SONG CONTEST BLOG

In the point of view of the booking agent, you – the artist – must be in place in your career that you can attract enough paying gig-goers to your show, do so frequently, and with consistent growth to justify the booking agent’s efforts in exchange for his 10% (sometimes 15%) cut.  Unfortunately, most developing artists, even those with a small but loyal following, are not attractive enough for the reputable booking agents to pursue.  Much like talent scouts, booking agents will sometimes take a chance on an act that they believe will develop successfully and provide a handsome financial return in the future, but this is a relationship that is both difficult to pursue and cultivate and its terms will be strongly in the favor of the booking agent.

If you’re not a savvy manager yourself, find an artist manager before looking for a booking agent.  Keeping in mind that your manager sees a cut of everything you do whereas the booking agent only sees a cut of your live performances, statistically, a manager should be easier to sign with because he is spreading his risk on all of your musical assets.  Your manager should already have music industry connections and a way in to discuss tour scheduling opportunities face to face with an established booking agent, rather than making cold calls yourself.  However, if this is not the case, at least the booking agent can see that you were talented enough to attract an artist manager in the first place and, therefore, worth attending your next show.

The multi-national booking and management agencies such as The Agency Group and William Morris Agency prefer to see that you have financial backing, usually in the form of a label contract.  This, if nothing else, ensures that the label can afford to finance your tour and even take a loss for the privilege of ‘breaking’ you.

Whatever the arrangement may be, everyone involved wants to make money.  As such, it’s your responsibility (or, better yet, your manager’s responsibility) to show that you are a great investment.

Live Nation, the world’s largest producer of live concerts and the leading purveyor of the mega-deal (or 360 music deal), has become a music industry powerhouse and, as result, drawing and signing the most lucrative artists in today’s live music market , a la Nickelback and Madonna.  The LA-based live music behemoth sells more than 45 million concert tickets each year and, in music industry standards, considered a promotional sure-fire.  In many respects, the company operates as a music label should: developing professional artists of every caliber by providing a financial pipeline into every aspect of the artist’s ‘portfolio’.   In 2008, Live Nation organized and produced 16,000 concerts for 1,500 in 57 countries.

Successful digital music distribution is, first and foremost, gauged by how cheaply and swiftly you can get your music on iTunes and whether your distributor can offer any marketing support, usually reserved for major label clients or independent megastars.  Although the current leaders, namely The Orchard, IRIS and IODA, now cater to the long-tail musician community, independent artists (a huge market) are being catered to by new, easy-to-digest digital music distribution models that appear to surpass the existing competition.  CD Baby, for instance, the most renowned online CD retailer of independent artists, has leveraged its resources for its target demographic and, resultantly, enjoying exponential growth in the digital music distribution sector.  With no start-up costs and just a 9% commission, the indie retailer is an excellent choice for up and coming artists.  A relatively new entry in the space, TuneCore, is making a splash with an equally unbeatable offer: $0.99 per track, $0.99 per store per album, and $19.98 per album per year storage or, $9.99 flat per song, all-inclusive.  No commission.

Due to sinking CD sales, digital music distribution has become the primary means of placing new music in front of consumers in a variety of online mediums.  As the retail options for independent artists increase, so does the value proposition from the digital music distribution service providers.

A citizen of the United Kingdom, Don immigrated to the United States from Australia, where he jump-started his career by doing record promotion for several labels, including Chess and Capitol Records. During that time, he was involved in the promotion of The Beatles, and was singularly recognized with the only Golden Apple Award ever presented by them for “outstanding promotion in launching Apple Records in the United States”. At Capitol, Don was also Manager of International A&R/Promotion, where he signed Little River Band, and Director of Merchandising and Advertising. When Capitol created a second label, EMI America Records, in 1978, Don became its Vice President of A&R. His credits at EMI America include Michael Johnson, Kim Carnes, Sheena Easton, Kate Bush, Sir Cliff Richard, J. Geils Band, and Kenny Rogers. In 1982, Don moved back to Capitol where he signed and helped guide a number of hit-making acts, including Heart, Joe Cocker, Freddy Jackson, Melba Moore, Steve Vai, Megadeth, WASP, and George Clinton. He was personally involved with the recording careers of Tina Turner, Bob Seger, Anne Murray, The Motels, Duran Duran, Power Station, Thomas Dolby, Ashford & Simpson, Billy Squier, and assisted in the emergence of Crowded House, Poison, The Smithereens, and Great White. In 1987, Don resigned from Capitol to join CBS/Sony as Senior Vice President of A&R, Epic Records, where he personally signed and worked with such acts as Celine Dion (via Sony Canada), Bad English (finding their #1 hit “When I See You Smile”), Iron Maiden, Basia, as well as bringing his expertise to bear on the careers of Cheap Trick (finding their #1 single “The Flame”), Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Estefan, REO Speedwagon, The Jacksons, and Europe. Under his direction, the Epic A&R staff also signed successful acts, including Living Colour, Indigo Girls, Allman Brothers Band, Alice Cooper, Social Distortion, Firehouse, Suicidal Tendencies, Front 2423, Ottmar Liebert and Joe Satriani. In 1993, Don created Drive Entertainment, a company with emphasis on classic artist and niche market catalog exploitation, where he compiled and packaged over 140 albums. Five years later, Don chose to reenter the broader-based music market and, to date, operates his own independent consultancy and music supervision company. We Are Listening is delighted to have Don on board!

Recommended online artist development platforms:

ReverbNation provides marketing and artist development solutions for up and coming musicians that need to “compete, cooperate, and differentiate in an increasingly noisy online environment”.   With a 360-degree approach, ReverbNation offers every tool in the shed for fledgling artists plus social and professional networking solutions in a single hub.

Music Nation, an artist-fan-promoter community, provides an array of music marketing features, as well as song contest and songwriting opportunities.  Perhaps more fan-centric than ReverbNation, Music Nation has also adopted the 360-degree approach to artist development.

OurStage, an artist and fan community that revolves around a “democratic” songwriting contest, has been making a splash as a pull-marketing platform for songwriters and recording artists to receive objective feedback from potential fans.

SellaBand, a vision of the music industry to come, has harnessed the power of niches and created an artist development platform that allows fans to, literally, put their money where their mouth is.  With a low risk and easy to digest financial investment program for music lovers, artists enjoy recording and A&R opportunities if they manage to attract enough “believers”.

YouLicense, the first independent music licensing platform, is where artists and music buyers engage one another and cut out the middle man.  With a host of music licensing opportunities in every imaginable musical genre, YouLicense is an artist development favorite.

MyDrifts is more than just a MySpace music marketing system, it’s an entire suite of music marketing tools for the artist or artist manager that wishes to better target his marketing efforts and learn about his audience.

Sonicbids is an artist development veteran, helping bands get gigs, and promoters book the right bands.  Their community consists of bands, singers, songwriters, and performers of all kinds, and music buyers of all kinds, including singer songwriter competition promoters, music licensors, festival programmers, and more.

If you Google – myspace music marketing – you will find a medley of useless tips on how to add more friends, write enticing messages, customize your page, and do more of what approximately 3 million active musicians on myspace are already doing, most of whom are still not getting any more attention than they did when they first joined.  Don’t get me wrong, I love myspace and I believe that myspace music marketing is absolutely essential.  Actually, I hate myspace but I do believe it’s essential and, now, a music industry standard.

Forget about robots for your myspace music marketing strategy.  And don’t worry, labels are no longer counting the number of friends and plays on your profile (it’s hard to believe they ever did!) so you need not spend all day and night adding friends aimlessly.  Start thinking about a targeted myspace music marketing approach whereby you only contact ‘friends’ you truly believe will take an interest in you and your music.  After all, online social networking answers to the same principles as day to day networking: you may work the room, but you don’t go into business with everyone you meet.

If you’re eager to raise your profile, dig deeper.  Rather than thinking about your number of friends, think about the ratio of friends vs. plays.  For example, If you have 1000 friends and 1000 plays, that should raise a big red flag: your friends accepted your invitation, listened to your music once (on average), and never came back.  For a truly effective myspace music marketing approach, keep your outreach to a minimum and focus on the folks that listen to your brand of music, attend live shows by artists with mutual musical qualities, and are likely to show up to your next gig.  If you don’t play outside of Nevada, why badger someone in Minnesota every other day?  Keep your myspace music marketing initiatives user-specific, short, and to the point.  Spend less time marketing to everyone and more time marketing to a small group of truly potential fans.  Before you know it, your myspace music marketing campaigns will be powered by your fanbase, a more potent and authoritative music marketing force than just you.

The digital media age has brought about a new breed of music marketing professionals armed with next-generation music marketing tools and savvy.  Cheap and, often, free online music marketing solutions are at the disposal of anyone with an internet connection.  However, today’s music marketing leaders are not your average Joe’s.  Dare I coin the term: music marketing Joe 2.0?

Budding young marketers are spending more time finding and sorting through information online – looking for patterns, clues, leads, characteristics etc. – that will help them learn more about their target audience and build relationships on behalf of their clients, as opposed to wining and dining with label executives.  Sad really, but music marketing is a different game now.  A decade ago, artists were still ‘enjoying’ the luxury of a label financed focus group and the gut feeling of the music managers at the top.  Today, they’re either getting feedback themselves from social networks or fortunate enough to have a music marketing wizard on their team to do the dirty work for them.  In other words, independent artists have been forced to become promoters and professional artists (i.e. financed artists) outsource to music marketing specialists as opposed to relying on old school record industry tactics.
Although the revenue pyramid still looks the same – a handful of megastars at the top,  a long tail of independent artists at the bottom – new digital media has leveled the playing field and empowered fledgling artists with music marketing solutions only the megastars had access to but a decade ago.

We Are Listening has brought together an exceptional panel of judges for an extraordinary international singer songwriter competition called The Singer/Songwriter Awards.  Six gifted song contest winners will choose from six attractive songwriting, recording and marketing related prizes packages, including an exclusive recording session with producer Steve Williams (Sting, Eric Clapton, Seal) in London, England; a one week songwriting retreat in Stockholm, Sweden; television and film placement; 8 week US college and community radio promotion; record mixing and mastering; and CD duplication.  As part of the singer songwriter competition prize package, We Are Listening undertakes to non-exclusively represent the winning songwriters and provide global digital distribution, sync licensing administration and bespoke online promotion.

Launched in 2005, The Singer/Songwriter Awards is We Are Listening’s first and foremost singer songwriter competition.  Since its inception, We Are Listening has added new music industry opportunities to its service roster, venturing beyond the singer songwriter competition to niche initiatives like lyrics-only and World music genre contests.  The company has become one of the leading forces in independent music promotion and boasts the most prestigious singer songwriter competition available to both unsigned and signed songwriters and recording artists.  Its founder, Lior Shamir, is committed to making We Are Listening a next-generation, turn-key solution for independent artists.

Lior Shamir

We Are Listening currently accepts entries for three international song contests: The Singer/Songwriter Awards, Lyric Writer Awards, and World of Music Awards. 

The Singer/Songwriter Awards is a song contest for songwriters writing original material with English-language lyrics in any genre.  The songs may be the product of more than one songwriter and winners have a choice of six song contest prizes, including a trip to London to record the winning song.  Participants are not required to be the performing artist on the recorded submission. 

The Lyric Writer Awards is an English-language, lyrics-only song contest in any genre.  The lyrics may be the product of more than one lyricist and winners enjoy professional publishing opportunities in the US market. 

The World of Music Awards is a world music genre song contest.  The songs are not required to contain words and, those that do, may be recorded and submitted in any language.  All entries may be the product of a songwriting team and, like The Singer/Songwriter Awards song contest, participants are not required to be the performing artist on the recorded submission.  Winners receive a fully-financed trip to world music festival, WOMEX, accompanied by one of We Are Listening’s music industry veterans.

We Are Listening also provides songwriters and performing artists with an assessment service as well as a special performance-oriented contest called Breaking the Band.  All of this and more on We Are Listening’s music contest page.

Typically, an artist manager receives 15% – 20% of the artist’s Gross income or 50% of the Net income.  I personally like the 50/50 model.  15% may not sound like a lot but keep in mind that the artist is responsible for expenses and if the artist is a four member band, you can guess who gets the biggest piece of the pie.  The artist manager is often the primary reason why the artist sees any money in the first place.  As such, a good artist manager deserves to be rewarded for his efforts, expertise, contacts and, above all, risk.  Besides, 15% – 20% of the gross is often the same as splitting everything down the middle.  In addition, the artist manager may negotiate a commission based on new deals he closed during the course of his relationship with the artist.  This is to protect his investment long after the contract has terminated and he and the artist have gone their separate ways.

A no-commission management deal, whereby the artist pays an artist manager or management firm a salary or ‘retainer’, is a relatively new contract model in the music industry.  The artist has the power to hire, fire and negotiate with his management.  The artist manager has a certain degree of ‘job security’ but can not reap the rewards of a huge commercial success.  No points.  No success fees.  Simple.  And the artist is in control.  This is similar to the way PR companies operate and charge for their services.

At the negotiation table, the terms of the deal, regardless of the type of payment model, should be in light of the degree of financial risk the artist manager is expected to undertake by the artist in the event that the artist can not pay upfront.  Considering that financial institutions define the terms of a loan by assessing the degree of financial risk, it is reasonable to expect an artist manager to be compensated based on similar projections.