A Musician's Guide To Setting And Achieving Goals For 2011

It’s a new year and a clear slate is in front of all of us. The turning of the calendar from 2010 to 2011 is an ideal time to set your goals. I see a marked difference between artists who set finite goals and those who do not.

Many of you may have seen a previous version of this article (or another one) on setting goals as they crop up at this time of year.

Ask yourself: Is this the year I want to make a difference for my musical career?  And if so – what difference and how?

Think of goal setting as if you were driving in a foreign place - You wouldn’t get where you expect to go without a clear set of directions.

Goal setting is like drawing a map for yourself.

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An Argument Against Fan Funding

Anyone can make a record for next to nothing these days. Almost any other hobby is more expensive: photography, mountain biking, even video gaming. When a teenager singing into a webcam gets exponentially more views on YouTube than your latest “professional” video, the answer isn’t more money.

You’re just not there yet. (hey, don’t feel bad - I’m not either) Tracking at Abbey Road Studios won’t get you there. Hiring T-Bone Burnett to mix your album won’t get you there. A full-day mastering session with Bob Ludwig won’t get you there. 10,000 pressed CDs with 18-page inserts won’t get you there. A $5,000 promotion budget won’t get you there either. No matter how much money you throw at your project, we’re all limited by a stubborn principle called free market pricing. People are only willing to pay what a product is worth to them, not what it costs to produce. The intrinsic value of music is in free fall, and people won’t pay for it if they’re just not that into you. So why are musicians flocking to fan funding (also known as “crowdfunding”) sites like Kickstarter, Sellaband, Slicethepie, PledgeMusic, and artistShare in droves? My guess is that they figure “why not give it a shot”? Well, I’ll tell you why not, and offer a better option.

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Myspace - Now With Glitter

The first thing you should know about the Product Manager for MySpace Music is that he’s an independent musician. He’s in a band called Big Kid. That’s him playing the drums. He also writes most of the songs. I found that both encouraging and surprising.

Myspace Product Manager Steve Clark approached me through my blog to have a chat about what was going on at Myspace, the big changes that they were making, and what they were doing to belatedly address the fact that they have access to (as I put it) every frickin’ band on the planet.

Now, I’ve been critical of Myspace in the past (to say the least). My complaints have been many and varied, but my concerns have been especially with respect to the fact that all of their efforts in the music space have been directed exclusively at major labels - and the fact that as an interface, both for artists and for fans, it’s a pile of crap.

A friend of mine once joked that you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. Basically, Myspace has been rolled in glitter.

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The Jango Focus Group

Devo got loads of press by letting fans choose everything from the songs on their new album to the color of their hats. If you’re secure enough to make your own wardrobe decisions, you can get useful feedback on your songs by conducting a focus group on Jango. It only cost me $75 to play 12 of my songs to targeted listeners 3,000 times in a single day. The information I gleaned helped me select which track would open my new album, and persuaded me to cut two others.

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Musicians on the Internet - Strategy Vs Tactics My Interview with CD Baby's Brian Felsen

Watch the video…

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Three Steps To Inexpensively Winning The Search Engine Game

Sites that are interlinked together are subwebs (subsets) within the World Wide Web.  Search engines rank and score websites by measuring the authority and the authenticity of every subweb on the Internet.
 
The stronger your subweb is, the higher your site will rank against keywords, phrases and concepts (as categorized and tagged) that occur on both your site and within your site’s ENTIRE subweb.
 
Authority and authenticity are weighed and measured by search engines that use complex and evolving algorithms that size (metaphorically speaking) the entire width, height, depth, complexity and the population density of your entire subweb.

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Rock Band Network authoring best left to the pros

After 45 hours of work over six weeks, my song is one of the 118 approved to be in the RBN Store when it launches. My last article laid out what it takes to get your song in the game, namely a deep skill set and lots of time. While I managed to clock in well under my 60-80 hour estimate, I had a considerable head start. Knowing what I know now, would I do it again?

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My Interview with SXSW Magazine on Online Strategy for Musicians

At last count, if I’m correct, I’ve attended the SXSW Conference at least seventeen times, and on many of those visits I have been very grateful for the opportunity to speak on a panel. When Brian Zisk, a co-founder of the SanFran MusicTech conference, invited me to speak again on a panel in December, and also to join him on his panel at this year’s SXSW, I gave pause.

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Rock Band Network for Dummies?

A few weeks ago, Kevin English of eleetmusic got me in to the closed beta of Rock Band Network, which provides the necessary tools to get your songs into the game. When it launches, the RBN Store will sell those songs through the game’s interface, with 30% of the purchase price going back to the artist. Now that the beta is public, you may be eager to dive in, but let me warn you - it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be! Authoring your first song requires a deep skill set and 60-80 hours of focused effort.

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Music Think Tank Notes and Etc.

A new design for Music Think Tank
In case you have not noticed, Music Think Tank is sporting a new look and feel.  Thanks to the excellent work of Kynan Griffiths of Sculpt.  Note:  Sorry, we no longer support IE 6 (Not sure if we ever did?).

MTT Post Categories
Chris Collins, MTT’s intern from the University of Massachusetts has just finished up categorizing all the MTT journal posts (see the left column of the site).  Thanks Chris. 

MTT contributors, especially MTT Radio contributors: please tag and categorize your posts going forward!  It’s one of the best ways for readers to find your posts after they have been pushed off the top page.

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My first ReverbNation street team mission

I love ReverbNation. I could write a dozen articles on the various tools they provide for artists. For now I’ll focus on one I just tried for the first time: Street Team Missions.

Whenever a fan subscribes to your mailing list, they’re given the option to join your street team. You create missions to direct your team’s promotional efforts on your behalf, and they compete against each other for rewards of your choosing. ReverbNation manages the whole thing automatically by measuring plays, widget clicks, banner impressions, and mailing list signups. Sound too good to be true? I thought so at first, so I joined several other artists’ missions to get a closer look.

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TuneCore Rocks

Check out the post Jeff Price (CEO of TuneCore) just put up (quote below).

“According to Nielsen (self defined as “…the world’s leading marketing and media information company.”)  there were: “…106,000 new (music) releases in 2008”

In 2009, TuneCore released approximately 90,000 releases.  This means, if their numbers hold true, almost every single new music release in 2009 was distributed via TuneCore.”

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Reconsider promotion. The faders are coming. The faders are coming.

If you have not tried MOG’s new streaming music service, then take a few minutes and watch the demonstration video.  MOG’s streaming music service features a fader that enables music fans to simply adjust the flow of new (relatively unknown) music that’s inserted into any MOG music stream.  I believe Echonest powers this feature.  Enabling music fans to completely control their music experiences is no longer a pipe dream, it’s now a must-have feature that will appear everywhere over the next twenty-four months.

Quality faders will change the promotion game.
I think it’s relatively easy to enable consumers to control just about any part of their musical journey, but what about quality?  Quality is subjective (or maybe it’s not?), however with artists creating over a million songs a year, the absence of a quality fader (filter) reduces the flow of new music to a trickle (the new music fader stays pinned to the left), as no music consumer wants to be burdened with the need to sift through a truckload of poorly written or poorly produced songs.  (Note: I believe Echonest is already (somewhat) filtering for quality (hotness)?)

In my opinion, a quality filter-fader that everyone can trust - changes (ends) the promotion game for everyone.  When we get to a point where quality, combined with other attributes, can be faded in and out, the entire industry will terminate the marketing department and hire a gaggle of people that can improve quality (subjective or not, it will me measurable).  Promotion will become something you (possibly) do after you measure “quality”, not before.

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Lou Reed iPhone App - An Example of Why The Last Decade Was a Waste of Time in Music

Lou Reed is an iconic rock star who’s bands and music changed the face of rock music decades ago - as Brian Eno said about The Velvet Underground.. “although few people bought the album, most of those who did were inspired to form their own band.” And it’s not because I begrudge Lou the chance to cash in on his brand by selling an iPhone app. No, it’s because the app is not a creative move for Reed, it doesn’t add a jot to his pantheon of work.

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