MMC15 - Part 4.1

Many of you may recall that I had a series of posts in February on the Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg (see: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). It recently occurred to me that I did not finish all of the posts I had intended to from that. Though it's overdue to the point of just letting it go, there's still a wealth of knowledge I pulled from the conference that I think is worth sharing.

Part 4 of this MMC15 series is on the last session that I attended. Jason Rubal, the owner of Seventh Wave Studio, spoke for this one. They've got their name on some 250,000 records - just to put things in prospective. Jason was real down-to-earth and seemed to know what was up with music and how it's been changing throughout the last few years. It was definitely my favorite and I've got a crap ton of notes from it - so get ready (this one section will be broken down over a few posts).

As was the case with the other MMC15 posts, I'll throw some comments in after things. I'll sign each one (-ab) just to avert confusion because there are tons of lists and whatnot here.


Mistakes Musicians Make - Jason Rubal


4 kinds of musicians:

1. Pro - make it happen no matter what 
2. Feelers - need something for it to happen
3. Excuse Makers - always have something to blame
4. Suck - act pro, but suck

• Being pro is the only way to make it
• I'd put myself somewhere between feelers and pro. While I can deliver musically 95% of the time, I still lack the audience skills to round the show out every time. -ab

You need to find fans for life - your "niche"

Types of music:

1. Song - tell a story
2. Music - based on an expression of music
3. Entertainment - weird

• Don't mix types! (goes along with finding your niche)
• Being firmly rooted in the "music" type, I often times will criticize the song and entertainment side of things for their lack of musicality. I've been getting better at looking at the lyrical content over the musicality of the "song" genre, but still can't get over the entertainment stuff. However, Jason made a great point: we don't understand them and we probably don't want to. -ab

Types of Records:

1. Fans - for people who want to purchase and listen to you
1. Albums made for the fans are intended to solidify your "sound" and to give people something they're familiar with. It would make sense to me that this would also lead to more profit. -ab
2. Artist - for yourself, as an artist
1. Albums made for yourself I would generally think of as less marketable. If I'm releasing albums as "Alex Brubaker" and one album is this pretty guitar stuff and then the next is profane rap, then you'll confuse the heck out of your fans. A lesser extreme is seen when artists change their sound and their fans get upset. Unless you've gotten those "fan for life" types, you'll never be able to carry a following. -ab
3. Industry - for the industry. These are dead.
1. The industry has caved in on itself. Major labels have tried to hold tie down the creativity in music and it's no longer having the upper hand. The success of that horrid youtube video, Friday, has shown that labels aren't needed. That leaves the choice of your album down to being for the fans or being for yourself. -ab

The music industry is doing great - how the industry perceives bands is the problem

• I think I would say that the problem is how "the industry" is defined is the problem. Since any Rebecca Black can release something, industry has just expanded too rapidly to be able to be redefined. -ab

Do not assume the way that you hear music is how everyone else hears it

• Being in the "music" category of type of music is the hardest because of this. Pop music is a step away from making my ears bleed and I can't fathom how others listen to it. However, I'll listen to a death metal band while sleeping on the beach and be perfectly content and relaxed. There's no way I'll stop being critical of ...everything, but to realize that not everyone senses the same is a good place to start at understanding people -ab
• The key is to find out how your fans hear music.

MMC15 - Part 3

I'm finally making it back to the MMC blogs. Again, this is a series on my experiences at the Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA a couple weeks ago. If you missed the first two, here are the links:
MMC15 - Part 1
MMC15 - Part 2

This post will cover the second session that I attended:

Music Industry Entrepreneurship - Dr. E. Michael Harrington, Lawrence Gelburd, Jason Spiewak, Jeff Snyder

This was a panel on how to approach music from an entrepreneurial standpoint. Since there were 4 minds contributing to this, I'll just use initials to denote who made which point (since there are 2 JS's, Jeff Snyder will just be Jeff). Also, as was the case with the previous posts, my commentary will be after their bullets, un-initialed.

• Balance analysis w/action - L.G.
• Looking at your record sales, number of facebook friends, and email stats is only half of the battle. The point of analyzing is to figure out what actions benefit you the most. Act accordingly. I've found that posting to this blog every few days helps build traffic on here, my website, and my reverbnation page. However, using the rest of the data, I can see at what times of day that works best and then act accordingly.
• Blogging
• Has to be relevant (no credit)
• When I'm reading anything, if it's not relevant to anything I do, then I have very little interest in it. Many people reading this or who may be reading this either have an interest in my music personally or are musicians themselves, so things like this I feel are relevant to the reader. Unfortunately, unless you're getting tons of traffic on one type of post and none on another, you've gotta have your readers help to tell you what's relevant to them. That being said, if you've made it this far, does anyone have any request for things they'd like me to write about?
• Crowd sourcing (no credit)
• Crowd sourcing is basically getting reader involvement. I feel like you first need to have a relevant blog before you can have people who care enough to ask you to write on something specific, but after that it would make sense that things would perpetuate themselves.
• Troll youtube for live performances of yourself - J.S.
• 46% of all youtube videos have > 500 views - Jeff
• I've trolled and trolled and trolled, but there's next to nothing. C'mon guys, take some videos of me playing! Doing little videos at home is one thing that's up there on the list of things to do, but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet. It does seem like youtube is the place to be these days, however. Andy Mckee's success is largely thanks to youtube. Unfortunately, so is Justin Bieber's, but that's a whole different set of blogs.
• Volunteer - get yourself in the door (no credit)
• This is largely what I've been doing. Paid gigs are often times gigs you get from people seeing free shows. One of the speakers was saying that he got his university job by volunteering a few hours a week. When everything is so reliant upon who you know, what better way to meet someone than by something that benefits them and costs them nothing. Sure, it may seem like shortchanging yourself, but occasionally you get some sort of break from those actions.
• Don't make excuses for your music - J.S.
• Play it w/conviction - L.G.
• If you don't believe in your music, who will? I'm definitely better about this now, but at first I would just rip myself apart for every mistake that I would make. When you show discouragement on stage or after a set, you and your music lose credibility. No one notices your mistakes 99% of the time, so just play them off, with confidence.
• Portray confidence in your website - M.H.
• Draw people in by making yourself sound good on your website. Saying that you sound like someone, but aren't as good isn't going to make me want to see you. You've got to set yourself apart by saying that you sound like this person, but also do x, y, and z. Essentially it's about having that 30 second elevator pitch to sell yourself.
• Make 3 goals for the next 2 years - L.G.
• Have 3 strategies for each goal - L.G.
• Have 3 things that you can have other people do for you for each strategy - L.G.
• This is like engineering "milestones" and how we like to do project planning. I'll have a later post (after the last MMC post), and actually try to come up with these for myself.
• Treat everyone as a potential friend - M.H.
• For me, someone who really has no faith in humanity, this is tough. Any type of entertainment requires a bit of handshaking and baby kissing in order to have good public appeal. Eminem would be a good figure to contrast this point, but I highly doubt that I'll be rubbing shoulders with the same crowd that he appeals to. I think for the most part I do a decent job at talking to people, but I can always do things better.

So this was sort of a long one. There is a ton covered in this, so if you've made it this far, I'd love to hear any thoughts on what was said. The next MMC blog is like 3 pages of notes, so it'll probably be a few pages. Maybe by the end of the week, I'll be done?

-Alex

MMC15 - Part 2

MMC had 2 days of music business sessions - Friday and Saturday. With having class on Friday, I unfortunately wasn't able to make anything on Friday. Basically, I got to conference to register and missed the last session of the day by 5 minutes. It was a bit disappointing, but not nearly as disappointing as the backlog of traffic that turned a 15 minute drive into an hour... Then, of course, I got to play Friday night at Pint's and Saturday at the open mic. After that, I was finally able to attend some sessions.

Being the good engineering student that I am, I took some notes. Right now I'll just cover the first session with some thoughts I have on the notes I've taken. The first bullet will be his point and the second will be my response.

Grabbing Your Music By the Balls - David Sherbow

• "There is no culture anymore. It's all been sold and shipped off."
• In today's society this is very much the case. Though we've had a huge increase in album releases in the past 10 years, there's been a steady decline in the musical quality. A "culture" that has come to revolve around auto-tune and American Idol is seeing music as a get-rich-quick scheme, rather than an art form. This is leading to more and more mindless garbage being produced. Of course there are the gem-in-the-rough kind of acts that embody culture and art, but with more and more music and media being pushed down our throats, they're easy to miss.
• Customer service is your job
• I don't view playing guitar as a job. It's a "job" but as long as I'm playing at said jobs, it will be for fun. When it starts to become a job, then I won't play out - simple as that. I've worn myself too thin before and have had to cut back on playing so that it would be fun again; it worked. So if I'm just going to play for fun, then that will leave the "job" portion for customer service. I've definitely been trying and I feel this blog is one of those steps. Obviously there is more that I could do, but it's all a process that will be happen over time
• Playing for free is better than giving away free music
• The main point Sherbow made on this was that everyone gives out free music. With everyone doing that, it devalues music handouts and you won't make fans. Fans are made by relationships and relationships are made during and after performances. Ultimately the goal is to make fans who are fans for life and the bottom line is that they aren't made by free music.
• Be deliberate about e-mail lists
• This means not only connecting with fans through email, but being intentional about getting names on that list. Honestly, I get maybe one or two email's per gig. Clearly, I could be doing this better. Over the next few gigs, I'll work on implementing a more deliberate plan for my email list. I always feel pushy in asking people to sign up with the list in hand, but I guess it's a good way to see whether people are in it or not. If someone doesn't like that I ask them for their email address, then I guess they're not who I want as a fan ...right?
• Attrition, Collaboration, Unification, and then Engagement
• The key steps in music business success.

More tomorrow. In other news, last week I saw 7 or 8 bands/artists, outside of the open mic. Not bad for a week...

MMC15 - Part 1

This weekend, I've had the pleasure of attending the Millennium Music Conference (MMC). It's the first music conference that I've been able to attend. Over the next few days, I'll be writing on my experiences - some of what I've learned, contacts I've made, etc.

Today's post is on my showcase spot in the festival and an open mic I played.

Pint's

So I played this small venue in downtown Harrisburg, Pint's bar and grill. Now this is the first bar that I've played. Those that know me know that I don't frequent bars. Really, the only time I've been in bars has been to play pool. Being to all of maybe 4 or 5 bars ever, I had no clue what to expect...

I'll paint a picture for you to give an idea of what my first impression was: small, dimly lit, smoky, questionable side of town, etc. When I walked in, semi-clean cut appearance, I stood out. Since it was smoky, I tried to keep my gear out of it as much as possible, so for a while I just listened to some of the other acts. However, when I did bring in all of my gear, again, I was the anomaly of the group. Obviously, once I started playing that was enforced again.

So, far this seems super awkward and weird for me. However, I did have a few friends drop by. I can't name them on here, but it was great getting to experience such a different culture with some familiar faces. We likened it to being abroad immersed in a foreign culture. It was a good look into a different part of our community and really interesting to do some people watching and whatnot.

As is with a music conference, the main point of this all was to network. I met some great artists and had some good discussions. My music went over well with most of the people in the bar as well as the musicians. Never having played in a bar, this was a major concern. However, with a completely new style being shown to them, the bar goers were actually intrigued to the point of standing up to watch. This is always a great thing to have happen.

Ultimately, the only part that I really didn't like was the smoke. So, if I can find some non-smoking bars, I'd love to play some more.

PA Musicians Magazine Open Mic


Today, I went over to the Radisson, where the main MMC events were held. Throughout the day, in addition to the speakers, there was an open mic. Since I was there closer to when everything started, I was asked to start off the open mic set. Strangely enough, this was the first open mic that I've ever played. Since I was the first one up for the day and was breaking the ice for things, I got about 5 songs in before someone else went up. From that brief exposure, I was able to meet some more people and to hear some more good music. I'll definitely be looking to play some more open mic's when I am able. There is also supposed to be a short write-up on each performer in the open mic in their March issue. It'll be nice to finally get some press and I'll definitely get a link up when that happens.


The performing side of things is just one facade of a music conference. Tomorrow I'll hopefully have some time to start exploring some of the speakers and what I've learned from them. First, I'll start with just the notes that I took, and then, perhaps at a later date, I'll start to talk about how I want to implement new things that I have learned.