#7 ~ Have Professionalism!
No matter what level of “success” an artist is at, if he or she has invested time into refining and defining who they are and how they want to present their art to the world, that gets my attention. I discover just as many independent artists today as I do artists who have had extra help getting to where they are.
What keeps my attention is, first and foremost, music that grabs my ear, but then the quality of the whole effort, which for me includes an artist website, not just a MySpace page, and the extent to which they have their ducks in a row, which now must start with an electronic press kit with high-res photos!
I can’t tell you how many times I was able to run something in my magazine on an artist at the last minute, but a search online for a quality photo was not to be found and so they lost the opportunity.
- Erik Philbrook
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Today’s Sell Your Music tip is from Ariel Hyatt’s brilliant “Indie Maximum Exposure List”. For more breakthrough strategies to sell your music, check out her new book Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
#6 ~ Build Your Network By Helping Others
Amber Rubarth is a 26-year-old singer/songwriter from Reno, who only started playing music five years ago, is now making a full-time living touring. She interned with a booking agent, to understand what’s she would need to do to get herself on the road. She was helpful to the agency and they in turn booked her as an opener for some high profile acts which helped launch her career.
- Derek Sivers
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Today’s Sell Your Music tip is from Ariel Hyatt’s brilliant “Indie Maximum Exposure List”. For more breakthrough strategies to sell your music, check out her new book Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
#5 ~ Be A Contrarian
Whatever other artists are doing in recording, performance and marketing…do the opposite.
- Tom Silverman
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Today’s Sell Your Music tip is from Ariel Hyatt’s brilliant “Indie Maximum Exposure List”. For more breakthrough strategies to sell your music, check out her new book Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
#4 ~ Look at What Differentiates You – Shove Yourself Into A Niche
Music fans aren’t found on sites for music fans. I’m inspired by certain things – technology, animals, politics, sci-fi/ fantasy – and so is every other artist. Whatever I’m writing about, there’s a community based around that topic. Instead of going after generic “music fan” crowds, I chose to focus on specific niches that share MY interests. Since I’m into podcasting and new media stuff, my music has been resonating particularly well with the geek crowd. That is where I focus my efforts. I’m also a big sci-fi/ fantasy nerd as well, so I hit conventions and gatherings of that nature. Not only is my music relevant to them, I can relate to them on a personal level.
- Matthew Ebel
Create a story that you can pitch to media outlets that don’t specialize in music. (You will have to figure this one out yourself).
- Tom Silverman
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Today’s Sell Your Music tip is from Ariel Hyatt’s brilliant “Indie Maximum Exposure List”. For more breakthrough strategies to sell your music, check out her new book Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
#3 ~ Lead A Scene
Position yourself as a leader. Put something together that doesn’t exist and get others involved.
- Derek Sivers
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Today’s Sell Your Music tip is from Ariel Hyatt’s brilliant “Indie Maximum Exposure List”. For more breakthrough strategies to sell your music, check out her new book Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
#2 ~ Understand You Are in Two Related Industries
You are a songwriter/recording artist and need to record and release compelling music regularly (without fail). 2) You are an entertainer / performer. Your show MUST COMPEL those in the audience (no matter how few) to come to the next show with all their friends. On stage you are an actor. Your character may be yourself. But the character usually needs to be an amplified version of your normal self. Alternately, create characters.
- Rob Gordon
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Today’s Sell Your Music tip is from Ariel Hyatt’s brilliant “Indie Maximum Exposure List”. For more breakthrough strategies to sell your music, check out her new book Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
#1 ~ Pick A Niche And Dominate It
There are no ultimate 100 Indie Maximum Exposure vehicles for one simple reason. Indie artists must break from a niche. That niche must be well delineated and can be very very small and still be effective. The mistake most artists make is making a pop record that does not have a niche to break out of. The adage, think globally act locally can be re-stated think mainstream, act niche. The newer your niche, the greater your chance of becoming identified with it.
Almost every Tommy Boy superstar broke out of a niche they dominated if they did not invent. Examples: De La Soul: hip hop hippies, House of Pain – Irish hip hop, Queen Latifah: first proud and powerful African American woman in hip hop, Ru Paul, first drag queen with dance hit, and so on. So whatever you genre, sub-genre or micro niche there will usually be media that dominates that view of reality.
If you are a militant political artist, you would launch in the niche militant political blogs and magazines to establish a beach head. If you’re a rapper that rapped about uzis and AKs maybe your entry would be blogs and mags about guns and ammo. David Hazan mentioned a band that was way into Anime and they get written up in the Anime blogs and make a living playing the Anime shows. Will they be able to cross to mainstream? Maybe not but they can be the lords of their niche and make a good living doing that.
So rather than being specific, I would point to blogs and mags in your micro-niche that might not even be music-oriented. You may be more news to a non-music site and reach a core audience that way than trying to get Pitchfork to discover you.
There are also opportunities to perform at industry shows in non music industry events and get paid much better than you would in the glutted music market. In other words make your presentation and target audience as unique as possible so you can be the king of that niche, then target the non-music publications (both on line and off) and the events in that niche. You will be building fans, gaining awareness and making money before you even attempt to cross into the “music industry”.
- Tom Silverman
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Today’s Sell Your Music tip is from Ariel Hyatt’s brilliant “Indie Maximum Exposure List”. For more breakthrough strategies to sell your music, check out her new book Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
The Indie Maximum Exposure List by Ariel Hyatt & Friends
Want to learn how to sell your music? Come check out what Ariel Hyatt has to say! After laughing at Billboard’s recent “Maximum Exposure List” (marketing strategies that only the superstar musicians could even pray to attain), Ariel reached out to her dream team of indie music rock stars to compile a list of tactics that the rest of us can actually use!!! I’m not above mentioning that I’m on her dream team, and that my tips are included in this amazing white paper. Especially as I’m in good company with other cool indie music peeps like Rick Goetz, Derek Sivers, Lou Plaia, Tom Silverman and more! Starting November 1st, the How to Sell Music Blog will be featuring daily tips from this breakthrough document.
Come back soon, ya hear?
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Ariel Hyatt is the founder of Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR, a New York-based digital firm that connects artists, authors and filmmakers to blogs, podcasts, Internet radio stations and social media sites. Educating musicians is her passion and her philosophy is: combine social media with internet marketing to help artists grow their fanbases and increase their income. This is the subject of her book, Music Success in Nine Weeks, which has helped hundreds of musicians navigate the Social Media landscape.
How to Sell Music Blog Interviews Heather McDonald from About.com Music Careers
How to Sell Music Blog Interviews Heather McDonald from About.com Music Careers
How to Sell Music Blog: What is one action a musician can take to build their music business?
Heather McDonald: I’m a little old school, but my answer has to be: book a show! Heck, book a tour! Get out there and play. I know that the overriding theme for musicians these days is that the answers to building their profile lie on the internet, and I’m not discounting the importance that all of the new opportunities that the internet has created for the music industry. However, I’m a big believer that building an ardent live following, even if it’s just in your town for now, is ultimately more cash in the bank for your music career than adding friends/followers/what have yous to your social networking profiles all day long. Those things are important and useful, but the translation of social networking friends to bums on seats at your shows isn’t a forgone conclusion. The trick is finding the balance.
How to Sell Music Blog: Why do you think that live shows are still important in the internet age?
Heather McDonald: When you play live, you build a following that is more invested in you than following you back or accepting your friend request, you perfect your craft, you make connections – these basics still matter. In other words, don’t sit around on the internet all day debating, say, whether or not the future of monetizing music is selling merch at shows. Get out, play a show, sell some merch and make up your mind that way! Learn by doing. It will be eminently more useful to your music career.
How to Sell Music Blog: Do you think that social media marketing may be a bit too distracting for musicians?
Heather McDonald: I encounter a lot of musicians who are extremely concerned about whether this site or that site is better for promotion or if the CD is dead or vinyl has been resurrected or any number of industry issues, but who have never played a show or even written enough songs to fill up a demo. Again, I do believe that now more than ever it is important for musicians to understand the industry as a whole, but be careful to avoid the temptation to put the cart before the horse.
When you build a strong foundation, opportunities tend to guide your next steps, but once I had something to promote, I would cherry pick a few homes on the internet to network with my fans. I think it’s better to be a vocal member of a few communities than getting lost in the shuffle joining every single networking site out there. I would also get my own website. Social networking sites are not enough.
How to Sell Music Blog: If you were starting all over today as a musician, what would you focus on?
Heather McDonald: I think that these are both exciting times and exceedingly confusing times to be a musician. I’m lucky that my job lets me interact with a lot of musicians who are just getting their start in the industry now, and a lot of them email me because they feel like they’re just spinning their wheels. There are just so many paths to go down these days that it’s easy to go a little way down all of them, only to find out you’re not really ever reaching any of your big goals.
What I always tell them – and what I think all musicians should make a point of doing these days – is to just focus on the basics and go for it. You should make a point of educating yourself about how the industry works and pay attention to the internal industry debates and dialogues, of course, but I think it’s a tremendous mistake to think that recording a good song, promoting it and playing it live aren’t still the bottom line. And yes, really, focus on the music before you focus on anything else. If your music takes a backseat to developing this plan or that plan, you’re building a house of cards.
How to Sell Music Blog: Is there anything else that you think musicians should know?
Heather McDonald: I’ve spent several weeks interviewing lots and lots of teenagers about their music habits, and while plenty of interesting things popped up, one thing every single one of them said was that YouTube is one of the first places they go when they want to search out new music. I’d make getting a presence there a priority.
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How to Sell Music Blog sends mad props to Heather McDonald for sharing her knowledge! – CLH
How to Sell Music Blog Interviews Ariel Hyatt, Ariel Publicity
How to Sell Music Blog Interviews Ariel Hyatt, Ariel Publicity
By Carla Lynne Hall
How to Sell Music Blog recently sat down with Ariel Hyatt to learn the latest music marketing and publicity trends that musicians can use to sell their music.
How to Sell Music Blog: What do musicians need to know about social networking and/or Web 2.0?
Ariel Hyatt: Social media is a wonderful way to engage your fans, meet new people and use cool interactive technology to communicate BUT artists must realize that this is just one piece of the puzzle. The real money and profits comes out of having a strategy and setting goals and working towards them.
I see so many artists that have thousands and thousands of fans on MySpace and on Facebook and they are making no money. The reason is: no one comes to MySpace or Facebook with their credit cards out ready to buy music – they do that at iTunes and on Amazon – so there needs to be a strategy that gets engaged fans away from the cool Web 2.0 portals where we meet and chat and interact into an atmosphere where we are used to BUYING – Amazon, iTunes and live clubs are where fan pull money out of their pockets and buy so if you are only on MySpace and Facebook and you are frustrated about why you sold way less than you expected ask yourself: Where are you asking for money? and how are you asking for money? Is there a strategy behind your asking or are you forgetting to even put a plan into place around this? Or even worse are you forgetting to ask at all because asking for money means you are being too pushy and aggressive and you hate the idea of asking?
You need to look at the Internet just like you look at your telephone or your fax machine – its a way of communicating NOT a place where you just will magically make money without a strategy and some knowledge of how traditional marketing works and a willingness to employ real plans and actions.
How to Sell Music Blog: You mention this in your latest book, Music Success in Nine Weeks. Is your book an actual step-by-step plan?
Ariel Hyatt: Music Success in Nine Weeks is a nine week program that helps artists do 3 things:
1. Build a bigger fanbase
2. Get more PR (via using Social Media)
3. Earn more money
The way I teach this is by taking artists through a process that helps them:
1. Laser focus their message so that potential fans can understand them
2. Start a two way engaging conversation with all fans
3. Capture vital information (email addresses)
4. Create a plan that is based on traditional marketing so that they are set up for making money
You can buy the book here: http://www.cyberprbook.com
How to Sell Music Blog: If you were starting all over today as a musician, what would you focus on?
Ariel Hyatt: I was never a musician so this is a hard question but I would say I would focus on building a community of fans who are engaged and involved with me on a personal and authentic manner. The bands that I meet who are making the most money and having the most success during these weird and uncertain times are the ones who work really hard at knowing who their fans are and what they like, don’t like and what they will respond to. These artists also provide a steady stream of communication and music and opportunities to engage with fans – either online or offline.
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How to Sell Music Blog sends mad love to Ariel Hyatt! – CLH