Competition: Win A Year's Subscription To The IMA Music Business Academy ($181 Value)

Hi guys. I’ve been a long term reader and contributor of Music Think Tank, and thought it’s about time I gave something more back to the community.

As some of you may know, I recently released my course ‘The IMA Music Business Academy’. It’s a course that aims to teach the independent musician the business side of the industry, giving them all the knowledge and practical skills they need to fast track their music career.

The course has received a lot of good feedback so far, and with the door now back open, I want give you the chance to get involved free of charge.

I’m giving away three prizes of a year’s long access to the IMA Music Business Academy (Each prize valued at $181). If you want to win this great prize, all you have to do is:

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Rockin' in the New World: Taking Your Band from the Basement to the Big Time"

Ok, there’s a bit of hype here since this is the title of my new book, but it really is a special book and addresses issues bands face in today’s changing industry. Those of you who know me, understand it’s not a vanity piece about me, instead, just like I did with TCG, it is a platform for helping artists, fostering the arts.

The letters I’m getting from kids in bands testify that it has hit it’s mark head on! 

We never had any resource written by people who, other than being lawyers or academics, actually were veterans of the industry. Martin Atkins’ Tour-Smart is the ultimate guerilla touring guide for today, Jim and Jean Youngs’ book from the 70s had interviews with an assortment of people in the industry including me as cocky a 24 year old manager. RNW includes today’s bands, the websites, the labels, DIY, Indies staff, and pages of resources. 

Check it out, it’s already in public libraries and receiving accolades. We need to support and nurture young artists as they are the future of our industry

Music Isn't Dead........

She’s not dead, but she isn’t well. I don’t want to be like any one of the other Nine Million Music blog posters out there and write about a day gone by like it was perfect, or even that great for music herself. Long ago, music lived in the air, for free, no matter where, no matter what. The only way you could hear instruments being played, is by proximity to a performer, or do it yourself. This is not the time so many seem to sing the praises of. They sing praises of a funnel system, that advocated control of music, and mechanical rights licensing and other dirty words.. They sing of the 50s or 60’s or 70’s or God forbid the 80’s as the hey day for music. I strongly disagree…

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Comparing Song Pitching Services

I wanted to know which song pitching services worked best for musicians and have created a simple to understand comparison chart. This Blog post looks at my experience with early pitching companies and my thoughts for the future.

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Sharing, Streaming and P2P -- The Death of Our Internet's 'Hippie' Era

It was too good to be true. You always knew it. Millions of songs, movies, books, etc., all up for grabs, all of the time. We used to think, ‘Oh they won’t catch me— they may catch the sophomore college fool who seeds hundreds of torrents, but not me.’ Now they won’t have to.

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Top 5 Things to Avoid as a Beginning Band

So you and your friends have gotten together and formed a band.  It seems like the perfect idea.  You write good music, are really good friends, and want to work really hard to make it as a band because who wants to work in a dead end corporate job when you could be living off your dream.  I get it because I’m right there with you.  BUT, if you are serious about this, you need to start somewhere and I write this with the hope of having you start out better than where I was (which was square zero).  So here is a top 5 list (in no particular order) of things to avoid so you won’t have to make the same mistakes that I did

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Industry Benchmarks: Why the Music Industry Finishes Last

1. We are spoiled. Our fans are so passionate about music that we are used to them coming to us and spreading the word. It is simply not good enough to just flier for your shows or treat every fan in the same way.

2. Whose job is it? In most industries, there is a CMO or a Marketing Operations Manager. In the music industry, there are still unclear roles about who should do interactive marketing. Is it the band, the manager, the promoter, the label?

3. Who owns the fan? Who owns the lists? Is is the band, the label, the promoter ?

4. Bright Shiny Objects. We are always trying to be one step ahead of the curve. We have to have a facebook, a twitter, 4square, a great music video, awesome tour dates. ooo and whats that?! We are distracted! We have a ton on our plate and really need to focus on a cohesive multi-channel marketing strategy.

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5 Game-Changing Music Industry Philosophies

If you work in or around the music industry it’s obvious things are changing drastically. The way people perceive and find their music has completely changed. New technology has turned the music industry on it’s head. How do we keep up? and why hasn’t the industry’s platform of doing things completely flipped as well?

Over the course of the last year I’ve been researching and developing a new platform, at least for my company to operate under. Instead of traipsing around complaining about the demise of the record business (like many of the major label execs spend most of their time doing now) I figured, something’s gotta change and fast! Being the owner of a young company, I’m not going to operate by the old platform’s standards and jump aboard a sinking ship.

More people than ever before are listening to music. It’s great! They have it coming at them from all angles, it’s just fantastic. This should be a very prosperous time for the music industry. Music is everywhere - embedded in their phones, tv, public spaces etc. So much room to make money from music. So where do we start…

Here’s my top 5 game changing philosophies. I think with an outlook shift we will actually be able to sustain ourselves. Well, I hope so at least…

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Ten in Ten: New music industry poll launches 08.02.11

Horace Trubridge, MU Assistant General Secretary, says: ‘Although we can guess, none of us know what the next ten years will do to the music industry – that’s why Music Supported Here will be launching Ten in Ten. The concept is simple. Ten questions that will be answered by experts from the music industry – musicians, fans, managers, labels etc – to give an overall picture of what we think is going to happen.

“Will illegal downloading become less of a problem? Will recording contracts be fairer? Will there be less new talent emerging? None of us can really be sure of what 2021 holds for the music industry, but we think that the opinions of thousands of people who live and breathe the music industry will produce some pretty accurate predictions’.

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The Musician's Secret Weapon

“Life can be very, very hard for a musician. You’re competing against millions of others, desperate to be heard over all the noise. And you’ve got no money.

But you’ve got a secret weapon. To outsiders, the music industry is sexy. People with day jobs are fascinated with the mythos of “The Rock Star”.

Make the person you’re talking to feel this. Make them feel like a part of this world.

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Music Industry Secret to Success #4 – Have Integrity

I have developed a set of music industry “secrets.” These “secrets” are designed to develop positive behavior, so do not expect a ton of tactical talk. Strategy will be the ultimate takeaway. In each shared “secret,” I am going to give ideas that should help you make the right changes toward a substantial music career. Be sure you check out the previous “secrets” of “Be Yourself”, “Reach Out”, “Listen” and “Have Humility” on FryinginVein.com before reading this.

By definition, there are two ways you can interpret integrity. Regardless of whether we are talking unfettered completeness or moral soundness, having integrity is crucial to succeeding in life - period. In this piece, I will list key actions you can do to increase your level of integrity in your music career.

When you are a person with integrity, you are a person that people can trust. You are someone that can be depended upon to do what you say you are going to do. That is where the “completeness” ties into the definition, so for the first key action:

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Is the Internet Dead or just Dead to Artists?

Is the internet dead? This has been a question I have been asking myself for a few weeks now. If it’s not dead is it just going through changes like most businesses do? I have read several articles of late that seem to think that it is dead and that the future of the internet will look much different then it does today. So what if it’s dead, how does that impact us? Do we even care?

I’m looking at the internet through the eyes of someone working in the music industry, as a recording artist, a studio owner and a music publisher. What was once the supposed gateway to music business success is closing and its closing fast. In fact it may have never really been open at all.

We have all heard the stories of how a band was found on myspace and then international fame soon followed. I once bought into this, but now I’m not so sure. How true can this be? Success in business has always been built on hard work, time, effort, energy, preparation and education. There are always the stories of overnight successes but even then all of the above things were at some point involved. No one can succeed at anything if they have never put forth any effort to succeed can they?

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Why Spotify is being denied in the US: A matter of pride?

The music industry has been getting kicked in the nuts from P2P and illegal file-sharing for a long time now. They have tried everything they can to try to stop their aches and there has always been one main reason why these illegal file-sharing sites get away with it - THE SONY BETAMAX CASE

Without going too much in to this, BETAMAX (VHS’ forgotten brother-in-law) came to US shores and hollywood went in to a state of panic. The thought that their movies, which millions of dollars were pumped in to making,  could be duplicated so easily was a huge issue! Soon a law suit followed led by Universal Studios. They pleaded to the courts that this would ruin the movie business as people will stop buying movies and shift to duplicating movies with the record feature the Japanese company included. After a long battle the courts favoured Sony and technology.

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Where the Music Industry Went Wrong: Why Indie Musicians Are Struggling to Sell Their Music

There are three reasons why local, indie musicians are not achieving the levels of success they desire in the music industry. In this article, I will give a short overview of these three reasons and the role the music industry has played. If you are an indie artist and you are struggling to sell your music, if you are struggling to get promotion and publicity, then it is probably because of at least one of these three reasons.

Three Reasons why most indie musicians are struggling to sell their music:
Reason # 1. Indie musicians have forgotten or are not aware of, the true value and power of music.

Reason # 2. Indie musicians do not communicate the value of their music or they do so poorly. This reason aims at how musicians market and promote their music. This reason also explains why most musicians are not able to network effectively at industry events and get the attention of music executives and the press. I will discuss this reason in a later article in this series.

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