Caroline Bottomley set up RadarMusicVideos.com in March this year. Radar is a network of over 1200 filmmakers worldwide, where labels and artists can commission videos and get them promoted. To date Radar has generated well over 2,000,000 online views for videos made through them.

 

Music videos are pretty essential for any artist wanting to promote their music online. Having a strategy to promote them is a whole other problem for artists and labels. Here's a few tips to getting a great music video and getting it seen.

What kind of music video?

If you want to be in it, consider how you can make it exciting to watch. Straight performance videos are generally predictable, ie boring, you can guess you're going to see a singer, a guitarist, a guitar, a drummer, some drums and so on. Two budget performance videos I think are great: Kate Nash’s Foundations and Example's Me and Mandy . We get to know the artist but we get entertained at the same time. Non-performance videos can give your video much more scope for viewer entertainment. The Wave Pictures and London Elektricity two different ways of supporting the track and being very attractive. By the way, The Wave Pictures was shot in Guatemala City for a London band – so you can also access a bigger pool of talent if you're prepared to go non-performance.

What budget?

If you've got 0, you'll be best trying the first two contact groups outlined below. You might hit lucky, but expect to get a student or starter filmmaker who wants to start or build their showreel. Which doesn't necessarily mean a bad video.

If you create a budget for your video, you'll have more experienced people interested in working for you (who have a history of delivering the goods) and you get access to the third contact group below.

How do I find a filmmaker?

1. Ask friends, fans, local art colleges.

2. Contact filmmakers on YouTube and MySpace. Both sites have 'featured video' sections where you get straight to the good stuff. Or find videos you like on music video blogs – google to find them

3. Contact a professional production company or an online service like Radar Music Videos. I'm not supposed to promote us here, but we don't know of any other online commissioning/promotion services!

How do I work with a filmmaker?

Basic principles – be clear what you want in your video brief, how much money you'll spend on it and when you want it. Get this all agreed up front in writing, preferably with a contract. Here's a sample contract. Get written references from people who've worked with the filmmaker before.

If you're spending money, be prepared to give some up-front, but hold a good chunk back against rough cut approval and a small amount against final delivery. The rough cut is as it sounds, a nearly finished version of your video. All the structure will be in place, with just some minor editing and colour corrections etc to do. It's not fair on your filmmaker to start asking for major structural changes or re-shoots at this point, so be sure to have created a clear brief from the outset. Above all, keep talking. If something isn't going the way you like it, talk about it with the aim to get a great video out of it – this may not be the same thing as getting your own way.

How do I get planet earth to see my video?

Video preparation and presentation - in order of importance:

- A good thumbnail

- A good title

- Well written metadata - the text that accompanies the video

Tags - use words people might search for. A lot of sites only allow limited numbers of tags so use the best ones ie 'indie' is probably better than 'cool'

Video distribution

Self service

Post on your artist pages. Contact blogs and music sites. If you've got any good stories from your shoot, write it into your (brief) press release – and give your press release a good title. Join video sharing sites like Dailymotion, Vimeo etc, build networks of friends and promote your video – carefully, you can get suspended very easily if you're seen as a spammer. See if you can find contacts for site editors who can front page your video. It's not easy to do this but it is possible.

Professional services

There are an increasing number of businesses who claim to viralise videos. They may work, I've never tried them, but do beware. It's incredibly difficult to get a video to go viral and most companies charge up front. Get references, check them out independently before you spend anything.

If you're considering taking on a PR or digital marketing company to generally promote you, see what they can do for your online video. Also check out what they can do to get your video on TV.

What's the point?

This is something you need to establish before you do anything else. What are your objectives? Increase your mailing list? Build your MySpace friends? Promote an album? A t-shirt? Get on TV? Adapt your strategies accordingly and use URLs in your metadata to guide people to where you want them to be (mailing list sign up, T-shirt order page etc) Set some objectives and you'll know when you're winning.

Good luck, don't give up. Promoting your great video is a pretty big job but it can win you a lot of t-shirt sales if you get it right. 

 

It seems the way money flows at a record label is largely a mystery to most artists who haven’t worked in the music industry for an extended period of time. It’s always interesting to lift the veil a bit on an unknown. Let’s take a look at one side of the economics of an indie record label, getting a new release to market. Below is a summary of the actual expenses an indie record label incurred for a new release:

Recording advance: $15,000
Tour support: $2,100
Mastering costs: $934.96
Marketing: $13,433.23
Advertising: $2,067.50
Publicity: $5,153.34
Manufacturing: $16,581.04
Artwork / photos: $200
Misc: $587.71

Total: $56,057.78

Here is an overview of each of the line item in a little more detail:

Recording Advance – The money for the recording advance is used to cover the cost of recording. Including studio rental, mixing, session musicians, sound engineer and producer.

Tour Support – Artists have traditionally sold more overall units when they tour so record labels will often times financially support a tour. Tour support money can help pay some of the expenses of touring such as gas, insurance, hotels, food and supplies.

Mastering – Mastering is a post production process that takes the final mix of the recording, edits minor flaws, adjusts volume and stereo widths, equalizes tracks, etc. It’s usually expected that the person who masters the recording will be different from the person who mixes it so there is typically a separate line item in the budget.

Marketing – The marketing line item is entirely for retail co-op marketing expenses. Co-op marketing dollars are expenses distributors incur from retailers for special product placement, in-store promotions, listening stations or advertising. The amount of co-op marketing dollars the distributor (and ultimately the label) are willing to spend on a new release has a direct correlation to the amount of product the retailer orders.

Advertising – Advertising expenses can include any print, radio and online advertising the record label incurs to promote a new release (outside of retail co-op dollars).

Publicity – It’s fairly common for a record label to hire an independent publicist for a 90 day period to help promote a new release to press, print and online media, bloggers and anyone else who can help influence music fans.

Manufacturing – The manufacturing costs for a CD with jewel case can vary but is still around $1.00 per unit for a distributor or label with measurable volume.

Artwork – The cost of custom creative and / or photos for the release.

Miscellaneous – Just like the name implies this is the catch “everything else” expense category related to a new release. For example, legal fees or video production expenses charged to a new release could end up here.

For this particular release to break even it must generate $70,072.23 in gross sales ($56,057.78 + the 25% fee of sales paid to the distributor ). The typical deductions a distributor takes on sales including return reserves and breakage (to name a few) further impact cash flow on sales back to the record label.

It’s important for artists to fully understand how the basic economics of an indie label work since they will not get paid any royalties from sales until the record label recoups all the expenses incurred in getting the record to market. This is true of both traditional record label agreements and even “50/50” licensing agreements. It is very common for artists to never receive royalties on sales from their record label since many new releases never fully recoup their expenses.

Being signed to a record label is no guarantee of sales success. Artists need to carefully weigh what a record label is going to spend on a new release to determine the level of sales that will be needed to achieve profitability before signing a recording contract. Even though the artist might sell a lower number of units on their own there is a very real chance they can actually earn more money without a record label being involved. 

Most indie record label owners are simply trying to get music they love heard by fans. They aren’t in it for the money. In addition to the above mentioned costs of getting a new release to market they have to cover multiple other expenses such as insurance, rent, payroll, travel and mechanical royalties . Making money as an indie label is no easy task. Needless to say, label owners give it a great deal of consideration before signing a new artist and committing to releasing their music.

It does take a lot of money and resources to get a new release to market. However, real transparency in accounting for these expenses is still largely lacking. Inevitably this leads to conflict between the record label and artist around recoupment of expenses and payment of royalties. Hopefully, as artists better understand the economics of record labels they will be able to make more informed decisions about when it makes sense to sign with a record label and when go it alone.

David Harrell  is the Editor of Digital Audio Insider and has blogged about the economics of digital music since 2006. With his indie rock band the Layaways , he has self-released three albums. The latest, "The Space Between," is now available for free streaming and download from Last.fm.

The best I can remember, the class was called something like "the scientific method." A graduate biology seminar, it consisted of meeting once a week to watch an old science fiction movie, followed by a discussion about the treatment of science in the film. For the students, it was a low-stress way to add a couple semester hours to our schedules, and for the tenured professor who "taught" the class, it seemed like an incredibly easy way to pad his course load.

But unlike most of my college classes, there's something specific that's stayed with me. It was the professor's contention that there is no such thing as a truly repeatable experiment, at least not for biological sciences. The classic scientific method depends on the notion of repeatable results -- running the same experiment again should give the same results as those obtained in previous experiments. His point was that no matter how careful a researcher was, there'd always be some alteration in a small detail, such as a different batch of food for the lab animals or the health of the laboratory personnel. He wasn't implying that most scientific research wasn't valid, just that there was no such thing as a perfect do-over for most experiments.

Why am I yammering on about science experiments in a music business blog? Well, as anyone reading this post knows, over the past few years, the music industry -- from the largest record companies and the biggest selling artists down to the level of self-released artists -- has been experimenting like crazy. Free music, pay-what-you-want music, "360" deals, exclusive deals with Wal-Mart sans digital distribution, iTunes exclusives, etc. And after every large-scale experiment (Radiohead's "In Rainbows," Kid Rock's no-iTunes strategy, AC-DC's current Wal-Mart exclusive), music industry analysts, the news media, and bloggers attempt to assess the relative success of the approach.

Yet in all of these cases, "experiment" is probably a misnomer --there's no "control group" receiving the placebo treatment. Absent a trip to a parallel universe where you could buy Kid Rock's last album (or the single) from the iTunes store, we really don't know for certain if Kid Rock helped or hindered his total sales.  (It's possible, of course, that some record companies have been using control groups of some sort. You could make an album available in iTunes for a specific country or region, and compare sales to those in non-iTunes regions. Though the demographics and fan bases probably aren't identical across regions, so you're still guessing somewhat…)

And even if we knew for certain if an individual experiment was a relative success, it's not necessarily transferable. Just because something worked for Radiohead doesn't mean it would work for R.E.M. Further, in addition to the non-interchangeable nature of audiences and albums, the music retail environment itself is changing on a daily basis.

Yet music is art, not science, and even if these different business tests aren't controlled, repeatable experiments, there does seem to be a few obvious takeaways. One thing that seems certain is that for acts of a certain stature, deviations from the standard sales approach will result in increased attention, perhaps enough to generate additional sales. Offering free music certainly seems to have helped Trent Reznor SELL a lot of music, music that is readily available for no charge. And maybe AC-DC's new album wouldn't be selling as well without the promotional push behind the Wal-Mart exclusive.

One problem, however, is diminishing returns. Radiohead got the attention it did for its "In Rainbows" experiment not because it was the first act to offer its music on a "pay what you want" basis. Rather, because they were the first act with that level of name recognition and artistic credibility to do so. Post-Radiohead, a similar experiment by a well-known act might not get the same attention.

What's less obvious, however, is if free or pay-what-you-want music has the same impact on the other end of the scale. That is, for self-released acts like my own, who are all trying to figure out how to compete in an environment of seemingly endless listening choices.

If you spend some time on the CD Baby message boards, you'll see that some self-released musicians that are quite indignant over the idea of "free music." They'll point to the both hard work that went into writing and recording their music and the hard-earned dollars that funded the recording, mixing, mastering, and manufacturing of their music. They simply want a chance to earn some of that money back.

But offering free music doesn't mean you don't expect to get paid for it. For musicians at ANY level, the fundamental challenge is twofold. First, you need to get people to hear your music. Then you have to convince them to buy it. For relatively unknown artists, without access to commercial radio and the mainstream music press, offering free music along with paid versions of it seems the easiest way to increase your listening audience and, eventually, your paying audience.

Anecdotally, there are plenty of examples of how free and paid music can co-exist. A few years ago, when the Strokes released their second album, they offered a free 192k mp3 of the lead single on their website. Yet that song remained their top-selling track on iTunes, despite the existence of a free equivalent. And when I look at our cumulative iTunes sales, the two tracks we've sold the most copies of are songs we've made available as free downloads.

These examples don't necessarily prove anything -- there's no way to know if the Strokes would've sold more (or less) iTunes downloads if they didn't offer a free version of the track. Nor do they reveal why some consumers are paying for music they could have legally obtained without purchasing it. Maybe some purchasers of the iTunes tracks were simply unaware of the free versions, or maybe they are deliberately choosing to support the artist by purchasing the tracks.

For our new album, we're taking the free music plunge, inspired in part by a post by David Rose on this blog. For their 2004 release "Conductor," the Comas had a level of critical and promotional success that most small bands would kill for -- things like an 8.0 Pitchfork review and strong support and airplay from KEXP (one of the biggest/best known CMJ-reporting stations).

Yet they sold less than 6,000 total units, including physical CDs and album downloads. Would the Comas have done better with a free strategy? Again, without access to a parallel universe, there's no way to know to know for certain.

But in our case, given our very modest sales, the upside seems to outweigh the minimal downside of potential lost sales. And while it won't be a controlled or repeatable experiment, there are plenty of things we can quantify over the next few months: our number of Last.fm listeners, web traffic, friend statistics for MySpace and Facebook, and -- we hope -- increased sales over our previous release.

John Doe is the founder of the seminal Los Angeles punk group X, a solo artist and actor. John answers questions from our community members in the WWJDD? blog. Photo by Autumn de Wilde.

today is the day

be part of history and

VOTE ! !

Attached is a Public Service Announcement by Yo La Tengo and Chris Stamey entitled "V.O.T.E" in MP3 format. We encourage you to forward to any of your friends and neighbors who have not yet voted.

14 V.O.T.E. PSA.mp3

thanks,
JD

If you have questions for John Doe about music, the music business or life feel free to email them to wwjdd@knowthemusicbiz.com.

For more information on John Doe check out theejohndoe.com or YepRoc.com .

Terry McBride is the CEO and one of three founders of the Nettwerk Music Group , which includes Nettwerk Productions (Canada’s largest independent record label), Nettwerk Management (artist and producer management), Nettwerk One (publishing), and Artwerks (graphic and fashion design). Founded in McBride's apartment in 1984, Nettwerk has corporate offices in Vancouver, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Hamburg and London. Nettwerk Management’s exclusive client roster includes Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies, Dido, Stereophonics, Sarah McLachlan, Sum 41, Jars of Clay and Jamiroquai, among many others.

So what is a "song"? Is it a copyright? A melody and lyric?  Who owns that "song"? What rights do the owners have to control its consumption?  These questions are at the heart of today’s debate within the music business. On one side there are the record labels, publishers and a great number of artists, on the other side a large number of music consumers. I have spent a lot of time listening to the opinions of all parties and have expressed a lot of my own points of view. So as this debate evolves, what do I think today?

Well, all parties are correct. Each has a valid list of reasons and a deep passion for what they believe. So rather than keep myself in this ongoing debate, I took the summer off the public speaking circuit with the exception of doing a fun artist brainstorming session with the UK based Musictank group. I left the debate thinking that all perspectives are "right".

During this time I immersed myself in various psychological, scientific, and wellness books as part of my own personal journey. I did a lot of yoga, listened to a lot of Kirtan music, and traveled back and forth to Asia a few times. Understanding how the brain works made me more and more curios about music and the neurological science behind it. What does music do to us on an emotional level? Looking at how we bookmark our life’s journey to various emotions with music being one of the strongest sensory marks.

The more I soaked this in the more apparent to me is that a song is in fact an "emotion". When a listener relates to that "emotion", they attach their own personal emotions to that song. In a sense creating a new emotion or a co-collaboration. This neurological wiring within the brain creates a conscious sense of ownership within the listener based on the emotional level they have infused into the song.

Today such collaborations are seen on many more levels than just a few years ago. The ability to do music mash ups, video mash ups, remixes, perform the song in a virtual space with friends. The personal and social emotional connection is now even more amplified than it ever has been.

I see this emotive impact in how music is used in movies and TV shows. Some music placements have little to no effect on sales, yet others have a profound effect, even if it’s the same song used both times. If the song connects to the emotion being expressed within the visual, it amplifies its effect on the viewer, and the emotional glue now has multiple sticky points. Sarah’s McLachlan’s song “Angel” a 5-minute piano ballad became a #1 hit single at top 40 radio. This would never have happened without its placement in the pivotal part of the movie “City of angels”. Sum 41’s “With me” saw a placement in an emotive scene in Gossip Girls, which caused digital sales to explode over night and help drive the song past 175,000 sales in just a few months as the clip spread through Youtube.

Clearly, the future is not the ongoing debate on control and ownership of copyrights, with the big stick approach of suing fans. Music, along with all the other forms of rich media, is going into the clouds where it will be pulled down from servers when and how the consumer wants. The new values reside in what is behind this media; the meta data. The quality and increase in value of this meta data will have a profound effect on the future. Digital maids will be cleaning up your media locker, moving files to where they belong and propagating your custom and peer based playlists. Digital valets will be pulling down media from these cloud servers and prepping it for the consumer’s consumption. Songs will not only be just the music, but will contain data that will allow foreign lyric translations, edited versions, sheet music, instruction on how to play the song and so on. Future economic models will be based on monetizing the behavior of the consumer by adding true value.

This thought process is not a huge step from what I have been publicly talking about, but it is a key shift in my perception as to music and its psychological effect on us.

 

 

 

Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan are the authors of The Indie Band Survival Guide: The Complete Manual For The Do-It-Yourself Musician published by St. Martin's Press/Macmillan in the US and Canada and founders of the open and free musician resource, IndieBandSurvivalGuide.com. They are also lead members of the horn-powered Chicago indie-pop band Beatnik Turtle . Their latest project is the The DIY Music Manual: How to Record, Promote and Distribute Your Music without a Record Deal from eBury/Random House in the UK, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand to be released in February 2009.

Most musicians, when they think about where to get their music heard, think radio. Unfortunately, commercial radio is essentially off limits to indie musicians unless you spend tens of thousands of dollars, and even that's no guarantee. College radio is in reach, but time consuming. And new license rates have even curtailed webcasting.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. Podcasting has emerged to become the radio of the internet. In fact the September 2008 Pew internet study estimates that 19% of internet users have listened to a podcast. And unlike radio, podcasters are hungry for music to use for their shows. But the best news is that the major labels have made their own music nearly impossible to use on podcasts.

That's right: podcasts are a major-label free zone.

How Podcasting Works

Podcasts are like internet radio shows. They are simply sound files, usually MP3s. In fact, anyone with a computer and a microphone can make one using free recording software such as Audacity . The magic isn't in making the MP3, it's in the distribution mechanism. Podcasts use feeds similar to blogs (using RSS or Atom) that allow programs like iTunes to subscribe to them and automatically download shows. It's similar to how a Tivo will automatically record a show except listeners can download the episode any time after it is released without having to wait for a "broadcast". Also, listeners can go back and hear all of the previous episodes if they want to.

Since anyone can make a show, there are podcasts about every topic you can imagine. To get an idea of the variety, go on PodcastAlley.com or PodcastPickle.com and search on any topic that you are interested in; from the profound to the profane, from the popular to the picayune, podcasts cover it all. Since podcasts are released through the Web, they have a global reach. While some have only a handful of listeners, others have hundreds of thousands. And, best of all, podcast listeners are more engaged than a causal radio listener since they've actively sought out the content.

Getting Podcast Play

The simplest way to get podcast play is to make your music "podsafe"-- a general, non-legal term that lets podcasters know that they can use your music in their shows. Since copyright law sets everything to "all rights reserved", telling podcasters that your music is podsafe lets you carve out an exception so they can use your music and not get sued. Or, if you want to be formal, license the song under a Creative Commons license.

To make it easy for podcasters to find your music, you can register songs at a podsafe music collective—websites that make it easy for musicians and podcasters to find one another. Podcasters routinely go to sites like music.podshow.com or podsafeaudio.org to find music. If you join these collectives, read their agreements carefully and make sure that you are comfortable with the rights you are granting to your music in order to turn them podsafe. In return, podcasters must tell their fans who the band is, and link to you (more than you ever get from a radio station.)

Another way to get play is to contact podcasters directly, usually with just a friendly email. While there are music podcasts, you will get better exposure and have an easier time getting played on non-music podcasts. Your songs will stand out better, since they often play just one or two feature songs in the middle of their show. According to PodcastAlley.com, the current top 50 popular podcasts are not music podcasts, instead covering topics such as politics, Harry Potter, and learning Spanish. Most likely, these popular podcasts have tens or hundreds of thousands of listeners--and have a need for music.

We have two suggestions if you get a request: Firstly, give them a high-quality WAV version of your song. There's nothing worse than hearing your song garbled because the MP3 you sent them got re-encoded as an MP3 a second time. Secondly, mention each podcast play in your own blog and website to give the podcaster exposure to your fans in return. That makes it even more likely that the podcaster will start requesting more of your songs—something that happens the more you get played. We found that after years of doing this, and getting play, they now come to us looking for music. Something we're happy to give them.

Just think, when was the last time a radio station asked you for your music?

 

Steve Spiro is the VP Marketing at Myxer.com, the leading provider of mobile content. He has over 30 years of marketing experience, having worked at both global corporations and technology start-ups. He spent 15 years at Motorola in various senior management roles both in the U.S. and Japan, and also helped lead 4 Internet start-ups over the last 12 years.

 

How many of your fans have cellphones?   It’s almost a rhetorical question these days.  There are over 250 million cellphones in just the U.S. alone (over 3  billion worldwide) so there’ a real good bet that it’s close to 100%. 

ringtones create great word of mouth buzz every time a bands’ fan phone rings.   Similar to word of mouth buzz, mobile content can create viral online buzz by sharing widgets and links. Ringtones, wallpapers, mobile videos, etc. can be offered from your website, your MySpace page or sites with large communities that focus on offering mobile content to their audience. A vital part of a bands success depends on their ability to direct their fans to their physical, online, and mobile offerings.

Beyond just online and word of mouth buzz, artists can promote their mobile content on all of their flyers, promotional items, stickers, T-shirts, album covers and more. You can create customized text codes for each of your ringtones or wallpapers and promote those codes directly from stage or on any of your printed materials.  This has a great impact on the fan that is just discovering your music for the first time because they can leave the show with your music on their phone to take home with them. A great guerilla marketing campaign would be to create stickers that only feature customized texting codes for free ringtones, then place them around you local area in bars, on stop signs, and hard to reach places on college campuses; then see how many hits you get.

Traditionally the ringtone industry only dealt with the hits thus providing a market where $1.99 or $2.99 ringtones were the only way to get new ringtones to fans’ phones. As more artists begin to offer ringtones and fans find new ways to create their own ringtones we have found that the promotional value of the ringtone can outweigh the money generated from just sales alone. You may choose to give free ringtones either as part of your promotional efforts, or as means to build up your list.   You can even use the free ringtones to help drive sales of digital downloads from iTunes, Rhapsody, Amie Street, etc. or to help sell other merch.

Speaking of lists, indie bands are also creating their own mobile fanlists so they can access their advocates right on the day they are performing to get additional people to hear them play at the venue. New trends in the online and mobile music industry have all pointed to the ability to engage your audience with updates and announcements as a very valuable tool to work with other online and mobile businesses. If you have the ability to get your core fans to download your new release or buy tickets to your shows just by keeping up on your email and text messaging updates you will have the power to run successful publicity and marketing campaigns very easily.

It literally takes only a few minutes to get your MP3’s converted into ringtones and many services are free.  Plus, your fans---virtually on any phone on any carrier worldwide will have access to your content.   You don’t have to try and fight to be on a carrier’s “deck”.   Why not take advantage of this excellent marketing tool?

The future is a mobile future and it’s here now

• Legitimize your band as cutting-edge and ready for advancing mobile technology.
• Interacting with fans via the mobile phone will start to create awareness of the mobile phones’            potential to close the gap between artists and fans.
• The mobile phone will become a place where artists can handle fan education, sales, publicity, promotions, street team management, and more.

 

 

John Doe is the founder of the seminal Los Angeles punk group X, a solo artist and actor. John answers questions from our community members in the WWJDD? blog. Photo by Autumn de Wilde.

 

A Question from Jen in Atlanta

Hello John,

I was thrilled to finally get to see X on tour this year. The band was incredibly tight and the energy of the show was "off the hook"! I'm in the process of forming a new band and wanted to get your take on what to look for in bandmates. Everyone in the last band I was in shared an interest in the same type of music, had similar favorite bands etc. But once we started playing together regularly it became clear we all couldn't be more different in our approach, work ethic, songwriting and so on. Needless to say it didn't work out well in the end. What's the best way to find out if new potential bandmates might be a fit? A friend suggested I put together a list of questions to ask but I'm afraid the "vibe" of that process could be a real turnoff for people who might be a great fit.

I would love to hear what you think.

Thanks,

Jen

hey Jen,
  Yeah a questionnaire might be way too much like a job interview or some Harmony.com dating service, so . . . NO.  How about dinner & drinks?  How about just hanging out for several evenings & see if you actually do see things similarly?  how about playing cover songs in yr living room? Always trust yr intuition.  Be sure you're in a big enough city to have a "talent pool" that's large enough. There are always exceptions but it's rare that you find everyone all at once. Most bands that I know have grown over a period of time.  A gtr player here, a singer there, a drummer etc, you get my point.  There is something to be said for fate & it seems that the best combinations & meetings have that as an element.
best of luck, hope this helps
& as always, thanks for writing 
JD

 PS: Make sure to vote on November 4^th. It’s important.

If you have questions for John Doe about music, the music business or life feel free to email them to wwjdd@knowthemusicbiz.com.

For more information on John Doe check out theejohndoe.com or YepRoc.com .

 

John Doe is the founder of the seminal Los Angeles punk group X, a solo artist and actor. John answers questions from our community members in the WWJDD? blog. Photo by Autumn de Wilde.

Dear friends of WWJDD,

This message could be one word long; VOTE!  That's my main message.  But a bit deeper lies what you're voting for or against.  Someday when we meet in some night club we'll discuss this at length but right now I urge you to go to the media, websites, internet blogs, friends & family to get the facts, however fluid they may be.  You're smart & can separate the lies from the truth (also fluid) & I'm sure you will vote for the right guy . . . no, not the one who suspends his campaign every time there's a dip in his poll numbers or some crisis he must attend (not really his job), uses falsehoods in adverts or agrees w/ 90% of Pres GWB's policies.  Please VOTE & vote for someone who can restore our FAITH & HOPE in this country.  BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT AS A CITIZEN & VOTE!  THIS MORE IMPORTANT NOW THAN EVER.

Thanks for allowing me a little soap box time & for your support. Below is a list of the different state's voter registration deadlines.

yours in solidarity,

John Doe

p.s. get yr slacker friends to register & vote too!

State	Voter Registration Deadline
Alabama	Fri, Oct. 24
Alaska	Sun, Oct. 5 (postmark by Sat, Oct. 4)
Arizona	Mon, Oct. 6
Arkansas	Mon, Oct. 6
California	Mon, Oct. 20
Colorado	Mon, Oct. 6
Connecticut	Tues, Oct. 21
Delaware	Sat, Oct. 11
District of Columbia	Mon, Oct. 6
Florida	Mon, Oct. 6
Georgia	Mon, Oct. 6
Hawaii	Mon, Oct. 6
Idaho	Register at Polls
Illinois	Tues, Oct. 7
Indiana	Mon, Oct. 6
Iowa	Fri, Oct. 24 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Kansas	Mon, Oct. 20
Kentucky	Mon, Oct. 6
Louisiana	Mon, Oct. 6
Maine	Tue, Oct. 21 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Maryland	Tue, Oct. 14
Massachusetts	Wed, Oct. 15
Michigan	Mon, Oct. 6
Minnesota	Same Day Registration at polling place
Mississippi	Mon, Oct. 6
Missouri	Wed, Oct. 8
Montana	Mon, Oct. 6 (or same day at elections office)
Nebraska	Fri, Oct. 24 (mail by Fri, Oct. 17)
Nevada	Tue, Oct. 14
New Hampshire	Same Day
New Jersey	Tues, Oct. 14
New Mexico	Tues, Oct. 7
New York	Fri, Oct. 10
North Carolina	Fri, Oct. 10
North Dakota	N/A
Ohio	Mon, Oct. 6
Oklahoma	Fri, Oct. 10
Oregon	Tue, Oct. 14
Pennsylvania	Mon, Oct. 6
Rhode Island	Sat, Oct. 4
South Carolina	Sat, Oct. 4
South Dakota	Mon, Oct. 20
Tennessee	Mon, Oct. 6
Texas	Mon, Oct. 6
Utah	Mon, Oct. 6 or in person Tue, Oct. 28
Vermont	Wed, Oct. 29
Virginia	Mon, Oct. 6
Washington	Sat, Oct. 4 (or until Mon, Oct. 20 in person)
West Virginia	Wed, Oct. 15
Wisconsin	Wed, Oct. 15 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Wyoming	Can register at polls

If you have any questions about registering or voting contact your Secretary of State. Click here to for a complete contact list by state at Rock The Vote.

If you have questions for John Doe about music, the music business or life feel free to email them to wwjdd@knowthemusicbiz.com.

For more information on John Doe check out theejohndoe.com or YepRoc.com.

 

 

Matthew Ryan first debuted in 1997 with May Day (A&M Records) and since, has amassed an impressive catalog of critically lauded major label, DIY and indie releases to date. Matthew Ryan vs The Silver State is Ryan's 11th record released by Brooklyn indie 00:02:59. Photo by Bob Delevante.

I'm in a mood today. So this could read grumpy, or even curmudgeonly (if that's a word).Things are good, things are above the waterline. Work is good, I'm writing, I just scored a television show and there's more ahead. I just released a new song called Some Streets Lead Nowhere via iTunes and I'm finding there's a new flux of listeners finding me. My last tour was successful, more and more people coming out and singing along. My listeners are beginning to help me tell my story. And I'm genuinely moved by this new migration of intimate advocacy. It's a humanizing hum in all the flash and adverts. But there's a part of me that continues to feel unsatisfied in the new lawlessness of music and the way it's internalized.

I don't wish to mourn the horse-drawn wagon vs. the automobile. But things have changed, and there's no going back. The days we knew are a boutique, progress isn't always progress. Often it's what's expedient or more thoroughly marketed.

I miss the tactile nature of music. The submersing seduction of artwork. The smell of the ink on paper with the images and the liner notes. The large speakers, the console, the ritual of removing the plastic wrap and inserting the breathe of a world changed by someone's ability to say and sing something. I miss it. It's what I wanted for my work. I wanted it to exist for those that needed it, and I wanted my work to hopefully confide and insist that things are always on the verge of exploding into a perfect opportunity. I'm confused by the homogenized experience of downloading music now. There's no physicality to it now. There's no unique sensation to the event. It's a click and a few seconds and then a declaration of war vs. instant judgment. Now, the quality of music itself has been compromised for speed of delivery. The system of delivery is rarely gonna mug you like a sudden rain or burst of sunshine will. It's more of a cute little machine that looks more like it could light a cigarette rather than unleash Love Will Tear Us Apart, Positively 4th Street or Keep On Rockin' In The Free World on you.

But it is amazing isn't it? Even with all the new traffic online, and as compromised as technology has made the width and clarity of recordings, songs still arrest you. Anonymous and handicapped, they still take over a room, shake you, force you to shake your ass or stop cold in reflection, cry and smile. Songs. You can't fucking kill them. And if you're song is good enough, honest enough, clear enough.... It will create a universe all its own through the migration and delivery in cold places like email and Yousendit. And on the end of those strange transmissions lie ears and a heart still wanting to be moved.

So I say, give your music away. Not all of it, but consider which song of yours at this moment is the ONE song you'd want anyone to hear. That's the song you should unlock the cage for. Be smart. Pay your rent. Work hard. Stay open and hopeful. Don't buy into subscriptions and donations and other silliness, If your songs are good enough they will speak for themselves. You should lean for life outside of your cult. People value what moves them. If you engage people, they will engage you. And eventually they will tell your story for you.

When we do our jobs, when we deliver on our promises, we're rewarded. I suggest that we understand that. Listeners, lovers of music, want artists that full fill their promise. And in return, they understand the reality of it. They will become patrons of your work. They'll come to your shows. They'll buy your t-shirts. They'll pass your music along with genuine heart and advocacy. Because even still, music is one of the few things that can connect, comfort and rile us in such a pure way. It has value because (watch out, this is gonna get redundant) when it has value, it has value. It's indefinable, scary and dangerous. The new world can't be bought. At least the halls of truly meaningful music cannot be bought. The Jonas Brothers and other drivel will always exist. It's brainwashing. It's bought and designed and sold and bought and re-invented and sold again. But the halls of the meaningful have to carve their own path, it has to exist ultimately based upon its merits and some collective willingness to understand or feel it. Those merits are cousins to magic, and it depends on its ability to confide something that everyone knows, but can't manage the words let alone a melody. That's the work of artists. You gotta be willing to release those songs like a bird into that great wide open. Cause you know, if you love something, set it free. If it never returns, it was never yours. If it returns to you, it's yours forever.