5 Reasons Other Musicians Will Play On Your Album

You are a solo artist looking to record your next single, or album, but you need other musicians to perform on your tracks. You could be a songwriter who doesn’t sing, recording a demo in need of a vocalist. Or maybe you are a front man or woman who wants to showcase your original material, and you are searching for other likeminded, talented musicians to be your bandmates.

I know I want to work with the best musicians I can find on my projects. Preferably, they are even better musicians than me and will add a whole new creative dimension to my music. But we all have limited budgets, the other day I visited SoundMoz site and I was able to get one of the best speakers.

How do we get other musicians to sign up to learn our music and lay down a track in the studio, or show up regularly and spend time practicing and putting together a set to perform out – preferably for free or little cost?

The other day I was chatting with a fellow musician at the Seattle AFM (Musicians Union) Chapter 76-493 before a meeting. He was talking about how he has a goal this year to release six albums (!) of original music. Now, he has the songs all written, but he has found it difficult to get other musicians to perform his songs in the studio for free. In particular, there was a musician whom he had approached because he was a much better guitarist. Somehow, my friend just couldn’t seem to get the other guy to lay down the guitar tracks to my friend’s songs. For free.

It became clear to me that my friend’s expectations were perhaps misaligned with reality.

I figured it’s time to share the obvious. Or maybe not so obvious.

I haven’t been at this music thing for that long (I’ve got friends who have been musicians for 40+ years, after all), but I’ve picked up on some pretty important basic etiquette of musical collaboration.

I’ve written another article about the mechanics of long distance musical collaboration, but this post is really about the business, the monetary  – and the non-monetary –  exchange involved in collaborating musically.

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Case Study: How The Rock Band @NightRiots Broke Out

What factors cause a band with regional popularity to suddenly break onto the national scene?

Night Riots is a California-based rock band that has gotten a lot of buzz recently, and this article is all about how and why from a marketing perspective.

Disclaimer: I don’t have any personal or professional connection to Night Riots; I’m just interested in profiling them as a marketing case study in indie music success.

I’m a member of a public Facebook Group called The Music Biz Weekly Music Marketing Mind that currently has over 1250 members. If you’re a musician or otherwise in the music business, I can recommend this group as a great place to share and get ideas about music marketing.

A few weeks ago, one of our Facebook group’s members, Diane Phillips, posed a question to the group about Night Riots. This stimulated some lively commentary from myself and others, because goodness know that we Music Musketeers, er, Marketeers, er… Marketers cannot refrain from giving our opinions when asked (and even sometimes even when not asked). I say that with great humility and affection.

I thought it would be useful to summarize what I learned from my research and other peoples’ comments about Night Riots’ recent success. Perhaps you will see elements of yourself, if you are a musician, or your clients, if you are a music marketing consultant, and find something that you can run with to further your own success.

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“Stop trying to get on the radio” And Other Words Of Wisdom From DJ @BradNolan

Brad Nolan

Stevie and I have been honored to be asked to help judge the last two annual Hard Rock Rising Global Battle of the Bands here in Seattle. In 2014, 10,000 bands entered this international competition, and 750 bands subsequently participated in live battles around the world at Hard Rock Cafes from Dublin, Ireland to Atlanta, Georgia. One winner went on to score an all-expense trip to Rome, Italy to perform in front of 40,000 fans.

This year, Stevie and I were asked to be two of the four judges in the finalist round here at the Seattle Hard Rock Cafe. It was very exciting. Even more exciting: this past May, the band which we helped judge to the number one spot in Seattle, a most excellent female-fronted band called Joyfield, went on to beat all the other bands from around the world, and win the entire 2014 global competition!

Brad Nolan and Ben HaggertyOne of the best parts of participating in the judging at the Hard Rock, however (in addition to seeing bands like Joyfield, of course), is watching our local MC for this event, Brad Nolan.

Brad is not only a fantastic live event MC, his day job is DJ at local Seattle radio station, Click 98.9. Brad is fast-talking, energetic and funny,. He’s also just a really straight-up, honest, friendly guy, AND (it turns out) he also has a lot of insider knowledge to share about radio and the music business.

I thought it would be very cool to interview Brad and see what words of wisdom he might have for indie artists when it comes to radio as well as media and PR in general. I was not disappointed.

I think you will enjoy this interview. Brad has some great advice to share, from how to get on the radio, to how to market yourself as a musician, to the role of social media for indie artists.

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Recap: SF Music Tech Summit XII 2013

I had a very full day at my first SF Music Tech. I was impressed with the level of serious dialog, with the fact that women were much better represented here than at many of the tech conferences I’ve been to (35 – 40%), and, perhaps most importantly, with the mix of technology, business, and artist/creative-types represented. Many music conferences attract one type of attendee or another, but this one seems to do a really fine job of bringing them all together under one roof.

Here are my other impressions (taking into account that there was no way I could humanly attend all of the 33 sessions):

Daisy and YouTube: Important But Unrepresented

It was interesting that panel after panel talked throughout the day about YouTube as the most important platform for music discovery, especially among young people. Zoe Keating said she gets more money monthly from YouTube than Spotify. Yet many other music tech platforms are not seamlessly integrated with YouTube, and licensing is a nightmare for smaller musicians. Google was completely unrepresented at SF Music Tech as far as I could see – neither as panelists nor attendees.

Another elephant in the room was Daisy: apparently things got heated at the “How We Will Experience Music in the Future” panel, although I wasn’t there to hear it myself. Daisy went completely unmentioned in the “Music Discovery” panel (with panelists from Echo Nest, Rhapsody and Pandora). I did see two Daisy/MOG/Beats (that was what their badges said) attendees, but no official panel representation. I would think with all the press Jimmy Iovine’s been courting around Daisy and serving data to artists, they would have had someone here to talk to the tech community about this feature. Maybe I’m naïve.

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