4 ms·

This is the most spot-on "tutorial" for today's musicians I've read so far. As a musician (formerly on a major label) with a hacker background, I agree with eve

by rivo 17y ago

This is the most spot-on "tutorial" for today's musicians I've read so far. As a musician (formerly on a major label) with a hacker background, I agree with every single word. It is still hard for musicians, however, to give away their music for free, especially if money was spent producing it. My band has been working the way described here for 3-4 years now. We're not famous but we have our fan base and we know there are people willing to pay for stuff. It's not enough to cover our living expenses but maybe we'll get there one day. Next stop: ramen-profitable... Still, as the only Internet-savvy member in the band, it's hard to explain this to my band mates. E.g. we get lots of requests from dummers for our songs without the drum tracks so they could play along. They'd pay much more than for a regular album. And they'd upload videos to YouTube which would be free promotion for us. But I cannot get our drummer to agree to releasing these versions. Most musicians don't get it. Yet.

Xichekolas 17y ago
You should link your band's site in your profile. I read your comment and thought "hey, might as well see if they are any good", but then you didn't give a link or even mention the band's name... so I couldn't.
- dag 17y ago
  Yeah, what's the band?
- mahmud 17y ago
  Musicians might not like to be seen talking "business". It's just impolite.
  - dag 17y ago
    I, as a musician, think you're making too much of this. If he's worried about someone finding this when reading about the band he could obfuscate (rot13, etc) the name.
  - Xichekolas 17y ago
    Which is why I said just put it in the profile. He doesn't have to beat us over the head with his band's name, but surely there is no taboo against casually dropping it when it's the subject of the conversation.
- rivo 17y ago
  I'm here as a hacker rather than a musician so I didn't put the band URL in my profile. Anyway, this is the band: http://www.rivodrei.de http://www.rivodrei.de. We're German so most of you won't understand the lyrics. (There's some English information here: http://www.rivodrei.de/en/ http://www.rivodrei.de/en/) That's also one of the reasons it's on a much smaller scale than you would expect. These are a few things we did: -I built this website as a community website early on. There's some additional material when you sign up (e.g. demo recordings etc.). You can find out which other fans went to the same concerts and communicate with them. There's a shop, guestbook, Google Maps integration, galleries, and a forum. Couldn't find any off-the-shelve package that did all of this together so I had to code it myself. -All our videos are zero budget. People like them anyway (they don't care about quality so much). We're currently shooting more videos for our new album. -We gave away a few tracks in the past and I'd like to do it for our next album which is due in the fall. But like I said, I have a feeling I will fail to convince my drummer/bassist. -Remix contest: http://www.rivodrei.de/remix/ http://www.rivodrei.de/remix/ (And yes, we could give away all individual tracks of all songs but the demand doesn't seem to be as high as for the no-drums version where everything else is pre-mixed.) -Live webcasting from the studio during our recordings for the new album (via former Mogulus.com). -Some fun stuff such as this one: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/the-hit-song-yo.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/the-... (This is in English, btw.) -We try to collect email addresses as much as we can, especially at concerts. Newsletters are sent about once a month and people can opt out any time. -About the use of Flash: There's a little box at the top right with pictures of live concerts. I have a feeling that people thought they were ads because of the animation. -We have a MySpace page but for many months now, we've been attracting mostly spam. I am considering deleting our profile there. We haven't used Twitter yet because it hasn't taken off that much in Germany yet but when it does, we will use it more. We have a Facebook page and that seems to gain some traction now. YouTube is doing ok. No Flickr account. (We have our own gallery and I'm too lazy to post all pictures twice.) I like to focus on our own website because all these services come and go. -I answer all (serious) emails. This is very important. And it's funny how excited some people are to get an email from the singer and not from some management. ;) It takes a lot of time to shoot on all these channels and create new material (music/videos) at the same time. I'm not doing this full-time so unfortunately, there's not much time left for something else.
Radix 17y ago
E.g. we get lots of requests from dummers for our songs without the drum tracks so they could play along. What do you play? Could you just convince him that yall should release a series of tracks each dropping one instrument? Maybe only the drummers will buy.
GavinB 17y ago
Instead of releasing the tracks without drums, you should release the mixdowns of each instrument individually. You could even charge a few bucks for it. Let fans play their own instruments, re-mix, and upload. Have a contest for the best interpretation. Doing it for all the tracks might help offset your drummer's aversion to the idea.
pageman 17y ago
my suggestion - put together a new band - to be your project band - so that you can do what you want - plus, it gets you out of the rut of playing the same stuff again and again :)

by rivo 17y ago

Xichekolas 17y ago

You should link your band's site in your profile. I read your comment and thought "hey, might as well see if they are any good", but then you didn't give a link or even mention the band's name... so I couldn't.

dag 17y ago
Yeah, what's the band?
mahmud 17y ago
Musicians might not like to be seen talking "business". It's just impolite.
- dag 17y ago
  I, as a musician, think you're making too much of this. If he's worried about someone finding this when reading about the band he could obfuscate (rot13, etc) the name.
- Xichekolas 17y ago
  Which is why I said just put it in the profile. He doesn't have to beat us over the head with his band's name, but surely there is no taboo against casually dropping it when it's the subject of the conversation.
rivo 17y ago
I'm here as a hacker rather than a musician so I didn't put the band URL in my profile. Anyway, this is the band: http://www.rivodrei.de http://www.rivodrei.de. We're German so most of you won't understand the lyrics. (There's some English information here: http://www.rivodrei.de/en/ http://www.rivodrei.de/en/) That's also one of the reasons it's on a much smaller scale than you would expect. These are a few things we did: -I built this website as a community website early on. There's some additional material when you sign up (e.g. demo recordings etc.). You can find out which other fans went to the same concerts and communicate with them. There's a shop, guestbook, Google Maps integration, galleries, and a forum. Couldn't find any off-the-shelve package that did all of this together so I had to code it myself. -All our videos are zero budget. People like them anyway (they don't care about quality so much). We're currently shooting more videos for our new album. -We gave away a few tracks in the past and I'd like to do it for our next album which is due in the fall. But like I said, I have a feeling I will fail to convince my drummer/bassist. -Remix contest: http://www.rivodrei.de/remix/ http://www.rivodrei.de/remix/ (And yes, we could give away all individual tracks of all songs but the demand doesn't seem to be as high as for the no-drums version where everything else is pre-mixed.) -Live webcasting from the studio during our recordings for the new album (via former Mogulus.com). -Some fun stuff such as this one: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/the-hit-song-yo.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/the-... (This is in English, btw.) -We try to collect email addresses as much as we can, especially at concerts. Newsletters are sent about once a month and people can opt out any time. -About the use of Flash: There's a little box at the top right with pictures of live concerts. I have a feeling that people thought they were ads because of the animation. -We have a MySpace page but for many months now, we've been attracting mostly spam. I am considering deleting our profile there. We haven't used Twitter yet because it hasn't taken off that much in Germany yet but when it does, we will use it more. We have a Facebook page and that seems to gain some traction now. YouTube is doing ok. No Flickr account. (We have our own gallery and I'm too lazy to post all pictures twice.) I like to focus on our own website because all these services come and go. -I answer all (serious) emails. This is very important. And it's funny how excited some people are to get an email from the singer and not from some management. ;) It takes a lot of time to shoot on all these channels and create new material (music/videos) at the same time. I'm not doing this full-time so unfortunately, there's not much time left for something else.

Radix 17y ago

E.g. we get lots of requests from dummers for our songs without the drum tracks so they could play along. What do you play? Could you just convince him that yall should release a series of tracks each dropping one instrument? Maybe only the drummers will buy.

GavinB 17y ago

Instead of releasing the tracks without drums, you should release the mixdowns of each instrument individually. You could even charge a few bucks for it. Let fans play their own instruments, re-mix, and upload. Have a contest for the best interpretation. Doing it for all the tracks might help offset your drummer's aversion to the idea.

pageman 17y ago

my suggestion - put together a new band - to be your project band - so that you can do what you want - plus, it gets you out of the rut of playing the same stuff again and again :)