Being a musician is a responsibility just like any other job and requires that you handle your employers with respect and dignity. Since a lot of independent musicians don’t have a manager advising them with what to do, here are some simple music career tips to put you in the right direction. Read More.
Part 2 in our series on non-commercial radio looks at KDVS in California and the model it employs as a self-described non-Top 40 station. Read More.
Part 1 of this post explores a brief history of radio deregulation, its impact on the national radio market, and the opportunity local non-commercial radio represents to indie musicians. Read More.
Creative, free music promotion tactics can be just as effective as your musical creativity when it comes to success as an independent musician. Read More.
Performing Rights Organizations aggregate the performing rights of writers and publishers and then negotiate licenses with all the users of music, collect the income from those licenses, and distribute that income. Read More.
Success comes from the flow between your different music promotion strategies. Your social media growth, your live performances, your YouTube videos, your email list, your music sales – they all funnel into and loop back to one another. Read more.
When I tell people I’ve been at Disc Makers for 20 years, they often assume that’s when the company was founded. When I say, “No, no, no – Disc Makers has been around for 70 years,” it’s usually followed by a strange silence. I put them out of their misery and follow that up with, “Disc Makers predates the CD by many years. Read more.
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.
A big part of the revenue blurriness in music streaming is because many record deals were made before the advent of music streaming, using a model of selling a physical product. It’s time to tackle the job of drafting contracts to account for the fact that there are no manufacturing costs with streaming or download sales. Read more.
2015 was marked by a number of high-profile artists continuing to speak out against the music streaming business model while excluding their music from providers like Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and many more. Mainstream artists have challenged whether streaming can ever be profitable for artists. 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.
Collaborating with another musician can produce great creative results. At the very least, working with someone new can take you out of your comfort zone, introduce you to new songwriting practices and ideas, and force you to up your game. For independent musicians, it can also be a boost of exposure. 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.
Apple Music is live and streaming, and for independent musicians who want in on the service, CD Baby is the go-to source to make music available on the platform. In addition to being an Apple approved aggregator, the editors at CD Baby’s The DIY Musician blog have embarked on a series of posts covering Apple Music. Read more.
Getting feedback from a sample of your audience is a great way to measure your success. But what happens when you get feedback that is the opposite of what you wanted to hear? Finding your true voice and an audience to whom you appeal requires time, patience, dedication, motivation, and effort. Read more.