Hey everyone,

We at UK Music Jobs are excited to start up a new promotion. If you are an unpaid registered member of Music Jobs and own a blog or website, you can get one month of paid membership for FREE. Don’t have an account yet? Sign up, and get your profile running for free, here!

How does it work?

If you are a registered UK Music Jobs member and you have a personal blog, this will be quite easy for you. Simply write in your blog about UK Music Jobs and include a link to our site. A couple of possible blog post ideas include a short or detailed description of the site, how Music Jobs has helped you in your job hunt, an informative wiki-like profile of our site, or you can write a review about UK Music Jobs.

If you don’t have a blog yet, there are plenty of free blog providers that you can join, including Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, LiveJournal, and many more.

Have a website, but no blog? No problem! Just write about us on one of your pages, refer people back to us, and link back to our site.

You can link to the UK Music Jobs Homepage (uk.music-jobs.com) , but it may be more useful for your readers if you linked to the jobs board page at http://uk.music-jobs.com/jobsboard.php. But, if you feel we have a page on our site more relevant to your readers, feel free to link back to that page instead (ie, the “About Us page“). (Remember, the link has to be clickable. To do this on most blogging platforms, highlight the text you want to make a link, click the icon that looks like a globe with a chain link in front of it, then press OK or DONE).

Once you have your blog post up, send us the following to ukmj_promo@music-jobs.com:

1. Your Name and UK Music Jobs username (click here to sign up for free)
2. Your website or blog’s URL with the posting about UK Music Jobs

Also, if you know any artists or anyone in the music industry that is not with Music Jobs currently, why not tell them about this promotion? It’s a great opportunity for non members to try out our service at no cost. Just have them sign up for a free account at the freelancer registration page to get started!

This promotion will last from today, August 6, 2009 until , September 6, 2009. Members who qualify for the free one month’s subscription will be contacted by email.

Thanks, everyone!
UK Music Jobs

Conditions and terms: URLs and links to UK Music Jobs must be clickable. Links with the “no-follow” tag in the HTML are not considered eligible for the promotion. Please allow up to three business days for approval. Link and info must be posted outside of UK Music Jobs. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other sites that use “no-folow” and framed browsing do not qualify. Only one free month subscription per member. Free month contingent on Music Jobs’s link presence for a minimum of 1 month on members’ blog/website.

Saturday afternoon was an action-packed discussion focussing on small independent promoters, and touched on their relationships with bands and artists, as well as how they conduct their work in the ever-changing music business. 

It was clear from the start that it is an entirely different market for small and large festivals; the smaller events offer their shindigs as a platform to meet people and network as well as an exposure to new art and music on many levels. Moderator Howard Monk, of live music promotion The Local, asks if the panel feel that they can deliver a lot of value for small amount of money, especially in relation to bigger festivals. The panel certainly agrees, and enjoy the fact that they can be a little more leftfield or off-the-wall by booking a bunch of artists yet to earn a nationwide audience but who may go on to play bigger stages.

Anna Moulson shares that The Great Escape like to try and support local Brighton acts, and that as Brighton has strong, healthy music scene then the Brighton people appreciate and support that fact. The idea of a local scene that fans embrace is an appealing one, but one that has certainly declined in recent decades, with the UK being a small island and people being able to travel greater distances to concerts with relative ease. I’d be keen to see if this may be a resurgence in certain cities and towns, as it certainly seems strong in Chicago, especially coming from my native but saturated London scene.

The struggle for small promoters is to offer quality artists reasonable fees and minimal demands. Having discussed several ways that less scrupulous promoters will avoid and even exploit such difficulties, my experience of both holding events and looking for gigs in London kicked in, and it occurred to me that promoters wanting credibility and longevity have to stick to their beliefs. This is true even during the tough times when “mr promoter down the road” is pulling in more people and possibly making more money (/breaking even). ‘Paying to play’ and ‘Battle of the Bands’ style events are sometimes a necessary evil for artists, but long-term relationships will not develop, and ultimately no-one becomes a fan of those event brands.

It is a tough call for artists to make when offered gigs with unfair pay and conditions, but one that should be given different conditions each time, re-evaluating their ‘position’ in the market and how much ‘clout’ they have, along with considering any positives or opportunities could come as a result. Secret Garden Party’s Freddie Fellowes offered that boutique festivals can sell tickets based on the strength of their brand value, therefore becoming an attractive prospect for indie and new bands yet to develop a huge following. Not piling on the pressure is a great way to build a relationship with the artists.

Discussing which types of promoting events work, both panel and audience chipped in with stories of posters creating an appealing front, relevance of text messages and success in various online and printed listings. However, the split in the audience response regarding which marketing types attract our attention, say to me that you still have to cover all possible areas in any marketing plan. Supporting any online work with a good offline strategy, be that word of mouth or handing out flyers etc, is a crucial part of developing this all-round attack and improving your chances of reaching your target market. You know how a funny sticker in a venue bathroom attracts your attention and the next day you Google the band? Yep, that’s how it works. Vijay Nair shared that there is an increase in the use of mobile phone permission-based marketing India clubs. Open bluetooth tactics, plus direct visual aids for text services are becoming more popular, as they can then be targeted to specific areas, and several business are looking at how to pull further data from current databases.

We moved on to the subject of secondary ticketing, and whether the promoter panel were developing any new interesting strategies to prevent re-selling (and touting). Jay Taylor describes how he goes to eBay and report sellers charging ridiculous fees for tickets. He also earned applause by stating that he has approached ‘touts’ outside and confronted them during the act of selling, often asking the punter “How much did that tout charge you? 25? i’ll let you in for 20 and buy you a beer”. A great idea, obviously completely impractical, but amusing nonetheless.

On a final note, when asked what was the best ‘item’ for a band to send to various promoters, the panel was a little split, with some people getting so many emails and links that a CD and half decent press pack will gain more attention. Others have cluttered desks and hate the excessive paper and plastic that a physical demo causes, so a personalised email has more value. My final piece of advice here would be that when you approach press / radio / club contacts with your music, you should offer “Would you prefer a CD or a link to an mp3?”, removing the option of a “no, thank you”.

And so, with that information-overload finale, Unconvention Manchester came to an end for me. I had to hop on a train and miss the last few bands performing at the Blueprint Studios that evening, but managed to buy a cake or two on my way out. Similar to supporting new indie artists by buying their CDs and T-shirts, I firmly believe in supporting great events like this by purchasing the BBQ lunches, pies and cakes, alongside several pints of bitter, cider and (predictably), coffee the following morning(s). The team put on such a great event and I am already hoping to return next year. Here’s to Unconvention Manchester 2010 with pies, cakes, and a bright future to offer the independent music industry.

Lee Jarvis.

If you’re in a band, or a producer, there is always one important question – how am I going to get a record deal?

It used to be a simple formula but things have changed. The onus is now on the band to work it themselves – to come to the label with a finished product. In the past, a band would get signed on a demo and the record company would pay for the band to go into the studio. Not anymore – the music business landscape has evolved so quickly that the industry has struggled to keep up.

(But this is not just a music industry problem. Any industry who experienced such a dramatic shift in the way they do business in such a short period of time would be left playing catch up).

My name is David Silverman and I own one of the leading music PR companies in the UK, Outpost. This isn’t the time or place to go into how I actually came to work in PR, but lets just say it came from being an artist myself – being in a band, a producer, a DJ. I also own a record label and music publishing company, 3 Bar Fire.

I’ve been on the frontline of the industry for the last 10 years and I’ve seen the changes in the industry first hand. I want to share my 13 GOLDEN RULES to make it in the music biz if you’re an up and coming band (or established for that matter!), a manager, distributor, DJ, agent or anyone else that would be interested in knowing how to generate the kind of promotion you need to get noticed…

The number 1 rule. If you haven’t got a great product to sell, then people are unlikely to want to buy. I think the polite phrase is you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silver purse – or words to that effect. Go away and come back when you have some decent, new, relevant music to play – not a copy of someone else’s and not something that’s dated. Don’t trust what your friends/girlfriends/brother/mother/sister says. You need proper honest feedback.

Just set one up. How? – because I just set up a record label and its called ‘This is My Record Label’. It’s that simple. You get a website saying www.thisismyrecordlabel.com, you get a myspace with the same name. You set a release date and you get 200 promo CDs made up (you can do this yourself, just make sure they look good!). Then you start sending them out (see sections below).

Now instead of being unsigned, you are signed to ‘This Is My Record Label’ or whatever name you choose, and you’ve immediately lost the stigma of ‘unsigned’ which is loaded with negativity.

What tracks do you put on the promo CD? Release a single – one main track plus one other, 2 tracks in total. If you can get any remixes done then do so, no more than 2.

This needs to be 2 MONTHS away (see later for why). Say today is March 1^st, then set your release date for the first Monday in May (records are always released on a Monday, don’t ask why, that’s the way it is).

If you’ve got some music to play, then get some kind of show/live date lined up to play it. Tell people about the dates. Hell you can even sell some of your CD’s from your new record label there. Set the gig up as close to the release date of your single as possible.

If you’re in a band you need to look cool. You’re aspirational, you’re a product and consumers need to believe that what they’re buying into is some way going to rub off on them.

And this isn’t you against a graffiti strewn derelict house/disused railway line. If you can get some great, creative shots done then this is a big advantage – magazines and websites need their pages to look great. If you’ve got great shots…..then you’re doing their job for them.

Pick up the mags that are relevant to you and your music. Pick out the reviews editors, news editors and features editors. Send them the promo CD with a PRESS RELEASE (a one page description of the music with the date it will be released, short background on the track, the band/DJ and anything else that is interesting or newsworthy).

Now, this is the reason you have set your release date 2 MONTHS away – monthly magazines have a minimum 6-8 week leadtime. That is, they need to get your CD, listen to it, send to their reviewers, get the written review back, send to designers, add pictures, get mag signed off, get to printers, get to distributors, get in shops, BEFORE the record is out! That takes about 6-8 weeks. Hence if you send a release to a monthly mag with a release date only 4 weeks away, they probably won’t do it. For a weekly mag, you’re looking at about 4 weeks leadtime, for a daily publication around 3 weeks.

NB – Send CD’s to magazines, not MP3’s. Make sure full details and contacts are on there. Make it stand out from the crowd – make it look like they should listen to it.

You need to listen to the radio and pick out the shows that play your type of music. Then, you need to find out who PRODUCES that show, and send them the CD, not the DJ – the producers decide what gets played. Include your press release as described in point 7 above for press. Lead time here is 4-5 weeks before release date! So send this AFTER you have sent your copies to press.

Goes without saying these days – get your videos/filmed performances up on YouTube and keep your Myspace up to date. Make a ‘Fan’ page on Facebook. Twitter to your friends. Which web magazines do you need to hit? The ones that cover your genre so hit them with your promo CD from your label (with press release). They will take it seriously because it’s not a ‘demo’.

Sell your downloads on your website, Myspace – have a look into digital distribution (sometimes called digital aggregators) to get your music distributed to download stores all over the web.

Flyering. You’ve got to promote your gig and your releases – invest in some help from some friends. Pick gigs of similar artists and flyer outside after the gig. Put in shops and bars. If you don’t market yourselves and don’t have a marketing plan, then no one is going to know about you, simple as that.

Hit them up – not all the time so you annoy them, but maybe once a week or once a fortnight – make sure you have something interesting to say so people want to read it and not just delete it.

Take strategies from the business world and translate them into a musical context. You’re a product – you need to market yourself like the brands market their products. You may not have their budgets, but if you get into this way of thinking, you can find lots of cost effective ways to promote yourself.

What your trying to do is to get everything to happen at the same time. Radio, Press, Online, flyers, e-mails, gigs – you need to CO-ORDINATE your campaign – just as you would if you were running a business. You need everything running in snyc – create a diary, plan it out – and in this way, you will be able to build your profile, develop new and beneficial relationships and get the coverage you want.

Not famous yet? It takes time. You need to do this over a period of years – its rare people just become stars over night – it happens but is the exception rather than the rule. The ones that appear to have come from nowhere have actually been following the above rules for a long time…They’ve paid their dues, nothing comes easy.

David Silverman
www.outpostmedia.co.uk

So here we have it, the final part of my Berklee assignment a few weeks ago that discussed the good and bad sides of a strong internet identity, based on this article from the NY Times. In this final section we discussed how to apply the lessons learned to your own music career promotion, and I thought these would make good tips for you to follow too. Just in time for the Holidays!

Adhering to learn from this article and the example artists given, I feel revitalised in my Indie stance and very positive about the online marketing possibilities. It reinforces some of what i do already, and has helped me ‘brush up’ on how I can achieve further. I will be careful regarding the personal depth of my blogging, and try and strike the right balance between the ‘exclusive’ information that my fans want, and not ‘ruining the aura’ that an artist should have. I will aim to achieve, as Thomson described one artist’s approach, “a nuanced ability to seem authentic and confessional without spilling over into a Britney Spears level of information overload”.

I like the ideas that both Coulton and OK Go embraced; their ’song a week’ and ‘treadmill-dance video’ respectively. While it would not be good practice to copy these too closely, I feel that what they do preach to me is the importance of how viral the internet can be, and it’s possible subsequent explosion in fan numbers. This is something I aim to use in my career for certain, and i see it as a vital part of a low-budget musician’s armory.

Something else to take away from the article, is when Thompson states that of the artists he interviewed, “many of them also said that staying artistically “pure” now requires the mental discipline of a ninja”. This kind of need for focus and discipline is something I consider myself to be currently good at, maybe even approaching a trainee ninja level, and it is something that I intend to maintain in the future.

One comment that Thompson made really hit home for me; “It seems likely that the artists who forge direct access to their fans have the best chance of figuring out what the new economics of the music business will be”. I see this as ringing very true, as these artists are adapting and evolving with the music industry, and collaborating with new media entrepreneurs and technologies all the time to produce fresh, innovative ideas and business plans. Proof of this is even included later in the article, as it mentions that Coulton has set up deals without any record label contract involved, and “uses a growing array of online tools to sell music directly to fans”. Various online companies offer opportunities to not just distribute the music digitally to popular online stores, but they can also store physical CDs, process credit card payments and then ship the CD out. Interaction between forward-thinking artists and companies like this shows that an online promotional route really can be a successful one for Indie artists.

This new route to success is only achievable when “the artist has the correct emotional tools”; I believe that I have, and I aim to project myself as part of the new breed of empowered independent artists (Lee Jarvis 2.0 ?), fully embracing the new wave of internet consumers and contributors, along with the opportunities that it provides.

Happy Holidays, and check back in the ’09 for more blog posts from the UK Music Jobs team

Lee Jarvis.