MySpace Concept Creators

• David Sherbow (MusicBizGuy) is a thirty-five year music industry veteran and the CEO of LiveMusicMachine. 
• Cara Pickens is an experienced digital media strategist, a graphic artist and a partner at LiveMusicMachine.

Click the graphic below to view a full-size preview.


• Distributor A charges a one-time album set-up fee of $20, plus an annual “maintenance” fee of $20, and takes no percentage of your sales (Distributor A passes 100% of the sales revenue it collects on to the artist).


• Distributor B does not charge any set-up or annual maintenance fees, and takes a 10% cut of your sales revenue (you the artist keep 90%).

Assume both distributors will deliver your content to the same stores and offer identical service except for the payment terms. Which distributor do you choose?

Do the math!

The answer, as you may have guessed, depends on how many albums (or single tracks) you think you can sell.  If you passed junior high algebra, you’ll find the math here quite straightforward:

Let’s suppose the average revenue per album sold that your distributor collects is $7 (this is what iTunes would pay out on a $10 album, after Apple takes their 30% cut).  X is the number of albums sold.

Artist earnings from Distributor A in Year 1 = $7 * X - $20 set-up fee - $20 annual fee

Artist earnings from Distributor B in Year 1 = $7 * 90% * X = $6.3 * X

Now we can find the number of albums you’d have to sell in Year 1 to earn the same amount from Distributor A and B:

7 * X - 40 = 6.3 * X

0.7 * X = 40

X = 57

And there you have it.  If you sell more than 57 albums in your first year, you’ll earn more money with Distributor A.  If you sell fewer than 57 albums, you’re better off with Distributor B.  Using the same calculation, you will see that for every subsequent year after Year 1, you need to sell more than 29 albums per year to earn more with Distributor A.

Beware of “small” percentages

In many business situations, a commission-based model between a client and service provider makes perfect sense.  There’s nothing inherently unfair about a distributor taking a percentage of an artist’s sales for their services.  However, it’s important to understand how commissions impact an artist’s earnings over time, especially if there is a flat-fee alternative for essentially the same service.

Returning to our example, let’s look at what it would cost you to distribute an album for 2 years using Distributor A and Distributor B.

Under Distributor A, the cost is $60 ($20 set up + 2 * $20 annual fee) regardless of how many units you sell. 

Under Distributor B, the “cost” is 10% of your sales, which in our example is $0.70 per unit.  The table below shows some examples of what Distributor B’s fee would be depending on your sales numbers over a 2 year period:

As you can see, 10% of revenue adds up quickly.  Distributor B’s model becomes significantly more expensive than Distributor A’s $60 flat rate, even for a relatively modest level of album sales.

Again, there’s nothing wrong per se with a distributor taking a percentage of revenue.  But when a distributor says “We only make money when you make money!”, remember that they also take more money as you make money.

Choosing the right distributor for you

There are other factors besides payment terms that you need to consider when choosing a distributor.  Which stores they deliver to, how frequently they pay royalties to artists, data reporting/analytics, reputation, reliability, and promotional services are all important factors to think about.

Ultimately, you should be able to answer the following questions before selecting a distributor:

1. How much will it cost me (in upfront payment and/or % of revenues) to work with this distributor, based on the number of albums I think I can sell?

2. Is this distributor more expensive than the next best alternative?

a) If so, how much more expensive?

b) Do they offer enough extra services/value over the next best alternative to justify the higher expense?

You can use this spreadsheet to compare how different assumptions about revenue per sale, album sales, and distributor terms impact artist payout: 

Digital Distributor Math Worksheet

Many artists have been asking me about the bext Apps for their Facebook Fan Pages

Here are six Apps that will set you on the right path, help you to stand out from the pack and keep your fans engaged and interested in you on a consistent basis.

1) Involver – http://involver.com

The people at Involver are masters of fan page branding. They offer two applications from their gallery free of charge (they have some wonderfully tiered packages, but those will cost you). I would recommend installing the Twitter and YouTube applications on your page, but there are other great ones as well. Your fans will then be able to see you last 5 tweets and last 6 YouTube videos right from your Facebook fan page.

*Check out the free app gallery here: http://involver.com/gallery.html 

2) iLike Music Tab – http://tinyurl.com/FacebookiLikeApp

One of the premiere music applications for fan pages. One great feature that iLike exclusively provides is the ability to load a large, MySpace-esqe banner. It is somewhat difficult to currently brand yourself visually on facebook (without spending a lot of $), but this is a good start.

This app plays music, shows your Twitter feed, has links to purchase songs, etc. In order to create on one these you need an iLike account: http://ilike.com

3) ReverbNation - My Band - http://tinyurl.com/FacebookMyBand

There is a lot of overlap between My Band and iLike. The main functions that separate My Band are the merchandise options (fans can buy merch right from this tab), and the newsletter/street team sign up box.

*If you do not have a newsletter management service or widgets that you currently using throughout your web presence, I would start to get acclimated with ReverbNation, and use My Band on your FB Fan page.

If you are already using a newsletter management service and have your widget situation covered, iLike is the way to go because of the beautiful branding opportunity with the large horizontal image.

4) Poll Daddy Polls - http://tinyurl.com/facebookpolldaddy

Poll Daddy Polls feature both private polls that only your friends can see, and public ones that you can share with all of your fans. This is a great way to poll your fan base and see what they really want!

5) Selective Tweets - http://tinyurl.com/SelectiveTweet

Update your Facebook Status from Twitter but only for the tweets you choose. This is a great tool for musicians who want to save time but still want to be selective.

Just end each tweet with #fb when you also want to update your Facebook Fan Page status. Note: *This won’t work if your tweets are protected.

6) Twitter/Facebook synch - http://tinyurl.com/TwitterTweetFB

*For personal pages, not fan pages

Many people ask me about this, so I wanted to include it. This links your tweets with the status updates on your personal profiles, not your fan pages.

Happy Facebooking Everyone!

Come Hang with me here: http://www.Facebook.com/CyberPR

Dave “Honeyboy” Edwards, left, and Allen Shadow.

I got a chance to talk with Honeyboy after one of the many blues concerts I’ve promoted over the years that have included the likes of Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, James Cotton, Earl King, Little Milton, Odetta, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Honeyboy was as charming as he was informative, happy to tell stories of Johnson and the early days. I considered it an honor and was pleased to see this giant of American music recognized last night.

# # #

Allen Shadow is a rock artist, songwriter and PR pro. For more, check out his blog.

Do you believe crowds of humans will ever (or do now) sway as much control over the rate and depth of media dissemination as the established media machine does now?

It’s easier than ever to make studio-quality songs and great looking videos.

You can easily distribute your music and creations worldwide.

Through promotion tools and strategies, you can continually increase the rate and depth in which your media spreads throughout the world.

However, just as there‘s always someone that’s stronger, faster, smarter or wealthier than any one of us, will there always be entities that can push media faster and deeper into the marketplace than ALL of us (humans) networked together?

My answer to the question above is:  The media world is flattening, but it will be years before networks of humans can consistently push media and messages faster and deeper than most media entities can now.  However, due to the shrinking fortunes of most media businesses, the gatekeepers that control mass-media exposure opportunities are looking for artists that are flat-earth savvy (capable of mitigating risk by excelling at self-promotion) and/or content that has flat-earth appeal (the potential to go viral).

It’s a conundrum.  You currently can’t match their speed and depth (of dissemination) on your own, but they can no longer afford to feature you unless you can obtain speed and depth on your own.

• Listeners - a song obviously needs as many listeners as possible.
• Optimal Frequency Rate - a song needs maximum spins (plays) within a compact span of time.
• Social Situation Rate - a song benefits from maximum socialization during that same time period.
• Resonation Rate - the percentage of listeners that a song easily resonates with.
• Adjacent Song Factor - the frequency rate in which a song is placed into a series of familiar songs.

The formula stipulates that for a song to obtain maximum traction, all the variables in the formula have to push up and max out.  If you plug the formula into a spreadsheet and play around with scenarios, you will notice (it’s all multiplication), that a single low variable sinks a song (this is important). In other words, you need ALL the variables to work for you to maximize the conversion rate from listeners to fans.

Here’s an extended description of the variables:

Listeners (L)
Listeners (L) is the variable that equals the number of listeners (not fans but receptive listeners) that have frictionless access to your song via a download, a music stream, a broadcast, or by way of receiving your CD.

Optimal Frequency Rate (OFR)
It’s often stated that falling in love with a song is a complex process. For the purpose of this post, I am going to speculate that a song needs to be heard by the average person at least 10 times within 60 days to make a shallow (but lasting) memory imprint. Therefore, 10 spins within 60 days equals the Optimal (maximum) Frequency Rate of 100%.

Less spins over a longer time period equates to a lower Optimal Frequency Rate.

Social Situation Rate (SSR)
Once again, the imprinting/socialization process is complex. Most (young) people need social cues (signals from others) to believe in (adopt and evangelize) a song. When people spin songs in a vacuum (think about the lone iPod user with headphones on), they are less likely to have an imprinting experience than during a shared/social listening session.

Social settings (where social cues are gathered) range from listening to songs with friends, to hearing songs at a club or party, to sharing/playlisting/promoting songs to friends online. In a perfect world, 100% of a song’s early spins would occur within a social situation; this would equate to a Social Situation Rate of 100%.

All social situations are not created equal. If you want to be more specific, assign varying weights to different social situation types.

Resonation Rate (CR)
Resonation Rate is the subjective component of the formula. Listeners are going to love your song(s) along a spectrum. A percentage of listeners (this would be the resonation rate) are going to adopt your song, while others won’t give it a second listen.

Adjacent Song Factor (ASF)
A recent study has shown that listeners easily tire of screening unfamiliar songs.  The more often that a song is played within a playlist or stream of familiar songs, the higher the Adjacent Song Factor is going to be.

Now in simple terms…
You need a ton of listeners; a lot of spins within a compact time period; spins that occur within social situations have more impact; you obviously need a great song; and your songs are more likely to be received when sandwiched between pre-existing hits.  Sounds like radio doesn’t it? 

about Bruce Warila

I had the honor and pleasure of speaking at NAMM last week about how to make money in the music business. Normally when I speak on panels it’s me and a few other Social Media,  Marketing, and PR peeps but this panel which was curated by Tony Van Veen of CD Baby / Discmakers was exceptional because it included an artist who is making it right now…  Brian Mazzaferri, the fearles leader of Chicago’s own I Fight Dragons had incredible insights to share about was his band is doing now to make money in the brave new world of “The old model isn’t quite totally dead yet, but the new model isn’t really proven either.”He took some time to really delve into his thoughts on the theroy and I’m delighted that he shared his insight with me and I know you will be too:

Ariel Hyatt: Do you believe that 1,000 true fans is a theory that can work?

Brian, I Fight Dragons: I will first say it’s an awesome theory and idea.  And if I had to place a bet, I’d say that in 10 or maybe even 5 years, it will be MUCH more possible.  However, I’d imagine most people reading this would like to build a music career now instead of waiting 10 years, so then I would have to say a very qualified yes, with some big conditions:
 
Condition 1: You’ve got to be a solo artist.   MAYBE a duo.  The handful of people I know who are truly making this type of model work make decent livings, but start dividing that living up 3 or more ways, and you dip below the poverty line pretty quickly.  My band has 6 people in it.

Condition 2: You’ve got to be both willing and able to do a lot of things yourself that traditional “professional” musicians don’t.  Same reason.  Managers, Producers, Booking Agents, Labels, Graphic Designers, Publicists, Studios, and Webmasters all need to get paid, and that’s above and beyond your living.  Every member you add to your team needs to eat.

For example, my band toured with mc chris this fall.  He calls this balance ‘trimming the fat.’  He runs an incredibly efficient music operation, self-managed, self-produced, self-webmastered.  The only team members he has are a booking agent and a tour manager that does the business and merch with him on tour.  But that means he has to do the rest himself.

And in the 1000 true fans model, that’s the goal!  That’s the finish line!

I would say this is the toughest realization for most people pursuing an indie music career (I know it was for me!), since I think the main reason we got into this industry was to make music, and we probably don’t have as much passion for the business end even if we have the ability.  And that’s as it should be!  If you have MORE passion for the business than the music, why do the music?  Personally, I like the idea of working with team members.  My manager, booking agent, lawyer, and social media coach are all ridiculously awesome at what they do, and working with them gives me more time to focus on music.

“If you have MORE passion for the business than the music, why do the music?” 

- Brian, I Fight Dragons

However, having a 6-person band and a large team, I’d say my band’s “True Fans” number is definitely above 10,000, which starts to become preposterous when you think about what a “True Fan” is.  Make no mistake, even 1,000 is very very hard to get to.

So, as much as people like to hate labels (especially the majors), we’ve come to the ugly truth: they’re really the only people investing the time and money it takes to build an artist up in the traditional ways.  And people like to say terrestrial radio is dead, but trust me, it’s no such thing. Radio is crazy powerful.  

Plus, the other tricky part is that a True Fan is not a possession.  It’s a relationship.  As such, it grows and changes, and people come and go as you grow, and as they grow and their lives change.  Plus the more True Fans you have, the less overall time you have for each one, which is definitely a factor for the people that are your biggest fans.  Keeping up with 1000 personal relationships is a monumental task!

“…a True Fan is not a possession.  It’s a relationship.  As such, it grows and changes, and people come and go as you grow, and as they grow and their lives change.”

- Brian, I Fight Dragons

And I suppose I’ve written an essay here, but to sum it up, I do think 1,000 true fans is possible, but currently only under very specific conditions.  However, as more and more people spend more and more time and money on the internet, this can (and likely will) change over time.

 
AH: Are you currently making a full-time living as a musician from your music?
 

B, IFD: Yes.  Admittedly it’s pretty damn humble, but I hope it will grow :)

AH: How many years did it take you from day j-o-b to part time job to F/T Musician?

B, IFD: Well, I started in music in early 2007.  For the most part I’ve worked part time from then until late 2009, making just enough to stay alive while spending every waking moment on music.  Also, I should say that my first few projects were huge learning experiences that went nowhere, and my current band didn’t really launch until early 2009.

AH: Can you give us a breakdown percentage wise of the following:

B, IFD: I don’t have exact %, but I’ll try and say how we do:

A. CD Sales?

We’ve sold a little over 4,000 physical copies of our debut EP, almost entirely at live shows. This is our biggest source of income at live shows.

B. Subscription Site?
 None.  All of our subscription-type content (email-list) is 100% free

C. Live Shows?
Because we’ve continued to try and play larger venues and to tour, we usually make very little money from guarantee / door, and instead make it mostly from CD sales with a little bit from t-shirts

D. Merchandise?
T-shirts.  They’re awesome and they sell at live shows (and a little bit online), but they’re EXPENSIVE.  Especially if you want to make them decent quality and you don’t have the budget to order very many at once.  We also do really well selling sweatbands and wristbands.

E. Other? Please name what the other categories might be.
I think Other is very very important.  Making limited-edition, very high-value stuff is awesome.  We sold 100 Lifetime Membership USB drives for $100 each (lifetime admission to any IFD show, free digital content for life), and that was a huge $10,000 boon for us.

Also, digital downloads are very important too.  We’ve sold around 10,000 tracks online through iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, etc.

AH: If possible (I know you may not want to share this information), can you share the amount of money you have grossed in the last 12 months, broken down by months correlating with market, and promotional, and touring efforts?

B, IFD: We do have some data on this, but it’s scattered around (I need to get it together).  Honestly we only started about 12 months ago, so it’s not very much data, and I’m not ready to share it quite yet :P

AH: How many die hard fans, fans that will buy everything and anything from you, would you imagine that you have?

B, IFD: That’s a tough question.  I’d guess between 500-1000.  It really depends on what you mean, since I think there’s a sliding scale, not all True Fans are created equal (although they are all created awesome), and a lot of them come and go depending on what’s going on in their lives.

AH:How long did it take you to build up this many fans?

B, IFD: It’s been about a year.

AH:  Do you have a strategy with long-term and short-term goals in place to get to 1,000 true fans or for any future looking aspects of your music career? If so, can you share these goals?

B, IFD: Well, to be honest, right now we’re talking with labels about releasing our full length.  If we released our full-length on a major label, it would go to radio, and we would tour to support it.  I’d say my biggest goal is to continue to try and bring awesome fan interaction and social media stuff to a larger scale, and to see what other awesome things we can do artistically that people will enjoy.

AH: Have you ever made money from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Ustream? Can you please tell us exactly how and correlate them?

B, IFD: Not directly.  Those are great ways for people to discover us, and for us to interact with fans, but we generally try to keep those channels about interaction and not about sales.

AH: Has your connection to the podcasting and online world, and your popularity with podcasters helped you to earn more money?

B, IFD:  Indirectly, yes.  I wouldn’t say we’re incredibly popular with podcasters, but those that have been our champions (Hipster Please, Mothpod, GeekDad, The Nerdy Show, and more) have been invaluable in helping us spread the word. 

AH: What are your next steps to continue to help yourself move forward in your own career?

B, IFD: For us, the next big step is finalizing how we’re going to release our debut full-length album, and how we can bring the social media and crazy new ideas we’ve used so far to work on a wider scale.

AH: If you could give a band or artist any type of advice on how to start in social media, what would you advise them to do?

B, IFD: Starting is a tough thing.  I’d say know your audience, and join the conversation.  Use Twitter especially to join in conversations that are already happening.

AH: If you had $500 to spend on marketing and promotion, how would you spend that money?

B, IFD: Just marketing and promotion?  I guess Facebook Ads are the only specific ‘marketing’ money we spend.  I’d say a lot of the money we spend to make and distribute free content is arguably marketing money though. 

AH: How do you use analytics to your advantage? What are your measurable online results, and how do your measures help you with your music career?

B, IFD:  Analytics are definitely important to know if things are working or not.  We use Constant Contact, so I see how many people open each of our emails and who clicks on what.  That’s very very valuable.
 

AH: On a scale of 1 to 10, would you say you share a lot (a 10) or are you guarded in what you exposure on social media sites about yourself and your personal life?

B, IFD: Probably 7.  We try to share a lot of ourselves, but we try not to make people uncomfortable.

AH: What would you say to a fellow musician, that thinks that Twitter is just sharing “eating a tuna sandwich”  and is stupid?

B, IFD: Um, “you’re stupid.”?  Learn about something before you dismiss it.

AH: And – is there anything I missed you want to say?

B, IFD: I guess I would say that it’s a fascinating endeavor.  My last big concern about the 1,000 true fans model is longevity.  Most of the people using it work through the internet, and everything on the internet has an exponentially shorter shelf-life than it’s Real Life corollary.  

I just think there’s very little data right now on how long an internet music career can last.  Most traditional music careers, even people with a hit record, are lucky to last more than a decade, and so traditional music business literature says to make as much as you can while you’re hot and save it up for when your career’s over.  

What’s the new model for that?  Is the expectation that an internet music career is longer than a traditional one?  I suppose one could argue that, but it’s a tough sell for me.  The internet is fickle, and tastes change.  I guess we’ll see the truth of that as time goes on too.  

Sorry to be the ultimate downer!  I’ve been wrestling with a lot of these issues myself lately, and these are my latest thoughts.

“For the record, I’m incredibly positive about music in general, I just guess I think we’re in a weird spot right now where the old model doesn’t work like it used to, but the new model isn’t powerful enough to take over yet, so there’s upsides and downsides to each one.  I suppose my biggest goal is to combine them both :)… I don’t think I’m the ultimate authority, this is just where I stand at the moment.

Hang with I Fight Dragons:

http://www.ifightdragons.com/

@ifightdragons

http://www.myspace.com/ifightdragons

A few weeks ago, Kevin English of eleetmusic got me in to the closed beta of Rock Band Network, which provides the necessary tools to get your songs into the game. When it launches, the RBN Store will sell those songs through the game’s interface, with 30% of the purchase price going back to the artist. Now that the beta is public, you may be eager to dive in, but let me warn you - it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be! Authoring your first song requires a deep skill set and 60-80 hours of focused effort.

You’ll need to have:

• Multitrack sessions of your song, including a dry vocal
• A computer running Windows
• An Xbox 360 with at least a 20 GB hard drive
• Rock Band 2

You’ll most likely need to buy:

• A premium Creators Club membership ($99/year or $49 for four months)
• A Gold subscription to Xbox LIVE ($49.99/year)
• Reaper Digital Audio Workstation software ($60 discounted license after a 30 day trial)

You’ll need to be able to:

• Prepare stems from your original recordings
• Learn a new DAW plus custom scripts
• Play the game proficiently on all instruments at all difficulty levels (good luck if you can’t sing!)
• Transcribe a vocal performance to MIDI, differentiating between vowels and consonants by viewing the waveform
• Play the drums (to program the right hand/left hand animations correctly)
• Connect your Xbox 360 to your computer

In addition to all that, you’ll be expected to test and review other members’ songs. It’s a network after all!

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to discourage you. I just want to save you the frustration of hitting a brick wall after investing your time and money. If the process seems overwhelming, you can always hire someone else to do it. The most widely promoted service so far is Tunecore’s, which charges $999. Keep in mind that the quality of the final product can vary considerably. One service might spend hours on lighting and camera work, while another might use the defaults generated by the compiler. Authoring is both an art and a science.

I created a couple videos of my song as it stands today, just after submitting it for playtest. I’ll post an update once the song makes it through the system. The first one shows the whole band in autoplay mode on expert difficulty, and the second just the vocals, so you can better appreciate the camera and lighting work (and the fact that Trent Reznor is singing my song!).

More info on the authoring process here.

Brian Hazard is a recording artist with fifteen years of experience promoting his seven Color Theory albums. His Passive Promotion blog emphasizes “set it and forget it” methods of music promotion. Brian is also the head mastering engineer and owner of Resonance Mastering in Huntington Beach, California.