In our experience working with artists from Ben Folds to the Beach Boys, we’ve found that fans want to be a part of a journey — the entire journey. If I love your music, I don’t just want to pre-order your new record. I also want to get a signed copy of the record and possibly a painting you made just for me. I may also want to meet you for dinner or see my name in the album credits. Read more.
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Critical Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Music PR Campaign
Working with an established, professional publicity firm might be the ideal, but unless you have a few thousand dollars available, you may need to design your own music PR campaign. A self-propelled campaign can be effective if executed properly, which means effectively managing the Pre-, During-, and Post-PR phases. There are several pitfalls that can derail the success of a campaign. Read more.
You’ve spent countless hours writing, revising, and rehearsing, and now it’s time to take your material to the stage. While a tour bus, road crew, and booking manager are helpful when it comes to worldwide musical domination, gigging locally and building a live following, honing your chops, and refining your performances comes first. Here are music promotion strategies to help you get attention on a local level. 
You know that question people ask musicians “who influences you most”? Well, I’ve never been able to answer it. For a while I thought I’d just list what music I grew up listening to, as that must have made an impact on my writing style. Later, I started listing musicians whose music I currently am into because I must be trying to be more like them if I am a fan, right? 
As an independent musician, digital publicity can be a fantastic way to set yourself on a path towards success. But like much of digital marketing, the process and results can feel a bit nebulous if proper goals aren’t set in place. Setting goals for your publicity campaign can help you to do two critical things: 1. Hire the right kind of publicist, and 2. understand the value of the work. 
The talented designers in our 
Check out the latest and greatest indie music from CD Baby!
As an independent music artist, what can you do to maximize your music promotion and overall revenue? At last year’s New Music Seminar, Disc Makers and CD Baby president Tony van Veen shared nine music promotion lessons he’s learned that every artist can easily implement to maximize gig sales, drive download purchases, and increase overall music sales. 
Are you a songwriter who needs to co-write, but don’t take the time to do it on a regular basis? Is there a group of songwriters in your community facing the same songwriting dilemma? Songfinishers is a songwriting workshop idea that may be right for you and your community of writers to help build friendships, encourage one another, and co-write songs. 
The most important thing to do when dealing with money is to make sure to write EVERYTHING down. A good way to keep tabs is to put all the info in Excel. We divide it into date, gas, food, lodging, salary (how much we pay our musicians), pay (from the venue), CD sales, t-shirts, tips, extra. At the end of each day we total it up. There are two main ways to make money as a band: 1) Guarantees/door/bar percentage, and 2) Selling merchandise. 
Echoes talks with producer/engineer/studio owner Drew Raison for insights on how to make your home recordings sound better. Drew says, “When you’re working in a home studio, I recommend you keep it simple. Minimal equalization and minimal compression at the time of recording, because you can add that later. You can’t always undo, so try not to make unfortunate decisions at the time of recording. 
The night of your CD release show should be the biggest music performance of your career to date. The show will be packed, if not sold out. The reason more people typically come to album release concerts than your Wednesday night four-band bill show is because it’s an event – and should be hyped up as one. Having a packed club with people there actually to see YOU is something that won’t happen very often early on, so you have to make sure you go about this right.
In part two of Echoes’ interview with renowned live performance producer Tom Jackson, we learn a simple rule: sing fewer songs, create more moments. When asked to play a half hour set, most bands immediately think, "How many songs can we fit in?" Instead, if they thought "How many moments can we develop?" they’d be much further along. 
In part one of our interview with live performance producer Tom Jackson, we learn that most artists never learn to see themselves from the audience perspective. Once a record is done, the focus shifts to hitting the road. When that artist hits the stage, adrenaline is pumping, the band sounds tight, everyone is locked in, so it’s natural to think, “Everything is good.” That’s not always the case. 
Many people have asked us how we transformed our band into a sustainable business, touring 250 days a year. We’ve created a series of videos to help explain what we’ve learned over the past few years in the hopes that it will help you learn how to get gigs and get more good bands out on the road. We’ll explain how to book music gigs that are well attended and pay guarantees, promote your shows, make extra money, build a following, and describe who wants to take your money (and why you shouldn’t let them). 
