19 Essential Artist Advice Blogs You May Have Missed
Aug3001:59 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
We know, it’s summer and you don’t want to stay indoors all day everyday, staring at a computer screen and reading blogs about how you can improve your career in music. Well don’t worry, even if you missed some of our columns while relaxing on the beach, we’ve put together a great list of our previous Indie Artist Advice columns on The Bleeder Blog so you can get you all caught up.
Summer is almost over and Fall is quickly approaching. If you're an independent artist, now's the time to dive in and refocus your efforts for the last quarter of the year.
If these articles leave you hungry for more information and ideas, we do private one-on-one consultations. Maybe we can help you out! Even if you're not in our area (Vancouver), we also do sessions via Skype. Feel free to send us an email if you're interested: brian@thornybleeder.com
Ok, let's get to it. Dig in and enjoy...
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LIVE Q&A on Music & Marketing with Brian Thompson
Aug2501:25 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
Hey folks, I had a random little idea this morning and decided to waste no time and throw it into action immediately. And that's the beauty of the world we live in today, you can make anything happen almost instantly!
So, here it is. Starting this coming Tuesday, August 31 at 7pm PST (10PM EST), I'm going to launch a weekly Live Video Q&A Session on the music industry and marketing. And of course, it's 100% free.
So in order for this test to work, I need you to mark down this date and time in your calendar and show up on time...otherwise I'll just be sitting there staring blankly at an empty chat window, twiddling my thumbs.
It's an open forum, so feel free to ask me anything you like: advice, tips, suggestions, experiences, thoughts, ideas...you name it!
Click To Read More...
Top 10 Ways To Sell More Merch
May2711:42 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
I remember reading an interview with the band D.R.I. many years ago, who said that if it wasn't for t-shirt sales they wouldn't be able to exist as a band. As a kid, I was shocked that a band wasn't able to survive on music sales and performances alone. And that was many years before music's digital revolution.
So here we are in 2010 and band merchandise is more import than ever. As an artist, independent or signed, merch is your lifeblood. It's your store front. It's where you make your money. It's where you connect with your fans. It's what gives your band a face on the streets.
Your merch table is your music career survival kit, and it deserves to be treated as such.
As a former music buyer for one of Canada's largest music chains, I spent many hours analyzing consumer behaviours and how people react to product placement, display techniques, and their affect on sales. It's not a hard thing to grasp, much of it is common sense: Make your shit look good and put it in a highly visible location.
So let's get to it. Here's my list on how you as an artist can make the most of your merchandise...
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Band uses recyclables to finance new recording
May0702:59 PM
Filed in: Music News
It's often been said that people look for hope in the bottom of a bottle.
But if you're assuming that Fredericton's own Ross Neilsen and The Sufferin' Bastards hit the bottle looking for inspiration behind their smokin' new record, Redemption, you ought to think again.
To cover the costs of producing their new record, Neilsen and the Bastards relied upon the generosity of fellow New Brunswickers, who donated their returnable beverage containers so that the band could claim the deposit money to put towards their recording fees.
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Watch It Grow: An Experiment In Digital Busking
May0702:59 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
If you're a regular reader of The Bleeder Blog, you'll remember a blog we posted in late April titled: Vancouver Musician Cultivates Earth Day Interest. On Earth Day, April 22, Victoria singer/songwriter Scott Valentine hit the streets of Vancouver and handed out 19,000 digital songs via free download cards.
It's a little grassroots street level marketing campaign which I've decided to call Digital Busking (or if you prefer, Busking 2.0). So if you happen to hear this term pop up anywhere in the next couple of years, remember that you heard it here first!
Continue reading for exclusive photos and feedback from the event...Click To Read More...
How To Break Your Band: Social Media
Apr0210:22 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
The following video is from social media marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuck from Wine Library TV, who I've mentioned before here. This guy is doing everything right with social media and he's created an amazing brand for not only himself, but his company too.
In only 4 minutes he successfully explains why you must embrace and exploit social media now to grow the profile of your business. While his thoughts are directed towards businesses, we all know that as a DIY artist in an independent band you face the exact same hurdles; reaching a new audience, gaining new fans, and monetizing your new followers to grow your business.
Watch this video, there's some important lessons here for everyone!
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Top 31 Ways To Suck At Social Media Marketing
Mar2912:46 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
If you want to truly SUCK at using social media, please follow this list closely and you'll be guaranteed limited exposure and zero online buzz!
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Top 10 Ways To Break Up Your Band
Jul0910:52 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
I've worked with tons of bands over the years and one thing remains constant, they almost all breakup eventually. Sure, some can go the distance and outlast the others, but what sets them apart from the bands that just can't seem to keep it together and fall apart?
Well, if you hate the music you play and you want to break up your band, here's a quick checklist for you:
- Leave the business side of things to just one band member.
- Don't have regular band meetings.
- Don't educate yourself on marketing and promotion.
- Don't make a list of goals (and never revise them if you do).
- Don't utilize the power of social media and online networking tools.
- Don't take your band seriously as an entrepreneurial business.
- Don't network with other bands and industry people.
- Don't build a team of passionate and experienced people around you.
- Assume that potential fans, blogs, press, radio stations, labels and agents will find out about your band just because your music is so damn awesome.
- Don't respect your fans, and don't interact with them in the way "new media" empowers you to.
Episode 4: The Bleeder Blog Video Podcast
Dec0902:00 PM
Filed in: Music News
Episode #4 of The Bleeder Blog Video Podcast is now posted on our YouTube Channel...
In this episode the mysterious TV Heart Attack “QR Code” Campaign is finally revealed.Click To Read More...
10 Ways To Make The Most Out Of Social Media
Nov1707:47 PM
Filed in: Opinion
I've mentioned it before on these pages, but it needs repeating...as an artist, you are an entrepreneur. And as an entrepreneurial business, marketing is one of your biggest hurdles. It's marketing that brings fans to your website, to your concerts, and ultimately end up buying your music and t-shirts.
So what's your marketing plan? What are you doing online to get noticed and to spread your personal brand? And perhaps even more importantly, how are you delivering that message?
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How To Make Successful YouTube Videos
Sep0411:18 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
I had a conversation with someone this morning about how to create successful viral vidoes for your band, so I figured I might as well share my thougths with everyone on The Bleeder Blog since it's something that most artists can improve upon.
In a world of expensive marketing and promotion campaigns, creating online video content for your band is a no brainer. It's inexpensive, quick and easy, and more often than not it leads to a source of discovery for new fans.
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Persistence Leads To Success
Sep2302:00 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
As an artist you are just like any other entrepreneur, hoping that your passion and talent will lead to a sustaining career. But as with any entrepreneur, simply having a great product isn't enough.
How will people hear of what you have to offer? How will you develop a buzz around your music?
Creating a solid business and marketing plan with a clearly defined goal is the first step. But as you work through your plan and make all of the necessary calls, you'll undoubtedly be confronted with many closed doors and unanswered emails. This is where the majority of bands falter and begin to lose their way. They give up far too early and aren't prepared for the countless hours of working the finished product...your album.
So what sets successful artists and entrepreneurs apart from the rest of the pack? Persistence and perseverance. It may sound like an overused cliche, but it's the truth: Persistence leads to success.
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The Online Artist Report Card
Jun1708:48 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
Some of the things I discover online are far too important to just send a quick little tweet about, and this is one of them. In today's world of Web 2.0 and the development of independent artists, what you do in the online world is quite possibly the single most important aspect of your career.
Are you hunkering down at the computer every day, connecting with fans or trying to find new ones? Are you easy to find online? Is there enough interesting content about your band to keep fans interested and excited about what you're doing?
I found this Online Artist Report Card on the music marketing and social media blog Way Cool Jnr at this link, which was originally developed from Native Digital.
So if you're pursuing a career in music, take the following quiz and see how you measure up with 'Social Media Marketing'.Click To Read More...
Show Success Before Asking For Help
Jun1112:17 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
Regardless of how everyone is probably sick of hearing all the press and buzz about Twitter, myself included, I continue to use it daily to spread music industry related news and articles, free mp3's, and tips for music marketing and promotion. To the uninitiated, Twitter is an over-hyped, social web-thingy that doesn't really make any sense. But if you give it a chance, and 'follow' the right people with similar interests, you'll find a wealth of information and knowledge that would otherwise be lost.
Here's an example of the type of thing I send out on Twitter: http://sivers.org/success-firstClick To Read More...
3 Axioms of 21st Century Music Biz
May3110:59 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
The following summary regarding the marketing and promotion of music in the twenty-first century comes from James Lamberti, VP Of Marketing & Artist Services for Topspin Media, a new technology startup.
These three tiny bullet points summarize the business perfectly for today's artist and content owner. Of course, it does over-simplifiy things greatly as none of these steps are simple to excel at, and each requires a tremendous amount of time to successfully develop. Click To Read More...
Give 'Em What They Want
May2702:02 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
To be a successful business you need to understand your customer, how they relate to your product, and what they want from your product.
Is the music business doing this? Are you doing this?
Click To Read More...
Scott Valentine Presents: Choose Your Own Price
Apr0302:52 PM
Filed in: Music News
As with everything Scott Valentine does, he's challenging the status quo and music industry standard, and has come up with an incredibly generous and original offer for his fans to buy the Seasons album. If giving away every track on the four CD album wasn't enough, Valentine is now letting you buy the album by Choosing Your Own Price.
Click To Read More...
Singer/Songwriter Gives Away Free Song A Week For A Year
Mar2411:29 AM
Filed in: Featured Artist
Thorny Bleeder is extremely honoured to present our latest discovery, Scott Valentine. We've created a truly unique approach to spread Scott's music to the world; through a newly launched website...
Click To Read More...
Podcast: Media, Gatekeepers, Fandom, Gaming & More
Mar2304:23 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
Have a spare hour to listen in on a captivating discussion from music industry insiders?
Click To Read More...
Twitter Music Promotion and Marketing Guide
Mar1110:44 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
Are you on Twitter yet? Is your band?
It can be confusing at first, regardless of how simple it may appear to be.Click To Read More...
Five Tips for Musicians to Engage Their Fans Digitally
Mar1110:25 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
In today's wired marketplace, musicians have to forge a personal relationship with their audience to keep their fans' interest. And for many, that means creating opportunities for fans to have an inside look into all aspects of an artist's life.Click To Read More...
A Band As A Brand
Jan0512:50 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
When the word "brand" comes up in indie music circles people are often turned off, insisting that the branding of music dilutes creativity and reduces artistic expression into a commodity, devoid of expressive merit. But what is a brand? Is having your band as a "brand" that awful of a thing?
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Music. Life's Bookmark.
Jan0209:46 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
It's a wonderfully strange world we live in. Our time on earth is such an incredibly short footnote in the history of mankind, yet our memories still seem to escape us. They're stashed away and filed into the dark depths of our memory, often lost forever and never to be recovered. However, we do have a unique emergency backup to recover our lost memories - our senses and their amazing memory recall abilities.
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200 Digital Music Startups From 2008
Dec3001:30 PM
Filed in: Music News
2008 has been a startling year for innovation in digital music. Check out the link below for a list of 200 new digital music startups, all from just this past year.Click To Read More...
The Power Of Goal Setting
Dec3010:26 AM
Filed in: Indie Advice
Are you in a band committed to making music your full time career?
If so, do you have a 12 month plan? a 24 month plan? What goals have you set for yourself, other than "playing lots of shows and selling lots of CDs"?
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Thorny Bleeder In The News
Dec2310:03 AM
Filed in: Music News
Check it out the link here, the article is at the bottom of the page
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5 Key Elements To Success
Dec2106:33 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what the key elements to success are and I've come up with this list of traits that should be an essential part of your every day life. These aren't intended to be exclusive to a musician's career, they're for anyone pursuing a goal in life, business or otherwise.
Click To Read More...
Is The Album Dead?
Dec1810:51 AM
Filed in: Music News
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has revealed that 2007's Zeitgeist will be their last album.
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LIVE on The Fox!
Dec1512:44 PM
Filed in: Music News
Our good friends at The Fox, Vancouver's rock station at 99.3 FM, have invited me (umm...Brian Thompson) to co-host some on-air, afternoon shenanigans with them, this Wednesday, Dec. 17th.
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Thorny Bleeder Records Releases Free Mp3 Album Download, New Website, And Artist Services Division
Dec0911:57 AM
Filed in: Music News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
How do you appease your musical appetite?
Oct2601:48 PM
Filed in: Music News
Ok, there's lots of ways to appease your musical appetite, but which way do you consume music the most?
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NEW Art Of Dying Single Hits Radio
Sep2805:35 PM
Filed in: Music News
Art Of Dying's latest single, "You Don't Know Me", was released to all Canadian rock radio stations today.
Click To Read More...
