Fair Trade Music in Portland, OR

It’s a common stereotype, a broke musician, bumming from family and friends until they “make it”, whatever “it” is. Time and time again, musicians are faced with a very raw and exploitative deal in exchange for their professional services. Has anyone ever tried to pay their rent with hamburgers and pizza slices? If you have, seriously, email me I’d love to find out how you managed to pull it off. Here in Portland, Oregon we have decided what “it” is, a living. We have rallied a few hundred musicians around the idea that their time is worth something, and the service they provide to the bars, restaurants and coffee houses of our city is a valuable one.

Click to read more ...

How to Gain 200 Fans a Week

I read a great article by Brian Mazzaferri from the pop-rock band I Fight Dragons. Brian’s article went into great detail on how they organically started to gain 200 new fans a week.

His points are so valid and real that it inspired me to delve a little bit deeper into their strategy.

Here is the breakdown of the top 3 things they put into place to begin gaining fans

Click to read more ...

Intriguing SXSW - Attaching Yourself to the Known

Got back home, a song repeating in my head so i head to my nearest music service, this being Youtube.  I type in the bands abbreviation[it’s a long band name], knowing that what i am after will come up.  I’ve been here before…

I see a familiar frame so click on said video.

Click to read more ...

Putting It Into Practise - A Free Album Case Study

I wrote on here a while back, triggered in part by a popular blog posting, about how musicians are indeed embracing the web as a tool for promotion.  I later got to thinking about what I was doing, and how I could start to do more to boost my own profile as a musician.

I had been coming around to this gradually, and in May ‘09 had started a blog - thinking, initially, that if I could write an interesting music blog (not necessarily about myself) that gained regular readers, then I could later use it when I had something to promote.  This process really opened my eyes to how musicians can (or do) use the internet and blogging networks to ‘spread the word’, and after a free track that I gave away made it all the way to the website of The Guardian (UK newspaper) I was excited.

Click to read more ...

Interview with Salem on the Risan Project – The International Multi-Media ECO Tour

The Risan Project utilizes multi-media events to raise awareness of climate change and the praxis of alternative lifestyles. The message of the tour is derived from the belief that environmental policy must reflect the acknowledgement of a global climate crisis. Affecting policy decisions begins with knowledge and awareness of the current state of the environment and alternatives to current systems of energy production and usage.

Click to read more ...

The Process of Innovation - Think Social!

This is an awesome topic that I love to share with people whenever I can.

Innovation is something that can be thought of in several different ways, however there are good ways, and then there are better ones.

Innovation can be basically anything that solves a problem that has not been previously solved, or it can be something that solves a problem that was previously solved, while solving other problems at the same time(these are the better ones).

Click to read more ...

What's Your Fan Pipeline?

How does someone with ears transform into a fan so obsessive they dig through your garbage?

Click to read more ...

Reverse Piracy: Pirate Your Own Music

Believe it or not, free and paid downloads can co-exist. To make it work you must have an appetite for innovation and a fearless entrepreneurial spirit. Why not revolutionize music e-commerce by placing a “Buy” button side-by-side with a “Download” button for your entire catalog of music on your website? Yes—every single song and every single album.

Click to read more ...

Creating a world for your customers to live in - Marketing and its direction in the modern environment

Today we want to buy into an experience, not just a physical product. We look at different options and think about aspects such as

• What is the environmental impact of the product I am buying?
• What is the company’s approach to business? (a prime example is Apple’s modern youth vs. Microsoft’s cumbersome heritage)
• What do other consumers think?
• How is the product being developed over time to match my needs?

Amongst other things, these aspects of how a company presents itself and its products to its sector are indicative of the change of focus. A brief history of how marketing has come about can help to put into context how some companies work, and more importantly can showus where to place our marketing focus in future projects:

Click to read more ...

How can Musicians get Paid already?

This is probably one of the most common questions I get asked when I talk about my website. It turns out there is not just one answer, which is definitely a good thing.

There are many different ways artists can get paid today. The most common ones are to sell their CD’s, sell their merchandise, and sell shows. But especially with the internet’s explosion, there are more ways to make money than ever. I will get to these in a minute.

First of all, selling CD’s, merch, and shows sounds easy enough, but it all requires effective promotion. This promotion can be an investment in itself. Buying magazine or radio ad space can get pretty expensive, and there’s no guarantees. Also, online promotion is pretty ineffective at allowing you to reach new people everyday. You are almost limited to the people you know.

Click to read more ...

How to create Song Survey

Last month or so, Eric wrote a post titled “The Best Kind of Feedback”. I have taken his survey suggestions and dropped them into the new song survey module on Music Xray.

Music Xray users can design any song survey they want.

Click here to try the Song Survey I created.

Click to read more ...

Is Perfectionism Choking your Project's Music Creativity?

Ah, the Inner Editor of perfectionism…we all have one. Some of us know how to keep this guy in a straight jacket but others seem to let him bounce around the walls of our studio, whining and complaining about every detail until he’s left us tired and uninspired. There’s a time and place to let your Inner Perfectionism have the reigns but when you’re first working on a production or creating new music it is not the time. As creative people we all have to learn the mental personality called the Inner Editor and choose to control him and use him what he’s made for: Editing. If you are not editing but actually CREATING then the Inner Editing should be locked in..

Click to read more ...

Why isn’t Netflix failing like everything else?

Netflix, the world’s largest video subscription service recently announced that fourth-quarter profits jumped 36 percent to $30.9 million from $22.7 million in 2008’s final quarter. Sales this past year were $445 million and Netflix expects to have 13.8 million subscribers by the end of the first quarter on 2010. Meanwhile, overall music sales are up only 2.1% over the previous year, bringing in about 1.5 billion dollars. That’s right – a single company – brought in almost a third as much revenue as the entire music industry. So what do Netflix and the music industry have in common?

Click to read more ...

Why You Shouldn't Hide Your Songs Under a Bush

We’ve all heard the old stories about the artist who submitted their song to someone in the music business and never heard back. Then, at some point in the future they heard their song on the radio as a smash hit recorded by someone else and the whole thing ended up in a contentious lawsuit or simply never got resolved. These days, some artists believe that when they put their songs “out there” they run the risk of it spreading virally and millions of people will end up listening to the song but the artist never will never see a dime.

As in every industry, the music industry has its share of unscrupulous people so I’ll never go as far as to say that this won’t ever happen again but in my opinion, the potential rewards of getting your songs heard far outweigh the risks.  Here are four points that illustrate why:

Click to read more ...