Future of The Music Industry

As a soon to be master’s degree graduate from Full Sail University, I have to say I feel extremely secure in my future career if only for two reasons. I understand digital marketing and the consumer's desire for free will.

The Internet has forever changed the music industry and it’s only going to change more. We see CD sales dropping more every year and ITunes sales going up. People are purchases singles and ignoring albums.

I would like to make a prediction. Within 5 short years CD’s will be no more common than Cassette tapes. There will just be no need for them.

With hard drives getting bigger, internet connections getting faster, and MP3 players getting cheaper it’s only a matter of time before the digital music stores offer downloads with CD sound quality. When that happens there will be no reason to spend the extra money and time to go to a physical store and purchase music that will only end up on your phone or IPod anyways.

Consumers have made it clear to the music industry time and time again that they want singles, not albums with a few good songs and a bunch of boring filler songs. The industry said no because printing CD’s was too expensive for the low price point of singles. Well now the option exists and consumers are eating it up.

Radio is going to have to change too. People want variety and yet radio still plays the same 5 songs over and over again for months before adding new songs to the playlist. The radio industry assumed their business model was better because satellite radio didn’t catch on as fast as predicted. But services like Pandora have proven that people do in fact want personalized variety.

Consumers want a say in what they get. You don’t see people lining up at grocery stores and saying, “give me whatever food you want me to eat”. No, people are far too selective for that. People love to exercise their free will. It’s the only real power anyone has. Radio is going to change or die and may be too late for them to choose. Thank you Pandora, radio’s sweet angel of death.

Financing

Some of you are probably thinking of starting your own label to carry your band. That’s all good and fine but make sure you seek the right resources before doing it. When you start your own label you should be treating it as a separate business. You need to keep an entrepreneurs mindset. Ask yourself, would anybody pay for this and if so who and how do I reach them?

With any new business comes cost. This is something most peole need assistance with. Check out the following resources.

http://www.opportunityfinance.net/

http://www.microenterpriseworks.org/

http://www.cdfi.org/

http://cfed.org/

http://www.cdvca.org/

http://www.ncif.org/

http://www.natfed.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1

http://www.eda.gov/

http://www.firstnations.org/default2.asp?id=69

http://www.oweesta.org/

My favorite of the group is opportunityfinance.net. This site provides a lot of resources for entrepreneur training as well as finance resources. Most of these sites though offer great financing options if you fall under the right type of business categories.  For example, firstnations.org and oweesta.org provide assistance to business on native american reservations and owned by native Americans. There are very specific guidelines that have to be met in order to receive assistance.

Microenterprisenetworks.org is another great site for entrepreneurial resources even outside of finance.

A lot of these sites such as cdvca.org and cfed.org provide assistance to businesses that help develop low income communities. Again, these types of assistance require that very specific guidelines to be met. However, if your business just so happens to meet the guidelines laid out, then these can be invaluable resources for you.

The important thing is that you do your research. Business financing isn’t all that different from seeking a college grant. They offer incentives and special assistance for some of the weirdest things that you’d never expect so get out there and see if anything about your particular situation qualifies you for any help.

Then you have to pitch pitch pitch. Make sure you’ve got your presentation rehearsed and polished. You don’t want all that research to be for nothing. 

Business Plans Part 2

Based on the research used in my previous post, it’s clear that investors want a clear focused source of income. This is not only important for attracting investment partners, it’s also important for success. Spreading yourself too thin and not clearly defining your goals is a recipe for failure. The business plan I am currently writing is for Archetype Studios. It was important from the beginning for me to define how I was going to make money. I had to ask myself what kind of products and or services I will be providing and what are realistic prices to charge. It was then important to figure out who my customer base would be as well as my competition. The status quo does not like new competitors entering the marketplace and taking profits away from them. Strong competitors will use deep pockets to put new threats out of business and it was important for me to find a way to combat their efforts.

The most important parts of a business plan are the financial planning sections. Not only do you need to have realistic financial plans set in place, it’s also important to remember that investors want to know above all things that they will get their money back as well as turn a profit. If you don’t have plan for how your going to accomplish that, not only will investors lose faith in your promises, you most likely won’t be able to make it happen in the first place anyways. Money is one of the world’s most valuable resources and we have and we must be cautious on how we invest it. How you spend is much more important than how much you spend.

You need to not only communicate how you will be spending your startup cost but also how much you expect to make. These figures need to be realistic so do you research. Nothing would be more embarrassing than going to an investor and saying “Oops I actually need more” or “I charge way above industry standard and nobody wants to work with me so the business is failing”.

Good luck to everyone else and remember plan, plan, and execute.

Business Plans

Whether you are an artist looking to distribute your music through your own label, an agent, a manager, or looking to start your own label, it’s important to have business plan. And just so everything is clear and communicable. You need to put it into writing. If you’ve ever seen a show called “Shark Tank”, then you have no doubt witnessed the brilliant and blunt attitudes of my favorite entrepreneurs Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjavec.

Kevin O’Leary started with nothing and developed software that teaches reading skills to children. As the business grew, O’Leary eliminated the competition by buying them out. He later sold his company to Mattel for about 3.7 billion dollars.

Robert Herjavec made his money by building and selling tech companies. His first company, BRAK Systems, was sold to AT&T for $100.

Both investors look for the same things that all angel investors look for.

Focused Money Source

They want to know where the cash is coming from. It’s important to be specific. If you say your going to make money from “probably here, and sometimes there, and maybe somewhere else also”, then you aren’t going to have much luck attracting investors.

You need to clearly define a concentrated revenue source. The simpler you can keep it, the better. Unforeseen setbacks will complicate your business enough, don’t add to it by having a plan that isn’t well thought out and focused.

Numbers

Do your number make sense? If your claiming a $20,000 a year profit from a small side business, and your not paying yourself. What’s going to happen when it becomes your full time business and you begin paying yourself? Then you don’t have a profitable business.

Are you asking for a $100,000 investment for 25% equity in your company? That means your company is worth $400,000. If it’s not, then your request is unrealistic and you’re not likely to be taken up on that offer.

Your Market

Do you know your market? Do you haven any competitors? If so, do they have the ability to drive you out of business as soon as they begin seeing you as a threat? Did somebody else already have your idea and patent it?

These are all things you need to know BEFORE you try to get your business off the ground. If you haven’t thoroughly researched these ideas why would anybody feel confident investing your company or much less you as a leader?

Conclusion

These are all points both O’Leary and Herjavec bring up repeatedly on “Shark Tank” and it’s important to take the advice of those who have been there before and been successful.

Song Copyright

The copyright is the single most important asset in the music business. Without copyright law, anybody can record and sell the song you wrote without your permission and without paying you on top of it. You don’t want that. You want to eliminate all chances of having to compete with other artists recording the song you wrote in all your infinite creative wisdom. The two most important copyrightable works in the music business are songs and sound recordings.

Song copyrights belong to you if you wrote the song. But you need to register the song with the United States Copyright Office. This is important because it will hold up in court as evidence that you are the rightful owner of the copyright.

Technically once you’ve recorded the song, wither on paper or CD or whatever, you are the copyright owner. However, try using a piece of scribbled notebook paper in court as evidence. Can you prove when you recorded that song at home if somebody else releases it? No you can’t. So the best thing to do is just register your songs and get it over with.

Before you ask me about mailing yourself a sealed notarized copy of the written out music and lyrics or recording and never opening it, let me ask you something your should ask every person who spouts these kinds of theories. Do you really think that has a 100% chance of holding up in court? Not only is it unlikely to hold up, it’s actually more time consuming than registering the song.

In regards to contracts with labels and publishing companies, it’s ok to sign over exclusive rights to your songs for a certain period of time, and for a certain amount of money for that matter, but never ever ever sign over the full copyright. You will lose all future ability to profit off of that song. It’s standard for you to sign over a portion of what’s known as the publishers share, but never sign over any of the songwriters share. The songwriter’s share is 50% of the copyright and the publisher’s share is 50% as well.

In regards to sound recording copyrights, the label will own them. This is the rights to the “masters” you hear everyone talking about in movies about the business. Unless you’re a big artist with a lot of clout you will never own the rights to the master recordings. However, if you are the songwriter as well as the performer, you will be paid separate amounts for both in a traditional contract. In the newer “360 deals” your probably more likely to get a flat overall rate, especially if you sign with an indie label.

I hope this clears up some confusion about song copyrights and how they work into your career. We’ll touch on negotiating the royalties and copyright ownerships in a future post.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Until next time.

Survey

Effective Use Of Social Media

In my meetings with artist’s I am seeing a huge disconnect when it comes to social media. It seems that that everybody knows the importance of social media and everybody thinks they are making the most of it. But very few artists are.

If you don’t read anything else I have to say at least read this.

SPAM is not effective social media marketing.

Don’t look at your Facebook and MySpace pages as a way to get new fans. Look at them as opportunities to build a unique identity for yourself and way to maintain an already existing fan base.

Your social media pages should exist so that you have something to show people when they come looking for you. Don’t use them as tools to track down random strangers by the thousands and attempt to add them as your friends. That tactic is annoying and most importantly it’s not conducive to building a professional image.

Also, don’t destroy good relationships with other artists by using their social media “walls” as a place to paste up your own announcements and images to attract audiences. It’s tacky and is no different than spraying a graffiti image of your band’s logo on another band’s billboard ad.

What you should do

Write an interesting blog

The key word here is interesting. Nobody cares what you had for breakfast until your as famous as Katy Perry. But right now, people do care what your songs are about. Describe what it’s like recording in a studio, going on tour, writing songs about your most personal experiences. Everybody wants to be a rock star so bring them along for the ride so to speak.

Post Self Taken Pictures

I wouldn’t recommend breaking the illusion and posting pictures of you lying around your house in your pajamas. But posting some backstage photos from a show, the studio, or anything else that makes your look like a certified pro is good for business.

That’s all for now. Remember, your building a reputation not destroying one. Keep it up.

Distribution

For this post we are talking about CD distribution only. We’ll discuss digital distribution in a different post. If you are on a major label, distribution will be no problem. If you are on an indie label, it shouldn’t be a problem. In either scenario you won’t have to deal with it because somebody else will. If you are indie by choice to circumstance and want to have distribution, and you should, I am going to help.

There are too many distributors to mention and new ones are popping up all the time. Hopefully I can help you choose one. It’s a lot like picking a college. You have to apply to a few and do your best to impress them all, just to hopefully get accepted by one. However, if you’re already well known, like a high school football star, they will all welcome you with open arms. But this isn’t usually the case.

First make sure you have your CD’s manufactured and good to go. Check the guidelines I set out in my “CD Manufacturing” post if you don’t’ want to get rejected and laughed at by the distributors. You will need to do some research and find the distributors that do things the way you like. Do you want one that will pick up your product on consignment? Do you want one that caters to certain types of retail outlets (Hot Topic, mom and pap stores, vinyl stores, etc)? Do you want a distributor owned by a major? Keep in mind that these major owned distributors have a separate sales staff for the indie distribution. Look up a distributor named RED. It’s owned by Sony BMG and it's a great example of how these types function.

Once you pick a few you will need to send press kits. If you don’t have a press kit, you’re nowhere near ready for distribution. Also, CALL FIRST. Don’t just mail in unsolicited material. Make some calls, or better yet get a manager and have them do it. They will have way more luck getting in touch with the right people. Once you identify and speak to the person who is interested in hearing your kit, send it to them directly along with a cover letter. If they decide they like you, they will ask you to sign a contract. Distribution contracts are usually 2 year deals. Take the contract to an experienced entertainment lawyer. Keep in mind the distributor is going to take a cut from your sales as payment. Have your manager negotiate this as low as possible.

Some Things To Think About

Do you have enough of a following to warrant putting your music in stores? If your album sits on the shelf for two years it’s not exactly going to earn you the business reputation you need.

What happens if you suddenly become successfully out of nowhere and a large retail chain orders 80,000 copies for immediate delivery? That sound’s exciting right? Freeze right there. Do you have roughly $75,000 to print those copies? I didn’t think so. One solution to this problem is to find a manufacturer who is willing to print the copies with the invoice that proves they you have the order for them. That way, they know that you will have the money to pay them as soon as this super retail chain gets their copies.

Here’s another problem, the store has a right to return all unsold copies for a full refund. By the way, industry standard operation is to save at least 20% of all money you make on orders to compensate for future returns, which can happened months and even years down the road.

Register your UPC code with Nielson Soundscan so that your sales can be tracked for the purposes of Billboard and other organizations that would be interested in seeing how successful your music is.

Distribution is a big step. If your not ready for it, it will send you home crying to mommy. Sell your music at your shows and online first to test the demand for your music. Your friends and family will all lie to make you feel good. Teenage girls will go to your shows and say how awesome you are because guys in bands are cool. But the masses of complete strangers will only pay for your music if it really is good. Start small and work your way up so you don’t jump in over your head. Good luck.

CD Manufacturing

Any artist hoping to get noticed by a label and hit it big should have one goal in mind. Prove that your act is a viable business. So, of course you will be professionally recording and manufacturing CD’s to sell. The key word here is professional. We’ve discussed recording in the past and will in the future in more depth but for now let’s talk about manufacturing your CD.

Duplication Vs. Replication

Duplication to put it simply is burning copies of CD’s. But have you ever noticed that when you flip over a CD you bought at the store and look at it that it quite a bit different? That’s because professionals don’t burn their copies. They print them. This is called is replication. Replication requires a master copy called a “glass master” to be made and used as a blueprint for all future copies. While most manufacturers require a minimum order of 1000 copies before they are willing to replicate instead of duplicate, the good news is that replication is cheaper than duplication once you cross that line. Besides, let’s be honest. If you can’t sell at least 1000 copies, it’s time to do some serious work or find a new job.

Inserts

You need to be absolutely sure your artwork looks good and is printed in high quality for the case inserts (booklet and liner). Do some research and find manufacturers with good reputations. And always go full color on the booklet, cover, and CD itself. Don’t cheap out. It’s worth saving your money up longer I promise.

UPC Code

You must have this. It screams “I take my music seriously as a source of income. Record labels can be confident in me to make them money”. Plus, stores will not sell anything without a UPC code. (We will get into putting your music in stores on the next post). Some manufacturers offer the UPC code at a one-time price. If you don’t use one that offers this service, you’ll have to register for a serious of codes and it will cost you a lot of money. Then you will have to upload it with your artwork for the manufacturer. To my knowledge there is zero downside to this route.

Packaging

Let’s talk shrink wrap and spine labels. Shrink wrap is a must. It’s professional, it deters theft, and stores won’t sell your CD’s without it. Spine labels are those pesky stickers that you have to peel off the side of the CD. The pros do it, so I would to just to send the right message. Neither of these options is expensive.

I Hope I’ve been of some help. Good luck. 

Intellectual Property Podcast Reviews

This business works because of intellectual property law so it’s always a good idea to brush up on current legal events within the entertainment industry. New laws and court decisions are constantly evolving the way we do business so I’ve reviewed a few podcast resources below. Hopefully at least one of them will help you stay up to date on a regular basis.

Entertainment Law Update

Episode: 19

This is a great episode. Gordon Firemark covers some royalty issues concerning digital downloads and how the courts have approached artist royalty payments for digital download purchases. The issue is whether or not artist should get the publishing royalty rate or the sales rate, which is general, much less lucrative for the artists. I don’t think this will be an issue for long because labels will structure their new contracts to specify downloads as earning the same artist royalty rate as CD sales. However, I suspect a court decisions might change the labels rights to structure their agreements in this way. Digital downloads aren’t worth much to start with and giving the artist the publishing rate for these would actually hurt the music industry in a bad way. Digital sales are replacing CD sales and without the same percent of profit going to the labels they will lose even more money and the music industry will sink.

Intellectual Property Law Podcast Series

Episode: Is Net Neutrality a Virtual Taking?

This is a great podcast by Suffolk University. They explore the issues of net neutrality in this episode and the potential pros and cons of both sides of the argument. This is an episode I highly recommend because laws governing the Internet affect every type of business. What are the stipulations of ISP’s throttling content? The consumers receiving information at their home through the Internet pay for the right to so. Should business have the right to pay a premium to the ISP’s to have their content sent quicker? Is this unfair competition? Will this hurt the development of the Internet by allowing only well funded projects to the front of the pack? Does this mean future services like YouTube and Facebook that were started from the grassroots will not be able to have the same startup potential anymore? Will this hurt or does it sound legitimate? These are some important questions that his podcast covers.

Intellectual Property Law Podcast Series

Episode: Owning Markets

This episode addresses some current issues lying in trademark law. A lot of cases have appeared in recent years where companies are suing others in order to protect their trademarks value. This episode addresses the question of how far does a marks value reach? Does it reach into a market that a company has not expanded into but might decide to in the future? The speaker uses Apple’s mark as an excuse. They questions whether allowing other companies to using a similar mark in a different market is ok even though it might limit any future attempts by Apple to enter that market. One thing I like a lot about this one is that it is a little more one sided and they strike down some of the current arguments in trademark law cases by pointing out the flaws in the arguments.

I hope everybody sees the importance in these issues and pays close attention to the outcome of the cases in question. One single court decision can change how business is done entirely, especially in the entertainment industry. Intellectual property is a fairly new concept to the world and the relevant laws are still evolving. 

Legal Issues In Music

Today I want to talk about some specific legal issues in the music industry. These are recent issues that affect people on both the business and creative side of the industry so pay attention and feel free to share your thoughts with me.

The first issue is copyright law in regards to sampling and remixing. It is a common misconception that sampling is legal as long as the length of the sample is only a certain length. I’m here to tell you that there is only one way to legally sample music for commercial purposes and that’s with written permission. You must obtain permission, in writing of course, from whoever owns the rights to the music BEFORE you use it. Believe me the RIAA is a vicious machine and it will tear you to pieces if you give it an excuse to do it. So, I personally recommend getting permission even if you don’t think your use of a musical work is “commercial”. A Harvard law professor named Larry Lessig, points out that the way copyright law was originally put on the books makes even re-mixers and samplers who give their creative works away for free are technically “pirates” the same as people who do profit off of illegal music. The Lessig’s TED talk on this issue is below.

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

On to issue number two. The RIAA’s fight against piracy. Remember when people used to tell you as a kid “pick your battles”. The RIAA has sued children, dead old ladies (yes they actually tried this and claimed it was an accident), and parents. We all know what they are trying to do. They are trying to make examples to use as scare tactics. They want to deter future illegal downloading by crucifying a few harmless citizens in front of the national media and leave their rotting corpses up for display. Well does it work? Do you want to download music more or less when you read that they RIAA began trying to sue a mother and her two children for 1.92 MILLION DOLLARS for downloading 24 songs back in 2009? That’s enough songs to make up about two albums, which would cost roughly $20 at the I-Tunes store. Can anyone say bully, witch-hunt, and psychotic over-reaction?

The point I’m making here is that you have to fight for your rights, but when you are fighting the consumers, pick your battles. You will no doubt have venues, sponsors, promoters, etc, who will breach the terms of their contract or harm you in some other way. And sometimes, I said sometimes, legal action is the appropriate remedy. Just remember to learn from the RIAA’s mistake and don’t burn any bridges you’ll need later. And above all else, don’t alienate your fans by making yourself look like the bad guy. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Give your fans a reason to pay for your music, not a reason to steal it.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/riaa-wins-big-in-piracy-lawsuit-avast-downloaders,29424/

Legal issue three. For the second time in the last decade and a half, the major record labels are being sued for price fixing. Last January, the U.S. Supreme court upheld a NY judge’s decision to allow the case to go forward. This time the major labels are accused of colluding to price fixed digital downloads where as last time they were accused to price fixing CD’s. (Link below). The last time the major labels were sued for price fixing, they were found guilty. By the way, in case you don’t know, the RIAA we talked about in the last part represents……wait for it……..the major record labels. Does anybody else see a problem/pattern here?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/11/major-labels-lawsuit

I see it. I see an industry that has been price gouging for decades. An industry that forced people to pay growing prices on a technology that was getting cheaper to manufacture (recorded CD’s) by the minute. The people fought back and sued them.

The labels learned nothing and began more and more to fill the CD’s with 12 crappy songs, one good song, and forcibly sodomize people for the price of an entire album. So, when the labels refused to meet the consumers demand to buy just one song at a time, people found a way to fight back again and get just one song anyways…for free.

Then, the labels decide to come back and punish these rebel pirates, who are usually children with no income, by suing them for millions of dollars. Now, the people are accusing the labels of price fixing again. Now do you see the pattern?

Does this sound like a good business relationship to you? If it were a marriage, somebody would be dead by now.

Something has to change right now before this problem continues to escalate.

Great Performances

This update covers an important topic for artists. Live Performances. If you’re a manager I hope you can find some useful information to pass along to your roster.

Live performances are one of the most important aspects of an artist’s career and you should take them seriously. By all means have fun, but remember that in this business you are there for the audiences entertainment not the other away around.

Body Language

Never ever ever ever turn your back to the audience. I have seen this over and over again and it is the first sign of an amateur. It distances your audience from you in psychological and emotional ways that feel very real to them. You want to engage them. Which brings me to the next point on body language.

Look them in the eyes. If you don’t feel comfortable looking at your audience, you need to grow your ego a bit or find a different career. People with stage fright don’t often end up superstars or even mini stars for that matter.  Don’t look at each other a whole lot either. You are not there for each other either. It’s always about the audience.

Speak

Talk to your audience. Don’t say cliché and insincere things like “It’s great to be in Cleveland” and “How’s everybody feeling tonight”. Be genuine. Tell some personal details about a song before you play it. Make them feel like you are sharing a piece of yourself with them. If the audience doesn’t feel that you are emotionally connected to your own music, then why would they want to be emotionally connected to it?

They don’t need to know if a song is about your dog but if there is something unique or interesting about a song or you have a funny, but non-incriminating, tour story then tell away.

There’s also the topic of swearing. It’s honestly not a bad idea with certain audiences like those at heavy metal shows. But if Taylor Swift got on stage and started dropping F Bombs every other sentence, it might not have such a positive affect.

Rehearse

Above all play your songs well. I really know it’s annoying to hear this but you have to practice, practice, practice and after you’ve literally passed out from exhaustion, practice some more. Don’t just rehearse for the sake of doing it either. Listen to what’s happening. Find what’s wrong so you can fix it. I suggest you record video footage of your practices in order to see what you need to improve before going out to play live. Shoot, video of your live shows too for that matter.

Put On A Show

It’s a party and you’re the host. Put on a great show and make sure everyone is enjoying the event. Avoid weird gimmicks like throwing flaming cheeseburgers into the audience.

Above all esle be confident and genuine.  If you can do that, most of the little stuff will fall into place.

Managing a Breakup

Today’s update is targeted towards group managers. Although, If you are a group or a member of a group for that matter, it would be in your best interested to continue reading as well. Hopefully this will provide you with some insight into cliché self-destructive behaviors that most group/band members dabble in at one point or another during their career. For the love of all that is good, I hope you won’t. But chances are you will.

Today’s topic is breakups. How can you as a manager survive when your most profitable and possibly only group is breaking up? How do you continue to put food on the table when your income is dependant on people who no longer care to continue producing a revenue stream?

Step 1

Avoid the disaster.

You need to be prepared from the day you sign the group to play therapist. Your job as a manager might feel like more of a job as a marriage counselor than anything else. If you see it that way, you’ve got a strong grip on reality so don’t lose it yet. I’ll tell you later when the appropriate time to lose it is. Start off by NOT taking sides. Make it clear that your job is to do what’s best for the group as a whole. Try to help everyone feel important, even if they aren’t. Help them see why they entered into this partnership to begin with. Do whatever you can to reignite the excitement they felt playing together in the first place. If they really don’t want to play together anymore, remind them that they still need each other to produce income for themselves. Remind them that there are no grantees, especially with solo careers, and that staying together is what’s best for everyone income. If you fail in your attempt to avoid the disaster, proceed to step 2.

Step 2

Follow the money.

If the group is split between the lead singer/songwriter and the lead guitarist on one side and the bass player and drummer on the other side then your choice is obvious. Nine times out of ten go with who writes the songs. Whoever brings the most revenue producing talent to the table should be your focus. It doesn’t matter who you like better. It matters who can put food on your table. Groups come and go, but money will always be a necessity. If you did your job and had the group make a legal agreement with one another in the beginning, then the rest of the work is cut out for you through the breakup. Hopefully the star of the group that your siding with has the rights to the groups name. That way you won’t have to develop a new brand. It will be the same brand with a couple of different faces. Groups hire and fire members all of the time long after they’ve reached success. Nothing wrong there as long as the group doesn’t suddenly decide that YOUR to blame for their problems with each other. If that’s the case proceed to step three.

Step 3

Lose it.

Just kidding. Step three is to cushion the fall.

You are going to have to do a lot of talking and apologizing for things that aren’t actually your fault in this situation. However, once any group of people has chosen a scapegoat, it’s very hard to convince them that they are actually the ones to blame. If the fault is yours then take responsibility. But, most likely it won’t be and there won’t be much you can do other than explain everything you’ve done to help their career and hope that they are rational enough to see it. If they aren’t, well then that’s why you have a sunset clause in your contract. You do have a contract right?

Recording

I’d like to address a subject all new, present, and future original artists should be thinking about all the time. Recording.

Recording is the single most important task in an artist’s career. Your entire career will be made or broken by what you record. A great recording can provide a long and fruitful career. A bad recording will put you on the fast track to nowhere. Even if you make more money from touring and playing shows than selling your music, people only come to those shows because they liked the music you recorded.

A good recording is made up of three main things.

1. A good song.

I shouldn’t have to describe what a good song is. But, lately I’ve noticed more and more that local music in general is getting worse by the day. To keep it simple I’ll just give you two questions to ask yourself. Do complete strangers from the audience tell me how great this song is? Do other bands and musicians criticize this song for being to “poppy” or accuse me of “selling out” for writing it? If you can answer yes to both of these questions, I’d say you have a descent chance that it’s a good song. If you can’t answer yes to both questions, then I’d advise you to put it aside and get back to writing.

Remember, the opinions of other bands are worthless unless they are lashing out in jealousy. If that’s happening then you’re doing something very right.

2. A good performance.

If you can’t play your instruments in tune and in time, you’re not ready for recording. The single most important part of the performance is the vocals. I cannot stress enough that you must have a good singer with a good voice and every note must be in key. Everything, and I mean everything, should compliment the singers part. I’m not sorry if that hurts the other band member’s egos because it’s the truth.

High speed squealing guitar solos, jumping off of risers, and screaming like Emily Rose may impress a handful of teenagers with no money to buy your music but that’s where it stops.

3. Sound quality

If you don’t sound like a professional you aren’t going to be treated like one. If you are willing to sound like you recorded your music on a cassette player in your parent’s basement then you don’t take your music seriously enough to be wasting your time with it.

With that said, many of you are on a budget and I can sympathize with that. Save your money for as long as it takes. You can find a decent studio with a sound engineer for as low as 35-45 dollars an hour in most major cities. That’s way better than doing it yourself if you don’t have the right training. There is a lot that goes into engineering even a mediocre recording that takes a lot of time and experience to learn.  It takes more than expensive software and microphones. Recording is both a science and art. Get some help with it. Your music is too important to not.

Getting Signed

I imagine that if your reading this blog you are more than likely a musician who hopes to find a way to get that ever-elusive opportunity of signing with a record label.  I’m going to give you some very important pointers that you will need.  For the sake of time, we’ll skip the part about how your band needs to not suck. I am going to just assume that those of you paying attention already have what it takes.

Promo Materials

If you want to get noticed you have to be visible. You aren’t going to be noticed unless you get heard and seen, a lot. Get an electronic press kit together. I cannot stress the importance of good photos enough. When I’m searching for a new act to sign, I pass on at least 99% of what I come across without even listening to it. The reason is that I, like every other professional looking for new talent, know that if the act doesn’t take themselves seriously enough to get good photos, then they have no shot at success.

Cliché photos of your band looking angry or away from the camera are bad. What’s worse are the groups who take their promo shots dressed up in costumes, playing with toy guns, or Photoshop themselves to make it look like they are walking on water. Goofy gimmicks only send the message that you are too immature to handle the recording budget or a professional tour.

Spread

Once you have your EPK ready. You need to spread it like plague. You have free advertising access to the entire world through the Internet. Sign up for every social network you can get your hands on and ALWAYS leave a contact email address. You should have a seperate email address listed as being specifically for inquiries from booking agents, managers, publishers, and labels. I have personally been interested in a couple of artists that I literally could not find because there was no way of contacting them. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that, as a professional, I don’t feel comfortable sending you a MySpace message that will get lost in the pile of fan mail. Weeks or months later, you’ll notice that message in the inbox and come running to the label with open arms, only to find out that somebody else got your spot. No label, even a major, has the money to sign everyone they like. So, get ahead of the crowd.

Don’t just wait for labels to notice you. Go after them. Send your EPK to the ones that accept unsolicited materials. Yes, some labels do accept unsolicited material.

In fact, you have my permission to send your stuff to ArchetypeRecordsLLC@gmail.com. If you reference this blog in the subject line I promise that somebody at the label will listen to your stuff. You’d be pretty dumb to pass up that opportunity.

EPK submission is the same as job hunting. For every 150 EPK’s you send out, you’ll get one phone call or email. For every 20 phone calls or emails you get, one will pan out to something that helps your career in one way or another.

It’s a long road but it’s worth the effort. It just takes a little bit of work every day. 

Digital Royalties

Any artist making a real attempt at a career in the music business should be familiar with the performance rights organizations ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.  If you don’t know about these organizations do an Internet search for their websites. Their job is to collect and pay out any performance royalties you as an artist or publisher might be owed from broadcasters, jukeboxes, etc. Make sure you check them all out thoroughly before you submit an application. You can only affiliate with one of the three and they are all different in the way the operate and run their organizations.

But what about when your music is played on Internet radio, satellite radio, or cable music services? In those situations these companies have absolutely zero power to get you paid anything at all. Most new artists either don’t know this fact or they aren’t aware that they are even owed money from those establishments in the first place. This is where SoundExchange comes in.

The Copyright Royalty Board, appointed by the Library of Congress, has chosen SoundExchange to be the sole digital performing rights organization in the United States. They have built an impressive track record for defending the rights of the music industry over the last five years.  Thanks to their efforts, in December of 2010, the Copyright Royalty Board decided to increase the per-performance royalty rate almost fifty percent. According to the SoundExchange website, SoundExchange has paid out over $537 million dollars in royalties since it’s inception.

There is another thing that sets SoundExchange apart from the other performance rights organizations. In addition to songwriting and publishing royalties, they collect royalties on behave of the owners of the master recording copyrights. The copyright owner for a master recording is a typically a record label. Sometimes though, particularly with unsigned artists, the songwriter may own the copyrights to the master recordings or maybe a publisher owns them. Either way, its money owed that the traditional radio broadcasters have been weaseling their way out of paying for a long time.

No matter where you’re at in your career it’s a good idea to register with SoundExchange so that you can get your digital performance royalties if and when your music gets played in digital. If you don’t register, you’ll have a pretty slim chance of getting paid your digital performance royalties or even knowing when your music is being played digitally in the first place.

To have career in music you have to make money in music. SoundExchange is a good start.

Copyright Extremism

Copyright laws have been a hot issue over the last decade, mainly due to file sharing technology, and nobody has been affected by this more than the music industry. But what’s just as important as copyright infringement is how the industry deals with it.

In the TED.com video “Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity” Larry Lessig, a lawyer and Harvard professor, argues that copyrighted content should be freely available for non-commercial artistic use. Lessig claims that extremism on both sides of the copyright war are creating corrosive situation in which younger generations are put in a position where they knowingly operate outside the law without doing any real harm. It seems that he would agree with me this is counterproductive. On one side there are those who believe that no copyrighted work should be used for any purpose without paying for that use and there are the other extremists who believe in operating outside of copyright laws whenever they can get away with it whether it be by illegal downloading, plagiarism, etc. But, there is a middle ground.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

This all ties back to the major record labels fighting change. Rather than accept the inevitable change and adapt to the new market, they would rather go down with the ship. That’s all good and fine but it’s not stopping there. The major labels are angry that industry is changing and they want revenge. They are taking as many people as they can down with them through lawsuits, criminal charges, injunction, etc. The biggest problem with this isn’t that they don’t have the legal right to these actions. The problem is how these actions affect the consumer’s perception of the music industry as a whole. It’s easy for people to justify stealing music when the companies they are stealing from sue teenagers for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Who’s side do you think the average consumer is on?

I’m not suggesting people be allowed to download music for free. I’m merely pointing out that how the problem is being dealt with is only hurting the industry’s relationship to its’ customers. As Lessig said,  “Extremism begets extremism”.