The Disc Makers YouTube Channel has a new series of videos, called “The Indie Music Minute,” featuring Tony van Veen (CEO of Disc Makers) distributing bite-sized nuggets of actionable information to help you make the most of your career as an indie music artist. Read the post.
Whatever your next music project is — be it an album, tour, video, single, or anything else — the first step is always planning. These four steps will get you off on the right foot. Read the post.
In life, and when making an album, things happen. The more you understand about the process and the more detail-focused you are, the better your chances for success. So here are some things I wish I had been told before I started putting together an album’s worth of material to be pressed and distributed. Read more.
All too often, I’ll see an artist find the funding for her recording only to fail miserably at project management. Too many independent music artists are engrossed with recording a full length CD, so they focus on how to achieve that goal within their budget rather than making the most of the money they’ve raised. Read more.
We’ve been covering the topics and trends of crowdfunding for musicians for years. Here’s a collection of posts that tackle topics spanning settling on a platform, setting goals and timelines, pricing rewards, and a whole lot more. Check out these posts, and keep coming back, we’ll keep adding new content. Read more.
Whether you are trying to cover the cost of producing your next album or get a tour off the ground, crowdfunding gets your fans involved while generating the necessary dollars. Today we want to dive into setting a mix of rewards to encourage backers to pledge the most amount of money to your project. Read more.
You’ve got your songs, arrangements, musicians, and studio all set and ready to go; plans for CDs and publicity aren’t far behind. The question? How to pay for it all. Here are case studies, tips, and strategies from musicians on gathering the funds to make their own dreams of an indie album release a reality. Read more.
There are numerous ways to approach crowdfunding – including home-grown methods that don’t rely exclusively on the websites that facilitate the process. Singer/songwriter Linda Chorney has been creatively financing and her own album projects for decades. I interviewed her to get some of her personal crowdfunding tips on the matter. Read more.
Crowdfunding doesn’t just raise money, it engages your fans beyond simply asking for donations or getting them to buy your merchandise; a successful campaign makes them feel like active participants, captures their enthusiasm, and helps you spread the word. The key is organizing your efforts to maximize fundraising. Read more.
You’re a musician – of course you want to record your music, make CDs, have an album release party, create new merchandise, and go on tour. Trouble is, you don’t have the cash on hand to make any of these things a reality. How can you raise the money to help fund your next music project? Read more.
When it comes to sales, sometimes the very best technique is the most direct. Ask plainly for the sale. If your fan or customer really wants to buy from you, you’re doing him or her a favor by making the process streamlined and easy. If your fan or customer is unsure, you’re not helping the cause by being ambiguous. Read more.
It’s not always easy to know what you should be releasing as a musician. Should you go all out and create a 14 track album right away? Should you release a single as soon as you’ve recorded your first track? Here is a plan I’ve seen work well for many independent artists. Read more.
Most bands do a traditional media campaign (newspapers, magazines, radio), as well as a new media campaign (podcasts, music blogs, MP3s). Music publicity is not just compiling lists and following steps mechanically, it should be fun and is a chance to channel the same creativity you put into your music to build a buzz. Read more.
If you’re sitting down to tackle making an album, there’s a lot to think about; from clearing the rights for your cover songs to converting the cover art to the right format. When you get your manufactured CDs in hand, there are still a lot of things you need to do – namely, releasing the album for sale to the public. While your music is at the heart of what you do, your identity, image, brand, website, web presence, merchandise, and publicity is what you use to connect with your fans. Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan have revised our popular Planning Your Album From Beginning To End guide. Here’s an excerpt from the revised guide. Read more.
Fan funding through direct-to-fan platforms puts you in the driver’s seat and enables you to make proactive decisions at every turn. No longer do you have to wait until after your album releases to see how fans will respond to it, who’s going to buy it and – gulp – if you will in fact be able to tackle the surmounting debt you’ve accrued in the process of recording, producing, mixing, mastering, marketing, and distributing. Read more.