Discover Some New Music

You know what is great about music, that feeling of excitement you get when you discover a new song, album or band. Something that up to that point never existed in your world, but with one song all of a sudden you have this great feeling of discovery, of finding something new… new to you. Let me give you a few examples.

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Top 5 Rules To Making Money Doing Music

1) Shows, Shows, Shows

Although this seems obvious enough, many artists miss the fact that performances are critical in earning a living. Even in the prime of the music industry, an artists’ performance income was their main income. And once a week at the same local bar is not going to cut it. Remember the basic rules of sales we all learned in 9th grade…Supply & Demand. If you are in too much supply to one little area, the demand will decrease. Spread your shows out, or at least switch which side of town you perform on.

2) Get Online

If you’ve been doing this long enough, you remember the days of printing up flyers, posters, stickers, sampler CD’s, and anything else you could think of to promote your music. Then you had to go out yourself and pass all that stuff out. Even living in major markets with millions of people, it was time consuming, took lots of money, and you would only actually get to a fraction of those people. Now, with the aid of the internet, you can reach millions of people, in just a few days, with almost no money. The weeks it took to successfully connect with a few hundred people can now be done in a few hours with a few well placed key strokes. It is a utility that can not be overlooked!

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"When Will We See You On MTV?"...Thoughts of an Independent Musician

“So when will we see you on MTV?” “When will we be hearing your stuff on the (mainstream) radio?”  “You should be famous by now.”  “When you’re famous we can say we knew you when.”

These are all questions and statments that I’m certain many relatively well-known touring independent musicians and bands (including myself) hear on at least a fairly regular basis.  I don’t know about you, but I usually feel slightly taken aback when I hear statements such as this even though I know the person or persons making the statement/s probably mean well.  I’ve sat down to think about why these feelings arise when I hear such statements.  When I think about it though, certain key words from such statements that are frequnently uttered when they are made: MTV, radio, and (most prominently) FAMOUS.  That then raises the question; What exactly is fame nowadays? 

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Get It Together (or what the music industry can learn from Chanel)

The experience that your audience has is the most important thing to focus on. If you are a promoter you have to figure out how you are going to give them the best experience. If you are a band you are going to play your best and give your fans the best experience you are capable of. If you are a DJ you are probably going to get requests. If you are a nice person, you are going to play those requests if you can because it will give that person who asked to hear Lady GaGa or Beyonce a good experience.  

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Music Is Not A Competition…

“If I promote other bands, my band won’t be noticed”… It’s not something I hear musicians say a lot but it is certainly often implied. This post is here to kick that way of thinking right in the ball-gina. Musicians, bands: I implore you, help support each other! Stop thinking about your own music as the only music deserving of praise & attention. There is lot’s of cool bands out there, lots of cool artists & many of them work just as hard as you do on your art. Here’s the rub…

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