Heads Up: new online Music & Culture magazine with print aesthetic

EyeSeeSound, three DIYers with a love of music and culture, have relaunched www.eyeseesound.tv as an online Music and Culture magazine with the format and aesthetic of print magazines.

Focussing on independent and DIY bands and artists the magazine, Heads Up, offers an opportunity for music and culture lovers to discover new bands, short films, animations, artists, photographers and designers through a stylish and innovative approach to website design and functionality.

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“Clear & Lucid & Natural & Simple.” The Summer’s New Hit ‘e-book’?

It’s summer time in the city of New York and while most every music artist is concerned with putting out a ‘hot’ single to compete with the season’s heat or ‘making some noise’ via an oh so cliche ‘buzz’, one in particular has decided to thread so far left, he’s ends up right. iAreConscious currently in the midst of an ‘indefinite musical hiatus’ releases a free e-book entitled, “Clear & Lucid & Natural & Simple.”.

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Little Known Tactics for Greater Touring Profits

For many independent artists organizing do-it-yourself tours, a common question  is, “How can we make more money on tour?” One of the simplest methods: by spending less. Here are some ways you can cut your expenses while on tour which leaves room for more profit.

Whether you’re planning a national, international, or regional tour the goals are the same: earn income while promoting yourself in a familiar or new territory. Reaching out to fans and connecting personally at your concerts are the keys to gaining a dedicated fan base and generating buzz around your band. Admittedly, while overall comfort plays a key role in combatting tour fatigue and  maintaining performance levels, sometimes comfort isn’t an option. If tour expenses are outweighing guarantees, try implementing some of these cost-cutting  travel techniques tailored for the DIY, self-booking independent artist. 

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Three Things All Independent Artists Should Do

The challenge of being an independent artist, especially when you’re starting off is that you have no one but yourself to answer to. This of course can be both a good and bad thing. For one, if you’re driven - you can do many things very fast because you don’t have to delegate. On the other hand, some days, nothing happens at all because no one but yourself is responsible for your career (and you decided to just stay at home and comment on all your friend’s Facebook pages.) A very real issue is that most of what we do as artists does not pay financially (at least not immediately). Most of it is groundwork, most of it is the business side of our careers. This of course makes us comes to terms…

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Episode 7: The Music Biz Weekly Podcast E-Commerce Solutions For Bands

Here we go folks, another edition of our weekly podcast featuring Brian Thompson from Thorny Bleeder and Michael Brandvold from Michael Brandvold Marketing.

This week’s topic? E-Commerce Solutions for Bands. 

We discuss everything from getting your music up on iTunes and the Amazon MP3 Store, in addition to options on how to handle your merchandise sales and email marketing campaigns.

What platforms are you using to sell your band’s music and merch?

Be sure to follow Brian on Twitter here and Michael on Twitter here.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and share your own tips and tricks with us!

Brian Thompson

Thorny Bleeder

TrueDIY Tech: How To Build Your Own Subkick™

Welcome to the first installment of TrueDIY Tech! In this do-it-yourself technology series, we will be providing details on how to create your own tools in the studio and explaining the most commonly practiced studio techniques. We’ll also be reviewing new equipment that is priced for aspiring engineers and how to use it to best suit your project.

In the video below, Chris Thomas of Strewnshank Productions explains how to build your own Subkick™ featuring audio examples showing the difference in a drum sound with and without the speaker microphone mixed in.

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Mobile Connect-with-Fans For DIY Artists – Why, And How?

Recently, on ContentSphere.de I argued about how highly required it is for DIY artists to get mobile – to find a way for mobile communication with fans. Actually, it is key to truely connect with fans. Apparently, there’s a solution to that. Finally.

I know, it’s beaten to death… but – there is an app for that. Of course, the main issue in CwF (Connect-with-Fans) is authenticity. You can’t buy that, same with the quality of your music. Yet it is required to have something to grow that on. A medium like an app.

That’s why I was curious to see if there’s anything like that available for the common DIY artist. But first off, why is it necessary at all?

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Hometaping: Anyone can make music. Record yours this November!

Some people think only the talented or the beautiful can make music. This is rubbish. Anyone can enjoy making music. And everyone has something worth making a noise about. Hometaping is a big effort to get as many people as possible to make an album of music in one month - that month being this November. It’s a celebration of what happens when they do.

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Relationships Are The New Distribution

Social Media superhero Chris Brogan recently wrote a post on the basics – the 4 P’s of marketing(product, price, place, and promotion) and talked about how many people don’t spend enough time on their Product, and try to make up for it in Promotion. If that doesn’t work they try competing on Price. But rarely is much time spent thinking about Place.

This got me thinking about how music is marketed, and how absolutely right he is. A lot of indie musicians tend to spend the majority of their time on Product and Promotion, with Price usually being the standard $0.99 per track. The common mistake is in thinking that Place, which is your distribution, is taken care of once you’ve gotten your music up on iTunes or Bandcamp.

I think we need to start thinking of distribution as more than just where people download or buy your music from, and maybe shuffle a few P’s around in the process.

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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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Crowd Funding and the Art of the Album Pre-Sale

People buy concert tickets months before an event. People pre-order books on Amazon before the book has been released. We all buy dinner at a restaurant before it’s been cooked. Why not pre-sell your album before it exists?

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Think Outside the Venue To Get That First Gig

Most new bands approach the first part of their careers like this: We need to find an audience, but in order to find an audience we have to play shows. If we want to play shows we have to get a talent buyer to book us, but talent buyers are going to want to know we can draw an audience before they’ll ever consider letting us play. It’s a frustrating catch-22. Thankfully, it’s also not the only (or even the best) route to finding your first audience or building your initial fan base. It just means that you’re going to have to go around the gatekeepers and find fans somewhere else.

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Is Physical Distribution Worth It for Indies?

Updated on October 7, 2009 by Scott Olson

The slow death of record stores and the increased opportunity afforded to emerging artists are two stories that we have all become familiar with. Distributors of CD’s have no doubt fallen on hard times as well. Given the cost of distribution, and the fact that record stores are disappearing from the map, does it make sense for Indie artists and labels to consider getting a traditional distribution deal as a major goal? 

Existing retailers are getting more exclusive. Rising “music retailers” Wal-Mart and Best Buy only stock that which they know will sell millions.  And in place of an increasingly bland music retail scene, artists are making it easier to get their music from them directly (or at least by buying their CD of amazon).

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