A survival guide learned from personal experience and viewing the travails of others at Wordcamp 2009.
Tip 1: Don’t set off the fire alarm. It tends to distract the audience during a speech.
Tip 2: Don’t lose your badge, it identifies you and nothing says “cool cat” more then a lanyard.
Tip 3: Get the T-shirt, don’t [...]

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Hypebot dropped some numbers on the rising significance of independent labels.
Some of their reported numbers:
-Independent labels accounted for 32% of aggregate album sales in 2008, up almost 1.5% from 2007.
One-third of album sales are indies – sweet!
-Independent labels, as a group, are the largest owners of master recordings in the industry – over 80% of [...]

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If anything, the Internet provides the ability to locate many things you may not have been expecting to find. This means that in order to reach your market (in this case, your music) you may need to find creative ways to get yourself noticed by those potential fans that may actually be searching for something else.

The previous V11 post quoted “The Fall of Communization and the Rise of the Music Fan.” Once again a quote from that post is relevant here, as it pertains to the perspective of the music listener/music purchaser:

As music fans we are now walking in a crowded room where everyone wants our attention and what happens naturally is that we’ve tuned out the frequency of noise in our lives. The permeability of the walls we put up around ourselves now only lets certain messages through. You now have to be smarter about what you do, because it’s no longer as easy to buy your way into our headphones.

Because of this, we need to find different, more organic ways to get over those walls so that people hear can your message.

Creative Marketing is required. Think of it as a combination of web surfing mixed with the long tail business approach.

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Every once in a while you come across an older post that starts sparking new thoughts. Kyle Bylin’s September 2008 post for Hypebot recently came across my screen.

He states: We now form communities around our favorite bands, we want to establish a connection or relationship, and we have a strong desire for music that is real, authentic, and meaningful.

This is consistent with Seth Godin’s now well known Tribes approach: what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies [or musicians, as the case may be].

Bylin continues: The permeability of the walls we put up around ourselves now only lets certain messages through. You now have to be smarter about what you do, because it’s no longer as easy to buy your way into our headphones.

So he asks musicians: What relationships are you building, where is your community, what connections are being made, how authentic is your message?

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This post from Music Think Tank’s Eric Galen helps musicians think through what they should consider when seeking managerial help. A team is needed these days, to cover the different areas of expertise…

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I was reading Spin Magazine’s April article on U2 (What Makes U2 Run?) and came across this quote from U2′S bassist Adam Clayton:

“Think about the big bands, the big orchestras that used to tour,” he says. “Then the stock market crash came and they slimmed down to quartets, because that was cheaper.”

His comment was in response to a discussion about music’s relationship to outside economic forces as a constantly mutating cycle.

So if at some point big bands had to reduce their numbers from 20+ to 4 to become financially sustainable, then are we now seeing a time when 4-6 member bands will need to be reduced to solo musicians to make touring financially viable?

After all, pay split between one is certainly much better than when split between five. So, is one > five?

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Some interesting tidbits from a recent LA Times Interview with Napster founder Shawn Fanning:
Since Napster came out in 1999, the music industry has undergone a seismic shift. How do you think that industry is doing now?
I definitely think it’s in rough shape. The margins for digital music are awful for everyone other than the record [...]

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I was able to track down the ubiquitous Brian Zisk, Executive Producer of the upcoming SF MusicTech Summit IV (Monday, May 18, 2009 in San Francisco), and Shoshana Zisk, co-producer of the event.

An excerpt:

What motivated you to begin producing the SF Music Tech conferences?

Brian: I love getting people together, and there is a plethora of music/technology talent in the San Francisco Bay Area. …. Plus our conference is different. Many shows are all about just the CEOs and VPs of marketing. They tend to leave their tech guys at home, not wanting to let others even know who the developers/creators are. Our event specifically brings together the developers and CTOs to share knowledge and promote synergies and innovation. Then the business execs, press, and investors all want to get in with these great creators.

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