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.
Pam Workman-Hilton is the Founder of Workman Entertainment and PR. Since childhood, Pam has been passionate about music, literature and the performing arts, but also very inspired the ideas behind business and entrepreneurialism. She first entered the music industry when she got an internship at MTV while pursuing a masters in journalism at New York University. This first internship deepened her interest in the music industry and led her to a second internship at VH1, which turned into a job in creative development and programming during VH1’s big “Music First” era in the mid-1990s. There, she was introduced to manager Bob Doyle (Garth Brooks) and his client, the renowned songwriter Billy Mann (Hall & Oates, Jessica Simpson, P!nk). She left VH1 to work with Bob as a management associate, eventually rising up in the ranks to creatively and administratively run his New York office.
When the bottom of the music industry as it had been previously been known began to fall out in 2000 because of the growing digital industry, Pam moved into the next phase of her career as a publicist. Thanks to her interest in technology and her vast experience on both the creative side and the business side of music, she has grown into a highly-specialized publicist who focuses on corporate music and music technology PR. With her own New York City-based company Workman Entertainment and PR, she now helps individuals in both corporate and entertainment arenas leverage modern media tools to build their brands and develop their careers. Most recently, she has worked with artists and entrepreneurs such as Eminem, Russell Simmons and Echo and the Bunnymen and also works closely with the New Music Seminar.
Pam spoke to me recently about her life as a publicist, the upcoming New Music Seminar and how artists can build their personal stories and their careers in a changing, digitally-driven world.
I want to ask you a little bit about your world view given you do a lot of events PR and corporate PR, although in many respects, the philosophy and underpinning is not that vastly different from what artists have to do to get noticed. Do you see your job as a publicist as helping pull a story from your clients and repackaging it? How do you look at your role?
PWH:
I look at my role as one that fits into all the crevices that aren’t being filled at any given time with any client, whether I am working with an indie band, a major label artist, a music technology startup or a national music organization. Granted, the larger organizations often have more infrastructure. But that’s not necessarily bulletproof in the sense of what one needs to be successful as a publicist. To be more specific, it’s not a cookie-cutter job. And I don’t believe anyone’s job in the music industry should be now. All of us have to be very creative and dynamic in terms of the services we offer and the skill sets we provide to the music community. The demands upon artists and companies to be successful are no longer linear. It’s this composite of things. For example, with an artist’s campaign, it’s not just “We have the radio in play, and you’re the publicist, and here’s the product manager.”
I remember the days where we would go about and there was just a cut and paste process. It doesn’t seem like there’s a specific process to an artist’s PR and Marketing campaign anymore.
PWH:
My point is that because there often isn’t a process, the team may be leaner, and the job may be bigger. I do traditional PR, and yes, my job is to get the story of the band, artist or company. But sometimes they don’t even know their story. Sometimes neither does their manager or label. It depends where they are in their career. And sometimes that story needs to be refreshed or reexamined. I think this is very 101, and I’m sure you’ve heard this many times, but having a great record does not a story make.
The line I always come back to is that “Dude Releases Record” is no longer newsworthy.
PWH:
That definitely sums it up.
What would you advise people that are looking for publicists or who are just saying, “I should do some blog outreach?” Is there an exercise or a process?
PWH:
Yes and no. I personally would advise any young artist or even mid-career artist, or anyone I work with to look for the unconventional opportunities. To me, getting a blog placement is fine. But getting involved with a charity you care about and being passionate about it and maybe getting the opportunity to perform at a charity event because you’re involved and you care, and then having your fans know you care about something other than your music starts to build a story about who you are.
I often advise people also that their music is unfortunately, or fortunately only one dimension. When you’re forced into a situation where you’re constantly generating some content or pitching to a niche, it involves living your passions as well.
PWH:
I guess we’re on the same page in the sense that I don’t want to say, “Don’t go after a blog hit.” And I think a blog would be more interested in a new band if they were doing something other than releasing their EP. I think identity is also really important. What’s your unique offering? And I don’t just mean the sound, but also visually, or literally “What do you have to say that’s different or fresh?” Maybe you’re from Hawaii and you spent your life surfing. To New Yorkers, that’s kind of different. I guess that’s why Jack Johnson is hip.
As marketing executives we all want the Jack Johnson story: “By the way, is there anything you do?” “Oh, yeah. I’ve been producing documentaries on the most famous surfers in the world for ten years. Does that help?”
PWH:
Right. You do have to start from somewhere. I think the people that are passionate about life and have things going on or are doing things beyond the realm of just putting a record out are at ground zero for the beginning of PR.
I’m going to switch gears on you a little bit. Tell me about what you’re doing for the New Music Seminar. As somebody that has that unique position to interact with all the panelists in a PR capacity, what are you noticing about the trends for the business? What have been some of your greatest takeaways about the changing music business?
PWH:
One of the first things that strikes me is that the story is still being written: the new business story. We’re in the middle of actually writing it. What’s exciting about the New Music Seminar (NMS) is that when you’re on the ground and experiencing it, you actually feel that happening. That is truly the unique takeaway that not only I get from the seminar, but that I think anyone who goes would likely get also. There is no pat answer today, so I think if you are excited by being a part of the solution and the conversation, the NMS is a very exciting place to be, whether you’re an artist, entrepreneur or an executive.
The other takeaway is simply that it’s a very exciting environment right now in that there are all kinds of new technologies and services that are being introduced, many of them at NMS. I don’t think any one of them will save the music business, but I do think there will ultimately be some composite of these services and this world that we’re learning about right now that will help us, if not succeed, definitely survive. Without them, I think we’ll see the value of copyrights continue to devolve, and I think the monetary solutions we’re currently attached to won’t grow, even on the digital side. There was a recent story in The New York Times that said we’re flat-lining in the digital world. I think all those things, if you’re an industry person, are cause for alarm. But if you’re an artist, it’s also concerning, because you want to know how to be heard, how to survive and how to make it work as a professional. I do think certainly that NMS will be educational to any artist that actually wants to understand what it will take to make music a career. Whether or not they can do it is a different story.
What’s refreshing to me about the seminar’s stance to me is that it doesn’t sound that anyone is saying, “We have the answers.” It sounds like you’re coming from a place of, “Here are some of the brightest people we know. We’re all trying to figure this out. Come and help us.” That’s the interesting thing to me.
PWH:
That’s definitely the most interesting thing to me too, and I think when I talk about the energy and the dynamic, that’s exactly where it comes from. You feel like you’re a part of making that a reality in action.
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You can learn more about Pam, her business and her roster of clients on the Workman Entertainment and PR website.
The New Music Seminar is coming up in L.A. February 14th-16th, 2011 in L.A.
Also, for the complete schedule of events at this year’s New Music Seminar and to register visit www.NewMusicSeminar.com. Use the 2 for 1 discount code by entering the secret code NMSLASE2322 when you select the Partner’s Discount tab on the registration page. You don’t want to miss this opportunity to take your career to the next level.
The New Music Seminar begins this evening a 6pm. Music conferences have always seemed very strange to me and I’ve come to view them very differently over the years. Below are my experiences at my first music conference and let them serve as perfect examples of what NOT to do.
When NYU’s Independent Music Festival rolled around in 1994 I was amazingly excited…and amazingly clueless. At the time I was a member of an eight piece funk band, an NYU student and someone who believed whole heartedly that I would be able to “make it” as a musician even though I had never defined what “making it” would entail – I just knew it sounded better than getting a real job. I sat in the audience for a few of the panels (which ironically was in the student center at NYU – the exact site of last year’s New Music Seminar), I signed up for some demo critiques with independent label A&R people and was generally bewildered that there could be so many musicians in the world.
You see that last part was important for my perspective. Sure – I knew a ton of musicians but it always felt like we were a very small subset of the population when I was starting out. The first time I saw a thousand musicians milling around I was… speechless. These people all look lost! I remember thinking “Oh, this is why everyone assumes I’m stoned when I mention that I’m a bass player…” At the time there were other reasons for that assumption but that will come up again later.
I began to see the telltale signs of different groups of musicians.
For all of our creativity and originality it’s funny how many of us choose to wear a uniform.
Here are some things I didn’t do-
Find like-minded peers:
Often the real value of these conferences is that you meet like-minded people in the audience and form relationships with them which can be as important if not more important than getting relationships with the speakers at a conference. I spoke to no other musicians but made a note that I had never seen so many black Zildjian tee-shirts. Oddly enough – other musicians who are doing well tend to know a hell of a lot more practical and ground level contacts and advice than executives do.
Make sure you and your product present well:
I made a dash for the independent label demo critiques. I had a hot off the tape deck 2nd generation dub of 4 of the best songs from my band’s last live show. I quickly hand wrote my contact info on the cover and included the names of the songs. It didn’t occur to me (How could it?) that as quickly as two years later I would be getting demos sent to me as a major label employee and ignoring the ones that were presented this poorly.
I don’t recall 100% but I believe that:
Needless to say that was how I presented my band and I to a potential independent label partner. I can only imagine that looking into my red-rimmed eyes that the label executive must have thought “This kid is more likely to make progress eating a bale of Twinkies than making progress in the music business…”
Have a plan
Apparently that was my four-point plan in 1994. Please make better use of your conference time than I did! Look me up if you are at NMS – I’ll be sober, dressed well (albeit casually) and talking to people.
Rick
Dave Lory has had a diverse career in the music business and has done everything from tour managing huge acts like MegaDeath, the Allman Brothers and Lady Gaga to being the head of the international and marketing departments at labels like Mercury and Artemis to managing acclaimed artists like Jeff Buckley. Most recently Dave has been a partner with Tom Silverman in the recently relaunched New Music Seminar. Speaking of the New Music Seminar at the end of the interview Dave shares a two for one promotional code for the upcoming July event.
Dave, thanks as always for your time. Let’s talk about what you saw on the road. I often get asked “How do I book a tour?” Tell me what is really involved in taking a band that is local or regional and getting to the next market.
DL:
It’s funny because a lot of times the question is their answer. They just do it. I remember I was right out of high school for four years I was a touring musician and tour managed the bands I was in. I went to all the Chambers of Commerce and asked them for a list of clubs – this was before the Internet – and sent out packages and I was pleasantly pushy and went in and played for free, and the next time we brought in a few more people, etc., etc. I grew up in the Southeast, and it was a big club scene in the Carolinas. Really I just started doing that circle and making it bigger. After about three or four months, the dates start getting easier. Because you’re playing a show, and then you book the next one a month or two in advance, and six months later without even realizing it you start having this database and options. We were playing anywhere from 22-30 days a month literally. That practice really hasn’t changed. Now there’s more detail with Musician’s Atlas or Pollstar, where you can go in and find the venue sizes.
Do you think there’s more competition now that so many musicians are able to do the DIY thing?
DL:
The club owners are getting saturated with artists. That’s why an artist really needs to look at their hometown first, and maybe even go places many people wouldn’t even think about. If you are living in New York City for example then it means going to Albany and some of these rural areas and getting on a show for free. You really have to be good at it, and that takes repetition and more importantly you have to show you can draw people, and that again really is through repetition. So there’s really no secret leap of faith or saying “let’s get the support slot, because sometimes the headliner will choose the supporting band because they like the band, but other times it’s a business decision and they choose someone because they will sell tickets.
From your perspective, when is it time for a band to get a tour manager, and what falls into your lap other than advancing shows? I know depending on the tour, that job varies greatly. Some tour managers are glorified roadies, and some people are actually doing a great amount of the business. I don’t think on the bigger tours people have an understanding of what a tour manager job really entails.
DL:
The first step is as a band you need to have band members that take the business aspects seriously. So you need one guy that deals with the merchandise, another guy that handles the website and updating it and reaching out to the fans and making sure they know about the shows, and another guy dealing with the logistics, and one guy maybe dealing with the boring aspects of it, so everybody has a job and they do it. In this regard things really have changed that much, because you’re still building a fan base one fan at a time. It can get to a point where you’re not performing or doing the business transactions as well as you could, and it kind of hits you upside the head. That’s when you have to say, “Maybe we bring a friend on for the next month, and he drives the van, and we pay him a $25 per diem, and that person slowly gets into that position.” When the band knows the job duties, they can actually train the person. The first person to hire ideally is a tour manager, but he can also be your sound man.
The job of sound man fell to you in your experiences on the road?
DL:
I actually got sat down by the band and told, “Pick one or the other.” Seriously. That was my slap upside the face, and I said, “Which one do you want to do?” And they said, “It doesn’t matter. You’re a great drummer and a great business person. Just make up your mind.” I was 24 at that time and hadn’t gone to college, but I was intending to go to New York to attend NYU’s music business program, because I thought that’s the logical place to break into the business or as an artist. So I made the decision to go into business. And I actually replaced myself with Scott Travis, who’s the drummer for Judas Priest right now. I moved to New York and continued managing the latest band I was in for the next year and a half. And I think that’s how you get better as a manager too, because once you take that next step and can just focus on being a manager it enables you to start gaining experience.
Tell me what the job as tour manager evolves into? You were just out with Lady Gaga. That’s a considerably different role. What kind of tasks fall into your hands? Someone like Gaga has people for almost every aspect of her life. Even Semi-Precious Weapons have their own handlers. They’re on Interscope, they have a manager. How does the tour manager role change as a band gets bigger?
DL:
Interestingly enough, I met Semi-Precious Weapons on the tour with Perez Hilton, and they were the only ones without a tour manager. They did it all by themselves. I kind of took them under my wing because I thought they were an amazing band. This was before they got signed. I saw them go from everybody rejecting them in a couple months to then all of a sudden a bidding war happening. They took no prisoners every night, hit the merch every night and did everything to develop a fan base. It was truly amazing. They went from the co-headliner to the opening act in five shows on that tour. It was a national tour. They originally asked me to tour manage them on the Lady Gaga tour, but they couldn’t afford my experience at the time. I really liked the band and wanted to make it work. Coincidentally I was brought in to coordinate Kid Cudi, so I was managing two artists. I was tour managing Semi-Precious Weapons and coordinating Kid Cudi’s tour, and then Lady Gaga once I got out on the road. The tour had seven tractor-trailer trucks and ten tour buses. They were primarily arena shows in theaters, and arenas have several loading docks, and theaters have only one, maybe two. So we were having trouble getting all the gear in on time.
It feels like it’s about to be a Spinal Tap moment: “Where’s the stage?”
DL:
Right. It really was. It was an unbelievable production. Lady Gaga is incredibly talented and smart, but it was a little bit too much. I was asked by the production manager and tour manager and stage manager to oversee the local crews, because that way the stage manager can stay up on top and the production manager can do his job. I used it to my advantage because I was getting more stage space for my opening act and getting sound checks on top of that. When you’re touring, the headliner will set up their stuff, and that can take all the way to the doors or past the doors, so you never get a sound check as an opening act. This is what opening acts don’t understand. They say, “Oh, the monitors weren’t good.” Well, the monitors won’t be good until you headline. Just get over it and get on with the show.
Semi-Precious was that way on the Perez tour. I’d say, “No sound check tonight, guys.” And they’d say, “No problem. It’s rock and roll.” And they’d just do it and never complain once. And you really wanted to fight for them. It was the same result with the Lady Gaga tour. What are you responsible for on a tour like this? For Semi-Precious Weapons I was responsible for everything from the lodging and logistics, to the tour bus and production elements, the timing, the guest list, the interview schedules. Anything and everything came to me and I put it together. On Kid Cudi, I got their trucks, lighting, video screens, video walls, put together their tour riders, tour books, the buses, what time they got up, when they traveled, how they traveled, the food at the venues. As a headliner it even gets more extreme. There were 70 people on the road, so you’re responsible for making sure they get paid, their daily per diems to eat – breakfast, lunch and dinner at the venue – the local crews you’re coordinating, and they have laws that get break for dinner, so you have to make sure stuff gets in, the production, the setup of the stage, the backline, the test, the backline and settling the show every night. And when you settle the show, people don’t understand you’re literally going into the venue and paying for that venue. So, all the local crews and staff, the Coke people are drinking that they’re paying for, towels, the production, all that is being paid for. And then it gets really difficult when you’re shipping it throughout the world, because you’re dealing with customs, passports, all that stuff. It’ really anything and everything that needs to be done.
It’s actually very enjoyable. When you’re last person on that bus, and you look behind you and see seven tractor trailer trucks and 10 tour buses over 70 people on the road, not to mention the 20,000 people that just left the venue with smiles on their faces, it’s a pretty rewarding feeling.
I’m going to bring it back in all the way to the beginning, because unfortunately most people don’t get to experience it on that level. But over the years, of all the things you’ve learned, what were the things you’d say to somebody looking for a tour manager. There are going to be obvious human qualities – they’re going to have to be trustworthy, they have to be diligent, not completely baked 24/7. But if you were starting over as a musician, how would you hire a tour manager? What qualities would you look for?
DL:
Two, primarily.
One, they don’t get rattled and they’re even keeled. You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law, well it happens all the time. A girl buying a ticket doesn’t care that you had a flat tire and were late, or that you aren’t feeling as good, or you had a fight with your girlfriend. They are paying for that one show. So, you really have to have somebody that’s even keeled and can handle pressure in its most intense form.
The second thing is, being really well organized. There are a lot of moving parts. People don’t realize that tour books, etc. are put together for the tour manager, not for everybody else that reads them. In doing the tour book, you’ve already laid out your daily itineraries for however long the tour is. “We’re leaving at 8 a.m., and there are 1,000 miles until the next city.”
What are the essentials in a tour book?
DL: The tour book is an itinerary that goes out to all the personnel working the tour: the musicians; the tour people on the road, but more importantly the management company, record company, publicist, etc., so they can look at that book and find out when is a good time to schedule an interview or hold a meeting, etc.
When would you suggest people just starting out start this thing? Would you suggest people schedule their tours to this degree when they’re just four or five guys in a van?
DL:
Absolutely, because if you’re doing one show in a week, that day sheet starts with, “Today is” whatever the day is, the date, the time zone and the city you’re going to. And then there’s “travel” at the beginning, which would be, “The van is leaving at 12:00 from Bob the guitarist’s house, and the travel time is 5 hours, 250 miles.” I usually use 50 miles for an hour, and if I have to go through a big city like D.C. to get somewhere else, I’ll add an hour for traffic just to make sure I’m being conservatively safe. And then on that same page it says, load in the gear, what time the sound check is, what time the doors are, what ages: 21 and over; under 18; etc.
And this kind of stuff really provides clarity and organization to anybody’s schedule. And it’s wonderful to hear concrete and useable bits of information like estimating 50 miles to an hour, etc. This is the kind of stuff that would translate to the guys that are just starting out and may say, “We’re going to D.C. We’ve never been there, but we met some dude, and we’re going.”
DL:
It’s the matter that everybody’s on the same page when you’re traveling. Even on your family trips, your dad woke you up and said, “We’re leaving at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and Grandma’s house is three hours away, and we have to be there for lunch at one.” So, it’s really no different. It’s coordinating a group of people on a trip, and we’ve done it as friends just going to the beach. The only difference is you’re in a professional situation, and you can’t be late, especially as a young artist. You should always be early. By just doing that day sheet, it’s a sheet you do so you don’t have to think. You just look at your sheet, and you know you have to be at Bob the guitarist’s house at ten in the morning.
I’m going to switch gears and get more to the present. I appreciate you sharing all that stuff from your past.
DL:
The beautiful thing about being in the music industry, and something that you brought up is that we learn every day. I learn from you, you learn from me. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in the music industry for 20 or 30 years. If you were in any other business, and I asked you, “How does that work?” you’d look at me and say, “You’ve been in the business for 30 years. Don’t you know?” No, you don’t. The other person gives that advice, and it’s not looked upon in a bad way.
That’s very true. Tell me about what you and Tommy are doing with New Music Seminar this year coming up in New York. What’s different this year, what’s coming up that you’re excited about? What are your general thoughts about the music business and where it is all going? Go to town.
DL:
The first thing is, the Seminar has really rekindled excitement in my career again, personally and professionally, mainly because you feel like you’re giving back something. What we’re giving back is bringing everybody together in an industry that needs to reinvent itself and being a big part of making that happen. The second part is we’ve got a program called “The Artists on the Verge,” which we’re researching hundreds of artists that have never been on a major or independent label, and we bring the top three artists out of that through a voting system and analytics of who is selling merch and concert tickets and music. We give them the opportunity to be the only show in front of the industry and the press in New York in July (July 19th-21st), and then again we do it in L.A. the day after the Grammys in February every year. That eventually will hopefully be a tour. We’re breaking artists above the noise floor, and we’re going to print the Top 100 by name and the Top 10 by genres twice a year.
Hopefully this will get exposure for these artists. Both of these reasons are reasons I’m excited. We started in NY, Chicago and L.A. doing one-day events and we were actually going to do it in Dallas, where 80% of the artists can just drive in and out – people in the industry, managers, agents, etc. It just took off so fast and in L.A. we had over 1300 people, and everybody was– and I mean everybody, because we reach out to the delegates and ask them what we could do better – was unanimously requesting, “You need multiple days.” Because they were learning so much in the book we give out that has facts and forms and marketing tips and dos and don’ts – it’s not just like the other conferences, nothing against them. They talk about Beyonce’s sponsorship deal and getting your music in CSI, and their books aren’t very practical. Our conference book is packed with real information that they can keep and keep going back to, some of which we just talked about: forms to fill out for a show as an example; or a rider; or merchandise forms that help you figure out how you sign out your merchandise before a show; tips on how to sell more merchandise; tips on how to tour more efficiently on the road; how to get started. That’s just on the touring end. It covers all aspects of the business. We really created this “curriculum,” as we call it, because we call our panels “movements” and our moderators are “conductors” and the speakers are “players” and it’s the NMS Symphony of ideas. We were doing four movements, and the basis of it is getting 1,000 true fans, spending $100 each on whatever it is you’re selling, be it a concert ticket, music or merchandise, and getting to the 300 ticket mark. What’s evolving that is now we’ve gone to a multiple-day event, where we’ve added eight 20-minute lectures, where companies and the heads of these companies are going to show artists no matter where they are in their career how to make money, and 22 mentoring sessions where the delegates get a one-on-one session, and it’s going to be fast-paced, almost like speed dating, where 200 people are coming in that room, and you’re going to be hitting just about any of them.
Shameless plug but I’m actually one of the mentoring sessions. How many panelists are there this year?
DL:
There are only 23 slots for panelists. Most conferences will have six, to eight people and there’s not a clear objective, they don’t talk before they go up there, so it’s really haphazard how those things happen. There’s not a lot of real information going out there. Nobody cares that I managed Jeff Buckley. They Google me and they know that. What they want to know is, how can I show them how to get to 300 tickets the fastest way possible. Nobody is allowed to talk about their companies on these movements. Their companies are being sold through the New Music Guidebook and the fact that we’re advertising them in that book and also by them speaking. Everybody’s really focused on educating artists managers, agents, independent label heads on how to use their companies and what are the new ways of doing business? That’s what’s exciting about it. When you leave the seminar, everybody is so positive about going out there and making that change, and “I can do it”. It is very rewarding. You leave with a very similar feeling when you do a live show as a tour manager. You’ve done a great job, people leave happy and if you help people. I’ve been teaching at William Patterson this past year, and it too is very rewarding. Youth gives energy back to you.
That brings it nicely full circle. Are you guys going to be doing any promos for the conference this year?
DL:
Yes. If you register for the New Music Seminar between now and June 29th, you can use the code “NMSNY10” and not only will you get a 2-for-1 discount, but you will also be automatically registered to win a Gibson SG white $1280 guitar. We’re doing the drawing on site on July 20th at 1 p.m.
Tom Silverman responds after returning from MIDEM:
If you missed parts 1-3 check out the interview that started here
Parts 1-3 were discussed here and mentioned on:
Music Think Tank , Hypebot , Digital Music News , TechDirt, Billboard.Biz , Cnet, Lefsetz and several other blogs. (email me if I missed yours)
TS:
It occurred to me that part of the reason I may have been misunderstood by some in last week’s MusicianCoaching interview is that many people may have missed the third installment that I wrote on January 20th in response to so many people wanting to know who the few artists that broke the obscurity line in 2008 were.
In that response I mentioned that there are other indicators to the escape from obscurity besides album sales including concert ticket sales and singles sales and there are certainly others such as being featured on a huge TV show.
When the flamers came to the party, I had already donned my asbestos suit. Their outrage at the analytical results that I uncovered is not surprising but shooting the messenger does not invalidate the message. In fact, I felt the same way that they did when I first began delving into the numbers. I thought there would be many more than 225 artists out of 1515 albums that sold over 10,000 and I was sure that nearly half would be DIY artists. The fact that almost none of the 225 artist breaking 10,000 albums for the first time in 2008 did it themselves was hard for me to believe but it is true nonetheless.
What upset me most about the reaction to the data was that some thought I was being pessimistic on the future of the music business or at least the DIY artist part of it. That could not be further from the truth.
Dave Lory and I brought back the New Music Seminar again out of dedication to the artist community and a belief that music and artists should be able to rise to their maximum potential regardless of gatekeepers or investors. That was the original promise of the web and I still believe it is possible. On Tuesday, February 2nd, in Los Angeles, the architects of the next music business will convene at the Henry Fonda Theater to discuss new ways and even some old ways that artist can break through. Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify, the streaming service that has taken parts of Europe by storm will talk about what Spotify will be doing to help artists get exposed. Michael Doernberg from ReverbNation, Derek Sivers founder of CDBaby, Ian Rogers of Topspin, Bruce Houghton of Hypebot, Christina Calio of Microsoft, Alexandra Patsavas of Chop Shop, Producer Rodney Jerkins, Jason Bentley of KCRW, Kevin Lyman of the Warped Tour, Corey Smith manager Martin Winsch, the ever popular Martin Atkins of TourSmart, Justin Tranter of Semi Precious Weapons and many more will all be trying to come up with solutions to artists trying to build manage and monetize a fan base in this new era.
The record business has an inflation-adjusted value equal to that of the late 60’s and it is still dropping. Anyone getting in the music business now is clearly not doing it for money. Anyone getting into the music business now is doing it for passion and that is the right reason. Labels have always invested in artists and still do, although they invest much more cautiously due to the compromised risk/reward ratio that currently exists and that reduction in new artist investment has certainly contributed to the reduction in new artists breaking out of obscurity. At the New Music Seminar, we hope to uncover new business models that enable music labels to increase their investment in new artists and give more artists opportunity.
I am more than optimistic. I know that within five years that number will no longer be 12 DIY artists a year breaking through but 50 or 100. The overall number of new artists breaking out of obscurity will be over 500. I believe that we are on the cusp of a golden age of music. We finally have come to understand that it was never about records, it was about the passion of the artist and the passion of the fans for music and their favorite artists. Finding new ways to track fan passion for artists and empower those fans to spread their passion are some of the tools that NMS will explore with cutting edge technologies.
What unites us all is our love for music and artists a quality that even Shakespeare mourned the lack of. In the Merchant of Venice he wrote.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
How can you not embrace anyone who loves music and shows passion for the business of music? I love what TuneCore has done for artists and the paradigm shift it has contributed to and I adore Jeff Price’s passion. Anyone who has seen Lefsetz veins pop out when he is speaking knows that passion is at the core of his being and whether you agree with him or not, you gotta love him.
There are no bad guys. There are just artists and fans. Artists have to learn to serve fans better and the rest of us have to learn to serve artists better. And we will. You can count on it.
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If you will be in the L.A. Area or willing to travel to the L.A. area you should check out the New Music Seminar on February 1st and 2nd. Readers of MusicianCoaching.com can get a two for one discount by going to www.newmusicseminar.biz. and entering the code “nmsla2”.
I wasn’t really expecting a part three to this article but it seems there was quite a bit of excitement about the statistics that Tom Silverman had mentioned in the first part of this interview. Tom was kind enough to add more information.
I will add only this – that of all of the people I know who did really well for themselves in the old world of music- Tom Silverman is one of the only executives I have met who actually really cares about the future of the music business unrelated to getting a paycheck. Thanks again for this Tom.
Please check out the New Music Seminar in Los Angeles on February 1st and 2nd. Readers of MusicianCoaching.com can get a two for one discount by going to www.newmusicseminar.biz. and entering the code “nmsla2”.
Tom Silverman:
In preparing for the February 2nd Los Angeles New Music Seminar, I wanted to learn more about how many new artists are breaking each year. After all, the New Music Seminar is dedicated to helping more new artists break.
First we had to determine the definition of breaking. At the New Music Seminar we identify the obscurity line arbitrarily as 10,000 albums sold in the year of release. That is not a hard number, nor is it the only meter of success. 300 hard ticket sales for a headliner in multiple cities might be another definition. 25,000 paid single downloads might be another. I’m sure there are many more but 10,000 albums doesn’t sound as elusive as gold or platinum (those archaic arbiters of success) or even 50,000 which only a decade ago might have been considered below the obscurity threshold. Looking at the 1517 albums that were released in 2008 and sold more than 10,000 units in 2008 we find that only 225 of them were by artists that had surpassed 10,000 for the first time in their career (either by themselves or with another band).
The vast majority of these were released by significant indies (110) or majors (103). Last Friday, I thought that only 14 of those were self released artists or artists on start up labels. Further inspection disqualified two of them. One was a gospel record whose Bishop had exceeded 10,000 in the past under a slightly different name and the other was a Soundscan placeholder for a title distributed by Anderson Wholesale, the distributor for Walmart, that showed the title “TBD.” We had thought it was a Dutch electronic artist called Anderson but alas, nay.
Who were these valiant artists? A quick inspections indicated that beyond Bon Iver, the real indie artist success story of 2008, there were three hip hop artists, one that had financing of $10 a unit in marketing spend to sell under 30,000 units, another associated with the big indie hip hop powerhouse Tech N9ne and the last a gospel hip hop artist. The rest were largely alternative rock artists, two had been contestants in America’s Got Talent or American Idol and a few others were on small labels with big budgets.
What does this say about the Chris Anderson “Long Tail” promise? Clearly the ease of making and distributing music does not benefit “breaking” music. Breaking music requires mass exposure which requires luck or money or both. I can say with great authority that less new music is breaking now in America than any other time in history. Technology has not helped more great music rise to the top, it has inhibited it. I know this is a bold statement but it is true.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to all of the technologists that participate in the New Music Seminar is to correct that issue so that great music can rise to its true potential regardless of politics, power or money. I believe that the next decade will bring improvement to the music web that allow that to happen. In the meantime, artists can still make a very good living without selling 10,000 albums by careful cultivation of their fan relationships. This is another theme of the New Music Seminar…redefining the music business around the artist/fan relationship…how to manage it…how to monetize it. Records are no longer currency in the next music business…fans are.
Here’s the list of the 12 artists that sold over 10,000 albums in 2008 for the first time. Remember these are 12 albums out of 105,575 new album releases that year.
BON IVER
Record Label: Jagjaguwar (US/CAN)
Album: For Emma Forever Ago 103,112
TMI BOYZ
Record Label: TMI Entertainment
Album: Grindin’ For a Purpose 29,119
CAS HALEY
Record Label: CaptainHooks, also Big Karma Records, a “Texas start up label”
Album: Cas Haley 22,580
DUKE SPIRIT
Record Label: SHANGRILA
Album: Neptune 19,403
EYES SET TO KILL
Record Label: BreakSilence Recordings
Album: Reach 16,133
PROZAK
Record Label: Strange Music Inc./ DeadMan Productions Inc.
Album: Tales From the Sick 14,929
SLIGH*CHRIS
Record Label: Brash Music
Album: Running Back To You 14,785
REBEL SOULJAHZ
Record Label: GO Aloha Entertainment
Album: Nothing To Hide 14,262
BLIND PILOT
Record Label: Expunged Records,
Album: 3 Rounds & A Sound 11,281
MORNING BENDERS
Record Label: +1 Records Album: Talking Through Tin Cans 11,201
STS9
Record Label: 1320 Records
Album: PEACEBLASTER 10,601
TRIP LEE
Record Label: Reach Records
Album:20-20 10,003
Continue on to the 4th and final part of this series…
This is part 2 of 2 of an interview with Tom Silverman the founder of Tommy Boy Entertainment and one of the main executives who has revived the New Music Seminar. Please check the bottom of this post – Tom was kind enough to offer my readers a code for two for one admission to the L.A. New Music Seminar coming up on February 1st & 2nd. If you missed part one you can read that here.
When I was at the New York NMS I noticed that a lot of the people in attendance were those at the many companies that now provide artist services. It seems to be there are lots of artist services businesses popping up. ReverbNation, Top Spin – there seem to be new ones every day. There are tons of services now where there never were before. I was wondering if you were fond of any of those companies and thought they had real value?
TS:
I am. I think they are replacing what labels and managers used to do or maybe never did, depending on what they’re doing. They’re also helping artists more simply bridge the gap between the online social world and search and all the things you’re talking about. It’s a complicated stew; you can be on 15 social sites, and there’s a question as to how important they are vs. the amount of time you spend, and how important the Web is to making your career go. I can’t think of many artists who owe their career to the Web.
When I think about the indie artists that are doing it themselves, like Sufjan Stevens or Bon Iver or this guy Corey Smith.. This is a guy from North Carolina who was a school teacher and about three years ago and his manager got him up to about a million dollars in revenues, then the next year he got him up to four million in revenues. Really, the game is how can you build your revenues, not how can you sell more records. You may not sell records at all. You may decide to give records away to get your revenues up. If your revenues go up, that’s what you care about. Tommy Boy is in the “how do we make more revenues” business and “how do we create a strategic plan to do that?” That’s what Tommy Boy has molted into. It’s kind of what we always did, but we just never really looked at it that way.
The New Music Seminar was created to identify what the goal is for everybody, including the ReverbNations or the TopSpins of the world. What are they going to have to provide to artists? When Spotify comes to America I am going to ask Daniel Ek (CEO & Founder of Spotify – who will be giving the Keynote at the NMS in L.A.) “What can Spotify do to help the developing artist?” Because the real goal of the New Music Seminar is to help developing artists so more artists can break through. We really have a big problem in our country right now in that so few artists are breaking through, with or without a label. The promise of the Internet was that all of us would be able to make great music and get it exposed. Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” article said that all you have to do is be able to get that record out, and they’ll come. But that’s not working.
I think part of the problem is that everybody did that.
TS:
Well, that’s what he said, “Everybody would do it.” That’s why it’s called the “long tail.” But when you have 105,000 albums in 2008 released and 17,000 of those releases only sold one copy, and 80,000 of them sold under 100 copies, it’s a pretty depressing scene. You can’t just build it and they will come. You have to do more than that. I was going to say before that Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver and Corey Smith are selling a significant amount – above 10,000 units – a lot of which is at their shows, and they’re not active online. They’re not Twitterheads. They didn’t break from the Internet. They broke from touring, and they had a good story, and the good story spread like wildfire through traditional media like NPR.
Musician Coaching: It’s funny actually, I’m friendly with Eric Garland at Big Champagne, and I interviewed him, and asked if there was any predictor to determine which kind of artist is most likely to get their music pirated, and he said, “Well, R&B crossover singles.” But he also said the biggest prediction is the more active you are online the more likely it is that your music will be pirated, which was upsetting.
TS:
Interesting. It’s upsetting to people that are making big investments in being online. I’ll tell you the one thing that works: if you’re great live and you bust your ass on the road, that works. And it’s the one thing that has always worked and your social network is at the show. You come to the show and everyone who comes is into the band, so they all have that in common and it’s a social network. But you can actually see them and talk to them and scream with them. There’s an excitement that happens at a gig that never happens online. The online thing is great for finding out about stuff, looking things up or for making purchases; but for exposing stuff, so far it’s been disappointing. That may not be true with webcasting – Last FM, Pandora and Slacker and some of the other big webcasters as they start to invoke discovery tools and more and more sophisticated discovery tools to suggest and discover new music get better and better. Maybe we can fix some of that, but when the Web was proposed for music ten years or twelve years ago, we all thought this would be the Golden Era and that there would be an Elvis that would break every three months, or some big act. There’d be a Lady Gaga every two weeks, but it’s not happening. It’s not happening at all. And Lady Gaga didn’t break off the Web. She broke by hard, hard work touring and doing promo shows and every place she could go we saw her. There was nowhere she wasn’t. They pushed and they pushed and put posters on the street – old analog shit. I’m sure they did the online stuff too. A lot of artists think if they do a big online push that’s enough, and it’s really not enough anymore. In fact, you could probably break without any online work at all; but you can’t probably break without any offline work at all. So that’s the big myth that’s being purported. You know where the investment money’s coming from in the music business now? It’s coming from venture capitalists that are investing in businesses like Spotify or any of those artist service businesses. There must be half a billion dollars in online investment in the music business over the two years. That’s more than all the labels in the world have spent on A&R in the last five years combined – a lot more – and probably on marketing too. That’s where the money’s coming from, so they’re leading the press. So of course everybody thinks shit is selling because of the technology, but it’s not. That’s the hope, and where the investment’s been, but that’s not the reality. We’re really not seeing any evidence that stuff is breaking off the Web.
There are a lot of groups that are breaking because of a big write-up on Pitchfork that leads to maybe a usage on a TV show like The Hills or something like that. People see something on TV or MTV or something like that or hear some song on MTV. The combination of that plus touring might work. If radio and print are moving towards the Internet and they can get enough reach and frequency, which has been the challenge for them so far, like the Huffington Post or maybe you can say Pitchfork. There are Pitchfork bands that consider themselves Pitchfork bands. They’re not going gold and platinum, but they’re getting booked and they’re starting to break that obscurity line. I think the more powerful Pitchfork gets … I mean, Oprah wasn’t Oprah in the very beginning. It took her years to build an audience. Now she can talk about a book and that book goes into the Top 10 on the Best Seller list the next week. There’s not a lot of people that have that kind of juice online. In fact, I don’t think there’s anyone that has that kind of juice online yet. There will be something that everybody watches just like they watch on television online or that they look at that will move the needle substantially right now. Right now it’s still really early days for that.
And a lot of artists are really putting all their faith in that and focusing on online, but when you look at the numbers, the artists that are doing it are the ones that are doing the grinding on the road.
At the Seminar we want to talk to artists about if there’s 120,000 albums that come out in a year, how do they differentiate themselves from all of them? Because clearly it’s tough. There’s such a glut, and how do I break through the glut? The best way to break through the glut if you’re limited in funds – and everyone is – is to differentiate yourself. So we talk about how do we differentiate ourselves in every one of the four important aspects that define an artist:
the songs
the recording
the image & concept
the live show
The concept is really big. It means- “what do you stand for?”
That’s why Susan Boyle sold more records in six weeks than anybody else in three years, and she wasn’t even American and had no radio play or anything. She had a story, and it was a compelling story. Anybody with a compelling story that can get that compelling story told. It is a lot easier to get exposed with a story because everyone wants to talk about and write about a compelling story. You have to have a good story.
The Live show is important too. Your live show has to be great, because so many artists are breaking from the stage now. You’re much more likely to get exposure and get a buzz if you have an unbelievable live show that makes people talk than if you have an unbelievable record. Records are not going to get radio play, because the radio stations that are left are hardly playing anything, and there’s nobody listening, especially in the rock area.
I taught a class at FIT and somebody asked me to come and speak. There were 40 kids in the class, and I asked them, “How do you guys find out about new music? Do you listen to the radio?” And only four or five kids listened to the radio in that whole class. All the rest of them said online they find out about it some way or word of mouth. That’s with every genre. Still, you just said that pop and urban are still breaking on the radio, and those are the ones that Eric Garland at Big Champagne said people are downloading and not paying for. The biggest radio hits are the ones that are more pirated. Everybody talks about peer-to-peer being a great way to expose new music. It’s not a great way, because 90% of the files being traded on peer-to-peer are the hits. It would be a much different ratio if it was a discovery tool. People aren’t using it as a discovery tool. They’re trying to get the songs that are already exposed.
What we’re doing at the Seminar is saying, “Where should we go to get the exposure?”
Continue on to part 3 of this interview
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If you will be in the L.A. Area or willing to travel to the L.A. area you should check out the New Music Seminar on February 1st and 2nd. Readers of MusicianCoaching.com can get a two for one discount by going to www.newmusicseminar.biz. and entering the code “nmsla2”.
Tom Silverman is the founder and the head of TommyBoy Entertainment. Throughout his amazing career Tom has worked with and broken artists like De La Soul, Digital Underground, House of Pain, Queen Latifah and Afrika Bambaataa. In addition Tom is one of the main executives who has revived the New Music Seminar. I was grateful he took the time to speak with me. Please check the bottom of this post – Tom was kind enough to offer my readers a code for two for one admission to the L.A. New Music Seminar coming up on February 1st & 2nd.
Tom, you have a unique worldview given your history and current position in entertainment. Tell me what you’re seeing out there. Some of the statistics I saw at New York’s New Music Seminar are a little daunting. What is the reality for the aspiring artist these days?
TS:
Last Thursday, the new 2009 statistics came out from SoundScan. I’ll go over the most recent things because that just came out. Interestingly enough, and this is what we’ve been identifying at the New Music seminar is that overall music sales are up by 2.1% — 1.545 billion sales were made. That includes physical, digital, singles, albums, everything, video, music video. Total album sales including digital are down 12.7%. Digital tracks are up 8.3%, which is pretty great considering everyone is saying digital is leveling off, and I find that to be a hype. The percentage of increase is slowing down, but that’s because it’s a numerator/denominator thing. The actual amount — the number of additional units was almost 100 million more digital tracks sold this year than the year before, and 100 million is nothing to laugh at.
When you want to talk about vinyl, it’s up 33% and it went from 1.88 million to 2.5 million; so, the increase on that was about 700,000. Full-length digital albums are up 16%, but then again they started at only 65.8 million, so they’re only up to 76 million. The interesting trend we follow at the seminar also is the ratio of singles to album sales; In 2004 there were virtually no singles sales- it was all albums. Last year there were 2.5 times as many digital download singles as albums, physical and digital combined. This year it’s moved to 3.1 times as many, so look to see the ratio of singles to albums to increase. A lot of this comes from the radio hits. What’s happening is that where the major labels play, they’re getting marginalized faster than the indies and the smaller artists. We identified that the Top 10 has dropped 65-70% since 2000, probably 70% as of this year. If you just take records that sold over a quarter of a million that’s down 65%; but if you take records that sold under 10,000 it’s only down three or four percent.
I don’t recall the exact figure but I heard the number of albums that went platinum in 2009 was frighteningly low.
TS:
There weren’t that many. In 2008 there were only 112 that sold over a quarter of a million. So if you think that the major labels only make money – they can’t justify their existence at the size they are on records that sell over a quarter of a million. A good part of those records that sell over a quarter of a million they hoped would sell over a million or two million, and only sold a half a million or less. So they overspent on them and didn’t make money on them. So those 112 records are the only records they could make money on at all. Probably 25-50% of those didn’t make money either. So only 60 releases make money, and the amount of money they make except for maybe four or five giants hits – the Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas level of hits – aren’t really making significant money. In the old days, one hit used to pay for 20 stiffs. Now one hit doesn’t even pay for one stiff.
Depending on what’s spent, one hit doesn’t always pay for one hit.
TS:
Exactly. Half of those 112 didn’t even make money or broke even. To sell 300,000 albums and not make money? That’s not a good thing. It’s because they were hoping to sell 600,000 or 700,000 or 800,000. The labels are getting more cautious. So here’s what’s happening, and this is what we discuss at NMS. There are two major concerns we have. One is, the labels, both majors and independents are more conservative; they’re not going to take risks on artists or invest in artists just because they hear the demo and they like the songs or just because they can pack a house. That’s not enough – at least not the major labels. They need to know the artist is going somewhere between 30 and 60 miles per hour already to make an investment in it. They can’t start from scratch anymore, because so few artists are breaking. Here’s another statistic in 2008 there were 1500 releases that sold over 10,000 album units. Out of that there were only 227 of them that were artists that had broken 10,000 for the first time. So in the whole year only 227 of the artists were artists that had broken what we call the “obscurity line.” When you sell 10,000 albums, you’re no longer an obscure artist; people know about you. You may not be a star yet, but you’re in the game. That gets you out of the glut and into the game. We looked at the 227 and identified that only 14 of them were artists doing it on their own and all the rest were on majors and indies; a little more than half were on indies. And that includes Lady Gaga in that number of 227. It includes the biggest artists and ones that sold 10,000 as well, whether they sold a million or 10,001. That’s a pretty daunting number.
How have you adapted with Tommy Boy Entertainment? How has your personal business adapted to this shift? You seem intimately acquainted with how things are going. How have you weathered this transition?
TS:
By starting the New Music Seminar again and doing tons and tons of research deep in the data, identifying what’s happening and not happenings, talking to people who are making it happen and doing it alternative ways, we’re identifying what the opportunities are out there. Tommy Boy is more than a record company; we don’t consider ourselves a record company anymore, we’re much more than that. Now we’re sort of a strategic artists positioning company, and our job is to take an artist from where they are in revenues to a much higher number. If we work with Artist A that’s making half a million dollars a year, our goal is we take them to a million in year one, two million in year two, and three or four in year three. That’s our goal. And then we take a percentage of that revenue. And we’re talking about dollars, not record sales, because we may decide to give the records away, and we may only make about 10% of our money from the music and master use or 20% and the rest of it will come from touring and merch, publishing and possibly sync and other things. We’re not concerned with where the money comes from as long as it comes. Tommy Boy is known for building brands, from Queen Latifah and Ru Paul, to De La Soul and Afrika Bambaataa, Naughty by Nature, House of Pain, so many household names now that you know. When you mention the name, you can see them; like Digital Underground, when you close your eyes, an image of who they are comes up. Coolio … they all became significant brands, and that’s what we did. Tommy Boy is itself as a significant brand. We’re not just a record company. Our business always was building brands. How we used to make money was selling records; but we don’t see it as the way we can make money now. It’s one of the streams of revenue that we can make money from, but it’s no longer the most significant or even the second most significant way we’ll be making money. We can no longer be limited in how we see artists to the music domain. It’s more than the music. We have to work with the artist’s positioning.
So, back to the New Music seminar. As it’s harder for artists to break, and no labels are going to come to an artist just because they like the demo, that’s hard for artists to take. Artists don’t want to hear that. They’re spending all their time, because they’re musicians making a cool record. And that’s what they should do, but that’s only the very beginning of it. One of the things we identified in that three times as many people buy singles as a whole album, it probably doesn’t make any sense to make a whole album, or it’s a waste of time and money in the studio making an album when they’re just getting started, because every artist breaks with one song. And they might as well focus on finding that one song before they waste the money on the album.
Do you suggest EP’s then as a plausible alternative?
TS:
EP’s or even singles. As you build fans, if you’re touring – and every artist should be regardless of genre right now to build their fan base and also sell merch and actually make money – they should be touring all the time. You create music to satisfy your live audience. Once you have fans that are coming to your site, then you need to keep flowing new music to them on a regular basis to keep them engaged, and hopefully good music. You’re going to say, “I’m no longer an album every 18 months or two years. I’m a song every two months or a song every month. I’m a monthly publication or a bi-monthly publication.” You look at yourself as more of a periodical than as an album-making business. I think the album days are coming to an end. Unless you’re already established and you already have hundreds of thousands of fans, in which case the touring and album making might make sense. I just talked to one of the writers and producers for Black Eyed Peas, and they’re going out on tour right after the Grammys. They’re bringing out two tour buses that are studios, so they’ll be recording while they’re touring. I think that’s the new world, is that artists will do their shows and then they’ll go into their mobile recording studio and write and record. Now that recording equipment is so mobile, it’s easier and cheaper to do that, and the top artists are going to do that, and even the smaller artists are going to have to be writing on the road constantly. And whenever they’re in a place where there’s a studio, they may want to drop a track or they can record live tracks to perform and practice and rehearse and do live tracks and record those live tracks and make them available. The flow of music from artist to fan is going to be more important. It didn’t used to be important because there wasn’t the kind of 24-7 contact between artists and fans. So as you build your fans, they’re not going to be happy with one album every two years anymore. That’s not going to work. After three months, they’re off finding another artist that’s going to take your place. If you want to keep their interest, you have to keep at the top of their consciousness, and that requires new creative on a constant basis.
So at the seminar we talked about all of this. We talked about the new model, which is no longer based on records, it’s based on fans and the relationship between artists and fans, and how you monetize that relationship. We talked about the fan relationship pyramid. We have to look at our fans based on their levels of passion and their levels of spending. What kind of content we see delivered to our fans – whether it’s for money or for free – depends on their level of passion and their level of spending. So somebody that doesn’t want to spend any money – a tire kicker – probably shouldn’t get something first. They probably shouldn’t get exclusives. The exclusives should go to the most avid fans. That’s the new world. And there’s a science – we call it “fan migration science,” and we teach fan migration science at the seminar. How do you migrate a passive fan into an active fan? How do you capture fans? The new music business is about getting fans. That was always the business, but we – artists and labels – were always confused. We thought it was about selling records. Record sales were how we used to make money. It may not be how we make money now. But really how we made money from it is that fans bought our records. Passive fans bought the single, active fans bought the album, super active fans bought the album and went to all the shows, and bought the t-shirt. So we have to look at our audience in that way from now on.
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Check out the rest of this interview
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If you will be in the L.A. Area or willing to travel to the L.A. area you should check out the New Music Seminar on February 1st and 2nd. Readers of MusicianCoaching.com can get a two for one discount by going to www.newmusicseminar.biz. and entering the code “nmsla2”.
I am actually pretty psyched about the New Music Seminar book that was given out when you purchased a badge. In the past guidebooks tended to be lists of the events and panels and performances as well as a contact list of the industry people who were attending and very little else. This guidebook has tons of information geared directly to the artist including sample tour budgets, riders and advice from industry professionals on their topic of expertise. My personal favorite piece of advice from the book was from Kevin Lyman of the Warped Tour who suggested checking the oil in your van on a regular basis and several ways to prevent your gear from being stolen on the road.
I was perhaps overly critical in my post yesterday about the panels as I forgot to mention that Emily White from Whitesmith Entertainment offered very real and tangible ways that Amanda Palmer and her other artists retained fans from the road including having her tour manager’s cell phone number shouted out from stage for the purpose of collecting fan email addresses via SMS. Of all of the panelist I got the sense from her that she had spent the most time at ground level working with bands (and it turns out she started out tour managing the Dresden Dolls). The rest of the panelists were discussing some good advice for fan retention and interaction but I wanted to hear more about the process of building a fan base. As I mentioned yesterday I missed the touring panel and I am sure judging by the members on it they would have much more experience in growing a following than I would but this is what I’ve learned and oddly most of it came from my time as a gigging musician rather than an industry executive.
I played bass (and became the manager by default) of a seven piece band that had a three year run from 1992-1995. The band was by no means a big success but we did manage to bring between 200-300 fans out on a regular basis towards the end of our little run in the NYC market which is a particularly difficult market to build a following. I’ve had other projects but this one makes the most sense to describe because it was really the band I learned the most from because I knew absolutely nothing when I started. I have since used modern tools in other projects I have been in more recently but these examples somehow still resonate.
Our first gig came about opening for a friend’s band. We were spared the cold calling and got a pretty lousy time slot club that at best held 400 people (I mean really held 400 people not what the fire marshal said it should hold). It was late-ish on a weekday night but we did manage to put 35 or so people in the room and we were invited back. At that point I don’t think we had even spoken to the guy who booked the room other than to ask what kind of back line was available and I’m pretty sure as it was our first gig that none of us really knew that it was called a back line.
It’s a funny thing being in a band, the idea was to play music and not have a real job because I hated the part time jobs I was able to get at the time and I think I dreaded job interviews even more. I would come to realize that every gig we ever played was simply a job interview for the next gig. If we wanted a better job at a better time slot on a better night we had to out perform the attendance expectations. If we wanted the same people who were there that night to come back the next time we played then we had better put on a damn good show.
I befriended the promoter of that first venue, it turns out he also booked a few other clubs and as we drew well for him on a usually slow week night. He was kind enough to suggest a few other nights at his other venues with bands that were more “our kind of music”. At the time we wanted to be like the JBs but were all very young and overplayed too much so it wound up being more like (sigh) disco. We played many such gigs with other bands who had a similar sound and were able to pull some fans from them as well.
I can already see this will be too long winded so I’ll sum up the things that helped the most going from a few dozen friends to a regular draw of several hundred people.
1) Make personal connections. I am going to take it for granted that everyone wanting to build a business is collecting email addresses and on all the social networks and using some restraint so as not to mass email everyone six times a day about important stuff like the lead singer having a headache. But I most remember being out and about with my bass on my back talking to people I worked with, talking to people I went to school with, talking to record store clerks and just talking to anyone about music. We wheat pasted flyers to telephone polls and send out mailers but I most remember that the people I stopped to talk to (without hard selling them) and actually handed a flyer to were the people who most often showed up. I still believe that looking someone in the eye will always be much more effective than emailing (at least locally). A side note about wheat pasting, I’m pretty sure no one does it anymore and it’s illegal (in NY) and the clubs get fined so be wary. Also be wary of smoking cigarettes while wheat pasting because inhaling wheat past that lands on your cigarette can be rather disorienting albeit not entirely unpleasant.
2) Be fearless. Like a band? Want to open for them? (and no, not U2, the big local or regional act) Introduce yourself after a show, get an email address explain your situation if they have some time. I’d be surprised if they didn’t do the same thing to the big regional act when they were coming up. Several larger acts mentored me after introducing myself in this way and one in particular became a life long friend. These relationships allowed my band to open up for some really powerful regional acts and really grew our band’s profile.
3) Be humble – Ask questions. Find people who have what you want, or even better find people who have what they want and ask them how they got it. For better or for worse I asked a local promoter for an unpaid internship because I wanted to learn how to get my band signed (yea, yea it was the 90s, shut up) and it got me an internship at Atlantic records. Ask the people at local clubs what they have found to be the most effective ways of promoting shows at their venue as soon as you book the gig and listen. The question alone let’s the person booking your act know that you care about your business.
4) Be Polite, follow up and don’t take rejection personally.
If you are in a position of cold calling put yourself in the position of the person on the other end of the line. And then think back to the stereotype of all musicians- guys and gals – as a rule, we suck! How much mediocrity and worse is out there? Do you silently groan when you see 3-4 normal looking people who are unknown to you take the stage before they have even opened their mouths or played a note? Well okay then… now picture it is your job to sift through mediocrity that we all know so well. If the last visual didn’t grab you go immediately to Guitar Center and stand in the guitar section listening to people trying out instruments for an hour if you come back smiling (from joy not Schadenfruede) please Fedex me some of what you are on immediately. Short story long – would you be happy to hear from a musician you didn’t know? I’m gonna go ahead and guess no. So call, be polite – provide facts about your business and accolades not how talented you are and then call as many other clubs that would have an act of your size and hope for the call back. Ask them their preferred method of getting material to them and do it as they request. Monday nights and open mics are the way to start and take baby steps from there.
5) Start small, start segmented. I will give it up to Terry McBride from Nettwerk who when I asked the basic build a band question to the panel he was on @ NMS simply said “start small, start local – Tribes.” This is sound advice. Go after an audience or community one community or segment at a time. At college- go after college students. Work at a big company? Go after co-workers. Belong to a strong group of some kind be it religious, national, political or hobby oriented? Group them together and market to them. The band I was in targeted the intoxicated, NYU students, Kung Fu fans and video gamers and even before the internet we manged to find these people. Be sure you are a part of these communities though because outsiders pedaling their wares with a hard sell are not at all welcome.
I may be way to scattered to be a blogger but those are some of the things that helped me – drop me an email I want to hear from you.
