Self Sufficient Musician

Just a quick note to say I will be starting my own experiment with Jango.com’s Airplay program — a pay-to-play program with decent targeting and analysis features.

I am starting out with $30 for 1,000 airplay level — nice and small for micro-testing.  And I’m going to start out with some basic artist-association targeting.  They offer more specific targeting based on age, gender and location, for two Airplay credits per play instead of one (meaning, I’ll only get 500 plays instead of 1,000) and I’ll experiment with that after trying more general targeting.  I listed about 20 artists to associate my music with — broader than what I consider effective, but I’ll see if there are any surprises among which acts’ fans tend to like my music.

More later!

Most artists go and record an album because they thing it’s “the thing to do.” While I don’t disagree that it’s a thing to do in your pursuit of a career as an original artist, but it’s a good idea to pause for a moment and ask yourself “why.”

There are many good reasons why you should record an album, but off the top of my head, I can think of three big ones:

1. You want to sell it to make a profit.
2. You want to use it as a promotional tool to get as many people as possible to know your act or come to your gig.
3. You want to showcase your talent/songs.

Now, they are not exactly mutually exclusive, let’s just say that it’s extremely hard to do all of them extremely well at the same time.

Consider for a moment.  If your goal is to make a maximum profit, you may want to reserve some money to promote the album instead of spending it all on production.  In fact, you may want to spend as little as possible on the production as you can get away with, so that it’ll increase your profitability.

On the other hand, if your goal is #2, you may want to forget about profits — and give away your recordings for free.  That way it’ll make the maximum impact on your promotions, and your visibility may help you move forward.

Or if you want to make an album as a showcase, then you’ll want to put everything you got into your production, and never mind what happens afterward.  Having a great showcase of your talents can be your greatest asset — it may woo and impress the important people, if not that many of them, that you’ll want to attract.

I’m sure for most of us, our goals are varying mixes of three.  When I made my first album, my goal was to see if I can do it by myself.  I did everything on my own, and I never let anyone else listen to my work in progress until the very final stages of mixing.  My experiment was to see if I made a record that appealed to nothing but my own taste, if people would like it.   Judging by the responses I got from my listeners, I think my experiment was a success.

But beyond that, I didn’t have very clear idea how I was going to use my album to further my career.  I spent about 9 months on a diligent MySpace campaign, then got burned out doing that, and took a break from my own music.  As I am pondering resuming and thinking about my next album, I realize how my lack of vision/strategy really made me spend my time and resources in an inefficient way.  Lesson learned, I hope to make a bigger impact when I release my next one.

What about you?  What are you setting out to accomplish with your album?  Ponder for a moment and write them down — it’ll help you make decisions throughout your recording, releasing and promoting process.

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Here’s one of the fundamental concepts of promotion.

Communicate your success.

As musicians, we want to be honest, authentic and (perhaps) personal — but that doesn’t mean you should flag your dirty laundry in public.  There’s a fine line between honesty and tellig what’s not being asked.  Some people mistakenly try to attract people by inviting pity and sympathy.  It’s one thing if you just lost your family in an accident — but your CD selling only 5 copies is not a tragedy. It simply means you have a lot of work to do to build up your fan base.  So that’s not something you want to communicate in your promotions — don’t lie if people do ask, but otherwise, keep that information to yourself.

Now that being said, success is in the eye of the beholder.  You can find positive sides in just about any situation.  Here are some ways to change your point of view and display a positive, uplifting side to the public:

• Just lost a band member -> It’s an opportunity for somebody to join your bandwagon
• Only sold 5 copies of your CD -> Focus on the positive feedback from those 5 people
• Don’t have gigs coming up -> It’s time to write some new tunes, or record!

And so on.  I’m not saying you have to be dishonest, but glass has to be half full when you’re promoting yourself.  People are attracted to confidence, momentum, and positive attitude.  Even when you’re a death metal act, this is true.  Keep that in mind at all times when you’re out representing your music — which is all the time!

I’m sure we’ve all done it: playing to an empty house. And my story is probably a familiar one, if not mirroring your own.

Back when I was performing as a solo singer/songwriter, this is what happened all the time.  I was getting whatever gigs that I could get, thinking that a little exposure is better than no exposure.  And I was counting on the club or the coffeehouse to have a “house crowd” that I could play to, because while I always had friends, the kind of people I associated with were seldom bar patrons or live music enthusiasts.  But the venue was counting on the acts to bring in the crowd — thus, both parties looking to the other to produce the audience.

On another level, I knew that playing with an acoustic guitar by myself, I was never that good.  While I could write songs that sounded good with just an acoustic guitar, it sounded so incomplete and boring to my mind.  And my singing isn’t my strongest suit — I would never impress anybody with my vocal= prowess alone.  I knew that my strength was in songwriting and arranging and without a band to bring out the intricacies of my songs, my performance was flat.  (continue reading…)

It’s a common attitude among musicians.

“I’m an artist.  I’m not into promotion.  I don’t care about commercial success.”

Well, my friend — don’t you want to make a living creating your art?

I’m sure the answer is yes, though it may be followed by some forms of “but”:

“but I can’t do it on my own.  I need a label and management.”

“but I really would rather not ‘make it’ if that means selling out.”

“but I don’t think it’s possible.”

And so on.  Well, to the #1 folks, I’d say, best of luck, because you’re gonna need it.  And be sure to have a plan B for your life, in case that all-important luck isn’t there for ya. (continue reading…)