Andrae Palmer, Author at Andrae Palmer

How to use Youtube to Promote your music

Youtube is the largest platform for videos online next to Google. Many persons use this to access music. As an artist, it’s a tool you can use to build your online following, to effectively promote your work.

Here is a problem though. For an upcoming artist, you are unknown to many, and so there won’t be much of any searches for your music. Except for having a small following, eg. family friends, and so on.

Have a Consistent Action Plan

There’s an effective way to getting your music recognised, and it will take having a consistent plan. You should know the category your music falls under and the artist to which your sound can be matched against.The aim is not to compare your work to others, but to help you realistically identify, and know the target audience you are going for.

eg. as a gospel artist, your sound is similar to that of Kevin Downswell, or a Jermaine Edwards, your target would be the fans of either of these on youtube.

With that in mind, you know persons are already on the search for these persons, the question to yourself then should be, “how do I use this to the advantage, for persons to find me on youtube?”

Do Covers

A perfect plan is to use covers. What you are doing essentially is, singing the person’s song, and then, for example, use your smartphone with a selfie-stick, to record your live performances of the song, to then posting it online.

The video post would be put up as a cover. So the Title would be

eg: Kevin Downswell’s “You make me Stronger Cover” by <your artist name>.

When persons search for “You make me stronger,” they may just well find your take of the song. They’ll probably listen to it. When they listen to it, and like your version of the song, they’ll search for you on youtube, to find more of what you do.

If you have original songs online, persons will listen to it also, and if they like it, chances are after a while, they will buy your music, or may want to attend your concert to support you. things like that.

Alongside the suggested action plan, as you a number of covers over a period of time, you should post additional content. Things like sharing the message behind your song.

eg: a song may be done from the experience a relationship break-up, and and you express yourself by singing a song.

eg2: ” I was in an accident, and I wrote the song to inspire people, there is hope.

However, it is, when you share the experience of the why behind the song, what is the inspiration, it’s you connecting to your audience.

The more you continue to post on youtube, your content will grow, and the more persons will then have reason to want to view your channel, to find you and consume more of your music.

Eg. Say you’ll be performing at a concert at Ranny Williams October 30, simply posting an invitation to persons to attend, is content. You may be on another event, you do the same, and overtime persons find you interesting. They’ll subscribe to your channel, follow you on other social media platforms, etc.

Conclusion

Ensure you use youtube effectively. The key to doing so is being consistent and seeing to it, that persons find you. One way for persons to find you is by using covers.

let me know if the information has been helpful. post your comments or questions below.

How do you get your music on iTunes

After you have recorded your song, have it mixed and mastered the next thing you will need to do is have your music in places for them to buy it. So how do you do that when you live outside the USA or don’t have a distributor? I look to answer that question in today’s post.

Being outside the United States, or Europe, in order to get your music into music stores, you need a distributor. There are various distributors that you can get access to. You can use, eg. VP Records, Universal Records and such like. These entities have distributors, and their job is to get the music into stores.That may be the physical or digital format.

Independently as an artist, you can’t get direct access to let’s say iTunes. To do so, you’ll need an aggregator. The aggregator is to see to it that you meet the criteria for the music distribution. eg. they make sure the song title is ok, and so on, and then get the music to the stores.

Here are some aggregator options:

cdbaby
Tunecore
Routenote
Distrokid
ReverbNation

Personal Experience with some aggregator

TuneCore

Tunecore cost 29 to start per album. $9 per single and a yearly subscription 49.99 and no fees are deducted. Additionally, your music is put up on iTunes within 24hrs. The disadvantage to this arrangement comes if you earn less than $50 for the year, it can prove very costly due to the yearly subscription

Cdbaby

Cdbaby costs approximately $49 to have your music up on iTunes.You pay this fee once on subscription. There is, however, a percentage deduction hereafter.

Routenote

Route note will have you put up your music charge free. That’s if you sign up for the free option.15% is however taken after sales. To get all sales proceeds, you may sign up for the premium option, at an approximate cost of $49

Distrokid

You pay $19 per year, and upload as much music as you like. ie: Distrokid is the best option. Besides that, if just starting out as an independent artist without money, you may use RouteNote. Over time as you build your career, you may transition to the other services such as Distrokid, as it would be the most cost-effective, compared to the others.

Analytics for DistroKid is real time. You can see purchases before payout. The same can be said for TuneCore, though more costly.

The Overall Basics to Getting Started

1. High-resolution album artwork size and specifications are given and must be a square and should not include costing and other details.

2. Track Title

Name of each track is written by the given specifications and featured artist, are also written in like format.

3. Upload music

specifications:

TuneCore- WAV files

RouteNote and Distrokid High-quality 320kb mp3 or wave

What do you do after your record your first song

Create a marketing plan to promote your music. A marketing plan is a plan of action to get persons to listen to and buy your music.

There are various components of a marketing plan to take into consideration.

Who is your target for the music you create

For example, say you do reggae music, your target would be people who listen to reggae. If it’s dancehall, you’d do the same, gospel, etc.

Other questions to consider are who will buy your music, and where are they? Where do these persons go to find out about the music that you do?

What are the different channels, are you going to use to promote your music?

eg. persons may listen to the radio – sending your music to DJs

In your marketing plan, you will look at the radio stations you’d want to target. These would be the most likely ones that would play the music you do. eg. You may now consider a radio station that plays only contemporary gospel, but you do reggae/ dancehall. You’d know then that station should not be placed on your options.

In addition, to live radio, you may also target online radio as well. There are shows that will align to your kind of music, the DJs will play your music, and expose their audiences to your music. You may also target podcasters in a similar light.

How can you use video, to promote and market your music?

You’ll first want to get a music video done, and then getting it played on review shows, and live TV. Another option where the use of video come into play comes with live performances. eg. morning TV shows, that you can target, to perform your music live. Then you have the internet. this is where you can upload your video, without you depending on TV station to allow the opportunity for exposure.

Live Performances a part of the marketing strategy.

eg. You may be booked for about 5 shows for a period. For each show, you’d consider performing the song, you want to be promoted, in addition to other singles and covers.

So if you’re promoting a song, it would not be wise to do a new song for each show, and not perform the song you want to promote, at the given time.

Print Media

you’d send your press release, and promo kit, to the editor of the entertainment section of the media outlet. What you are hoping to achieve, is for these outlets to publish your release, or contact you for an interview, and so on.

In addition to print media, there are online media, such as blogs and review sites, where you’d send your music to them, for them to review it, as well as share with their audience, and expanding your reach.

Conclusion

At the end of putting together your plan of action. the next step is to execute it. So you’re going to now contact all the radio stations to get interviews, and the shows that you’ve identified would play your music. sending your print media info, once completed, getting to the producers of the different TV shows, to get things going. Also performing the song you want to promote, a choice among your set list. All these steps take you to where to go to next, after recording song, and you’ve received the mastered finish.

Should an independent artist get a manager

A manager’s purpose is to help manage your career and to make sure you make as much money as possible, as an artist. That’s their purpose, to manage your career. They bring you to the next level in terms of exposure and earning money. If the manager you have is not making you money, get rid of him. Let’s examine the Pros and the Cons, of the matter.

Yes To Self Management…?

Managing your career by yourself, means you think about the long term, that is, where you see yourself, five / ten years from now. Where are the places you want to perform? And what are the type of songs you want to do? Also, how are you going to monetize your career? These are the questions, that you need to think about.

Most managers – the ones that are effective, they utilize their relationships to get you exposure to push you in the right direction to help you have a sustainable career.

In order for you to get one step ahead on your own, there are some things that you need in place to ensure that you manage your career effectively. Let’s say you are pulling strings together on your own, you need a team alongside you.The manager would normally work with a team to help push your career forward, just the same.

The first person you need on your team is a booking agent. The booking agent really is to ensure you get as many shows and expose you to live performances. They are key to making sure you are continually on a stage to perform.

The next person on your team should be the publicist. The responsibility of this person is to get you media exposure.They assist with executing your marketing plan.They get you on talk shows, radio interviews, and write up in the newspaper and magazines.

Important, and often left out is the lawyer. Should there be a contract for signing, the lawyer ensure that details are clear and that you are protected. They also see to it that your brand and your image are protected.

Finally you need an accountant. You need a system that will keep track of your income and expenses and to manage it well.It’s ridiculous to earn $1000 this month, and you spend it all. The accountant helps you manage your money, help you ensure everybody is paid and ensure you have more money in your pocket as well.

No to Self Management….?

Having someone to handle the day to day activities of your career means coordinating activities, around your marketing plans. Also there must be liaison re talking to alot of promoters, ensuring that the logistics are worked out, that you have transportation to go to the shows, that you reach the venues on time, that you have everything that you need to feel comfortable to perform and that all things necessary, are in place to push your career forward.

All this can be done by yourself, but after a while it becomes draining for an individual. Therefore there is need to delegate the task to a manager. The manager coordinate the activities of your team, so that you may be able to think about the important thing, you need to think about, and that is, working with your producer to make great music.

For a while you can self manage, but after a while you delegate to a team. If you are in a group, one person can deal with the activities of managing the group.

Managing yourself can be done, if you have the skills to effectively organise yourself, but overtime you might not be able to get all things done.

Conclusion

Th manager is the person responsible for managing the activities between you, and your team. They ensure that your career move forward, and things work out to your favor. A manager who is not able to help you move forward, in terms of where you see yourself, will not be helpful to you.

To manage your career effectively, you need key persons within a team to help with that.

Booking agent to get you shows to perform, a publicist for media exposure, a Lawyer to handle legally binding arrangements and an Accountant for managing your money.

4 ways to earn money doing music full time

The question is asked, how do you make money from making music as a recording artist?

Because there are multiple ways of earning income as an artist I’ll focus on four of the main ones.

Selling your albums and singles

The first way is by sales. You may record an album, get it mixed and mastered, you package it by CDs, vinyl, cassette, flash drive, digital files, you sell those to the consumer, that is the person who loves to buy music. Persons may buy a physical or digital copy of your album to listen to over and over again.

Streaming is another way to earn money. This is where persons listen to your music using a streaming service, just like on the radio. The more they listen to your song, the more money you earn. (for radio you earn from royalty).

But streaming is similar in context. it’s online and on demand. so persons listen to your song whenever they want, as much as they want. the more they listen to your music, the more money you earn. Streaming is basically a numbers game. If you put out a song and persons listen to it less than 1000 times in a month, you might not make as much money compared to a major label artist, whose song is being listened to a million times or more. They make more money in terms of streaming because of the number of time fans listen to their songs.

The more persons you can get to listen to your song on streaming on platforms like Spotify, Deezer, Apple music, Amazon, it works out better for you as an artist. You can make more money because more persons are listening to your song.

Streaming tells which songs persons are gravitating towards. If you put out a single and a lot of persons listen to it, and it’s being spread, you know you have a hit, persons really like that song. You can put more of your promotional efforts into promoting that song.

Live Performances

The next thing outside of sales and streaming is shows. The more shows you get to perform at, the more money you can get. When you are booked for a show, you can charge a performance fee.

If you work through a booking agent, the booking agent books you at a particular price, and they take a cut of say 20%, however, you agree. The more shows you perform the more money you can get once those shows are actually paid shows.

Performances can be viewed as two- fold. It is promotion as well as an avenue for you earning income. If your music is not selling, but you can get paid shows, then you are earning income.

Look at the situation in context, in terms of how much money you are going to earn per month to live. eg. On average lin jamaica, most persons working in offices get at least $50.000 per month. some might get less , some might get a lot more.

As a benchmark let’s say you need $50,000 per month to pay light, water bill, rent, buy food and pay for transportation to move around from studio to shows, you need to charge for your performance, a certain amount of money, for you to earn your $50,000. Once you do that, then shows can be another way of supplementing your income, in addition, to sales and streaming.

Selling Merchandise

Outside of performances, there’s the option of branding, in terms of merchandise. Putting your artist name on a t-shirt, you sell it at your shows, and you are earning an income from it. In addition to the performance and music sales. Consider this as expanding your income opportunity. Should either one fail, there are multiple options, but if not, you know everything is going to your goal of $50,000 a month.

Sponsorships

Another earning route is sponsorship. You may see an artist getting sponsored by a Digicel, FLOW or a Wysnco; water, ocean spray. Companies pay them to advertise their product. Eg. Usain Bolt, the only clothes brand you may see him wearing, is Puma. Puma sponsors Usain Bolt. when Usain wears Puma, it puts money in his pocket, just by wearing clothes.

Say you can create a powerful brand and leverage sponsorship opportunities from companies, that’s how to earn income from your music talent.

Conclusion

Sales, Streaming, Merchandise, Performance, and Sponsorship are four key areas to look at for building your career, as a musician. These things take time. The larger your audience , the more money you can earn. The smaller your audience, the less money you earn.

Once you look at leveraging other persons audiences, and build your fan base over time, you can look to reaching the benchmark that you have set. This is how much money you need to earn per month to take care of yourself, and so you can grow your career over the long term, in music.

If you have questions leave them in the comments below. Share this with an artist who will find it helpful.

How to start your career as a music producer

If you’re interested in becoming a music producer they are many roads you can take to build a career. And your journey will on depend on the type of music production you want to do. If it’s edm production laidback luke has a video on youtube that outlines the process which makes it easier to develop your skills. just to go over it here:

Start by doing edits to tracks
Then move on to making bootlegs
Then move on to doing mashups
then start making your own original tracks

Along the way get a better understanding of arrangement and sound design and mixing and all the things needed to make a release ready track. Once you have a track that is ready for the public send it to friends and get feedback about your music and build a fanbase overtime. This will help you build demand for your work and give you leverage when you start shopping tracks to labels.

If it’s pop music production or you want to produce a band and vocalist and so forth the process is a bit different.

First you’ll need a space to do recording, you can pay for studio time or you can build your own studio.
Next thing you need to understand what makes a good song and the basic arrangement structures for your genre. This will help you make decisions about an artist song and what it needs to take it to the next level so it can work for its indented listeners. This involves cutting or adding stuff to the song or even changing the order of lyrics etc.
Then the final bit is project management to ensure that things get done on time on budget as well as hiring the right people to do the right job.

You don’t have to be a musician to be a producer you just have to know what you want and get the right people to get it done. Because in essence, you are producing a piece of music. The early producers had a good ear and know good music they didn’t know how to play anything.

So in conclusion to start your career you’ll need to do:

Find and artist who has a song
Get a beat produced for the song
Work on the song so it’s good and the artist knows the lyrics by heart
Record it whether at your own studio or someone else’s
Get the song mixed and mastered
When you have the final master you essentially just produced your first song.

Do it long enough to build a portfolio and eventually a career.

PS. It won’t hurt hanging around local studios to get a foot in and meet people, the key is to be helpful and bring something to the table because you never know.

Why Rehearsal is Important before recording

Vocalists and musicians are true to their craft. They work day and night practicing to getting better at singing and playing their instrument.

If you incorporate practicing into your daily routine you’re well on your way to mastering your instrument.

When approaching a recording project same dedication should be taken. That’s why rehearsals are important. They are not only for live performances.

They’re for studio recordings as well. Here are some ideas on how to use your rehearsal time before going into the studio

Work on song arrangement.

It’s the best way to work on the fine details of the song. Work along with your producer to fine-tune the arrangement of lyrics and parts to make singing and playing the song easier and more in sync.

Doing this saves you both money and time in the studio. Also, it will help to bring more focus to the song.

Ensure all song sections complement each other and are not fighting for attention. Make sure no instruments are not playing in the same range to mask other parts.

Meaning each instrument should play in their own range as well as leave room for vocals.

Test out ideas.

Rehearsals should be both fun and technical. Don’t be static test ideas that you want to try, whether it’s a new melody line, a harmony section in the verse, a different drumbeat.

These ideas should either make the song sound better or worse. Keep a note of all the ideas you want to add to the song. It will be good to have a voice recorder to keep all your ideas together.

Best way to learn songs.

Practice is the best way to learn the song or songs by heart. Mastering it will give you more time to focus on the performance.

If you practice like you’re on stage chances are when you get into the studio you already know how the song should sound, so singing it and playing the parts will be easy because you worked so hard on it during rehearsals.

Get better at playing them.

Rehearsals help with your musicianship. The more you perform the better you get. The better you get the more confident you’ll feel.

Confidence helps you give you all while recording because you know how to get the sound you want.

Knowing how to use your instrument takes practice. Practicing your songs makes you a better performer and a better professional to your craft.

If you take rehearsals seriously and give it your all you’ll save both money and time.