I got an email from my friend, Vincent Lowe about a week ago asking if I’d run sound for an event he was putting on at San Pedro Square Theatre in downtown San Jose. The event was called “Art Shots” and it was a small competition sponsored and facilitated by Artsopolis and Vincent Lowe to connect film makers to artists. The film makers would choose an artist that they wanted to interview and produce a 90 second film clip describing the artist. The event was the culmination of the competition, showing many of the films that were submitted and rewarding the winners. The grand price was awarded to ArtShots 2010, Carl Couchman.
The best part for me were the excellent live performances of artists from the competition, Amy Obenski and Tin Cat. I talked with the guys from Tin Cat and they’ve agreed to play with Rhythma at the Doctors Without Borders concert at The Blue Rock Shoot in Saratoga on Sunday, June 6th at 6:30pm.
Tarradiddle (Sean Michael Imler and Bill Mason) are playing a house concert with Gazingas at 7pm, Friday April 2nd in Sunnyvale, CA. Contact me if you’d like to attend and I’ll add you to the eVite. If you haven’t heard us, we play folk rock covers and similar originals, both on acoustic guitar with lush harmonies. There are a couple of tracks on mySpace.
I played a character in a short film called “Trail of Gold.” I also wrote an original song for the film and performed it in the film. The producer, Vincent Lowe posted a video on Youtube of the one take performance mixed as a vignette of scenes from the film. Unfortunately, the film’s editing wasn’t completed so you can’t see it in it’s entirety at this point and I haven’t cut this in the studio, but I was lucky to get this piece to share with you. I hope you enjoy it.
Wow, I can’t believe this is the ninth week! I have to tell you that I’ve played virtually no music over the last 9 weeks I’ve been so busy with all the changes I’m making. I think the foundation is laid from here on out and I’ll be able to focus a little more on the craft but there is a list of 22 things that I have to complete as of yet. For instance, I’m in the process of making ringtones which unfortunately, ReverbNation is doing a store overhaul so I can’t post them right now which is a bummer because I’m very excited about these. I did a test run of “Island of Misfit Toys” and sent it to my phone and I’ve shared it with a couple friends by having them call me, and watching their faces light up when it’s playing on my phone has been a very cool experience. I may look for another way to host them so keep a lookout for a service that will allow me to sell them either directly from my site or host them but give me an API that links back to their service. Oh, and by the way, that’s the topic of this week’s chapter in the book, what Ariel calls the “Continuum Program.”
Ariel really wants you to make money and doing it alone with just music isn’t necessary. That’s why she encourages you to look at other things you can provide to your customers like merchandise emblazoned with your logo, private shows, cheap downloads, or free downloads with email subscriptions (which I’ve already done). But she doesn’t stop there. She’s really trying to get you to think about how you can create an ongoing relationship with your customers, engaging them into a distribution funnel that starts with the inexpensive and capturing their interest by producing more exclusive products or programs that cost more money, but provide more exclusivity to them. I think that much of the thinking behind this is concurrent with a thread that she’s been writing about based on the 1,000 true fans theory that basically encourages you to find the right number of die-hard fans that are enraptured with your output. You cater to those fans with what they love about you and it’s a win/win: They support you by buying your products and you support them by being the creative you that you are.
There are a number of program ideas that the book suggests for keeping momentum with your fans and engaging new fans. Things like special exclusive events with the band, monthly gifts, artist critiques and even a private VIP fan website. I’m going to start out slowly on this because being one artist with a full-time job, I can only do so much and I really need to build a fanbase from the publicity work I’m doing from the last 9 weeks, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have made much of a different yet except that my mp3 sales are improving a little. But, I got a great idea from my friend, JC which is to try to sell prints of my artwork on FineArtAmerica.com. I’ve had some drawing on my website for a long time and I have hi-def slides as well so I’m gonna go get them re-digitized and post them hopefully within the week and see if I can’t sell some prints. I also have a number of drawings that are near completion that I’ll add to the mix and maybe I can combine some art sales with music sales. The proposition is exciting! So keep a lookout for that.
I also wanted to add that the end of the book has a couple bonus chapters on traditional PR and choosing the right publicist. I really found the traditional PR chapter to be quite interesting and wish that I’d seen it a long time ago. Ariel includes comments from a couple of journalists who write about musicians and gets some nice feedback from them about what they like and how they like to receive press kits to possibly write about. I’ve seen other articles along these lines but what stands out about this one is the immense detail about the press kit itself, representing that press kit on your web site, and the pertinent advice on follow-up. I myself have not done due-diligence on follow-up sometimes and I know that I’ve suffered for it. You have to do it which means you need to keep track of when and where and who you send something to and be ready to follow-up a couple of weeks later. I remember listening to a panel once of music reviewers for agencies and someone on the panel talked about their office. It had three boxes in it. The first box got all the mail-ins of CDs. If an artist made contact one time either by phone or email, someone would hunt down the CD in the first box and move it over to the second box. If the artist made a second attempt at contact or follow-up, the CD would be moved from the second box and into a box that actually sat on the reviewers desk where it would be reviewed. Sounds a little nuts until you see the wall of CDs on some people’s desks.
One thing I’m learning about the music business: It’s a little what you know, who you know, what you do… and how much endurance you have. This concludes our regularly scheduled program. Please stay tuned to find out how this big shift will play out in 2010. I’m really wanting big things to happen this year and I’m really hoping that the effort that I’ve put into this blogging contest has will pay off. I would love to be publicized by Ariel. She rawks and has truly been inspiring too me!
Well, this is really winding down now. This week’s chapter is fairly short and relatively simple and all about non-virtual communication with people. For instance, going to a party or other event and really staying focused on what you want to achieve when talking to people face to face. I’m not sure who does that anymore but it sounds intriguing. ;O)
Ariel cites Larry Sharpe as the inspiration for some of the information in the chapter and explains the reasons why we network, like finding customers, gaining a sphere of influence and finding resources for new ventures. She’s emphatic about being memorable by getting other people to talk about themselves. I actually really enjoy getting people to talk about themselves so this is easy. I rarely ever say anything about myself unless asked, because frankly, conversation is a two-way street. Now, if someone only likes talking about themselves, I’d just give them a mirror and find someone else to talk with. But maybe now, I’ll give them a business card first, which just happens to be another bit of strategy that Ariel gives.
For getting business cards done, Ariel recommends Vista Print for free cards and Jak Prints for designing your own. I’ve actually been getting cards made at Vista Print for years for the price of shipping. You can choose from a number of templates which change often enough that you may be original, provided that you don’t use the one with the red painted tapestry with the microphone in front. I got that one when it came out and so did 1,000 other musicians. It was kinda funny actually. The only catch is that they put their logo on one side. When “Between the Lines” came out, I got custom cards made with one of the photos from the photo shoot for the cover of the CD, and really spent time crafting a card that was part of the image I was working with for the new CD. They came out very nicely and were dirt cheap, they threw in a custom mailing ink stamp for outgoing mail which is getting a lot of use when I send CDs out, and the turn-around was lightening fast. I highly recommend them. There are some tips about what to put on the card, like your pitch, a photo, something that indicates what you do or play, email, and links to web sites where you’re found. I did all those things and people have actually hung up my card because they like the picture on it, so I know what Ariel is saying is right on.
So, without using the word “intention”, Ariel very much is recommending that you know what you want out of making a contact in a social situation. Setting intention is such a powerful thing because it sets a lot of wheels in motion because you’re putting out there what it is you want, and when you do that, you draw situations toward you that support your intention. Even when meeting people, have a vision of what you’d like to receive, and then be willing to put effort into following up with people that you meet to find out how you can get what you want from them and give them what it is they’re looking for. It’s about creating synergy with people. I always try and think about my music as being something that people really want so that when I’m sharing with them, it’s not laborious to be selling myself. But I’ve found that you have to let them open the door to you, and they do that when they know you’re listening too them. I just never try and sell something without being invited which is why I’ll never be a door-to-door salesman.
“In order to be successful you must think about your fans as customers”, Ariel says. First, wrapping my head around fans is enough. I know I have people that like my music and I’ve sold music to them, but when I think of the word “fan”, it’s hard to picture these people as fans because I know nearly all of these people personally. They’re friends, family, acquaintances, people that I see around. I haven’t made a really long reach yet, and I have trouble reconstituting these people as customers. I have asked them to buy music from me and review it, but I do so thinking that they want to support me as their wacko music writing buddy. Maybe a shift in my perspective will help, but I’ve never really enjoyed sales. I think that’s probably the point here is to start thinking like a business person. I find something that helps is only sell when the other person expresses interest. That’s the opening to shift to sales person. Don’t try to sell to someone before you know that they have interest. This helps me stay authentic.
There are a ideas in chapter 6 of the book Music Success in Nine Weeks that I like better than the last one. Make ringtones out of songs. ReverbNation has a new store and selling ringtones is something they offer their artists so I’m going to try and get a few good excerpts of songs to post there and see how that works. Something else I’ve thought of doing is making stickers. I really like the Rhythma logo and I think it would make great rub-on decals, so that’s on my list of things to do. How many of you would buy stickers, 2 for a buck? Do I hear t-shirts?
A good portion of the chapter is dedicated to email marketing and building your email list. I’ve had an email list for over 5 years now. It’s not a huge list, and I don’t send out that many emails which according to Ariel is not good. You need to be consistent and frequent. For much of last year, I abandoned the list because I wasn’t doing much music as other things had priority in my life. I shant do that again. She really presses the idea of knowing your audience so that you can think of interesting and relevant things to add to the newsletter to make it compelling. I’ve always thought of the common thread is the love of music so I only talk about things that are going on musically. People are so inundated with content being pushed to them that I tend to keep my newsletters short and to the point. According to my analytics, only 30% of my newsletter mail-outs are read. That’s a really big concern and I don’t know what to do about it. Is it spam, are they getting lost in the shuffle, or are they just being deleted? I recently upgrade my software and found that there are rejections from some servers thinking that I’m spam. I’m remedying this. Spam is a real problem because it’s easy to get black-listed from major email servers if a few people have a spam happy trigger finger or mass mailings to larger email servers trigger their alerts and once you’re on those lists, they’re really hard to get off of.
The other thing about the newsletter is the formatting. I always keep my subject line reading, “Sean Michael Imler AKA Rhythma Newsletter.” That’s pretty clear. The book then talks about the 3 G’s: greeting, guts, and getting. Got that the greeting as my software Active Campaign’s 12All adds personalization of the sendee via hooks. The gut is the content which should always be compelling in my opinion. Getting is where you get the readers to do something, which I’ve always done, no matter if it’s primary or secondary to the guts of the email. She prescribes only one call to action tho. I’m a firm believer in staying to one point. Readers can only handle so much at once and will easily miss the point because most people are skimming because of time constraints.
Last but not least, she recommends surveys. I’ve haven’t done this in a long time, since before I put out my first CD in 2005. Anyone remember the poll I did to decide which songs to put on “Rhythma?” Well, I set up a new poll. It was pretty easy to do now that I’m using WordPress. I used a plugin called WP-Polls. It was a little tricky to hook up because you have to have the wp-head and wp-foot php includes in your templates. I’d removed mine not thinking they were needed and I ended up at their forum trying to debug why it wasn’t working, but it’s all good now. I posted my first poll asking everyone to pick between two versions of a song that I recorded.
So, this is good: Ariel’s getting me to be more active with my email list. A couple of sites she recommends to use for email lists and polls are SurveyMonkey and BandLetter. They seem like pretty cools sites but I’m such a DIYer, I probably won’t go down that road. ;O)
I submitted this to a Taxi listing that was calling for a tense acoustic singer/songwriter type song that raised an air of suspicion for an indie film. I thought that “Falling” was perfect but it wasn’t dark enough so I rewrote it in E minor and rerecorded it. Unfortunately it didn’t get selected. But, I have something to share with you so check it out. You can even leave me a comment. If I get some decent responses, maybe I’ll polish and produce it with more instrumentation and it will make it onto my next CD.
This week seems to have gone by really quickly. I’m still grappling with identity in Flickr and how much personal stuff to share. I can’t seem to make a decision around some things that I wrote about in last week’s post especially concerning Flickr and I’ve neglected to write down the user/pass that I created for the MyBlogLog account that I created as a todo in Week 5 of the book. The most ironic thing is that I had a “personal” MyBlogLog account, and like the Flickr account, I wanted to try to separate Rhythma from everyday Sean, and it might just be that I can’t do it.
It’s quite a commitment to work thru this book and update my blog each week for each chapter, but I’m persistent and will prevail. And, speaking of blogs, that’s the topic for this week: Gittin’ yer blog on. So, if you read my first post, you’ll know that it was a big deal for me to turn this blog loose because although I’d been keeping a dream blog for about 5 years, I’d never made it public. Now that you may have read some of my dreams, you’ll see they can range from short and bizarre to long and bizarrer. I’ve added two other categories, “Rhythma Music” which I’ll file this post under, and “Life in General” which is not getting many posts because I can’t seem to find the time to upload my pictures to Flickr or anything else because this project is taking so much time and after that, there’s music. So, no life.
To turn my blog on was quite the effort because my OCD kicks in whenever I’m working on the computer. I get a vision in my head of the way something needs to be, and I work relentlessly to achieve it. In this case, I had to first upgrade WordPress from version 0.9 to 2.8. A quick synopsis of WordPress would be that it’s a very nicely written blogging application that you install on an internet server so that you can host your own blog under your own domain. When you look at Rhythma.com in it’s current state, you’ll see that there are links in the left hand side that take you to other pages in the site where you can look at photos and listen to music, but in the middle is my blog. The comparison would be to look at Blogger.com where they are the host for someone’s blog which you can write once you’ve created a user account with them, but your blog will always be on Blogger.com. I’ve always liked hosting my own content. In fact, I ran my web site from my own server out of my house until about 4 years ago when I finally decided to have godaddy.com host it because I was tired of the maintenance and hack attacks. BTW – I really like godaddy.com hosting.
WordPress is nice because if you don’t know too much about web sites, you can install WordPress with an incredibly simple installation! If you want to make WordPress look different from the default look, you can pick from hundreds of themes that users have created that give you different styling options and page layouts. It’s really awesome. For me tho, I needed to make WordPress look and feel like my current web site because I’d been running it at an exclusive url and never bothered to give it the look and feel of Rhythma.com. To do this, I had to learn how to create my own theme. Once I did that, I got the current layout that you see on my site, with the addition of plugins available from WordPress. A plugin is a chunk of code that does a particular task that you can add onto an application. The plugins that I’m using and I highly recommend are:
Twitter Goodies – I use this to send the titles and links back to my blog posts to my Twitter Page. I could have Socialite do that for me as it is a feature of that plugin but I have Facebook set up to post all of my tweets to my main Facebook. Not to mention that I get that dandy little right side bar widget that reposts my tweets right back to Rhythma.com.
Find Me On – This gives me the six icons on the right hand side above the Twitter Feed that point to the social networks where I have content that I want to share with my visitors. You can choose from a whole bunch of them and the icons are very nicely made.
The book recommends that you not only have an outgoing blog to share parts of yourself but that you engage with other blogs online to establish a connection with bloggers that you might at some time get to review your music. This is a road I’ve been down and I’ll share with you my experience and also some of Ariel’s thoughts around this. Music bloggers are a very busy lot. New music is coming out constantly and it’s really hard to get them to write you up. Last year, I went to SXSW and sat in on some panels that talked a lot about bloggers and a tactic that I learned was simply to hunt down music blogs that might be apt to review music like yours. I find my music somewhat similar to Brett Dennen and since he’s been getting traction, what I did was do searches online for “music blogs” and “brett dennen” and came up with a good list of thirty blogs that had reviewed Brett. I then went to each one of them and tracked down who wrote the article and how to contact them or how to send them music. Then, I bookmarked each of those sites and sent out lots and lots of emails. I sent out mp3s via email and even sent out actual CDs for review. The result: Not one review. Months went by and nothing… Pretty disheartened, I wasn’t sure what to do next. After reading week 5, I learned that bloggers are a finicky bunch and to get reviewed by them, you need to become one of them. So, if you notice down the right hand side of my web site, there’s a long list of music blogs or what you might call a blogroll. Ariel’s suggestion is to go to these sites and create an accounts there, make comments on articles, let the writers get to know you, and then… slip in that you create music and maybe they’d want to check it out. The bottom line is that bloggers have a lot of influence over real music lovers, so I’m putting this into practice. Like many of the suggestions in this book, this will take some time to garner results, so I’ll have to get back to you on that. Plus, I need to increase the number of blogs from 30 to 50.
I’ve gone thru the trouble to create this blog because as Ariel points out, it’s really important for your fans to be able to get to know you and it’s important to create as much of a presence on the internet as possible. Big brands spend thousands of dollars in marketing just keep their brand in the public eye and in your face. They do that because of what I call “out of sight, out of mind” which all of us suffer from when we don’t keep in touch with our friends and you find out about the great party that you missed because they forgot to call you ‘cos they hadn’t heard from you in three months while you were dating that hotty that you met at the club, etc. And really, the bottom line for all artists is that you always need to be generating stuff, all the time. If it’s not going to be music, stay in the rounds, keep posting your ideas, thoughts, photos, tweets, anything so that you don’t get forgotten.
