jayetheartist posted:

dreamerm posted:

And I don't know what "CwF + RtB" could possibly stand for.

I believe that stands for "Connect with Fans" and "Reason to Buy"

That is exactly it. It was put forth by Mike Masnick of Insight Community/ Floor 69/ Techdirt.

[www.techdirt.com]

"Connect with Fans ( CwF ) + Reason to Buy ( RtB ) = The Business Model"

And I just came here to comment on Flash's place on a site. It should not be a whole site, but rather a piece of it. If you need to play media, flash is your best option. If you need to show video, flash is your best option. However, there is no reason or rhyme to making an entire site out of flash. It's just not the way to do it. That isn't to say it can't work, it's just that in normal cases, it doesn't. At least not from a band perspective. Especially since Search Engine Optimization is nil with flash sites.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2009 01:07AM by Firewalker.

syunghans posted:

I have a friend who is a computer programmer by day, lead guitarist by night for a band he and a friend co-founded in the Boston area. That's what they've been trying to do for a long time and it's starting to pay off. They do the social site thing, they do their own label/distribution. They also had a few lucky breaks along the way.

THERE'S something no one's really mentioned in this thread yet, oddly enough.

Luck.

Well, I guess I can understand why nobody's really talking about Luck, as Luck is out of your control, but without Luck the most hardworking, fantastic raw talent in the world is unlikely to get anywhere.

Here's the thing with Flash, it has a specific time and place. There are things that you can do to enrich or encourage different visualization and manipulation of data that you cannot get with HTML/AJAX/CSS. As far as HTML5 I honestly haven't looked at it yet. It's still draft.

*Business rant ahead.

And... moving on. The best ammo you can have as a person in business is people. Furthermore, people that have no vested interest in you making money or not.

My friends and I call this 'the asshole down the hall'. The asshole down the hall can be a forum, a community, an individual, a panel, whichever. Someone to ask for trusted advice. A good example is gamedev.net. If you have ever thought about how cool it would be to write a game, go there. It will teach you 1) you don't know shit about it 2) that there are people there who have done it before, failed repeatedly then succeeded 3)do your research before you launch into something and 4) don't forget to ask for help.

The best thing you can do for yourself is understand a simple balance sheet. How much money am I taking in gross and net? How much are my expenses? Did Jimmy ripoff ten bucks from my wallet, and does that fuck us in gas money. You are never too small to sit down, and scribble out a balance sheet.

Another item is sitting down with an accountant, at what threshold is that going to be for you? The point where the band is self-sustaining and starting to make a profit. If you purchase a guitar for the purposes of your band is that an itemized expense, is the deduction amortized? I am *not* an accountant. I can't answer these questions for you.

From a pure business perspective the overwhelming majority of small businesses do not make it past their first five years. A business is a business. Nobody likes to go "well I'm a businessman not a musician", you are you just wear both hats at different times.

This is the boring shit *nobody* likes to deal with, but if you're going to make this your livelihood approach it as such. The music is the art, the act of getting yourself out to people and earning back on it is the business.

And now, I get to do the dishes.


Update:

Also, I'm not a brilliant millionaire businessman. I *have* done a ton of contracting, bombed a ton of contracts, sat inside a dot-com startup that got decent VC and watched it implode from working on the inside. And I've spent a lot of time failing. So when I talk about this stuff, it's either from direct experience of fucking this kind of thing up or working in companies that fucked this up. The one thing that I *do* know is what bad business looks like. Everyone fucks this stuff up, the key is to try to head off the larger mistakes with planning and intense thought.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2009 01:56AM by jarrettwold.

jarrettwold posted:

From a pure business perspective the overwhelming majority of small businesses do not make it past their first five years. A business is a business. Nobody likes to go "well I'm a businessman not a musician", you are you just wear both hats at different times.

Personally, I think this is why a lot of artists of all types doom themselves to fail. Too many are either repulsed by the idea of having to think of their creative efforts in terms of it being a business, or they simply don't have and don't want to develop the skills to juggle both roles.

Trent, excellent points about breaking through as a starting band in a day and age of internet and one-click accessable media. The internet has been a blessing and a curse to artists, and the speed at which it has evolved has forced artists to adapt EXTREMELY quickly.

What I'm contemplating here though, is how this treats music as an art. The way you tell it seems sort of... manipulative, formulating a plan in which people are drawn in with the ultimate GOAL of PAYING for 'the product' (= music). I know it is reality that even with the best songs ever, without marketing your music, only you and your close friends will ever get to hear those songs. I guess what I'm trying to say is that in your version it sounds like quality of the music / product comes last... after the promotion and hyping (the limited editions / scarce items) and the selling. Shouldn't good music be the ultimate goal, and making money with it be the added bonus?

It sound a little tacky whan you position your text as the masterplan for independant music world domination.

jayetheartist posted:

jarrettwold posted:

From a pure business perspective the overwhelming majority of small businesses do not make it past their first five years. A business is a business. Nobody likes to go "well I'm a businessman not a musician", you are you just wear both hats at different times.

Personally, I think this is why a lot of artists of all types doom themselves to fail. Too many are either repulsed by the idea of having to think of their creative efforts in terms of it being a business, or they simply don't have and don't want to develop the skills to juggle both roles.

There's a flip side to that too: sometimes a musician discovers they are better at the business part then they were at the music part and they were fooling themselves all along.

These people USED to go work for Record Companies and resent all the rising stars they were supposed to nurture. I don't know what happens to them nowadays.

That USED to be a useful function of the Record Industry. Again, the conditions they kept artists under could qualify as indentured servitude, BUT they managed the business. Sometimes they managed it very badly. But they managed it.

I wonder if there would be a use for some sort of networking site where Artists can find the technical or business help their flakey artist asses might need.

dreamerm posted:

I wonder if there would be a use for some sort of networking site where Artists can find the technical or business help their flakey artist asses might need.

HAHA! Something like that would be useful, an experts exchange/meetup thing for musicians to connect with expertise and vice versa.

This sounds very realistic to me. The only thing I have discovered - which is kind of contradictory to what you suggest - is that most people won't download music just because it's free, but because they like it. This is why it's important to make it easy for them to listen before they download. People don't have a lot of time either, so my listening examples should be short and sound great. If they hear what they like, I display two links they can choose from: 1) buy the track/or album (digitally or physica CD/LP), or 2) download the track or album for free (putting a "donate"-button there seems resonable). - Personally, I offer a free download to anybody that asks for it. I know they are motivated to listen, and this means that other music lovers will probably discover my music through him But, just giving away my music for free, will probably not give any results at all. I am using Amiestreet.com as a place to find new music (it's free until ten more users download it), and I used to download a lot of new music there. Then I discovered that I will never have time to listen to those tracks, and they just fill up my harddrives. My philosophy now is that unless I really like what I hear - and have time to listen there and then - I won't download it. And... here comes my real point: If I really like what I hear, I am also motivated to pay a little for the download. I think it's much better to sell music downloads cheap than to give them away for free. When someone has paid, he or she will have more motivation to listen to the music later - and that is the main goal, isn't it?

Sorry, I posted this as a new thread instead of a reply...
I signed up to Tunecore and have test submitted a bunch of stuff to iTunes and Amazon through them. They charge very little and also the returns can be good. However, the best stream of royalties so far is coming through from royalty free sound sites such as istockphoto.com who are doing audio and video now. I recently signed up to audiomicro.com. These all return small quantities but also serve as great ways to publicise your work. They take half of the income but you do have access to their data base of contacts and site users. My advice would be to upload a lot of your experimental, loop based work. Parts of songs and vocal stalks etc. If people want the whole thing you could upload that at istock and itunes. One thing though, you can't be affiliated to a proffessional sound recording agency or company. It all suits me and is looking to be a great route to get my album known and heard. Only one thing now, finish the album. Hope this helps and keep up the great influential work TR, in sound and advice. Oh, check my strange electronica here.

This is great advice. I'd like to take it a bit further re: specifically how to do this technically. Musicians tend to depend on 3rd party sites to do everything but they lack the control and don't have their own 'home base'. Many of these sites bite the dust every week.

Build your own website. I use wordpress (free), which makes it easy to make changes and you can find a nice theme or have someone tweak it for fairly cheap (post a small project on elance.com for example). You can host wordpress on hosts like godaddy and hostgator, and they provide basically 1 click installs of the software.

Get an email autoresponder service. I use getresponse.com. You put a form on your webpages to collect emails. This allows you to set up a series of automatic follow up emails (an email per week for example) or broadcast (send email whenever you want). Don't rely on regular email as you will amass hundreds or thousands of email addresses and you want to avoid getting blocked by spam agents.

Sell digital goods - you can do this manually by using paypal (free but they take a small transaction fee) and sending people the link to the download. But over time you may want to get a shopping cart to handle payments and digital delivery. I use 1shoppingcart.com. When someone buys they also get added to an email list so I can build a 'list of buyers' which are much more valuable financially than freebie seekers. Your funnel is moving people from a free signup (to get your mp3 for example) then to a list of buyers, then larger upsells over time.

Sell things related to the music. I sell guitar lessons via a membership site (7 video courses with live Q&A streaming video sessions each month), downloadable courses, webcam guitar lessons and email guitar lessons. Don't just focus on gigs and merchandise for making money.

Affiliate products - you can offer related products to your list (and get a piece of each sale), as long as they are helpful and you don't abuse this too much. You could even test gear like guitar pedals, guitars, drums, etc and provide a link to sites like musiciansfriend/zzsounds that will give you a cut of the sale (tracked via the URL you provide to your list).

Adsense - While I'm not a huge fan of advertising, once google bought youtube and allowed me to do 'revenue sharing' with my videos, I now make $100 every month or two with only 32 videos (my vids have about 500,000 views at this point).

Finally, these are not very technical tasks. Much of it is simple cut and paste jobs (email form, shopping cart button, etc). You can easily outsource this to a techie for dirt cheap if you want.

My 2 cents.
Will Kriski
[imedia-ventures.com]

He lists a lot of ways to not make money, but even if you have a ton of fans on your email newsletter how are you going to make money if you're giving your music away for free?

Playing shows is how big acts like NIN make the dough, but small acts sometimes have to pay to play and often lose money on shows.

Printing fancy special edition CD's to sign and sell on the net to your hardcore fans for more than they would pay for a regular album by a well known artist sounds crazy to me, and even if it would work, where is a small, broke act going to get the cash to pay for a small run of nicely printed album art?

Forget cash to pay for studio time, out of all the musicians I know we barely have enough money to pay for food right now. We can record the album ourselves and because of lots of trial and error it will sound good, but we don't even have money to print an album to give away for free.

The headline should be changed to: "Trent Reznor's thoughts on what to do as a new / unknown and already rich artist."

My hypothesis is that this new wave of musicians not making money will force a generation of creative people who would have been successful artists in the past to get day jobs and work their life away, never creating their art until people realize that music has begun to suck, and want to pay for it again.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2009 09:50AM by ancientprotector.

For the last three years, I have been working toward my first album. Thank you for all of your inspiration and insight. I am humble hungry and ready. I have and will continue to adapt and overcome. To sing my song and share it with you.

[sorne.com]

Thank you.

My thoughts on that matter:

-First
You probably are the best example to follow and I'm proud I've always been a fan of your work and ideas.

-Second
I've always thought the music business is primarily a matter of networking: you know people in the business and talk to them about what you do and then it gets to the next level and so on and the word goes out to the right ears and people...eventually: which appears to be the seed to the Justin Timberlake/U2 way...

Ok, so now I realize what's happening to the music business and feel helpless and then you come with those great ideas.

I now have an account on Bandcamp (which you should investigate if you haven't...it seems great for new artists) Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, last.fm and Twitter. I also have accounts on echoingthesound, nin.com and depechemode.com which gives me access to communities that I think could connect with what I do.

I tried using them to promote a so-called "internet single release" and got maybe the attention of...200 people at most...remove friends and family maybe 150 people...around the world...

--UPDATE--
If you're interested in another example where I got attention: have a look in my comments for this remix: [remix.nin.com]


I participate in the most remix contests I can...to get noticed you know...And that's where I got the most attention! I didn't win the most recent remix competition on beatport for DM's single "Peace" because I didn't log on to post about my remix every 10 minutes. Instead, I uploaded my remix on last.fm where you can listen to it for free and now more than 7000 people listened to it and I've got many comments saying my remix is better than the original (it's not my personal opinion though...) To me, it's a greater victory than winning the contest itself.


--The important part of this post--
So, do you think it could work that way: Small artists being helped by big ones by forming some kind of a community of artists working together aside from labels and directly with the fans? Or is there the risk that the big artists become as selective and hard to reach as the labels currently are? Is there further risks that the artists simply lose their credibility? And that simple fans start to "make music" just to reach their idol in some way? I think we are in transition but we all have to move the same way toward the same goal...am I being idealistic?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2009 10:39AM by Indefinite_Cure.

jarrettwold posted:

dreamerm posted:

I wonder if there would be a use for some sort of networking site where Artists can find the technical or business help their flakey artist asses might need.

HAHA! Something like that would be useful, an experts exchange/meetup thing for musicians to connect with expertise and vice versa.

I think that would be an awesome thing for all artists.

I think this blog talks just as much about succeeding as a new band as it does the future of the industry and music itself. The only two things I (or anyone else) know about this are 1) the old paradigm has broken down, and 2) the new model has not emerged yet.

While some artists like yourself have figured out what works for them – everything you’ve written here – this is not a model for the new music industry, because it’s only viable for a certain type of artist. What you’re suggesting here is not a new paradigm for which bands to use to break in, you’re suggesting that the future of music is primarily for the indies. And you’re probably right.

I think there are two areas to look at within your blog – first, there is the approach of using “unconventional” means for an artist to get their music out and connect with their fans, and to make new ones. Twitter, webcasts, etc. Who can argue with this? The fact is, these methods (which labels still refer to as “viral” marketing”) are not viral – they are the fucking mainstream, or soon will be. It’s how this generation is not only communicating but is getting its information. As Michael Crichton predicted in “Electronic Life” decades ago, the old way of information is leaving us. We are now witnessing the final stages of a terminal illness for the mainstream media – newspapers, CDs etc. So I couldn’t agree more with your first point, which is to wake the fuck up and recognize we’re in the midst of a technological revolution, and utilize it to your full advantage.

Your second point deals with the way in which bands are to conduct their business, which I understand to be “give your music away, and try to earn money on special collector’s edition merch.”

To me this is where it breaks down, because it will only work for a certain kind of band. No, I’m not giving you the standard bullshit reply of “it’s great if you’re already established,” which you’ve addressed in this blog. What I’m saying is more complex than that.

First off, this does seem like a good way for a band to start out and get a fan base. But what I don’t see in your blog is an answer to the question “Then what?” You seem to imply to continue on merrily giving away your music and selling collector’s editions. The major argument I have against this is that very few bands have the kind of fans that will pay for this. Sure, I had no problem dropping a couple hundred bucks on the “Ghosts” edition when it came out. NIN is the kind of band that has fans like that. Beastie Boys is another. So is Radiohead. But what if you’re The Fray? Or OneRepublic? These are bands selling shitloads of records, but they just don’t have the kind of fan-base that’s going to blow money on collector’s editions or even really give a shit about them. It’s the soccer mom in the car humming along to “Apologize” that’s going to go ask her 13-year-old how to download it on iTunes that’s buying their records. I just don’t think your method will have longevity for straight-up pop bands – bands with good songs that people want to hear, yet don’t have the intrigue of a NIN or Radiohead, that will transform an ordinary music listener into a militant fan. While it may be a great way for a band like that to start out, what do they do next? I’m saying I think your idea will only work for a specific kind of band, with a specific kind of fan, one that will follow the band’s every move. There are only a handful of bands around today that command this kind of power, and yes NIN is one of them. The best evidence of this, sadly, is American Idol. Why do some of the actual *winners* of the shows dissolve into obscurity, while the second and third place finishers go on to massive stardom? Because people give a shit about Chris Daughtry for more than five minutes, unlike Taylor Hicks.

Furthermore, since there is very little money coming in and essentially no labels, your blog only speaks to bands with the capacity to produce themselves. How realistic is it for every band to be self-produced?

This takes me back to the beginning of my post, where I said the picture you are painting is one of independent, self-produced bands becoming the mainstream, because that’s the only kind of band that will be able to thrive with your suggested methods. Will that happen? It might. Because those are likely the bands best equipped to reach the new generation, but not necessarily the best bands. That’s a scary thought, but not any scarier than the old system.

The question all this begs to me is does this preclude any real musical revolution from happening? The mainstream trends have always been easily followed. In the 80s there was…well, 80s music. This morphed into cock-rock and then there was Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Somehow we backslid into the Backstreet and Britney Spears era, and then there was Dave Matthews and mother fucking Blues Traveler and the Rembrandts and Bare Naked Ladies and Matchbox Twenty. Next? Linkin Park. Alien Ant Farm. Limp Bizkit. And then the American Idol era began. Nickelback was invented. Santana started getting artists to put their songs on his records while he obscenely soloed over every goddamn section. Alongside that was a quasi-R&B fad with Timberlake and Outkast. Enter piano rock. The Fray. Five For Fighting.

You can question the exact timing of these last few eras, and that is my point. Most of these last few trends have been running parallel to each other. Music is more eclectic now than at any other point in history. And it’s because the media is changing. Everything and anything is available at all times. Previously, dominant musical trends were driven by a machine, a mainstream machine. Whatever the labels put into the machine came out neatly packaged and force-fed to a generation, clearly defining an era. That machine is now broken. Whereas there used to be one major highway that became what we call a trend, there are now a thousand arteries branching off in every direction. So the question becomes, is it possible for there to ever again be a single, easily definable musical mainstream era? Or is the new mainstream by definition an eclectic melting pot?

If this is the case, then we can be happy the playing field is somewhat leveled and we won’t have to be force-fed whatever the major labels have bestowed their blessings on. But there’s still a machine isn’t there? This one looks different and acts differently, but it’s still a machine. It’s still marketing. It will be the bands that know how to use the new media that will succeed, and this doesn’t mean it will be the best bands, just the craftiest ones. Is this really any better? I’m sure some will say clearly, yes. But it will really be no different. In the old system great bands were never heard of because they couldn’t break through the bullshit system, and they had no other way of getting heard, while shitty music was everywhere. In the new system, great bands will never be heard of because they don’t know how to utilize the new media, and yes, shitty bands will still be everywhere.

I don’t think a blog like yours can be written without discussing the consequences of what it purports. Because what you are talking about is not just a way for bands to break in, but a new vision of the music industry, and a complete make-over of music itself. I think there has to be an avenue other than this, alongside it, because otherwise all we’d have in the coming years are tech-savvy, self-produced indie bands.

What I see happening is basically a revolution, a churning over of the old system into something that will look very much like its former self. It’s essentially a passing of power from one pair of hands to another.

It won’t be indie bands that will be taking over, it will be indie labels. While more and more bands will become self-produced as music technology gets continually dumbed down, you’ll see less of the big-name producers, engineers and mixers and studios around (I mean, we already are). But rather than the bands themselves being the ones to take matters into their own hands, it will be independent labels that are able to embrace the new market. They’ll provide 360 deals for these new bands and a platform from which to launch (read: $$$). Unlike their major label predecessors they won’t be shelling out half a million to make a record anymore. They’ll expect the bands to make the records themselves, but they’ll likely lure them with more lucrative advances, tour support, etc.

Some of these indie labels will be more successful than others. And eventually those indie labels will become? Major labels. They will look different but that’s what they’ll be: an entity that was best able to master the current media. Just a new machine.

RG