Tablets and Tunes: Will Apple's iPad Rock the Music World?
By now, you’ve probably heard all about the iPad, and seen the pictures of Steve Jobs displaying his new “tablet” in a manner undoubtedly familiar to the lateCharlton Heston. So far, reaction to the device has been mixed at best, with some people already lining up to take potshotsat Apple’s latest doohickey.
We still think it’s pretty neat, mostly because we’re curious about what it could mean for the music biz, which is still struggling to find an attractive (and profitable) alternative to physical product. Look, as long as whatever new gadget that comes along plays nice with independent and unaffiliated creators who want to join the digital party, we’re cool.
The iPad’s specs are certainly interesting: the touch screen (multitouch) is 9.7 inches in length (on a diagonal), and, because the body is only half-an-inch thick, it weighs a mere 1.5 pounds. In the weeks preceding today’s unveiling, Jobs was rumored to have said that the iPad represented “the most important thing he’s ever done,” and, as the proud papa dangled his newest creation in front of a packed house in San Francisco, some may have wondered… “um, why, exactly?”
The iPad will not actually arrive in stores until March, meaning, for the next six weeks or so, bloggers nationwide will sing its praises and tear it down as if on “shuffle.” None of this is likely to phase Apple, who seem eager to compete in new markets — the eBook reader biz among them. And, with the iPad’s “introductory price” of $499, it very well could give Amazon’s Kindle a run for its money.
Of course, we’re here to talk about music.
For those of you out there who miss the days of liner notes, producer credits and the good old fashioned “album experience,” there is reason to think — or at least reason to speculate — that the iPad will could indeed be something special for musicians and fans. Assuming that people do, in fact, want an digital facimile of old-fashioned
LP
, then the iPad — with its ten-inch screen and lush graphics — might take the not-so-major thrill of buying a digital music file from iTunes to a whole new level. To push this entirely speculative argument one step further, the iPad could give musicians more incentive to produce albums (and not just singles), by bundling the files in an oh-so-groovy package that could also include links to an artists’ website, tour dates, videos and so on and so forth. Again, the relative awesomeness of all of this depends on whether Apple keeps its storefront accessible to all artists, or becomes another gatekeeper. Currently, it’s pretty easy for even an unsigned artist to get their stuff on iTunes, and we have no reason to believe that this will change.
With all the hard work the indie music community puts into promotion and marketing of music, it’s amazing how often key information is missing from the message. It’s hard enough to get above the noise, so when you do get the attention of a potential fan, it’s important that the action you want them to take it clear. Our friends at the Echoes blog (blog.discmakers.com) wrote this great article about sending a clear message in your music promotion efforts.
It’s called a “Call to action” for a reason!
All the marketing in the world doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if it doesn’t elicit a response from your audience. That’s why it’s astonishing that so many marketing materials lack the key ingredient to ensure success: a strong call to action.
No one will argue that capturing your audience’s attention is paramount. But once you have it, you must make it 100% clear what you want them to do. How? By having a clear method for prospects to ask for more information, request a catalog, place an order, come in to your store… whatever your end goal is.
So what is a call to action?
A call to action is the specific action you’re asking your prospect/customer to take. It can be tied to a unique offer – such as an instant online discount for signing up for an email list – a simple mechanism that allows clients to “act” on your message, or even an alert to buy now because your sale ends today. It can be as simple as “Call for more information” listed next to your phone number, or “click here to register” with an active link in an email. It can create a sense of urgency with a deadline: “Register online by April 15th and save 10% on your next purchase.” Calls to action will vary from piece to piece, but what’s important to remember is that you always have one.
Print Ads
A large phone number and web address are musts (unique phone numbers and URLs are even better as they can help you track your ad results). Remember, you have a split second to capture someone’s attention, and his or her time is limited. Don’t expect a prospective client to hunt down your company online to find contact information. You never want to make it difficult for a potential buyer to contact you or purchase your product.
Catalog and Brochures
Having your phone number and URL on the outside is great, for starters. But consider repeating it on the inside of a brochure as well. And if you have a multiple-paged catalog, then by all means make sure you put your contact information on each and every spread. Again, every time you make someone work to find a call to action, you are putting up an unnecessary roadblock to making a sale.
Websites
Just because websites are digital vehicles, prominent placement of a phone number and a strong visual to call for more information do two things: One, it offers less tech-savvy individuals an outlet for inquiring about your services; and two, it adds credibility to a website, because customers will know there is a human being behind it.
Direct Mail
The mother of all “Calls to Action” is the Business Reply Card (aka the BRC). This handy little device allows users to quickly (and effortlessly, if preprinted) respond. BRCs are ideal for prospecting to rented lists or older names on your mailing list. From there you can follow up with responders with more focused and targeted marketing communications.
Remember the key to any marketing is to get your audience to respond, and the only way they can do that is you provide a call to action.
Analysis: 5 Reasons Why 2010 Will Be Revolutionary For The Music Biz January 12, 2010 - Touring | Digital and Mobile
By Glenn Peoples, L.A.
This year will host numerous events that could well change the course of the music industry. From the future of music giant EMI to the impact of the Performance Rights Act, many events that will occur in 2010 could have deep, long-term consequences. In no particular order, they are:
1. The Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger If the Department of Justice gives the merger a greenlight it would instantly create less competition in ticketing in the near term as Live Nation’s fledgling ticketing division ceases to be a competitor to Ticketmaster. In the long term, a combined Ticketmaster-Live Nation will be able to sell new entertainment packages in novel ways. Competitors may form partnerships and coalitions to act as a counterweight to the merged companies’ market power. In addition, the merger will inspire similar pairings as other companies jockey for competitive advantage. A denied merger will lead to greater competition in ticketing as Live Nation will continue growing its ticketing operations and the two companies will continue M&A activity in an effort to build for the future. Either way, both ticketing and promotion will never be the same.
2. The Performance Rights Act Changes Radio In October 2009, the Performance Rights Act made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The House passed its version in May. Although there is solid opposition, chances are good that Congress will vote on the bill in 2010. The Performance Rights Act would give both performing artists and owners of sound recordings royalties for performances on terrestrial radio. (Currently, only the composition merits a performance royalty.) Webcasters and satellite radio pay such royalties, but terrestrial radio has always been exempt. The added expense comes at a bad time for a radio industry suffering from an advertising slump and shifting consumer behavior. How much money the record labels will collect is a big question. It’s logical that radio stations will take measures to limit their royalties. That may mean more talk radio or fewer songs played. Regardless, terrestrial radio will never be the same.
3. Internet Service Providers Become Partners This will be the year Internet service providers become content partners rather than adversaries in the battle against piracy (mostly in Europe, where legislation will make partnerships more like shotgun marriages, but eventually in the United States as well). Partnerships will beget a new era of music services. As tends to be the case, however, the first entrants may not score a breakthrough but better services will appear and eventually the ISP will be an important and obvious point of contact for music-loving consumers. Aside from the possibility of reducing piracy, partnerships with ISPs have the potential to reach multitudes of light consumers who outnumber heavy users but spend little or nothing. The industry is busy extracting more value from the most passionate of fans (the heavy spenders). The real pot of gold will be found in reaching tens of millions of light users through ISPs.
4. Spotify Will Raise The Bar For Mobile Music The celestial jukebox—access to all the world’s music—has been imagined for more than a decade, but the game-changer that fans and the industry have long desired will be a reality in 2010 if Spotify opens shop in the United States with supporting apps for the iPhone or Android. Spotify only has the music that the company has licensed (rather than a true “celestial” catalog of all recorded music) but its user-friendly interface puts it well above the competition. When people dreamed about unlimited access to music in the ’90s, they imagined something like Spotify on a mobile phone and PC.
5. Almost Any Way You Slice It, EMI Will Reshape The Industry Whether it soars or is sold, the scenarios regarding EMI that will play out this year will reshape the music industry. Terra Firma, the company’s private equity owner, could slowly maneuver the company to profitability—and thereby offering a blueprint on how to turn around an ailing record label—merge EMI with a competitor, or sell off one or more of its divisions—thereby changing the music landscape and increasing consolidation in recorded music or publishing. If Terra Firma somehow restructures EMI’s debt, 2010 may look less revolutionary and more like 2009. But since private equity owners don’t intend to stick around forever, change is going to eventually come.
I know many artist ave big dreams of getting signed to a major record deal. They look at BET and MTV and say one day that will be them. This may very well be true for a few artists out there who are actually "lucky" enough to get signed or discovered. However this dream turns into a harsh reality to most artists when they realize that they are getting older and the trends o music are changing. Soon they start to feel as if their dream is slipping farther away. I hate to see artists with the put me on mindset. This means that all they want to do is meet the right guy and "spit" for them and get signed. Now they are living the good life. Just make hit records and hit the clubs every night. While this sounds like what most rappers and singers do this is far from the truth. Most artists don't realize that they are in a far better situation than the average artist they see on tv. They are in control of their own music. They own their masters and can reap the full benefits and profits of their work. Sites such as reverbnation.com andtunecore.com has given artists the tools they need to create a strong following online and also integrate the promotional efforts with other social networking sites like facebook.com and myspace.com Due to the poor economy and declining record sales,record labels are closing it's doors left and right. The days of getting a 10 million dollar record deal so you can put an album out for you and all of your homeboys are long gone. No Limit and Cash Money crushed the industry with those stellar deals. Companies are now looking for the final product to distribute. Artists need to have their own production, album, artwork, website, strong fanbase, stage presence,image and viral media buzz BEFORE a major label is even considering to get behind them. This is why it is important that the artist get out of the "Put me on" mindset. A company wants to know that you are going to promote yourself just as hard before they spend a dollar on you. The good part about this is that once you get the ball rolling the more leverage you have in negotiating the best deal you can with a major. Take Drake for instance; He did not wait to get a record deal. Drake created a strong underground buzz for himself through a series of FREE mixtapes that lead to his multi million dollar deal with Cash Money/Young Money. He is actually the perfect artist to model your career after. Check out his blog atoctobersveryown.blogspot.com Stop tryna get put on and put yourself on!
freeplaymusic.com - This has been a great earner for me. They have been around for a while now, which draws in lots of TV and film producers, but also a lot of composers. Be sure to give your tracks bold descriptions and name your collections wisely.
audiojungle.net - A fairly new service from the quite awesome envato blog network. They have an interesting pricing / earning structure and it’s been a decent earner for me.
pumpaudio.com - This is a popular service. They provide all of the musical content for the excellent user-driven television channel, Current TV, along with many other outlets.
I’m interested to hear what your experiences have been with any of the services on this list or others. There must be other great services out there ready to be tapped. If you know of a good one, leave a comment and let it be known!
Before the advent of affordable home recording technology, most bands and songwriters struggled to save up enough money to go into a professional recording studio to cut a demo or a record that would help them get noticed.
Invariably, once they were in the studio, these bands realized just how good they could sound if they only had a little more time in the studio to perfect their music. In short, unsigned bands were often caught in a bind trying to make the best possible recording in the shortest amount of time.
In the 1990s, the proliferation of affordable home recording programs such as Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, Digital Performer, et al., took the studio clock out of the equation in many ways. Musicians could now soundproof a few rooms in their homes and after making an investment in a digital recording system and a powerful computer, spend as much time as they wished creating their own recordings. Unfortunately, home recordings may include flaws introduced unintentionally into the recording process by any number of possible causes.
For instance, the acoustical properties of the room where a particular recording was mixed down might have excessively boosted bass frequencies so that when the record is played anywhere else (without the original room’s bass boost), it will sound thin and weak. Perhaps a ballad you recorded has an extremely wide dynamic range, starting off very softly and building to a soaring (and louder) climax. Every time you play the finished recording back in your car, you constantly have to adjust the volume control since the beginning seems too quiet, while the ending nearly blows out your car’s speakers. Maybe you recorded the various songs on your album over a period of months and during that time, you made changes to your recording system, instruments, monitor speakers, etc. As a result, some songs sound different than others, resulting in a disparate sounding collection of recordings that don’t fit together.
Fixing problems such as these are what a talented and experienced mastering engineer does every day, helping artist put out the absolute best recording to their listening public. And home recordings are not the only ones subject to the kinds of problems discussed above. Every major label release goes through the mastering process to help polish the music to its absolute best before it’s pressed and released.
What should you expect from a mastering session? Here are four points that help make the case for investing in mastering.
1) Objective assessment by a new set of experienced ears. Mastering engineers are trained to listen objectively and critically to every nuance of your recording. They listen to dozens of different albums a month and as a result have a good idea of what is typical of the best recordings being released in each genre. They can alert you to any potential problems that may exist on your recordings, something as simple as some clicks that you may have missed to larger issues such as too much low end which could result in a muddy-sounding album. They can and should give you an honest appraisal of what would improve your album’s sound and how much time and cost will be involved. Based on their advice, you may decide that it’s worthwhile to go back and remix a particular song to insure something is corrected before making thousands of copies.
2) The best tools to properly master your album. A good mastering engineer has a wide range of both digital and analog equipment to help them do their job. Perhaps even more importantly, a mastering engineer will evaluate and master your album in a finely tuned, accurate acoustical environment. This allows them to hear precisely what is on your master and judge which adjustments will result in the best-sounding album, one that comes across with impact on the widest variety of playback systems.
3) Polishing your album’s sound. A talented mastering engineer doesn’t actually change the sound of your music, instead, they work to make it sound more polished. One of the first things you are likely to notice when listening to a well-mastered album is its overall cohesiveness, something that is of little concern when you are recording individual songs. By giving your album this cohesiveness a mastering engineer helps to bind your songs together into a single entity.
A good example might be an artist that features acoustic instruments such as guitars, mandolins, fiddle and string bass. Although the overall blend between the various instruments might sound fine, after mastering, the tracks may have a certain sparkle and airiness to them that was enhanced and brought out by the judicious use of high quality analog EQ in the mastering process. The result is a bright, pleasant sound that wasn’t audible on the original mix master.
For a hip hop artist, the fact that an album may have been mixed on a small pair of near-field monitors may lead to an abundance of very low frequency information on the record that could not be heard in the artist’s own recording studio. Once again, the mastering engineer can consult with the artist and by removing unwanted very low frequencies, often termed “rumble,” the resulting album will have plenty of bass, but much greater definition and clarity on the kick drum and bass guitar. In both hypothetical cases, the final album will sound more professional and compare much more closely with commercial releases.
4) Optimize your album for a variety of delivery formats. While downloads continue to increase in sales, CDs still account for more than two-thirds of all recorded music sales. So optimizing your album for CD release is one of the key jobs of the mastering engineer. They will also embed the ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) codes into each of your album’s tracks. This digital fingerprint allows music distributors such as iTunes or Rhapsody to track and collect your royalties each time one of your songs sells as a download. If you want to release your music on vinyl, a good mastering engineer can also help prepare your masters for this and recommend a reputable pressing plant. They will also advise you on what works best for the multitude of compressed digital audio file formats if you want to offer downloads on your own website from MP3, to AAC, to WMA as well as the so-called “lossless” compression systems such as MLP, Apple Lossless, and FLAC.
How Expensive is Mastering? The same revolution that brought home recording tools into the realm of affordability for nearly every musician hasn’t had the same impact on the mastering process. That’s because building a professional mastering room is an expensive undertaking, costing tens of thousands of dollars and an acoustician to insure that the resulting room will be acoustically “neutral.”
Additionally, mastering studios are equipped with a wide range of both analog and digital recording and signal processing equipment, plus a variety of playback monitors which themselves can run additional tens of thousands of dollars. All that said, mastering rates in most large cities vary widely. Depending on the caliber of the rooms and the track record of the mastering engineer, rates can run from around $75/hr up to $250/hr and beyond.
But rather than equating a better quality mastering experience solely with cost, it’s likely a better bet to find an experienced mastering engineer with whom you can communicate clearly. This is especially important since mastering is the final step in the record-making process where any creative changes can be made to your music. Thus, it’s the aesthetic sense and experience of your mastering engineer which are much more critical to achieving a successful mastering outcome than whether he or she uses a particular piece of equipment.
To simplify the budgeting process for mastering, some engineers have begun to charge by the song or the album project, with any subsequent changes charged hourly. Others charge an hourly fee, but should provide an overall estimate of how much time will be needed based on the number of tracks and total running time of your album. Be sure to clarify whether there are any extra fees for CD references, shipping masters, etc. Also, ask how you will be charged for any additional changes you request after the CD ref has been reviewed.
I spoke with three local indie artists that had all had a recent self-produced album project mastered professionally, to see how much they paid. The range of mastering costs went from $750 on the low side to about $1,500 on the high side for all mastering services in these three instances. All three artists agreed that the time and money was well spent and that their finished CD sounded measurably better than their own final mixes.
The Importance of the Reference CD Once you have consulted with your mastering engineer so they know what you are hoping to achieve through mastering and they have completed mastering your album to your specifications, they will provide you with a reference CD to carefully review. Some mastering houses are now able to deliver your CD ref online via an FTP site, saving you time and money.
It’s the artist’s responsibility to carefully listen to every note on this reference CD on a number of systems (studio, car, home, etc.) to insure that your music is coming across just as you envisioned it. Don’t be shy about asking questions of your mastering engineer at this stage of the game. Their goal is the same as yours: to insure that your album sounds as good as possible. After discussing what you are hearing with you mastering engineer, it’s up to you to decide whether the job is completed or whether a few more tweaks might improve it further. Once your CD has been mastered and the CD reference approved, you can simply have the mastering engineer forward the CD master to your duplicator for production. Keep your final approved reference CD handy, as you can use it to double check that your duplicated CD sounds just as good as the CD reference.
The role of the mastering engineer is an important one. They provide a critical last step in the process of getting your recordings ready to reach your audience, helping to insure that the CD you will be judged by is the absolute best possible sounding representation of your music. That’s why it makes sense to invest in mastering your next album.
An interview with old school British mastering engineer George Peckham (aka Porky) including a brief look at how vinyl masters are cut may be found at:
It’s amazing how quickly Twitter has become a part of the mainstream culture. What’s even more surprising is how many artists have still not taken the Twitter plunge. At first, the micro-blogging format can be confusing and seem a bit ridiculous, but if you hang in there Twitter can be a powerful asset in your music promotion arsenal that not only helps spread the word about your music, but is great for making real-world connections with people on an individual basis. Since there are a lot of Twitter newbies out there, here are 5 tips for new artists/band getting on Twitter. If you have any other starter tips, feel free to add them by leaving a comment on this post.
1. You have to stick with it and be consistent. Twitter will take some time before you start to see it’s full potential.
2. Start out by following people that tend to discuss topics you like. Seek out other artists/bands that are experienced on Twitter and “follow” them. Chances are you’ll pick up a few points
3. It’s a great tool to help develop your story telling ability. Take everyday events and make them sound interesting.
4. It’s a public forum, so don’t say don’t say anything that you want kept private.
5. Avoid shameless self promotion as much as possible, as people will see right through that on Twitter. Interaction is the key!
Radio Promotion – Why you won’t get commercial airplay
Here is my diatribe on Radio Promotion. Please take it with a grain of salt. Absorb some of the ideas, tailor it to your own needs, or outright reject it. In the end, you know what is best for you. But…
Without the support of a monied label, an extremely well known PR person, or a heavyweight radio promoter on your side I’m fairly certain that you’ll NEVER get sustained or meaningful commercial airplay.
Commercial radio is such a racket. Its a closed system of secret handshakes, payola, and broken promises. Radio promo is a real trail of tears and dashed dreams. The playlists on commercial radio stations are mostly dictated from a central corporate headquarters and the songs are picked based on what record companies are “paying” the most in favors, vacations, junkets, money, cupcakes, drugs, and other various sordid somethings. (ClearChanel anyone?)
An Indie Artist’s only hope is college radio, public radio, community radio, internet radio, or niche programs on commercial radio stations that are specifically focused on local/unsigned music. But luckily for you, me, and the world these venues are exactly where the interesting and important music of today is getting aired.
You could get a radio promoter to help in these areas. But its a ton of money, and in 99.9% of the cases you’d be a salmon swimming upstream only to find a big dam has been built while you were away. You could find much better ways to spend the money you were setting aside for radio. I’d recommend using that money to find a publicist or finance a tour instead.
I’m not trying to dampen your spirits at all, but if you’ve got your heart set on it, make sure you really get the goods on any radio promoter you do work with. They can be a scary bunch sometimes. Check their credentials, their previous successes in promoting indie artists, get some testimonials, and make sure you can check up on their work to make sure they’re giving it their all. And most importantly, make sure its affordable and that they really are enthused about your music. Otherwise, you’ll pay too much for someone doing too little.
Sorry for the big warning. We just want to make sure indie artists are utilizing their limited budgets and resources in the most effective ways possible (and radio promotion at the indie level is a very chancy bargain).
Here’s a few rules for doing radio promo yourself (which I DO recommend):
1) Be prepared to send out 100-200 CDs with One-Sheets
2) Target college, community, and public stations, online radio, blogs, podcats, and commercial specialty programs (like local or unsigned feature hours) that are appropriate for your genre and within a geographic area that you can realistically tour through at least 3 or 4 times a year. Don’t get carried away with Florida if you live in Oregon. Radio doesn’t stay faithful to you if you’re not continually playing in their area, and its a waste of time, energy, and discs if you don’t plan on maintaining the relationship.
3) Get the contact info for particular DJs or hosts on those stations depending on their specialty genres. You may have to send CDs to 3 or 4 different people at the same station (KEXP comes to mind!!!). Its not that they’re lazy. They all just have a constantly growing pile of discs to listen to and they probably won’t be passing discs back and forth, even when they’re jazzed about a certain album.
4) If you’re touring, get the marketing/booking contact at each station that has added your music to their playlist and ask about the possibility of an in-studio performance the day of your show.
5) Big one- – make sure you’re ready and willing to do all this stuff in a short period of time. Your big chance to make any significant dent is when your CD is new (1-3 months old). All your ducks should be in a row. The stars should align for that magical period right before and right after your release where you’re able to put every last bit of energy into your music getting out to the world.
6) Have your CD in hand about 3 months before releasing it. This gives you ample time to prep the release party,… but more importantly it gives reviewers, critics, press, and radio program directors the chance to determine whether they’ll leave it in their pile of CDs that are going to the nearest used record store, or if they want to get behind it. 3 months is also a good lead time to start booking your tour to support the new album once it comes out.
7) After you send out your CDs to radio, check back in a couple weeks by phone or email to make sure they’ve got it, had a chance to listen, and ask if they’ll be adding it to their playlist. Don’t put up a fight if they say NO. Just politely ask “why” and say thanks if they tell you the reason. If they say yes, give them a quick thanks and casually ask what their preferred protocol is for you to check up on the actual reception your album is getting from their listeners. Feel free to check back every few weeks to see if its still in rotation. You might feel like you’re being a pest, but I’ve actually heard from college radio DJs that they appreciate when someone calls to remind them to play a certain song. Otherwise, they tend to feel like they get into a programming rut and just start playing the same old things. Go! (and continue, and continue, and continue, in 3 month cycles of touring and resting… ad nauseum).
I hope this helps. Its by no means the only way to do radio promo, but it seems like a good place to start, at least. Check out the Indie Bible (http://www.indiebible.com), too. Its a great resource that has many of these contacts listed in nice orderly categories for your quick reference.
Please keep us posted on how its all going and let us know if we can help further.
As Facebook continues it’s dominance in the social network realm, many artists are feeling a bit lost when it comes to promoting their music on the Facebook platform. Naturally, you should be talking about your music on your personal profile just as you talk about other aspects of your life, but there are some good reasons why you should make the leap and take the focused promotion efforts off of your personal Facebook profile and create a Facebook page dedicated to your music.
First we need to clear up a little terminology. Facebook calls the typical individual profiles Personal Profiles and they refer to the profiles created by a brand, product, organization, musician or band as Profile Pages. It can get confusing as they can look similar, but there are some big distinctions in how they work. Also, you must have a Facebook personal profile first before you can create a profile page, so if you’re brand new to Facebook, you’ll have to create that first. Once you’re up and running with a personal profile, here is how you can create a profile page.
2. Select the Artist, Band, or Public Figure button
3. Once that is selected, you will get a drop down menu where you will want to select band or musician
4. Enter in the artist or band name in the “name of page” field and click create page.
Now that the page is created, be sure to post a profile image and drop your bio into the info section.
Why not just use my Facebook personal profile?
As mentioned above, there are some key functionality differences that make a Facebook Profile page a better option for promoting your music which we’ll detail in part 2 of this tutorial. But #1 on the list has to be the security for your personal information. Most people use their personal profiles as a way to share info, pictures and updates with their friends and family. So certain aspects of their life outside of their music career are visible for all who are “friends” to see. Anyone who you grant access to your personal profile (Because they are a fan of your music) might have more info than you really want them to have. Making a Facebook page for your music career allows anyone to be a fan without the worry that they’re getting to know you more than you like.
It's not only a new year, it's also the beginning of a new decade! What a great time to renew your commitment to letting your musical light shine and living to your fullest potential.
There's a good chance you've already set some goals for 2010 and are using a planning system of some type to make sure you stay on track. If so, congrats to you!
If not, that OK too. Getting clear about who you are and how you want to grow is something you can do at any time of the year -- whenever the time is right for you.
But I'd like to share a simple way to look at your life and music career in a way that will make it easier to set meaningful goals. This is something I learned from Jim Bunch when I attended one of his Ultimate Game of Life workshops.
Here's the essence of it ...
All the goals you will ever want to achieve can basically be broken down into three key areas of life:
Goals that make you happy
Goals that make you healthy
Goals that make you wealthy
Jim calls it the Happy, Healthy, Wealthy Game. Looking at my life and livelihood in this manner really resonates with me. Perhaps it will with you too.
Too often our goals are focused on only one or two of the three areas. Some really ambitious people just play the Wealthy, Wealthy, Wealthy Game ... and ignore their happiness and health.
Some people who might be described as "slackers" will mainly play the Happy, Happy, Happy Game ... and downplay their health and ability to make money.
Still others focus on health and their appearance at the expense of the other categories.
The trick is finding a balance between all three. Although Jim says that "Happy" is listed first for a reason. It's the area of life most people overlook in the pursuit of achieving their material goals.
I love that idea. Because you're sense of joy and well-being gives you the juice to pursue the other areas of your life -- and music career.
Here are some examples from my own Happy, Healthy and Wealthy goals for the new year:
Happy
- Meditate every morning and enjoy the benefits of a clear mind - Spend meaningful time with Pooki, my daughter, and good friends every week - Write, record and/or perform one new song every month
Healthy
- Hit the treadmill and make a health shake every morning - Do some strength training for 20 to 30 minutes three times a week - Get up from the computer once every hour to stretch and move
Wealthy
- Write, publish and promote two new books this year - Go through my audio and video archives and create at least five new info-products this year - Pay off the Visa card bill and home equity loan
Now get out a notebook or journal, or open a new document on your computer. Type in the three category headings: Happy, Healthy and Wealthy. Then start adding meaningful goals in each of the three areas. And make certain there's an equal balance between them all.
Do this -- really do this! -- and you'll have a happier, healthier and wealthier year in 2010.
These are the best headphones that I have ever bought. These work better for my "On the Go" lifestyle. i plug em in at the Studio, or my iPhone and enjoy the same crisp studio quality the way music was intended to be heard.
With all the hard work the indie music community puts into promotion and marketing of music, it’s amazing how often key information is missing from the message. It’s hard enough to get above the noise, so when you do get the attention of a potential fan, it’s important that the action you want them to take it clear. Our friends at the Echoes blog (
Before the advent of affordable home recording technology, most bands and songwriters struggled to save up enough money to go into a professional recording studio to cut a demo or a record that would help them get noticed.
For instance, the acoustical properties of the room where a particular recording was mixed down might have excessively boosted bass frequencies so that when the record is played anywhere else (without the original room’s bass boost), it will sound thin and weak. Perhaps a ballad you recorded has an extremely wide dynamic range, starting off very softly and building to a soaring (and louder) climax. Every time you play the finished recording back in your car, you constantly have to adjust the volume control since the beginning seems too quiet, while the ending nearly blows out your car’s speakers. Maybe you recorded the various songs on your album over a period of months and during that time, you made changes to your recording system, instruments, monitor speakers, etc. As a result, some songs sound different than others, resulting in a disparate sounding collection of recordings that don’t fit together.
2) The best tools to properly master your album.
It’s amazing how quickly Twitter has become a part of the mainstream culture. What’s even more surprising is how many artists have still not taken the Twitter plunge. At first, the micro-blogging format can be confusing and seem a bit ridiculous, but if you hang in there Twitter can be a powerful asset in your music promotion arsenal that not only helps spread the word about your music, but is great for making real-world connections with people on an individual basis. Since there are a lot of Twitter newbies out there, here are 5 tips for new artists/band getting on Twitter. If you have any other starter tips, feel free to add them by leaving a comment on this post.
Here is my diatribe on Radio Promotion. Please take it with a grain of salt. Absorb some of the ideas, tailor it to your own needs, or outright reject it. In the end, you know what is best for you. But…
Go! (and continue, and continue, and continue, in 3 month cycles of touring and resting… ad nauseum).
As Facebook continues it’s dominance in the social network realm, many artists are feeling a bit lost when it comes to promoting their music on the Facebook platform. Naturally, you should be talking about your music on your personal profile just as you talk about other aspects of your life, but there are some good reasons why you should make the leap and take the focused promotion efforts off of your personal Facebook profile and create a Facebook page dedicated to your music.
