Strategies

The Weekly Batch

March 19, 2013

Musicians are expected to be everywhere these days. We’re interacting on social networks, following up on blog comments, keeping our profiles on countless music sites up to date, and checking our stats and analytics with a variety of online tools. It’s enough to make a lifelong indie yearn for a label – one with a [...]

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Social Media & Email Management for Musicians

July 12, 2012

Engaging with fans is fun and rewarding. It can also be an addictive time suck. If you check your email, Facebook, and Twitter first thing in the morning, you’re doing it wrong! Better to start your day creating something worth tweeting about. As a self-confessed productivity junkie, I’ve tried dozens of approaches. This one stuck. [...]

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Next Steps to Music Licensing

June 13, 2012

I’m excited to bring you a follow-up to one of the most popular articles on this site, by friend and music licensing veteran Helen Austin. -Brian My music career has advanced significantly in the two years since I first wrote about film and TV placement. As more and more licensing opportunities become available to indie artists, I’m often asked for advice. It’s nice to [...]

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7 Steps to Finding a Music Publisher

April 3, 2012

Back by popular demand, I’m proud to present another guest post by friend and music licensing veteran Helen Austin. -Brian I’ve had songs with several publishers, from large instrumental libraries to publishers promising me Coke ads. I now write exclusively for pigFactory and get songs regularly placed in ads and on TV and movies (click here for [...]

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How I Got 96 Album Cover Designs for $145 (and why I’ll never do it again)

July 11, 2011

Quality graphic design is expensive. I paid $500 just to license the cover image for my last album, plus $600 for the rest of the design. That’s fine every couple of years, but now that I’m releasing songs individually, I need a cover design every month or two. I decided to give 99designs a try, [...]

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Prescreen Your Future Fans with Twitter

May 10, 2011

Two months ago, I began implementing Ariel Hyatt and Carla Lynne Hall’s strategy to increase my Twitter following, as laid out in their book Musician’s Roadmap to Facebook and Twitter. The basic idea is to follow potential fans in the hope that they will follow back. I discovered that the more selective I am in choosing who [...]

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10 Ways to Trade a Song for an Email Address

January 12, 2011

I measure my success as a recording artist by the growth of my mailing list. The best way to get someone to subscribe is to offer something in return, and a great song is a powerful incentive. Here are ten techniques to negotiate that delicate exchange: 1. The classic squeeze page. You’ve probably stumbled onto [...]

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7 Best WordPress Plugins for Passive Promotion

October 8, 2010

I’m convinced that WordPress is the most powerful and easily implemented website platform for musicians. Most of my social networking efforts are aimed at directing traffic to my band site, which serves as my base of operations. Countless free plugins allow me to add new features and customize to my heart’s content. I recently overhauled both [...]

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4 Steps to Film and TV Placement

September 3, 2010

I’m often asked how to get music into film and TV. I owe my small degree of success to a music supervisor from Bunim-Murray who found me on thesixtyone and placed several of my songs in MTV shows (more info on my latest and largest placement here). For a more helpful answer, I turned to my [...]

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The Individual Edition CD

August 17, 2010

This month I released my 8th full-length album, slated to be my last physical release. I might have gone the digital-only route this time if I hadn’t won free CD manufacturing from Disc Makers through the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. The fact that it was a physical release allowed me to take pre-orders, which provided [...]

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