The world may be better off without the Rockstar persona...

By Jon Ostrow

Jon is the co-founder of MicControl, a music blogging network based on a social networking platform. For guest blogging opportunities or to simply reach out to Jon, he can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

In a time where reality TV has become the most popular form of programing – everyone from the famous (or infamous) celebrity drug addicts, to the not-so-famous, money-desperate “reality show” competitors have been cashing in on transparency as a way to connect with an audience and build a brand.

Would the sudden death of Corey Haim, the 80’s child-star who seemingly fell off the face of the earth around the same time as acid wash jeans, have made as big of a splash if his addiction hadn’t been documented on the A&E series, The Two Coreys? Probably not.

It seems that Reality TV has created a wave of transparency that everyone wants to ride. Even MTV, a MUSIC video driven channel, has since officially removed music television from their name in order to focus on following pop culture in its own element.

Beyond reality TV is the internet, and the continued development of social networking, blogging and microblogging, which has been giving musicians all around the world the ability to be as little or as overly transparent as they would like. So this brings up a very important question: Is transparency a good thing for musicians to take part in?

The real answer is that it is sort of a grey area. Yes and no. While the internet has made it easier for artists to connect with their fans on a real-time basis, successfully knocking down barriers between the fan and artist relationship, it also has the potential to remove the mystique of a musician’s image.

In a world where transparency reigns supreme, the David Bowies (or rather Ziggy Stardust’s), Marilyn Mansons and Kiss(s) of the world would never stand a chance. Fans expect and even require far too much access into the everyday world of a musicians, and would not stand for being kept in the dark about the private world hidden behind the veil of their public and staged image.

However, with the exception of the very few artists still attempting to create a brand based on image alone, transparency can be a very good. Just like anything else, it must be used in moderation in order to be effective in helping artists.

The following are a few ways to help you to achieve the level of transparency that is desired by your fans meanwhile avoiding the harmful side-effects.

The Good Kind of Transparency:

1. Your Agenda: Make people aware of your purpose, your goals and your mission. No one likes a hidden agenda. Be honest with your fans about what drives you and you are passionate about, and you will find that many will extend their own support in whatever capacity they can, solely because they know you are genuine.

2. Your Sound: While no one (well, mostly no one) wants to hear music that is just plain noise pollution, you should consider the transparency of your recorded sound. Make it real and easy to connect with.

As Seth Godin says, in the age of Slick where autotune and protools allow everyone to have that professional shine, you should have the guts to be transparent and be real.

You’ll be amazed how many people find the grittier tones of a ‘real’ recording (as opposed to an over-produced, glossy recording) to give the sound its character and originality. Go listen to The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street, more specifically Sweet Virgina and notice not just the gritty, lo-fi characteristics of the recording, but the true depth of emotion in the music. That is the sort of transparency that made Exile one of the greatest rock n’ roll albums of all time.

3. Your Accessibility/ Acknowledgment of Fans: Make it easy for your fans to reach out to you. In a world where everything is accessible via the internet and the internet is accessible from virtually anywhere, fans will crave the ability to reach out to you.

More importantly, the internet gives fans a sounding board for opinions and feedback to be heard. Don’t be the artist that ignores their fans. You don’t have to act upon the feedback from fans, but acknowledging feedback in one form or another can be a good way to let your fans know that you hear them, that you care and that you took the time to digest what they had to say.

The Bad Kind Of Transparency:

1. Your Financial Situation: Don’t be that artist who tweets about how broke you are. Part of the mystique and romanticism of being an emerging artist (or a ’starving artist’) is the fact that you are doing anything and everything for the love of your craft. If you go on to Twitter, Facebook or on your personal blog and bitch and moan about how life sucks because you don’t have any money, the ‘burning passion’ will have been all but stripped away.

2. Your Creative Process: This could really go either way, as some will argue that it is a great way to receive feedback from fans. I find that this will do more harm than good.

There is nothing wrong with sharing demos with select fans or giving a group of people the opportunity to supply feedback when you ask for it about an upcoming song or album, but giving fans the opportunity to watch you in the creative process, every step of the way, takes way the excitement of the overall finished product. It is the same reason why authors don’t let you read a book chapter by chapter as it is being written or a why a director doesn’t let you watch scene by scene as a film is being made. It hurts the integrity of the piece as a whole.

3. Your Unwarranted Political Opinions: If your music is deeply rooted in a specific political movement, then this most likely won’t effect you. For those of you who avoid the topic of politics throughout your music, do your self a favor and avoid announcing your strong opinions on political matters in public ways. If your fans run the gamut of all walks of life, you may find many walking away when you announce that you are pro-life, pro-choice, anti-immigration or don’t think that gay marriage is okay. Leave that aspect of your personal life out of your music.

In the end, your use of transparency is just like everything else- it should be consistent with the rest of your brand. Though it may create new obstacles for musicians who prefer to maintain a private life, it does give fans the opportunity to connect with artists as real people putting the focus back onto their music, and less on the nature of their look or their actions.

Is transparency a fad that will end with reality TV or is it a necessary part of the modern day artist/fan bond?

Image credit: http://blog.pennlive.com

Help delete irritating internet marketing tactics.

Last week, Hypebot asked me to contribute a brief post for their ‘Social Media Day’ feature. You can find it here. The exercise got me thinking, and I’ve decided to expand on the topic a bit here on Creative Deconstruction.

If I were to create a poll to find out the average internet user’s feelings toward internet marketers, how many people do you think would respond positively?

… And how many of that number would be internet marketers themselves?

Next to perhaps lawyers, the internet marketer probably has the worst reputation in Western business. In may cases, this reputation is largely deserved. Like the telemarketers of old, internet marketers make it their business to interrupt peoples’ days with unsolicited messages, brazen advertisements, and questionable ideals.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to act like a tool to make money online.

Human Beings vs. Internet Marketers

The way I see it, there are two ways to approach business online. You can sell like a human, or you can sell like an internet marketer. The question is: which are you?

What is the difference between a human being and an Internet Marketing professional? I’ve taken the liberty of creating a handy list to help shed some light on the disparity:

1. Humans have real conversations. Internet Marketers have agendas.

2. Humans are interested in helping others. Internet Marketers are interested in monetizing each and every interaction.

3. Humans are passionate about creating interesting and valuable content. Internet Marketers are passionate about SEO.

4. Humans value connections with other humans. Internet marketers value leads. (Which do you think is more valuable?)

5. Humans develop mutually beneficial relationships. Internet Marketers develop human sales funnels.

The irony is that the human activities listed above have so much more potential with regard to building a valuable – yes, even revenue generating – network of connections, supporters, customers and fans. The other activities are shallow and transparent. Very few people are fooled by these tactics anymore anyway – so is it really worth trading in your personal credibility?

How Then Shall We Sell?

Selling like a human, to other humans, is not easy. Humans are notoriously unpredictable and difficult to please. That’s why so many turn to the soulless side of internet marketing. There’s a much lower threshold to entry. It also takes much less emotional energy to manage textbook marketing activities, than it does to truly seek to add value to human relationships – whether with customers, fans, clients or other connections.

The answers to selling like a human lie in what makes us human in the first place. Human beings need to connect with one another in meaningful ways. We need to belong to a diverse community of like-minded people. Sometimes we need others to help us, other times we need to share what we have with others. We need to learn, and even at times to be entertained.

If you can help meet these needs in other people, you will be successful in business – and life, for that matter. The other side of that coin is that if you can’t figure out how to contribute to at least one of these needs you will likely struggle.

What does this have to do with you?

Like the internet marketer, modern artists are often out there on there own.  There are precious few label deals to go around, and the ones going around may be a gamble, at best. So artists are left to promote themselves and their music lacking key resources and often without any kind of real training. So who do you turn to for direction?

When you’re out here on the internet, especially on social networks, pay attention to how you are going about your business. Are you interrupting peoples’ day with unsolicited messages, brazen advertisements and questionable ideals? (“Check out my MySpace page, fan me on Facebook and make sure you RETWEET!!” – What value does this add to the reader?) Or are you treating people like humans and helping to meet their needs?

People want good music, clearly, but I would even argue that people need good music. What we don’t need is to have artists trying to sell us that music by mimicking the tactics of shameless internet marketers.

Instead, take the time to think about your audience. Who are they? What do they want, and what do they need? How can you meet those needs and desires? Sometimes it’s as simple as giving them something to laugh about, or finding a way to connect like-minded people within your niche. That’s how you’re going to find an entry point into their day.

And that is how you are going to find new fans.

Related posts:

1. Do Viral Music Videos Sell Records? A Closer Look at OK Go

“That would never work in the real world.” You hear it all the time when you tell people about a fresh idea.

This real world sounds like an awfully depressing place to live. It’s a place where new ideas, unfamiliar approaches, and foreign concepts always lose. The only things that win are what people already know and do, even if those things are flawed and inefficient.

Scratch the surface and you’ll find that these “real world” inhabitants are filled with pessimism and despair. They expect fresh concepts to fail. They assume society isn’t ready for or capable of change.

Don’t believe them. That world may be real for them, but it doesn’t mean you have to live in it.

That’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Rework by the founders of 37signals. The message hits close to home for me right now, so I thought I’d share it with all of you.

I’m currently in the process of starting up a new business. In the real world, neither my partner nor I are in a great place to be risking it all on a new venture. Erik runs a music discovery service, and works as an internet marketer by day. I have two young kids, a full-time job as a headhunter and a music industry blog to generate quality content for each day. We’re busy, we’re already over-committed, and resources are scarce.

In the real world, we should both be heads-down at a cubicle somewhere trying to ‘focus on our careers.’ Instead, we’re seizing every spare minute to pour our time, energy and our best ideas into this project.

Why am I telling you this? Because I believe that my experiences starting a new business are not too far removed from many of your experiences starting a career in music. Our venture also  depends on many of the same factors that your careers depend on – namely that listeners and consumers will continue to value the music experience.

I’m going to try to blog the start up process from beginning to end, and well beyond. Everything I learn, you’ll learn. Every mistake I make will be one you won’t have to. My hope is that there will be something for everybody to take a way and apply to your own endeavors.

The first installment is simple: if you have a vision for your life and your career, don’t wait for permission. Get started now. Keep your day job, but make time to work towards your goal every single day. If I can do it in my situation – and I suppose only time will tell – anybody can do it.

Erik and I have the advantage of an idea that we truly believe in. We’ve discovered a real need in the music industry that no one is currently meeting with any kind of success, and we plan to fill it. We even have a few ideas on how we’re gong to do it.

But that’s outside the scope of this first post. For now, I’ll leave you with another short excerpt from Rework:

The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.

Does this resonate with any of you? Are any of you in a similar place? I’d love to get your feedback.

Related posts:

1. ‘Physical Fanatics’ Continue to Embrace Vinyl in a Post-iTunes World

I had a great phone conversation with Kyle Bylin of HypeBot last week about viral video – specifically OK Go’s ‘This Too Shall Pass’ masterpiece. He was preparing to sit down and write about the actual value of a viral music video. The elaborate, MIT engineered Rube Goldberg machine featured in the band’s latest video is ingenious, and enough fun to warrant a couple of viewings. But when the thrill wears off, does anyone really remember the song?

It is still about the song, isn’t it?

Kyle ended up with a great post, which can be found here. In it, he says this:

I think we’re getting close to the point where the marketing of the music video overrides the song in it to the point where the only thing that it motivates is more views, leaving fans with little interest in actually acquiring the song playing.  Since, after all, the song itself is boring once you take away the flashy effects, machine contraptions, and the marketing hype.

What he’s essentially asking is, do hit music videos sell records?

The more I think about that question, the more I wonder if it’s really the right question. More on that in a moment. First, I want to try and find an answer.

The answer is… sometimes.

OK Go had some mild success with their self-titled debut album, but they remained relatively unknown until their first hit video ‘Here it Goes Again‘ blew up on YouTube in 2005. The album was called Oh No, and sold around 200k copies. By contrast, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky has only managed to sell 20k copies, despite not one, but TWO viral music videos for ‘This Too Shall Pass.’

The video for ‘Here it Goes Again,’ which features a tightly choreographed dance across a series of treadmills, genuinely seems to have been instrumental in launching OK Go into the public eye. The exposure the band gained from the millions of views, the press coverage, the interviews, the TV appearances, and the copy-cat videos is something most bands will only dream about.

Yet, the more recent ‘This Too Shall Pass’ videos haven’t proven to be able to repeat that effect.

I think there are a couple reasons for this. The first is that OK Go already has a couple of hits under their belts. The kind of catalytic effect of the first viral video can’t be reproduced because a YouTube video can only really get you so far, and OK Go may already be there.

More importantly, this is 2010, not 2005. If you think the world hasn’t changed much since in 5 years consider this: YouTube had only been around for 16 months when OK Go the ‘Here it Goes Again’ video. It would still be 4 more months before the fledgling video-sharing site was acquired by Google.

In 2005 the idea that a music video produced by a mid-level band with limited funds could reach over 1 million people in only 6 days was mind-boggling. Today that number, while still impressive, doesn’t seem nearly as extraordinary. Non-celebrities can tweet a picture of their breakfast sandwich and trust that their 10,000 Twitter followers will faithfully click. ‘Charlie Bit Me’ can become an overnight meme sensation.

Can a viral music video sell records? Yes, if the conditions are right. Is a viral music video guaranteed to sell records? Absolutely not.

Are record sales really the right goal?

That brings me back to my initial point. Are we asking the right questions? Is the highest destiny of an online music video to sell records?

In the past it certainly was. Music videos were designed to turn singles into hits that made people want to buy records. But again, the world is a dramatically different place that it was in MTV’s heyday. Music videos across the board are struggling to have impact on sales they once did.

The real question isn’t, do viral music videos sell records? The question is, can anything sell records anymore?

Record sales have reached historic depths this year, with little hope of rebounding. No video – no matter how many millions of views it garners – is going to change that. Artists and members of the music industry need to expand their views of this business to include the smaller, diverse streams of revenue that make up artists’ livelihood today.

Modern music videos should be measured the same way that all the various weapons in an artist’s arsenal should be measured – do they drive exposure and engage new and existing fans?

Does a viral music video sell records? Sometimes. Does it introduce new eyes and ears to artists that had not been able to reach them in other ways? Certainly. And that kind of exposure – when handled correctly – can be translated into all sorts of positive returns.

For example, when I first showed the OK Go videos to a friend his first response was, “I bet this band puts on an incredible live show.” The energy and fun of the band’s videos caused my friend, and many others, to want to see what kind of fun they had on stage.

From a revenue perspective, having a history of music videos going viral allowed OK Go to secure sponsorship for ‘This Too Shall Pass.’ The video itself was a direct revenue source.

And to be fair, the video did boost record sales to some degree. According to Billboard, OK Go saw sales of their most recent album triple, and sales of single tracks (mostly ‘This Too Shall Pass’) increased sevenfold. The numbers still aren’t great, but without the video and the attention it has garnered the band they would be dismal.

The music video has evolved into an art form of its own, but it remains an important promotional tool. The key for modern artists and bands is to figure out what exactly they are trying to promote. Just an album? Or the diverse streams of art, content and experiences that grow their fan base and make up their livelihood?

Related posts:

1. Sell Like a Human: How to Make Money Online Without Acting Like a Tool

MySpace360Wizard is a new tool designed to help bands brand and optimize their MySpace pages. Find out below how to win one of 5 FREE access codes.

Every band has a MySpace page. Unfortunately, 99% of those pages suck.

When it comes to out-of-the-box usability, MySpace ranks far, far below its more attractive cousins, Facebook and Twitter. The template is cluttered and counter-intuitive. The page is filled mostly with noise, and it takes large amounts of time and money to customize and brand an artist profile effectively. Even many well-funded bands have MySpace pages that would make an unfamiliar listener believe it was posted by a high schooler.

Yet, every band still has to have a MySpace page. Why? Can’t we just put our music on Bandcamp and call it a day? Put your music on Bandcamp – it’s an excellent service. But the fact is that many, many potential listeners stop at a band’s MySpace page first – before even their homepage – to check them out.

That’s why your page really can’t suck. Like it or not, it’s going to be making your first impression on many eyes and ears out there.

Inexpensive, user-friendly MySpace optimization

MySpace360Wizard, created by David Sherbow and Cara Peckens One Fan Consulting, aims to provide an accessible solution to the MySpace problem. It clears up the clutter, and offers a straightforward guide to help artists customize and brand their profiles.

More importantly, it helps artists optimize their profiles for conversions. When the pros set up a website they do so with specific goals in mind – the sale of a product, mailing list sign-ups, etc. What are your goals? In other words, what are you trying to get the people who visit your page to do?

In most cases you want visitors to do 4 things: listen to your music, buy your stuff,  show up to your gigs, and sign up for your mailing list.

MySpace360Wizard is integrated with all of the major direct to fan services – music players, online stores, and email marketing programs like FanBridge and MailChimp. It’s layout and navigation are designed to drive visitors to these services without having to sift through all the MySpace noise. The player is front and center, the store is above the fold, and right next to it is the touring calender.

It takes about an hour from start to finish to redesign or create a profile from scratch using the wizard. The wizard makes it pretty easy, taking the user through the process step by step. You can preview the profile at any time to make sure it’s looking the way you want it to look. It costs $99 bucks to publish the custom profile. You can check out a completed example here.

Win a FREE custom MySpace page by tweeting good advice

I’ve got 5 free access codes to give away, plus 1 grand prize  Here’s how this is going to work:

1. Tweet the best advice you have for independent bands and artists in 140 characters or less.

2. Include this link: http://bit.ly/bRWMlS (It links back to this post.)

3. Tag it #CD140

I will personally pick the best five entries to receive the free codes. Good luck!

The service is still in beta, but what do you think of the ‘New MySpace’ that this tool offers?

Related posts:

1. And the Winners of the Free MySpace Redesign Give-Away Are…

I’m sure many of you have seen this already, but it’s just too good not to share. Below is a beautiful info-graphi.c that breaks down the amount of music in various digital formats that a single artist would have to sell in order to meet the US minimum wage in a given month.

As you can see as you scroll down through graphic the returns become increasingly low. In order to earn minimum wage through spins on Spotify alone, your track would have to be played 4,549,020 times in a single month. A  little intimidating.

Pink dots can’t tell the whole story

Now, it’s important to note that the data being visualized here is somewhat flawed. This is for a couple of reasons. If you look at the fine print at the bottom of the graphic you’ll notice the following:

Rates do not include publishing and performance rights for songwriters.

These royalties can actually make a huge difference, especially when it comes to internet radio.

For example, I got myself into a bit of trouble a few months back by mis-interpreting one of Lady Gaga’s Spotify statements. After just over one million plays on the streaming music service, Lady Gaga earned an abysmal $167.

These numbers were shocking at the time. Lady Gaga’s earnings were one of the first real case studies of the kind of revenue artists should expect from services like Spotify, and the results were less than promising.

However, after more details emerged it became clear that the $167 payment was only a piece of the puzzle. The $167 was only Gaga’s half of the publishing royalty, and didn’t include the performer’s fees paid by Spotify.  The real total was probably more like $1837. Still not great, but streaming is only one small part of an artist’s digital strategy.

Would those additional numbers make much difference in the size of those massive pink dots at the bottom of the graphic? Probably not. But every little bit helps, so it’s worth being as accurate as possible.

How to react

Some artists and labels have looked at these numbers and react by threatening to boycott streaming services due to the extremely low returns. That type of knee jerk response ignores the realities of the digital music market.

The challenge for artists today is not simply how to earn enough money to pay the bills. Any new artist has the formidable task of rising above the noise of an intensely crowded market. Services like Last.fm and Spotify may not pay well, but can be a great way to expose new listeners to your music.

Using Lady Gaga once more as an example: Lady Gaga had her track streamed over one million times in 5 months. During that same period she also sold over 20 million paid downloads. Do you think maybe all that streaming had something to do with it?

Diversification

If this graphic teaches us anything it is that the key to a successful digital music strategy is diversification. There is simply not enough money to be made by focusing in on one format.

Take the smallest dots in the graphic and do what you can to drive revenue from those formats. Read Monday’s post on a recent report that shows listeners still want to purchase physical formats, such as vinyl. This graphic preaches the same message.

Remember, though, that streaming radio and other services that drive little to no revenue may still drive the sale of some of the higher margin items, such as paid downloads, CDs, and vinyl releases.

Making a living as an artist is not an easy thing to do, as these numbers make painfully clear. But it can still be done. And remember – these pink dots are not the only revenue streams available to an artist. Live performances, special edition products, merchandise, licensing, etc. are big slices of the revenue pie. They may be missing from the chart above, but they should certainly be present in your strategy.

Record Store Day 2010

Even as many in the music world continue to trumpet the death of the physical release format there is growing evidence that these claims have been grossly exaggerated.

There is no denying that digital has taken hold of the music-listening market. Digital sales continue to climb, and new records are set every few months by artists such as Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas, and others.

However, there is also no denying that the revenue being driven by digital sales pales in comparison to the figures the recording industry once saw during the ages of vinyl and the CD. The new artists might not notice the deficit, but the old-timers and record label executives have certainly felt the pinch in a big way.

The album post-iTunes

At a recent conference in the UK called ‘Never Mind the Box Set: The Album Post iTunes,’ participants bemoaned the negative by-products of the new digital world.

“We have cheapened music so badly,” admitted Paul Conroy, formerly of Virgin Records U.K. and one of the panelists. He pointed to the inflated prices of the past decade as one cause of the CD’s decline. “It was greed and short-termism because we wanted gratification today and we screwed up.”

The participants acknowledged what the DIY music world has understood for years now – that relying on digital downloads as a primary revenue source is very risky due to the ease of digital copying. “If one CD ends up on 10 different iPods, how do we make money?” asked Steve Bunyan of Union Square Music. (Please join me in welcoming Steve to the 21st century…)

Physical releases in the 21st Century

In response to the uncertainty surrounding the recording industry as a whole, there was some interesting data presented that sheds a positive light on the sale of physical formats such as vinyl and collectible box sets.

The most interesting information came from a report by the IFPI, which is based in London and represents the recording industry world-wide.

The report was described as the ‘first ever industry-wide segmentation of the British music-buying public.’ It concluded that revenue from music sales was not behaving the way the industry pundits and analysts were predicting it should. In 2009 73% of music sales in the UK were from physical formats such as CDs and vinyl, with only 19% digital, and the remaining 8% consisting of performance rights.

The report itself doesn’t appear to be online, but you can read Billboard’s coverage here.

Not all consumers are the same

73% is a big deal. It means that while many have shifted their music consumption habits to digital downloading (whether legal or illegal) there is still a healthy subsection of consumers looking to spend their money collecting physical formats, particularly vinyl.

This data might be surprising to many new music industry pundits, but it’s encouraging news for musicians and record labels.

The IFPI report actually breaks the total physical spend down into different categories, including Physical Fanatics, Traditional Physicals, and Digital Dabblers. Each category, as the names suggest, exhibits a different blend of music-purchasing habits. I think these are great distinctions, because they avoid the kind of blanket generalizations that cause artists and record labels to throw all their eggs in one basket – the way so many have done with digital.

Musicians and labels would be wise to pay attention to these demographics because they could provide useful insights into how their particular audience wants to consume their music.

For example, if you are only selling (or giving away) digital downloads, you may be missing out on a significant number of fans that would be interested in purchasing physical products such as vinyl records. Those vinyl record sales mean revenue. It doesn’t take an MBA to understand that if your fans are willing to give you money for something, you should be offering it.

Vinyl is alive and well

It may sound like common sense to offer multiple formats for your fans to choose from. Unfortunately, the DIY movement has been so zealous in declaring digital the Savior of the Unsigned that many have forgotten that there are still many, many people out there who want something physical to purchase.

It’s all part of a natural progression. Something new arrives on the scene and the industry watches as it begins to take hold of the market. They see that nice upward trajectory and the projections begin to grow more and more fantastic with each passing month. Digital is going to take over the world! The CD is dead! Physical releases are dead! The ALBUM is dead!

Is the CD dead? If it’s not it certainly seems to be on its last breath. But physical releases in general? The album itself?

I wrote an article a few months back about a resurgence of vinyl records that continues to grow even as CD sales – and recorded music sales in general – continue to decline. That data, along with the information collected by the IFPI report, suggest strongly that we all jumped the gun a bit in our doomsday projections.

More people are buying vinyl records. The majority of these vinyl releases seem to be special editions with unique packaging, or box sets that give a new depth and design edge to an existing catalogue. These types of releases use the sonic advantage and nostalgia of the vinyl format to give fans something of value. And, so far at least, fans have proven that they’re willing to pay for that value.

Artists – are you taking advantage of this?

Photo credit: Tom Mcshane.

Related posts:

1. What Do At&t’s New Bandwidth Caps Mean for ‘iTunes in the Cloud?’
2. What does it take to earn a living with digital music?
3. Ignore the Real World: Blogging the Start Up Experience

Axl Rose of Guns 'N' Roses.

Change is difficult.

Artists often have the hardest time with change because they can be so driven by principle. The rockstar-poet is the clearest example of this. You know the type – one or even a couple of great albums that receive major critical acclaim (whether under or above ground) and then the world moves on and they just can’t seem to understand why their message doesn’t seem to be getting through anymore.

“My songs haven’t changed, so the people must have. The world is clearly going to hell.”

Or worse, the would-be rockstar-poet. That’s the guy (or girl) who’s message is so personal, obscure or ‘deep’ that no one gets it in the first place.

“I’m so misunderstood… The world isn’t worthy of my Rock.”

Axl Rose and ‘Chinese Democracy’

Speaking of the former, however, there was an entertaining bit in a recent Lefsetz letter that I wanted to share. Lefsetz shared an email that he received in response to something he had written about the latest Guns N’ Roses album ‘Chinese Democracy.’

If you’re unfamiliar with the album, here’s what Lefsetz wrote on it originally:

What album’s got a title YEARS before release? Isn’t the title usually the last thing?

Axl would have been better off saying he shelved that record, making it an unreleased legend like “Smile”, and then cutting another (or releasing the same damn work under a different name). Because by time it was finally released, people expected something in the neighborhood of “Appetite”, and that was impossible.

But it was impossible for any new work to have the momentum and impact of “Appetite”. It was twenty years later. MTV, the centralizing force, was dead. Radio was calcified. And the audience…was in its forties and had jobs and kids and couldn’t stay at home all afternoon getting high to new music.

Times changed, but W. Axl Rose did not change with them.

That pretty much sums it up. Here was one reader’s response:

When a track from Chinese Democracy (”Better”) leaked in 2006 – the radio stations that were playing it received Cease and Desist orders from Axl’s attorneys.

When Axl tried releasing the same song as a single 2 years later – the radio stations ignored it.

You reap what you sow.

This is a great example of somebody who just doesn’t seem to get it anymore.

Back in the day.

First of all, why was ‘Chinese Democracy’ allowed to sit around for 2 years after that track leaked? The full album should have been sent out that afternoon, as far as I’m concerned. You can do that now thanks to a little device called the ‘internet.’

Instead, Axl held the album close for 2 more years. Perhaps he (or more likely someone working for him) eventually realized that if ‘Better’ had gotten airplay without the record company even trying, it should probably be the re-released as the album’s first single.

Too little, too late.

The damage had already been done and the world had yet again moved on. What’s more, the radio stations had been snubbed. They were eager to promote the track when they first got wind of it, but Axl told them to stop. Two years later that eagerness had long since faded. Maybe they were holding a grudge, or maybe the world had just had enough time to realize that the album wasn’t all that great anyway.

Humility and Flexibility

The lesson here? The world doesn’t owe you anything. The record industry, the broadcasting and the television industries don’t owe you anything. Most importantly, the listeners don’t owe you anything.

If your music, or your business, or your way of doing things don’t lead to the kind of success you want to achieve…. you may not be as good as you think you are. And when you do find your groove and the successes start rolling in, remember – the world spins very quickly these days.

The key is to stay humble, and to stay flexible. Humility allows us to make an honest assessment of what we have, or don’t have to offer. Flexibility allows us to change in mid-course if need be to adapt to the changing marketplace, or the changing creative landscape.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here is Mr. Axl Rose, Slash and an entire Wal-Mart’s worth of hairspray. Please enjoy – at least until Axl’s attorneys make me take it down.

Hope and Social at the 'Come Dine with Us' event.

The new music industries work in a very different way than the record business of the ’60’s. The precious 7 inch of plastic discs of that decade (when music demand far outstripped supply) were rare; clamoured for. Music lovers saved their pennies and tens of them would gather round a single radio to hear the charts. People flocked in droves to record shops to hear the latest discs and treated their vinyl with the cotton glove respect that’s reserved for the finest of diamonds. People Treasured Music.

Today’s music environment is very different. With 13 million bands on [cough - spit] Myspace alone, a growing live scene, thousands of pieces of music becoming available free online daily, and most all forms of recorded music being easily copy and shareable, we can’t consider Music itself to be the carrier of our currency. The Democratisation of Music means more supply of music, and that means that the expectation is that it sells for less. What’s more, music is copyable, shareable, reproducable and even if only say 4% of the bands on Myspace are any good, that’s over half a million bands to compete with.

So, what can we sell?

If we can all now make, distribute and sell music, to succeed we’ve got to differentiate ourselves from the crowd & give people something they can’t get elsewhere. If we can give people something that isn’t repeatable and isn’t copyable then all the better. So, what’s unique and not copyable? A feeling, or an experience. We have a saying in Hope and Social. Have Fun, Make Art. It’s become part of our ethos. If it’s not fun we don’t do it; and if it sounds fun we should probably ask others to get involved. It may not be the same for your tribe, but for Hope and Social the currency we deal in is “Fun”.

3 Course Meal in a Crypt

Come Dine With Us

With the “Make Art, Have Fun” mantra resounding in our communal larynx, we took a demo of a song that sounds vaguely like French supermarket music, added the germ of an idea that a cheese and wine night could be fun and multiplied that by the effervescent mind of the brilliant Ben Denison’s.

What we we came up with was a great way to galvanise our close fans, to get them involved in making art with us, to have a lot of fun and to raise money to fund our music making. We invited our fans to our home, the studio we’ve recorded all our albums to date in (and the venue for the Crypt Gig last year). We promised to cook great food, to have the band wait on, and play at our guests tables and finally, once everyone was suitably relaxed drunk, record a song together. We named it “Come Dine With Us” and we invited people by song.

The Event

We’ve already blogged about the amazing people who helped us pull all this together, but to see them in action is something else. A picture says a thousand words and all that:

Hope & Social • Come Dine With Us [Behind-the-scenes] from 3B Media on Vimeo.

We turned our studio into a French Bistro for the evening, we served a 3 course gourmet French meal to 70 people, the band waited tables, played at people’s tables, silent auctioned one-off items and recorded a song with our good people.

Offer Value

Our (initially flummoxed) drummer Gary Stewart (who joined us this past year) said, “I don’t understand… so you just think stuff up that you want to do, and people pay for you to do it?” and quite simply the answer is yes. When we do special events, we do our best to ensure that we give value to those who care enough to attend. We price it as something we could afford to do. Through this we’ve built relationships with our fans which enables us to sell unique events such as our Crypt gig last year and Come Dine With Us as far more than a standard gig.

People buy into our events because they know it will not only be a good time, but also that we’re not trying to bleed as much profit out of them as maybe we could. All our standard releases are Pay What You Want. People know we’re not in the game of ripping people off. Most importantly though, people know we’ll include them in the night and as in the case of our recent Come Dine With Us event, we might well make a song with ‘em for our album.

The Wine Bottle Orchestra

The Song

James Hamilton wrote a wine bottle orchestra part, we tuned 50 wine bottles, asked guests to bring an instrument of their choice and we made art. We recorded the song live along with our fans singing, blowing, clanking, banging and singing along. As Ed Waring said in his recent blog:

“Eurospin is not my favourite song on the album but it’s kinda my favourite bit on the album. Watch the amazing video below. You got to love the amazement on our faces that it’s working and the fact that the crowd just make it look so easy…”

Hope & Social • Eurospin from 3B Media on Vimeo.

… additionally however, the story of how we made this song has helped us reach many new fans.

The Footprint

More from 'Come Dine with Us'

The response to the event and the concept of the event has been amazing. In advance the twitter and facebook communities were rife with activity around the event, and by turning our guests into band members on the record itself, they became the evangelists for our record.

It’s not by accident that the tools we use to sell and promote our work online include the option to share. There’s the 3B Media videos, and the bandcamp music which can be easily embedded on most websites. Bandcamp also has the transformative “Post to twitter” and “Post to Facebook” direct links and through the stats package we can see this appearing daily in people’s posts. There are new blogs sprouting up about the event, and through selling more Fun we can reach out to even more new people.

The music industry has changed, however if you know your band and if you know your tribe you can give them something they can’t get anywhere else. Find that thing and that’s your currency!

'Starving Artist' is not a job description.

This is a guest post by entertainment business consultant Kevin English.

Back in 1992, I told myself that I was going to make it in the music business no matter what. The thought of being a starving artist was romantic to me in many ways, because it looked glamorous on TV and the singer always seemed to get the girl in the end. But as I got older I started to feel like I was on a blind date. I was broke, sleeping on a twin box spring without a mattress, and spending what little money I had on fast food and Mary Jane. I was a lower class musician.

I was not a lower class musician for lack of musical ability — after all, I was one of five singers accepted into Mason Gross for Classical Voice that year. Rather, I was a lower class musician because I couldn’t buy my way into the music business. My first label job in the A&R department of Universal Records paid a whopping $14k per year and did little to advance my career. I learned the hard way that there is a difference between what I wanted to do and what I had to do.

Over time, I found that cash flow is the amount of money you need to pay your bills before your next paycheck. It’s also one of the best indicators of which financial class one belongs to. Many people don’t even know how much they are spending month to month, let alone when they will see their next music industry check.

Below are four things you can do to stop living like a pauper today and raise your stake in life tomorrow.

Lower Your Overhead

Ian Rogers and Shamal Ranasinghe of Topspin refer to the middle class musician as “one that can operate on a lower volume, at a lower risk, but with higher profit margins”. I happen to agree that Rogers and Ranasinghe may have figured out that much. However, in order for you to gain access to the Topspin platform you must first take a college course [over $1K] and then split 60% of your overall profit between selected marketing and fulfillment companies. That sounds too much like a traditional record deal to me.

Instead, there are tons of low cost alternatives that can help you put the pieces of the puzzle together once you can see the bigger picture. I am an advocate of Live Music Machine for booking, Bandcamp for direct-to-fan sales and data capture, Fairtilizer for digital promos and Google Analytics to see who is clicking through your WordPress blog.

Learn to structure yourself like any other startup and formulate a strategy on paper that will sustain you for three to five years. You’ll soon find out that overspending on manufacturing, marketing, promotion and distribution is very difficult to recoup.

Adjust Your Expectations

For some of us, music is a hobby and that is okay. However, if you plan on feeding your children by touring the Chitlin’ circuit, that’s another thing entirely. When I realized that writing songs for Columbia Records and recording demos with The Fugees wasn’t going to sustain me forever, I had to adjust my expectations. These gigs were few and far in between and often times didn’t pay half as much as you would expect them to.

I studied profitable ideas, people, and businesses to find a common denominator. I learned that nine out of ten successful startups had a business plan. Not just any old plan, but one that was standard across all industries. Financial planning, marketing, and the management of people and products/services cannot be done on the fly. If all you want is for people to hear your music that is fine. But again, you can’t necessarily expect to make a decent living.

Accelerate Your Learning

Hundreds of books have been written on the subject of business plans, yet no one in the music business seems to think they need one — until, of course, they run out of cash. I spent years in my local SBA in Newark, NJ looking at sample plans, meeting with retired CEOs of successful companies, and learning how basic businesses operate.

If you do the same you’ll realize that most startups have more similarities than you’d expect. However, it is important to point out that no two plans are alike. You will still need to write a plan specifically based around your music-related products and services. My first plan was a disaster. I asked my uncle for $75K with a promise to return 20% of the loan over the next five years. He had a good laugh over that one, but at least he knew I was serious about my dreams.

Diversify Your Product Offering

If you’re anything like me you already know what you are passionate about. You may already have a substantial amount of music-related product at your disposal, and you may even know a thing or two about the industry. But remember, just because you are musician doesn’t mean that CDs and digital downloads are the only thing you are allowed to sell. Don’t believe me? Ask music industry vet, David Sherbow. He’s fleshed out a long list of potential revenue streams for musicians at various levels. The concept of bundling CDs with digital downloads and merchandise is great, but will only work if you can sell enough of these things to stay afloat until your next release.

If you know now that you are in need of a middle class stimulus package, you need to start working on these four things early. Don’t wait until your album is finished before you begin to look for marketing dollars, or you’ll never find them. We have plenty more options then we had back in the 90’s so take advantage of this opportunity before it’s too late.

Kevin English

Kevin English is a product manager, business plan writer and consultant for various entertainment and technology companies. He blogs about the skills and strategies necessary to get the most of your musical career at http://eleetmusic.com or on Twitter @eleetmusic.