11 Ways To Be A Happier Musician Person

As artists we are constantly evaluating ourselves…and others. In order to succeed we make many sacrifices such as financial, social, emotional, or physical. I don’t believe in the “tortured artist”. Being an artist can be a hard life, but it doesn’t have to be. If you are mindful of what’s going on with you and the world around you, you’ll realize being an artist can be the most rewarding and fulfilling path you can take if you’re willing to work for it.

1) It’s about the journey, not the destination.

Stop comparing yourself to others. Everyone has their own struggles that you know nothing about. Stop coveting others’ success. It’s cancer for your band. Stop perceiving others as a threat and try not to be so hard on yourself. It’s not about all about the numbers or followers. It’s about you and who is connecting with what you do. If you’re in it for fame, you’re in it for the wrong reason. Focus on what you have accomplished and what strengths you do have and try being happy for others’ success. Everyone has their own path…and if you’re not happy with where yours is taking you, change it.

2) Stop the hate.

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What Does Free Streaming Mean for the Music Industry?

Music lovers everywhere can rejoice! T-Mobile announced that customers can stream music without worrying about going over their data. Users will be able to use apps like Pandora, Slacker Radio, iHeart Radio and Spotify on the latest T-Mobile phones and tablets like the Galaxy Note 3 to listen to music whenever and wherever they want. While this is obviously great for consumers, what does this do for the musicians? How are streaming services affecting the music industry? While there are some doubts that this move benefits the industry, the outlook is generally favorable.

Increased Exposure for Artists

In 2013, Nielson reported that 68 percent of Americans used music streaming services in the past year, and that sales of music went down 6.3 percent. Although this could hurt bigger artists, independent and lesser-known musicians can enjoy an increase in exposure by putting their music on this medium.

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MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: 6 Social Media Tips for Entrepreneurs

• Megan Frisbee | 6 Social Media Tips for Entrepreneurs 

• Dave Kusek | Music Business Strategies

MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: 6 Social Media Tips for Entrepreneurs

6 Social Media Tips for Entertainers

Although some businesses are still trying to figure out the value of building a fan base on social media, many entertainers have long understood that attracting a vibrant community of fans is critical to their success. Perhaps this is why entertainers were among the first to embrace social media as a way to engage and communicate with fans. Since the most effective marketing strategies include building a broad, dynamic, and engaged community around your act or business, social media can represent a healthy percentage of your marketing efforts. There’s much more to social strategy than creating a fan page, posting photos, or amassing a large following on Twitter.

By adding your own personality and flair to the following steps, you’ll be well on your way to a successful social media strategy.

1. Choose Quality Over Quantity

You’re a busy person! You don’t have time to pour hours and hours into having an amazing social media presence across multiple platforms, and that’s okay! Instead of having a mediocre presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, it’s better to have a strong presence on one or two of these platforms. Choose the social network(s) that suit your business the best and encourage the most interaction from fans and clients.

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Music Business Strategies

There are a lot of musicians out there struggling to pay the rent, grow their fan base, and make a profit on tour. It’s a tough road, but if you’re dedicated you can make music your career. In today’s music business, it’s not about forcing yourself into a one-size-fits-all box, or throwing a dice and hoping for the best. It’s about building the right career for YOU and YOUR music, experimenting, learning, and adapting to change. Today, you are an entrepreneur, not a product, and great success is waiting for musicians with this mindset. 

The New Artist Model is all about thinking of your music career like a business and using creative strategies to start growing now with the tools and resources you have available. In the New Artist Model FREE E-book, you’ll get a glimpse at some of the proven strategies we discuss in the full online course. Click the image to download your copy and check out the 10 key points of the New Artist Model below.

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MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: Who Stole the Music Business? (And How You Can Get a Piece of the Loot)

• Jack Hayford | Who Stole the Music Business? (And How You Can Get a Piece of the Loot)

• Liz Uhl | Increasing Your YouTube Views

MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: Who Stole the Music Business? (And How You Can Get a Piece of the Loot)

Increasing Your YouTube Views

We’ve been focusing a lot lately on online promotion and SEO for videos. Through this process we have been doing a lot of tests to see what works and what doesn’t and we’ve only been getting better results. There are so many scams and companies out there that offer fake numbers. This is never a good option – the whole reason to release and promote anything online is to either entertain your current fans and/or gain new fans. It’s easy to release a music video for the benefit of your current fans and it’s important to do things to show your appreciation for them. What we have been focusing on instead is how to increase your fan base and get views from people who have never heard of you before.

The strategy of uploading a video to YouTube and then posting it on your Website, Facebook page and tweeting about it isn’t enough and you wont be gaining new viewers using this method.

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Who Stole the Music Business? (And How You Can Get a Piece of the Loot)

Are you a musician? Are you a songwriter? Did you wake up one day not long ago and say “WTF? Who stole the music business?”

With CD sales about half what they were 15 years ago, and the “new media” radio stations like Pandora, Spotify, Grooveshark, et al, reportedly paying out pittances for even millions of airplays, you’re not alone.

And you’re right. Someone did steal the music business. But it may not be who you think and there just might be a remedy available to you.

Game Changer

Once the mp3 was invented, and the historical physical music product (rolls, records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs) was transformed into a VIRTUAL product that could easily be captured (stolen) and shared with “peers,” the game was over for making money from music distribution. It has been downhill ever since.

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MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: Why Email Newsletters Are Still a Vital Marketing Tool for Musicians

• Dave Cool | Why Email Newsletters Are Still a Vital Marketing Tool for Musicians 

• Thomas Honeyman | How Art Became Advertising

• Lukas Camenzind | What I Learned About Songwriting From Being Stuck In Traffic

MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: Why Email Newsletters Are Still a Vital Marketing Tool for Musicians

How Art Became Advertising

In the early days of the Internet, an hourglass turned over. The grains of sand counted down the moments until the old creative industries inevitably collapsed. Everyone knew content companies like music and publishing were screwed; they had to reinvent themselves to take advantage of the Internet or they would rapidly become obsolete. As they began to fail, we blamed them for being too stupid, too slow to innovate.

The Internet helped to end the old music & publishing industries. But we also hoped it would bring newer, more profitable models to fill the chasm. Unfortunately, the last decade has been rough for creators trying to scrape together a living through writing, music, film, and art. Digital downloads, subscriptions, and advertising have emerged as the new models we were looking for, but they’ve done little to stem the bleeding from lost physical sales.

Advertising has had a curious effect on the Internet. It has helped foster a culture which expects art, software, and other non-physical goods to be provided for free. This hasn’t exactly been a blessing for industries like the recorded music business, which has suffered immensely over the past 15 years.

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What I Learned About Songwriting From Being Stuck in Traffic

Attention Songwriters! This is how to write songs that connect with your fans, so that they’ll want to play it again, and again, and again…

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Why Email Newsletters Are Still a Vital Marketing Tool for Musicians

This post originally appeared on the Bandzoogle blog. Dave Cool is the Director of Artist Relations for musician website & marketing platform Bandzoogle. Twitter: @Bandzoogle | @dave_cool

“Email newsletters, an old-school artifact of the web that was supposed to die along with dial-up connections, are not only still around, but very much on the march.”

That quote is from a recent New York Times article “For Email Newsletters, a Death Greatly Exaggerated”. We thought it was a good time to reiterate why we think email newsletters are still one of the most effective promotional tools for musicians today, which is also why Bandzoogle continues to offer a mailing list tool with all of our plans:

5 Solid Reasons to Use Email Newsletters

1) You own the list

For bands that have been around since MySpace was still a thing, remember all those fans you had? Well, MySpace owned their data, not you. If you didn’t get them signed-up to your mailing list, chances are you lost contact with many of them when you had to start over on Facebook.

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MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: 16-Point Band Website Assessment Checklist

Dave Cool | 16-Point Band Website Assessment Checklist

Sari Delmar | What They Really Mean: The Musician’s Guide to Industry Speak

Andy Lykens | How To Reach The Best Music Business Contacts. Period.

MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: 16-Point Band Website Assessment Checklist

How To Reach The Best Music Business Contacts. Period.

Lately I have had the opportunity to talk to a lot of subscribers and it’s been a very cool process. So many of you have had some success in the music licensing world, or are getting approached by companies to sign agreements and have your music represented in third party catalogs. But the most common question I see is:

Who do I reach out to in the first place?

And while this answer depends on your main goals (do you want to pitch music yourself or work with a company? Are you looking for a major label deal or trying to get into a music library?) the process for finding your key contacts is the same.

Imagine that you no longer feel like you’re sitting and waiting for something to happen. You’ve invested time, energy, and probably a good amount of cash into your music but you can’t help but feel like you need to do something to get noticed.

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