I love that Derek Sivers is blogging his experiences as a music business mentor, if only to see him live through some of the same experiences I enjoyed on my first few “book tour” appearances. Derek gently reminded an audience…
Category
Tips
Does your band offer health insurance?
The Houston Chronicle profiles the extraordinary benefits package that you get if you join Robert Earl Keen on the road as a member of his band or his crew. And while most of the musicians who read this blog on…
The Difference Between a Music Business Manager and a Business Manager
Deborah Neville offers excellent insight into the various roles of your support team, especially the distinction between your manager (who helps shape your overall career strategy) and your business manager (who tells you when you can and can’t buy that…
Tip: Write The Press Release First
I was in a meeting at the day job today when one of the marketing folks mentioned an awesome, mind-exploding idea that fits perfectly with setting music career goals: write a press release, then work backwards. The idea is to…
How to get a guitar on an airplane. (Or any other musical instrument, for that matter.)
I know that we’ve covered this topic in passing over the past few months, but with today’s news of a foiled airplane bomb plot in the U.K., airport security’s going to be on condition red for at least the next…
Mapping Indie Music Around the World
Jennifer Layton posted a great article at Indie-Music.com about the challenges that independent musicians face when playing outside the U.S.A. She covers more than the usual territory about stringing together some pickup dates in Europe and Asia — she digs…
How to Stay Healthy on the Road
Erika Luckett’s got an excellent article in the new issue of Stave Magazine. She shares “Five Rules for the Healthy Musician,” and she couldn’t be more right. If you’re working the zone strategy now and you can’t wait until you…
How to take your own publicity photos (that will look good in the newspaper).
Joan Stewart passes along advice against “execution at dawn” photos, and suggests that you take some publicity photos at angles other than eye level. Here are some other tried and true tips to create a photo that won’t get your…
5 Questions With Tom Dorsey, Nice Promotion
Today’s 5 Questions interviewee is Tom Dorsey of Nice, a promotional firm specializing in print and radio, headquartered in Portland OR. Starting only a few years ago with a handful of local bands and singer-songwriters as clients, the Nice roster…
More good inbox etiquette
If you use email newsletters to announce gigs and communicate with your fans, you should read Jakob Nielsen’s new article entitled Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion. Some interesting revelations from Nielsen’s survey: most people spend less than one minute reading…
Stay safe on the Web!
Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that, for a lot of musicians, the Web is a brand-new place. And with more and more indie musicians trying out services like eBay and Paypal to sell CDs and merch, a…
Using zone strategy with your mailing list
If you’re a practitioner of Joe’s zone strategy for booking gigs, here’s a tip that’s served me well: incorporate your zones into your mailing list for more accurate mailings. It occurred to me that it doesn’t always make sense to…