You have set up your music business and now you want to get your clients? You do not know where to start? Well there is no other tool better than networking to help you succeed in this business. Below are some tips that you can use to sharpen your networking skills which can help you grow your business leaps and bounds.
Freshen up old relationships. Reach out to old friends. It could be a small telephone call or an email or most innocent of all invite friends through social networking sites like Facebook. The key here is to just start keeping in touch and not start selling your business from day one. Try and find out more about them, their professions, their hobbies etc. Meet them up over a drink if they are in the same town. Revisit old times but do not speak much about your business. Keep in regular touch with friends who seem to have some form of interest in music. Once you have had enough communication with them and both of you feel comfortable with each other, at that time introduce your business. Remember it should never sound like you have got in touch with them just because of your business else you will lose your friends.
Next reach out to local businesses. Offer your services to them for free or nominal fee. Take part in online competitions and community events. Meet up prospective clients in these events. In fact playing in local competitions is one of the most time tested ways of getting clients. If you play well you will start developing a fan base and you can then reach out to them to give you business.
Networking with relatives is another area where you can use your networking skills. In most cases you might be aware which of your relatives are interested in music. You can keep in touch with them and speak to them about your progress and latest developments in the world of music. Once they know that you are genuine and not keeping in touch with them for getting business they will be more than happy to recommend you.
There are some golden principles of networking that you should remember: - Keep in touch with your network. Start a newsletter. It is my favourite and most effective tool here. It takes time but a solid mailing list will be your biggest asset. Take the effort to know them - their likes and dislikes and have common topics of discussion when you meet them. - Do not always talk about your business. Business will come your way if you genuinely keep in touch with them. Even if you have to talk business, let that be the last point of discussion. - Be courteous. Do not keep on bragging about yourself and how well you play. If you are good they will notice and it is always better to get praise from your customers. - Finally take time out for your network and do things for them even if it is not part of your business. When they see that you care about them, they will make sure that they will send business your way.
So you want to be a recording artist? Are you going to sing or just make the score for your music masterpiece? Are you any good? How can you know until you try? There are a lot of factors to consider when becoming a music artist or in getting started in your endeavors to create the music that you want everyone to love understand and of course play. It is so much easier now to produce your own music, whether it is the full compilation or just the musical score. Technology is advancing in ever increasing speed and while you thought you might one day want to try you may be surprised now at how easy it will be for you to do just that. You can get started the easy way from home and then as your career takes off you can move into the professional recording studios.
You could always try out for shows like the American Idol style of shows that are now on offer in almost every country of the world, even though they change the name of the show itself. However, perhaps you want to have a stab at it at home first just to make sure you don't sound terrible.
There are a wide variety of software options for creating music and you can start out with some very basic free options or you can turn to some more advanced packages it of course just depends on how committed you are to this music thing or whether you are just doing this for the fun of it. Either way check out the options you can find on the internet and perhaps find a blog or forum where other novice musicians are creating their music and get ideas from them about what might be the best software for you.
Make sure that you have written notes about the music as you can so that you can create your master piece over a period of time and remember where you were at when you started. Not everyone can create music in one day or one afternoon so you will generally need to come back to your music at different periods and if you keep good notes you will easily be able to pick up from where you left off.
When you are using home systemsmake sure that you have some set up on the software or program that you are automatically constantly saving your work because the last thing you want is that you forget to save something and the power goes out or your cat jumps on the keyboard while you are in the middle of getting the notes down just how you want them. In fact lock the cat out because you don't want a meow in the middle of your tracks either....unless you're a weirdo(!).
On that note make sure that you set up the area where you are going to do your work to be as comfortable and suitable for the type of recording you are going to be doing. You don't want to be recording in a room that is facing the street and mixing engine noise in with your music, unless of course that was your intention from the start?
Now there are a lot of steps to actually getting to your final product so make sure you take your time and get the desired results from your music. When you are finished make sure you give your music to others to listen too before you go sending out your tracks torecording studios. While you may think your music is fantastic and your mother or your wife or husband say it is just wonderful, it may be possible that they are just not willing to hurt your feelings.
Find a good friend who you know will be honest with you and have them listen to it. Or find a complete stranger who couldn't care less whether they hurt your feelings and get their response. You don't want to be in the position that you are actually perhaps not very good at this. If that does happen then you can tell all that it was about your music software and that you will give it another shot when you find a better program. But hey that maybe just me because I know I couldn't do it. Either way, why not just give it a go if it has been a dream then you should give yourself the chance to turn it into a reality.
Flying in the face of the widespread notion amongst a large majority of musicians I am not doing the world a favour by making my music available to listen to. I am making it available to listen to as, firstly, I enjoy creating it immensely. Secondly I would like to think that someone out there somewhere might get a kick out of it and it may brighten their day, take their mind off unpleasantries or give someone some food for thought or discussion. Thirdly, there is nothing more that I can do with it.
Having put my music here, there and everywhere for the above reasons, at the end of the day the choice is yours as to whether you decide to listen to it or not. It doesn’t take hours of listening to figure out whether you dig someones’ music or not.
The next choice that is yours is if you decide that you like a particular artists work enough to follow their progress then it is easy enough to follow them. If you decide that you like my genre of music then the form immediately below places you on my mailing list thus enabling me to immediately notify you of a current release.
Hopefully you are not swayed by glossy posters expensive advertising campaigns and the likes. Keith Richards oft-quoted view on music is, "Pass it on." I like to take his perspective on music one step further, particularly with regard to my own personal musical road and add, "Nothing is weird." I choose to record the genre of music that I do, that’s all. It’s you who make the choice as to whether you dig it or not.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, all one had to do to listen to music was switch on what was called
a radio. Admittedly the reception wasn't always the best and the selection of music left something to be desired but it was all we had and were happy with it. It has become blindingly (and deafeningly) obvious that we weren't.
The next great leap forward was the record player. People were now able to pick and choose who they listened to and when. The tape deck soon followed, making it possible to not only store larger amounts of music which was increasing in diversity faster than technology at the time but to transport around with us almost everywhere we went.
One morning I woke up and discovered that the aforementioned sound-players had been trampled almost to death by 'things' with names that still make no sense to me. CDs were but a dream. Admittedly I am middle-aged in years but I have never viewed myself as being middle-aged in mind. I guess most people my age don't. I have something of a minor mental dilemma with the speed at which technology is advancing today and my reaction to it and the speed at which it was advancing a generation ago and middle-aged peoples' responses to it then.
My parents speak first-hand about the invention of the television. There's no mention of confusion about the event. Quite the opposite. They tell me that my grandparents were the same. They also speak first-hand of 'Beatlemania' and how The Rolling Stones arrived as the bad boys of the scene merely because of their supposedly long and unkempt hair. Imagine how two groups of English guys playing music seemed to have more of an effect than the television?
Slightly earlier in the United States Elvis Presley caused something of a stir with his adventurous hip-swivelling. It was hardy the work of Satan but certain parts of American society at the time made enough of an issue about it that he was only filmed from the waist up on The Ed Sullivan Show. This merely served to increase his popularity. (I wonder if those people are still around?).
Now that music has become so easy to access it's difficult to take in. One certainly can't take in all of it and even taking in what you like would be more than a full-time occupation. Irrespective, record companies, internet sites, companies producing sound devices and a string of other interested parties are doing their darndest to force-feed their 'products' upon us. By 'products' I refer to anything to do with you listening to a song. The band, the individual artist, the record label, the merchandise, the sound device, the box-set DVD, the speakers, the earpieces and so forth.
I still have no idea what 'mp3' actually stands for. I know that it's a type of sound file and the type of sound file that my music is stored in. I know that an iPod plays mp3 files. I have only a vague idea of what a 'Blackberry' is. I assume that it's a 'fifty-billion-devices-in-one' affair with another
ninety-billion apps. I know that an app is an application and in the computer world it's something that's added on which makes something do more.
As a musician you may wonder why I'm so ignorant about these things as they are part of what I do. I choose to remain ignorant, not as something to boast loudly about as do (far too) many people who think inverted snobbery is cool (man). I do so because I don't need to know. I don't need to know how many Mbs a song is. I do need to know at what bit-rate it's processed at for various sites. These are things that I have picked up along the way through necessity. This very laptop on which I'm typing can do 90% more than it does but I don't need it to, just the same as I don't have any need to learn rock-climbing.
I'm on Twitter as scotsbob. That's a funny sort of thing. I was rather enjoying it until they got rid of FutureTweets. The only reason that I go on there now is that, for what ever reason, it does well in the Google search engine. Really well, infact. I only have to think about Twitter and an alert comes up. It's a bit beyond my scope of knowledge or great interest, but I'll take what's there.
I deliberately mentioned Twitter as a segue into percentages.
As an independent musician it's all about percentages. For those of you reading who are independent musicians, sit down and have a
shot of something strong. You're not going to like what you hear initially but ideally it will spur you on, as it has me, to keep chiseling away without waiting for every day to be 'the day' or to lose faith in yourself.
The hit rate for the independent musician is approximately 0.1%. This figure is pretty consistent across each individual set and thus, obviously, them all combined. One sale per thousand supporters. It doesn't sound good, eh? There is an upside. I have found that this one sale per thousand transfers somehow. It may not be the same person but it does seem to transfer. Any independent musician who gives astronomical percentages should be signed by Columbia Records or the likes as it is such figures that attract such companies. Either that or their family and friends are buying multiple copies of their material.
As for supporters, such a small percentage is partly to do with 'cross-supporting,' that is supporting an artist on different websites. This gives a falsely high reading and should be accounted for. There is also the sincerity factor. In the age where one can type compliments to an artist the actual sincerity of it may be questioned. On the flip-side it can be argued that a compliment doesn't need to transfer in financial terms to be sincere. I enjoy many genres of music but I don't purchase it.
This leaves the independent musician with a few punches to roll with and some rough calculations to do. I don't believe that there is such a thing as too much advertising. I do, however,
believe that there does exist advertising which is too aggressive and inappropriate.
Spreading oneself far and wide is all very well but it should be calculated, weighted and timed. I'm not one for putting every song that I have recorded on every website that I'm on. I only put a few on each site, generally a similar collection but not identical. I have recently taken to making each single available for download as soon as it is released. I use the same message on each of my sites and run a brief 'coming soon' campaign. I also make it clear on each site that they are not available on iTunes as some sites deceptively give the impression. I discovered through experience that once I had paid my fee for an album I basically vanished into a tiny silver button. Not at all handy for promotional purposes.
I have been distributing digital downloads via Nimbit for some months now using their free account and can't speak highly enough of them. I have been reliably informed by numerous people that the download process is a smooth affair and the fact that they offer PayPal as an option is a real bonus to those who have downloaded. For the artist they also provide outstanding tracking statistics, an easy website install with individual codes for each storefront to track performance and their MyStore can be added as a tab on both Facebook profiles and pages.
I have also been using Audiolife for some time as they cater
for physical CDs. Again, their digital downloads are an easy affair and CD delivery is prompt. I would suggest using the cheapest option as this option took 14 days exactly to reach Tasmania from the date of purchase. Audiolife is also now in partnership with ReverbNation whose store utilises Audiolife software.
If you are an independent musician who is reliant on music as a an income, as I am, prepare yourself for stress and be patient. many people say that hope is over-rated. It's only over-rated if you become totally reliant on it.
To become totally reliant on hope is detracting from your primary focus in the industry. You are a musician first and foremost. The remaining factors are necessities but one has to have a song to advertise, show off, and so forth. Keeping ones eye on the song and not the dollar will reduce stress no end.
So, am I a grumpy old musician? You bet.....but not really.
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