8 Best Ways To Promote Your Music

Do you enjoy making music? If yes, we definitely understand you because it’s one of the most rewarding things you can do in life. It gives you the pleasure of creation and lets you express your deepest thoughts, ideas, and feelings. However, finding your place in the music sun is everything but easy.

An industry report conducted by the Next Big Sound shows that over 90% of all artists worldwide can be considered undiscovered. What does it mean? Well, most musicians simply cannot win over the new audiences and increase the number of listeners.

The competition in this field is extremely harsh, so you should try to use state of the art marketing channels in order to reach the target audience. It’s a long and challenging process, but we will help you get through it by presenting the eight best ways to promote your music in 2019.

Click to read more ...

The Dark And Light Sides Of Digital

Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd bassist and creative force, is a known detractor of the modern music industry. The Times Arts editor Alex O’Connell explains “Waters said how grateful he was to have grown up when an artist’s talent and hard work was rewarded financially - unlike nowadays.” 

Waters slams digital music providers, “When this gallery of rogues and thieves had not yet interjected themselves between the people who aspire to be creative and their potential audience and steal every f***ing cent anybody ever made and put it in their pockets to buy f***ing huge mega-yachts and gulfstream fives with.” He continues, “I blame the punters as well to some extent, a whole generation that’s grown up who believe that music should be free.”

Click to read more ...

The Return Of The Song Plugger - The Unsung Heros Behind Songwriting’s Renaissance In The Digital Age

By Thomas Scherer, EVP US publishing and international writer services at BMG

We’re in the middle of a golden age of collaboration in the music industry. The digital age has removed barriers for artists and writers teaming up to work together, contributing parts, ideas, lyrics and so much more. In the past twelve months, some of the biggest hits in our catalogue - such as DJ Snake’s “Let Me Love You” ft. Justin Bieber and Florida Georgia Line’s “H.O.L.Y.” - have been co-created by amazingly talented writing and production teams. Yet all of this creativity is underpinned by an unsung role that has never been more important within the music industry - the song plugger. 

Click to read more ...

Vintage Music In The Digital Age - Collecting Your Favorites

Ever since you were a kid, you’ve collected records. Most of your collection is in the form of long playing records and the singles that you bought every time you could find one with a picture sleeve. As much as you love your collection, it would be nice to have digital copies you could take along on the go. The good news is that you can digitize your vintage music and listen to whatever you want whenever you want.

Click to read more ...

How To Advance Your Music Career In A Digital Age

Being a musician these days is tough! Back in the good ‘ol days, artists just had to worry about learning their craft and booking shows, hoping to get radio support along the way that could eventually get you signed to a label. But today things have gotten a bit more complicated. But with every challenge there always lies opportunity. This opportunity is that we now have more access to information than ever before–information is knowledge. Now all the barriers of entry only large record labels knew about are out there in the open. With a bit of research and time, we know the industry works and we know how musicians can make money in it.

Click to read more ...

Research Says Young Listeners May Embrace CD Quality Audio. Habit Says It Won't Be on CD.

The music industry wishes young listeners would abandon low-bit-rate compressed digital music for harder-to-pirate and more profitable CDs. Contrary to the long-held belief that young listeners think lossy compressed music is “just fine,” Harman researcher Dr. Sean Olive has published results from the first peer-reviewed scientific test showing that young listeners will in fact choose CD-quality audio over lossy alternatives when given the choice. Has the dream of a new generation embracing CDs come true? Not so fast.

Click to read more ...

The Importance of Album Art in the Digital Age

As we all increasingly download our music rather than browsing through the shelves of our local record shop, album artwork is less important. Or is it?

There is evidence to suggest that musicians and audiences are still interested in imagery surrounding music.

“I like a bit of controversy. It tests the nation’s intelligence.”

When photographer and director David Boni came up with the idea of hanging The Stranglers in a kids’ swing park, bass player JJ Burnel, replied “I like a bit of controversy. It tests the nation’s intelligence.” And so, the cover of brand new album ‘Giants’ was born. Currently touring the album – and, inevitably, some of their classic tracks like ‘No More Heroes’, ‘Golden Brown’ and ‘Peaches’ – the band has seen a revival in fortunes across Europe, only tainted by drummer Jet Black’s recent illness.

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

Digital Distributor Math: Choosing the Right Distributor for Your Band

Question:
You are a musician and you want to sell your music on digital retail sites.  You are deciding between two digital distributors to deliver your new album to retailers.  The two distributors, Distributor A and Distributor B, have different payment terms and fees.

• Distributor A charges a one-time album set-up fee of $20, plus an annual “maintenance” fee of $20, and takes no percentage of your sales (Distributor A passes 100% of the sales revenue it collects on to the artist).


• Distributor B does not charge any set-up or annual maintenance fees, and takes a 10% cut of your sales revenue (you the artist keep 90%).

Assume both distributors will deliver your content to the same stores and offer identical service except for the payment terms. Which distributor do you choose?

Click to read more ...

No One Has the Answer, But Sivers Told Us That

If there’s any doubt about the disarray and desperation afoot in the music business, just check out the Internet’s affect on the media business – music, print and broadcast – overall over the past decade. A recent article in the New York Times covers the waterfront on this issue quite well.

While the devastation of digital democracy vis-à-vis the Web made its first blitz through the belly of the music biz, the print media was next in line, and the battlefield there rivals Antietam.

Click to read more ...

Anthropology, Technology, The Social Web and Advertising

As we approach 2010 and the new decade, I decided to revisit this essay, one I originally wrote and posted in June of 2008. For much of this decade, social media as an idea, term or simply a phrase, has been willfully bandied around by agencies, social media “consultants,” PR folks et al, as if it was the cure-all for any brands’ online presence. White noise engulfed common sense; nature, particularly how humans behave in society, was hardly ever considered as marketers embraced what they considered, the white hot future wrought by technology. That lack of consideration of human behavior on the web when it came to an online brand strategy, I believe, was an early mistake that really muddied the waters. This post is in reference to one I wrote here earlier this month - Dear Musicians - Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of The Way. Simply put, it’s my argument that social media or social networking are very natural activities for us, both online and off. Therefore a musician or musician’s digital strategy requires an understanding of how people actually use the web. Here’s the link to the post - Anthropology, Technology, The Social Web and Advertising

Breakthroughs, Bitterness and Biopics

Music biographies mesmerized me when I was a kid. Whether it was Glenn Miller or Elvis Presley, it was always the same fascinating formula: talent and tenacity leading to the precipice of success, with the artist always searching for that one elusive element to define his signature sound, to breakthrough. With Miller it was the addition of trombones. The proceedings always put me on the edge of my seat and the breakthroughs set me reeling. I guess it was in my blood.

It persists. The other night I watched two great documentary-style biopics on TV, one on Johnny Cash, another on Willie Nelson. Willie, as many of his fans may not realize, was actually a Nashville songwriter penning such classics as “Crazy,” which Patsy Cline etched into the music lexicon. Despite his preeminent status as a writer, Willie couldn’t get arrested as an artist in Music City. His quirky phrasing was way too off-beat for the 60s sound, which was infused with sweet strings and pop arrangements.

Click to read more ...

‘It’s tough to beat up a guy that never quits’

Babe Ruth mouthed that ungrammatical gem, and a slumping Nick Swisher of the New York Yankees just invoked it at a critical moment in his career.

Hang with me a moment, and you’ll see what this has to do with us music artists. Swisher made the last out in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series the other night. It was a frustrating moment, since a hit in that spot could’ve finished off the Angels and put the Bombers in the World Series.

Click to read more ...

Dog Guru

My wife, Roxanne and I saw Jamey Johnson last weekend in an awful club in Clifton Park, N.Y. Johnson’s a country songwriter cum recording artist who’s anything but awful. He’s one of those rare artists who come along once in a generation in a genre, in this case country.

He’s so raw and real it hurts. He’s of the outlaw breed, and his songs — even some of his hits – hold a bare light bulb to reality.

He’s a Montgomery boy, an ex-marine, ex-family man, and ex-rebel rouser, and his voice is as perfectly imperfect as his life. I’m not writing this to pitch Johnson, but country fan or not, this plainspoken poet is worth a listen.

I’m reminded of Steve Earle, who blew me away with his 1986 debut album “Guitar Town.” One literate bad boy with a voice to match. The first time I heard him I wanted to burn my guitar and typewriter (remember those), but eventually returned to my auteur senses.

Click to read more ...