DIY | Solveig Whittle

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.

Marketing, Music, News, Social Media, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 8: @Kickstarter @Patreon and @Fluence_app

May 16, 2014 2 Comments

In this 12 minute episode of Walking The Dog, I discuss crowdfunding and other new ways indie artists can support themselves besides selling merchandise or touring.I have written about a local Seattle artist, Aury Moore, and her successful Kickstarter campaign which raised over $20K to fund her 2012 CD “Here I Am”. I am always interested in case studies of artists who have raised amounts like this via crowdfunding, because they are so much greater than the average.

Hypebot published an article today entitled “#Fangagement: Artists Crowdsourcing Opinion Part 10: Mark de Clive-Lowe” which included some great tips from Mark (a musician who also raised $20K on Kickstarter) on being realistic in your funding goals based on average donation rates, numbers of fans, and average social media engagement rates. Mark researched the stats, and found evidence that the the engagement number on social media is 3%. Many social media experts also echo Mark’s findings that only 3% of fans, followers, and those who have Liked a Facebook page are likely to participate in a social media campaign of any type. It’s important to keep this and other numbers in mind so you don’t overstretch or understretch your funding goals.

The Hypebot article also mentions Patreon, a new, fast-growing platform for sustaining indie artist careers created by Jack Conte (Pomplamoose). It’s kind of like Kickstarter, but ongoing, and may be a new model for artists to sustain a career in music while still leaving them time to focus on creating art – not just focusing on the business 100% of the time.

The Seattle ukulele songstress I mentioned, Molly Lewis, is actually up to over $2000 per original song in pledges on Patreon. Worth checking out!

Finally, I wrap with a mention of a new platform for musicians to pay small fees for feedback from music industry influencers call Fluence. Fluence is a San Francisco-based music startup that is still running very much under the radar, but you might try it out if you are an artist fairly new to the music industry and are looking for professional feedback and connections with industry folks. Hypebot also wrote about Fluence in February 2014. I have written recently on this blog that I feel it is very important for musicians at every level to get professional feedback on their music and live performance. Fluence offers this opportunity for feedback without having to travel or spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to perform in showcases or pay consultants or coaches.

Please let me know what you think of my podcast, the subjects mentioned, and any experience you’ve had with any of the platforms mentioned. Share so we can all benefit from your knowledge!

Interviews, Marketing, Music

Concert Window 101: Elegant Live Performance Streaming

May 4, 2014 14 Comments

I’ve written about the platforms StageIt and YouNow, where indie artists can stream a live music performance and even make money doing so. Concert Window was launched in 2011 by Harvard grads and musicians Dan Gurney and Forrest O’Connor to provide the same service. Still running a bit under the radar because they’ve only been live for about 9 months, Concert Window is gaining praise and growing quickly through word of mouth buzz in the indie musician community.

Last week, I attended a streaming performance on Concert Window by Austin singer-songwriter Alex Winters. The event security was a little strict but that’s okay, it went so well that I thought it would be interesting to interview Alex about her experience and try setting up my own artist profile.

Alex and I met through GoGirlsMusic, and while she was here in Seattle recently, she mentioned she was about to do her first Concert Window performance. I signed up on the website ahead of time as a viewer so I could tune in. One of the things I noticed right away was that I could watch Alex’s performance on my iPhone while away from my desktop. I think this is a smart feature, and no doubt increases audience views significantly. Mobile is where it is at.

After a few minor glitches on both her end (Alex’s PRO TIP: “When you’re ready to broadcast, hit the BROADCAST button!”) and on my end (my AT&T phone signal was weak at first), I was able to enjoy her concert on my earbuds with no problem. Note that all the viewer features of the desktop version are not there on mobile, such as chat and tipping.

This post has three parts. First, an interview with Alex about her experience with Concert Window . Second, my walkthrough of setting up an artist profile and a performance on Concert Window. Last, I give my assessment of some of the features that make the Concert Window platform stand out.

Marketing, Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 6: ConcertWindow and Facebook (Again)

May 2, 2014 No Comments

Every Friday morning, I walk my dog and record a podcast about music, music marketing and whatever is on my mind that week.

In this week’s 19 minute episode, I talk about two things:

Concert Window, a streaming performance platform for musicians much like StageIt, which I reviewed a number of months ago, and
tips and tricks from Kim Garst for using Facebook to promote your music – without paying for advertising.

Look for a more in-depth review of Concert Window, including an interview with musician and songwriter Alex Winters, in a later longer blog post form on my website. In today’s podcast, I cover an overview of what Concert Windows is and a few of the features that stand out to me to differentiate Concert Window from StageIt.

The majority of today’s podcast discussion comes from a free ebook available from social media consultant, Kim Garst of Boom Social, entitled “9 Ingredients For Dominating Facebook’s News Feed… Without Giving Them a Penny… Shhhh”. I love Kim’s blog posts about Facebook marketing. She does research and shows examples of her experiments with her own Facebook page, and she also works with clients, so she focuses on real life data and situations.

Frankly, there is also something perverse in me that enjoys the idea of sharing Kim’s tips on using Facebook WITHOUT paying for advertising. Plus, the meta-lesson here is that or order for you to download her ebook, her landing page is, well…. on Facebook! She’s using her own marketing principles to drive traffic to her Facebook page for free. Smart.

In last week’s podcast, I highlighted an article from Social Media Today about why it may be smart to ignore Facebook as part of your social media strategy, or at least why you should only consider it as part of your integrated marketing plan for your music.

As a social media marketer, I remain professionally ambivalent about Facebook, to say the least. I enjoy using it personally, but I hate it as a marketer, and I don’t respect the way the company treats its customers. And it also scares me a bit how much personal data Facebook collects online.

[Tweet “”I remain professionally ambivalent about Facebook””]

I cannot, however, in good conscience, suggest to musicians that they completely ignore Facebook as a marketing tool. However, with

1.26 billion users worldwide
757 active daily users
138 million active daily users in the US alone

you can’t ignore the fact that

[Tweet “Facebook is the dominant social media platform on the planet,”]

Listen to my podcast to hear Kim’s 9 tips and tricks for maximizing engagement with your Facebook fans and see how you can make the most of Facebook to market your music – without paying for advertising.

Conferences, Marketing, Music

Macklemore Manager Zach Quillen Reveals Secrets of Marketing ‘The Heist’

April 6, 2014 10 Comments

I first wrote about them in October 2012 on this blog, but the world now knows that a combination of strong, socially conscious messaging, a well-defined visual persona, an electrifying live show, and great music characterize the hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Amplified by impeccable marketing execution and excellent timing, they have become the poster child group for DIY indie artists around the world and put Seattle back on the map of music industry innovation.

Zach Quillen (@wexington), who began managing Macklemore and Ryan Lewis full time in 2012, was interviewed this past Saturday live and in person by Larry Mizell Jr. (@lar206), DJ from KEXP Seattle. This happened at Seattle’s EMP Museum at the Pacific Northwest Chapter of The Academy’s Songwriter’s Summit 2014. I was fortunate enough to be in the audience.

As both a marketer and an indie musician, I was fascinated to finally hear Quillen talk in person about the details of marketing The Heist. I’ve been waiting to meet Quillen for almost two years, and I wanted to hear straight from the source what his biggest challenges and most difficult decisions have been. I was not disappointed.

There Has Always Been A Plan

My key takeaway? There is a plan. There has always been a plan. It’s a plan you can trace back to the early 2000s, but the additon of Quillen brought music industry marketing expertise, experience and connections to the mix. The seemingly meteoric success of The Heist has been planned by Ben Haggerty, Ryan Lewis and Zach Quillen for years. Marketing for The Heist has been strategically thought out, considered, discussed, rehashed and then tactics executed boldly – with adaptations made on the fly as opportunities arose.

Music, News, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 2: Gear

April 4, 2014 2 Comments

Most every morning I walk my dog. That’s where I do a lot of my thinking about my own music and social media, about music marketing and about what’s happening with music and technology in general. I thought you all might want to come along and hear what was on my mind this Friday morning.

The subject of today’s podcast is gear. What is the role of gear in your music career? Have you recently purchased some new gear and has it made a big difference in your recording or live performance?

In this 5 minute episode I talk about my own experience and also my observations from watching Stevie produce local bands. I didn’t admit it in the podcast, but I’m not immune to the siren song of gear. I’m like a kid in a candy shop at Guitar Center. In fact, I purchased the JamMan Looper/Sampler pictured above in October of last year. I haven’t yet figured out how to use it.

It often seems that musicians are more willing to purchase expensive musical gear than to spend the same amount of money on music lessons, professional performance coaching, song critiques, marketing, or legal services. In my mind, expensive gear is a social signal – but what it signals to others is not necessarily what I think many musicians believe it signals.

[Tweet ““Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn’t get bored” ― Keith Richards”]

I’d love to hear your experience and your opinion on this issue in the comments section below. I’d also love your feedback on this format!

Marketing, Music

How To Edit Your MP3 Music Metadata

February 20, 2014 32 Comments

You’ve probably heard a lot about metadata. Metadata is “hidden” data in computer files that “tags” a file with certain identifying information. For example, you may have heard the word used in discussions in the media about metadata associated with digital recordings of phone conversations. Metadata formats are different for different types of files. This article is about music file metadata. As I have written about before, having the correct metadata associated with your music files is extremely important.

Metadata, also referred to as ID3 tag for mp3 files, is the identifying information associated with your song, such as the

composers
performers
song title
title of the album on which it was released
year released
track number
genre
album art
lyrics
producer
and so much more

Metadata appears in iTunes when you load up your music track – hopefully instead of the dreaded “Unknown Artist: and “Track 1”. Metadata has nothing to do with the file name of the mp3, it’s information that you need a music player or special editor to view and/or change. Metadata is important for the following reasons:

You want your name to show up in the key music databases, Rovi/Allmusic and CDDB/Gracenote as associated with that track. This is important because any music professional will use those databases to check you out and verify your claim to authorship or performance credit.
If you plan to license your music for use in film or TV, it’s important that the use of your song(s) can be tracked for royalties, and metadata is how that is done. Your metadata must be entered properly in the publisher’s database in order for your royalties to be paid to them and to you. You probably will be giving the publisher a wav file at some point, but mp3s are often used for pitching your song, such as for sites like MusicXRay or TAXI.
If you want to join NARAS, the Recording Academy (I wrote about the Grammy submission process as well as some of the less obvious benefits of belonging to the Academy earlier this year), you need credits on 12 released songs listed in the Allmusic database (either as a songwriter or performer).
If you submit your music to a reviewer or to a terrestrial or internet radio station. Whether you are working with a PR agency or going direct, your electronic press kit should contain mp3s of your songs that have the correct metadata, including album artwork.

Once your mp3 song file is properly tagged, the song can be uploaded to either the Allmusic or CDDB music databases and will link you by name directly to those music files. I wrote a post about uploading your music metadata to the CDDB database, which is pretty easy. Uploading to Rovi/Allmusic is a bit more complicated and involves sending in a physical CD.

Marketing, Music, Social Media

10 Simple Ways To Promote Your Music

February 10, 2014 4 Comments

[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.

Marketing, Music, Social Media

Three Steps To Content Marketing For Musicians

December 20, 2013 9 Comments

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.

Interviews, Marketing, Music

Setlist Music Part II: What Bands Really Need

December 12, 2013 2 Comments

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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