True Blue Fan (TBF)

Many artist & their bands can sing & play, but, they are amazed (sometimes mad) when the audiences fail to connect with them.  Artist and bands work on perfecting their play list of songs to sound like the studio version or the 'cover' version they hear. On stage, it's entertainment time!  If I go see a movie and it doesn't entertain, connect, excite me, then most of the time I actually take short naps.  Most artist/band never think about changing up a song to allow it to 'CONNECT' with their audience. And, if you don't connect and create special moments of memory, then, in most cases you will not have won over new fans & you certainly will not have what every artist should strive to have and that is:  TRUE BLUE FANS!  Yes, that is a KSE exclusive.  TRUE BLUE FAN OR TBF IS WHAT EVERY ARTIST MUST HAVE to create longevity as an INDIE touring band.  TBF are those people that will become the most important part of your TEAM.  In short, they are the ones that will show up for your shows with new fans & they are the ones that will buy tickets, merchandise, and leave tips in your tip jar.  As we all know most young inexperienced bands can only tour if they can meet expenses.

Developing into an entertainer takes time, much practice, money, and developing TRUE BLUE FANS!  It's like going from grade school, Jr. High, High School to getting your Bachelors, Masters and your PhD.  After you have completed those degrees, you need continuing updates and training....All Roads that lead to the STAGE must be incrementally improved each year, but, only after an artist has mastered all the baseline stages.  Once this is accomplished, an artist/band will forever be developing their passion for creative performances that make connecting memorial moments that last with their new fans that will change into TBF.

Fine line between self-promotion and the “me, me, me”

It’s really important to not overdose your fans or the press with your promotions. It can be taken the wrong way. Firstly, if you saturate everyone, no one will read your emails or promotions. Secondly, find a way to promote yourself but also add cool opportunities or interesting stores along the way. Then people won’t turn off if it’s just all about you. I love to read gig news emails if it starts with some funny anecdote about what the artist has been up to or a story they want to tell. It grabs me in. Then, in a subliminal way, I’m also fed great gig and music news. 

 It’s hard to be your own promoter, that’s for sure. But if you don’t have someone to do it for you, or you don’t want to use a pseudonym and write in the third person, then go for intimacy. Speak from you, colloquial, and let us into your world. Fans love to know the “real” artist! 

 Don’t’ be afraid to self-promote. It’s a new era, and you can do it. Just watch any language you use that might suggests a focus too much on yourself and please veer away from fancy words like ‘outstanding’, ‘the hottest performer ever’, or ‘ the new Madonna of Studio City’. Try not to compare yourself too much and be your own unique being! Being humble is also important. It’s nice to be glorified, but let others glorify you, not you.

Making True Blue Fans

So how DO you make fans today?  By making something so creative or good that people pay attention.  That's the major label formula.  They want to sign you AFTER you've gotten everybody to pay attention.  But if you make that deal you're shortsighted, because all the label can do is get you on radio and TV, two dying media, meanwhile taking too much of the upside and paying very little in advance.

In other words, one Funny Or Die clip is better than hours spent working with Dr. Luke. That's the secret of OK Go.  The videos were so creative, they were passed from hand to hand via e-mail, IM and the Facebook wall.

Yes, the words of the poets are written on the Facebook wall, the subway's passe.

So instead of handing out fliers, e-mailing everybody you know to listen to your music, the game is to stay home and create something so good, so interesting, that when it's posted online, people won't be able to stop sending it to their friends.

It's not even about genres.  There are no limits online.

And catchy is catchy.  I may have only heard Rebecca Black's "Friday" one time through, but the chorus is stuck in my head.

So stand back, take a deep breath and change direction.  Don't play by the old rules. Today you've got to be really good or really creative or both.  Your song must connect in one listen.

That doesn't mean you can't keep trying, you can't keep uploading songs and videos, but the sheer mass, just staying in the game, won't help.  You're now an inventor, looking for that one breakthrough product.  When you succeed, your history is unlocked and your fans can wallow in your past.  This is the opposite of the major label paradigm.  There's the hit and..?

Indie Music SUCCESS = ENDLESS HOURS OF WORK

Indie Female Success is dependent on how much time you will consistently dedicate to being pro-active to promoting and developing your career.

You should be thinking: Today is the first day of the rest of your life/career. Achieving your goals means taking all the necessary steps in a prescribe order. This will prevent repetition and redundancy on this Indie Road you travel. Sometimes your 'steps' will be short; sometimes they will be long, but, remember every step takes your forward towards achieving your dreams.

As an Indie Artist it's difficult to know what your next step should be, let alone know when your next paycheck will come. Every new fan; every new gig is progress. Each day there are many things to do. Most days your preparation is doing the same things over, but, with the goal of improving or doing them better.

Independents wear many hats because for a long period of time, they must do everything themselves. If this isn't your calling, you may want to think extensively about seeking another career, either inside the music market or outside it. Just Remember: The harder you work the luckier you get!

Branding

If you take the ‘e’ out of emotion, you’re left with a word that is synonymous with action. Small wonder then, that when it comes to human behavior, nearly all of the voluntary stuff is fueled by some sort of feeling that comes from within. Whether it’s a fist pump into the air or in someone’s face, our actions occur only in the presence of emotion.

When people fall in love with brands, they don’t fall in love with its face. They fall in love with what lives at the heart of the brand. And emotional appeals can’t be forced or contrived and be successful. When they come from the heart, people will respond in kind.

These days, successful brands have a set of attributes that include:

Human - Can people relate to your brand as though it were a person? What are the personality traits of your brand? If it were a movie character, what would it look like? Is it a man, woman or child? Is it young or old? And how do these traits reveal themselves in your marketing?

Engaging - How many ways are there for people to interact with your brand? Are you producing content that doesn’t look or sound like advertising? Are there ways you could be entertaining your customers? What kinds of experiences do you provide for your audience besides a buying experience?

Authenticity - Does your marketing accurately convey the spirit or soul of your company? What kind of promise do you make to your audience about the kind of experience you provide? Do you make good on that promise during all possible interactions with your audience?

Relevance - Who, specifically is your audience? How would you describe them in human terms? What is the purpose of your brand in the lives of these individuals? How does it fit into their every day existence. Does what you offer increase their likelihood to feel positive emotions toward your brand?

Tension - What kinds of ideas do you present to your audience that challenges their current thinking about the world? Is there enough drama in the content you put out into the world? Can you identify the audiences “enemy” and somehow insert your brand as a hero?

If you have covered all of these bases in the development of your marketing, you have established a strong foundation for building an emotionally charged brand with which people can identify on a deeper and more meaningful level.

Giving It Your All

Working 24/7 is a given if your an Indie Artist/Musician.  Success = time + total commitment to becoming Indie/Independent. Most doors will be closed.  But, there is always one that will open if your pursuit is endless.

Be ready to work you tail off.  Through your work and efforts you will 'learn'.  You will learn about many new areas of the music business, because, for the Indie Artist, Music is a business...A REAL BUSINESS. 

As an Indie Artist you have total control and can't blame anyone else but yourself if things don't go right or don't get done. 

As a woman Indie artist, the effort required to become successful will require 3X the effort. 

All problems should be view as OPPORTUNITIES OF ABUNDANCE!

Flexibility means you must be patient, for patience is the key to Indie success.  Hone your craft until your music shines and your band is 'tight' on all songs. 

If what you are doing is not working, most likely it will not work until you discover other means to monetize you and your music.  To me that key is in building a base of True Blue Fans.  These are fans that promote you and your music 24/7 and they spend a minimum of $100 / year on you.

The stage is but one place where you connect with existing fans and make 'new' fans.  Failure to connect is opportunities lost to build your True Blue Fan base. 

Remember the only limit in music success, is YOU!

--end

INDIE INDEPENDENT

Not every female artist is cut out to be independent or as I refer to them: Indie Independent. Which means you are beholding to no one except yourself and your music.  I believe in today's Music World 2.0, Indie Independent is THE route for 90+% of all artist.  But, before you decide Indie Independent is for you, ask and answer these questions extremely honestly:

1. Have you done everything you can to be as good as possible?
2. Can you trade dreams of being a star for the reality of making a living from your music?
3. Are you willing to bend with suggestions from others?
4. How much time are you willing to devote to your music, including touring?
5. Can you commit you life to your career and to no one else, except God?
6. Can you be a Team Builder?
7. Will you commit to doing everything yourself (in the beginning), and not assuming someone else will do things for you?
8. Will you accept and commit to your True Blue Fans, knowing without them, you are nothing in terms of becoming a successful live music/recording/touring artist?

The most important thing you can do for your music career is to hone your craft.  Be the absolute best you can be each day....tomorrow be better than you were today and today be better than you were yesterday.  Don't waste your valuable time on anything that doesn't improve your craft and where you want to go.  

Play LIVE at every opportunity, even if it means playing for tips and merchandise sales only.  If you can't cut it live, success may not be in your future. 

One of the most important things for an artist to become, in addition to having a great voice and great songs, is to become a great communicator.  Can you, with comfort, look at your audience and make them feel 'special'.  It takes practice and spontaneity to make your fans feel they are connected not only to your music, but, to you as well.  Never be in such a hurry as to leave your fans wanting to be part of your career.  

If your songs cause fans to sing along, dance, or for the very personal songs, that causes them to 'stop' in their tracks and listen, then, you are most likely on your way. 

STARTING A FIRE

The story begins online, just like it used to begin in clubs.  Sure, you need music.  But that's just the kindling to start a fire online.

Have you ever built a fire?  If you load up the big logs first, it doesn't take.  You've got to start with very small twigs.  You've got to nurture the flame, blowing air on it or gently using bellows.  Then you lay on increasingly large pieces, not getting to logs until you're just shy of a conflagration.  That's how you build careers today.

1. Focus on the music.  You need at most four songs.  Any more and you confuse the audience.  Less is okay, but you want to encourage a story, you don't want to appear a one hit wonder.

2. As you gain traction, you put out more music.  You don't worry about selling the original music to everybody on the planet, at this point you only focus on your core.

3. You make the music available.  Don't try to monetize it at first, that just slows down the process of building your career.  People can hear it streamed online, and they can download it and trade it.

4. Interact online, and don't talk down to your fans.  Don't tell them you're the next big star.  Hip-hop bluster is passe.  Be thrilled that they're interested in you and your music.  Tell them everything they want to know, and more.  Put up pictures of your girl or boyfriend.  Tell them what you do every day.  If you've got a family, don't hide it, reveal it.  Your goal is to humanize yourself.  Artifice is so seventies.  The Net community is about sussing out the truth.  Give them the truth and your honesty will endear you to them.

5. Don't ask your fans to spread the word.  Don't ask them to be street-teamers.  Don't have a street team!  If they like your music and you treat them well, they will spread the word just like a kid tells his mother about his new best friend.   They won't be able to hold back.  There's no money in it for the fan.  So let him retain his dignity.  Let him believe he's your best friend.

6. Don't alert the mainstream media.  That comes last.  Once you've built something, once you've got a story.  Kind of like Dispatch playing Madison Square Garden.  If your story is not interesting to those who don't care, don't tell it or sell it.  Like I said, I'm not interested in vampire books, but the phenomenon intrigued me.

This is ass-backwards to the way it's been.  In recent scenarios, music has come last.  It's been about image.  It's been about marketing.  So there's no traction, no connection with the consumer/fan.  With looks being everything, "artists" have become models.  Pretty faces with no depth.  And you wonder why the "Hills" stars are more famous than most musicians...  Because musicians don't have that something extra, the music that sets them apart!

You're building a fan club.  You don't want to let everyone in, you don't want everyone to come.  When the nerds are partying, they don't want the athletes crashing, with their beer and belligerence.  You're building a community of nerds.  Nerds will build your band.  If you're not interested in nerds, you'd better be Christina Aguilera, with a big voice and Top Forty airplay.  Nerds need music to get by.  They don't have enough of a social life.  Their life is online.  Nerds come first, then the popular kids, then the general public.  You want people with plenty of time, to sit online and spread the word.  Kids who know the ins and outs of the Web.  This is your audience.  Don't play to the last row, don't play to people who don't care.  Chances are you're a nerd too, if you'd only admit it to yourself...  You're playing music because you have trouble talking, meeting the opposite sex.  Your online nerd-base wants to embrace you...  LET THEM!

And if you're good, the casual user will find out about you and your music in the long run.  Because mainstream media NEEDS a story, and you will have one.  But since the publicity does not come overnight...  Since you drove across the country, stopping in shopping malls and bars before you rocketed to the moon, your original fans will not abandon you, because they've invested time, they've got knowledge no casual fan can have.  They're bonded, they're dedicated.  They will keep you alive after your mainstream fame has dried up.  But they won't stay with you if you switch allegiance, to all those people the nerds decry, in quick order.

But it all comes down to creating something people like.  And what people like most is not slick, not glossy, over-produced songs written by guns-for-hire, but straight from the heart original numbers.  You don't have to create a new genre.  But you do have to be good.  Pick up on a tried and true genre and give it your own twist.  A brother and sister can be the new Carpenters.  Scruffy kids can be the new Beatles.  Don't reinvent the wheel unless you have that ability.  

Clive Davis is right in one regard, you've got to have your hit.  A hit is something that is irresistible, not a track that is driven to the top of the chart by big company money.  Create your hit, and you'll get a fan base.  But, from there, know that you're the leader of the gang.  But the gang is more like a Boy Scout troop or a group of Brownies.  But, Boy Scouts and Brownies desire to break through into adulthood.  You're going to help them, by giving them the tools to show the rest of the world that not only do they matter, they're aligned with the best stuff out there, and they've been dedicated from the very beginning!

THE 3 C's of Web Presence

Consider these three C-trends:

COMPETITION. The web is no longer the property of the elite, the tech-savvy or the big companies. Any ten year-old kid with a modest knowledge of how the Internet works can set up a website in less than a half-hour! This means that the barriers to entry are almost non-existent.

Note: If you aren't building your web presence, odds are your competitors ARE.

CHOICES. Customers have more choices than every before. This means they are going to seek out the best. And in their minds, the “best” probably means “the first hit on Google.” So, without a powerful web presence, you’re going to end up on page 11 of a search that never got finished. The customer just picked the first company on the list and called it a day.

Note: If you ain’t first, you’re last! 

COMMUNICATION. Instant messenger, email, widgets, search engines, blog directories, social book marking software, RSS feeds, widgets, blog comments … these are just a few of the way customers are going to seek you out. See, the nature of the web allows people to obtain information according to THEIR needs and THEIR learning style. So, if there’s only ONE way to get a hold of you, Mr. Earthworm, you’ve just alienated a LOT of potential customers!

Note:  If they can’t get a hold of you, they’ll just move onto the next guy.

Considering these 3 trends, there’s no doubt about it: you need a web presence.

Artist Press

kleerstreem

 

Positive articles written about you are invaluable for building awareness.  If you can't get articles written about you, at lest try to get quotes about you.  Start locally and continue to move outward from your base.  Asked local DJ's to play your music and to give you one liners. Build up a quote sheet for your press kit and for all your social media sites.  Use these letter and quotes every time you can; if you do there is a great chance of a domino effect....newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and TV...they will think you are incredible!  And, the bottom line, is everything will lead to more fans that will come out to see your shows.

Prince and Creating Spontaneity

Dez Dickerson and Prince

The former guitar player for Prince was telling me about their rehearsals. If you’ve seen any video of Prince or seen him live, he goes off on jams that appear completely spontaneous. Sometimes they’re so off the wall, you wonder where they came up with the stuff they did!

I asked him, how did you get from that place to this funky thing to this Pink Floyd thing to this breakdown, to this jammin’ stuff — and it all seems so spontaneous? And he said one word…“practice.” In practice they got an instinct, they were jamming, and they went down that road in practice. The idea came to them, they stopped, went back, fleshed it out, and rehearsed it to where it was really tight and they didn’t have to think about it.

Those of us who have just “jammed” know that it might be magical….one night. And then on other nights it’s just terrible. So the key is this: if you understand the fundamentals in your preparation, and you know how to hold the mic, and you know placement on stage, and you know what it takes visually onstage, then they’re in your arsenal and you can use them (be spontaneous with them) onstage. They’ll come naturally – without thinking about them.

Otherwise, you get an instinct, and if you haven’t rehearsed the fundamentals, then you have to think about it, and all the audience sees is you thinking about what you’re doing. And that’s not exciting.

I have a good friend who lives in Chicago. When he flies into town he doesn’t give me a call and say “hey, Tom, lets go down to the library and watch people read!” We don’t want to watch people read. And no one wants to watch people think!

So what we need to do is plan, practice it in rehearsals, and then we can go out and do it. And when we’re onstage, IF we have the fundamentals, then we can follow our instinct, and it’s natural. We’ve done it over and over and over again. It looks spontaneous even though the basics are things we’ve worked out in rehearsals.

On a football team, those players are not just playing their 19th, 20th game of the year when they get to the Super Bowl. Before the Super Bowl, they had six weeks of training, and before that they had a 6-inch thick playbook of plays that the team runs, and they study those plays. The truth is, everyone knows their role. They run the plays over and over and over again. Then the coaches have a game plan.

THAT’S what a live show should be! You’ve studied a playbook, you’ve rehearsed it, and where the spontaneity comes in is that every night, every audience is different. So just like the running back, you don’t run through the same hole every play. You try left, you try right, you try jumping over them, you pitch the ball back…. that’s where the spontaneity comes in.

Everyone needs to know the role they have and the goal of each play. That’s the way a song should be, too. That’s what should happen onstage – a combination of rehearsal and spontaneity. No one is thinking! The running back isn’t thinking when he runs up to the hole, and the hole is closed, “oh, maybe I should run this way” – he just reacts. Why? Because he has the fundamentals!

Having the fundamentals down because you’ve done your wood shedding is the first step. Then planning the show – getting a vision for what you want each song to look like, and what you want your show to look like – that’s the next step.

It’s important to find the balance between form and spontaneity, and to understand the creative process. That means brooding over your songs, listening to them in different ways, planning, getting ideas,…and then working it until it becomes a part of who you are onstage. Something natural, something creative, something unique – and that’s what your audience wants to see!

Evolution of Music

Music 1.0 - the first generation of the music business where the product was vinyl records, the artist has no contact directly with the record buyer, radio was the primary source of promotion, the record labels were run by record people, and records were bought from retail stores.

Music 1.5 - the second generation of the music business where the product was primarily CDs, labels were owned and run by large conglomerates, MTV caused the labels to shift from artist development to image development, radio was still the major source of promotion, and CDs were purchased from retail stores.

Music 2.0 - the third generation of the music business that signaled the beginning of digital music, piracy ran rampant due to P2P networks but the industry took little notice as CD sales were still strong from radio promotion.

Music 2.5 - the fourth generation of the music business where digital music became monetized thanks to iTunes and later, others like Amazon MP3. CD sales dive, the music industry contracts and retail stores close.

Music 3.0 - the current generation of the music business where the artist can now communicate, interact, market and sell directly to the fan. Record labels, radio and television become mostly irrelevant and single songs are purchased instead of albums.

Music Business Other Sides

Music biographies mesmerized me when I was a kid. Whether it was Glenn Miller or Elvis Presley, it was always the same fascinating formula: talent and tenacity leading to the precipice of success, with the artist always searching for that one elusive element to define his signature sound, to breakthrough. With Miller it was the addition of trombones. The proceedings always put me on the edge of my seat and the breakthroughs set me reeling. I guess it was in my blood.

It persists. The other night I watched two great documentary-style biopics on TV, one on Johnny Cash, another on Willie Nelson. Willie, as many of his fans may not realize, was actually a Nashville songwriter penning such classics as “Crazy,” which Patsy Cline etched into the music lexicon. Despite his preeminent status as a writer, Willie couldn’t get arrested as an artist in Music City. His quirky phrasing was way too off-beat for the 60s sound, which was infused with sweet strings and pop arrangements.

At the age of 40, Willie returned home to Texas. Such a move would have meant a life sentence selling insurance had history not intervened. As fate would have it, Woodstock Nation had opened the doors to multiple music movements by the early 70s, and Willie realized that such hippie hangouts as Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters were ready for a new kind of country artist. He enlisted his buddy Waylon Jennings, among others, and set about launching a novel sound to a new audience. His ultimate success turned country music, and the music establishment at large, on its head. Ultimately, he was responsible for redefining music, establishing its “outlaw” class and creating the Austin revolution as well as worldwide social activism that persists to this day.

Despite his huge outsider success, Nashville rejected this giant yet again. By the 1980s, you couldn’t find a Willie song on mainstream country radio, and forget about a major label deal.

Okay, let’s get right down to the hard part. Cash was just another music god to be tumbled unceremoniously from Olympus. By the 80s, he, too, was cast out like so much trash. His popularity was dwindling, and he was struggling to find an audience and make a living.

So these outlaw outcasts banded together, literally, forming the country supergroup The Highwaymen, along with Waylon and Kris Kristofferson. Talk about a Mount Rushmore of talent. They had taken fate into their own hands and, once again, set out to redefine the music scene, outside the establishment, all on their own.

A Bronx boy, I was still getting my country legs under me, when I hit Nashville in the late 80s. At the time, I couldn’t understand why the likes of Willie and Johnny weren’t getting mainstream air play, why I could eat lunch with Emmylou Harris but couldn’t hear her songs on country radio, why Nanci Griffith was considered a darling in all the clubs, to all the execs, but couldn’t get the chart toppers and eventually carped about it in interviews.

I was just getting introduced to the hard truth of the music industry: bitterness. Griffith was bitter, my friend Artie Traum (from back home in Woodstock) — one of the sweetest guys to ever grace the business — was expressing a degree of bitterness, too, in interviews of the day. I was just learning.

The songwriting trade in Nashville was rough. By year two, I was saying you had to learn to live on a diet of stones. Rejection was the blue-plate special everyday. It took me two years to get my first major song contract and more to get my first staff writing job and my first cut. Everyone who stuck with it had war stories: the song on hold that never happened, the artist cut that got dropped by the label or never got released as a single or didn’t make it above 20 on the charts. But, despite eventual successes and even industry support, I left after a decade to pursue a career as an artist, packing scars and wisdom, love and hate.

But back to Johnny Cash. One of the greatest artists to “walk the line,” he faced the pure pain of artistry more deeply, more movingly than anyone before him. Late in his career, with the help of producer Rick Rubin, Johnny faced his inner darkness, his demons, his truth, his soul. With such albums as “American Recordings” and “Unchained,” he found a vast and vital new audience, just years before his death. His new material was so raw that family members had a tough time listening. They told him it sounded like he was saying goodbye. He told them he was.

In the Cash bio, artists such as Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp and Vince Gill expressed the true painful tumble that all artists must face. Mellencamp himself recently penned a telling if rambling article on the biz in HuffPost, a blog post that established a wellspring of conversation in the social media sector.

So, this little Bronx boy, who reeled from the Glenn Miller story and cut and broke his teeth on Music Row, finally came to understand bitterness and the role it plays in any music career. No one is exempt. It may be (excuse me) a bitter pill to swallow, but I recommend downing it to develop a good artist-immune system. Another words, one has to learn to deal with it, embrace it, pain and all, and find a way to move on. Carry it on your back, in your suitcase, in your heart, on your skin — the rose tattoo of the music artist.