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, Social Media

Positive And Sexy: An Interview With Indie Artist @SuCh

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I “met” Denver, CO singer and actress Su Charles (AKA SuCh) on one of the Grammy® Facebook pages, where she has been active posting and conversing with other musicians and sharing her music during this fall’s Grammy voting season. I was impressed with her single, “Sugar Maple”, from her 2014 album, Trial and Error, and the many YouTube views of her video (you can watch and listen to Sugar Maple on YouTube at the bottom of this post, where you can also find a link to SuCh’s music website and iTunes page. I also linked below to a lovely bio piece the Denver Post did for more background info).

What impressed me most about SuCh, in addition to her great voice and music, and the incredible diversity of her talents (she’s also an actress), is the positivity and sweet sexiness of her music.

I love that I can enjoy SuCh’s genuine smile, watch her playfully sexy imagery and production – and listen to her music – without her music video being NSFW.

As a woman in music (and an old-school feminist), I applaud any woman who can walk that line and be as successful at promoting their music as SuCh has been. Most of us women in music want visibility for ourselves in the industry. We certainly want people to discover our music. Sometimes it feels, though, like the only path to “visibility” is to show a lot of skin in your music marketing images.

Don’t get me wrong, I love skin. It feels like mainstream pop music videos have merged with the soft porn industry, however. Not so for SuCh’s music videos. There’s skin, but it doesn’t distract us from her music. (Maybe it’s the minister’s daughter thing). OK, I will step down from my post-feminist soapbox now.

Here’s my interview with SuCh, a positive and sexy young woman (and a mother, daughter and wife) who is successfully promoting her music first:

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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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Marketing, Music, Social Media

The Importance of Purpose For Musicians

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Purpose-Objectives-Tactics

Blah blah blah personal branding blah blah blah purpose blah blah blah cause marketing…

I hear several related refrains oft repeated in the world of social media gurus:

  • “Purpose” is important if you are going to do social media
  • “Cause marketing” (eg. The Ice Bucket Challenge) is the best way to get attention in a crowded social media world drowning in selfies
  • The millennial generation wants to know what principles a brand stands for before they will buy a product with that brand
  • “Storytelling” is the heart of marketing today
  • Being “genuine” is critical in getting your message across because trust is everything in social media and marketing

When my friend, social media practitioner and public speaker, Russell Sparkman, guest lectures in my social media class, he emphasizes the important of Purpose (which from now on in this post, I will refer to with a capital letter) with his succinctly worded foundational principle for social media and content marketing:

[Tweet “The path to engagement is paved with Purpose.”]

As Russell says, “the path to engaging content happens when you connect the dots between:

  • The share-worthiness of meaningful content,
  • The share-worthiness of content that offers “utility purpose,”
  • Increased consumer expectations that brands must address social issues,
  • And consumer acceptance of brands talking about the good work they do.”

Create A Marketing Plan With Purpose

In working with artists to create a marketing plan that is personalized to their music and where they are at in their musical career, I think all of these “outbound” marketing reasons around social media effectiveness are great. But there are also very clear practical reasons to be clear about your Purpose before launching into the frenzy of ANY PR, promotion, or marketing of any kind for your newest release, for a single, or for your music video.

To be clear, this post is NOT about Purpose in a religious sense, although that may be related for some people. It is, however, all about something transcendent. Also, I will note up front that I am very aware that the items I am talking about spell POT. OK, enough 9th (6th?) grade jokes.

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Marketing, Music, Social Media

Apple Music Connect: DTF Savior or MySpace?

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A lot has been written about the recently announced Apple Music as a streaming music service for consumers, but one thing I have been curious about as an indie musician is the new Connect service. How does it work? What impact will it have on me and you as indie and DIY artists? Should we make the effort to “claim” our Connect artist profile pages? Is Apple going to save the music industry or has it replaced Google as the new 500 lb gorilla villain?

A Powerful New Direct-To-Fan Platform

Benji Rogers of PledgeMusic recently wrote:

“Previously one of the biggest impediments to artists letting their fans know about external offers was the fact that iTunes and services like it owned all of the fan data. Therefore, they owned that connection. Using Apple Music’s Connect feature, artists can let their fans know in real-time what they are working on, link out to their pre-order pages and gather their fan data into a destination that they actually use and control. Artists can post ticket links, bundles and exclusive content to those who want to see it and, consequently, control the conversation.”

Rogers concludes his post with the prediction that “The platform that becomes the thinnest skin between the artist and fan and fosters a meaningful two-way communication between them, becomes a bright part of the artist’s and industry’s future, no matter what.”

So is Connect the best thing to come along for DIY artists, or is it just another Ping, or worse – MySpace? What do we know and what should we make of it?

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Marketing, Music, Social Media

5 Tips To Make A Viral Music Video

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[Watch me talk about this post with Michael Brandvold on the Music Biz Weekly Episode 195 on YouTube here or listen to it on Soundcloud here.]

YouTube is the number one search engine for music, so having at least one or two music videos up there seems like a no brainer, check-the-box item for an indie musician.

And once in a while, a music video from an unknown artist goes viral, giving them a huge boost in visibility.

As indie artists, we all feel the pressure to produce a stellar music video (or two), and we look with no small amount of envy at those artists who seem to get discovered overnight via their viral music video. But how is it done? Can you make a music video that is more likely to go viral?

I’m less interested in the viral videos by popular stars like Taylor Swift (Bad Blood) or Sia (Elastic Heart, Big Girls Cry), because those are undoubtedly supported by large online marketing efforts. I’m more interested in music videos made by relatively unknown artists with small to zero marketing budgets which nonetheless seem to have caught on and propelled those musicians’ careers forward in a significant way.

So let’s look at three recent examples.

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Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

Grant Maloy Smith: Man of Many Small Horses

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Grant Maloy Smith is an Americana indie artist who lives in Rhode Island. I first met him as a member of the online indie Grammy®  community this past fall. I was impressed with how he seemed to know everyone. Online pictures of him kept popping up collaborating with other musicians I knew, like Jody Quine and Ricky Kej/Wouter Kellerman, performing live or playing on their songs in the studio. For a guy based on the East Coast, he sure seemed to show up at LA recording sessions a lot!

I finally met Grant in person in February of this year at The Soiree, a showcase of indie Grammy artists at the House of Blues in LA, where he and I played backup for one of our mutual friends, nominee Paul Avgerinos. Grant was just as much fun in person as he is online.

I’m always interested in artists who

  1. Write and perform their own original music
  2. Collaborate with other artists often and outside both their own genre and immediate geographical area
  3. Have retained a sense of humor, and more importantly, a sense of purpose and vision for their music, in an industry that seems very opaque and anonymous
  4. Have had careers in other fields, where they have acquired strong business and social skills which they apply to their music careers
  5. Have over ten thousand Twitter followers

I think you’ll enjoy this interview with Grant, and learn some practical tips as well.

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Interviews, Music, Social Media

How Three Women Got Together To Book Their Own SXSW Gig

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Since I’m not attending SXSW myself this year, I thought I’d bring you a real life, in the trenches, on the road, slice of life post about three female artists I met through Madalyn Sklar’s GoGirlsElite and #ggchat.  I’ve met two of them In Real Life, and have watched  two of them perform on ConcertWindow – which feels almost like IRL I’ve read their blog posts and listened to their music, and they are all such positive and energetic women, doing all the right things to market themselves in this crowded place we call indie music.

Meet Rorie Kelly, Mary Bue and Alex Winters. [Full disclosure, Mary Bue is a music marketing client of mine, but Rorie and Alex are not. All three women are also being represented by my friend Stacey Sherman of RSP Entertainment Marketing while they are at SXSW.]

These three talented musicians got together (completely unbeknownst to me) and booked themselves an unofficial showcase gig tomorrow, Thursday March 19, 2015, at 8 PM at the Waterloo Ice House in South Park Meadows.

I love this story because:

  • It’s a bunch of women getting together to make their own gig happen – community, not competition!
  • It’s social media at its best – helping people meet their business goals. Rorie, Mary and Alex met and got to know each other via the GoGirlsMusic network, which is a great virtual networking tool. The public Thursday Twitter chats at the hashtag #ggchat at 3 and 9 PM EST are well-attended by both male and female indie musicians and are always lively and informative. You’ll note below that they have some mutual male musician friends as well who are also frequent participants in the #ggchat Twitter chat, and helped encourage this group gig at SXSW.
  • They all have great stories in addition to great music. I know some good PR will come from this for some deserving indie artists just trying to get heard above all the SXSW noise.

On to the interview.

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Book Reviews, Marketing, Social Media

“Will The Real You Please Stand Up” by @KimGarst: Book Review

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What is authenticity? What does it mean to be genuine with your fans, with your customers? How do you know how much of yourself to share on social media? Why do both corporations and individuals find it difficult, yet rewarding (monetarily and in other ways) to be transparent on social media? How has social media changed the way entities, from musicians to social entrepreneurs to multi-national corporations, market their goods and services and engage in value and monetary transactions? How can we use social media to communicate our values, build trust, build relationships and, ultimately, create loyal fans and customers who buy from us because they share our values?

I recently read two books which stirred a great deal of thought on these questions. One is Kim Garst’s Will The Real You Please Stand Up and the other is The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. I was struck with the very different approaches these two women took to discuss the science and art of social media in their books, but also convinced that were they stuck sitting next to each other on a flight from New York to LA, they would find much in common in their approaches to building a thriving brand on social media.

This is a review of Kim Garst’s book, with a few examples from Amanda Palmer’s book thrown in to help illustrate some of the key social media principles Garst espouses (although she has plenty of more corporate case studies in the book).

Whether you are a musician, a corporation, or an individual seeking guidance on how to best use social media to build your brand and your business, Kim Garst’s book is a well-written, vital and accessible resource I know I will be recommending for years to come (and that says a lot in the quickly-changing world of social media).

[A podcast review of Amanda Palmer’s book will be appearing later this month as the focus of an extended interview of me by Connie Rock on the University of Washington’s FlipTheMedia.com].

[Tweet ““Authenticity is the game changer that makes good companies great.” – @KimGarst”]This is the fundamental premise of Garst’s book, a business primer which blends both good and bad case studies with a methodical and organized approach toward 21st century marketing online. In just ten chapters and an easy-to-read 173 pages, Garst lays out the key traits necessary to craft an authentic presence on social media. Her principles apply as well to individuals interested in crafting their personal brand as they do to Fortune 100 companies.

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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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