Planewalker .:.:. Waveform Wizardry

With a recent post explaining how to get signed to a record label, you might wonder why you’d ever want to start one of your own if you could get someone else to do all that dirty work for you. Or perhaps you’ve always wanted to start your own record label, but simply never knew how. Since I am in the process of starting my own, I can offer what advice I may to the hopeful newcomer.

First off, as my friend Luke Mandala of Activated Recordings says, “Don’t quit your day job!” Starting a record label is just as hard as starting any other profitable business, no more, no less. In the beginning, you will most likely be losing money until you get the hang of it, which could take one to two years. It’s hard work, and not all of it is purely creative. Strangely enough, it’s the commitment to making sure the mundane, repetitive tasks are properly taken care of that will ensure your success. You can have the best music in the world but if you don’t keep up with your release schedule and publicity tasks, you will not make a profit. Above all else, running a record label requires precise coordination and timing. Everything happens in phases and you are looking at as much as a six month period between the music being finished and properly released to the public. If you miss certain windows, the release will probably flop.

What exactly does a record label do? A record label’s primary job is to promote its artists and release their music. It does this through publicizing the artists and making sure that their music is properly distributed so that when enough of a buzz has been created, people will easily be able to find the artist’s music and buy it. A record label serves the artists that it represents.

Back in the day, record labels also used to front the costs of recording, which was a major expense of putting out a release. But because of home recording studios and the migration to digital online media for delivery of content, recording and duplication costs take up a much smaller portion of the label’s expenses. Now, the majority of the money is spent on publicity and internet marketing.

So make no mistake, if you want to start a record label and make a profit from selling music, you will either have to pay someone to do publicity for your artists, or otherwise learn how to do it yourself. You will also have to commit to releasing music on a regular basis. In the electronic music world, for example, Beatport sells about 70% of all the music that is sold to DJs in the world. They will not accept you as a label unless you can commit to at least one release per month, and on top of that, your tracks have to make a minimum in gross receipts per quarter or you will be booted from Beatport and your entire back catalog will be removed. No joke!

So, here is the order of operations for starting to get your label together:

1. Get at least 3 well-known artists to sign up and commit to a release schedule.

Although some labels are purely the pet projects of already well-known artists, you will not be able to sell enough music at the beginning unless you are releasing the music of artists that are already well-publicized. This is perhaps the hardest part, because it will probably require an initial investment of several hundred if not thousands of dollars to acquire the rights or at least a temporary exclusive license to tracks that will sell.

2. Make a website for your label.

It doesn’t have to be mind-blowing flash animation, but should look reasonably professional. You should have names and bios of all your artists, your release schedule, and contact information. This will really help you get distribution. You may also wish to have guidelines for submitting demos detailed if you wish to accept demos from new talent. For an example, take a look at my label’s website:

http://astralforce.net

3. Make a release schedule.

If you want to make an impact, you want to aim for 2 releases per month, which means one release every two weeks. Most releases should be an EP of 4 tracks or more, or a full-length LP with 8-10 tracks. Some releases can be singles. Release dates should be set at least 4 months after you have the completed, mastered product with album art in your hands. This means that your artists will need to provide you with finished music 5-6 months before you release it, that way you have the time to put all the appropriate publicity materials together to send out press kits for review and publication. Most magazines and other periodicals that review music finalize their publications 2-4 months before they are actually printed. This means that they must receive your publicity materials 2-4 months before they can print it.

4. Make a press kit for every release.

The press kit is still the standard by which labels, artists and other music-related entities share and receive information. Just sending music is not enough - you have to give writers enough material to actually make a story out of your release. To do this, you need to send extras along with the music, like photos, a bio, other press clippings, and your contact information. Most importantly you need a CD WITH A LABELED SPINE. A sleeve is not acceptable because the music needs to be shelved in order to be organized and found. It is utterly impossible to find a CD among hundreds of others if they are all in sleeves!

The jewel case is still the best kind of packaging to use because it is much more durable than a DigiPak. Although many consumers no longer buy CDs, they are still used in the publicity world and you will need to print a short run of at least CD 50 copies of each to get enough press kit out for release. Making press kits is beyone the scope of this article, however, so you may want to refer to other sources for this very, very critical and multidimensional step.

5. Make a database or spreadsheet of publications that you want to review the release.

You can use Google Documents to do this. It’s important to be organized and have the address, phone number, and contact person at each publication. Without this information, you cannot organize a mailing of press kits.

6. Call the publications you are sending the kits to, ask permission to send a press kit, and get a name at each publication to send it to. Write it on the envelope and send it!

If you send a press kit to a company without writing a name on the envelope, the receptionist will not know where to take it once it arrives. It may never even get opened! Think about it - there are dozens and dozens of people with offices at the headquarters of these publications. A mysterious package addressed to the company with no more specifics will probably never get to who might actually check it out.

You need to do this at the appropriate time for each publication, so be sure when you call to ask the receptionist how how far in advance they need to receive a press kit before it might be written about. Make sure to send it just a little bit before that date. You want to be sure that you aren’t getting publicity before the release goes live, but rather that all the publications are writing about you at the exact same time. That way you will have the best chance in reaching enough critical mass to create a serious buzz.

7. If your artist performs, send the press kit to promoters.

Like the step before, you will need to spend some time researching and creating a database of promoters appropriate to the music. You also want to call them or email them and ask them for submission guidelines. Do this 4-6 months before the release date, looking for shows in and around the release date. If you can convince one of the promoters to do a release party, all the better!

8. Befriend some bloggers and send them your press kit too.

Blogs are becoming increasingly relevant in the world of music. If you can get someone to blog about your release before it happens, you will sell more music. You will probably need an electronic version of your press kit to do this, commonly referred to as an EPK, ideally in PDF format. For blogs it is okay to have them write about you before the release, because unlike the print world, the blog world’s information will stay up on the Internet to be searched and indexed indefinitely.

9. Send the press kit to appropriate Internet and FM radio stations.

Like the step before, you will need to spend some time researching and creating a database of radio stations appropriate to your music. You also want to call them or email them and ask them for submission guidelines. This step also takes time, but can be done somewhat closer to the release date.

10. Create a distribution plan and release the music!

This last step still happens about 2 months before the actual release date. At minimum you will need to send the music and album artwork to a digital distributor like TuneCore, CDBaby or Beatport, or perhaps you will decide to work with a consolidated distribution partner like INGrooves. Tell them your release date. If you plan to do a physical release as well, you will need a physical distributor, which is somewhat more difficult to get.

If you timed everything right, you will come upon your release date and the music will go live on the Internet and possibly arrive in stores a couple of weeks before the magazines hit the shelves. Once people start reading, they’ll start buying. If the music got good reviews and enough publicity and is high enough quality, you just might make a profit!

Filed under: Business Tips - Music Tips
by planewalker
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Filed under: Music Releases - Visual Artwork
by planewalker
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I’ve often heard it said as a rule that you should never master your own tracks. I followed that rule for awhile, but recently I’ve come to a new place with it after years of study, and I don’t agree anymore. In my opinion, if an artist can learn to mix his own tracks well, he can also learn to master them. The truth is that mixing well is a more involved process than mastering well, and if you can’t do a good job mixing your own tracks, good mastering can’t fix them. On the other hand, if a track is well-mixed, mastering it is much simpler. I’ve sent tracks to people who have mastered Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and other really big artists and they come back with the track saying that all they had to do was “pump up the level”, which I could have done just as easily. My new philosophy is - do a really good job mixing your tracks, and mastering becomes easy as pie. The biggest names in mastering seem to agree - all you have to do to a well-mixed track is run it through a peak limiter and dither down. If you are mastering a whole album, you have to do other things like get even volume between the tracks, determine the track order, and maybe put ISRC codes into the CD, but that’s not so tough to do.

That said, it can take years to get a good feel for mastering. It is its own skill and has its own lingo. But it is learn-able. If you are just starting out, I think it’s worth it to pay $50 or so send a track from your album to a professional mastering engineer. Make sure to ask them for their mastering notes. Take a look at the difference between the mastered and un-mastered versions of your track, and then read the notes. Pay particular attention to the spectral balance and the waveform. For this you need a really hi-res spectral analyzer and oscilloscope plugin. I recommend the Spectrum device in Ableton Live version 7 and above, and the s(M)exoscope from smartelectronix. The Spectrum device is great because you can click the arrow in the title bar of the device and make it take up the entire screen, where you can zoom in on any part of the spectrum. This is critical, because a 3db difference in mastering is a BIG difference. Most spectrum analyzers cannot show you that much detail.

You also need to understand the frequency response of your monitoring environment, particularly in the sub-300hz range. For this, play a sine wave and sweep the frequency across the spectrum, noting where it is louder and where it is quieter. Most setups will have resonant frequencies at around at 80hz and 160 hz where the bass suddenly gets way louder or quieter. In a properly designed and acoustically-treated room with good monitors, the frequency sweep will be even, and the sine wave will remain at the same volume as you sweep with less than a 3db variation between frequencies. This is not easy to achieve, and you will probably notice much bigger volume variations. However, if you understand where the problem frequencies are, you can make note of them and know that the room is influencing the volume at those frequencies. Ideally you would want to smooth out those problem areas, but if you can’t, you can at least know where they are and avoid making mixing and mastering decisions by ear in those frequencies, relying instead on the spectrum analyzer.

A well-mastered track will have a slowly tapering downward spectral slope in the spectrum analyzer, starting louder on the bass side and slowly rolling off as you get farther into the high frequencies. Just run a well-mastered track though the spectrum analyzer to see what I mean. It won’t have any big spikes anywhere in the spectrum. You can use either an EQ or preferably a multiband dynamics processor to smooth out the spikes and get a more even spectrum, but if you did a good job mixing down the track and compressing/EQing the channels, you won’t need to. On the oscilloscope, the peaks of the waveform should hit zero on both the positive and negative side at the highest energy points of the track when the song is at its loudest. The peaks of quieter parts should fall somewhere between -6 and -12db. The final level itself is a matter of taste, but this is where having a reference track by a pro engineer really helps you. Try to get the track at the same level as the reference track while remaining just as clear. Use a brick-wall limiter to adjust the level. Any other effects like stereo widening or harmonic excitation are not necessary if the track was mixed well. If it wasn’t, it’s better to go back and fix it in the mix than apply such effects in the mastering.

Once you get an idea of what a well-mastered track looks like and what the appropriate level is, you can attempt to duplicate it in other mastering efforts. If you keep doing this and refining your sound, you’ll be able to master your own and other people’s tracks just fine. If you get good enough at reading your oscilloscope and spectral analyzer, you can even do a good mastering job on headphones or in environments where the acoustics are bad.

If you’re new to the whole process, but you have good compositional skills, it’s still true that you are probably better off having someone else master your tracks until you really get the hang of it. Until you do, however, it’s best to get a professional to mix your tracks before you hand them to the mastering engineer, because a badly mixed track with great mastering will sound a lot worse than a well-mixed track with great mastering. The better your mixing skills, the easier it is to master your own tracks.

Filed under: Business Tips - Music Tips
by planewalker
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Happy holidays everyone! I am sitting here now in beautiful Menlo Park, California, spending the holidays with my family and appreciating all that a relaxing holiday season has to offer. Plans for the near future involve a lot of watching Battlestar Galactica, playing Final Fantasy: Dissidia, reading The Golden Thread and oh yeah, making some music! Life is good!

The Chaos Control press kits are by and large all put together, and will be ready to go out at the beginning of the new year. It remains to be seen how effective they will be, but our experience of calling record labels has been quite good so far. It’s so critical to establish a relationship with people before sending them stuff. Mister Chill’R and I think that we’ve got it right this time around. Wish us luck!

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by planewalker
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Having submitted over a hundred demos to record labels and eventually getting signed to Geomagnetic Records, I’ve learned the hard way how to get on a record label. Now the task must be performed again on behalf of my new group Chaos Control, as the market is different and the current label arrangement will probably not work.

Getting on a label is not as hard as you might think, although if you don’t do things the right way, it is next to impossible. Follow these steps and if you have good music, you should be on a label in three months or less.

1. Make a List of Appropriate Labels

Take a notebook to some music stores in your area. Go to the genre section that is most appropriate for your music and make a list of at least 20 labels that are releasing music in your genre. Take that list home and plug each label name into Google one after another. If the label has a website, get the phone number and address of the label. Then, use a spreadsheet like the one in Google Documents to organize the information. You will need to make columns for the following data fields:

a. Name of Label
b. Phone Number
c. Receptionist Name
d. Name of Press Kit Reviewer
e. Preferred Press Kit Format?
f. Physical Address
g. Reviewer Email Address
h. Initial Contact Date
i. Press Kit Sent Date
j. Follow Up Date

The idea here is to get as much information as possible about each label and the important people you will need to create relationships with at that label. Whether or not you get signed by this label, it is important that your time calling these labels is not wasted and you at least have a name to give to the receptionist the next time you call. Some of this info will be available on the label website, some of it will not.

2. Call the Labels

This is perhaps the most overlooked and also most critical step.

a. Create a script for what you will say when someone picks up the phone. This will help you stay on the ball, collecting all the information you need even if the receptionist tries to stonewall you. To do this, you will need your Elevator Pitch and a set of written questions based on that spreadsheet you wrote out before. The script will go something like this:

i. To whom am I speaking? (write down name)
ii. (one-sentence elevator pitch)
iii. I am calling to ask permission to solicit a press kit to your label for consideration as a new artist. Who do I need to speak with to get this permission? (write down name)
iv. May I speak with this person?
v. (explain what’s in your press kit) Is it OK to send this?
vi. Would you prefer it in physical format, electronic format or both?
vii. What physical/email address should I send it to?
viii. Is there some kind of code I can put on the package/email to indicate that the press kit has been solicited by phone?
ix. By when should I expect to receive a response?
x. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Now, please realize that many labels will act all annoyed that you called them and will tell you to just go look at their website. This is because labels get flooded with demos and calls from idiots who don’t know the solicitation protocol and it is the receptionist’s job is to stop those idiots from wasting the label’s time. If you are following this protocol, this does not apply to you. The proper response to being stonewalled like this is something along these lines, “Yes, I’ve been to the website but I am calling because I want to send a solicited press kit, not an unsolicited demo. Please understand, I want to be sure my press kit gets into the right hands and actually gets reviewed. I need permission to send it and moreover, who to send it to and what format to send it in. Can you help me with that please?” This ought to get you in the door and to the proper department head.

The most critical thing you need to do while you are talking to these label people is to get their NAMES, write them down, and USE THEM. Use them every other sentence if you can. This is the best way to warm up cold people, and will give you the power to cut right through to them the next time you call. Moreover, once you have their names you will have begun developing a relationship with them. Few people take the time to do this and they will be much more likely to remember you if you treat them like human beings.

3. Send Out Your Press Kits

A press kit sent to a record label should have the following elements:

i. a professionally mastered CD with 3-5 songs in a jewel case
ii. a one-page bio that reads like a story, not like a resume
iii. a 4×6 color photograph of you or the group
iv. any press clippings you may have
v. your discography

If you don’t have any press clippings or a discography, that’s fine. Just send the first three things. All of it should be on loose leaf, 8 1/2″ by 11″ paper and should look as professional and nice as possible. Pay to have someone else write your bio and manufacture your CD if you can afford it. Your name, phone number, and e-mail address should be on all 5 of these items. They should be packaged in a padded envelope that is addressed to a specific person at the label. Always include a short personal note or cover letter addressed to that person, saying that you enjoyed speaking with them and that you look forward to hearing back from them soon. This makes a BIG difference.

Why is it important to do things this way as opposed to just throwing a CD in a jacket and mailing it off to the label? Because presentation really does matter to record labels and will make the difference between you getting signed or not. Imagine getting 100 or more demos a day. This is what happens: the packages addressed to the label in general get put in a bulk review pile, and the packages addressed to specific people at the label go straight to those peoples’ desks.

It’s someone’s job to open all the packages and sort them. Demos go into one pile, press kits go into another pile. Demos without contact information on the CD are thrown away and are never listened to. Demos in sleeves go into a pile while demos in jewel cases wind up on a shelf. The reality is that when you call to follow up with the label in a month or so (see the next step) they will probably not be able to find your demo if it was in a jacket or a sleeve because it is buried under a heap of other demos and papers and it is simply too much of a pain to go digging through it.

Even if someone listened to it and liked it, they may not be able to remember your name and if they can’t find your demo, they can’t contact you or listen to it again. The bulk of it gets tossed to the circular filing cabinet to be sorted for the last time at the recycling center.

The moral of the story is: use a PRESS KIT addressed to a specific person at the label, not just a demo, and put your CD in a jewel case with a labeled spine. Just doing that will more than quadruple your chances of being listened to by anyone other than the demo reviewer. The magic ingredient to your success with a label is to deal with individuals at the label, not the label as a company. Every bit of correspondence should be personalized and designed to make it really easy for the people that review your press kit to organize it with all the other demos and contact you.

4. Follow Up

This is yet another critical step. If you took the time to call the label, get a name, send a press kit to a specific person at the label, and ask when you should expect to receive a response, you will have recorded a follow-up date on the spreadsheet. Some of the labels will respond to you very quickly. Others will take weeks or months. Some, even most, will either never respond to you or will not respond until you call to follow up. As the responses start coming in, put a “Y” in the follow-up column for every label that gets back to you with feedback.

Don’t take the feedback personally as it comes in. Most of the time the label will just say it’s not what they’re looking for at this time - other labels may go so far as to criticize your music. Listen to the feedback but don’t take it personally. Make a list of responses and don’t seriously consider what any of them say until you’re totally done with the follow up process. You’ll probably find that different labels will say opposite things about the same part of your music - proof that the value of music is mostly subjective. If two or more labels say the same thing, however, it’s probably something you should consider looking at in detail when you are done with the follow up process.

If you get an offer from a label, don’t just blindly sign off on the deal if they offer you a written contract. Get a music lawyer to look it over. Make sure the label has a publicist or at least a publicity plan. Ask how they’ve gotten publicity in the past. Make sure they have a distributor that can reach your market. Make sure that you get something in the contract that says if your music is not released by so and so a date, the rights revert back to you. Don’t get stuck in a situation where the label owns your rights and never releases your music. It’s the worst possible situation for an artist to be in.

If they don’t offer you a written contract that you sign, they do not have the rights to your music, which is good for you because if there is ever any question, you will be the rightful owner of the copyright as long as you registered for the copyright before the music was released. Verbal contracts are not enforceable when it comes to transfer of copyright in any state of the USA.

As time goes by, pay attention to those follow up dates. If you don’t hear back from the label by that date. Call them again. Ask for the receptionist (you should have the name) that you first spoke with. Ask the receptionist (using their name every third sentence) if the person who was supposed to review your press kit (again you should have the name) is available to speak with. If they ask what it’s about, simply say that it’s regarding a press kit for (name of your group) that was sent (however long ago).

You might get stonewalled again at this point, especially if you are talking to a different receptionist. The receptionist might tell you, for example, that they will get back to you if they were interested. The proper response is something like this, “I understand that you have a protocol for unsolicited demos. However, this demo was solicited and I am continuing a conversation with (name of demo reviewer). Would you please transfer me to his/her desk or at least allow me to leave a message for him/her?

Most of the time, all you will get is a voice mail or be allowed to leave a message. Wait a week for a response and if none is forthcoming, call again and go through the same thing. Keep calling every week until you get a response and do not be intimidated. If you got permission to send a solicited press kit, you deserve at least a short email from the person who was supposed to review it. Realize that some people will not get back to you until they realize that you are not going to go away until they respond to you. If they still haven’t listened to your music it will encourage them to do so, and if they have listened and liked it but just forgot about it, it might get you a record deal!

Don’t stop following up with labels until they respond to you. If someone is running a record label and are accepting demos, and if you take the time to politely solicit them for a press kit review, you deserve a response! However, steel yourself and be prepared to deal with some serious ego and attitude. Don’t let it get to you. Many of these people are seriously stressed out and you bugging them is only adding to their stress, so they might lose it on you. Still, never lose your cool and don’t be intimidated. These people are no more important than you are, but are probably a lot busier and stressed out. Be kind and understanding. Listen to them but be persistent.

5. Evaluating Feedback

When you’ve gotten feedback from all of the labels, congratulations! Even if none of them took the bait, you’re learning how to fish! You now hopefully have the names of at least two individuals at each label and some professional feedback to review. Take a look at what each of them said, and if two or more people said the same thing, pay attention to it and maybe ask a few more people if they agree. If there seems to be a consensus that you could be doing something better, make an effort to learn how to do it better in future efforts. If you want your music to improve in quality, you will need to be a little open-minded to what other people say about it and make efforts to keep what works and throw away what doesn’t, replacing it with new ideas that might work better.

On the off chance that you got a record deal that you like on your first round of mailings, congratulations! You made it! Now all you have to do is follow through and give the label what they ask for. Stay in regular communication with the label. Try to coordinate release dates with press efforts.

6. Round Two

After you’ve evaluated all the feedback you’ve gotten and made your next group of three to five songs, it’s time to go through the whole process all over again. Revise every item in your press kit and include your newest music. Whether you got a record deal or not, unless you signed on to an exclusive deal with a term, it is in your best interest to keep shopping your music out to labels every time you have enough material to put a demo together.

Just because a label turned you away the first time does not mean they won’t love the second press kit you send them. In fact, you are MUCH more likely to be signed the second time or the third time you solicit a label because you will have advanced in your artistic vision and will already have a conversation going with them. It might take going through this process half a dozen or more times before you manage to get a deal, depending on the quality of you music, press kit, and people skills, but if you take each time as a learning experience, you will get better each time and eventually you’ll get good enough at it that you’ll land the deal you seek.

Good luck and happy fishing!

Filed under: Business Tips - Music Tips
by planewalker
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Last night I was lucky enough to attend a screening of “It’s Complicated” featuring Maryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. The story is basically about a divorced couple who attempts to re-ignite the fire. It was not a bad movie. I am usually not one for relationship/romance movies but I actually enjoyed this one. The beginning is a little slow, but somewhere towards the middle drifts into a completely hilarious thrill, with all sorts of taboo things being done. The story gets a little slow again toward the end. I think the movie is definitely targeted at an older audience and I don’t recommend bringing your teenage son to it, but all in all I recommend it.

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Tags: « "Alec Baldwin" • "It's Complicated" • "Maryl Streep" »
by planewalker
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As much as I like reading ahead and jumping the gun, I’m making a rare commitment to actually do things the way Ariel says in each chapter, with the idea that if I can let go of my preconceptions about how to do things that I just might learn something. I’m not sure I’ll spend a full week on each “week” in the book. I might spend more or less, depending on how long it takes me to do it all. But I definitely will do it all, and exactly the way she recommends. Here are my initial thoughts about this chapter. I’ll make some additional posts as I get around to doing it.

The idea behind this chapter is that you have to get in the right frame of mind to tackle all the stuff she’s going to tell you to do later. Having read ahead, I’d have to agree with her. It’s A LOT of stuff to do. It is overwhelming. I am worried it will suck up all of my time and become an obsession. I am already way too obsessed with spending time online, and it takes its toll on my relationship. But I also recognize that a lot of the stuff I do online is not helping me, and that I could use the time I am spending online more effectively. I’d like to think that I am already there in that right frame of mind, but OK, I’ll accept that maybe I’m not already there. In fact, I know I’m not because I feel overwhelmed. As Ariel says, “studies show that the average person can achieve six tasks a day so write a MAXIMUM of six per day - don’t get overwhelmed.” I stand guilty as charged.

Another place where I find that I am resisting is in writing stuff out by hand. You see, when I write stuff by hand it takes up space and gets lost in my endless piles of handwritten stuff that I never see. I look at my computer screen a lot more than any printed material. I organize my tasks using the OmniFocus productivity software. I am not bad when it come to personal productivity. Goal-setting, on the other hand, is something I have neglected to some extent and this chapter has been a good wake-up call for me. I can have all kinds of projects going, but if I can’t continually remember why I am doing them, they tend to fall by the wayside.

Ariel claims that less than 3% of people have their long-term goals written down. She also claims that by simply writing down your long-term goals, you are much more likely to achieve them. But I know from past goal-writing projects that simply writing them down is not enough to make them happen. You have to actually put them in a place where you can see them every day and monitor yourself as to what you are doing to get you closer to achieving them. Moreover, goals change. They are not written in stone and are to be used more as landmarks or beacons than military orders you are giving yourself. Beating yourself up if you don’t achieve them in the time frame you set is only going to make it worse, so it’s pointless. The most curious thing she says is to write down “five little victories” a day for a whole year, starting right now. At first I didn’t get why this is important, but now I am beginning to understand. If you can’t write five little victories down a day, you’re not thinking positively enough about your life and you are definitely not in the right frame of mind.

Even as I write this I find myself trying to rush through the process. I’ve already written down my goals in OnmiFocus and started doing things to move towards them, but I am beginning to see that what I really need to do is take a time out and give myself a couple of hours with the book and my journal and get it all handwritten into the journal, then rewrite the goals and tack them to the wall behind my computer desk. I’ll post part two to Week 1 after I’ve done that.

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by planewalker
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So Ariel at CyberPR has done something very smart. She’s started a blogging contest about her book. She’s promising that the person who wins will get a full PR package worth well over $1000. To be considered for the prize, you have to read her book and write 9 blog entries on it. It’s a brilliant move because it will do huge things for her publicity if enough people actually bite the bullet. Writing 9 blog entries is a good bit of work, but will be worth it if I can get the publicity package and the added publicity of having won the contest. I’ve got enough faith in my writing skills to give it a shot. At worst, I’ll simply be reporting my progress (or lack thereof) implementing her plans, which will probably be a good reality check for me anyway. I’m in!

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by planewalker
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Being a musician is fun, but the biggest problem with it is finding a way to make a living from it. You can have great music, but if you don’t get publicity (read: other people writing about you) it’s hard to convince labels and promoters to release your music and book you for shows. But how do you get publicity? This long standing problem has plagued independent do-it-yourself musicians since advances in technology have made it possible for anyone to make a record without spending a fortune. The result is that now we have so many artists trying to get heard that your album gets lost in a flood of information. How do you stand out enough in the sea of artists to make an impact? Well, someone has an answer to that. That would be Ariel Hyatt, author of the book Music Success In 9 Weeks.

Being in the challenged financial situation that most people are in these days, I definitely thought twice about laying down the $35 for the ebook. After all, it’s more than half of what I have in my bank account. But one thing I’ve learned over the years is that when you have a little money, spend all of it, and when you have a lot of money, don’t spend any of it. Let’s hope this maxim applies toward my success in this case. In any event, I’ve already read through the entire book and begun applying the information learned. I’ve got TweetDeck running on my computers and have probably signed up for 20 new social media and social networking websites in the last two days. I feel somewhat overwhelmed.

Here’s the basic idea behind the book: it’s all about participating as an artist in the “Web 2.0″ thing while at the same time working the traditional hardcopy publicity route via the press kit. Both things involve A LOT of stuff, which is why if I had a lot of money I’d definitely pay someone to do this stuff for me so I could spend more time making music. But I don’t, so it’s my job to do it until I can get good enough at it that I can afford to hire a publicist. Anyway, her philosophy is that an artist website is not adequate - you need to get blogged about and written about if you want to make it in the music industry. The book gives a lot of great tips on how to find the right blogs and how to get blogs to write about you. It also explains how a publicist gets press coverage using a press kit.

There are a lot of steps involved and it’s not easy or simple, but it is do-able, and the fact seems to be that musicians really have no other choice than to take this route in today’s economic and technological climate. Fewer and fewer people are reading print media anymore. Fewer and fewer people are just browsing the web looking for cool stuff. More and more people are learning about new things through Facebook and Twitter and other “Web 2.0″ interactive sites and programs. If you don’t get with the program and learn how to use these things to tell people about your music and your shows, you risk being left in the dust. I’m inclined to agree with her. Print media, even if it gets read, also gets tossed in the circular filing cabinet. But blog articles might stay up on the web for years. But again, there are a lot of steps and you have to be careful not to mess up your relationship with the bloggers and the writers at any step of the process. Probably the best advice given in the book is about how to talk to writers, publicists and other important people in the music industry so you don’t come off as a difficult to understand or self-centered person and mess up your chances of them giving you some publicity.

All in all, I think her plan just might work. I’ve really come to understand the importance of blogging in the music world, and so I’ve made a commitment to write a blog article every day as well as read and comment on a few blogs every day. The important thing this does is get your website full of interesting content so that people will stick around. Visiting blogs and commenting is also key, because it gets your name out there and lets the bloggers who might write about you know that you are in it to interact, not just to get attention. Overall the book is quite well written, but I am going to hold off on my final judgment of the book until I get the chance to implement it and see if it works. I’ll be posting some additional entries in the near future about each “week” of the plan. Stay tuned!

Filed under: Journal Entries - Reviews
by planewalker
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As a true psychedelic trance fan, I sometimes forget that there are other kinds of trance out there that haven’t given over to the pop sound with female vocals that is personified by Kaskade and Darude. Not to say it’s bad. Kaskade having recently been brought to Portland’s Whiskey Bar by the promotion group Red Cube in December 2009 and having the draw to make at least one of my friends go, many people obviously appreciate it. It’s just that if I’m going to listen to pop, my tastes veer more towards Coldplay and The Beatles. I’ll take Freaks of Nature or Cosmo over Kaskade any day, but that’s just me.

Anyway, it pleases me to see that there are artists making great trance that is neither psy nor goa nor mainstream, but “tech”. It’s as if the tech-house bug of the late 90s and early 00s has now infected trance, and it feels both like an old revival and a new innovation. And some of it is actually really good! A chance encounter with agent and promoter Julian Reyes at Keyframe Entertainment has opened up a new door for me, so to speak. Heck, this stuff is a lot better than most of the psytrance being released these days. Two individuals are particularly worth checking out. First off is producer Jason Knight, who is bridging the gap between tech trance and techno in a totally unique way. Secondly is Derek Ryan, who has a few good mixes of this genre up on SoundCloud. Any trance fan who wants to expand their horizons would do well to check them out.

Filed under: Music Releases - Reviews
Tags: « "Tech Trance" • Jason Knight • Pure.FM »
by planewalker
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