Here is some excerpts from an interview I did with Rick Goetz from musiciancoaching.com
“I think it’s critical that you have your own website and drive traffic to your own website in any way imaginable, and that you set up ways to do business transactions on your websites. That can be collecting names, cell phone numbers, Twitter follows, selling product, building dialogue, communication, selling tickets and merch. That’s essential.
At Music Power Network and Berkleemusic we teach a lot of people DIY basics. Get your act together, get a website together, have a business partner that is going to help you create a strategy and deal with promotion and distribution and touring and publishing and your finances and the business aspects of your career so you can focus as much time as possible on creating art and getting better and practicing and becoming a better artist. I think that’s essential. Lots and lots of people I’ve seen – musicians, artists – have thought, “I’ll get online and Facebook and YouTube and get a bunch of friends and spend all my time blogging and tweeting.” But if they’re not working on your music, most of the time that other stuff doesn’t matter at all. If you’re not really great, nobody is really going to care.
It’s such a fine balance to strike between perfecting your art and being unique and different and having something to say and getting the word out. That’s the conundrum. We often counsel people that you have to have a business partner. At Berkleemusic we teach entrepreneurship, artist management, how to start your own business, how to run a business, how to market direct and use social media to market, what copyright law is all about, what contracts are all about, how to tour, how to make money, the realities of the different levels of touring and how you can get paid and use that to be a driver of your career.
It’s a huge ambition that we have here at Berklee to try and help create a healthy music industry going forward. If there isn’t a healthy music industry, none of us have jobs, none of our students have jobs and the whole thing goes down the toilet. We have to help people be free thinkers, entrepreneurs, to break the rules.
When we started the berkleemusic online school ten years ago there was no iPod, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook or Apple iTunes store. That all happened in the last ten years. So if you think about what’s going to happen in the next ten years, it’s going to be completely different and almost impossible to predict what’s going to happen. People that want to be in the industry have to be willing to accept that it’s going to constantly change for the foreseeable future. There is nothing you can be sure of, and the things that work today probably are not going to work tomorrow.
God willing, some kid is going to create the next big thing in music like Sean Fanning did with Napster or a new format or a new kind of virtual experience that is as good as a concert. Something like that is going to happen, and who knows what it is going to be? It’s hard to predict.”
Read the whole interview here. Thanks Rick!
The pleasure was mine Dave – be in touch!
R
Really social networking is essential for a good business.
DVD RW
Great article and interview! Musicians have never had as much power to draw their own audience as they do today. There are millions of people out there who spend hours looking for music of all styles and genres on the web. As many have said before me.. “luck is when preparation and opportunity come together.” Be prepared, know for a fact in your soul that you can be as successful as you want to be, never give up, and choose to enjoy every moment of the the ride. If you’ve got talent and you follow these steps, YOU WILL SUCCEED! Thanks Again Dave and Rick!
RMS
Thank you for the insightful article and interview. I am originally from the midwest (though working in OC, CA), and an alumnus of the Indiana University School of Music (Bloomington, DM Composition). I believe the Berklee College of Music understands the future of music better than anyone. Keep up the good work!
I agree that as artists our time can get absorbed with the necessary but secondary activities of business promotion compared to actually making the music.
However, there are so many ways to automate and streamline the process of promotion.
There are fundamental principles of marketing that work regardless of the next or last big thing – sometimes it’s just a matter of applying the same creativity that we employ on our music.
Good to see the likes of Berklee embracing that approach rather than waiting for some kid to create the next big thing!
Andy
Great Somali Music to check out!!!!
Hey David,
Ran across your site and enjoyed the content. We would love to feature you on our blog. Feel free to drop me a line if you are interested. Thanks!
Giovanni
The Record Shop