Don't Forget The Other Half

Can you see that in the distance?  That “thing” that keeps getting further and further away in the rear-view mirror?  That’s the shrinking visibility of a distant entertainment microcosm that forced amateurs and professionals alike to be aligned with financially prosperous partners in order to fund, market, and distribute quality content.   

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How Touring Musicians Can Run A Business From The Road

Over the last few decades musicians have had to become more savvy regarding the business aspects of the creative endeavours that they’ve dedicated their lives to. Whether it’s due to the myriad examples of how unsuspecting creatives have been taken advantage of, or the industry shifts that have affected how revenue is made, musicians are taking the development of their business skills almost as seriously as their musical chops. While this adds a certain complexity to musician’s lives, this is also incredibly empowering.

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Business For Band Members

You may have spent thousands of hours practicing your instrument and perfecting your singing tone, but musical talent is only one element that factors into your success as a band. Band members need to develop business skills, too, when it comes to marketing, promoting, and networking. Whether you’re seeking out your next performance opportunity or are engaging with fans to build anticipation around your upcoming album release, you’ll need some business skills to be a successful musician. 

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Are You Treating Your Production Cost Like A Business Would?

One of the best parts of taking your passion project to the next level and treating it as a business is that you are able to take advantages of the tax write off that goes into running your business. Yet many new entrepreneur-musicians struggle to fully benefit from this. Especially shocking given the equipment that goes into production is one of the largest cost to your business. Write that new mixer off baby!

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What To Do After Your Band Breaks Up

Being in a band is just like being in any other relationship: the beginning is exciting and full of possibility, but at some point, you might realize that you and your bandmates just aren’t on the same page anymore.

Whether it’s a build-up of small annoyances or big creative differences, it can be extremely difficult to come to the decision that it’s best for your band to break up. This is especially true if you’ve been playing together for a long time and have deep personal connections with your bandmates.

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Simple And Fast Invoice Generator For Bands And Musicians

As a working musician, boring ol’ admin can most definitely be thought of as a job for tomorrow. However, having worked as a band leader for many years, I quickly found that creating professional quotes, contracts and invoices was a must if you want to appeal to high-end clients with increasingly higher expectations (and budgets).

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The EU Referendum: A Creative's Perspective

If you’re anything like me ,all this noise over the UK EU referendum has left me confused over the impact of leaving the UK will have any impact on our lives. While i can’t speak for UK citizens i’ve been piecing together what impact this could have on the music industry.

To cut to the chase, the general consensus from the music industry is that we should “vote to stay” in the EU.

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Music Teaching - How To Create A Business Plan

In order to set up and run a successful music teaching business you should definitely have a business plan. It’s a great way to organise all your thoughts and make sure you have everything in place before you start your business

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3 Ways Your Band Can Use Creativity to Make More Money

Money. Many artists struggle with it: either we’re poor at managing income or we lack creativity in getting it. It’s clear that with the shape of the music industry, most artists aren’t making a living from record sales. So how are they getting the support that they need?

You might argue that some bands make their money from performing: they command large guarantees when playing a show. Another popular idea is that most bands survive because of merch sales (few promoters provide a decent guarantee, if one at all). Others see crowdsourcing as the new golden calf.

I don’t think there is a one-size fits-all model for all artists. What artists need is something that is personal, transparent, and appropriate for their career. In 5 Non-traditional Ways to Promote Your Music, I called upon artists to use their creativity when it comes to music promotion. I think the same could be said of your sources of income as well.

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The Three Legged Table: Songs, Magnetism, and Business

How do you tell a businessperson that success in the music business…has nothing to do with business?

On Music Think Tank, where I have posted over eighty articles, you’ll find an overwhelming amount of advice on social media practices, fan engagement and conversion strategies, business planning, artist management, music marketing, music technology and enough similar sounding posts to make your head spin.  One might even be misled into believing that the equation: decent artist + solid business support = success.  However this formula is about as a sound as building a one legged table. 

If you are ever thinking about financially backing or supporting an artist, you should know that there are two other legs of the table that are of equal or greater importance.  In fact, if these first two legs are solid, the third leg, the business leg, almost organically grows itself.

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4 Steps To A New Music Business

By now everyone has read a string of thoughtful predictions by many great music industry minds regarding the future of the music business, and most of them certainly have merit. Let me propose the 4 steps that I think would help thrust the music business truly into Music 3.0. Some of these you’ve no doubt heard before, but some you may have not.

1) New Blood For The Industry - The music industry was creatively at its best when the pioneers of the business (Berry Gordy, Ahmet Ertegen, Mo Ostin, Jac Holzman, etc.) were actively running their companies. They were fans first, businessmen second, and they intimately knew their audience well because they were part of it.

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HOW TO: Use Viinyl to Help Promote Your Latest Single

Viinyl is a fairly new service that popped up in late 2010 that allows you to create “song-based websites.” They ended up being one of my top picks for 2010’s most interesting and innovative music start-ups, and I’d like to dive a bit deeper into the free service with this post.

If you ever find yourself wanting to promote a single, using Viinyl is an excellent way to provide your fans with a rich media experience surrounding a single song. In this post, I want to show you how you create a one-song web page with Viinyl, and how you can link to it via a subdomain on your official website (e.g. “singleimpromoting.mywebsite.com”).

1. Sign up for a beta account

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The Lottery Model, The Free Culture Model, The Click Control Model

Q: What happens when you put a lawyer, an economist, a business executive, a government bureaucrat and an artist into a locked room?  A: The business executive assaults the economists, the lawyer sues the executive, the bureaucrat falls asleep, and the artist writes a song about it.  This is the copyright debate.

Over the last couple of years, and as a background task, I have tried to make sense of the copyright / copy restriction debate.  Is more or less copy restriction better or worse for rightsholders?

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In Defense Of 1,000 True Fans - Part I - The Mountain Goatsl

Since I started my career in this business. I’ve always been working within the 1,000 True Fans model.

Here’s my story: In 1996, I was living in Boulder, CO and I had just started Ariel Publicity, my boutique PR firm.

Acoustic Junction and Zuba two local bands became my first clients. Both had been staples in Boulder for a couple of years, and both made fantastic livings touring and selling their independent releases from coast to coast. They did this with no label, no distribution, and no major marketing budgets: just a manager, a tour manager, and me.

I also represented The Toasters, Bim Skala Bim, The Slackers, and Skinnerbox, (and practically everyone touring during the third wave of Ska).

These artists and dozens like them all made full time livings from playing and touring.  They had a core group of fans that supported them by seeing several shows a year, buying merch and buying albums.

Today, it feels revolutionary when we hear about bands that make a living based on their music.

What happened? What changed?

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