, “If I gave you $50,000 today, would you put that $50,000 into what you’re doing? Would you put it behind the record we just made? Would you put it into a publicist? What would you do with that money?” Often people say, “I’d buy myself a house” or something like that. My answer to that is, “Well, then, you haven’t made good music yet.” It’s not until you’re willing to put the money behind your music that other people will put money behind your music.
That’s the thing about the music business: You have to spend a lot of money in order to make money.
There’s no doubt about that.
As a guy who played in hair metal bands – which by the way is a new revelation for me about you – how is promotion of that kind of thing different from the electronic scene? You just said if you’re an aspiring DJ, you should play any way and anywhere you can and do a lot of promotion and pound the pavement.
MING:
I don’t think it’s that much different. I think the difference for me, being a New Yorker, is that I’ll play New York a lot less than I’ll play other places. Being local to New York can make it overly convenient for promoters not to book you or pay you. And if you want to get paid, it’s better to go somewhere else and become a named person so people want to pay you for what you did.
In the first half of my Ming+FS career, New York promoters would rarely want to book or pay us. It wasn’t until we broke nationally that all those same guys were trying to cut deals to get better rates for us in New York City. When you’re a New York DJ playing across the country, it means something. Being from New York City carries a lot of weight when you’re playing in Iowa. I really exploited my locale and the rest of the country’s perception of New York City as a hot spot. No one from New York cares if you’re from Ohio and come to New York to play a show: “Yo, Ohio hip hop.” Nobody cares. You’re fooling yourself if you think you’re going to bring Iowa’s next rap star to New York City. The only way you’re going to break as that person is to become big in your area so people can’t ignore you anymore. Certain areas just don’t have credibility. If you’re doing hip hop and are from Atlanta, L.A., New York or Chicago there’s cachet there.
I think people need to be honest about what it is they’re bringing with them, who they are as a musician and what their marketable aspects are – what they bring to the table.
The other thing about being a DJ that’s really important and a little different from being in a rock band is, when you’re in a rock band playing only your original music, you’re locked into playing the music that you’ve written and the songs you may cover. A rock band might play a couple covers to extend their repertoire and help the audiences see a connection between the bands they’re covering and their own music. If you’re Jet, you might do a David Bowie cover, because you want people to see your band in that artistic light. Or, if you’re Green Day and want everyone to know that you were influenced by the Sex Pistols, you do a Sex Pistols cover.
In the dance community, you play your tracks, but you have to do a lot of other people’s music. And you also have to play music that makes people have a good time, because they’re not just there to see you. It’s a bi-directional community. As a DJ you can’t say, “I’m on stage and I’m a god, so everybody look at me.” It’s more, “I’m on stage providing an opportunity for people to have a really good time.” And every once in a while, I have connection points with the crowd through my own songs or other big songs I’m playing. And I share those points with the crowd, saying, “We’re doing this together.” I learned how to read the crowd and say, “Oh, this song didn’t work for these people. Maybe I should go this other direction.” I’m reading the crowd constantly and trying to figure out where the particular sweet point is, so I can bring them up to a certain level and then bring them back down again. And I don’t want to wear people out, so I can’t keep playing the same types of songs over and over again. I have to keep it diverse enough so people’s ears get a sonic break from each track I play. It’s like conducting a large audience of people that are also the musicians, whether they know it or not.
Rock bands could probably take a cue from that if they had the repertoire to be that flexible.
MING:
I think really good rock bands do do that. You might laugh at this, but there is a similarity between a hair metal band and a DJ. The hair metal bands love the big, in-your face tunes. And then for a hair metal band, the ballad is like a DJ putting on a track that brings the energy down. It gives their audience a moment to breathe. It gives someone’s girlfriend a moment to relate to a song, so both men and women can feel connected to what you’re doing. So, a good band can rock out, but also be sensitive. And in a lot of ways, that dichotomy is also sort of like what you find on country records.
That’s what a DJ needs to do: rock hard, but also play a tune that will clear the dance floor and not worry they’re clearing the dance floor. They need to give people a moment to breathe, get a drink and talk to each other. And then they need to be able to bring everyone back out and reconnect. And if you’re skilled enough to do that, you’ll be able to be have a career as a DJ. I’ve been a professional DJ since ’96, so it’s been almost 16 years.
Most people don’t even get to the point in music where they say, “We broke national.” So, I can’t imagine you didn’t have some idea of where you were in the marketplace. During your career as a producer, DJ, and everything else you’ve done, were there specific branding decisions above and beyond which music you played, who you played with and where you played?
MING:
I managed Ming+FS for about half the time we were together, before we had a manager. I always had an aesthetic and a concept for Ming+FS: I knew if I pushed it the right way, we would give the media something to play with. For us, it was the combination of hip hop and drum and bass. Nobody in America was really doing those two things at once. We were the first artists to be able to take the double-time feel of drum and bass – which was the new and exciting art form – and hip hop – which we both had grown up with and fuse those two things together.
And this was a time when magazines were still king. It wasn’t blogs, etc. We really gave the media something to work with in terms of having a point of view. I was very political and spoke out about a lot of stuff. I did most of our interviews, so I always really thought ahead of time about my talking points for interviews. I always tried to give much more than what was in our bio that our publicist had sent.
Also, we tried to connect with the areas we were going to and not just compare every place we had been to the next place. Each place was special. For example, Lawrence, Kansas was the first city to have a gay mayor. So, there was a really interesting pocket of culture in a city that most people in New York didn’t identify with as being culturally significant.
The first place we broke in the States was Seattle. We got to Seattle, and it was like we were rock stars. From Seattle, we grew it to Portland, then San Francisco. Being from New York and on a San Francisco-based label helped greatly, because we were covering the East coast, and they were covering the West coast.
Then, we worked the mid-states. We did everything from raves, to clubs, hip hop venues, tours – you name it. We did stickers and a couple of mixtapes that ended up being classic mixtapes for the time. I got other companies to give us money to sponsor those mixtapes and put their branding on it. We got 10,000 mixtapes made by the clothing label 33 Degrees. At that time, copying CDs was big. So, we put out 30,000-40,000 copies of our CDs. They got copied again and again, and hundreds of thousands of CDs later, we were national.
We had our own label to fill in releases, so we would take boxes of records and mixtapes and throw them into the crowd in the middle of a show. We gave away so much free stuff. And I learned that from being a promoter. If you give something to someone for free when they’re walking in the door, the show will already have a good vibe to it. We took that mentality with Ming+FS as well.
From a visual branding standpoint, we had a look to match our sound. We were careful about the artwork we selected.
We also had a street team that we built in every town where we toured. We would give the street team free product. We would give them first look at the shows and reduced admission. We did all kinds of stuff.
You’re back out as an artist now. What is your take on marketing and promotion in the modern market now that the landscape has changed?
MING:
I’m speaking with blogs on a regular basis. I do a ton of promotion on several social media platforms. I put out releases on my label to mix with those I’m putting out on other labels, so I constantly have new products coming out. I have new singles all the time. The old format was to put out full albums, but I think that format is dead for a while. So, I’m putting out singles and EPs and plan to stay focused on that for the next few years until I see we’ve reached a critical mass where people want a full body of work from me again.
I’m also doing a lot of remixing for other artists. Some of it’s paid and some of it’s free. I’m doing a podcast on a monthly basis and do live video streams from my studio. I was writing for Electronic Musician magazine for a while doing tech blog pieces and also a video blog on different production techniques.
I’m out doing tour dates again and opening up for other artists. I’m doing local dates and national dates. I recently played for 4,000 people opening up for Bass Nectar followed by a show in Brooklyn for 400 people.
And how does social media and your website play into your strategy?
MING:
I have 24k+ people following my MING page on Facebook and am also in the process of building my Twitter presence. I do a lot of music promotion through SoundCloud. And we have a mailing list where we send out music to blogs for free and a contest I use Headliner.fm a little bit. I basically dabble in all sorts of social media.
What I try to do is maintain my message and let people discover me, but also talk about the music that turns me on. I found out that with social media, when you give away things for free but also talk about other bands and musicians, you help turn the camera back around onto you.
It sounds like you’ve positioned yourself not only as an artist, but also as a tastemaker.
Do you have any other parting words of advice for people who want to have a successful career in production, DJ’ing, or both?
MING:
I think they’re separate. But, as with anything, you always need to be working to get better at your craft. Try to work with as many people as possible. Have a point of view and a unique sound. Bring something new to the table.
And learn how to collaborate. Just because you can do everything by yourself now doesn’t mean you should. I still collaborate with a ton of people. If I do work with another band, I’m getting access to their audience. This audience is going to find out who I am because that artist is going to mention what I’ve done with them. The more people you can collaborate with, the better you will be as a musician, and the larger your fan base will be.
The other thing is to be honest with the music you’re making. It’s okay to make music that is not successful. But if you want to make music that you’re going to make your money from, you have to find the line between art and commerce and be able to ride that line comfortably. You have to be able to carve out a career where you’re making money from the art that you make. Otherwise, you can call yourself a professional musician, but you’re really just a hobbyist with an addiction.
To learn more about MING and his work, check out his label, HoodFamousMusic.com or his artist page, Mingsmusic.com.
The following article is a guest post by Julia L. Rogers. Julia helps me behind the scenes at MusicianCoaching.com. She is a classically-trained musician, a published author and a contributing music writer at Bitch magazine. Julia plays out regularly in New York City in various original projects. She also writes about business strategy, social media and emerging technology for corporate clients ranging from the Huffington Post to American Express (and writes artist and band bios!).
As an artist or band, you’re going to be repeatedly forced to explain yourself. And if you are incapable of communicating – in words – who you are, what you sound like and why someone should care, you’re not going to go very far. In short, you’re going to need to write a bio.
The most important thing to remember is that your artist bio is not a rambling autobiography or the introduction to your future memoirs: Your bio is a professional sales tool. But many new or emerging DIY artists cannot necessarily afford to pay a high-quality professional bio writer and are tasked with writing their own. When you sit down to write your bio, you need to know that it is just a small part of a much bigger picture: your marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy must communicate what you have to offer to your fans. And you need to show your value in terms your fans can understand.
If you want to be taken seriously as an artist, you have to have promotional material. And your bio is one of the most critical components – if not the most critical component of your press kit. (Sorry, but no one cares about your music if you can’t introduce yourself properly.) Your bio represents your first opportunity to spark interest in someone who will be a champion for your music. Besides communicating essential information about you, a well-written bio portrays you as a professional that has some understanding of the business you’re in – music. And when you take some time to thoughtfully craft it, you convey to your fans, to press, media and labels that you are serious about making music your career.
The following are some tips for writing a riveting bio that will make people want embrace you and your music.
Above all, remember that your band bio needs to have a positive tone, be straightforwardly enlightening and filled with positive comments – and even second-party quotes — about you. The narrative has to be interesting enough to get the reader to not just listen to your music, but take action and a vested interest in your success.
To learn more about Julia Rogers, check her out on Twitter. You can also read another one of her guest blog posts, “5 Tips for Approaching Music Journalists.”
David Choi is a singer, songwriter and producer. Originally from L.A., he grew up playing violin and piano and came into singing and songwriting when he was in high school. His music has been played on major channels like NBC, FOX, VH1, MTV, A&E, E!, Travel Channel, Style, PBS, Food Network and the Disney Channel. He has also worked on creative projects with companies like Kelloggs, Starburst, the American Cancer Society and Samsung. David was chosen in 2004 by David Bowie as the grand prize winner in his Mash-up contest. Shortly after, he won the USA Weekend Magazine John Lennon Songwriting Contest for teens and appeared in USA Weekend alongside Usher.
David Choi is an amazing example of a DIY artist that has used YouTube annotations, playlists and embedded links to connect to existing fans and continue to turn new people onto his music. In fact, on YouTube, he has amassed over 884,000 subscribers and has had over 95,000,000 YouTube upload video views. In 2008, he produced and released his first album, Only You, followed in 2010 by his second album By My Side.
Recently, I sat down and talked to David about his success in the music business as an artist and songwriter, why he has been so successful at marketing his music through YouTube and some advice he has for artists that want to connect with fans and build their careers.
Thanks so much for taking some time to talk to me, David. How did you get into the music business? And how did you build such a following using YouTube?
DC:
I grew up playing violin and piano. I was forced to play and actually hated it. But then I discovered songwriting in high school. This kid brought in a CD and said, “I created this music.” And it had never clicked in my mind before that you could actually create something from your own mind. That’s how it started. I started when I was 16 and started interning with music companies – the whole thing a lot of people in the industry do and have done. About six years ago, when I was 19, I got signed to Warner/Chapell as a staff writer, which I got through a workshop with ASCAP. I just put in my stuff and got selected out of 2,000 people throughout the United States along with about 15 other people. I got really lucky.
I started posting to YouTube in about 2006, and I kept posting. In my second year with Warner/Chapell, I posted a YouTube video just for fun. I wrote the song in about 15 minutes. It got featured on the home page somehow a couple weeks after I put it up. I wasn’t expecting anything, and I wasn’t even pursuing a career as an artist. I was strictly a songwriter and producer. About a week after my video was featured, it already had half a million views. And that’s kind of what got the ball rolling. I didn’t even start doing shows until 2009. Everything just started growing, and life took me in a little bit of a different direction than I intended. I’m still doing the producing thing but am focusing on the artist thing for now. In conjunction, I’ve been trying to do a lot of things with YouTube and other social media.
Let’s talk about that. Over the years, a lot of people have been featured on the home page of YouTube. And that didn’t wind up leading to a career, as it has for you. It seems like YouTube is where you’ve exploded. I notice you do really interesting things there with playlists and annotations, like the feature on your new album. Is there advice you can give people who want to market themselves on YouTube?
DC:
To be honest, I think a lot of the success I’m having through YouTube is because I started early. I’m not saying it’s too late for other people, because there are plenty of people that are rising to the top. There are some people who have only been on for a year and are just growing like crazy. YouTube definitely has changed from what it was when I first started. In 2006 it was more about, “Oh, wow. This person is making a video from their house. It’s so unpolished and unprofessional.” But the landscape on YouTube is changing, and now everyone is getting HD cameras. It will still work to not have polished videos, but it seems like the trend now is that everything is much more polished, because above all, YouTube is a video site. It was never really a music site; it was always a video site.
As far as advice for people that want to use YouTube well goes, I think consistency is very important. You have to be persistent.
How often do you post videos at this point?
DC:
I don’t really post as much as I would tell people to, because I’ve just been doing it for so long and am a little tired of it. I think I’ve been posting about one every 10 days or so. But I’ve been doing that for five years, so there have been periods of three months where I haven’t posted anything. That’s really bad. You should never do that. But I guess it’s a little more understandable for me since I’ve been doing it for such a long time.
I think if you’re just starting off, you should definitely do it every week. Another thing that seems to work is recording a cover of one of the more recent songs that came out and posting it, because people will be searching for that. It’s all about views and reaching an audience. And there are a lot of people searching for the new music that comes out. So, if they see your cover up there, they can listen to it and make their judgments about whether it’s good or bad. And if they like it, they might become a fan. They might check out some of your other covers or see if you have any originals. That’s the direction I took it. I did covers and hoped people would check out my originals.
I agree. I’ve found covers are a very good way to combat consumer fatigue. I don’t know about you, but when somebody says they’re a musician, I kind of roll my eyes. It’s gotten that bad sometimes. When somebody is bringing me something I’m somewhat familiar with, I’m more likely to give it a chance.
DC:
Yeah. That makes sense. Definitely.
How did you select the covers you chose?
DC:
I just looked at the top charts on iTunes and chose something in the Top 10. For me, personally, my selections were based on which songs I liked. And I really liked oldies, so I did a lot of covers of oldies. The label didn’t like that so much at the time.
Labels used to crack down a lot more on YouTube covers. Lately I haven’t heard of anyone getting into real trouble for it, other than a wrist slap – a take-down notice or an infringement notice.
DC:
Nobody has been sued yet on YouTube for doing a cover. But there have been channels that have been suspended. I actually got suspended before because I got three strikes for doing a cover of “What a Wonderful World,” which I did twice. Nowadays, there are things being worked out with labels and publishing companies. I’ve seen a little bit of progress happening. Really, you can’t stop it. People want to share music. And of course there are two sides to the story, and I completely understand both. There’s the business side, and then there’s the whole creative idea of being able to share music because it brings joy to people’s lives. My viewpoint is that we should find a solution and find a way to monetize everything.
And I think people are starting to chip away at it. For example, Sony emailed me, and they said they are getting into the YouTube thing too. The truth is, YouTube is very powerful; everyone is on it. But that’s a whole other topic.
I notice you’re also really big on collaboration. Has that contributed to getting a lot of fans and viewers?
DC:
I would say that collaborating is definitely another tool to expand your fan base. It’s a great way to get a new audience, in a way similar to doing covers. It’s about drawing a different crowd. Of course there are some politics involved. There are issues like, “How much am I going to promote this person, and how much are they going to promote me?” But aside from that, generally collaborations help mix their fans with yours and your fans with theirs, depending on how much you and the other artists promote.
You have to throw a little caution to the wind when getting into business with someone new and hope that they will at least provide an equal output of effort so you’re not just getting someone who is leeching off your brand equity.
DC:
Yeah. The way you worded it makes it sound like a business. And it kind of is. At the same time, most people started YouTube because it was something they did for fun or because they were bored. It didn’t used to be a business, and most people didn’t go into it thinking it was a business. Maybe they do now, because it’s a partner program. And now people get excited when they find out they could possibly make money from it. But when I was first getting into it in 2006, everyone that was also getting into it thought it was just all for fun. Now there’s actually a business model you can follow with it.
Do you get performance royalties checks from the stuff on YouTube? Do you see any income from the videos you post?
DC:
I guess it could be considered a performance royalty, although you don’t get paid per view. It’s similar to AdSense. You definitely don’t make as much money through these ads as you would through a commercial on TV. In terms of the amount of money you can make on your original content – it’s probably around $1,000 per million views.
If you think about TV, and if it was working the same way as YouTube, an ad that played on a TV show that gets 2 million viewers in a night would make $2,000. Mainstream media charges tens of thousands of dollars for commercial placements on a TV show that gets 2 million viewers, whereas on YouTube, you get $2,000. That’s why the industry is not happy. I don’t know if mainstream media is asking for too much money or if YouTube is undervaluing people’s content. That’s also another subject.
But is YouTube a good source of income? For some people it is. For musicians, I wouldn’t say it would be a main source. But it will help you get people to your shows and it will help drive album sales. And people share videos. So, it helps with exposure as well.
On the new release, you used links and annotations within video really well. Can you explain exactly what you did on that album promo?
DC:
It’s an interactive CD basically. I decided to do it because I know people are going to steal my music anyway. So, I made it available on YouTube with some voiceovers telling people what they were listening to and where they can get it. So, if they don’t want to hear a version with my voiceover, they can get the album on iTunes. It was basically a way for me to make it easy for people to listen to my music and for people like you to embed it in blogs. A musician that loves YouTube would love it if you embedded their videos. You’re just sharing it. It’s expected that the videos will be shared.
Do you have any parting words of advice for artists or songwriters?
DC:
If you’re a musician, and you don’t have videos on YouTube, you have to do it. It’s free advertising. If I look at myself as an example from a third person perspective, I think it’s funny that someone who had no ambition to be an artist and travel around the world performing, through the power of YouTube, was forced in that direction. I think that alone right there is enough reason for all people that want to do music to be on YouTube. People are using it already, it’s free advertising, and for me, it’s the biggest promotional tool – more than Facebook, Twitter, anything else.
To learn more about David Choi, visit his website. You can also check out all his music on his official YouTube channel. Below is his song “By My Side,” an example of how he uses annotations in his YouTube videos to promote his music.
Pat Downes is the singer and guitar player for the Sublime Tribute band Badfish and the original rock group Scotty Don’t. Badfish / SD represent a very interesting example of how playing covers can help develop your original music’s following. More often than not S.D. will open up for Badfish at their live shows. I find their situation particularly brilliant because I am told many people in the audience don’t realize that Badfish and SD are in fact one band playing two different sets.
Tell me about how you got the band together.
PD:
The drummer and bassist went to college together at the University of Rhode Island. They formed the band Badfish and had another front man for a few years. They started around 2001 and had that lead man until 2006. I joined in 2005 as a saxophone/keyboard/miscellaneous fourth guy covering a bunch of parts. I was that guy for a couple years. I grew up playing saxophone, and that was my main thing for a long time, so I got a different perspective of what it was like to be in a band. I’d played in a bunch of bands before doing horn parts, so I kind of got both sides of the coin as far as being in a live, performing band. When the first singer decided to part ways, I took the reins. I sang to, so I figured, “Why not challenge myself and brush up on my guitar skills?” I closed myself up in a closet for a few months and worked seriously trying to put those skills together. You can’t fully develop those until you get on stage, but luckily we had a lot of opportunities to do that because we play 130-150 shows per year. It didn’t take long to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
Why a Sublime cover band? Was this a calculated decision on their part that this was an underserved market?
PD:
Yes, pretty much. I actually met the guys at a show. I was in a different band opening up for them. This was way before the Scotty Don’t thing took off. I ended up being in a different band out of Boston and was the opening band. They heard me playing saxophone, and I jumped up and did a couple tunes with them. One thing led to another, and I was quitting my job and hopping in a van going around playing a bunch of Sublime tunes around the country, and that snowballed into what it is now. When our other singer said he wanted to settle down and stick close to home, I had been writing songs on the side as personal stuff and didn’t have a band to pay them with. I brought them to the table and said, “Do you want to bring these in?” I saw opening bands playing before us and getting on some shows and gaining popularity through the popularity of our concert. I’d see people come in to hear Sublime tunes and end up coming in and seeing a band they’d never heard of but would fall for. The chops and the songwriting are still getting better, but we felt it was worth it to pursue an original project. Now we wear two hats every night. We’ll start as an opening band and go up there and try to win over a crowd that has never heard us. It’s definitely a different thing than going up there and playing songs that everyone knows every word to every night. It’s challenging, but it’s kind of cool.
Do you ever play shows separately or is it always Scotty Don’t opening up for Badfish every time?
PD:
We typically open for ourselves as described. We’ve done a couple shows here and there as just Scotty Don’t, but it’s tough, because by the time we get home from the road we need to take a break and catch up with the rest of our lives. There are only so many days in a year.
Doing 130-150 dates per year- you must be nationwide at this point?
PD:
Pretty much. We’re ramping up to do a Midwest tour right now. We leave September 10th, and that will be 2 ½ or three weeks. Then we’ll come home for a week or so, and then we do the whole East Coast, down to Florida. As soon as that’s over, holidays, and then once the New Year comes around once a year we do a tour all through the south and up through California. That’s usually every January or February.
So it was through the guys at Creative Entertainment Group that you were able to build up as a regional band? It must have helped that those guys are managers and club promoters. I always thought you guys were based in New York because you play here so often.
PD:
No, we’re based in Rhode Island. It was a regional thing that spiraled out. That’s always what works. If you can get successful in your area you can branch out from there slowly. It’s really tough, because a lot of bands will think going out on the road is key but they wind up playing in front of three people or the sound guy when they are in a far away market.
You’ve been at this for quite a while. Not even necessarily specific to Badfish, but are there things you learned being a guy that’s on the road a lot that you would’ve wanted to know before you started out with all this? Can you give some practical advice about jumping into a van and living this life?
PD:
It’s very key to pace yourself, especially with that many shows. You don’t want to burn yourself out. It’s too fun and easy to party all the time. It’s good to keep a level head with that and keep yourself in check. Don’t think you’re God’s gift to music, because that doesn’t work. I see so many people who think they’re the best. They try to tell you that and put that attitude forward. If you’re the best then show me. Put on your best performance, and if you’re relatable and people see some value in what you do, you’ll get what you’re working for.
What about from a business perspective? Was there anything you learned from the School of Hard Knocks?
PD:
People want your money. That’s for sure. It’s tough with a band. You have your heart in it and are passionate about what you do. When someone tells you, “I can get you what you need. It’s just going to cost you this much,” you can be blind to the fact that they could be ripping you off. In the digital age there are so many avenues that are just not solid. It’s not like, “I go to this record company, I make a deal, and I get this cut.” People are growing bands in so many different ways that it’s easy to do it wrong.
Anything in particular you would admonish people to avoid?
PD:
I see promoting via Internet as something best done on your own. Everybody has a computer, and you can figure out how to do it. We’ve paid a couple people to help us out on that front, and the results aren’t as tangible as offline promotions. If you pay somebody to go flier up a neighborhood, you’re going to see the fliers when you drive by. That’s concrete proof. It’s tough to gauge Internet stuff and how much it’s worth. If you find someone that’s working that you have a good rapport with, stick with it.
You obviously have a good built in crowd because you market to Sublime fans. But how did you target them online or how do you target them online?
PD:
Obviously the simple stuff like Facebook. When we have people at the shows, we’re trying to bridge that gap between having them at the show and having them remember us at home, so once they hit their computer we can create that link. We’ll do a “Come check us out at our website” spiel when we’re on the stage and try to connect those things together.
What about e-mail collection? Has that been big for you guys?
PD: We did that for a few years, and it was big. You’re probably talking to the wrong guy when it comes to that stuff. My strong suit is being on stage. But we try to split it up as much as possible. But being in a band, as with any stuff, you’re most valuable where your time is most effective.
When I was in bands I was the bass player who was the business dictator because everybody else couldn’t be bothered. I was the one writing set lists and settling shows etc…
PD:
That is our bass player, actually. He grew up as a national chess champion. He’s a numbers guy and is very strategic. He’s a big reason why the band is successful. He puts his head down and goes towards the project and doesn’t stop until it’s done. You need that. I’m the guy that is trying to get this original band up there at least the level that Badfish is at, and I have no problem sitting 12-13 hours a day in front of a computer putting songs together. Everybody has their thing that they fester over to make sure it’s perfect.
Learn more about Scotty Don’t & Badfish
So – you have a product in hand, plenty of b-roll footage, photos and videos of the making of your newest music release – that was part 1 of this series. We went over what the breakdowns of marketing, sales, promotion and PR were in the traditional record label days (because the digital age has blurred all of these activities together) in part 2. That, hopefully, leaves you with product in your hands and an understanding of some of the basics that need to be covered in moving forward in getting people to care about you and your music.
Where does this leave you? At the bottom of a very large mountain to scale but hey, at least you brought your hiking shoes and found the mountain – you’d be surprised how many people don’t make it this far because they are looking for a chairlift of a helicopter that won’t ever arrive.
Before I jump in to this I want to clarify something about DIY.
Begin Rant This won’t make me very popular in many circles but DIY is a condition of last resort. In no way am I now or ever suggesting that you should handle your music career on your own if you can avoid it – you’re going to need help. That is not to suggest that you run out and sign away 20% of your career in perpetuity to the first manager who approaches you who has that kind of creepy “stay away from my sister” kind of vibe. (Laugh if you want – we’ve all met that guy.) There are people to hire, interns to find, friends and family to convert – whatever it takes. When I talk about DIY I am usually suggesting that no help is coming from people who are established in the industry unless you prove yourself up for the journey by beginning said journey on your own. Far too often I see artists in the position of a lonely hitchhiker who knows town is in one direction down the road but refuses to even begin headed that way and opts to sit there with his thumb out hoping for better. The odds of a ride are much better closer to town – there is more traffic there. End Rant
At the beginning of part two I discussed departments that were not yet prominent at labels ten years ago namely the Film & TV and the digital departments. Digital? Well digital is everything you do when you are on your own so let’s just say a little piece of that department is part of everything you do. As for film and TV, you can now outsource these tasks to a whole host of non-exclusive music libraries that specialize in placement. I am of the opinion that music placement is a full time job and is best left in the hands of people who have a larger catalog of music than just a single artist’s catalog. Partnering with these libraries is a good idea especially if you form a good relationship with one of the song pluggers at these organizations. I am fond of Musiclibraryreport.com for getting more about what libraries do what and hearing other first hand experiences that musicians are having with getting their music placed. I am not saying you shouldn’t work these opportunities on your when the opportunity arises to meet a music supervisor but it has been my experience that music supervisors take people who have large catalogs more seriously than individual artists and that music supervisors get a great deal of their leads from ordinary music consumers. Long story short – partner with 1-2 of these libraries and focus on making great music and getting fans.
Here are some more things to think about when readying yourself for getting your product out into the world.
More soon,
R
In Part 1 of this article I outlined the importance of having prepared properly for a new music release. This covers everything from having captured video, stills and writing about the making of your new music to making sure you have your social networks and website sorted so you have places where said footage can live and work to your advantage. I also neglected to mention that it is important that your bio, press clippings and photos are up to date at least several weeks if not months prior to your release date. Long story short – there is a ton of set up to do for any well marketed and promoted release and there are a ton of moving parts to keep your eyes on.
Yes, like a game of whack a mole. If you are releasing your record 100% on your own- chances are you are going to miss some of these metaphorical moles but I thought it would help if you at least knew them by name. An easy way for me to go over this believe it or not is to go over in very broad strokes the way record companies functioned around their releases over a decade ago. It is easier to break them down from their old terrestrial functions because the digital age has blurred the lines of what is PR vs. marketing vs. sales vs. anything else that moves the needle for an artist’s career. The solutions the different record label departments use today (and that you will use on your own) are very different than they were ten years ago but the needs that these departments addressed are still the same. You will note of course I am leaving out finance, business and legal, art, A&R – because they are slightly less applicable and there is no mention of a film and TV department or digital / online departments because ten years ago such departments were very tiny if they existed at all. They will be covered in a follow up article.
Meet the old moles:
Marketing:
It was the job of the marketing person to have relationships with various other entertainment entities and brands, to find interesting opportunities for their artists, to communicate with the band’s management and agent and make sure that all of the other departments at the label were performing their functions on a schedule that maximized the impact of everyone’s efforts.
Sales:
Sales departments at labels made sure that the chain record stores had product in stock and they cut deals to ensure that this product was priced competitively and on a priority project they spent money to ensure it was positioned in a way that made it more attractive than most albums in the rack. You know those big cardboard displays at the end of the aisle in old school record stores? Those cost labels a pretty penny.
Publicity:
It was the job of the publicist to work with artists on their image, their biography and photos and of course to make sure the press wrote about them. A publicist made sure that an artist’s press kit was as compelling and slick as possible.
In my experience great publicists were that they were able to take elements of an artist’s life and persona and magnify or mythologize them in a way that made for a compelling story or several compelling stories that they could pitch to different kinds of periodicals for write ups or appearances on morning television news shows, talk shows etc…
Promotion:
The job of the promotion department (both video and radio although they were usually somewhat separate) was to get the artist played on radio (or video outlets) – develop relationships with all of the programmers who were the gatekeepers to these stations or channels and to make sure that their artists appeared not only in terms of getting their single or video spun but played at live events put on by radio stations, showed up on air in radio and video studios and generally maximized their artist’s presence at these outlets by leveraging their relationships.
I will come back around for part three on how the hell these different departments are translatable to you doing your own thing in the digital world and of course introduce you to some newer moles.
More soon,
R
Ready, Fire – Aim!
I have worked with about a dozen artists over the last year more than just coaching them but doing the heavy lifting – product managing and marketing the release of recorded music and tours. What never ceases to amaze me is the myriad of things that many artists only remember about marketing and promotion after they have released an album. I realize there is less set up time required in the high paced digital world we live in but let’s not forget that there is in fact a need to have some setup before a release date so as not to be completely unprepared.
These are ideas that should be thought about before you have even entered the studio because what you capture about the process of making the record will serve you in the process of the set up and release of the record. One of the most important and noteworthy things a musician can do from a marketing and press standpoint is to release new material. This is one of the reasons many people advocate releasing singles or EPs vs. LPs. I’m an EP man myself – a single just feels too easy to divorce from the message and image of an artist as a whole but that’s probably a topic for another blog post at another time.
Try these:
1) Have a plan. Any plan is better than no plan. Start this plan the same day you say to yourself – “it’s time to go into the studio”. Physically write out this plan and make yourself a sketch of the next 3-6 months both during the making of and after the completion of the record. It had better be more than – “Let’s put it on Myspace!”. As hard as it is to not share your new creation with the world – hold off until you have a rollout strategy in place so you can maximize the impact of your new release.
2) Document the process of creation. Write about it (and I mean keep a full journal), take photos of it, take videos of you in the studio if you are lucky enough to have guests on your record that have a larger profile than you ask permission to get photos and video of them with you. Collect a few rough mixes and make sure you have instrumentals and TV tracks mastered for possible placements at a later date. Be sparing with what you release to your fan base during the creation phase – it may make sense to survey all this “making of” content so you can edit and meter it out in a way that keeps people talking about you and your new music that’s coming out.
3) Once the album and B-Roll footage are all assembled and edited – divide these items up into what is for sale and what is for promotional use and start thinking about where and when to place the promotional pieces leading up to release.
4) Speaking of where – get the url for your project name at myspace, facebook, twitter, youtube, flickr, ustream and sign up for a tubemogul account. Toy with synching these services together using artist data, ping.fm or other one off synching applications (Selective tweets, myspace-twitter, twitter-lnkedin etc). If you’re going to be in a learning curve or don’t have these items established do it with your catalog albums and merch – not the new stuff.
5) Like Physical CDs? No judgments here. They sure are easier to sign than digital downloads. Have them in hand a few months before the release date – some gatekeepers still like getting CDs in their hands.
I’ll be back soon with part 2 but consider items 1-5 as prerequisites to have checked off of your list before release. Above all – be patient!
-R-
Chris MacDonald is the founder of the very popular Podcast and music discovery platform – Indie Feed. As one of the early adopters of Podcasting I wanted to talk to him about whether or not participating in services like IndieFeed were helping out aspiring artists and if so – how?
Chris, first of all thanks for your time. How did Indie Feed come about?
CM:
In 2004, when we first heard about podcasting, we had no idea what it was. I first thought it was having an antenna on top of a portable media device, and somehow that sent out signals that other people could pick up. What I learned obviously was that it’s a subscribed media service. It was downloading content into computers and into mobile media players at that point. There was no such thing as an iPhone or a lot of these smartphones. What we realized was that there would be a lot of individuals that would be keen on creating their own personal music shows. We decided it was a good idea to see what people were doing with their current consumption, which was listening to individual tracks or collections of single tracks. We reverse engineered a show that was essentially a track with a little story at the end. This idea really caught on because one of the strengths of downloadable media is that you can consume it in short form in between other things. Imagine where once you were walking down the street grabbing a coffee and then going back to your office; now you could actually consume content on an on-demand fashion. It was media where you wanted it and when you wanted it. We started a series of subscribe-able shows, each with a specific genre, and it started to get popular. It seemed the short format worked with a lot of folks. We watched a lot of these longer format shows, and people doing series of 20-30-minute, to one-hour shows. We were differentiated from the beginning. Before we knew it, we were starting to get featured on places where podcasts get consumed, and pretty soon Apple got into the game, and we bubbled up and came into consciousness. Since then we’ve branched out into other forms of consumption, such as licensed in store radio. We had the content delivered or progressively downloaded and streamed, and people can get it on our website, and any partner sites that we’ve done deals with have our content situated.
Why do you think Indie Feed got popular? I realize there weren’t a lot of players when you got involved, but what did you do to market yourselves as tastemakers?
CM:
We certainly didn’t start out thinking we were tastemakers. We were just a group of people excited about this new medium and being able to share what we thought was worth sharing. It was a means to an end. We started to realize the narrative made sense at the end of the show. This was not a personality-driven service or the Chris MacDonald show, so we tried to get out of the away and let the music speak for itself. If someone was interested, they’d stick around long enough to listen to the narrative and perhaps learn more. We learned that about 65% of our surveyed respondents said they made purchases directly related to our referrals. And 84% said they went back to the websites as recommended. So it was a pretty powerful response.
What kind of reach and listenership do you currently have?
CM:
We average 2.6 million listens per month.
How many unique sets of ears does that fall upon?
CM:
It’s difficult to measure, because the way the collection analytics work is on the IP basis. It also has to do with on what range you’re collecting. Our analytics system is collecting on a 24-hour basis. What we don’t do is parse through every 24-hour cycle and figure out which IP address goes to what. Not only is that difficult from a mathematical standpoint, but it also is difficult because IP is a good indicator of location and unique, but AOL users and university users all use the same IP address. It’s a guessing game. But what we can do is verify. We have Nielsen verifying unique listens, so they’re actually tracking on a third-party basis to ensure those are the appropriate people. Also, each feature has throughout its life cycle, depending on the genre, a range of listens. Those numbers are aggregate numbers per network, but you can slice and dice it down to each show. What we do is provide guarantees to our artists in our label relationships a certain amounts of listens per feature per genre.
Have you seen anybody harness your podcast or podcasting in general to make a dent in their marketing efforts?
CM:
We have certainly seen the needle move. For example, we did a couple tests with some artists that released their promotional track of one track to the rest of the world and then they used a control with ours. Then they started to see increased sales on the promotional track and there is no other reason to base the increased sales of that track other than back to our system. So, we’ve seen measurable sales. If the question was, “Have you seen artists actually leverage what we do for them?” Absolutely. For every single artist we send an artist fan pack. It’s the announcement of the feature and all the social components that you can utilize to share with your fans that the show occurs. We also have a press widget, and because it has the quotations it has turned into a bit of a taste-making tool. We add a quote as well and then we circulate it with our Twitter list of over of over 10,000 and our Facebook list of over 3,000. We place the quotation inside every feature these days.
I should back up – many folks might not be too familiar with how Indie Feed works. Can you take us through that?
CM:
You can get the indie feed features in a number of different ways. The largest way it’s currently getting featured is if you go into the podcast section of the iTunes directory and go to music or just put in the iTunes field “indie feed,” you’ll find several of the shows we have available for subscription. What that means is you can click the “subscribe” button and from that point forward automatically get the new features in the podcast section of your desktop, and you can listen to them. You can obviously attach your iPod and take those on the fly. We also Twitter out the features, so you listen to them as they come in. But all the features are pretty much the same. You can also find it on our Facebook page.
What is the song selection process like?
CM;
What we do is have a submission process and a rights clearance process. Everything we play on Indie Feed has the rights cleared. We vet submissions and review every single submission that comes into the website. We work with third-party promoters and promotional companies that are doing digital work for their client base. We also work with distribution houses that are pre-clearing the content. We have a team of what we consider to be specialists who vet the content and really on the basis of their experience filter out the content they feel is inappropriate. To the extent that we don’t have the rights cleared on the content, we will seek that clearance. And to the extent that we do, we have the artists or the third party send out an online clearance. We’ve gotten to the point where it takes a short amount of time to get the rights cleared.
If you were an artist in this day and age, what would you be doing with podcasting to get heard? What’s the pitch? Is it cold calling, is it third party? What does it look like? It has to mirror the antiquated system of talking to the program director at radio at some point; there has to be a filtering process…
CM:
When artists ask me that I ask “What do you want to accomplish?” If all they are looking to do is attempting to get airplay there are certain ways to do that but I think it’s more interesting if you’re a person that wants to control the outcome and can create content that might be useful. Whether it’s deliverable by subscribed media, or deliverable on YouTube, or deliverable on a news or email message, it’s irrelevant. It’s that you’re creating something that’s new, useful and of use to your recipient. This really opens up a much larger discussion about band relationships and keeping your best fans in contact with you and you with them. That’s one direction.
The other direction is if you’re in a position where all you want is airplay, there are some tips and tricks to make sure that happen. First of all, even the largest new media outlets still are going to likely be small shops. There are people behind those e-mails. The whole notion of sending a blanket press release is pretty much dead. They are very presumptuous and think very little of the result. In addition, mass e-mails that start with, “Hey you” or “What’s up?” make it clear that the artist really doesn’t have an interest in developing a relationship with the party for distribution. They just want to get some airplay. What I recommend first is that the artist does a little bit of research and take a listen to the variety of shows that are out there and make a determination as to whether they think their content will fit on the channel. Once they refine that list, I would consider to research and try to figure out who the principles of the small organizations are and then try to establish a reach relationship. Go out and find their names and ask them what their submission process is instead of just sending their format. What often happens is that their formats get burned. There might be opportunities that may not be evident. There might be opportunities for bartered services and opportunities for an artist to get some sort of list. The closer the relationship the artist can have with these new channels of distribution, the more likely they will have a lasting relationship that will work for them rather than against them. I’ll say what doesn’t work: random e-mails. Even if you’re a promoter and have 20, 30 or 40 acts, the press releases that don’t have access to the content are just a waste of time. And we get a lot of really big companies like big record labels that send out information about their indie bands, and they don’t give any information except what they want you to know in three or four paragraphs of content and maybe a picture. It’s completely useless for folks like us.
Talk to me more about that. I guess you are looking for more than just the music. You’re looking for someone’s commentary about the music and their process? Is that really a regular part of it?
CM:
There are two things. One – the model that’s currently out there, and you can’t really blame promoters for this, is that they’re looking for blog play. In other words, their view of what is going to create lift is if they can get “bloggers” blog about an artist, and there are a lot of bloggers out there. But that’s not really what we’re doing and not necessarily what other people that post analog radio content are interested in. We’re not interested in hearing the story or a recast of that. What we’re interested in is having access to the content and being able to figure out how to integrate it into our programming. And then because it’s necessary to get the rights because this is downloaded content that invokes mechanical compulsory fee licensing we have to get the clearance for that as well. I think the problem is that a lot of the outbound messaging isn’t designed to receive us. The upside is great. To get attention drawn to one show or one feature by a new artist can help an audience understand them and that is a truly valuable thing. Even if it requires a little bit of adjusting from the artist’s standpoint it’s well worth the time. I would say that would be good advice for any subscribe-able content, whether that’s Internet content where you’re doing an interview, or any content where you’re integrating.
Can you give me an example of something you received that you felt should be replicated by other artists?
CM:
The easiest way is when someone submits the content in the way that meets the submission requirements. If an artist that has the wherewithal to host their content so they can just sent a link and send that link in the context of the submission guidelines that really helps. Outside of that I’m sure they could create some unique, creative methodology to try to get someone’s attention, and we have had direct calls where we do respond.
Also, Make sure you have a narrative you wish to share. Your story is as important as your content, because your story is your content in addition to the music. Be prepared to provide that. It’s a creative process. You can portray aspects about your act and the direction your act is heading in a way that’s very compelling. In other words, if you have a scenario where you’ve met some level of adversity and you’ve overcome it, you can tell a story about that. It’s a compelling piece of information. Or perhaps all your band members are from one place or from very different places. Or you have a unique perception – your band is distributed where you have one person in one place and another in the other, and you attached all the content together in a special or unique way – something that differentiates you. In the context of being able to tell a story, studies have shown that grounding a band experience into context is going to increase memory retention in a world where there is so much music out there and the metadata of the music is not necessarily with the content by which you are experiencing it. So because you don’t know the name of the band or where it is from, if you can tie something to what you’re doing, you stand a much better chance of remaining at the top of the mind with a listener to the point where they would click to purchase the content or go to see the show.
For More information about Chris and his company checkout IndieFeed
