Music | Solveig Whittle

Interviews, Marketing, Music, News, Social Media

Interview With Grammy® Nominated @WhiteSunMusic Singer Gurujas Khalsa

December 12, 2016 5 Comments

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:

Interviews, Marketing, Music

Whose Music Career Do You Want To Have? – @TerraNaomi

May 16, 2016 13 Comments

Artists Sharing Their Own Journey

In my quest to learn about music marketing I’ve encountered many smart people, some of them music industry professionals, some social media and marketing professionals, and several who are, like me, musicians actively practicing their craft and trying to make it (whatever that means… but I’ll get to that in a minute).

There is something particularly genuine and relevant about advice that comes from another musician. The advice and perspective that comes from industry professionals is valuable too, it’s just coming from a different place. Non-musician professionals have an overall vision of the industry that is uncolored by their own ego and participation as an artist.

But musicians being vulnerable about their own journey – now that’s something immediately relatable to me some of them may have started with some beginners drum lessons and become later talented musicians.

[Tweet “I find the musician as marketer perspective particularly relatable.”]

There are a lot of smart musicians who are actively sharing – mostly for free – what they’ve learned through their own experience, and, through interviews, the experience of other musicians. Basically, what I do.

Here are a few practicing musicians whose blogs, books and podcasts I follow:

Ari Herstand
Dave Ruch
Marcio Novelli and Ross Barber’s Bridge The Atlantic
Brent Baxter’s Songwriting Pro (AKA Man vs. Row)
Sean Harley Tucker‘s The Spark and the Art
Bob Baker’s The Buzz Factor
Bree Noble’s Female Musician Academy
Shannon Curtis’ book on House Concerts

If you know more artists who are offering great music career and marketing advice based on their own experience and that of other real, DIY musicians, please feel free to add links to their websites or podcasts to this post in the comments section.

Terra Naomi

I recently had a very productive conversation with a musician of that ilk named Terra Naomi. She gained fame doing covers and originals on YouTube in the mid-2000s, winning the first YouTube Award for Best Music Video in 2006. Her original music video, Say It’s Possible, has over 4.8M views as of this writing, and she has many (hundreds?) other videos of both cover songs up and originals on her YouTube channel.

Marketing, Music

DIY Is Dead: Seven Suggestions For Indie Musicians In 2016

January 4, 2016 11 Comments

“How do musicians move from the investment stage to the revenue generation stage of their music careers in 2016?” is the question I hear most often lately. In other words, “When can I stop spending so much money on my music career and start making money from my music career?”

Identifying the sources of real music income with high margins is becoming an even more urgent issue this year as technology has enabled the production of more and more music and digital distribution has driven the consumer price for recorded music to zero. Everyone knows you don’t make a living on streaming, downloads are down, and pressing CDs is a cost of promotion. Vinyl is unlikely to fill the revenue gap for most.

The good news is that more free information on how to be a “musicpreneur” is available online than ever before, and paperback books on the subject of DIY musicianship abound.

“Easier said than done” has gained a new and profound meaning, however.

Maybe you are reaching year 10 of your 10 year music career. Maybe your subsidizing parents, grandparents, spouses, small labels, 401K accounts, and core fan bases are getting a little fatigued, too.

I think 2016 is the year many musicians are asking themselves:

What is the single silver bullet [platform, technology, program, technique, skill set, niche, tribe, cause, creative project] that will separate me from the crowd and elevate the visibility of my music in 2016?
How do I continue to cobble together a living financially?
How on earth can I get it all done myself in a 24 hour day: be a social media maven, blog every day, design perfectly branded website and merchandise, update my ReverbNation page, and still have time to write, perform, record and produce music – and also eat and sleep? Unless you can hire the likes of the Santa Cruz web design team, there will be no sleep for you.

To help answer these questions, here are seven things I believe indie musicians should focus on in 2016 for success. [Credit goes to Kara Kharmah of Engage Your Fanbase for this click-bait post title. I spoke with Kara on Blab recently about music marketing, generating revenue for musicians, and some of the content of this post. You can watch the replay here]:

Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

Positive And Sexy: An Interview With Indie Artist @SuCh

December 17, 2015 5 Comments

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:

Marketing, Music

Popcorn With @Mark_Mulligan And Indie Music Marketing Tactics

November 19, 2015 8 Comments

I attended an online Music Biz Association webinar last week presented by Mark Mulligan. Mulligan is the author of the Music Industry Blog, Managing Director of of MIDiA Research and “a media and technology analyst of more than 15 years’ standing and one of the leading voices in music industry analysis.”

I really like Mulligan’s blog posts because he is a music industry wonk, something I can only aspire to. His work is original and thorough. He often presents his research findings at music industry conferences.

One of the ideas Mulligan presented in this webinar is that music itself is no longer a revenue-generating product for musicians. This has powerful implications for the average musician’s marketing strategy and tactics.

Because music is so much in abundance now (due to the digital democratization of both music production and distribution) it has effectively been commoditized down to zero price, so that makes it hard to make a living as a musician.

This is not a new idea, of course. The effect is even more pronounced for emerging artists or artists with niche appeal.

So what is a starving musician to do to keep themselves going?

[Tweet “Musicians, find your popcorn”]
Mulligan proposes that artists should follow the marketing model developed in the early days of the cinema (theater) business.

Here’s the basic idea (from a 2014 post on Digital Ascendency on Mulligan’s blog):

Marketing, Music

5 Reasons Other Musicians Will Play On Your Album

October 27, 2015 5 Comments

You are a solo artist looking to record your next single, or album, but you need other musicians to perform on your tracks. You could be a songwriter who doesn’t sing, recording a demo in need of a vocalist. Or maybe you are a front man or woman who wants to showcase your original material, and you are searching for other likeminded, talented musicians to be your bandmates.

I know I want to work with the best musicians I can find on my projects. Preferably, they are even better musicians than me and will add a whole new creative dimension to my music. But we all have limited budgets, the other day I visited SoundMoz site and I was able to get one of the best speakers.

How do we get other musicians to sign up to learn our music and lay down a track in the studio, or show up regularly and spend time practicing and putting together a set to perform out – preferably for free or little cost?

The other day I was chatting with a fellow musician at the Seattle AFM (Musicians Union) Chapter 76-493 before a meeting. He was talking about how he has a goal this year to release six albums (!) of original music. Now, he has the songs all written, but he has found it difficult to get other musicians to perform his songs in the studio for free. In particular, there was a musician whom he had approached because he was a much better guitarist. Somehow, my friend just couldn’t seem to get the other guy to lay down the guitar tracks to my friend’s songs. For free.

It became clear to me that my friend’s expectations were perhaps misaligned with reality.

I figured it’s time to share the obvious. Or maybe not so obvious.

I haven’t been at this music thing for that long (I’ve got friends who have been musicians for 40+ years, after all), but I’ve picked up on some pretty important basic etiquette of musical collaboration.

I’ve written another article about the mechanics of long distance musical collaboration, but this post is really about the business, the monetary – and the non-monetary – exchange involved in collaborating musically.

Marketing, Music, Social Media

The Importance of Purpose For Musicians

July 1, 2015 14 Comments

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.

Marketing, Music, Social Media

Apple Music Connect: DTF Savior or MySpace?

June 18, 2015 3 Comments

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?

Marketing, Music, Social Media

5 Tips To Make A Viral Music Video

June 1, 2015 2 Comments

[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.

Marketing, Music, News, Social Media

2015 Social Media Checklist for Musicians

January 20, 2015 38 Comments

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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