A Plea To The Industry: Don't Let Your Hunger For Success In The Music Biz Override Being A Good Person

There’s no litmus test or bar or SAT you must pass to hold an influential job in the music industry that affects the lives of many others. The industry doesn’t require years of schooling or the ‘daunting’ requirements of being psychologically sound and thinking carefully about your decisions. I would even argue that this industry attracts those of us who are slightly delusional, self-centered, under or over medicated, and rebellious. In fact, those exact things could allow you to excel in this industry. That is what makes it a pretty futile environment to work and live in – because being a skeezy asshole could in some cases get you further ahead than being kind and generous.

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How Your Band Can Use Twitter Effectively

Artists today have a lot of advantages over those of yesteryear when it comes to connecting with their fans. Between MySpace (back when that was a thing), Facebook, Bandcamp, Kickstarter, and who-knows-what-else is coming, bands have a multitude of sources for promoting themselves and their music. Each platform offers something different, and every band should make the best effort to get all their social media bases covered.

So you’ve got a lot of options, which is great. But there is one thing I can say for sure: Your Band Should Be On Twitter. Short of actually picking up a phone and calling someone, Twitter is one of the most highly effective forms of new media we use in the music industry today. Your new record/interview/blog post can be broadcast to all your followers at once and immediately become part of an online conversation between you and your fans.

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Why Dress to Impress? The importance of always looking your best.

In this day and age it’s no wonder that looking your best is one of the most important aspects of gaining and maintaining business relationships. But why exactly should we do it. First of all, looking good is a great self-confidence booster. Nothing feels better than walking into a room and all eyes are on you!

Feeling under the weather? There’s no cure like fashion! Always remember to look better than you feel. Dress your best to be the best, after all, you never know who you might run into. Studies also show that when you “dress for success”, you’re bound to have a higher performance level. So not only will you feel good if you look good, but your work will reflect it!

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The Do’s and Dont’s of Merchandising and Why It’s So Important For Your Band

From the Audio Blood Intern Blog Archive - Published January 2013.

Band merchandise – many think it’s a dying addition to your band’s brand; people are downloading more, so there’s no need for CDs, people are wearing less band t-shirts, and when was the last time someone said they wanted to buy a pin? Well, if you think that you couldn’t be more wrong. Band merchandise serves two VERY important purposes, for one, it’s your band’s calling card – you want people who see you to be able to walk away with a CD, or a t-shirt or poster, so that you’re remembered. Secondly, it’s a financial life-line for the band; bands need money for tours, recordings, equipment, and so much more – a small investment in merchandise can yield high return if you know what you’re doing. So, here’s what you need to know to build up the merch aspect of your band.

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Don’t be a Victim of Your Work – 5 Tips to Help You Stay Ahead of Your To-Do List

So many of us live our day to day lives on a constant goose chase, always trying to catch up with our to-do list. The feeling of being perpetually behind on your work is draining. Living in that space doesn’t allow you to do your best work or be creative. It’s easy to get discouraged and find yourself distracted when trying to hang  out with your friends after work, preoccupied with all the little stresses waiting for you at your desk.

This is no new phenomenon, as we push ourselves harder and harder it’s only normal to want to take on the world. And those aspirations are totally admirable. You have hopefully found what you love and want to do for the rest of your life… but why is it so damn hard to keep up? What we don’t actually learn in school is that sometimes in order to get ahead you need to take a step back, check yourself, and find some good coping mechanisms that will allow you to handle the capacity of work you’d like to. You don’t have to live in that stressful and frustrated space, never feeling like you’ve made a dent. I can promise you, it’s more about a mental attitude than reality after all. And the good news about that is we can change our mental attitudes if we just fight through our old habits!

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5 lessons in 5 years from Audio Blood CEO & Founder, Sari Delmar

Every day, I get to wake up and go to work at my favourite place in the world with my favourite people. Every day I shake myself and say - HEY THIS IS REAL LIFE. YOU AREN’T DREAMING! 

My brand and artist development company Audio Blood is turning 5 years old next month and I can’t help but do some reflecting. 5 years somehow feels like it has just flown right by. I can see 10 in the not so distant future, and 15 and 20 thereafter. But, when you look carefully at each year it also feels like it’s been so long since starting out on my own in my little bedroom on Salem Ave in Toronto to our new downtown office with 7 full time staffers. It kinda blows my mind.

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Thinking About Starting a Business in the Music Industry? - 15 Essential Tips to Help You Succeed

Do you find yourself banking your best ideas? Dreaming of calling the shots? Then it’s probably inevitable, you were meant to be an entrepreneur. So what’s stopping you? Well, the list is long: fears, concerns, questions, doubts… there is tons of BS that could get in your way. Not to mention, you’ve chosen the music industry. And it’s probably the most waffling of them all! Here’s some tips for overcoming the obstacles and preparing for the best thing you might ever do in your lifetime.  

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5 Game-Changing Music Industry Philosophies

If you work in or around the music industry it’s obvious things are changing drastically. The way people perceive and find their music has completely changed. New technology has turned the music industry on it’s head. How do we keep up? and why hasn’t the industry’s platform of doing things completely flipped as well?

Over the course of the last year I’ve been researching and developing a new platform, at least for my company to operate under. Instead of traipsing around complaining about the demise of the record business (like many of the major label execs spend most of their time doing now) I figured, something’s gotta change and fast! Being the owner of a young company, I’m not going to operate by the old platform’s standards and jump aboard a sinking ship.

More people than ever before are listening to music. It’s great! They have it coming at them from all angles, it’s just fantastic. This should be a very prosperous time for the music industry. Music is everywhere - embedded in their phones, tv, public spaces etc. So much room to make money from music. So where do we start…

Here’s my top 5 game changing philosophies. I think with an outlook shift we will actually be able to sustain ourselves. Well, I hope so at least…

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Festival Sponsorship Extremes

It’s rare that you go to a festival in this day and age that isn’t presented by some corporate sponsor who proudly drapes their brand on every imaginable piece of the festival. That’s not all, you can of course count on there being a number of other sponsors handing out free swag and creating these larger than life experiences for you to be a part of. It’s all become part of the festival experience . But at what cost?

The bigger the festival, the more extravagant the sponsorship partners. After attending Budweiser’s Lollapalooza in 2008 in Chicago and many years of Van’s Warped Tours, Virgin Festivals, Sirius Satellite Radio’s North by Northeast, Molson Canadian’s Canadian Music Weeks etc. etc. I’ve become accustomed (if not a bit obsessed) at watching how these corporate partners continue to out-do one another with their on-site presence and forward thinking campaigns.

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