The Most Important Trait All Musicians Should Have

There is one thing that every musician should have - an ultimate goal. It could be to make an album, it could be radio airplay, it could be playing a successful gig. Forward planning is essential, and can help turn all that motivation, skill and passion into great art.

How Musicians Can Use Their YouTube Channel Effectively

If your a band or artist you might be thinking of making or have made music videos. You will almost certainly want to upload these onto YouTube. Over 800 million people use YouTube, and you can attract a large amount of subscribers if you know how to manage your channel effectively. Here's how.

- Have a great video - This is the easiest and obvious way to get plenty of viewers and/or subscribers. Although it should not rest on the quality of the video alone. The music has to be good too, and the visuals should combine well with the music. This is what turns a good video into a highly memorable video, especially if the visuals are original. Try to avoid cliched videos - such as having the band play in the video, as this has been done millions of times and has absolutely no imagination to it.

- Have a few videos ready - If you only have one video uploaded then there's a good chance your online audience will lose interest, so make sure you have a few videos uploaded to keep them happy. There will inevitably be times when you don't have any new videos to upload, so during this time you should favourite videos on other channels that you like, preferably ones that are related to your own work.

- Keep your videos short - The reality of YouTube is that most people won't watch a 20 minute epic of your music, if you make it that long. Even at 5 minutes you may struggle to keep them watching for the whole duration. It's far easier to condense and make a great 2 or 3 minute video instead of making anything longer. You have only so much allocation time before your audience switches attention to another video.

- Include plenty of tags - Make sure you put plenty of words relevant to the video and your band in the tags option, so that you appear more in searches. This optimization is vital to ensure you reach a large audience.

- Have a short description - Most people only read the first two lines of the description box for each video, so make sure you post a link to your website and also to remind them to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

- Avoid automated YouTube plays - Many websites guarantee you a large amount of views or plays for your video in exchange for money. YouTube are trying to crack down on this, and if you try to pursue this option your video may be taken offline and they could suspend your channel.

- Consider collaborating - You can share ideas with other YouTube channel makers and explore new areas. With this idea you are creating leverage from your collaborators channel and so you will gain new subscribers to your channel, and vice versa.

- Always mention to subscribe - After every video you should remind your audience to subscribe to your channel, so they are kept informed about any new videos you've uploaded.

Those are useful points to make the best out of YouTube for you or band, and if you adapt to those then you will have a very successful YouTube channel.

Do Online Music Resources Dilute Or Help Musicians?

Musicians have a whole arsenal of resources available to them on the web. Many specialize in music theory, production techniques, marketing and promoting resources and advice, music business news, online music platforms, even sites where fans can donate money to musicians, in exchange for a limited edition album.

Do these resources dilute or add to a musicians success?  

One of the problems with promotion and marketing tips is that there easily imitable, so if one musician does it than there's bound to be someone else that follows. This might be a Youtube Video that's easy to make. Production knowledge is also easy to be copied, and subsequently you go on any music platform like someone and you hear loads of musicians doing exactly the same kind of music. It is also a bad influence on other musicians.

On the flipside, there are many benefits from using a combination of these resources. If you learn a good level of music theory and develop sound production skills, both from online resources, then you will create a more unique and distinctive sound in your own music. Distinctiveness is absolute gold dust. It also pays off not to get carried away with overloading your platforms of online music access – instead of having your music on Bandcamp, Myspace, Soundcloud and Reverbnation why not just have it on one of them? You can then give that platform your undivided attention.

Restraint and control with online music resources is the effective way, instead of getting carried away with too much.

The Very Simple Science Of Pop Music

The very simple science of pop music goes like this:

• Write a common chord progression
• Have a verse/chorus structure repeated three times
• Add a novel or unusual element
• Keep it three or four minutes long
   

And that's it! This sequence can be interpreted in many different ways, but with this basic formula you will have the makings of a pop song.

The Importance Of In-House Artist Development

One key area for a label or record company is their artist development. More specifically, they must decide whether or not to promote and market a band immediately, or give them time to develop. The latter option is very important – here's why.

Many artists come into labels as raw and unrefined, like raw goods essentially. They have plenty of promise but there maybe some doubt about their musical quality or sound. With artist development, an artist has the time to craft and develop their musical repertoire over a few or even possibly several years. They can learn new compositional and production knowledge, adapt to the business practice of the industry and build a solid network of contacts. This turns a promising musician into a well-rounded, confident one.

One artist from the past who took this route was David Bowie. Despite having an early hit in his youth, it was after five years of artist development that he became a pop mega star with Ziggy Stardust. He was given time to develop and craft his arty and innovative style, and became largely a huge success throughout the seventies because of years of artist development.

There are issues with this strategy. It is very time-poor and can be very costly to a label or record company, who want to have a ready-made product to sell. It makes more financial sense for them to approach an artist who already has an established fan base and tailored to a specific market or genre. There's also the problem that developing an artist won't pay off in the long run simply because of bad development or just plain impatience.

So, artist development can be highly effective, but the key to it's success is giving an artist the right amount of time and taking them into the right direction.   

The Changing Role Of The Music Performer

It use to be simple. In the past bands and artists would play gigs or concerts to an audience and get paid.

However, with the emergence of turntablism as a popular performance act in the 1980s DJs were the new breed of performer. They seamlessly blended disparate textures to create a unique new sound, despite not actually using any traditional instrumentation, or having any artistic credits on the records they played.

Roll on a couple decades and you had (and still have) X-Factor, a show that makes regular people's dreams of pop superstardom turn into a reality. At least for a short while. Contestants perform to a panel of judges who decide whether they have the credentials to be a pop star, and culminates with many of them being voted off the show. Combine this with millions of primetime viewers and you have a major entertainment show. Some don't even watch it for the best singers - many of the bad singers are just as entertaining. However, because the stakes are so high many contestants are totally devastated when they lose (and the few that win are beyond ecstatic).

With the power of the Internet there is now a website where artists and bands all over the world can perform to a virtual audience. Artists and bands on Stageit.com can create and perform interactive monetized shows to audiences all over the world who are willing to pay. This gives a different meaning to performance, but also takes away the real interaction with fans and listeners.

These three examples show how changing technologies and new forms of entertainment have had a revolutionary change in the way a musician performs to its audience.

The Best And Worst Products Musicians Sell To Fans

The increase in the range of merchandise and added-value goods has provided a real goldmine for all types of musicians, but what goods are of real worth?

The best products are the ones that are related directly to the music - tickets to gigs, limited edition CDs, live videos of concerts and performances, music tuition and instrument kits.

Then there is the worst - the ones that seemingly have almost no relevance to music whatsoever. These include locks of hair, necklaces, nauseating photo books and a lot of clothing merchandise.

The amount of products in the worst category seems to give off a smack of desperation from the artist, and may even reflect an insecurity from the artist with the most important aspect - their own music.

Musicians should know that their fans want their music more than their superficial goods, and I would certainly prefer it if a fan had an album of mine rather than just a T-Shirt.

Production Music - A New Step Into Music Longevity?

Production music is essentially licensed music that is used for TV, film, radio and online broadcasts to name a few.

Many artists have licensed their music for use on these mediums and it provides them with a decent and regular income. A lot of them earn more money this way than they do from selling their own records.

So how do these payments break down? Usually a band will register their licensed music on a production music website like Audio Network, where a production company can then listen and use the music they like, paying a fee in the process. This fee gets split 50/50 between the production music website and the artist.

The level of income received varies depending on which the music is used on. Film soundtracks pay the highest, follow by TV and advertising, radio, internet, games and mobile usage.  

So this all sounds good. However, if you're an up-and-coming musician then it might be a while before your music grabs someone's attention and gets used. Many production companies go for established artists, so you have to make sure your music stands out.

It also creates another problem regarding your direction in acquiring a living from music. Is your customer a production company instead or as well as a dedicated music fan?

Production music offers a great new opportunity for artists, but competition for usage is fierce and it's only going to get fiercer.

The Power Of Music Collaborations

There are many collaboration opportunities available to musicians in the modern era. Here's just a few of them.

Working with other musicians - The obvious one, and quite a broad one at that. Working with similar musicians can develop ideas and improve your own knowledge. It can be very enriching and even just working with another musician will improve you as a whole.

Working with other creative types - such as art designers, choreographers or film directors (if you're lucky enough to work with a film director). This is a popular route to making a living for many musicians. It also make your work accessible to a range of new audiences that were previously unreachable. A good relationship with other arts professionals can lead to regular collaborations.

Online collaboration - This is a way of working with a musician without having to meet them in person. The major benefit of this collaboration is that you can collaborate with musicians from all over the world, something that was virtually impossible before the Internet.   

Mass online collaboration - This is a development from the online collaboration method. With this method you collaborate with as many musicians as you can, fusing many different styles with musicians from many different countries. You may find that your involvement in the project will become a lot more diluted, but think of the relationships you would build with many different musicians. If you want to branch out internationally, then this could be a viable option.

With the right planning and execution these collaboration methods can act as a way forward to a musicians success.

New Music Markets Across The World

Breaking into the traditional music markets (USA, UK, Japan, Germany) is the dream for many musicians and bands worldwide.

However, those are not the only options. There are growing music economies throughout the world that could eclipse the traditional markets in the near future. I will focus on three of them – Brazil, India and The Netherlands.

From 2011 to 2012, Brazil has had a music market growth of 11.2 per cent. This has largely been down to a huge population, growing economy, improved infrastructure, expanding middle class, increasing device penetration and greater use of social media. Growing internet access has been the key to this surge. Another major factor is the emergence of one of the world’s biggest digital music platforms, itunes, which has recently been launched there. This Latin American market is huge, and Brazil is its new leader.

A third year of consecutive growth in 2012 has seen India emerge as one of the most powerful Asian music markets. Digital sales have overtaken physical sales, and this has largely been down to the increased ownership in mobile phones, particularly smartphones. The largest proportion of sales has come through mobile channels, and with half a billion mobile subscribers it is an extremely lucrative market.

The Netherlands has experienced the biggest growth of digital music in Western Europe, with a growth of 66%. This has occurred because of a growth in streaming usage and a big clampdown on illegal downloading sites such as Megaupload, Fileserve and Filesonic. There are now more Spotify users than Pirate Bay users in the Netherlands.

These are just a few examples of the potential that new music markets offer to the modern musician and if subscription services carry on growing and illegal platforms are tackled then artists will enjoy a new renaissance.

All the information featured in this article can be found in the IPFI 2013 report.                 

http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/dmr2013.pdf