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Your music is your marketing

Info TheBiz - Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Think about this. For the independent musician, the music you make is essentially your advertising. The product that you are trying to sell is yourself as the artist. You are trying to get consumers to buy into you as an artist, come to shows, buy a t-shirt and buy the premium package of your music, whatever. The music is just an ad to get consumers to buy in.

Think about what could happen to your outlook on the music industry if you started to think of the music itself as just an advertising message. Would you charge people to listen to or watch an ad? No way, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to see your ads and to be affected by them. Better still, you want people to talk about your ads and to share them with one another. Your ad can go viral if enough people like it, share it and make it part of their Facebook profile. Your ad helps them define who they are – now that’s a buy in!

Music videos have always been ads for the single, but did you know that in the 60s the single was really just an ad for the album. The Beatles certainly thought that way; they always saw the album as the main game. Having number one singles is just a great way to get people to buy your album and then buy into you as an artist. Artists and record companies will always rather sell albums than singles. Traditionally the single was sold just above cost price but its main aim was to get you to buy more great songs just like this one...on the album. Remember the “Cassingle” (A cassette single that contained 2 or 3 songs) It was a disposable item, sold very cheap so you could take that favorite song with you anywhere you wanted. But if you didn’t want to have to change the tape every 5 minutes…you had to buy the album.

When you think of the music as an ad for the artist you have to question the wisdom of doing anything that gets in the way of getting that advertising message to the masses. Charging for music seems crazy.

Get the music everywhere that it can be seen or heard (like any marketing message) give it away at gigs or on MySpace or via file sharing sites, wherever you can. Hope that your adverting makes an emotional connection with the listener. If it does you will have the opportunity to try to turn them into fans. Why do anything to stop your main advertising message get to the masses?


Ben O'Hara

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The Dawn of the Independant Musician

Info TheBiz - Friday, August 20, 2010

2005 was the dawn of the new music industry. The old industry was a world where the corporate fat cats finally got so greedy that they actually started to devour themselves, but that left a space for everyone else. I think great music is finally back and the music industry is re-discovering its soul. All thanks to the independent musician.

For me, 2005 was the moment when I realised that it was no longer possible to keep track of every great new band that was out there. I used to be able to ask 18 or 19 year olds, ‘so what kind of music are you into’ and I would know every band that they listed. In 2005 the answer to that question just got so ‘far out there’ that nobody could keep track. ‘I’m totally into this Industrial/Grind Core German metal band; they don’t have a record label and have never toured outside of Germany. They only have 112 fans on MySpace so far, but I am the most passionate of all their fans. I have every T-Shirt and I made a video clip for them, which is being played on German community television.’ WHAT?

It’s not the 1st time in history that this has happened. The original music business of the 1950’ and 1960’s was all about people power. Record Labels and Radio started playing rock n’ roll due to overwhelming demand from fans wanting to discover new music. The labels didn’t really care about rock music but the fans did and the Baby-Boomer kids had money. The Baby-Boomers actively sought new music but with limited communication options they relied on the corner stones of the record label, the radio and the retailer to help them find it. Those 3 became the ‘taste makers’ telling the consumer that they knew what was good music and what was not. They supposedly filtered out the bad music and let consumers access the good stuff.

Here is where it all started to go down hill, the labels worked out that it was not about the music at all, it was about having ‘hits’. If you are going to sell something, it is much more profitable to sell lots of one product than lots of different products. The filter got narrower and narrower. The definition of ‘good music’ really became ‘most popular’ or the ‘highest selling music.’ The 80’s were really full of this kind of thinking. The easiest to digest music was the most popular and niche music got pushed out of the way.

Somewhere around 1994-95 file sharing and Napster suddenly took hold. The filter was off for the 1st time. While most of the music that was shared was still the super popular stuff, there was plenty of obscure, niche stuff available. All those previously unrealised tracks (unreleased because the record company thought they were not “commercial enough”) were suddenly available to anyone with a home computer, anywhere in the world. In a way the record companies tried to jump on-board, digital music stores (like Apple’s iTunes) offered legal paid for downloads, but the filter was still there. You could only buy what the companies made available and only in the territory where you held a credit card. All in all, not enough freedom and not enough niche music was made available. The independent musician was left out.

Then in 2005, MySpace really took hold. The music maker could interact directly with the fan. No filter at all. Any band, any fan, anywhere in the world. The filter providers (the record label, the radio/TV stations, the retailers) become completely irrelevant. This changes everything and levels out the playing field for everyone. Now in 2010 it’s all about good music again. It’s not about getting a stack of record company cash behind you or getting main stream radio airplay. It’s about getting fans to talk to you directly. No more excuses. Just make great music, get it out there (you know all of the ways you can do that) and start building a stack of fans.

I think that history will look back on 2005 to 2010 as the beginning of the next phase of the music industry. The Dawn of the Independent Musician.


Ben O’Hara

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How much do I charge for...

Info TheBiz - Thursday, August 05, 2010

On an almost daily basis, we are asked by a musician or composer or a manager one of the toughest questions to answer. ‘How much do I charge for…a gig…a song in a film…a song in an ad…to have my lyrics on a T-Shirt’ and a thousand other money making ventures in the music industry.

It’s a tough question to know how to answer; it’s really a ‘how long is a piece of string’ type of questions. There are as many different answers as there are bands and artists out there. Plus, unknown and struggling bands are always excited by the idea that someone might want to pay them anything at all. They get used to working for free or even paying to play. The idea that you might find some way to promote your music AND get paid at the same time, is an exciting prospect for many bands.

So, I thought this week I would share a couple of tips that are helpful to apply when trying to set your price.

  1. The key is really finding a price that you would feel happy to work for. If you were to walk away with $100 from the deal, would that make you happy or would that make you mad.

  2. Find the middle ground between feeling like you are getting ripped off verses feeling like you are getting paid well beyond what you were expecting. That middle ground is where you should really be aiming.

  3. Think about how much work will be involved for you in making the work happen. Can you break that down into an hourly amount? Work out how much per hour you would be happy to work for. (say $25 per hour) You know the work is going to take 10 hours (they want you to write a song for their short film) so, $25 x 10 hours = $250. Is that a fair price?

  4. Practice common negotiation skills like putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. If your price is completely over the top, they won’t do a deal with you this time, or anytime in the future.

  5. Value what you do. If you don’t, nobody else will either. If you give it away for nothing you need to have a way to convert that nothing into something. Bands might give away a demo CD in the hope that more people will come to their live shows. You can apply that principle in any deal that you do.

  6. Weigh up the opportunity, is it really the opportunity that you think it is? What are the down sides verses the up sides

Does it always have to be a one off payment? You may be able to negotiate some kind of ‘verses deal’. The idea is you get a set amount for providing your service (say $500 for the gig) but if the use is more successful than 1st planned, you reserve the right to collect a larger share of the income, or renegotiate the deal. (say if 50 people show up to the gig you get your $500 plus $5 per person beyond the 50 person mark.) This works in film and other uses. It is sometimes referred to as a ‘backend payment’ (more about this in future blogs.)

For me, I don’t think that it is about winning or losing the negotiation. It is just about finding that middle ground. If you really want to opportunity to happen, you will be prepared to give up more. If you don’t mind if the opportunity goes ahead or not, you may be prepared to give up less.

Final tip – It is rare that you only get one opportunity in life. If the band is good, or the music is good things will happen. So saying no or valuing your music highly is not to say that you will never get opportunities. But the flip side of that is also true, be a diva and say no too often, eventually people will stop bothering to ask.

So, how much do you charge? It’s up to you. But use the tips above to try to find some kind of balance.

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