hypebot

Building Your Music Career While Keeping Your Day Job [Best of Hypebot 2014]

As the year draws to a close, we're sharing some of Hypebot's most read posts of 2014. This one is by Farah Joan Fard from the Sonicbids Blog.

Does going to your 9-5 and then playing a gig that night ever make you feel like a Clark Kent/Superman combo? Do you feel like there's not enough time in the day for both your full-time job and your musical duties? You’re not alone. Balancing a day job with a music career can be tricky on so many levels, especially when you're so serious about your music – you want to be dedicating 100 percent of your time to it, but you need some way to pay the bills until you can get there.

8 Steps To A Million YouTube Music Channel Views

By Matt Sandler, musician and founder of Chromatik.

I get at least a dozen emails a month from musician friends who want to build out their YouTube presence. I don’t claim to be a YouTube expert, but I spend a good amount of time atChromatik working with artists and the YouTube ecosystem. We’ve built the Chromatik channel to over a million views (led by the extraordinary Kelley McKinney), and I’ve worked on musician friends’ channels with over 50 million collective views.

The Importance of Music Video Promotion [Best of Hypebot 2014]

Jesse Cannon of Musformation.com talks to Andy Gesner of HIP Video Promo.

The following is a transcript of their discussion.

Jesse:  This interview is rewarding for anybody who’s an artist or in a band and wants to see some of the hidden gears of how a music video secures exposure. I highly suggest reading the whole interview; Andy’s incredibly insightful, and you can check him and his company out at hipvideopromo.com.

Getting It Done: The Week In D.I.Y & Indie Music

• 2 Genius Ideas For Funding Your Next Tour

• 5 Quick Email Etiquette Tips for Bands (and Everyone Else)

• Is It Ever OK To Work For Free In The Music Industry?

• Everything Indie Musicians Need to Know About YouTube Music Key

[MORE]

Passenger Case Study ’14: The Power of Social Media

By Jasmine Nguyen & Pedram Nikfarjam on DashTwo.com

From Australia to North America. Rarely do we witness a successful infiltrating attempt by foreign artists trying to make it in the United States, with a few exception of Justin Bieber and the likes. Passenger, however, pulled it off almost smoothly and convincingly in 2012, mainly thanks to his major presence in Ed Sheeran’s North American Tour and the release of “All The Little Lights” by Nettwerk Music Group in the same region.

Bandsintown Reveals Most Active, Rapidly Growing Artists of 2014

Bandsintown dug deep into their large concert database emerging with a top list of most active, rapidly growing artists of 2014. Using Bandsintown Tracker to see which artists made their mark this year, Bandsintown identified and recognized artists with the Most Tour Dates, Most Countries Visited, and Fastest Growth. American Aquarium, Aly & Fila, Vance Joy topped each category respecitvely.  A further breakdown is illustrated in the infographics below. 

Everything Indie Musicians Need to Know About YouTube Music Key

By Keidra Chaney on Sonicbids Blog

Recently, YouTube introduced Music Key, a music streaming service that the video hosting company had been hinting at for at least a couple of years. The company has experimented with revenue models and music industry partnerships to leverage its huge library of music videos since its 2005 acquisition by Google – including a partnership with Universal Music Group's video platform Vevo back in 2009. There's a bit of confusion (from both musicians and fans) about what YouTube Music Key actually is and how it's different from Google Play, Spotify, and other music steaming services. Here's what you need to know.

Google's 2014 Year In Search Reveals Excellent Year For Emerging Artists

Earlier this week, Google released its annual Year in Search results, putting the spotlight on up and coming artists and trendsetters in the music category. Iggy Azalea made an appearance among trending song lyrics and took the top slot as #1 Trending Music Artist of 2014, beating other top trending artists including Lorde, Sam Smith, Meghan Trainor, Solange Knowles, and Nicki Minaj, to name a few. While artists like Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj have experienced their fair share of time in the limelight, these search results really showcase the talent and staying power of 2014's emerging artists.

3 Branding Lessons From Music's Biggest Superstars

By Tyler Allen on Sonicbids Blog

They say it takes 10 years of dedication to become an overnight success. This phrase is largely due to all of the things that the public is blissfully unaware of. We acknowledge artists when they pop into the mainstream, but we're blind to the denied demos, poor image choices, and bad business deals that happened before they reached a worldwide stage. When looking at a lot of top artists throughout history, you begin to see that it wasn't always their talent that slowed their success. I mean, look at Decca's infamous rejection of the Beatles; it wasn't necessarily their playing ability.

Bandcamp Launches Indie Label Portal

Direct to fan digital sales platform Bandcamp has launched an accompanying portal designed to better serve independent record labels. The new Bandcamp For Labels adds unified accounting and stats across all artists, a single fulfillment interface for merchandise sales, direct payments on a per release basis and Bandcamp Pro-level accounts for all the label's artists.

The One Thing That Pretty Much Every Failed Artist Has In Common

By Shaine Freeman on Sonicbids Blog

A career in the music business can be one of the toughest, most frustrating paths to take, especially if you're a musician whose dream is to top the charts and sell out stadiums. It's an industry where the overwhelming majority of musicians experience failure more often than success. For the sake of defining what success is, in this case I'm talking about earning a living creating music, as opposed to the fantasy lifestyle that most people think of when they imagine what success in music looks like.

A2IM Libera Awards 2015 Accepting Nominations From The Indie Music Community

From the A2IM blog.

All U.S. independent labels, artists, distributors and partners are invited to submit projects for consideration for the 2015 A2IM Libera Awards (“The LIBBYs) Every year, the annual A2IM Libera Awards spotlight extraordinary achievements by independent labels and artists as voted upon by the independent music community.

TOP POSTS: This Week's Most Read Posts on Hypebot.com

• Spotify Gifts 3 Months Of Premium For Just 99¢
• Linkin Park Moves To Self Management
• YouTube Takes The Guess Work Out Of Music Copyright Status
• Next Big Sound Expands Free Analytics For Musicians, Adds New Metrics
• 2014: The Year Nothing In Music Broke, and Nothing Got Fixed
• 5 Types of Music Publicists Indie Artists Should Avoid 

[MORE]

Getting It Done: The Week In D.I.Y & Indie Music

• Next Big Sound Expands Free Analytics For Musicians, Adds New Metrics

• 5 Types of Music Publicists That Indie Artists Should Avoid 

• How Pentatonix Built a Social Media Powerhouse

• The Many Realities of Touring as an Independent Artist: What’s Right for You?

• Indie Artists Receive +50% Of All GRAMMY Nominations For 5th Consecutive Year

What the Ad Industry Can Teach You About Running Your Band Like a Brand

By Tyler Perry on Sonicbids Blog

Your band is your brand. Whether you like it or not, that's just the truth. Your music is your product, your fans are your customers, your genre is your industry, and your content is your positioning. You can hide from it all you want, but that's how people already view you – as a brand. So if we're supposed to treat our work as a brand, shouldn't we be marketing it like one? 

The Cost Of Breaking A Major Label Act

By Bobby Owsinski on Music 3.0 Blog

The latest IFPI (International Federation of the Phonograph Industry - boy, is that name outdated) recently came out with a report about the state of the music industry and a few of the elements that were analyzed included how much the major labels spent on developing new acts.

Here are some interesting figures.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Facebook vs. Snapchat

By Lisa Hallgren on DPFOC.com

As the MD of a digital marketing company, I know that social media is now a huge part of digital marketing and it has really revolutionized the area. Facebook provides an excellent advertising medium with high targeting potential but Snapchat is still in its infancy in this regard. What are the specific pros, cons of using both platforms? Click to view the full infographic below. 

EDM From 30,000 Feet

By Dave Blue of GEOclubbing

A new industry report from EDMTCC provides the most comprehensive look to date at the dynamics driving the surge of EDM in the United States.

Titled “The EDM Guide: Technology, Culture, Curation”, the report gracefully summarizes the evolution of Electronic Dance Music dating back to 1982, how EDM is outperforming in the face of declining music sales, and profiles several trailblazers throughout the industry.These topics will be familiar to many Hypebot readers, but the report provides a deeper level of understanding for industry pros, and serves as a starting point for entrepreneurs looking to enter the scene.

How to Run a Proper Social Media Contest Your Fans Will Love

By Tyler Allen on Sonicbids Blog 

I had a guy approach my company about sponsoring a talent show. I always dig a good talent show, and it made sense with my work, so I was certainly interested. He then told me, however, about an online voting component, where fans voted on contestants through Facebook, and the winner was deemed the "online fan favorite." To further add spice (and complication), if you voted, you were entered into a drawing for a prize at the show. So you won something, and the artist won something.

6 Tips for Your Holiday Email Campaigns

By Amanda Krebs on the FanBridge Blog

The inbox can be daunting when December rolls around, but we’re here to help you craft a powerful campaign that will cut through the clutter to your most supportive fans.  Here are 6 things to keep in mind as you gear up for holiday promotions:

Not Another Streaming Debate

Guest post by LIVIA TORTELLA of Black Box

In 2009, Jordan Kurland invited me to my first Bandwidth Conference when it was hosted in San Francisco; great name, no press, invitation only. The space was perfect for productive and intimate conversations. Five years later, Ashli Lewis (founder and organizer of Bandwidth) continues to keep the conference true to it’s roots as a music meets technology heart-to-heart. When I got a call from Ashli over the summer inviting me to lead a discussion at Bandwidth, I immediately thought yes. I asked my friend and colleague Michele Fleischli to co-facilitate a session about artist development in the face of technology and the new music economy. Michele and The Windish Agency, where she works as head of creative, can certainly teach us a lot about developing music today.

5 Types of Music Publicists That Indie Artists Should Avoid

By Laura Goldfarb on Sonicbids Blog

It's time for me to come clean – at one point or another in my career, I've been guilty of being all of the types of publicists below, and as a result, I kind of sucked at my job. I've also dated, slept with, shacked up with, or befriended enough indie artists over the years to know what simply doesn't work. I recommend that the process of choosing a publicist for yourself be as informed, careful, and intuitive as choosing a nanny for your first-born child. Here's a little help on which five publicists to avoid completely.

2014: The Year Nothing In Music Broke, and Nothing Got Fixed

By Cortney Harding on This Week In Music Tech.

This was the year of the treadmill.

I mean that both for me personally (ever train for an ultra-marathon during a polar vortex?) and for the music business as a whole. 2014 felt like a whole lot of running, but there was no real forward movement — everyone wound up in pretty much the same place they started.

Indie Artists Receive +50% Of All GRAMMY Nominations For 5th Consecutive Year

A recent release by American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) recognized and congratulated the noteworthy talent coming from the independent music sector. For five years in a row, independent music labels and artists have received over 50% of all GRAMMY nominations - earning 219 nominations out of 404 non-producer category nominations (excluding the not-yet-announced Album of the Year nominations) for 2014. Independents earned nominations in key categories, including but not limited to Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Rock Performance, Best R&B Album, Best Rap Performance. 

REWIND: The New Music Industry’s Week In Review

 

• Spotify’s Secret Weapon

• 3 Things The Music Industry Can Learn From Virgin America's Cyber Monday Fail

• Let’s Be Pigs Not Hogs: How to Thrive in the Age of Digital Music

• How Pentatonix Built a Social Media Powerhouse

[MORE]

Getting It Done: The Week In D.I.Y & Indie Music

 

• The Many Realities of Touring as an Independent Artist: What’s Right for You?

• 10 Things You Had Totally Wrong About Music Publishing

• 14 Ways to Make Money From One Song

• 5 Snarky (but Simple) Design Tips That Will Immediately Improve Your Content

[MORE]

Our Virtual Panel Looks Back At 2014: Cortney Harding of Muzooka

Cortney Harding, strategist at Muzooka and co-host of Hypebot.com's Upward Spiral Podcast will be kicking off the 2014 Hypebot.com Year End Virtual Panel. "Much like cab drivers love to whine about Uber when they should be thinking about how to survive when driverless cars hit the road, the Taylor Swift vs Spotify dustup is a short term distraction to a much bigger disruption." Continue reading to hear more from Cortney on what 2014 meant for the music industry. 

Why Streaming (Done Right) Will Save the Music Business

By Jason Epstein and Rob Glaser, members of the board of directors of Rhapsody. 

“There’s somethin’ happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear … ” — Stephen Stills

When the legendary American rock band Buffalo Springfield sang those words in 1966, they were singing about a youth uprising in LA, at a place called “Pandora’s Box.” Little did anyone know that almost 50 years later these words would be an equally apt way to describe another youth uprising, surrounding another Pandora, as well as a Spotify, a Rhapsody, a YouTube and an iTunes.

4 Jobs You Unknowingly Take On When You Become a Band Manager

By Shaine Freeman on Sonicbids Blog

Great managers are hard to find – especially when you consider that it's one of the few professions where no experience or license is required to negotiate contracts and collect money on behalf of someone who is not under their guardianship. While there's a body that governs managers on the film side of entertainment, there are no such organizations in the music business to set standards for best practices among managers, which is why so many artists and bands are likely to experience a bad management situation at some point in their careers.

The Many Realities of Touring as an Independent Artist: What’s Right for You?

By Chris Robley on CDBaby.com

Jack Conte of Pomplamoose wrote a blog post last week about how his band toured for a month and grossed $135,983, but still LOST money to the tune of $11,819. The piece is really interesting, going into detail about the band’s expenses, revenues, and what their attitudes are towards the “cost” of touring as an independent act.His article has stirred up a lot of different kinds of conversations around touring. A UK band called They Say Fall posted “The reality of low-level band touring,” an article that basically says mid-level bands such as Pomplamoose could turn a profit by doing with less on tour: no roadies, sleep in the van, eat cheap food, etc.