I started to write a blog on how to write a press release, and realized that to fit everything in, I needed to break this into three parts. This one will cover what many of you might not realize is an important first step—establishing your PR message. (The next parts will talk about how to prepare the message and get it out there effectively.) While marketing messages can be about your latest CD or big gig, public relations is more theme based. This lets you ensure that you communicate a single idea that underlies everything you say about your music or band. And developing a good theme that will carry you over time requires thought and research. If you do it right, the marketing messages are going to provide a constant reinforcement of the overall PR theme.

Research? Sure. Do you really know why your fans like what you do? Can you state it in a single sentence without being silly and saying “cause we are good”? If not, you haven’t got your theme.

What is a theme? The theme is basically the story of your band. It sets out the thing, one thing, that makes your band different. Not unique (bad word anyway), just different. If another band playing similar music is in town, why should people spend their hard earned money on your gig? And right here comes the first difficulty.

Become an outsider

I am going to assume you don’t have the financial backing to hire an outside PR person. If you do, that can be a big help, but since you don’t, here is how to put on that person’s hat and become a PR person looking at your band from the outside. You must find important things that are of interest to your audience, not your mother or the rest of the band.

It is very important that one person be the PR person for the band, because this only works if there is a single, consistent story.  You can all discuss the idea and contribute to it, but one person should have the responsibility for maintaining its presence and consistency in all that you do.

The PR person has the rough task of finding an objective story. And it might not be the obvious one, or rather, the obvious story might not be the best for you.

Mastering two audiences

What makes PR tricky is that there are two audiences and they are layered. If you don’t get through the first layer, the second layer will never hear of you. The first audience layer is that of editors and music reporters. You need to develop a message that will make them feel that your band, your music is newsworthy. If possible you want an angle that will let the writer present you as a discovery.  Remember, the writer has an audience too, and they want interesting information on breaking trends and ideas.

So what does an editor want? He or she wants to know why you or your music, preferably both, are different from the other bands flooding the mailbox with PR and CDs. To this end, do yourself a very big favor and banish words like “best,” “hottest” and “new” from your vocabulary. These are superlatives that other people should use, not you. Editors are even more tired of them than everyone else. And by the way, even if you have the only punk band ever to use harpsichord and zither, you are NOT a unique punk band. Breaking the mold is great, and a good story hook, but “unique” and “punk” or any other genre, are incompatible terms. If it is unique, it isn’t punk, and so on. Pick your poison.

You probably want to go with a genre, and not make up your own. Typically, a punk bank using odd instruments is of greater interest than a Zydeco/Punk band. Not always, but an odd category is, in general, a harder sell. For one thing, many publications specialize in certain genres and you don’t want to give them an excuse not to run a story on you.

Keep it human

To reach the second layer audience, the readers of the story, you need to make sure your story has human interest. Even if you are doing modal jazz, readers are going to relate more to your human struggles than technical musical information. The fact that you play everything in Lydian scales is less interesting than the fact that you make your living running a dairy farm and got hooked on jazz when you learned that the Windows audio logo is in E flat.

But the question that must be answered is: “why do you do what you do?” So you do all the lead breaks on kettle drum and didgeridoo, so what? The thing that might be interesting is why you do that.

You will need to find a sounding board, because quite honestly, we all bullshit ourselves real well. Maybe you want to go where Miles Davis feared to tread, but are you truly doing that now, or just working toward it. Editors and writers of any experience survive by having well developed bullshit detectors. To get passed them, you need an honest story. It doesn’t need to be a madcap tale. It can be that you formed your band to pay the rent when your parents lost their jobs and you found a home in the blues. It can be simply that you make music cause you love it, or don’t know how not to. That is the underlying story. Then, the story behind the latest CD or gig becomes an episode in that bigger saga. The human interest builds over time, and the audience impatiently waits to hear what will happen next. In the best sense, it becomes a living drama.

And drama hooks audiences, both at the screening level and the readers.

But do remember that this story is one that, if it works, will cling to you, follow you everywhere, so it better be one that is true and that you want in the minds of fans and everyone else.

What stories have you created before, and what has worked well for you? Or perhaps, what challenges have you faced with your public relations campaign?

In response to my blog A Songwriter’s Marketing Strategy, Muhammed Babajide commented that he had written a number of songs, and then asked: “are these songs good enough, and if they are who would my contact be at the library? What do libraries use them for and when do I get paid?”

There are several important questions here, and the answers might be appropriate for a number of readers, so I thought I would take a break from my planned topics to answer them. In the course of thinking them through, I developed some generic rules that should lead you to your own unique answers, the same way music theory should lead you to creating your own songs. I’ve provided some links to other blogs in this series because together they provide a fuller picture.

1)      Are the songs good enough?
Actually this winds up being two questions, because there is the issue of the quality of the song itself and then one of the quality of the recording. I recently had a track rejected by a very fussy library that told me they thought the track was great but that they didn’t like the playing. Fair enough. Other folks loved it.

As I mentioned in the blog on The Seven Steps to Songwriting Success, you can use critiquing services to determine if your songs meet commercial standards (“good” probably isn’t the issue), as long as you can let the person doing the critique how you envision the song being used. Don’t send in a Hank Williams tune in and ask if the reviewer thinks Alicia Keys will sing it. You need to know your market. (Read the article for more ideas.)

As far as the quality of the recording itself goes, the best thing you can do is listen to the music samples on the sites of the music libraries and compare. Do you measure up? If you lie to yourself, it’s no good. If you don’t like the kind of music they have, I’d skip that library (different strokes for different folks and all that). And don’t be afraid to try songs out to test your judgment of how well they fit. For both parts of this question, the rule is: Get to know your market. That means study the music you are competing with.

2)      Who would my contact be at the library?

Some of this you will find in the blog on music libraries, I wrote a short time ago. If you go to their web sites, the contact information is usually there. If it isn’t clear, there is usually some kind of info@…. email address where you can ask. But the contact will be a catalog manager, or sometimes a music supervisor. The title doesn’t matter. The important part is directing the song to the person they ask you to send them to, in the format they ask for. Some libraries want mp3s (to start with), or they may ask for a CD, or a link to your web site. Here is the rule for this question: However they do business is the right way to do business with them.

3)      What do libraries use them for?

The real answer to this question is that libraries don’t use them at all. Libraries, like music publishers, find homes for songs. They are the connection between you and television, movie, video game, and video producers who need music. Some libraries come out of one of those industries, have good connections, and know exactly what their clients want. These tend to be very picky, and if you haven’t worked in those industries, you have a lot to learn before you will consistently connect.

Some libraries are more generic. They look for what they consider good music, and try to promote themselves as a source for it. Their success is less consistent, they probably generate less income (for you as well as themselves) than the higher end libraries, and both their catalog and client list is broader. This translates into more opportunities for composers and songwriters trying to break in. The rule that applies here is: Start with libraries that deal with the same kinds of clients you could deal with yourself if you had the contacts.

4)      When do I get paid?

Unfortunately, the answer here is complicated and best summarized as “it depends.” Libraries collect license fees for the use of your music and split that with you. A 50/50 split is common, but there are other ratios as well. Some libraries register your song under another name (see the article on retitling) and collect the publisher share of the performance money as well. There is no standard practice here, and what passes for standard changes constantly as libraries, like publishers and record labels, try to sort out the rapidly changing music business.

In general, you will paid your share of the license fee shortly after the library gets paid. How long that is after a deal is made depends to an extent on the accounting practices of the client. Get a big movie deal and they might string you out a bit to use your money for a little longer before they pay up.

The performance money payments depend on when the client files the cue sheet, when the video is aired or sold, and the reporting cycles of your PRO. In other words, until you have a lot of music in that pipeline, don’t hold your breath or run up your credit card.

So our last rule is: Don’t spend it until the check clears.

One of the difficulties of working in any artistic discipline is finding a balance between the art and business portions of your efforts. It isn’t so much the right brain versus left brain problem that we read so much about—both art and business efforts should combine both of these. After all, you want logic in your art and some creativity in your business to get the most out of ALL of your talents.

Typically, when making art, you want your creative side to have uncensored rein over your efforts and then be able to apply some intelligent editing and formatting to give it polish and coherency. In business, although it can be a step by step process, you want to be able to unleash your considerable creative talents to finding new approaches to business problems or obstacles. That is where your strength lies. You should be using all your resources for any problem you encounter in life.

The Balancing Act

The balancing act I am referring now to is much more basic. Simply put: both art and music require a great deal of energy and time. The balance is how and where you spend it.

Consider the simple idea of dealing with your marketing plan. We’ve done a couple of blogs to get you started with that effort. I suggested marketing strategies for songwriters and Kavit wrote an excellent piece on business plans .
Done correctly, these don’t take an enormous amount of time. But they do take some thoughtful effort and should be reviewed regularly (daily review of your goals helps you stay on track), and don’t replace your record keeping and bookkeeping. These aren’t the same, by the way. Record keeping involves maintaining a current list of your songs, contracts with music libraries and publishers, submissions wherever, registrations with your PRO, following up on cue sheet submissions, and anything else relevant. Bookkeeping is the accounting—where your money goes and comes from. Without maintaining your accounts you will dislike tax time even more than if you keep them.

On the other side, if you aren’t spending an enormous amount of time working on new music, studying your craft, and trying new things, how can you hope to do anything worth marketing?

Divide and Conquer?

One approach I’ve heard from successful folks is that they divide their time (however much it is) into studio (aka art) time and office time. They never mix the two. They mentally put on a suit and go to the office, and shut off the phone and all outside communication when they go in the studio.

That doesn’t work for me. I find myself working on a tune, and an opportunity pops up and I stop what I’m doing to evaluate it. My natural way of working is to be what computer folks call, interrupt driven. To that end, I have a music computer and music computer in the same workspace—both on. I often listen to tracks I am working on while doing the record keeping, or work on the bridge for a tune while waiting for a response to come back from an email to a music super or library.

Part of this approach has been a reaction to the way my life has developed. But I am used to it. My way might drive you nuts. The point is finding a strategy that works for you.

Einstein said that one definition of insanity was repeating your actions and expecting a different outcome. In short, the sane thing is to try different approaches and see what works. If something doesn’t work the first time, evaluate what you did to see if you gave it a fair shake. Remember that some parts of this songwriting business are not fun, but need doing.

Like writing music, experimentation should be the heart of your approach to this crazy career. Be flexible.

Prioritize Your Efforts

One technique that is taught in many business courses on efficient time management says that you should:

1. Make a list of all the things that need doing (not what you want to do, although some of the things better be things you want to do, or you are in the wrong business). These should be tasks, not goals—things that you need to do in the short term.
2. Prioritize your list. Not all of it, but go through it and pick the three most important.
3. Do the first one. The idea is that because the top job is the most important one, if you spend all day on it, that’s okay, because it is important. If you do nothing else, you have still done the most important thing (to you).
4. Do the next one.

Based on the results of your daily effort, you should make a new list every day. Ideally, do it at the end of your day so that the list waits for you the next morning.

I’ve used this approach and have been amazed at how much I can get done, and how it minimizes the time I waste. Let me know how you handle your balancing act.

As a songwriter, your main activity should be writing songs. Sure that sounds obvious, but there are so many activities that can distract you that sometimes actually writing songs gets the short end of the time allotment. After all, there are forums where you exchange information on songwriting techniques and business information, instruments to practice, new computer programs to learn, maybe gigs, and amid all that it is kind of nice to have a life as well. But in the end, it is songwriting that you are there for. And the product you create is your catalog.

The nature of your catalog depends entirely on you–your taste and skills. But there are some components that you should address. First are the various versions of songs that you should be creating. As we’ve discussed, if you are selling through libraries, then you are creating the “broadcast quality” recordings, whether you pay to have them done, or do them yourself. But consider the multiple uses of a song with video. Your song might be a theme song for a drama. Fine, but often, because the music is partly responsible for setting the mood, filmmakers like to have instrumental versions of the song to use elsewhere, subtly recapturing that mood. That means you need to have instrumental versions ready, and preferably in the library already. Some libraries will link the various versions of a song together. To increase the marketing possibilities, if the lyrics are right, consider having both male and female vocals. The storyline of a movie or television show can suggest a preference for one or the other. (Having both versions is also useful when pitching songs to artists.) If the song contains an instrumental hook, then short instrumental version could be useful. Consider 30 second, 45 second and 60 second cues from the recording.

If you work in a home studio, then you can do all these with fairly little effort. If you use an outside studio, it is good to think of them in advance. If you have to go back and ask for different versions, life can get expensive.

Once you have the song in its various forms, you need to do some paperwork. Being able to pitch a song correctly, or even loading information for a library database, requires more information than you might think of at first. It is a good idea to collect the information while it is fresh so that you don’t spend time trying to recall if that bass note was played by a tuba or a trombone.

Naturally, you are going to need the title and the duration of the song (and each version). You will need to determine its genre. Unfortunately, this can get tricky because different libraries use different choices. Some are rather broad (country, jazz, rock) whereas others will have terms you’ve never even heard of (“Jamaican techno salsa”). But you need to get your brain around a ballpark genre. Or maybe you work in only one area, like dance.

You will need to note information on the vocals: What language? Male or female (or duet)? You will need specific notes on the instrumentation. Although sometimes “rock band” is enough, sometimes the fact that the lead is a synth or a crumhorn makes a difference. Is that metallic ding from a set of bells or kalimba? It can matter if you suddenly see a call for rock music that feature crumhorn and kalimba. And such strange things do come up.

You will need to know the tempo of the song. Some libraries want to know the range, but some want the precise beats per minute. You will usually need to specify moods that the song conveys using word lists that go on forever. You will also, very importantly, need to say who the song sounds like. Is it a tune that could have been on a Beatles’ record? Or Stones? Coldplay gets a lot of requests lately. Often supervisors search on that first, so give it careful thought, even if you aren’t actually thinking in terms of your tunes as replacement songs.

My suggestion is that you create a form that contains all this information and fill it out when the song is recorded. Marketing your work is tough enough without having to generate all the information on the spot. And if you do nonexclusive deals with multiple libraries it will save you a lot of time in the long run. Then you can also note on the form which libraries are marketing the song for you and where you pitch it. Stick them in a loose leaf binder and its there when you want it again.

As you build your catalog of music that you want to place, targeting specific opportunities within film and television can provide a wealth of learning, grow your catalog, and possibly win you some placements.

If you are already working with music libraries, they can be a great source of leads for last minute opportunities, and often can require a rather sophisticated production in a short period of time. The reason is simple—nothing already in the catalog worked and the music supervisor is facing a deadline. If you have something or can produce something in time, you will stand a much better chance of getting the placement.

Creating for a specific target is a skill that takes practice. Interpreting the needs of a production on short notice must be learned. One friend, who composes for major television shows, laughs about being asked for “30 seconds of happy music.” But that is the job.

In addition to music libraries, there are a number of places you can go to find these kinds of leads and some specialize in the entry level work. Versus Media calls itself a film agent. For a small annual fee you are connected with independent filmmakers who email their requirements (and post them on the site). Many are students who could become name filmmakers later on. (Think networking.) The site HUMTOOis a music library and also a place where clients post requirements and sometimes video, tell a bit about their requirements, and you can submit your music for their consideration. If there is a video, you can see it with your music synched to it. The clients look for everything from songs, to intros, to background music. Taxi is another place that provides briefs for music that is needed, typically for higher end productions (meaning higher pay and more challenging standards), and their dispatch service is for music that is urgently needed. And many libraries post on job boards for their members, or email about special needs.

When you approach any “to order” composing task, the first thing you must do is carefully read the description of the requirements, which might even list the temporary song that needs to be replaced (often some well known song that is too expensive or not available). The information on the requirements is called the brief. The second thing you must do is follow the brief.

When I asked Steve Wheen, Director at HUMTOO what advice he could offer composers and songwriters, he said: “In HUMTOO’s music marketplace we often listen to fantastic music that isn’t successful for the projects. Why? It’s all in the brief. More often than not the content creator will have a really solid idea of the music track they are after, and no matter how hot the track is that you pitch, if it doesn’t match the brief, it’s not going to be successful. My advice to up and coming composers is stick to the brief.”

Yes, you might be able to give them something they hadn’t thought of, but they don’t really have the time for you to educate them. And avoid the beginner mistake of submitting instrumentals when songs are asked for, and vice versa. Remember, the submission isn’t about showing off your music—it is about meeting the needs of their movie or television show. Sometimes a sappy song is exactly the right thing.

Going after some of these opportunities can really enhance your skills and push you into using types of music and sounds that you wouldn’t gravitate to otherwise. I like them because they often take me out of my comfort zone.

Whether the jobs pay front end money or simply hold out the promise of money from your PRO down the road, they can build your credits, your contact base, and your confidence in hitting the target.

When you begin to look for a home for your music, whether your market is the listener, a music supervisor, or an A&R person, you need a marketing plan (not the same as your business plan). There is a fair amount of information about marketing on the web, but much of it doesn’t apply to music, but one place that you can learn a lot that is directly useful to you, is from looking at how book authors market their unpublished manuscripts and books.

This is effective because song marketing is moving in ways that book authors have had to function for some time. The marketing baton is passing from the label to the singer and songwriter (and pure songwriters have always had to do it). But book authors do the normal marketing and then some, making them about the best example of individual marketing ideas that I know. One author I know well is such an excellent promoter that she promotes all of her publisher’s books.

And author Linnea Sinclair , a science fiction writer with Bantam books, has a forum that she runs dedicated to her books. It gets a fair amount of traffic. (A note of special interest here. Linnea and I co-wrote a song for her book THE DOWNHOME ZOMBIE BLUES and I did music for a promotional video for her book FINDER’S KEEPERS.) Check out the sites of your favorite authors for ideas on things you can do. You can learn a lot about how to hustle (in the positive sense) there.

Most authors have at least some of their marketing strategy defined for them by publishers. According to experts (like my own agent), to get the attention of a publisher, even a small one, you must identify some core marketing items in your book pitch. These include: 1) the audience (both kind and size); 2) the competition; and 3) your action items. Let’s take a look at these in a little detail, because making this sort of proposal is a good exercise.

The first is the audience. Who are you writing the song for? Is it the college crowd? Baby boomers? Easy listening listeners? The answer to this question goes a long way in helping you target the right record label, movie opportunity, or artist. Although they have a more open door to submissions than many, sending love ballads to Rough Trade is a waste of time, energy, postage, and good will. If you are writing the song for yourself, well good for you, but that isn’t typically going to get you a hit (unless you are a recording artist making a personal statement).

What and who are your competition? To a degree this item is just to ensure you are aware of who is resonating with your market niche. You need to be paying attention. If you are asked for a song that sounds like a current hit in your genre, you need to understand the elements that make your tune competitive, a viable replacement, without being a copy. This requires an awareness of artists, content, arrangements, and production.

Action items are things you will do to get your work seen and heard. A book author might arrange their own book signings and get booked on talk shows. If you write a song for an artist, how will you get it to them? Do you know who is producing their next CD? Can you find out who manages them and make some initial contacts? Do you know one of their roadies or tour bus driver? If you want to get your music in movies, do you know anyone in that business? So much that you can do here is going to be through networking. And networking has interesting side issues.

Ride serendipity for all it is worth—someone you meet in one context might be of help in a completely different one. If a group demos your song, then gets a recording contract, they might want to perform your song. Promoting other songwriters and musicians can’t hurt and might produce some unexpected benefit. It’s good karma, if nothing else.

But keep action items active—each should require a positive effort on your part. And remember that what you can’t control is none of your business. If people don’t like your music, you won’t change their minds. Put your attention on the things you can control, like finding the people who share your musical sensibilities. So check out the ideas, make your written marketing plan, and get moving on your action items.

I hear this (or something along the lines of this) quite a lot: “I launched my CD about two months ago and sales have only trickled in, it’s been nothing spectacular. What went wrong, and what can I do to promote it and get more sales?” I respond with this: “What did you do in the six months running up to your CD launch?”

The answers vary, but usually along these lines… “I set up my Myspace page and just put up a few clips”… “I haven’t really done much, we’ve been busy recording”… “I did a few gigs but haven’t really performed any of this new material”… 

I rarely hear of independent musicians who devote hours upon hours to promote and market their new music months ahead of launch and frankly, you’re losing out and leaving a lot of money on the table if you’re not. 

In order to build up a successful launch during launch day and the following week, you’ve got to build up enough buzz to get people talking about it, getting juiced and marking their calendars for your launch ready to download or buy your CD. The ultimate record launch (or re-launch) is one that generates buzz, puts you in the papers, gets your music heard on radios and takes you up the charts. This kind of ultimate record launch can only happen when you plan and then act on that plan.

Nearly every musician is so juiced about releasing a music record that for the majority of the time, they forget about how important the release is and don’t plan it. I agree that I’d love it to be this way and hope that someone else can take care of it, but as independent musicians it’s important to remind ourselves that we’re music business owners and have to also take care of the planning as well.

The question is what should you do to build your buzz. Here are four quick ideas.

1. Start a blog. A blog is a great tool to use in cultivating relationships with your fans – starting new ones on the web and continuing relationships from your gigs. See this post for more: Do I need to blog as a musician?

2. Build your mailing list. Musicians Mastermind members, my audiences and readers know what a mailing list means to me: it’s probably the best way to tell how many fans you have and how many potential sales you’ll make with your launch. For example, if you have 1,000 subscribers, you have the potential to sell 1,000 downloads. I understand that other mediums such as the radio, TV, newspapers, websites and magazines can get you to hundreds of thousands of people – but the real fans are those who’ve subscribed. 

So make the mailing list a core feature of your promotional activities. Capture their details. Ideally their name, email and if possible, their contact number. The reason you’re doing this is so that when it comes to launch time and pre-launch offers, you already have a base of people you can offer this too!

3. Play regular gigs. Book a period of lots of gigs. Grow some momentum and grow your crowds. If you also play covers, use the gigs to also throw in some originals with some promotion of upcoming gigs, free downloads and launch information. That way you can also see what people think of your new stuff too. Get a friend to come along with a camera and video your entire show. Don’t worry too much about the quality, just get it all on video.

4. Upload all your recorded gig videos to YouTube and share them. Upload songs individually. Share them at your blog, share them with people who sign up. Offer them new videos on a regular basis to keep them coming back and checking out your music. The more they hear it, the more they’ll want to hear it and then download/buy it.

These are just four ways. There are lots more, of course. What have you done in the run up to any of your launches – what worked and what didn’t work? I’m interested in hearing how this has worked for you.