Album release checklist for the DIY musician - success plan!

This kind of post comes up all the time and this latest one from CD Baby listing what you need to do when that huge box of CD's has just been delivered is a good checklist to have to hand.

When your album is finished, your work is only half done; and oftentimes, that first half is the easy part.

Radio promotion, PR, booking, web maintenance, and all the other “business” elements of a music career generally don’t come naturally to artists. But if you can learn to embrace the fact that these tasks NEED to get done in order for anyone to hear your music (and chances are that no one else is going to handle all those things FOR you), then you’ll eventually find a sense of fun and accomplishment in the non-musical chores too!

Not only does it then list 12 steps that you need to go through but it also links to loads of further articles that expand on those steps. This is one worth bookmarking!

Whilst we're on the subject, there's a great pre-release checklist on MusicianWages here and you'll then need to check out Cameron's mind bogglingly good series of posts on everything you need to know about self-releasing an album here. It's awesome!

BUT, and this is CRUCIAL, this is all bollocks unless your album is worth releasing in the first place (read our post here) and you MUST have built a fanbase first - READ this post from Topspin dude Ian Rogers (he really is actually a dude) which is the best one post description of how to build that fanbase that I have ever seen.

I'll be sending endless people who contact me and ask about how they should release their album to read this post - I'd hope you'd bookmark it and refer to it as this is pretty much the plan on how you acheive DIY success!

How to make loads of money being DIY

You've probably already seen all about this story but I would be remiss if I didn't make sure.

In December the American stand-up comedian Louis CK, who has admittedly had significant mainstream media but really survives by his large cult following, decided to see what would happen if he released his own live stand up video.

In comedy, live videos are usually released by one of the major entertainment companies. They bear all the costs and pay the comedian a royalty - just like a record deal.

Louis decided to shoot and produce the video himself - which cost somewhere between $200k and $250k depending on what you include (the new website etc).

He then offered it for sale as a download only from his new website.

"The experiment was: If I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?”

And, boy, did they.

In 12 days, he sold over $1million worth - hence the Paypal shot above.

Now, Louis already had a tribe that he could ignite through Twitter and other online PR, but so do a lot of bands, don't they?

The key point here isn't that he could do this but that his followers wanted to buy at that price and see that money go to him.

As Mashable said - His experiment proves, however that people are willing to pay for content if you communicate with them openly, shed the DRM and keep the price low.

I think it's also extremely important to understand that this was a globally available release done on the same day. It's a paradigm that the record labels don't get!

I want to see a band do this as their model, not as a one-off like Radiohead (which was fine), rather than signing a deal!

It will happen.

Here's the links to read all the stuff:

Lefsetz tells us how & why Louis could do this - this is a GREAT article!

Mashable tell us how much he earned

Hypebot on the story early

Louis's own explanation

Assets - get lots of them!

This post is so, so true.

When you're planning a campaign for a release you can't have too many hooks and bits of content ('assets') to hang it on.

You need to plan these well in advance and know when you intend to use them to keep attention focused on your release.

Last week at SF Music Tech Summit, Ethan Kaplan said something very telling yet true: "The worst thing you can do to keep fans actively engaged... is to actually release the album."

Think about that -- just because the album comes out does not mean the campaign is over. Hell, at that point, the campaign just BEGAN! Unfortunately, too many acts waste their ammo in the weeks leading up to the Big Event, then have little salvo to offer in the weeks following, especially if the press, the airplay, film placement, or the tour do not come in as hoped.

Read it here.

 

Digital Album Artwork affects sales

I saw this mentioned by @thornybleeder at the end of last week and then had someone else ask me about it this morning to see if we agreed.

It's an article about how album (and single) artwork is changing in the digital age and how those changes can actually affect sales success.

The basic premise is that since we are approaching the point where the majority of album sales are digital downloads, the most viewed version of an album sleeve is the thumbnail size version on iTunes and Amazon.

Artwork designed to stick out at this small size (especially when people are browsing the shop category areas) really can help make people click through and listen and perhaps buy your music.

We have been simplifying our sleeve designs for most of our artists for several years for this reason and you should consider it too.

Of ourse, there is still  place for intricate and detailed artwork but be aware of the choice you are making or perhaps cretae a simple version for web sales and a more complicated version (of the same art) for physical sales.

I love great packaging when I buy CD or vinyl, but don't let that cloud your judgement!

Read the piece here.

Project planning - uncool but vitally important

I know that you don't want to hear this, but getting your shit in order before you try to accomplish anything in your music career is step one!

Much as it pains me to admit it, every time that we have fucked up a release over the last 20 years, it has been because we didn't plan it properly and failed to get all our ducks in a row before we started on a campaign.

This might seem so utterly simple but I guarantee that you'll ignore this, fuck up, and chalk it down to experience.

So, get all your shit staright before you start and know what everyone has to do and when.

In a nutshell – and you probably know this already – rock and roll success is one of the most difficult things to achieve, and if cash or talent alone can’t secure it, then what will? Well, it’s our view that one of the most single important things that can help give artists an edge in the quest for success, but gets repeatedly overlooked, is this: a plan.

Read this great post about this here.

 

A vinyl record crowdsourced label

I love the idea of this new label/site from the people at Plugola.

I'll let them explain it:

After roughly a year and a half of bootstrapping and slowly building, we are finally able to announce a soft (beta) launch of Hifidelics.What we have here is essentially an online record store built on top of a crowdsourcing platform. Our focus is to release limited edition, creative vinyl records from some of the freshest, up-and-coming talent. When I say ‘creative’ records, I mean something extra special in the packaging or the record itself.

Go and read their post about the idea here.

And, you can check out the Hifidelics site here.

It might be that it's a great place for you to release a record, or it might just inspire you to make an extremely creatively packaged record - these resonate with true fans very well.

 

How to promote your album

This is a great post (and free pdf) from the CD Baby's DIY Musician blog.

It sets out a timeline for what you need to do to promote your forthcoming album from 12 months before release (or 4 months as a minimum!).

Although I am not set on the idea that every DIY musician should be setting up to release an album (building a real fanbase by releasing singles or solo tracks, gigging and spreading the word online comes first) until they are ready, when you do, this is a very valuable reference tool.

Releasing a new album takes more than just duplicating discs and throwing a party. You’ve got to get the word out if you want your music to sell. But with so many methods of promotion and so many outlets for music discovery, it can be difficult to know where to focus your efforts. Stay calm! This promotion timeline will guide you through, step by step, breaking it all down into bite-sized chunks so you can get out there and start generating press and buzz.

Get it here.

 

Offer vinyl as a part of a your release?

Image by Karola Reigler Photography

Check out this long post about the continued resurgence of vinyl and what it means, both culturally and for you as a mucsician.

It's a great piece that links out to various other articles to look at the whole picture of what is currently happening with vinyl sales - the truth being that they are on the increase but are a tiny fraction of music sales overall.

Cutting a vinyl record today is about making a physical artefact of a release. It carries with it prestige. Its scarcity is part of its value, with exclusive 12″ releases again returning to the days when DJs were judged by the obscure gems in their collection, not the disposable digital hits.

But, for the DIY musician, this format is something special. When you have a fanbase that can support the cost (somewhere between 2500 and 5000 people on your email list - actively interested in your music) there will be a core number amongst them who adore the idea of a physical 7" or 12". I see it all the time with my clients where we get a steady stream of email asking for various records on vinyl. OK, sure, it's genre dependent to a degree (all those trip-hoppers and electronic fans love vinyl more than some other niche fans) but, for all artists, the market is there.

Learn about vinyl - it's tactility, warmth, superior sound, heritage etc - and when the time is right, make a big deal about offering it to your fans.

Read the whole piece here.

How to make the most of your album release

Making the most of your album release is something that almost every indie or diy musician falls short on.

You slave away and make a great record and then put huge effort into the release, but within a few weeks, it's all over.

These two posts look at this issue in different ways.

This great post from We All Make Music sets out five things that you really ought to be doing to maximise the impact of your release.

Just because you have 500 copies of your new record sitting in your apartment doesn’t mean you should start selling them at shows or online right away. If you just spent three, six, maybe even ten months creating a new album, the least you can do is spend at least three months (if not more!) promoting it.  Here are a few steps that every young independent band should take to ensure the release of their record is as successful as possible:

Read all 5 tips here. 

And then there's this post from Greg Rollett. Greg looks at music promotion and marketing in a way that nobody else does. He is an internet marketer, and experts in that field really are at the cutting edge of how to use the internet to market stuff - anything - but Greg applies it to music.

In his post and video he focuses entirely on how to extend the shelf life of your album once it's released so that it's not all over in a matter of weeks.

Read the post here

 

Tunecore upgrades give you more options and information

Tunecore announced a major upgrade to their service this week.

If you don't know what it is, Tunecore is one of the digital distributors that will get your music (yes, anyone's) on all the major digital retail outlets - iTunes, Amazon etc.

It charges a fee per release and takes no further commission or rights. It's a great option.

However, if you want to know everything that you'll ever need to know about which digital distribution service to use, check out Adrian @Buzzsonic's amazing post here.

For the Tunecore skinny, watch the video here.

 

Get an extra 5% from your iTunes sales

You might not think that matters that much, but it all adds up.

iTunes now accounts for 80% of most of my client's income outside of their own direct-to-fan sales from their websites, so adding another 5% to that makes a noticeable improvement.

And it's relatively easy to do.

What this post teaches is that you should swap bare links to your music on iTunes for 'affiliate' links. Now, if you don't know what an 'affiliate' link is, the short answer is that it's a link that the vendor (in this case iTunes) tracks to see where people coming to their store are being sent from. And, if the visitor buys as a result of coming through your link, you get paid a commission.

This is a massive business online and if you've never heard about it, go and search it up and have your mind blown!

As a musician though, you should follow the advice in this post and use affiliate links to your own music on iTunes.

BTW, the same thing applies on Amazon and various other digital music retailers.

The major­ity of artists already have their music on iTunes, thanks to sim­ple ser­vices like CD Baby and Tunecore.  You get 70% of the money every time some­one buys your album.  But if you are send­ing you fans to iTunes, you need to sign up for an iTunes Affil­i­ate Account to earn an extra 5% every time one of your fans buys some­thing after click­ing on your link!

Read the whole post here.

 

Which music sale makes you the most?

Image by steffenz

This post is written from the point of view of the fan buying music and advising them which way will return the most cash to the artist.

But, as a basic primer for you, the artist, it works just as well.

And, in short, what it tells you is that the direct sale to the fan is the one that will make you the most cash. Sort of obvious, but it reminds me that Ian Rogers of Topspin says that you're not in the business of selling 79 pence / cents single track downloads. It just doesn't work.

You're in the business of selling the music experience of your band to the core element of your fanbase - and that starts with selling CD's or album downloads to them. Learn about the direct to fan model from Topspin, Nimbit (this link is their direct to fan training) or Bandcamp.

Say your favorite band is putting out a new album and you've decided to buy it. You want to make sure that when you do, the band gets as much of your money as possible. Where do you shop? Best Buy? Your local record store? iTunes?

Read it here.

6 tips for fan funding success

This is a great primer for anyone thinking about trying to fan fund a music release - taken from the DIY Musician blog.
When undertaking a crowdfunding project of your own, be sure to avoid these common pitfalls:

•   Setting unrealistic fundraising goals: “Internet Angels” (wealthy strangers trolling the internet looking to give away large sums of money) are the exception, not the rule.

•   Underestimating the importance of marketing your project: The assumption that “If You Build It, They Will Come” (simply posting to a crowdfunding platform and expecting contributions) is a conviction best left to Kevin Costner movies.

Crowdfunding is WORK, but it is smart work.

Here are 6 Tips for Crowdfunding Success:

Read the 6 tips here.

What is an Album now anyway?

Image by kevindooley

When someone who's worked at a major label with superstar acts wants to tell you something about how to succeed as a musician, you can bet that you should be listening.

That's the case here in this great piece on Hypebot about how the Album is dying and what it will become.

I don't agree necessarily with the overall view of the piece, as the format showcases music and great music is at the heart of what we all do, but there are two sections that are required reading for artists.

One in the middle of the post where Ethan 'defines the Album':

• Branding: an album serves as a tent pole around which to rebrand a band. Logos, type faces, color, visual identites. This also applies to non-visual things such as: message, statement, platform, etc.
• Visuals: both with and without music, related closely to branding
• The Hook: something that serves as the tweet worthy summation of what this Album is aiming at
• The Angle: a unique method or action which serves as an easy method for someone to write about the record
• The Timeline: the sequence of events and windowing of releases culminating to…
• The Release: Not the end game, but rather a stop along the way
• The Music: Can’t forget about this? Or can you?

And at the end, where he sets out rules for a release:

• Announce the release when it is ready to ship. Lead times should be at most 4 weeks from announcement to “in hands”
• Self-direct all publicity and promotion. Own the visual language/identity, own the messaging.
• Fans matter more than radio stations, website exclusives, etc. Giving a video to the NY Times ahead of your own YouTube won’t get you a good review: don’t do it.
• Hear it and buy it: don’t put anything up to hear, watch or experience if it can’t be purchased. Reward loyalty for your fans through exclusives.
• Make your fans product evangelists. Everyone wants an iPad because everyone they know wants one or has one. Make your release so amazing that you want to tell the world about it.
• Own your press: disintermediate, be selective with interviews and use the channels at your disposal (video, twitter, etc)
• Make it an event. Time it properly, make all messaging unified and coordinated.
• Let the Release define itself: if you can’t summarize it in one sentence, keep winnowing it down until you can. It might be an app, a collection of songs, a video album, etc

These are both critical things to understand and why 'just having good music' is never enough!

You can read the whole post here.

 

 

 

What's broken in A&R?

A&R rightly get a lot of grief from everyone else in the music industry.

All too many simply don't have the talent to do the job and it becomes the parody that the video below pokes fun at (Don't watch if you're easily offended!).

But, there are some good A&R people - who can bring improvement, direction and clarity to an artist's work.

This article on Wired is well worth a read.

A&R scouts, the workers of the music industry entrusted with finding and developing new talent, have come in for much criticism over the past decade. Most people don't know what they do, and those that do, disagree with most of their decisions. Disgruntled, overlooked bands hate them for not signing them, and the record-buying public hate them for feeding them bland, intelligence-insulting music, or incomprehensible hipster nonsense which no-one living outside the E1 postcode will like.

But is the A&R-bashing justified, and, if so, what can be done about it?

Read the piece here.

Oh, and it really is like this:

 

 

Direct to fan releases avoid piracy

I know I said I wouldn't join in and talk about Radiohead - sorry!

But this piece in Billboard is more about the changing release structure that allows bands, who don't have a record deal and who have a community of fans that trust their creative chops, to go straight to them with a new record.

They can put it on sale without anyone knowing what it'll be like - because they trust the band.

And Radiohead fans are the most like this, as far as I can see.

Direct to fan doesn't replace the old model, but can run alongside it and even pre-empt it.

The new music business model axiom says access over ownership...except in this case. If you want Radiohead's "The King of Limbs" you'll have to legally or illegally download it. None of the subscription services, from Spotify to MOG, will have the album until its commercial release on March 29.

This is a hint of things to come. Over time more artists will decide to self-release music in this fashion, thus creating long, staggered release windows that place serious fans first and more casual fans further back in line. Traditional retail must wait in line, too. That means service companies that provide the tools and expertise for the online self-release of albums will benefit from this self-release strategy while the second wave of consumers are left to retailers.

Read the Billboard piece here.

And, you might have seen this already!

 

Direct to fan - from the expert

I did Mike King's Topspin course at Berklee.

And it was / is great!

I now use Topspin for a number of my clients and am increasingly called on to assist artists signed to indie and major labels develop a direct to fan element that sits alongside their traditional deal. The two are not mutually exclusive - in fact they sit perfectly side by side to offer different types of fans different experiences.

Mike looks at all aspects of direct to fan in this lecture.

This is a long video, but it is, in my humble opinion, required viewing for all artists.

 

And, watch it on Hypebot here if the embed fails!

Online Mixing - improve your masters

This is a relatively new service that I came across the other day. It gives everyone access to professional level mixing (and mastering) at an affordable (-ish) cost.

Many DIY musicians will know that the area of their material which mosts let them down when self-producing and releasing is the final mix.

I genuinely believe that mixing is one of those skills that really does require that 10,000 hours of practice to get right - to have learnt every little nuance. Some people definitely have an ear for it and can do a good job early in their 'experience curve' but most people take a very long time to actually be great at it.

Trust me, this is part of how I make a living. I have a world-class mixer on my roster!

But, finding someone with that level of skill for the unsigned artist has always been difficult, but it is now easier thanks to this site. They offer a graded range of fees depending on what you want and hopefully it is within range of most aspiring artists.

Go and check it out.

10 things to nail down for your album release party

This is a great post from a great blog - Brian Franke's 'Thinking Aloud'

Brian is a working musician in Washington DC who writes from his personal experience - so he knows what's worked and failed for him! There are great posts all over the site to help the DIY musician and it's well worth digging around for some gems. He also goes out of his way to provide a hub for the DC scene.

This post covers all of those things, talking as it does from his own experience in setting up an album release show.

You just left the studio and recorded the final notes for your album.  There’s the mixing and mastering process for your producer to take care of and the artwork for your album and any merchandise to do–but the real deal is when all of this comes together and you officially release your album at a CD release party.  A lot goes into making a CD release party a successful one and it rests entirely on how well you prepare.

There are many key areas that make it successful that I will discuss below, but to keep it short and sweet I would say the most important things are: be in tip-top shape and form musically when you perform, give lots of lead time to get it ready, have your album ready in CD and digital form on the day of your show, and ask for help when you need it.

I most recently went through this process and while some things were tedious, when my big night finally came, it turned out to be everything I wanted it to be for my fans.  I spent a good three months putting my CD release party together.  That’s not to say yours will take as long.  Depending on what you want to do may shorten or lengthen how long it can take.

But looking back on those three months, these are the 10 key things to do to have a successful CD release party.

Read the 10 key things to nail down here.

 

 

 

What does a record producer do?

Image by The Daily Ornellas

I mostly manage songwriters and producers these days - so I found this short piece to be solid and useful advice.

So often a band these days will come to us thinking that because they have the equipment and some (pretty good) skills, they can record, produce and mix their own record.

And, some can - to a degree.

But, what people often forget is that production and engineering is a skill, like any other, that can be perfected and honed over many years practice - Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000 hours (Google that if you don't know what I'm on about!).

So, whilst you might well have a great little studio set up (the democratisation of the means of production being a laudable step in the right direction for the music biz), and may be able to produce a pretty good sounding track or two, that doesn't mean that you wouldn't benefit from a producer.

Give it some thought.

The best way I know to describe what a producer does comes in the form of this analogy: A producer is to a recording as a director is to a film. When it comes to making a film, the buck essentially stops with the director.

In a film, the director steers the ship, working with everyone from the technical editors to the actors in order to achieve his or her overall vision of the movie. It is exactly that way with a producer when it comes to making a recording.

The producer have the experience to work with the studio engineer (often possessing the technical expertise to engineer the project themselves) and the musical understanding to help the artist with everything from song choice, structure and arrangement to the all-important vocal performances that are vital in giving a recording its personality. In short, a producer provides the experience and necessary perspective to guide a recording from start to finish.

Read this piece from Serve the Song in full here.