James Moore's Blog, page 93

You Are a Businessman

One of the strangest things that I’ve come to accept in recent years is that I have a hell of a lot more in common with my rather straight laced businessman father than I ever thought possible. (Or ever wanted to think possible) I came face to face with this fact yesterday when we spent the day together in New York City hanging out in the Museum of Modern Art. I found myself asking him questions about corporate strategy that I had entered the music industry in order to get away from. We talked about budgeting concerns and investment opportunities, and even how to organize a companies 401k. I might be a bit too much of a hard living rock and roller to ever be a suit in the proper sense of the word, but I have had to admit, underground music freaks are businessmen too.

In my experience it has been actually rather liberating to admit to myself that I’m really just a businessman in an industry that eschews corporations. It’s a weird thought to have, because as something of an anarchist this is definitely something I struggle with. People in the industry, musicians especially, are rightfully paranoid of suits after years of oppression and it’s certainly not an image that you want to ally yourself with. There are far more tasteful ways to execute these types of things though, and you need to be self aware before engaging in them. This goes beyond viewing your band as a business – instead you need to embrace the entire industry as well, an industry.

One thing that has been important for me to realize is that a lot of things that affect the day to day business world impact me a lot too. While someone like my father might have to consider his companies stocks and where they are going, I have to do the same for album sales. While a businessperson has to negotiate a contract, I have to figure out guarantees and advances. Obviously these ideas manifest themselves in different ways, and I’m allowed to swear and drink a whole lot more, but the general concept remains the same. You’re not so much a representative of an artist or your art as you are a businessperson. The sooner you embrace this, the sooner you can move on to bigger and better things.

This is important to note for you young bucks too. If you’re trying to convince your parents that you should work in the music industry and can provide evidence to prove that you’re really just trying to be a businessman, they are likely to be far more receptive. Furthermore – being able to couch music industry dealings in a business context is going to help you look more professional and intelligent in front of record labels and other business interests. If you can use a traditional business lexicon in regards to your art, then people are going to be more willing to trust you because, even if other evidence points to the contrary, this will suggest that you have your shit together. It even has the potntial to bring in investors from outside of the music world.

Of course this isn’t easy, and that’s why there are books on this sort of thing. My articles are (hopefully) helpful but they hardly should be taken as a be all and end all. The point that I’m really trying to make here is that you need to have a general attitude that a businessperson might use to approach problems and consider solutions. Once you start to let these ideas sink into your business practices you’ll find yourself able to consider your position in a much more clearheaded manner than if you used your strong attachment to your art to limit your considerations.

This doesn’t mean that you should be casting away artistic integrity in the name of business sense, that’s a whole different issue – your morals should remain of paramount importance because that’s how you make people respect you. The point that really matters here is what I said previously, not only do you need to heed the age of old advice of treating your band like a business, you need to let that attitude sink into everything you do vaguely related to the industry. You’d be surprised how much a purely professional outlook can help – but it’s what I’ve been able to base a career off of. If you can separate yourself from the emotional side of things you can suddenly execute far more effective deals. As long as you look for music with depth and something that has true passion and meaning behind it then you know that you must be on the right track towards success.

At the end of the day – this simply means that you need to start embracing a businesslike attitude towards everything you do and realize that the people who run this whole creaky ship of an industry are doing the same. It makes you look better and the deeper you delve into it the easier it becomes. Soon you’ll find yourself naturally networking and making contacts – proving that you too can be a huge part of the world we love. No one said that this would be easy to do – but it’s important, and the sooner your business acumen comes to the fore of our work, the sooner that people will turn around, take notice and acknowledge what you are helping to create.

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 You Are a Businessman appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

5 Mistakes I’ve Made In The Music Industry

There’s been a fair amount of regret in my time in the industry, and I’ve come to accept that that’s just how it goes. Now while I definitely have tried to address these mistakes in other articles I think it might be helpful to explicitly call out some of my fuck ups over the years. There’s obviously been a lot more than the ones listed here, but this is definitely a start and should begin to give you some insight into things not to do in the music industry. Again, this is by no means a definitive list, and I was lucky enough to miss making a lot of mistakes, but here are some ways that I definitely screwed up.

5. Trusting People

Now I don’t want to sound overtly nihilistic, I really don’t. That being said – there have been many times in my career when I thought I could trust someone and ended up screwing myself over. I know that sounds bitter and dark, but that’s simply how the cookie crumbles. When you get hurt like this though it’s important to remember that oftentimes it’s not the fault of the person who hurt you, they simply could not deliver on the level that you had expected. You need to be aware that in this industry very few people live up to the hype that they build around themselves and you need to be careful before you let someone take an active role in your art.

4. Not Talking About Money Up Front

This is a hard one since it can also be very uncomfortable for a lot of people. Part of the issue that a lot of the time there isn’t a lot of money involved at all. I’ve also found that I am too quick to want to work for free, and that has screwed me and others out of a lot of money over the years. Instead I have had to come to terms with the fact that there are layers to this whole operation and that if you’re not blunt about goals and payoffs then somebody is going to get burned and everyone is going to be frustrated. Obviously there is some finesse required when talking about money with people, but don’t be afraid to bring it up at the end of a meeting – if you don’t, then it might never be broached.

3. Investing Too Much Money In The Wrong Things

This has been a longtime issue of mine, and again, this is one of those things you kind of need to learn for yourself. That being said – I have lost a lot of money investing in vinyl releases that went nowhere or tapes that never ended up getting delivered. Now this is all part of the trade and there are always going to be projects that become financial dead ends, but as you grow you learn to watch out for them. People who ask for your money saying ‘you need to spend money to make money’ inevitably end up screwing the pooch and leaving you losing cash. While this definitely ties up into the previous two points it’s important to consider the actuarial realities at hand and keep them in mind as you develop your portfolio.

2. Going Into Projects For The Money Not the Passion

This is perhaps the easiest mistake to make on this list. Look, we’re all starving musicians and we all have a very hard time with the music industry, it can be a challenge to make ends meet and also live your dream. There is a perpetual struggle here that is going to haunt you for your whole time in the industry. So if you dive off the deep end and get involved in music you don’t love, isn’t it okay? Not really. People can tell if you’re not fully sold on the music and that is inevitably going to hold you back. In a competitive market, the people in power can choose the best and most passionate people to work for them, if you hop onto a project you’re not crazy abut, you will feel the pain early on. The sooner you can come to terms with that and embrace what it means for you the sooner you will be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and come to music industry success working with art that you love.

1. Not Realizing Most People Are In It For Themselves

This has always been a hard thing for me to accept because I have made so much of my name as someone who is trying to help out the collective. At the end of the day though, there are a lot of people in music (Some might even argue most people in music) who make a profit without ever paying anyone else off or trying to grow the community. Unfortunately this is just a bleak reality of an industry of annihilation and is something that we all need to come to terms with. That being said, it has been my experience that those who are in it for themselves also tend to be the ones who don’t end up making it in the long term, so perhaps if you drive forth and stay true to yourself you can eventually scratch out a career for yourself.

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 5 Mistakes I’ve Made In The Music Industry appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Why Record Labels Still Matter

Why Record Labels Still Matter

I’ve started to get an impression from a lot of independent artists these days that record labels are a bad thing. When bands like Radiohead and Metallica started to do stuff on their own people began to realize that they didn’t really need big labels to help make their work well known. This is technically correct, but I’ve also noticed that a lot of people have started to demonize labels and say that they aren’t worth anything. Now that isn’t true at all, I think it’s time to remind the music playing populace that record labels really still are worth something, even if virtually none of them will ever see your record go platinum.

Here’s the thing – at this point, piracy has been the reality of the industry for about fifteen years. This means that someone who graduated college in 2000 to go straight into the music industry is now 37 and is now probably working a fairly high level job. Most of these people understand exactly how brutal piracy is and have been dealing with it for their entire careers. Hell – a lot of people in the industry, for better or for worse, got into music via piracy, I know I did. The point I’m trying to make is that people get it, and they are trying to adapt to it, you’re not dealing with idiots here, these people are making money off the industry because they understand it and love it, even if their paychecks have been cut.

Furthermore, these people all really love music, I can guarantee you that no one is in it for the money these days, everyone is here for the passion, which is in my opinion, a very good thing. \What this means though is that almost every record label person that you end up dealing with is probably both very good at their job and utterly in love with music. If you want to be able to carry on the passion is a must. For a few years, it definitely probably was a bad idea to go to a label, because yes, a lot of those people did in fact only do it for the money, but now they’ve started to come to terms with it and the people who have stayed are the ones who feel like they can’t do anything else.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful when picking a label. There are a lot of record labels and distribution companies out there who prey on bands and twist product out of your hands for no return. There will always be crass hangers on who take advantage of bright eyed young people who don’t understand basic financial realities. Yet, if you find the right label, one who have a commitment to treating bands right and who are dedicated to their craft then it’s easy to see why the label system is still very valid.

After all – record labels are the people who are still willing to invest in your band, and the good ones will hook you up with all kinds of services, from promotion to graphic design. Some of this will come out of your pockets (Or rather as a part of your debt to to the label) but the label also tends to get these things at discounted rates and a god label should know how to employ these, and actually be paying people to execute your needs at the highest possible level. Now I know that being in debt to a label can be a little scary – but in all honesty, the money you made for your band should usually just be going right back into the band – for almost every band members shouldn’t be trying to end up by profiting personally off of the music until they reach very high levels.

The other important thing to remember is the legendary Advance. Now, a lot of these are probably a damn sight smaller than they were back in the day, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still amazing resources for your band. If you can swing a five thousand dollar advance then suddenly you have money that can fund touring for years to come, or at least until the next album. Then, if you’re doing your job at all well then you should be able to negotiate your way to an even higher advance for the next record, gradually scratching your way up to the point that you can fund expeditions to all sorts of exotic locales to share your music the the people who need it most.

Now – be aware that I’m definitely not trying to suck record labels collective dicks, again, the vast majority of labels are frankly, kind of destructive, and you need to be very careful when signing a contract. If you get locked in to the wrong sorts of stipulations then you’re already screwed before you get started. It always pays to have a lawyer read over your contract, and in fact most labels encourage it, they could have made a mistake to. I’m not saying that you should hand yourself over, even to big name labels with the blind conviction that you will be taken care of. You still need to do a lot of work on your own after you get signed and you still need to handle all manners of the day to day suffering that so often defines the music industry.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you should always have an attitude of gratitude towards your label. Even if the label is able to have some people working full time there’s probably a lot of folks who do stuff with them for free for no other reason than that they like to work with bands. Sure these people make more money than you do from music, but they are also handling many more bands and have extremely specialized soft skills that you probably shouldn’t ignore. Record labels aren’t out to hurt you, in fact in most cases it’s quite the opposite. Labels most often run themselves into the ground because they were trying to help bands and this screwed their business practices, not the other way around.

At the end of the day – you don’t need a record label to do well in this industry, and you can probably make a living without one. But god damn they can really help and they can guide you towards a brighter future. This is not a task for the faint of heart, nor one that can just be handed off to one member, it’s a full band decision that needs to be carefully considered and worked on. Yet when the time comes, and you dive on in, realize that there is hope, and at the end of the day a good label will take you to places you never imagined possible.

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 Record Labels Still Matter appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Why Labels Still Matter

I’ve started to get an impression from a lot of independent artists these days that record labels are a bad thing. When bands like Radiohead and Metallica started to do stuff on their own people began to realize that they didn’t really need big labels to help make their work well known. This is technically correct, but I’ve also noticed that a lot of people have started to demonize labels and say that they aren’t worth anything. Now that isn’t true at all, I think it’s time to remind the music playing populace that labels really still are worth something, even if virtually none of them will ever see your record go platinum.

Here’s the thing – at this point, piracy has been the reality of the industry for about fifteen years. This means that someone who graduated college in 2000 to go straight into the music industry is now 37 and is now probably working a fairly high level job. Most of these people understand exactly how brutal piracy is and have been dealing with it for their entire careers. Hell – a lot of people in the industry, for better or for worse, got into music via piracy, I know I did. The point I’m trying to make is that people get it, and they are trying to adapt to it, you’re not dealing with idiots here, these people are making money off the industry because they understand it and love it, even if their paychecks have been cut.

Furthermore, these people all fucking love music, I can guarantee you that no one is in it for the money these days, everyone is here for the passion, which is in my opinion, a very good thing. \What this means though is that almost every record label person that you end up dealing with is probably both very good at their job and utterly in love with music. If you want to be able to carry on the passion is a must. For a few years, it definitely probably was a bad idea to go to a label, because yes, a lot of those people did in fact only do it for the money, but now they’ve started to come to terms with it and the people who have stayed are the ones who feel like they can’t do anything else.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful when picking a label. There are a lot of labels and distribution companies out there who prey on bands and twist product out of your hands for no return. There will always be crass hangers on who take advantage of bright eyed young people who don’t understand basic financial realities. Yet, if you find the right label, one who have a commitment to treating bands right and who are dedicated to their craft then it’s easy to see why the label system is still very valid.

After all – labels are the people who are still willing to invest in your band, and the good ones will hook you up with all kinds of services, from promotion to graphic design. Some of this will come out of your pockets (Or rather as a part of your debt to to the label) but the label also tends to get these things at discounted rates and a god label should know how to employ these, and actually be paying people to execute your needs at the highest possible level. Now I know that being in debt to a label can be a little scary – but in all honesty, the money you made for your band should usually just be going right back into the band – for almost every band members shouldn’t be trying to end up by profiting personally off of the music until they reach very high levels.

The other important thing to remember is the legendary Advance. Now, a lot of these are probably a damn sight smaller than they were back in the day, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still amazing resources for your band. If you can swing a five thousand dollar advance then suddenly you have money that can fund touring for years to come, or at least until the next album. Then, if you’re doing your job at all well then you should be able to negotiate your way to an even higher advance for the next record, gradually scratching your way up to the point that you can fund expeditions to all sorts of exotic locales to share your music the the people who need it most.

Now – be aware that I’m definitely not trying to suck record labels collective dicks, again, the vast majority of labels are frankly, kind of destructive, and you need to be very careful when signing a contract. If you get locked in to the wrong sorts of stipulations then you’re already fucked before you get started. It always pays to have a lawyer read over your contract, and in fact most labels encourage it, they could have made a mistake to. I’m not saying that you should hand yourself over, even to big name labels with the blind conviction that you will be taken care of. You still need to do a lot of work on your own after you get signed and you still need to handle all manners of the day to day suffering that so often defines the music industry.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you should always have an attitude of gratitude towards your label. Even if the label is able to have some people working full time there’s probably a lot of folks who do stuff with them for free for no other reason than that they like to work with bands. Sure these people make more money than you do from music, but they are also handling many more bands and have extremely specialized soft skills that you probably shouldn’t ignore. Record labels aren’t out to hurt you, in fact in most cases it’s quite the opposite. Labels most often run themselves into the ground because they were trying to help bands and this fucked their business practices, not the other way around.

At the end of the day – you don’t need a label to do well in this industry, and you can probably make a living without one. But god damn they can really help and they can guide you towards a brighter future. This is not a task for the faint of heart, nor one that can just be handed off to one member, it’s a full band decision that needs to be carefully considered and worked on. Yet when the time comes, and you dive on in, realize that there is hope, and at the end of the day a good label will take you to places you never imagined possible.

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 Labels Still Matter appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Recovering from the Twenty First Century Hangover

I think that a lot of people, especially people in bands, seem to think that they have a strong understanding of the history of popular music. People have this weird notion that things were better back in ‘their day’ whenever that day might be, and as much as they might be right (Who am I to say, I wasn’t there) I often am left feeling like they simply don’t understand how the industry has evolved. It’s not their fault – things have changed incredibly quickly in the last five years even and I think that very few people realize the full import of that.

A lot of this article was inspired by a pair of interviews that I conducted yesterday, both of which I feel loosely touched on this idea. One was with the legendary Charlie Benante of Anthrax who said, “Buy music, don’t steal it.” and the other was with Goatwhore’s Ben Falgoust who claimed, “I don’t care how people get my music, I just want people to hear it” Having these conversations with musicians who I respect so much got me thinking about the fundamental nature of where the music industry is headed and where it came from.

Now we need to remember that these two statements represent two ends of the spectrum and there are some important distinctions to be made. While both figures are well known musicians, Charlie Benante made a ton of money back in the 80s playing thrash metal, largely driven by gold and platinum record sales and his band, like every other, has seen a drastic drop in sales of late, and even though they are charting higher than ever, they are selling fewer records by an order of magnitude. Meanwhile, Goatwhore’s Ben Falgoust has guided his band into a reputation as the ultimate road dogs. In Falgoust’s world by the time his band was big enough to be opening for Danzig, piracy was running rampant. He’s a product of the underground and means to say for better or for worse. Unlike with Anthrax there are no real ‘career’ ambitions behind Goatwhore. Essentially, Benante is a professional musician and Falgoust is just content with the experiences he gets to have.

Don’t get me wrong, both positions are fine and totally have merit in and of themselves, and personally I would probably not fully agree with either one, although regular readers will know that I probably lean a little closer to Falgoust’s opinion. The fundamental thing that very few people truly understand is that the current climate that we have, where music is driven by the live performance and reproductions of content are a small bonus has actually been the state of the industry for the entire history of music outside of the twentieth century.

It’s actually a little weird to think about how the 20th century was this perfect time for the music industry. Right at the beginning of the century the phonograph was popularized and there was a need for records, and right at the end of the century we started to see the first touches of piracy. In the intervening years though we had for what will probably be the only time in history, a climate where music was manifested in a tangible physical format.

Now think about that, for the entire history of music the only real way to make money off of your music was performance. There was some income from transcriptions of work but that was fairly minor, if I understand correctly it was comparable to album sales today, if that. The very top composers and songwriters could get by, but that was it, and even they usually had to teach or perform in order to support themselves. Alternatively, they could be in the employ of a royal who gave them an annual salary, similar to how today there are salaried songwriters working for major labels.

That is not to say that there weren’t some good things to come out of the twentieth century. Charlie Benante is a distinctly twentieth century musician, but he has also been one of the driving forces behind Anthrax. His obsessive archiving of everything the band has done has paid dividends for the group in terms of re-releases. He’s one of the people who made the t-shirt sale such an essential thing to heavy metal and the music industry as a whole. He helped to show that in this brave new world where music has no concrete value that there are alternative paths to make money, hell Benante can even be credited with coming up with the concept for Anthrax’s recent set of playing cards! In the twenty first century music industry things like transcriptions have been outsourced, but there are whole new income revenues in terms of merchandise, something the composers of old definitely didn’t have, meaning in some ways it’s easier now to make a living as a musician than it was in the time leading up to the popularization of the phonograph.

Furthermore, I’d also like to put I a gentle reminder her that we are all suffering from a sampling error. For every Pat Benatar and ABBA there is a Shebang and a Diamond Head – bands who never got to make a living off of music, bands who formed the vast underbelly of the industry. Of course we remember the big bands, because many of them were the great ones. They made a lot of money because they were famous. We tend to forget the thousands of bands who slipped through the cracks. If you need a reminder of this, go through your parents or grandparents LP collection sometime and look at how many bands you have never heard of. The music industry has traditionally been unkind – we all need to get over that fact.

As bleak and fatalistic as this article might seem, I really don’t mean it that way. The real message I want to get across here is that we need to collectively get over the hangover from the twentieth century and realize that all good things can’t last forever. The twentieth century was a great time to be a musician and the music really thrived because of it. Now though we have to wake up and realize that someone mixed something weird into our drink. The fantasy was great while it lasted but now we need to cut our losses and move on. We have a lot of new markets now, and we should place an emphasis on taking advantage of those rather than trying to sell CD’s. So come out from the past, embrace the now and fall in love once 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 Recovering from the Twenty First Century Hangover appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Making a Jump to being a Music Industry Professional

A lot of people who find out that I do this music industry stuff for a living have only one question for me, “How”? And it’s true – figuring out the leap from being a part time music industry type person to a full time one is really hard and requires a lot of thought and foresight. It pays to have a backup plan, but then again, if you have a plan B, then that’s your plan A. Navigating these waters can be treacherous and a lot more chaotic than you might imagine. There’s a lot you need to be aware of, but at the same time, moving to be a professional can be a lot easier than you expect. It merely requires the hard work and discipline that we have discussed in so many of these articles.

The first thing you need to make sure of before hopping in is that you are good at being poor. If you can get by on less than a thousand bucks a month then you’re already off to a great start. You need to be aware that in the music industry it’s hard enough to keep yourself alive, much less another person – if you’re in a relationship and about to take the plunge just be very aware of the finances first, even more so if you have children. Most people doing this live at a poverty level, it’s kind of scary. That’s not what you need to know though, what you need to know is that you need to be willing to scale back on responsibilities and financial obligations. You need to have a decent amount of cash in the bank while you wait for your work to start taking off. More importantly, you need to be ready to join the lower class and stay there, because you’re going to be there for a long time, if you ever manage to escape.

But again – to make the leap really isn’t that hard. If you are willing to work for twelve to sixteen hours a day and actually do stuff, (A rarity in this industry) then you should be able to turn a profit relatively early on. What I think that a lot of people forget about the music industry is that it is called an industry for a reason – people work and need to eat. I don’t like having to slave away at a computer all day either, but it’s so much better than some sort of fucking job at a desk following someone’s orders. If long hours and late nights don’t appeal to you then this might not be the career path for you, the reason that so few people seem to really get by in the music industry is that it’s fucking hard, there is no way around it.

I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that a career as a freelancer in a creative profession is not that hard to start, the real question is getting established and knowing how to network. To take the leap you need to be aware that a lot of your day is going to be networking and trying to charm the people who have money into giving you some, and the people who are already giving you money into giving you more. This is not ever going to be a convenient or sensical task, in fact it will always be quite the opposite, I know this from bitter experience. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun. In fact its quite rewarding to see years of hard work paying off like this and coming together to drive your work and your entire scene forward.

Don’t think I’m discouraging you though, there is surprisingly little that you need to do to make the plunge, you just need to know for a fact that there are people out there who want to work with you and would rather that you be on board full time or at least give you enough money to survive. If you’re not sure, ask. People in this industry tend to be brutally honest about their finances, largely because there is so little and because so much of it is cash based anyway it’s really hard to do otherwise. Expense reports are crucial and be ready to dig deep into your pockets in case it all falls apart.

I think what I’m really trying to say with this piece is that life in the music industry is possible if you’re willing to be a minimalist. You need to be able to strip back the veil and realize that there is a whole lot more here at stake than just yourself. Your contributions to the industry, if you choose to go full time, are almost inevitably going to have the power to make or break careers. We live in an age where there are very few gatekeepers and to go full time you need to take advantage of that, and then find those few gatekeepers who do matter and befriend them, and hopefully get them to want to work with you – again, there comes that networking word – the most crucial thing to making a living at this.

Essentially – you need to realize what you’re truly good at in the industry and capitalize on it. Organize your networking around and be unwilling to do it for free. If you start charging for services before you go full time then people are going to start to get a hint for what you want to do and you’ll slowly be able to start self selecting and only taking on serious projects ie the ones that pay. As you grow your business you’ll eventually realize that in this organic process you will find that switching over to an arts driven career is a much more natural process than you might have initially realized. There might be a few months of trauma, but by the end it is almost always worth it, and if not, at least you fucking tried – and that’s important.

So what does this mean for you? It means that the end goal is in sight – closer than you might imagine. It’s going to require you meeting the write people, and having a whole bunch of the ‘right people’ willing to work with you, but it’s doable, you can do it. Just keep on driving and growing your business, organically shifting towards what will hopefully be a better future. Be ready to embrace poverty and destruction because that’s the way to live in this industry, freedom is the basic state of man and the music industry allows for that above all else.

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 Making a Jump to being a Music Industry Professional appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Soft Skills in the Music Industry

One of the things that makes my life so difficult is that a lot of the services I provide as a manager, PR guy, label executive and writer are soft skills. That doesn’t mean they are less important, it just means that they are harder to define – it isn’t that they aren’t valuable either, in fact, because of their rather ambiguous nature they can be more important, because if you find someone who excels in any of these then you pretty much have to hire him. This is not meant to be a self aggrandizing article but rather one that asks you to look at the industry in a new way and with fresh eyes.

What I always tell my clients before signing them on is: “Technically I’m not going to do anything you couldn’t do for yourself.” And this is true. I’ve seen bands get thirty plus pieces of coverage for their record without a PR guy, go to Europe without a manager or a booking agent, and make a living off music with no real label. Everything is doable with sufficient funds and time and of course the right skillset. The thing is – there’s a reason that almost every major band has a PR guy, a manager, a booking agent and a label. Yes – it’s a lot of costs, but it makes the whole process of being in a band so much easier.

Most bands who are playing one hundred to five hundred person crowds should be looking at losing up to twenty five percent of their gross on any given show, if not more. That’s just a huge part of the trade. And again – some pretty major bands like DRI or Pomplamoose manage to keep everything in house – and that’s awesome. Once more though – that’s the exception. You might be lucky enough to have the people with the right set of soft skills in your band and that can be great, but don’t get ahead of yourself, it’s easy to overestimate the soft skills that people have to offer.

Perhaps the most valuable asset hat you can have as a musician trying to guide your band to success is an ability to read people. For this I would like to recommend Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People, for me at least it’s been a key text in allowing me to understand how to understand people. You need to be able to figure out if folks are the real deal or if they are just riding your coat tails. Remember – even a band with the smallest amount of success will have hangers on. You need to be able to figure out which of those mater, and that’s where a lot of the struggle comes in – hangers on are hangers on for a reason and they cause a lot of anxiety for people in bands when deciding which individuals with traditionally soft skills should be brought into their fold. This is part of a time honored struggle and one that we all end up a part of whether we like it or not.

I think that if you’re someone who is trying to market your soft skills the best thing that you can do is to be honest. Explain exactly what you can do for a band with whatever skills you are trying to sell. If you oversell yourself and are not able to follow up then word is going to get out. A lot of people claim to have soft skills, and again, nothing I do can’t technically done by you and your band, the same goes for other people. So of course hangers on are going to claim to have those skills to be with the band. The only thing that you have to sell yourself as someone trying to market soft skills is your achievements, and as long as you have that then you know you’re building towards something greater. Remember, you are what you do, and if you continue to do good stuff then people will stat to pay attention.

What I’m trying to say is that soft skills may very well be the trickiest part of the music industry. With band members it’s easier, you get along or you don’t, they can play the music or they can’t. Same with album art and songwriting. Not to devalue those things, they are important and super difficult but they tend to be a bit more quantifiable With management and the ilk things get complicated because you’re dealing with people outside of the band and trusting them a lot more than you might initially think. It’s a stretch to hand over the keys to the kingdom you’ve built to someone else in the hope that they will take your music to a new level, but it has to be done.

Simply put, soft skills are a huge part of what makes this entire industry work, and you need to be able to execute them or have someone who can execute them for you if you want your band to continue to grow. That’s just how this whole thing works. People require a level of professionalism and knowledge if they are going to work with you, especially at high levels. This may not seem to fit the DIY ethos that you may have founded your band on, but that’s simply how it is. If you want to carry forward you’re probably going to need a team behind you, not just a few buddies who ‘know some people’.

In the end though, what does this mean for you? Essentially that you need to be aware that there’s a lot of bad dudes out there, but also a lot of good dudes. For every guy trying to make a quick buck off your new single there’s another guy who would love to give it a review. In a world where far too many people are trying to crack into an industry that can only support a fraction of them you need to be realistic about who you decide to work with. It can’t just be a friend it has to be someone who has proven their worth before. Finding these people of merit is a challenge, but they are out there and they are ready to help take your band to the next level as long as you can produce art that they believe in. Find these people, befriend them and prepare to conquer the globe.

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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DIY and You

DIY culture is a fundamental part of the music industry, it’s weird to think about it that way to because, asides from being largely illegal, for so long it seemed like it was going down the tubes and we were going to lose control of it all. When the music industry got really out of hand in the 80s and 90s it seemed like DIY culture was dead, but now that there is no money in the music industry (At least in regards to the mainstream) DIY is back and bigger than ever – but what does this mean for your band, how should we approach the upcoming storm that we must all embrace if we want to take our careers further?

We are at a point where even the friendliest bars are asking for a minimum of two hundred bucks to play a show. Now that’s fine – in fact there’s nothing at all wrong with that, people need to be paid, that’s part of how venues work. That being said – DIY venues traditionally cost nothing, or very little, to play and are a huge part of what should make your band move forward. Instead of relying on expensive venues to play, it makes a lot more sense to me at least to have your band play a few DIY spots along the way in order to recoup funds and help to establish your place in the scene before tackling the big ones.

Here’s what matters though – in a world of increasingly diversified incomes, your band needs DIY culture in order to survive. It’s hard to find good spaces these days that will support your work and do it on the cheap, so you need to give DIY a chance. Every band to have come out of the underground in recent years owes a major debt to the DIY scene, that’s the only place nowadays that will even bother to host shows for the music we love, and even fairly major bands, groups who land on magazine covers, can be found playing dingy basements and groups who play to massive crowds at festivals have been known to play shows that were blatantly illegal. Why? Because it makes financial sense.

That being said – some bands simply don’t work in a DIY setting. If you have a special emphasis on your stage performance then a lot of smaller DIY venues simply won’t work for you. Other bands, like Agoraphobic Nosebleed or Tengger Cavalry are simply trying to breed a cult of exclusivity. (Admittedly with Tengger Cavalry the theatricality is a big part of it too) This is crucial to those bands’ image and rightfully so. That being said – the odds that your band are in this category are relatively small – and in fact, playing DIY shows, in the current climate, can boost your authenticity.

We all know that in this day and age authenticity is crucial to selling your band. Remember, when you sell your music today you are trying to market to a generation who have been marketed too their whole lives. People can spot a phony because they’ve been training at it since they were babies, and it’s going to only get worse from here. If you’re not in it one hundred percent and showing off your dedication to the scene with DIY ethics and a simple understanding of how punk and hardcore permanently altered underground music then it might just be too late for you.

The DIY scene is roaring back, every few months a cool new spot will open up in your city. A veritable DIY revolution is overtaking the world as more and more folks are open to letting concerts take place in their homes. As independent music becomes the norm we are entering a world where just about everyone is a part of the music industry to some extent, and now more than ever the fans have a tremendous impact on making things work out. This is a crucial development and means that people are getting ready to move towards a world that is entirely DIY.

Is this actually going to happen in the near future? Probably not – but the trends seem to suggest that great things are coming. People are increasingly socially liberal and I think there is a greater level of appreciation of the arts manifesting itself in the millennial generation. You need to take advantage of this and the new found clemency that we are all benefiting from. This is perhaps the first time in the history of music that people are starting to get a sense of what artists are worth and want to do things to help make paying them possible.

DIY culture is a fickle thing and certainly a hard one to master. Everything relies on your reputation and your ability to prove that you’re good people, but perhaps it’s better that way. I personally really like that we are all working together, striving for a better tomorrow and reveling in the promise of a more exciting scene. It’s a weird thing that we’ve built up and all come to rely on, but it is also a fundamental part of how the industry works now and the smart record labels understand that. If you’re a band, you more than likely need DIY, and if the people around you don’t realize that, it might be time for you to move on.

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 Devaluation of Music and You

I recently interviewed a good friend about the state of the music industry. Something came up in our chat while recording last nights episode that I wanted to expand upon here – something that affects our livelihoods, and will impact music industry folk more than any other one concept. The thing that makes us all weirdos and deranged rather than just another important part of society. I’m talking of course, about the devaluation of music and the way it may be making our music scene change forever.

This is a trend we’ve seen happening for years, but that has been accelerated in recent times – largely due to the rise of the MP3. Now that music has no real physical format and can’t manifest itself in a physical reality, outside of a concert, it’s a lot harder to make the average person want to buy an album. After all, since most people don’t really care about liner notes, one of the last reasons to buy a CD, there is little to no reason to own a physical product. In a way it makes sense that people don’t value music anymore, it’s something we all have constant access to with Spotify, Youtube and other services of that ilk. And that’s fine, in fact I prefer it that way – I don’t really like going through my CD collection to find an album and I’m sure you don’t either – especially when the internet is so readily available.

Of course, I’m not going to blame the rise of the internet exclusively for the devaluation of music. Why, legendary composer John Phillip Sousa was the Taylor Swift or Lars Ulrich of his day, famous for getting upset and thinking that gramophones were going to devalue live music! Of course – it ended up being quite the opposite and was key to bringing us to where we are in the industry today, but that doesn’t mean his point wasn’t valid. Sousa was predicting a larger trend where music (And art in general) has gradually been losing its value as something special over the last hundred years. As music programs in schools get cut and music becomes increasingly diverse we’re only going to see this breaking down even further.

One thing that my friend Nate Carson, head of Nanotear Booking, brings up is that with rock music is that you are generally marketing to a primarily young white male audience. By being someone who puts on shows for a living he understands the type of people who come to his concerts. Is this his fault? No. It’s the product of our society shaping our musical tastes based on our individual cultures – and again, that’s fine. But you need to be aware of it. Almost any musical movement has, in an objective sense, only a very small potential demographic. It is perhaps because we are marketing to the smallest slice of pie of the smallest slice of pie that music is devalued.

So what does this mean for you as a starving artist? Well asides from proof that you probably don’t need to be selling CD’s anymore, (In the words of the legendary Max Cavalera, “A CD is like a business card these days”) it also suggests that people need to be given new reasons to appreciate your art. That’s what makes a band like Pomplamoose so interesting to me. Rather than just being a mediocre indie rock band, they’ve been able to craft an entire social movement around there band giving them strong brand recognition. In many ways – they have been able to harness the millennial ideology and craft a unique place in the scene.

As bleak as this might sound, it’s no longer about the music. Entertainment has reached a level of multimedia complexity that it now demands more than that. The biggest bands, like Metallica and U2 have started to realize this and are really branching off in new directions, and for good reason! Radio play has no relation to album sales these days, after all, album sales bring you virtually no money, and so we have to ask, holy shit, what’s going on, are we totally lost? Has the whole world gone crazy? It seems to me at least that we need to start rethinking about how we brand bands – because they are no longer musicians, they are artists.

This is both an extremely liberating and extremely intimidating process. There’s a reason that Pink Floyd are considered great and why Roger Waters The Wall tour has been such a success – the band has been able to use multimedia content to appeal to a broader segment of the population. Obviously you’re probably not going to have the production value to pull that kind of thing off, but it’s important to remember that a band like Ghoul have been able to do something truly special and elaborate with a very DIY mindset. Of course – your stage performance doesn’t need to be elaborate – that’s merely an obvious example of how you can make your work cross into a multimedia platform. What I’m trying to say is that we need to be flexible and ready to create art that resonates because it crosses platforms and allows the common fan to connect on multiple levels.

We’re already seeing this start to happen and people are beginning to crack. They see that there is no real way around it – for the common young person being a band alone isn’t going to cut it – and neither will a social media presence, although both of those things help. Instead you need to emulate someone like Ghost, who use a distinct aesthetic and whirlwind of productivity to help to establish themselves as icons. As the music world becomes even more cutthroat you need to stand out more than ever. In an increasingly multimedia world – wouldn’t it thus make a lot of sense to go out and make your art multimedia as well?

So essentially, what I’m trying to say is that the devaluation of music is forcing us all to expand our work. No longer is it okay to just be a musician, you need to be aware that if you want your band to be serious you need to be an artist. As challenging as it may seem we are at a very exciting time when the art we can make has no more boundaries and we can now build up to something epic in scale and truly magical. As hard as things might seem right now, I for one am very excited with the changing state of the industry and as soon as you can accept that music, for better or for worse, has no more value, the sooner we can all grow, together.

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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Housecore, Festivals and Phil Anselmo – an interview with Kate Richardson

Kate Richardson is a singularly interesting individual. Someone with a distinct role in the metal community as the fiancée of extreme metal godfather Phil Anselmo and the vice president of Housecore Records – one of the most exciting indie labels out there right now. She’s had an interesting life in the industry and if the recent Forbes article on her label is any indication things are only going onwards and upwards for this metal devotee.

Always friendly and always professional she has a distinct approach to the world of metal and a clear understanding of what it takes to grow in the metal world. The festival that she helps to run, Housecore Horror Film Fest, is regularly billed as one of the best metal festivals in the nation and her dedication to the genre is impressive. Considering that she also handles essentially a heavy metal compound and has to watch out for one of the biggest names in the business she can’t help but to be interesting! Getting to pick apart what makes her tick was an honor and made me excited as to what would come next for this fledgling label!

So how are you Kate?

I’m fine. How are you? Enjoying the festival?

Very much so! And that’s what I wanted to talk about… what even is your role with Housecore and the festival in general?

Well, I wear many hats. With Housecore Records I guess I’m the vice president. Phillip is the president and CEO. We are very much a DIY operation. We record at the house. Phillip produces most of the records. We keep our overhead low that way and that gives us a more intimate relationship with the writing and recording. It creates a bond with the band too because we spend quality time with them. It’s kind of a different approach, a more intimate one. We have a small roster but you know that every band on the label we are very much involved with an believe in.

What do you do for the festival as a whole?

Phillip has always had this idea of starting a horror movie theater when he retires, like a “Brew and View” where you can get beer and food and see old films. Then he got involved with Corey and we had always wanted to do a Housecore Festival and celebrate our bands as well as bands that we like. When Phillip got involved with Corey and Corey realized the extent of Phillip’s horror fandom he just said “Let’s do it! Let’s make it a film fest as well!” Corey just made it happen. And we had been talking about it for a long time but he was the driving force behind it.

I like to describe the festival as what would happen if you hung out with Phillip at the house for the weekend. These are the movies you’d be watching and the music you’d be listening too. It’s kind of like that – but on a larger scale.

What’s your background like?

I was in a couple bands in high school. Then I went to school in Grand Rapids, Michigan at Grand Valley State and it’s a very conservative area. I didn’t have any friends for the first semester at least because nobody knew what to do with this chick walking around in a leather jacket with skulls painted on it. But they had a student run radio station where I made a lot of strong friendships.

I started at that station as a DJ and with my knowledge in metal, punk and hardcore I quickly was able to become the metal director. The following year I became the president. We had a really great program even though it was a small station. We were the only one on that side of the state. We were promoting a lot of music and moving it and getting it out there. Even if people couldn’t tune in it was carrying on. We would go to the CMJ convention every year and I established a lot of business contacts who I am still working with.

With my contacts there I was encouraged to become a promoter and start booking my own shows. I was booking and promoting for two or three years. I made money, lost money, I pretty much broke even but I got a lot of experience. Now as tour manager of a lot of these bands I can do it well because I know the other side of it as well.

What is it like tour managing a quasi celebrity? How did you develop the protocols for that?

Well Phillip has a great attitude and established his protocols before I came aboard. The guys can be a handful that’s for sure. But we are very professional. We want to walk into the building knowing that next time we come to that venue they look forward to seeing us. Things can go wrong but you don’t have to freak out and be an asshole. You can handle any problem.

If you are going to be a crew member under Phillip you need to have that level of professionalism and be courteous to the other bands, the house people and to each other.

I’ve been doing it so long though that I’m used to the celebrity part!

How did you meet Phil anyway?

I became friends with Jimmy Bower and Kirk Windstein through Eyehategod and Crowbar respectively. When Down went on tour they had a day off in Grand Rapids and Kirk called me up to come have some beers and that’s kind of how we meet. Through mutual friends!

When you’re running a label with your fiancé how do you separate your relationship as a couple and as professionals?

It’s interesting. We run the label out of the house and then when we’re touring we’re our own thing. The engineer of course lives with us and the studio is in the barn and Mike from Eyehategod lives in the apartment of the barn and bands stay with us all the time. It’s like a heavy metal bed and breakfast.

Do you want to grow that into like… a compound?

Yes. We were running the store and stuff out of the barn and we grew out of that. The studio and the barn started overlapping so then we built a warehouse to store everything.

How much is that self funded? Is it self sufficient?

We’re pretty much self funded but we do have some support from the distribution company. We’re certainly not a major label. We pretty much live paycheck by paycheck but while the paycheck is bigger we have so much more stuff to pay out. We keep the machine rolling. We’re not making big profits, hopefully one day we will, but we are helping peoples dreams come true and doing what we love and what we’re passionate about.

I heard a rumor that people on the Housecore team wanted to bring the fest to new cities… is that still a plan?

Yes. We did Austin for two years and that was cool. Now San Antonio I think is going pretty well. I think it’s really great to do the screenings in the Holiday Inn. It’s way more convenient than doing things outdoors in those tents and everything. It’s not even a block away from the Aztec. The Korova is a little further than we like but it’s still doable. We might want to perfect it here and be here for a few years because every time you move to a new venue it’s hard. I think we’ll do it again here next year. We’ll have a meeting with our team afterward but I think it’s going well. I think we’ll work out the bugs, perfect it, and then maybe we’ll grow too big to be here. We’ll find another beautiful venue in another city and try it out there. Of course we have a lot of Texas people and that’s important to us. The locals can help with creative problem solving. We’d love to try NOLA but they just have so many festivals. That’s why we moved out of Austin too. San Antonio is great though. It’s a real heavy metal town. The Riverwalk is beautiful and the venue is beautiful… it’s cool!

What do you love so much about music?

It’s art, it’s a universal language. Music gets people through so much. It’s a foreign language in a way too. I don’t know. I love music. It can do so much for people on many different levels!

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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