Nothing spurs creativity like a deadline. Get your songwriting started by signing up for the RPM Challenge or February Album Writing Month and create an entire album in the month of February. Read the post.
Perfecting your song order when you sequence an album can mean the difference between a great artistic statement and a nice mixtape. 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 the post.
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.
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.
Music metadata is the information embedded in a digital audio file that is used to identify the content of the song, including the song title, band or artist’s name, the name of the album on which the song appears and which number track it is, the genre of music, and year the song was released. 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.
If the music program is sibilant overall, the audio can be cut at a lower amplitude, which can help with the distortion caused by the high frequency information. The result, though, is a vinyl record that’s at a lower level, and the surface noise will be more prominent – not to mention, it’s not going to be comparable to other vinyl albums. Read more.
Vinyl records are back – of course, they never really went away — but how do they work? We take a look at the history and explain the science behind the sound of vinyl records. From mastering to manufacturing, here’s how vinyl records work. 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.
The process of transforming your musical ideas into a finished product you can share and sell begins with your audio recording sessions and continues through to the delivery of your packaged CDs or vinyl records. The choices you make at each step affect the quality of your final product, so familiarizing yourself with this process at the earliest stages will help you produce the best possible results. Read more.