performing | Solveig Whittle

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.

Music

Having Kids and Touring: Pro vs. Amateur Musicians

June 25, 2013 25 Comments

Stevie and I were talking the other day about the fact that all of his professional musician friends are childless. As a member of GoGirls, I have also gotten to know many female musicians online. I’ve noticed that in general, the women I have met online who are working musicians (those who make a living working full-time as musicians – no day job) don’t seem to have any children. My local female musician friends are the same way – regardless of age, they have no children.

It got me thinking – why is it that being a professional musician and having children seem to be incompatible, especially for women? I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about touring – is it a necessary part of a band’s evolution?

I have decided that it may well be true that these are two very important things that separate a professional musician from an amateur: having children and touring. Of course, these two things are related. This is one of the reasons that choosing to be a professional musician is perceived (perhaps logically) as a young, childless person’s game. Touring and putting off having children are both things that younger musicians do, but find increasingly difficult to juggle as they get older.

(Note an important caveat: the story may be different for professional studio musicians or those who write and record music primarily to license it for film and TV. This post is meant for indie musicians who are performing artists with their own original music groups).

Having Children

Let’s face it, male musicians can and do have children, but only if they find a partner willing to stay home and take care of their kids for them while they are out on the road making a living. In some ways, that’s even harder, because they then have to make enough money to support not only the band, but their families back home. If you read Peter Townsend’s recent autobiography, Who I Am, he talks about the pressures he felt to continue touring to support his wife and children. This was true even mid-career, when people would have assumed The Who were so successful that Townsend could have slacked off or retired.

For female musicians it’s a lot less acceptable to have kids. It may be a provocative thing to say, but I think society frowns more on the absentee musician mother than the absentee musician father. Other (childless) musicians look at you sideways when you have to leave rehearsal suddenly because of a sick child (been there, done that).

Here are a few of the other reasons I think many musicians – men, too, but especially women – have to choose (or feel they have to choose) between a professional music career and having a family:

Live, Marketing, Music

Did I Move You? How To Throw A CD Release Party

May 1, 2013 5 Comments

I did something important this weekend. It was important because I’m dying. Not anytime soon, mind you, but someday I won’t be here. So, because I could – because it mattered to me – this weekend I did a few things I enjoyed doing a lot. Things on my bucket list. These were all things I’ve never done before, and I did them with people I love and respect. I

entertained 50 people (pictures here),
performed original music I had created with my life partner, Stevie,
opened for Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer, yes that Amanda Palmer), and
kicked off the launch of the first ever Solveig & Stevie CD, Superwoman (available soon via iTune and all your favorite channels and services).

Oh, and I moved people. That is really the most important part of what I did this weekend. I made something beautiful and magical for people I love and for complete strangers alike. How do I know this? Because people haven’t stopped telling me since last Saturday. That is why I make music: to move people. I don’t need to be a star. I don’t need to be famous. I’m old (relatively), and I have three kids. I think regularly about how best to live the rest of my life, and what kind of meaningful memories I want to leave behind when I am gone. I’ve done my time in corporate meeting rooms. I want to make people feel. I want to touch people and make them think about their own creativity. If I did that for even a few people last weekend, that makes me happy.

Yes indeed. What a night! Could the long term good vibes of the church be blessing our communion ! I’m not the least bit religious but last night was the best feeling I’ve had in a group of strangers since the sixties. – Tim Rounds

Marketing, Music

6 Reasons Seattle Living Room Shows Rock

January 24, 2013 3 Comments

ShelbyEarlySeattleLivingRoomShows — Shelby Earl

I recently attended an “intimate” Saturday night show with 100 other people in a secret location at a dance studio on the north side of Seattle. From the outside, it looked sketchy upon arrival. The entrance was in an alley behind a restaurant. There was no sign to indicate you were in the right place. But here’s the thing: the performances were real and the audience appreciative. They listened with respect. Mostly quietly. Often raptly. They chatted with each other and with the musicians during breaks. And then they applauded vigorously. Repeatedly.

There was no proper stage, just about 50 folding chairs in front of a makeshift stage area in a corner, the rest was standing room only. If you hadn’t arrived an hour early and put your coat on a chair to claim it, you were out of luck to get a seat. White curtains were strung up over the wall mirrors behind the artists, and Christmas lights combined with two intense soft box lights to illuminate the performers. This experience was not for the nervous artist who prefers to be at a remove from the audience. The lineup consisted of a solo musician (Jason Dodson of The Maldives), a duo (Shelby Earl), and a small group (Ghosts I’ve Met – this was actually their CD release party as well), performing amplified acoustic music with hand drums at the loudest. OK, well maybe a small kit. This was, indeed, an intimate experience, despite the fact that the space held more people than I’ve seen in many local commercial music clubs or bars. Half of the 100 people packed in this relatively small space stood through the entire three hour show holding their plastic wine cups, beer bottles and paper plates of veggies and nacho dip.

Music

StageIt 101: Creating An Intimate Experience

October 25, 2012 10 Comments

It’s hard to tour – expensive, time consuming, and pretty much out of the question if you have kids or a full time job outside the music industry. But what’s an indie musician to do – you have to get out and promote your music, right?

I liken it to live internet porn for musicians, albeit generally G-rated and a much better value for the audience. Streaming your live music shows over the internet is one of the hottest ways musicians can boost their visibility, grow their fan base, and make a few dollars in the process, all from the relative comfort of their own living rooms. And neither they nor their fans have to pay a babysitter either. I’ve met quite a few musicians now who are putting on regular live performances via a streaming music service. There are several different platforms out there including StageIt, Ustream, LiveStream, Google+ Hangouts On Air, Skype, YouNow, Broadcast for Friends for Facebook, and Second Life Music. What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of each? I couldn’t find any articles that compared all the services, so I decided to try researching them myself and sharing what I’ve learned. In this article I’m going to cover the basics of StageIt.

My partner and I experimented last spring a bit with StageIt. We streamed two of our house concerts using it, and I found it quite fun. You start out by joining as a StageIt audience member, which is free. You can join by using your Facebook page, or by entering a StageIt name, email address and password. One advantage of StageIt is it’s dead simple to join. Once you are signed up as a member, you can sign up as a performer, which is a one-click action. To view a show, you purchase “notes,” a StageIt currency that translates 10 Notes = $1 US. To view a show, you purchase Notes in a minimum of 50 increments ($5 US). Notes are used to pay for tickets and to tip performers during the show (more on that later).