Thoughts

10 Lessons For Musicians From The Lego Movie

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10 Lessons For Musicians From The Lego Movie

This past weekend I saw the Lego Movie. It’s a fun movie – more than just a 90 minute commercial, as FastCompany wrote, (really, I promise). Now, I rarely go to see movies, so it’s even rarer that I actually like one.

Will Ferrell has a great (non-animated) role, and Morgan Freeman shows off his considerable deadpan and off-the-wall comedic skills. Is there anything Morgan Freeman doesn’t narrate these days? If you’ve never heard him narrate his own life, I’ve embedded it below. It’s hilarious. But let’s get back to the movie.

I think in all honesty, the Lego Movie’s target audience is GenY parents and Baby Boomer grandparents more than children. I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie creates a boom in adult Lego construction. If you’ve read anything about Lego recently, though, they have been amazingly astute at marketing their products in the past ten years. They didn’t exactly need the movie to sell their products.

The movie is packed full of sly inside jokes and life lessons. I thought I would pluck just a few and write them down, trying not to spoil the movie for you, in case you haven’t seen it:

  1. Encourage creativity in yourself and others. Be patient. Like Vitruvius was with Emmet.
  2. Sometimes an empty mind can be the most fertile place for ideas to appear. Also, like Vitruvius said.
  3. Stay flexible so you can adapt to change on the ground. Keep moving forward even when you don’t know what’s going on. Like Emmet did.
  4. Sometimes a little anger accomplishes a lot. You don’t have to be happy all the time. Like Unikitty.
  5. Be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else just because you think it’s cool. You’ll10 Lessons For Musicians From The Lego Movie attract the wrong kind of people. Like Wyld Style (AKA Lucy).
  6. Teamwork and collaboration can build things no individual can. Like Emmet showed the team.
  7. Sometimes the most mundane idea can save the day. Like the double-decker couch.
  8. Maybe someone who is standing in your way just needs a little encouragement and love. Like Mr. Business.
  9. Even the most ordinary creator is special. You just have to believe in yourself. Like the cat poster said.
  10. The prophecy is just made up. You make your own destiny. Like Morgan Freeman (AKA Vitruvius) said.

I think this is the shortest blog post I’ve written in quite a while. Perhaps there’s a lesson in there for me, too…

Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, rebuttals – as always, please leave a comment below.

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Marketing, Music, Social Media

10 Simple Ways To Promote Your Music

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[The following is a guest post by my friends at Ditto Music. That’s why the spelling is British 🙂 Ditto Music is an online music record label services and digital distribution company servicing over 50,000 artists across the world. Services include chart eligibility, royalty collection and online promotion. I have guest posted on their site.

This post is particularly relevant for me this week. Being a DIY musician, I have done each of the things suggested below myself to promote either my current band, Solveig & Stevie, or my former band, Shades of Red. So I can personally attest to the fact that they are all important. I think #6 below is something that many bands and singer-songwriters wrestle with, myself included. I’d love to hear your feedback on this.

Stevie and I are planning a professional photo shoot and a band website redesign this month, and I’m pretty excited for that. You’ll probably see a blog post or two from me about those experiences. Meanwhile, here are some great music marketing tips from Ditto Music.]

If you are embarking on a career in music, having talent and determination will only get you so far. In order to reach the heights of international stardom, you will also need to promote your music if you decide to go down the road of independent publishing. The internet and the wide range of digital outlets available will provide you with many opportunities to spread the reach of your music. By adopting these 10 simple strategies, you can maximise your chances of reaching the top of the charts.

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Marketing, Social Media

10 #SEO Tips For Musicians

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SEO Basics For Musicians

A friend of mine recently asked me about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tips for his music industry and marketing website. Now, I’m by no means an SEO expert. However, I love when people ask me questions and I don’t know the answers, because it’s an excuse for me to do research. I knew I could improve the SEO on my own websites with what I learned, and also pass that information back to him, thereby placing him forever in my debt. Just kidding about the debt part. But I do enjoy building long term relationships based on openly sharing practical information that helps others.
Like my Dallas Seo friend with this tip, “When one person asks, it also means there are probably other people out there who would be interested in the answers.”

I’ve posted links to the articles I found in the process of doing my reasearch at the end of the article. I want to give a special shout out to Stan Smith of Pushing Social, whose recent webinar on 7 Blog Marketing Tactics was especially useful in the section below on SEO for images.

What Is SEO For Musicians?

Simple SEO Tips For MusiciansSEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. All this means is that if someone searches (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) for either your personal name, your band name or perhaps even for the type of music you play (eg. “dubstep Celtic”or “ukelele classic rock cover band Seattle”), your website will appear at the top or close to the top of their search results.

Have you Googled yourself or your band name lately? Try it and see what comes up. You might try also your musical genre if it’s narrow enough. My results are shown above and to the right when I Google my name, and below left for when I Google the words in my band name, Solveig Stevie.

Solveig Stevie Google Results

Just remember to go “Incognito” or “anonymous” before you search yourself, otherwise the search will take into account all of your own recent searches, and might be skewed. You want to see what the average person will get when they do a search, not your own “tailored-by-Google” search. There’s more in this CNET article on how to search anonymously in other browsers such as IE and Firefox as well as Chrome.

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Interviews, Marketing, Music

The Grammy® Awards and Indie Music Marketing

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Sometime in the summer of 2013, I decided to join The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), AKA The Academy®. I had heard it was a great way to network with other local musicians – including Seattle’s own Grammy®-winning writers, producers and artists like Sir Mix-A-Lot, Eric Tingstad and Sue Ennis.

Then, in the fall, on a lark, I decided to see what it was like to submit my music for the 56th (as they call it) Grammys. Just for fun, mind you, and to learn. I have no delusions of grandeur left about the music industry. Well, maybe a few.

The Grammys are the biggest honor in music you can get. I thought it would be interesting to participate in the process and see how it really works first hand, for an indie and from the inside. No PR machine, no label, no manager.

First, I did some research on indie artists who have gotten nominated. There’s been a lot of controversy in recent years, with EDM artist Al Walser and Americana artist Linda Chorney top of mind. This post is not about the controversy of the voting process, however. Believe it or not, this post isn’t even going to cite Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, although Seattle’s own hometown indie artists were nominated for seven (seven!) Grammys, in case you’ve been living under a rock this year.

What is most interesting to me are two things I discovered.

One is a shift, at least for the indie artists, away from the private Grammy365 website to social media sites like Facebook to promote their nominations. Social media is having an effect even on crusty and fairly closed organizations in the music industry like NARAS.

Second is the sheer explosion in both the number of Academy members and number of submissions for nomination, as more and more amateur recording artists and producers have begun creating and marketing their music. This has created not only technical issues for the Academy and its members’-only website, Grammy365.com, but it has also made the annual listening and promotional process within the voting members much more challenging.

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Marketing, Social Media

My Top Ten Posts In 18 Months Of Blogging

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I began publishing on this website on June 28th, 2012, thanks to Brian Thompson (@thornybleeder). Brian has been a role model for me as both a popular music marketing  and inspirational blogger and also as a social media maven. He consistently produces high quality content and shares it intelligently. He also has a great sense of visual design and branding, which permeates his online presence.  What some of you may not know is that he also created this beautiful WordPress website for me (thank you, Brian).

After 18 months, I think it’s appropriate to reflect a bit. Of course, for me, that means “let’s look at the numbers!”

In the spirit of following my own advice on using Google analytics, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of my top blog posts. Note that not all of these posts were written in 2013, this is just my top ranked website page views from June 28, 2012 through December 26, 2013, according to my Google Analytics.

So here they are, in order of popularity:

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Marketing, Music, Social Media

Three Steps To Content Marketing For Musicians

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You may have heard that content marketing is (or should be) the center of 21st century marketing for any business, large or small. But what does this mean in practical terms for a DIY musician?

The basic idea is that by creating original, useful and entertaining information and then using social media to share it far and wide, you attract potential fans who would not otherwise have been aware of your music. Plus, it costs you little or nothing to create the content and do the promotion, right? Free marketing! Well, not exactly free. It costs time and energy, and maybe even a little cash. Without some thought up front, content marketing can also quickly become overwhelming even for the most savvy. But don’t give up just yet. You can do this.

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Interviews, Marketing, Music

Setlist Music Part II: What Bands Really Need

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For the second half of this two part series, I interviewed Robin Fairbanks, A&R at Seattle’s Setlist Music Solutions. Robin is an amazing music industry resource who has developed, managed and promoted many bands and solo artists across the country.

She has also done just about everything there else is to do professionally in the music industry, including being an on-air radio personality and doing radio sales, online radio programming, original music sales, full-service advertising and PR, booking, and event promotion. In this interview, Robin gives indie artists her perspective and advice on how to be successful in the music industry.

Robin is so engaging, we spent two full hours together talking together, so this is a long interview, but I think it’s chock full of important information.

You may also be interesting in reading Part I in this series, an interview with Robin’s colleague at Setlist Music, Elizabeth O’Keefe.

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Interviews, Marketing, Music

Setlist Music Part I: Cafeteria Style Marketing For Musicians

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I recently interviewed two of my favorite, no-nonsense women in the Seattle music scene, Robin Fairbanks (A&R) and Elizabeth O’Keefe (Operations). They are both part of a music consulting company called Setlist Music Solutions, headed up by Sean Hensley, which specializes in artist development and management. Part I of this series offers Elizabeth’s perspective, and Part II will showcase Robin’s point of view. Both of these women have a lot of hands-on experience helping indie artists succeed.

It’s no secret that the options for self-promotion are greater than ever before for musicians. As a DIY independent artist myself, I often find it overwhelming just to understand all the different business and marketing things I need to do on a daily basis in order to be successful – to say nothing of actually getting them all done – and I have an MBA (and experience in marketing!) Like many artists, I fantasize about a record label riding in like a white knight, begging to sign me and to do all the work to promote my career as a musician. While this still happens for some artists, for most of us, it’s important to move forward with the reigns of our careers still firmly grasped in our own sweaty, trembling hands.

So what’s a girl to do when she realizes there is no way she can do it all herself?

Boutique Label

The idea of a boutique recording or music label has been around for a while, and has been written about in articles like this in-depth Baltimore City Paper article published in 2010 or in this article about the Arizona-based Cosmica Artists label. While the terms indie label and boutique label often seem to be used interchangeably, a boutique label generally focuses on a small artist roster, or even a single emerging artist. It may even be started and owned by a producer, or the artists themselves. It could be a non-profit artist collective.

The signed artist(s) may do none, or some of their own marketing. The boutique label may or may not act like a traditional label, providing (and funding) most or all of the services an artist needs, from recording to promotion, booking and tour management. Artists may have to pay for some, or all, services provided, but they get to say they are “signed” to a label. Boutique labels will not sign just anyone, but they might take a chance on a relatively unknown artist. The artist and label’s brands are associated with each other. The boutique label generally chooses the artist, not the other way around.

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Conferences, Music

The Future Of Music Is Standardized Metadata

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I’ve participated, either in person or online, in several music industry events in the past two years. The speakers and panelists have opined on the sorry state of the industry and the plight of independent muscians, and have pointed a forest of fingers:

  • It’s the labels’ fault
  • Technology (Napster) killed the music industry
  • Music piracy is the problem
  • Now that everyone can buy ProTools and become a musician, there’s just too much free [not always good] music
  • It’s just too hard to find good music, so making music discovery easier for consumers is the answer
  • Streaming is the future of music distribution, and Spotify and Pandora don’t pay artists enough
  • It’s the fault of radio for being corrupt and paying artists even less
  • Apple killed the music industry by unbundling the single from the album via iTunes
  • YouTube killed the music industry by elevating sensationalism over quality of music (and artists don’t make much money from it)
  • Archaic copyright laws are to blame
  • Fans don’t really want variety and quality of music, they are content with Psy and Justin Bieber
  • The only way musicians can make money now is by aligning with big brands
  • And let’s not forget: Google is evil

It’s all true, to varying degrees, and many people with a lot more experience and knowledge about the business than me are working on addressing these issues.

Yet progress seems slow.

Not a day goes by that I do not read somewhere that being a musician today is both a liberating yet increasingly confusing, disheartening, and economically untenable profession.

In a perfect world, the Direct-To-Fan model eliminates the gatekeepers and creates a music meritocracy, where good music rises to the top and those artists are financially rewarded. Yet that has not happened.

Some would say it always has been so for the 99%, change is good, and this is a brave new world of opportunity for those musicians who can navigate it. Yet we musicians seem an increasingly desperate bunch. It’s not a question of talent or hard work or who you know. Some feel that it is different now, that music is a more irrational business than it has ever been.

Music Metadata

Maybe it’s because I’m an outsider, or naive, but it seems obvious that the solution to a problem created by technology is, yes, a technical solution. Bear with me for a minute.

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