A Canadian musician is getting tons of North American press because of a viral video on YouTube. As the story goes, last year, while on a United flight, the baggage carriers were throwing around his band's guitar cases and ended up breaking a guitar. United wouldn't pay for it, so he wrote a song and made a video...
If you weren't there to live through most of his accomplishments, maybe it's hard to understand, but I think eulogy below does a pretty good job of showing why Michael Jackson is considered to be such an incredible entertainer.
As you know, running a music business is can be extremely time-consuming. Whether the business is flourishing or just getting off the ground, there are countless tasks you must do to ensure its success. Most of the time one person cannot, and should not, attempt to do everything alone.
You can get help in your music business and increase your bottom line by outsourcing tasks that you don't want to do, don't know how to do, or don't have the time to do.
By taking the time to find good people to outsource tasks to, you can almost be certain that you'll save both time and money in the long run and increase your revenue greatly over the life of your business.
Many people, including musicians, are control freaks who want to keep an eye on everything. However, if you want to scale your business, this isn't possible. There are only so many hours in a day. If you want to play with the big boys, you're going to have to bring in more people to help you run things and you're going to have to trust them.
Use these quick tips to help you get started, even if you're on a tight budget.
Quick Tip #1: Examine Your Budget and the Going Rate
When running an independent music business, it is always important to define a budget. A common error is to set aside more money than you can afford when you're first beginning to outsource projects. A smart idea is to allocate a percentage of the money you are bringing in only for outsourcing. This way you'll be able to steadily grow your profits by leveraging the work of others.
For instance, if you decide to reinvest 10% of your profits into outsourcing, then, as your income grows, the amount you spend on outsourcing will grow, as well.
The size of your budget is not what is important; you need to figure out how to use this money to benefit your music business in the best way possible. This will change depending on the tasks you are outsourcing.
Visit freelancing sites like Elance.com, Scriptlance.com, or oDesk.com. Notice which types of projects people are bidding on and how much they are offering to complete them. See then how this fits with your allocated budget.
Not all of the projects you see on these sites will be things you could use in your music business, but general aspects of promoting an online business, such as driving web traffic or search engine help, will absolutely come in handy for you. Other tasks, such as graphic design or web programming, are also needed by most musicians.
Quick Tip #2: Be Honest with Yourself
After making the decision to outsource, make sure you are honest with your decision.
Are the tasks that you have decided to outsource truly something that you cannot do yourself? If it is something that you may be able to accomplish, it would save you from wasting money from your budget. This would also allow you to allocate another task for outsourcing either now or in the future when the need arises.
Take the time to really think about what tasks need to be outsourced and what just might not be a favorite task to perform yourself. To differentiate between the two can save you money; time and can get your true priorities accomplished quicker.
With that said, your ultimate goal should be to outsource everything that other people can do. As a musician, you should focus your time on what others can't do, such as songwriting or performing.
Quick Tip #3: Search for the Best People
It is in your best interest to research before hiring a contractor. Remember that you are working within your budget, so outsourcing haphazardly can result in a loss of precious funds, especially if you need to have the work redone.
Take your time and do not make an uninformed decision. Use all available resources, ask for references, and speak to others, visit websites, look at samples, anything you can do to get a clearer perspective on someone you are considering. If you take this task seriously, you will certainly improve your odds for positive results.
I suggest you give a small task to three people to test them and find out which is the best fit for you before investing a large amount of money with any one person. For instance, if you need links to your site, hire 3 separate people to get 5 links each. Use this small assignment to figure out which links are best for your site as well as which person was the easiest to work with. You can continue with whomever “wins” the challenge.
Quick Tip #4: Consider Trades and be Creative
If you need to outsource tasks but have used your allocated funds for the month, there are other options. Simply use your imagination to figure out alternative ways to outsource.
One way may be to trade services with fans. It is likely that a task that you can finish in ten minutes may take someone else ninety minutes and vice-versa. Also, keep in mind that fans love to be part of a musician's success and will often work for little or no money, just to be part of something.
Offer to trade tasks. That way you are not only saving time but money as well. This is a great idea to build relationships with other musicians for future gig swaps.
For example, if you're in Nashville and you need promotion done in Memphis, find a band in Memphis to handle your business there. In exchange, you can handle their business in Nashville. You'll both save a lot of time and benefit from having an "insider" do the job.
Outsourcing on a budget isn't always easy, but it is possible. All you need to do is plan ahead, do your research and use your imagination to come up with win-win scenarios. This will help the process run smoothly and simply, ensuring that you will outsource again in the future.
Today is Independence Day in the United States, so I thought it was a great time to ask the question...
What does "independent" mean to you?
I'm not asking for any kind of "flag waving" or political answer... I want to know why you choose to release your music independently what that means to you as a creative person.
Leave answers below...
Here is an updated version of the same presentation, with extra footage at the end, which explains how these techniques can work for musicians who aren't as well known...
Thoughts? Post 'em below!
The blond in the photo to the left is my friend Celeste. The photo to the right is also Celeste, about 20 years ago.
What's changed in her life? A lot...
What hasn't changed? She's still crazy about New Kids on the Block. In fact, the only reason that photo to the right made it out of an old photo album is because she used it as part of a contest to win backstage passes.
On this tour, she's going to see the group in St. Louis, Memphis, Dallas, and Houston. But it's how she's going to see them that I find interesting.
Here are a couple of photos from her trip to last night's show in St. Louis...
What kind of person would decorate a car like this and drive hundreds of miles to see a show?
A superfan!
Let's face it... The music business is changing. It's easier than ever to download music for free, and while there are a lot of new and exciting ways for musicians to make money, album sales isn't necessarily one of them...at least when it comes to "casual" fans.
That's why it would be a smart strategy for you to work on developing relationships with fans who will buy your highend stuff again, and again, and again. Fewer fans, more money.
You're probably heard the "1000 True Fans" argument, which says you can make a pretty good living if you've got 1000 people spending $100/year with you.
It's true. You can make a good living with "1000 True Fans."
But what would happen if you focused on developing "500 Superfans" who would spend $300/year with you?
You've just increased your income by 50%, even though you only have half as many fans...
What if you could do both though? What if you could have "1000 True Fans" and another 500 people who would spend much more than average?
And what if you could have these relationships for 10 or more years?
You can...but you have to work on creating a solid foundation you can build upon.
My question to you... What are you doing to develop these "superfan" relationships?
Post comments below. I'll also be adding my own ideas over the next few weeks, so subscribe to this blog to make sure you don't miss anything.
Dolly Parton makes me proud to be from Tennessee. Not only is she amazing at both music and business, she is a total class act.
Any musician interested in establishing a rock-solid, long career, should really study what she's done and use it as a blueprint.
I suggest taking a look at her entry in Wikipedia and checking out the video below for starters...
More videos from Dolly...Are there any artists you feel handle business well and also do a good job of managing relationships with fans? Post 'em below!
As you probably know by now, a Minnesota woman was recently accused of pirating 24 songs.
Here is the list of songs she supposedly downloaded...
Vanessa Williams - Save The Best for Last
Sheryl Crow - Run Baby Run
Reba McEntire - One Honest Heart
Janet Jackson - Let’s Wait Awhile
Guns ‘n Roses - Welcome to the Jungle
Guns ‘n Roses - November Rain
Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar on Me
Bryan Adams - Somebody
Aerosmith - Cryin'
Linkin Park - One Step Closer
Green Day - Basket Case
Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
No Doubt - Hella Good
No Doubt - Different People
No Doubt - Bathwater
Sarah McLaughlan - Building a mystery
Sarah McLaughlan - Possession
Gloria Estefan - Rhythm is Gonna Get You
Gloria Estefan - Here We Arere
Gloria Estefan - Coming Out of The Dark
Journey - Faithfully
Journey - Don’t Stop Believin'
Destiny’s Child - Bills, Bills, Bills
Richard Marx - Now and Forever
Kind of kills your image of who is pirating music, doesn't it? The only thing better would have been some Sandy Patti and Carman...
The upside of Twitter is that everybody knows your business. The downside is that you look like an idiot when all you post about is eating, drinking, and reality television.
Are You Tweeting Away Prospects? has more thoughts on the subject.
As always feel free to post comments below...
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