Advice from a Guru: Young Guru (Audio Engineer Behind Jay Z and Others)

Need I say more? Listen to Young Guru share his journey in the music world, how he met Jay Z, and his take on how recording should happen.

Pillars of (Online) Fan Engagement. (All Other Ground Is Sinking Sand!)

Trust me, you can only spam your followers/fans/people in your circles for so long. Even if you're the hottest potato fresh out the oven, spamming 'hungry' fans is sure ticket to a fast expiration date.
Does it mean more work? Dedicating 'extra' time to sit by your device of choice to counter your posts on your upcoming gig with interesting snippets of your life? Maybe.
The key, (I find), is to work towards making your online social engagement 'second nature'. If surely you can spam,you can engage! (Rihanna's love of Instagram is a great example; after all, a (ratchety) picture is worth 1000 words,even more. I refer you to celebrity blogs and their constant deciphering of her posts. Keeps her relevant and mentioned and talked/bitched about...you almost always know what she's up to! Enough with improving her SEO ranking...
So,what can you do? How can you get the best out of the interwebs,your current and potential armies of fans? Behold, the pillars... (with italicized interjections from this gigging musician.)


(image via Hypebot)

1. Authenticity

First and foremost, communication with your fans must come from you, the artist, in your voice. Not your manager, label, or intern. People aren’t interested in hearing generic updates from your label or agent. They want to get to know your personality, hear about your experiences. Essentially, fans want to feel like they’re on the journey of your career along with you.
(It's cool to have your team update for you once in a while ,but c'mon, it's you we are following!)

2. Consistency

Consistency is key when it comes to engaging with your fans. You can’t post an update on Facebook one day, then disappear for several weeks to come back and find that a bunch of fans responded with questions that you never answered. People will likely stop paying attention if you don’t have a consistent presence. 
(I mean really, how would you feel to be snubbed? Constantly? That's the wrong kind of consistency to adopt.)

3. Sustainability

And finally, when it comes to fan engagement, you have to sustain it over the long term. Don’t expect immediate results. It might take months of being consistent to start seeing more quality interactions with your fans, which in turn could lead to new fans, more people at your shows, and increased sales.
(Quit with waiting to a week before your gig to start updating your profiles in CAPS (so annoying!), somehow thinking people should pay attention...you haven't even dusted off the virtual cobwebs!)

If you have an online presence, you in turn acknowledge that you know its inherent value. Else, you could also remain antiquated...which you can make work for you. Point is, an online presence indicates to fans that you are there to engage with. Remember that.

Never leave fans hanging yo! Same way you don't want them to leave you hanging at your gigging hour.
 
           (image courtesy of hypebot)

It's part of the job. The sooner you accept/adopt, the sooner you can reap the awesome benefits of the interwebs and the fans that be.( An interesting and potentially rewarding approach is to centralize your efforts to one social network, then autopost to others. However, be sure to check the autoposted sites occasionally, to avoid a situation as that of the poor cat above. I'd personally recommend Google Plus for such an endeavour; benefits/features will be the subject of another post, so keep it here.)

You might also like: Artists and Social Media: Some Tips (thank me later!)
(Insights largely borrowed from Hypebot's 3 Pillars Of Music Fan Engagement)

Profitable and Sustainable Music Careers Take A Lot of Work!

In order to become financially free in your music career, you will need to take a very different approach than the one that is taken by most musicians. You will need to approach your music career as both a “musical artist” AND as a businessman (or woman). You must run your career as a business, where your primary goal is to add as much value as possible to your fans, other bands, music company officials, and other people in the business of music.

Besides not being prepared to achieve success in the business side of music, many musicians fail to make a decent income in their careers because they make the following mistakes:

Not Taking The Time To Identify Your Market

Once you have become familiar with the value you have to give to the music industry, you will you need to find and identify the people who you will give value to. 

One of the most common mistakes made by musicians is that they spend the time to create an album, increase their musical skills, or work in another area of the music industry, but when it comes time to receive the payoff for their hard work, they have great difficulty making any money. This happens because they have not taken the time to build a database of customers who are ready and willing to pay for the value that the musician is offering. 

Not Having Solid Goals And Ways To Reach Them

To earn a good living in the music industry, you MUST develop a specific plan for how you will reach your goals. If you merely fantasize about making a lot of money, this is not enough to make this goal a reality. Rather than fantasizing, start working toward what you want to achieve by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What is your desired yearly income from your music career?
2. What are the sources of musical income that will make the amount in question 1 possible?
3. What action must you take to set up these sources of income?
4. How many ways can you ADD VALUE to your interactions with people in the music business? (Think of every possibility!)
5. How many ways can you eliminate risk for other people in the music business?

Thinking That Popularity = Making A Lot Of Money In The Music Industry

The truth is that some musicians (who are very popular) still work side jobs just to get by. By understanding this, you will be able to push ‘fame’ aside in order to focus on the most effective ways to work toward your goal of making a good living in music

Not Taking The Time To Set Up Various Music Related Sources Of Income

In order to make a good living in your music career, you must stop thinking from the mindset of obtaining a single sum of money as your main goal. Instead, you must work to build many different sources of musical income that go into your bank account on an ongoing, residual basis. 

Not Consistently Providing Additional Value To Other People In The Music Industry

If you want to make a lot of money in your music career, you will need to make it 110% clear that you are the number one choice when someone in the music industry must choose between you and your competitors. In fact, this must be TOTALLY clear before anyone has even listened to one second of your music!

 

Useful music business assessments and more insights/examples can be found on the original post.

You might also like: Developing A Hardcore Fan Base

 

Artists and Social Media: Some Tips

1. Start with the social media outlets you are comfortable with.

2.Be personal and authentic

3.Let the negative comments stay

(yup! People will come to your defence.)

4. Keep your Facebook fan page and personal profile separate.

5. You've got to hustle!

(Get rid of the misconception that merely posting stuff online will get you attention.)

6. Don't send out too many posts via social media.

(''On Twitter you can throw things out there pretty often, see what sticks and what gets retweeted. Use that to know what to post on Facebook.”)

7.Don't forget that Youtube is also a social network.

('Fans can subscribe to you, fans can interact with you through your channel.')

8. Pay attention to your analytics.

 

These are tips shared by music and digital experts at the New Music Seminar. Here's more details to each tip.)

Got any tried and tested tips that have worked for you, do share in the comment section below :)

You might also like: Push vs Pull Marketing: C'mon,Be Cool.

 

 

The Music Fan Experience (and its evolution throughout history)

What can we learn from a new generation of music fans?

 Remember the good old days of timing music countdown charts on radio to tape and re-tape your favourite songs? The pencil-cassette-celltape relationship? We broke numerous copyright laws,but it was such a dedicated fan affair!

The internet has since become an even more disruptive model for the traditional copyright music business model, but there have been disruptive fan experience models throughout history.

Developing a HardCore Fan Base

"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living." (The 1000 True Fans Theory)

 

(image via kk.org)

Banking Beats: Africa's Music Economy

'Aid to Africa' has been a dominant theme in the media and political arenas for many years. Yet, despite the billions of dollars in development-related aid, many argue that it has done little to reduce poverty or stimulate economic growth. In contrast, the music industry in Africa has grown exponentially over the last decade and has had a direct impact on Africa's economy. African musical acts of varying genres have worldwide recognition, concert attendance numbers are in the tens of thousands, and homegrown music festivals draw a global audience. Examine the growth of the music economy in Africa and the opportunities it presents locally and internationally.

This was the official blurb for a SXSW 2012 Interactive Panel that saw Africa's rising music economy discussed. Thanks to Matthew Dawes ,one of the panelists, I was able to find the session's podcast, available here.

 

Also interesting to note that Society HAE have proposed a panel session for 2013's conference: The Promised Land: Can Africa Save The Music Biz?

Among other things, the panel proposes to focus to look at what Africa's growing economy and youth population mean for the Music Industry, as well as the partnership opportunities that exist locally for foreign investors, artists and record labels.

 

Let's wait and see if their panel proposal is selected, but I think the conversation can start/continue.

 

What do you make of Africa's music economy, as a consumer and/or producer? Feel free to share in the comments section :)