No matter what your involvement is in music, marketing needs to be a way of life. This is true more for the musician seeking to make a living in music but it generally applies to anyone with goals other than pure aesthetics.
What is marketing? Marketing is the entire range of activities that involve increasing your [...]
This is a copy of an E mail that I sent to Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for The New York Times It’s in response to a question concerning the market for jazz.
Ben,
I am a veteran jazz guitarist, born in Chicago but based in suburban Philadelphia.
I appreciate how you handle sensitive topics related to the Art [...]
No matter what your involvement is in music, marketing needs to be a way of life. This is true more for the musician seeking to make a living in music but it generally applies to anyone with goals other than pure aesthetics.
What is marketing? Marketing is the entire range of activities that involve increasing your [...]
By the music business, I don’t mean the recording or the performing artists. My reference is to the business machinery that is supposed to drive the music industry.
Musicians and entertainers are not supposed to chase club managers around, negotiate contracts or even collect the money. They should be spending all their time developing and [...]
I think that the state of today’s contemporary Pop/Rock/Indie music has reached an all time low. Most groups that I see on TV can’t move, sing, write or play. Their personalities could be described as cardboard but that would be an insult to cardboard.
Why they are in music at all is a mystery to me. [...]
“Who you know” is a commonly thought prerequisite of success in the music business. Though there is a certain amount of truth to that, it is highly overrated. “Knowing” people who can assist you in your music career is nothing more complicated than meeting them. I do not deny the importance of “contacts” or the [...]
Commercial work is filled with adjustments. The musician interprets them as compromises, a term filled for the most part with negative implications. The music, atmosphere and audience are rarely to his choosing and still more rarely to his liking. The gap between what he has prepared for and what he finds is difficult to reconcile. [...]
We hear much about “selling out”. What does it mean! To many it means playing anything that becomes financially successful. This is an extremely narrow and destructive point of view. An individual can “sell out” in only one way. That is to violate and give up the pursuit of goals and ambitions for himself thus [...]
Here is a common problem in bands. You start a band with your good friend. You’re not concerned with the fact that your friend doesn’t play well. You’re just glad to be making music. Over time, it becomes apparent that your friend is not as committed as you are. Perhaps you study and he or [...]
There is something about musicians that resists marketing, especially self promotion. I think there is a perverse pride that musicians have about not being in business. This alienation to business creates a great disservice to everyone involved.
If you don’t approach your music as a serious endeavor, it will not be taken seriously. Is music your [...]
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