Most aspiring musicians receive a lot of advice from friends and family about the best approach to take with building their music career. Among the many things suggested, is the idea of having a backup plan. Many people give advice about “the need to have something to fall back on in case the music career doesn’t work out” or “a Plan B”. Typically, musicians are encouraged to go to school and get a degree in something they can easily find a job in, and do music on the side, in their “free time”.

If/when you reach the point where your music career begins to develop, you are probably advised to work less in your day job and focus more on the music until you can leave the day job and make the music career work for you. This advice sounds good in theory, but in reality fails to work as intended in almost every case. Why? Usually the job that most musicians get to support themselves until their music career kicks off, has nothing to do with music in general, or their music career specifically. As a result, most end up in a very frustrating situation that makes it virtually impossible to achieve any kind of lasting success as a professional musician.

Four Reasons why this kind of “backup plan” is usually doomed to fail

Before I go into detail about some reasons why this kind of “backup plan” is usually not working as intended, I want you to test yourself and the effectiveness of your strategy to become a professional musician. It will really help you to take this test BEFORE reading the rest of the article, so that you are not biased in your answers.

Do you think that your “backup plan” will work and will lead you to a rewarding and stable long- term music career? Take this survey to find out before reading further.

Reason #1: Not having an effective exit strategy

The idea of slowly phasing out your day job while building your music career is good, but in order to work, it needs to be done in the right way. Most musicians have nothing planned or prepared that will allow them to gradually decrease the time spent at their day job and focus more on music. When choosing a “backup plan”, musicians typically find a job that is the most “safe and secure” and the one that pays the most money. However, most people fail to plan the “exit strategy” and think ahead to the time when their music career situation will allow you to focus less of your time on the day job. When they finally reach that point, they realize that they are trapped in their day job and are unable to “gradually” phase it out. They are faced with the choice of either quitting the job entirely, or sticking to it until retirement (more on this shortly).

The best exit plan is to have a job that will allow you to gradually decrease the number of hours you spend on it: from 40 hours per week to 30, from 30 hours to 20, from 20 to 10, until eventually you can quit the job altogether! So you must take care to select an occupation that allows a lot of flexibility in work schedule. That means you need to be careful to select an occupation that allows a lot of flexibility in work schedule. This way, when the time is right, you can make a “gradual” transition into a full time music career. Unfortunately, most traditional occupations (such as being an accountant, computer programmer, office manager etc…) do not allow this flexibility. Remember, your boss at work will not all of a sudden allow you to “work three or four days per week instead of five”, simply because you want to work on your new CD an extra few days per week. It is possible to begin by working in a non-music related job at first, BUT do not select “any” job offer without considering the exit strategy first.

An ideal job for an aspiring professional musician is teaching guitar. Not only can you make very good money doing it, but you are in complete control over how many hours you choose to work. Not everyone may desire to teach full time for the rest of their life (and this is fine). But as long as you are going to be working anyway, why not do something that is already related to what you enjoy, help students reach their goals faster and make money in the process? In addition, teaching is already a “music related” activity that is probably much more fun to do than sitting in an office!

Another possibility is to work as an independent contractor in sales or marketing or doing consulting work for hire. Always check about the flexibility of work schedule before accepting a job offer. Remember that in most industries, the 40-60 hour work week is the norm, with little or no possibility for part time employment. This makes it impossible to make a smooth transition to a full time music career.

Reason #2: There is too much risk involved

Slowly phasing out your day job seems to be a very ‘safe and secure’ approach, but it can actually backfire and “trap” you by its sense of security. If you are making $60,000 per year at your day job, and have managed (through working nights and weekends) to build up your music related income to $25,000 per year, then, all together, you have a total income of $85,000 for the year. Here is where the reality catches up to you. Should you decide to go full time into music, you will invariably need to quit your day job completely at some point. Until you can recover and build your music career to higher and higher levels, you will be making $60,000 less per year than before! This kind of risk is uncomfortable to think about for most people (especially those who get married, have kids and/or have significant expenses), and keeps them trapped at their day jobs their whole lives.

Reason #3: You are often not able to take advantage of opportunities.

What if you put extraordinary effort on nights and weekends into recording a great sounding CD with your band, spend a lot of time promoting it in hopes of getting signed by a record company and go on tour, and then you really get the opportunity to do a 10 week tour in another country in the world. It is VERY probable that you would NOT get paid a lot of money while on a first tour, but as a whole, this kind of tour is exactly the kind of breakthrough you have been searching for. What are you going to do? Are you going to turn down a huge opportunity to advance your music career? Or are you going to agree to take a huge cut in pay by quitting your day job to do the tour? I think you can agree that neither of these options sounds entirely appealing. Wouldn’t it be great to do the tour and not worry about how you are going to feed yourself (and your family) while you are gone?

Reason #4: There is not much quality time and energy to get anything done.

This may seem like a more subtle issue, but it is actually very important. If your most productive hours in the day are spent on the least productive activities, then reaching your goals will take MUCH longer than it needs to. Think about it: if you wake up at 6:00, get to work by 8:00 or 9:00 and spend eight to ten hours there, and another one to two hours commuting back home, by the time you are ready to begin working on your music career, you are already tired! This is also not taking into account the time taken up by other things in life that you have to tend to. It will take a truly extraordinary effort to get anything worthwhile accomplished during the time on nights and weekends, to build multiple streams of music related income that will enable you to quit your non-music related job without putting yourself and your family in financial struggle.

Now that you see why this kind of backup plan isn’t as good as it seems to be, you may ask yourself what you should do instead.

What is the solution?

Well, having no backup plan is definitely NOT the solution. In order to build a successful music career, you need to be prepared and you cannot simply hope that “things will work out”. The underlying problem with the conventional backup plan I described is that it originates from thinking about how not “to lose”. This type of thinking lacks real ambition and it forces you to stick to that which is the most familiar and so called “safe and secure”. As a result, you typically end up with what you wish for: a familiar, average, safe and secure life. However, this attitude rarely leads to significant achievements, breakthroughs and victories in the music industry.

What the most successful musicians do is arrange their backup plan or Plan B around their MUSIC CAREER GOALS (Plan A). This requires real ambition and courage, and it is based on thinking about how “to win”. This also requires you to think how you can integrate Plan B with your present and future life as a professional musician.

There are many possibilities for truly effective “back up” (which are more like “support”) plans. In many cases, they involve designing systems and multiple income streams coming from music business sources that will support them continuously.

It’s important to put a lot of thought into which kinds of “backup plans” and approaches are best suited to your specific goals. To find the right plan for you, there are two important things you need to do:

First, study how the music business works. This is key! Understanding it will greatly help you with designing the most effective strategy for reaching your goals in the fastest period of time. Building a successful, long term career takes a lot of focused effort and dedication. The more you understand about the music business, the easier it will be to design the kind of backup plan that will help you reach your goals instead of restricting and trapping you.

Second, be careful about taking advice from people who may have great intentions, but lack knowledge and experience about how the music industry works. Very often, our friends and family, with the very best intentions at heart, attempt to give us advice on what to do to “make it”. However, if you pay attention, you will notice that this advice has a common theme, which is “here is what you must do in order not to lose”. Very rarely do you get advice about how “to win”! This mentality (as described above) keeps you away from taking steps that will propel your dreams forward.

To make matters worse, although your friends and family may have the best intentions in their heart, most of the time, they simply aren’t qualified to give advice about the music business. It will be similar to you asking your brother who is a plumber (for example) about how to cure a disease, or asking your uncle who is a carpenter (for example) about how to solve a legal problem. It doesn’t matter that these people have your best interest at heart. If they don’t know what they are talking about (in a particular subject), they are not likely to give helpful advice.

If you truly want advice that works and if you want to learn the strategies of how to reach all of your music career goals, you need to find a mentor who you can rely on for effective advice. This means learning from someone who has already done what you want to do, and ideally someone who has trained many others to do the same.

The most effective, predictable and safe strategies to “phasing in” your music career

Now that you know about the problems with the conventional approaches to backup plans, I will show you the characteristics of a good backup plan (Plan B).

1. Flexibility

Your plan must be flexible. This can mean many things. One of them is having the ability to “gradually” decrease the amount of time you spend working on Plan B and increase the time you invest into Plan A! This can also mean the ability to integrate (leverage) the skills acquired (or the results earned) from Plan B into Plan A.

2. Passivity

Your plan should be mostly passive: it will really help if your Plan B mostly consists of passive income streams that you have created by only investing the work once! It should be pretty obvious to see how this will free up a lot of time to dedicate to your Plan A (your music career)!

3. Diversity

The plan should be diversified: do not become so dependent on only one stream of income! Many people argue that a music career is not secure, when nothing could be further from the truth. Which do you think is more likely, that a company lays off an employee in the blink of an eye (cutting off his one and only source of income, the paycheck), or that a music teacher with forty students (who essentially has at least forty “diversified” income streams) will suddenly lose all of his clients overnight?

By making your Plan B options diversified, you also build your own financial security, without depending on anyone else. I don’t know about you, but I feel much safer knowing that I am in control of my own future, rather than putting my faith into someone else’s idea of security.

4. Congruency and Relevance

This means that Plan B needs to make your primary goal (music career) MORE likely to occur! This also means (ideally), that the time you invest into developing skills and experience in Plan B can be easily used to enhance Plan A. For example, if you are known as an excellent guitar teacher, you can easily integrate teaching clinics and workshops with performances of your music, selling your future music CDs, other merchandise etc…etc…

I hope that you can see now how this strategy is vastly different (and superior) to the conventional wisdom of getting a day job, and then doing your best on evenings and weekends to launch a music career from scratch.

As you design your own path to a successful music career, compare the steps you are taking against the criteria above and modify your strategy if necessary. This will help save you from the frustration felt by most of the ‘wannabe’ musicians, who realize (much too late) that their strategy leaves them no way to manifest their dreams.

If you have missed the survey mentioned at the beginning of this article, check it out here.

© 2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

If I gave you my complete list of music industry connections (key people I have established important relationships with), do you think it would help you develop a successful music career? … NO! Why? Because a mere ‘contact’ is not worth anything. Contacts need to become meaningful connections. Meaningful connections are developed by building good relationships… More on this later…

However, even if you have good relationships with the right people, this won’t help you until and unless you work on having the right things in place which enables your contacts to feel confident enough to work with you. You can see more about this specific topic in a free video on how to become a professional musician.

So, who are the people you should be contacting? … And when you get through to someone, what do you say to him/her? How can you make these important people pay attention to you if you don’t yet have a ‘name’ in the music business?

Let’s explore the first question, “Who are the people you should be contacting?” To answer this, you need to ask a series of other questions such as:

• Who are some music industry people who have great influence and power?
• Who are the music industry people who have the greatest number of key relationships with other music industry professionals and companies?
• Among the most important music industry people, who are the easiest to locate in your local area?
• Who are the most accessible music industry people?
• Who are the music industry people who you can help to solve THEIR problems and/or help them to reach their goals?

Is there a single “type” of music industry person or (company) who fits ALL the above criteria? The answer is ‘Yes’. And if you do not have music industry connections, this ‘type of contact’ may be your best place to begin… So, who is this type of person or company? Record company executives? A&R people? Producers? Publishers? Managers? Entertainment Lawyers? Famous bands? No. The answer is “Concert Promoters”.

Serious concert promoters have massive power and influence in the music industry. They are the real entrepreneurs of the music business. They deal with thousands of very important music industry people every year, such as well known bands, record labels, artist management, tour managers, entertainment lawyers, production companies, merchandising departments, the venues, booking agents, radio stations, the press, etc., etc.

If you live near an urban area, you won’t have any trouble finding promoters who live and work locally (use Google). Unlike most other important music industry contacts, promoters are generally accessible and will be willing to talk to anyone who has ‘something real’ to offer them. That’s where you come in.

Generally speaking, concert promoters take on more risk than any other person or entity in the entire music industry. All promoters lose large sums of money every year, because some concerts lose money. The successful promoters make (and keep) more money than they lose throughout the year.

What every promoter wants is a bigger and stronger team of people to help ensure that the concerts/tours they promote make more money! Obviously, it’s expensive to employ a large team of experienced people. However, you can join their team, at least on a part-time basis, if you are willing to volunteer, intern, or earn a small salary. You may not yet know anything about promoting tours, but some promotion companies would be eager to train you if it isn’t expensive for them to do so.

Think about it from their perspective: If you were a big time promoter taking on huge risks, wouldn’t you want another person to work for you, for free or for a very low salary? Of course the answer is ‘yes’, even if that person could only work part-time.

Many musicians who want a music career are told to do an internship for a record label. The conventional wisdom is that when you do this, you will learn a lot about the music business. The reality is, most of these interns never get into a position where they can truly learn much at all as an intern. However working for a promoter, your ability to learn how the industry really works (at least on the touring and promotional side) goes way up! In addition, the number of contacts you can make are 200 times more than what you would likely make working at a record label. And compared to record labels, there is a lot less competition, currently anyway, for internships or jobs with a promoter.

As excited as you may now feel, knowing that you CAN actually do this, there is a catch and it’s a big one. In order to have any real chance of pursuing this opportunity and using these contacts to help launch your music career, you must work on having the right things in place which enables your music industry contacts to feel confident enough to work with you. The truth is, nothing in this article will help you until and unless you do take this step. You can see more about this specific topic in a free video on how to become a professional musician.

©2008 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved

Because you are reading this article, I can imagine that you have probably faced similar challenges. I know how you feel, because I went through the same depressing struggle for years and have seen hundreds of great musicians travel along the same path. But over time, I have discovered that in many cases the lack of success is caused by the musicians (including myself in the past) simply not knowing what it is the music industry companies want from new artists.

You probably already know that record labels, producers, entertainment lawyers, and managers seek artists who have a lot more to offer than talent alone. What they want from you is a “total package” which includes many things, but the two main factors are: adding more value (in terms of money and/or opportunity), and reducing potential downside risks to the music company. I am going to tell you more about these two elements of value and risk in this article.

Prior to signing my first record deal and doing my first real tour, I read dozens of books about the music business. Although some of these books were helpful, I quickly discovered that the reality of the music business was very different from what the books described. In most cases these books weren’t necessarily ‘wrong’, just very incomplete.

Entering the industry as a professional opened my eyes to many things I had never heard of or thought about before. Eventually I came to know and understand many important details about the companies I worked with: their needs, challenges, problems and mindsets. I paid very close attention to things that others around me often overlooked. I did this for two reasons:

1. I wanted to advance my own career to the maximum extent possible while remaining in control of the ways in which that growth occurred.
2. I was already mentoring other musicians, so going deeper into my understanding of the music business was something I needed to do for their benefit as well.

The central theme which kept coming up in my earliest conversations with the record label executives I worked with was “partnership”. Today, it seems perfectly normal for me to think that record companies might see their artists as “business partners”, but at the time, I didn’t think that the term had a genuine meaning. Over the years that followed, the concept of ‘partnerships’ began to show up everywhere, but I probably would not have paid much attention to it if my first meetings with the record label and management hadn’t been so focused on this fundamental idea.

Record labels, managers, and successful bands, are looking for artists who think in terms of mutual benefit. You must think in this way before any company in the music industry will want to work with you and invest their money and resources into your career. Imagine you are in a band, trying to get a record contract. Obviously you know what YOU want from this deal (access to the record company’s resources that will be used to propel your career forward, attract new fans, sell more records, make more money, go on tours, etc.) But have you thought about what THE COMPANY wants (besides the obvious)?

Now imagine for a moment that you are the president of a record label. Would you take $250,000 of your money and invest it into a band which is good and has marketable songs??? I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t do this, UNTIL AND UNLESS it was clear to me that my investment into the band will not be a waste of money, and will bring back substantial returns. It’s highly unlikely that a $250,000 record label budget will be enough to take a band anywhere significant if that band is ‘only’ a good band with marketable songs. It’s going to take a lot more than good talent and good marketable songs to get the type of serious commitment and investment from a label which is needed to advance your band’s future over the long term. It takes a partnership (not merely a contract and a budget) to make this happen.

What about you?

Do you think you have what it takes to become a successful business partner of any company in the music industry? Take this 5 minute survey and find out: http://www.tomhess.net/WhatDoesTheMusicIndustryLookForInYou.aspx 

Here are a few things you need to think about when approaching any company in the music industry:

Key mindsets you need to acquire:

• Don’t seek to be merely an “employee” of a company, instead, think in terms of a win/win partnership.
• Do not feel like you are entitled to receive money or opportunities simply because you are talented. It is not the company’s job to reward you for your music. It’s their job to reward you for the value you bring to them (beyond the music).
• You must become a partner in what they want to achieve. And you want them to be a partner in what you want to achieve. Note that I am not talking about “selling out”. Selling out would involve giving up your musical integrity for money (or other benefits). What I am describing is simply one of the most basic and universal practices of business. You must give the other side what they want in order to receive what you want from them. If you follow this principle, success in business (and life) becomes so much easier!

Too often artists and companies are at odds with each other because each is out to reach its own objectives even if those objectives are in direct conflict with the other side’s goals. When either side feels “entitled” to something without a win-win strategy, everything breaks down between them. And sooner or later both sides lose (and so do the fans!).

Until you begin to think and work with the win-win partnership concept, the people and companies with the greatest power to help you will typically not be interested in you…. And the bad people (“sharks”) in the industry might seek to take advantage of you, if you are talented but ignorant to how the music business world works.

Here is How These Mindsets Help You:

The good music business people expect you to know how the music industry functions BEFORE they begin to work with you. They get tired of answering basic questions about how things work. While the companies could teach you these fundamentals, they would prefer for you to learn them yourself. The reason they want this is because it saves THEM time (and resources).

Remember, when it comes to getting other people to associate with you, think in terms of what they stand to gain or lose by signing you to a record deal or putting your band on tour (or anything else).

These music companies prefer not to waste their time teaching you about the music industry, general business, mental attitudes, image, stage presence, logistics, etc. At first glance, this may seem like an inconvenience for you, but it isn’t. It is in YOUR interest to see these resources spent on promoting your career, helping you sell records, tour the world, attract more fans, make more money etc. If instead, a big chunk of money and time was spent on teaching you what you should already know, who do you think loses the most? YOU do! This is because the company’s resources SHOULD be spent on helping you achieve what you could not do on your own (and learning the fundamentals of the business is not one of them).

Also, remember that since music companies are directly investing money into your career, they will expect their investment back, with interest. Therefore, it is (again) to your advantage to minimize any waste in that investment. Here is an example.

Let’s say that your band was put on tour by a record company, but the management believes that your band does not know how to conduct yourselves on and off stage. They will require you to be coached in these areas (and believe me, they WILL). If rehearsals take an additional week (at the rate of thousands of dollars per day), then money will be spent on this new expense instead of being invested into other aspects of your tour, record and career. Remember, this extra money will need to be paid back to the company FIRST before your band sees any profits from the tour OR your record (yes, your label will require to be recouped for all expenses).

Many new bands feel a sense of ‘entitlement’ and think it is the tour manager’s job to coach the band how to conduct themselves on and off stage. This, as already discussed, costs the band and the label a lot of money. However, when you see yourself in a win-win partnership with the label, then you know that it is in everyone’s best interest to take the initiative to prepare yourself in all possible ways before money is spent. If you are not prepared beforehand, you are creating a higher investment risk for the company you work with!

Here are the most important things to remember from this article:

• Find out as much as you can about the companies you want to work with before approaching them. This will help you in many ways. First, you will familiarize yourself with their goals, business desires and challenges. This will help you to anticipate and come up with win/win solutions to business negotiations. Also, the people in these organizations will be impressed that you took the time to learn about their needs before approaching them. They will remember you.
• Always try to see all business situations and proposals from the point of view of the other side. This will allow you to better anticipate their needs, challenges and possible objections toward working with you. Then you need to demonstrate this understanding in both words and actions.
• Think in terms of win/win partnerships. If you develop a reputation for coming up with business ideas that meet your needs as well as the needs of the other side, you will find many more attractive opportunities coming your way.
• Seek ways you can add value while reducing risk. In all of business, (music industry or otherwise), your success will be greatly affected by your ability to deliver high value with low risk. Before approaching any company with a business proposal, consider all of the ways you are planning to add value to the project. Can you expand this list? Do the same analysis of all of the potential risks of a particular business partnership (whether it comes from you or other people in the project). What can you do to minimize or eliminate these risks? If you do this, you will definitely have a great advantage over most musicians who are more concerned about how much their paycheck is going to be, rather than trying to enhance the value for all parties involved.
• After you have done all that you can to add value and reduce risk, you again need to demonstrate this in both words and actions. Think of how most bands try to get signed, they play local shows, try to increase their following, send their promo kits to labels, management, entertainment lawyers, etc. In this way, you compete with all the other unknown bands. Here is a huge tip, why not focus directly on showing and proving to these companies/people how your value is higher and your risk is lower than the thousands of other bands who are sending their press kits every year. Although there is much more to the story, this is the basis for how I landed my own first record deal. This approach helped to further separate myself from literally thousands of other excellent guitar players who pursued the same opportunities I received. And I’ve used this strategy to land several other fulfilling and lucrative music business related deals.
• Lose the feeling of entitlement. As I alluded to in the article, no music company in the world will want you, unless you have something to offer them which they find valuable. Nobody is “entitled” to a record deal or more money simply because they may be a great musician. Feeling this way is a mistake that a lot of musicians make and one that I hope you will avoid, now that you are aware of it after reading this article. What you need to do instead is prove to the other party how they would be passing up a great opportunity if they didn’t work with you. When you can do this, you will find that the other things will fall into place much easier.

You should think deeply about the issues that I brought up and consider the ways some or all of them can apply to your current (or future) music career. I have given you some good starting points to begin thinking and planning for success. Use them to take the actions you know you must take to reach your goals!

If you missed the survey mentioned at the beginning of this article, I encourage you to test yourself here: http://www.tomhess.net/WhatDoesTheMusicIndustryLookForInYou.aspx.

© 2008 Tom Hess Music Corporation All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission ]]> http://www.musiccareers.net/career-articles/pursuit-of-the-record-deal/feed/ 0 http://www.musiccareers.net/career-articles/begin-your-music-career/ http://www.musiccareers.net/career-articles/begin-your-music-career/#comments Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:04:50 +0000 Tom Hess http://www.guitarnoise.com/musiccareers2/?p=117 Why so many good musicians struggle to begin their music career.

If you are like most people who want a career as a professional musician, the first question you ask is probably, “What do I have to do?” You ask this because you are not sure what you need to do first, second, third, etc. And it seems obvious that you must actually do things in order to move forward and launch your own music career.

Whether you are just starting out, or already have some experience in the music business, there are important steps you must take and many things you will need to do. However, the order in which you take each step will make a big difference in the results you get.

It’s not about what you must do… It’s about who you must become.

Some years ago, I had a great mentor who was a very successful entrepreneur. At that time, I was not yet very far along in my own music career. I asked him all the usual questions like, “How can I get on a world tour?”, “Where should I send my CDs to?”, “Who do I need to talk to at the record company?”, “How can I make more money with my music and talents?”, “What do I need to do to sell my music in other countries?”, etc.

He replied, “Tom, you aren’t ready for any of that yet. You might be ready as a musician, but you haven’t really prepared yourself mentally. When you ‘do things’ now, you will make some progress along the way, but that isn’t success – that won’t create a lucrative and stable career over the long term. Successful people are successful not because they are intelligent or talented, nor do they succeed simply because they ‘do the right things.’ When you become ‘success-minded’, you will have the power to achieve success in anything you want to do. Don’t worry now about ‘doing things.’ Let’s begin working on ‘who you must become.’ Your success needs to be built from the inside first, then the external things you must do will fall into place much more easily.

I only proved him to be right when I reacted by saying, “I already know all this positive thinking stuff, I need specific advice on what, when, where and how to do things now.”

His response back to me was, “Okay, Tom, if you really know this then I challenge you to show me at least twenty-five ways in which you have already implemented these mental concepts, on your own, into your music career.”

I didn’t have an answer to that. He continued, “The entrepreneurs and business people in any industry will know you are not really ready. They will smell your inferiority like a lion smells fear in its prey. And when they do, it generally won’t be good for you. It would be like going into the jungle without a weapon, without shelter and without a guide.”

After our discussion, I became convinced it was time to work more on who I needed to become before concerning myself with what I needed to do. Our first major task was to define exactly where my mental skills and preparedness for general success were.

To discover your mental preparedness for launching your own music career, take this three-minute quiz to find out.

7 Things You Should Do Now to Begin Your Music Career

1. Don’t get caught speeding. Listen to the advice already given above. Focusing first on who you need to become is more important to your long term success than focusing on ‘what actions you should take’. Don’t get caught speeding through Step One in order to get to Step Two faster. Who you will become will dramatically influence the results you receive when you are busy doing things in the future.
2. ‘inspect’ what you ‘expect’. What do you expect from yourself? What do you expect from life? What do you expect from others? Your entire life, up to this point, is a reflection of your own expectations. You alone control your own expectations. Only you can choose to expect greater things out of yourself, your life and your surroundings – when you do this you will become ready for the next step…
3. Demand and Command. To expect greater things from yourself and life is an important step. But expectations won’t have real power until and unless you demand from yourself and command yourself to do what is necessary for you to move forward no matter what obstacles, challenges, fears and setbacks you may encounter along the way. More importantly, you must demand and command even more from yourself when things ARE going well. Success often causes some people to lose their momentum. This happens to people who are not truly “success-minded,” but have only been granted some shorter term success. When you become “success-minded,” you will maintain high levels of demand and command in your life in all situations. This is key for long-term success – especially in the music business.
4. Shoot Fire! How do other people perceive you? As a quiet, private, introverted or reserved person? Or as someone who is so filled with passion, intensity and commitment that they can see flames of fire shooting out from the back of your head? You already know that passion is the fuel which drives your actions to move toward what you want. Beyond this obvious point is another important component. When you are on fire, other people notice it and become attracted to you, what you do and what you have to offer. Highly successful people have an intensity about them, which most people do not possess. Many successful people will look for this quality in you as an indicator of what they perceive your success potential may be – this is especially true when you first meet a person who may be in a position of power to either help or hurt your career.Of course, be cautious not to come across as arrogant or obnoxious. Show people your attitude of expectancy, confidence, passion, determination, conviction and…. FIRE!
5. Get Congruent. It should be your goal to align all (or most) of your daily thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, plans and actions with what you want to be, do and have. Although this might seem obvious, very few people truly focus on this in their daily lives. Typically, we may want to manifest a particular outcome, but we divide our mind into opposing directions. Here are two common examples…
   1. A guy constantly thinks about becoming a touring guitar player, but does not really expect it to actually happen. The lack of “expectance” leads to further incongruity, because, by wanting but not “believing” he will really become a touring guitarist, he won’t make the necessary plans, contacts, and other actions which could take him there.
   2. College students, who want to become musicians, often major in a non music related (and non-entrepreneurial related) subject. In this case, most of these students’ time and energy are spent doing things which take them only further from their musical aspirations. As a general rule, the more congruent you are, the faster and easier you will get where you want to go.
6. Weed your garden….You might not always have the freedom to choose the physical location of where you live, but it is not always necessary to relocate your home. You can find success from virtually any physical place. In addition, not all of us have been blessed with supportive family environments. Although we cannot choose our family, we can choose our friends and other people we associate with (both on and offline). If the friends you have don’t support you, find new friends who will. The environment where your mind lives is very important. You must find supportive, positive and empowering peer group environments. People who have similar aspirations, ambitions and experience in the areas you seek are like good soil for which your career can develop and grow. Negative, pessimistic and disempowering people are like weeds. Do people around you build you up or tear you down? Associate with other success minded people, surround yourself with them. It’s hard for flowers to grow among weeds, so weed your garden.
7. Don’t depend on the sun and rain alone…. use fertilizer! Your musical skills (no matter how great they may be) will not be enough to create and sustain a significant level of success in the music industry (sad but true). You may even already have a reasonably decent understanding of how the music business works today (though most people don’t). Becoming a successful professional musician is a lot like being a gardener. To be sure your career grows, you need high quality seed (your mental preparedness), lots of sun (knowledge and skills), rain (physical action), and fertilizer (a mentor). Yes, it is possible to grow a blooming flower without fertilizer, but the chances of long-term life and maximum healthy growth go way up when you use fertilizer. The same is true with your level of success as a professional musician.

The average person’s score on the assessment mentioned above is 4 out of 10. Take the assessment yourself to find out what your score is.

It matters little where you are now, it matters greatly what you are willing to do now….

About the author:Tom Hess is a professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He teaches, trains and mentors musicians from all around the world. Visit http://www.tomhess.net/MusicCareer.aspx to discover highly effective musician learning resources – free advice, lessons and online assessments.

©2008 Tom Hess Music Corporation

The music biz stands at an historical crossroads – almost every aspect of the way people create, consume and listen to popular music is changing, dwarfing even the seismic shift in the 1880s when music lovers turned from sheet music and player pianos to wax cylinders and later, newfangled 78 rpm phonograph records.

The following highlights some of the most ground-shaking and, (in my opinion), enduring “metatrends” currently shaping the biz.  The intent is to give guidelines to both musicians and industry careerists to help set their forward sails on this crazy ocean we call music.

METATREND 1: Empowered Music Consumers

Today may be the very best time to be a music fan, especially one looking for a connection to a favorite artist or guidance and access to the exotic or rare.

Be it the iPod, alluring satellite radio services such as XM, the fan-beloved minutiae posted on Web sites, the availability of live music performances on AOL, the esoteric music videos streaming off Launch.com or the self-tailored satisfaction of burning a homemade mix on CD at home, there is a singular zest to the modern fan experience today.

The public is now driving the market. The challenge to the industry is to respond positively in such a way as to secure the future of music while satisfying customer demand and providing choice.

It’s becoming increasingly more difficult for companies to treat us like “mass market” ciphers.  The trend is towards “mass customization” where consumers’ unique needs are front and center.  Some marketing gurus call this trend “The 1-to-1 Future” and the companies that can dance with this trend will prosper.

What You Can Do About It

• Get to know your fans.  They are your chief asset going forward and the better you know them, the better you can communicate with them, build loyalty and enlist them in lending their support to you and your music projects.
• Involve them, empower them, mobilize them, let them co-create with you.  None of us knows what all of us know.  Build a community, a fan club, a subscription service and learn how to pool the wisdom of your following.
• Provide potential customers with as much choice as possible.
• Learn the technologies that will help you customize your communications with customers and fans.

METATREND 2: Music Product to Music as Service

Presenting music as a service, like radio or TV, would seem on the surface to be less profitable than selling millions of CDs, but actually, this change will be positive for the music industry. It will be able to sell more things associated with music. But the actual sale of music as a product will make less sense. It will be a move from transaction-based push to flat-fee pull.

Consumers have clicked, and they demand access to content by any means necessary. Just as AOL has gone from selling you five minutes of access to a take-whatever-you-want model, music too will move to a flat-fee model.

We’re not there just yet. But in the next few years, the requisite technology will fall into place. Then most of us will carry a wireless Internet uber-gadget wherever we go – a unified cellphone/MP3 player/ digital assistant/Blackberry/ camera/GPS locater/video recorder/co-pilot for life. This device will receive wireless Internet audio, a loose term I use to describe the various forms of streaming audio starting to appear on the Internet. With streaming audio, you can hear the music you love any time, anywhere.

The future isn’t about a change in distribution, it’s about the atrophy of distribution itself. Instead of distributing things, we’ll get access. It’s a critical difference.

The future isn’t about downloading songs and burning CDs. It’s about just-in-time customized delivery.  Music as on-demand service not as industry-dictated product. Just as in the early days of the record industry (c. 1900), music publishing will once again assume the primary role in the biz.  Music will become available for diverse uses dictated by consumers and businesses.

How fast will the sun set on the compact disc?  Quarter-size CDs that can float among compatible music players, computers, game devices, digital cameras and personal digital assistants are already developed.

Of course, a massive installed base of CD players means that the traditional recording industry markets are not going to disappear or even be impacted by digital distribution in the short term.  But rising consumer interest in downloads and an increasingly multi-media business-to-business economy opens new opportunities for composers, editors, sound designers, and all forms of audio producer.

What You Can Do About It

• You should be figuring out how to distribute your work through digital music services now.  The Net is your Open Mic to the world. Get yourself onto iTunes, Rhapsody and MusicNet. Learn the virtual ropes.
• As the industry moves away from physical product, it becomes increasingly important for musicians to learn the rules of licensing (read, ‘renting’) their music.
• Seek out users of music as well as buyers.
• Prepare for a multi-platform approach – value-added packages containing your music, artwork, DVDs, etc AND a container-less presentation using various online showcases, messageboards and portals.
• Develop marketing plans for both your selected singles as well as for your full-length albums.  50% of current online music sales are in the singles format.

METATREND 3: The Next Music Companies

The writing is on the wall for traditional music companies. The record industry grew rapidly, matured, and is now in the throes of transformation. How successful this transformation will be depends on how creatively the musical industrial complex can dance with all the changes spiraling around it.

Unfortunately, so much of the music industry is beholden to corporate owners, itchy for quick profits, and driven by rigid corporate imperatives.  This wreaks havoc with artist development; hell, it wreaks havoc with business development, and necessitates high turnover of both artists and employees. Major labels are also saddled with legacy problems regarding production and retail.  Thus the geologic tempo of industry change.

But the same forces undoing the larger music companies are empowering individual musicians and micro-businesses.

As with most modern industries, a silent computer on a desk is the wildcard that makes so much tradition redundant. Perhaps the term “record company” itself is becoming outdated – “Music Company” might be more relevant. Many music biz execs echo the words of Steve Becket of Warp Records when he says, “I think we’ll mutate into a new type of company – mixture of artist management, publisher, marketing consultant, agent and promoter.” “We’re a communications company,” agrees Marc Jones of Wall of Sound,  “and that’s what we’re becoming more everyday. I don’t think the model for a traditional record label will exist in this environment anymore.”

But we don’t have to solve the dilemma for the mainstream music business about which future to embrace.  We’re living the side-stream music movement that may inspire the majors but, God willing, will never be completely controlled by them.

Unlike mainstream commercial music, the farther you get out onto the fringes, the more helpful people become. The more participants, the greater the chances that something truly interesting will emerge from the collective rabble.

A new generation of music entrepreneurs is rising with a power in its corner it has never had before.  The times are ripe for change and these creators are the spearhead.

What You Can Do About It

• The appetite for music only grows around the globe and you can satisfy it. You’ll need to employ your maverick instincts over conventional “business rules”, take fuller responsibility for your own success, and beware of “standard industry practices” that can chain your career.
• Concepts like “company”, “work”, “job” and “career” are morphing.  The entire business economy is passing through a transition the likes of which haven’t been seen since the industrial revolution.  Rather than seeing your “career” as a ladder, think of it as a rouge wave full of rises, dips and switchbacks.
• It’s time to think outside the normal channels of business and imagine new kinds of companies. Creative alliances and partnerships are the key. Combining good music, cheap, global distribution and business savvy almost guarantees success in today’s music-hungry world.

METATREND 4: Segmenting Music Markets & Niche Music Cultures

I often hear musicians moaning about how consolidation and the monopolization of the media by companies like Clear Channel and Viacom threaten musical diversity, yet I can hear and obtain more interesting music today than I could ever hope to in the 1950s.

The menu of music choices and styles expands daily.

When the Grammys started in 1958 there were 28 categories of awards; last year there were 105!  Check out the “Music Styles” page at the allmusic.com and you’ll find over forty styles of music, each with a drop-down menu of several “sub-styles.”

Even the pop charts, which have made room in recent months for PJ Harvey, Modest Mouse, Diana Krall and Franz Ferdinand, suggests there’s an audience starving for something other than junk food.

The music market continues to segment and each segment is a “world”, a portal, through which small companies can create value and success.

While good news for niche companies, this is bad news for the musical industrial complex.  The major labels cannot justify going after these smaller markets because they are optimized instead for the larger, pop mainstream.   These niche music cultures can’t generate the sales needed to float the major label boat. While 20,000 unit sales are a cause to celebrate at a micro-label, they hardly register a blip on big company radar screens.

The times call for focus.  Mass customization and a segmenting market encourage the development of products and services of a “niche” nature. Since few of us have the time, money or energy to mount national marketing campaigns, it is in our best interest to discover and concentrate on a niche, a segment, that we can explore towards successful enterprise.  Whether your specialty is house, trance, bluegrass or neo-soul, learn to work that niche and scope out relationships and opportunities within it.

Micro-media targets the tributaries off the mainstream and if the artist occupies one of these “niche streams”, they have an open and ready channel for exposure to their target audience.  Each niche stream has its own burgeoning media culture and the smart combination of high-quality music, creative event-making, perseverance and strategic alliances gets people talking.

What You Can Do About It

• What is your niche? Maybe it’s arranging music, or the history of rock, or the intricacies of music software. Whatever it is it will lie at the crossroads where your most compelling desires intersect with your background resources and current opportunities in the real world.
• What is your music’s niche?  If your music can be slotted into an established category, then master that area both musically and business-wise.  Know the inlets and outlets for your music, become familiar with the influencers and tastemakers in that realm, and start communicating with them. If your music defies categorization then lead with that.

METATREND 5: The Next ‘Big Thing’ is Small

The analogy is television.  30 years ago, the three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) had a ninety percent share of the viewing audience.  Today it’s less than forty.  Where’s the other 50%?  Watching cable channels.  Though cable channels have miniscule ratings, they’re profitable. Why?  Because they’ve discovered and developed their niche.

And this is what smaller, indie labels do – the Americana sounds of New West Records, Red House Records’ focus on singer/songwriters, the creative acid jazz of Instinct Records, and the deep reggae catalog of Trojan insures listeners they can expect quality discs from each company within their respective niche. Indie market share is on the rise!

Lacking vision beyond their own profit lines, major record companies fail to see that the revolution in music delivery occurred in reaction to the industry’s mismanagement, not to mention its complicity in force-feeding the public a flavorless diet of sonic pabulum.  With the increasingly conservative (read, “risk-averse”) stance of the majors today, indie market niches become all the more important to the creative development of music.

The implosion of the musical industrial complex has also resulted in the availability of many formerly-signed artists and talented executives. The past ten years have seen veteran artists like The Pretenders, Rod Stewart, Foreigner, Aimee Mann, Sinead O’Connor, Carole King, Sammy Hagar, Dolly Parton, Hall & Oates, Hanson, Steve Vai, Sophie B. Hawkins and dozens of other either starting their own labels or signing on with smart indies.

What You Can Do About It

• The paternalisms of yesterday have given way to personal responsibility for your own success.  The holy grail is NOT a record deal; it’s waking up to your own power.
• Signing with a major label today in most cases is a career risk.  These divisions-within-corporations are unstable and anti-art environments, and best avoided by aspiring recording artists.
• If you’re up for it, start your own company and release your music through it.  If you want to delegate the heavy lifting seek out a successful indie label to partner with.  But only do so when you’ve achieved a level of success appealing to a business partner (that is, you’re showing net profit for an extended period of time).

Record company bosses think society’s top priority today must be restoring record-company revenue and profits. But music lovers and musicians have a different perspective. They want to know how musicians can exploit the extraordinary technology of the Internet to expand the audience and enable more musicians to make a living doing what they love, and improve the quality of life of consumers.

In a sense musicians may be in a better place today than they’ve ever been before. Taking a cue from the cyber-bard John Perry Barlow, I believe we could be seeing a paradigm shift from the domination of the “music business” to that of the “musician business.”

The more things go digital, the more we crave authentic, roots-based music; the more music that’s available to us, the more we seek niches that provide meaning and navigation through all the choices; and the more worldwide radio shows through satellite radio, the more we desire shared cultural experience via local djs.

If we had to, all of these trends can be placed under one banner that reads: the larger the world economy the more powerful its smallest players.

Hey, we’re talking about you.

1. Hone your talent and realize there is a place for you. Not everyone is a Quincy Jones, a Beatles, or a Bruce Springsteen, but if an artist like Tom Waits is a vocalist, then there is definitely room for you too. Do the work necessary to excel in your niche, whether it’s writing a chart, engineering a session, providing backup vocals, or teaching kids the basics of music.

Your goal, to use marketing lingo, is to “position” yourself in your “market” as the go-to person for that particular skill or talent. Don’t worry too much about industry rejection. Every record label in Britain initially passed on the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The key is believing in yourself and persevering beyond others’ opinions (even those of “the industry”).

2. Connect with as many people as you can because relationships drive music careers more that anything else, even talent. Music is a “who-you-know/who-knows-you” kind of business. The quality and quantity of your relationships will be the primary engines of your progress. Try developing creative projects with fellow-musicians. Perhaps you can combine your live show with two other acts and present the package to a local promoter. There is strength in numbers. Finding the right combinations takes experimentation.

If you’re interested in working in the business side of music, then interning at a music company is the best way to both learn how the biz works and connect with those who can help move your career along.

3. Accept the new powers in your corner and take responsibility for creating your own success. The last twenty years has given you the means to both produce and distribute your own music on a global scale. New models of business are emerging in the world of music. A “record deal” is not necessarily the goal any longer. The Internet has clearly become your “open mic” to the world, and desktop technologies provide you with ways to have the look, reach and efficiency of larger companies. Dare to be different.

Remember, new power also means new responsibilities. Global reach means a potentially far-flung audience. You need to be ready for the incoming messages and questions from this new market. Have you created the best business structures to hold and express your work? Are you setting up effective systems to communicate with your audience? It’s up to you to create your own success and not merely rely on a record company or agent to do the work of making you visible in the marketplace.

4. Understand that every business is becoming a “music business” and so musical opportunities are multiplying. It took a coffee company and a computer manufacturer to teach the music industry how to sell music in the digital age! Non-music businesses everywhere are seeking creative ways to add music-related services to their mix. This means that you needn’t be dependent on the traditional “music industrial complex” for music career success.

Think of companies you already resonate with and try brainstorming ways you can link up. Start on a local scale. It might be a gift shop, bookstore or arts organization. It may even evolve into a full-fledged sponsorship for a tour or recording project. Finds ways to add value to what these businesses are doing with what you have to offer. Forging creative alliances is key to building a multi-dimensional music career.

5. Prepare to be versatile and to wear several hats initially, until your “brand” is established. Most musicians I know have had to cobble together several revenue streams in the early stages of their careers in order to make enough money to support themselves. Many have also had to take on a non-music “lifeline careers” just to make ends meet, pay down debt, or supplement what they earn from music.

I tell musicians to not so much look for “a job,” but to seek out the work that needs to be done. It might be arranging a song, playing a wedding gig, helping organize a concert series, doing a jingle session, offering private music instruction, or writing a review of your favorite band’s new CD. Eventually, all the different experiences merge together into the roaring river that will be your music career. At that point you’ll be visible, in demand and able to name your price. And that’s career success.

Despite the importance of the Internet to commerce, CD sales through “brick and mortar” stores are still important. National distribution, rather than consignment, is the only practical way to service the big chains like Borders, Tower, and HMV. Although you must cultivate the relationship between yourself and the stores, successful distribution takes into account the entire marketplace. This marketplace is a fluid set of symbiotic relationships between yourself and radio, press, public relations, advertising, venues, the Internet, distribution companies, stores, manufacturers, vendors, and other musical acts in your genre.

Your job is to create a brand, an image, and a story that will engage all of these elements in the service of finding your audience. There is no guarantee that money invested in distribution will be recouped solely through CD sales. However, the prestige of national distribution is a career builder that will enhance your other efforts to make a living. Work smart, be honest with yourself, and hope for the best. But be prepared for some disappointment and failure along the way.

Getting Started

Before seeking distribution for your album, I suggest that you acquire a budget and start your own record label. You’ll be dealing with other businesses and it’s best to be on equal footing with them. Also, when your employees look to you for daily direction, you’re forced to focus your goals. I decided I’d found WaterBoat Music and hired a business-and-marketing team. Kimball Packard came aboard as manager and Louise Miller as administrative assistant. My wife, Jenny Mikesell, an accomplished website designer and graphic artist, worked as the art director.

To record my CD Trust, I hired a production-and-recording team. Berklee grad Dave Locke ’93 engineered and mastered the project. Players included other alumni like guitarist Kevin Barry ’88 (Paula Cole, Mary Chapin Carpenter) and bassist Mike Rivard ’85 (Jonatha Brooke), as well as former Del Fuegos drummer Woody Giessmann. Independent radio guru David Avery of Powderfinger Promotions was hired to work Trust to Triple-A and college radio.

While we made the recording, I searched for a distributor. There where problems. The two elements that distributors look for when negotiating with an artist are extensive touring and a previous track record of CD sales. Because of my commitments to teaching, I couldn’t tour to support distribution. And while my first CD This Distant Light had garnered a Boston Music Award nomination, I had no sales record.

To make up for this deficit, I crafted a marketing plan that highlighted my strengths, drawing upon the entrepreneurial concepts outlined in my book, Making Music Your Day Job. My marketing plan featured a $10,000 budget and focused on national radio airplay, advertising, regional gigs, in-store and in-station performances, and various guerilla marketing techniques. (Visit www.waterboat.com to download a PDF version of the complete proposal.) I sent my proposal out to five distributors, and in December of 2000 I signed an exclusive deal with Goldenrod/Horizon. What made them sign me when others had turned me down? In part, they loved my music. But essentially, they liked my marketing plan and our $10,000 budget.

Before signing me, Goldenrod had presented my proposal to their single largest client, Borders Books & Music, to get their opinion. Their national folk music buyer agreed to take an order, and, based on that promise, I got the deal. I had used my powers of persuasion and business expertise to circumvent the key requirements of a typical distribution deal. Would that fact ultimately hurt me? Marketing plans aside, Trust would have to prove its worth at the cash register. If it couldn’t, WaterBoat Music would be dropped. I decided to risk it.

Be Careful What You Wish For

One day we had no deal and were alone. The next day, we had a deal that involved lots of other people. We now had primary relationships with both the national and regional sales representatives at Goldenrod plus the field marketing manager from Borders. Soon we would develop additional relationships with new performance venues, advertising sales reps, shipping companies, and more.

Suddenly, we had to factor everyone’s schedules and turnaround times into our own plan and things became very complicated. The radio campaign and retail release dates had to be coordinated with all other efforts, including gigs, advertising, and in-store promotion. But it didn’t work out that way. Since we signed the deal in early December, we missed the holiday buying season completely. Major listening rooms book four to six months in advance, so January, March, and April were unavailable to us.

It didn’t make sense to do in-stores and in-stations unless we could support the efforts with advertising and we hadn’t had time to negotiate ad rates, design our print ads, and produce the radio advertising spots. The listening post program at Borders—a key part of our plan—was booked until at least April. It looked like May 1 was our earliest possible start date, but if we waited until May, college radio stations would be winding down for summer break. We decided to forge ahead with a January radio and retail release and work hard to put everything else in place by May. (see sequence of events below)

Trust went to stores in mid-January and Powderfinger worked radio from January 23 to March 12. All in all, we got the CD played on almost 200 stations nationwide. It was a great start. But managing the details was often problematic. Little things snowballed into an avalanche. For example, our first order was two weeks late while we were setting up a FedEx Ground account and frantically designing our point of purchase (P.O.P.) stickers that said “all profits to benefit the Sierra Club.”

While this minor disaster unfolded, we scrambled to call venues, radio stations and the press, design print ads, fix our computer system, update the website, play gigs, send out packages, do interviews, and book in-stores. We were often completely overwhelmed. Finally, May arrived—a full two and a half years after the recording sessions began—our modified marketing plan was in full swing.

Cash on the Barrelhead

The following represents investments I made to support the distribution deal.

• Recording $30,000
• Staffing $10,000
• Radio promo $3,000
• Radio commercials $1,000
• Specialty packaging $1,000
• Total: $45,000

At $7.50 per copy, I must sell 6134 copies to recoup my hard-dollar expenditures. These costs are actual money invested and do not include promotional copies of the CD given to venues, the press, or radio, nor do they include product credit payment of the listening post program at Borders. To date, I am far from recouping my investment via CD sales.

However, all is not lost. My main goal to first establish brand name identity has been successful. Some of the direct, non-sales oriented results of working my distribution deal are as follows:

• More people have heard of me, and heard my music.
• My press kit commands increased respect.
• I’m now able to play key venues and better rooms.
• I’m playing in new markets, including New York City and London, England.
• I’m a more informed and valuable teacher to my students.

I set my sights high and have succeeded in some realms, failed in others, but at the end of the day, I asked and answered questions that were important to me. This has clarified my artistic vision, and increased the scope of my work. The process of working my distribution deal changed and challenged the way I felt about my music, my goals and the industry in general. It was exhilarating, frustrating, and a real learning experience.

Kevin’s Top 10 Hits

1. Get Radio Active
The advent of low-cost digital recording technology has flooded the market with releases. Radio station music directors now rely more heavily on indie promoters they trust to help them program. Unless you are extremely good on the phone and know the radio business, hire a good promoter. Even though I was a music director at a radio station, I found it was best to let a pro help me out.

Develop an effective mailing package that will help you break through the clutter at radio stations. Use radio airplay to increase sales, press, and touring. We sent the weekly radio airplay reports to Goldenrod so they could service stores in national markets where Trust was receiving heavy or medium rotation.

2. You Can’t Eat Good Press
While important, press coverage does not necessarily translate into CD sales. The industry is filled with artists who languish in the “critically acclaimed” ghetto. That being said, you’ll need press before you release your CD on its “street date.”

During the production of Trust I invited members of the Boston press to lunch and then join us while we mixed a tune. We also made 50 “one-offs” and sent them out to the national press to get pre-release coverage. Develop a philosophy of consistency when dealing with the press. For example, on the finished CD booklet, incorporate your picture into the cover art. When you start to get press, control your image by only allowing them to use your CD cover. That way, when people see your CD in stores, they’ll recognize it from an article they read about it. These concepts are road tested and they work.

We had reviews, profiles, and feature cover stories in Billboard, ASCAP Playback, Gig magazine, the Boston Globe, the Boston Tab, and numerous other publications.

3. P.R. Is Good Business
Public relations is the process of building goodwill for your brand in the public eye. Supporting a good cause is a great way to do this. I decided to donate all profits from the sale of Trust to the American Liver Foundation and the Sierra Club, and this has opened quite a few doors for the project. Because I teach entrepreneurship and career planning at Berklee, we also targeted the business editors of nonmusical publications. As a musician, entrepreneur and educator, I am somewhat anomolous in the nine-to-five world. Go where your competitors aren’t and reap the rewards of being a rare find.

4. Get the Word Out
Public-relations efforts go hand in hand with your advertising campaign. We focused our advertising on the listening posts at six Boston-area Borders stores, where customers could listen to the CD through headphones. This type of program is paid for in product credit rather than hard dollars. One month at listening posts “cost” WaterBoat Music $1,071 in product credit. This means that at $7.50 per CD, Goldenrod and Borders keep the proceeds from the first 143 copies of Trust sold.

As part of the Borders listening post program, we also received 15 “free” 60-second commercials on The River 92.5, a great local Triple-A station. We decided to boost the 15 ads with additional commercials to promote gigs and various in-store performances.

To retain control of my image and message, I produced the ads. Berklee alumnus Scott Miller edited cuts from Trust into a commercial bed, I wrote the copy, and station DJs did the voice-overs. For maximized impact, it’s essential that advertising be seen and heard in as many different mediums as possible. Our May ad campaign included radio, print, and the Internet, with a focus on live gigs.

5. For Every Season, Tour, Tour, Tour
Marketing efforts, even very successful ones, are no substitute for live shows. David Tamulevich, a prominent national booking agent, suggests a touring schedule of 225 to 250 nights a year. Touring is actually the best opportunity you have for selling your CDs to a motivated, excited audience. Berklee alumnus Bob Malone set up a merchant account with Visa, and his live-show CD sales have increased significantly.

Ironically, great press and radio airplay can help propel you beyond your capacity. As you start to play bigger and better rooms, it’s tougher to fill seats. Be realistic: if you need to take a step back and work as an opening act, do it.

If you’re serious about a career as an original artist, though, cover gigs can drain your energy and credibility. I strongly suggest making every effort to talk to those in charge of venues before sending your package. Have an honest discussion with them. Don’t be afraid to turn down a gig that’s not right for you; if nothing else, you’ll be memorable! If I were 25, I’d start a band, rent a cheap house in the woods, make a CD, buy a van and hit the road. I’d support the effort with a marketing plan and a great website.

6. Weave a Big Web
Use a professionally designed website that is commercially viable and reinforces your brand. All marketing and advertising should drive traffic to your website. To encourage return traffic, update the site with new songs and new content. The Web is not a static medium. Unless you’re getting thousands of hits a month, it doesn’t make sense to fulfill your own orders. Link your site to CD Baby or Amazon and let them do it; they have the traffic.

Your site should be easy to navigate and unburdened by huge sound or picture files. I post short Real Player song samples on my site and provide a link to my MP3 page for bigger files. My entire first CD, featuring Ellis Paul, Catie Curtis and Duke Levine, is online. I have only 20 copies left, and rather than manufacture more, I give it away in MP3 format. If people dig the music, maybe they’ll come back and purchase Trust. Check out the “Free Goodies” link at www.waterboat.com for details.

Put your gig listings in the table format that allows Musi-Cal and other performance search engines to offload the information automatically to save you from duplicated effort. Register your website with the main search engines. You’ll have to update it every six months to remain current. The Internet is the ultimate guerilla marketing vehicle that allows you to subvert the status quo.

7. Work for Bananas
Branding efforts that are highly creative and cost effective are an essential part of a guerilla marketing campaign. We made a strategic alliance with Club Passim, which has a 15,000-person mailing list for their music schedule newsletter. In exchange for a discount on ad space, we committed to donating 50 percent of the purchase price of my CD to their music education fund. All a customer had to do was write “Club Passim” in the memo section of their check and send it directly to us.

8. Star Wars, Culture Wars
There is a strong interrelationship between press, radio airplay, touring, the clout of your distributor, the strength of your live show, your “buzz” factor, and that ineffable psycho-sexual, gender-war, political, what-is-hip, who-is-hot miasma of fear and loathing we call pop “culture.” Fueling this hot-rod race of fame seekers is cold, hard cash—the more the better. Be prepared to grease the wheels of commerce in the form of advertising, packaging, videos, shelf fees, touring, product give-aways, and other forms of promo.

Country and r&b music are the big sellers. If you’re in these categories, you’re competing with serious star power and huge corporate budgets. If not, set your sights on modest sales appropriate to your genre. Selling 20,000 units would represent big numbers for a contemporary singer/songwriter but would get a pop artist canned.

According to the New Yorker magazine critic Nick Hornby, a recent Billboard top 10 list of bestselling albums includes the song titles, “Bad Boy for Life,” “American Psycho,” and “Pimp Like Me.” If you’re not writing songs that celebrate rampant consumerism, sexism, and the machismo of violence, your potential audience just got smaller. Way smaller.

9. It’s a Big Country, Pilgrim
Remember, it’s your distributor who’s national, not you. Goldenrod focused their placement of Trust in Boston and in select stores nationwide that did well with folk music. That’s fine, because I didn’t have the budget to promote every market properly. Initially, I wanted to do the national listening post program at Borders, which has 350 stores. I would have needed 350 listening-post CDs plus five copies for each store for a total of 2,100 CDs. Because I only had 2,000 CDs to start with, I would have had to manufacture 1,000 more to meet my other needs. Borders wisely suggested I start small, and if sales were hot I could grow into a national campaign. Keep in mind that when your inventory goes into a distribution network, it ties up your capital investment for a long time.

10. It’s Mine, All Mine!
If you’re signed to a label, they will pay up-front costs for recording and some marketing. But they’re merely loaning you money that you pay back through recoupables—a convoluted process that never favors the artist. It’s better to own your own company. Quite frankly, if you’re not willing to make that investment, why should anyone else? Besides, the payback on the other end is potentially better.

Take selling CDs from the stage as an example. If I were on another label, I’d have to pay them wholesale rates for my own work. At a sale price of $15, I might net $7 and pay them $8. But with WaterBoat Music, I get the entire $15. Plus, I have the flexibility to set special sale pricing.

At a recent show, my pricing went like this.

• $15 – Buy 1 CD, get a free tape
• $20 – Buy 1 CD, get a free CD
• $25 – Buy 2 CDs, get a free tape.

That night, I made more on CD sales than I did at the door. And in the End…

After working my deal hard for nine months, I continue to build on what I’ve made. There are no easy solutions and it’s definitely a work in progress! Our industry is not for the faint of heart or the empty of pocket. But as long as we’re willing to invest in our careers, we’ll always have a future in the music business. Only time will tell if it’s worth it in the end.

As a complement to these contributions, I’d like to offer some thoughts not so much on trends in the biz, but on music career development amid these trends. I will try to open up some of these trends and look at their career implications and applications.

I hope both musicians and industry careerists will gather some guidance for setting their sails amidst the mercurial waves of a transforming entertainment business.

First, some noise from the trenches:

• Of the 27,000 albums released last year by the recording industry, less than 5000 sold over 1000 units.
• Since 1988 only 16 classical albums have sold more than a million copies in the United States; five of them were put out by Victoria’s Secret.
• The source of most music listening hours is neither Cds nor radio; it’s video games.
• When pop star Sting needed a marketing partner for his 2000 album release he chose Compaq Computer.
• “Ten years ago, rock musicians would never listen to dance music and dance musicians would never listen to classical music. Now, most of the rock musicians I know own samplers and most classical composers I know also are listening to dance music.” — Moby
• Worldwide entertainment and media spending will reach $1.4 trillion by 2006, (PriceWaterhouseCoopers).

The New Music Economy

The news is good and bad. We’re seeing nothing less than a global restructuring of the economy. This isn’t a brief shudder; the organizational structures of the last century are being torn apart. Business worlds are deconstructing and reconstructing. Everything is blurred, fuzzy and vague. And the meanings of ‘work’ , ‘career’ and ‘job’ are being re-written.

We’re also witnessing (and feeling the effects of) the end and beginning of the music business. Like humans, industries pass through developmental stages: birth, youth, maturity and death (or transformation).

Our industry grew rapidly, matured, plateaued and is now in the throes of transformation. How successful this transformation will be depends on how creatively the musical industrial complex can dance with the changes.

Unfortunately, so much of the music industry is beholden to corporate owners itchy for corporate-size profits and driven by rigid corporate imperatives. This wrecks havoc with “artist development”; hell, it wrecks havoc with business development, and necessitates high turnover of both artists and employees.

Complicating industry maturation is an event no one saw coming: a new distribution channel called the Internet. The big labels are contracting as a vast Web is spinning around them. The Internet is both threatening to take the rug of necessity out from under vast sectors of the traditional music business AND providing musicians and songwriters with direct access to global audiences.

All of this adds up to a picture today where it is no less risky to “go indie” than to “get signed”, signed, that is, as an artist or as an employee. Choosing to go indie is exploding across all industries not just music. We need only think of indie film or book publishing. Independence is a mark of the times we’re living in. We are profoundly on our own in this milieu.

And that’s the rub.

We’re beginning to accept that we will never return to the more static, less opportunity-rich but also more comforting world in which most of us were raised. The changes we’re living through are both permanent and dynamic. The real social revolution of the last 30 years is the switch from a life that is largely organized for us to a world in which we are all forced to be in charge of our own destiny. That’s the scary challenge.

And also the exciting opportunity.

Today we have three different music ‘industries’ developing side by side:

1. The mainstream pop/rock business, which will continue to market established stars like Celine Dion and Whitney Houston.
2. The chaotic illegal record business, involving at one extreme pirates and bootleggers, at another experimental and political artists refusing to accept the restraints of copyright law; and in between the usual variety of pirate broadcasters, home digital distributors, and so forth.
3. The indie, genre music scenes, local players connected through web sites and digital radio, but commercial in their niche, making enough money to go on making music but not necessarily seeking to play ‘the game” of ever-increasing ladder-climbing success.

The first industry is contracting; the second is and always will be present; and the third is poised for quantum development.

The lesson: Unless you’re seeking Britney Spears-level fame, then avoid the major labels and prove yourself in the independent sphere first. Someday you may want to partner with a major company (record company or otherwise) but, for now, focus on creating your own success, building your value, maintaining control of your career and music trajectories, following your muse and your spreadsheets with utter dedication and focus.

From The “MUSIC BUSINESS” To The “MUSICIAN BUSINESS”

In a sense musicians may be in a better place today than they’ve ever been before. Taking a cue from the cyber-bard John Perry Barlow, I believe we could be seeing a paradigm shift from the domination of the “music business” to that of the “musician business.”

The same forces that are undoing the larger music companies are empowering individual musicians. And as a result, the idea of a ‘music career’ is sprouting new wings as artists and industry careerists begin discarding intoxicating myths and tapping into some new-found powers.

Powers deriving from desktop computers and digital recording gear, from a hyperabundance of entrepreneurial and self-development resources, a segmenting (and reachable) music marketplace, and most importantly, from the Internet – the first tool that puts a global communication and distribution “channel” into the musician’s hands.

As venture-funded dotcoms rose, crashed and burned, a quiet revolution has been slowly but surely mounting; one that threatens to turn the music industry on its head.

In a peculiar way, the computer sets the music industry back 300 years. Consider: Musicians of the past performed songs for royal and religious “patrons” and received support (patronage) in return. It was a direct connection between musician and audience, as small as it was.

Today, with the Net, musicians are capable of galvanizing global audiences, nurturing them through generous communications, and building support models to help them earn a sufficient living.

In other words, the Net allows the patron model to re-emerge only this time, rather than having one exclusive patron, a musician may have thousands. It’s a slow-growth strategy but with a pace and quality entirely in the hands of artists and their teams.

“Patrons” subscribe for a reasonable price ($30-40/year?) for access to the artist, first call for all new tracks, and extra values like discounted tickets, fully-packaged recordings, posters and exposure to any other works of the artist.

Musicians and bands like Jonatha Brooks, Scooter Scudieri, Maktub, Christine Lavin and Aimee Mann are all using the digital channel (alongside recordings and performances) to grow and nurture supportive fan bases in this way.

Again, slow but sure.

If you’re putting out awesome music, then build it and they will come.

The lessons: Accept your new power. See yourself as an entrepreneur – one who creates forms to hold and deliver creative works. Befriend technology and rigorously apply yourself to understanding it. Throw out the “quick fame” idea and commit yourself to long-term career success.

Every Business Is A Music Business

Every business is becoming a “music business” or, more accurately, an entertainment business.

Management guru Tom Peters claims that “it’s barely an exaggeration to say that everyone is getting into the entertainment business.” Peters counsels his corporate clients that “the bottom line in commercial life is the sum total of conjured-up dramas created by our customers.” The new operative words, says Peters, are myth, fantasy, and illusion.

It’s no mere coincidence that other industries try to model the way the entertainment industry is organized. What do the cultural industries – including the recording industry, the arts, television, and radio – do? They commodify, package, and market experiences as opposed to physical products or services. Their stock and trade is selling short-term access to simulated worlds and altered states of consciousness.

The fact is, they are an ideal organizational model for a global economy that is metamorphosing from commodifying goods and services to commodifying cultural experience itself.

Companies way outside the orbit of the traditional music business are waking up to this all around the planet. As a result, you are no longer beholden to traditional “music industry companies” to achieve music success.

We’d mostly agree that the major record companies served their purpose well: they made recorded music available to us on a fairly vast scale for seventy-plus years, instilling an insatiable appetite for music in the process.

As a result music “sells”. Music has accompanied just about every product that’s come to market since the thirties. In fact, today some of the most interesting music is heard more readily on TV commercials than on the radio.

Wherever we go we hear music. Why? Because we love it and we want it. We want it when we drive, eat breakfast, shower, work, make love, shop for stuff — it’s the aural landscape of our lives.

We hear music on recordings, at concerts, on commercials and at the airport; we listen to music over the phone and in our video games, Walkmen, iPods, Rios and cell phones. The global demand for music is chronic and ever-growing.

We’re purchasing music just about everywhere too. 25 years ago you bought records at record stores; today you can get them at record stores, grocery stores, drug stores, book stores, consumer electronic stores, department stores, plant stores, tattoo parlors, bars, gyms, museum shops, thru the mail, over the Internet, at kiosks, at the airport, at MacDonalds, at Starbucks, at Victoria’s Secret, thru 800#s, and hundreds of other places– MUSIC IS EVERYWHERE!

Why?

Because it’s a universally loved value and activity, and companies across the board are looking to associate themselves with music and its fans.

The lesson: These trends require a new way of thinking about the “music business” and “industry careers.” It’s time to stretch our minds and get outside the box of traditional music business models. The “digital common” brings all kinds of non-music businesses into a space where creative partnerships can develop. Non-music partners are fresh and unjaded and excited about associating with musical and entertainment arts as a way of adding value to what they’re offering.

We should reflect on where musical skills are used rather than on where music has traditionally been sold. Think of companies you personally resonate with and then focus on those that may have an affinity with the kind of music you produce. Make an alliance and use that alliance to market your music. Consider Craig Dory and Brian Levine of Dorian Recordings who get their recordings played on all the new hardware at consumer electronics shows. Smart alliances.

Remember, the economic structures of the last century are being torn apart. The rules are being rewritten. Anything goes in the business world today.

Therein lies your opportunity.

Less Precious, More Valuable

Some fear the devaluing of music simply because of its ubiquity and, to an extent, this may be true. “We are teaching a generation of consumers that plastic costs money and music is free,” Albhy Galuten, VP of Interactive Programming at UMG once famously said.

And it’s true. By placing the value of the musical content in its pretty package and not in the music itself, by reacting with lawsuits instead of evaluating the validity of their current business models, by focusing their efforts on how to prevent piracy through content protection schemes rather than remove the motive to pirate instead – record companies are indeed teaching a generation of consumers that music is free.

More choice of music should, however, increase consumption and lower price. The business of music should grow and music can be more integral to one’s life with less limitations on how to consume it. Music will get more valuable but less precious (in terms of a ‘collector mentality’) and less expensive. We may need to regard our recordings increasingly as a promotional expense designed to provide access to other arenas for our talents.

Seven Navigational Clues For Setting Your Sails

How can you best position yourself for optimal career development in a transforming industry?

Here are seven ways:

1. Brace yourself for crazy times.

The transitions we’re living through aren’t ending any time soon. We’re in an entirely new game, but we don’t quite know yet how to update the rules. Our situation offers tremendous opportunities for individual fulfillment and self-expression. But it also requires that we expend a great deal of energy making what were until recently fairly routine and straightforward decisions.

As the Internet morphs into the Evernet – turning our personal computers, electronic notebooks, PalmPilots, and wristwatches into the equivalent of perpetually open T-1 lines – the institutions that we have come to know will continue to change shape, crumble, or disappear with a ferocity we can only now imagine. More instability and more opportunity, more dislocation and more choice, will be the result.

And so we have a richer environment today, but a far more daunting one as well.

The job picture isn’t any better.

Higher. Bigger. More. Not so long ago, that’s what getting promoted was all about. The aim was the top. The way to get there was by climbing the ladder, accumulating the badges of power: a bigger title, a bigger office, more people reporting to you. Everybody knew how to win at this game. You got ahead by climbing over the backs of your coworkers. And by kissing the…hand of whoever was in charge.

The game has changed.

Try: down, sideways, and sometimes up. Try: smaller, less. The career ladder’s been hacked to just a few rungs. The new path is full of switchbacks. Plan on zig-zagging in your career. You’ve got to meander – taking different jobs so you can learn more skills. The size of your office? Who cares? You’re never there anyway!

You need to be an “ambiguity survivor” in these times, that is, you need to have a high tolerance for confusion and may even relish it because you know that it’s a close relative of change. You’ll need to be able to live within the paradox of past comforts vs. your vision of a more fulfilling future. And you need to know that the greater the spread between the past and future scenarios, the more your creativity will flourish.

If all of this sounds vague, get used to it.

2. Size yourself up.

If you want to create work that suits your individual needs and talents, you must not only be aware of the forces reshaping your world. You must also develop a through knowledge of yourself and an understanding of what you have to offer. Only then can you set about finding the point of intersection between your opportunities and your gifts.

Know our priorities, values, temperament, character, and ambitions. Understand where your blocks lie, what emotional legacies might be holding you back or pushing you forward. Understand what you fear, what makes you feel stuck or overwhelmed.

The well-known motivational theorist, Abraham Maslow, once commented: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.” Many of us are walking around today with outdated toolboxes. New challenges call for new tools. If we are to re-create our careers and businesses for the twenty-first century, we must release our outdated beliefs about the way the music industry works and replace our time-worn hammers with a radically new tool kit.

Know your strengths but, more importantly, know your weaknesses and blind spots too. Are you a master player but a marketing dunce? Can you blast out a song in five minutes but find it hard to make friends? Playing and writing are crucial skills but in today’s business world you’ll need to also practice the arts of self-promotion and networking. Find a way to get what you need.

Also, don’t sell yourself short! Be sure to make visible those skills that lie under the radar of your memory. Those swim classes you offered at your neighborhood YMCA contain a rich palette of skill colors: student assessment, curriculum development, customized instruction, group facilitation, etc. Don’t sell yourself short as you inventory what you can offer.

3. Think “skills security,” not “job security”.

In many ways, “job security” is gone. We’re seeing a shift from corporate loyalty and identification to enlightened self-interest. All across the board there is an increasingly prevalent attitude among workers that, in the face of increased uncertainty and a shifting, constantly re-focusing economy, they have to become “free agents” – highly-skilled “units of one” not necessarily attached to a particular company, loyal to “projects” and individual teams rather than organizations, and always looking out for new opportunities.

Think “skills security”.

This comes pretty easy for most musicians who are already wired for flexible works arrangements and are used to wearing several hats at once. In fact, musicians are optimally suited in may ways for the new world of work. Through their diverse activities they’ve learned to “multi-task”, “build coalitions among diverse groups” and use “whole brain thinking”. They quite naturally demonstrate that “flexibility of being” so valued in today’s quick-changing environment. The key is to have confidence in your skills, continue to develop them, and watch for opportunities that beg for them.

This means:

• Writing your own script rather than waiting for someone to write it for you
• Being vigilant on your own behalf, identifying and preparing for opportunities, rather than expecting anyone else to guide you along or do reconnaissance.
• Becoming an independent agent, defining yourself in terms and concepts that are independent of your job title, your organization, or what other people think you should be.
• Changing your mindset from selling to solving.

4. Become a corporation of one.

Telling is the marked increase in the number of actual freelancers, independent contractors, and temps in today’s workforce: now roughly 1 out 5 workers falls into one of these categories. Again, pretty familiar territory for most musicians.

Think of yourself as a corporation of one, with a number of different departments, and you as the product:

• Research and development: What are the areas in which you’re going to learn and develop? How are you going to keep your skills on the leading edge? Now as ever a lack of information – about a new position, a new company, a different location – is the root of most job seeker anxiety; in the end, I feel, the informed careerist is the happy careerist.
• Production: What services or products are you going to offer? How are they linked to you personally? What processes will you employ to develop them efficiently and effectively?
• Marketing: What key assets do you have to sell? What market niche can you exploit? What opportunities can you take advantage of? Do you have a marketing plan? What is your product worth? Have you developed creative and effective ways of selling your services?
• Promotion and public relations: How are you going to promote your product? What are the stories behind your work? How do you plan on penetrating a dense media culture with these stories? And what “affinity partners” will you link up with to mutually expand your visibility?

5. Be a meaning-giver.

Futurist Paul Saffo talks about the different “scarcities” the world has experienced over the past hundred and fifty years. First there was a scarcity of “conduit” (that is, pipeline). Then electric wires were strung coast to cost and conduit was hyperabundant. Then there was a scarcity of “content”, that is, information and programming to fill the conduit. Then content became hyperabundant too until today we’re drowning in information.

The new scarcity, according to Saffo, is “context”, that is, giving meaning to all this information. The increasing flood of information calls for “filters”, “editors” and “portals”. The need for context is so strong that Saffo sees a time when people like Opra Winfrey and Peter Jennings will be licensing their “worldviews” to software companies to create products that screen vast amounts of information and present digestible info-bites in an acceptable framework for users!

A clear example of providing context in the hyperabundant field of music is the compilation. Once a mere afterthought of the recording industry, these “variety packs of music” have emerged as a vital force in the market. Have you noticed all those compilations on the counters of lifestyle retailers Pottery Barn, Structure, Williams-Sonoma and others? One man – Rock River Communications’ Jeffrey Daniel – usually chooses the music. If mixing tapes is an art, then Daniel is the most popular artist you’ve never heard of: his branded compilations have sold nearly 5 million copies. Rock River’s annual wholesale revenue is about $8 million, on par with a midsize record label.

How might you, in your area of expertise, be a meaning-giver in the world of music? Are you an expert in the use of ProTools or on 70s soul? Is bluegrass your passion or is it music education for kids? Are you highly informed about microphones, roots reggae, or lyric writing? How can you put that to use using channels like the Internet and other digital tools?

6. Own your niche.

The times call for focus. Mass customization and a segmenting marketplace encourage the development of products and services of a “niche” nature. Since few of us have the time, money or energy to mount national marketing campaigns, it is in our best interest to discover and concentrate on a niche that we can explore towards successful enterprise.

Niche is an architectural term referring to a special place that’s designed to display or show off an object of some kind, like an ornament, that’s placed in a recess of a wall or an arched area of a room.

And that’s just what a niche can be for you. Finding your niche will set you off from others who do something similar and draw the best possible attention to you and what you can offer.

Examples of niche marketing abound in the world of music:

• Chris Silvers, a Dallas trumpeter, used to take out every Latin music recording from the Dallas Public Library and play along with them, until he mastered the horn lines. As a result, he became a first-call musician and horn arranger for all latin bands passing through the Dallas-Fort Worth area and beyond.
• Chicago native Joycie Mennihan was always drawn to music’s power to heal. She took this interest and turned it into “Sound Health”, a company providing workshops, seminars and books about music therapy and its health benefits.
• Lee Jason Kibler (aka DJ Logic) turned an interest in sampling and a love of multiple music styles, into a unique production sound so that his chops are some of the most in-demand from top recording artists.
• Boston’s Rosie Cohen, took a love of singer songwriters, a passion for adult literacy, and tireless devotion, and turned it into Big Girl Records’ first release, “Can You Read This Boston?,” a compilation album of singer-songwriters, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Boston Adult Literacy Fund.

Choosing a niche will open certain doors to you while closing others. But just as you’ll never get to see the world if you can’t decide which destination to head for first, so it is with committing to one focus for your career and business marketing. The doors that will open to you once you fully commit to one endeavor will present new opportunities you may have never imagined.

On the other hand, the 21st century musician should remain flexible and be ready to re-purpose when the time comes.

When asked about what advice he had for young players, pianist Ahmad Jamal once said: “Prepare yourself to have options. Many of the greats were lost because they didn’t have options. If there is one exit door when a fire breaks out chances are you’re going to get trampled to death. You can conduct, perform. Teach, arrange, produce, go to an institute of higher learning and get the options, and avoid the exit door”.

7. Use the Force

Nothing speaks louder than something creative. No one can define “creative” but we all know it when it’s present.

Unfortunately, most of us traffic with societies demanding little in the way of creativity. We can get by, and even be very “successful” with partial participation, re-cycling culture and conversation ad infinitum. Studies show that a child’s creativity plummets at around age 5. What usually begins at that age? Right.

Though the word “education” comes from the Latin ‘educare’ (meaning, ‘to draw out’), our systems betray a fear of human nature and instead pour in reams of information that a committee somewhere decided we should know.

In the process, the multidimensional child-artist is flattened and “de-programmed”. To make room for all this intellectualizing art, music and drama are pushed to the margins of education and are often the first activities pegged for budget cuts.

Few of us get any training in how to tap our inner creative. The last few centuries were outward-oriented to the extreme and much of the ancient knowledge about human power went underground. As a result, we hear that humans use only 10% of their brains.

There are two responses to this: accept it as the expert opinion, or push on to the other 90%.

Beginning in the 1950s a more inclusive consciousness began to spread, and people experimented more readily with new ways of thinking and acting. These “new ways” were, of course, often old ways rediscovered and renamed. They included a more appreciative attitude about the body, the environment, and different lifestyles.

Another was a “turning inward” and the power of thinking to affect reality. In its most basic form, it says, ‘you are what you think you are.’ Today we all have the chance to compose our own lives. It’s a liberating prospect, but also daunting, because it requires a high degree of self-knowledge. If we don’t start at the core – if we instead accept reflexive, inherited, or half-thought-out definitions of who we are and what we have to contribute – we run the risk of being overwhelmed by the possibilities that we face.

To break through to those other parts of ourselves that sit submerged beneath our everyday consciousness demands courage.

There is nothing more brave than filtering out the chatter that tells you to be someone you’re not. There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.

In his 1994 inaugural address Nelson Mandela spoke these profound words: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

Well that certainly turns it on its head, doesn’t it? The poet Robert Frost similarly observed: “Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found out that it was ourselves.” Tapping into the creative means first understanding the qualities creative people share: keen powers of observation, a restless curiosity, the ability to identify issues others miss, a talent for generating a large number of ideas, persistent questioning of the norm, and a knack for seeing established structures in new ways.

Commencement

The only way to lead in the new world of music is to deconstruct the ruling dogmas of our industry (like, for instance, that records are the best vehicles to convey music and they should remain the chief support pillar of the industry), to generate heretical ideas to challenge that dogma, and then to build strategies around those ideas.

There’s a new dynamic in the biz today, one that flies in the face of all received wisdom. It can be said the first phase of the music industry (c. 1935-70) was music-driven, new sounds came up from the treets and clubs, and entrepreneurs responded.

The second phase (c. 1970-1995) was business-driven, lawyers and accountants ascending to decision-making posts and corporate imperatives dictating “hits”.

The third phase (1995-now…) seems to be market-driven, consumers themselves are taking control of their music consumption. There, of course, are elements of all three approaches at all times, but one has dominated each era.

Moving forward to individual audience empowerment brings music back into a more purely aesthetic relationship again, which is good for the art itself, and better for artists too. Artists may never recapture the kind of control of their relationship with their audience that they had in the past (except live, in concert), but a genuine aesthetic interplay with their audience is much better than being beholden to the least common denominator of the average of a mass audience’s taste.

The current difficult climate serves as a form of reckoning. The tougher the times, the more clarity you gain about the difference between what really matters and what you only pretend to care about.

No one knows where all the cards will fall in this industry-wide shake up, but the good thing about radical change is that, during those times, the little person has a chance to make a big difference. It is the time when big ideas are brought to life, big names are made, and, yes, even big money is made.

The power’s in your corner.

Rise.

Nobody’s Buying What They’re Told to Anymore

The Big Labels

The big labels are having a hard time selling CDs. They are panicking because they put a lot of cash into producing, marketing and promoting new releases and the masses aren’t biting. An associate of mine got signed to a record deal last year. The whole package cost the label about six hundred thousand big ones to produce and promote the whole thing and they have only sold about a thousand CDs so far. The music industry is getting nervous. Why do you think this is happening? The answer is simple: the Internet.

The Internet

The Internet has become the greatest sales tool since the radio. It offers you an inexpensive way to promote, distribute and market your own CDs and gives you the opportunity to make much more profit per CD than you ever could any other way. There are millions of music lovers surfing the Web every day searching for music that they want to discover all by themselves. They don’t want to be told what to listen to and buy anymore. There will always be the mainstream market and Tower Records will stay on the street corner. But, let’s face it: the Internet offers consumers many more choices, plus the option of listening before they buy anything. You can also browse for hours in your underwear without a clerk calling the cops.

Choices

A friend of mine who happens to be one of the greatest guitarists around (he’ll get mad at me if I tell you who) and has also been signed to a major label for the last ten years just lost his contract. As I said before, CDs aren’t selling, so artists are losing their contracts right and left. He has the option of shopping around for another contract and could get one without a doubt, but he has decided to do the whole thing himself. His logic is this: he has a big fan base so he can still sell a bunch of CDs without a major label. Granted, he won’t be able to sell as many as he could with a big company promoting every release, but he doesn’t need to.

I’ll tell you why. When he was releasing CDs signed to a major label, he was only making about 6% on every CD he sold. By releasing it himself, he makes more like 80% profit. The more CDs he makes and sells, the higher his profit margin will be. Even if he sells only half of what he has in the past, he’ll still make much more money. A ton more.

Artistic Differences

Prince also did the same thing. The reason I can mention his name is because I don’t personally know him. I never discussed this with him and I don’t know the specific details (so forgive me if I am not completely accurate), but from what I understand the whole thing started because Prince, being the creative genius he is, wanted to release a lot more material on every CD than the record label wanted him to. I guess the record label’s logic is that, the more songs there are on the CD, the more packaging you need: more plastic, more paper. All these things cost more money and cut into their profit margin. Prince probably just wanted to release CDs that suited his artistic needs and at the same time gave his fans what he assumed they wanted, more Prince per CD.

Obviously they couldn’t meet eye to eye. Since he already had an enormous fan base, he decided to do his own releases. Prince is a true pioneer. Record companies aren’t in the game to create art; they are in it for money. They are very particular about what kind of songs you write, how many minutes each song is, and the order of the songs and the mix of the recording. For these reasons, “true artists” have a hard time dealing with producers whom the label decides are best for them. If you don’t want to be told what to do, doing it yourself is a great option. With the advent of the Internet, this is becoming an easier undertaking.

How to Promote Your CD

Gigs

This is an easy way to sell your CDs. Bring ‘em to your gigs, set ‘em up and just take cash on the spot. Or, leave some at the register so people can buy one on the way out. You may want to offer a cut to the club you are playing at. Make sure to mention your CDs during your set, and don’t forget to point people to your site for information on your band and concert schedule.

Marketing

Without a major deal you will have a rough time selling CDs in stores. You won’t have the money for promotion and distributors won’t touch anything under five thousand units. If you want to get your CDs in some stores you will have to think of some different marketing strategies.

This is what I did. I went around to some small music schools. You know, the kind that are inside music stores. I offered them 25% on every sale. All they had to do is play the CD in the waiting room when people where waiting for their lessons. Without a doubt the students would ask whose CD was playing. When they found out they could buy it, a lot of them would. It is a “win win” situation for everyone involved and only sets me back 25% on each sale. To put it in a CD shop would set me back between 50% and 60% for distribution and the cut that the store takes.

I also pay the musicians on my CD a distribution charge of 25% on each CD that they personally sell. I don’t mind letting them make a little money on the deal because, as I said before, I’m making enough profit on the CD to not care too much.

Another thing I did was tie up with an effect maker. HAO, a maker of great stomp boxes, asked me to record a CD demonstrating their distortion boxes. Rather than take money for my studio time, I offered my services for free in exchange for a few hundred CDs that I give away from my site or guitar9.com when anyone buys my new CD, “Prospects.”

Try to figure out whom you can team up with as a marketing partner. How about a restaurant, car wash, veterinarian, or your local church.

Your Site

Important Features

The next thing to do is to get your site up and going. Your site must have three important features: a way to sell your CDs, a way to point people to your gigs where they can buy your CDs, and last but not least, a reason for people to visit your site and leave with a CD ordered or a memo in their schedule book to go to your gig next Friday.

Sell From Your Site

One super easy and cost-effective way of selling from your site is to use PayPal. This system allows visitors to buy from your site using a credit card. PayPal simply charges you a small percentage and credits the rest to your account. You will have to mail each CD out, but can get your girlfriend to do that for you. Another way is to send them to an Internet CD shop that will do everything for you for a slightly larger cut. I’ll get into this a little later on.

Point People to Your Gigs

This is easy. Post your concert schedule. It helps to include the time, door charge, and address and phone number of the club. I would also link to the club’s site if they have one.

Reason to Visit

Since no one is promoting you, you’re going to have to attract visitors to your site. You are going to have to find a way to make people who don’t know anything about you want to become your fan and start a lasting relationship with you through your site. This is what I did: I put my knowledge of the guitar and experience as a teacher to work. I offer free guitar lessons on my site. I cover a bunch of different subjects such as music theory, scale and chord patterns, etc.

This is what usually happens. Someone sitting at home is having trouble sleeping because he is confused about the Phrygian scale. He heard someone say that this scale works nicely over a certain kind of dominant chord and can’t figure out why. He goes over to his trusty computer with his guitar in hand and punches into his favorite search engine, “phrygian scale over dominant chords.”

Low and behold, a link pops up for my website. He visits, finds the information he needs, may even e-mail with a question which I will, without fail, e-mail a reply to. He may even listen to one of my tunes, come to one of my gigs, or even buy one of my CDs. To be honest, I don’t even mind if he doesn’t buy one. I made a friend in the deal and helped an aspiring musician in the process. What could be more rewarding? I have people asking me questions from all over the world, from Russia to Hong Kong and everywhere in between. Spreading knowledge about the guitar is the niche that I fill with my humble site.

Internet CD Shops

If you don’t want to deal with mailing CDs out to different parts of the world you can use an Internet CD store. I use guitar9.com and CDbaby.com. All you have to do is mail a bunch of CDs to them, and they will sell them and send a check to you from time to time. All you have to do is link from your site to your page on their site and the whole thing comes together pretty easily.

The best thing about using a site like one of these is that music lovers browse through, searching for the undiscovered gem and may, by chance, discover you! I can’t tell you how rewarding it is when someone I never met in a country I have never been to, buys one of my CDs because he found me in a Web store, listened to a track or two, found something that connected with him in the music that is very much connected with me, and parted with money that he probably worked very hard for. If I were signed to a major label, the whole thing would probably be a lot less rewarding.

Net Networking

You will want to promote your site by networking. Link from as many sites as you can. I write Articles (just like this one) for different sites from to time to time. No money changes hands but the whole thing works out because the website gets material and I get free promotion. It also helps me get my writing skills in order and organize my ideas on various subjects. Send your CD to Internet radio stations and music review sites.

A Word on Recording

The same computer technology that made the internet possible has also made recording simple and inexpensive. Ten years ago, not only did you have no place to market, promote and sell your CD, you also had no way to record it without spending some real cash. Computer technology has inspired thousands of engineers to open up studios in their houses or in other small spaces and you can get yourself recorded for a fraction of the cost these days because of this. As I said in one of my last Articles; no matter where you decide to record, make sure you are prepared before you go to the studio. The big and small studios both charge by the hour so make sure you have it together. If you want to research this subject a little more, check out my friend David Chambelin’s site: http://www.dbwproductions.com/ He produces and records various artists for a very reasonable price. He’ll even arrange your stuff and play on it for you. His site offers advice on how to prepare for your session.

Have Fun

The whole thing is a blast. You have nobody to blame if you can’t sell any CDs, and that’s part of the adventure. You get a chance to use your head, grow in the process and make friends around the world. What could be better than this?

Don’t get me wrong, creating the CD had more reward than cost. There’s no doubt about that in my opinion. But witnessing your self-produced music finally completed and packaged beautifully for the first time will fill the eyes of the stoutest musician with warm, happy tears.

I wanted to bounce off the walls and shout to the heavens, “I DID IT!!” No one helped me with it, no one paid for it. It was marvelous and it was all mine! A new problem arose, though. You see, the next day, when listening to your music on the CD again (you’ll do that until you’re just sick of hearing it, and the prospect of playing them over and over again, for the next two years makes you want to gag!), you realize that your work has only just begun.

When you’re signed to a label, the CD gets finished, and you get a tour schedule. The label handles all the marketing, the booking, the distribution, the finances, the merchandising and “concepts”. If you made the CD yourself, you don’t have all of that. Where do you go from here?

Well, you have a few choices. One is to send the CD off in a demo package to record labels, producers, booking agents, and managers and such. Then you have to get real religious and pray like heaven that your package will be one which actually gets their attention out of the hundreds and thousands they get every day. Hey, I’m as good at this as the next person, but let’s be real here!

If you’re not sure about pursuing a label, you might even consider hiring a manager, or producer to help you out in making the right decisions. He or she may even be able to arrange a “showcase” for you with A&R people.

I had thought at the offset that having a manager might be the easiest route to take. So, I interviewed several people, and finally took on a “Leisure Suit Larry” type guy, who had a LOOOOONG list of verifiable references and a track record like nothing I’ve ever seen. He had a small record label and recording studio where he self-produced the talent he had in his stable, and he seemed to know what he was doing.

Meanwhile, back at the bat cave, I had already started my own record label for the purpose of producing, selling, and marketing my own CD’s. In addition to that, I trademarked the name of the label, and the band that I owned the rights to. It was a costly process, but I have never been one to fly solo without a net. I was covering all my bases and covering them well.

In addition to that, having made an intense study of the record industry, and having been stiffed on payment by nasty club owners more times than I cared to count, I began my own little database of information. I had a spreadsheet for notes, contacts, legal information, contracts, and even requests that I had gotten at clubs.

Since I had done so much on my own, my manager’s job basically consisted of booking my gigs, and helping me promote, sell, and distribute the CD. Fortunately, I refused to sign a deal with the man until he had produced a little work for me, and I had produced a little cash flow in return for him. He thought I was really good and had no problem agreeing to my terms, stating that maybe a trial time of thirty days would be a good idea.

At the end of like sixty days, I was beginning to see that this wasn’t going to work out. I always showed up on time for my appointments and the guy was never there. I understood that he was a busy man, and I was more than willing to wait, but weeks spread into months, and he never called, booked me a gig, or helped me out with much of anything.

So one night, about three o’clock in the morning, this guy calls me from his studio and says, “Yeah, Sonata. Look here. I got this great punk band in here recording tonight, and we were discussing the possibility of trade marking their band name. How would they go about that?”

Now I am as understanding as the next person, and I love helping people out. But I’m thinking, “If this guy is representing me, and he doesn’t even know how to go about the legal stuff I’ve already done, what do I need him for?” I asked for the number of the bandleader and promised to give the guy a call with some detailed information in the morning, and then I said, “Oh, by the way, you’re fired!” and hung up.

After helping these young guys set up their web site, their publishing rights, and doing some artwork for their upcoming CD and such, I began to realize that I had been planning to rely on other people, to do what I could just as easily do on my own.

So I contacted the Small Business Administration and asked to whom I could talk about starting my own small business. I had decided that it was high time I treated my musical career as a business. They sent me to the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), where I could get information and counseling on the matter for FREE.

I learned that you can’t begin a business without capital and that banks would loan you money for your small business, provided you had some of your own start-up capital, and a good business plan.

I had never even heard of anyone considering the idea of a business plan for a music career before, but the people at the SBDC set me up with one, and counseled me on how best to fill one out. It was hard for them (and for me!) to figure out how to tailor a standard business plan for a musical career, but we muddled through pretty well I think.

When I had first begun the music business, I had, as most musicians do in the beginning, a day job and I made enough to pay my bills (and NOT a penny more than what I absolutely needed to survive). After filling out the business plan, I realized I was going to have to get up some capital, and fast! I networked the internet, the phone, and sent packages in the mail, and pretty soon I was booking myself a mini-tour to promote the CD.

I decided that my day job had to not only pay bills and buy necessities, it would also have to supply gas money to my gigs, and pay for my equipment and such.

Needless to say, I ate a LOT less, and used a LOT fewer utilities. Man, that was the toughest part! But the bottom line was that ALL monies for the music stuff had to be stashed for venture capital.

Soon, I had a few bills fall short of getting paid in full, and I was beginning to think the whole thing was pointless, really. I was VERY tempted to use the money I had stashed in the bank for payment on my bills, but I just COULDN’T do it. If I ever intended to work for myself in a musical career, I’d have to find some other way to make my bills.

I hired myself out to mow grass, and paint houses during the day on weekends, and at night, I was playing some club within a hundred mile radius of my job. God, I was tired! One good thing about having an undying desire and passion to play music, is that you’re rejuvenated, especially the MOMENT you get on stage.

In three months time, I had cleared three thousand dollars from the gigs and stage sales of my newly released CD. I had a windfall – I got a house to paint in the historic district that promised a nice little chunk of money in my pocket.

When I finished paying bills that month, I designed some merchandise, and sent off for key chains and can coolers with my band logo on them, (which was trademarked by the way), and I set to the task of designing my own T-shirts. Being a graphic artist had its advantages. I made my own T-shirts, and made a HUGE profit on them at my shows.

I LOOKED professional, whether I was yet or not. And do you want to hear something funny? When you look professional, you’d be surprised probably to hear it, but you really are professional. In this business, people judge you so quickly by your appearance, that you need it to be as right for you and as close to flawless as humanly possible. By the end of five months, I had about five-thousand, eight hundred dollars built up, and I had finished my business plan.

I called my bank (the one which had been receiving mysterious money-order deposits from me, bought at convenience stores around four in the morning and dropped into the night-deposit box for deposit into my account), and I set up a meeting with a loan officer.

I am not ashamed to say that with a very painful divorce behind me, I had really messed up credit. Fortunately, my deposits over the past few months showed that I was in fact successful, and I autographed a copy of my CD for the loan officer to keep personally. She also got a free T-shirt, a can cooler, and a key chain. Ha ha!

At any rate, because I was able to show a surprisingly good part-time income, and a steady bank deposit record… and because I wasn’t asking so much for a loan, it was granted. It helped that I had done a target market demographic study to reflect what songwriter’s typically make in their first six months. My progress was above it by a mile. I really just needed the loan so I could survive and do this for a living.

I got incorporated under my stage name, had repairs done to my equipment and got a bunch of CD’s pressed. Because I was incorporated as a legal business, all of my repairs and purchases were tax write offs, and I was going to be getting a weekly paycheck from my account that was slightly more than I had been earning at my job of three years. This gave me free time to make music, perform, and market myself.

All of my remunerative transactions were handled through my bank account and I was suddenly taken seriously from a business point of view. I was so busy in fact, filling orders, answering fan mail, booking shows, and pushing the CD, that I rarely had time for recording any more.

It slowed down the ability to work on new material, and pretty soon, after 2,050 sales, and 1,000 or more press kits, I was wearing thin. I am only just now getting to the point where I am seeking any outside aid, and really it’s just to help me manage my career rather than to take it over.

The good news is, that because I took a business-like approach to my music, I became successful rather quickly, clearing a net of forty thousand dollars last year alone, when my goal, according to my business plan was twenty thousand dollars. When I’m ready to go to the bank for a new loan… I doubt I’ll have any trouble getting it, and with their help, I have actually begun cleaning up my credit enough that I hold corporate accounts with my merchandise companies and glass house, which means I pay for their services by the month.

This also makes me hot property where outside influences are concerned, and I have had little to no difficulty getting attention. At this stage in my career, I am interviewing managers, producers, record labels, musicians, and assistants as though they are employees in the business of me, and I have the rare (and wonderful) opportunity to be selective about it.

The truth is that, as artists, musicians are by and large disorganized thinkers. We are so overwhelmed, in fact, by our creative ideas and avenues of expressing them, that we cannot often manage ourselves in a business sense. It’s up to us to take charge of our careers, in order to make ourselves more appealing to the people who will only be managing our “business”.

I was fortunate. I took two years of Business Administration in college, and had been managing companies for other small businesses all along, so I had a jump start in forming my own business. On top of that, I do countless researches into the music industry on a daily basis, and had been doing so for about four years, so I knew not only what to do, but where to go. Basically by becoming our own boss, and strictly sticking to a plan, we can overcome the current system and still turn a profit.

The problem is, that as musicians, it is much easier for us to blow money on new “toys”, and equipment, and waste time doing covers for beer addled patrons, than it is to deprive ourselves of some little luxuries and put our head down to brave the storm.

Let me just extend this word of caution. This is the hardest route to take, make no mistake about it. The responsibility for all your success and failure rests solely on your own shoulders taking this method, and if you fail, you stand to lose everything.

There are going to be times when you don’t sleep for days because you’re running between gigs, studios, and home trying to get it all done. In the beginning, you’re doing all of those things, balancing a day job, and trying to make good contacts for future references, so it can be quite painfully tiring.

I found myself designing merchandise, CD cover booklets, labels, my own business cards, correspondence etc. I mean I even have a template for “Thank You” post cards, business cards, and stationery. I made my own posters, T-shirts, caps, and stage attire. I was a sewing, stamping, ironing, designing fool.

I have had the good fortune to already be something of an artist, and to already have a grasp of graphic arts and templates, so I managed to do this myself. I also grew up on a farm, where my mom made my clothes until I was old enough to make them myself, so sewing is another of my abilities. I can’t imagine having to pay someone to do all of these things for me. The cost would have been too great for me.

If you think you’re going to need to pay for these things, make sure you have several estimates for them attached to your business plan. My ability to “do-everything-myself” helped quite a bit, because I didn’t need extra cash for expenses.

I don’t want to give the impression that my music was just so good that it sold itself either, because if that were true, there’d be a LOT better music on the radio than the crap I’ve had to listen to lately.

The truth is that my music isn’t bad. My new stuff is far better. I just want to make it perfectly clear, that my success was dedicated not only to having many talents suited for the music industry, but because I was determined to see it through, and willing to risk everything. If you have nothing to risk, most likely you’re not going to make it, because you don’t work half as hard at it. If this failed, I was going to have to go back to work for someone else, and put my music on the back burner, and to me that was almost a fate worse than death.

Empower yourself with knowledge. Learn this business inside and out from as many aspects as humanly possible… and as always…hone your craft daily. Once you’ve done these things, and taken over your own work, you have the key to success and you’ll be surprised how heavily the bloodhounds follow that scent. Just be prepared to sweat, starve and bleed for it because it’s the most difficult route to take.

Always remember that YOU are the one offering the service and that the outsiders are to be viewed as employees in the business of you. Once they realize that you don’t need them, and that you are succeeding, they will clamor for your attention. When that happens… your dream of being a full-time musician will be that much closer to becoming a reality.

If I can be of any further help, or if you have any questions, feel free to write to me at:
SoftSonata@hotmail.com

It sweeps throughout my heart like a whisper of love, and lights the fire of passion in my veins. In short…I love music.

It may appear to some, I suppose, that there is some madness in my desire to create the beauty of music, but it is only in the soft refrains of my melodic musical endeavors that I find total clarity and sanity. It seems that no matter how off balance the rest of the world is… there is solace in music.

Music is in all life.
~Sonata Jones
“There is no better time than today…this very minute”

What’s the difference between an artist and a musician?

The Artist

I’ll start with the artist. The artist plays for himself for the most part. His objective as a guitarist is to please his own artistic hunger. He strives for artistic elegance. Don’t get me wrong, this is not necessarily a bad thing for me and you. It’s great. Artists make life for the rest of us better. Artists create art. I have Picasso hanging on my wall, not something a graphic designer drew that I found in a magazine. The problem with being an artist is…it’s rough to make ends meet. Artists are generally only brilliant at their own music or working with artists that fall into the same category as themselves. Artists constantly study art. That’s the reason it’s hard to make a living. The artist is always striving to create better art. He creates art with such high standards, the average Joe has a hard time understanding it. The artist is so involved in creating art that he often creates a gap between himself and the masses. I’m not saying all artists are broke but it’s a gamble.

The Musician

The musician is a different animal all together. The musician is a hired gun. Although he may have musical preferences, he isn’t picky about what he plays to pay the rent. While the artist may be particular about what he has to play to get paid, the musician will play anything. He is well versed in all styles and can mimic various players. These types of players make good studio musicians, session players and teachers. They usually do all these things. Like the artist, the musician is always working on learning new skills. The only problem with the musician is that he tends to find himself artistically frustrated. Let’s face it, deep down inside, we all really want to be the artist. We want our music to live on after we’re gone. We want someone, after we die, to send one of our CDs off into deep space so some alien can find it in a million years and say “them earthlings wrote the most glorious music in the galaxy.”

Balance

Which would you rather be; the artist or the musician? Remember the phrases; “the starving artist” and “the struggling musician.” I personally would rather struggle as a musician while I commit myself to creating art. I think the best way to live a satisfying life as a guitarist is do dedicate your life to both of these ambitions. Most guitarists get themselves in trouble by focusing on only one of the two. Most of the money I have made in the business as a player came from playing other peoples tunes, not from my own CD sales. But to be honest, releasing my own CDs is way more rewarding (mentally, not financially). Doing both makes my career well balanced. One feeds the other.

The rules of making a living as a guitarist

Bite of more than you can chew (almost) – Never turn down a gig. There are two ways to look at doing a gig; first, a way to pay the rent, Second, a chance to learn something. The worst mistake you can make as a guitarist is to turn down work because you think you not good enough yet or you don’t have much experience playing that style. When I was in my twenties, I got a call to do a country gig for about twenty bucks. I had never played country before and I was tempted to tell the guy on the other end of the phone that I was busy on that night. In the end I couldn’t break my own rule so I took the gig. I got the charts and the music, worked out all the tunes, borrowed my roommate’s Telecaster and had one of the best learning experiences I have ever had. Was I scared? You bet I was. That’s exactly what helped me work the tunes out in time, good old fashioned fear. I, of course have my own musical preferences, but I rather play guitar for an hour at a wedding, learn some new tunes in the process and get paid fifty or a hundred bucks than to work at Burger King for minimum wage. My students get to see me real angry when they tell me they turned down a gig for some trivial reason.

Don’t bug anyone – Simplicity will keep you out of trouble. When you’re at home practicing, reach for the unreachable. When you’re on the gig, know your limits. My experience as a studio player has taught me to focus on every single note I play. When you’re recording for another artist, on somebody else’s time, you have to play everything perfect. For every mistake you make, you have to punch-in the part again. The tape rolls and after you record your part; you go back into the room where the engineer and the producer are mixing the recording. They turn down the other parts to check out what you played. Your guitar is really loud in the mix. There is no escape. It’s like looking in the mirror. Every time you play something a little out of time or a little sharp or flat it makes you cringe. My first experience in the studio taught me to listen to every single note I play, all the time, even when I’m not recording. It taught me to know my limits whenever I play, and to stretch those limits by good practice. While in the studio, I try to get the track done on the first or second take with no punch-ins. Next time you are on a gig, pretend you’re in the studio recording for Michael Jackson. See how long you can play without making even a tiny mistake. Let this become a habit.

Love your enemies – When I was learning guitar as a kid, I wanted to crush the neighborhood guitar kids like grapes with my technique! Competitiveness is important; the need to be the best is what drives people to be just that. But don’t let it blind you. Every time Mike Stern or Scott Henderson are in town, I dread going to hear them play. It always depresses me. It forces me to compare myself with them and to truly see what kind of player I am in a true light. I could easily avoid the whole miserable thing and stay home but I force myself to go. After it’s over, I go home, don’t touch my guitar and go to sleep. The next day I force myself to get over it and practice like a maniac. I have had similar experiences all my life. There is always someone who plays better than you. It is important to search them out, make friends with them, pick their brains and learn. It’s okay to secretly hate their guts! Use envy and jealousy to your advantage. The interesting thing is that the guys that I always want to beat in guitar wars, usually become great friends and refer me for gigs from time to time. Players who avoid better players are destined for mediocrity.

Listen to what your mother told you

This is really important. No matter how great a player you are, that is only half the battle in being a successful guitarist. Here are the other things:

Never be late – If you show up late for studio work, you’ll never get called back. Time is money. Get there early, set your equipment up and be ready to go before the session is supposed to begin. The same thing goes for auditions. Even if you are the greatest guitarist to ever walk the face of the earth, you’ll make the producer nervous if you show up late for an audition. He’s running a business so he is going to figure that you’re late all the time and since he’s got enough to worry about he’ll pick someone for the job who is dependable. You won’t get a call back. The same thing is true for rehearsals. A good friend of mine has the touring gig with a super big artist (ain’t gonna tell you who). He was telling me that the keyboardist in the band came to rehearsal and didn’t have all his stuff set up in time. He made the artist wait about a whole minute to get the rehearsal started. Instead of rehearsing he got fired on the spot. He lost a $2,000 dollar a week gig for being a minute late. Don’t make the same mistake.

Appearances count – Before you play your first notes, the audience has already made a decision about you by your appearance. This goes for auditions too. First, go to the magazine stand and get yourself a copy of the newest GQ. I’m not joking. Check the photos and see what guys are wearing these days. Music and fashion walk hand in hand. Dress for success! I know tons of great players who lose out because they wear the same stupid t-shirt everyday. Think of Miles Davis, not only a musical genius but a true fashion plate. The first lesson I learned about this topic was from a band member when I was eighteen. He told me to get some new shoes because mine were dirty. I had figured that nobody looks at a guy’s shoes but when you’re standing on a four foot stage that is the first thing the people in the first row look at. Take pride in your appearance and carry yourself with confidence. Charisma, charm and style carry a lot of weight in the music business.

Wear as many hats as you can – Play as many styles as you can, this will increase the amount or gigs you can do. Also, work on your singing chops. Sometimes this alone will get you the job. A lot of bands are looking for someone who can do both. It saves them the money to hire two guys. If you can sing harmony it’s a plus. If you can sing lead, it’s even better. This is also a good strategy for your band. You can make way more money as a trio than a quartet. Most gigs pay by the band regardless of how many band members in the band.

Education

Get an education – Just like any other kind of job, education is important. Lessons are great but if you have the time and money, enroll yourself in a good music school. I spent a year at Musician’s Institute in Los Angeles where I ended up also being a teacher for six years. The great thing about studying at a big music school is all the students that you also get a chance to learn from. The thing that is great about MI or LAMA in LA or The Collective in NY or the schools that I run in Japan is that they are not art schools as much as they are trade schools. They strive to teach you how to make a living at being a guitarist while also giving you plenty of creative support. They don’t cater to any one particular style of music as an “art” school does. The trade school teaches you a trade rather than an art.

Get in education – A well rounded musical education will also prepare you for education. One of the most rewarding things I have ever done is to get into music education. After I left MI in 1992, I found myself in Japan as the Director of Education at Tokyo School of Music. Teaching will teach you more about music than studying will. When I was teaching at MI, I found myself teaching in the classroom next to Scott Henderson on one side and Paul Gilbert on the other. I would eat lunch with jazz legend Joe Diorio. Just being in the same building as players like these and absorbing what was going on around me was an invaluable experience. Teaching also forced me to organize musical concepts which in turn helped me become a better player. If you are fortunate to get work at a school that also has courses in recording, you may be able to sneak in there and learn a little about the newest technology. One of the biggest advantages of working at a music school is the fact that you can network. I’m always surprised to see how much the teachers at my school end up working together. They refer each other to gigs as subs and even get them on their own gigs. The great thing about teaching is that it is usually a day gig which doesn’t interfere with your night gig; playing. Its extra cash and it’s steady.

Some advice on getting a teaching job

The Interview

Your Manner – A lot of guys ruin the whole thing here. Here is how it usually goes; I get a call from a guy looking for a teaching position. I ask him to come down and he does. I talk to him a while and decide he seems like a decent cat. His eyes aren’t red and he can carry a concise conversation. You may think I’m joking. You would actually be surprised how many guys come to an interview high on something. This is a sure way to not get the job. I don’t care what anybody does in their free time but, anyone who comes to an interview at a school for a teaching job stoned is probably going to come to teach his classes stoned too. Also, like I said before, never, ever show up late for your interview. One of the most important things for a teacher to be is on time.

Passion – I also want a guy who is passionate about teaching. Remember, a school is a business so I want a teacher who is going to teach all the students, not just the gifted ones. Most kids quit school because of discrimination. Not racial, religious or sexual, but talent discrimination. Anyone can teach someone with a ton of talent to be a great player. I’m looking for someone to teach the kids who struggle with the guitar. If you feel that filtering out the students that are not “musically gifted” is a teacher’s job, you won’t be working for me. I want every student who enrolls in my school to graduate. Remember that during your interview too.

Your Profile – Don’t disclose the unnecessary. You will need to give the school your profile. Leave out anything that you may be doing that doesn’t involve music. When I look over profiles for teaching position at my school, I’m looking for someone who is a working player. Anyone who is gigging plus, let’s say, works at the local Kmart is out. I’m looking for guys who are going to teach the students how to work full time as a guitarist so they better be doing so themselves. Don’t lie, but don’t disclose the unnecessary details.

Your Demo – Let’s say the interview and the profile go over. Here is the next thing that a lot of guys screw up. They don’t have anything recorded. I want to hear them play. You’d be surprised how many guys don’t have a decent demo. I generally don’t like cassette tapes. I’m looking for a decently recorded cd. It can be burned at home or at a studio but it needs to showcase what you are good at. This is also true for auditions. A lot of times, before you even get to audition, you first have to send your bio and demo. Be careful not to send a demo of you playing Bebop to a producer looking for a rock guitarist.

Empower Yourself

Don’t wait for a break – This is my advice for those of you who want to satisfy your artistic needs. No matter how much money you make teaching or doing gigs as a hired gun, the truth is, your dream since you started playing probably has been to be rewarded for your playing and your own music. In the past, most artists would make a demo, and shop it around hoping that a record label would pick them up. Those where sad times. Artists had absolutely no power whatsoever. Even today, there are still plenty of artists doing the same thing; they have yet to see what great times we live in. Because of technology today, releasing a CD is a simple thing to do. If you are well rehearsed, you can be in and out of the studio in three days. That includes the mix down. I recorded, mastered and pressed my own CD, “Prospects” for about three-thousand five hundred dollars. That includes the money I paid for the studio musicians to do the session. If you have a band with permanent members you probably don’t have to pay them, so you can do it for less.

Recording tips – Be totally prepared. The trick to getting the session done inexpensively is speed. The misconception that you need a month in the studio to do a good recording is completely false. If you are well rehearsed, you can knock each song out in two takes. After that, you decide which take you like, punch in any parts you don’t like and move on to the next tune. The difference with my newest CD is that we never rehearsed. I hired studio cats who just read the charts. We ran through the tune once, recorded two takes for each song and never did any punch-ins. The musicians where top notch players. If you get in the studio and start rehearsing, you are never going to get done in time.

Selling the thing once you get it done – In the old days, the only way to sell a record was to get a contract with a record company and a distribution deal to get the product in stores, advertise, tour and wait for you measly royalty check. Royalty rates vary slightly from company to company, but I’ll just tell you, you have to sell at least a million records to be able to pay your rent. That’s the sad truth about “a major deal”. But now we live in glorious times thanks to the internet. Once you get your CD done you can sell it from your web site (I’ll get to that after this). You can also send it to cdbaby.com and/or guitar9.com and/or a bunch of other sites that will sell it for you. In the mean time you can send it to some different sites that will review it for you. If you do a good job on your CD, you should be able to get some good reviews from sites that specialize in just that.. Other people looking for new music will go to these sites read your review, go to your site and buy your CD. I used godsofmusic.com, prognosis and some other sites. You just put the link for cdbaby.com or guitar9.com on your site and they will be directed directly to your page on those sites. Guitar9.com, cdbaby.com and most other similar sites such as Amazon.com will sell customers the cds you send them by credit card and they in turn will send you a check from time to time. They take four or five dollars from your sales and everyone walks away happy. You are basically doing your own distribution. With a “major deal” you would make about a dollar on a CD sale, this way you make about ten dollars, about fourteen on the ones you sell at gigs or from your site by personal check. You only have sell ten percent of what you would with a “major deal” to make the same money. But the most important thing as that you are empowered; it’s your own motivation, dedication, footwork that moves your CD. Do it yourself and learn a bunch in the process.

Your Site – If you think putting together a site is way more than you know how to deal with, your wrong. Buy yourself software like Dreamweaver for a few hundred bucks and you are on your way. You don’t have to know anything about code to do it. It’s as easy as “Word” or “Powerpoint”. It’ll take you about half an hour to install it and have your first few pages going. The other thing you need to do is get yourself a domain name and someone to host it. That’s easy too. Just type in “domain names” into your favorite search engine and you are on your way. I think mine costs me about seven or eight bucks a month for 50MB. I need at least 50MB because I have mp3s on my site available for people to download. You may or may not need that much. The only other problem is graphics. Your site will be dull without cool graphics. If you are into that kind of thing you may want to try to do it yourself using “Fireworks” which is included in the “Dreamweaver” package or some other software such as “Adobe Photoshop”. Or, (shameless plug) you can purchase your own custom graphics from a company like ominousgraphics.com for next to nothing. Yes, ominousgraphics.com is my own company that does web graphics for artists for cheap. Once you get your site going, have as many sites as you can add your link and you’ll start getting traffic. Include in your site; audio files, your bio, a cd page with links to cdbaby.com and guitar9.com, a links page, a news page, a schedule page so you can get people to come to your shows (and buy your CD) and photos, etc. It’s important to do it yourself. If you don’t, information will always be slow and your site will be a big bore. Like I said before, do it yourself and learn something in the process. Check out my site if you have a chance. You may get some ideas.

Green

Managing your money – This will probably be the first time you are going to get financial advice from a guitarist. A lot of musicians give up playing as a professional for money reasons. One of the tricks in surviving in the business is to manage your money. No matter what happens, pay yourself first. Before you pay your rent, bills, buy your girl a watch, pay yourself first. Whatever you can swing is okay. Let’s say, two, three, five hundred dollars a month. No matter what happens, every month, you put it away first and you don’t touch it. What if you can’t make ends meet? You make ends meet! If you can’t come up with the car insurance at the end of the month, you’ll work that much harder to find a gig. If I had started doing this when I was eighteen, I would have about a million bucks today. I’m serious. I started doing this in my late twenties; I put the money into a mutual fund that earned me, on average, about twelve percent a year. Here is a rule that you probably never heard before. They never taught me this formula in school.

72 divided by yearly interest earned on any investment = the amount of years it takes the investment to double

Let’s say you are eighteen and invest six thousand dollars ($500 x 12 months) into a mutual fund that earns you ten percent a year. 72 divided by 10 equals 7.2 years for your six-thousand dollars to double. It will double again in another 7.2 years. Let’s just make it an even seven years for demonstrational purposes.

You would retire with three-hundred eighty-four thousand dollars from only one year of properly invested savings. Figure out what you would have if you had done this every year of your life starting form when you where eighteen. You would be a millionaire! You don’t have to believe me, do your own math. Go to yahoo finance and do some mutual fund historical research.

Becoming a guitarist has been one of the greatest joys in my life. I hope that sharing some of the things I learned along the way will help you to be successful in the music business. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to e-mail me anytime. Next time I’ll get into some more specifics about what it takes to be a studio musician. Until then…

I’ll be using Canadian prices and Canadian dollars so that I don’t have to waste too much time on conversions. But don’t bother reaching for your calculator, the meaning of the numbers will be clearer than the numbers themselves.

First, let’s clarify one thing. The average album, on a major label, sells 3,000 (three thousand) copies. Not much, right? You can sell that many without a label and through the Internet. And keep all the money.

Now, when you sign with a label, you’re share of the money is a percentage (called points) of the sales price. These points are usually between 11 and 17 percent. If you’re completely unknown, you won’t be able to negotiate, you’ll get 11. If, however, your name is Madonna or Celine Dion or Michael Jackson, and that you’ve sold millions of copies of your last three albums, you’ll be able to negotiate above 17 points. Don’t ask for the exact figures, no one will tell you.

So let’s say you have a decent following, say 300 people at all your shows (and that you’re playing at least 4 shows a week, not all in the same city). Your Manager goes in and gets you 12 points.

Now let’s say your album has sold 300,000 copies. Canada has a population of 31 million, so that’s a triple platinum album. We’re talking big sales here.

The sales price of a CD in Canada is $23.99. Twelve percent of that is $2.87. Times 300,000 equals $861,000. Nice, right? However, that’s not what you’ll take home…

15% of CDs sold in record stores are freebies. Sony will deliver 100 copies of a Celine Dion album to a HMV record store on St. Catherine street in Montreal, but will bill for 85 copies. The record store cut of the $23.99 is usually less than $2.00, so this is how these stores stay in business.

So, although your album has sold 300,000 copies, you get paid for only 255,000 copies. Meaning, you’re now making only $731,850.

There’s a clause in most record contracts called the “New technology clause”. When the CD originally came out, it was a new technology. You needed a new reader, and a lot of people were in no hurry to make the transition. And CDs were expensive to make back then. So this clause was introduced. It allows the record company to pay only 85% of your cut. CDs have been on the market for 18 years and are no longer a new technology, so this clause is slowly being phased out. But it is still on most contracts at the moment.

85% of $731,850 is $622,072.50. Well, that still interesting. But we’re not finished. With a major label, you’ll have to get someone to produce the album for you. Bands who self-produced their albums in the seventies and sold millions are required to get an outside producer today.

A producer gets a standard cut of 4 points (4% of the sales price). That four percent comes out of the band’s share. So he gets $24,882.90. So you’re now left with $597,189.60.

Now what? When you record an album, you have expenses: studio time, sound engineers, new instruments or accessories to buy, session musicians, etc. You might be spending two months in the studio and have to wait another two to six months before the album is mastered and finally released. Meaning you have to pay rent, food, etc. If you have to work full-time, you can’t spend enough time on your career. You need money. So the record company gives you and advance. Usually, this will be around $150,000. What’s nice with this is that if you don’t sell enough records, you don’t have to pay this back. But with sales like this, you do.

So, after paying back the advance, you’re left with $447,189.60. That’s slightly more than half of what you originally had. But that’s not all folks…

With a major label, you have to record videos. Videos run around $65,000 each to make. This, of course, is an average price only. The expenses for the video will be shared, equally, between the band and the company. On average, you’ll make three videos, for a total cost of $195,000, of which your share will be $97,500. Bringing your income down to$252,189.60.

Then, you have to tour. Touring pays and the money is yours. Except that when your album has just been released, you won’t be selling as many tickets as you will down the road. So you need a loan to get started. Say $40,000. That’s a reasonable amount. Now you have to pay it back. So you’re left with $212,189.60.

Then there are incidentals. These can be things like photo sessions, publicity shoots, interviews, etc. Stuff the record company originally paid for, but that you have to pay back. These incidentals will usually amount to around $100,000. So you’re left with $112,189.60.

Divide that by four if you’re a four-piece band and you’re each left holding $28,047.40. Or are you? Remember that Manager we mentioned at first? He takes 10%. $100,970.64 is what you’re left with for selling three hundred thousand records. Or $25,242.66 each for a four piece band. Of course, the record company will do everything in its power to cut back even that amount. In most cases, the band ends up with nothing. And when you do get paid, it can take a long time.

That’s the reality of selling records with major labels. Unless you sell millions of copies and have top-notch lawyers and the best manager in the business, there’s no money in it.

I didn’t make up these numbers, you can find similar ones in Mark Makoway’s (the guitarist from Moist) book “The Indie Band Bible”. You can also find similar numbers elsewhere.

One other nasty thing that often surfaces is that only the executives at the record companies know the actual sales figures. I’m not saying that they will all lie on the amount of albums sold, but there are nasty stories out there.

Luckily, there’s a new system out there that’s being implemented. Every time a record store will scan a bar code on a CD, this will be registered in a central, independent computer. This will give total sales, sales by countries, regions, dates of sales, etc. The numbers will be totally accurate. Which will also have the by-product of producing charts (such as Billboard or others) that will reflect reality of sales. It doesn’t mean that if an album is Number one in sales that it actually sold more than the others.

What saves the day is copyrights. If your band is playing other people’s songs, you’ll never make money out of albums, your story stops here. But if you do write your songs, then there’s more money involved. For ten songs on an album, the record company has to pay out $1.80 per album sold. And they cannot cut down this figure or make any deductions, it’s the law. Period.

So that $1.80 per copy amounts to $540,000. Remember that those 15% of albums given to the record stores were sold, so they have to pay.

Technically speaking, this money goes to the publisher. When you’re recording your own material and are not interested in others recording your material, this is the only use of the publisher: receiving a check and making one out to you. The money should, by definition, go to the people who have written the songs in increments of how much they have written or whatever other arrangements have been made.

Except… if you have written all ten songs and get a check like this, what will the other band members say? Think you’ll be making a second album with them? Usually, this money is distributed among everyone in the band. The proportions may vary. With some bands, the songwriters will have a higher percentage than the other members, while in other cases, the check will be split evenly among everyone. This is really a decision that has to be made among the band members from the start. And put it writing too. Just remember that even though you bring in the raw material, the songs, it’s the band that makes them come to life.

So you’re thinking, why go through a publisher at all? You can publish your songs yourself. Just think of a company name, register it and that’s that. However, a publisher is useful. What they will do is buy half the rights to your songs. When you sign this deal, your album has not been released yet. You don’t know how much the album will sell. So the publisher, through experience, will estimate the figures and give you an advance equal to half the amount he expects the copyrights to make.

Again, as this is an advance, if your album does not sell, you keep the money. But that also means that instead of making $540,000 with copyrights in this example, you’ll only make $270,000. This is what most people do.

You see, as a professional in the business, you’ll essentially be living on advances. These make the difference between life and death in this business. On the plus side, you’ll also be getting royalties (divided up with the publisher) for every time your song is played on the radio or used in a film or a commercial or what-not.

When you’re touring, you’ll be selling plenty of T-Shirts and tour books and other paraphernalia. These are the only things you can buy for which the money goes directly in the band’s pockets (often, minus a cut for the venue). Ticket sales usually cover touring expenses and living expenses. Without T-Shirts, a band makes very little money out of a tour. That’s why T-Shirts are sold at $50 to $100 a piece. Think about this the next time you’re at a show and you’re complaining about the high price of a T-Shirt. Do you want this band to keep on recording and touring?

And if you’re in a band and playing a lot of live shows. Do you have any T-Shirts to sell?

Initially, I ventured into making a living as a musician with a pretense of “yeah, I’m going to be a guitar star and won’t have to get into this boring business, corporate, hierarchical rat race that every other conventional career has to offer.” I have to say that I got lucky in this respect by abandoning that notion early on. I got hip to business and started to accumulate logistics skills to the point of spending 2-5 hours on the guitar daily and the remaining time of 5-7 hours at my desk, or running errands, teaching, and writing music and materials for classes or for books and magazines.

Coming to Berlin in the beginning of 2001 was quite a shock. I think I would have had to get a day job if it hadn’t been for those business skills mentioned above. There were (and are) plenty of guitar players in this city. Most of them, like me, could play. But too many of them already had the gigs, and those take a while to get your hands on. So instead of getting that day job, I went on auto-pilot: I started doing a lot of research for my web based teaching, for German and European booking avenues. I knew exactly what steps to take for acquiring new students quickly and for creating other teaching situations, such as up-coming classes in Hamburg (ensemble workshops) and Idstein (guitar seminar). While my teaching platform started to take roots, I began to recognize the effects of having sent out tons of promo packs to promoters, booking agencies, clubs and festivals. Now I had a reason again to organize sessions with my German quartet. I created a podium for working on new compositions and projects I had planned for a while.

In comparison to leading a band in the US, the map of Germany, with mid-size to major urban centers so close together, allows a band to book gigs all over the country all the time. It takes 8 hours to drive from the northern city, Hamburg, all the way to Munich, located close to the southern border. While there may not really be any stops worth mentioning between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, on the German route I can book dates in Bremen, Hannover, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and at least three other cities of similar size – 300,000 plus inhabitants. On top of that, the funding for the arts offers quite a lot more help with such endeavors – a tradition that encourages European cultural exchanges, especially international ones.

Coming back to my point in business: I might sound like an entrepreneur when describing my approach to making a living with music, but I sure enjoy it. Take for instance the next couple of months: I’m finishing up several new compositions I had been working on with my rhythm section here in Berlin. My saxophonist lives in Hamburg, so I will email the charts to him a couple of weeks before our spring tour will start. We’ll meet a day before our first gig to look at those tunes in a couple of rehearsals, with everyone well prepared individually, and do six different cities in a week without too much driving. Then a recording session the day after to finish the whole thing off. That’s exactly as we did it for my last record “Hamburg – Port of Call”. Such a tour would pose some difficulties in the US, and it wouldn’t be possible in either place without six months of follow up calls to clubs and promoters who I had sent bunches of promo packs months before that. On the other hand, one needs to mention the gas prices in Europe (about four times the American standard), and high taxes let the already meager pay appear quite slim.

I have worked in plenty of bars in my days, from bar bands to Hip Hop, Rock, Funk and Dance. A modern jazz outfit really works no differently when it comes to what the venue wants: Drinking audiences. But it sure changes when it comes to soliciting federal or corporate funding or when preparing for the premiere of an art collaboration. The other difference is that an average bar band appeals to a much lower common denominator in club-goers. Modern jazz claims only about 2% of the music-enthused population as jazz listeners. It sure takes some business skills to bring your musical outpourings to the select few that might want to hear them and spend that buck – or Euro!