Answering some important questions about my career in the music business

One of the more useful blogs out there, MusicMarketing.Com, recently issued a survey that I found to be really interesting. I usually find surveys to be stupid, mush filled enterprises of multiple choice. But this one was a 9 question blank field survey that asked a few very thoughtful questions that got me thinking. So I answered them and discovered a few things about myself along the way. I thought I'd post the answers here for those that might find the answers useful or insightful for themselves as well... it's a bit personally revealing, but i suppose that's what the internet is all about these days

WHAT IS YOUR NUMBER ONE MUSIC INDUSTRY GOAL?
To find a manager / team to run my music businesses and find funding for my works so that I can focus on being creative.

WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE IF YOU FULFILLED THIS GOAL?
This team would help my band and sell 10,000 albums a year. And release at least 1 album a year.
Book shows to tour and have it be lucrative enough that we can afford to keep doing it and make money from it.
Enable resources to draw in outside collaborators to help realize any creative / marketing / entrepeneurial vision that I have (video, online, musical, merchandise) and find ways to fund it

Ideally this team would also help in my other work as a producer of artists and help setup collaborations with my studio and allow me to work as an A&R role with artists I produce.

WHAT IT WOULD MEAN TO YOU IF YOU ACHIEVED THIS GOAL?
It would mean that I can spend my time doing what I do best and quit focusing on peripheral issues that don't move me along. It means that the incredibly talented but seriously broke artists that I produce would be able to make their albums much more quickly. It would mean I could spend more time being creative and less time trying to figure out how to be successful as a marketing person. It would mean I could be what I've always wanted to be rather than feeling like I need to be 10 different people to do the few things that make me happy.

My life would only be different in the sense that the way I spend my time now would be much more artistically and creatively focused instead of market and promotion focused (which I can only do when I have the time because my day job is to be creatively focused after all).

WHY IS THIS SO IMPORTANT TO YOU
Because I know what makes me happy. I like creating and collaborating with people. I like helping new artists reach their potential. I like writing and co-writing songs. I like to be able to perform and record and produce. My work is only limited by the fact that there is no one other than me to promote it. If I had someone who could make the work I do bigger, then I could focus on making bigger and more work.

WHY HAVE YOU NOT ACHIEVED YOUR GOAL
I have not met the right person or team yet and feel at a loss on how to meet this team. It is not really a lack of connections. I know lots of people in the business and am told I'm very well "connected". I go to SXSW, CMJ every year. I am the secretary of my chapter of the Recording Academy. I write a blog and occasionally comment on other blogs but finding the right person to manage any part of your business is a huge leap of faith and trust and requires finding a very specific match, particularly since my business encompasses so many areas.
On a more personal, deeper level, I am also afraid of changing elements of my life (I have a bit of a fear of success and a fear of rejection). I don't like cold calling people and I don't like having to "sell" myself. I am afraid of asking for things for myself because it makes me feel very shallow. I would rather have people see what I do and then make an offer if they would like to. I realize much of this is self-defeating and simply answering the question puts a few ideas in my head...

WHAT IS YOUR NUMBER ONE MUSIC INDUSTRY FRUSTRATION?
Trying to bring quality products to people that might like them. I have an assumption (born of experience) that most busy people that you want to reach, really don't have time for new things, even if they are good. It is really hard to get the right type of meeting with the right person and you have to have both to make any new connection successful. This applies to fans as well as to managers and labels. It probably applies to life.
The other is just not having enough funding to achieve the goals I have. And finding the time to put together plans to make these goals happen, which again goes back to not having a team in place to multiply time for me.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST MOTIVATION TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL AND HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH YOUR FRUSTRATION IN NOT ACHIEVING IT?
I keep progressing as an artist and I love to learn. I study things that I can't get done and then figure out ways to do them.
I love to be creative both as a writer, a producer or a business person. I enjoy coming up with solutions to problems. This is a double edged sword because sometimes I don't follow through with my solutions and then come up with a new one before the last one has time to become successful... yet another reason why having a disciplined manager would help...

THE KIND OF HELP YOU NEED IN ORDER TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN YOUR MUSIC CAREER...
I need to find opportunities to meet managers / music business people / promoters in my area (meaning genre and work style, not necessarily geographically, but that would be nice and helpful) and have those meetings be personal enough to actual facilitate a connection that will lead to future work, not just exchanging cards. Or else I need to gather a team of competent young interns and figure things for them to do that will help accomplish these goals. And I need funding. I produce lots of new artists and finding funding for their projects is something I have zero experience with.
Also figure out how to make myself attractive to a manager type of person so that they end up coming to me.


So that's the spilling of the guts, so to speak...
To sum it up, too much to do, not enough time...slow down and make time... i'm working on that part.

Exciting vs Important

I love my job. Actually I should make that plural. I love my jobs.

I run a few different businesses and projects to which I allot varying degrees of attention depending on my mood, enthusiasm, circumstances and the schedule of the various partners I work with on those projects.

Over the years I have slowly begun to focus on the ones that make me happiest and now I can say that I really have 2 main businesses. One involves my work in the studio as a producer, engineer, session musician, consultant or manager. The other is my work as an artist wherein I create more, this includes my band

The band is the project I usually feel the most passion for. I love writing, performing, working on new weird ideas for videos and whatever else we come up with. At the moment it's more like a hobby with potential than it is a job.


There are numerous elements of both businesses that are really fun. But then there are a few elements that have to be done, but which are just plain drudgery.

• Booking shows
• Website design and updating
• Remembering to send regular promotion emails
• Preparing for a release and planning the promotional elements of distribution
• Preparing taxes and keeping the books straight

These are just a few off the top of my head.
I know that the rage these days is to outsource everything, but the problem with outsourcing is that you have to find someone, tell them how to do what needs doing and then make sure that they do it well. By the time you outsource, you could do it just as well yourself. And as long as you don't procrastinate, you'll do it more quickly.

It is possible to hire people to do these things well. And if you can afford it, that's great. But the problem I keep coming back to is, "where do i find these people?"

Cannons and Clouds video

Cannons and Clouds, a band I've been producing for the last year or so was recently featured in a documentary for Universal Audio that was filmed at Broken Radio this month. Check it...

10 reasons Why the album is not dead

I was just reading New Music Strategies (one of my favorite blogs written by the very astute Andrew Dubber) in which he asked "Is the album dead?"...

I think there are several reasons that the album is not dead. Here goes my top ten.

1. Reviewers and bloggers are critical to generating attention about an artist. It is much easier to get someone to review or talk about an album than it is to get them to talk about a collection of singles or a video you just released. It gives context.
2. For some artists, it is actually a lot more financially wise to record
   a cluster of songs in a studio to save on setup costs and time. Hiring
   and rehearsing musicians for only one song doesn't cost much less than
   hiring them to record 3 or 4 songs. And you will often catch a break on
   cost when it's a whole album involved. It may be a bigger pill to
   swallow at first, but albums have a far longer shelf life than a
   single.
   
   
3. An album also defines a certainly level of credibility and
   seriousness for an artist. If you go to the trouble of pressing 1000
   cd's it means you take your work seriously enough to go to the expense
   of recording that many songs and to then have them duplicated. That
   doesn't mean it's good, but in a very crowded marketplace full of
   infinite product, a physical one stands out a little further than a
   purely digital one (sometimes at least)
4. 4. It's much easier to get airplay on college radio and specialty formats when you have a
   CD. Not many radio people want to download a song to play it on the
   air.
   
5. It's much easier to tour around an album for a variety of reasons. It
   gives you something to sell at the merch table. Download cards don't
   sell quite as well and not too many fans really want an artist to sign
   the disposable download card.
   
6. It gives the artist an organizing principle for marketing efforts. This
   can be hugely important. It's like creating a brand for a specified
   time period. You can create a line of merchandise that relates to the
   album. A website. A storyline using flickr regarding the making of.
7. While people may hit shuffle all they want, the option exists for the
   listener to enjoy an album in the order that the artist intended. That
   shows that an album can have many purposes for the listener / fan /
   consumer too. It's more versatile than a single or an EP with only 4
   songs on it.
   
8. The album can be viewed as a work of art. It's a collection of work
   that will be defined, however loosely by some sort of theme that helps
   define what an artist is (or is not) trying to be.
9. The artwork, posters, postcards, and physical marketing materials
   generated by an album are important to fans of a band. They allow
   people to badge themselves with a particular time in the life cycle of
   an artist. That's not as likely to stick with a single or even a digital only release
10. Lastly, perhaps most importantly, there are segments of the music
    buying public that simply prefer buying albums. These are the people
    that LOVE music. They don't go buy the latest top 10 hits. They obsess
    over all kinds of new music and talk about it with friends. An album is
    still a rallying point for this type of music fan. And this type of
    music fan will recommend their new favorite ALBUM to their friends in a
    way that people who dance to the latest hit single do not. It's
    demographic that is hugely important to the launching of new artists
    and it's not filled with just old people. Even teenagers like albums.
    This demographic may not sell platinum, but they do help discover and
    launch the careers of many talented artists.
    
    
    
    Just because digital is an easy way for people to get music does not
    mean that it's the only way, nor is it the only way that serious music
    lovers will want to get their music. For these people who often shape
    the taste of what music is discovered, the album is still king.
    

Vote for Super Adventure Club on the Deli Magazine's Band of the Month poll!

Vote for us at TheDeliMagazine.com/sf!




We're very excited to be nominated for Band of the Month. The Deli Magazine is one of our favorite local blogs and they were the first to write about us anywhere. (Thanks Rachel!)




So be a good citizen of the interwebs and do your duty! VOTE FOR SUPER ADVENTURE CLUB!

The Hits Keep on Coming

The ability to sell your music online and distribute it widely without the help of a label is a rallying point for many independent and do it yourself artists.

A lot of artists and online label start-ups all seem to say the same thing: "Now that distribution costs are practically zero and the cost of making a record is practically nothing, major labels will wither away and have no reason to exist, all thanks to the glorious rise of the internet." Or so goes the conventional wisdom. Nevermind that making a good record still costs money...I could go on for days about that...

But my curiosity was piqued when I read a recent Harvard Business study that confirmed something rather obvious: people still gravitate towards hits. Audiences might be able to buy all the tiny bits along the long tail, but they don't necessarily want to. And just because you CAN put your music up on a website, doesn't mean anyone will want to buy it or listen to it. Most people who buy entertainment, buy things that their friends have bought and that are relevant to popular culture.

The most powerful weapon in the marketing arsenal is perceived success. If you can sell your album to a lot of people, then you can sell more albums to a lot of people. Conversely, if no one has heard of you and a potential buyer doesn't believe that anyone else they trust likes you, they are unlikely to spend money on your music.

Why do people like hits so much?

I think it has a lot do with culture. People congregate around a small number of ideas. These may vary locally and within subcultures, but to have conversations, we all need to be talking about the same thing. Teenagers in high school don't define their cliques by how unique each person's taste is, they all love a certain band together. People like to talk about the same TV show they watched, the same movies and the same books. We may not like them all, but we all have an opinion and these items become part of popular culture.


SO, the next question is, what makes a hit?

There's more than one music business

I don't really care much for super-pop. I can identify a few artists from this genre of music to make it easier to understand what I'm talking about...
Usher, Kelis, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Jay-Z... etc.
I looked at the top 50 songs on imeem last week and did not recognize any of them, but I recognized the names of the artists. Most of them were signing high profile branding agreements or 360 deals with mammoth corporations in the last few months

CD sales for this type of music have gone monumentally down the toilet.

Meanwhile, I have several new bands that I have discovered over the last year or so while reading the top 100 albums chart of eMusic.
This would include,
The National, Andrew Bird, Chris Letcher, Cold War Kids, Spoon, Thomas Dybdahl and a great many other artists that you may or may not be familiar with.

The point is, that I think these artists are not losing millions of dollars (they probably didn't have them to begin with) and they are most likely making more money from their music than ever before. And they are selling ALBUMS. They are selling collections of songs to customers like me because I don't really buy singles. The album is not a dead format. The CD is not a dead format. At least not for independent songwriters who write from the heart and take the time (or have the luck) to make really great sounding records.

What I Wish Someone Would Do for Artists Online

This should probably be a more thoughtful post than what I have time to write... but that's the whole point of this post anyway.

I have a band that I really love to work with. Playing music, writing, performing, recording... it's all great fun and I love being an artist and creator again.

What I don't love is dealing with promotion and maintaining a presence on at least 15 different sites.

So here's what I'm wishing for...

A service that would have a real person evaluate the type of music my band makes, that can then put the music in the appropriate social networks, and perhaps more importantly, tell me what blogs to contact. That's step one.

Step two would be a timely way to help me update all these sites, let blogs know about my latest happenings and keep them current.

I enjoy writing things and can email and so forth. But to put a blog up on the 5 or 6 blog sites the band has (plus this one, plus my own web site, etc) is time consuming. It would be great if I could just have someone email me and say "Please write a 1 paragraph description of what's going on with your band last week and the upcoming month." Please attach a new photo as well.

I would reply to the email and then it would be parsed out to imeem, iLike, facebook, myspace, garageband, secondlife and whatever else needs to be serviced.

Because it feels like my biggest obstacles are
1. prioritizing my time to know what's important to get out in the world (show updates, emails to fans?)
2. Prioritizing the places to put this information.
3. Taking the time to do all this.

If somebody could help me figure out what's effective (in terms of what I need to create) and then where it goes (in terms of where I need to publish it) then I could probably hire somebody else or automate the last bit.

Some Useful Blogs about Online Music Marketing

There are so many music blogs out there that it can be difficult to
keep up with all of it. As with finding new music, finding good blogs
is often a result of what's recommended from people you know. Here's a
thread of the top 5 blogs that I've been reading that I think are
insightful and relevant to selling music online.

1.
NewMusicStrategies.com - Philosophy of selling music online by a
Birmingham (UK) professor named Andrew Dubber. Download his ebook, it
is incredibly important. He also has a couple of sister sites that he
started: MusicThinkTank.com and NewMusicIdeas, which are both good.

2.
SethGodin.com - A general online marketing blog, but he often makes
direct comments about the music business. This is the #1 marketing blog
online.

3. KnowTheMusicBusiness.com - Sometimes an aggregate of other blogs, but well culled and good writing.

4. Coolfer.com - Music Business news about artists, labels, tech startups. Some good editorial content.

5. Digital Music News - A daily feed of what's going on in the online music business world.


Anybody have other ones that are useful?

Promoting is harder than creating.

I have a lot of friends who are in the middle of making records.
Some of them are half way through the process.
Some think they are half way through and are much farther away than they realize
Some are nearly done and don't want to admit it.

There is a strange disconnection between recording an album and releasing it.
I think this is because there is a great deal of work that goes into releasing an album that has very little to do with music and a lot of musicians get held up in all these non-musical parts.

Art work always takes ten times longer than it should.
Duplication takes forever.
Getting the credits right takes forever.
It's a lot of leg work and once you've finished recording, it seems like a lot of drudgery.

That's because, for a musician, it is.

But drudgery quickly turns into procrastination and it becomes really easy to second and triple guess everything you've done musically, until the album becomes a huge and heavy burden. You place massive expectations on it. It must succeed and therefore requires some sort of supernatural strength and planning to release it. And where will that strength come from? Usually the answer becomes... "somebody else"... "maybe if we just wait for a label..." and a whole bunch of other stuff that means "anybody other than me"

I would love to be able to offer some sort of advice on how to overcome this, but the fact is, making a record is a lot of hard work. And a lot of is boring, unsexy and tedious. It requires working really hard and doing things that are not that interesting. Or else finding people who are willing to do that work for you.

The best advice I can offer is, just get it done as quickly as possible. Rely on experts, if you can find them. Hire the best ones you can find, and if you can save time by spending a little (but not too much) extra, then do it. Don't wait around for it. Just get it done. Make some decisions and move on. Your second and third albums are waiting for you to make them.

And come up with a plan. Releasing an album requires planning and preparation. And you may need an expert for that too... More on that later...

Top 10 Issues Facing Music 2.0 (From Hypebot)

This is a pretty useful and insightful posting from Hypebot

I haven't been keeping on my blogs (or my blogging) this weekend... see last post.

Finally a weekend day of doing nothing computer related.

Oh wait, I'm on the computer again.

Back to not computer. Have a nice weekend.

Overwhelmed with the internets

OK. I have to admit it right now.
I'm really really tired. It's been a long string of 12 hour + work days plus supporting my fiancé who just finished her masters thesis.

That leaves me feeling really easily overwhelmed. And it's one of the first things I keep hearing from people who are trying to figure out this online music business: it is totally overwhelming.

There are just so many competing players out there right now, that it's really difficulty to cut through the noise and figure out what's useful, what's fluff and who the hell is paying attention to all this stuff anyway?

I've been busy promoting my new band Super Adventure Club over the last several months and through it, I've learned a great deal about what's out there.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I've learned what really WORKS. There are a few sites that I visit regularly (even when I'm this tired) and try to keep updated, but there are a lot that feel to me like they are languishing in obscurity.

So here are my top sites of use in my state of overwhelm-edness

1. MySpace - the original social networking site still has the biggest audiences and is a place where people come to discover new music. Commenting on other bands and friends pages is a very good way to keep people remembering that you exist. And that's a very important part of being in a successful band.

2. Facebook - this is more for my personal life. I keep track of my friends and can read about them. I don't really view it as marketing and I don't promote my band here very much. But I enjoy learning what all my long lost friends from grade school are doing...

3. ReverbNation - this is a new one for me and I'm just starting to discover its usefulness. The most useful thing about it so far, is that it has an excellent mailing list collector, lots of widgets you can employ to get your music on loads of websites and they are pretty artist friendly. I'm going to explore these guys more once I quit feeling so damn tired.

4. My own websites. - theoretically this should come first. And this is me, in my tired state, admitting shortcomings of self-promotion by not updating my own site enough (and not doing it first).

My approach to web promotion is still hackneyed and haphazard. The more I learn about what's out there, I'm determined to put a plan together. I have a feeling I'm going to need some help on that from some one who is younger, more dedicated to it and has a lot more time to devote to it than I do.

Or perhaps when I get some more sleep, I'll get right on that.

Jay Clifford's big break

Sardinia with Jump Little Children (Michael Winger Drinking with Jay Clifford, originally uploaded by mwingerski.

Here's a picture from way back in 2002 when I travelled to Sardinia with Jump Little Children working as their sound engineer / Italian translator.

Jay has recently had some great success with his new album "Driving Blind" and the single from it was just featured on Gray's Anatomy last week.

Meanwhile, he's got a promotional site up to make his next music video. His friend, Zach Braff, is making it by soliciting clips of people lip synching the song in various parts of the world. Check it out at www.jaycliffordmusicvideo.com and watch as Zach explains the process while he pimps Jay's new record.

I've known Jay for a while and he's one of the most talented musicians I've met. We toured together when I released my solo album and also with my old band, Dayroom. I always love seeing old friends get the success they deserve... congratulations Jay!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

MySpace is about to make your life easier?

If there's one thing that I've found most frustrating about having an online presence as an artist, it's the sheer chaos surrounding the environment of social networking, band profile sites, blogs, facebook, myspace, imeem bebo, garageband, ilike and the list goes on and on...

Yesterday, Digital Music News reported that MySpace is going to make "profiles" portable. What this means to the artist is that instead of having to update your photos, blog, bio, and video across 15 websites or more, you can do it once and it will show up on whatever social networking sites you might choose to put them on.

This is pretty profound and what I think will be the way to go in the future.
At the SF Music Tech conference yesterday, I heard Tim Westergren, the head of Pandora
online radio suggest that bands should actually add an extra band member whose sole job is to manage and handle your web presence. Theoretically this sort of job falls into what a label or manager would traditionally do. But we don't live in traditional times anymore...

And the web presence is hugely important. Perhaps music managers will start adding these types of team members to their teams, if they haven't already. And if you're looking to get a start in the music business as a young internet-savvy person, then that's certainly an opening you could position yourself with.

But I give props to myspace for getting the jump on this "profile portability." Anything that makes life easier on artists in this crazy new music business is a good thing.

How to properly announce a tour

Tom Waits Press Conference

You can't get enough of this amazing video!

You Love this video

YouTube - Super Adventure Club - Mexican Gun Fight

Super Adventure Club comes to Cafe Du Nord on April 27

Cafe Du Nord - April 27 with Roy 2000, Radioactive and the Genie (of Spearhead) |

The end of the lowest common denominator? (or at least an alternative)

Barack Obama's recent speech about race and the media in the US

My favorite quote about Barack Obama's recent speech came from Jon Stewart who said "He spoke to Americans as if they were adults"

Given how large an audience the broadcasters are aiming at, they have to aim for the lowest common denominator to maintain that audience (and sell ads, most importantly). As a result, the TV news has to keep the news easily comprehensible for its entire audience. The level of rational thought required for any discussion or debate needs to be pretty low. Essentially, it must be comprehensible to 12 year olds and high drop outs. (Not that these are the only people who watch the news, but they represent the lowest common denominator)

Obama's speech was a complex and very thoughtful argument but it doesn't lend itself to soundbites very well. If you didn't hear or read the whole speech, then you miss the point of much of it. And the message I got from it, more than anything, is that our media culture is distorting and dividing our nation. But that argument is something that your average 12 year old high school drop out is probably not going to have much interest in understanding. I am hopeful that much of the voting public does have an interest in understanding that and doing something to change it.

Luckily, we live in an age where it's possible to hear Obama's entire speech without relying on media soundbites. The good part about the internet is that the lowest common denominator doesn't have to apply to how you get the news, art, music, film, humor, or anything else, if you don't want it to. Hopefully, the leaders of our democracy will realize that and start using their brains a bit more. Obama's off to a good start.

Ad supported music sites

There has been a lot of talk around the music industry about the idea of ad-supported music sites. It seems that many in the business (particularly the technology folks... go figure) believe that music is no longer something people want to spend money on and therefore we should turn music into the same form of media as television or radio by using ad-supported sites.

The most recent site I discovered "ad-supported-music.blogspot.com" goes by the motto "Don't Sell the Music - Sell the Time Spent Listening to the Music"

Something about this strikes me funny.

I think that a lot of people have a very important and personal relationship with the music they listen to. When you connect with a song, an album or an artist, it feels like a part of your identity. And the idea of putting a piece of advertising between the listener and the music feels like a violation of some sort of trust between the listener and the artist of the music.

This is the main reason why I feel that music will not become exclusively advertising supported. It may work for certain types of artists who are much more commercially driven (Hannah Montana, Britney, Madonna, flavor of the month celebrity / singer) but I don't think it will work terribly well for independent music artists who are artists first and business people second. (or third or twelfth or whatever...).

However, I do think advertising supported music sites are a good idea. I think they will be a great outlet for getting new music into the attention of new listeners. Most people don't want to spend money on music they've never heard before. If advertisers are willing to spend money that way, then I think it's great. But I don't think that most people really want advertisements on their iPods.

Like many other music professionals, I have involved myself in about 20 different roles over my 18+ years in the music business. Mostly I call myself a music producer, because it seems to be the most broadly undefined category available. I'm also a writer, a musician, a performer, a band leader and occasional theorist on the music business.

After reading the last two posts on Andrew Dubber's excellent New Music Strategies blog, I have spent the last few days writing down and categorizing all the things that I do. It has opened up a lot of insight into how I spend my time, and I am finding as much clutter in my activities as I find in the junk drawer at my studio. (Perhaps those two are related)

I first categorized my list into Learning, Writing, Performing, Collaborating and Relaxing (with lots and lots of subcategories). I then realized that most of these categories fell into the broader concepts of Creating, Selling and Maintaining.

What I am finding difficult is bridging the gap between creating (songs, writing, performances, recordings, etc) and selling (earning money from these creations). Both creating and selling seem to involve a lot of overwhelming maintenance for each. And I think I am someone who defines himself as a creator first, a maintainer 2nd, and a seller as a distant 3rd. But my goal for the year is to bring these elements together a bit more, or better still, delegate the selling and maintaining to others.

It seems that the more I collaborate with other people, the easier it is to do all three though. So a large part of the effort this year will be focused on projects that I can work on with others. A new band and possibly starting a new label for some of the artists I work with (if I can find someone to launch it with who wants to do the selling part...)