I sent this e-mail to my musicians list:

Hey,

I was thinking the other day… “What does
it really take to be a successful musician or
songwriter, and why do people struggle all the time?”

Here in the UK, we’ve recently been having
some pretty awesome weather (I love the sun).
So cherishing the moment, I went for a
walk round my local park.

I sat on the bench, I got out my notebook, and
I began to doodle about what it really takes.
There were certain things that kept popping
up again and again, and you could divide them
up into… (1) creating a road map of the
things you need to do, and (2) characteristics
that you need to have. I’m going to write
some of them out here.

1) You’ve got to have GREAT song and music.
Without this, of course, you haven’t passed
the first hurdle. I’m including in this point
the recording, production and full preparation
of the music.

2) Then grow a following of people interested
in your music. Sign up with FanBridge or something
similar to get yourself a list. Probably the most
important point too, because it’s these people
that are going to put bread and wine on your table.

It’s these people that will socially share and ‘Like’
your work all over the web. And it’s these
people that will jump up and down (or whatever
they do) at your gigs.

3) Play gigs (for musicians). The more gigs you
play, the more you’re recognized. Sure, it can
be difficult to get paid all the time, but if you’re
starting out, settle for the opportunity alone.

Once you’ve got a paid gig in a location, try
to negotiate a recurring opportunity there…
once a month, once a fortnight, once a quarter.
Become a firm regular there. Learn the Zone
Booking strategy too (more below).

4) Get social, online. Have a site set up. Use
Hostbaby.com (wonderful, easy-to-follow
setup for muso sites). Get to Facebook and
set up your Music page. Sign up and Twitter.

5) Get your music videos online. They don’t have
to be professionally created videos. They just
need to show your music. Get a Flip camera
really cheap from Amazon, and get a friend
to record your practices, gigs, and performances.

Put these up on YouTube, give the videos
related tags and let them go viral. Share them
on your Facebook and Twitter. Email them to
your list. Videos are AWESOME at generating
interest and connection with the artist.

More than the action steps above (and there
are many more you could be doing)… I had
this MAIN point also written in my journal…

PERSEVERANCE.

How important is this?! Pretty much every
musician who has made it successful hasn’t had
it easy – whether they have gone it alone, or
they’ve had huge record deal backing. Sure, things
don’t always go right, but each time it goes
wrong is just a lesson in disguise.

I know musicians that are 57 years old still prodding
along, doing their best, taking their lessons,
making changes and creating results. These are
the same musicians that have “struggled” for the
last 40 years! I salute these people – because it’s
their constant and never-ending persistence
that gets them the result they want.

Successful musicians and songwriters are always
learning – from mentors, from fellow musicians,
managers, record labels, attending conferences
and further training. They’re always trying to
improve. They are doing the best they can at all times.

Another thing that’s really important is
MONEY MANAGEMENT. I used to be poor at
it, until I made a conscious effort to improve
how I treat, manage, save, spend and make
money. A lot of musicians don’t pay any importance
to this… We all hear the stories of those
multi-millionaire artists that go broke, only to
think, where could all that money possibly go!

I have more to say about all of this, but this message
is getting a bit long so I’ll leave it for another
time. I’m quite intrigued about what goes on in the
mind of successful musicians versus the mind
of those so-called “struggling” musicians.

Before I end, I want to let you know about
something very special coming up.

****************
FOUR FREE GIFTS – worth $388

I’m going to be giving away some of
my best training materials for free,
including these four elements:

TRAINING #1 (value: $147)
“How To Make Six Figures With Your Music Business” DVD

TRAINING #2 (value: $147)
“How To Get More Gigs” DVD

TRAINING #3 (value: $47)
“49 Music Promotion Tips” PDF Report

TRAINING #4 (value: $147)
“How To Launch Your Music Record Successfully” PDF Report

****************

I’ll tell you more in another e-mail on Monday 19th.

Keep your eyes open for it

All the best,
Kavit

Leave a comment below on what you think it takes to be a successful musician and songwriter.

I have been speaking to a lot of music teachers recently – some of them are active musicians who also teach to create a side income; others are full-time music teachers. Most of the people I meet are really passionate about what they do. However, many of them struggle.

They struggle to get new students. They struggle to create awareness about their instruments (if it’s rare) or to get the word out about themselves (if it’s a crowded market). Many struggle to generate income from their teaching. Many struggle to use new media to generate more students and revenue. Others just aren’t aware of the best music teaching techniques available today.

I have a question to ask, and I’d really value your input. I am putting the final touches on a free report specifically for music teachers, and I’d like to hear from you before I get it out. It is a high quality report – and has had some great reviews from it’s initial feedback rounds. And if you like my work, and any of my previous free reports/ebooks and paid training, you’ll find this really good for your music teaching business.

As a music teacher, what are your most pressing challenges and struggles? What do you find really difficult – and would like guidance in?

Please let me know by leaving a comment in the box below.  I really appreciate your time.

-Kavit

I’ve released a new 2-page document sharing the seven steps to musopreneurship.

It is a complete game plan to getting your music career to the next level.

Click here to download the Seven Steps to Musopreneurship PDF.

(Sign up on the right if you’re not on the mailing list for a special announcement on Tuesday 20th)

And be sure to leave your thoughts and comments below please.

Press Play To Watch The 2009 Holiday Message From Kavit Haria:

FREE Teleclass With Kavit Haria on Mon 4th January 2010:
Strategies For Kickstarting Your Music Career In 2010.
Click Here To Book Your Place

This post is inspired by a recent post at the CNET blog in which they debate between Myspace and Facebook – the two social networking giants – and which will outperform the other in 2010.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

• I believe Facebook will still be ahead of Myspace in 2010, just as it was this year. Facebook is aesthetically much better, and its clean interface allows users to navigate the website much better. Myspace, on the other hand, needs to clean up and look a bit better.

• Facebook is a community. Myspace still hasn’t thought of itself as a real community; it’s not as easy to discuss, contact your members and communicate with friends as it is on Facebook.

• Facebook opened up its API for developers to create applications. Myspace hasn’t yet, as far as I’m aware. I do believe, however, that Myspace will open up completely in 2010, allowing people to create applications that engage with the website and allow people more chance for interactivity.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

1. Which do you use more – Myspace or Facebook – and why?
2. What do you think will happen to these two social giants in 2010?

Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments below…

I have discussed in many articles my views on using social media and networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as a means to get regular streams of new visitors to your website so you can continue to build your community and mailing list. 

The idea is that all these Web 2.0 websites are user-generated community portals where you can set up profiles and pages to showcase your music and your information. People, friends, and their friends, can become a friend or fan of your page, read and listen to your music and then possibly click on your web link to visit your website. 

I wanted to create a diagram that showed how I think this should all work, but came across one which looks even better than what I would be able to create. This diagram was created by Tom Williams of the Hit Singularity blog.

The chart above is brilliant, and although I wouldn’t alter it, I would point out that there are just too many tools that you would end up wasting all your time on them if you don’t plan it out accordingly and figure out what to do. My preferences are to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to generate your traffic to your website and blog so you can build an e-mail list of fans.

What do you think of this diagram? Does it help you?

I’m writing this post inspired by Bruce Warila’s 3 page white paper on the same theme written for Hypebot.

Every single day I see new music start ups coming out of thin air and promising to be the next big thing for musicians – platforms to sell downloads, ways to sell merchandise, mailing list software, blog aggregators, social networks, and more. Each one is headed by a very enthusiastic team that has received funding from someone or a group of venture capitalists. Each one is excited by the potential of what’s going to happen.

But a year or two down the line, sometime even just months, the investment dollars that have gone in are no way to be seen, not even in the form of healthy returns. Sometime there’s not even a break even point to consider because the losses are just too strong. Bruce points out that most of these businesses end up running into the major label wall that causes them to stunt growth or not move forward in the direction they want. I agree.

Economist and musician Krzysztof (aka Faza) doesn’t agree with Bruce’s paper. He presents an alternative chart as shown below as to how the model works. He explains his thoughts in detail here.

I prefer this model to the original created by Bruce. This one very clearly explains where your investment should go. Any investment you get should be first to generate exposure and promotion and then to create your product. I don’t agree with spending any investment on building brands or things like that.

Read the paper here (pdf) and then let me know your thoughts…

Here at InsiderMusicBusiness.com, we’re introducing Ed Teja as our new Featured Writer. Ed has already started to write in the last few weeks and as he continues I would like to get to know him a bit more and where he’s taking his writing with this blog. I asked him five questions, and here are his responses:

1. Ed, what’s your background in the music industry?

At first I played for the love of it–high school bands, playing in coffee houses, anywhere there was an audience. Songwriting followed almost immediately, although mostly just to have material that I liked to sing. As music became a more significant part of my life, I studied arranging formally, and took jazz guitar seminars in Los Angeles with Howard Roberts.

Mostly I traveled a lot. That exposed me to a variety of music and gave me the chance to play in bars and other venues in Asia and The Caribbean. In Hong Kong, a friend and I started an outrageous blues band (we played the Hong Kong Convention Centre) and although he is now in Canada and I am in the US, we still collaborate on outrageous music. Moving back to the US got me playing new venues in the US and Canada (I was featured on TV Ontario), including a number of blues and folk festivals, but I grew disenchanted with earning my living playing live. That’s when I really focused on songwriting as serious business. I managed to place some songs I had already recorded in television shows and got hooked.

Today I work through a number of music libraries, write (and cowrite) songs for some emerging artists, and I am cowriting a number of songs with the lovely singer (in every sense of the word) Victoria Lagerstrom (www.victorialagerstrom.com) for her second CD. I’ve also been writing music for videos. I placed a song in a small budget DVD and since have done the music for a number of promotional CDs for book authors. I am also working with some other video makers on some speculative projects. It is all great fun.

2. You’ve been involved for 25 years or more so you’ve seen over a length of time the changes in the music industry. Where do you think the music industry is going? What’s the trend saying?

The way people use and value music is the biggest change. Music is so pervasive in our lives, there is so much that is available, that paying the going rate for a CD doesn’t seem to offer value. Clubs increasingly have trouble charging a cover for live music. this forces musicians, songwriters, music publishers, everyone in the business to be more creative and more businesslike. Like any other change, it has its ups and downs. If someone is comfortable in a niche, they hate to see it go, but change is the currency of the music business, whether you are talking about the music or the way it is presented and marketed.

3. As a songwriter, what do you think is missing from most songwriters knowledge and repertoire these days and what guidance can you give to them?

Most songwriters, myself included, often write songs for themselves. While there is nothing wrong with that, if you want to be successful you need to understand the market you are writing for. Success demands that you develop a feel for the market. And the term “market” is an elusive one, because it includes current trends in the musical genre as well as the changing tastes of the listeners–the consumers (although that term isn’t always appropriate), and the musical formats that are being used. It means understanding the role of video in this market. So the short answer is that what is missing from the knowledge base of many, especially beginning songwriters is how to find out what is going to be needed tomorrow, and then how to create that.

4. What are the kinds of topics you are going to be covering on the InsiderMusicBusiness.com blog over the next few weeks and months?

To address this problem of understanding the markets, I plan to look a lot at various approaches to keeping your finger on the pulse of the business and the genres. I will look at a variety of ways you can get your songs out there, and a lot of what it takes to be competitive. I am going to let some colleagues speak about their experiences in breaking into specific markets, whether it is writing for television or creating songs for artists.

We will take a look at cowriting, which is a specialized form of networking, and how networking in general applies (or doesn’t) to songwriters. And, related to that, we will examine how songwriters need to prioritize their time if they are going to have any songs to take to market. How do you build and organize your song catalog? Do you write songs on speculation, or place them for credit only? These are not simple issues.

The overall intention is to inject some common sense into the business end of things, so the songwriter who is just starting can learn to determine which of the services available are serious, and which are just a way for songwriters to spend money they don’t have.There are many great resources in books and online, unfortunately a number of the people and places that cater to songwriters do little for the money they charge, and are mostly good at finding new things to charge you for.

As we get feedback from readers, I will research answers to their questions and offer strategies to their dilemmas. My hope is that the site will become increasingly interactive.

5. If you had to give one piece of wisdom or advice to upcoming talented musicians, artists and songwriters, what would it be?

Plan to be in the business for the long haul and never stop learning. That sounds like two things, but they are inseparable.

Click here to read posts by Ed Teja at the InsiderMusicBusiness.com blog.

Jim Townsend is a musician. He joined the Musicians Mastermind 2.0 program a few months ago. As we’re about to open up the class again on Thursday 6th August for a new intake, I wanted him to tell you his story and how the course has helped him. Read it in his own words here:

“Right before I discovered your program I had always felt deficient in marketing my music and was a little jealous. I made stabs at marketing myself and my shows but it never seemed to work. Then I discovered your program.

“The initial things you said captured my attention and I decided to sign up, though I couldn’t really afford it. I took a leap of faith. As a result, I finished my web site which led me to another paying job designing a web site for some one else. This has led to another site I will be doing. This is really not what I set out to do but it is helping me none the less.

” I perform a lot (4-5 timers a week) as a solo artist and with a band. Because of the course I decided to try out what I was learning and produce a “special” show to see if I could get more interest going in my band. My band is called the Jim Townsend Blues Band and we play blues, but I can play nearly any style so we decided to branch out. Our first show was a Beatles Tribute Show. We sold out the club and we made money. I also made extra as the promoter. I managed to get our advertising out on the radio, did a live spot, and in the newspaper through the clubs ad. I put information about the show on my web site and generated a lot more traffic than usual.

“Six weeks later we did another show that went just as well. I Advertised it the same way. This last Saturday we completed our 4th show and it was amazing. There is a local music and art newspaper in our area that has a man who write little one liner blurbs about up coming shows. Until this last show I could not get him to include us in his articles. I tried and tried. This last week he wrote a complete paragraph about my past shows and the splash I was making in the local community. This was a big thing for me because my band got mentioned very favorably. We are a blues band but now we are known as the party band that can play “anything”.

“In 6 months my band has gone from local obscurity to the point that any time I contact a new venue about booking, they have already heard of us! This increased exposure has increased my musical income and in fact more than paid for the course. I decided this morning, before getting your email that I was going to go back and complete the course. I think in some way I may have already known a lot of what you were teaching but you put it all together in a way that helped me work it all at once and gain some momentum, I work at promotion every day and it really does pay off. Thank you for what you do and good luck to you in your endeavors.”

-Jim Townsend, www.screamingjimmy.com

Want To Join The Next MM2.0 Class When We Go Live On Thursday 6th August?

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