Interviews, Marketing, Music, News, Social Media

Interview With Grammy® Nominated @WhiteSunMusic Singer Gurujas Khalsa

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I have several acquaintances who have won Grammys in recent years in the New Age category. I wrote a music marketing piece about the February 2015 win of two of them on this blog, Ricky Kej and Wouter Kellerman. I am also friends with two local Seattle area musicians, Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel, who received a Grammy for Best New Age Album in 2003. Although I myself am not a New Age musician, New Age music and its Grammy category intrigue me both as a listener and as a music marketer.

I discovered the band White Sun about a year ago when I received a private Facebook link to their debut self-titled album during the first round of the Grammy listening and voting process in fall 2015. Their album entry really stood out. I was very impressed with their music, most especially with their female lead vocalist and unusual lyrics. As a vocalist and lyricist myself I listen closely to vocals and lyrics. The lyrics of White Sun’s songs are all non-English yogic mantras set to addictive repetitive melodies. From a production perspective, Garujas’ vocals are both immaculately produced and prominently front and center, which I also appreciate. The instrumental music production is quite lush and complex, much like a modern movie score, with the organic twist of traditional East Indian instruments.

In addition, the visual marketing of White Sun’s second album is striking to me. I’ve included some of their images in this post. The story of the mandala on the cover of the album can be found on their website.

The New Age category interests me as a music marketer, since, along with the Children’s Music Album category, New Age usually has many fewer entries than Pop, Rock or American Roots. It also has virtually no big label artist winners, and most are extremely hard working indie musicians doing their own marketing and promotion both inside and outside the Grammy process.

After I heard their music last year, I knew White Sun would have a good chance at Grammy nomination this year, and indeed, they have been nominated this year in the Best New Age Album category. I was so certain they would be nominated, that, as I did with Ricky and Wouter, I asked for an interview before the nominations were announced.

In my study so far of the marketing process for indie artists, I have come to the conclusion that it takes four important elements for a relatively unknown indie artist like White Sun to receive a Grammy win:

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Interviews, Marketing, Music, News, Social Media

An Interview With Pianist @LewinPiano

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I “met” Michael Lewin virtually (online) last year on one of the indie artist Grammy® Facebook pages. He sent me his CD, “Beau Soir,” in the mail, and honestly, I really loved it. I didn’t think I would. It was all classical piano pieces, and all Debussy, at that. We communicated briefly via Facebook, a medium in which he was unfailingly polite and sincere.

This year, Michael released a companion Debussy album, “Starry Night”, also on the Sono Luminus label. It’s a good thing he has a label to help market his music, because I think Michael is one of the least self-promotional, yet most talented artists I know.

Although Michael and I have never met in person, and I cannot say I am at all, even remotely, any kind of expert in classical music, I find Michael’s music pretty amazing.

It never fails to surprise me how much of a person is expressed in their music, regardless of the genre or format. I can hear Michael’s reserved and polite, almost formal personality, and his highly precise musical technique. I am not a pianist, but I can hear the perfectionism when he plays. It’s not surprising, given his education at Julliard, and the time he spent studying piano in France at Debussy’s boyhood conservatory in his hometown of St-Germain-en-Laye. Michael Lewin has devoted his life to the piano, and he demonstrates a level of musicianship that most of us can only aspire to.

Juxtaposed with that intensity and focus on technique, I can also hear the love Michael has for the pieces he plays. One cannot help but be moved by the passion he expresses while playing, and he has a loyal and growing global following as a result.

Michael also had a featured performance of a Chopin Nocturne on the Grammy-winning No.1 Billboard New Age Album “Winds of Samsara,” by Ricky Kej and Wouter Kellerman.

This fall has seen further well-deserved success and visibility for “Starry Night.” The album has been featured on the front page of Apple Music, MusicWeb International awarded it September 2015’s Recording of the Month, and Rhapsody named “Starry Night” one of the Top 10 Classical Albums of the Month.

Michael Lewin Rhapsody Top 10

I hope you enjoy my interview with Michael. I’ve put a link to his website and social media channels at the bottom of this post so you can watch and listen to him play, follow him on social media, and find out when he’s coming to a town near you to perform.   In addition to being a fantastic pianist, he’s a super nice human being.

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Case Study: How The Rock Band @NightRiots Broke Out

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What factors cause a band with regional popularity to suddenly break onto the national scene?

Night Riots is a California-based rock band that has gotten a lot of buzz recently, and this article is all about how and why from a marketing perspective.

Disclaimer: I don’t have any personal or professional connection to Night Riots; I’m just interested in profiling them as a marketing case study in indie music success.

I’m a member of a public Facebook Group called The Music Biz Weekly Music Marketing Mind that currently has over 1250 members. If you’re a musician or otherwise in the music business, I can recommend this group as a great place to share and get ideas about music marketing.

A few weeks ago, one of our Facebook group’s members, Diane Phillips, posed a question to the group about Night Riots. This stimulated some lively commentary from myself and others, because goodness know that we Music Musketeers, er, Marketeers, er… Marketers cannot refrain from giving our opinions when asked (and even sometimes even when not asked). I say that with great humility and affection.

I thought it would be useful to summarize what I learned from my research and other peoples’ comments about Night Riots’ recent success. Perhaps you will see elements of yourself, if you are a musician, or your clients, if you are a music marketing consultant, and find something that you can run with to further your own success.

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Interviews, Marketing, Music, News, Social Media

Starbucks To Stage: Seattle Musician Paula Boggs

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I first saw Paula Boggs perform at a local singer-songwriter hangout, the Soulfood Coffeehouse in Redmond, WA. She seemed totally comfortable on stage, despite the fact that she didn’t look or sound much like any of the other performers that night. It didn’t take more than a single Google search on my iPhone to turn up the fact that she was the former Corporate Counsel for Starbucks, along with having served on the Iran-Contra task force during the Reagan administration. I was intrigued.

I’m always interested in what draws someone with many talents and choices from the corporate world into music. I’ve said several times that learning the music business is harder than getting an MBA – even for someone with an MBA. Those of us who executed “Plan B” first, who had successful careers in other fields, might be tempted to find easier ways to fulfillment, like yoga or volunteering for the PTA. Or to simply look at our music as a hobby. You have to be pretty driven to stick with the music thing.

Paula is on her second  album release, coming this March, called “Carnival of Miracles”, so I guess she’s in it to stay.

Paula Boggs Ferris Wheel

Here is my interview with Paula Boggs. I think you’ll enjoy it.

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Marketing, Music, News, Social Media

2015 Social Media Checklist for Musicians

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Featured image by scottchan for freedigitalphotos.net

I began teaching a social media certificate class this month to 31 adults in downtown Seattle at the University of Washington’s Continuing Education Program. I’m really enjoying it – the students are enthusiastic and operating all at different levels of social media expertise and experience. Creating material for a three hour class on a weekly basis is no walk in the park, but I love it so far! It’s an exercise in visual, rigorous, accountable, consistent long form weekly content creation.

At the same time, I’ve also been working with some fabulous musicians as a marketing consultant, helping them develop their marketing plans, define their music career business goals, and then execute against those goals.

AND I’ve also been trying to keep up with the fast paced and ever changing worlds of both social media and music. Oh, and then there’s the new set of songs Stevie and I are working on for 2015 release.

I got to thinking a few weeks ago about how to distill down the things I see as vital for musicians – and any small business owner – to attend to as part of their social media for the coming year. [Tweet “Here is what I would tell you to do in 2015 if you were my client”] So here is what I would tell you to do in 2015 with your social media if you were my music marketing client:

  • Understand your primary social media business goals. Don’t jump into social media just because you feel you “need to be on social media.” Are you promoting a new album release, an event or tour? Is your primary goal to increase followers or Likes? Or are you trying to get the attention of bloggers, press or industry influencers? Are you trying to win a music contest or raise money via Kickstarter or Pledgemusic or some other platform? Is your goal to promote coupons or discounts to encourage fans to buy your music or merchandise directly from your website? Your goals will help determine both what social media channels to focus on, and what kinds of activities (posts) to engage in. Set some reasonable, concrete, realistic, numerical social media goals for 6 months and for a year from now – goals with numbers and a timeline. It’s easy to get lost, sidetracked and overwhelmed in social media. If you’re not aiming at something, you won’t know if you’ve succeeded. [Tweet “It’s easy to get lost, sidetracked and overwhelmed in social media.”]
  • Know who your target market is. What are the basic demographics (age, sex, location, artists they like) for your super fans? If you don’t have a big fan base, research the demographics of bands you consider your competition. I also wrote a blog post on identifying your super fan that includes some great online research tools.
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The @ZIIBRA Interview With Solveig Whittle On Marketing Yourself As A Musician

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Last month I was fortunate enough to get a chance to visit the offices of my friend Omri Mor’s Seattle startup, ZIIBRA. What a great team of highly motivated and creative people (their office Halloween pumpkin-decorating contest was, how do I say this? Inspiringly Awesome). 

While I was there visiting, I also did an interview with their charming community manager, Mia Myklebust, about one of my favorite subjects, music marketing.

Omri founded ZIIBRA in 2011 “with the goal of helping artists turn their creative projects into full-time gigs.” ZIIBRA is a crowd funding or online patronage service that strives to harness the internet to make creating art sustainable. It caters to various types of creative “makers”, from visual artists to musicians to herbalists, perfumers and artisan food producers. 

Here’s the interview I did with Mia Mykelbust at ZIIBRA:

Solveig and Mia on Couch

Solveig Whittle has had a number of different careers from Microsoft to Marketer to Musician. Her many interests and talents have given her a unique perspective on the artistic community and how they go about making a living from their passion.

“I started out as a programmer many years ago and worked at a big company,” Whittle said. “I worked at AT&T and then I kind of got into the business side and worked as a product manager in the high tech area.”

She has now found her way back into marketing, which is really where her heart lies, while at the same time pursing a career as a musician. Her diverse background has given her the tools to start her own successful music career as well as help musicians hoping to break into the industry.

“Think about it as starting a small business,” Whittle says.

“If you’re an artist and you don’t think about it as starting a small business – you can’t fathom that – it’s going to be difficult unless you partner with somebody who can do it.”

Particular early in their careers many musicians will inevitably be doing their own marketing and promotion. Whittle says that though it’s important for artists to have a broad understanding of what going on in these areas of their business, oftentimes artists are more successful when they partner with someone they trust to work on these sides of their career.

[More…]

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News

5 Things Indie Musicians Can Learn From Taylor Swift’s 1989 Release

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Taylor Swift Time Cover

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a blog post called 8 Things Indie Musicians Can Learn From Taylor Swift’s Red Release. That post has become one of the most popular on my blog, so I thought it appropriate to do a follow-up regarding the release of Swift’s newest album, 1989. Plus, analyzing and writing about the dynamic marketing duo of Taylor Swift and Scott Borchetta is downright fun. (If I were a graphic artist I would have a picture here of Borchetta in a Batman outfit and Swift as Robin).

The release of Swift’s 2012 Red album was a remarkable success from a marketing perspective. It propelled Swift from country into the mainstream pop market and made her one of the most powerful artists in the industry with a large and loyal fan base.

This year’s 1989 album also did not disappoint. Swift topped even her own record (no pun intended) with 1.29 million copies of 1989 sold in its first week (as compared to 1.21 million copies of Red in its first week after release). While selling 80,000 more units in Week 1 doesn’t seem like a huge accomplishment, remember that overall, the music industry has shown a significant decline in sales in recent years. Until the release of 1989, 2014 looked to be the first year no single artist album would go platinum (sell over a million copies).  Sales of CDs for the first half of 2014 were down 19 percent from the year before, to 56 million, and even digital downloads declined by 14 percent in the first six months of 2014 (RIAA figures). 1989 comprised 22% of the entire US album sales the week of its release. In a declining industry, this was no small accomplishment.

[Tweet “1989 comprised 22% of the entire US album sales the week of its release.”]

As I did with my first article, it’s important to consider what the marketing goals were likely to have been for this release. In 2012, I proposed the marketing goals for Red were to expand Swift’s fan base beyond the country demographic into a broader demographic. I think the goals for 1989 were different: in this case, to maximize total net profits for the release. I mean, isn’t everyone already a Taylor Swift fan? Do we really need more Taylor Swift fans? (See Saturday night’s perceptive fake ad for Swiftamine for proof of her expanded demographic.) OK, just kidding. Sort of.

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News

Penniless and Anonymous: Don’t Worry, Be Happy

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During a recent Twitter exchange regarding the Taylor Swift/Spotify/streaming debate, I was labeled as  having “become a professional problem identifier.” I was exhorted to instead “Be a problem solver.”

Many more knowledgeable and successful than I have certainly already waded into the fray. Even Dave Grohl! Why bother to add my perspective?  Because every time I hear the argument that musicians should just “get over it,” or “stop complaining about streaming” I realize that many of us are not on the same page. We don’t even agree what the problem really is. I subscribe to the philosophy that solutions are built on consensus and common understanding, not on forcing a solution that doesn’t fit, or a model that only benefits one or two key players in the industry at the expense of the others.

It seems to me that there are a lot of things that get all confused up in this debate, and the refrain I keep hearing that musicians should just shut up and “focus on making great music” ignores the reality of how screwed up the music industry is and how hard it is – even if you’re a great musician with great material – to make a living at music.

I’m not a famous musician, or a tech entrepreneur, or someone with years of experience managing bands or running a record label. I’m just a musician, an anonymous musician who, like most of the musicians I know, doesn’t make a fulltime living as a recording artist. Oh, and fifteen years ago I was the VP of marketing at a startup whose product was distributed software as a service, bringing Microsoft Office to corporate desktops as, essentially, a streaming product.  I do care more about the long term future of musicians and the music industry than going public with my music tech company and cashing out (something I also know a bit about). And I am an engineer by training. I  have a sensitive radar for arguments that don’t square with my version of reality.

[Tweet “Public discussion and debate are as valuable as building a software platform to “solve” a problem. “]

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Interviews, Marketing, Music, News, Social Media

How New Age Musicians @RickyKej and @WouterKellerman Won A Grammy

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Ricky Key and Wouter Kellerman

In fall of 2014, I interviewed New Age artists Ricky Kej and Wouter Kellerman about how they marketed their newest collaboration, Winds of Samsara. The album debuted in July at No. 1 on the Billboard New Age Chart, and then spent the following 12 weeks in the Top 10.

****** UPDATE!! February 8, 2015 – Kellerman and Kej WON a Grammy for Best New Age Album at the 57th Grammys. Congratulations! It couldn’t have gone to two nicer musicians and a harder working team. ******

Ricky, Wouter and their team are a hybrid indie artist marketing model: neither the artist nor the label does 100% of the marketing. Most of the marketing strategy, however, is planned and driven by the artists and their managers, with similarities to how Macklemore (Ben Haggerty), Ryan Lewis and Zach Quillen drove the charting success of The Heist in 2013.

Ricky and Wouter signed this project with a label, but they recognized from the start that their label wasn’t going to do everything needed to promote the album. The artists themselves needed to pitch in, especially with social media promotion. That is the powerful story here – all the incredible networking and promotion this team did for the album, in addition to using key industry resources at their label to help strategically promote the album in distribution and on the radio.

I’ve seen first hand on social media how Ricky, his wife Varsha Kej, Wouter, and Wouter’s manager, Tholsi Pillay, persistently promote Winds of Samsara. All four fluidly mix the creative with business. In addition to being Wouter’s manager, Tholsi played keyboards and synth on the album, and Varsha is Ricky’s manager as well as a sitar player. 

I wanted to hear more about how this marketing dynamo planned and executed their marketing, and what has gone into debuting and maintaining Winds of Samsara’s Billboard chart status over the past weeks and months. I also wanted to know what kind of promotional team they have behind them (distributor, PR, etc.)

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Marketing, Music, News

Suburban Mom Indie Musicians Plot To Walk the Red Carpet At GRAMMY® and HMMA Music Awards

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Love and Fire A Dangeroous Combination

I don’t frequently post my own press releases on this website. I prefer to interview and feature artists other than myself. I have a few amazing musicians whom I met through NARAS (the Recording Academy) on deck in the coming weeks with some very successful music marketing and social media stories to tell – so hang in there. It’s also the middle of Grammy season, and believe me, I will have a follow-up post to my Grammy submission experience from last year.

But in the meanwhile, as those other musicians finish laboriously typing their detailed and informative interview answers, I’m making an exception and promoting some of my own recent achievements as an artist. Plus, this post isn’t just about me. It’s all about indie musicians collaborating to make things happen, and it features my good friend and musical collaborator, Elizabeth Butler, whom I have written about before on this blog. As you know, I’m not just a marketer and blogger, I’m a musician. I try to live by my own advice, which includes tooting my own horn once in a while. So bear with me, here’s a bit of self-promotion.

October 20, 2014

Do you have to be 19 and able to twerk in a bikini to receive recognition as a female musician these days?

Grammy AwardSolveig Whittle and Elizabeth Butler are proof that you don’t. These two indie female songwriter-musicians from Seattle, Washington and Houston, Texas, were notified recently that they both have songs and albums up For Consideration in the 57th Grammys and nominated for the 2014 Hollywood Music in Media Awards (HMMAs). The Grammys will be awarded in February of next year, but the HMMAs will be awarded sooner, on November 4th, 2014 at the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles.

The two women have been strategizing for months and working together to promote their music in an industry in which it is notoriously hard to stand out – and one that also tends to favor younger artists. They remain undaunted, however, and now their musical and co-promotional partnership has created some very visible results, such as their Grammy and HMMA nominations.

[Tweet “Collaboration is the new route to success in the music business”]

Like many indie musicians, Whittle and Butler have been hobbyist musicians their whole lives. Only within the last few years, however, have they gotten serious about putting resources and time into pushing their individual music careers forward. By sharing information with each other and honing both their musical and promotional skills, they have proved that collaboration is the new route to success in the music business.

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