James Moore's Blog, page 71

Market Segmentation And Your Indie Band

Market segmentation – now there is a fancy sounding term. It’s also a term that is going to hopefully make you and your band a whole boatload of money – or at least enough that you are able to pay for your day to day expenses. Fortunately it’s not too complicated to start doing this and in fact once you get cooking you’re going to find yourself making very exciting progress. Market segmentation is, in its essence, breaking down the potential market for your band into individual chunks and figuring out the best way for you to reach out to them. The reason we do this is because the odds are your band can’t afford to have a one size fits all approach to marketing. I mean sure it’s easier and it might involve a lower initial investment, but as you’re getting ready to start to grow your income and expand your fanbase then you want to take a look at who is int what you have to offer and then try and develop from there.

So how do you even go about doing this? It certainly isn’t straightforward but there are a couple useful mental exercises that I like to do in order to find the best way forward for making money in alternative ways. One thing I like to do is try and figure out how I would market a band to my dad. Now my dad likes hard rock and heavy metal but he is not the sort of guy who would ever buy the shirt for a band. He wears nice collared shirts and high quality jeans when he’s at home. So how do I get him to want to wear band merch? Well – one year I bought him a nice AC/DC colored shirt with the logo put in subtly on the breast. He loved it because it was a high quality article of clothing and one that he could wear around without looking weird. This is the sort of thinking you need to have. It’s not about calling people who don’t wear band shirts posers, it’s about figuring out what they would actually want to buy that would funnel money into the band.

What you have to realize is that for a lot of you guys in bands out there your music isn’t that unique and it’s not a product that’s going to totally inspire people to dive into your project with fistfuls of money. So you need to break down what the interests are going to be of your fans outside of the music. You need to look and see if your fans are into say… fine art and then try to figure out how your band can create something that will reflect that interest. This could be, as I’m doing with one set of clients, a nice framed picture, or, to continue the fine art example, you could focus on making your album art especially nice, catering to kids with art history degrees. There are a lot of other interests that could define your fanbase though and you need to figure out what those are and then create banded content around that. For example – Pilgrim are huge D&D nerds – so we are creating Dungeons and Dragons adventures in nice hardcover books for the fans who are really into the dorky side of the band, andwe know this will make money.

One of the things that you need to be aware of is the 80/20 rule. That is to say that 20% of your fans are going to be responsible for 80% of your income. You need to figure out what makes those 20% tick and try to keep giving them content that is going to make them feel special. This is why I feel for bigger bands having limited edition merchandise is the key. If you know that there are 100 people who will buy whatever you put out then two or three times a year you are going to want to put out something unique in order to maximize the customer lifetime value they represent. That being said – you don’t want to gyp these people. If you’re going to give them bonus tracks, unique shirt designs or anything else you want to make sure that it’s a good product and not just a money grab. Sure people might be fanatical about your band for a little while, but if you’re not creating unique items that show you really value the fans then when it comes down to it you’re not going to be able to retain those valuable superfans down the line.

Ultimately you want everything you create as a result of market segmentation to feed back into your brand. So as much as you might want to create nice collared shirts with your logo if you’re trying to be a scummy hardcore band it won’t make sense. At the same time – the odds are that your scummy hardcore band has very few fans who wear collared shirts. One could say that after a fashion it’s the fans who are creating the brand. I’m not saying you should be pandering but you should at least be aware of what they are actually into and not what you want them to be into. The difference being – even though it would be cool if all of your fans only cared about one color shirts printed on cheap material it’s probably not the case. Instead you need to spend the extra dime to figure out what is going to really make you money down the line.

So life goes on – you grow your brand through segmentation and hopefully eventually figure out how to maximize your dollars per head. Sometimes it’s not an obvious path but other times a little observation can take you a long way. It’s by making an effort to cater to the people who really care about your band by cutting up the demographics into refined groups. Once your data is rich enough (Data primarily collected by observing people at shows, no one is going to answer a fucking survey) then you will even be able to figure out what kind of merch you need to be packing for individual gigs. I know that sounds a little Minority Report-ish but if you look at some of the best merchandisers, bands like Iron Maiden they do this and do it well and it pays off massive dividends.

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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Who You Want In Your Band

Figuring out who you want to work with in the music industry is hard. There’s a lot of shitty people you have to deal with and you’re going to get fucked time and time again by awful people. A lot of the stereotypes in the music industry are true. Very few people seem to really get it and most people use it as an excuse to shirk responsibility. As luck would have it, being in a band doesn’t mean that you can just have an easy time of it. You can’t just resort to ad hominem’s and let yourself have it easy. The music industry is a place that requires a lot of maturity and to be able to get up and invest yourself in the amount of responsibility you are realistically going to need to take on for this sort of thing is ballsy. Becoming a music industry professional was never supposed to be an easy thing, but I wanted to help you figure out the sort of people you’ll want to be working with.

First and foremost, you want the people around you to have steady job. Be it in the music industry or anywhere else you want it’s a good sign to see that people have steady jobs. Now this isn’t an attack on people who don’t have jobs or people who suffer from chronic unemployment. All I’m saying is that if someone doesn’t have a job or is chronically unemployed there is probably a reason for that. Some of those factors can be out of their control for sure and I’m all about being understanding and compassionate but I also think that there’s a lot of reasons that someone is jobless or chronically unemployed that reflects poorly on themselves. When you’re getting involved in a project with someone you don’t really know do you really want to have that pall hanging over them? It’s really not a good sign and one that can lead to a lot of frustration and mooching further down the line. That’s because when you’re looking for people to work with you want to make sure that they are someone…

Who has money. Now I know that sounds crass and I don’t mean it that way, really. You want someone where if you need to each pay $100 a month for a practice space you know that it won’t be an issue and they aren’t going to gripe about it. You want someone who is willing to chip in on gas for those early shows where you’re walking away with literally no money. You want someone who is willing to buy their own food on tour and won’t be awkwardly staring at you while you eat gas station pizza with nothing of their own because they are broke. They don’t need to be rich they just need to be financially stable so that you can relax and not worry about everyone’s financial situation the whole time. I know that can sound like a high demand in a nation where half the population has less than $500 in their banking accounts, and that’s definitely valid. But trust me – you will feel a lot better in the end this way.

You also want to make sure that the person entering your organization is emotionally stable. Now this can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. For some people this means someone totally free of mental ailments, but let’s be real, this is music, that isn’t going to happen. What you can look for though is someone who isn’t going to insist on taking days off due to their depression or someone who isn’t going to randomly go missing because they off doing drugs somewhere. You essentially just want someone who is going to show up when they are supposed to show up and not fuck you over by showing up twelve hours late for a tour (Which has happened to a band I used to manage) or forget to bring their guitar to the gig (Which happened at a showcase I booked once) These are all shitty things but things that we need to be able to deal with in order to build a better future for you and your bandmates.

Most importantly you want someone who knows how to work. I mean someone, not just who has a job, but who understands that if you want to get somewhere, especially in the hypercapitalist maelstrom of the music industry you need to put your nose to the fucking grindstone and go for it. Now that being said, any one given band isn’t going to necessarily need everyone to be like this, and it could even be a negative factor, but be aware that you need at least a couple people in your band who are real workhorses and also be aware that everyone needs to know who those workhorses are, because if you get to the point where you’re starting to make money and the guy who does none of the work expects to get paid the same as everyone else… you’re going to run into a problem. I’m not saying you need to set up agreements before establishing a band, but you do need to be aware who is putting the most effort in from the get go.

When it comes down t it you don’t need all of these assets in every member of a band or organization but you want to make sure that everyone ticks off at least most of these boxes. You want to be able to minimize the stress of your working relationships in the music industry because you want to be able to instead focus your energy on other shit. The less you have to worry the better. That’s why these days a lot of the bands who seem to get along best are the ones where everyone knows they have something solid to be going home to and has t least some sort of a safety buffer. Music is a financially risky and emotionally trying thing so it makes sense to do it with people who are as stable in every sense of the word.

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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Code Orange / Youth Code / GATECREEPER live review

The streets above ground were calm and quiet in downtown Mesa last Sunday night. Down below, though, beneath the pavement and piping, in the Nile Theater’s underground basement venue, the guttural rumble of GATECREEPER shook the upper level. The crowd was packed, pushed wall to wall by the mosh-pit void that had opened. The people moved around it like particles pulled by the gravity of a black hole.

The metal band from Arizona started off the night with a sharp set of songs mostly from their debut album, Sonoran Depravation, released last year on Relapse. Singer Chase H. Mason, with the black and white GATECREEPER flag behind him, stalked the stage, crutched by his microphone stand. Something jumps inside him and dies before a performance and the fumes of death rise up and spew from his esophagus. He was flanked by the rest of the band and their drone metal gnashing came like solar bursts to earth. Their last song, “Patriarchal Grip,” started with its spellbinding lull and ended with a hammer to the head.

Youth Code perform at the Nile Theater. Photos by Eli Jace.

The second act, Youth Code, out of Los Angeles, arrived without guitar. Only a tabletop of pedals, controlled by Ryan George, were set up with Sara Taylor desecrating the mic. Their sound is a ferocious mix of Nine Inch Nails industrial scuzz and jacked up, panicked death metal. Commitment to Complication, their second full-length, was released last year.

Their set started with a deep bass pulse and then Taylor took over. She explodes as a frontwoman. She tosses her body to the ground, her white hair whipping around. When the distortion gurgled to the surface in loud roars she’d bend down and throw a few fists to the floor.

Apparently the teetering crowd was in a trance and didn’t know how to react. She kept shouting for everyone to dance or at least show some life. At one point during a mechanical breakdown, she thanked George for letting her scream about her problems. Whatever those problems are Youth Code make a good case for their audio equivalent.

It was clear a majority in attendance were there for Code Orange. Even George couldn’t tamp down his excitement to see them when Taylor brought it up. The Pittsburgh group is one of the new growing warts of hardcore. Their sewer-scorching third album, Forever, was released last month on Roadrunner Records.

Code Orange perform at the Nile Theater. Photos by Eli Jace.

Front and center I was ready for the beat down. The stage for the Nile Underground is about two feet high. Shin-level. A constant tripping hazard when the people behind you move like they’re on bath salts. Eric Balderose and Reba Meyers, on guitar, and drummer Jami Morgan all claim vocal duties, but it wasn’t always easy to tell where the carnal yells were coming from. Each lasting scream dissolved in the dark. In addition, two different vocalists jumped up from nowhere for a song each.

Their set was stuffed with new songs. “The Mud” with its tar-melting interlude halfway through brought an eerie calm to the basement for a moment that did not last long. The slow-crushing brutality of the album’s title track sideswiped everyone.

Joe Goldman, on bass, took up the middle of the stage looking like an outcast Street Fighter character. His presence was alarming. He threw hook-armed fists into the air, spin-kicked and left no distance between the front row. Before songs he’d lift servants up by the shirt collar and scream in their faces to get up. Miraculously I avoided the bent end of his guitar colliding with my head. 

The Nile put on a great line-up this night. GATECREEPER, Youth Code and Code Orange, three ripening groups that each attack metal and hardcore from three different angles.

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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Why It’s Important To Have A Marketing Plan

So I just did a pair of articles on marketing, which hopefully you read and which hopefully were able to help guide you along. However you need to be able to understand what this marketing plan represents and why it is important. While it certainly can seem self evident at times and have a major impact on your career I think that there are some simple things that should be clarified in order to help you use your marketing plan to the greatest potential. We discussed this in brief in the previous articles but I’d like to spend the time to properly understand everything that these plans can entail. After all – if you’re going to spend the time to create a twenty to thirty page document then you might as well take the time to properly understand all that it can represent for folks trying to grind it out in the underground like you and me. The music industry is a struggle, but the marketing plan is a key step you can make in order to fight for a better future.

What’s key to remember is that your marketing campaign is supposed to be a document that needs to be constantly edited and revised upon itself. It’s a document that you need to use as a guide but also one that needs to remain realistic and deal with the changing future and opportunities within your band. A static plan is almost as useless as having no plan. You need to be able to use plans like this in order to craft a future. Everything about this industry is in flux, almost constantly as luck would have it. Because of this we need to respect the changing nature of bands and instead embrace the dark realities that this might make for. In short – you need to be willing to update and evolve your plans based on what works and what doesn’t, what you can afford and what you can’t. Because any template will have situations you can’t account for it means that you can’t be afraid to play with these models in order to create and evolve your future.

Remember that when it comes down to it your marketing plan is set up in order to help you and you alone. It’s all about orienting yourself in your career. Your marketing plan is set up in order to figure out where you fit in to everything. If you don’t take advantage of what’s been presented to you then you will be lost, like the metaphorical child wandering into a film. You need to use it as a road map – and not just by spending a lot of effort on the timeline, but also working on where your brand is going to fit in to the industry. Marketing is all about finding your niche, your unique place and what will make people want to invest their time and energy into what you’re doing. If you don’t have a plan for that then you’re not really going to know what direction to go in next. It’s not always about long term planning (More on that later) but more the general flavor that you’re trying to set up for your band as a general brand.

That being said, long term planning is certainly a key part of a marketing plan. It’s something that by being able to orient yourself in the market is going to be much easier. The thing is it’s easy to figure out the next 60-100 tings your band needs to do. But sometimes it doesn’t always make sense going far beyond that. Having a general idea of how you are trying to move forward is key when you look out and try to create quarter by quarter and then year by year plans. Sometimes these things can be difficult to really foresee, but having a strong marketing plan that shows every aspect of what you might be interested in is going to drive your band forward. Developing a series of marketing ideas and promotional plans is going to allow you the opportunity to look far deeper into the future than many of your peers might be able to and in turn allow your brand to really shine and hint at a lot more possibilities. It’s going to generate options of the sort that most bands could only dream of.

Perhaps most importantly, if you have a professional looking marketing plan that you can share with businesses then the odds of you finding an investor and endorsement deals are going to astronomically rise. People in business have a fairly closed off understanding of the industry at times simply because the world of underground music is so separate from the average human experience. It’s not up to them to come to terms with you and try to understand what you are delivering, it’s up to you to figure out how to approach them in the most effective way. You need to be able to stick up for yourself and show that even now the world of underground music is something that can interact with the rest of the world. The odds are against you – but if you have a professional looking plan then you are going to be far more likely to find the opportunities and crossover potential that you want to have and the crossovers that will end up making you a lot more money.

When it comes down to it, a marketing plan is a sort of visionary statement. A definitive look at what you think is possible for your project. If you don’t have one then you are rapidly going to find yourself falling apart at the seams. When it comes down to it a lot of bands suffer because they have a lack of direction, and while creating a marketing plan might be hard it’s also a great way to drive yourself forward. There is always going to be a struggle in the music industry and you need to get the most tools possible to drive you forward. There is only so much that we can consistently rely on to make things work in the wild world of music and as far as I can tell this certainly seems to be one of the main ones, so why don’t you get on it?

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 Why It’s Important To Have A Marketing Plan appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Outline Your Marketing Plan Part 2

So in the prequel to this piece we talked about getting your bases covered, sorta figuring out how you’re going to put your plan into action, the fans you are trying to target, getting your general materials and products together and figuring out the price point that you are going to try to be selling this stuff to them at. Now we need to get into some of the nitty gritty, how you’re going to position yourselves in the market and how you want to promote yourself but also how you’re going to keep track of all of this and how you’re going to roadmap it. Remember – your SMART goals aren’t worth it if you forget the R and fail to road map all of your grandiose plans. If you don’t do these things then it can be hard to tell if things are getting out of hand because you have no plan to fall back on and refer back to. Yet if you can present yourself in a mature and well put together way then it will be a lot easier for big names to want to take the time to work with you.

When determining how you want to market yourself you need to figure out not just what need you’re filling, a hard question in a crowded underground scene, but moreover how you are going to pitch yourself so that it seems like you are fulfilling a previously unmet need. For example, don’t be just another indie pop band from Philly. There’s a million of those. Figure out a mutual interest of your band outside of music and use that to your advantage. For example if you all like Star Trek then use that geekiness as a launching pad and try to place yourself as an indie pop band for geeks. It certainly worked for Weezer! Also key in this is figuring out what venues and music distribution services match your brand. If you’re trying to play ska then you’re probably going to have a hard time playing in a local punk house – even if it is run by your buddies. You need to be aware that everything about where you sell your products reflects back on your brand and if you don’t keep that in mind you will surely falter.

This also ties into how you are going to promote yourself. There are a lot of layers to this and it can be rather tricky. For example – some bands don’t realize that there are certain PR companies that are the favorites of writers. I’m part of a Facebook chat of some of the top music writers in heavy metal and you can bet your bottom dollar that we have publicists who we eagerly await material from. You need to find out who those publicists are, either by thorough research, asking writers directly, or just tracking your favorite bands. That’s not all there is to it though – you also want to make sure that things your videos fit into your image. You want to have a wide swathe of content for your fans to choose from but it needs to make sense based on who they are. For example, a hardened sludge band doesn’t need to do little bit pieces about “Why they fell in love with music” but a fun pop punk band probably does. Realize that everything you do to promote your band ties back to a larger image.

Of course all of this is useless if you don’t take the time figuring out how you are going to measure your success and your initial costs. Now measuring is not really that hard, most of the time you can just do it with solid spreadsheets and a little know how. You need to track merch sales of course, but also head counts and your (hopefully) rising guarantees. It’s how you make sure that your plan is working. By the same token you need to map out your costs far in advance in order to guarantee that you are not totally screwing yourself over. Have a budget and do your best to stick to it. Obviously sometimes things don’t work out and you need to be willing to deal with that – but having an initial idea of how much some of these things are going to cost you will only help. By measuring you are going to only be more able to figure out when your break even point is and start to find yourself crawling to the top of the heap.

Which is why behind all of this you need a timeline. There are a lot of ways to do this and I really only know what works for me – which is a week by week outline for the current quarter and then broader outlines for the next three. This way you know what you should be working on on any given day but also what you are building towards up to a year from now. Timelines are great because they make sure that you stay on track with all that’s going on in your musical world but also can beset up to remain realistic with everything that you are trying to do. I like to put a lot of small tasks in my timelines so that way I can feel like I accomplish something every day. Sometimes I even take the time to color code them based on the completion of an event, making for a handy visual guide to how far along you are in your general marketing plan.

Long story short – I hope that this is an effective introduction to what you need to be doing in terms of marketing your music. I know it’s a lot to take in and I know that a lot of it is kinda weird and is hard to wrap your head around, which is why you should probably read some better articles than these – but also know that these are tactics that have worked for businesses for a good long time – I am just trying to adapt them in the name of punk rock. These pieces were pretty dense, so just remember that everything you do with your band can act as a reflection for your brand, a strong brand will make you lots of money and a weak one will make you look pathetic. Do with that information what you will.

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 Outline Your Marketing Plan Part 2 appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Outlining Your Marketing Plan Part 1

So one thing that I’ve been developing recently is a massive template for a 25-35 page marketing plan. Wile I’m not going to post that here I do want to touch on some of the general ideas that a good marketing plan is going to need to have. This is gonna be a two parter, but I think by picking apart the key elements of a marketing plan you are going to be able to help your band reach a new level and learn how to sell your work to a broader audience. A lot of these lessons are borrowed from fairly standard marketing books. While it certainly makes sense to read those I think that e also need to take the time to make sure that we interpret them for underground musicians, folks who can straight up ignore certain aspects of marketing because they just don’t matter for this sector of the economy. What it boils down to is what we’ve talked about again and again on this blog – your band is a business!

So the first section of marketing that you need to be aware of is of course a mission statement created in conjunction with our previously discussed SMART goals and SWOT analysis. Using these elements you are going to be able to really find what seems realistic for your band and what you are going up against as well as what tools you have. When it really comes down to it, having a mission statement is only a small part of the marketing plan, but it serves as a nice general overview you can come back to. Given that a marketing plan is often 30 pages long or more it’s not necessarily wise to always have to keep referring to various sides of it at all times. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to summarize what you are trying to do with your band in a paragraph, this will certainly help with the elevator pitch you are trying to give to labels. Keep in mind – a lot of this stuff might not be for you as much as it is to help make you look professional so when the big players come calling you don’t look like you have your thumb up your ass.

After that you’re going to want to take a look at your fans, who they are as well as what they are interested in from you. Remember, you’re trying to sell a product here, so it makes sense to look at the exact demographic of person you’re trying to sell too. In my experience in underground music race and age aren’t as big players as they are in more traditional entertainment so you can often circumvent that, though it does help to have that information. You also need to remember that your average fan probably doesn’t make too much money – that seems to be a general rule of underground music. At the same time you also need to gauge their reactions to what you create, be it songs, merch, a live performance or something else. This is part of why I think it’s a good idea to keep spreadsheets tracking merch sales etc. You need to be able to use this data in order to interpret what is going to be useful for you further down the line.

Now that you’ve started to determine what you’re going to sell, how much of it you’re trying to sell and who you are going to sell too you can start to figure out the actual marketing strategies behind it. Remember that just as your band has a brand you want to have a brand for each piece of merch. This is why bands like ACxDC sell onesies, because that product has a sort of innate branding behind it just because it’s so goddamn ridiculous. It’s also why Abbath has a snow globe, the product strategy (It’s a black metal dude in a snow globe c’mon) serves to boost the brand strategy (Abbath is no longer a super serious black metal guy but rather like a beloved uncle of the scene). Remember that every product you sell needs to serve the larger brand, maybe not even just of your band but the genre as a whole if it’s tight knit enough. We are all trying to make the underground rule, so we need to create products that reflect that desire.

This ties into the pricing, which will be the last aspect I talk about in this article about laying down the groundwork of your marketing plan. I think I’ve discussed before about how pricing is just as much a part of your branding strategy as anything else. If you price things super cheaply with lots of loss leaders you look like a DIY band just trying to make good who want their music to get out there. However people might also think that you’re just a schmuck who doesn’t really believe in their work. By the same token if you price things to high then you look like an asshole. I’ve written about finding a balance but you need to keep in ind the various pricing strategies that you ca use and try to decide which items should go for how much to make sure you maintain your semblance as being a ‘real motherfucker’ a desire which I think is fairly characteristic of music fans from across the underground scene.

When it comes down to it, laying down a foundation like this is going to make your life a lot easier down the line because it will give you some larger guidelines by which to base your experience and planning around. As much as I like to lay out quarter by quarter plans it’s really only with hard work and knowing exactly who you want to be branding yourself and knowing who you want to target that you are going to be able to figure out a way forward to make this entire thing work out. You need to create a strong foundation, like the old story says, the wise man builds his house upon the rock, but the fool built his on the sand. Do you want to be a fool?

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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Pricing For Indie Bands

Pricing is one of the most important things to figure out as an indie band. It’s what can make you look out of touch and irrelevant or what can make you into a financial juggernaut. Merch is where the real money is made and people expect to see markups of 1000% or more on a regular basis. This is important to realize and you have to keep in mind that no matter what you do with our band the primary financial driver, at least in most genres that traditionally appeal to youth, is going to be merchandising. As difficult as this might sound at times ultimately knowing how to price your items properly is what is going to keep your band in the black. I’ve written plenty about the types of merch you should have (TLDR: The more the better) but now we need to sit down and look at how to make the most money off of it, and at times quite literally get the most bang for your buck.

The most important thing when deciding how to price your music is to keep track of profit margins. Remember that when it comes down to it you need to be earning at least double what you put in on pretty much any piece of merch. Sure there are occasional exceptions to this – like really nice shirts or specialty items that you simply can’t price too high but the point largely remains. Note however that if you want to keep margins low but still make money that means you can still sell CD’s for $3 and make 1.50 a piece if you know where to look when buying. With every piece of merchandise be aware what your net profit is and also how many you need to sell to recoup your investment. It’s quite the balancing act since you want to maximize the net profit, minimize the pieces needed to be sold to recoup and simultaneously make sure that things are reasonably priced so that you don’t need to worry about people not buying your merchandise.

This is why you need to be flexible. If you’re at a show and tried pricing your CD’s at $15 a pop with the hope that the reduced sales would be overcome by the increased price or that the higher cost would create a perceived value, and it’s not working then that’s a sign you need to change your strategy. That doesn’t mean you’re an idiot or inherently wrong. It just means that you need to be able to change prices on the fly if you’ve got to. You’re still at the gig and you still need to move units and make money, that’s just how the cookie crumbles. If someone comes up and asks to buy your $15 CD for $10 because that’s all they have on them then it’s probably worth your while to say “Fuck it” and let them have the CD. You’re still making money on the sale and the fan feels valued. Just make sure that it doesn’t become widely known that you’re willing to dip prices. The point is more to feel out the market and try and see how much money you can make off of it.

There’s a lot of psychology to selling and pricing merchandise too by the way. I think the most obvious example of this is with package deals. While you certainly need to make sure that package deals fall the same rules of having a solid mark up and are covering costs they can be a great way to make someone spend $25 at your merch stand rather than $20. You need to keep people constantly informed of the packages and encourage people to take them on at every turn. People aren’t looking to spend money, but oftentimes with the right suggestion they will buy in. This ties into the argument that you should be pricing your items on the higher end of things – perceived value. While this might not fool the hardened punk crowd if you are catering to an audience that isn’t heavy show goers they might be impressed by higher prices and think you are offering a superior product. The catch being – you need to be sure that your product truly is top notch.

The final thing that’s important needs to be taken from the book of bands like KEN Mode, a group whose core members were accountants, you need to track everything. Figure out your average merch sales per head. Figure out how much merch you sell on average in certain sized markets and use this as a basis for planning future shows. Sure this isn’t always easy and some markets are just anomalies but putting together some fairly basic projections shouldn’t be out of the question for a band who has played a fair bit regionally. There’s a lot of money to be made out there to be sure and you need to take advantage of simple economic facts in order to work towards dominating your local scene. Figure out what price points work too – I’ve found that pricing things around 5’s is generally a good idea since most people don’t like to have to make change, and holding a bunch of change sucks for the merch guy. Again – these are all things that should come with experience, but a little encouragement never hurt anyone.

Long story short – merch sales are one of the most cerebral parts of being in a band but also the part that lends itself perhaps the most nicely to spreadsheets. It doesn’t require a lot of high level economic knowledge but you need to be aware of a few basic vocabulary terms and master their implementation. Once you are able to do that then you know that you are going to be able to come through the struggle laughing. When it comes down to it sometimes the best thing that you can do is just be smart and follow what the other bands in your scene do. Odds are at least one person has figured it out and is able to keep their merch making money for them through the long haul. These aren’t jealously guarded secrets but rather ones guided by common sense.

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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More On Licensing From A Jaded Old Hack

Music licensing might as well be the last bastion of the music industry, and while I think it might be going away eventually I think that for now we’re looking at a future that is going to burn bright for many bands – if only because there is a high bar of entry. Licensing is the source of some of the single largest checks that you are going to see in music. In a world where guarantees suffer and compeers drown under competition we have music licensing to help get our songs placed in films, commercials and just about everything else in order to make us at least some semblance of a few pennies in order to keep our bands going. That being said – if you can become good at it then the odds are that you are going to wind up with a solid revenue stream for your band that can keep you buying new merch to sell and funding exciting new studio adventures.

You have to remember with music licensing that the people doing these placements have a lot of money behind them. This isn’t because people making films are by default rich, but rather that film is pretty much the last place in the arts you can consistently get some solid funding. Sure some indie films won’t be able to pay much, if anything at all for the music, but most of the time it’s not unlikely to get $50 even from a quick little web placement. This is different from writing for TV too since you already have put the songs together. You don’t need to do what countless writers do and put together little thirty second ditties with names like “Winter” or “Afraid” in the hopes that some music supervisor will notice it in their apparently infinite sheet of emails and choose it to be a part of their film. That’s a totally legitimate way to make money to be sure, but that’s not really the kind of licensing I think that most folks in bands want to be doing.

The reason that not every band does this is because there is, as I previously mentioned, a high bar of entry. It’s hard to get someones attention just by sending out mass emails or phone calls for a few songs you have. As I wrote in a recent article you need someone repping you and to have someone repping you odds are your music needs to be pretty darn good or you need to be well connected (Ideally both) Think about the sheer impossible number of bands out there and then think about what that means for your income in the long run. It’s important to be working with people who have actual relationships with the music supervisors and producers who place songs because otherwise you’re just another face in the crowd. A single band is of no real interest to most production companies, it’s when you have people who know this side of the industry working with you that you are going to see yourself putting money in your pocket

This is where it’s important to remember one of the most fundamental lessons of music licensing and really the industry as a whole. Money is money. It doesn’t matter if the guy trying to place your songs is putting them in Barbie videos, or if the amount of money that they have to offer has reduced. At the end of the day assuming your agreements are non-exclusive, and they should be, then you have a world of opportunities in front of you and to say no to some quick money now would be remiss. Sure some people turn shitty and maybe pursuing a relationship isn’t worth it when you have other stuff cooking, but also remember that if you have no other choice to find money then you have no other choice to find money and that just fucking sucks. I know that it’s an unfortunate reality to be had by the balls by some production company big wig, but in a post piracy world where music is worth essentially nothing there’s not much that folks like you and me can do.

With everything that I’m saying keep in mind that all of this will probably will dry up at some point. As bitter as it sounds I feel like unless we get some serious legislation cooking then very soon a lot of these production companies are just going to start ayin that you can be in the movie for free and they are doing you a favor since they are giving you ‘exposure’. While I like to think that as a whole people are moving past this backwards way of thinking you also have to circle back to my previous point and remember that money is money and no matter what you do, money will still be money to film big wigs and that fucking sucks because they are in what is quite frankly the ideal situation to take advantage of some young bands who think that they are doing themselves a favor by giving away their music for free. As much as it sucks to come out and say, it seems to me that with more bands than ever trying to get in on he licensing game then we are all going to lose out.

Still, I strong encourage any band to engage in licensing because that’s where the money is right now and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re trying to be serious with your band and you’re not chasing the money. I know it sounds crass or facile a lot of the time but sometimes that’s what it boils down to and we need to appreciate that unfortunate reality for what it is. Music licensing can be a lot of fun, remember that, few things are cooler than hearing your own music in a commercial or TV show. It shows that no matter how hard things can be it pays off in the end and as long as we keep appreciating that and honor the weird magic of the music industry then maybe, just maybe, we will come out of this thing okay.

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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How I (And Other A&R People) Sign Bands

So… with regards to getting your band signed there’s a lot that goes into it- but at the same time there is a very short process when it comes down to me deciding if your band is going to be worth signing. As an A&R guy, and generally a dude in the music industry for years now I feel like I’ve come to terms with what it takes to make me want to sign a band and brought it down to a sort of formula. Sure there are surprises and exceptions but there’s a few things that directly impact my personal green lighting. This isn’t the method all people responsible for signing bands use, some are far more strict and others are far looser, however from what I can tell this is a pretty reasonable overview of how it works for most bands trying to get out there and be serious. This goes across all genres too, regardless of the kind of music it’s pretty easy to tell who is worth picking up and who is going to toil in obscurity with only pipe dreams of success.

The first thing I’m going to look at, and probably the most important thing to look at is how much you’ve done. If you’ve never been on tour, only played a few local shows and maybe a small festival or two then the odds are I’m not going to be interested in picking up our band. This isn’t an attack on your band but rather a simple acknowledgment of the fact that if you haven’t proven you can sell records or get attention on at least a regional level then it doesn’t make sense for me to take a risk on you. If I’m going to seriously look at investing in a band I want them to be a group who have at least a regional tour or two under their belt and have some press buzzing. It’s hard for me to want to pick up a band who have no word out about them or who have played out. Even if the music is that good I’m probably going to feel at a loss – after all it’s hard for me to market Philly’s next big thing to a kid in Reno if the kid in Reno has no direct access to their work!

Another important thing to examine is the quality of the material. In 2017 it’s easy to create a good sounding product with beautiful cover art, solid press images and nicely put together social media pages. People don’t seem to understand that music industry professionals are so overwhelmed with quality material that shitty art, or even art that just appears shitty is going to be roundly ignored. Gone are the days of A&R guys listening to a bands subpar demo and hearing that there is potential in the group. If your demo recording isn’t up to snuff then I’m probably not even going to get through a song. Really good songwriting, interesting art and a good backstory can save it, but it’s rare that after a few minutes of bad sounding music that I’m going to be genuinely interested in continuing the dialog. This isn’t because I’m a dick, but merely because I’m too busy. How do I know that the next guy in line isn’t the rock and roll savior?

This brings us to another important aspect of signing bands something tied into the quality of the material, and that is the quality of the presentation. If your music hasn’t been put together in a professional looking way and the EPK is gross or the social media isn’t properly set up then I’m going to immediately judge you and think you’re lazy. A lot of the time this just comes as being out of touch. Be it in expecting people to download files or just sending a pdf to look at. Other times it can be from bands forgetting to give me links, or even failing to mention the goddamn band name in the first place. That’s not a joke. I’ve gotten label submissions without even a band name to go off of. Again – I don’t have the time to deal with all of this bullshit, it leaves me overwhelmed and I don’t want your inability to form a complete sentence or come up with a good subject line to get in the way of my workflow. I have too much other music to sit down and try and help out.

Of course at the end of the day my personal taste also has a huge impact on bands I decide to sign. As much as I might want to make money, I got into this business because I like music. I do my best to only sign bands that I like, not just bands that I think will move units. Using the ideas and philosophies outlined above I’m generally able to come to a pretty solid understanding of which records are going to make sense to put out, but it boils down to me seeing if a record matches my taste. If it doesn’t then I’m not really going to be passionate about it and it’s going to be hard to justify putting in the hundreds of hours that goes into properly promoting a release. Instead a lot of my work will just feel flaccid and uninspired. I know it’s frustrating to be told that sometimes the success of your band boils down to some tired dude listening to your music in his underwear but sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Signing bands is by no means a precise science, and odds are that I’ve probably already passed on a band that made someone else a ton of money. I know I will do it a lot more in the future and it’s going to suck. I look forward to the mistakes though. They are what teach me how to move on in a productive way and refine these basic ideas. I have a theory that this entire industry can be reduced to a few spreadsheets and it’s core concepts like these that I use as my jumping off point. If you know who you’re targeting, have great songs and presentation and done a lot with your career though then the odds are you will end up finding a record label that seems right for you, and if not, then the struggle must continue.

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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Being A Part Of A Collective

So there’s a reason no one really wants to license your bands music or generally work with your group. It’s not a hard one when you really think about it but it’s one that you aren’t going to like. You’re not part of a collective. When you get to the heart of the matter you on your own are probably not important enough to merit the attention of a music supervisor, nor is your music necessarily good enough to immediately catch peoples attention and make them want to put it in a film. You need someone actively pitching your shit, but not only that you need someone to be pitching you as a part of a collective. There are a lot of lessons to pick apart here and I want to help you figure out the impact, not just of this but also how the general thought process behind being a part of a collective can make your band a lot more likely to get the sorts of placements and interest that you really want.

First of all – why is it that you need to be a part of a collective? As I touched on in the intro – you’re only going to be helped by making yourself a part of something larger. A part of my job is pitching songs for licensing, and when I started and only had a few artists it was really hard to get any bites, merely because I wasn’t satisfying enough of a need for anyone to actually care. Sure I had one or two weird artists but it was stuff that could only be used once a year. They had no reason to have a relationship with me. Now that I have a catalog of literally thousands of songs it is far easier to establish lasting relationships with people than if I just had a few tracks. It’s the same reason that being a solo songwriter with no representation just doesn’t work. Odds are you have a style rather specific to you. You might not be able to satisfy every need of a client and if you’re not working with someone who can help satisfy those needs you’re probably going to be stuck up shit creek without a paddle.

Even if you’re the best in the world at songwriting odds are there are going to be certain projects you just can’t do, but you also can’t go out and pitch yourself to as much stuff as you would like because the odds that you find the appropriate jobs and get interest from those jobs is so small. You’re not just going to score random odd jobs, you need ongoing relationships. But you’re probably not going to be able to start ongoing relationships with he relatively limited capacities of a beginning songwriter. Do you see the catch 22 here? In the end if you want people to take you seriously you’re going to need to be a part of a collective where the other folks are taken seriously and help to lend you some legitimacy so that people know they can work with you and won’ be frustrated or embarrassed by your lack of professionalism. In other words – you need someone to vouch for your legitimacy and guide you through the struggles.

So what kind of collectives can you actively be a part of that will help get your music licensed? There are a lot of types of them and you’ve probably engaged with more than a few. These are things like record labels, management companies and agencies. All of these things are companies that are primarily focused on helping their artists generate more income so that they can get a cut out of it. They are companies that also establish a sense of legitimacy around their artists and either have or are trying to establish relationships with other professionals in order to get gigs, placements and all that other fun stuff. In other words shit is set up for you to succeed, you just need to be able to access it because these people have far more resources. Sure you might be a face in the crowd, but with representation at least people have a reason to want to learn your name. There are some artists who eschew this model but the successful ones are in the extreme minority – don’t go thinking that they are a standard you can easily follow.

Why is getting involved in a collective of any sort so hard then? Well for obvious reasons, they help you make money doing what you love and if you’re good they’ll just give you money up front. Think about how unrealistic and hard that is to actually expect in any other industry. Signing bonuses in other fields are largely a joke. You need to be a part of a company if you want to make any money and things are the same in the music industry with record labels, management companies and agencies. No one is going to care about you because ‘the tunes are so good’ they are going to care about the representation behind it because the representation is going to be able to help the people who need art get the best art they can and have the relationships t make it worthwhile for both parties. I know that sounds really incestuous and can be really awful, trust me I know it is, but it’s also just an unfortunate reality of life in music.

I’m not saying to give up the ghost, I’m merely saying that you need to be realistic and realize where you are at in the industry, and where you are at is in the position of being a nobody with the need to find somebody to turn you into a person who actually gets work .Yet if you’re not wiling to do your side of things by providing new content and working hard at improving your craft then the people representing you aren’t going to be interested in doing their part. But if you keep your nose to the grindstone and figure out a way forward that is productive for everybody the there definitely is money to be made. There is a reason there are rules and for better or for worse we all kind of have to play by them.

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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