November 18, 2013 
Payola, in one form or another, is as old as the music business:
Labels pay radio stations to broadcast their music, producers pay DJs to spin their records in the club, and promoters ask live bands to pay-to-play at their event.
And it’s always been a hot topic amongst musicians.
So if you’re an artist, should you ever have to pay-to-play?
October 3, 2013 Disclaimer: First of all, let me make this clear. I’m not trying to say that making it in the music industry is easy, or that everyone who reads this will become a chart success. The aim of this guide is to help you define what success means for you personally, and look at what you’re willing to do to reach your goals. I’ll also touch briefly on creating a business plan to achieving your goals and more.
Hopefully the information in this guide will give you a clearer path, and increase the likeliness that you’ll get where you want in the music industry. Again though, nothing is guaranteed, and it’ll essentially be down to your drive, your level of talent, your marketing and business knowledge, the amount if time and effort you put in and the like.
September 10, 2013 Ever wondered why some super talented musicians don’t get the fanbase and recognition they ‘deserve’, while other not as talented musicians get a lot more exposure and seen in all the right places? Well while there could be a number of different reasons for this, one of the most common is that successful person’s ability to handle the business side of the music industry. More specifically, they probably know how to market themselves well.
September 4, 2013 Hey guys, today I’m going to show you how to make a top music website which will allow you to better turn visitors into fans, capture their details for future contact, and effectively make more money from your music career. I’ve already show you how to set your site up from scratch, so I won’t be talking about that again (use that guide if you haven’t already got a music website). What I didn’t cover in that guide however, is how to structure your site to make the most of your visitors.
August 26, 2013 Important Note: This is not one of those guides with no substance that says “Work hard and you’ll achieve it”. Have a read to see what I feel you need to give yourself the best chance of success in the music industry. If you find it helpful, please share with other musicians and band members.
Shaun Letang.
Making it in the music industry isn’t an easy task at all. If anyone’s ever told you it would be, they were lying!
August 12, 2013 This is a chapter from my book The Independent Musician’s Survival Guide. You can see more chapters here.
So now you know that it’s possible to make money from your music career, and you also know you should take things one step at a time. But before you go out and start trying to earn money from your career, it’s important you take time to set goals for what you want to achieve.
While it’s easy to say, “I want to get a lot more fans” you have to ask yourself, how is saying this actually going to help you achieve your goal? It’s a non-specific “want,” rather then a well thought out business plan.
Musician, Realizing Your Goals tagged setting goals May 29, 2013 Hey guys. Today I want to look at one very important music business skill that will greatly benefit you in your quest for a ‘successful’ music career. We all have our own idea of what success is, but if to you it involves getting known on a wider scale then you already are, the below strategy will definitely help.
I’ve already looked at three other essential business skills for musicians, but this additional skill is just as important, if not more so. You should use it alongside the others for a more professional and faster moving music career.
So, let’s have a look at what the subject of today’s guide is:
Leveraging other people and platforms who currently command more influence than you.
With that in mind, let’s get into it!
January 10, 2013 Hey my Music Think Tank gang, I hope you had a good new year. That said, the turkey’s done, and it’s time to pull sleeves up and get our music business grind back on!
With that in mind, I’ve written up a guide for anyone looking for some motivation and a way to move their music career forward this year. What’s more, I’ve made it available as a free (And very pretty) ebook for you to download!
So start reading this guide below, and if you feel it could be helpful to you and want to read the rest, simply click the ebook link at the bottom of this post and download the full version.
November 29, 2012 Hello again my Think Tank friends, and welcome to part two of my beginners guide to music marketing. If you haven’t already seen part one, I suggest you check it out before going any further (Link opens in a new window). Part one looks at what music marketing is and why it’s needed, the power of leveraging established platforms to get your music out there faster, and types of online and offline platforms you could use to market your music to targeted fans of your genre.
Marketing, Marketing Strategies tagged Marketing, music marketing September 27, 2012 Ever wondered what kind of income levels are achievable as a musician? Well read on, as that’s exactly what we’re going to be looking at today.
Below is one of the chapters taken from my new book ‘The Independent Musician’s Survival Guide’. I know there’s a lot of misconceptions about how much money can actually be made from your music career, so I thought it’d be valuable to share this chapter and help you gain a more realistic view of what is achievable. There’s no hype or half truths here, this is as realistic a evaluation as you’ll likely get.
If you find this information useful, please share it on your favorite social networking sites and link to it from your site. Thank you.
September 13, 2012 Hey guys, this is a follow up to my guide on how to sell your music on iTunes and Amazon MP3. In that guide I looked firstly at the process of digitally distributing your music online, and secondly at what you need to do once your music is on there. This second point I don’t think I looked at in enough detail however, so want to talk more about it today.
While getting your songs and albums on to these big online stores is a good feeling in itself, if you want to actually makes sales of your music, getting your music on iTunes is only a small part of what you need to do. Let me explain.
June 12, 2012 Hi guys. Today, I want to share with you my views on some of the traits that makes an independent musician successful. While this isn’t a complete list of the things that they generally have in common, all of these things do tend to be defining characteristics outside of the fact that they have talent.
So read on, and see if you can incorporate any of the below points into your music career.
November 15, 2011 In any industry you go into, there are always two types of people: People that take action, and people that don’t. In fact, let’s not limit that to industries people are in. In LIFE, there are two types of people…
The people who take action are the people who usually end up getting further. They are brave enough to make things happen, and even if they don’t work out as planned, they can always give it another go.
So why am I talking about taking action? Simple, because this is exactly what a lot of musicians fail to do!
June 14, 2011 This is a response to Dan Morgan’s post “Do Social Networks Really Help Musicians?”, a post questioning how useful social networks really are for musicians. Funnily enough, I was actually planning on writing a similar post on my own website just days before. After seeing Dan’s post however, I thought I would share my views on the matter on Music Think Tank instead. There were some very good points raised both in the article and in the comments, but here’s my take on things. In short, I think social networking websites can be useful if they are used right. Having said that, I don’t think a lot of musicians use them right. Let me explain.
Social Media tagged music promotion, social media, website 