How Small(er) Artists Make Money

In this post I will be outlining some ways that today's artists make their money.
Long gone are the days where the musicians would just make excellent music and be offered a record deal with megabucks advances and the label would take care of the rest. Not to say that it's impossible to do that now, but those days are galloping into the sunset.
I'm talking about artists today, the guys who are struggling to enable themselves to do the gigs and produce the music.

In recent years the amount of money music makers could earn have both been dwindling and excelling, of course it's dwindling for the smaller artists and excelling for the huge ones.

I will, inevitably, cover the aspects you've probably already though of, or heard about but I'll try to include some useful tips to enhance your success.

Merchandise
Yes, yes, peddling your wares to the gig goers!
This one isn't one to do straight off the bat for new artists. For success in selling your merch you'll need a minimum of three things:

• Money
• A well known name
• Great design

Money - In order to produce the merch you will need a bankroll from somewhere. Whatever you decide to sell - they cost a decent amount of money to produce and the margins are not huge - but they are a good seller. The old adage remains true - you have to spend money to make money.

A well known name - It's pointless trying to sell merch if nobody knows who you are. This is the reason that I don't advise you to do this approach straight off the bat. To successfully sell your gear you will need to seriously hone in your marketing (as covered in another post) and once the facebook likes and gig goers start rolling in then you can think about merchandise.

Great Design - Even if you're a big name and you have a cheaply made, horrible looking design - you're not going to sell anything! Well, maybe you will - but certainly not as much as if it were a great design! Usually bands will use their band logo so make sure this is up to scratch (for more info see our branding post on how to make sure you look great!)

If gigs pay poorly - do your own!

This is something I did in my early years when I was in a band, and something a band I managed also did in their early years.

If your local promoters are paying you peanuts for turning up and doing all the work - cut that middle man right out! I'm serious, the promoters only become relevant the higher up you go in the music scene. At a local level, the majority are only robbing you! A word of advice though - if you have a well known promoter who you know without question has great connections then don't burn that bridge! But most are just taking what should be yours.

You'll find that most venues will offer you a great rate to hire the venue out and if your lucky/a good negotiator, some MIGHT do it for free! They will always make money on the drink sales.

If you get 150 people to come to the gig for £5 entry, you stand to make £750 - and we're certain that money is better spent by you rather than in the promoters pocket!

Selling your own music

With aggregators now allowing you to put your music easily and quickly on iTunes, spotify and all the other big name sites, you'd be silly not to take advantage of them. It costs very little and is a very quick process. 

Of course, to make any kind of decent money you'll need to have your name known and that's where most people fail. Marketing is something that will come up time and time again - make sure you do it properly and the rest will take care of itself. If you've made the best track in the history of humanity - it's useless unless people know about it.
Of course, Spotify et al will pay you peanuts per play and unless you're pulling tens of thousands of plays a month you won't really see anything from them but it most certainly helps to get your name out there and perhaps people will like your music enough to then buy it off iTunes

In your early days, selling music at gigs is a hotly debated topic and anyone you ask is likely to have a different opinion. Yes you may make a few hundred/thousand pounds per year by selling your CDs at gigs, but on the other hand you will severely loose out on the free advertising you could get. My advice has always been to just give out your music for free when your starting out to get those fans coming back for more - however, it's ultimately down to you what you do. A popular trade off is to give the CDs out for free in return for an email address, this is a very useful thing to have and it costs your fans nothing.

What Should Bands Pay For? New Series!

Should bands and artists need to pay for services?

I'm starting a new series of blog posts realted to services that people will ask for money for doing. I initially intended to do only one post, but when I drafted it I had too much to talk about, so instead I will break the topics up to make a series of posts.

Included in the series will be:

• If you are going to pay for services - This is the minimum you should have!
• Pluggers - are they worth it?
• Artist Development Companies - should you pay for their service?
• PR/Media Services - what can they do for you? At what price?
• Music Videos 
• Recording Studios 

I will be uploading the first topic soon - if you have any issues you'd like discussed in these posts feel free to email us on info@noticedandsigned.com and we'll post about it.
Discussion always welcomed and encouraged - even if you disagree we'd love to hear your thoughts! 
Don't forget to bookmark www.noticedandsigned.com so you can find your way back here.

Thanks, 

Team Noticed and Signed

What Shows/Gigs should you play?

As an aspirational band it's very easy to fall into the trap of doing all the gigs you can get your hands on, but to be honest - should you be playing all those gigs?

Now I know a lot of you are shouting "OF COURSE YOU SHOULD!!" but the truth of the matter is simply ... NO, you shouldn't! Especially if you're a new band!

One band I worked with fell head over heels into this trap. They are a great band with fantastic music both recorded and in their live set. In late 2013 to mid 2014 they did over 200 shows! Now that's impressive in any light, BUT, it did them no favours at all!

Let's look at why not: 

• There was a lot of local gigs in there
• Local gigs are fine, but as I mentioned in another post, try not to advertise these gigs, keep them word of mouth only - see previous post for why.
• When record labels look at these gigs it really means nothing to them - local gigs are so easy to book they hold no status for most labels - in fact I'm certain that I could start an acoustic act tonight, make a facebook page and book the entirety of next week out in local gigs with no music to show the venues. They mean nothing to them.

•  Most of the places were 'sell tickets to play'!
• This is my absoloute pet hate in the music industry, I love how the venues have shunned 'pay to play' but in fact all they've done is repackaged it as sell tickets to play... and if you don't sell x amount of tickets...you have to pay the venue! STEER CLEAR! The only reason these still exist is because bands will still play them - worthless gigs! You won't gain any fans and you will have dragged all your friends to another city at great cost for practically nothing, just a night out.

• Doing so many gigs in a year devalues you as a band!
• Imagine your time as a resource - if you give it out like theres no tomorrow then you are practically flooding the market and bringing your value down. It's the same as diamonds - DeBeers hold a collosal amount of their diamond stocks off the market for the purpose of keeping the demand alive in the market and inflating the prices - this is what you should do with your time!
•  If you have hundreds of gigs in a year and a finite amount of fans (let's be honest, you have) then maybe 10 will come to this weeks show and another 10 will come to the show the week after and another 10 decide to come to the show the week after that... what you're doing if effecitvely spreading your fans out accross the year, STOP DOING IT! If you only did ONE show every 6 months in that location and promote it like crazy then all those fans who were going to come at different times will ALL COME TO THE SAME GIG! Making it an epic gig in a packed venue rather than 6 poor gigs in an empty one! If the fans do want to see your show, tell them when it is and make it exclusive... don't give them an option of 6 gigs to choose from in the next 6 weeks! It might look impressive on paper but that's it. Imagine a label executive comes to one of your empty gigs then imagine them coming to a packed gig!

• It's fun to begin with.... but...
• It wears thin really quick! The band I mentioned were doing hundreds of miles a week usually in their own cars. They did gigs 6 hours away, travelled there, did the gig, travelled 6 hours back, got home at 4am, got up in the morning at 8am to work, finished work and travelled 4 hours to the next gig and repeat! 
• It adds stress to the band that shouldn't be there and detracts from other things such as song writing and recording - things that will get you places!

• They didn't work smart on what gigs they picked
• They practically did every gig they could find, and it got them deeper in this catch 22 situation because they kept being offered more gigs to do as a result of the ones they were doing (in the same venues). 
• Doing an empty venue on a Tuesday night will get you nowhere fast.
• Unless the weekdays are the busiest nights at the venues, don't do them! People will be at work/school! They don't want to come to your empty gig.  

So in a nutshell.... don't do so many gigs!
Work smart, not hard, well... do work hard, but work harder at being smart! 

If there's any doubt about the gig, don't do it.
If you know it will be quiet, don't do it!
If you've done it before and it was bad, don't do it!
Basically, don't play gigs for the sake of playing gigs, you will get sucked in to it and it will be impossible to break out of and if you manage to then you'll find yourself back at step 1 just as if you had never of done those gigs to begin with.






The band that did all these gigs, they didn't do anything that year and when they came to me the biggest job was getting them out of that cycle because everything else was great! 
Now they are doing only gigs that will benefit them and maybe playing 2 gigs a month instead of nearly 4 a week and they are shooting up through the ranks much much quicker than they were by doing any only gig. The ones they do now hold a value and status and gets people to notice them! They did some of those kinds of gigs while doing the 200 a year but they got lost under the pile of bad ones they were doing.


If you would like to discuss any issues mentioned here, please feel free to email me at getnoticedandsigned@gmail.com and I'll try and point you in the right direction! If you know anyone who could benefit from these posts, please send them the links or share it on social media! Thanks!

Next up..... SHOULD BANDS PAY FOR PEOPLES SERVICES? (for example.. pluggers, booking agents etc.)

Image

Dear Readers, sorry for the long pause since the last post.
I have decided today to write a post about Image, something all bands regardless of size should consider seriously.

In today's over saturated market place you really need to present yourselves as well as possible and in as little time as possible. 
Often people that visit your social media or website will only be there for a short time before they move on, so you need to deliver your pitch as quick as you can and make sure it's very easy to navigate around so people can find what they're looking for.
I won't go in to the ins and outs of design of web presence only to say use some common sense if you design it yourselves. Make everything look good - not overcrowded, easy to navigate and look slick. I appreciate that web design is very costly and unless you know someone who can do it well but cheap then you might have to do one yourselves. I remember starting out as a manager and sorting a website for one band with some decent features- the company quoted me £8,000 ($12,500)! Needless to say we didn't take their offer but we did do it ourselves and the results were fantastic. Now it's even easier with the advent of 'site builder' software that often comes with domain names, these are generally pretty good or if you're after something a little more special one of the bands I managed used a template you can buy for $25 and it looks as slick as any big label artist website.


Image is one of the first things people will notice about you, and, how often have you been on to some bands facebook or site only to find it littered with uninteresting posts and no good info while you have to trawl through to look for some links to any of their tracks? I'd bet it's pretty often! 
Look at the pro bands Social Media and Website and notice how good it is. Why can't ours be like that? Well, simply, it can! Why not?

Something that really irritates me when looking at a bands social media is over use. I see it time and time again where people think they need to post a status to keep the fans interested, this is simply not the case although I can see the logic. 
When you post something, make sure it's a quality post with something valuable to tell your fans. 
I guess I can assume that you're here to progress your music career and because of that you're playing in some somewhat bad venues locally? If that's you - don't put them on Facebook! Use word of mouth for these gigs - it will count for so much more and from your image point of view you're not clogging up your page with a lot of posts about playing your local bar.

You might think that it doesn't make any sense to not promote the shows - I had a huge falling out with one singer because of this - so it's best if I tell you my views on it. 
If some new fans from out of your hometown look at your page they are looking at your image, if all they see is you playing your local bar every weekend then that's what they are going to assume you are doing all the time. They will not get excited about you at all. However, if you don't post those shows and selectively pick which shows to boast about then they will think 'Wow, I didn't know these guys were so good!' because that's what your image will tell them.
Another aspect of this is that you have to think 'who are you promoting to?'. 
It's often the case that your hometown fans are your friends or people who have heard about you through your friends - and that's exactly what will happen with word of mouth, you don't need Facebook to do that and it's a lot more powerful this way! If new fans from your hometown check you out then they will see your profile and think Wow because you're showing that you're getting out there and getting big!

Band Image

This is always a tough one because it really does rely on the way you want your image to be. But from a managers perspective - if you all look like a band that's what matters. Please don't go on stage like a few guys who just finished work, you won't make any impact (plus most bands do this anyway so you'll stand out better).
The most important things about the way you look is that:
1- It's consistent for every member (not the same clothes - just that you pick something that unifies you - like dark colors, use your imagination here)
2 - It looks good
3 - You look like you're supposed to be there

I can't tell you what to wear neither can anybody else, it has to come from you guys and it has to be something that fits in with what you're doing (a pop band who's songs are really happy would look ridiculous in dark clothing and eyeliner)

Professionalism
Do your best to always be professional.
I had one band that from the very start were always hugely professional and well mannered with industry folk and everybody said it was a huge pleasure to deal with them and they would gladly take the time out for them.
One very influential A&R guy was called by one of the band members during his lunch hour (and we all know how A&R guys are..) but because the band member was so pro and well mannered the guy had no problem talking to him and even thanked him for calling and gave him his personal number to call at any time he needed anything - he did that because it was so refreshing for him to deal with a band who were so professional! It goes a hell of a long way.
When you turn up to gigs, when possible always be early.
When you have a meeting, be early.
These things will pave the way to dealing with these guys again and making sure that these guys WANT to deal with you.
Even if your songs are amazing but most of your band are total tools, it's unlikely that you'll ever get attention because it would be so hard to deal with you.

Guide for emailing as an Artist/Band

When you're faced with having to send hundreds of emails out to people this can be a daunting task.
What makes matters worse is that almost all the bloggers, radio shows and labels don't like being mass-emailed. I suppose this is fair enough but it's also a massive pain for musicians therefore you will have to email them all individually.
Here is my guide on how to do this:

• Use Gmail
• It's convenient, free, easy to use and stores all the email addresses you have used before so when you start typing up a followup email the recipients email should auto fill.
• Although Gmail is great, it can look a little amateurish when you post in on your social media and website, consider buying some email package to go hand in hand with your domain and use email forwarding.
• There is a handy tool available for free called YesMail which allows you make and save templates, gives you response rates for emails sent using templates and let's you see when people have opened their emails. Since discovering this tool my productivity has skyrocketed. I won't post a link but it's easy enough to find via Google
• Send a pre made email
• If you don't use the plug in, make a template and save it in to drafts
• You'll need to make a few different templates to cover all the email you'll be doing, have different ones for radio, gigs, labels, follow ups, etc.
• Content is KING
• What you write and how you write is almost as important as your music
• Take time to get the email right
• Don't overload it with information, keep the important bits in but trim all the fat
• Put links close to the top of the email and make them easy to see
• DON'T send attachments unless they have asked for them - not even pictures, put them on your site and link your site
• Make sure that all your social media is easy to see and you can click on the links (and that they go to the right place!).
• Once you have done this, the only thing you'll need to change in the foreseeable future is the "Dear...." part.
• Try making the email as personal as possible, don't write it like your sending a spam email, nobody likes that, instead try to write it as if your sending it to someone you already know in the business - that'll make it friendly and not spammy.
• Be consistent
• Spell Check!
• Follow up on your emails
• If you haven't heard back from your contact for a week it's acceptable then to follow up
• Use your pre made followup template and send it to everyone who didn't reply to your previous email that you sent the week before.
• Give them something to reply to. There's no in emailing "Hi, I sent you an email last week, any chance you could reply?". If you're sending it to radio for example ask them to give any feedback on the track, if there's any way to be involved with the upcoming show, if there's a way you can do a session for them. Give them something extra to bite to.
• Calling is always a good option if you can - but this article focuses on emails so I won't get into that.
• Be prepared to put in the hours
• On a normal day I can send 200 emails because I've nailed my system now by doing things logically and being organised
• Prepare for a whole load of "NO"
• My reply rates for blog sites are 6% (after emailing hundreds and hundreds)- which is depressing to say the least, but it's to be expected. 400 emails (two days solid work) to blogs might get you featured on just under 25. But on the flip side of this, these are all high quality blogs that thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people read and getting on 25 of them at the same time is something to be proud of so carry on doing it even if you're not seeing the results yet, it will pay off, and if nothing happens this time at least they already know your name for next time.

How to send music to Radio

Getting your music on the radio can be very exciting, if you've never done it before the first time you hear your song being played on radio is fantastic!
Bands and artists usually want to send their music to the biggest radio stations first, it's fine to do this just don't expect any results.
If you're in a early stage of your career then start sending your music to community radio and local radio stations, I will agree that the royalty rates on these stations are pitiful but that's not what you're goal is here.

The music industry is all based on leverage. What have you got that we want?
Sending your tunes to the biggest station in your country won't get you anywhere fast (unless you totally strike it lucky or your song is the best thing to come out for years, it's totally worth a shot).
If you get your music on community radio, local radio, nearest student radio, whatever, then it's a really good start.
The second that happens (or the second you know it's going to happen) you can then progress up the chain. Aim to get your music on regional station by leveraging the fact that you're being played on 5 different stations non stop locally.


The key with radio is that you don't always have to be totally honest, as long as you don't go over the top.
It's my opinion that giving little white lies or exaggerating the truth is acceptable every so often, after all you're in the entertainment business and if you can make your story more entertaining then go for it.

Sending the music over
For this part I will now assume you are a band that has a decent following and a few songs under your belt.
When you are sending your tracks to radio, make sure you do not neglect the producer of the show. By getting to know the producer and building a relationship with them is the best way to get your band on the radio. They are very important and are very often overlooked.
What do you put in your email?
Try to keep it minimal. Keep the music links close to the top of the page and try to keep the writing to a minimum. You need to give all your key facts but don't over-do it.
If they have to read a huge paragraph before any sign of a link it'll more often than not just get deleted.
Include links to your facebook, twitter, website, blog etc.
Be polite. Don't give your opinion of your own track, let them have one of their own.
To press release or not to press release?
Press releases look very pro if you do them properly. If you are considering doing a press release then research how to do them properly because if you don't then it's just going to look incredibly amateurish and nobody will take you seriously and you might as well have not bothered.
My opinion is that you should only give a press release if you are releasing a big single for your upcoming EP or something along those lines. Bear in mind that if you do go down that path of releasing a single to radio to coincide with a release that you should allow 6 weeks (ish) for it.
Following Up
The worst part of it for me is following up, I always feel like I'm harassing people. 
It's easy to get fed up after sending out 200 emails and getting one reply back saying "no", so following up is a key principle but it's also an art form more than a science.

The worst thing to do is call up and email constantly. Trust me, they will get fed up of you so quickly and they won't play your track because of that.
Leave it a few weeks after your initial email before following up. Call up if you can because it's better than email as they can't ignore you and it also gives you a premise to follow up by email later on if you still haven't heard anything "oh hi, I spoke with you on the phone a few days ago, just wondering if you got a chance to have a listen" etc.

You need to be tenacious BUT not annoying. I've spoken with hundreds of people regarding follow ups and I have a great relationship with them and they don't mind taking time during their lunch break now to chat with me about it. The key is to be professional and polite and they will appreciate you calling them.

What nobody tells you!
One thing that I wasn't aware of for ages was that radio love a story. I started out thinking that if the track is good they will play it. After a huge void in airtime coming the bands way I had a lengthy discussion with one of the producers of a national radio station and I leveled with him and told him I was really frustrated that nobody had played the song (it was a really good song too) and he told me that sometimes that is the way it goes, you might have a great song but why are the radio going to play it?
Especially if you are an up and coming band working on your buzz and hype. If you release a track for the sake of it, the radio have no reason to play it other than it's a good song.
They need a story.... a story could be anything, playing a gig in a certain city, releasing a video, doing a session, on TV etc. as long as you have something interesting to say about you, the band or the song then your chances of airplay will be greatly increased! Simple but very effective!
You can also use this information to send tracks to places that wouldn't normally play your tracks in a different county/city for example. Send them your tracks and tell them you're playing there on this date (give them enough notice) and keep following up until the day of the show, maybe even offer to a session for them as well. It all helps.

Getting in touch with labels

While most people think that at an early stage (first few months) in an artist or bands career it would be fruitless to contact the major labels, I think the opposite.

You should be contacting the big labels as soon as you have a decent product i.e a good single or recorded track. Once you have that it will open many doors for you and I'll go into detail in a later post on how to take advantage of your first single but for now I'll concentrate on the label side.

I'm a strong believer of getting yourself out there and networking and that is exactly what sending your music to labels is, networking.

While you should keep in the back of your mind that it is extremely unlikely for you to get a record deal at this early stage, you should email all the labels you can.
I have also found that when sending out loads of speculative emails (more on communication and how to email will follow too!) it is generally the bigger labels that will reply to you and not the smaller labels.
This is good, because you are getting peoples names, and peoples names in this business can get you far.
For example if you have a big show coming up in a major city and you call up the record label (For this instance let's say Universal) to see if anyone can attend your gig, this is probably how the conversation will go:
You: "Oh hi, I'm just calling up to see if anyone is available to come to our show this weekend at *name venue here*?"
Them: Ok cool, which label did you want to be put through to?
You: Universal......
Them: Yes but which sub label?

(Ahhh... yes... the big labels have loads of smaller labels under their name.)

You: Oh, Mercury records please.
Them: Sure, no problem... who did you want me to put you through to?

This is where the phone call totally deteriorates because you don't know anyone at the label and most of the time they won't put you through to A&R unless you have crazy people skills.

However, if you are emailing the labels and calling to follow up, the chances are that you are going to get an email back probably saying "no" BUT you'll have somebody's name!
This is incredibly valuable to bands starting to build a buzz and will save you so much time in the future.
 The same goes with Radio Stations (I'll do a whole article to cover radio also!).

Another benefit of doing this is that your building a relationship with the label people and say in a years time when you have a killer EP/Album and a huge following you can call up that label and say "Hi Jane, it's me from that band, would you come to our album release show, it's sold out but I've kept you a ticket?" instead of beginning to send out speculation emails at that point.

This is exactly what happened to one of the bands I managed before, they emailed record labels from a very early point and got loads of "no" emails but more importantly got loads of names.
They used those names to get through to people and to get people down to shows to watch and built a relationship with them and less than a year later they were signed to Sony after having 3 other labels interested.