Kurb indie music promotions

It used to be that, as a musician, only 10% of your career was up to you. “Getting discovered” was about all you could do. A few gatekeepers controlled ALL outlets. You had to impress one of these magic few people to be allowed to present your music to the world. (Even then, they assigned you a manager, stylist, producer, band, etc.)

As of the last few years, now 90% of your career is up to you. You have all the tools to make it happen.

Record labels aren't guessing anymore. They're only signing artists that have made a success on their own. As Alan Elliott says, “A record label used to be able to look at a tree and say, 'That would make a great table.' Now all they can do is take a finished table and sell it at Wal-Mart.”

You have to make a great recording, a great show, a great image. You have to come up with a plan and make it happen, too. You have to make thousands of people want your music so much they pay good money for it. You have to make things happen on your own. Even if a record label puts it in the stores for you, it's still up to your own hard work to go make people buy it.

The only thing stopping you from great success is yourself. This is both scary and exciting. At least you're in control.

You may have heard of “D.I.Y.” which stands for “Do It Yourself”.

I think many musicians have accidentally interpreted this as “Do It ALL Yourself”.

Instead, I suggest you think of D.I.Y. as “Decide It Yourself”.

You should NOT be the only one making your website, engineering your recordings, designing your artwork, promoting your shows, booking the gigs, and all that other stuff. Trying to do it ALL yourself will be a disaster once you have anything happening.

Instead, just be the one in control, making the decisions, but find people to help you. Find someone who gets excited about making your website. Find someone who gets excited about engineering your recordings. Someone who loves designing artwork. Someone who's great at promoting shows.

Yes, it's hard to find these people. But it's harder to watch your career crawl instead of run, because you're trying to do it all yourself.

Everything great that happens in your career always starts with someone you know. Don't think that the big opportunities are somewhere else.You don't need to surf the 'net. Your next big break will not come from a some mysterious technology, or discovery of new information. Your next big break will come from someone you know. Go know people.

If you want any level of success beyond the admiration of friends and family, you have to get used to the idea of dealing with great numbers of people.

One good review means almost nothing. Getting airplay on one radio station is not enough.

You need to stay in close touch with hundreds, and soon, thousands of people. Whether fans, music biz, or the endless characters you're going to encounter around the world on your way to the top, you're going to need to keep track of them all.

You're going to need a database. A “contact manager”. A fancy term for an address book. An amazing tool with endless memory to help our artistic, creative, musical brains which are often lost in space and notoriously flaky.

It takes a discipline and orderliness you may not be used to, but comes in SO handy when you need to contact that graphic designer who introduced himself to you once after a gig in St. Louis a year and a half ago. Or to be able, in 5 seconds, to find the 6 drummers you know in Southern California.

Last week a musician wrote an email to the effect of, “I've been working hard - why isn't it paying off?”

Keep this in mind: life is like high school.When you're in high school, it's ALL about popularity, clicks, being cool, what you wear, what parties you're at, etc. When you go to college, the focus shifts to academic achievement.

Many people get out of college thinking the world will be like that. “The harder you work, the more you will be rewarded.” But it's not.

Life is like high school. It's all about who you know, how socially charming you are, what scene you're in, what you wear, what parties you're at, flirting, and being cool.

But you can make this work in your favor. When I think about every big leap that happened in my career, it was always because of “someone I knew.” Always friends of friends. People in some position of power who I kept in touch with, did favors for, and got the same in return.

Go meet 3 people each week you think could help your career. Be a good friend. Make it mutually beneficial, not some suck-up relationship. There's always some resource you have that can totally help out someone who may be “above” you on the ladder. Invite a NEW friend to a party or show you know about.

For years I was booked solid, touring the college market, making way too much money, not because I'm GOOD, but because we made a FUN, ENTERTAINING, “COOL” show. We won the popularity contest.

I think it's possible to approach the music business as if you were a new kid going to a new high school, and wanted to be the most popular kid in class. Sounds shallow, but it works. Ask Andy Warhol, or someone like Miles Davis - who made great music but knew how to play his image : to be cool.

Like proper manners, or knowing how to drive, here are some things in the online world you just need to know:

1. EMAIL
- Have a good signature file that tells who you are, how to find you, and entices people to click through to your web address. All in 4 lines or less.
- How to make good subject headers. So when your email is one of 500 in an “IN” box, it will say exactly what is contained inside, from the other person's point of view.
- How to quote someone's email message back to them. Or not.
- How to subscribe to, post messages to, and unsubscribe from to a mailing list.
- Manners. Spelling. Punctuation. How to turn off your caps lock key, and not use 25 exclamation points in a row.
- How to communicate personality through these typewriter keys.
- Separate sentences into paragraphs. Reading a computer screen is different from reading a book. There's no paper to waste - leave plenty of space.

2. DATABASE SKILLS
- Know how to work your “address book” program. How to find people, sort, print, add, remove, change, and do bigger find commands (how to find all guitarists in the 818 area code)
- Keep it nice and clean and updated. Keep street address separated from the city, state, zip, country. Don't be sloppy in these early stages.
- Assume you ARE going to get more popular and soon your little address book will need to sort thousands of people.
- If you get really fancy, track each contact you have with someone: each call, email, visit. It comes in handy when someone from a year ago calls you up saying, “It's George! Remember?”

3 . WEB SKILLS
- Know how to make an MP3, and how to upload it to a website.
- Sort your bookmarks/favorites into categories/folders so you can find things later.

The self-promoting musician of the past needed to always have a presskit (with CD and photo) nearby and ready to send.

The modern self-promoting musician needs to keep a “PROMO BOX” folder on the desktop of your computer.

It will take you just one hour to put together, and you'll be able to use it again and again and again:

Make a folder on your desktop called “promo box” and put these things inside for quick easy access:

1. At least one full-length MP3 file of a track from your CD. Encoded at the standard 128k bitrate. Give it a nice long name, without spaces, so that if anyone runs across it on the web they know who it is. (Example: RACHAEL_SAGE-sistersong.mp3 ) Preferably have 3-5 songs from your CD encoded here, ready to go.

2. An entertaining bio written four times, in four different lengths.
- Long long version (over 3 paragraphs. 1-2 pages. exhaustive and rarely used.)
- Medium long version (2 - 4 entertaining and important paragraphs. the top end of what people will sit and read on the web.)
- Short version ( 1 killer paragraph)
- One-liner ( 1 killer sentence )

3. Quotes from reviews:
- one big text file with every review you've ever gotten, all typed out and credited
- one text file with just the best short quotes from these reviews

4. Graphics, with a few different sizes of each:
- artist photos (studio shot, live shot, up close, far away)
- album cover graphic (big version, small version)
- your logo, if you have one

IF YOU DO THIS, JUST ONCE, then the job of uploading your information to another website will be painless. You'll just say, “da-da-da! all done!” and let your MP3s upload while you go make dinner.

Your website can be your best tool, if you make it communicate with your fans and potential fans, TWO-WAY.

Your website should get people involved, make them want to introduce themselves, ask questions, shout out.

YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD:

Get their email address! Interact! Make an easy fill-out form. (hint: try a fun question like “who are you?” or “do you know your own name?”)
Encourage them to buy your CD, constantly. It's a great way to start a relationship.
Show what's unique about you. Image, quirks, colors, moods.
Make the sound clips easy to get to, not buried under layers
Answer the obvious questions: who are you, what do you look like, let me hear the music
Acknowledge them! Have their pictures on your site. Answer their questions on your site. Show them they ARE a part of your life.
And make sure you have your own domain name.

Secret trick to get people in the audience to sign your mailing list AND be part of your inside club. At every show you do, from now on, bring a camera and a notebook. About halfway through your show, when everyone is having fun, take pictures of the audience, from the stage. Tell them to smile, make a face, hold up their beer, whatever.

Afterwards, pass around the notebook and say, “Please write down your email address in this notebook, and in a few days, I'll email you, telling you where you can see YOUR goofy picture on my website.”

At the end of the night, before bed, write up a journal/diary/memoir of that show. Scan and upload all their pictures onto a page of your website. Dedicate a page of your site about that show, with the diary, photos, and a little link on that page that says, “If you were at this show, please introduce yourself!” - so people can contact you.

Email everyone that was there that night. Of course EVERYone will go look at your site. How could they not? People are infinitely more interested in themselves than they are in you.

Stay in touch with them all!

The other hidden idea in this is to make every show a Real Event. A Big Deal. Something worth documenting. This will get you out of the habit of thinking of it as “just another gig.” Because for many of your fans, it's not. It's the most fun they've had all month.

I prefer to ignore the music industry. Maybe that's why you don't see me on the cover of Rolling Stone.

One of my only regrets about my own band was that we toured and got great reviews, toured and got lots of airplay, toured and booked some great-paying gigs. BUT... nobody was working the inside of the music business.

Nobody was connecting with the “gatekeepers” to bring us to the next level. We just kept doing the same gigs.

Maybe you're happy on the outside of the biz. (I know I am.)

But if you want to tour with major-label artists, be on the cover of national magazines, be in good rotation on the biggest radio stations in town, or get onto MTV, you're going to have to have someone working the inside of the biz.

Someone who loves it. Someone who is loved by it. Someone persuasive who gets things done 10 times faster than you ever could. Someone who's excited enough about it, that they would never be discouraged.

Like your love of making music. You wouldn't just “stop” making music because you didn't get a record deal would you? Then you need to find someone who's equally passionate about the business side of music, and particularly the business side of YOUR music.

It IS possible. There are lots of people in this world.

Get to the point of being a novice marketer/promoter/agent. Then hand it to an expert.

Moby, the famous techno artist, says the main reason for his success was that he found experts to do what they're best at, instead of trying to do it himself.

(Paraphrased:) “Instead of trying to be a booking agent, publicist, label, and manager, I put my initial energy into finding and impressing the best agent, publicist, label, and manager. And I just kept making lots of the best music I could.”

If you sense you are becoming an expert, figure out what your real passions in life are and act accordingly.

Maybe you're a better publicist than bassist. Maybe you're a better bassist than publicist.

Maybe it's time to admit your weakness as a booking agent, and hand it off to someone else. Maybe it's time to admit your genius as a booking agent, and commit to it full-time.