john

Hey Roy, Welcome to our community! Good to have you with us. Do you have any releases online? Cheers John

My guess is this is the topic you are talking about...

Friends and family are not (generally) fans, they may be fans of you personally, but your grandmother is unlikely to be a death metal fan. Even if your friend likes similar music, it does not mean they like the music you make. Pressuring them does not help. If anything it drives them away. In the old days, friends might be useful for filling the seats for your first gig or two, but really, artists need to reach beyond friends and family. Friends and family have a broad taste in music (as a group) and their feedback tends to be both heavily biased and is presented diplomatically or overly blunt etc because reactions are heavily influenced by their personal relationships with you. Point is, move on from friends and family as soon as you can or even sooner. More than that, find the right audience. Initially work from your best guess. But don’t scatter gun. Look for fans where people likely to like your music will hang out. There so much more to it, but that’s the basics. That is true for real world, or online. Seek out musicians for jamming with, chatting about making music, having a laugh on music sites, groups pages etc. If you want to build an audience, find listeners (whether musicians or not) somewhere that is not about making music. Simple (and yes I know there are many well reasoned variations).

MP3.com? Myspace? Musicians can make excellent fans when you encounter them in a fan/audience situation. If you encounter them in sites like Reverbnation, Soundcloud or social media (as artists) etc they are not really looking for music, they are looking for a follower exchange or other quit pro quo. They suck!

@Theodore Kidd did you post anything up and I missed it?

I think it, in part, comes down to finding the right people to hear your music, instead of pushing your music at everyone and anyone you come into contact with. That often becomes spam. It also takes being very honest about who we are and what we are about, because connection is partly about identity and values (that is a big part of the appeal of image, the falsehood is where artists and their marketers misrepresent themselves. Of course some, like Alice Cooper or Amy Lee from Evanescence see themselves as an entertainer playing a role, which as ever is entirely up to them.) As artists, we also have a message, of sorts. Some quite literally. Others it is about clarity of purpose. Effective and authentic branding and marketing is, for me, about honest identity, values and message. We’re our own audience because we make it that way. I see this on Social media, especially Twitter, all the time. Independent artists don’t know how to reach out and connect with potential fans. Instead they often start by calling on the help of fellow musicians to get the word out, because they are easy to get on board(ish) (it is often a fickle and flimsy level of support). Because it takes real effort to build a real fanbase, so many opt to fake their following by “I scratch your back, if you scratch my back” cooperation, to make their social following numbers artificially inflated... but these people will rarely if ever listen to your music. It is a like exchange and an entirely false audience. The artist then wonders why their list is so unresponsive, because they confused “easy to build numbers” with “genuine followers”. Yes, there is an expectation adjustment, but you can build a real fan base, one fan at a time, with no shortcuts. Often with Indies there is a complete absence of image, no identity, no values and no message. They rely entirely upon the music to make that connection. That’s a very tough call. They forget of all the other stuff that helps get the right people click and listen or watch in the first place. At worst, you don’t want to pre-dispose potential listeners to not like your work, to hear it with an already prejudiced ear. Awareness can be used to mislead, absolutely, but it doesn’t need to be used in that way. It’s exactly like understanding the meaning of words. They enable detailed communication. In that communication we can choose to speak truth, or lie, reality or fantasy. To learn and use language is not in itself at fault for misunderstanding. The fact that other misuse language intentionally or unintentionally is no real reason not to learn how to communicate, precisely because we can communicate our truth.

So, why should you opt in to Songstuff community messages and the Songstuff Community Newsletter? News Well, there is the obvious, that staying informed helps you to get the most out of any website or community. Our newsletters tell you about music and entertainments industry news, music tech news as well as news about our site and community. Supporting Independent Music We feature great independent music created by our community members alongside the best independent music available on the Internet. We also run playlists on Spotify and YouTube covering Songstuff members and a broad range of other artists, and a Featured Artist playlist Of Songstuff members on Soundcloud. Songstuff Ad Coupons Varying from 5% to 100% cost, from all members to first come first served. Advert locations include Songstuff and Songstuff UK. Songstuff Product Coupons Varying from 5% to 100% cost, from all members to first come first served. This includes courses, subscription packs, ebooks and other products and services created by Songstuff

I knew that I had missed an option!

This is very useful for us to know... Please let us know!

Something that does work is using a notch filter on the guitars to suppress the guitar at key vocal frequencies... ie subtractive EQ, allowing the vocals to cut through and sit within the mix. You don’t need to dial it right down, and you can trigger the EQ using the side-chain on your noise gate. That suppresses the guitar at vocal frequencies a little only when the singer is singing, and switches it back out when they are not singing. Pretty useful with keyboard washes too. Use your daw automation to find center frequencies and Q for different vocal sections and that’s you. I’d recommend trying subtractive EQ, instead of boosting the vocal. Also swap out vocal reverb for stereo slap-back delay. It has a similar effect to reverb without loss of clarity and it really, really helps vocals cut through. It’s a pretty modern sound too.

Let’s move to specific topics on the marketing critique board and within the marketing challenge. Some we can deal with some within the current challenge, others we should do in dedicated topics in the marketing critique. So, as an example, let’s deal with your site within a critique topic, but as I will be looking at landing pages within the challenge we can deal with that specific aspect of sites as part of the challenge. A second critique topic: your brand. If you set up the two critique topics (1. Site design and content, 2. Your brand), we can go from there. Just use @john to include me in the discussion. Perhaps invite the other challenge participants to join us in those topics? CMS. - Content Management System - Software used for managing your website. Adding pages, menus, blog entries etc

Ok. Getting a better idea now. What content management system is it? It doesn’t look like Wordpress. Out of interest there is a conspicuous absence of music on your site. Create a video tab and create an embedded grid of your YouTube videos. You could do similar for your soundcloud player. If at a later point you make videos or music member only you just change how and where you feature them. Boosted Facebook posts is not recommended. It’s pretty expensive and audience targeting is more limited. Look to set up a Facebook Ads Manager account: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/step-by-step-ads-manager-account and associate it with your Facebook artist page. Talking if, I recommend having a page separate from your personal profile. Gotta make some food. Will try and post a little more later.

It’s a massive topic, so I have a few questions just to clarify your set up... How are you running your Facebook Ads? Ad manager account? Boosted posts? Are you using image/video + text? So you set up an ad that directly links to where...? The song url on reverbnation? Your bandcamp page? Do you have a website other than bandcamp? When you say godaddy, do you just mean their standard email hosting? iirc, neither Reverbnation nor Bandcamp provide a proper autoresponder (email marketing essential). Have you set up a Facebook messenger bot? Don’t rush out to google stuff, or least don’t rush to action on Googlings! It sounds like you are saying: AD -> Song Page Where they can then play the song.

Absolutely no problem I should have been clearer in my original reply.

A reply of of “that” sort? Hmm. You seem to have misunderstood. I can see why you might have. For clarity: The topic is about approaches to songwriting with the aim of discussing the observations, issues and solutions raised. My reply is in that vein. I did not mean you had a problem. You brought up some things that can be problems, however you describe how you capitalise on having so many ideas. You raised some excellent points and observations. You brought up some points on your working practice. However, having a lot of ideas is a double edged sword. Yet, you work with so many ideas in a way that it isn’t a problem for you. I quoted you because you brought up these points. I have seen many writers struggle with too many ideas. One board member in particular, @Richard Tracey, struggled for a long time to finish anything... which in itself was a problem because he really wanted to finish tracks and very much wanted to release them. He would work on a track and in the process have many ideas and would switch to them and neglect the piece he had started working on and had actually wanted to progress. He also wanted everything to be perfect. In Richard’s case he was the one who wanted to release his music and was highly frustrated. Once he had ways to move forward, it was like a dam breaking. He worked with so many ideas and yes, kept much better focus, while not wasting ideas. I myself struggled with being a perfectionist. It took time to learn to harness the benefits of me looking for a high quality result but balance that with a need to move forwards. You brought up how you view and deal with these aspects of songwriting. That was all I was doing. No criticism was implied VoiceEx.

Good to see you are thinking about your brand. Most indies don’t. I’ve just about finished writing up the ebook branding component for a future music marketing course, next comes video scripting! It won’t be ready as a course for a couple of months. I will have other stuff available before then, but that course deals with advertising too, particularly Facebook advertising and a whole load of other strategies, tactics and tools. It’s aimed at the professional and semiprofessional indie market. I ended up with so much info I have had to split it into two courses! Advertising is by far the most effective way to reach new audience, but it is only cost effective if you have the right back end to catch and keep fans. Yes there are a load of free/guerrilla tactics, but they largely limit you to second degree contacts. Advertising allows you to reach your target audience based upon their preferences and interests. What is your typical cost per lead (CPL)? Somewhere between $0.10 and $0.30? What about Cost Per Fan (paying customers)? Somewhere between $0.50 and $1.20? Who do you use for your email marketing? What other tools are you using? If I can review your set up I will see what advice/suggestions I can offer to help you.

Not an uncommon problem. It’s a musical equivalent of shiny paper syndrome, or the grass is always greener. The issue with distracting ideas is simply fixed by discipline not to pursue ideas, but instead scratch record them quickly, even played into a memo recorder works, or storing a performance part (I find this works best by saving my current project, saving it again with a new idea name, reopening my original project and DELETE THE NEW IDEA FROM THE CURRENT PROJECT. It allows you to draw a line under it... and move on. The same is true for being in search of the perfect song, or the perfect version of a song... as long as you release songs. That’s where set deadlines come in. Public deadlines that are very hard to back down from. Releasing singles, EPs, albums let you draw a very definite line. It allows you to creatively move on. Especially albums. They allow you to wrk out concepts and ideas, indulge experiments, bundle up the results and present them to the public. Think of the albums of really good artists. They encapsulate the band’s sound, the ideas they had, the gear they used... and in most cases they move on, new sound new ideas. There in lies a hidden problem of being consumed with the pursuit perfection. We don’t really move on to new ideas. We have less fresh pallets to start new projects, and more projects where we just mix a new shade of color. Idea progress is less of the big splash impact of a heap of new ideas, and more of a slow drip process, causing a few ripples. So while it is important that we keep creating, it is always worth remembering that pursuing that perfect version of a song slows our progress. We can learn from this song to do a better new song. That aside, perspective makes the change. To let time pass and accumulate new skills, new perspectives and then revisit an existing track, gives us far more scope for more radical change instead of incremental evolution. In entrepreneurial circles there is an approach about failing fast. Try ideas, learn, move on. Keep what works discard what doesn’t.it works for music composition, production and music marketing.

Welcome to Songstuff Should be fun. What have you got so far?

Your question surprises me, considering those instruments are the subject of your blog

Hey Ghost Jax, welcome to a Songstuff Do you have any music related goals?

Hi Peter Welcome to Songstuff Good to have you with us. Liking your nifluences

Hey Gang The connection performers get to their audience is pretty obvious. Writer-performers have that direct connection too. Yet writers who are not performers are usually one step away from the action. So I thought it might be interesting to explore the connection between writers and their audience. Other than the poll, perhaps you can also discuss this... What, if anything, do you do to encourage connection to your audience? I look forward to reading your answers! Cheers John

It's such a common issue for artists.... funny thing is, there are a lot of parallels with songwriting and production. You are in conversation with listeners and fans, different people have heard more than others. You have a message deliver, you might use different formats, different vehicles and ultimately you are trying to connect with people. Of course, trends and tastes change, ideas get over used, and you have to be creative to stand out andto make an impact. Sadly, I think most artists believe they are selling their soul, partaking in conning the audience with some arkane magick. It doesn't occur to them that they can market themselves based upon their values and with an honest message. Just because less scrupulous people use language and knowledge to misrepresent does not mean that you have to. It's a pity. Music marketing techniques, tools and strategies can really enhance the experience fans have and enhance the relationships we have with our fans, if only because they really make us think about their experience as fans, and our relationship with them. However, it is not just for those reasons. There are many others.

Ah cool, I'm on the Southside a mile from Hampden

hey Johnny, good to meet you! Glasgow Scotland? That’s where I live. Dive in, have fun. Any questions, just ask