James Moore's Blog, page 69

On “Prisoner” Ryan Adams Misses Her Like Candy

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In reading some reviews of Ryan Adams’ new album, Prisoner, released last month on, I saw one writer describe the cover as a self-portrait. Could be. But, really, I see two people embracing, one face-forward, one back, with an emotional finality.

These songs were written in the aftermath of Adams’ marriage to actress and singer Mandy Moore. If Ryan Adams, released in 2014, postulated on the circumstances that inevitably lead to their divorce, then Prisoner sees Adams in the empty, discolored days of solitude after the case was closed. Here he takes on the stages of grief song by song.

Prisoner opens up with the just-add-water classic first single, “Do You Still Love Me?” a song only Ryan Adams could muster with such perfection. An organ leaks into the track like sunlight across a windshield and leads to a three-hammer jab of  disgruntled guitar. The song is jolted each time it hits. The chorus finds Adams pleading desperately with the title’s question. He’s hoping against hope for a positive answer, but knows there are none. There could be no better way to start an album primarily focused on the separation of wife and husband.

There is a clouded Eighties lens over the sounds of these songs. The drums sound 25-feet in diameter. The guitarwork twangs like Johnny Marr and pasted in the background are thick “Streets of Philadelphia”-era Springsteen organs. Adams switches between an electric and an acoustic guitar. The harmonica takes its seat in the front for “Doomsday,” a rambling look back at a finished relationship. The drums are big and roll through with echoes.

Adams’ mumble buzz heavy on “Haunted House” as he paces the place where love once lived. The acoustic guitar strums with kitchen reverberation. “My friends all disappeared / They all got lost,” he sings. On “Shiver and Shake” Adams starts to regretfully accept his circumstances. His fingers barely drag across the guitar. The organ matches the tremble in his voice as he tries, woefully, to drag himself forward. “I miss you so much / I shiver and I shake,” he sings. “I’ve been waiting here like a dog at the door / You used to throw me scraps / You don’t do that anymore.”

On the sixth song, “To Be Without You,” at the halfway point of the album, Adams begins to make amends with the pain of his separation and starts to confront his new reality. The second half of the album continues with Adams lifting himself up with song. “Anything I Say To You Now,” “Breakdown” and “Tightrope,” with its streetlight saxophone moping along, are the best of these.

In Prisoner Ryan Adams has given the world another classic album to reach for in times of intense heartbreak (‘cause there’s never been a shortage of demand). He gets down the raw, misguided emotions that come when those feelings turn. Prisoner will heal anyone in distress as I’m sure it’s already been cried on by the millions.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post On “Prisoner” Ryan Adams Misses Her Like Candy appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Having Scene Cred And What It Means For You

One of the most important things that you can do in this scene to get real legitimacy is both simple and beautiful. It’s how countless people have won my respect and how I have been ale to keep doing this stupid thing no matter how hard or intimidating it can be. Though the music industry is incredibly frustrating, not very rewarding and endlessly infuriating there is a simple reality that keeps me going, it’s the people talking about their passion for the music. It’s the ability to just sit down and chat with someone about some of their favorite records and see where that takes me. That’s not the only thing though, it’s the stories about that passion come to life. About hanging out with Dave Grohl and Lemmy at the Rainbow, about doing blow with Lady Gaga in a weird sex club that one night, or yelling at Zach De La Rocha for quitting Inside Out to form Rage Against The Machine. And it’s with these stories that you start to gain respect in the field.

Here’s the thing – having those stories is what establishes your legitimacy as an industry person. If you’re in a band it’s the sort of thing that shows industry people that you’re connected to the right people, if you’re an industry person it shows that you’re down to hang. In both cases it shows that you are connected to a larger scene and this larger scene will be able to help you find a bevy of opportunities for whatever project you are working on. Not only that but it also helps to create connections that run deep and bring people closer into your fold. For example, which bands do you think I manage, the ones I got cocaine for the first time I met them or the ones who were impressed by my resume? In almost every case it was the former category. That’s what long term relationships are built on – stupid adventures that you have with strangers. When it comes down to it most of us are in this because we are sad and came into this for the selfsame sadness. So why not just accept that and use it to your advantage?

Remember that just about everyone likes to have a good time. They want to party, get drunk, go whoring and then get arrested for something silly. These are the things that really bind people together and it’s these adventures that last a lifetime, not some stupid series of meetings you have in an upscale apartment. People aren’t going to connect to that as well. By the same token, people are more likely to want to connect with people who can tell them these stories. A lot of my strong industry connections come just from spending a night at a bar shooting the shit and telling stories about different drugs we’ve done with the singer of such and such a band, or which solo artists we’ve gotten kicked out of strip clubs with. If you’re just someones business connection then you are going to have a hard time finding a way forward, you will be viewed clinically. But if you can be seen to be a part of your community you are going to find a lot more ways forward.

Of course this doesn’t always work to your advantage. A lot of the time if you fuck up too hard because you’re drunk or on drugs people will remember and judge you. They won’t want to work with the person who said something stupid to them one night while they were wasted or someone who has loose lips when he has a few too many. These are things I personally struggle with all the time. Secrets are secret for a reason and while that can be difficult to cogitate it’s also good to figure out who should be allowed to know what. While there are certainly people who seem to regularly get destroyed and still manage to figure out a way forward that doesn’t seem to be the majority and a lot of people would make the argument that staying primarily sober is going to do you a lot more good in the long run then being willing to do shots with anyone in the name of potentially making a connection. There certainly is a balance to strike.

When it comes down to it I’m not trying to advocate for the use of drugs and alcohol, at least not all the time. Rather I am trying to encourage you to try and have the craziest and best experiences possible. I want you to go out and have a good time evidencing time and time again that you are part of a community and not just a suit. The music industry is not an easy thing to exist in and you need to be wise about how you go about this whole thing. You need to know the artists though and if you don’t know the artists then they are going to forget you. They are the medium which brings you income, no matter what your role is, because remember, if you’re cool with a band they will want to tour with you, if you’re cool with an agent he will want to book you, the list goes on. But how do you become cool with them? By sharing experiences and the desire to create a better tomorrow for the goddamn collective.

I know that my talk about being a servant to the collection can be viewed as a bit pie in the sky. I know that not everyone has the opportunity to have these crazy experiences with musicians and that a lot of people don’t want to come off as annoying or out of touch. Believe me I emphasize, it’s not something that comes naturally. You need to be able to figure out how to work that into your system though. You need to find your place in the scene not just trying to make connections for connections sake, because no one cares about that, but rather by figuring out how to create a world before you that unfolds piece by piece and reminds us that in the burning pain of reality we can find something that unites all of us, the craziest artists in the world.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post Having Scene Cred And What It Means For You appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

How To Handle Trainwrecks

Sometimes shit totally falls apart. Sometimes you find yourself watching a trainweck, sometimes you’re at the head of a trainwreck. These are the sort of things that cause me a lot of anxiety and that leave you struggling in the face of a world that is utterly punishing. This week I had to deal with a friend undergoing one such trainwreck and I learned a lot from the experience. A lot of this was derived from what he told me but a lot also was from my own observations. It was a reminder that planning for the worst is not necessarily the best option and that there are certain rules you need to follow when things fall apart in order to hopefully grind up your lemons in order to make them into lemonade. When things go south there is always time to save them and no matter how dark the future may seem remember that we can always build from past mistakes moving onwards and upwards with every lasting scar reminding us who we are.

The event in question was a severely underattended SXSW event, one that had unexpected competition at the last minute and which was just a tad too far outside of the beaten path to be truly successful. It didn’t help that it was a little overpriced for the lineup either. Any one or even two of these factors might not have hurt the event that much, but when only a thin trickle of people showed up for the first day of the event after Facebook predicted hundreds of attendees the guys at the fest knew that they had to figure out ways to fix things. They did. In the end even though they didn’t have the attendance they needed they were able to work out a solution with a combination of free entry before a certain time, drink tickets for fans and heavy word of mouth promotion they were able to get enough bodies in that the guys were discussing possibilities for a second edition of the festival in 2018 – making it not a total loss.

Now there’s a lot to be aware of with how this went down. Going in no one thought it was going to have any issues. There were 600 people listed as going and several thousand listed as interested on Facebook. At a normal show that would probably mean that at least 500-600 people would show up. Even if that was split equally over the weekend the festival would have made money. They only needed the venue at 40% capacity after all. They hoped to have a similar number of walkups as they did ticket sales – usually a decent rule of thumb, this didn’t happen, almost at all. That was when the guys started doing damage control. When it comes down to it, even though they thought they were planning extremely conservatively they were not planning for the absolute worst. Remember that music is a bullshit industry and you should never count your eggs before they are hatched. That’s something I still struggle with and something that I think every promoter needs to keep in mind before a show they think is about to do very well.

But let’s say your trainwreck still is happening even though you planned for the absolute worst case scenario. At that point you need to try and strip down the economics of the situation to the barest minimum. You need to consider the best way to maximize funds and to get at least some of your money back. I already went over how these guys did it – they gave away drink tickets and free entry with the knowledge that they could start to make money off the bar. You need to be able to think critically, chalk things up as a loss and look at how you can maximize the total income of your situation. I’ve done the same on tours, we saw people weren’t showing up and we had invested a ton of money so we slashed the price on merch and did a bunch of giveaways. Sometimes things don’t go the way they were planned so you need to reevaluate how you want to make money and remember that you just need to try to cut your losses as much as possible.

The most important thing to do though when facing that nightmare situation is seeing what you can learn from it. Maybe it’s that you shouldn’t place your tours so close together or that you need a new agent. Maybe it’s that your product is priced to high or it simply doesn’t have the value that you thought it did. Maybe your product simply doesn’t meet the cost that it needs to meet. You need to do a breakdown of all of that and then determine how to fix it down the line. I know the sort of people who go out on big tours, put together massive events and generally get their fingers down and dirty in the music industry – they don’t give up after a few setbacks or even a bunch of setbacks. Even if they decide to take a break for a few years they will always come back – it’s a drug that none of us can get away from and one that is stupidly addictive. It’s the path forward for dudes like us who sold their souls for rock and roll.

So embrace your trainwreck. Remember that any failure is merely another one on the long road of life. As humiliating and frustrating as they might be they are also key steps forward in the name of a future that we can all build together. It’s a question of finding the people who show you compassion even in your darkest and most painful moments and then working with them on a better tomorrow. It’s a question of closing your eyes and remembering that if we didn’t fail all the time we wouldn’t have the drive to succeed that makes us human. This entire thing is bullshit and going to make you hurt yourself, but as dark as the night might get remember that there is usually going to be a dawn and that if you look at how your life fell apart a little critical thinking can save you a lot of tears.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post How To Handle Trainwrecks appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Copying Your Peers Best Ideas

You may have heard the saying, “A good band copies three or four other bands, a great band copies twenty.” This isn’t just true for the music though, it holds for the actual marketing of your band as well. I would say that in my whole career of doing this, I’ve had no original thoughts – everything I’ve done has consistently just been an upgrade on something that I saw one of my peers doing. In a career where I’ve been profiled multiple times and been able to hire people, create companies and release countless records I’ve gotten through it all not by being especially smart but simply by knowing what other bands do that works and then copying that. Sure I might need to elaborate on ideas here and there, because sometimes bands don’t realize exactly what they have come in to but the basic principle stays the same. You see what works, put your own general flavor on it and then try and go from there – the same as with songwriting.

When it comes down to it, we are all, on some level, aware that everything is stolen from everything else. No thought is truly original but not every thought has been built upon in the right way yet. My view is that you need to take different ideas and combine them in order to figure out new paths forward. It’s a brainstorming technique that I think has worked fairly well in countless situations over the years. Look at existing services and the bands that take advantage of them and then try and think about ways that bands could be expanding upon what they are doing and figure out a way to make it accessible and practical for your band to do. You’d be surprised how often people seem to miss key functions of services, or read articles about doing cool things with sites like Patreon or Kickstarter and then never bother to act on it.

Another thing that I find comes in handy when copying other bands is to take an idea and look at the most successful bands doing this. Or example – my cousin plays in the band Animaniguchi, a group who has had one of the most successful crowdfunding experiences of all time. Whenever I need to set up a kickstarter, as much as I might think that I know all the rules and as much as I might think I know how to crowd fund at this point I still refer back to it. I also constantly stay updated on articles about crowd funding to see what exciting new ideas are being carried out and what fundamental truths about crowdfunding I can glean for personal use down the line. I know this isn’t something you might normally think of doing and this is part of why it’s good to have a manager who stays up to date on these sorts of things. It’s easy to get lost in far too simple and nicely designed guides on websites without backing it up with any sort of real knowledge.

You need to view anything that your band or any other band does as a sort of great experiment. You need to look at all the opportunities that people have taken and try and determine where they fit into the grand scheme of things. If you fail then chalk it up to a learning experience, but more importantly try and see if you can find other bands that have done what you are trying to do and then see if you can improve upon that. I know these things can be hard to find a lot of the time because if something failed then it’s unlikely an article will be written about it. By the same token – even if it was successful if the band was of a small enough caliber then no one might have noticed. Some of the best ideas I’ve ever had have come from stalking obscure bands I discovered on Spotify because I was bored, seeing how they never capitalized on a great moneymaking idea and then making one of my bands play it to the hilt.

I think that one thing that really helps with all this is looking beyond your own genre. A lot of the time you will read an article about a band who don’t do anything at all similar to you but if you look at it with the right mindset then you can fairly easily find where they are coming from and how they were able to make money off of whatever their idea was. I know that can sometimes be hard to put together and less than obvious – no one said the music industry was easy! Still, the successes of a group like Pomplamousse alone should be enough to inspire your average DIY band and give you food for thought for months, if not yars to come. By taking the lessons of groups who are not afraid to experiment and then document their experiences you are going to ind a bold future. The secret of course is to be smart enough that you don’t get caught up in the fact that it won’t work because “It’s not our genre” Instead take that as a challenge to find the essence of their solution and use that to drive your work forward.

If you really look at it – figuring out how to make money with your band is just like with any other business. Businesses aren’t trying to create totally original ideas most of the time in order to drive their model forward. Rather they are making variations on old themes in order to generate something powerful that can make th profitable in the long run. If you look at things in terms of the immediate and not the long term then even then you will be able to find countless examples that will help you. In my yes though it’s much wiser to take the time to isolate some bands you really admire and try to pull of their marketing tactics and bring your entire model to brave new heights.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post Copying Your Peers Best Ideas appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

South By Southwest And The Indie Scene

I’m in a plane right now headed to South By Southwest and since it’s a direct flight from New York to Austin at the beginning of the South By week there’s a ton of other industry people on my flight. However they fall into two types, the kind of people who are going to have full on artist passes and the kind of people who don’t. It’s the people who have bought into all of what, in my eyes, makes SXSW shitty, that is to say the bloated corporate structure, the mistreatment of bands and the dilution of the beauty of the underground versus the people who just want to have a good time and put on a cool unique showcase for their friends. Now I do genuinely believe we should all be working together, but I think that SXSW is a perfect example of how the mainstream music industry simply doesn’t get what could really happen if we let the underground flourish and how the underground is perhaps not well served turning up its nose entirely at this thing.

I think that there is a certain profound beauty to SXSW that we all need to admire. In a world where festivals are often cut of into micro subgenres I love SXSW simply because of its willingness to represent anything and everything. That in and of itself is a really exciting idea and one that I think attracts a ton of people to the event. I think that the willingness people show to go to mixed genre shows here is admirable and the fact that you can hear just about any type of music imaginable is really exciting. You need to embrace that. It creates an attitude of inclusion that we only rarely experience in America and having that sense of inclusion is, in my eyes going to bring us all forward. Sure, you might be going only for events in a specific genre, but the very nature f the event makes it impossible not to discover new stuff – and that’s really exciting for people like me.

By the same token having all of the unofficial shows is super cool – it allows the underground to meet the mainstream and if you have a festival pass it’s all for free. That’s pretty goddamn awesome, especially when bands play both official and unofficial showcases. This makes for a situation that is truly exciting and gets people going to underground shows who might otherwise have never considered it. That’s a hell of an achievement. It’s so cool to get to see all of your favorite bands converging on one city for a week – and if you like a certain band enough than it’s no issue to see them twice in a day and three or four times over the course of the week. South By Southwest is a breeding ground for fanaticism and hints at so many other powerful options in the music industry that we might have never otherwise had a chance to explore. There is so much potential here, and yet I think many of us feel it is routinely ignored.

The issue of course is when it becomes exclusive. It comes when the fat cats behind SXSW decide that they want to be able to decide everything that goes on and limit the unofficial showcases. It happens because as countless artists have informed me, the bureaucracy of South By Southwest makes playing it absolutely suck unless you are doing an unofficial showcase. It means that if you can’t embrace what they have to offer in a more concrete way then you are going to embarrass yourself and watch everything fall apart at the seams. South By Southwest could be a far greater event than it is but when it comes down to it most people who represent the mainstream have no clue what it means to play a house show, or to sleep on a crust punk basement or to play a show in Reno to three people. These people are from a different world, and when these worlds collide there is naturally going to be a lot of tension that is conjured up.

I think this just reveals another disappointing truth about the music industry. If we weren’t all so caught up in our own bubbles then we would find a lot more success. I know that I’m personally very guilty of this too. I’m sure you could read the note of pride I have when thinking about all my war stories, the crust shows, the thirty hour drives and the weird tattoos I got in the basement of Connie’s Rick Rack in the unsavory Philadelphia neighborhood of Kenzo-Fish. We in the underground tend to view ourselves as pure rock and roll badasses and a lot of our self image and our ability to deal with the inherent struggle of this music comes from the fact that we feel superior. So we need to make an effort ourselves to let go of this sense of superiority and instead work together to create a future where we can all be winners because I think that it’s possible. As pie in the sky as it sounds, there is hope for all of us sinners and rock and rollers to find unification.

Rock and roll is a weird and magical thing. It’s weird because though we might all have gotten into this for functionally the same reason we are still unable to come to terms with large swathes of the music loving population. We have a hard time realizing that we all have the same end goals and that if we sit down and work together on a better future then we are going to find success, but if we continue to harm ourselves by thinking we are superior for avoiding the mainstream at SXSW then we are just shooting ourselves in the foot. There are infinite possibilities available at this festival, but it’s only by coming to terms with the inevitable, the future, the bond of mainstream and underground that we are all going to reach our fullest potential.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post South By Southwest And The Indie Scene appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Dale Carnegie is, if you couldn’t already tell, one of my...

Dale Carnegie is, if you couldn’t already tell, one of my favorite authors. In his book How To Stop Worrying And Start Living he details a simple method to get ride of at least half of your concerns. It’s a method that’s been used countless times over the years by tons of musicians and industry folk, myself included. While it may not be a panacea for all your worries, since at the end of the day, bad music is still bad music and ineffective marketing is still ineffective marketing, this method that Carnegie writes about is certainly one that I think we can all take advantage of. It boils down to four simple questions. These are: What is the problem? What is the cause of the problem? What are the possible solutions? What is the best solution? If you use these methods in the music industry then you are going to find yourself moving forward with blissful rational. So let’s pick each one apart and figure out how it can apply to the music world.

So for the first question – looking at what the problem is. In music I think that his is a big issue for a lot of people. They don’t realize that when it comes down to it the problem is theirs. It’s not the potential fans problem that they don’t like the music. It’s the musicians problem that they are not making music the fan likes. It’s not the peoples problem that they haven’t heard about your band, it’s your problem that you have to educate them. A lot of musicians try to divert issues away from themselves so that they can calim to be pure artists. But when it comes down to it you need to look at the very core problems facing you so that you can start fixing things. This ties into being realistic too. For example, it’s better to wonder, “Why aren’t we getting guarantees?” than, “Why aren’t we getting $1000 guarantees?” So when you come to face your problem be sure that it is a problem you are actually facing rather than one you wish you were facing.

Then we fall onto the cause of the problem. Frequently the root causes of the problem are money, awful music or oversaturated markets. If you have good music and no money you’re not going to go anywhere because you can’t invest in PR, playing out, or buying dinner for industry dudes who might be able to help you out down the line. If you have all the money in the world but bad music then you’re not going to go anywhere because no one will want to check you out. If you have an oversaturated market though then the odds are that no matter what you do you are going to find limitations. Of course there are other big causes for problems in the music industry, like politics, clashing personalities and the general shitty nihilism of the whole thing. These aren’t things that people often want to accept because they feel like they have no control over them, but I feel like if you truly fight for it then you can find control.

So then we turn to possible solutions. Well, if in many cases the cause of a problem is money then the answer to the problem is also going to be money. I think in music more than in any other field the causes have some pretty obvious solutions but when it comes down to it the solutions are not ones you want to hear because the causes are the sorts of things that most musicians think that they are above or do their damndest to ignore. Perhaps there are no possible solutions to anything ever because musicians are too entitled to want to accept them for what they are. That’s mostly just bitter Matt talking, but when it comes down to it this can frequently be the hardest part of the process. Accepting that some of the potential solutions are not going to feel god on the way down or on the way back up. The music industry is a cruel and uncaring place and the sooner you can start to accept this harsh reality the sooner these solutions will seem more palatable.

Finding the best solution seems like it would be fairly self evident. But this is another one of those times where the uniqueness of the music industry will bite you in the ass time and time again. At the end of the day – there’s a ton of scam artists out there. So even though you might be doing what you think is the right thing you need to make sure that you’re not doing this by buying into a shitty manager, a rip off PR firm or some other sort of bullshit snake oil scheme. As much as articles can tell you to get a label and invest in consultants and all that fun stuff they can’t help you to determine which ones are bullshit and which are actually on the up and up. This is the burning issue that a lot of us are going to have to deal with as we advance in the industry in 2017. No matter how good a decision we might make if the team trying to make that solution work is bad or full of scammers then you’re going to wind up worse then when you started!

When all is said and done nothing about this was ever supposed to be fun but if you can ask yourself these four questions and be frank with yourself then you are going to find a degree of success beyond what you might otherwise be able to reasonably hope for. Beyond that – these are the keys to solving worry. While there certainly a lot of assholes out there who are going to fuck with you, using this method to start to spot them and figure out what is going to actually be an effective use of your time is going to push this whole thing forward and give you a path that isn’t just full of pain and suffering but rather one that allows you to embrace a bold future and fall in love with the power of rock and roll all over again.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

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Dale Carnegie is, if you couldn’t already tell, one of my favorite authors. In his book How To Stop Worrying And Start Living he details a simple method to get ride of at least half of your concerns. It’s a method that’s been used countless times over the years by tons of musicians and industry folk, myself included. While it may not be a panacea for all your worries, since at the end of the day, bad music is still bad music and ineffective marketing is still ineffective marketing, this method that Carnegie writes about is certainly one that I think we can all take advantage of. It boils down to four simple questions. These are: What is the problem? What is the cause of the problem? What are the possible solutions? What is the best solution? If you use these methods in the music industry then you are going to find yourself moving forward with blissful rational. So let’s pick each one apart and figure out how it can apply to the music world.

So for the first question – looking at what the problem is. In music I think that his is a big issue for a lot of people. They don’t realize that when it comes down to it the problem is theirs. It’s not the potential fans problem that they don’t like the music. It’s the musicians problem that they are not making music the fan likes. It’s not the peoples problem that they haven’t heard about your band, it’s your problem that you have to educate them. A lot of musicians try to divert issues away from themselves so that they can calim to be pure artists. But when it comes down to it you need to look at the very core problems facing you so that you can start fixing things. This ties into being realistic too. For example, it’s better to wonder, “Why aren’t we getting guarantees?” than, “Why aren’t we getting $1000 guarantees?” So when you come to face your problem be sure that it is a problem you are actually facing rather than one you wish you were facing.

Then we fall onto the cause of the problem. Frequently the root causes of the problem are money, awful music or oversaturated markets. If you have good music and no money you’re not going to go anywhere because you can’t invest in PR, playing out, or buying dinner for industry dudes who might be able to help you out down the line. If you have all the money in the world but bad music then you’re not going to go anywhere because no one will want to check you out. If you have an oversaturated market though then the odds are that no matter what you do you are going to find limitations. Of course there are other big causes for problems in the music industry, like politics, clashing personalities and the general shitty nihilism of the whole thing. These aren’t things that people often want to accept because they feel like they have no control over them, but I feel like if you truly fight for it then you can find control.

So then we turn to possible solutions. Well, if in many cases the cause of a problem is money then the answer to the problem is also going to be money. I think in music more than in any other field the causes have some pretty obvious solutions but when it comes down to it the solutions are not ones you want to hear because the causes are the sorts of things that most musicians think that they are above or do their damndest to ignore. Perhaps there are no possible solutions to anything ever because musicians are too entitled to want to accept them for what they are. That’s mostly just bitter Matt talking, but when it comes down to it this can frequently be the hardest part of the process. Accepting that some of the potential solutions are not going to feel god on the way down or on the way back up. The music industry is a cruel and uncaring place and the sooner you can start to accept this harsh reality the sooner these solutions will seem more palatable.

Finding the best solution seems like it would be fairly self evident. But this is another one of those times where the uniqueness of the music industry will bite you in the ass time and time again. At the end of the day – there’s a ton of scam artists out there. So even though you might be doing what you think is the right thing you need to make sure that you’re not doing this by buying into a shitty manager, a rip off PR firm or some other sort of bullshit snake oil scheme. As much as articles can tell you to get a label and invest in consultants and all that fun stuff they can’t help you to determine which ones are bullshit and which are actually on the up and up. This is the burning issue that a lot of us are going to have to deal with as we advance in the industry in 2017. No matter how good a decision we might make if the team trying to make that solution work is bad or full of scammers then you’re going to wind up worse then when you started!

When all is said and done nothing about this was ever supposed to be fun but if you can ask yourself these four questions and be frank with yourself then you are going to find a degree of success beyond what you might otherwise be able to reasonably hope for. Beyond that – these are the keys to solving worry. While there certainly a lot of assholes out there who are going to fuck with you, using this method to start to spot them and figure out what is going to actually be an effective use of your time is going to push this whole thing forward and give you a path that isn’t just full of pain and suffering but rather one that allows you to embrace a bold future and fall in love with the power of rock and roll all over again.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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Competitor Analysis And Your Band

So one thing that has been teaching me a ridiculous amount lately has been competitor analysis. It’s shocking how this took me so long to properly codify but when it comes down to it competitor analysis has basically singlehandedly revolutionized how I approach music marketing. It’s one of those things that we all sort of do involuntarily. I talk all the time about how we need to go out and look at the other bands in the scene and see what works for them and talk to them but that’s not it. There’s many more levels to find the true beauty of competitor analysis and reap all of the potential benefits. Using competitor analysis you should be able to pick apart what makes your peers tick and then take that apart for your own benefit down the line. When it comes down to it – all the best bands just rip off the music and strategies of a million other bands in order to create truly original products that people are genuinely interested in.

See – while on a superficial level competitor analysis certainly does take the form of looking at your peers actions I think it’s rare that people document them. Furthermore, in an industry where presentation is everything sometimes it’s good to mimic larger bands. I’m not saying you need to try and emulate their business tactics but rather that you can try and copy some of their branding. For example – if you look at some of the biggest bands in your genre there is probably a certain slickness in how they present their product. You want to be able to look at that and emulate that selfsame slickness. It’s surprisingly easy too. It’s not hard, for example, to find the artist on your favorite record of last year from a big band and get them to do a cover for your own band. When it comes down to it – if you can present yourself professionally and try to not be cringy about it then you are going to go very far in this industry.

There’s a lot more you can learn from competitor analysis too. You can look at things like social media strategies and the products they sell. When it comes down to it you want to look at all of the major aspects in the presentation of your peers and the bigger bands you look up to and emulate as much of it as possible. You want to figure out what you need to be offering if you want to realistically compete with the bigger bands in the market. Of course this isn’t always feasible financially or even physically, since odds are you don’t have a merch guy or a crew. So even if the bands you really look up to have epic stage presentations and lavish items for sales you probably can’t emulate that right away. That’s why it’s important to look at your direct peers in the scene. They can help you remain realistic and on top of things without that weird cringy look that a lot of the lower level bands trying waaay too hard to be ‘pro’ suffer from.

Looking at a range of bands helps to ground you in reality too. When it comes down to it no one cares about your shitty band. You can figure out how everything fits in by looking at higher level bands alongside some of the smaller guys. At the end of the day it’s not always about presenting yourself as a huge band when you’re a small one, but rather presenting yourself as a band who are maybe a few levels higher. You want it to seem like your position is cautiously optimistic relative to where people think you are. For example – competitor analysis could show you that bands that are slightly larger than you and on one of your favorite indie labels have a specific way of presenting their music. You can take that model and use it for your own album presentation in order for fans to think that you are affiliated with those sorts of labels. Of course you don’t use their logos or anything, nor do you totally copy paste it, but you follow the format in order to look like you are part of a greater collective, and hopefully one of the better parts too!

So how do you keep track of all of this? Its quite a bit for anyone to process. Personally I use spreadsheets. I document everything, from key branding strategies, product strategies, pricing strategies, social media numbers and more. It’s the sort of thing that’s impossible to keep straight in your head but which can give you a sense of freedom when you look at it all. One thing I started to realize as I did more and more of these is that while many bands only have one or two good ideas that you can use if you can steal ideas from four or five bands you’re suddenly looking at a whole range of cool options and from there will be able to develop into something far greater. There is a sense of transcendent representation that you are supposed to be going for – uniting the scene and figuring out what makes it work from top to bottom, finding your place and pushing for bold and weird new band realities.

At the end of the day, it’s like I said earlier – anything you do is going to be ripped off from other bands even unwittingly. So if you want to kickstart your process then you want to figure out what has been working for your peers. You’d be surprised how easy it is to climb the ranks early on if you just take yourself moderately seriously and invest the time and energy (Or possibly money) in getting a good presentation put together. Bands are not a complicated thing, I still maintain it can all be reduced to a formula somehow and I know that a huge part of that formula is going out of your way to find your peers and copying what works for them, but simultaneously improving on it to create a better and more hopeful tomorrow.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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The Biggest Problem In Music

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So here’s the biggest threat against the music industry right now. It’s a simple one and one that we all run in to time and time again and get endlessly frustrated with. It’s all those goddamn out of touch motherfuckers. It’s the people who think “Oh well you’re just going to stumble into a $4000 guarantee because you work hard” It’s the people who think that a $500 promotional campaign is going to have a significant boost on their draw at shows. It’s the people who think that hitting up a million teeny blogs is going to change their bands future because they get good reviews. It’s all of these people. These people don’t realize the fundamental futility of the industry and the fact that you need to invest money into this if you want to figure things out and that you need to be a bigger and driving part of your music if you want to find real success that stays with you over an extended period of time and over a large region.

Here’s a big thing out of touch people don’t realize that cases them a lot of grief. People only care about top notch products. So even if your idea is good and your presentation solid if your songwriting is shit you won’t get anywhere. By the same token if your idea and music are good but you fail to invest money into it or be realistic about the kind of money you will be getting well then you are also going to suffer. That’s ultimately what it comes down to. If you’re not cautious and smart with your product then things are going to fall apart before your very eyes. Yet time and time again we see people who decide to not listen to wisdom and instead throw away a perfectly solid model and venture because they let themselves bleed it dry or simply don’t pay enough respect to the art form, leaving people questioning your motives and making you look like some clueless asshole left behind by a new way of thinking and product creation.

I think one of the big ways that people are out of touch is that not only do they try and chase money, which we know is not a good idea, but they try and chase money that isn’t even there. I feel like a lot of bands out there seem to think that there are groups on the basement circuit that make a significant amount of money at it – sadly that is not, and never has been the case. By the same token while bands definitely need to win their way up through the ranks you also need to realize that the ones who make it are extremely few and far between. This is not something that you can expect your band to do without a whole bunch of work in other fields. Of course the out of touch band seems to think that they will be the ones who push their way through and become champions simply because their music is good and while having good music is certainly important I think to reduce it to good music and hard touring is nowhere near close to what actually needs to be going on to find any true measure of success.

I think this ties into something else out of touch people don’t realize – there is no money. Like – I know countless bands who seem to think that as shitty a their lives are they are going to stumble into a several thousand dollar licensing placement or get for one show a several thousand dollar guarantee just because they will find someone who ‘really gets it’ and ‘can bring people out’. I have no fucking clue where the idea of a promoter who can bring out several hundred people for an unknown band comes from but apparently people seem to think that it’s something that people can do fairly easily. If someone could explain to me why they think this then I will be very fucking grateful. The best yu can hope for from a promoter is that they put up a few posters around town and do a god job promoting the event on Facebook. That can be a lot of work and a little overwhelming and that’s when the promoter does a GOOD job. So why would you EVER fucking expect a promoter to bring out the masses? These things just don’t happen.

It’s probably easy to see my pent up frustration here. This whole industry has a tendency to drive me utterly apeshit at times. It’s these same people who don’t pull anyone to their shows who seem to get upset when you tell them they can’t open for the bigger bands in their scene. The bigger bands in the scene don’t give a shit because they want to be able to play with the bands who are serious and bring people. The bands who are serious and bring people are the ones who are good enough that their friends want to actually come out to their shows. These things are hard to do. Music is not easy, but people who are out of touch seem to think that they can just write a record ina few weeks and expect people to want to come to their shows. They don’t see the point in investing in PR or any of that important stuff. Instead they just sit back and pout when they find out that sad truth I emphasize time and time again – no one fucking cares.

So yeah – don’t be an out of touch person because that’s just going to make people like me angry and stressed out and when yu make people like me angry and stressed out then the odds are fewer people in power are going to do you favors. People want to work with folks who understand what’s up and who are fun to work with, not people who try and dick you over for a few dozen bucks or who take forever to reply. When it comes down to it – a lot of the conventional ways old heads made money are dead now. A goo friend recently told me a story about a Lou Reed tribute in one of the hippest venues in New York City featuring a ton of guys who used to play stadiums. In his words, “Not a cent of money was exchanged” So think about that next time you dive into trying to move forward with your shitty fucking band.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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Life At The C Level

So this is a topic I’ve written about at length before but I think needs to be circled back to again, and I’m going to try and discuss it in a more generalized way because this seems to be the issue the bands are running into these days. So this is the question of targeting the C level, regardless of platform or function, be it markets, websites or just about anything else you can think of. This is one of those finnicky tings that you need to understand can be a good thing in limited amounts but which can also fuck you over well proper if you’re not smart about it and don’t take care in order to make your endgame clear. C level constructs are the basis of a lot of what we do and I often encourage you to invest time in accessing them but at the same time I think I need to do this piece – cautioning you to temper your outreach. There can be too much of a good thing and the C level is something you need to be extremely fucking careful with.

The C level to clarify is a catch all term for the things that don’t fit into the target A and B tier constructs. For example, an A level market is New York City, a B level is somewhere like Sacramento, the C level would be pretty much anywhere else. In terms of publications an A level publication is one of the biggest publications in your genre and where the main people all work there full time, the B level is a website where no one working there makes money off of it but the site looks professional and gets hits and the C level is blogspot sites and the like. The C level is great because it often can provide a solid basis for your band. Hell in big cities you even have C level venues which like most other C level constructs tend to be the most easily accessible and those are a great way to develop your band. However you also need to be fucking smart and realize that if you tap into these too much then your brand is rapidly going to deteriorate.

Think about it – the reason the C level is the C level is because it’s no ones first choice. It means that most of the time things are going to be a little dingy and subpar. Now while this is great for cutting your teeth and starting to feel out your band and your place in the scene you also need to be aware that it’s not the ideal. You can’t spend all of your time targeting the C level. You might say “Well it’s only the C level that will deal with me!” and that may be true – but you don’t want to give the impression of that, and odds are you can probably get into a few B’s if you present yourself right. Now I get we are going deep into the world of theory so look at it this way, imagine you ant to go out and play a bunch of shows. Well that’s all well and good – but if you make all those shows happening tiny suburban towns then very rapidly you will become “That band who only play shitty suburban towns.” By the same token – if you pitch your music to blogs well after the material has been out for a while and no one gives a shit anymore you are only go to wind up in tiny .wix sites etc. While that’s well and good and helps you look better on google do you really think that people are going to read that Wix site review and go see your show in a shitty little town?

Now I get how this can be confusing – after all I lecture all the time about how you should be willing to accept any show that you can and be grateful for any opportunities that come your way. This is true up to a point, but I also think I need to temper this by reminding you that you need to be fucking careful about which opportunities you take on. There certainly is a good reason to do the occasional C market run. If you get on the good shows well a lot of the time people will show up because in C markets there are a surprising amount of fans who have been underserviced as fans. That being said – if you play C markets you want to make sure you are in the GOOD ones. By the same token if you want to get into the C level blogs you want to make sure that you are getting into the ones that have some sort of cult following, even if they are dingy, and beyond that you want to make sure that you are getting into those blogs at the right time. A review of your six month old album isn’t going to do anything for you, however that same review building up to release can create the illusion of a massive movement which is the real goal.

See – the C level is fucking fantastic if you are using it in the right way. If you use it to fill out your touring schedule, add in a couple fun weekend dates here and there, get a few silly sponsorships or subtly increase your brand presence then it makes sense. You can use it as an easy and fun progression on what you are trying to do. You can be liberal in your use of them but you don’t want them to be the focus of how you market yourself. If all you are doing is getting into the same dingy publications that ultimately don’t matter and playing the same pointless shows then yeah no one is going to care about what you are doing. While there certainly are bands that focus on how they are super DIY they also try to make sure that you see not everything else they do, like their choice of venues and shows is not awful but in fact makes sense with regards to what they are trying to do. Basements are fine if you are trying to be a basement band – but you need to make sure that even those basements are the right ones.

I know this is a lot of information and it can be frustratingly confusing. I think when it comes down to it you really just need to be plugged the fuck in to your local scene. You need to be capable of figuring out what parts of your scene actually have a positive real impact on the music and what parts of the scene are just driven by drab human suffering. It’s not about begging for shows but rather figuring out which parts of the scene make sense for you to take part in and figuring out how you can contribute 00iso you’re not just another fucking leech. When it comes down to it I just want people to contribute positively to this stupid thing that I love just so goddamn much and if you’re not helping it out then you’re just making us suffer.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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