Credit crunch Blues or how to monetize your music Part 1

[Djay Buddha]

What with the major banks going bankrupt, businesses big and small going to the wall...
If people aren't going out to gigs and pubs and venues closing at the rate of 50 a week here in the UK. Not to mention piracy and the difficulty of selling music on the internet when you are relatively unknown.Where does that leave the working musician, who whether full time or part time is looking to make money from their music?
Now I know there are many here who look at their music making as a hobby and do not feel the need or particularly want to make money from their music and that is fine, but their are those who would at like to at least make enough money to cover their outgoings and maybe buy that new guitar they are after or help feed the kids and keep their better halves off their backs :)
So how do you start making that extra bit of cash.
I have been thinking about this for a while and have come up with some potential ways of doing it for yourself and thought I would share them in this blog.
First some of the things that won't make you much money if any at all.
1 Pay to play gigs and open mics!
Pay to play gigs kind of speaks for itself JUST SAY NO!
while I shouldn't really put these two together there are some who put on open mics and do it for the love of the music no question about it. however there are also far more who are putting on so called open mics and getting paid by the venue and the artists get nothing, These aren't really open mics as they aren't open at all, many of the artists are booked to play well in advance and expected to play 30/45 min sets If they are run well and are popular the promoter can make a lot of money usually by getting a percentage of the bar takings. what does the artist get hmm if they are lucky a bottle of beer or two. I am not saying don't do open mics just be very fussy about who you do them for :)

2: online promotion companies are in the vast majority of cases scams where you pay them to get you fake plays or ask for fees upfront and you never see them again. the other one is the compilation cd scam, where you pay a fee sometimes as much £200 and they tell you they send out promo cd's to labels radio stations etc but they never do. There are of course genuine companies who provide a&r promotion and radio plugging services while they may ask for a small deposit upfront, If they are any good they will be happy to get paid by results.

OK enough of being negative although I could probably write about quite a few more.

So how to be positive and get your music heard and make some money.

1. CD's and digital distribution Playing a gig and getting paid is good but if you can sell a few cds at the gig it is a bonus and very often make your than the gig.The secret is marketing it properly get some flyers done and place them on the tables or pass them round the audience with info on your cd or where they can buy mp3's and make sure that the CD packaging looks professional and not home made. Buyers at gigs make buying decisions based on what they have heard and what the CD looks like. So it is definitely worth investing in professionally produced CD's
Digital distribution is very easy and difficult at the same time. easy to get hooked up with itunes etc and difficult to get anyone to buy them. Why? because there are millions of artists doing the same thing.
So here is a little inside information relative to itunes and how to stand out from the crowd. itunes allows each credit card holder to have 5 accounts attached to it, So you can rate your music 5 stars from each account. you can also review and recommend artist friends music on your playlists (playlists should be genre specific and include artists similar to you).for each account and ask them to do the same for you. i you do this and regularly update the playlists with new music, you will climb the charts rapidly and your music will be recommended to others who have similar tastes.

2 Putting on your own gigs is kind of obvious but can be a great way to promote yourself and artists you like and make some money. Find unusual venues, village halls where live music is rare. People will go A: out of curiosity or B: to support you in your endeavours. House concerts are going to be the next big thing get onto RoB Ellens House concert hub and advetise your dates and or host concerts or get friends to host concerts IF you played 1 0r 2 house concerts a month with 20 or 30 attending and 8/10 pound donation plus sell a few CDs you can make decent money and het that new guitar sooner than you think :)

3. Using your friends and fans to help spread the music virally There are plenty of widgets and embeddable players that we should be sharing with each other on myspace facebook etc If we agree to help promote other artists music then instead of having one player playing your music on myspace you could have hundreds and if you put them in blogs and bulletins they won't even mess up your pretty pages:)
more to follow in part 2

[Lew Bear]

Hmm, the open mics - I book people to play well in advance as special guests. Does that count as bad?

It is of course an open mic around that

[Djay Buddha]

Indeed it is. As independent and skint artists everything is fair when your taking on the "Man" :)

[Michael Heath (aka Fledderjohn)]

That's a very interesting post there rick. I didn't know about the itunes thing - though rating your own music 5 times seems like cheating. But then all is fair in love and war and the promotion of independent music.

[Djay Buddha]

bump

[Djay Buddha]

Part 2 will follow soon