The big secret behind success in music business: Hard Work.

Part 66

  I was talking to a friend of mine about all the things I have been up to in the past few years. It really has been a roller-coaster ride. It got me thinking once again about how interesting time it is to be a musician. I have learned so much. But the thing I really like and would like get it through to every one, when I started this, yeah I had some experience in music business due to the fact that I had played in bands since I was about ten, but as to music promotion and trying to break a band through I was new to it all. All I had in the beginning was hand full of songs, laptop and a bag full of enthusiasm. So I set out to learn more. And I still do every day! If I need to get something done, first I try to see can I do it my self. If I can, I try to learn how to do it really well. If there is something I can not do, I try to find some one who can and ask for help. Most of the information on band promotion I have acquired, I found through Google. Sometimes it can take time, but usually persistence is rewarded. I get a great buzz out of it when people come to tell me how well we promote JPKALLIO.COM, but at the end of the day I can tell you this: There is nothing I have done that any one with bit of enthusiasm and internet could not do. If you need something, look for it and I can bet you will find more on the way as well. There are some great blogs out there on music business, and I think you should be reading them. It is very important to keep up to date with everything in today's music business.

  And here is another one of my favorite rants:-) We have all met these people in the past, the ones who said they are going to start a band and it's going to be better than anything else out there. Yeah, and that band never even leaves the pub or plays a note. I am sure you have all seen it at some stage. Now the truth is that I was once one of these people, even though I always played in a band. I still had an idea brewing at the back of my head of the "ultimate band". Did I do anything about it? First, no. But eventually I decided to take control, get the ball rolling and since then I really haven't stopped. It has been some of the most rewarding time musically in my life, and not only does it show in JPKALLIO.COM, but in everything else I do. I have pushed my self harder than ever before. The point I am trying to make here is that you can do it as well. And If you get off that bar stool, or sofa for that matter, watching X-factor and giving out you could do it do much better, if you bothered;-), I bet you will have great time doing it. You will be rewarded. I mean, yeah you need certain amount of talent, but most of it is just hard work! There you go, that is the best tip I have given you in all the blogs I have written so far, HARD WORK!

  Some of you know already that JPKALLIO.COM did advance to the final of the Rocktober battle of the bands in Fibber Magees. We had two great gigs at the competition so far and got to play with some great bands and made loads of new friends. Unfortunately the final falls on a day that Qra will be in Poland to visit a doctor about his on going back problem. So we are sad to pull out of the competition, but obviously Qras health comes first. We'd just like to wish all the other bands good luck.

  So that's all for this week. I shall be back for more next week:-)

     J.P.

On a shoestring project part 31

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I've had a good look around in the past six months of the music scene in Dublin. I looked in to venues and promoters who put up shows for independent and up and coming bands, I looked in to local bands, what they do, how they promote them selves, where they play, how often they play... And I have found out few things that might need attention, and I will try to do my best to help this situation.
  First of all, we all know there are few cool venues around the town, where you can get a gig with an indie band. But I would like to see a list of venues and band nights online where any band could go and try their luck. But of course this is not as simple as just set it up and every one is happy. First of all, if I would post every venues promoters contact details, I think they would be ready to lynch me after a month of mail boxes full of not so great music... Second thing is that this list should be informative as well, there is no point trying to push your reggae band in to a heavy metal club. And if you just want a venue list, that’s what the Hot Press yearbook, is for. So what I will try to do is going to take me a long time and probably lots of help from musicians and music fans. As you know jpkallio.com started a 100 concert challenge, where to build up following, mailing list and social network lists. With in this challenge we will perform in quite few venues. So as we go along, I started a page on the blog where I will post the venues we played, and with the venue promoters permission I will share their contact information and some details of the venue and what kind of music they are looking for. I will work out the details of this page in the next few weeks, but the start up is already up. One-way or another it will be a free list, but again I do worry that the list will be abused by musicians who just waist promoters time... So be nice people:-) I also want to get a bit of a conversation going, where other bands and artists can share their experience of the venues and submit other venues. So first of all, let me know what you think of this idea, and also if you have any venue suggestions for the list you can send them to jpkallio@hotmail.com, or the comment section on the Indie Venue List page, that way they are there for every one to see.
  Second, I was very surprised how few up and coming bands have website! For the love of all good in the world, this is not that hard to do! There are loads of services on the net where you can get a template for a website, and I would be very surprised if you did not know any one in your friends who knows a bit of HTML. I started from the bottom... I think it was an Web design for Dummies, or something like that, about 12 years ago. But being a musician, I know it is sometimes hard to manage your time, and it feels like another over whelming task. I would like to make a web design guide for musicians, but to me right now that just seems more than I can take on. But maybe in the near future. Do you think this would be useful? And would you use it? For now, try it your self, there are endless amount resources online. If this fails, try to find some one who is willing to do it for you just for fun. Remember, it does not need to be the best website in the world. I believe that just an ok website is still million times better than no website. If you can't find any one, then try contacting some colleges and see if they can put you in contact with some students who might want to do this just to build their portfolio. The next step up from here would be getting a professional to do this, but be careful with your hard earned cash, shop around wisely. If all else fails, contact me. I am a musician, not a web designer, but I have done quite few sites so far and for a small fee I can get your website up and running.
On top of the website you need to have presence on as may social media sites and music sites as possible. I talked about compiling a list on them way back in one of the earlier blogs. But for now on our websites link list there is a links to our social media sites. Not all, but the ones that seem to be working for us. So just click on the link and sign up your own band up, and when you do, make us your friends :-) I will be tweaking this list almost weekly so keep an eye on www.jpkallio.com/links.html
  And hey, don't forget about our next concert! 31st of March in the Captain Americas on Grafton Street. The show starts at 10 with a support band and we'll be on right after them. This will be number two in our 100 concert challenge. I will leave you this week with a new video from our first concert :-) This is a song called “News” Back for more next week.

On a shoestring project part 30

  There is so much talk about the state of music business on the net at the moment; it's even making the news. Being a musician it is important to keep up with the new trends, and follow where the business is going. I heard during the week an interesting point about the internet's role in music business in the future. It was compared to Radio. I can some how see the point here. I found my self listening songs posted on Facebook by journalist who is Running a Jukebox show on Facebook. And I've seen lots of other people do this as well. You are doing your work, and on the back you play tunes posted by other people. It is an interesting concept. I also read a statistic that most people prefer to see a video while listening to a song. I suppose it is a natural progression in the times we live in. Everything is Sensory overload. We want our movies, sports and even games in 3D. It's all about stimulating as many of our scenes as possible. Of course I sometimes miss the more simpler times, when I first got my hands on the Guns n' Roses Appetite for destruction LP, and the artwork on the cover and the actual music was enough to take young boys attention for hours and hours. But at the same time, all the new technology has its advantages. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know about the video we made for our band jpkallio.com few weeks back. I will use this as an example here for a second. After the actual recording of the song, we decided to make a video for it. It was Tomeks, the bass player’s brain child. He went out on the streets of Dublin to do some filming first. Then we hung up few white sheets in the wall of our rehearsal room, set up few lights and filmed all of us playing the song. If you would put this in to time frame, we probably spent about 8hours altogether on the filming. Then Tomek spent fare bit more time editing the video. The result was really stylish black and white music video. In its first week we got over 700 views! And this already in my mind is phenomenal. For an unknown band to be able to reach to that many people in one week would have been unheard of 20 years ago. But this can be all very “virtual” and bit hard to grasp. But when bit over week later we played our first concert and I knew for fact that at least 30 people in the audience had heard the song already before we ever played it live, that’s when the power of this new music business format did hit home. So we will be embracing all the tools of this new music business available to us and I would encourage all other bands to do so as well.
  But lets not forget probably the oldest promotion you can do, playing live. How many times have you heard band talking about “making it”? Still today in many musicians minds this involves getting signed to a record label, getting a manager, a booking agent and what ever else. First of all, no record company would have interest in your band unless you have a substantial mailing list; second, if your only goal in music is to get signed to a record company I would encourage you to do some serious reading about the state of the music business! Record companies will only sign you if they know you will sell records, meaning you have existing fans who will buy records, not meaning they put the magical wheels of music business in motion and you will be on fast track to stardom. So I ask you: If you have enough fans/ followers/ people subscribed to your mailing list for a record company to want to sign you, would you not be better producing the record on your own and keeping 100% of the profit, rather than 40% down to anything as ridiculous as 1% of the profit? But one way or another, it comes down to one thing, getting people to sign up to your mailing list/ Facebook page. And still today by far the best thing for this I have found is playing live shows.
  We have implemented an action plan, well... more like a guide line. Every one knows that new bands WILL NOT get paid for gigs. Yeah being a musician is a skill that we worked hard for and it should be appreciated, but before you get ahead of your self, you need to be able to provide value. By this I mean: You need to be able to bring people to your concerts, fill venues night after night! Before you can do this, you do not have value in the eyes of the booking agents, venue promoters, and bar owners. Yeah your music need to be good, but not for the promoter to like it, but for the possible fans to fall in love with it. I mean do you honestly think that the head of Aiken promotions (One of Irelands biggest booking agencies) really is a big Justin Bieber fan? I don't think so! But he knows Justin will fill the O2. So to start of our plan is 100 concerts. First one is done, so 99 to go. The idea here is for the first 100 concerts to just concentrate on:

1. Playing in front of as many people as possible
2. Clock in the hours of playing live as a band
3. Get people to sign up for mailing list and all the social media sites
4. Build a name for the band
5. Have lots of fun :-)

 During these first 100 concerts we are not trying to make money. In fact, as long as we won’t be loosing too much money, we'll be just happy to play. So any venues who would like to get on that 100 list, just let us know ;-)
But is not just a small gimmick, it is something I would recommend for any starting band.

  So the number two in the 100 concert plan will take place in the Captain Americas on Grafton Street on Thursday the 31st of March 10pm. If you were at the last show, you know it is going to be a rocker of a night again :-)
  Oh yeah, and one more thing. As Twitter had its fifth birthday, it would be only fair to share our twitter here.
http://twitter.com/jpkalliomusic

On a shoestring project

I am about to bark on a new adventure. Sliotar is taking it reasonably easy in Sliotar terms for the next few months. And I have some time to get working on this project. So here is the basic plan:
I have been planning to record a CD of my own songs for a long while. But always something got on the way. Now it is time to make a plan and put it in to action. I will record a full length album, professional quality, professional packaging, launch the CD and promote it to the best of my ability. I will use what ever resources available to me and what ever I can pick along the way. I will set my self guidelines that I must stick by, and I will set these down in the next few weeks and will take suggestions as well.
I am sure all my musician friends have been there before, especially Independent artists. Where everywhere you turn some one is promising you the moon and the stars for a reasonable price. You know them, Sonicbid and a like, where you need to pay money to submit to festivals, events and so forth. I must point out here that they have introduced some new free services, but still all the real stuff you must pay for. All those people on Myspace who promise you 10000000 dedicated friends... There are rehearsal room fees, studio time, or home recording equipment, musicians fees... unless you have real good and talented friends:-) photos, website, art work, CD mastering, CD replication... And when the CD is finally out, there is the over whelming job of promoting it. Here many artists and record companies spend often even more than the entire above put together. I remember an interview of a well known manager of an Irish boy band, where he told of an concert where the band were starting to let the fame to get in their heads, the manager dragged them out, opened the boot of his car, which was filled with their CD's that he had bought from the shops to boost the sales figures. And I have personal experience where a company over ten years a go offered this service for me, for a fee of course. This is obviously out of reach of my budgets, neither do I have any interest to conduct my business in this way, but it is just an example of how the business works. Now would it not be cool to do all of this in inventive way that would cost as little as possible? And base the success in real CD sale and download figures, concert turn outs and so forth. What do you think?
I will try to do just this, with the help of hopefully some real good friends, some innovative companies and some fresh thinking. And I will keep a record of all the details of this project and share it with the readers of this blog. I will be looking for your opinions and ideas on music and business. Hopefully I will learn a lot on this journey, and share as much of this knowledge as possible with all of you. To keep up to date on this blog, and the release of my CD and any live dates, new videos and stuff please sign up for my mailing list below. Thanks and I will talk to you all soon:-)
J.P. Kallio