Why Is My Band Not Signed Yet?

Borrowed this from Blasko, it's worth sharing...

Why Is My Band Not Signed Yet?

~ Here is an interesting post originally penned by music attorney Martin Frascogna. .

1. There’s Nothing Unique About Your Group
At this point everyone knows music alone doesn’t get you signed. Music is indeed the lowest topic on the totem poll. Labels are looking for a unique hook, a hook which enhances the groups musical element. More so, labels are looking for something which they currently don’t have. Bands need to show they’ve penetrated a niche in the market which labels don’t have access to. Show you’ve got a niche, and labels will recognize you’re the vehicle to take them there. Don’t show a niche and you’ve placed yourself in the same category as the other thousand bands standing outside the label’s office looking to take your head off.

2. Attitude
Never under estimate the power of a good attitude. Labels are essentially entering into a business relationship with artists and the last thing they want to do is enter into a relationship with a group who feels entitled to being signed or someone who's arrogant. You won't find a person in any industry who wants to do business with an asshole. More often than not, bands enter negotiations with this attitude of “what could you possible do for me.” Wrong. In their defense they think this is the way business is done. Hard noise negotiations tactics are for the insecure and entertainment wannabes. Rather, have your entertainment attorney negotiate. They negotiate for a living, understand subtle negotiation tactics and know which buttons to hit.

3. Funds Aren’t Flowing
Contrary to any preconceived notion, labels don’t have money. There is a small percentage of labels who are in the financial position to take on new acts. On top of this daunting nibble of information, there is even a fewer number of legitimate labels. Record labels are everywhere but the numbers means nothing. Musicians should only sign with labels who (a) are legitimate, (b) have money for development, and (c) have distribution in place. Today this is the equivalent to finding a unicorn wearing a diamond saddle who’s sitting in a pot of gold while smoking fountain of youth cigarettes with a leprechaun.

4. Timing Is Everything
Simply put, some bands don’t get signed based on timing. You may have the right package, the right deliver system, unique music, and a solid niche market but the label says “no”. If the label tells you the timing isn’t right, they are telling you the truth. Cycles in the music business make and break sales. If you aren’t falling in the right cycle in terms of market demand and genre success, hold tight, the cycle will more than likely rotate back in your favor. At this point, stay ahead of the curve and approach the label when the timing is rights.

5. The Delivery’s Wrong
Bands rarely get themselves signed and A&R is dead and has no pull. Unless a label approaches you, which is a rarity, labels hear about musicians from entertainment attorneys. Entertainment attorneys know how to structure label proposals and better yet, work with label executives on a personal and daily basis. They know which labels have money, which labels are signing, and which ones will bite on particular clients. Like it or not, attorneys can navigate past the gatekeepers and get straight to the decision makers. Rejections are common when bands pitch their products inappropriately. You get one shot. Pitch incorrectly, the door closes. Attorneys know how to pitch, when to pitch it, and where to pitch it. Use them and maximize your chances of getting signed. Not to mention your attorney should be the consistent figurehead who helps you navigate all levels, indie or major. Use them on the front end and allow them to grow with you throughout your career.

Artist Development

The following is from Bob Lefsetz, wanted to share with everyone.


Enjoy


ARTIST DEVELOPMENT 
Is about taking chances.

When oldsters complain that there's no more artist development, what they're really saying is labels are no longer interested in signing the outsiders, the weird, the risky, and staying with them for four or five LPs to see what they turn into.

Once upon a time, most record labels weren't multinational corporations focused on the lowest common denominator in order to generate profits.  Rather they were the hobbies of fans.  You couldn't even call these fans entrepreneurs.  The only business they had in mind was staying in business.  Selling enough records to be able to make more.  Oftentimes they recorded artists just because they wanted to hear the finished product.

Today's major labels get the lion's share of the press, but they're the last place you'd go for innovation.  At best, they purchase the rights to successful indie acts.  The concept of hearing something raw and vital and signing it on a whim, an inner desire as opposed to an Excel spreadsheet/calculation, is completely history.

And the major labels control the major press.

It's like there's a constant disinformation campaign.

If the major labels were interested in surviving, they'd change their tactics.  They'd split in two.  One entity would be the usual hit machine, signing malleable acts for airplay on Top Forty radio.  The other would be a nimble enterprise focused on signing that which is interesting, that which can grow.  Can you tell me how Ke$ha grows?

And this second entity must be manned by fans, with one suit to keep the books balanced.  And salaries must be minimal.  Any further financial rewards must be based on success.  But the real reward is being able to work in music.

But the major labels won't do this.

So where does this leave us?

With a lot of bands vying for attention.  Some good, most bad, and too many playing by the major label rules to little success.

So if you're a new act, stay indie.  You've got to, in order to be control of your own artistic destiny.  If you can't change direction on inspiration, chances are you won't connect for more than a moment, if that.

And indie is about forgetting everybody else and focusing on your fans.  If your fans are burned out on your music, you must make more, even though others have never heard it.

Albums are big statements.  Hooks upon which to hang your marketing.  But marketing doesn't work for anyone but the major label acts.  Artist development is not about growing your audience.  It's about writing, recording and playing, and finding out if someone is interested.  Your music is your calling card.  What the majors call marketing is luck.  If you've got a buzz, someone will write about you.  Their passion will shine through and you might garner some new fans, especially if the writer has a following himself.  Maybe NPR will even do a story.  But a passionless squib in the local paper is worthless.  As are advertisements.  People are only attracted when they can feel the passion and the excitement, which doesn't come from hype, but people, testifying one to another and occasionally in media.  In other words, there are no shortcuts.

And if you're really good and have success, business people will come to you.  Like flies to sherbet.  That's when you hire a lawyer and decide who to play with.  Please hire a lawyer.  A bad deal can kill a career.

And a lawyer can craft a deal that allows someone to run with your music for as long as he or she generates success, otherwise you're free again.

And you don't want to be with the usual suspects.  Not unless you make Top Forty music.  The usual suspects only know how to do it the old way.  They're all about the money, and you're all about the music.  It's a bad fit.  They're about instant stardom, you're about paying your dues, discovering exactly what it is you do that appeals to people.

Take a chance on someone your age.  Young and tech-savvy.  Someone who'll work 24/7 on your behalf.  Someone who's of the same demo as your fans, who understands them.

And sure, work Facebook and Twitter and...  But all of that is secondary to your music.

In other words, you're in charge of your own artist development.  We live in a DIY world.  If you're waiting for someone to rescue you, to make you famous, you're delusional.  Yes, in the old days Warner Brothers gave five album deals to nobodies.  But they really weren't nobodies.  They had friends, they were connected.  Which means you probably never would have gotten your chance anyway.  Now, you've got a chance.  Don't play with the usual suspects and kill it.

There will always be a few superstars, culture demands it.  But the new era is about tons of journeymen.  Your goal should be to make a living playing music.  If this is not enough, give up.

Orion and Amp Merchandising Teaming up

Orion Entertainment and Amp Merchandising have teamed up to work on several projects.  In case you are not familiar with Amp Merchandising, here is a little info on them...

http://www.ampmerch.com/

AMP Merchandising Ltd is a full service merchandising company with long-standing roots in Western Canada.  Founded over a decade ago in Langley, B.C., AMP has developed into one of Canada’s leading special event merchandise companies, with clients across North America and around the world. Specializing in merchandise for sporting events, promotion, music concert tours, and special events, AMP has become a leader in these markets. The experience gained through merchandising dozens of international concert tours a year has given AMP a unique knowledge of consumer behaviour at a variety of venues and environments. We feel this experience is invaluable in bringing both, an exciting look to the merchandise line and the delivery of a professional appearance to all our clients vending opportunities.

Check out our first 2 lines

Motivationalspeaker Tony Gaskins - "NO Groupies"  http://bit.ly/af47H6

Original Dirty Dancing Demos writer Frankie Previte http://bit.ly/8Zct0B

More projects to come! 

How to Get Your Music into Pandora Internet Radio

Repost from CDBaby

Michael Zapruder is an award-winning musician who serves as Music Curator for Pandora, the Oakland-based internet radio service based on the Music Genome Project. As curator, he directs all aspects of music collection, curation, and cataloging for Pandora’s stations. Zapruder has been with Pandora nearly since the inception of the Music Genome Project and was appointed as Pandora’s music curator in 2004.
There are any number of ways to get your music on Pandora. We’re always looking for new music to play for our listeners, so we watch all kinds of blogs, radio stations, show listings, charts and things like that. And while we don’t automatically add everything we see in those places, when an artist reaches a certain level of visibility we like to try our best to make that music available on Pandora.
So that’s the first thing you need to know. If you are connecting with an audience or community in a strong way; if you’re playing good rooms and getting attention, you will have a fine chance of getting into our collection.
We know we can’t find everything, though, so for the many deserving bands that we miss for one reason or another (and for bands that are just starting out), we offer a web-based music submission process that is free and open to everyone.
Here’s how it works:
1.    Register for Pandora (the submission process is connected to listener accounts, so you can use your existing account if you have one).
2.    Go to http://submitmusic.pandora.com and follow the directions for submitting.
3.    If your CD meets the requirements for submission (you have to have a valid UPC code and the record has to be for sale in the Amazon CD store), you’ll be prompted to upload two songs along with any biographical or press information and any links you’d like us to know about.
4.    When we get to your submission, we listen and make a decision about whether your submission is right for us.  (This takes time, so be patient.)
5.    If you’re accepted, we send you an email with a customized mailing label that you’ll use to send us your record. If we pass on your record we let you know on your submission page and we encourage you to keep us posted on your future work.
Lots of people ask us about the Amazon requirements, so here’s the skinny:
We use UPC codes as identifiers to display the right artist information and album art when something plays on Pandora. We want to be able to show as much information about the artists we play as we can, and UPC codes make that possible.
Requiring albums to be available in the Amazon CD store guarantees that we will have usable metadata for every album we accept, which in turn frees us up to spend our time listening to your submissions instead of entering song titles and such. It also means that interested listeners will be able to find and buy your music by clicking the Amazon link in the Pandora tuner.
You can get your music into the Amazon CD store for free using a service called CreateSpace. They press on-demand CDs for Amazon purchases. For people who have CDs for sale already, there is a vendor program that Amazon offers that charges an annual fee as well (and in case you’re wondering, we don’t have any financial stake in the above services).
So, what are we listening for when we get to your submission?
Well, for unknown bands the fundamental question we have to answer is: will fans of this kind of music be excited to discover this on Pandora stations?
We also consider how the submission might add to our existing collection. We may have more of a need for Black Metal, a less visible genre, than for something more common like Indie Rock (that’s not to say that we close the door on any genres, but the state of our collection sometimes comes into play).
We have a few basic internal guidelines for listening to every submission.
For one thing, our reviewers never have to give a reason for accepting music, but they always have to explain their decision if they are rejecting something. This only seems fair to us.
Also, we try to keep our personal musical preferences out of the decision-making process. The fact that a reviewer may not enjoy Darkwave or East Coast Hip hop or anything else really has no place in the decision about whether our listeners would embrace that music.
We are looking for excellence. Tim, Pandora’s founder, often says: “You have to earn your way into Pandora.” We try to make good decisions about whether the music lives up to that high standard.
When it’s all said and done, though, we know that with music and art we can’t ever be 100% sure we’re making the right call. We can never completely transcend our own subjectivity. Our way around that is to keep it simple: we try as hard as we can to give your music a fair hearing. We do our best to be conscientious with your work.
If we do get it wrong (and we do sometimes), we’ll find out about it; and when we see your music being reviewed or appearing on a chart somewhere, or when you’re playing the Fox Theater here in Oakland, we’ll make sure to get it into the collection right away!
Best of luck to everyone who is considering submitting their music or has already done so, and thanks from all the reviewers here for your interest in being a part of Pandora.
_______________________________

Note: this article was written by Pandora’s Music Curator Michael Zapruder and originally appeared on KnowTheMusicBiz.com. Thanks to both of them for allowing us to re-post it here. We should mention that CD Baby distributes our artists’ music to Amazon (one of the Pandora requirements). Here are a few steps you’ll need to take to ensure this requirement is met before submitting your album to Pandora-
1. In your CD Baby member account area, sign up your album for physical distribution through Super-D (No CD-Rs allowed) and for digital distribution to Amazon MP3.
2. Once you’ve confirmed that Amazon is selling both physical CDs and MP3s, contact our customer service team by writing cdbaby@cdbaby.com and ask that we “link up” both products so that Amazon houses them together under one UPC.
3. At that point, you’re free to submit your music to Pandora. Follow the guidelines below from there!
- Chris R. at CD Baby

When is a Pro Studio the Right Choice?

Repost from CDBaby

We listen to tons of albums every day, and the recording and production quality tends to vary just as much as the styles of music do. Ultimately, it’s up to you (the artist) to decide what sort of sound you’re going for, and of course, cost is always a concern. Yes, in a perfect world, we’d all have the time and money to spend weeks tinkering in a professional studio. That’s not a reality for most of us. But are you sacrificing pro-sounding results for the convenience of home recording? Again, it all depends on what your goals are with your music, and the means at hand. But unless you really know what you’re doing, getting that “radio-ready” pro sound of polished tracks at home can be a struggle.
So, when is a pro studio the right choice for your project?
We’ve heard a lot of different stories from musicians: some swear by the studio, others prefer the freedom of working at home and could never imagine shelling out big bucks and dealing with time constraints. For others, booking studio time is a motivator: you know exactly when you’re going in, and you’d better have your tracks up to snuff by the time that day rolls around. With the advent of pro-quality (HD, even) home recording, a lot of musicians are doing basic tracking at home, and only going to the studio to lay down the major elements of their record. (Why record tambourine at the studio when you can do it at home?)
What are your thoughts on this? Can you get the sound you want from your DAW/home studio? Do you think a pro studio is a must for a serious musician, or a waste of money? Let us know in the comments below.

Is Your Band/Artist Name Holding You Back?

Repost from CDBaby

When choosing the name that’s going to represent you and your music, don’t take the decision lightly. The moniker is going to follow you wherever you go, and it will be forever associated with any music you release under the name. So choose wisely: picking a good name can not only be a great tool in promoting your band/brand, but it can also help you avoid fan confusion, online hassles, and possibly even lawsuits.
How about a stage name? If you’re a solo artist, the thought of using anything but your real name may not have occurred to you. And honestly, most of the time, using your given name is going to work just fine. After all, what represents you better than the name you’ve been using your whole life? But if you have a really common name, one that might be overly hard to pronounce, or even one that you simply feel doesn’t suit your music – for whatever reason – don’t shy away from the idea of adopting a stage name. You won’t be the first musician to do it. I think we’ve all heard the theories on how Bob Dylan might have fared had he stuck with Robert Zimmerman. And you can’t help but wonder if Iggy Pop would have had the same impact had he gone by James Osterberg.
Does it match your music? Picking a band name is trickier, because unless you choose to go the Van Halen route and use your last name as your band name, you’re probably starting from scratch. (If you have a last name as cool as “Van Halen,” you may want to consider just going with that. Just sayin’.) There are many schools of thought when it comes to picking a band name, and there are no hard and fast rules that universally apply. Some folks would tell you that you should go with a name that directly evokes the feelings you’re trying to get across in your music, but if you’re a fan of irony and/or sarcasm, maybe choosing something completely incongruous with your sound is the way to go. But be wary of picking quirky or jokey names: what may seem funny at the time may seem old and tired down the road.
Use the internet! When picking your name, the internet is going to be your best friend. Think you’ve thought up the best band name ever? Give it a quick Google and see if somebody already beat you to it. You’d be surprised how many artists we see on CD Baby with the same band names. In the pre-internet days, you could claim ignorance when it came to another band having the same name as you’re using, but nowadays, you’ve got no excuse. Make sure you’ve chosen a name that no one is using, or no one has used. The last thing you want is someone badgering you online for taking their name, or even worse, taking legal action against you. So go original. When it comes to online promotions, you’ll be glad you did.
Online advantages of a highly original name:
- Search engine-friendly. Nothing like being the top result in Google when someone types your name in, instead of making people search through stuff to find you.
- Easier access to ideal domain names. If you name your band something no one else has ever thought of using, you’ve got a great chance of slapping a “.com” on the end of it and claiming the domain for yourself.
- Same goes for MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. While there’s nothing wrong with facebook.com/yournamemusic, facebook.com/yourname looks sharper. Choose an original name, and you’ve got better odds that no one’s using the URL you want.
Some common mistakes we’ve seen artists make:
- Using a first name only. If you just call yourself “Steve,” you’re never going to show up when people are searching for you online.
- Using overly common words. You ever wonder if the band Train gets tired of seeing locomotives pop up when they Google themselves?
- Using excessive punctuation and/or symbols, purposeful misspellings, or any other tweak that will constantly have you saying, “It’s spelled…” This one certainly has some exceptions (hey, it worked for !!!) but you might consider doing yourself a favor and leaving out the bells and whistles.
The bottom line: When picking a name, look to the future. Is it going to set you apart from the crowd, or is it going to fill you with regret and assure that you’re lost in the muck of the web? Use Google to do some research, and make an informed decision. You’ll be glad you did.

Tom Silverman’s New Music Model

Tom Silverman’s New Music Model