Alternate Payment: Try a Square Reader!

It's a quick response, used both as a sigh of disappointment and as an excuse to not buy your band's merchandise:

"Sorry, I don't have cash; all I've got is a card!"

Well, here to solve that pesky little sentence forever is...

Square is a portable card-reader that you link to your business' name and can use without monthly fees or extra charges. The device itself costs ten dollars to buy at a store, and is free if you ask the Square website to mail it to you. The only 'cost' is the percentage that Square takes of your card-based transactions, which is a little less than 3%.


You've probably seen a Square in action by now,  either conspicuously plugged into a vendor's smartphone at a downtown festival or cleverly hidden in the wooden Ipad stands that many hip coffeeshops and mom-and-pop stores are using instead of cash registers.



My first experience using Square was in March, when I agreed to run the merch table for a friend's band at their album release show. I was a little nervous at first, but it was easy.

Easy to register under the band's name.
Easy to set up with the Ipad.
Easy to arrange a menu of items. Easy to apply discounts.

And, best of all, easy to 'settle' at the end of the night (Square tallied everything up, showed how much of which items I sold, and even had a function to help me tally how many items had been sold with cash instead of a card-swipe)!

The good experience I had with Square is what compelled me to buy one for myself this past week.

My experience this second time was exactly the same: easy all-around and so very convenient. I highly recommend this useful device!

Promoting Your Art: ReverbNation!

The website ReverbNation is one of the first useful sites my college suggests to our Popular Music majors.

ReverbNation is a social media site that is designed to help indie and unsigned artists get gigs, share music, garner fans, and gain exposure.

ReverbNation is free to users, and has two types of accounts: fans and artists(bands). 

The fan account is not particularly useful, but is linked to Facebook, so it will let your Facebook friends know what you've been listening to.

The artist account, however, gives you a profile with various pages for relevant information, including bio, tour dates and ticket info, photos, and comment sections. It also provides statistics on how high the artist ranks in his/her particular city of residence in his/her genre. There is a section for uploading tracks for your fans to stream or even download.

I've previously mentioned that ReverbNation will host your EPK for a small fee, which is also very useful.

Finally, the site posts contests and gigging opportunities regularly for its members. These range anywhere from small notices in your inbox that a festival near you is seeking entertainment to large contests that offer playing alongside the Dave Matthews Band as a final prize.

ReverbNation may not be as well-known as some other music-sharing sites. However, being free, it is certainly worth the time to set up and occasionally maintain your profile. 

Booking a Gig

For many bands and artists, booking a gig is the scariest need-to-do on the list. It can sound really daunting, but after you've managed to go through with it once or twice, it just gets easier and easier, I promise.

Thing is, lots of venues want good music. They want good music and they want it supplied regularly. And, contrary to popular belief, many venues are willing to do their best to ensue that their acts are properly reimbursed for putting on a good show.

That being said, make good music. Your fans should love you for your art, and playing one bad concert can have a long-lasting effect. Rehearse often and plan for extra time and extra problems. Be prepared.

Getting Started: 

It's best to start with a list of venues you want to try out. When you're a small act, you can book multiple shows in the some county/town area without too much issue; it may even be the best plan, as you're going to need that time to build a fanbase and continuously saturate the area with your sound and name.

Set up a google calendar for the band. It sounds like an unnecessary step that you can skip, but really, it will make life much easier for everyone involved. It helps with scheduling, and it helps members think about how their personal lives affect (and are affected by) this band's work.

Start contacting your venues. If their local and it's at all an option, drive there and ask in person. It's more difficult to say 'no' to someone's face. Often what you will be given is the contact information for the individual in charge of booking for that venue/restaurant/what-have-you. Remain engaged during the interaction, and take notes as soon as you leave the venue. This also sounds like extra work- and it is. However, knowing the name of the person you just spoke to, the little details about what type of music they typically accept, and the name/contact info of the booking manager is a huge advantage.

Usually the contact info you are given for the booking manager will be an email. Occasionally, you will get a phone number, or be asked to call on certain days of the week "..and ask for So-And-So". This is where your EPK(Electronic Press Kit) comes in handy, because it allows the booking manager to view your goods at his/her leisure.

It seems to go without saying, but build relationships. Make friends with the waitress who shows you to the back for your meeting, visit the venue when another band is performing and introduce yourself to the managers who's running the entertainment that night, have your card and cheeriest attitude at the ready for anyone.

When you do finally book a gig, 

             Ask About Your Perimeters:

-How long of a set do you need prepared?

-What music do they want for the night(style, genre, do they want covers vs. originals)?

-How many of your band members do they want? Do they want a full band, or do they have a smaller space, quieter crowd, and need you to rock a three-person acoustic set?

-What equipment do they provide? What do you need to supply yourself? How much power do they have, what type of stage will you be working with, and how many instrument changes can you do?

-What type of sound system are they working with?

-What time do they want you there for load-in?

-How soon will you be able to leave?

When It Comes to Payment:

Early gigs may pay in nothing but exposure. However, there will definitely be a time where you will have to be able to put your foot down and explain that you're good enough to receive compensation for your work.

There are three main, viable payment options for gigs: split, guarantee, and donation. A third option is pay-to-play, but this is rarely going to be an advantage for your band.

A guarantee is nice, but harder to get. With a guarantee, the venue pays you a set amount no matter who shows up. If no one comes, the venue still pays you. If the venues is packed, you still receive the same set amount. 

A split gives your band a percentage of the total earned by the venue. It means that you get a certain amount for each person who comes through the door to hear you play.

A donation payment style can either be really great, or a waste of time. Obviously, it's based around the money that your audience is willing to give you. If you're at a big event or a radio station, donations can work out really well.

This article by Radio-Media.com goes into a lot more detail about the advantages and disadvantages of these different payment types.

What's an EPK???

"An EPK? What is that for? Do I need one?? How do I get it??"

An EPK is an electronic press kit. It contains items like your bio, your performance resume, and tracks of your music, all stored electronically in a web-location. You then can give the link to that web adress to interested parties, so they can peruse it at their leisure (much like an online resume).

It is for promoting yourself/your band to the people who can potentially help you take off with your music.

So yes, you definitely need one.

And now I'll show you how to get it.

Obtaining An EPK

You have two options. You can buy an EPK, or you can make one yourself.

You can hire a professional to design, upload, and even maintain your EPK. However, that method is very pricey, often unnecessarily so. ReverbNation actually runs a service where they will store your EPK and allow you to reference it on your music sites for a very low rate-per-month. 

If you're like me, and you're just getting started building yourself into the music scene, you probably want to opt for the create-your-own option. This will allow you to tailor your EPK around your band's strengths and accomplishments. Hiring someone to create an EPK for your group will usually involve a pre-designed template, and if your content isn't strong enough to fill it properly, the EPK may actually make your band look worse!

So, How do I make an EPK?

It's actually very simple, you just have to make sure you take the time to ensure that your EPK really shows off the best of the best of your band(and more).

The typical EPK includes:

-Contact information for booking/interviews
-Description of genre/style
-Bios
-Tracks of your best songs
-At least one live performance video
-A music video(but only if you have a good one)
-Photos
-Discography


Here are a few great resources for building your own EPK:

Plugged-In's great article: How To Put Together A Knockout EPK

Sonicbids also has a great how-to: How to Create An EPK

Just in case you missed it the first time, here's ReverbNation's option: Electronic Press Kit

Finally, Music Think Tank has this spectacular article, including little industry-known details (like removing the shrinkwrap from your CD before submitting it with a physical press kit). The article addresses a few aspects of the press kit, both electronic and physical, and gives you more of a feel of the receivers are looking for!

Promoting Your Art: Do You Spotify?

What is Spotify?

Spotify is a music streaming service/program that has a social twist. Much like Pandora, Spotify users have accounts and can stream music for free. Spotify, however, has made sure to integrate social media platforms like Facebook to ensure that users can easily send and receive music tracks and albums from friends. I say 'receive', but really, since Spotify is a streaming service, users are actually just sending an automatically-opening link to their friends' inboxes. Users create playlists, and then can follow each others' accounts to see what their friends are listening to.

Spotify does have a mobile program that works well on both Android and Iphone. It also asks musicians to create playlists that their fans can follow.

One difference between Spotify and a typical streaming service (like Pandora) is that the free users have to listen to commercials, but can build unlimited playlists and skip songs as often as they like.

Additionally, there is an option to pay for a monthly Spotify subscription called Spotify Premium. Spotify Premium removes commercials from your account and allows you to 'download' tracks to your laptop or other mobile device by storing spliced sections of the music files to your device. The Spotify program then re-assembles the song when you click to play it.

Although this sounds complicated, it is Spotify's way of assuring that users cannot simply download the actual song file in, say, mp3 format, and then sell or share it with whomever they like for free. This is part of the method that Spotify uses to continue operating legally with artists' licensed work.



Spotify and Musicians

Spotify obviously cannot list any songs in its library for which they do not have license rights. Some artists' work, like the Beatles, are not on Spotify for this reason.

If you are doing well as a popular artist, Spotify may contact you to ask if you would be interesting in being listed in their library. If you are less known, you can send in music to Spotify and ask to have you tracks added to the library (for exposure). Spotify will then consider your work and go through a paperwork process if the track is approved.


While Spotify is completely legal, there is some debate as to whether it is 'good' for rising artists, budding artists, or established artists to allow Spotify to stream their music.

File-Sharing Sites

So, how do you feel about file-sharing sites?

 What about programs that allow others to download, re-record, or otherwise steal your digital goods (in this case, your music)?

For most musicians and record companies, we hear complaints of how the internet is taking music out of business. While this statement is a bit extreme, the claim seems reasonable. How can one make money selling a product that is so cheap and easy to illegally reproduce and distribute?

In all honestly, though, many musicians are aware that the internet has actually opened up an entire new world of opportunity. One of the most obvious of these is the ability to reach fans without regard to location. We can now market our music to the people who want to hear it even if they live on the other side of the world. This still blows my mind on a regular basis. Not only that, but we can also hire the best managers, booking agents, or what-have-you's that tailor-fit our bands, instead of picking out of the possibly limited number of option in our band's area.

But enough on the internet, we all can agree it helps the music industry. The debate at this point rests with individuals with a reasonable web connection and the inclination to enjoy and share music without paying for it.

The angry musicians and record companies are correct; the music is intellectual property, and as such, it does not belong to anyone whose name is not on the license. If everyone that listened to each song and paid for that access, record companies would be rolling in dough (and perhaps musicians would find themselves better off-I'm not so sure about that).

But take a second and think about the are we're moving into.

In today's world, social media and networking are THE THING.

So, when you stop to consider just how many artists there are out there, and just how much you can easily spend on advertising and pushing your music into perspective fans' ears, think about file-sharing. Most people do not decide they love a song after one listen. Or two, or three, or even five. They may like it, but chances are they're not willing to drop even $1.50 on downloading from Itunes, not after just one listen. Now, imagine if they've downloaded the song, it's started to crop up on their ipod a lot, and they're really starting to feel it. This leads to two things: artist re-check and sharing.

Artist re-check is when they've listened to your song so many times, they've found themselves getting attached to you personal 'sound', and now they're wanted to see what else you've got. In addition, they already like your sound, and they're begun to get familiar with it, so they are a good deal more receptive and likely to like other works you've created.

Sharing is when the song is just so good they're stuck constantly singing it, or it fit a certain situation just so well that they had to share it, or they had it playing in the car during Spring Break in Cancun and now every single person on the trip wants a copy of your record.

You could mutter and grumble about how that's your intellectual property they're sharing and how you want your $9.99 for that album.

Or you could think about the incredible advertising opportunity you have. I'll talk about branding in a little more detail another day. For now, suffice it to say, you are not actually in the business of selling that song or that album, not really. You are in the business of selling tickets. You are selling your name and the experience of seeing yourself perform live. All the YouTube videos in the world cannot reproduce the pleasure of seeing a favorite artist do something beautifully well, live, and in front of you. There's really nothing like it, and our generation certainly has learned that.

But without fans, your brand name, you, your art, is not bringing in the cash. And without social media, now, you have to be truly exceptional to gain and keep fans without regular interactions on social media of some kind and constant advertising.

And if your music is good enough to steal and share, you should be flattered. Maybe you can be unhappy with it,  and justifiably so. But don't discount that it is the new normal, and it is also helping you, possibly more than actually being paid per song would.

Choosing A Genre: Yes, You "Have Too"

Hello, music-lovers!

Today we're going to talk about your music!

Why put your music in a genre? Most budding artists want to insist on 'staying free', complaining that the music should not be labelled. Unfortunately, the statement "I don't conform to a genre; I want to write music for everyone to enjoy" is much more harmful than helpful.

On the first note, terrible as it may sound, when a record company or a professional in the music industry hears you say those few words, they instantly know you're an amateur. Even if your music is fantastic, they still will choose not to work with you because they have deduced your lack of experience from that one simple slip. So, sadly, in a hipster-esque twist, your refusal to commit to a genre still labels you.

Secondly, choosing a genre actually expands your audience. While it seems that avoiding genre would make others more open to hearing you, the reality is that you are keeping your music from cashing in on one of the most effective marketing techniques of this digital era: branding.

See, whatever 'genre' you're choosing isn't that specifically defined. You can do (almost) anything you want with it. Saying your music is funk is much like saying a painting is purple. The whole painting is (likely) not entirely purple. If it's a good painting, it's got a lot of the other colors mixed in. It just overall provides a lot of purple.


What you're choosing, then, is the type of audience you want. The lifestyle that is associated with that particular genre, the kind of crazy fans you want screaming at your concerts or paying $240.00 flat to sit demurely and wait for all the movements to be over before applauding.

Genre helps those fans find you. With search engines, through file-sharing programs, through YouTube recommendations, through word-of-mouth, the genre of music you choose helps you. Trying to stay label-free only makes you nonspecific, which usually results in perusers choosing not to even waste a second listening. If they know they hate country and you know you have a lot of country sound to your music, just say it's country. People like what they know, and you have a lot more of a chance of winning over a fan who knows they like bluegrass to your 'country' song. However, if you haven't chosen a genre, with how much music is available, most people simply won't 'waste' their time listening when they don't know what to expect.