It’s hard enough to find music managers you can trust. Once you’re earning enough money from music to think about helping others, you’ve got to find managers from other disciplines who can carry out your mission without embarrassing you in…
What happens when Gadhafi’s on your guest list?
From the “problems you probably can’t wait to have” file: Artists at all stages of audience development have discovered that house concerts, private events, and corporate bookings can often result in far more revenue than traditional club gigs. And while…
Why you want your manager, your business manager, and your booking agent to work for different agencies.
Young Buck’s not having a great year. In the wake of his recent arrest, we’re learning more of the details about his money troubles, and the feud with 50 Cent over an unpaid $300,000 loan. He owes the IRS even…
Build an Affordable, Essential Website for Your Band
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…
Chris Brown gets uncomfortable on Good Morning America
Have I mentioned lately that I love subscribing to the Wall Street Journal, if only because it subsidizes Speakeasy? It’s my favorite pop culture blog of the moment, because it’s got such a wry sensibility while filtering the insanity of…
British gospel artists prepare to take on the USA
In Grow Your Band’s Audience, I wrote about the subtle differences between the US and the UK markets for independent musicians. In a nutshell: US audiences crave familiarity. It’s hard to break in to the music business, but you can…
Creating a positive culture for your music management agency.
It’s easy for music management agencies to fall into a stereotype when it comes to corporate culture. Managers often get called cutthroat, rude, angry, or worse. That doesn’t have to be the case. Angela Haines from the Huffington Post…
Find cheap crash pads for your next tour.
I’m usually the only voice in a room full of musicians and music managers telling folks to slow down touring until you’ve saturated all of the zones in your region. (Understand the Zone Booking Strategy I’m talking about by checking…
Keeping your audience safe.
Depending on who you talk to, SXSW may have hit its own critical mass sometime in the past few years. From talking to folks who went this year, some of the best stuff was actually happening at many of the…
Where’s your hustle?
Fred Wilson shares the story behind Airbnb (a great startup that I’ll write a full post about soon), especially the strategy the founders used to raise $25,000 in emergency funds to keep their business afloat. Whenever someone tells me that…
It takes six months to convince Baltimore officials to stage an acoustic set in a coffeehouse.
Now that the 2011 editions of Music Management for the Rest of Us and More Gigs Now are off to the printer, I’ve started working on the revisions for Host Your Own Concerts. And it seems like some neighborhoods could…
The Concert Photographer’s Manifesto
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…