Attention the Independent Artist
NOBODY CARES SHOW Jay and Dirty Bob Show
Ten cardboard boxes arrive in the mail containing a thousand shrink-wrapped CDs. You’re feeling pretty proud. All those precious hours writing, practicing, scrimping & saving, recording…
All for NOTHING!!!
… unless, of course, you can get other folks to take an interest in your music and actually LISTEN. But how?
Guest post by Bob Baker, www.TheBuzzFactor.com
A well written press release is the first step in getting some attention for your new album. Use this template to help you organize your information. Note that this template was written with bands and indie labels in mind as the writers and the media in mind as the readers. PR folks and radio pluggers will want to take a slightly different approach with their press releases, and one sheets for distributors and stores should also be slightly different.
by Chris R. at CD Baby
Build the bill yourself.When booking tours, so many bands begin the process backwards. They start by writing to the talent buyers at all the coolest clubs (or the only clubs) in the towns they’ll be traveling through. If you’ve never played in a particular town before, your press quotes and your contacts might help you get a slot on a bill you have no control over, but it probably won’t be a great night. Here’s why:
1) Most bands with a decent draw in their hometown take more than just a passing interest in who else is on the bill. So if you’re being added to a bill by the booker without ever talking to the other bands, chances are those other bands are being thrown on the bill the same way you are.
2) Meaning,… that all the bands that evening have small draws. Plus, you might be mismatched in terms of genre, style, appeal, etc.
3) Since you went through the booker/talent-buyer directly, you’ve probably not built up any kind of relationship with the other bands. They’ll have little interest or investment in encouraging their fans and friends to stay for your set.
So, what is the moral of the story?
So, for example, pretend you live in Portland and you want to play a gig in Seattle that is worth the 3 hour drive and gas money. First, you want to find who the local Seattle bands are that you want to play with. Check out the websites for the Seattle weekly papers. Use Google searches, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, even MySpace, to discover similar Seattle bands. Then contact them.
At this point, you’ll have to use your own common sense when approaching bands. There is strategy and politics involved in booking. If you don’t have a huge draw in Portland, then you probably shouldn’t be writing the most popular bands in Seattle with gig-swapping offers. Opening for a big band in Seattle is a huge opportunity, and that band will want something in return. If you can’t provide it, they’ll ignore your email. Conversely, if you DO have a decent draw in your own hometown but are completely unknown in Seattle, some bigger Seattle acts may be willing to take a chance on you.
If you’re still building your local audience and approach Seattle acts who are doing the same, there is still value in constructing a bill this way. First, you’re ensuring that you’ll be sharing the evening with similar (or at least sympathetic) musical acts. Second, since you’ve formed relationships with the Seattle bands directly, there will be more of that good old social pressure on them to support you, stick around for your set, get their fans out early, etc.
So, next time you’re booking an out-of-town show, consider writing to a few bands first before you email Tina Talent-Buyer at the Cool Club.
Monitoring the successes and failures of your Facebook campaigns is the key to learning,tweaking and making improvements. Bitly is a valuable tool that will give you a birds-eye-view of the interests and levels of engagement of your fan base.
Bitly, formerly known as bit.ly, is a URL shortener that also helps you track info about your fans. Let’s say you want to post a link to your blog on Facebook. Normally you would just paste in the link:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog/really-cool-article.html
But if you shorten that link with bit.ly first, it will look like this:
http://bit.ly/noDWX7
Your new URL will be trackable and you’ll be able to view:
* how many people clicked your link.
* what time of day you get the most interactions.
* the time zones and geographical location of folks who opened your link.
* lots of other useful info.
Are your fans mostly in the US or Europe? Do they use Macs or PCs? Are they night owls or morning people? All these bits of data can help you construct a better promotional campaign for Facebook. Use bitly to get to know your fans and improve the way you interact with them.
by Gary Ewer
Songwriting can be an excellent way to express feelings and emotion, but let’s not forget about one of the most important parts of the process. When you write there should be something special about the song. Good songs need that undefinable magic. Gary Ewer has compiled a few tips to make your songs more special.
1. Every song you write needs to show something innovative, something unique that sets it apart from all the other songs that you’ve written. You can go a long way toward this goal by never starting two songs in a row in the same way. If you started with a chord progression to create your last song, you need to start your next one in a completely different way. Don’t use a formula!
2. Try to incorporate an interesting instrument, or instrumental effect, in most of your songs. It can be the difference that grabs people’s attention. What would McCartney’s “Mull of Kintyre” be without the bagpipes? But it doesn’t even need to be that obvious. Even if you’re using a band with a set instrumentation, you can do things in performance that puts a mark of uniqueness on the sound of your songs.
3. Allow your songs’ intros to make a statement. An intro is your songs first and almost only chance to grab people’s attention. Do something creative, something imaginative. An intro can be used to set up a hook, give melodic shapes that come from the rest of the song, and introduce the song’s mood. It’s an opportunity that can be wasted if you’re not careful.
4. Make changes to loudness levels (dynamics) throughout your song. Sometimes a song can sound boring, and all it takes is the drama that comes from changing quickly from softs to louds and back again.
When I critique songs that are sent to me, the most common issue I encounter is “sameness”: nothing stands out. Nothing makes a statement, and the whole song sounds the same from beginning to end.
So for every song you write, make a recording of it,and ask yourself, “What’s special about this song that sets it apart from anything else I’ve ever written? If you can’t answer that question easily, you’ve got to make changes if you want to make an impact.
by Brad B. at CD Baby
Don’t Forget to Fill Out the Short Description on Your CD Baby Album Page
We see a lot of pages where this section is left blank, and while you’re certainly not required to write anything in there, there are some advantages to doing so. It’ll probably only take you a few minutes, and it can make a big difference. Here’s why.
It enhances your CD Baby search results. Your Short Album Description accompanies your artist name and album title in search results on CDBaby.com, as well as in the listings if someone is just browsing albums. Providing some text that might catch their eye might lead to a click-through to your album page, where they can hear your music and learn even more about you.
People who want to write about you need copy to grab, or at least a place to start. When writing show previews or little blurbs, journalists and bloggers are going to be searching for quick info about your release that they can quote or summarize to include in their piece. Sure, this info might be on your website, but why not have it on your album page as well? CD Baby album pages provide strong Google search results, and there’s a good chance somebody looking for info about your project might end up there. Make it easy for them to find out what you’re all about. If they have to search too hard, they might just scrap it.
BY: MATT VOYNO
’ve started to notice a trend. Radio doesn’t like the internet. Actually, most of the music industry doesn’t like the internet. The traditional music industry can’t do much about file sharing, loss of their brand, the flattening of recording technology, etc, but they can do something about radio and traditional media. They can use their power in both worlds to ignore nearly every music star the internet has created.
Rebecca Black wasn’t played on the radio. Not because she had a horrible song, no, it was because she was created outside of the system. Other internet music stars like Kina Grannis, Pomplamoose, etc, have more than enough fans for radio play, but because of the tight relations between the Major Labels and Corporate Radio, those internet artists aren’t receiving the attention that they should. They’ve been created without the Majors profiting and therefore they’ve been blacklisted.
Of course we do have the curious case of Justin Bieber. Arguably the biggest star the internet has ever produced. But when you look at the main differences between Bieber and other internet music stars you quickly notice that Justin Bieber signed with the Major Label world very early on. His manager, whom discovered him, was already involved with the Majors and Justin was quickly groomed to be very much a Major Label artist. For all the good his mother did him in his early years of his career, she didn’t want to keep controlling it in a DIY fashion like many of today’s internet music stars want.
The difference between the two types of music stars is quite obvious. When bands sign with Major Labels they are signing to old media. Radio, TV, Newspapers, (other things that your father grandfather talks about) have a long and storied history with Major Labels. The internet is new; it’s brash, bold, and will probably kill most of the old media if it has the chance. Of course radio won’t play an internet artist. It would be tantamount to giving it all up. They still must up hold “standards” even if it kills them.
It seems that, at least today, 2011, you do have to choose between being an Internet Star and a Radio Star. if you reject the Majors and go it your own way, you also reject traditional mainstream radio. For indie bands, psych jam rockers, underground electronic hip hop beatmakers that will probably not be a problem. But if you’re aiming at a bigger audience, the kind that the pop stars of yesteryear had, then you’d better figure out away to do it without mainstream radio, because most likely, you’ll be left out.
With multi-track recording programs like GarageBand, Pro Tools, and Logic becoming nearly ubiquitous amongst tech-savvy musicians, it’s easier than ever to take your own music all the way from first inspiration to finished audio file without leaving your room. But just because these high-powered tools are available, it doesn’t mean we all know how to use them well.
One big stumbling block that many up-and-comers encounter is learning to deal with virtual instruments (VIs) – the sampled pianos, guitars, drums, strings, and synths – that you can trigger from your keyboard, via a MIDI connection, and record internally in these programs.
Given that many such sounds often come standard with recording software, it can be tremendous fun to lay down a virtual drum groove, record a virtual bass line on top, add a virtual organ pad, and so on. Regardless of how cool your composition is, though, and how inspired your performance may be, the end result can still end up sounding mechanical and rather lifeless. But what’s to be done?
Making your virtual instruments breathe with the music, sound more realistic, and convey the true emotion of the song is a craft unto itself. To help you bring your own pre-packaged sounds to life – regardless of whether you’re using GarageBand or Pro Tools, Logic, or Digital Performer – here are some tips from the pros.
ATTN Mag
O Squared
Attn Correspondent