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.

Is it the word “ratio” that brings back ugly memories of grade school arithmetic? Are you trying to avoid being called upon because you don’t know the answer? It’s simple division! Whatever the reason, if you’re going to take your band website and music career more seriously, we need to talk conversions.  So let’s start with some basics;

• If the venue says you need to sell 30 tickets and you sold 10, your conversion ratio was 33%.
• If the venue holds 500 people and only 200 people show up,  simple division tells us that the conversion was 40%.
• If 200 people came to your last show and 10 bought t-shirts, your t-shirt conversion ration was 5%.

Now, if you received 1,000 visitors to your website last month and 10 people bought a CD, your conversion ratio was  1%.

The only question left to answer is that good or bad?  I’ll answer that shortly, but  if you don’t actually know how many unique visitors you had to your website last month;  that would be bad.  You need to learn about website analytics, but I’ll save that topic for another day, maybe.  Email me if you would like to see an introduction to band website analytics.

Now. Take a look at this story by Author Bryan Eisenberg, posted on grokdotcom.com, about the BEST online retailers and their conversion rates.  What you’ll quickly see is that the very BEST online retailers, like Amazon, LL Bean and Office Depot all see conversion ratios which average around the 20% mark – for December 2008 at least.  In plain terms, that means for every 100 visitors who come to those website, 20 visitors will actually make purchases.  While this is very helpful information, I would remind everyone that these companies are the cream of the collective crop, in the midst of prime shopping season, and most have been selling online for over 10 years. There are a lot of other details about average ticket prices, number of items, time online and page views, most of which we’ll ignore to keep this lesson simple.  If nothing else, the story above illustrates that Amazon is perfecting a way to turn visitors into buyers which directly benefits anyone attempting to sell their books, DVDs or MUSIC using that channel!

Image via Wikipedia

One more VERY, VERY, VERY important topic related to selling music on Amazon, or anywhere else for that matter:  This link will show you the top 100 selling mp3 albums for 2008 on Amazon.  Before You Click – care to guess who beat out Coldplay for the number one position?  I’ll give you a hint; It was an album that was also given away for free and it wasn’t Radiohead (they were #11 on the list).  Furthermore, it was a 36 track INSTRUMENTAL album… Congrats to Trent Reznor for continuing to lead by example, that you can do great things to reach your audience and still take home the $$ to keep the lights on at the studio. Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV was the number one SELLING digital album for Amazon during 2008. Giving away music is a way to increase your sales, but again, I digress…

So what does that “conversion rate” mean to you as an independent musician/band attempting to sell some of your merchandise, CDs or digital downloads through your website?  What’s a reasonable target for conversion. My straight answer; 10%.

If your website gets 500 unique visitors each month (just 17 visitors a day) and 10% of those 500 people converted  (bought something) and finished the process spending an average of $12 for each transaction, that total ($12 x 50 people) would equate to $600 in monthly revenue.  What did your website score in extra income last month?  Finally, are you pusing all of your social media traffic from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace back to your band website?  Using the same conversion target of 10% a band with a website getting 5,000 visitors per month would be pulling down $6,000 in sales.

I realize that selling music, tickets and merchandise is not everything that music is about. I get that.  But money does provide the fuel for further future creativity.  In other words, if your music isn’t selling now you probably will not have the money to fix the van or promote the shows or afford the postage for media press kits that will get you more airplay and interviews.

SOME money is necessary to keep the wheels going round and round, and that allows you to do what you love.

-pjc

Please contribute to this website by posting your comments, questions and real-world examples below. Comments without links back to your band/music website or social page will not be approved for publishing.  Spammers and sploggers should not waste their time either. “Move along people, nothing to see here.”

Way back in 2004, during the earliest days of podcasting, before most people and trade associations like the RIAA knew what podcasts were, Chris MacDonald started the indiefeed podcast. The idea was simple; several times each week deliver one great music track with details about the artist and the song. Simple, but this idea would not have worked if it were not for the quality of music selected by Mr. MacDonald and his team based in Washington DC.

Chris MacDonald Founder of indiefeed

Indiefeed started out with a just handful of podcasts that could be subscribed to, according specific genres listeners could narrowcast themselves into. Regardless of your musical taste, the format remains the same; one good song with all the pertinent details that benefit the featured artist. As people became familiar with the idea of Podcast subscriptions, having great new music automatically downloaded to your iPod (or other audio device) established excitement and credibility, not just for indiefeed, but for all future podcasts as well. Today indiefeed provide six music genres, plus a few spoken word options that were rolled out in 2008.

According to the information Mr. MacDonald provided for this post, indiefeed averages more than 2.5 million downloads monthly, as confirmed by the Nielsen ratings service. When we break this down to unique programs each week, per musical genre, we are still left with averages that place subscriptions at roughly 20,000listeners  per genre, with nearly twice that going to the long running Alternative/Modern Rock stream (according to Chris). The current music genres, as of this posting, are:

* Alternative / Modern Rock
* Blues
* Dance
* Electronica
* Hip Hop
* Indie-Pop

With the popularity of podcasts continuing to build as people actually figure out how to use their iPods and iTunes, having your music considered for the indiefeed podcast should be a primary goal for most independent musicians. Mr. MacDonald and his staff are waiting and review every submission.  What follows is a quick preparation checklist for those of you ready for your four minutes of indiefeed fame:

1. Make sure your website is ready: Even if your track only intrigues 1% of 25,000 people who might listen to your song, make sure those 250 new visitors can take action and engage on your website. That means capturing email addresses (and zip/postal code!), providing future tour dates (not last years) and having merchandise/music available for purchase and download. Also keep in mind that while you can expect traffic to peak with early with the podcast release, do not be surprised if you continue to receive podcast traffic for a month or two following the release.

2. Make sure your music is ready: The submission form clearly states they do not want your Myspace links to music or links to download your entire album. Pick ONE track. If you need help with that, email me and I’ll find the one for you. Be sure that it is encoded to at least 128k which is what they use for their podcast (I would encourage 256kbps just to make sure your quality is at its best). I would also encourage you to make sure your mp3 file is properly tagged with all the right information (artist/album/url/etc.). Also, do not waste time with WMV, OGG or Flash file formats.

3. Make sure your background details are triple checked: On the indiefeed submission form you’ll need to provide a description of the track and a bio for your band. You’ll also need to provide artwork for your track (GIF or JPEG only), which should include both your band name and your URL (again avoid Myspace and Facebook to push traffic to your website).  Again, refrain from sending the staff to look through your flickr account and give them the ONE image they need that you want them to use, that has been triple checked for accuracy. Do not got overboard with the size – something 600 x 600 will likely cover the bases. Make your submission based on the expectation that you will be featured and if not, do not give up.  Try again in a few months with a new track.

My final strong suggestion (demand) is to actually subscribe to indiefeed.  If you’re uncertain about which genre your music would fit best with, subscribe to the feeds and listen for yourself.  Also keep in mind that many of listeners to indiefeed are musicians themselves, along with “industry types”.  If you get featured, don’t be surprised to be considered for additional interviews, tours or other possible deals.

And don’t forget who helped you!  Remember -being on your VIP guest list is all I’m asking for when you’re in NYC or Boston.

-pjc

While the former music industry crumbles into a slow, self-inflicted suicide stabbing of itself, there is an opportunity for independent musicians/bands to form alliances with independent filmmakers. Recently, I read a story in TechDirt about a independent movie production, for a movie called The Graduates, that was going to heed SEC Bad Boy Mark Cuban’s suggestion of giving away soundtracks to movie goers.  Being a big fan of both independent movies and indie music (not to mention Mark Cuban), I was really intrigued by the idea of attempting to give away 1,000,000 soundtracks to an independent movie.  So I contacted executive producer of The Graduates, Ryan Gielen, for an interview to better understand this process and how it might benefit both independent musicians and movies in the future.

SMMuG: For the bands and musicians who are not familiar with the movie making process, how do Executive Producers find music for their films?  Is there a directory, website, association or service that helps movie makers find specific types of music?

Ryan: Many films have music supervisors who seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of music. They’re like a Cinematographer in a lot of ways- they interpret the story and the tone and the textures and pick out music that expresses those things. On The Graduates we asked bands I already knew and loved, and we put out a call on several websites and blogs for music submissions. The soundtrack is a mix of both.

All told, Matt (my producer/brother) and I received about 10,000 song submissions and whittled that down to 24 songs. I didn’t particularly care where or who the music came from, I just wanted to find the perfect song for a particular scene. There are so many incredible bands looking for exposure that it wasn’t difficult to find those songs.

Ryan Gielen

SMMuG: It’s clear that your Free Soundtrack promotion would be beneficial to the movie, but what are the specific benefits that musicians would receive by participating in your project?

SMMuG: There are some good examples of strong soundtracks drawing attention to a movie, but do you seek out independent bands that have large followings in order benefit from their fan base?  If so, how did you determine what kind of following each band might have?

Ryan: For The Graduates, I never looked at the bands’ followings, because the soundtrack is not the product. The film is the product, so I wanted songs that made the film stronger. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the MySpace friends or whatever bands use to determine their fan base because I’m not a promoter or a booker, I was just looking for pieces that would help this scene or that scene.

SMMuG: What are your plans for marketing and promoting this very unique offer in the markets where your movie will be screened?  Do have street teams or what local promotional efforts are you using to raise the awareness for your film?  Are any of the bands involved in your promotional efforts?  Maybe brief concerts before or after the screening?

Ryan: When our release schedule is in place we’ll work with the bands to schedule the kinds of events you’re describing, but in the meantime we’re doing tons of grassroots outreach- emails, phone calls, blog articles. When we get close to screenings we’ll have our street teams in place along with articles and other local coverage. We’ve gotten pretty good at this- we’ve had 7 or 8 standing room only festival and sneak preview screenings in five different states. I hope we can carry that over into the release, I know we’re working our asses off to make that happen!

SMMuG: Frequently, I’ll purchase soundtracks to movies prior to actually seeing the movie – Mark Mothersbaugh’s musical influence with Wes Anderson movies are a prime example.  Watching the movie, the familiar soundtrack increases my appreciation of the movie.  Is there any discussion about getting ticket sales up front so that the soundtrack could be in possession of the movie goers prior to the screening?

Ryan: We hope the free soundtrack will have this effect. We’re giving away the soundtrack in order to generate buzz, sure, but most importantly we want people to see the quality and entertainment value of the film. We’re not just competing against $250,000 movies, we’re competing against all movies, so how does a little tiny indie like us get attention, and show off the goods? We think this is a start.

Plushgun

Plushgun is a great example. Dan Ingala was making music in his room, but he started putting it out there and playing a little in Brooklyn where he had a dedicated following, and then he let a small little web tv show use his song “Just Impolite.” They put the song in a video on the web, it got hot because it’s a great song and people could easily pass it around, I stumble on it and loved it and put it in the film. Around that time he gets invited to SXSW, later gets signed by Tommy Boy, and now he’s releasing his first full album in two weeks, and “Just Impolite” is featured in a long, critical sequence in The Graduates. But it all started with him making his great music available online for people to pass around.

Regarding directors- IMDb.com is a great place to start (the Internet Movie Database). If you pay $100 per year you can join IMDb Pro, which has contact information and production information for most people in film. Filmmakers update the status of their project and you can search for projects “in development” or “in production” or “in post production.” I would contact every single one of those filmmakers with a link to your myspace or iTunes pages and mention two songs they might dig. Make a quick mention of why the songs are good for the film: “saw this is a family drama, you might dig this acoustic track.” If you don’t want to pay the $100, chances are you have a friend or acquaintance who has IMDb Pro, I’m sure they’ll let you hop on for a good cause.

This is also why it’s smart to produce your own music videos. If you post a job on Mandy.com looking for a Director, and you do three or four videos a year, after three years you have ten to twelve young directors who know and like you and your music. Chances are these guys are going to try and make another short or feature at some point, and your music will end up in the score.

I would also put all these videos, even if it’s just concert footage, on Youtube and Blip.tv. Blip is amazing because it lets you submit to all online video sites with one click, including podcasting on iTunes. If your band recorded every concert on camera and with good audio through the soundboard, and uploaded that as a podcast to iTunes and other video sites, you would be pretty groundbreaking. And the only investment is a $500 HD camera and a couple cables to connect your laptop to the soundboard.

I think tracking down filmmakers is a lot like tracking down your audience- if you don’t put content out into the world, nobody’s going to find you… I think this is attributed to Cory Doctorow, but I completely agree: “The greatest threat to an artist is obscurity, not piracy.” There’s a reason The Dead let people tape their shows. They wanted people to hear them whether you could make the show or not. The bottom line is we all want that great distribution or record deal, but the reality is that it probably won’t happen. So artists really can’t afford to sit on their art, you have to put it out there.

—

Keyword: SMMUG

Beyond providing us with some great direction, inspiration and information, Ryan Gielen has also promised to give 100 SMMuG readers the full, 24 track soundtrack to The Graduates!  Visit the Graduates website. put the digital soundtrack in your cart and use the following code at check-out to get the whole thing for FREE: SMMUG.  Beyond getting the soundtrack for free, you’ll also be registering for an almost monthly SMMuG newsletter, from yours truly.

-pjc

So if twice as many people are looking for music videos online where is yours?

Lucky for you, my broke but artistic friend, I have answer.  We just discovered Animoto this week and it’s actually pretty slick. You can try a 30 second clip for free, or you buy a credit for one song for $3 or, if you REALLY like it, you can get an all access pass for $30 for a year (which includes hosting). While this might be a tad more expensive than something like Blip.tv, there is a great feature, ideal for music videos.

After feeding your music track and a bunch of photos to Animoto, it looks at the sound of your music and creates a unique mix of your photos in time to your music, complete with effects! Where else can you take some still pix, your music and $3 and get a hosted video?  Nowhere – but Animoto.

Please give it a shot and then let us know what you think below. Better still, post the URLs to your new Animoto made videos!

-pjc

Since late 2002, Frank Yang, the owner/operator/writer for the music review weblog called ChromeWaves has turned his passion for music into a “second full-time job”. Beyond writing really informative music reviews, Frank shares news and links to MP3’s for most of the bands featured.

His own stats link indicates that he receives about 1,600 visitor each day, which puts him the top 25 music blog websites, according to Hype Machine.  ChromeWaves is a part of the BlogAds advertising networks, so if you have the cash to spare, be sure and include this website in your a la carte order.  According to Alexa, half the traffic for this Canadian blogger is coming from outside the US.  QuantCast seems to put the volume of US readers at only about a quarter of total traffic (~10k U.S. Visitors per month).  While some might see this as a disadvantage, I think this global diversity is an amazing way for ANY band, regardless of geography, to be seen by the world at large.  Technorati gives this music blog an Authority Rank of 281, which would likely put Frank in the Top 40 of all music review blogs that Technorati monitors. The Alexa traffic ranking for the site, over the past three months has it at 184k, an impressive score for ANY website. And according to Google, there are over 28,000 websites linking to ChromeWaves.net.

What’s unquestionable is Mr. Yang’s amazing dedication to bringing great music to light for so many years, and making ChromeWaves (a name taken from a song from one of his favorite bands, Ride) an important consideration for bands of many kinds.  Recent reviews this month included; Land of Talk, Zeroes, Friendly Fires, Cut Off Your Hands, Woodpigeon, Jealous Girlfriends, Sky Larkin, Emmy The Great, Ida Maria and more.  What I love about this blog is that Frank infuses news, tour dates, video links and mp3 files within his almost daily postings.  Really great stuff.

If this sounds like a man you want to make contact with, please do NOT send him MP3 attachments.  A simple email with a link to your MySpace/Facebook or website URL will suffice.  Email your message with link to submissions at chrome waves dot net.  I’m not including a direct email link, because he didn’t and I don’t want to be responsible for spamming this already very busy man.

-pjc

—-

Your comments below are HIGHLY appreciated, but please be sure to include a URL to your website or social network page.  Any Comments submitted without a connection to a legitimate website or page will not be approved.  And spammers and sploggers can suck my cancerous nut – wherever in hell that might be.

Paste was amazing in the early days because they provided both a music sampler CD and a video sampler DVD in the same issue.  The CD would almost always contain a few jems each month and the DVD would focus on music videos, live performances, movie trailers, some occasional shorts and usually a sponsor or two.  Where could you get more for a$5 investment beyond a CD, a DVD and a great read? Actually it was even cheaper when subscribing, so that’s exactly what I did. Just a few issues later, I got the notice that they were axing the DVD sampler. And now, a couple years later, the February 2009 issue will be the last newsstand issue with a CD sampler.

According to page 32 of that issue, Paste claims they ship more than 2,000,000 CDs each year. They surveyed their subscribers and discovered that most are ripping the CD to digital and tossing the disc. Subscribers can still opt-in to receiving the physical discs, but everyone else, especially newsstand purchasers will receive a special code in each issue to download their digital samplers.  I love the idea of a special printed code unique to each magazine/person, but I like the idea of a physical CD and DVD more.   But that’s likely just my prehistoric self showing a fondness for shinny objects…

SO, why should musicians and bands care about Paste?  Because they are clearly paying attention to the trends toward digital.  And while most music magazines are still struggling to figure out how to survive, Paste seems to have things well in-hand.  The Paste website, according to both traffic monitors Alexa and Compete, saw some of the highest traffic counts in their online history right towards the end of 2008.  And while Rolling Stone still has several hundred thousand more website visitors (and magazine readers) than paste, during 2008 the traffic to Paste’s website grew by 571% compared to Rolling Stone’s meager increase of 17% (according Compete.com).

Beyond the slick digital sampler code, Paste has also created a VIP club for just $3.95 per month that I’ll be joining very shortly as well.  Beyond a cool “Members Only” t-shirt, I will also score early access to the next 11 issues of Paste digitally, all the back issues digitally, 24 full albums (digital), 11 digital samplers, exclusive MP3’s and finally a handful of those DVD Samplers that I loved so much, so many years ago.  If you want to be as cool as I’m going to be, you can subscribe as well by visiting their VIP page.  Might be your best $4 music investment for the month.

In the meantime, here’s what you need to know to get your music to Paste magazine and to their monthly Paste Culture Club podcast:

Contact Nate Douglas at:
Paste Magazine
Attn: Reviews
PO Box 1606
Decatur, GA 30031

Once your stuff arrives, follow up with Nate by email or phone: 404-207-1182

For the Paste Culture Club Podcast, contact Kevin Keller by email or phone: 404-207-1190

I look forward to reading about your band, hearing your music and watching your vids, all on the new digital versions of Paste!

-pjc

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

And “endured” might even be an understatement in the making of their new album, When the Ceiling Meets the Floor.  For about five months straight, Tyler would leave his home in NY and travel 90 minutes to work in Connecticut, then travel nearly the same time back to the studio, four or five times per week to record.   After recording into the early morning hours, Tyler would then drive about 40 minutes to get home, sleep for a few hours and then get up to do it all again.  Weekends were spent rehearsing, writing or playing a few live shows.

About half way through the recording process, Tyler’s car was hit from behind one morning on his way to work, by a bus driver. So in the midst of the recording process and $4 per gallon gas, Tyler was dealing with borrowed cars, hospital visits and insurance red tape attempting to screw him out of whatever they could.  Despite a slight concussion, Tyler and the guys held it together long enough to keep things moving forward during their nightly rendezvous at the studio.  Almost like the “two weeks” scenes out of The Money Pit, whenever someone asked Tyler were they were at in the recording process, for months the answer always seemed to be “about half-way done.”

While the personal commitments I’ve outlined are clear, what’s not usually seen or heard about are the personal relationships.  The seven months of recording, mixing and mastering the album cost the band two marriages and one serious relationship.  That’s something that does not show up on the bottom line, but should not go without mention.  Being dedicated to your music or your art, almost always comes with a price.  Those who can do both and keep their family life, business relationships and personal relationships intact, should receive medals.

Now the album is officially complete – See Tyler’s blog post and picture of the final mastered disc. Tyler gave me a copy of the master just yesterday and it really sounds amazing.  I’ll be first in line to buy 10 copies, so if you’re interested in hearing it, sign-up for my mailing list using the form on the far right of this page and I’ll send a copy to the first 10 people who put “Take One Car” in the Notes box.

During our lunch yesterday, I asked Tyler about touring to support the new release.  It sounded like he wasn’t certain.  I’m not sure if he said that because we work together and he would be concerned about loosing his job or because he truly hadn’t given it a lot of thought.  One of the original founders of Take One Car returns to the US in Spring and with the new album being released in March, it just seems to make sense.

After all this time, tragedy and personal sacrifice, the idea of NOT touring to support, and to truly celebrate this effort is totally foreign to me.  And this is not just directed toward Tyler or the band, but to all of those who’ve committed to getting their tracks heard.  To not take to the open road and meet people and visit places you have never seen before, seems like more than a missed life opportunity.  The supporting tour seems like the payoff, the return on your life invested.

There is a great moment in the movie Elizabethtown where a former musician fondly recalls his glory days; “That was my band. This was the show we opened for Lynyrd fucking Skynyrd.”  Whether you realize it or not, these are your glory days.  Please take your bow.

-pjc

Your comments below are HIGHLY appreciated, but please be sure to include a URL to your website or social network page.  Any Comments submitted without a connection to a legitimate website or page will not be approved.  And spammers and sploggers can suck my cancerous nut – wherever in Hell that might be.

During my days in the radio and music business, I had heard repeatedly that the music you listen to between the ages of 15-24 will be the music you listen to for the rest of your life.  If you are in your thirties or forties or older now, and you look at your music collection, do you find that to be true?  Odds are that you are not buying as much or listening to as much NEW music as what you did during those years.  I think 80% of us would admit that the music we enjoyed during high school, college and our early adult years is likely to be the music we will take to the grave with us.  When they put my stinky body in the ground, I want two songs played, one by The National that just came out in 2008 and one by Bob Seger that came out  when I was 15.

This dual study, surveying nearly 5,000 people,  shows that 75% of people between the ages of 18-24 and 57% of people between the ages of 25-34 have social network profiles (MySpace, Facebook and Twitter being at the top of the list). The take home here, for all you musicians, is that is THE core music loving/listening/buying audience. MySpace is popular with music lovers and the youngsters because those two “demographics” are usually one in the same.

In a prior music news post this week I mentioned how Facebook’s traffic trend is significantly better than MySpace’s.  But the other reality is that MySpace still has more users and those users are, on average younger than the current Facebook crowd.  Again, the suggestion is not that you should pick just one, but that you should be aware of the trends and get your music to where the music loving/buying/touring fans actually are.  Establishing important connections to people in this age group today will mean many years of support as you both age together.  Need proof?  Go see the Stones or Bruce Springsteen live.  This study is very positive news for those of you already making the connections on all the social networks.

-pjc

Your comments below are HIGHLY appreciated, but please be sure to include a URL to your website or social network page.  Any Comments submitted without a connection to a legitimate website or page will not be approved.  And spammers and sploggers can suck my cancerous nut – wherever in hell that might be.