Musicians | Solveig Whittle

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

October 20, 2014 2 Comments

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?

Solveig 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 57^th 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 4^th,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.

Marketing, Music, Social Media, Thoughts

12 Reasons We Want You To Stop DMing Us

August 23, 2014 1 Comment

I recently participated in a group discussion with Christine Infanger (@norabarnacle) and a few other music industry people about musicians who send automated Direct Messages (DMs) on Twitter when someone follows them.

The result was a light-hearted compilation of all the reasons we all hate it when musicians Direct-Message us. It was posted on the CD Baby DIY Musician Blog, and I thought you might want to read it if you haven’t already. There’s some good advice here!

I cannot restate this enough- Do Not send bot/automated DM's. It's spam, everyone ignores them, & it's annoying. Trust me, musicians.

— Christine Infanger (@norabarnacle) July 29, 2014

It began innocently enough; a tweet was sent which read “I cannot restate this enough- Do Not send bot/automated DM’s. It’s spam, everyone ignores them, & it’s annoying. Trust me, musicians.” From there, an onslaught of musicians and others involved in the industry in various capacities got to retweeting, favoriting, and corresponding.

This innocuous tweet touched on a subject which seems to have been gnawing its way to the top of many pet peeve lists as artists are becoming further removed from personal engagement and replacing it with automated direct messages.

What transpired was a fascinating two day conversation amongst a group of people all very active in the music industry and all very knowledgable about social media and the common sense behind using social media to interact. The conversation then necessitated more than 140 characters and moved to email where the group decided to compile a list of what to do, and perhaps more importantly, what not to do when sending direct messages on Twitter. [Read more here…]

Marketing, Music, Social Media

It’s Your Reputation, Don’t Screw It Up

July 2, 2014 3 Comments

I received an email this week from a fellow musician and music marketer that caused me to unsubscribe from his list. I was so incensed that I didn’t just unsubscribe, I wrote him to tell him why.

The email was a solicitation for me to buy a spot at a conference called the Ultimate Millionaire Summit organized by a woman named Loral Langmeier. I’m not going to link to either his or her website from here, for obvious reasons – I don’t want to give any extra SEO to someone I feel is using dubious marketing techniques. You can Google Loral yourself.

Be Careful Who You Sell Or Give Your Email List To

This musician clearly sells or gives his email list to third parties – in this case, Loral Langmeier. He says in his email that he is performing at this “Millionaire Summit”, and told me all the reasons why I should Act Now! to join Loral (for just $297!) in Florida to “rub elbows” with millionaires and learn their secrets for accumulating my own millions! Yuck.

[Tweet “Who do you give or sell your email list to?”]

The email sounded so scammy that I did some background research on Loral and found that she has been sued for misrepresenting her product and refusing to give refunds to customers who complain. Yet she has also been linked to Dr. Phil and has a great PR team who continues to get her coverage on local television so she can promote her “seminars”. Apparently these TV station interns don’t do much fact checking before inviting Loral on their morning TV shows.

Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

Walking The Dog Episode 13: Interview With Tommy Darker

June 20, 2014 2 Comments

In this 15 minute episode I interview Tommy Darker from the (somewhat noisy) Argyll Arms pub in SOHO, London, about his new book, The Indecisive Musicpreneur, and his many other ventures as an event organizer, blogger, public speaker, consultant, musician, and music industry thinker.[Tweet “Be relentless about your art.”]

Tommy talks about how he started documenting his own journey to a place where he is now supporting himself as a full time musician. Although he has no formula that works for everyone, Tommy sets out in the interview the six key things he learned along the way. This includes developing a business model, and Tommy references the website Business Model Generation for helping musicians discover how to create revenue-generating business model for themselves.

[Tweet “Language is a poor alternative to vision.”]

We also talk about the challenge of switching between thinking as an artist and thinking as a business person. Tommy and I both espouse the idea of musicians as entrepreneurs (“musicpreneurs”), and we are also both fans of the Lean Startup Model, also known as Agile Development, which I wrote about in my post “Agile Marketing For DIY Musicians.”

[Tweet “Business is about solving problems, art is about creating questions.”]

If you enjoy his writings and want to support them on an ongoing basis, Tommy has a new Patreon campaign called The Tommy Darker Book Club, and you can also listen to his band, Sidesteps at SideStepsOfficial.com

Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 12: Future Revenue Models For Indie Musicans

June 13, 2014 No Comments

In this week’s 7 1/2 minute episode, I am podcasting from lovely London, and the subject is streaming music and the future of indie music revenue streams. (The picture is of some Hare Krishnas we encountered on our walk back to the place we are staying at.)

An article this week in Digital Music News entitled Why Apple’s Acquisition of Beats Is Bad for Indie Labels, Artists, and the Industry… argues that the acquisition of Beats Music by Apple is a bad thing for indie artists and labels. The basic argument is that as download revenue declines, streaming revenue will not increase enough to compensate (essentially due to the unbundling of the single from albums), and that labels will continue to keep a large amount of the revenue from streaming from artists anyway, and so this is not a good model for indie musicians.

I disagree. I think the future viable revenue model for an indie musician will look more like that of indie artist Zoe Keating, who revealed where her revenue comes from earlier this year. Zoe makes much more money from selling her music directly from her website ($68k) than from streaming her music ($6k) – but she is OK with that.

In a March article on Hypebot, she is quoted putting her revenue streams into perspective, saying, “…Aren’t I just an example of “The Long Tail” at work?… For a single artist like me commercial streaming will never be more than promo. I accept that. But I will keep talking about it until streaming companies do more to make that promo more useful (i.e data).”

I believe that the Zoe Keating model is the model of the future for indie artists – one where record labels don’t stand between the services that deliver the music to fans and the artist – and more importantly, where they don’t stand between the payments made by those fans and the artist who created the music.

Please leave your comments below, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Marketing, Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 10: @Mark_Mulligan on #Streaming and Albums Vs. Singles

May 30, 2014 No Comments

Walking The Dog Episode 10 Solveig Whittle

In this 18 minute podcast, I cover two current issues:

The $2.6 billion acquisition of Beats by Apple, and why indie musicians should care.
A discussion last night on the popular indie music and music marketing Twitter chat, #ggchat (archives available here), about whether artists should release singles or albums (EPs, LPs, etc.)

I start the podcast with the recent Hypebot post Mark Mulligan: Apple’s Beats Acquisition Driven By Streaming Music’s Mutual Fear Factor. Mark is a respected music industry analyst and consultant, and former Pinnacle and Forrester analyst who publishes on his own SEO-friendly-titled blog as well, Music Industry Blog.

As indie artists, we probably don’t care much who wins the streaming music wars – Pandora, Spotify, Apple, YouTube (Google), or Amazon. We should care, however, that the flow of revenue to artists from streaming music consumers becomes more transparent and equitable.

[Tweet “”If streaming music becomes less crowded, at least we’ll know who to shoot at.””]

Apple revolutionized music consumption and propelled the consumption of digital music into the 20th century with iTunes. Perhaps their acquisition of Beats will help drag the music industry into the 21st century and make payments more transparent. A humble indie artist can only hope!

The majority of the podcast is a discussion of the issue of whether indie artists should release singles or a bundle of songs (an EP, LP, or album.) I am in the process of releasing what I call an EP later this summer, so this issue is personally relevant to me as an artist.

I draw some of my argument from an excellent (if a bit dated) article on Music Think Tank by Frank Woodworth, entitled Unbundling the Album: A Business Case for Releasing Single Songs. I believe the discussion should really be about how indie artist can best market and promote songs, not really how we release them.

Please feel free to leave comments and opinions, experience and arguments below! I love to hear from you.

Marketing, Music

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.

Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 4: PROs

April 18, 2014 No Comments

This week on Walking The Dog, I talk about Performance Rights Organizations, or PROs. In the US, the PROs are ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. Musicians can register with one of these three PROs as songwriters (music composer/lyricists) as well as publishers of their own music. Once you are a member of a PRO, you can then register your songs, which has the advantage of allowing you, the musician, to use the services of your PRO to collect royalties whenever that song is performed.

In this 15 minute episode, I refer listeners to a website called MusicalRedHead hosted by Christiane Kinney, who is an entertainment lawyer as well as an indie musician. I met Christiane a few years ago at SF Music Tech, and also follow her on Twitter (@musicalredhead). Her blog has a lot of great information for musicians.

In addition to giving a brief overview of what the function of a PRO is, the two issues I talk about in this episode are live performances, especially in smaller venues, and music licensing for television shows and commercials, and where PROs figure in the equation.

Please leave your comments and rebuttals below!

Marketing, Music, Social Media, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 3: Facebook Ads

April 11, 2014 2 Comments

Facebook: we love it and hate it. Facebook brings up so many opinions, but there is no question that it plays a big role in our lives both personally in business.

In Episode 3, I have decided to take a slightly different tack than the first two podcasts. I’m going a bit longer (11 minutes) and I’m going to discuss a hot marketing issue that also came up last night on the #ggchat Twitter chat (run by Madalyn Sklar every Thursday).

Many bands have experienced a drop in interaction on their Facebook pages in recent months since the changes Facebook made to its algorithms for how posts are displayed in fans’ news feeds. Basically, the days of free advertising are over. There has also been a lot of discussion about whether bands should be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms.

In this episode, I summarize the key points in a recent (December 2013) article by Larry Kim on MarketingProfs called Twitter vs. Facebook Ad Showdown: Which Offers the Best Social Media Ad Platform. At the end of the podcast, I also give my analysis and recommendations in practical terms for artists and bands.

Let me know your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media advertising. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

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!

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