’nuff said.
====================================

I’ll drown my beliefs
To have your babies
I’ll dress like your niece
And wash your swollen feet

Just don’t leave
Don’t leave

I’m not living
I’m just killing time
Your tiny hands
Your crazy kitten smile

Just don’t leave
Don’t leave

And true love waits
In haunted attics
And true love lives
On lollipops and crisps

Just don’t leave
Don’t leave

Just don’t leave
Don’t leave

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The past several days I’ve been getting back to the basics – not woodshedding in the real sense of the word, but just rediscovering my love for and the joy of great music. It’s a serious cure, and lately I’ve been taking it all in…

Sunday night I saw an incredible performance of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, put on by Wordless Music. 

Yesterday I found a copy online of the Dave Matthews Band’s first studio recordings from 1992, which blow me away for several reasons: at times they sound like total shit, which is reassuring. But Dave’s songwriting abilities were mature from the beginning – these early versions show that some of his best songs were forged in the group’s most amateur moments.

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I smiled in admiration.

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There’s a good introductory article on this topic by David Rose at Know The Music Biz’s Blog. He did a quick survey of his top 10 bands and found that many of them still don’t allow fans to buy mp3’s directly from their websites, myspace profiles, etc. His point being that this just makes it one step harder for people to become your fans. Sure they can go to iTunes, but you might lose some potential listeners that don’t want to bother loading iTunes, etc.

David points to a few services that will allow artists to set up their own webstores for mp3 downloads. These are: Musicane, Hooka, Easybe, and Nimbit.

I’ve checked these out and listed below are some initial thoughts on each one, based on my own requirements as a musician with very limited resources and not a huge fanbase. Most artists aren’t really going to sell that many downloads, no matter how good the music is. So getting free technology is key to making direct music sales worthwhile.

Musicane MP3 Webstore

Musicane is in beta, and their user interface could use some improvements. But the site’s simple and reasonably elegant layout is nice, as is the design of the embeddable mp3 store. They seem to have some big-name artists using Musicane, which may or may not mean something. Musicane takes 30% of sales, and you keep 70%. Paypal enabled.

• Musicane’s service is free to use
• You upload your tracks, copy the “Musicane” code and embed it in any web page you want.
• You can designate a commission percentage, and enable your listeners to embed your music on their webpages. This is a cool way to get them to participate in your success and maybe make some spare change in the process.

Test Run
I spent a while creating a Musicane for my new EP, Bbelief, and the process took much longer than it should, based on some site bugs and user interface gaps…But I think it’s promising…

Hoooka Indie911 MP3 Webstore

Don’t judge a book by its cover, but I usually do anyways. The layout and design of this tool just turns me off. They say that their embeddable mp3 seller can be skinned completely to match your custom site, but the custom Hookas I looked at still suffered from a generally tacky design. They made all the music sites look amateurish. And the company name, “Indie911,” seems geared towards hobbyists and tools.

Hooka does, however offer 80% of the sales revenue, taking only 20% for themselves.

Easybe - a 1-2-3 Music Store - Sell Music Downloads

Unlike the tools above, Easybe is not web-based software that just outputs a code for you to use. Easybe lets you run the whole operation yourself, and is essentially a php-based software solution that you implement and manage yourself. It has advanced features like email list management and tracking, and enables unlimited operations, theoretically.

Easybe requires $68 upfront for artists, and $168 for labels. Since I’m an indie artist and may not even sell $68 worth of music anytime soon from my website, this is not an option for me. If I start doing high volume sales, this would be cool, because it offers better marketing tools and, beyond the upfront fee, you keep all revenue for yourself. Nice. So if you sell thousands of tracks and don’t like sharing the pie, this could work for you.

Nimbit Digital Music Downloads

Nimbit is kind of a hybrid of the above, because it offers both free and paid versions of the service, with some sophisticated and large volume tools to sell not only mp3 downloads, but merchandise and tickets.

• The free service enables you to embed your mp3s for sale on any webpages, and your fans can too.
• The company will even skin your Nimbit seller for you, for about $100.
• Nimbit can also get your tracks into iTunes, Rhapsody, and several other popular online distributors.

Test Run
Nimbit’s service centers around the OMT, or Online Merch Table, where an artist can sell anything they wish. For the FREE service, you can sell digital downloads, and are limited to the default skin for your OMT. But the user interface is much more robust / thorough than Musicane’s, and seems much further along than Musicane. They offer a wider array of services, too. While I don’t love the look of the OMT (I wish it were smaller and not so high-tech looking), it works and seems to work well. I embedded it on my Bbelief page. When I installed the OMT app on my Facebook page yesterday, it said that there were 9 total users of that app. So, clearly these apps have not reached widespread use…

Nimbit mails checks to you, which seems old fashioned. It would be better if they had some Paypal and ACH transfers…

Your Turn
Are You Using Any of these MP3 webstores on Your Sites? Let Us Know in the Comments Section…

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Here are more of Phil’s insightful comments on marketing music and participating in the NYC music scene…

How long have you been a musician in NYC?

I’ve been a musician in NYC since I moved here five years ago.  However, I spent the first year and a half practicing and writing, so I’ve only really been publicly active for the past 3.5 years.

What music projects are you personally involved in?

I write and perform my own music, both solo and with my rock band, The Bliss Jockeys.  In addition, I’m also an ongoing guitarist for the Jessica Lee Band.  All of these activities are well-represented on my web-site.

Apart from my own direct projects, I run the indie record label, Roomful of Sky Records, and in that capacity, I produce and/or help promote the recordings and shows of our ten artists.

Has the Meetup had a significant impact, professionally and/or personally, on your singer/songwriter career?

Yes.  The Meetup group has enabled a great and supportive community of musicians to come together and stay strong for the past couple of years.  Personally, I’ve formed many mutually beneficial relationships with other musicians which have given me the opportunity to ‘grow by doing’—eg. when you feel safe enough to try things out in front of other people, so that even if you fail miserably, it’s understood as the kind of healthy experimentation that’s part of progress—by having an environment like that, I’ve been able to both expand my skills as well as increase my confidence, all the while very much enjoying the process and forming quality friendships.

The networking aspect of the group has been tremendously beneficial as well—I’ve found all sorts of collaborators, as well as built relationships with venues, rehearsal spaces and studios which have resulted in me having more power to call my own shots as places are more willing to work with you when you have the strength of numbers behind you.

To what extent has the Meetup improved your skills as a musician and songwriter?

First and foremost, I feel that playing regularly with (and for) others has really desensitized me to most of the nervousness that can often be associated with performing or with presenting my ideas to others.  That in itself has enabled me to feel more comfortable to just GO FOR IT whenever I play/sing/write.

It’s like anything else, you take baby steps and take a little risk and it turns out to be OK, and so next time you take a little bit bigger of a risk and, again, it turns out to be OK, so just by participating in an ongoing process of playing over time, you wind up having the opportunity to keep pushing your own envelope.

Playing regularly with others has also helped me to get my mindset ‘off the page’ or ‘out of the head’ and or whatever you want to call it.  What I mean is, when you sit in your room by yourself, you are playing music and it’s a one-way communication.  When you play with other musicians, however, they are creating music simultaneously so it becomes a two-way street; while playing you are also LISTENING– there’s something going on larger than just you, which is the collective creation of everyone in the room.  So, becoming more sensitive to that and becoming more able to allow the simultaneous listening inform what I myself am playing.  That’s the very essence of musicianship, and you only develop that ability by participating in music making with others, and the Meetup has given me a tremendous opportunity to create and participate in many of those kinds of situations on an ongoing basis.

Have you collaborated with Meetup participants on new songs?
Yes, on a couple different levels.

Informally, when we have our song workshops, many members are open to giving/receiving ideas that come up organically during the process of just running through each person’s song three or four times with the roomful of assembled musicians.  I’ve participated in that process (both on the giving and receiving end) many times.

More officially, I’ve been a part of three different ongoing bands at various points in the last couple years that organically grew from relationships I’ve had with Meetup members.  In those contexts, we’ve explicitly collaborated on songwriting, mostly in the name of developing the repertoire that we would collectively perform and record with each other.

One of us has a CD coming out later this year for which many of the songs have songwriting credits listing two to five members of the Meetup as having had a hand in the song’s creation!

What online resources do you use to help market your music?

Most of the typical resources—myspace, youtube, constant contact, cd baby, blogs, plus building my own web-sites.  One strategy that I’ve seen which works very, very well in hobbling together a web presence out of all of the above is to use a consistent identity across all contexts.  This is simple marketing 101, but to have a consistent brand is important; once you develop your logo/icon/background image, you can stick it on your myspace, your youtube channel, you e-mail newsletter, and then you can create a basic web-site which links to all of the above and it seems like a very unified and connected experience to web-visitors as opposed to different pieces spread out over the internet.

What have been your most successful strategies for selling your recordings?

The #1 successful strategy has been constantly growing my e-mail list.  When I started my e-mail list, I added the e-mail address of every single person I’ve ever known—friend, class-mates, former co-workers, family, etc…  I sent out a big notice to all of them, ‘I’ve included you on my e-mail list; thanks for the support; if you don’t want to be on it, unsubscribe at any time…’

Since then, I literally never miss an opportunity to (politely) add e-mail addresses of people who I make a personal connection with.  Every time I perform, every time I meet someone new, every time I go to an event or host an event, or someone gives me their card, or I leave a job, etc., I ask if I can add them to my list.

What advice do you have for the average independent singer/songwriter looking to get their music heard?

Go and find a unique niche where you’ll find lots of the kind of people who are likely to respond to your music, EVEN IF that niche isn’t music-related.

For example, you can put your independent music up on an independent music web-site, but the reality is that your music is going to be up there along with the music of the 14 million other independent musicians.  You’ll literally be just one drop in the ocean.

However, say you write songs that include references to, for example, Greek mythology or NASCAR racing or the environmental movement.  Then, go find a mythology web-site or a NASCAR forum or an environmental online store, and get your music into THOSE places.  Now, you have the advantage of really sticking out because the people who go to those sites are going to be into the kinds of things your music is about, and plus, you won’t be competing with a million other musicians.

Also, just PERFORM, PERFORM, PERFORM.  Once you’re comfortable doing your first few shows in front of supportive audiences comprised of your friends, then graduate and put effort into playing at places where you’re going to play for strangers who haven’t heard you yet—that way, you’ll win new converts along the way.

Go back to Part I of the Interview with Phil Robinson, NYC Musicians Meetup

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Suffering: Is it Good for Your Music?
Taken to an extreme, perhaps this is true. If Thom Yorke didn’t feel so alienated from society, we’d never have been given OK Computer. And if you had millions of dollars, a handful of butlers and your own private island, perhaps you’d become complacent and would stop looking for new sounds and song ideas. But generally, making good music is hard work, and typically, hard work is productive work when you aren’t starving and can afford clean clothes and a shower. And don’t return home exhausted every evening after your full-time “real” job, at which point you expect creative inspiration to strike. And in Thom Yorke’s case, it’s clear that his alienation is not a function of finances, otherwise his alienation vs. riches graph wouldn’t look like this:

On the other hand, maybe the starving artist archetype emerged because the majority of artists will, by definition, always be mediocre, and who wants to give money to someone that sucks? Well, lots of people, in reality.

Get Paid, You Deserve It
Whatever your case is, I’m just saying that if people like your music, you should be paid for it. Which puts me in an awkward position, given that I have gifted myself music from time to time, via peer-to-peer networks.

I foresee contradicting myself over and over as we proceed. Sometimes I’m impressed by how illogical the sum of my convictions is…

These things make for good debate, though…

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