spinme.com turns twenty this year. Our mission, when we first launched this thing, was to try to expose the work of artists who weren’t getting enough attention from mainstream radio and television. Today, it seems like radio’s the last place…
Excellent advice for comics from Brent Morin, who released an excellent Netflix special not long ago: Get up every night. Bar shows and coffee shops apartment shows etc. avoid comedy clubs for a year or so. https://t.co/eVk05M7xqp — Brent Morin…
From our “Ask a Question” mailbag, Joey M. writes to ask: “I guess my query is the same as many others. How do I get my music to the right ears?” I think there’s a deeper question behind that question.…
Here in Philadelphia, a core collection of 160 “arts and cultural groups” has issued an urgent plea for $1.4 billion in philanthropic funding. This, only five years after a report noted the challenges of making significant social impact when creative…
Cultivating a relationship with your fans means getting clear about your attitude toward showing up in their Instagram feeds.
When spinme.com launched in 1997, we thought it would grow up to be Pitchfork. It hosted “Daily Digital Opinion,” J.F. Parnell’s album review mailing list, and our original discussion forums. What a precious logo we had when we launched: While…
Over the years, I’ve had plenty of arguments with musicians and with music management professionals about the importance of maintaining a website under your own domain. Their responses often included: * 1996: I don’t need my own domain. AOL gives…
A recent post about concert photography on Australian website The Vine resulted in feedback from an anonymous concert photographer who left a so-called manifesto in the article’s comments. The Vine republished the photographer’s manifesto on its own page, in which…
Al Lewis launched into a Wall Street Journal essay on the economy with the phrase: Shared sacrifice follows every disaster. It’s only a matter of deciding who shares it. Thinking about some of the choices Lori and I have been…
Hollywood’s going nuts this weekend, because of a deal between Lionsgate, Groupon, and Fandango, to pack theatre seats for the premiere weekend of Matthew McConaughey’s new movie, “The Lincoln Lawyer.” Here’s how the deal works. In most cities, it costs…
Rebecca Black made it into the iTunes Top 100 this week. While Jay Frank’s analyzing the songwriting mechanics that make Rebecca Black’s “Friday” a chart success, I’ve been getting lots of e-mail and DMs about a new wave of song…
I’ve been teaching some workshops on social media lately, and one of the questions that comes up very often involves how to keep Twitter and Facebook status updates from taking over your life. In the new edition of Grow Your…
Michael Epstein suggests that microfunding better suits a label model, where funders on a Kickstarter-type campaign can invest in a slate of projects rather than in a particular artist. Scott Andrew notes that sites like RocketHub encourage some acts to…
I love reading the monthly briefings from the Trendwatching team. This year, they called out “Twinsumers” and “Social-lites” as part of their 11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011. Grow Your Band’s Audience charts a course for finding “your perfect audience.”…
A few weeks ago, I joined a gathering of about a hundred professionals from the arts, entertainment, and creative communities in Philadelphia to discuss the concept of “creative vitality” in our city. The fact that all of these talented individuals…
It’s so easy to focus on social media marketing and street team strategies, that we often overlook some of the most basic ways that you can grow your audience. Every day, someone probably asks you what you do for a…
Yesterday, I wrote about how our culture cast Simon Cowell as the villain of American Idol, just because he has the audacity to tell people “no.” We’re so concerned with being liked, with validating everyone’s experiences, and with wanting happy…
If you believe the news reports from the Television Critics Association, there’s “no villain” on American Idol now that Simon Cowell has left for the American version of X-Factor. That’s a shame. American culture has evolved in the past few…
…also known as your fans. While this will sound a little contradictory coming from the guy that wrote two books about audience engagement (with a third on the way), think about the qualities that drew your fans to you in…
I meet too many aspiring musicians who tell me they’re just waiting for that lucky break for the world to discover their talent. In the meantime, they’re usually the same folks watching every episode of American Idol instead of booking…
Pamela Slim writes that it’s easy for creative people to fool themselves into thinking that their strengths can overcompensate for environmental variables. Have you ever watched yourself spiral downward with something that’s usually a cinch? It happens to musicians and…
James Danziger offers four essential rules for young photographers to “survive” in what’s becoming a challenging line of work. It strikes me that all four rules apply to emerging musicians and artist managers, too: 1. Have talent. Danziger says, “Talent…
The alarm clock woke me up with the news that a senior News Corporation executive hinted about the possible closure of MySpace within “quarters, not years.” Even if MySpace manages to avoid a total shutdown, independent musicians should worry whenever…
There’s a long-running trope about the Velvet Underground that goes something like: “The Velvet Underground only sold about a thousand copies of their first record. But every single person that bought that record started a band.” It’s funny to me…
After yesterday’s mailbag entry on royalties, our friend Ken Muse pointed me to a great breakdown of the current record deal math done by Cord Jefferson at The Root. By the math in the article, the average “signed” musician makes…
Here’s a coda to last week’s kindie rock story: Salon contributor Kenneth Rapoza flashes back to his Bon Jovi youth and wonders how cool it would be to treat his kids to VIP tickets and a meet-and-greet at a Jonas…
Lori and I just came back from a family vacation at the Jersey Shore. We snuck away for a night to Atlantic City, and we’re either the worst gamblers or the best gamblers ever, because we ended up spending about…
Now I know the music business has turned upside down, since I just learned about an OK Go video from a science magazine. (I probably would have been on this way sooner, but I’ve been on vacation!) Discover Magazine’s blog…
Run into any burning buildings lately, even though you’re not a firefighter? So why are you so worried about getting your song on the radio, getting your band signed, winning that battle of the bands? Every week, I get e-mail…
Have we all been using “Kindie Rock” to describe hip records for families for a while now, or is the term bubbling up from Anne Hart’s great blurb about the genre in the Savannah Morning News? Like most overnight sensations,…
Every time I write about booking shows on college campuses, I get two kinds of e-mail. One burst of e-mail comes from artists who are so frustrated about how difficult it is to nail down dates through college activities boards,…
Katie Evans uses her entertainment column in Forbes to explore some of the ways that bands raise money from fans beyond traditional CD sales. (And, as I’ve been writing about for the last ten years, CD sales are just about…
If you saw any of the live seminars I’ve staged in the last decade, you’ve probably seen me reference CBGB’s bathroom as everything great about rock and roll–and everything wrong with live performance venues. Long before YouTube comments, there was…
It seems like the music journalism community has decided that this is the week they can finally pile on Taylor Swift. In the past 36 hours, I’ve read headlines about her “career-ending” Grammy performance, bloggers and columnists have called for…
This London Times profile of singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson deserves a little more than just a slot on this week’s “interesting links” list. A few slices of Michaelson’s life indicate the direction that savvy working musicians will need to take in…
Natalie Gelman’s recapping some of her favorite Seth Godin books on her blog, and relating what she’s learned to her experience as a New York City street musician. One of the most important things Godin said in the book for…
Heather Nolte remarks that Twitter’s latest usage numbers show a decline in active users, from 23 million down to 20 million. Whether the novelty has worn off for some passive users of the service or whether the entire social media…
Yes, I’m still working on the draft of “Grow Your Band’s Audience,” version 4.0. (Side note: if you buy the PDF version now, you will get a free upgrade to 4.0 when it launches.) One of the things I find…
“The way this place is working, the landlord business may be more profitable than the bar.” That’s the critical quote from an accountant interviewed for a CNN profile on a relatively new bar in Detroit, P.J.’s Lager House. Owner P.J.…
Derek Sivers posted a little experiment. In it, a band that was selling its CD for $15 at gigs asked the audience to come see them at the merch table. “Pay what you want,” they said, “and if you can’t…
For the past hundred years, the conventional wisdom about marketing your music has been about building a brand and sticking to it. Think about some of the classic stars of the last century: Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Elvis Presley. It’s…
I just came back from running an errand at the Plaza at King of Prussia. The whole mall is crawling with girls lined up to catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson from the movie Twilight. 300 fans lined up in…
See what happens when your biggest new fan has a fan base of their own.
Is your audience hyperconnected? Are you? One of my lightbulb moments happened a few years ago when I was still booking gigs for bands. A club owner I had a great relationship with wanted to know more about one of…
I would love to be a fly on the wall when Scott wakes up and sees that Kevin Kelly has linked to him. OMFGLMAOBBQ!!1!!11eleventy. Seriously, though, it does seem that the research Kevin’s doing for his new book is touching…
Scott Andrew and Bill Wilson are riffing on some tools that we could use in the independent music community to get more meaningful artist promotion work done. I like Scott’s idea of automating gig swaps — the kinds of things…
The New York Times Magazine looks at the various ways that musicians connect with fans in order to make a living. Although the carrot of super-stardom still dangles (the article mentions that Justin and Beyonce are creatures of and for…
CNN catches up with Michael Penn on the occasion of his “best of” collection’s release — which is, in itself, a curious story of how corporate consolidation can actually benefit the kinds of “dropped” major label acts I wrote about…
While Nancy at Online Fandom covered this nearly a month ago, the guys at 37signals have a pretty thorough recap of the tremendous marketing campaign behind the new Nine Inch Nails record. It’s a great example of the kinds of…