The Importance Of Record-Keeping For A Band

If you’re an active musician who enjoys payment in any way, you’ll probably have to do taxes eventually. Unless you’re giving all of your music and merchandise for free, you may have already missed an important amount of work that could get you in trouble with the government. That’s normal — musicians don’t always think about it, happy their art is finally making back more than what they’re putting in. But eventually, it needs to be addressed.

See, when you have a band, in a lot of ways you are running your own small business. You are selling a product, no matter how much integrity you have in putting it together. And where there’s a profit, there’s taxes to be done and records to be kept. If you don’t get this taken care of, it could ruin your band/music later.

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Musicians And Their Online Personas

Here is the lowdown on the importance of navigating your music career through the internet: what you need to do with it, where we’re going, and how to maintain a reputation.

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The Legalities Of Touring

You’ve read these tour articles a thousand times — I’ve written plenty of them. By this point it’s no surprise that touring is hard. It’s no surprise that touring is expensive. And it’s no surprise that making your money back doesn’t often happen for DIY bands on their first couple of trips.

That said however, there are legalities to consider. A band is a business, whether you want it to be or not. A tour is a venture. And musicians are people who bring their own lives and difficulties to the table. So when you’re looking to tour, consider some of the legal problems that could stop you from being able to fully experience or continue to tour in the future!

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Financial Lifehacks For Musicians

To dedicate a good amount of your time, energy, and resources on music is to accept that the financial reward rarely even doubles the sacrifice you put in. If you want to take your music seriously — even as a serious hobby — this makes some of your personal expenses a little bit harder to come by.

Whether it’s food, travel, or healthcare and insurance, the musician life is not always an easy one. However, hard is not the same thing as impossible. Here are some basic life hacks for saving money as a musician.

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4 Most Important iPhone Apps On Tour

When it comes to U.S. and Canadian musicians, it seems that we’ve chosen Apple to provide us with the best mobile devices. Some musicians tend to choose Android, but for the most part we seem pretty set on the iPhone. Whether that’s my old hand-me-down iPhone 5 from family or the newer, fancier kind of models, it just seems that we all enjoy those the best. That said, I think it’s well overdue that we put together a list of the best iPhone apps to have on the road (besides Maps, because, you know, duh). These are my most used apps that are specifically beneficial to touring.

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5 Albums To Roadtrip To This Winter

The “holiday season” as it’s called is a time of change and contemplation, as well as travel. A lot of us end up traveling for the holidays, driving for long periods of time through snowstorms and fog to see our loved ones. Some of us just use the winter time to go skiing or see new places that thrive in snowy environments. Whether you’re riding along with your snowbird parents or just going by yourself, a fun part of preparation is what you’ll be listening to.

Road tripping, moving, simple holiday travels — the soundtrack to your journey will often stay with your memories of it. Here are some of my favorite winter-travel tunes.

1. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (Soundtrack)

If you’re driving with a loved one, this is a good 41 minutes of conversation music. I know that Christmas is already over, but if you are still in the holiday spirit, this record is for you. Not only will it keep you in the mood for Christmas, but it’s not overwhelmingly loud on the vocals, so you can continue to chat while it plays in the background.

2. “Even If It Kills Me” by Motion City Soundtrack

This is a great driving in the snow record for people my age who remember the “emo” days of junior high and high school. Really an underrated talent, Motion City Soundtrack’s “Even If It Kills Me” is an album that got lost in the shadow of its precursors and peers. The mood of the album is sad and mellow, but yet pretty hopeful at the end of it and has some great, emotionally intense moments. I remember listening to this in the back of my parents car in the tenth grade while driving up to McCall, ID, and I’ll always look at it as a winter album. It’s a great one to sing along to with a friend or family member who also loves it.

3. “Reunion Tour” by the Weakerthans

A lot of people talk about the album Reconstruction Site, but I think it’s a bit too country for a drive through the cold and snow, albeit emotional and sad in the way the Weakerthans are so good at. Reunion Tour begins with a song, “Civil Twilight”, about a Canadian bus driver in the winter reminiscing, and if that doesn’t say “midnight drive in the snow” to you then I don’t know what does. As the album goes on, the emotional tones of the record along with the contemplative, reflective, and remorseful lyrics work to help you reflect on your year and think about some of the deeper questions of life (it is John K. Samson, of course).

4. “Let it Snow Baby, Let it Reindeer” by Relient K

Again, high school was cool. Relient K’s Christmas album really takes me back to — again — driving in the snow, all winter of 2008. Religious lyrics aside, this is just a fun album to listen to if you want a more upbeat, punky approach to typical Christmas songs. It’s silly, fun, and lighthearted. While most of the albums I’ve listed here are more sad or contemplative, this album does a little bit of everything while still leaving you with a smile on your face.

5. “For Emma, Forever Ago” by Bon Iver

This record has a somber, wintery feel that really fits the mood in the middle of a road trip. Driving through a snowstorm, nothing totally keeps you contemplative and peaceful feeling like the debut release by Wisconsin’s Bon Iver, AKA Justin Vernon. It depends, of course, on how the holidays make you feel. But for me this is a great album if I want to think about life and contemplate where I’ve come in the past year.

What are your favorite winter road trip albums? If you don’t celebrate Christmas but still travel for the holidays, what songs do you listen to and what holiday do you celebrate? Let me know on Twitter @Robolitious.

5 Albums To Roadtrip To This Winter

What's The Appeal For Children's Music

Something I’ve noticed getting older is how many of my favorite musicians growing up have found a new home in children’s music. They haven’t discontinued their projects to sound differently, of course, but a plethora of side projects seem to have come out of newer times in their lives. With so many of them making this transition, or at least trying it out, I have to at least wonder if I’m missing something. Or will I become like them?

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Maintaining A Relationship While Touring

Many of my friends at this point in life are touring musicians, and many of them are dating people they are not touring with. It’s no mystery that dating on the road can be hard. I mean, how many songs have been written about the subject?

Any podcast that has to do with DIY touring will tell you that in the 90s there were a lot of stop-and-go, using the payphone, sending letters and postcards, paging significant others, and other stressful situations happening in those days.

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Canadian/Mexican Bands Coming To The US: Pay Attention!

If I wanted to travel from Idaho to Canada and play music for a month, I could do so free of charge. If you live in Canada and want to cross the border to play in the United States, it’s much more complicated. Why is this? Well, the United States can be pretty hostile to foreign travelers, as most of us are aware. Additionally, navigating a new culture and place in a foreign country can be hard. In addition to your normal road trip preparations, there are a bunch of legal complications you need to account for. I want to talk about some of them here and hopefully your band won’t struggle as much while you try to play music and enjoy these troubled states.

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Judging An Album By Its Cover

“I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I’ve found you can judge an album by its cover.”

My friend recently said this to me and while I kind of hate to admit it, I also have found a positive correlation between good music and aesthetically pleasing packaging. If nobody’s heard your music before, the artwork may be the difference between skipping over it or checking it out - especially in the digital age where there’s so much music available for free. Here are some tips I drafted up for creating and choosing the correct album art.

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More Money, More Problems!

Often times, people look at their band/music project as an endless money pit. They view it as impossible to break even. However, I’d argue that over time, breaking even is pretty attainable. A lot of young bands don’t pay enough attention to money - they give up early and view their losses as necessary evils for the sake of “the game,” so to speak. And they also give way too much away for free. That’s fine if free merch is your thing and you’re not concerned with breaking even (in fact, I think that’s noble of you). But if the reason you’re doing that is due to an idea that success comes only from terrible losses, I think you’re wrong. You can start making money now, and it’ll probably help you to continue your music henceforth.

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Three Ways The Internet Hates Your Band

I am 24 years old and have a marketing job, college education, cute girlfriend and parent’s rockin’ health insurance. So I guess I have absolutely no place to talk about how hard my life is or how difficult it is to get my music out there into the hands of people who would rather pirate the newest Taylor/Bieber/Gomez/Kanye/whatever record than download mine for free off of Bandcamp. But I guess I’m going to, because a lot of you reading this are probably in a similar position.

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Music Mailing Lists: Yes Or No?

I used to get e-mails from Paper + Plastick Records about free downloads once a week or once a month (to be honest, I don’t remember which). While it felt a little overwhelming at times, I also found myself being informed about new bands and releases I really cared about. Bands like Flatfoot 56 and The Braces who I’d followed for years were putting out new releases and I was getting mp3s and updates pretty regularly on their new stuff. Facebook worked for this as well, but I didn’t get free music out of it!

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A Musician's Guide To Simple Drinking

The difference between an athlete and a musician is that while the former can’t drink on the job, the latter often do. But as with all drinking, uncontrolled, there can be consequences. Here’s a guide to simple drinking: for musicians.

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