What’s the Value of a Concert to Your Audience?

One of the musicians I help on a frequent basis surprised me when he said that the band he’s been in for nearly three years, have recorded nearly every one of their live performances. Like the professionals they aspire to be, the band apparently reviews the recordings like they were game tapes, attempting to figure out what could be done to improve their performance and who screwed up where. While I had previously encouraged this band to post an open audio taping policy on their website, I’ve begun to consider something more sinister. (cue the notorious laughter)

While it’s great exposure for bands to get their live music heard by thousands, on free music torrent sites like DimeADozen.org (with their 100,000+ users (wow- I really downloaded nearly 2 terabytes of live audio & video?)) and TheTradersDen.com and etree’s live music archive (with over 3,300 bands), what if your band benefited from an open taping policy with one caveat?

Here’s the scenario;

You’re on stage in front of 600 screaming fans. You are 25 minutes into your set, in between songs, and the lead singer leans into the mic and announces, “Just so you know, we’re recording tonights show.  (Cheers)  If you want us to send you a link to download it free, put your address on the sheet by the t-shirt booth.”  That’s it.

The result? Depending on your performance, you’re likely to find a nice crowd of people surrounding your booth after the show.  Just drawing them to your booth is bound to help merch sales, because while waiting to put their name, email and zip code (ALWAYS get the zip/postal code!) down on your free concert recording list, they can’t help but stare at your cool t-shirts, CDs, 8-tracks, lunchboxes and what-have-you.  And how hard is it to create a printed form with a column for name, email and zip code?  Not hard, I just created one in 10 minutes (a PDF example is attached, but sign-up for my free SMMuG Email list off to the right and I’ll email you the Excel version so you can put in your own band logo). —> Make a dozen copies of your form, invest in a clipboard or two, and you are in business!

Now, the show is over, you dump your recording to the laptop, edit the tracks and compress to MP3.  Post the tracks up to your website using a unique path for each show; something like yourbandname.com/2009/pittsbrgmp3s/.  Email everyone on your new list, thank them for coming out, apologize for the exploding drummer and include the link to the mp3s.  You, my friend, have  just made a bunch of your people VERY happy!   And what do you have, beyond some great karma?  Well lookie there; you now have a list of fans/friends and followers who you can reach out to next time you’re coming to town! Or next time you’re releasing a new CD.  Or next time you’ve got a new t-shirt.  Or next time… You get the idea. Put that list in Excel, a database or better yet your favorite email campaign system, like MyEmma.  A few years from now you can send me a thank you card when you have 5,000 people in your system and can go just about anywhere and draw a crowd.

Now, how does this play with your taping recording policy that you’ve posted on your website? If you actually do tape all of your shows as my friend does, I would encourage the audio recording and free trading of your shows, but request a 30 day grace period before audience recorded live shows hit the trading networks.  This will increase the value for the people receiving the links to the bands mp3s since they will be the first recordings of that show available.  Not to mention that the band recordings will be from the soundboard and the other recordings are mostly audience mics. Keep in mind that tapers take their passion very seriously and it is not usual for them to get recordings from a live show up and available via bit torrents in the same day, which is why the 30 day grace period in critical to this process.    The other thing that this new process addresses are some venues who have strict policies against the audience carrying in mics, booms, laptops and harddrives to capture your show.

One last thing to consider, a lesson learned from prior Pearl Jam tours. Some of your audience members haven’t figured out how to download Mp3’s or use Torrents.  A few of your audience members haven’t figured out how to get music to their iPod. And some of your audience members would rather BUY a CD of the live show they attended, because of the convenience, or as a gift or because of the lossless quality of the music.  How easy would it be to offer that low price live CD option up to all of those who attended within the email notification to show goers? Easy. Easy money baby.

Let me now how it goes!

-pjc

I get emails from bands every week thanking me for the website and asking how they can contribute.  The best thing to do is post your comments, concerns, questions below and create a dialog with other bands and musicians.  Who knows, you might find a new collaboration amongst this little community!  Make sure your comment below has a link to your website or social media page (Myspace/Facebook/Twitter, etc.) otherwise it will not be approved.

Doing What You Love Will Not Lead to Fame or Fortune

Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a musician who is struggling to save his money to have his demo disc duplicated. I said something like, “You should do something special with the first thousand – sign & number them or something.  After that you’ll have the momentum and the cash to do more.”

This statement caught him by surprise. He wasn’t thinking about anything more than the first 1,000 copies of his CD.  In his mind, that first batch was all there would be. This person isn’t short-sighted and he wants to make music his lifelong career, but he just hand not thought in terms of scope – that there would be THOUSANDS of people who wanted to hear his music.

This is the Entrepreneurial Myth in action (also referred to as the E-Myth). The basic premise is that if you know how to do the technical aspect of something, and even if you LOVE doing that something, whether its music, art, fixing cars, doing taxes, cutting hair or cutting the lawn, that the worst thing that you could do is get into that thing as a business.  In 1985 a powerful business book was written about this subject by Michael Gerber, oddly enough called The E-Myth.  The basic problem is that if you know HOW to do the technical part of the business, like playing music, you will not do all the strategic parts of business (marketing, promotion, bookkeeping, bookings, etc.) that will cause your business to thrive.

How many people do you know who could do some technical work so they thought they could open their own Remodeling/Painting/Landscaping/Repair shop? And how many of us have had really bad experiences with those same businesses?   Are you doing the same with your music?  How much time to you set aside each week to focus on promotion, marketing and customer satisfaction?  Let me give you two real-world examples. Or maybe we’ll call these “reality” world examples.

Do you know why the band Kiss is still around, after 37 years? Unlike the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen, it isn’t because they are still putting out solid new albums.  Kiss is still here, and being talked about because of Gene Simmons.  If you haven’t seen his Family Jewels TV show, it should be required viewing for any musician or band that expects to make a career in music. Gene is the definition on an entrepreneur. He can’t write a song to save his life and his vocals are pretty rough around the edges, but what Gene delivers is total attention to marketing, licensing, promotion and customer satisfaction.  He makes sure that everyone is happy with what they got for their ticket price. I know we were all members of the Kiss army back in the day, but have you tried to listen to a Kiss album all the way through recently?  Do yourself a favor, put Season One of Family Jewels on your To-Do list for this week and get back to me after you’ve completed season three and tell me you haven’t learned something about the music business or just business in general.

My Trifecta of reality shows are basically The Apprentice, Family Jewels and Chef Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. I have eaten at one of the 11 restaurants that Mr. Ramsey owns in NYC and it was one of the most absolutely amazing meals I’ve ever had.  The man not only knows how to create an amazing culinary experience with each of his restaurants, but he also helps other restaurant owners. The premise for one of his two reality shows, Kitchen Nightmares, is that he travels to a restaurant in the US and helps the owners and the staff come to terms with how bad their restaurant is.  He provides them with the reality that the hundreds of thousands of dollars they’ve lost, is a direct result of usually just a handful of normal business tactics (inventory control, portion size, marketing, customer experience, etc.).  What I always find impressive is that in nearly every episode he draws the owner and the staff OUTSIDE their business and attempts to get them engaged with the outside world.  He gets them to give something away for free, like meatballs or pizza slices, as a way to build local buzz.  He almost always invites the local mayor, governor or a local celebrity to take part in the new Grand Re-Opening. Where so many businesses fail is in engaging their local market, because most restaurant owners would rather run their business or, to use Gerber terms “they work IN their business instead working ON their business” that they fail to be relevant to their own local customers.

So this week, work ON your music!  You will always find the time to do the work in you love, but please dedicate time to developing relationships with your potential friends, fans and followers.  Find a few music blogs that you enjoy and post some comments on the writing and the music. Develop a list of 20 radio stations that you want to send your CD to and then SEND IT. Work on getting your music heard as much as you work on creating your music.  And be sure to watch Family Jewels for other important music business lessons from Professor Gene.

-pjc