Just because you’re excited to get the word out about your band, it doesn’t mean you’re ready to embark on a PR push. PR expert Ariel Hyatt gives some straight answers about what you need in place to make the most of a music PR campaign. Read the post.
Disc Makers Blog manager, Andre Calilhanna, sat down for a Zoom interview with Ariel Hyatt, founder of Cyber PR and author of the new book, The Ultimate Guide To Music Publicity. Read the post.
When it comes to being a music artist, your job is to be creative and productive and release lots of music. Let the marketplace and your fans judge your music. Read the post.
For years, my biggest challenge was getting a reply to the multitude of emails I wrote. I’ve since perfected my sales pitch so that 100 percent of the emails I send get a response. Read More.
While technologies like Square are becoming more and more popular, there’s still a coolness factor – they’re new enough to elicit wide-eyed looks of wonder from grown adults (jaded New Yorkers included). For now, at least, paying for an independent album via credit card on someone’s smart phone, and signing with a swipe of your finger, is fun. 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. Read more.
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. Read more.
Getting a Wikipedia page approved for your music project can be tricky. It can also be great for building credibility and gaining exposure for your music.
Because of the sheer number of relatively unknown independent artists out there, Wikipedia has become very strict in its guidelines for accepting artist pages. Wikipedia editors are composed of volunteers from around the world and they all interpret Wikipedia’s guidelines a little differently, so, mileage may vary. Read more…
We are always on the lookout for new album release strategies. Here’s the latest from Billboard.biz and the Kaiser Chiefs:
U.K. guitar group Kaiser Chiefs is taking an innovative approach to the release of its new studio album, “The Future is Medieval” (Fiction/B-Unique Records), by allowing fans to choose their own track listing and album artwork.
In 2009 Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn tried out a little experiment. They spent $128.74 on a bunch of yard sale junk and hired professional writers to draw up interesting stories about each item. Then they put everything up on eBay with the stories that they created to see what happened. Read more…
Many of us use the term ‘independent artist’ or ‘recording artist’ to describe ourselves, but are we really artists, or are we just people who play music?
To answer that question we need to decide what it means to be an artist. Many of us grew up in an environment where we were only taught what art means at a superficial level. Maybe our first definition of an artist was someone who was really good at making realistic paintings or drawings or maybe someone who made weird abstract creations that were supposedly only understood by special people. Read more…
CD Baby and IndieGuide.com have put together a very interesting and helpful album release schedule – updated for 2011.
Back in the late-90s at Sony Music Entertainment, we had these incredibly detailed setup schedules for albums. That included everything from getting artwork approvals, passing elements to distribution, setting up artist interviews, the works.
I’ve never been one for top 5 or top 10 lists, but I have seen these mistakes so many times in the past year, I figured they needed to be documented. #1 Waiting. You may want to reconsider. With replication costs low and mailings that can be made for little more than the cost of a stamp, putting your message on disc may be the smartest way to tell your company’s story and interest new and existing customers in your latest offer. Read more…
I recently had lunch with the founder and CEO of a popular website for independent artists. It was great to catch up and hear about all the exciting things going on with the site. On the other hand it was a bit of a concern hearing about some of what he and his staff have had to put up with recently in dealing with some of the more, shall we say, frustrated and/or unstable musicians that use his services. Read more…
In the course of your journey as a musician there will be some things that go right for you. What you choose to do about those things will go a long way towards determining your success (or lack thereof).
The concept of leverage is all about finding your opportunities to capitalize on the things that will give you the best return for your efforts. Read more…