*********************************************
“Before you can get FAMOUS you have to get FOCUSED!” ~ Ty Cohen
*********************************************

 
If you think last week’s post was helpful, you are going to Love this one..

 

Before getting into this week’s blog post, I want you to make a committed vow to yourself, your family and to everyone you love and respect to expand your mind and your thinking past your normal, self imposed limits. Read the content that I have prepared for you here, allow yourself to get past any negative beliefs or prior mental blocks that you might have grown to accept about yourself and the music business and then FOCUS on the information and advice given to you and most importantly…. TAKE ACTION!

 

As someone who has worked with thousands of independent artist, of all different genres, from across the globe, I’ve seen the enormous changes, that the music industry has gone through in the last couple of years. Many feel that with the way the heads of major labels have dropped the ball, all of the changes, illegal file sharing and poor music sales, that new artists can’t hope for much more than to give their music away.

 

 
I on the other hand feel ad Know that this new age of ITunes, TuneCore and Internet Marketing offers unlimited opportunities to artist like yourself as well as rappers, bands and musicians that under the ‘old system’ of traditional record labels never would have had a chance.

 

 
So with that said, here are 5 success tips for for anyone that seriously wants to make it in the music industry without going broke or having to beg a major record label for a contract;

 

 
1) Get Distribution. Until very recently, getting any kind of distribution was impossible without a major label contract. ITunes does not take independent artists music. Now this has changed. You can sign up with either TuneCore www.tunecore.com or CD Baby www.cdbaby.com to get your music into all the major online outlets like ITunes, eMusic, Amazon etc. That’s like instant world wide distribution. With a few mouse clicks, your songs are available from Tokyo, Japan to Novosibirsk, Siberia. And with online sales, there are no returns, no CDs to manufacture, no big advance costs to worry about.

 

 
2) Market your Music. There are unlimited ways to market your music on the internet. Your own web site is your first line of defense, if you don’t have a site, get one. Selling your music there is as simple as placing a link back to ITunes. Then, there’s MySpace and MusicBizCenter.com where you can set up an artist site for free and get your music heard, your videos played and more. Marketing yourself on the internet is not hard work if you know how to do it right (I show this in How to Sell Music Online Like Crazy! and in the Myspace Magic Manuscript ). Getting people to link to you, getting found in the search engines. etc. Here’s a quick tip: To get found on the net, don’t concentrate on getting the name of the band into the search engines. Remember, nobody knows you yet, so nobody will be searching for “The Rocking Elephants” or whatever you are called. Instead, try to get links that point to your style of music. When somebody searches on Google for “Russian Rock Fusion” your band’s name should come up on top. We are following this strategy with a few of our current clients and it is working quite well.

 

 
3) Market to “The Other” kind of Radio. A word of advice here. As an independent artist, you are wasting your time trying to market yourself to commercial radio stations… Unless you have a huge buzz in your City / State or unless your local stations accept indie music) They will NOT play your songs. It takes millions to tap that market. The average marketing budget for a new major label release is at least 5 million dollars. You can’t compete with that. What you can do, inexpensively and effectively is to market to college radio, internet stations, clubs, hip hop, jazz programs etc. There are thousands of these outlets and in this day and age it is actually an advantage if your music is not mainstream pop but maybe reggae, jazz, electronica etc.

 

 
A good, and free resource to get airplay on these specialty outlets and radio stations is www.indie-500.com There is no charge to list up to three songs and Indie 500 will make your music available via digital delivery to hundreds of specialty stations and DJs that play YOUR kind of music. Since Radio Programmers can instantly download your songs if they like them, there are no CDs to ship and no expenses on your part. And best of all, you don’t have to resort to spamming radio stations trying to get some airplay. Everybody wins! The major labels have been using digital delivery for years but Indies have greatly overlooked this. According to Billboard Monitor 86% of Radio Program Directors actually prefer digital delivery.

 

 
4) The rebirth of the EP. One thing I noticed on ITunes that no matter what album you look at, there are only two or maybe three songs on the album that get all the sales while the rest of the tracks get almost no sales at all. Yet, in order to get on ITunes, you have to have an ‘album’. So you are wasting in a sense a lot of recording time and energy to fill an entire album just to sell those two or three ‘hits’ In stead, why not only release 5 song EPs from now on? The EP can be the new ‘album’. ITunes requires you to have an album but they don’t tell you how many songs need to be on it so we found five a pretty good number. If you are an artist that has a lot of variety in their music, you can split one traditional album into 2-3 EPs that has songs of a similar style. So, your EP #1 may do well with jazz lovers while the next EP does well with fans of R&B or Hip Hop.

 

 
5) Leak it to the Illegals. Now this is probably the boldest move. The big complaint from all musicians and labels is the illegal downloading. Big labels are suing individuals, big artists take Napster to court to shut it down. But here’s my take on that. If you are an ‘unkown’ and you don’t have any sales anyway, why not give your first song away to get a fan base. You cannot get ‘distribution’ quicker than giving your stuff away by leaking it to the illegal downloaders and to make sure it gets around quickly. But here’s the trick. Do not call your track ‘Honey” by the ‘Honeymakers’ or whatever your song or band are really called. If your track sounds somewhat like Linkin Park, title it ‘Unreleased Linkin Park?’ with a question mark behind it. Hey, now everybody who likes Linkin Park and looks for an illegal download will see your song and if they like it, they will download it. The key here of course is, the MP3 tag for the song when they play it will show the real name of your song, your band name and if you are really smart, the URL to your web site.

 

 
So what do YOU think? I want to hear back from you… Yes YOU! I look forward to reading a comment from you…. Cool? Ok, you can leave your comment below.