March 4, 2011 A Lesson in Music Industry Success Prevention.
If your ship came in, would you be smart and frugal enough to ship out on it or simply shit on it? Let’s keep in mind how hard it is to monetize music these days…
If a recording artist could invest $1000 to make between $10K and $70K in 4 months, would he turn it down? Even if you could invest $1000 for the following exposure for your debut CD, with no real guesstimates on download sales, would you turn it down?
Here’s one recording artist who did.
What would you have done if such an offer, like the one briefly described above, dropped out of the sky nine months after you:
a) spent about $3K to record and package your full-length debut disc? (Yea, talk about frugal).
b) bailed out of your marketing program, after spending half of $5,000 on the contract for distribution, marketing, radio promotion and PR?
c) failed to deliver promised live national performances at leading public entertainment conferences and expos?
d) failed to reply to all inquiries to participate in and fulfill the marketing program?
e) inexplicably maligned your own marketing team?…
f) … all the while still producing and recording in the very same building where your team is trying to promote your ungrateful, bipolar and sorry ass.
g) currently, he has 449 fans on his Facebook fan page, hasn’t updated his blog since mid January, 285 followers on Twitter, 8 Myspace friends, and the handful of videos relevant to his own music are all over a year old and barely break 1000 views.
I have been fortunate to have been the catalyst for some really amazing offers for my clients over my 20-years in the music industry. Yes, the ones that have Grammy Awards and nominations, as well as Gold and Platinum albums on their walls…
One of the top three offers I have received in the last decade was this recent offer for the aforementioned former indie recording artist client to appear in a viral marketing program for major automaker that was practically custom tailored to hit his demographic. The cost to the artist for my management fee for all my time, negotiating, paper-pushing, coordination of camera crews, etc., would have been negligible. $1000.
Again, for the record, this client bailed out on his contract in September 2010 and disappeared without fulfilling his obligations to see the campaign through or pay the balance of the contract. But, as far as I’m concerned… water under the bridge.
As far as the publicity was concerned, we did a decent job on the one and only press release we were paid to send out. We secured him about a dozen published web articles/reviews - with all due credit where credit is due - for his very innovative and unique debut release, with publication dates that ranged from September through to December 2010. (Per a Google search on March 3, 2011)
The automaker’s viral program would expose him and his music to 10 million people over four months through a five-minute video interview. This is not factoring in how many times the video would be shared. It could have ingratiated him to leading personalities in media, internet, corporate America, and marketing and it could have resulted in staggering download sales for his music, as well as thousands of new fans and followers to his Facebook Fanpage and Twitter accounts.
If 1% of 10 million people purchased one of his tracks thru iTunes as a result of him appearing in a 5-minute video, in where he would demonstrate his really unique music and recording processes, over the four months of the campaign, he could have netted $70,000.00 on the high-side and on the low-side, he could have walked away with $10K. This is after expenses and really working the campaign through his own social networking properties.
I emailed him an enthusiastic and detailed proposal (below) and he shot back, succinctly, via his iPhone, after I had to chase him down, “This campaign doesn’t fit me at this time.”
That was it… to say that it left me stunned is an understatement.
Below is the proposal I sent to him. (The names have been changed to protect incompetent).
A_,
Per our conversation last week, I have an offer for you to appear in the new “Chevrolita” campaign.
I just wanted to follow up and give you some facts and statistics about the program.
The Program: “Chevrolita” is a social media campaign, designed to appeal to fans of 6 major passion points: Technology, Travel, Music, Entertainment, Fashion, and Sports. Each genre features blogs and shows hosted by high-profile internet personalities. You’re going to be interviewed by “Shelia Sexynerd.”
The Hosts’ Collective Reach: Together, the hosts reach nearly 3 million Twitter followers and 350K Facebook fans/friends. Videos produced by the hosts prior to the “Chevrolita” campaign have a combined reach of nearly 5 million views.
“Shelia’s” Reach: “Shelia Sexynerd” has the biggest reach of the talents, with 1,596,690 followers on Twitter and 25,381 fans on her Facebook page. “Shelia” regularly tweets and blogs about her shoots and encourages followers to view her “Chevrolita” videos.
The Program’s Reach: The videos are syndicated primarily to YouTube and DailyMotion. “Shelia’s” Technology videos alone have had more than 125,000 views between those two sources since the program launched in late January.
The “Mini VidCam” piece, in particular, has 28K YouTube views, and 55K from DailyMotion.
These numbers will continue to grow as the “Chevrolita” name spreads and the campaign rolls on. They would love to feature you in one of these segments. Beyond being an entertaining piece, it’s a topic “Shelia’s” fans would undoubtedly embrace and share.
This is non-paid appearance, but if you want me to push this through for you, I am going to ask for $1,000.00 to secure your placement and act as your manager. I’m negotiable on the fee, to a degree.
Please advise, as they would like to do the interview as early as this weekend. I would need an answer - yes or no - by the end of the business day, March 3.
Thanks!
Very Best Regards,
C
Luck is defined as when opportunity and preparedness meet. I have no idea why this arist would back out of such an opportunity. His rejection of the opportunity was abrupt and succinct, to say the least. I don’t even think he read the proposal. Potentially, he didn’t have the funds to pay me for my time to review and put the paperwork together - paperwork that would protect him and his art. Otherwise, he’s just pennywise and pound foolish, completely unprepared for the reality of what the music business is all about: It takes money to make money. Yes, in this day and age, it takes $3 to make $4. Did his ship come in with this one offer? It’s hard to say for sure it did, but regardless, it was a pretty big, luxurious boat that could have sailed him off to better opportunities.
What would you have done, given this opportunity?
Artist Development | tagged Promotion, music promotion, promotion strategy
Reader Comments (5)
All I can say is Chris Buttner is working print and electronic PR for my CD release, "Sacred Love," and I'm delighted with the results!! His knowledge of traditional and social media-based PR is an asset that can benefit every new artist. - ShambhuMusic.com.
Let me get this straight. The artist pays you $1000 and then the artist will make $10K - $70K?
You are claiming at worst a 1000% return in 4 months. Bullshit!
Most management contracts I've seen are for a percentage of annual revenue. The more money you make for the client/artist the more money you make for yourself.
I'm not clear. Is the $1000 a fee for appearing in the Chevrolita campaign, or is it a budget for the marketing and promotion of the album, or is it your flat rate management fee? Either way this doesn't sound right. The manager is usually the last one to get paid, not the first.
Foster,
I would read the article again. It's quite clear. The fee was for administrative work, as clearly stated in the article. But, to be clearer, I'm not a manager, I'm his former publicist (who was stiffed, along with the rest of his marketing team of six people), and I am still fielding inquiries from media outlets that want to book him into media opportunities. Why? Well, my name is on all of his press releases that are out there in the world, so I get the calls. I still get calls from acts I represented back in 2001 and 2002...
There's no 1000% return assured or guaranteed in the article, so I am not sure how your getting that number.
Regardless of how I've been treated in the past by a client, if an offer comes into my office, even for an artist that has stiffed me by breaking a contract and failed to pay, we're still going to bring it to the artist's attention and offer them a reasonable service and administrative fee to push the project through... I would never hold back an opportunity from anyone I have repped to break into the industry. But, we are a for profit business and we don't work for free.
Few artists given the opportunity to get their music associated with or appear in national ad campaigns will turn down such offers, and are aware of the fact that their representatives need to be compensated. My agency does not work on a commission. We get a retainer or paid in advance before work begins. That's an industry standard operating procedure. What was maddening about this particular situation, in where I felt the need to throw this out into the world and engage comments and input, was the fact that such situations are all too common. It's simply maddening when opportunities come in from the blue and artists are either unprepared, have no understanding of marketing, don't inquire or request counseling, don't read the details or understand the offer, and don't and won't simply sieze the day.
Rome wasn't built in a day. Sometimes it takes many months to start to see reactions from marketing programs and press efforts. This offer came in six months after the first press release went out and appeared on 10 or 12 websites in the USA... for the sake of accuracy, this artist reneged on a 60-day media blitz after only 30-days, frustrated and flailing that things were not happening fast enough, besmirching the team and their efforts on his way out of the door. Very uncool and very unrealistic. As it's said, 'every overnight sensation was ten years in the making.'
Chris,
I wasn't aware you were the publicist. The letter does say, "I am going to ask for $1,000.00 to secure your placement and act as your manager."
I was looking at it from the perspective of a management deal not as publicity.
I feel you that most artist don't want to admit that there is now more time, money, and effort needed to promote a project than there is to create it. But from what you wrote in a) through g) it sounds like the artist wasn't going to follow through with anything you brought them. Tough sell.
Foster,
While I don't state in the article I am a professional publicist, the article states, "As far as the publicity was concerned, we did a decent job on the one and only press release we were paid to send out", leading anyone to assume I’m a publicist, and one click leads you to info that reveals my profession.
And your point, "most artist don't want to admit that there is now more time, money, and effort needed to promote a project than there is to create it," is not accurate.
It has ALWAYS taken more time, money, and effort to promote a project than to create it... that has been a constant and not changed.
The difference these days is the artist HAS to make the time and effort, and cough up the money, to do it themselves.
The cost of promotion and touring alone dwarfs the actual productions.
Really?
Yea.
A major label band, like RUSH, has an overhead of hundreds of thousands to about a million dollars per week while out on tour. Far more than what it costs to record an album.
The Billboard chart reports that Rush dates from August through October (2010) sold more than 270,000 tickets, with a gross of $18,989,834.
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/rush_top_tour_list.html
What do you think it costs to keep such a production out on the road, and promote it?
I tell every artist, be prepared to budget 4 times more for promotion and marketing than production and packing on your indie release. That never sinks in – they never have resources to promote. Artists brag about how much they paid to make the disc and when they come to me wanting to promote it, and when I ask about the budget, 9 out of 10 say they have none. No budget to promote or sell your work?
Even today, after this whole internet thing turned out not to be a passing fancy or fad, what artists still don't realize is they only need 3000 people giving them $10 per month in order to earn a really good living.