Finding Your Audience: Social Networks

…finding people who care about what you do is not nearly as labor intensive–especially for musicians–as it once was thanks to the prominence of social media, but that does not mean you can take it for granted that your ideal audience will find you. In fact, there may be too many tools available that will allow you to search for your audience. Here are some of our recommendations for using social media to find your fans, especially if you are just beginning or starting from scratch…

Somebody wants to hear your music…

…if there is one thing that we can learn from Blip.fm–besides the fact that people from around the world like to share what they are listening to–it is that if you make music, there is someone who wants to hear it; you just need to reach your audience…

So you’re not going to SXSW…

Now, don’t get me wrong–SXSW is an amazing experience, and I do wish that I was attending this year. However, not attending is not the end the world, and as a working musician, you can use this upcoming week to your advantage if you are smart about it.

Record Store Day: Show Your Local Indie Music Store That You Care

One of the more effective ways for you as an independent musicians to promote your music and discover new listeners is through your local independent record store. These stores and their customers are at the center of any healthy local music scene. Thus, they should be a key part of your music marketing strategy.

April 18, 2009, is the annual Record Store Day celebration–an excellent opportunity to both support these music-centric businesses and to promote your music to the locals. Read on to learn how…

Musicians: What Can You Learn from a Group of Boy Scouts?

Every February, I take a large group of Boy Scouts from Manhattan on their annual Winter Camp event.  For those who have not done it before, winter camping is everything that you would imagine it to be (and probably more), but it always ends up being a great time, despite the cold and (usually) wet [...]

Facebook is NOT MySpace

…on MySpace it was cool to be friends with everyone, whether you knew them or not in the real world, and the number of friends you had became some sort of twisted badge of honor as well as bragging rights (regardless of how unresponsive most of them were/are to your updates). That is all fine and good–that’s whatMySpace is, after all–but that is not Facebook….

Musicians: how do you define success?

Today, you can successfully earn a comfortable living as a musician, and despite what you may think, it’s not that much more work. However, you have to have a different definition of success.

After looking at Rollo & Grady’s interview with marketing genius Seth Godin, we examine how success as a musician today is different from what it was in the 1980s and 1990s.