The Value Of Keyword Research For Artists

Keyword research is vital in the digital marketing industry. It is valuable because of its high return on investment (ROI), and keywords help your website to rank in the search engine results page (SERP). Researching keywords that relate to you can help you to learn which terms and phrases to target with SEO. This is a good way to learn more about your fans, too. Choosing the most important keywords and phrases that describe you will help you to attract qualified traffic to your website.

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The Music Industry Won’t Always Be Like This

No one is listening to you at showcases. People prefer your memes to your songs on social media. People don’t understand your solo sections.

 

Any of these relate to you?

If they do you may be having doubts about your abilities? Maybe you don’t think your music is good enough? Maybe you just want to jack the whole thing in.

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Spotify: The Music Industry’s Life Support?

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, does not believe that Spotify is out for anyone, but themselves. On Grammy night Portnow took to the stage to aim shots at music streaming services for making less-than lucrative deals with artists and musicians. Neil Portnow said, “Isn’t a song worth more then a penny?”

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Cyber PR Q&A: 5 Questions For John Kellogg, Esq. Author Of Take Care Of Your Music Business

John Kellogg is a practicing entertainment lawyer and assistant chair of Music Business/
Management at Berklee College of Music in Boston. I met him when I spoke at Berklee and my firm was delighted to represent him for the release of his book Take Care of Your Music Business, Second Edition.

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10 Tips For Indie Artists To Start 2016 Off On The Right Foot

Alright artists, it’s time to really buckle down. 2015 is coming to an end, so how are you going to make sure that next year is really your year? Here’s a few tips to start you off on the right foot:

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4 Reasons Why Empowerment Is Important To Musicians

Musicians need empowerment to: 1. stay motivated even after demotivating comments 2. dare to broaden their horizons 3. get more out of it by knowing their abilities 4. prevent to get screwed over by the music business

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It's Time To Rethink Everything

As many of you who normally read my blog post know that I do not support the music-streaming model that is currently being used. I believe that streaming in the current business model is not sustainable revenue for the music industry. To date there hasn’t been any music streaming service that has yet made a profit. It’s easy math here, the record labels and artists spend big time dollars to produce, market, and distribute music. In turn they receive pennies to the dollar, this seems like a no brainer. No wonder why music-streaming services have not made a dollar.

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8 Ways To Get People To Share Your Song

Does promotion often feel like pulling teeth?

Has it been hard for you to get people to share your music?

If so, continue reading. We’re about to clear things up for you.

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Increase The Probability Of Getting Featured

As technology is growing and becoming much more accessible all over the world, more Record Labels and Artists are getting their Music Production hats on and releasing music to the world. The thrill of seeing the material out on stores such as Beatport, iTunes, Google Play, and others is a great feeling but then the artist and record label begin to realize there is not enough attention that is needed and begin to ask, how can I get featured and get a banner on Beatport or iTunes and others?

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The Musician’s Guide to the Sales Funnel: 10 Steps to Selling Tons More Tickets, Music, and Merchandise

If you’ve been struggling to get results from your marketing efforts and continue to spend more money than your band makes, then this is a must-read.

 Independent - (adj) - 1: Not influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion, conduct, etc. 

2: Thinking or acting for oneself. 

As musicians, we tend to think we can do it all. We’re independent artists. We’ve got our music, our talent, our fans—and nothing else matters. Well, at least that’s how it works in theory. 

The reality is we need help, and lots of it. I don’t care how good you are—there is simply not enough time to do everything and still be a master at your craft, which is the music itself. You need tools and you need to outsource. You need to learn how to run your band like a business, and being resistant to this fact is the fastest way to kill off whatever income—and independence—you have left. 

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Musicians as Entrepreneurs

The music industry isn’t the same as it was in the past. A lot of people have spent a lot of time complaining about this following the rise of the internet, but like everything else, it’s just change. Change isn’t positive or negative, rather it’s what you do with that change that matters. The successful musicians and music business people are embracing that change and running with it as a new breed of entrepreneurs.

In today’s music industry there is no one-size fits all model. We are all free to experiment and find out what works best for us, our fans, and our music careers. This is the true definition of entrepreneurship. Today’s music business approaches would not have worked in the past when technology was expensive and valuable connections were hard to come by.

As an indie musician, I already know you are extremely creative—more so than most business people out there! You may have never thought of it this way, but you have the same mindset, problems to solve and thought process as an entrepreneur. The key is to harness that creativity in your career, capitalize on this new artist ecosystem, and build it into your own model.

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Music Business Strategies

There are a lot of musicians out there struggling to pay the rent, grow their fan base, and make a profit on tour. It’s a tough road, but if you’re dedicated you can make music your career. In today’s music business, it’s not about forcing yourself into a one-size-fits-all box, or throwing a dice and hoping for the best. It’s about building the right career for YOU and YOUR music, experimenting, learning, and adapting to change. Today, you are an entrepreneur, not a product, and great success is waiting for musicians with this mindset. 

The New Artist Model is all about thinking of your music career like a business and using creative strategies to start growing now with the tools and resources you have available. In the New Artist Model FREE E-book, you’ll get a glimpse at some of the proven strategies we discuss in the full online course. Click the image to download your copy and check out the 10 key points of the New Artist Model below.

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Who Stole the Music Business? (And How You Can Get a Piece of the Loot)

Are you a musician? Are you a songwriter? Did you wake up one day not long ago and say “WTF? Who stole the music business?”

With CD sales about half what they were 15 years ago, and the “new media” radio stations like Pandora, Spotify, Grooveshark, et al, reportedly paying out pittances for even millions of airplays, you’re not alone.

And you’re right. Someone did steal the music business. But it may not be who you think and there just might be a remedy available to you.

Game Changer

Once the mp3 was invented, and the historical physical music product (rolls, records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs) was transformed into a VIRTUAL product that could easily be captured (stolen) and shared with “peers,” the game was over for making money from music distribution. It has been downhill ever since.

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The Cost of Free

By Athena Butler

When it comes to recorded music, today’s consumers enjoy a free ride and seem to have all the answers.  Song sharing is there for the taking and, in any case, the old music sales model is archaic. But if out with the old and in with the new is stylish in music, the same is not true of music recordings.

For the business, it seems, free is good. However, the decline of recorded music sales has been catastrophic since 2001, when piracy became rampant and the single song Apple economy banished the album. Now, hope for the sector requires a giant leap of faith. In the meantime, the tough job of finding new ways to compensate for this loss of profits falls to the record companies. It may appear that artists are gaining more exposure as music changes hands often and easily. But is the moneymaking of old within the reach of the business?

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