My return to the front line of music management and major label artists has given me a number of insights into how things have changed over the last five years.

Some of the changes are the same for every artist, from the DIY musician to the global superstar – digital downloads, social media and increased ‘fan engagement’, and a hitherto unknown reliance on brand partnerships are all good examples.

But, perhaps the biggest change of all is to what we used to call the ‘album cycle’, wherein an artist would disappear from view for 12 months or so following the last single from an album and reappear that year later with new singles leading up to an album and a tour to sell that record.

That’s now been flipped on it’s head for many artists, especially those from the pop mainstream.

Singles as marketing tools

Singles are now marketing tools, both for the artist themselves and for the live tour. The music now sells the tickets rather than the old paradigm that was the other way round.

The fear of your fanbase evaporating in the ‘off cycle’ between albums means that more artists than ever are staying continually in the public eye with marketing driven by regular single releases. In many cases the albums that result from this activity are merely collections of the singles that went before. And, the gap between albums and the first single from a notional new record may be non-existent.

There are obviously other factors at play. Global radio seems to have become homogeneous in support of pop derived from dance music, with pure R&B and Hip Hop suffering something of a decline. New mainstream artists in Rock and Indie have almost completely failed to materialise and although there is still a level of support for established acts in those genres from mainstream media, that isn’t guaranteed if the act has been out of the spotlight for some time.

There’s plenty of heritage rock acts still making great money playing to their ageing audience on US tours, but those more recently successful acts are finding it harder to keep their audience with them between album releases.

The worst thing is not being in the marketplace

So, in order to keep the career momentum going many artists are now ‘Always on’.

The perfect example is Rihanna. Six albums in six years and thirty singles. And that’s not including appearances on other artist’s tracks!

It clearly works on a host of levels. There’s always a new track at radio which fuels press and media coverage. Although tours are scheduled there is always an opportunity to do a small run of shows outside of a full touring schedule where demand presents itself. A dip in chart success of a particular single is steamrollered by the arrival of the next record.

In this article, her manager Jay Brown notes that, “Kids want new material all the time” and that “I think you become disposable when you put out an album every three years”.

It’s also very important to recognise that he believes albums had become ‘bloated’ as record companies sought to get the most from the available running time of CD’s and that in the digital download world, an album needs ‘no filler’. Having too much music on the album dilutes what an artist is aiming to do. He says that he wanted her latest album to be ‘all hits’! Interestingly Adele’s ’21′ and Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’ have similarly short running times.

Of course, if you’re going to move on to the next album quickly, you can keep this one short and make another too.

In this Billboard article this attitude is summed up in another quote from Brown – “The worst thing is to not be in the marketplace”.

You can see this paradigm working for The Black Eyed Peas (and Will.I.Am), Katy Perry, David Guetta, Jay-Z, Kanye West and many many more.

Always on for the DIY musician

So where does this leave the DIY musician, who doesn’t have the endless opportunities to promote a new single on a global scale or tour the world in style?

Well, follow that lead and be constantly making and releasing music. It doesn’t have to be reaching everyone but it can reach your fanbase and build them into an army.

I have sent so many of my readers to this presentation by Ian Rogers of Topspin. It’s not quite saying that every musician should be alway’s on, but approaches the same idea from a different direction.

Ian is talking about building a fanbase and having 2000 fans before you try to sell them anything. His presentation is a brilliant roadmap to do exactly that and I’d urge you to read it all.

But, the key concept is that every artist should do ‘one small thing every week and one large thing every month’. Small things might be a blog post or a video to YouTube and a large thing might be a big show or a release of some music, but the concept is clear – be ‘always on’ for your fanbase…..and it will grow.

Going forward as an independent musician you can have the same type of opportunity that major label artists are given. The internet and scoial media are great levellers. Sure, they may have way larger budgets and an army of people to help them, but you can compete by constantly and consistently giving your fans something that stems from your creativity that keeps you and your music ‘front of mind’ – another saying I’ve heard a lot recently in label meetings!

It is a tragedy that so many DIY musicians sit at home perfecting and honing their work in the belief that they will be able to release it with no fanbase and no prior awareness. This doesn’t work. You must make great art but you can do it with your fans and comtemporaries watching on.

Growing and developing in public is one of the great changes that the interent has brought for artists. Early adopters will find you when you’re still raw and others will join later as you become the finished article. But do document that journey in public. Make more music, put it out however you can. Build a tribe and lead them in other ways that your art inspires.

The winners will outwork the competition and they’ll do that by being always on.

Everything you ever wanted to know about music industry agreements, all wrapped up in a free pdf.

I’d always intended to write something along the lines of this guide, but now there’s really no need as this is great piece of work and does the job as well as I could – probably better.

Whether you’re resolutely DIY and never intend to sign a record deal with a major label or an indie or whether that elusive major deal is your first goal and step to global success, you’re going to learn a huge amount by downloading and reading this. Most successful artists will need a manager and do a publishing deal and these are covered in the guide.

It’s written by leading music industry lawyers in the UK, Lee & Thompson, who know their stuff inside out. Obviously it’s written from a UK perspective but the vast majority of the guide is great advice and factual detail that applies in any part of the world. They claim that it is written in a way that is more ‘practical than legalistic’, but you’re going to find it dry!

360º deals

What you’re also going to find is that it’s amazing. The explanations of the various agreements and how they fit into the overall structure of the business is detailed, comprehensive, accurate and up to date. This last point is crucial. The guide was updated for 2010 so it has a few MySpace references to date it a little but, importantly, it was written after it became usual for record companies to offer what is known as ’360º’ deals.

In such a deal the record company will require an artist to share the revenue from the other ways that they make money with the record company – such as from touring, merchandise and songwriting.

The reasoning is that the label provides the platform for the artist’s success and, with dwindling income from the sale of records in the modern download music economy, they need to have a share of the remaining healthy and profit making parts of an artist’s career in order to justify the investment that they make.

Whether a 360º deal is a good idea or not for any particular artist is a massive ongoing debate as many predict the oncoming demise of the old major record companies – but if you’re going to sign a deal with a record company they will be looking for these ‘ancillary rights’. The guide covers this in detail.

Management as a ‘joint venture’

The other area that shows the understanding of the latest trends in the music business is in the section on management agreements.

Traditionally, a management agreement is simple and the artist pays the manager 20%of all revenue (with some exceptions), but, again due to the changing nature of the business, it is becoming more and more common for the manager and artist to enter into a ‘joint venture’ creating a company that owns all of the artist’s rights and receives all their income from all sources (records, publishing, touring, merch, sponsorship etc…everything) and that is then split. These days that split might be greater than 20% for the manager.

Whether those joint venture deals for artists are right for you or not is another ongoing debate. The reason they have become more normal is that many artists now need a lot more financial support for longer before they can earn enough to sustain their career and reach their potential.

This applies in the world of the DIY musician just as much for those artists shooting for the mainstream, perhaps even more so. Understanding that this non-traditional management structure might be right for you will be helped by the guide.

The guide to Music Industry agreements

The guide covers the following agreements:

•  Management Contracts
•  Recording Contracts
•  Producer Contracts
•  Publishing Contracts

In each section it looks at the commercial and personal reasons behind each deal an artist will do – for example, how to choose a manager, or why you may need a team of people in place to help you get a record deal, and it then looks at the framework of each type of agreement, going through them in detail.

So, regardless of how you plan to build the career you want, DIY or signed to a major, going it alone or with a team to guide you, you’ll be well armed if you read this guide.

You can read the guide to music industry agreements online here.

You can download the music industry agreements guide here.

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.

Step 1. Make sure your music gets a reaction!

This is the starting point and you will only have any chance of success if your music is good enough to attract some kind of audience.

This doesn’t mean that you need to make some commercial mainstream dross that isn’t true to your art. Far from it. Your music can and probably should be targeted to a small niche. It just means that you need to be able to tell whether you’re on the right path. This is VERY difficult and we wrote more about it here – Is my music good enough?

The second step in that process is constantly improving your art until what you do is so good that people can’t help but become fans – some more on that here – Never give up.

Step 2. Build a website!

We get bored telling people this.

Facebook and YouTube are essential to spreading the word about your music (see below) but you need a ‘home base’ – a place that is completely in your control where people can come and discover your music and you can control all the elements.

To begin with it can be simple and can grow with you but as soon as you have material that you know is good enough, build a site.

The other thing we get told all the time by people is that they don’t have the skills or can’t afford to build a site.

We understand – it looks expensive and difficult, but most people can build a website for an initial outlay of $13.94 and an ongoing cost of $3.96 per month. That’s the cost of a domain name and the first month’s hosting for a site.

Although it might seem daunting, pretty much anyone can learn how to launch a website. And learning how will seriously help your online marketing skills and therefore your chances of music success.

There’s loads of info and videos on the web to help you learn how to do this yourself. Give it a go. If you mess up, you can still find people online who will fix it for you for pretty small amounts of cash.

Try first and call for help if it doesn’t work out!

Buy your domain name from Namecheap here. Just use the name of your band if possible and buy the ‘.com’ if you can. If ‘yourband’ domain name is gone, get something like www.yourbandmusic.com or www.yourbandband.com.

Buy your hosting from Hostgator here.

Buy the $3.96 ‘Hatchling’ Plan if you only plan to have a single domain name. A lot of musicians will have a later need for a second domain and therefore buy the ‘Baby’ Plan.

Don’t buy the domain and the hosting both from either Namecheap or Hostgator. There are good reasons for not doing so – trust us!

There are loads of hosting options but Hostgator has a great reputation (we use them) and some of the training links below are about the Hostgator set up.

Once you’ve bought a domain and hosting, the simple choice is to build a site using WordPress. Again, there are loads of reasons why and we’ll look at those in detail another time but it is easy to use, simple to update the design and lots of people are on hand to help.

There’s a video below that shows you how to get your WordPress site live on your Hostgator hosting. In this video Chris Rockett buys the domain at Hostgator as well. As we said above, we’d advise you against that, but the rest of the video shows you how to actually get the site live.

Once it’s live there are a bunch of things you can and need to do. Go and look at the series of posts that follows Chris’s video in his ‘music marketing challenge’ series, where he shows you a lot of the steps you need to take to improve the site you’ve just launched.

Alternatively, there’s a great video from serious music marketers Michael Brandvold and Brian Thompson for $5 that deals with all the steps in launching your own WordPress site. Get that here.

Of course Google or YouTube searches will help you find an answer to almost any issue that you find when setting up a WordPress site for the first time.

Once you’ve launched a site, you’ll want to find an easy way to make it look great to represent you and your music. When you first launch the site it will have a default design – which can then be altered.

The design of a WordPress site is controlled by the ‘Theme’. You can get lots of these for free and there are endless ones available to buy.

Check out these two articles, both of which have a great list of Themes that you can use for your site.

• Free WordPress themes for musicians -  A great list from Chris Bracco’s great site.
• Best WordPress Music Themes. Loads of great themes – all paid rather than free but starting at $20.

You can also find loads of themes by Googling for things like ‘band wordpress theme’ or ‘music wordpress theme’. Have a go and see what’s out there.

Lastly, there is a great WordPress theme designed by music marketer Greg Rollett called Band WP Theme.

This is a custom designed theme that is specifically set up for musicians to build a website using WordPress and is also designed to work with our favourite email software, Aweber.

The training videos for this theme are superb and easy to follow and the sites look great and work well. It costs $47 but if you want to avoid some of the learning issues with building your own site this may well be the right solution for you.

In order to install a theme, go back to YouTube and look for a recent instructional video with a search of ‘install wordpress theme’. Just bear in mind that WordPress is constantly improving their software so if you watch a recent video it will look like your dashboard of the site you’ve just launched – and hopefully won’t therefore confuse you!

The last thing to remember about Themes is that you can always change them in the future.

The key is to get your site up and live!

And, if this part scares you and defeats you, just got to Fiverr and search for ‘wordpress’. You’ll find lots of people who will help you get your site launched. Look for people with at least a few good feedback comments.

The other place to look for help is elance.com. It’ll cost more – $100 or thereabouts – but you’ll get a more specific service.

Step 3. Build a permission marketing list!

Why permission marketing works for spreading your music and making sales!

I would say build an email list, and that is the key, but it’s not the only ‘list’.

Permission marketing is where you send marketing messages to people who have given you their permission to contact them – i.e. it’s the opposite of spam.

These people want to hear from you again and again!

So, as well as an email list, you need to be building real engaged fans on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – these fans, followers and subscribers are another permission marketing list that you can promote and market your music to.

But, the daddy is your own email list.

Despite the claims that email is dying and that messaging over social networks will take over, everyone I know still has an email address and still checks it.

Build the other lists and communities, but don’t ignore a list of fan emails. This should be primarily built by collecting those addresses on your new website by using an opt-in form.

We have written more about this in our Fan List section of this site. All the main email list software systems have lots of ‘how to’ videos to show you how to set up the opt-in form and trade the future fan’s email address for free music.

Our preference is to use Aweber as it is the very best email software that you can get and it will grow with you and your career. The more you learn to use it, the more you realise how powerful it is. Some feel that Aweber is overkill for some musicians though and so we’d gladly recommend FanBridge as the musician focused alternative.

We also love Topspin as a full website solution that builds music players, shop buttons and more on your website. Its email element is, however, its weakest part.

It does the basics required of it but often we use Topspin as the main engine of a website but move all the emails that we collect using Topspin into Aweber. There is a free starter option with Topspin but the basic plan cost is $9.99 per month.

To encourage people to join your fan mailing list when they come to your site you MUST give them something in return. Some music is the default option but don’t give them one poor demo track. Give away a 3 or 4 track EP of some of your best stuff. Why would people want to become a fan and come back if all you want to give them is your cast-offs?

It’s been proven by many DIY music leaders that the more you give away when starting to spread the word about your music the greater the effect.

Have a look at those three options and decide which is best for you. At the outset we’d recommend any of them.

If you’ve used Namecheap and Hostgator and now choose Aweber, their first month costs $1 and is then £19 per month. So, if you’ve managed to do it all yourself with a free WordPress theme (and we think you can with some YouTube help!) you will spend $14.94 in the first month to launch your site with an email list building tool built in and then $22.96 per month as your ongoing hosting and email software costs.

That is a sum that every musician NEEDS to invest in their career!

Step 4. Build a presence and following on social networks.

We just mentioned that you need to build a permission marketing list on the three biggest social networks – Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

But you need to do more than build lists of followers and fans – you need to engage them and create music and videos for them to discover, enjoy and share.

We have for a long time held that you ought to still have a presence on MySpace – there are Google search benefits and it still has a lot of traffic – but 2012 might be the year that we decide it’s no longer worth the effort. It’s definitely not worth a lot of time even now. Current advice is to build a quick simple page with basic info and some music and send people from there back to your new website.

The ‘Big 3’ are a different story – they are now central to all your music promotion and marketing efforts.

Why YouTube is ESSENTIAL for music discovery

This article tells us two core things that ought to inspire you to be an avid YouTube creator!

YouTube is the second biggest search engine and 80% of the searches are music related. Not only that, but people are 3 times more likely to listen to music on an audio & video stream (i.e. YouTube) than they are to buy a download.

Just last week a UK artist, Alex Day, had a number 4 hit, largely propelled by his long term building of a YouTube fanbase. Read more about that here.

Put everything you write, record or perform on YouTube in as many forms as you can!

YouTube isn’t just the best place to have your music discovered – it’s also a social network and you need to learn more about building friends and subscribers. Until we write more tips for YouTube make sure you read their own free guide on how to make the most of all your videos.

We’ve already written the definitive guide to using Twitter as a musician. It’s really good and you can be become a Twitter master if you read the whole thing.

But, it’s Facebook that’s the king for social interaction and the viral spread of your music. We’ve got some great posts on Facebook music promotion here but will be giving some more detailed step by step advice in the near future.

Build a Fan Page, offer some more free music and engage your fans is the basic plot!

Step 5. Play live as much as possible

Hopefully there’s a live element to what you do. If you’re making dance music, this might mean DJ’ing to build a following and to road test your tracks, but in any other genre you ought to be able to have some kind of live performance.

If your music is good enough (see point 1!) and you play locally and promote your shows properly you will get a reaction and the beginnings of a fanbase.

Have a look at this post about getting your first gigs.

And this brand new free eBook from Seth Jackson gives some great advice on how to make sure each show is properly promoted and therefore well attended. Get it here.

For the very best advice on how to get the most out of live shows there’s no better book than Martin Atkins’ ‘Tour : Smart’. I’d recommend it to every artist. Check out his ‘Five pointed inward facing Crush Strategy’ video below to see how this simple touring advice can help you build a following.

I also highly rate Jeri Goldstein’s book, ‘How To Be Your Own Booking Agent: The Musician’s & Performing Artist’s Guide To Successful Touring’ (rightfully considered the ‘how to’ live bible for DIY and indie musicians) and her more recent course on the same subject. You can check that out here with a discount that she offers for our readers.

Lastly (and every time I recommend him I have to point out that all his training is expensive) if you know your live show needs to be improved the acknowledged expert is Tom Jackson. He consults with some of the world’s biggest artists and his experience shows. Have a look at his training here.

Don’t feel that you need to invest in Jeri or Tom’s training – it really isn’t necessary for everyone but if you recognise that you need what they’re selling, we vouch for the fact that you’ll get value from it.

The key is to get out there and play live and build a local following. Expand the area and do the same thing. This is how a live fanbase is built.

Step 6. Spread the word on the internet

Now that you have a website as the hub of your online promotional activity and you have made sure that your material is getting a reaction, you need to do more to spread the word.

That means adding to your network of sites where people can find you. SoundCloud, Bandcamp and Flickr are obvious candidates.

But, the killer promotional outlet that most musicians just don’t spend enough time applying themselves to are blogs!

No need to repeat ourselves on this though as we have already written about Music Blog Promotion. Read that post and think about spending $2.99 to buy Chris Bracco’s eBook – it’s worth it!

Step 7. Have a plan for the year!

I keep meaning to write a detailed post about the need for a plan, but here’s the sketch.

If you get steps 1 to 6 all set and your music is ready to be embraced by a wider audience, you need to devise a plan.

It’s not very artistic and sounds a bit like a job (or being an accountant!) but the last piece of the puzzle to breaking your band is to outline all the steps that you are going to take and make sure that you have all the tools and ‘assets’ ready.

Take a year long diary and schedule the releases you plan to use as promotional and marketing hooks and levers for the year, Not just traditional single releases on iTunes – in fact these should be the final and largely irrelevant aim. More importantly the timed releases of free tracks, YouTube videos, picture sets on Flickr, SoundCloud tracks and remixes etc.

On top of that schedule when you will make videos (lyric videos, rehearsal videos, in the tour bus videos, as well as the more traditional music videos), write posts on the blog of your site (and what they will be about), contact other blogs for reviews, play local shows and shows farther afield, make major Facebook posts and how and when you are planning to make every major step in your band’s year.

Only if you make this kind of detailed plan and work out with your band members who is going to do what can you hope to achieve the success that you, your music and your marketing set up is capable of.

You need endless amounts of music and video to keep your newly acquired fans engaged and to have for them to pass on to build more fans….and it all needs to be made!

If you plan it and share the workload you will have a chance of keeping up with it. If you don’t you are way more likely to fail.

Will these steps work for me?

Yes.

Right at point 1 we made the most important point – if your music makes people sit up and take notice you’re on to a winner.

All the other steps are ways to make sure that your music gets in front of people online and in the real world. Obviously if you make amazing music but it just sits on the hard drive of your computer, you cannot succeed.

The more concerted your promotion and marketing efforts are the greater chance you give yourself of building a fanbase that can support you and spread the word about you further.

Follow these steps and put your own website at the heart of your music and your music promotional efforts and you will give yourself the best chance possible to break your band 2012.

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.

Bublé’s 10,000 hours

Bublé definitely put in those hours. He played everywhere – bars, cruise ships, business conventions, weddings – you name it, he’d come and sing whether he’d come out with a small fee or even a loss. He didn’t care.

Bublé loved to sing and it’s the only thing he ever wanted to do. It’s true that he got a few lucky breaks, meeting the right people who could propel him to the superstar level just at the time that he had the goods and the opportunities opened up.

But the truth is that he only got lucky because he worked so hard.

His live performances became so slick that when he sang at the wedding of the Canadian prime minister’s daughter he stunned the guests including a fabled record producer whom he then hounded relentlessly. The power manager came soon after.

It’s true that he doesn’t follow what we’d call ‘best practice’ with Twitter and Facebook – they are done by someone on his team and are all old school ‘push marketing’ – but at least he has a presence. And to decry that is to miss the point, since he is one of the last people to sneak into the old school music industry whose massive marketing dollars and muscle built his global career.

The point is that his career was only made possible because he kept perfecting his art – in his case predominantly his live performance – and he never stopped chasing his dream.

He might have been appallingly bad when he started – I don’t know. But the sheer volume of shows made him great.

Improve your live performance

In the GQ article that made me write this post is this quote that Bublé tells of comedian Peter Kay:

“Peter told me always to remember how lucky I am. How special this is. How the audience spent all that money, hired the baby-sitter. Don’t ever coast and go through the motions. Even when you’re 60 shows into a tour”

Clearly, for Bublé and Kay (he did his 10,000 hours before any meaningful recognition as well!) that means not letting down an audience who have paid top dollar to see a star.

For you, it’s just as relevant.

You never know who is going to catch your show (as with the Canadian prime minister and the record producer for Bublé) but also every show is a chance to improve. Another chunk of minutes experience towards the magic 10,000 hour total.

It’s equally important to realise how much you can learn about performance. How often do you go to a gig and the band just get on stage and play? That’s not enough. Performance is an art that can be taught and every nuance can improve the overall effect.

Don’t just shamble on stage and put it out there. Plan the whole thing from entering the stage to the moment you walk off – what you’ll say in the gaps between songs, how you’ll move, the way your set ebbs and flows depending on how you order your songs.

There are countless things you can do to improve your live show. Study what you do on stage and force yourself to improve. Tom Jackson is the acknowledged expert on this – his training material is superb but not cheap!

Bublé knows this and works his audience (who are fiercely loyal because of it) with great skill.

He put in the hours and never gave up.

You should do the same.

You need to learn what the music business is all about, right?

And you need to learn from people who actually know what they’re talking about?

If that’s you, read on.

Knowing how the music business works will help you chart your way through it and tell you what you need to learn to promote and market your own music.

That’s what these two music business pdf‘s are all about. Oh, and they are free to download.

Music Business Handbook Volume 1.

Music Business Handbook Volume 2.

In them, you’ll find a collection of articles by faculty and guests at BerkleeMusic.com, the online part of thew world famous Berklee College of Music.

These people know their stuff – being successful artists and executives with countless years of experience actually working with and breaking artists. I have done a couple of their courses over the years, so I know first hand how good they are – they should be listened to!

Particularly good, in my opinion, are the pieces by Mike King on ‘Direct to Fan Music Marketing’ and ‘How to get your music in TV & Film’ in Volume 1 and ‘Using Fan Funding techniques to help a Direct to Fan marketing campaign’ in Volume 2.

However, there are 13 articles in all. Some are music business theory and some are ‘how to’ lessons that you can apply. It’s all good though!

We’d normally put something like these on our daily musician tips sites, but they are so good I want them to be here for every musican who need them to find easily!

Get both music business pdf‘s here.

Music Business Handbook Volume 1.

Music Business Handbook Volume 2.

Florrie - Image by Paul Scala

This is a tale of a DIY musician who hasn’t quite made it yet, but  is well on their way.

There are lessons that everyone who reads this blog can take from her story so far.

This is the sort of post that I’d normally put on our Daily Tips for musicians site – kind of unplanned and all over the place – but I’m thinking about mixing things up a bit so that we get more great stuff on this main site and this seemed like a good post to start with.

It’s about a girl called ‘Florrie’, who I met about 5 years ago. I haven’t been in touch since, but I’ve seen occasional glimpses of her career as she navigated her way to success and a couple of things appeared this week that made me want to hold her up as a paragon of the DIY musician route.

Key elements of the DIY musician

There are so many things about the way she has built a career that fit with what we talk about:

• She’s embraced the ‘freemium’ model, but her fans still go and buy the same songs from iTunes et al;
• She has done her 10,000 hours, and more;
• She has collaborated with exceptional talents to learn more to advance her own talent;
• She has embraced Social Media to build a fanbase;
• She isn’t looking for a record deal until she is ready and has worked out who she is, what she wants and how to get where she wants to go!;
• She engages;
• She has leveraged a brand association to give her a push (lucky, or the result of all the above hard work?);
• She has a functional, informative and active website at the centre of her online presence

In this article in today’s Daily Mirror Florrie says that in her first effort, in a band with two friends called ‘Fi Fi Saloon’, they bombarded agents and managers with tapes. I was one of those managers!

We went and met them and they played a few tracks in their rehearsal room. As I’d done a lot of work with pop producers and writers we thought that there might be something we could do to help. Florrie was also enamoured of our involvement with the Spice Girls – as she was/ is a massive fan. I’d been managing their writers at the time of ‘Wannabe’ and had those pop contacts still (that’s a story for another day though!).

As it turned out, we kept in touch for a while but we knew that we weren’t the right management for them at the time. I felt that the band as it was would not make it in the way she obviously hoped to, although I remember thinking that I’d feel differently if the focused girl on the drums could also be the front-person. Of course, the fact that she would clearly turn into a head-turning beauty doesn’t hurt in the world of pop either.

Keep going!

But, she didn’t give up.

She changed it around and took a chance, moved city and hooked up with some writers who had offered to help.

That didn’t work, so she changed it again, and…..because she had put in the hours honing a talent, she got a break.

Her talent made that chance. She’s been playing drums for 15 years already and she’s only 22 – we’ve talked about the 10,000 hours of practice before – buy this Malcolm Gladwell book if you don’t know what we’re talking about -Outliers: The Story of Success

And, following on from that, she has taken the time to focus on her own music before floundering around desperately looking for a record deal.

On her site, she has written a piece explaining to her fans why she doesn’t want a record deal, yet! How cool is that?! In fact, I can’t ever recall someone being so upfront about their plans, clearly stating that they have ambition but also making the fans feel that they are right there in it with her.

This is what she says:

“The reason is that I believe there are certain things that I need to do first to give me the best chance of succeeding in the future and also allow myself the time to experiment and create the music I really want to make. I’m also having loads of fun and that is what it’s all about.

The most important thing is to keep getting my music out there to as many people as possible and hopefully finding new fans along the way. The best way for me to do this is to continue to make my music available for you guys to listen to whilst not being afraid to develop my sound as I go along. I’m also going to keep touring, practising, and perfecting my live performances. At the same time I’m going to start releasing my own records independently for a while.”

It’s so refreshing!

You can read the whole explanation here.

And, her site is also a paragon of ‘best practice’ for all artists – lots and lots of free music, but there’s a shop too, lots of social media links, and an email sign-up. Interestingly, she doesn’t ask you to trade an email for the free music, which I always recommend, but instead she comes right out and asks you to tweet or post on her facebook page – and asks for your opinion on her music.

Most of all, it comes across as completely genuine.

Songwriting secret

One more thing, in the Daily Mirror piece there’s a hidden gem about songwriting. I know that Florrie has had the good fortune (born of her hard work) to write with some very successful songwriters – and whilst doing so, she has done the right thing – listened and learned.

She says;

(She has) “benefitted from Higgins’ “scientific” songwriting. It’s a very specific method. They write lots of different bits, lots of melodies and after the lyrics are written they pick the four or five best. I can write 25 melodies for one song, so you never know how a song is going to turn out. It works.”

That’s a tip worth knowing – Brian Higgins has only sold a few million records!

I hope that she goes from this pivotal moment and becomes a great artist. She has the talent and is trying to uncover her art before looking for mainstream success. I think she will become a household name with a great deal of musical integrity.

What can every DIY musician take from this? Well, look at her steps, her dedication to honing her talent and the way she’s using the modern online world to build a fanbase before she looks for success and a helping hand.

Sure she’s been lucky, but that luck comes from her hard work.

Using mastering tools to create professional recordings

This is a second guest post from the very knowledgeable Nick Lewis. Nick is MD of online mastering studio Brighton Mastering.

It’s easy to hear stories about Michelle Shocked being discovered thanks to a warped dictaphone recording and Justin Bieber’s YouTube genesis and think that your music will shine through even the most woeful of renderings. However, in most cases, a professional recording is essential to being taken seriously.

In an age of self-production and self-distribution, producing a great sounding recording is arguably more important than ever. Michelle Shocked and Justin Bieber were picked up by record labels who went on to fund and facilitate better recordings, having had their talent recognised by talent scouts well-versed in the art of picking out diamonds in the technical rough. You may not be so lucky, and the general public is not so well trained.

Quality counts!

The first thing people notice when they hear your music is the quality of the recording. They may not be conscious of it. They may think they can’t tell. But a badly tracked, mixed and mastered recording will inevitably get in the way of a listener’s enjoyment. Many people don’t realise it, but they subconsciously expect certain technical benchmarks to be met.

Those with a little more knowledge will consciously recognise a poor quality recording and perhaps take the music less seriously as a result. A good recording is the hallmark of an artist/band on their way up or already there. Poor quality (unless deliberately lo-fi) is the telltale sign of an artist just starting out, or one that doesn’t take their music seriously enough to spend money on making a good sounding record.

By making sure that your recordings are up to scratch (along with everything else) you really will be judged on the same level as major label artists, purely on the quality of your music without any technical issues clouding people’s perception of you.

I wholeheartedly support anyone learning more about music technology, and learning how to produce your own music can be one of the greatest joys a person can have. However, if music is more than a hobby to you, it pays to recognise just how far along the road you are, and how capable the equipment you have is. A cracked copy of Cubase and some free plug-ins can produce mindblowing results in the right hands, but more often than not it takes a lot more to produce something that’s really up to scratch.

Learn & Improve

It’s important to be crushingly honest with yourself about the technical level of your recordings. Just because you’re not there yet doesn’t mean you won’t get there. But before you have, it might be worth investing in a trip to a dedicated studio and sending your tracks to a professional mastering engineer.

Sometimes the major labels get it wrong – I’m not particularly a fan of the recent Beatles remasters for example, but the output always meets a certain benchmark that immediately qualifies it as a professional recording. Hitting the same will put you in the same bracket, and people thinking you’re a professional is the biggest step to becoming one.

Whether you’re a long time subscriber or new to Make It In Music, I hope you know from the site and our tweets that we are working on a total revamp of the site.

When it’s complete, the site will have a whole new look, lots more content and much more focused particular training to help you succeed as a musician.

Plus, we’ll be going from a post or two per month to several per week, split up into simple categories.

I spent yesterday with the designer working on page layouts etc. We are REALLY EXCITED!

In the meantime, we are also working on beefing up our Twitter tips and what we do on Facebook. We’ve cleared the decks a bit to free up the time to work on this more and more!

One thing that we have done is started a bunch of blogs that we call the ‘Make It In Music Daily’. On these we post the same tips that we post to Twitter but we give a little more depth and, unlike Twitter, they are there permanently so you can go back and find the tip you liked far more easily by bookmarking it or subscribing to the RSS feed.

At the moment, these tips don’t appear on the main site here. They might do after the revamp – we haven’t quite decided! This site is and always will be the hub of what we do and where we put all our own content.

There are four ‘Daily’ sites at the moment but we will add more to the network. The content on each is exactly the same. The reason that they are hosted on each of the main blogging platforms is that it gives people a chance to interact with whichever blog they choose if they are a member themselves at that blog platform.

If you have a blog at one of those platforms, follow us there. If not, just choose one – you won’t miss anything.

Hope that makes sense. It’s just designed to make it easier for you to know what tips we are digging up for you from other people.

Here’s the list of the ‘Make It In Music Daily’ sites. Please go and check one of them out, get the feed or bookmark it.

Please also feel free to pass those sites’ URL’s on to any musicians that you think would like to know about them.

On Posterous – http://makeitinmusic.posterous.com/

On Tumblr – http://makeitinmusic.tumblr.com/

On WordPress.com – http://makeitinmusic.wordpress.com/

On Blogger – http://makeitinmusicdaily.blogspot.com/

Go and check them out as there is and will continue to be loads of brilliant information on them that you won’t want to miss.

You’ll probably know that I’m a great fan of the ramblings of Bob Lefsetz. I heartily recommend that you sign up to his newsletter.

In one of his posts this week he referred back to an interview with Jerry Greenberg on Bite Me! in which Jerry makes a major statement on how to build your fanbase.

It almost passed me by but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it is exactly the ideology that we now follow with our artists and which we suggest you should too.

The piece said, “Bud Prager—who managed Leslie West in the old days and Felix Pappalardi—he’s a great producer who I have the utmost respect for. One day we went for lunch…it was 1979/1980 and MTV had just started. Warner Communications funded MTV in the very beginning along with American Express.

Steve Ross had a vision of creating music on TV and having it be a marketing tool. Bud said to me as MTV progressed that he felt MTV hurt the record business. His whole philosophy and, I have to agree with him, was that we broke bands by them going out and getting a fanbase – a real fanbase. AC/DC started out in a little club called Max’s Kansas City then they worked their way up to the Fillmore then the Forum and then the stadiums. They built a fanbase, but so many of these artists just became these video stars and you could see them on video. The only way you could see AC/DC, before videos, was to wait until they went on tour.

Bud felt that in the long run it hurt the artist and hurt their career and then it also created a lot of what we call “The One Shot” video artist – who were really acts that people got because of the video but when they really had to go out and do it there was no substance.”

It’s obvious really isn’t it?

You need a fanbase

If you are hyped and leveraged into the national (or international) consciousness, you’re going to have to be spectacular to make it last. All the kids who get the big break on the TV talent shows cannot sustain the level that those shows give them.

Why not? They just aren’t actually talented enough, but, more importantly, they haven’t built a fanbase. They get instant recognition but it fades in the public interest when the next series comes along.

I can see that the same was true with MTV – and the same is still true for major label artists today that are over hyped and simply manufactured. Sign someone half pretty and get them a load of songs from the current writer / producer du jour. It all sounds good enough but 99 times out of 100, there isn’t anything to back it up. I’ll accept that there will occasionally be an exception.

BUT – if the right thing to do in order to build a career is build a fanbase, then how do you do it?

Look at Arcade Fire – how did they do it. Quality material, no bullshit, slow build of momentum, unreal live shows, true talent.

No-one wanted to sign them when they started, so they did it on their own!

The message is the same now as it was for AC/DC when Jerry Greenberg remembered how they started.

Get your material strong and go out and play it. Watch this video of legendary Island Records boss Chris Blackwell telling how a live show and word of mouth is all you need.

So now that the music industry has changed and everyone wants music for free, how do you build that fanbase and why is that change a good thing?

Well, you can still do what AC/DC did and go out and play. You must! You’ll improve, you’ll bond as a unit and you’ll find champions who will tell everyone how good you are.

BUT - you now have an advantage that outdoes MTV in it’s heyday and will allow you to build momentum slowly, reach a global audience, perfect your style and sound – all the while sticking two fingers up to the old music industry hegemony.

The internet. You must use the internet to build your fanbase.

10 steps to building your fanbase

Here’s what you do:

1. Get your act straight. Right people, right look, right sound and BRILLIANT material. Not ‘good enough’ – brilliant is what is required.

2. Buy a domain name for your band’s website (we use Namecheap – it is!), and then buy hosting for it. Use Hostgator. I know you have loads of choices, but, trust me, this works really well and I have never had a problem.

3. Build a website – Use WordPress, hosted on your own domain (that’s downloaded from wordpress.org not hosted at wordpress.com). Personally I always use Thesis as the theme for the site for a host of reasons that I won’t go into here. It is awesome. If you think you can’t build a site in WordPress and/or Thesis, you will be able to. Honestly – there are loads of videos on YouTube to talk you through it and if you get stuck, find someone at your school, college or even on Elance to do it for you.

4. Build a list of fans using serious email software. You can use Fanbridge – it works fine – but if you are really serious, there is only one choice – Aweber. It will do more than any competing mailing list software and it will last you your whole career.

5. Give people something really valuable in return for joining your mailing list. Sure, give them mp3′s of a few tracks. But, you can do so much more. Give them a whole album and ask them to get their friends to come and sign up for it.

I love Pretty Lights and what he does – 3 albums, 2 EP’s and some live material. All FOR FREE. How does he make a living? He sells merch and has a massive live following. If he hadn’t given this music away he would not have gotten anywhere. The free music gave him the momentum. Now he makes more money from his music career than if he had signed to a major – by a factor of 20 or more. Plus he gets to be a true artist and do exactly what he wants, when he wants with his art.

6. Put the sign-up box for the free stuff on the top right of every page of your site – what designers call ‘above-the fold’. Why? Because it works. Also – have a dedicated ‘squeeze page’ on the site or even on another domain that you can send people to. He doesn’t do this, but Pretty Lights could have a squeeze page at freeprettylights.com. It’s easy to remember and you just put a single page site there with just a small pitch and a sign up box for your Aweber list.

7. Build a quality profile (and interact – don’t ignore any of them) at MySpace (yep, still – it is the music directory and you need to be there), Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. This is the minimum – there are others that you might wish to add.

8. Shoot LOADS of video of your band. Writing, rehearsing, gigging, in the van – goofing off. It doesn’t matter. Send emails to your list at least once a week telling them to check out something that you have posted somewhere online. DO NOT just email them the week of a show asking them to come. Be in regular content. Put those videos on your YouTube channel and all over the place.

9. Post on Twitter and Facebook all the time. Not inane stuff but things that your fans will want to know.

10. Develop a healthy interest in music blogs. Find ones that might support you and start to build rapport with the bloggers. This is a key way to spread your name when you have material being released. Chris Bracco has the best guide to this currently available – which is free – get it here.

11. Don’t neglect the art! Keep writing. Write much more than you record and rehearse as much as you write. Recording is important and you need tracks to give away, but it is having great material that is going to make your fans talk about you to their friends and build that fanbase. Writing is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing.

12. Play live. Anywhere for anyone. Not to the extent that your fans can’t keep up. But spread wider, cross genres, make new fans. Obviously, collect every name and email address that you can at gigs. Go to other band’s gigs – hand out cards with your site address on them at those gigs. Hang out, meet other bands and meet their manager, agent, sound guy….whatever.

13. Be tired. No, really. If you’re working a full time job and you’re doing enough to succeed, you are going to be exhausted. The people who can keep going when they are exhausted will win.

There you have it – I think that’s a blueprint on how to build your fanbase. I’ve just read it over and, in essence, that is all there is to it.

Of course, I can and will expand on many of those points and go further another day – how do you move from this point to selling records, how to go up a level etc.

But, right now, that’s not important. It’s not important since you MUST build a fanbase to get started and to achieve anything – whether that is DIY and Direct-to-Fan success or the aim of getting signed. Either route will happen much more easily if you have built the fanbase yourself – that’s what other fans will see so they will want to be in the in-crowd – and it’s what agents. managers and record label A&R will see that will help take you to the next level.

One last thing. This is not ‘selling out’. This is ‘selling’. It does not cheapen the art. It gives you a chance.

It will only happen if you do it – start now.

Step one is critical! But as soon as you have something ready for the world to hear, build your website at the heart of your efforts. Go and get a domain (Namecheap) and hosting (Hostgator) right now if you don’t have that sorted yet!

Image credit – by wonker

I just read about this minisite that Devo put up a few days ago and tweeted it, but thought I ought to leave a permanent post about it and just give a little more detail. It’s a brilliant piece of online music marketing.

Why?

Well, it’s a perfect example of fan acquisition, engagement and selling. An object lesson in the mindset that you should have in the modern music business. Sure, Devo have label funding and this particular idea might be too expensive for you if you haven’t got their budget, but it’s the mindset that you need to learn from and the steps that you need to employ.

Have a look at the promo video that they have made for their ‘Devovision’ YouTube channel…….

…..and then go and take the test at the Devo song study site.

So, the site is there to help Devo get feedback from their fans to choose what tracks should be on their next album. But, it’s not just for that is it?

No.

When you’ve listened to and selected your favourite 12 tracks, you’re then asked to pick your favourite. Now, that information (data, if you must – but that makes it feel too clinical!) is obviously very valuable to begin with. Devo are finding out what their fans want on the record. That’s great for them as they can pick the record that most appeals to their fans. Remember that in the digital music age you are free to make music for your fans, rather than for radio or your record company bosses, but you need to know what they want.

However, what is also going on as you select tracks is that you are pre-selecting yourself as a future Devo album buyer. Not everyone – in fact, just a small percentage – but you’re now engaged in the debate and will, despite yourself, need to find out more when the record is released.

I bet that the track that most people select as their favourite is the lead single! Don’t you think?

The next bit is even better. So, you’ve picked your favourites and then you’re asked to give up your name, email address and location. We’re all used to giving this up for free music, but here we’re doing all the giving and not getting anything for free….but the humour in the site and the historical oddness of the band has helped us want to be part of the process. The request for additional thoughts and a photo (nothing rude, please!) all just adds to that sense of ‘Devo fan’ inclusion.

I’d have added a surprise bonus. When you click the final ‘Submit’ button, it would’ve been great to be taken to another page where you were thanked and maybe given a free download of a couple of tracks or a pre-order button for the album with a discount.

In online music marketing it’s essential to remember that your fans are ‘hottest’ to take action just when you’ve engaged them, usually by giving them something free, but here by giving them a sense of ownership and having some fun with them. That’s the time to sell them something or give them something else for free to cement their love of your band.

An unannounced bonus as a thank you would’ve made this perfect. And I’d have sent an email to each person who did the survey and signed up, immediately, saying ‘Thanks’ too.

So, what else do Devo get out of this?

Well, obviously, they’re building a very targeted list of fans and, in particular, as I said above, people who are pre-selecting themselves to buy the next record.

But, the minisite also engenders discussion and is newsworthy itself – thereby spreading across the internet and by word-of-mouth, bringing more people in to the site to learn about Devo. An idea like this is, by its very nature, inherently viral and will do more than just reach existing fans. It can even ready traditional offline media to be more interested in the band when the new record has its traditional release.

Devo have been no slouches when it comes to using the internet to connect with a pre-web audience from their original incarnation. But, because they were making records before all the online marketing techniques that bands are now using came in to play, they need to use all the tricks they can to dig up old fans and get them on to their email list.

It reminds me of the Led Zeppelin reunion concert a year or two ago. With no database of fans from their active years, the need to register your name, email address and location for the ballot for tickets for the only show, brought in a million fans in a matter of weeks. I wonder if that list will be used time and time again to market re-issue albums and merchandise to Zep fans?

So, have a look at the Devo song study site and see what you can learn from it to apply to your own efforts marketing your band and reaching your fans.

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.