How Singer/Songwriters Can Save $100K Right Now - Today!

$100 K. I thought that would get everyone’s attention. And it’s the first thing I say when I meet with young singer/songwriters and their parents as we start the educational process of moving up from the basic performance skills of singing their own songs and playing guitar or piano to the rarefied air of the art of entertaining. That’s what I do these days as a live music performance coach.

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Creating A Band Agreement: What You Need To Know

This guest post by Canadian entertainment lawyer Byron Pascoe originally appeared on the Bandzoogle Blog

Being a musician is a business. If you’re in band, one of the most important elements of organizing your business, is having an effective band agreement.

Without agreement among the members of your band, whether verbal, written on a napkin (is that still done?), texted, or written by an entertainment lawyer (shameless plug), some key issues will need to be negotiated at a time when perhaps not everyone is acting reasonably. Or you may need to rely on the law, which may not provide appropriate solutions for your situation.

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How To Stay Safe And Sound While Rocking It At A Concert

If you enjoy going to music concerts, there are a few precautions that you should take to keep yourself out of harm’s way. Being safe, however, won’t prevent you from still having a good time while you revel in the music. Here are a few tips to staying safe at concerts.

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Promoting Music Without Spending Much Money

Considering the popularity of the internet in the present era, the first and the most important thing that you need to do for promoting your music is create a music website. This would be your personal website showcasing your talent. Here, you can upload songs and music that you have created. However, make sure to promote this website by using different means for attracting visitors. One beneficial thing that you can do is allow the visitors to listen to a part of your music completely free of charge. This website can also be used for selling music.

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Should I Write Original Music Or Music That Sells?

Have you ever noticed that the music you love to write, always ends up being the music people hate? Yet, your worst written songs, the songs you said “I can’t believe I wrote this POS” are somehow, magically, the ones everyone loves? What’s up with that?

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How A Visual Artist Taught Me To Earn A Living Through Licensing

Many musical artists don’t think about how to generate alternative revenue streams to supplement the money they make selling albums and playing gigs. Many artists avoid thinking about the business aspects of the industry in a more broad way than simply “play a gig and get paid”. This is a subject that has interested me for many years, as the financial roller coaster of being a professional musician can be very trying at times. When I was younger and working as a full time keyboard player, I could be playing in a big Broadway or Off-Broadway show one day, and the next be just another unemployed musician scrambling to earn a living after the show closed. But then I met Larry Rivers, the man who taught me how to merge art and commerce to generate revenue. My experiences with him have greatly influenced how I approach earning a living as a creative artist.

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Fame Is Purchased - Why You Need To Pay People In The Music Industry

No I can’t make you famous. No one can. That’s not how this works. So why do people like me need to explain this to musicians all the time? Fame is a very intangible thing – and in this day and age it’s largely purchased. By hiring a producer, manager or promoter you’re probably not going to get famous right away. In fact, even having rad music and an entire team behind you does not guarantee that you will make it. It’s only one step forward. Here’s the thing – we live in a world where fame is bought – and any one who tells you otherwise, or that it was ‘better back in their day’ is woefully misguided.

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How to Make Money Selling Recorded Music

I’ll tell you the secret to selling music:

Being a musician who sells music is like being a restaurant that only serves sauce. Music is most valuable when paired with something else.

— Dave Hahn (@davidjhahn) March 17, 2013

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How Much You Should Ask from Sponsors

Recently, I received an email with two commonly asked questions about sponsorship that I’d like to address:

1) How much can you ask from a sponsor?
2) My project costs X dollars, should I mention that in my pitch?

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How Musicians Can Save Money When Buying Instruments

In tighter financial times everyone would like to save some money on their musical purchases. This guide can help you save some money when shopping for musical equipment. So lets say you are about to buy some new instruments or some studio equipment, that can cost serious money when you opt for the best quality items. We are currently in a recession and it seems that there is some positive economic news of late on both sides of the big pond and that’s great. However most of us still need to watch the pennies and cents and there are ways that you can ensure you are getting the best possible deals on your equipment purchases. We can use the current situation to our advantage, as both musicians and retailers are experiencing the same economic conditions.

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How Much Money Should You Aim To Make From Music? And How Much CAN You Make?

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.

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How to Get Sponsored: Rethinking Sponsorships

When most people who want sponsorships think about their ultimate goal, it involves money. They’re looking for someone to fund their event, to pay for their tour, to raise money for their charity, and so on. When many business think about sponsoring someone, it ultimately involves money as well: even if it is an incredible cause, at the end of the day, they want to know how sponsoring will help them get more customers. Each party treats the sponsorship as a transaction. However, I believe it is important to shift the definition from “a cash and/or in-kind fee paid to a property (typically sports entertainment, non-profit event, or organization) in return for access to the exploitable, commercial potential associated with that property” (IEG, 2000) to something more equitable: a partnership.

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Why Is It So Hard to Give a Record Label My Money?

I updated the original article I posted on October 19th.

Maybe I am missing something, maybe I don’t understand why territory restrictions still need to exist. I guess thinking of the world as the territory is wrong.

Maybe my feeling that fans will buy music if you make music available the moment they want it, at a fair price on whatever device they use is just wrong. But right now trying to buy music actually can drive a fan to steal music.

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On the Money: Examining Musicians’ Revenue Streams in the New Digital Landscape

Future of Music Coalition (FMC) has launched a groundbreaking research project called Artist Revenue Streams, where we ask US-based musicians and composers, “How do YOU make Money from Music?” Project Co-Director Kristin Thomson from FMC explains in this MTT post where they idea came from for this research and why it’s so important that every musician or composer in the US takes this online survey, which is available at http://futureofmusic.org/ars until October 28, 2011.

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