Music | Solveig Whittle

It’s Your Reputation, Don’t Screw It Up

July 2, 2014 3 Comments

I received an email this week from a fellow musician and music marketer that caused me to unsubscribe from his list. I was so incensed that I didn’t just unsubscribe, I wrote him to tell him why.

The email was a solicitation for me to buy a spot at a conference called the Ultimate Millionaire Summit organized by a woman named Loral Langmeier. I’m not going to link to either his or her website from here, for obvious reasons – I don’t want to give any extra SEO to someone I feel is using dubious marketing techniques. You can Google Loral yourself.

Be Careful Who You Sell Or Give Your Email List To

This musician clearly sells or gives his email list to third parties – in this case, Loral Langmeier. He says in his email that he is performing at this “Millionaire Summit”, and told me all the reasons why I should Act Now! to join Loral (for just $297!) in Florida to “rub elbows” with millionaires and learn their secrets for accumulating my own millions! Yuck.

[Tweet “Who do you give or sell your email list to?”]

The email sounded so scammy that I did some background research on Loral and found that she has been sued for misrepresenting her product and refusing to give refunds to customers who complain. Yet she has also been linked to Dr. Phil and has a great PR team who continues to get her coverage on local television so she can promote her “seminars”. Apparently these TV station interns don’t do much fact checking before inviting Loral on their morning TV shows.

Marketing, Music

Walking The Dog Episode 14: ISRC Codes and SoundExchange

June 27, 2014 2 Comments

This 11 minute episode focuses on the ISRC (International Standard Recording Code): what it is, what does it look like, how do you get one, and why it is important.

Also often called the ISRC code (even thought that is a bit redundant), it is “an international standard code for uniquely identifying sound recordings and music video recordings” (Wikipedia). The ISRC was developed by the recording industry in conjunction with ISO (International Standards Organization) in 1986, and updated in 2001.

But before we talk about ISRC codes, let me first say I am disappointed that SoundCloud removed the direct record/upload feature from its iPhone app this past week. This means it requires more steps for me to produce this podcast (ie. use Garageband or ProTools). It will also make it harder for me to produce Walking The Dog remotely, as I managed to do for the past two weeks while I was out of town, using just my iPhone and iPad. You can read about SoundCloud’s mobile app update on Hypebot.

On to ISRC codes. Deep breath, people.

Each of your songs, if you are a recording artist, should have a unique ISRC code associated with it. That code is embedded in the digital sound file, and included on the CD (not vinyl or cassette tapes). The ISRC code is also registered or kept in various databases by the artist or publisher. The ISRC code is important because it is used to track the physical CD sales, terrestrial radio plays, or digital streaming plays of the song online – for example via Pandora. It’s also used for tracking music charts, as well as combating music piracy.

[Tweet “It’s important the track has an ISRC code so royalties can be paid out to you”]

The non-profit SoundExchange organization has been tasked by the US congress to figure out what royalties you are owed US songwriter from your non-interactive digital internet radio plays – ie. Pandora, IHeartRadio, or other streaming radio stations. They collect those and then send you a check.

To clarify what I said on the podcast, SoundExchange does NOT handle royalties from Spotify, terrestrial radio, live performances, YouTube, covers of your songs, licensing for TV or films. Just streaming radio performances.

As both interactive (Spotify-type) and non-interactive (Pandora-type) streaming music services become an increasingly important way that people consume music, the ISRC code will only become more important for musicians in terms of tracking royalties and charts.

Fierce battles are being waged within the music industry over copyright and royalty rates, particularly as things heats up with YouTube/Google’s much-anticipated streaming music service and the indie labels. The ISRC is an important reporting mechanism and transparency tool. If you are really interested, read SoundExchange’s legal counsel’s filing with the US Copyright agency, which actually has a lot of good information about ISRC codes and a very coherent argument about why they are an important standard.

I welcome your comments, corrections, and feedback.

Some more helpful guides to ISRC codes:

Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

Seattle Musician Molly Lewis On Going Viral, Social Media and Patreon

June 25, 2014 No Comments

[Photo by Atom Moore]

A few facts to introduce this interview:

Molly Lewis’ (@molly23) ukulele cover of Britney Spears’ Toxic, which she first played at her high school talent show, went viral on YouTube in 2007. Now Molly writes witty, original ukelele songs and opens for Jonathan Coulton.
Molly Lewis is a YouTube star, but she doesn’t much like YouTube anymore, at least not as a way to earn a living (via advertising). But she likes Patreon a lot.
Patreon, an online arts patronage platform founded by Jack Conte, announced a $15 Series A round of funding this week. They now have over 25,000 creators signed up, 180 more signing up every day, and have grown their revenue 10x in 5 months. On Monday, they held a webcast for their creators and patrons, with hundreds participating and asking questions about new features and product direction.
Molly Lewis makes $2535 (as of this writing) from her 402 patrons on Patreon every time she releases a new original song.

Intrigued? So was I. So I interviewed Molly via email.

Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

Walking The Dog Episode 13: Interview With Tommy Darker

June 20, 2014 2 Comments

In this 15 minute episode I interview Tommy Darker from the (somewhat noisy) Argyll Arms pub in SOHO, London, about his new book, The Indecisive Musicpreneur, and his many other ventures as an event organizer, blogger, public speaker, consultant, musician, and music industry thinker.[Tweet “Be relentless about your art.”]

Tommy talks about how he started documenting his own journey to a place where he is now supporting himself as a full time musician. Although he has no formula that works for everyone, Tommy sets out in the interview the six key things he learned along the way. This includes developing a business model, and Tommy references the website Business Model Generation for helping musicians discover how to create revenue-generating business model for themselves.

[Tweet “Language is a poor alternative to vision.”]

We also talk about the challenge of switching between thinking as an artist and thinking as a business person. Tommy and I both espouse the idea of musicians as entrepreneurs (“musicpreneurs”), and we are also both fans of the Lean Startup Model, also known as Agile Development, which I wrote about in my post “Agile Marketing For DIY Musicians.”

[Tweet “Business is about solving problems, art is about creating questions.”]

If you enjoy his writings and want to support them on an ongoing basis, Tommy has a new Patreon campaign called The Tommy Darker Book Club, and you can also listen to his band, Sidesteps at SideStepsOfficial.com

Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 12: Future Revenue Models For Indie Musicans

June 13, 2014 No Comments

In this week’s 7 1/2 minute episode, I am podcasting from lovely London, and the subject is streaming music and the future of indie music revenue streams. (The picture is of some Hare Krishnas we encountered on our walk back to the place we are staying at.)

An article this week in Digital Music News entitled Why Apple’s Acquisition of Beats Is Bad for Indie Labels, Artists, and the Industry… argues that the acquisition of Beats Music by Apple is a bad thing for indie artists and labels. The basic argument is that as download revenue declines, streaming revenue will not increase enough to compensate (essentially due to the unbundling of the single from albums), and that labels will continue to keep a large amount of the revenue from streaming from artists anyway, and so this is not a good model for indie musicians.

I disagree. I think the future viable revenue model for an indie musician will look more like that of indie artist Zoe Keating, who revealed where her revenue comes from earlier this year. Zoe makes much more money from selling her music directly from her website ($68k) than from streaming her music ($6k) – but she is OK with that.

In a March article on Hypebot, she is quoted putting her revenue streams into perspective, saying, “…Aren’t I just an example of “The Long Tail” at work?… For a single artist like me commercial streaming will never be more than promo. I accept that. But I will keep talking about it until streaming companies do more to make that promo more useful (i.e data).”

I believe that the Zoe Keating model is the model of the future for indie artists – one where record labels don’t stand between the services that deliver the music to fans and the artist – and more importantly, where they don’t stand between the payments made by those fans and the artist who created the music.

Please leave your comments below, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Marketing, Music, Social Media, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 11: Content Marketing and Hashtags

June 6, 2014 2 Comments

In this 12 minute episode I discuss what content marketing is and how musicians can use it to help build their following on social media, bring fans back to their website, and ultimately, encourage people to listen, share and buy their music.

As part of her #TwitterSmarter series, Madalyn Sklar and I held a free online webinar this week that covered content marketing for musicians on Twitter. This (90 minute!) in-depth webinar is full of lots of information, including a Q&A at the end. You can view the webinar replay complete with my audio narration at the link above, or if you just want to see the slides without the benefit of narration, you can view them on my Slideshare. This episode of my Walking The Dog podcast gives you a taste of the webinar.

Inbound marketing, or content marketing, is a marketing technique many businesses are finding very successful and cost-effective (besides email and paid advertising on Google or Facebook.) Content marketing, when done well, attracts fans, influencers, and customers who don’t already know about or follow you. Sharing content that expresses your passions or outside interests (in addition to sharing your music-related content) is a great way to attract attention and pull people in.

In the podcast, I discuss two different ways to use hashtags as part of a content marketing strategy:

Twitter chats (like #ggchat) and
subject or genre hashtags

For an example of how NOT to use hashtags (and a little lighthearted humor), check out the YouTube video below the podcast on hashtags by Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake.

If you have tips and tricks to share with my readers on how to use content marketing, or some success stories to share, please do so in the comments section below!

Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

Case Study: Mary Bue And The Studio Run Kickstarter

June 4, 2014 No Comments

I was recently introduced to singer-songwriter Mary Bue from Minnesota. We got along like a house on fire from the start – she’s smart, funny, spunky, and resourceful (and a great songwriter and musician.) In the process of getting to know her, Mary mentioned this “Bands Banding Together” Kickstarter project she was involved in over the past few months with a recording studio called Welcome to 1979.

The campaign started with a contest in which the studio sought bands willing to travel to the Welcome to 1979 studio in Nashville to record an album live direct to lathe (vinyl). This is actually a very old recording technique which has recently experienced a trendy comeback, including a direct to vinyl live performance by Neil Young and recorded by Jack White on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show.

Beths Cafe With The GoGirls — Me, Jean Mann, Julie Wisckstrom, Alex Winters, Chris “Seth” Jackson and Mary Bue (Photo by Kelly McWain)

Once the bands were selected by the studio, they committed to help promote the Kickstarter campaign (which was set up and run by the studio) to their fan networks, and also to provide merchandise for some of the premiums. The campaign had a fundraising goal of $25,000, which would enable Welcome to 1979 to record the five bands live in the studio, one at a time, and then release five vinyl records. Each band would also get some vinyl records of their recording to take home out of the deal.

An Interesting Crowd Funding Model

I think this is such an interesting model for crowd funding a record. It makes a lot of sense in many ways: the studio is incented to make the campaign successful, because they are paying themselves, and the combined fan groups for both the studio and the artists involved would theoretically make for a wider audience for the campaign. However, there are also a lot of potential pitfalls in this model.

I did some research, and couldn’t find other examples of studios doing crowd funding campaigns on behalf of musicians except for one, Groove Box Studios for Nathan Kalish, but it was a much smaller amount. [Thanks to Ian Anderson at Launch and Release for finding that one for me].

Let me be clear: no one was ripped off, and I don’t think anything shady went on here. I think everyone just felt disappointed that the project didn’t succeed, and some fan goodwill was expended. Perhaps we can all learn from this.

[Tweet “This campaign was pitched as being about the process of recording live to vinyl.”]

I think the much bigger takeaways are about the planning and coordination needed to implement a joint Kickstarter between 5 bands and a studio.

Marketing, Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 10: @Mark_Mulligan on #Streaming and Albums Vs. Singles

May 30, 2014 No Comments

Walking The Dog Episode 10 Solveig Whittle

In this 18 minute podcast, I cover two current issues:

The $2.6 billion acquisition of Beats by Apple, and why indie musicians should care.
A discussion last night on the popular indie music and music marketing Twitter chat, #ggchat (archives available here), about whether artists should release singles or albums (EPs, LPs, etc.)

I start the podcast with the recent Hypebot post Mark Mulligan: Apple’s Beats Acquisition Driven By Streaming Music’s Mutual Fear Factor. Mark is a respected music industry analyst and consultant, and former Pinnacle and Forrester analyst who publishes on his own SEO-friendly-titled blog as well, Music Industry Blog.

As indie artists, we probably don’t care much who wins the streaming music wars – Pandora, Spotify, Apple, YouTube (Google), or Amazon. We should care, however, that the flow of revenue to artists from streaming music consumers becomes more transparent and equitable.

[Tweet “”If streaming music becomes less crowded, at least we’ll know who to shoot at.””]

Apple revolutionized music consumption and propelled the consumption of digital music into the 20th century with iTunes. Perhaps their acquisition of Beats will help drag the music industry into the 21st century and make payments more transparent. A humble indie artist can only hope!

The majority of the podcast is a discussion of the issue of whether indie artists should release singles or a bundle of songs (an EP, LP, or album.) I am in the process of releasing what I call an EP later this summer, so this issue is personally relevant to me as an artist.

I draw some of my argument from an excellent (if a bit dated) article on Music Think Tank by Frank Woodworth, entitled Unbundling the Album: A Business Case for Releasing Single Songs. I believe the discussion should really be about how indie artist can best market and promote songs, not really how we release them.

Please feel free to leave comments and opinions, experience and arguments below! I love to hear from you.

Conferences, Marketing, Music, Social Media, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 9: #Contentmarketing, Balancing Life, and #Micropayments

May 23, 2014 No Comments

In today’s 16 minute Walking The Dog podcast, I talk about three things:

Consistent online content creation (even in the rain)
A shoutout to Michael Brandvold and Brian Thompson’s Music Biz Weekly podcast episode 153 on balancing work and life
The main discussion: How can and why should we move from an online model in the music industry where everything is free (at least when you are starting out as an indie musician) to one where musicians can earn a living making music.

Musicians, we’ve all heard it’s important to create online content outside of your music – blog posts, streaming online concerts, YouTube music videos, how-to videos, artwork, e-books, podcasts – the suggested list goes on and on.

Why create content in addition to your music? Well, content marketing is 21st century marketing: bringing your fans, your audience, your customers to YOU, instead of marketing AT them (the old way).

[Tweet “As a musician, consider creating and distributing content online as a way to build your fan base.”]

It’s super important to pick a content form that you can be consistent in publishing. For example, I decided to start this podcast because I knew I would always be walking my dog and thinking about music marketing stuff, and because I knew I could commit to doing it once a week – even in the rain (like today).

The second subject of today’s podcast is to acknowledge that balancing being an entrepreneur (a “musicpreneur,” if you will) with the need to nurture your family life, your personal needs, and your health is a challenge for every musician.I encourage you to watch or listen to the latest episode of the Music Biz Weekly Episode 153: The Musician’s Dilemma for an honest discussion by Michael Brandvold and Brian Thompson (neither musicians, but both very busy guys) about their thoughts on this challenge.

Lastly, I discuss this article: Why I’m Not Giving It Away For FREE (And You Shouldn’t Either) by Nancy Fox on LinkedIn and the idea of NOT giving all your music away for free. How can musicians make a living when they are starting out competing in this noisy environment where fans are overwhelmed with so much free online stuff?

It’s a problem for the entire online industry, not just music, and Ms. Fox’s suggestion for solving the problem may or may not work in the music industry.

More resources on micropayments and creating a sustainable model for online content in intellectual property (IP) creators:

Marketing, Music

10 Tips From A Musician For Better Band Photo Shoots

May 20, 2014 2 Comments

I just did my second band photo shoot for our Solveig & Stevie updated EPK, for the cover of our new EP/CD (whatever it is going to be), and for our redesigned website and social media banners.

Argh.

This was not my first experience with band photo shoots. I’ve done band promo shoots, several music videos, and sat for professional family photo portraits and for business head shots numerous times before as well. You would think I could get this right – but no.

Band photos are so important, and they can be so complicated. Your photos should communicate your band’s brand accurately to your potential fans. Plus, all of us humans want to look cool and sexy and, well… good, in our pictures – preferably without either plastic surgery or too much Photoshopping.

I think we can all agree that we artists are perhaps a little more touchy when comes to visual presentation than the rest of the population. Whether we are are punk, folk, metal, grunge or goth, it’s often a very carefully calculated personal image.