by D. Allen on February 5, 2010
What is better? One long tour or several short tours?
When it comes to getting used to life on the road, it would be easy to guess that a long tour is the way to go. Wouldn’t anyone want to get all their promotion done for the year in one stretch?
I recommend the second option.
Short Tours
If you do music for the long haul, you are going to need to get used to traveling, playing gigs, and making money in the process without experiencing burnout.
Short tours allow you to test out certain venues several times.
Short tours help to improve planning each time around, saving yourself a lot of headache.
By touring in short bursts, you can take a scientific approach to touring without spending too much money. (If I do X, my income increases by this much. If I promote this way, XX% more people are at my gigs.)
Home is not that far away when you only have 10 gigs left to play rather than 40 or 50.
Remember
The more time there is between now and the end of your plan, the more risk you are exposing yourself to. A 20 day tour that goes wrong is way less damaging than a 100 day tour that goes wrong.
Short Update
I will be posting less often for a while. I intend on continuing to update, and the only difference is that it will be less often for a couple weeks. Have a great weekend.
by D. Allen on February 3, 2010
Short post-grammy thoughts…
Why were the rappers censored so much? I missed half the song. If the song is going to be censored half the time it is being performed, get someone else to perform a different song. Lil Wayne? Did you know that few people heard much of you at all?
Album of the Year went to Taylor Swift. Congratulations to her. She seems to be one of the few pop artists with anything to say that relates to the human experience.
Beyonce won six? Song of the year was “Put a Ring on It?”. Really? Really? The only person to put a ring on it has been Jay-Z, but at least she set a record for women.
Best dance recording and album went to Lady Gaga. Shiny…Her hat looks like it came from Superman’s home planet, yet it was cool in a way.
Is it just me or does Mary J. Blige repeatedly perform with artists whose style do not match her own? I would go as far as saying Andrea Bocelli sounded good in spite of Mary J Blige.
Best rap/sung collaboration went to Rihanna, Jay-Z, and Kanye….With Kanye in 3 of the 5 nominations, I just had a feeling he might win. It would be interesting to see what would have happened if he didn’t.
Bon Jovi is good, but it feels like he isn’t even trying when you compare his performance to the Livin’ on a Prayer from the eighties. He even outsourced his high notes to a female singer.
I know you don’t have to try Bon Jovi, but we appreciate when you do.
Recording Academy President and part-time bearded dinosaur Neil Portnow has a point. Artists do deserve to make money. If someone is worried about where their next meal will come from their art does suffer. I say dinosaur, however, because he refuses to acknowledge that the past system will never again work for musicians like it did before. File sharing is a reality. His speech would have reflected a message of hope and power if he mentioned new ways to make money that were in accordance with the reality of musicians everywhere. Instead, he opted for the misguided, close minded “shame on you” message that the RI double A has been shouting since before 2001.
The future is bright. It is brighter than Gaga’s outfits, and the reflective stagefloors of the LA Staples Center. Rock on.
by D. Allen on February 2, 2010
Here is a list of things I have been paying attention to recently. Some of them are just websites, while others are video. For your convenience I put the video lengths on the blog for you. Enjoy!
1. Pharrell Williams shares his thoughts at the MIDEM 2010 conference in France – time: 41:29
This one is dynamite. Producer Pharrell Williams talks about production (he works with many artists like Ludacris, Kanye West, Shakira, etc.), Entrepreneurship, and finding new business ideas. Once it gets past the first 6 minutes or so, it becomes really eye opening.
2. Burning Questions for the Musician – on my own blog
I talk about false assumptions and how by asking simple questions about how you work, you can change your work process for the better. I even give a small list of questions if you want to start now.
3. Seth Godin talks about getting your product shipped. Time: 18:33
The primitive section of our brain wants to protect us. When the more developed region of our brain gets closer and closer to finishing a creative product and sharing it with the world, the primitive section will try to protect us by causing us to fail. Seth explains why and gives some strategy to make sure you ship on time.
4. Tunespro – get songs for as cheap as 19 cents
I have been buying like a kid in a candy store at this place. While I don’t believe ownership is the future of digital music, it is taking so long for spotify to launch in the U.S. that I am willing to pay this small a price for some music. If you are, check the site out.
by D. Allen on January 29, 2010
That’s How Everyone Does it, Right?
False Assumptions. We face them every day, but most of the time we don’t know about them. Yet continually, they hold us back, and are responsible for so much unnecessary struggle.
One thing I hope to achieve with this blog is to point out false assumptions whenever possible, questioning how you do things, giving you better results.
What is a false assumption? A false assumption is a thought or way something is done that we assume we need to follow, when in reality there is a better option.
An example is: working 9a.m. to 5p.m.. This is a work schedule that you may have rejected by pursuing music as a career, but that is why it is easier to explain. Most people work 9 to 5. It was a great system for making sure everybody was working at the same time so that factories can produce things faster. It doesn’t work so well anymore because most people don’t work in factories, and many of those who have jobs can do most of their work from anywhere in the world, so long as they have an internet connection.
Despite this obvious situation, it has been difficult for companies to adapt to this, and become comfortable with their employees being free to do their work where they like as long as it gets done on time. Those flexible few that have adapted have less employee burnout, higher loyalty, fewer costs due to reduced office usage, and higher productivity. If it wasn’t for challenging the 9 to 5 assumption, those companies who have adapted to change would not have received all these benefits.
Musicians Can Assume Too
I am going to ask you several questions that challenge you. They are great starting points for breaking false assumptions:
Do I have to charge for music in order to make money?
Is accepting commercial endorsement selling out? If so, are there exceptions?
Do I have to succeed in L.A. and New York before I consider myself a success?
Do I have to be the opening act on a tour?
Do I have to tour at all?
If I had only 10% available storage space on the road as I do now, what would I take?
What time of the day do I make new material? Why? Is there a time when I could get more done?
Do I even have to use Twitter at all?
People can find the location of my gig if I simply tell them the address, right?
Artist ******* would never respond if I asked them for advice, right?
What if people stealing music could be turned into an advantage for me? How could I do that?
Can You Do Better?
I hope you can. This is your life we’re talking about.
Asking proactive questions will help you find what false assumptions are pulling the strings on you and your life. If you have found answers to these questions, or have questions to add to my small list, please comment on them.
by D. Allen on January 26, 2010
Brand = You, and everything associated with you.
Brand Building is everything that you do and don’t do about your career. It is not just your product, or your band name, or corporate mission statement. It is you.
Brand Management is making sure everything lines up. If your goal is to be a best-selling artist and your songs are abominations to the ear, you are not managing your brand. You are not managing yourself. If you are a Christian artist and you are doing drugs, you are not managing your brand. When things don’t line up, your brand becomes ugly. Band management and PR all come down to this:
What you say has to line up with what you do.
When that doesn’t happen, a phenomenon very common in the music industry occurs: average
Top forty radio is full of average. Indie bands playing in cafe’s and smaller stages crank out average just as consistently. If you are a lucky average musician, you might connect with someone ready to sell average music to a much larger audience, but that audience has heard average music before and they don’t care about average music artists.
What examples do you have of average? If you have none, then you probably weren’t paying attention to them when they had their chance, thereby making me right. Not that it matters.
Lots of blogs will tell you to be above average. That’s about as abstract as saying “succeed by doing good stuff”. Succeeding by doing good is the right direction to go, but it’s weak. Paying attention to what you do and how it lines up with what you say is easier to see, hear, and take action on. That’s what band brand management is all about.
In the wise words of George Bush, who exemplified average during the 2004 presidential campaign: “If you don’t stand for anything, you don’t stand for anytIf you don’t stand for something you don’t stand for anything”.
by D. Allen on January 22, 2010
During the years I have watched the Grammy Awards, many times I have heard nominations of artists that I had never heard of before. I listen to music all the time, so when something new in a genre I love gets that much recognition, it is a shame I had never hear it until now.
Thank God there is the internet, and blogs like mine, which will point out music you might not have discovered. And if it turns out you have, then you know the material is good.
This is my second post centered around the Grammy awards. If you haven’t read the first one, which explains the steps someone would need to do to get a Grammy, you can always get it here.
Unexpected or Unfamiliar Grammy Nominations
Having played guitar for a number of years, it would have been a shame to not have heard of this next artist.
Eric Clapton
In the nomination for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, he did a duo with Steve Winwood, who I know has been around for a long time but I had never listened to before.
Here is a live version of the two singing their nominated song: “Can’t Find my Way Home”
Can’t Find My Way Home – Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood
Catchy….from the very first 5 seconds. The solo in the beginning is filled with notes, yet none of them seem out of place. The song is great for driving, or just doing things, and it creates a great atmosphere.
Maxwell
The “Song of the Year” category presented another artist who was new to me. “Pretty Wings” by Maxwell starts out with some interesting harmonies with wind-chime like instruments, and I’d like to know what they are called because they sound great. The chime intro segues into warm electric guitar playing the same notes. What makes this song different from many R&B songs you hear on the radio is that the percussion is done with an actual drum, but you still hear the *clap* sound on the second and fourth beat, giving it a familiar feel. The warm, yet light mood grows stronger until the horns kick in on the song’s latter half. I can see why it was nominated for an award, and it made me aware of the neo-soul genre that this man has been performing for years already.
Pretty Wings – Maxwell
Adele
In “Best Female Pop Performance”, there was yet another artist that did not get a chance to stand out from the beat-driven top 40 radio, and I did not hear about her. Nonetheless, Adele has managed to not only become popular in the UK, where she’s from, but has also secured two grammy awards the previous year. “Hometown Glory” is more about the piano than it is her singing, and she may yet get another grammy this year, as the grammys are judged by quality of performance and not sales. It will be interesting to see how she does against Taylor Swift, Pink, and Beyoncé.
Hometown Glory – Adele
To see an entire list of grammy nominees, you can always check out the official Grammy nominee page. To help you, here is a helpful tip. If you use a mac, hold command + and hit F. once you do, the find button on the bottom left of your browser will appear, and you can type in the words of the genre you want to find and it will locate those words for you. Control F works for PC.
Time saved – several minutes.
Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t. It’s the best way to get this blog delivered to you.
by D. Allen on January 20, 2010
On January 31, 2010, CBS will televise the awards show that is supposed to be the most prestigious of award shows for the American recording industry.
This is going to be a series of posts leading up to the big night, in which I describe how the Grammys work, my own opinions of nominees in big, debatable categories, and some last thoughts including suggestions for future categories.
What you may not know about the Grammys, however, is how they work.
This is the process that your submitted material would go through in order to get the grammy award:
1. Individuals or record companies are allowed to submit material to be nominated. It is sent to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. A simple search on the grammy website can give you an address, but I do not know if it is for PR or for submitted material. Technically, YOU as an individual, can submit. While there are too many factors out of your control further down the process, you can at least do step 1 if you wanted to.
2. 150 Experts in the recording industry review material for eligibility and to categorize the submitted material.
3. Those same experts then vote for a submitted material for the general field (i.e. best song, best new artist, album of the year), and for 9 categories out of the available remaining categories (like best gospel album, best jazz improvisation, best heavy metal performance). Once the experts have voted, the top 5 artists in each category become nominees.
4. Once those votes are counted, the recording academy members are issued final voting ballots. They may then vote in the general field and in no more than eight of the 30 fields.
5. The independent accounting firm, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, counts those votes.
6. The recording with the highest votes in a category wins, though ties do happen sometimes.
7. Winners get their Grammy, thank their mama, their producer, their fans, and Jesus Christ. Those who don’t win are given a medal for their nomination.
I’m sure major labels consistently win partly because they try to find material that they can sell well, and this oftentimes means finding the best recorded sound from the best artist. Major labels also submit almost every record they release, as their relationship with the NARAS has existed longer than it has for other music organizations. Basically, they try more often with material that is better than the average.
Now ideally, Academy members in the nomination process vote based upon quality alone. They are not supposed to be influenced by sales, chart performance, personal friendships, regional preferences or company loyalty. Bribes are a no-no, and voters are supposed to vote in their fields of expertise. These are all ideals that I hope the members strive to hold themselves to, but hey, this is the music business, and the music business has not always been the shining star of American business ethics. You can find plenty of examples with a simple online search.
Now there is some questions left out for debate, like “with the increase of independent artists, has amount of material submitted increased? If so how much of it gets through?”
Do only major label acts get grammy awards?
It seems that predominantly the high-selling artists win, so does that mean the free market decides the winner or do the reviewers have some bias after-all?
How does one become a reviewer in the first place? I personally sent an email to the NARAS asking this question. If I get a response, I will be glad to share it with you while we’re talking about the Grammys.
If anyone already has these answers, please sound off in the comments.
by D. Allen on January 17, 2010
This last weekend I was reading an article about China and the way their systems work with businesses. The article was on a blog by Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft, currently with Rackspace, and an expert on all things tech. Despite how those of us in the music industry would normally have trouble relating to tech CEO’s dealing with the East, the picture painted by Google and many other companies in their relation to the giant nation are all too close to home.
Monkey See, Monkey Do
What Scoble wrote about first was of his experiences going to China. It is common knowledge that China makes duplicates of western products, but did you know that it is possible for entrepreneurs to copy entire business models of almost every American industry and simply apply it in an economy just a step behind us? (yet managing to be our banker, but I digress)
Let’s talk music. Ever notice how when one style of performance gets well known, other artists try to use a similar style to achieve a similar level of success?
I admit, nothing is original, and it would be foolish not to adapt something that works if what you are doing is getting you nowhere. In school it’s called cheating. In business and in life, however, it’s called learning. Where it starts to cross boundaries with many people is when there seems to be almost no originality coming from the “copy”. No twists. no branching out of styles. No surprises. In today’s ClearChannel-run terrestrial-radio world, it is all too obvious. Just look at the Autotune situation of the past two years. Jason DeRulo seems very similar to Chris Brown. Doesn’t that melody to “Viva la vida” by Coldplay sound a lot like “if I could fly” by Joe Satriani?
I propose that too much blatant copying by entrepreneurs in China sans originality is one of the reasons the Statue of Liberty flinches when she looks west of her Hudson River home. It gets even worse for her and many of us in the US. When so much copy-cat entrepreneurship exists, we don’t even know what WE do anymore? What does America make now? Oh yea, inefficient automobiles and corn!
Maybe I’m being too hard my states. We do have Silicon Valley, online enterprises, and the Apple computer! I couldn’t find Taco Bell, my last bastion of fast-food deliciousness, in Europe. It didn’t matter how hard I tried!
There is nothing wrong with borrowing good ideas. Try, however, to improve upon them. That’s what makes society progress… You’ll be super cool too.
Standing Up
Scoble’s next point: to be in China as a tech business means to play a game. In this game, you can be first place and get bad PR at home, or you can get better PR at home and be in second place. So far, it is an either/or option.
Case in point: Google. They are asked by China to censor things (like Tienneman Square). Google can play by the rules and make lots of money, and then they will be seen as supporting human rights violators back in the US. Google can also choose not to play all of China’s games, but then China introduces a search engine shockingly similar to the Goog. They name it Baidu and it becomes the number one search engine in China because it is run by the Chinese, who will do what their government says. Today, Baidu is China’s most-used search engine, and Google is second. Very copy-cat-like as well. After government-paid hackers tried to attack Google (and other companies), Google has decided to slap them with this quote:
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
What about the Music?
There seems to be a controversy between doing your own thing or conforming. Even though Google may not close their doors in China, the fact that they are willing to show that card in a debate with a country that owns our debt is something to be admired. We may find ourselves at different points in life where we have to choose between taking a drop on the charts, a pay cut, or less recognition and playing someone else’s game. It is up to you to decide when and where you will play the Google card. My recommendation is to choose sacrificing of the external in situations involving ethical or moral decisions. You may be second place instead of first, but what is really going on is that you are in second place by playing your way and owning that. Whoever gets first will be getting it because they gave their ownership away for a temporary increase in money, fame, power, etc.
There is always a choice to make.
If you’ve had to make a choice that involved temporary sacrifice, please let me know in the comments.
by D. Allen on January 14, 2010
It has long been held true that artists are not completely satisfied with their work. You must be prepared to face this part of your mindset and have a plan for deciding when something is done, or good enough. I am not talking about whether others think it’s great, I am talking about you, the artist, and how you feel about your work.
You’ve been working on that album for a while now. Maybe spending an inordinate amount of time on this one song. The lyrics don’t fit, you don’t know how to make the chorus sound as catchy as you’d like, and the guitarist is spending way too much time rerecording a 12 second guitar solo.
There are options.
First, you can release whatever music you are happy with and let that last song stay with you until you are satisfied with it.
Second, you can release a “version 1″ of a song to your fans pre-release style. If you have an email newsletter it would be even easier to control who hears it. Don’t worry, if the song gets really popular, then maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. If it is bad, however, you can depend on the fans already rooting for you to give their own feedback. If you ask for it, it can save you a lot of time. You can even use something like garageband.com to do this publicly with total strangers, though I make no guarantees about how many people see it or what their opinions are.
Third, if you do have an instrument solo and it doesn’t seem perfect you can always take it out, remake it so it is extremely simple (for guitar – lots of repetition and string bends using high notes), or submit your track to indabamusic.com and outsource your instrument solo to someone else. Just be sure to agree upon how to give them credit for their contribution. Chances are, if someone has listened to your song long enough to get to where a solo usually is (60-75% into the song), then they are already sold on your core sound and your solo, if small, won’t do much to affect it.
Fourth, keep in mind that even if your music or other art is released to the public, it does not mean you cannot remake it or change it into something better for later resale. This gives you an opportunity to make new fans with old material, and gives current fans something to debate about (which one was better?). Besides, if you aren’t making your songs at least a little bit different for your live show, you are missing an opportunity to give your fans unique experiences that they could never get by just listening to your recordings.
Like I said, the options are many. Make a decision today.
(amazon affiliate), it shows that someone could spend 10-12 hours a day making art while still managing to avoid being an artist. Usually the person who manages this will make some money, but not very much.