Release | Solveig Whittle

Walking The Dog Episode 20: House Concerts and Release Tips

August 8, 2014 No Comments

In this ten minute episode I share my thoughts on house concerts and mention the site, Concerts In Your Home. I also discuss some basic ideas for getting your first house concert off the ground.

I also mention my latest blog post, 25 Music Marketing Expert Tips For An Indie Release, which has a lot of great information compiled from 25 music marketing experts, including Greg Savage, Ari Herstand, Michael Brandvold, Don Harrison, Cari Cole, Neil Kristianson, Christine Infanger, Aaron Bethune, Corey Koehler, Seth Jackson, Bob Baker, Randi Reed, Chris Knab, Andrew Jones, Praverb, Tommy Darker, Alison Lamb, Madalyn Sklar, Wade Sutton, Billy Griseck, Ryan Lucht, Ariel Hyatt, Debra Russell, Carlos Schwilly, Sophia Lovett, and me! I think you’ll find it very helpful if you are releasing your own CD.

At the end of the podcast, I also have a special message for my podcast listeners. Thanks for listening!

Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

25 Tips From Music Marketing Experts For An Indie Release

August 7, 2014 90 Comments

Tis the season for indie album releases (perhaps the Grammy submission timelines are driving some of this).

As some of you know, we recently mastered our second Solveig & Stevie CD, Fire and Other Playthings. Before we release it, of course, I am writing up my promotional plan. In the midst of my best practices research process, it occurred to me, wait…

What about consulting the collective brainpower surrounding me in the virtual online cocktail party that is the Internet of All Things, those brilliant music industry people (some of whom I am now honored to call Friend and many of whom I have met In Real Life over the past several years)?

Then came another Lightbulb Moment: I should compile these tips into a blog post to share with you, my faithful readers!

All of these folks are people I have interacted with on social media or in person in some way or another, so they are real people with real experience in music marketing. Many have written entire books (or at least ebooks) on the subject, which I have downloaded or purchased and read.

The links below are not affiliate links, they’ll just take you to the author’s website or blog. All I ask is that if you do visit my friends, please let them know I sent you.

Don’t forget to read all the way to the end – there are some real gems here. Some are a bit more, ahem, detailed than others. Some are practical lists, and some more philosophical. I didn’t want you to miss anything, so I edited just a bit for obvious redundancies. There are some recurring themes.

[By the way, if you’d prefer this post as a PDF, I am thinking of creating an ebook from this blog post. Let me know in the comments or email me via the contact form to let me know.]

So with no further ado, in no particular order, except as they came in to me, here they are:

Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 15: Timing and Creativity

July 4, 2014 No Comments

In this 30 minute episode I talk about the idea of timing as it relates to the release of music, like a CD or single, and also about the creative journey.

I had a great conversation with Sean Harley “Tucker” this week about creativity and being a musician. If you want to hear more of my thoughts on creator/makers in the industry today, check out his podcast, The Spark and The Art.

[Tweet “Success lies at the intersection of our passions, our talents, and what others are willing to pay us for”]

While some of us discover early in life what our creative calling might be, I think most of us struggle to find that intersection between what we love to do (our passion), what we are good at doing, and what others want to compensate, or pay us, to do. I know I’m still working on it.

Life is definitely better when you enjoy what you are doing every day!

Have a great 4th of July weekend (even if you’re not in the US).

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.

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

8 Things Indie Musicians Can Learn From Taylor Swift’s Red Release

November 28, 2012 8 Comments

**If you like this post, you may also enjoy my follow-up post 5 Things Indie Musicians Can Learn From Taylor Swift’s 1989 Release**

Album sales may be plummeting in the music industry overall, but Taylor Swift’s latest album hit the number one position on iTunes’ Top Album charts within 36 minutes of its release last month and remained there for the past three weeks. First week sales were 1.21 million copies, according to Nielsen Soundscan – the biggest first-week figure for a new album in more than a decade. None of this was an accident – it was the result of a carefully orchestrated and deeply creative yet disciplined launch. What lessons can indie musicians take away from the way the upstart Big Machine Label Group marketed Taylor Swift’s “Red”? Sure, Swift’s label probably spent millions of dollars of marketing budget and had relationships with huge retail chains, but there are some lessons for smaller music marketing budgets.