What the repeal of Net Neutrality could mean for musicians

What is Net Neutrality?

Last week the FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality rules. What is was Net Neutrality?

According to Wikipedia:

Net Neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.

Without the concept of Net Neutrality, internet service providers (ISPs) can take action on the content flowing through their networks. One common example of what ISPs would be allowed to do is represented by the following graphic:

What a nightmare!

Common consumers don’t want to pay an added fee just to access free services such as Twitter, but even worse would be having to pay Netflix’s subscription fees and then another fee on top of that to Comcast in order to access Netflix at HD-level speeds.

Can anything be done?

Before we go further, I just want to say that fighting to save Net Neutrality is not a lost cause. We can still pressure Congress to use a “resolution of disapproval” to overturn the FCC’s vote to dismantle the Net Neutrality rules.

Urge lawmakers to reverse the FCC vote today!

Where does CD Baby stand on Net Neutrality?

Allowing ISPs to take action on the content flowing through their networks allows them to choose winners and losers, and will likely stifle innovation. If ISPs decide to enforce pay-to-play rules, then it’s possible only larger corporations with deep pockets will be able to pay up. That could mean ISPs drastically slow down delivery of content from those companies that do not pay. Worse still, they could outright block content provided by competing services. For example, Comcast owns NBC, so perhaps they would slow down or block streaming from CBS properties unless CBS or its consumers pay them an added fee.

These scenarios are not certainties, but they are possible outcomes of repealing Net Neutrality rules. Likely, the initial actions by ISPs will be small and seem innocuous. But as the Internet builds upon itself in layers, so too may ISPs build upon the lack of Net Neutrality in layers, making it that much more difficult to reverse in the future.

“It feels like a slippery slope to allow the big cable and internet companies to decide how fast your internet should be,” says Tony Van Veen, CEO of AVL Digital Group, the parent-company of CD Baby. “There’s no way this will lead to lower rates. To the contrary, rates will go up.”

How does the repeal of Net Neutrality affect artists?

If you look at Wikipedia’s list of Comcast-owned properties, you’ll see they own… quite a lot. Many of those properties have some musical component. Any musical artists signed to a Comcast property could have their music preferred on Comcast’s network. Perhaps Comcast would offer a fee to artists not signed to their own labels to allow fast delivery of music. This would add yet another burden to artists, and those without deep pockets would be left with their music either blocked or not loading as quickly on Comcast networks.

Something else to consider in a world without Net Neutrality – artists may end up forced to distribute their music with certain services if those services are given preferential treatment by ISPs. If Apple pays Comcast a fee to make Apple Music Comcast’s “official” music streaming service, to the detriment of Spotify and others, then artists will likely need to make sure they distribute to Apple Music as well in order to maximize the chance of their music being heard. This removes one element of choice that artists previously had when making decisions about what’s best for their music.

This kind of behavior is anti-competitive, and oftentimes works to the detriment of innovation. The repeal of Net Neutrality rules is bad for independent people throughout the country (and world). With CD Baby already championing independent artists, it only makes sense for CD Baby to champion Net Neutrality, which levels the playing field for all kinds of independent operators.

“Companies that need significant bandwidth – like Spotify, Apple, or Pandora – will possibly (if not likely) face higher internet access costs,” says Van Veen. “As for-profit businesses their goal is to make a profit — albeit eventually, in the case of Spotify and Pandora — which means the higher costs will get passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription rates. This may impact adoption of streaming by customers, and therefore music consumption levels, if customers decide not to pony up for a Spotify subscription because the price is too high.”

If you feel strongly about this issue, contact your representatives and also sign this online petition to urge lawmakers to reverse the FCC vote.

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How to stop hyperventilating and crank out better mixes in less time

Mixing tips to help you stay creative AND productive.

As a home studio musician, you might find mixing an exhaustingly frustrating aspect of your record-making process.

I understand that completely, and that’s why I’m here to help. You see… us mixing engineers find mixing one of the most satisfying aspects of the music production process. It’s where we get to take all these recorded tracks and make them sound awesome.

But sometimes you might get a little overwhelmed when you’ve gone overboard during the recording process. There’s nothing you can do about that, though. The production and recording process might yield a song that has 50-60 tracks and it’s understandable to get a little freaked out when you’re getting ready to mix that together by yourself. You have no idea where to start!

But what I’m about to tell you will make it easier for you to get rid of that mental block and start mixing.

Break the song down into its elements.

Take this mix I was doing the other day. It had about 60 recorded tracks.

For someone not experienced with mixing it might make you hyperventilate a bit, but once you look closely at the tracks you realize there are only four groups of instruments:

• Drums
• Guitars (including bass)
• Keys and other synths
• Vocals

Even with close to 60 tracks, that’s really what you’re balancing together in your mix.

So breathe. Don’t worry about the enormity of the session. Once you’ve broken the mix down into a handful of different elements your perspective on the session will change.

Simplify with routing.

Once you’ve drilled the session down you can simplify it even further inside the respective elements.

Say you have all these drum tracks that even by themselves are overwhelming.

• Two kick drum tracks
• Top and bottom snare tracks
• 4 toms
• Overheads and room mics

Luckily you can simplify further by combining things into busses.

• Combine the kicks into one bus
• Combine the snare into one bus
• Combine the toms into one bus
• Combine overhead and room mics into one bus

That simplifies your 12 drum tracks into 4 tracks you can play with. You’ve cut your hyperventilating down 66%!

Of course, make sure you balance each track into the main instrument bus before so that you have control over the sound that you want. But if you do it in stages and one track at a time you’ll end up with a session that’s much easier to handle.

What about all the fancy overdubs that don’t fit into the main categories?

You’ll have sessions that include all the necessary foundational instruments like guitars, bass, keys, drums, and vocals. You know, those instruments that make up most of the song. But then you’ll also have solos or lead fills here and there that only play for a limited time during the song as “sweetening.”

Sometimes these tracks can make up a good chunk of your session so it might seem like there are a lot of tracks, but there’s actually not that much going on most of the time. It’s a good idea to calm your brain down by completely ignoring these instruments until it’s time to mix them in with everything else.

Usually, you can group and process those tracks together fairly quickly so worrying about them is pointless when you should be focusing on the mix as a whole. Work on your mix in broad strokes first. Then focus on the little stuff.

Fast and efficient means more songs.

Cranking out more mixes means getting better at your craft. Being an efficient musician is one thing, and it’s incredibly important. But becoming an efficient mixing engineer is another thing altogether.

Gary Keller, the author of The One Thing, said it best:

“When you see someone who has a lot of knowledge, they learned it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of skills, they developed them over time. When you see someone who has done a lot, they accomplished it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of money, they earned it over time. The key is over time.”

Reading that, it’s no wonder you can’t mix fast if you’re just starting out. You haven’t done it enough “over time” to create “mixing muscle memory.”

The importance of deliberate practice.

One of the best ways to learn to mix faster is to develop a deliberate practice. That means blocking out times where the only thing you focus on is improving your mixing skills.

That means not:

• Checking email
• Updating your Facebook feed
• Responding to Twitter
• Posting on Gearslutz or other forums

… while you’re trying to mix a song. Instead, you’ll completely clear your schedule for nothing except making your mix sound good. No distractions and no exceptions. Let me repeat that:

No distractions and no exceptions.

You’ll improve much more with an hour of deliberate mixing practice where you fully immerse yourself in the process than if you’re constantly multitasking between different things. Even if you think you spent an hour mixing, with all the distractions you’ll be lucky if you get 15 minutes of true focus with all the constant interruptions you’re imposing upon yourself.

Make deliberate and focused practice your natural state when you’re trying to improve your mixes. You’ll get there faster.

Do you want better mixes in less time?

Learning to mix quickly is incredibly important today. Whether you’re mixing your band’s new single or working on an EP for a client, you still want results fast!

Let me ask you:

• Do you already know the basics of mixing but you still waste time tweaking the mix long after it’s done?
• Do you want to finish your songs faster so you can release more music and reach more fans?
• Do you have limited mixing time and want to get more clients and finally quit your day job?
• Do you want to be as productive as possible in your home studio and produce faster without losing quality?

If you answered yes to any of these questions and want to learn how to mix fast and efficiently, then my new eBook, Better Mixes in Less Time is perfect for you.

Better Mixes in Less Time: The Productivity Playbook for Mixing Engineers is my brand new Amazon eBook that teaches you how to create an efficient workflow that makes you a faster mixing engineer.

Inside you’ll learn:

• How to think like a productive and efficient mixing engineer to save time and money
• How to make time for mixing music when you have a busy schedule
• The power of deliberate and deep practice, even if you only have 25 minutes to spare
• How to find pockets of time to improve your mixing skills
• Important productivity tools and methods to stay on task and finish faster
• How to use a mixing template to speed up the mixing process and eliminate distractions from too many plug-ins
• The exact mixing template I use, and the workflow I use to make faster mixing decisions because I don’t have to search around my DAW any more
• How to prepare for a mixing session and know exactly what to do when you start the mixing process
• An easy mindset for knowing how to EQ, compress and use effects
• My 9-step process for taking a mix from a rough recording to a finished song
• A special, step-by-step plan on how to schedule your time so you’re always creating new mixes (even if you don’t have any songs)
• See exactly how to group and buss your instruments for a faster workflow
• Learn what processors you should put on your master bus and your groups to get your rough mixes sounding good immediately
• What effects busses you should create in your mixing template so you can easily create punch through parallel compression, width through stereo widening and depth with reverb and delay
• How to create your own presets for your compressors so that all you need to do is to tweak the threshold to add tightness to your tracks
• How to use the right plug-ins to speed up your mix workflow and to avoid wasting time constantly browsing your plug-in folder

If you’re currently taking forever to finish each song because the mixing process is taking you too long, then the workflow inside Better Mixes in Less Time will help you save hours of unnecessary mix work so you can crank out quality mixes in no time. Check it out here.

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Get instant access to Spotify for Artists

CD Baby artists now fast-tracked for Spotify artist verification.

We’re excited to announce that CD Baby has partnered with Spotify to make it super easy for our artists to get verified on the world’s #1 streaming platform. As a CD Baby artist, you’ll have instant access to Spotify for Artists, allowing you to take control of your Spotify artist profile in a matter of minutes.

Spotify for Artists is designed for artists and their teams to get the most out of Spotify, giving you tools to:

• Share playlists directly with your fans
• Update your artist bio on Spotify
• Customize your artist profile image
• Access analytics for all your songs
• Pin songs, albums, or playlists to the top of your profile with a custom photo
• List tour dates
• And more

Get real-time data to help you understand who, where, and how fans are listening to your music

Once you’ve accessed Spotify for Artists, you’ll be able to look at actionable data on your listeners, including:

• Demographics: find out important information about who’s listening to your music on Spotify, including age and gender, and what device they’re using to access your tunes. Is your ACTUAL audience different from what you imagined? Adjust promotions accordingly!
• Location: Find out where your fans live so you can route smarter tours and concentrate radio promotion efforts on the right markets.
• Similar artists: See what other artists your fans are listening to. Maybe this info can help you better target your online ads.
• Live listeners: Discover how many people are listening to you on Spotify in real-time.
• Song data: Break it down to the song level to see how your newest track is performing.
• Playlist data: Find out what impact playlist placements are having on your streams, and give social shout-outs to any playlister who adds your music.
• Playlist notifications: Get an email any time Spotify adds one of your songs to one of their curated playlists.

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Spotify for Artists really offers a great set of tools to help you take your music further on the biggest streaming platform.

To access your Spotify for Artists account today, go HERE.

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“I’m well on my way to paying off my house with streaming revenue”

How one instrumental guitarist is earning significant money from his streams on Spotify and Pandora.

The music career of Lance Allen is a true DIY success story. He doesn’t tour. He doesn’t rely on merch sales to pay the mortgage. He isn’t a household name. And yet he’s earning a full-time living in music by balancing guitar lessons with streaming revenue. That money he’s generating from Pandora, Spotify, and YouTube is a pretty sizable portion of his overall earnings too. It’s enough to “buy a new guitar every month,” but instead he’s using it to pay off his house.

How’s streaming working so well for him? I asked.

An interview with Lance Allen, the Guitarlancer

CR: Your main focus is clear from the calls-to-action at the very top of your website homepage: drive action on Spotify and Pandora. Why those platforms? Why not… touring? iTunes? YouTube? CD sales?

LA: Spotify and Pandora Radio have the largest audience, and that’s the reason why they’re my main focus. Plus it has been a source of income for me.

In late 2015, I was lucky and one of my songs was chosen for the new playlist on Spotify called Acoustic Concentration. A Skype guitar student that I teach told me about this. I didn’t know what to expect really, considering most people in the industry complain about Spotify’s royalty rates. The first payment I received was somewhere in the tune of $700 and I was floored! I didn’t know how long it would last, but I held out hope. It kept going and eventually the playlist switched up songs and I remained on there. This stayed constant, but I wasn’t doing any research until earlier in 2017, when I accidentally stumbled on a short book called The Slotify Method by George Goodrich. This book and the CD Baby PDF on how to get added to playlists put a fire in my feet and I got started right away. I’ve done most of the things suggested in each of the pamphlets, and it has worked greatly.

As far as touring, I don’t need to do that. I have a successful guitar lesson business and a family at home. It’s quite nice to be at home with the family. I do the occasional gig at coffee houses, weddings, or corporate events. It’s at those type of things that I bring physical CDs. I have a box with a hole in the top and lay my CDs around the box and have a sign that says, “Pay the box, take a CD. Any amount is ok. Enjoy!” This seems to work great, because most people pay more for the CD than they would normally.

YouTube is strong for me. I started in 2006 posting videos of my arrangements on guitar. My camera got better, sound got better, and everything else fell into place. I do generate a little income from the AdSense. YouTube is very friendly with Google, so whenever I release a song I’ll make a live performance of me playing it and link to my Spotify and Pandora artist pages, as well as where you can buy tablature or sign up for lessons. Sometimes I’ll do multiple videos of the same song on various guitar brands to get more keyword juice going. Every little bit helps. You just have to keep the content going.

CR: What, if any, are the unique opportunities that Pandora and Spotify offer instrumental music?

LA: I have found that businesses all over the globe are using Spotify and Pandora to stream instrumental music in their shops and offices. Whether it’s a coffee shop, a boutique store, gift shops, or doctors offices, they use these platforms typically to play instrumental music. A lot of them use existing playlists, but some create their own. So there is a lot of opportunity for me in these areas. Still learning about them.

So, you currently have half a million monthly listeners on Spotify, but take us back to Day 1: How did you get those first 1000 listeners? The first 10,000 listeners? Can you walk me through the real foundational steps for driving interest in your music? And how much of your success was the result of engaging your existing audience vs. reaching out to playlist curators?

I can’t remember really what my earliest numbers were like as I didn’t pay much attention until I saw some income from being on Acoustic Concentration.

After reading up on how to get on playlists, here are some of the things I started doing:

• Posting screenshots of my artist page to Instagram and using pre-loaded hashtags for reach. I did this daily!
• Using Twitter to promote the playlist I was already on, as well as encouraging people to follow me on Spotify.
• Finding playlist owners and asking them to add me to one of their playlists.
• -Becoming acquainted with Spotify editorial departments on LinkedIn.

Speaking of, how DID you reach out to playlisters? What’s the method in terms of research, pitching, promoting, and so forth?

I did a search on Spotify using keywords that pertained to my genre of music (Acoustic Guitar, fingerstyle guitar, instrumental guitar, study music and so on. There are a lot!) I set about an hour each morning while I enjoyed my single origin pour-over coffee to do this. I searched out the creators of the playlist on Facebook and Twitter. I matched up photos, and requested them to be a friend, along with sending them a message telling them about my music and how it would fit nicely into their playlist. It’s very tedious work and some playlist curators don’t even get onto social media. The key is to stay persistent with it and then the ones that matter end up connecting with you and help you out.

I know from when I met you in person at the DIY Musician Conference that you have a confident way of promoting your music, without it seeming… cloying or arrogant. Is that just your natural demeanor, or did you have to work to acquire those skills of self-promotion? What part do you think that confidence plays in your career successes?

Confidence is one of my major strengths! If you have a dream or are very passionate about making a living doing something you love, you have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed. I’ve learned this through growing my guitar lesson business and meeting people. You never know who is going to be the next person to help you out. They may recommend you, buy a CD, or support your fundraisers. Or… put you on their playlist!

I’ve read a lot of books on self selling, and making friends and influencing people. One that especially got me going was The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. After listening to that book on audio, I found myself putting in ten times the effort! There are a lot of great books out there on making yourself sellable and influential.

What have been some of the letdowns or failures you’ve experienced along the way, and how did you pick yourself back up?

The letdown is not being able to reach someone with a user generated playlist I know will help me. I’m focused on getting onto the playlist that users create because that in turn gets my name on the Spotify curators’ radar.

Something that I do to help with keeping persistent is having a goal sheet written in bold sharpie just above my computer. I try my best to keep at it, regardless of a failing outcome. I have seen results from my efforts, so I just keep with it. I find that I learn new things and techniques along the way. This hasn’t happened yet, but getting pulled from a playlist would be a disappointment. Especially a Spotify playlist, as their independent curators are ghosts and difficult to have direct contact with. However I would keep pushing, because it is my goal to succeed with my music.

Taking a look at your discography, you put out albums every few years, with two related albums in 2017, but you also started dropping a bunch of singles over the past year. What effect did putting out music more frequently have on your music’s streaming performance?

Releasing singles has been the best thing for me. It keeps listeners engaged with my artist profile. I started releasing covers too, because CD Baby makes it so easy to do. That has been a game changer! People love hearing cover songs. And because mine are all instrumental, they get put on big playlists, like Instrumental Pop Covers.

The two related albums are String Poet and String Poet Guitar Solos. One of the releases has the violins and cellos in the mix and the other is just solo guitar. I did this because of a playlister who only wanted solo guitar. It got me on the playlist, so it was worth releasing them that way.

In August 2017 one of my songs got placed on the Peaceful Guitar playlist, which is a Spotify playlist with half a million followers at the time. I’m quite confident that this happened as a result of being prolific on the platform. The pay from Spotify streams is big for me. I could easily buy a new guitar each month if I wanted, but it’s paying my house off!

In October I decided to record a song just for the Peaceful Guitar playlist. I didn’t know how it would go, but I did it anyway. I listened to the playlist and created a song that would fit. I took into consideration that most of the songs on there were nylon string and quite peaceful, so I got some new strings and went to work. I even gave it a title in the same manner as the other tracks in the playlist, “Raining Slowly.” It wasn’t a lot of work really. I sat in my living room with my laptop, GarageBand, a single AKG microphone, and a Focusrite preamp and recorded one take of an idea that I had. I took an iPhone photo of my guitar and used Font Candy to make a title on the photo. This ended up being my cover for the release. I got the song uploaded on Spotify and on day one it was placed on the Peaceful Guitar playlist!

Took me about 1.5 hours to do this tune and now it’s a part of my income. Holy Cow that was awesome. I’m doing what I can now to replicate that.

What’s the basic checklist of things you do to promote each single?

Make sure you are ready to post in every social media outlet, tagging people, messaging your friends who have created playlists (you know, the ones you met from doing the research).

Make a YouTube performance video, linking everything together. You can also make a video with the audio layed underneath your cover photo of the release. That seems to help as well. Don’t forget to put links in every video.

Besides frequent releases and pitching to playlists, what else are you doing to drive Spotify engagement?

Creating and promoting my own playlists. I’ve created a playlist that is growing quickly called Acoustic Guitar Cafe.

It’s a lot of my friends who play guitar similar to me. I just recently asked every artist on there if they would be interested in chipping in $20 for a Spotify ad to promote the playlist. I was able to get a decent budget on a Spotify ad to promote the playlist. This will hopefully help find new followers and listeners of our music. It’s also started a discussion with some of the artists where we’re sharing stats and techniques of what is working to get our music heard.

What are you doing to drive Pandora streams? Are you using AMP?

I use AMP every day or every other day. I try to post artist messages that are personal, sometimes funny. The key is to connect with people that are listening. Being that it’s instrumental, I can provide a short blurb about why I wrote the tune. Things like that generate thumbs up, which in turn brings your music up more often.

What role does data play in shaping your strategies? Do you make a habit of looking at analytics?

I look at the analytic all the time. In fact I can’t wait until 11 CST to see the artist.spotify update. That tells me if I’ve gotten on any new playlist. I also used the data when creating the Spotify ad to promote my playlist. I’m eying the AMP data as well, to see if my artist messages are working and possibly making conversions or new listeners and fans.

So what are some of your big picture goals?

I’d love to earn a complete living with streaming revenue, and in fact I’d love to say that I paid my house off with streaming bucks. I’m well on the way.

Also, I’d like to see my music in the movies or TV eventually. I know in the music business it’s all about who you know. I’m already in a library, so just hoping a music supervisor picks it up and hears it.

I didn’t quite make it, but I tried to get nominated for a Grammy this year. Although I don’t need a Grammy to succeed with this, it would be neat to get a nomination. So I will continue to submit every year I do album.

Who are your musical idols — and have your songs appeared alongside some of theirs in curated playlists?

Yes! One is Phil Keaggy, and it was a dream to have him on one of my songs, “Blue Ireland.” Tommy Emmanuel is another big influence, and I hope to one day record something with him.

What’s the next year look like for you?

Next year Pandora will have increased, as well as Spotify numbers. I will be releasing more Christmas music for the holidays as well as an album of cover songs. I may even do an original album of peaceful guitar music or possibly a Volume 2 to my String Poet album that everyone has loved. I may even look into doing an electric guitar album or something in the smooth jazz style of music. That elevator music pays too!

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Download CD Baby’s free guide to getting your music on Spotify playlists.

Check out more information about Lance Allen on his website.

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VIDEO PREMIERE: Ural Thomas & the Pain’s “Christmas Crawl”

You’re invited to Ural Thomas’ funky holiday house party.

Ural Thomas, Portland’s elder statesman of soul, has played the Apollo more than forty times and shared the stage with legends like James Brown, Otis Redding, and Stevie Wonder. Now in his late 70s, Thomas ain’t slowing down. In fact, since 2013 he’s been more active in the music scene than he was in the previous two or three decades, kicking up the energy in recordings, videos, and — of course — at gigs, where the focus is always getting dancers on the floor.

Apparently that focus extends beyond traditional dance halls and rock clubs to living rooms and kitchens too! In the video for their new holiday jam “Christmas Crawl,” Ural Thomas & the Pain bring the party home with swinging saxophones, Santa hats, vocals with just the right crunch, a game of Yuletide Twister, and — no surprise — sleigh bells.

Check out our premiere of the funky “Christmas Crawl” video above, and then read on for a short interview with The Pain’s drummer and bandleader Scott McGee.

I asked drummer and bandleader Scott McGee a little bit about his experience putting a band together to reintroduce Ural’s voice to the world.

4 questions for Scott McGee of Ural Thomas & the Pain

What was it like to put this band together for Ural, and how did you find the right players? 

It was an honor to put it together! Ural gave the go-ahead and I jumped all over it. Most of the band’s initial members were friends from the music community. A few have moved or left, and we found new folks in the same way. We’ve had a really great and solid lineup for over two years now. We’re a family!

What was your experience like putting out a record with Mississippi Records?

It was great. Eric is a gem and we felt lucky to release our first album on his fantastic label.

When did you fall in love with soul music? 

In New Orleans, as a young man in my 20s.

How did your DJ gig lead to Ural and the band?

They are linked for sure. Much of the set we play — aside from originals — are songs that most people wouldn’t recognize, but they sound like classic soul hits from the 60s. I didn’t want us to sound like a wedding band or something along those lines. As a 45 collector, thousands of songs have come my way that are really good and most people simply haven’t heard them. It’s a great era to pull from if you’re looking for inspiration!

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For more information about Ural Thomas & the Pain, visit their website HERE.

Check out Ural’s music at CD Baby.

[Photo by Ric Walters.]

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A Letter to a Young Marketer

How to formulate an effective music marketing strategy.

[This post was written by songwriter Gavin Castleton, and it originally appeared on his blog.]

Hi Jordanna,

So you’ve got a new band, new album and big record release party coming up—awesome! Rather than give you a marketing prescription for your exact needs (which is probably what you hoped for), I want to lay some high level strategy on you.

Many artists just blast all their networks with whatever content they can muster. If the content is good they may get some traction here and there, but ultimately I think this is a flawed approach. The few successful, completely independent artists I know avoid any sort of magical thinking and embrace the reality that being a musician these days requires a plethora of additional skill sets, business and marketing being two of the most crucial (web development, graphic design, audio engineering, video production, management and concert booking are par for the course).

During my time working for social, email and mobile marketing companies, I noticed a huge disparity between the way businesses approach marketing and the way most musicians do. Successful businesses focus on strategy and ROI (“return on investment”) while musicians focus on creative ideas and fan engagement, with less attention to strategy. Perhaps this is why so many of us are often broke and a large percentage of our promotions fall short of expectations.

The more strategic you can get, the more impactful your campaigns will be. Rid yourself of any notion that content miraculously goes “viral”—nearly all viral content is the result of a calculated launch by a marketing team. It’s not black magic and it’s not luck; it’s strategy, money and data analysis.

Here’s how one of my favorite songwriters, Lex Land put it:

“My personality makes me ill equipped for self-promotion, which is unfortunately so necessary as an independent artist. Of course, this evasion led me to adopt the all-too-prevalent ‘pray and wait’ strategy that so many artists employ. After receiving countless “breaks” but never really “breaking,” and during a years-long stall in the release of my third album, I adopted a new mantra: “What can I do?”

 

Diving into a ton of different informational resources about digital and content marketing, and specifically in the music space, I experienced enlightening breakthroughs while taking a hard look at what I had been doing and what hadn’t been working. To adopt any strategy is better than having no strategy at all.”

You can find buckets of marketing guides and philosophies online—often as a downloadable pdf behind some obnoxious email capture form landing page)—each tailored to what is being sold (goods, services, entertainment, etc.) and what channels it’s being sold on (print, TV, social, radio, blogs, etc.). Tasks like calibrating your ads and writing an impactful press release are crucial skills that anyone who can read can learn. Do it. Google. Read.

Below is a 7-step marketing strategy you could apply as an independent musician.

Depending on what level you’re at career-wise, this process may feel overly formal, cumbersome, or even pointless to you because your budget is $0 or your goal/tactics appear obvious, but I encourage you to build a habit of thinking through these steps and articulating your answers to them; training your brain to switch out of imaginative artist mode and into real-world, ROI-focused, pragmatic business mode will focus and optimize your team efforts, increase your income, help you assess the value and productivity of 3rd party publicists and make hard career decisions faster.

1) Define your Goal for this Marketing Campaign.

It should be measurable. Walk through the creation flows of Facebook/Instagram Ads, Google Adsense and Twitter Ads to help hone your objective.

2) Declare your Success Metrics and key Performance Indicators, as well as how you will track them.

How will you know if you achieved your goal? How will you know if you’re on track to meet your goal? Don’t confuse the warm feeling you get from Likes, Comments, Retweets etc. for success—their only marketing significance is how they influence your ranking in the feed algorithm. Don’t be fuzzy about your definition of success for this campaign.

3) Identify your Target Audience.

Who exactly will this campaign resonate with? Who can actually attend your event or purchase your product?

[Note: “customer profile,” “segment,” and “target demographic” all mean basically the same thing in this context]

4) Plan your Marketing Tactics.

This is where your creativity comes in! Each tactic should clearly and effectively help you meet your Marketing Campaign Goal. If your primary goal is to get people to come to your show, then any marketing that is not region-targeted is probably overkill (unless you’re explicitly soliciting referrals). If your primary goal is to make money from a new release, then encouraging your audience to listen to your new release on any and all platforms is not as ideal as directing all traffic to the platform that pays you the best percentage (e.g. not Spotify, Youtube or Pandora). What results can be realistically expected? Be skeptical.

5) Calculate a reasonable, realistic Budget.

Think through all potential costs, even things that seem incidental (like gas, public transportation, staples, tape, etc.). INCLUDE YOUR UNPAID HOURS. Budget will probably be the hardest thing to estimate accurately at first, but you’ll get better at it, and its massively important as your cash flow increases and ROI becomes more calculable/provable. In the future you will use these skills to extract bigger chunks of money from labels and banks.

6) Define a Schedule for your tactics that is optimized to meet your goals.

This is particularly important when relying on social networks for the majority of your promo, and when trying to inspire action on a specific date. Think through when your audience would actually be most receptive to your message. Don’t blast your social networks all at once; there are ideal times to publish on each network. And since many people will follow you on multiple networks, you’re wasting your bullets when you promote to them across all networks at once… better to stagger your posts so that viewers are reminded periodically. Determine the right order for each task (if you have to wait until nextweek before sending your press release, you should have a few drafting/revision sessions and an industry contact list gathering task scheduled for this week). Schedule regular reviews of your Success Metrics and Budget. Use a group calendar and set up alerts in your phone for each task.

7) Do a Postmortem. Learn and iterate on what worked and didn’t work.

This is the most important step, and the most often forgotten. Be frank and honest with yourself—it’s not a blamefest, it’s a crucial learning opportunity.

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Here’s how it might look in the context of your life:

1. Life Objective 1: Secure a family
   • Family Goal: Find and maintain a partner that can pay my bills
   • Family Goal: Acquire a child that can pay my bills
2. Life Objective 2: Sustain a career as a Performing Artist
   • Career Goal 1: Develop 300+ draw in NYC so that I can headline small venues on a weekend night, trading support slots with out-of-town acts.
3. 1. • Marketing Campaign 1: Secure impactful slots opening for prominent local acts
      • Marketing Campaign 2: Promote record release show <—we are here 
   2. 1. 1. Goal
         2. Success Metrics and Performance Indicators
         3. Target Audience
         4. Marketing Tactics
         5. Budget
         6. Schedule
         7. Postmortem

[Note: At this point you should have already justified how a proposed Marketing Campaign will help achieve one or more of your Career Goals]

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And now here’s how your specific scenario might look:

Marketing Campaign 2: Promote record release show

1. Goal: I want at least 75 people to attend my record release party. The promoter, who also books a larger venue, will then consider us for national support slots in the future.
2. Success metric: Ticket sales (night of the show)    
3. Performance indicators: Ticket presales, Facebook Event RSVPs, Bandsintown RSVPs, Songkick RSVPs
4. Target Demographic: All genders between the ages of 21 and 38 in the NY/NJ area.
5. Marketing tactics: 
   • Tactic 1 (Physical): Hang flyers in high-traffic areas (above urinals, front window, etc.) at or near venue.
   • Tactic 2 (Physical): Send compelling press release, photo and show details to all local print for inclusion in their Events section and possible feature.
   • Tactic 3 (Online): Synchronize show announcement and centralize Facebook Event traffic. Get promoter and all bands on the bill driving traffic to one Event page with links to ticket purchase, free music, and photos for all bands. Invite only those in the region. Encourage friends to invite their friends to Event.
   • Tactic 4 (Online): Pay to Boost Facebook Event page, escalating budget the week of the show. Run Facebook ads on various content starting two weeks from show, always promoting a URL with show info and ticket purchase.
   • Tactic 5 (Online): Get a local music scene blog to premier the single from my new forthcoming album and announce show; use blog post as new content and increased legitimacy.
   • Tactic 6 (Online): Coordinate with all performers to schedule the addition of new content to the Event page every week and stagger social posts and profile photo/banner updates from personal and band accounts using photos, short videos, streaming content, etc. initially driving traffic to the Facebook Event, and eventually alternating between FB page, direct streaming content link, direct ticket sale link, etc. so as not to annoy audience. Be sure all parties involved Like, Comment, and Retweet each other’s posts soon after posting to exploit feed algorithms.
   • Tactic 7 (Online): Offer free download (using Bandcamp promo code) to anyone who posts a photo of their purchased ticket (or similar testimonial content) online.
6. Budget: $80, 40 hours unpaid labor
   • $25 for targeted Facebook ads and boosted Event
   • $15 for color flyers, staples and tape
   • $40 for band photoshoot to be used for social posts and profiles photos
   • 40 unpaid hours (log hours in online solution or phone app)
7. Schedule: 
   • Week 1 (this week):
     • Mon: Design incredible flyer/promo images. [4 hr]
     • Tues: Write fascinating press release with show details, ticket purchase info, promo image, and private streaming link. Send to team for feedback and revise. [3 hr]
     • Tues: Gather local print Events Page editor contact list from online search and industry friends. [1 hr]
     • Wed: Use Mailchimp to send press release to contact list at 9am. [1 hr]
     • Thu: Print $10 worth of color fliers at Staples. [1 hr]
     • Thu: Hang color fliers at the venue and nearby coffeeshops. [1 hr]
     • Fri: Create potent Facebook event page and give promoter and other performers “admin” status. [1 hr]
     • Sun: Everyone announce show and invite friends to FB Event at 9pm.  [1 hr]
   • Week 2:
     • Mon: Tweet link to FB Event at 1 p.m. or 5 p.m
     • Tues: Send follow up email to weekly print Events page editors. [1.5 hr]
     • Wed: Share FB Event to personal FB pages at 3pm.
     • Thu: Post promo image to Instagram at 8:30am.
     • Fri: Change profile image of personal page, include link in description.
     • Sat: Share FB Event to personal FB pages at noon.
     • Sun: Review success metrics. Adjust budget? [1 hr]
     • Sun: Boost FB Event page for 7 days by $7.
   • Week 3
     • You get the point…
   • Week 4:
   • Week 5:
   • Week 6:
8. Postmortem: 
   • I achieved and exceeded my goal with 82 paid concert goers!
   • I went over budget by $20 due to the fact that I set up the FB ad budget incorrectly.
   • I worked an extra 1.5 unpaid hours due to traveling to and from printer and venue to hang fliers
   • I worked an extra 2 unpaid hours on researching and contacting local blogs.
   • Facebook Event RSVPs (111) were 35% higher than actual attendance (82).
   • Likes and Comments subsided during weeks 3-5; maybe I got too markety?

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So there’s my stab at it. In reality I rarely take the time to draft something with this level of detail, but the important thing is that you start thinking like a business when it’s time to promote your work.

A few other tips:

• Learn as much as you can about the various social network algorithms and exploit them. For instance,  to determine if users find your video interesting (and therefore worth showing to others), Facebook tracks user behaviors like turning on sound and switching to HD. So it may be beneficial to include text in your video or description encouraging users to turn their sound on or switch to HD (which should also provide better sound quality). The algorithms of Instagram, Reddit and Twitter each have their own interest-ranking metrics that they track, each playing a huge role in your social marketing success.
• More from Lex Land about her current marketing strategy: “The end-goal is to capture emails of fans or potential fans with whom I can build a relationship, and then monetize that email list by running quarterly promotions and alerting them of live performances in their area. I believe that social media should be viewed as a traffic generation and rapport-building tool rather than the sole point-of-contact for fans. Social sites are excellent for ‘blasts’ because of the visibility and daily use by most folks, and the ability to use retargeting on Facebook, especially, is invaluable- but, still, an email list is the only thing we as artists can carry with us through the ever-changing landscape of whatever platform is currently trending, or even from being on a major label to going independent. With a strong email list, we have leverage – to get better guarantees, to get better features, to get noticed by industry if that’s what we’re after. I think it’s crucial that we fortify our bond with the consumer of our music to garner that leverage, rather than waiting for ‘something nice’ to happen to us that might bring the fans our way someday. All of this requires us to be more vulnerable, to open up more of our lives and ourselves to our fans, to be more assertive about that connection we can bridge between us and them through our music. This has perhaps been the best takeaway from what I’ve learned, to cultivate a more honest perspective about what I and my music have to offer other humans.”
• Read this book

Good luck with the album and release show! Don’t quit when your campaigns fail; quit when you stop learning from your failures. You don’t get anywhere by having lofty goals—you get there by optimizing the system you use to reach them.

– Gavin

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Early-bird tickets now on sale for 2018’s DIY Musician Conference in Nashville!

Join us in Nashville this August for a career-changing weekend.

The 4th annual DIY Musician Conference takes place in downtown Nashville at the Omni Hotel, offering three packed days of action-oriented keynotes, workshops, panels, performance opportunities, collaboration, mentoring sessions, networking, and more.

Early-bird tickets are now on sale for just $79 (which is good for the entire weekend).

If you’ve attended in the past, you know what an amazing experience this weekend can be. If you haven’t been, check out this video with highlights from the 2017 conference:

To get a better idea of what to expect at 2018’s DIY Musician Conference, check out this YouTube playlist with testimonials, videos of the main stage sessions, and more.

Buy tickets now to get early-bird pricing!

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Creating a good lyric video for less than $10

How to make a lyric video for your song (without using Motion or After Effects)

Lyric video: a video that shows your song lyrics while the music plays. [Pretty self-explanatory.]

Not only are lyric videos a great and manageable way to keep your video content coming in between bigger projects that involve more complicated production, but I’ve found they can actually be a lot of fun to make.

Below I’m going to talk about how I created six different lyric videos along with info on some of the FREE tools I used.

A few things to keep in mind:

• I’m not a video guy. Every time I make one of my own lyric videos it’s a process of trial and error. A pro could probably create something twice as good in half the time, but I enjoy playing around to find solutions on my own. Plus, video budget? (Pshaw).
• You can make really cool lyric videos with programs like Motion and After Effects. I didn’t. For one, those programs cost money (see pshaw above). But diving into one of those programs would mean I have yet another learning curve to climb. I’m interested in exploring Motion at some point, but in between family, work, and everything else, I’d rather use what time is leftover to make music and bang out some videos, not hunker down in the lab for days on end. Maybe those programs are easier to use than I’m imagining, and I’m missing out (let me know in the comments), but for the sake of this article, let’s just refer back to the zero-budget appeal of making lyric videos WITHOUT Motion or After Effects.
• That leaves you with free video editing software like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. Pros might scoff at these intro-level video production tools, but when you combine them with a few other tricks, plus some creativity, I think you can create compelling lyric videos with little more than what comes loaded on most desktops, tablets, or smartphones. [Full disclosure: I used Final Cut Pro X on three out of the four videos below, but I’d worked in iMovie for long enough before that to know most of the things I’m doing in FCPX can be done in iMovie.]

Beginner tips for making lyric videos

1. Open your movie-making software and set your new project’s aspect ratio to 16:9.
2. Import your song and any other media (like video clips, still images, logos, etc.) that you plan to use.
3. Move your first clip or background image to the project pane. If you plan to use one static background image the whole time, you can click and drag to adjust the duration that it appears so it’s long enough to display during your whole song.
4. Place your song into the project pane. If you want it to start playing right away, drag it all the way to the left. If you have a title page or some other introductory elements, you can leave a little room before the song starts.
5. Use “titles” to place the lyrics on the video at the appropriate time during the song, matching with the vocals.
6. Use a font size and style that’s readable (or that looks cool at the very least).
7. Position your titles on the video (again, by dragging) so they appear in a place that’s legible. For instance, if you’re using a still image of a sandy beach below a light gray sky, you don’t want white font to appear over that sky. Better to drag it down so it appears with starker contrast over the dark sand.
8. Make adjustments to the length of the titles (you can do this by clicking and dragging) to smooth out the transition from line to line.
9. Watch your whole video a few times through and make any needed fixes.
10. Export your video file and upload it to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc.

Some tricks to spice up your lyric videos

This is the lyric video to my song “Irretrievable Beauty.” To create it I followed all the basic steps mentioned above, but here are a few of the bonus elements I added for (hopefully) extra impact:

• Additional text — No one ever said a lyric video should contain ONLY your lyrics. So I wrote a bunch of other text (a letter from the 22nd-Century) and placed my lyrics within it. Check out the video and what I’m describing will make more sense.
• Color contrast of text — The actual lyrics of the song needed to be easily readable, so they’re all in black against a lighter background. The rest of the words are white, and it’s fine if they roll by without anyone being able to read them all. I intended to create the feeling of being flooded by text, so lots of it is supposed to wash over you.
• Public domain image — I found a super hi-res image from 1905 to use for the background of the video (and my cover artwork too), and slowly zoomed in throughout the whole video.

Above is the lyric video for my song “1+1+1=3.” Some of the things I did to make this video:

• Slow fade between different versions of the same photo — The background image for this video is the same as the cover artwork, a photo I took of arithmetic on a chalkboard. I then applied different filters to the photo to create three separate versions. While editing the video, I started by laying the three images out in a repeating pattern and then cross fading them all so it looks like there’s some kind of slow transformation happening.
• More extra text — The additional text in this video is nowhere near as crazy as in “Irretrievable Beauty,” but I wanted to add a few bits here and there. You’ll spot ’em.
• Directly reference the subject matter — The song is called “1+1+1=3.” Yes, it’s about love, but the math element was a fun visual reference point. Arithmetic on a chalkboard. Strange equations in the text. Etc. What’s the visual reference in your song?

Above is the lyric video for my song “Silently.” Some things I did to create this one:

• Hyperlapse sunset — One afternoon when I was visiting Oregon, I ran up to the top of Mt. Tabor (an extinct volcano in the heart of Southeast Portland) and found a good spot to film the changing sky as dusk fell. I made sure to be out of the way of anyone who might walk in front of the camera and ruin the looooooong time-lapse shot. Hyperlapse is a free app from Instagram, and it makes it easy to shoot long videos and then speed them up at various rates. I think my 4-minute music video required about 45 minutes of footage.
• Intro titles from Word Swag — If you read this blog frequently, you probably know I love Word Swag, a free app that lets you add cool fonts to images. I used Word Swag to create both the circle logo at the beginning with my name in it, and also the “Silently” title. You could use this app to create text for every single lyric, but that’d get time consuming so I just ended up using it for those two elements at the beginning. For this purpose, within Word Swag you’ll usually want to lay the font over a transparent background so you can fly it into whatever video you’re creating without disrupting the moving footage. [Note: I used Word Swag to create the intro text for all the lyric videos below.]
• Sketch effect — I then added some built-in effects, including a color saturation effect and two doses of a sketch illustration effect, to make the video look grainy and lo-fi. Like I said above, this wasn’t premeditated. Just playing around with effects to see what looked promising. On that note…
• Earthquake wobble effect — I used the earthquake effect because I thought it kind of made the text look like it was on a transparent slide overlay that was out of focus for a second.
• Alternating pacing of lyric appearances — Sometimes the lyrics appear and disappear with the vocal. Sometimes certain lines linger. I just went by feel, and payed more attention to how the titles looked laid out across the screen than anything particularly musical.
• Alternating the color of the text — This is another obvious way to add some variation if you feel like your lyric video is too much of the same thing: change the colors of the lyrics!

Here’s a video for a song called “Morning Edition” which I posted right before the election in 2016. The recording is actually just a super lo-fi Garageband demo, but I only had two weeks until election day, and I figured if I’m going to make some kind of statement, there’s no time to wait to get my band into a proper studio. So, a few notes about this lyric video:

• A lyric video can still have live action — I’ve never really liked the distinction between “music video” and “lyric video,” as if one is more legit and exciting than the other. As someone who listens to lyrics just as much as the music, I love good lyric videos, and I think there can be an interesting hybrid between these two approaches. For “Morning Edition” I lip-synced to my song, 10 seconds at a time, while using the Face-Swap tool in Snapchat to graft a certain someone’s mug onto mine. Then I edited all those takes together and applied a sharp contrast filter to blend the background of the Snapchat clips with the large black borders on both sides of the clips.
• Did I say the lyrics have to be legible? — Well sure, it’s good to have legible lyrics, but I don’t think they need to be HUGE if that means you’re ruining the aesthetic of the video. For this one I figured I’d keep the text in a thin minimalist font at the top of the screen, out of the way of my face, and anyone who really wanted to read along could watch the video in full-screen mode.

Here’s the lyric video for my song “Veterans Day.” By complete accident — again, lots of playing around with built-in options — it ended up with a kind of Zen art aesthetic. Here’s how:

• Stock video — I looked through tons of stock video sites to find an affordable, hi-res clip that could be used as the background for the whole video. I ended up buying (for less than $10) a short video of milk being poured into a clear glass of water with a black background. But 6 seconds of video wasn’t going to cut it for a 5 minute song, so I…
• Slowed the clip WAY down — I stretched the clip as long as it could go and still only had about 2.5 minutes’ worth. So then I…
• Reversed the clip — By duplicating the clip I had 2.5 minutes of forward motion, and 2.5 minutes of backwards motion. So the result is like a palindrome, or like that famous bass solo on “Call Me Al.” Halfway through, the whole thing turns around and the milk goes back into the bottle by the end. Another accident that I ended up enjoying.
• Color inversion — I used the built-in tools to invert the colors so the white milk became like black ink, and the black background turned to a light gray.
• B&W — I then took that video and turned it to black and white, which ended up darkening the whole thing in a nice way.
• Scrolling text — One of the built-in title options on many video software programs allows you to scroll text vertically, like the end credits of a film. I used this effect separately for each verse and chorus of the song. Then I did another layer of scrolling text with just a bunch of randomly spaced letters and symbols, with a high transparency on the font so it appears as a graphic element, and I think it gives the whole video a kind a translucent papery feel.

Here’s a few things you might be able to learn from the lyric video to my song “Premiere:”

• Still photos are your friend — Check out royalty-free photo sites such as Unsplash. I made the entire video for “Premiere” using photos I found on that site. The one risk you run is that other artists use the same photos in their work, but you can always tweak the images so they’re barely recognizable as I did with the milk video in “Veterans Day.”
• Don’t be afraid of Ken Burns — He has a built-in video effect named after him for a reason; that technique of zooming in and out on still photos can be really effective for creating mood. Dynamics! Don’t go crazy or anything with the motion, but a little Ken Burns here and there can make flat photos come to life.
• Mix and match fonts — I used a bunch of different kinds of fonts on “Premiere,” giving each section of the song its own feel.
• Apply effects and transitions to the titles (text) too — Don’t forget that many of the same effects you can use on pictures and video will work to give your lyrics an interesting look as well.
• Don’t publish your video until you’ve proofread it a dozen times! — If you watched my lyric video for “Premiere” you might’ve found a typo. Whoops. I didn’t catch it until it’d been posted for over a week, and by then… oh well. Staring at text while you’re editing gets tiring. Your brain tricks you. While you’re in the process of creating, you might not catch something that seems glaringly incorrect later on. So get some bandmates and friends to watch the video a few times to make sure you don’t have any spelling or grammar issues on your lyrics (I mean, besides the usual grammar or syntactical issues that ALL lyrics have). Another way to limit errors is to…
• Write your lyrics out in Word and then paste them into your titles — When you type your lyrics in Word first, you get the benefit of the program’s spellcheck system. Some of the popular video editing software doesn’t have spellcheck, so paste those lyrics in after you’ve vetted them in the external doc.

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Okay, those are some of the tricks I’ve used to make my lyric videos more interesting than just white font on a black background, all without paying for extra software or expensive stock footage and images. Hopefully they’re helpful as you create your next video.

Do you have any advice to add? I’d love to hear it. Holler in the comments below and be sure to post a link to your best lyric videos on YouTube!

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7 things every musician should do before releasing a single

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Building a social media foundation for musicians

Social media has made self-promotion for indie artists easy. The main problem is that there are so many different platforms, it’s difficult to know where to start. You don’t have time or money to waste. You want to get potential fans hooked and buying tickets and downloads.

Before social media, bands and musicians had to wait on the goodwill of their record label for promotion. That’s if they ev had a recording contract to begin with. In the past, DIY music production and sales were unheard of. In the post-Myspace era, bands can now record, produce, distribute, sell, and promote their music without an A&R rep ever darkening their door.

Here are the top tips for creating a following, gaining fans, and promoting your music and merch to the masses via social media:

1. Create a YouTube Channel

YouTube has replaced MySpace for band promotion. It’s one of the most-used social media platforms for music fans. The search features make it a powerhouse for finding a new audience. YouTube promotes you in “Related Videos” to the fans of bands in your genre, making it easy to capture an ever-widening base of music lovers. You might find you’re getting more traffic from other bands’ channels than organic searches.

Get our free guide to promoting your music on YouTube.

Tip: Be sure to enter a description and tags that’ll help people who like your kind of music find your videos.

2. Create a Facebook Fan Page

Although not as popular with the under-35 demographic as it once was, it’s still the social media platform that most people go to connect with artists. Twitter is great, but it’s no Facebook. Set up a fan page for yourself or your band, and put the time it to make it look good. To engage fans, consider the following:

Schedule content updates.

You’re going to want to share several different types of content on your Facebook page. Upcoming events and new releases are vital, but fans also want to see candid shots, rehearsal videos, even some personal day-in-the-life content. Make sure you have a regular stream of content by using a social media scheduling tool like Hootsuite. Keep it relevant to your work, but make it relatable and fun.

Interact with your followers.

Take some time out of your day to respond to fans commenting on your Facebook posts. Let them know that you’re paying attention to their feedback and that you appreciate their support.

Use Facebook ads.

Set up your gigs as Facebook events and use the Facebook ads manager to zero in on your target audience and sell more tickets. You can narrow your audience by age, location, gender, even income. Then target your ads at those who like bands like yours.

3. Connect Your Facebook and Instagram

Save time by integrating your posts to deliver to your fans on both Facebook and Instagram. These social media platforms have different strengths, but combining them saves time.

• Instagram is more casual and fun, so use your feed to plug other bands in the lineup and selfies with fans.
• Instagram relies heavily on tags for targeting content to the right audience, and even Facebook is somewhat responsive to tags, so don’t forget to tag your posts.

4. Learn to Livestream

There are several ways to livestream your performances online. Gain new fans by broadcasting performances, signing events, even fan chats. Fans love to feel that they have a direct connection to their favorite musicians, and letting them in on your day as you rehearse, record, even pick up new equipment can be a memorable event. Facebook allows you to livestream right from your band page or personal profile.

Learn how one indie artist used Facebook Live to earn more than $74k in under a year.

5. Get on SoundCloud

SoundCloud is one of the biggest audio file-sharing services around. You can share your tracks with fans, potential fans, and music reviewers anywhere on the web. The widget allows play on a variety of social media platforms to share exclusives with dedicated fans, and it even keeps stats on plays, so you know where to focus your marketing efforts.

6. Distribute your music

All the social media promotion in the world won’t help you much if people can’t access your music on the platforms they already subscribe to (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) So make your music available globally! With CD Baby, it’s simple — and there’s never any annual fees!

7. Use Social Media to Create an Email List

Social media has become swamped ― even your grandma has signed up. But email marketing is so old-school that it’s new all over again. People love free stuff. People also want a sample of something before they hand over their hard-earned bucks. It’s been a tough economy out there for everyone. Offer incentives to get potential fans to sign up for your mailing list.

People blank out on ads, most still scan their inbox daily. Use your social media platforms to put together an email list by offering some cool exclusives only available to your most devoted fans ― those willing to part with an email address.

You can offer subscribers exclusive materials:

• Recording studio video footage
• Pre-release access to new music
• Exclusive or free-to-download songs
• Song demos
• Early ticket access
• Merch or other swag

Don’t Just Create a Product, Create a Culture

Music is more than a product, it’s a lifestyle, and genre identity is a thing. Become a social media influencer by offering your fans more than just your music. Plug other bands on the lineup for every gig.

Livestream interaction with other musicians and fans at the venue. You’ve probably already targeted your market, and you know what other bands will appeal to them. You might even have an idea of what clothes, movies, or video games they like.

Find your niche and give your potential fans the whole experience. Recommend venues and boost other musicians on their road to success ― they’ll probably return the favor. You’ll find that marketing your genre is a lot more effective than just advertising your latest song.

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Author: Kayla Rigler is the the editor of The PR Authority.

Featured image CC by CC0, by Free-Photos, Pixabay

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Gigs from HELL!!!!!!!!!

What’s the worst gig you ever played?

We’ve discussed live concert horror stories before on this blog, and many musicians shared their funny or terrifying stories in the comments section.

Today I came across a Facebook Group where artists can share those same kinds of stories, hundreds of them, thousands of them, with the names and places changed to protect the guilty.

If you want a good laugh or cry this Friday, check out the Facebook Group “Gigs from Hell.”

Also, feel free to tell me about your live concert tribulations here in the comments below. I promise not to judge (too much). 

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Big independent showing for 2018 Grammy Awards

Congrats to the many CD Baby artists nominated for a Grammy in 2018.

The stranglehold that the majors once had on the Grammy Awards is loosening  each year.

That might not be evident from the televised portion of the ceremony, which favors categories where nominees are still predominantly on big labels, but taking the Grammys as a whole, independent artists are widely represented.

CD Baby is proud to be carrying the following 2018 Grammy-nominated albums, listed here with their award category:

Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah — “Lake Shore Drive” (Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media)

Alex Han — Spirit (Contemporary Instrumental Album)

Alphabet Rockers — Rise Shine #Woke (Best Children’s Album)

Anat Cohen & Marcello Gonçalves — Outra Coisa (Best Latin Jazz Album)

Antonio Adolfo — Hybrido – From Rio to Wayne Shorter (Best Latin Jazz Album)

Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers — Top of the Mountain (Best Regional Roots Music Album)

Ladysmith Black Mambazo — Shaka Zulu Revisted (Best World Music Album)

Ladysmith Black Mambazo — Songs of Peace & Love for Kids & Parents Around the World (Best Children’s Album)

Larry Cordle — Give Me Jesus (Best Roots Gospel Album)

Lost Bayou Ramblers — Kalenda (Best Regional Roots Music Album)

Miguel Zenón —Tipico (Best Latin Jazz Album)

Pablo Ziegler Trio —Jazz Tango (Best Latin Jazz Album)

Randy Porter — Porter Plays Porter (Best Jazz Vocal Album)

Steve Roach — Spiral Revalation (Best New Age Album)

Jean Baylor & Marcus Baylor — The Baylor Project: The Journey (Best Traditional R&B Performance, and Best Jazz Vocal Album)

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Big shout out to all of these talented artists! We’re proud to help you get your music into the world, and we’re especially pleased to be distributing 4 out of the 5 releases nominated for Best Latin Jazz Album this year.

If we missed any nominees who are also CD Baby artists, please holler in the comments below.

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4 reasons you should be using LinkedIn to advance your music career

So you’re a music professional. You have the standard social media apps (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter). You may be rocking these sites and already have 50 zillion followers. Now, what does your LinkedIn profile look like?

For many musicians, LinkedIn doesn’t seem like a site to bother with. They assume it’s mostly utilized by people with corporate jobs. It’s not really the scene they’re after. This misconception is why many musicians are missing out on amazingly beneficial connections.

So why should you use LinkedIn to promote your music?

Contacts, Contacts, Contacts

LinkedIn is only for professionals. Many people use it to get jobs or connect with those in their fields of industry. This is what you should be doing too. A LinkedIn profile has tons of benefits, the biggest being increasing your contact list. LinkedIn being a purely professional site means that when you send a contact request, it will probably be accepted. No one gets on their LinkedIn account to look at the newest cat video. There are a lot of music industry professionals on LinkedIn and if you’re planning to build a profitable music career, you’ll need them. Think studio managers or booking agents.

Other people worth sending requests to:

• Music Bloggers
• Music Journalists
• Booking Agents
• Promoters

Music Industry Groups

The groups on LinkedIn are a vital part of what makes it a true social media site. While there is a myriad of music-related groups, try to stick with the ones focused on the music industry. Once you’ve requested to join and have been approved, be active. Ask and answer questions, start conversations, and make your name a common sight for the big fish who read the group content.

A few LinkedIn groups to join:

• Music Biz
• Music Industry Forum
• Music and Marketing

Look Like a Professional

The beauty of a Linkedin profile is that it can be designed to look extremely professional. To attract connections from the music industry, you need to appear like a business professional yourself. When designing your profile, use a headshot or a face shot at a minimum. Avoid using a band logo or live performance shot, as these aren’t considered quite as business savvy.

List your actual experience instead of what your music is about or where your inspiration comes from. These are more useful on a Facebook or Instagram page to attract fans. Have you ever been featured on a blog? List it. You want other professionals to see you when they do a search, so if your profile looks more professional than someone else’s, it may give you a leg up. Finally, stick keywords into your profile that relate to your musical niche.

Questions to ask yourself when designing your profile:

• What is your niche?
• Who do you most want to see your profile?
• What can you offer other professionals?

Keep Your Connections

Once you’ve established industry connections, it’s important to manage and maintain them. Fortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t drop connections with a lost phone number or change of email address. Ideally, once you’ve made a connection, these people will begin to recognize you from the groups you’ve joined. Until this happens, you need to keep working up the connections you actually know. LinkedIn has a lovely recommendation feature, which allows others to recommend you in one of your listed skills. Hit as many of these connections up as you can and ask for a recommendation. It will add to your credibility. Also, send a small thank you message when someone accepts your request. This isn’t done often and will make an impression.

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LinkedIn is a worthwhile site to expand your connections and improve your professional status. Researching the best way to fill in your profile and how to work the groups to your advantage can also help with increasing promotion. DropTrack is another great way to promote your music, and you can try it free.

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7 things every musician should do before 2018

For musicians, the holidays can be a time of either frenzy or famine. You may find yourself rushing down the freeway from your tenth corporate gig of the month to your fifth holiday house concert, finally getting a second to to check the Spotify for Artists app to see how your new Christmas single is doing while stopped at a red light.

Either that, or you’re on the couch in a food coma while A Christmas Story loops endlessly on the TV, longing for the New Year to arrive so you can put this holiday haze behind you and start playing club gigs again.

Whether December provides you with only a few free moments or gives you all the time in the world, there are a handful of important things you should do as a musician before the end of the year.

An end-of-year checklist for independent musicians:

1. Professionalize your publishing rights

Even if you don’t consider yourself a “songwriter,” you ARE one if you create original music.

As a songwriter, you’re owed publishing royalties for the usage of your music, including mechanical royalties for global streaming and international downloads, performance royalties for radio plays and live shows, and more. But these kinds of royalties are not usually paid through a distributor, and only a portion of them are collected by Performing Rights Organizations such as ASCAP and BMI.

If you don’t have a publisher or publishing administrator working to collect these royalties, you’re missing out on YOUR money.  But there’s a simple fix: CD Baby Pro Publishing!

Sign up or upgrade your releases to CD Baby Pro Publishing and we’ll make sure you’re paid everything you’re owed.

2. Get verified as an artist on Spotify

Spotify is the dominant player in the streaming world, and they give you a number of tools to boost your music’s profile on the platform. But not if you aren’t verified. It’s a pretty easy process though.

Go HERE to learn how to get verified, what you can do as a verified artist, and how to build your following on Spotify.

3. Create a Show.co account (it’s FREE!)

Show.co is a super elegant suite of music marketing tools that have been used by major labels and major artists like Maroon 5, Tove Lo, OASIS, and more.

Show.co campaigns give you a way to turn casual fan interest into concrete, action-driven results. As a CD Baby artist, you get to use Show.co for free to boost your presence on Spotify, grow your email list, drive views or subscribes on YouTube, and more.

Claim your Show.co account and launch a campaign in minutes by logging into your CD Baby members account and clicking “Free Marketing Tools.”

4. Buy your early-bird ticket for the DIY Musician Conference

It’s our event, so this might sound hyperbolic (or at least biased), but we’ve heard it from so many attendees: The DIY Musician Conference can be career-changing, giving you a super affordable opportunity to learn from experts, get one-on-one mentoring, meet reps from important music and tech brands, network, showcase, and make friends that will support you for the long-haul, because they understand exactly what it’s like to be committed to a life in music.

Our fourth annual DIY Musician Conference will be happening in Nashville from August 24-26, 2018, and tickets right now are only $79. Get ’em before the price goes up.

5. Sign up with SoundExchange

SoundExchange collects royalties for the digital transmission of a sound recording. Think satellite radio or Pandora. These royalties are paid to the artist, performers, and label — not the songwriter and publisher — so if you’re the artist and/or label, you can collect these in addition to any publishing royalties generated for the use of the underlying composition.

Like lots of royalties, if they go unclaimed for too long they’ll disappear, so register with SoundExchange today to collect what’s yours.

6. Submit your set lists for 2017

If you perform original songs live, you can earn publishing royalties for your shows (in addition to whatever fee the venue is paying you).

In order to collect, you must file your set lists with your Performing Rights Organization. HERE are the deadlines.

Keep in mind, some venues you perform at might not be doing things by-the-book, meaning they haven’t paid any fees to the P.R.O.s. If you file a set list for such a venue, the P.R.O.s might come knocking on that venue’s door. That puts you in a weird spot. On the one hand, that venue SHOULD be paying songwriters and publishers for the very music that brings in customers and gives them a reason for existing as a venue in the first place. On the other hand, you don’t want to be the person the venue blames when they get a threatening letter in the mail. So use your judgement, and don’t be afraid to ask venues if they’re paying one or more of the P.R.O.s before you play your show.

7. Make a plan

5-year goals are great, but c’mon; we’re musicians. We usually can’t see past our next gig. That’s why the holidays are a great time to plot out some small, medium, and large goals for the coming year. It forces you to give some shape to your efforts, set some metrics for success, and something even more important: get excited and inspired to put in the work.

Book a tour, launch a crowdfunding campaign, shoot a video, whatever. Set the goal, plan accordingly, and do it. 

See you in 2018!

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What are your goals for 2018? I’d love to hear in the comments.

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Tell your fans: 1¢ shipping on 3 or more CDs at CD Baby (between Black Friday and January 2nd)!

If your fans, friends, and family are looking for music this Christmas — send them to CDBaby.com, where they’ll pay just a penny for shipping on 3 CDs (or vinyl) or more.

‘Tis the season – the perfect time to give the gift of great independent music: YOUR music! And here’s a sweet holiday treat for your fans and loved ones: When they purchase 3 or more CDs or vinyl records from CD Baby between Black Friday (2017) and January 2nd (2018), we’ll ship them all for a penny!

5 CDs? 1 cent. 20 CDs? 1 cent! (You get the idea.) Check out the details HERE if you’re into fine print, but it’s just that simple.

This will NOT affect what you make from your CD sales or the pricing you have set. This is coming completely out of our pocket (and not your fans’). We just want to do what we can to help you sell more CDs this season!

How can you prepare?

1. Restock quickly.

We keep a close eye on your albums here. If we’re running low, we’ll email you right away and ask for more. Need to get some CDs made? No problem. There’s still time, but you better hurry. We have packages starting at just 5 CDs.

2. Review your CD pricing.

This is a great time to reduce your sale price, give your fans a DOUBLE discount, and sell more. Want to go further? Add or increase a wholesale discount and capture more sales this season through our physical distribution network.

3. Update your album notes and style description.

It’s time to make your release as enticing as possible! Head into your member dashboard and click “edit” to adjust or completely revise these sections for each title.

4. Still using 30-second clips? Consider full streaming.

Streaming full versions of your songs will give potential buyers a much better idea of what your album sounds like. You can make those adjustments from the album/song edit menu in your account. Log in HERE.

5. Maybe most important: Email your fans and let them know!

Send an email letting your friends and fans know about this shipping deal, and that the purchase of a CD or vinyl record often goes further to support the artist than a stream or download.

If you want, just copy and paste this email template:

Subject: Get 1¢ shipping when you buy 3 of my CDs (or vinyl) on CD Baby

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Still trying to find the perfect gift for the music-lover in your life? I wanted to let you know that CD Baby is charging only 1¢ for shipping when you purchase any three (or more) CDs or vinyl records between Black Friday and January 2nd. That’s ONE PENNY standard domestic or international shipping!

You can find my music right here: [paste a link to your artist or album page on cdbaby.com]

Here’s to a music-filled holiday season.

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Hopefully our one-cent holiday shipping deal gives your music promo efforts a little more ooomph this Christmas season.

If you’re looking for some other Holiday promo tips, check out “12 ways to make more money from your music this holiday season.“

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