Don't bail out to soon!

-We have done so many free gigs we really need to get paid for this tour.

I was talking to a manager. She had asked me to give some advice on festivals this summer and I had asked for the conditions on the tour. This was a hard-working project. Both the band and the manager had put up both money and time to get things going. But in some many ways, they had spread the cost in different ways and now the shortage of cash was stopping them to get on the tour they needed.

The problem in this case, was that they had spent money on things they really didn’t need to spend that much on. Early in a career you really must be a cheap bastard that no one likes and actually save it for the future. The hard part is to tell when you should spend and when you should not?

I know they had spent quite much on a recording. Here is the general rule if you spend an amount on a recording you just must spend equal amount on marketing to get it out. Most tend to think that marketing is something you get for free. No here is where you really must spend. So, if you get your recording shiny, then put the same shimmer onto your PR. And that is the first thing that came up and bit them. The cost of recording had lowered their budget so they couldn’t take the free gigs that are needed to make the PR to the audience to buy/stream the recording.

Here comes the next mistake. They put over this problem on me. I should be able to bring in gigs that are now paid. The problem is that the recording was the tool that should secure these paid gigs. Now they are just an unknown band with a shiny recording. For a festival, they won’t sell any extra tickets. Even how good they are or how shiny their recording is, they won’t sell anything. People might discover them during the festival but that doesn’t help the festival or the gig place budget. Then they must do a favor and just put them on and hope that the audience then will remember them the next time they put them on. If that is even in their festival or gig place let say they gave them the chance and next year when they sell tickets, they take another bigger festival.

No better to pay for an artist that is selling tickets. So here the offer you can do is having PR money to play for free to just have the chance. The problem is that you can’t do that forever either, so you must have a good plan to do this wisely.

This mistake of trying to get paid to early is I think the most common problem in the business. And I see it from many angles. People think that after volunteer a small bit they can jump straight for a full salary. Or that the job that you are doing for a band suddenly can have a high price tag. And of course, the band that thinks that they could get the same price as their home turf on a new market. The whole thing is an investment and you are in for a long race. Yes you need to spend but do it wisely.

Do some PR for your release!

No, it's not just to get the music "out there". Yes technically it is that way, you can release your single in 24 hours and get it online (technically I can do it in 3 hours, but that is another thing). But what is the point?

You see more and more that the services use more algorithms to pick up what should be on the playlists, And not just the algorithms, I see many of the bloggers and tastemakers also want to have a build up before the release.

Quite frankly your singles success will depend on how much and what kind of PR you are doing. The more and broader you will do it the more your release will succeed. this is actually not any new science. I would be that Coca-Cola is not the best soft drink in the world. Still, it's the most sold and they are masters of doing PR in many levels and things. By that they are the most sold soft drink, the best well that is totally another debate.

Yes, I know you can't do the PR as Briney Spears or Kate Perry. These are massive campaigns. No, what I mainly see is that most artists actually don't do any PR. They seem to think that a Facebook post will do it, or even worse a paid facebook post. Yes, you have to work for it around a release. You have to hit up all the people you have meet in your career, all the people you know and in some way or another be able to present this new music you have done. Yes, you will get 2% answer on it.

Of course, this goes easier if you have been smart collecting these people during the way and been small communicating with them. Here is the first mistake the artist do, they don't collect fans. No the followers on Facebook are not yours, you in fact only reach 10% of them with your posts. And you can't control how Facebook is flip around posts so they won't appear in the right time and place. In all words forget Facebook as a good PR channel, forget Instagram as well. You would probably be more successful in picking up your phone and call twenty people and tell them to talk about your new release.

I tell my artist to have all their release ready 10 weeks it goes live. Yes, 10 weeks. That is the time you need to set up all channels you have to be on before the release. You are not able to do the work faster than that.

Then also look into some PR that cost money! Too much people try to take all the free routes. Well, they are nice but it also gathers all other free routers. And in the end, you won't get anywhere just because every tool you use is for free.

And save mone6y for it. May I ask how much the recording cost? Calculate to use 50% of that sum for PR. Or actually, double it and use the rest for PR. Did the recording cost a million dollar (which probably Kate Perry cost) well then you have 2 million dollars and spend the other on PR. In Kate Perrys case they probably spend 10 million. But hey that is later. Did your recording cost 10 bucks well spend then bucks on PR. In the ned, I can tell you that 99% of the reason why your release flopped is PR. Even with the worst song, you can do a great release with PR.

- If I only had two dollars left I would spend one dollar on PR - Bill Gates

Get this blogs updates straight to your mail.
Enter your email address:

Make more with the spending money.

People love to spend money. Spending them on content on social media is often like throwing money in the fire.

People record songs in expensive studios make costly photoshoots and videos. But the quality is not the reason why people will check your things on social media.

Social media is more about getting many things out during a long time. Spending it on one post is not a wise thing.

Then, of course, you want it to look good. And yes the biggest stars hire professionals to even take their Instagram pictures. You can't compete with that until you have the same amount of followers. To get followers you need to be consistent.

The key is to make it into a story. The audience wants to see the next thing and that has rarely anything to do with the quality of the content, rather what the content contains.

So plan your money in a longterm thing instead of trying to make a big thing when you don't have the massive following.

PERSONAL:
Kind of excited about everything that is going on. Yes, I have to go back to the start again but it feels alright just as I can find the right material to work with.
I just got offered to join a new venture and it will be fun working on an international project and see where it goes.
As usual, I'm a bit impatient to get things to get started

The big advances time is over....by far.

Today is number two in the list.

2) You’re Not Going To Jump Out of a Day Job into a Million Dollar Advance

The days of the big break are pretty much over. Labels don’t sign unproven acts with nothing going on. Labels want a sure thing that already has built it on their own. Oh and labels don’t offer million dollar (or six figure) advances anymore to new acts. If you’re waiting around to be discovered and aren’t taking your career in your own hands, you will be waiting till you’re dead.

This problem I really see a lot. The artist that thinks that it will be a big advance (especially if you sign with a major). It was a long time ago I saw these advances. Then someone always tells you about someone that got a huge offering, but always its something behind it. Like Joel Adams that took his song single handed to 200 million streams on Spotify, yes he got really big upfronts thrown after him. Like it says he had done the bigger part himself.

This is also reflected quite much other stuff that artists think is going on. For example, that bigger artist gets really big sums for playing on festivals, yes Justin Bieber does, but a midsize rock band is not. I get so many artists thinking that a showcase festival should pay them to get there. Duh, it's showcasing you are showing off products. If you think that companies get paid to put their stuff on fairs think again.

So what happened to the big advances. To explain it during the 80:s in the USA it was easy to write off an advance on the tax money. But not paying so much taxes they instead just signed bands and like a lottery sometimes one of these bands actually took off, still many didn't.
I don't know if the rules changed but today this is not the case. Today you have the time to wait until the act is finished and then do the move to grab it. Today it's more like to be a bidding war around a good band.

Yes, you have to do a lot of stuff yourself. Luckily there are some new companies (Musichelp is one of them) who invest time and resources to develop artist to the level where it becomes interesting. It's  Do it yourself or try to build the team with experienced people that have large networks. Sometimes these people are called managers. I would change that term a manager is more to like to work with a really established act. These are more to be called developers. It's really in its infancy but this will be the hot part of the music industry in a couple of years, much like the songwriting teams.

The red part is from an article in Digital music news, here is a link to the whole article.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/07/27/millennial-musicians/

In the music industry all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

I have been around in several other businesses but never seen so many hypocrites like it is in the music industry.

Most artists like to be leftwing. They did article that where more to the right on the political scale in USA and it was very few, one of the few examples was Johnny Ramone. Most of the artists liked to be left wing.

At the same time most artists are small business owners, so in reality they should actually be more right in their political view, at least in Sweden. Okay many of them really don’t understand that they are a small company, or they make so much money that they just don’t care about politics at all laughing to the bank.

But I guess it’s part of the whole thing of being Mr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the music industry. They write songs for the public, so they want to identify with them. Still they aim for being richer then Kardashian.

I bumped into a festival once that claimed that they were almost non profit, cared about the small people. Had lectures about how we could do a better society and so on.

That same festival is famous for using new kids in the business for free and then fire them. They had put money on the side so when they went bankrupt they just got the losses to the vendors and companies around them, just to make another festival with the money that they really owned to others. To be quite honest they were really the worst scum there is. Still they thought they were almost better then Jesus to be good to people. I guess the expression from John Steinbecks Animal farm comes good here. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Another festival took money from the local government for years to make their festival that never really went around. In reality the government paid these people to run a festival (yes I know this only happens in Sweden). Then they wanted to be really left wing and feminists so they went out and criticize the government in some smaller thing. Of course the politicians then withdraw the money. In the end they saved the festival so the politicians gave them money for one more year. What do they do? Well they book only friends and boyfriends to the ones that are in the board, giving the money to them having a festival for their friends. Still claiming that they do a great job for the community. Yes the mantra is still there All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

We have a left wing artist in Sweden that is in the board for how the money should be distributed to artists. Guess witch band got a big shunk of money, of course her own band.

I’m not that surprised, the thing that annoys me is that many of these artists are so equal and for the people until the money comes to the table. Then they become more greedy then Uncle Scrooge.

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.