Learning about the music industry - week three

This week it's all about maximizing your website and to be honest when i first read this i felt a little daunted. Not because what Ariel was saying didn't make sense, it was because we have so many websites that we feature on. Anyway the key thing for me was building the corporate style and feel across all of our websites and also picking out which websites to focus on first. In some ways this is something the band have been quite good at in that whichever of our sites you go on you will find our logo in either it's traditional brown or in it's current electric blue model (at Xmas we have a version of the logo with a Santa hat on it!)

So what are we doing that's right

they are pretty clear and consistent.
they load fast and have no flash stuff.
there is free stuff to have as well

What we are not doing right

Some of the sites we have need updating.
Some of the sites we don't have enough control over.
We need (once we've agreed it) to add our pitch to all of our websites alongside our logo.

And the thing (other than read the next chapter of Ariels book) that i'm going to do this week.

Take our main website down and keep it down until it gets redesigned. After all My space and facebook are much easier to manage than your own website - Honest :)

Zak

Learning about the music industry - week two

This week the band and I have been looking at Ariel’s' chapter on the perfect pitch. However... before I talk about what we've learnt and what we are doing as a result of our learning I wanted to talk about some of the other stuff we got from Ariel and how we've already began to see changes as a result of working with Ariel’s learning.

I want to briefly talk about Twitter. One of the things Ariel suggests about Twitter is that as a tool for engaging people with the band a lot of artists go about using it in the wrong way and only post stuff occasionally which usually consists of - buy our record or come to this show tonight.

If you are going to get the most out of Twitter you have to remember that it's primary function is to work as a short burst social networking tool and if you want to connect to people you have to be willing to share more. Whilst we'd done this a little bit before reading Ariel’s stuff, I can't say we'd done it with any real plan. This week we've tried tweeting every day little snippets about what we've been up to that generally still have a band theme but tend to be more engaging that we would have otherwise tweeted, and.. We’ve begun to get feedback from people who are following us that we don't know - which to us is great progress. For example, we played a gig at our local pub on Saturday just for fun. The stage was in the pub garden, which meant that there was a small tree right in front of the stage (almost on the stage). During the gig a friend took a photo of me singing behind this tree and just after the gig I tweeted the picture with a quote 'ever played a gig with a tree on stage' and I got a response - a real connection with a fan that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise got :)

Any way onto to today’s learning. This week we've been looking at creating the perfect pitch. Now I have to say that as I write this is still work in progress and I’ll be taking Ariel up on her offer to review some of our ideas later in the week. What I wanted to say at this time is where we think we are at with creating a perfect pitch. IN other words how would you sell the band in one line?

For us the idea initially of comparing ourselves to other band was at first a little uncomfortable. Although if I’m honest lots of other people have already done that. Describing us as.

Comfortably familiar, yet uniquely different.
A great rock - pop band without a bass player (yes we don't use a bass player, it's not a crime!)
Keane with Balls.
Coldplay experimenting with HI-NRG in the Beatles potting shed
Piano led pop rock from these tipped chaps.
Deliriously draped in angst.


Certainly we are happy with all these pitches that others have already made about us and to deny that we are inspire and influenced by other bands would be ridiculous. Also it's very true that people need a hook to categorise you in their CD collection so comparison are very important. Just as an aside we often get people say you must get a bass player until we get them to listen with their eyes shut and they then say that you would think we had one and we then explain that the Doors didn’t; have a bass player and it didn't do them any harm!

Any way the pitch. It seems to us the pitch needs to sharply sum up the band but it also needs to link the band to other bands and enable people to feel they can understand the band very quickly. The pitch has to describe then band and make people want to find our more about the band at the same time. The pitch should be honest and true and slightly tempting. Hence - I’m going to be sending Ariel’s some ideas for review this week and reading chapter three at the same time.

Cheers


Zak

Learning about the music industry - week one

Having bought a copy of 'Music Success in Nine Weeks' on Friday the weather here in the UK this weekend gave me an excellent opportunity to sit down in between rehearsals and start reading Ariel's book.

As with most books I read that aren't fiction the first thing I had to do was to take a look through the whole book and get a clear handle on what the whole course was about before sitting down and carefully reading and actioning the first chapter on goal setting.

This first chapter was actually very comforting. As a band we have always been very comfortable with goal setting - our manager has a written strategic plan for the band that we regularly review - can’t say that we have always met the goals we have set ourselves but sometimes the working towards a goal and then finding it's either not the right goal, or we've set the goal too high or not clearly enough is just as important as reaching the goals.

Goals have to be specific and measurable and they also have to be flexible - if not you run the risk of missing out on great opportunities because you are too focused on your band goals rather than the opportunity that's put in front of you.

Goals also have to be broken down into smaller goals as well. A goal that says 'get a record deal' is never going to get you any where unless you work out what the goals are that you need to achieve in order to 'get that deal' ,and, what the possibilities are for a 'record deal' that isn't about someone coming along and handing you a load of cash to make a record. What we learnt very early on is that no one gets a 'deal' with out a great story and a strong track record to start off with so we broke our goal towards 'getting a deal' down into manageable steps and stayed flexible as well.

These are the goals we set over two years (and achieved) to date around getting a record deal.

Practice songs and rehearse shows.
Record and self-release some stuff and get used to working in a recording studio.
Find a producer who loves our music and spend some time learning how to record with them.
Record some stuff and look for a little label that can distribute our music and help us to learn about the record and distribution side.
Release a single with a little label and learn about PR and Marketing in the UK.
Work with other producers to see how they operate. Learn, learn, and learn about recording.
Record and release a second single and learn about PR and marketing in other countries.
Try out some more producers and learn about working with producer managers.
Set goals for recording and marketing our first two albums.

Which is where we are up to now. Along the way we've remained adaptable flexible and open minded, knowing that it isn't just having great music that makes a band, its great showmanship, great people to work with, great PR and strong never give up work very hard business like attitude to everything we do.

My learning from Chapter One is that we need to keep working hard, keep setting realistic and measurable goals and.... remain Utterey flexible and focus.

Also, remember we may be artists, but we work in an industry and thus we need to work very hard to make sure our fans get to hear us and support us to keep on making great music for them to enjoy.

Time to start reading the next chapter and putting it into action.

Zak