by Ian on December 31, 2011
Another year over and what have you done?
That imperfect Lennon quote is the question that every musician will be asking themselves as this year ends and the next starts.
If you feel or know that you didn’t achieve what you wanted with your music in the previous year, what are you going to do to change that in 2012? What can you do to break your band?
“How do I make it” is the question that we get asked all the time and the one that we and lots of other bloggers try to spend a lot of time answering.
Reading our blog and the others like it will give you lots of great ideas on methods to market and promote your music and some insight into how to be a better musician.
But, we are asked this question so often that we felt the best thing that we could do on this last day of the year is make the most basic plan possible for every musician.
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by Ian on November 11, 2011
Bublé & Kay - mates who both put in 10,000 hours and more
I’m not a Michael Bublé fan.
It doesn’t matter though, because he is an example of effort and application that you can follow regardless of what you think of his music.
Nonetheless, I have enormous respect for what he’s achieved and how he kept going to get to where he is today. He never gave up!
It’s that determination that often makes the difference.
We’ve written before about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule from Outliers: The Story of Success. In it, he says that you don’t get to be a winner without lots of practice and he has all the evidence to prove it.
I’d recommend that every musician read it.
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by Ian on November 4, 2011
I’ve been looking at how to promote music on Spotify.
There’s a couple of things that I needed to sort out for artists that I work with relating to their presence on Spotify. That led me to start to make some decisions about the basics of using Spotify for promotion as a musician – so this is what I have uncovered so far as it applied to the issues I was having.
This is just about getting the basics right to start with – I think I’m right, but it’s a work in progress, so let me know what else you know!
The obvious issue is that with Spotify getting serious traction in the UK and the US, any artist would be a fool not to use it, have their music on there and work out how to maximise that exposure.
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by Ian on October 20, 2011
Image courtesy of 'letthesunshine'
“How do I get noticed?”
We get asked that…. a lot.
People approach us all the time – both as a result of writing the posts on this site and in our day jobs as managers and consultants.
And then, about half of the people who ask that, follow up with a second question.
“Is my music good enough?”
The first question is what we aim to spend the majority of our time and effort on this blog answering. It comes down to using best practice methods for marketing and promotion.
We favour a particular systematic approach to build momentum and to try to achieve a critical mass that will sustain your career.
But it’s the second question that actually really matters.
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by Ian on October 11, 2011
I used to be a music lawyer and I was a bit of an authority (for a while) on sampling and sample clearance in the early ’90′s.
Then I ran a bunch of dance labels and worked with a lot of electronic artists.
I have cleared a lot of samples but I have released way more records with samples in them that we didn’t bother to clear.
Why?
Because we thought that no-one would notice that we’d used their music – these were generally small specialist underground records – and that if they did, we would be able to agree something after the event, if the need ever arose.
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by Ian on October 5, 2011
Want to know the state of the music industry right now and where it’s headed?
Want to know what some of the sharpest marketing minds in the world think are the things that matter in the future of music?
If so, I’d take the time to read this presentation from J. Walter Thompson.
These people know their stuff seeing as they are the leading marketing agency in the world.
The presentation covers a very wide range of topics, starting with looking at where the music business is right now. It then looks at the sea changes that are occurring in the consumption of music (streaming being paramount) but also in music production and promotion.
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Another year over and what have you done?
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