(Here’s an interview I did with Cypress Hill’s B Real TV. I never contacted them asking them for an interview ... they saw that I had gotten some buzz and wanted an interview. I was honored and beyond excited given I was OBSESSED with his music when I was young!)
3. Don’t Worry About “Getting Signed”
95 percent of signed artists fail. With those odds, it makes more sense to learn the new music business on your own. You can stay Independent and keep control of your music by learning and applying the principles of marketing to your music. You’ll have a better shot at sustainability than if you sign somewhere and let a label with a 5 percent success rate manage your career. (Not to mention the control they will have over your creativity and image.)
95 percent of signed artists fail. With those odds, it makes more sense to learn the new music business on your own. You can stay Independent and keep control of your music by learning and applying the principles of marketing to your music. You’ll have a better shot at sustainability than if you sign somewhere and let a label with a 5 percent success rate manage your career. (Not to mention the control they will have over your creativity and image.)
If you’re not into learning business/marketing, get someone on your team that wants to learn it while you learn to evolve your music. I partnered with someone that loves my music and loves marketing, and it helps if you love and enjoy each other as people and have similar spiritual and creative interests!
Having my own marketing and events firm didn’t hurt, but it was about making many financial and PR mistakes (and learning from them) that actually created the sustainability. Give your marketing person a piece of your potential profits and all the love you can muster as this type of support is such a precious gift to an artist. There is a ton of great music and lots of talented artists out there, but there seems to be very few talented marketers in the music industry.
4. Give Your Music Away For Free - The Legal Way
Don’t just give away your music for free — assign a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) License to your music.
Don’t just give away your music for free — assign a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) License to your music.
What in the world is Creative Commons?
It’s a copyright license you put on your music that allows you to let others download your music for free and use it for whatever they want. They just have to give you credit for it. This is a very unique and new marketing strategy that will get you many new fans. If you are not comfortable doing this, that’s understandable, because I was not at first. Why would we spend hard-earned money and time writing, recording, mixing, and mastering my music only to give away for free?
I argued for a long time with my partner about it, and the value of art. It wasn’t that I wanted to make a ton of money off of my music, but I wanted to stand for the value of all art in general. But in the end I trusted his instinct — giving away all 5 of my albums for free. I also am not into the monetary system as it is anyway and loved that anyone could have access to music, even if they couldn’t afford it.
Here is a great tool to choose a license - Choose a Creative Commons License >
9. Make sure you have an AWESOME EPK
Sonicbids is expensive. You have to pay a monthly fee and then a fee for submitting for each gig. It seems to be over-saturated and less and less effective these days, especially since their latest platform update. I would avoid the free shows at Sonicbids ... for the same reason as above.
Make your own EPK.
Here is my EPK, as an example:
Update it every time something awesome happens.
The beauty of having this readily available is that the media (and fans) will LOVE a 1 stop shop where they can get everything they need about you and spend less of their precious time searching. Your bio, your latest accomplishments, your pics, your music and links to important places should be included.
10. Email is the Holy Grail
What? Email? What is this, 2001?
What? Email? What is this, 2001?
Email is still, by far, the highest converting online marketing tactic. From my experience, your number of fans is determined by the number of emails you have.
- Not your Facebook fans.
- Not your Twitter following.
- Not your number of Instagram likes on your cute puppy.
And even crazier is that your number of fans = your email list opens, not your total email list. That number will probably be around 50 percent ... so for every 2 emails you get, consider that 1 true fan.
How do you get these emails?
If you ask, you shall receive.
If you ask, you shall receive.
Once you give away your music for free and post it on all of the Creative Commons websites (make sure you put your social media links in all of the descriptions), you will begin to see new fans on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
Engage with them, authentically and from your heart. Ask them for their email address so that you can continue to send them free music / concert updates / anything that isn’t spam!
Since you now have someone on your team that is devoted to marketing your music, every new marketing idea you come up with should have an end goal of getting an email address.
CONCLUSION
This entire process will have a spiraling exponential effect. The more fans you get, the more fans you will get. Here it is, again:
1. Make music
2. Give it away for free using a CC license
3. Free music = new fans
4. New fans will reach out via social media and engage, be grateful and love them!
5. Collect emails from your fans
6. Make more music and give it away for free
7. Email your current fans and ask them to share it
8. Free new music + Current fans sharing that music = more new fans
9. Repeat 1 through 8 over and over again.
10. Magical things will happen
2. Give it away for free using a CC license
3. Free music = new fans
4. New fans will reach out via social media and engage, be grateful and love them!
5. Collect emails from your fans
6. Make more music and give it away for free
7. Email your current fans and ask them to share it
8. Free new music + Current fans sharing that music = more new fans
9. Repeat 1 through 8 over and over again.
10. Magical things will happen
- Blogs will start posting your music
- People will want to book you
- Your mp3 sales will start to appear
- You will get licensing opportunities
- Brands that align with you and your music will want to help you
Again, I can make no guarantees and also could share a lot more about what worked and what didn’t but I know time is limited. I will follow up with some more articles very soon, so please, follow me on Twitter to get my updates.
I also believe heavily in putting focus and intention on what you want (the laws of attraction) and could suggest various things that helped me creatively, but if you have a method that works, keep it up! Every mistake is a lesson learned and no way is ever the right way. For example if you are a busker or living and playing on the festival circuit, you are a bad ass and I admire it so much! But, I just hope you find something of value from my suggestions. May the force of amazing music and love, always be with you! xoxo
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