MUSIC INDUSTRY BLOG

I used to be.

I couldn’t handle the rejection.

And worse, help in the form of critical – sometimes brutal – feedback on my music would leave me licking my wounds for days.

You see, it takes a lot of courage to ask for help and welcome criticism as well as praise.

And this is the mark of an independent artist and entrepreneur that music fans and professionals want to listen to and associate with.

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help

Professional songwriters, label executives, music supervisors, venue promoters, and die-hard music fans are all around you.  Take a big breath, approach them, ask a question, and even offer to play them a few seconds of your song.  Do this at every opportunity…

…You’ll be surprised how easily you shed your fear of dismissal.

And though you may not always like what they have to say, their willingness to help you – listen and share their thoughts with you – may drive your career to new heights.

Not everyone will be willing to help you.  But don’t let that put you off.

If you learn to ask for help and be open to receiving it in any form, you will discover that most people will go out of their way for you.  That’s a promise.

I hope this helps.

1. Wil, I see the value in BandCentral but is it really a ‘must-have’?

While record labels are trying to halt their downward spiral and unswervingly opting for “safe” artists with proven mass-market appeal, the DIY model of self-management, self-promotion and self-releasing is the only option available to the majority of bands ? and the only way that most bands will get off the first rung of the music industry ladder.  Any band that is serious about moving their career forward in this climate will see BandCentral as an essential tool.

In our experience, the difference between a successful band and a band that fades away has to do almost entirely with hard work, dedication and passion.  BandCentral is designed to streamline the self-management process and make every-day organisation and communication between the band, band manager and third-parties much easier, enabling you to get on with the music and promotion, rather than getting bogged down with missed communications, lost gig booking info, bickering over shared or IOU costs, chasing each other for rehearsal or gig stage times, losing your performing rights data or not having important files at hand.

Naysayers say that “bands will never be organised enough to do all this stuff themselves”.  I believe that these are the same people that are sitting around, blinkered to all the opportunities the digital sphere presents to artists and waiting for CD sales at record stores to turn around.  I know from personal experience that without some way of keeping tabs on the nuts’n’bolts admin side of a creative venture, there’s a risk that the band can lose momentum and non-creative work can sink the entire endeavour.

Making it in the music industry has always involved a lot of hard work but never more so than today.  BandCentral fills a vital role in this new ‘DIY’ paradigm, helping bands to harness the best of what the web has to offer them and giving them all the tools they need to streamline the self-management process and join the music revolution.

2. Should every band be using BandCentral, from fledgling to established?

Every band that is serious about their music should be using BandCentral.
If you’re an unknown band, you should make use of BandCentral’s tools to get organised, get yourselves out there and get known.  Once you’re established BandCentral will help you to collaborate better with each other encourage complete transparency in dealings with third-parities such as managers, producers & bookers etc. and help you to organize every aspect of your band life.  It will also help you to organise and get the most out of all the different elements of the DIY business model, from live shows and tours to single/album releases and accounting and merchandising.

Acts who have broken through to the big-time will have an army of full time management looking after them, so acts like Coldplay or Interpol are obviously not going to be needing any help from BandCentral.  Their management, however, would find it hugely helpful on a day-to-day basis as it keeps everything in one central, secure and instantly accessible place online.

Every industry needs a tool to help it get organised – BandCentral aims to be that tool for the Music Industry.

3. Most bands are strapped for cash. With so many musician resources out there, bands often face a tough call as to which they should spend their money on.  I have always recommended investing in assets that show a direct financial return.  Is BandCentral such an asset?

I’m in full time band and I know from personal experience how costly things can be.  We’ve intentionally kept the price down with cash-strapped bands in mind and we feel that £4.99 (approx. $10) per month split between 4 or 5 people is a small price to pay for the service that we offer bands.  It’s less than one packet of smokes in the UK.. and a lot better for you!  We also have a Free option for those bands who either can’t quite justify the outlay yet or see their bands as more of a hobby or a side interest.

There’s a strong argument for a band saving a great deal of money simply by being better organized.  To take the BandCentral Finance Manager as one example, if your band keeps track of finances in a detailed, responsible way, then you’ll know what you’re spending, when and how you’re wasting your money, and you’ll surely pick up much more than £4.99 a month in savings.

So, is BandCentral an asset worth investing in?  You tell me.

4. How is BandCentral different to Bandize?

Whilst Bandize is certainly in the same territory as BandCentral, anyone who has tried the two services will be aware that there are stark differences in terms of functionality, design and overall usability.  We welcome comparisons between the two sites because this gives us the opportunity to highlight the contrasts.

5. When do you expect to become profitable?  Do you expect to reach this goal without another round of investment?

We have been working on BandCentral for the last 15 months and have grown to a team of 7.  Happily, we’re on course to become profitable within the next 12 -18 months.  BandCentral has already negotiated a second round of funding, details of which will be released in the coming weeks.

6. What can we expect to see from BandCentral in the next six months?

BandCentral Version 2 will be launching in the autumn and brings with it a whole host of brilliant new features such as Music and Merch Management along with some cutting edge enhancements to those V1 features that BandCentral users already know and love.

We’re also incredibly excited about the BandCentral iPhone app that’s in development because it’s something our bands have been asking for for a while and were pretty confident it’ll transform how bands and band managers communicate and get organised whilst on the move.  We have just appointed an agency and the app will be set for release in early 2010.

Beyond that, we’ve got some more music festivals and industry events lined up, both here, in the UK, and abroad.  We’re going to be taking BandCentral to Music Live in November, MIDEM in Cannes in January and we’re excited to be part of the really strong British contingent headed to SXSW in March ‘10.
You’ll be hearing a lot more about BandCentral V2 and developments with the iPhone app in the coming weeks.

Visit www.bandcentral.com

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BandCentral – Band and Fan Relationship Management
Bandize
ArtistForce

This is a guest post by Brian Mazzaferri

My name is Brian, I’m in a Nintendo-Pop-Rock band called I Fight Dragons, and we currently get over 200 new fans signing up for our email list every week.

We officially launched just under six months ago, with 0 fans on the list.  As I write this, we have 3656 subscribers.  We didn’t add a single fan ourselves, these are all people that have signed themselves up, that we now know, love, and interact with on a regular basis.  They are our biggest champions and a constant inspiration to us to keep working harder and pushing ourselves.

Note: there has been no label investing in us, no management company pulling the strings, no 800-pound gorilla confusing the issues.  While I appreciate the creativity of endeavors like those of Radiohead and Trent Reznor, let’s be honest; it’s not rocket science to make the internet work for you when you already have legions of fans.  That’s the easy part.  Offer them stuff to buy, and they will buy it.  Tada.

But how does a new band go about getting fans when starting from scratch?  Most advice on the subject is sorely old-hat (just play as many shows as humanly possible and never stop), or hopelessly impersonal (add 500 targeted MySpace friends every day).  The problem is that it all revolves around impressing the industry and getting to the point where someone will drop a big chunk of change to buy you a fanbase.  And there’s the root of the problem, because in the internet age money just can’t do enough.  So unless you get on TV or become famous for some other reason, the key is finding a real way to establish and grow meaningful relationships with an ever-growing number of fans.

So I humbly submit our method, which so far has been going pretty well.  For the sake of brevity, I’ll boil our online strategy to three core steps:

1. Give your music away, but don’t throw it away

We’ve given away a free digital copy of our debut EP to everyone who signs up for our email list.  For people who don’t know us, it’s a free and easy way to learn about our music for free.  And then we’ve got their ear.  Note, this is VERY different to just posting it online for free download.  The price may seem the same, but the result is 100% different, because we now have a foot in the proverbial door.

2. Regularly give away stuff that’s way too good to give away

Next, we send an email to our list every Monday at 11AM (for the most part).  More weeks than not, that email contains free music.  And not just some off-the-cuff track, it’s a track that is up to our personal standards, which I’d like to think are very high.  In holding ourselves to that standard, we give our fans something new that they really want to show their friends.  And when the next new track goes out, the new converts get to become the evangelists.  But they need new music to do that, and not just any new music, YOUR BEST new music.

3. Be real, be available, and be involved

This seems like a no-brainer, but it actually takes a LOT of work.  We’re on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, our Blog, and TheSixtyOne every day, talking with people and being involved in conversations.  I’m NOT talking about one-way, blast-yourself-out-there stuff like MySpace adding.  I’m talking about joining in conversations on Twitter that you have something to add to.  About commenting earnestly on music you like.  About joining a community, not trumpeting your own message.

Of course, you’ve still got to play live (and put on as great a show as you can muster), you’ve still got to have great music and high standards (in whatever context you choose), and you’ve still got to get out there and network, to become a part of the physical community as well as the virtual one.

But ultimately, in the early stages it’s not about the money.  Or I should say, it’s not about the marketing money.  It’s about you, your music, and your willingness to put in the time and energy to develop real, deep, and meaningful connections with fans.

Just joined BandCentral, a fan and task management service specifically developed for musicians and industry professionals.  It’s strikingly similar to Bandize, and playing in the same ball park as RockDex and ArtistForce.  The Band Status Updates, a one-click message syndication feature which posts to the band’s Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter profiles simultaneously, appears to be a lite variation of what ArtistData currently offers, along with a number of other dotcoms that aim to ease the pain of managing data across a number of social networks at once (I use Ping.fm to syndicate this blog).  The idea is simple: an affordable client relationship management solution for the music industry or, more simply put, a service for bands who manage their own fans.  How’s that for a strapline?  There’s also a number of key admin features for internal band use.  Watch the video:

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Bandize
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I encourage artists to take their career into their own hands, self-manage and self-promote.  I believe that this is a prerequisite in today’s music industry and taking greater control of your assets will ultimately yield greater results than relying solely on third parties.

Needless to say, I’m not the only one who thinks this way.  Technology has created a gateway to music fans and the entrance through it is cheaper and more accessible than ever before.  As such, there are services available, free and not-so-free, catering to every imaginable aspect of a musician’s career, founded upon the DIY paradigm.  From music-friendly analytics and publishing tools to online collaboration and direct-to-fan distribution solutions, there are countless specialized offerings out there gaming for a stake of the massive independent artist market.

Now, a new service has emerged with the aim to assist artists in personal organization and management.  A one-stop-shop for accounting, task management, scheduling, and almost every other administrative task associated with the music industry, Bandize hopes to help artists clean up their act.

Currently a by-invitation-only service, the company may be over reaching by expecting artists ? essentially a community suffering from attention deficit disorder ? to take to a CRM solution.  Most artists are not facing complex cash flows and a diverse and demanding clientbase to truly take advantage of Bandize’s full suite of organizational features, including “Asset Management” which is bordering on ludicrous.  Those that are can probably justify hiring an intern, assistant, accountant, or personal manager as a business expense, by my estimation.  I did, however, enjoy learning about the company’s one-click data syndication, a simple yet powerful feature which enables users to post just once for all of their online properties.  That makes perfect sense.  It saves time and ensures that marketing messages and general communications remain consistent.

The site looks good and I completely support artists who wish to get organized and disciplined.  I just don’t believe that they will.  It’s like cleaning your room or taking out the trash.  There’s always something better to do.