MusicThinkTank.com Weekly Recap: What if your Band only had One Fan & more

Where

The Music Industry

Thinks Out Loud

• Joey Flores: Rich Band, Poor Band - Why You Should “Invest” in Pull Marketing
• Chris Seth Jackson: What if your Band only had One Fan?
• Marcus Taylor: Are you reflecting on your goals as an artist?
• Bobby Owsinski: Quality Is A Moving Target

Quality Is A Moving Target

Defining what exactly is “quality” music is an age-old process that never comes to a conclusion. The music that one person loves, another hates, and vice-versa. But now it’s possible for an artist to use that to their advantage.

Click to read more ...

Are you reflecting on your goals as an artist?

The success of large Japanese manufacturing companies is largely attributed to the Eastern culture of reflection and open-mindedness. The leaders who design the future of companies like Toyota spend a great deal of time reflecting on the past and future – something that is not as highly valued in Western culture - where ‘action’ is the so called key to success.

Click to read more ...

What if your Band only had One Fan?

What if every band had only one fan? What if live music was no longer available? What if there was no fame or money involved with music? What would you do?

Click to read more ...

Rich Band, Poor Band - Why You Should "Invest" in Pull Marketing

There is a very famous (and powerful) book called “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, by Robert Kiyosaki.  In the book, Kiyosaki explains that “poor parents” will recommend buying your home and “investing” $2,000 a month in your equity, instead of throwing it away on rent.  “Rich parents”, on the other hand, would encourage you to find a property that you can buy for $2,000 per month, and rent to someone for $2,500.

Click to read more ...

MusicThinkTank.com Weekly Recap: 4 Key Traits of Successful Independent Musicians & more

Where

The Music Industry

Thinks Out Loud

• James Aviaz: Q&A: How Music Supervisors License Music
• Shaun Letang: 4 Key Traits Of Successful Independent Musicians
• Jamie Leger: The Indie Artist Launch Plan
• Ariel Hyatt: 8 Simple Steps to Formatting a Proper Press Release

8 Simple Steps to Formatting a Proper Press Release

Here in the Cyber PR® offices, we quite frequently have musicians about to release albums this fall for press release writing services. We no longer write press releases for bands, but wanted to at least give you the basis for how to do so properly, should you still feel the need to release one yourself:

A press release should be one page only and on letterhead (if you do not have letterhead put your logo or your record company’s logo at the top). Your press release should be formatted like this:

Click to read more ...

The Indie Artist Launch Plan

Got your attention? Good. Now obviously there is no ONE path to launching a career as a musical artist, whether you are going the Indie Route or aim to get picked up by a Major Label…

But I fear that the overwhelming DIY concepts saturating the already overloaded artist/musician is causing analysis paralysis and/or an unneeded amount of complication surrounding what one really needs to do to build your foundation as an Independent Artist or Band.

Throughout this two part article series I am going to do my best to break the component parts down to understandable and slightly over-simplified concepts to leave you with what I believe you’ll find very valuable insight and a message that you can apply to your life/career in some helpful way.

Or, screw it… If you read this article, 4 million dollars will fall out of the sky and land on your doorstep, and the girl/guy of your dreams will instantly show up in your life… Ok. NOW you’ll read!

But today, in retrospect of what I know now, and from working with artists and bands to progress and develop their career, launch albums, and get more clear on what they need to do and as a DIY Indie Artist, there are a few things I would do differently to build the foundation of my musical career…

This is what I would like to share, and exactly what I would have liked to have had someone tell me eight years ago, so hopefully you will be able to benefit from this.

Click to read more ...

4 Key Traits Of Successful Independent Musicians

Hi guys. Today, I want to share with you my views on some of the traits that makes an independent musician successful. While this isn’t a complete list of the things that they generally have in common, all of these things do tend to be defining characteristics outside of the fact that they have talent.

So read on, and see if you can incorporate any of the below points into your music career.

Click to read more ...

Q&A: How Music Supervisors License Music

Following on from our Getting Music Placed in Film / TV post, many of our community were interested to find out more about the role of licensing’s gatekeepers – better known as music supervisors.

To get the lowdown, we spoke with the wonderful Season Kent - Music Supervisor at Clear Songs. Her recent projects include: The Fighter, Limitless,Dear John, Revenge, Macgruber, The Strangers and more.

Click to read more ...

MusicThinkTank.com Weekly Recap: Why Buying Followers is a Bad Idea & More

Where

The Music Industry

Thinks Out Loud

• Simon Tam: Why Buying Followers is a Bad Idea
• Marissa: 7 Mobile Apps Musicians Need NOW!
• Stephen Carmichael: How Google And Search Engine Optimisation Changed The Music Industry
• Joey Flores: Bands - Don’t Contact Me, Unless…

Bands - Don't Contact Me, Unless...

I would love to take it as a compliment that so many bands send me email asking me to check out their music or come see them live.  It should mean I’m important.  Instead, I disregard most of it as spam.

Mile-long emails telling me about how so-and-so is the next hot artist blowing up all over my face.  New album press releases that assume I have 40 minutes to spend learning all about how some artist “grew up in the poorest regions of such and such area before ‘rising to fame’”.  It’s all hype that makes no sense given that you have only 80 fans on Facebook.

What is most annoying about these emails is that they’re not even addressed to me.  They’re sent to the Earbits customer support email address, and have clearly bcc’d the rest of the world.  Sometimes, they’re not even smart enough to do that, disclosing hundreds of email addresses to everybody else on the list.  These untargeted, long-winded marketing pieces are lazy, in some cases costly, and completely pointless. Stop sending them.

Click to read more ...

How Google And Search Engine Optimisation Changed The Music Industry

There are many technological developments within the last ten years that have changed the way we interact and consume media. Development such as facebook, twitter, (myspace), tumblr and youtube have emerged and have become an integral part of how society interacts. However, one of the crucial elements that is often overlooked is the impact that google has on how things spread and the content that is consumed.

Click to read more ...

7 Mobile Apps Musicians Need NOW!

Greetings! Marissa from Team Cyber PR® here, and I have a question:

Do you consider yourself mobile-savvy?

I’m not just talking about texting (although that’s important!). I’m talking about using your smartphone to tap into and enhance your online presence while being up-to-date on all of the cool apps to make your life a little easier. If you could use a little help understanding the magic of mobile, then this blog post is for you!

Here are some interesting mobile statistics to keep in mind:

• There are 165 million Twitter users, and 50% of them use Twitter Mobile.
• Over 1/3 of Facebook’s 900 million+ users also use Facebook Mobile.
• Mobile internet usage will overtake desktop internet usage by 2014.
• Mobile coupons get 10x the redemption rate of regular coupons.
• 3 out of 5 internet searches are done with a mobile device.
• 91% of mobile internet access is to socialize.
• In March 2012, Smartphones were in use by 50.4% of consumers in the US.

As you can see, the popularity of mobile devices is currently on the rise! And even with social connections aside, new apps are always finding ways to make just about anything possible from your phone. If you’re ready to simplify your life and amplify your fan interactions (mostly for free), then get your smartphone in hand and check out these 7 apps:

Click to read more ...