TuneCorner

Help! I Have 24 Hours to Save a Horrible Mix

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in both Nashville and New York City. Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News. He can be reached at cliff@cliffgoldmacher.com.

Part I

Well, I suppose I’ve got your attention now at any rate. Given what an emotional medium music is to begin with, it’s not surprising to me that songwriters and artists (myself included at some point in the murky days of my early career) find themselves panicking when they’ve committed to something that requires a finished product before they have it. In the old days, this used to be situations like planning a CD release party/show before you had the finished, shrink-wrapped CD in your physical possession. These days, it’s more likely that you’ve committed to getting a finished mix to a film/TV music supervisor or radio station by a specific date and after playing your mix for a few trusted friends or fellow musicians, your worst fears are confirmed. The mix is horrible. As this article will come in two parts, I’m going to spend the part one of this article giving you ways to completely avoid this situation to begin with. Then, in part two, I’m going to give you ways to salvage a desperate situation based on three different budget scenarios.

How To Avoid the Above Situation in the First Place

I understand how exciting it can be when you’re nearing the end of a recording project. You can almost count the money you’re going to make from sales or royalties. Stop! You’ve spent years perfecting your craft. You’ve taken your time and learned to sing, write songs, play instruments and, in some cases, even to engineer your own material in your home studio. Why would you try and rush one of the most critical stages of the game? A mix is the culmination of all your effort and should be handled precisely and patiently. My sincere recommendation is that you never promise a song to anyone in the industry for any reason until you’re dead certain you have a finished mix you can submit with confidence. By avoiding situations where you’ve promised something you don’t have, you won’t run the risk of not delivering and appearing undependable or, worse yet, turning in something that’s sub par. Set yourself apart from the stereotype of the flaky musician by delivering what you say you’re going to when you say you will. It might help to remember that at a certain level in the music world talent is a given. You have a better chance of differentiating yourself by being a professional in all senses of the word.

The Mix Process

Whether you’re mixing the song yourself in your home studio or working with a professional mix engineer, take your time. Listen to the mix on the speakers in the studio, in your car, on a boom box and, Steve Jobs help us all, on those crappy $30 ear buds that come with every iPod. Of course your mix won’t sound as good on a boom box or through ear buds, but it should still sound clear. You should be able to hear the vocal and distinguish the individual instruments without, for example, the bass making the speakers rattle so much that nothing else is audible. Also, it’s been my experience that singers tend to want their own vocals too low in the mix because they’re either self-conscious or they think because they already know the words that the lyric is clear enough…or both. My recommendation is to bring in one or two friends (ideally not musicians) to listen to your mix and give you their honest opinion. Musicians, as a rule, tend to listen to the wrong things in a mix. The average listener will give you valuable feedback like “I can’t hear the guitar because the drums are too loud” or “I can’t hear what you’re singing.” Musicians tend to get into the nitty gritty and often can’t keep the big picture in perspective. The one exception would be if you’re a relatively new engineer and you’re uncertain about how your mix sounds. In this case it might be worth your while to talk to an experienced mix engineer and even hire them to give you detailed criticism about things you can do to improve your mix.

Working With A Mix Engineer

For non-engineers, the main thing to remember when giving your mix to a professional mix engineer is to let them mix. My recommendation would be for you to explain to the engineer that you’re going to leave the mix to them and you’d like them to let you know when your mix is ready to review. Then take the mix home, listen to it on various sound systems (as I mentioned above) and take detailed notes about what you’d like to go over with them when you see them again. For example, instead of saying that there are some words in the song that aren’t loud enough, you’d do better to say “in the second chorus, the word “aardvark” is a little too low.” It is infinitely easier for an engineer to go over a checklist of things to review in a mix than it is for you to have them stop playback every time you think you hear something. In other words, do your homework and use your studio time with the mix engineer to methodically tweak whatever needs tweaking.

When It’s Done, It’s Done

By following the approach I’ve mentioned above, you’ll avoid the gut-wrenching feeling that you’ve got an opportunity you’re going to miss or screw up if your mix isn’t ready in twenty-four hours. My final piece of advice for this section of the article is to remember that once you’ve signed off on a mix, it’s in your best interest to let it go. Like songs, mixes can be tweaked and tweaked ad infinitum but my hope for you is that you’ve got enough else on your plate to know when to say when. Do your best and move on. The more you go through the process, the easier the “letting go” will become.

Stay tuned for Part II of this article, coming soon.

Viral Marketing–What’s Really “Real” About It?

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in both Nashville and New York City. Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News. He can be reached at cliff@cliffgoldmacher.com.

The Bad News

In my 15 years of making a full-time living in the music world, one thing has become more and more clear to me. It’s work. The romantic image of the starving artist being so incredibly talented that one day he or she gets “discovered” and becomes rich and famous is a dangerous myth. I say “dangerous” because the more you as an artist believe it, the less inclined you’ll be to do any work on your own behalf. The gritty reality is that if you don’t do the necessary (and daily) work promoting yourself and your music, it’s highly unlikely anything will ever happen.

The Good News

There has NEVER been a better time to spread the word about yourself and music. The internet, with its downloadable digital music files, social networking sites and countless other advances that we can’t even begin to imagine yet, has leveled the playing field in a way that will make the “work” you have to do infinitely more effective.

Gather Your Fans

The more you can identify and reach out to your fans the better off you’ll be. Whether it’s your friends on MySpace or Facebook or the email addresses you’ve been collecting at gigs or online, it’s these people who you need to be able to reach effectively to spread the word about what you’re doing. Treat your list of email addresses like the gold that it is. It’s these people who will not only consider buying your music when it comes out, but more importantly, will also help spread (“viral” get it?) the word about you and your music. Once you’ve got a network of fans that you can reach out to, you’ve dramatically increased your potential to spread the word about what you’re doing.

Be Creative

The fact that the playing field has been leveled and almost anyone can get their music out worldwide is both a blessing and a true challenge. Instead of fans knowing that the local Tower Records is where they should go to find new music, the internet, with its infinite musical venues, has become the new (and overwhelming) place to find what’s new and great. The more creative you are in your presentation, the more likely a fan of yours will be to forward a YouTube link with your video or any one of a thousand other ways you can create to present yourself and your music. Again, the plan is that by putting something out there that’s unique enough to rise above the typical internet fare, it will take on a life of its own and appeal not only your current fans but also to new fans in ways you’ve never imagined.

Stay Current

The outlets for music and ways of marketing online change and advance almost hourly. Taking time out of your day to be aware of the next MySpace, Facebook or Twitter will pay huge dividends going forward. It’s not enough to find one way of reaching people and stubbornly stick to it. If that were the case, bands would still be mailing postcards to let people know about their gigs. Did I just date myself?

Give It Away

Don’t be afraid to give something to get something. A free download of a song in exchange for an email address is the best deal out there these days. Make it worth someone’s while to give you his or her email address and you’ll be amazed at what happens. Let your music speak for itself. If fans like their free download, there’s a much higher likelihood they’ll come back and buy the rest. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to do this either. Take a peek at a simple and effective example by clicking here.

Make Sure Your Music Is Available

I can’t think of anything more depressing than the artist who comes up with an amazing vehicle to promote his or her music, watches it go “viral” and generate huge web traffic to their site only to have nothing readily available for sale. Don’t expect most people to wait around or check back with iTunes every few days until your music is up. Make sure that before you go about promoting your music, you’ve taken the necessary steps to insure that if and when people want to buy your music, they can do it easily. Companies like Tunecore make this essential step both simple and cost effective. Don’t wait around for people to start asking how they can get your music. By then, it’s too late. Do it first.

Trust Me, It’s Real

Be patient. Not every online marketing attempt you make will result in thousands of downloads and new fans. However, every effort you make to get the word out about your music (even if it’s fifteen minutes a day) becomes part of the bigger picture of reaching new fans. The more fans you have, the greater the potential for any one thing you do going viral and bringing in not only more fans but income. All of a sudden your “friends” on MySpace and Facebook just became a whole lot friendlier. Think of your work as a series of base hits that will get you ready for your shot at a home run. Good luck!

Jeff Price's Article in the Huffington Post

Here is the full text of TuneCore President Jeff Price's article that appeared in the first week of January, 2009's Huffington Post. Read it and reap. --Peter

From MTV to YouTube: When the Net Pays Everyone But the Musician

In 1996, taped to the wall of my now defunct record label spinART Records’ 800 square-foot, four-ikea-desk-loaded-with-unsold-CD-and-vinyl office was a $1 check from MTV. I fought hard for that stupid check. MTV wanted to use a song called “Supermerica” by a band called Poole that I released. Usually TV shows pay good money for the use of a song, but not MTV-- they required labels to allow them to use the music for free in their TV shows when you submitted a music video to be considered for programming on their network. I still don’t know why they even bothered saying they would pay a dollar. It really pissed me off. I had fronted money and worked my heart out along with the band to promote, market, manufacture and release their album and along comes a multi-national billion dollar media corporation and demands to be able to use the music for a stinking dollar. I refused to do it. The music had value to me, it was the thing we sold and the thing the band made the majority of their money off of. I could not just give it up for free. But, Harry (lead singer of Poole) convinced me to let MTV have it in anticipation of the promotional value they might get out of it. The show aired, the song appeared in the background for about 30 seconds, the show ended, MTV made money from the advertisers and the song was not mentioned anywhere. This was the way it worked. The labels fed MTV free music and videos and in return hoped to get their videos aired which in turn would drive huge music sales. And MTV made a fortune off the advertising.

And this is more or less why Warner Music recently demanded that all its videos and music be removed from YouTube. Warner previously granted YouTube the legal rights to use its content and YouTube generated a lot of money from it via advertising. Now Warner wants to be paid more by YouTube. If the Google-owned YouTube does not comply, it opens itself up to potentially tens of millions of dollars in copyright infringement fines. Universal did this same thing successfully some time ago.

When media giants fight over music, you know it has to be valuable. Looking, listening and occasionally buying a “good” song drives revenue, tremendous web traffic and generates big advertising dollars. I can kind of understand Warner’s point, but as music sales drop and the multi-national, billion dollar media giants wrestle, lobby congress and sue each other for new income streams the musician seems to be getting lost in the shuffle, and that’s a huge mistake. Creating a new revenue sharing model that focuses on allowing artists to generate enough money to continue creating music would be a win for everyone. After all, it is the music that is fueling the entire machine.

The union of music and advertising goes back decades, but it seemed to reach a new level with the launch of MTV. MTV broadcast free “TV shows” from the labels in the form of music videos. These videos brought viewers allowing MTV to charge money to advertise on its network. In return for the free videos, the labels and artists received promotion. Artists became more famous which in turn allowed labels to make more money from music sales (there were other income streams as well like money from gigs, but the labels only participated in revenue that came from the sale or license of the music). This symbiotic relationship worked very well as long as all involved made their fair share of money.

However, after over two decades of a steady annual increase in music sales generating enough revenue to feed the record industry, music sales plummeted. At about the same time, advertising revenue from music went through the roof. Internet companies made money off music via venture capital investments, going public and getting acquired for a billion dollars. And this is the crux of the problem, music is being used for profit but not everyone is getting a piece of the pie.

Music sales plummeted with broadband proliferation and the mass adoption of the Internet, MP3s, compression technology, peer to peer file sharing, instant messaging of files, email attachments, torrents and other on-line distribution vehicles. The labels found themselves wondering why they should continue to provide their music and videos for free if the channels/sites they gave them to were reaping a disproportionate financial benefit. Labels would not have given MTV free music videos in the 80’s if MTV made money off the videos but the labels did not. (Imagine ABC getting the TV show “Lost” for free, then broadcasting it and keeping all the advertising revenue.)

Move ahead in time to the launch of the original peer-to-peer music file sharing software Napster allowing anyone to get any song at any time for free. Tens of millions of users provided Napster a huge “viewing audience” that it could reach via its “channel.” Unlike MTV, most labels and artists did not give Napster permission to use their music. The one area where value could have been created – music sales from discovery – was made irrelevant by allowing users to get the songs for free. To add insult to injury, despite Napster raising almost 100 million dollars and then being bought for 8 million the artists and labels were not paid anything (some would even suggest they lost money due to pirating).

The money that labels did make came from suing Napster and getting paid settlements for copyright infringement; the artists got nothing.

Over time social networking sites began to pop up and MTV moved on to showing its own TV shows (why not, they now had their own built in audience). Bands began to use these sites to get heard, discovered and to collect fans. Music lovers flocked to the sites, web traffic went up and the social networking sites began to charge advertisers for banner ads based on the “eyeballs” they were getting (for a website, any friend of the band is a friend of theirs). Once again it was the bands’ and labels’ content driving the audience, and once again someone else was making money off the music without an equitable inclusion of the labels and bands in the equation.

Which brings us back to Warner demanding that YouTube take down its content until it receives what it perceives to be its fair share of revenue. Following Google’s one billion dollar acquisition, YouTube is not yet profitable and suggests it cannot give up even more of its advertising revenue. Labels contend that this is really not their problem and need to be paid more for the use of their “products.” Unfortunately, advertisers are not paying the same sort of rates for online exposure as for TV and radio airtime, and there is not enough money to go around. And the artists, the ones who create and make the music that fuels it all, have yet to be directly included in the conversation.

As the “golden era” of MTV morphs into the world of MySpace and YouTube, a new model of advertising around music – ads appearing on artist’s WebPages or popping up on a streaming internet radio player– is not creating enough money to share. And no one is seriously discussing sharing it with the artists anyway. How then in this shifting landscape can they survive?

One possible piece of the puzzle may be the democratization of corporate sponsorship; instead of companies deciding which bands they choose to endorse or random ads appearing when music is played, let bands decide which corporations they want to work with. Bands can then tells their fans to click a link to land at a sponsor’s webpage where the fan gets a “free” song. The advertiser gets the web traffic and the artist gets their proportionate share of the advertising money for each free download. Going a step further, the artist has the ability to collect information about the fan (i.e. email address, age, zip code) thereby providing the opportunity for a targeted ad buy , i.e. 18 – 25 year old woman in the 02134 zip code. Or, taken another step further, as opposed to a random ad appearing on a streaming Internet radio player as a Pixies’ song is played, assume an ad appears for a product that the Pixies selected, i.e. The Pixies use Gibson Guitars or they love the movie Fight Club. Targeted demographic marketing allows advertising fees to go way up.

TuneCore is launching this model in January 2009 (full disclosure, I am CEO). This connection allowing artists and corporations to work with one another directly may prove to be one of the better ways to generate revenue in the new model. New companies such as TuneCore can then become facilitators providing the tools and information to the artists to collect fans, create music and provide access to opportunities such as corporate sponsorships. I by no means believe this is the magic bullet to the problem, but I do think it has the potential to be part of the solution. In 1981, video killed the radio star, here’s to hoping the Internet does not inadvertently kill the musician.

Thank you...and Coming Up in 2009!

A THANK YOU

On January 25th, 2006, almost three years ago, TuneCore went live. Gary, Peter and I had a mission to change the music industry by allowing any artist to have worldwide distribution, receive all the money from the sale of their music while keeping all their rights. As we begin 2009, we want to give you a sincere and heartfelt thank you. Without you we could not have changed the world for the better.

SEE WHAT YOU DID!

In the last two years, TuneCore customers earned over 30 million dollars. In just one day, you release and distribute more music via TuneCore than any major record label does over the course of a year. In just three days more music is released and distributed than all of the major record labels combined over a year. YOU are now the music industry.

COMING UP IN 2009

With the new-year upon us, our focus is to provide even more information, access and distribution points while building and providing more tools and services that can be of use.

First up is the opportunity to get an endorsement deal from Ernie Ball, one the pre-eminent guitar and bass string manufacturing companies on the planet. Available for the first time ever in the music industry via TuneCore, any artists can obtain a top level Ernie Ball endorsement based strictly on how many songs are sold. Sell 50,000 songs and get discounted Ernie Ball guitar or bass strings; sell 100,000 songs and get FREE Ernie Ball guitar or bass strings, up to 18 packs a month. Just walk into any Guitar Center store to get them. Before the end of January, the first group of eligible artists will be notified.

Also before the end of January, expect the following to be live at TuneCore:

The first version of your own streaming player that has direct links to buy your music on iTunes. It can be placed on any webpage that accepts cut and paste HTML.

The opportunity to give away a song for free and be paid for each download by a sponsor.

In the next few months you can also expect a number of other new high-end features and services including a site re-design, music discovery tools, new digital stores, some very cool physical distribution opportunities and a few other surprises.

As always let us know what you want and what you are thinking in our forum.

Here’s to a great 2009! We can say we knew you when...

TuneCore Announces New Sales Awards

I began working at TuneCore a little over a year ago because I was inspired by the idea that with all the seemingly negative changes in the music industry, there were actually more opportunities than ever for artists to pave their own way.  Earlier this week, we unveiled new sales certification awards to recognize that with a new way of selling music, there must also be new milestones to measure sales by.  It is for this reason that we have announced our brand new TuneCore Sales Certification Awards.

In addition to looking extremely cool, the most exciting thing about our first 26 awards is that they are going to both established stars (Jay-Z, Ziggy Marley, Jason Mraz, Public Enemy) and DIY up-and-comers (Meiko, Sky Eats Airplane, Eric Hutchinson and Clear Voyage just to name a few).

 

Below are some artist renderings of these new plaques: 

 

White: 100,000 songs sold certification     

 

 

250,000 songs sold certification

 

 

500,000 songs sold certification 

 

Each sales certification award will be approximately 16" x 19 1/2" and made out of single molded piece of cast resin. The album cover will be raised and inset above the resin under framed glass.  Text will be etched on the glass to create an even deeper dimensionality.

There are going to be three thresholds of songs sold via paid download to be eligible for TuneCore certification and award:

•     White: 100,000 paid download sales
•     Silver: 250,000 paid download sales
•     Black: 500,000 paid download sales

The downloads must come from one album, not from multiple albums. The certification is based on the total number of song sales from that one album. (For example, if an album has 12 songs on it and the album sells 10 times, the number of songs it has sold is 120. The total song sales for that album will be the number of albums sold multiplied by the number of songs on the album PLUS the number of individual songs sold from that same album.) The sales will not be restricted to territory but will take into account paid download sales from around the globe.

You can view the full list of winners here.

Why Sales Awards, Why Now? by TuneCore President Jeff Price.

The world of the music industry is changing and recognition of these changes needs to occur.

As I write this, the RIAA is the one self-appointed entity in the United States that certifies and issues Gold and Platinum records. Currently, to be eligible for the opportunity to have the RIAA issue a Gold/Platinum record, an album, single etc has to have shipped (not sold) 500,000 or 1,000,000 copies. With other options available for global distribution outside of the RIAA members, there are new milestones for success, new ways to sell and buy music and new companies uniquely qualified to verify sales information that the RIAA does not even pick up on. TuneCore is one of these companies.

Three years after our launch, there is more music released via TuneCore in one day then via any major record label over the course of a year. Very soon, more music will have been released via TuneCore than all the major record labels combined. Hundreds of thousands of artists now have their music available around the world to be bought, share and sold. They too deserve to be rewarded and recognized for the achievements.

TuneCore is now certifying and issuing sales awards based on artists reaching new sales goals.

Converse Sneakers & the Doors

I subscribe to something called the Lefsetz Letter - it is an email/blog by Bob Lefsetz. Wikipedia describes Bob as:

.... an American music industry figure and author of the email newsletter and blog, the Lefsetz Letter. Based in Santa Monica, California, Lefsetz worked previously as an entertainment businessattorney, majordomo of Sanctuary Music's American division and as a consultant to major record labels. Lefsetz deals with issues at the core of the music industry.

Themes explored in the Lefsetz Letter are:

• The diminishing role of the major record labels in current recorded music
• The decline of physical musical formats (primarily the decline of CD sales as alternate online music services such as iTunes continue to flourish)
• The prevalence of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing as the primary source of digital music distribution
• The need for a legitimate and licensed Peer-to-Peer or similar distribution service to facilitate the next working business model for the music industry
• Lefsetz's personal reflection on songs, songwriters, bands and industry insiders that have affected his unique and independent outlook of the music industry
• Lefsetz's personal life: his wife, kids, trips, vacations, youthful years driving across country, skiing, and so forth.

A recent posting from Bob was clear about one thing - he was pissed.  The Doors song "The End" was used in a Converse sneaker commercial.  Bob thought it wasn't right.  The manager for The Doors, Jeff Jampol, read Bob's posting and wrote a response which I found fascinating, educational, interesting and relevant.

Please note: Bob tends to swear a lot in his postings, so if you are offended by profanity, best not to read it. Else the Lefsetz Letter is definitely worth subscribing to. I leave your thoughts on the whole Doors/Converse matter to you, but do come back and post your comments here.

The Straddle

by George Howard

When TuneCore first began, we called George: few people understand the music business as deeply. George Howard is a professor of management at Loyola University, New Orleans. He is the former president of Rykodisc, and founder of Slow River Records. He is the senior editor for Artists House Music, and a board member and advisor for a number of companies including Wolfgang's Vault and Daytrotter. He has written two books on the music business for Berklee Media. Check out his personal blog at www.9giantsteps.com.

Marketing today is a straddle between the online world and the offline world. Only those who do the straddle right will survive. Err too far online, you fail. Too far offline, you fail. What I think justifies this post’s existence is that no one (that I’m aware of) is really (yet) talking about the straddle.

Doesn’t mean people aren’t doing it.

For instance, I’ve written and blogged frequently about how artists like REM are leveraging the tech by using wonderfully articulated social media marketing strategies to allow their constituents to engage in participatory marketing. However, I didn’t emphasize enough in these posts that it was the straddle that really allows REM to leverage the tech. That is, it’s their interplay between their offline world (touring) and their online world that allows them to be successful.

Similarly, another person I’ve written about frequently who is doing the straddle well is Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk. Certainly his use of tech is about as good as it gets, but what makes it work is his commitment to offline activities (wine tastings, appearances, etc.). It is wine that he’s talking about, for goodness sakes; you sort of have to have an offline presence.

Another example: I believe that the reason Facebook is just crushing MySpace (random sample of the hundred or so students I teach: Q. How many use Myspace? A: None; Q. How many use Facebook? A: All) is because Facebook helps them do the straddle (sounds like a dance); while MySpace is a closed online only experience.

Think about it: Facebook works because it allows you to enhance and augment your offline experiences. You post photos of things you do with your friends; you write on each others’ walls regarding offline experiences.

MySpace is more of (and I use this word in the loosest possible manner) a portfolio (or, what I really believe it’s become, for bands at least: a demo). MySpace has nothing to do with your offline life; it’s only related to your online life, and, thus, falls short.

Musicians and others too often feel that the new tech allows them to forgo what is really important: building real connections via playing live. I.e. they emphasize the online and forget about the offline. It makes sense. These online tools are so easy, and they give the illusion of progress and (sometimes) accomplishment. However, this indeed is illusory. Without leveraging whatever you, perhaps, built online in order to grow your offline presence (and vice versa), you will fail.

This holds true across the board. Businesses, authors…whomever…must do the straddle. If you’re a real estate agent, why would you not be tweeting up a storm, Facebook-ing up a storm, blogging up a storm, so that when you have an open-house for one of your listings you can connect with your online constituency in an offline manner. If you’re a restaurant who isn’t tweeting out your specials (and I don’t know ONE restaurant who is), and even perhaps creating events/menus for your online peeps so that you can then have the offline experience with them, it seems to me you’re missing something.

How are you doing The Straddle? Let us know in comments.