JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum musicians no longer have to wait for ... our big break

Gary Powell wrote this, it might stir a great discussion here.


“Let’s Talk” Music at Sam Houston State University

Table Topic:
How to Create Great Art and Save the World at the Same Time

Congratulations to SHSU for raising $57,000 with your annual event, Let’s Talk. Presenting as a “Conversation Leader,” I was pleased to be involved with this worthy program. Having my former professor and friend, Walter Foster and Jeri Lyn Foster, who were most influential in my educational upbringing, was a great surprise. Renewing my relationship with the university through Mike Bankhead, has also been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you Rhonda Ellisor, and Nancy Gaertner for a beautifully run event! Written below is a quick follow-up of the discussion held at our table.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t quite get to the “saving the world” part of my table topic. Saving the world is actually an ongoing negotiation I am having with record companies, distributors, social-media sites, networks of friends, lawyers, publishers, allies, supporters and with myself as well - all the while trying to compose and record some worthwhile music, identify talented deserving performers and musicians and earning a pot-load of money to fund it all.

The opportunities open to recording artists have been profoundly transformed since I began my professional career in 1976. The idea that a musician could record an album in their living room with a laptop and two decent microphones and then acquire worldwide digital distribution for a few hundred dollars would have been thought to be crazy talk even ten years ago. Nonetheless, now we have that ability. For the first time, I myself have pushed three of my personal album productions to iTunes in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, and the European Union. The albums are also available for download on Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, Napster, eMusic, and LaLa. Apple’s iTunes store alone has now sold over six billion songs since it began on January 9, 2001. About 200 of those sales are credited to me personally (not counting my work of Disney), so you can see that there is another hurdle to jump through in learning how to find and direct customers to buy our music.

It’s an exciting time to be a musician and artist, for not since 1776 have talent and integrity had such an opportunity as this. - Gary Powell

A producer’s or professor’s development of an aspiring musician who can compose and produce a marketable album has never been enough for success. Like politics, it has taken the power of movies, television, nepotism, secret deals and every other sorted ideal to make it to the top of the charts. It’s just that now as musicians no longer have to wait for what we thought of as our big break. Now, utilizing many of the emerging distribution and marketing technologies, we can finally take control of our careers while implementing our production and marketing strategies incrementally. Refer back to the 200 units sold digitally by me online. Before I posted those three albums for sale, there were another 127 albums composed and produced by me for different clients and record labels. Those albums have sold some 45 million albums in 47 countries. These kinds of numbers do not happen because the proverbial cream has risen to the top. There is much more to this music business than just writing and recording. Unfortunately, entrepreneurship is is not taught to most aspiring musicians, so until we rise to the challenge of learning how the business of music works, we will continue to miss the opportunities offered us through new marketing and distribution technologies.

Obviously, the major record labels are not thrilled about the democratization of the music business, but, they should be. These opportunities are renewing the public’s interest in discovering and maybe buying music again. Regardless, here we are - millions of musicians, singers and composers for whom the record companies are becoming irrelevant. That is not entirely true just yet, but broadening our educational arts curricula to include basic entrepreneurship courses will give talented individuals tools and hope for building a sustainable business - a business they can solely own and from which they can prosper directly. It’s true that we all can have a chance to swing the bat for a home run, as long as we can build and own our own stadium. Thus, this effort will require some very serious skills beyond learning counterpoint and spelling major-minor seventh chords.

It’s an exciting time to be a musician and artist, for not since 1776 have talent and integrity had such an opportunity as this. I just made that up, so please don’t make me defend this bold statement. But, hope really needs no defense, as long as it is accompanied by education and discipline.

For further information, please check out the links below.

We mentioned briefly the idea and principles of viral marketing and how to use it.

Playing for Change is a very cool idea of using one song and recording it all over the world.

Trevor Romain is a personal friend of mine with his own kids show on PBS. He supports an orphanage in Africa.

Craig Hella Johnson and I taught at the University of Texas School of Music together for a brief time and have remained friends. This professional choir is his full-time position now and they presented a two hour special on PBS this month called Company of Voices. It’s beautifully produced and lovely to hear and watch.

I have produced and arranged nine albums for Joe Scruggs since 1982. He is responsible for introducing me to family music. He and partner Pete Markham created a full-time career performing for children by owning their own production company and record company.
CDBaby is a website for individuals who wish to sell physical product online. They provide digital distribution as well and all fulfillment in collecting and distributing money and mailing product to customers for $4 per unit. The artist sells the CD for whatever price they want.
Tunecore is an aggregator site for musicians to upload their music directly to iTunes. This is my current favorite site for this revolutionaly kind of service.
John Smither, you brought up an important discussion on open source software. It’s a rather huge topic as you know. I use Wordpress, an open-source platform for my own website. Michael Tiemann was an early innovator in this movement. He found me online and came to Austin to spend two days talking about how to change the paradigm of artists having to pay for recording time in professional studios. He is building his studio, Miraverse, now in Chapel Hill, NC which will at least offer a different business model which musicians should find favorable to say the least. “Revolution OS” is a movie which features Michael for his vision and being an innovator concerning open-source software.
Ted Kryczko is my friend and client from Walt Disney Records. He was the “conversation leader” at another table at our event. We have produced over 1,000 tracks together since 1989.
This category on my own website, Music Business Insight has 25 articles I’ve written within it to help educate and inspire musicians. I hope you will pass the link along to anyone whom you think might find these words helpful. If there is anything else I can help you with or if you have a singer or musician you would like to refer to me, please do. Having worked in both Hollywood and the Goree Unit, I can tell you that my studio in Austin is unlike either one of these places.


http://www.garypowell.com/blogs/notes/shsu-lets-talk/

Aside from him having an amazing grasp of the obvious, I don't see anything here? What am I missing Ande?

Brian

It sort of reminds me of all those E books I have bought over the last year in reference to the new age of music and marketing a digital product, generally telling me what I already know, and being just vague enough to make me wonder where it's all headed to, and about those entrepreneurial aspects everyone keeps talking about without really saying exactly what they are, and even if they get into that subject, what they talk about isn't anything new or astounding.

I have learned to save my money, and quit wasting time reading E books that tell me what I can find online all by myself if I just take the time to do some research, read a few articles.

The one thing I have learned is No one knows for sure what the answers are about doing business in this time of turmoil within the music industry, there is no set pattern for immediate success. So called experts point to the success of a few individuals and what they feel they did that helped them achieve it, what they fail to point out is depending on your particular circumstances, factors like money, knowledge, ability, and genre, the same approach may not be right for you, and the fact that for every group or person that managed to find some success their are at the very least a hundred thousand other very talented people that are wandering aimlessly around the internet still looking for answers.

I have spent the past two years, trying to learn how to use the internet for marketing and promoting my songs. So far, after many different approaches, I have learned a few concrete things.

Keep in mind that success is different things to different people, some search for fortune, some desire fame, others just want to make a living making the music they love, and get a little recognition for the fruits of their labors. I fall into
the last category.

What have I learned that seems to be a constant?

First the more things change the more they remain the same.

You still have to get out and play.Touring is essential to building a fan base, and it is one of the few ways you will actually make any real money today, either through paying gigs, or the sales of CD's and merchandise.

Secondly, there is no one single thing that will propel you onto the world wide market. The labels had a small army, armed with $500,000, to get the job done. They knew the massive effort it took to launch an artist. Most of us have neither a small army, or the half million. The alternative is a plan that includes many streams of influence. Like touring, getting involved in social networking sites, and I am not talking about the big 3 (Myspace, Facebook, and Youtube). What I am talking about is the hundreds of sites that will allow you to upload your music for free, and offer it for sale to their members (they don't produce much in the way of sales, but the exposure to an additional 10,000 people cant hurt), learning to write a good press release and how to get it to the media that makes a difference, building a website that draws your fan base and helps you to market your music, blogging, becoming active in RSS feeds, learning how to get your music to the leading digital distribution sites, such as itunes, rhapsody, amazon, and all the others.Creating linkable banners for your fans to post on their websites and social networks, and if possible paid advertisement on relevant websites, and maybe most important of all is building an email list of 4 or 5 hundred Dj's that will accept an Mp3 file, or are willing to download an EP, and are willing to play it on the air. All while you continue to write your music, and practice for your concerts. A lot to do isn't it?

Which leads me to the next reality.

The stand alone "Do it yourself" Artist, can not do it all by themselves. There are just too many hats to wear, even if one person had the expertise, and the ability to do all those things well, he could work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and not be able to keep up with it. All those things mentioned above take constant maintenance, and most have to done on an on going basis.

The last reality is there is no substitute for money. In order to do most of the things in promotion, you need software, you need to be able to pay people to do the things you don't have the expertise , or the time to do. Without a little working capital your dead in the water.

So here we are in the new age, and the factors that were important in the old business model are just as important today, promotion, an organized work force, and money. Like I said, funny how the more things change the more they remain the same.

I was at a meeting recently where the speaker pointed out, if you could find a 1000 hard core fans, that were willing to spend just a $100 a year buying your CD's, and other merchandise, you could make $100,000 a year, that's no shabby income, relatively simple right? The problem seems to be if you can find those 1000 fans, you still have the expenses it took to get them, and by the time you subtract those, a $100,000 isn't what it used to be. : )

it's still about finding a niche, investing a lot of time and money, being in it for the long run, and persistence.

That's just my experience and I thought I would share what it has cost me a lot of money to learn.

Billy, you pretty much hit in on the head. As far as the kinds of "success" you described, I started out striving for the former, but have come to realize how fortunate I am to have the latter. I keep it going by doing all the things you just described. As far as 1,000 people willing to spend $100, I'm not there yet, but judging from CD sales, I have a COUPLE of thousand willing to part with $10, so I'm getting there!

Hi Bob,

Well you are far ahead of a lot of others my man, and congrats on your success. I know it ain't easy achieving it. It takes a lot of hard work that's for sure. Good to know I am not the only one that has had that experience, and come to realize those realities. Sounds to me like you have laid the foundation for a pretty successful career, good luck my friend.

very good post Billy ! Brian has posted many times about having 5000 fans willing to support you @ $20 a year to make your 100k !

Thank you Herbie. I am not too sure as to who Brian is, I am relatively new here. The bottom line is no matter how you do the math, it works...lol.

OOOOps sowwy, you meant that Brian...LMHO...yes i know who he is but I haven't seen that in a post yet....sorry Brian, I didn't want you thinking after all your efforts you are wallowing in obscurity. Keep up the good work my friend.

Billy