When I released my EP last year I did so with the help of a few online articles and some friends who have released their own music independently over the last few years. It was a fairly simple process and something i’ll refine for the next Bluevibe studio release. It seems anybody can get their music up on itunes now but many artists still need a little help to negotiate the range of options available and still need some help putting the whole release plan together.

Cameron Mizell recently launched a series of posts over at musicianwages.com outlining all the stages involved in self releasing your music. I’ve been reading Camerons articles and checking out what he’s been up to on twitter and he really seems to have a great working model together as a musicians. When I’m working with an artist to look at income streams and models of working as a musician it’s really important to look at your skills and talents and really find a creative and productive outlet for them, Cameron seems to do this really well and share his knowledge along the way.

I’ve been working on a range of income streams for quite a while now and I’m always looking for new and creative ways to put my skills to use. Here’s my list at the moment and admittedly some of these only bring in a few dollars at the moment but it’s quite a diverse list and I’m learning and developing the list everyday.

• Artist career facilitator – (3 days) consultant job helping musician’s develop sustainable income
• CPC website manager – (1 day) errrr managing a website
• Seminar and workshop production
• Recording artist – music sales, gigs, royalties etc
• Blogger – guest posts and consulting
• Remix artist – paid remixes
• Mix engineer – mixing other artists projects
• DJ

Now, I gotta say that this list is a lot of hard work but this would be a similar model to most independent musicians who are out there trying to hustle a living for their family. Most artists are just not gonna make a living out of music sales (you guys already know that though?!!) so focusing on your skills and developing a diverse approach to your income is essential for most artists today, i’d love to know what works for you?

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• Soul Sides music blog – keepin it deep (0)
• Radiohead – Warner MG – Bluevibe studio – 2008 (0)

So after setting up my Twitter account months ago I’ve actually started using it on a regular basis. I’m only following a few people so far but am actually really enjoying connecting with people and sharing the huge amount of information I come across daily. I’m a real info. freak and once I actually stopped to think about the amount of information I digest every day I thought that Twitter would be a great tool to spread some of this in a quick and easy format. I’ll still be blogging because I only blog once a week; I like to write longer articles for this blog plus at the moment I’m talking to different people and focusing on different topics on the blog than I am on Twitter.

As part of my working day I check about 100 RSS feeds every morning and meet with 2 or 3 musicians daily so there’s always something going on, new projects, solving problems for bands, giving advice to artists just getting started with blogging, a huge range of stuff and some of the most interesting bits are worth posting on Twitter. I also spend a few hours in the evening hunting round for new music, checking my music blogs, playing some vinyl and writing tunes and this always provides inspiration for a few Tweets. If your on Twitter then you can follow me over here http://www.twitter.com/bluevibestudio and if your not then you can check out a few quick articles on using Twitter below.

• 10 easy steps for Twitter beginners
• Musicians Twitter roadmap
• Twitter : Use it productively
• Using Twitter for music promotion

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• The business of music – the insiders guide to funding (0)
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This week I’m starting a series of podcasts recorded at a recent seminar I presented in conjunction with The Depot Artspace and The Creative Peoples Center. The seminar took place last month and focused on the subject of promotions for independent musicians. I decided to break the rather large topic of promotions up in to 3 specific areas; tour promotion; album promotion and digital promotion.

This first podcast features Rebecca Caughey covering the topic of tour promotion and marketing. Rebecca is the Managing Director of Funktion Music Media . She currently manages Shapeshifter and Ladi6 and is a tour publicist for artists such as Bic Runga and Brooke Fraser .

I’d like to thank Bec’s for her contribution to the day and the depth of information and advice shared. The full podcast is 85mins long and well worth listening to as it covers topics from the changing role of the artist; writing press releases and bio’s plus a step by step guide covering how to put together a marketing plan for a tour.

Make sure you don’t miss out on the next podcast by either signing up for the Bluevibe studio newsletter or subscribing to the RSS feed. The next podcast features Lauren Clough from Maiden New Zealand Entertainment taking us through a detailed plan of how to launch an album in to the New Zealand market. The final installment focuses on digital promotion and features Matt Turner from Kurb promotions .

***** Update: you can check out all the recordings from the seminar over at the new Creative People’s Centre website. *****

You can also listen to this seminar online over at the excellent online radio station Jam radio . This series of podcasts will feature in a new monthly show I’m putting together for Jam radio focusing on the music industry with advice for musicians covering a range of industry topics and a few interviews with local musicians and industry figures.

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• Bluevibe studio wins $15k promotion package from voeveo.com (2)
• The business of music – the insiders guide to funding (0)

It’s a pleasure to finally let you all know that the EP is now back from mastering (thanks to theproof.co.nz) and ready to be let loose on the big wide world. I’ve discussed a few options for the promotion of the EP in previous posts and wanted to ask a few questions to get some feedback on my ideas.

The first thing I’m working on is a prize promotion to accompany the EP consisting of a Vestax Handytrax turntable; Presonus Inspire 1394 sound card and some vinyl and sample CD’s. I’ve got the gear sorted through a deal with local distributors but what I’m trying to figure out is how should I actually “give them away?”

I really wanted to do the promo giveaway because with this kit anybody can get started making tunes, the sound card comes with cubase so you can load up the samples from vinyl or CD and your away. I started on an emu sampler and playing with trackers and really wanted to get people in to making their own tracks. My big question is how do I make the most out of the promotion. I really want to get this EP out to as many fans as possible and also not lose money on the launch. Simple goals which shouldn’t be too hard to achieve with the right promo.

I have a few idea’s but wanted to ask for your input on the promotion. How do you think I should do it?

• Include an entry form with each CD sold? This could only happen if I get a whole bunch of CD’s done which I don’t really have the budget for?
• Some kind of “buy the full digital EP and be in to win” promotion?
• Everybody who comes to the launch party gets a copy of the EP and is entered in to the draw to win the prize pack?
• Buy one of the tracks from the EP from an online distribution company of your choice and go in to the draw…..
• Register for the Bluevibe newsletter and go in the draw…..

After researching EP sales on CD with quite a few retailers it just doesn’t seem worth getting a run of CD’s pressed up, especially when your an unknown artist. This is the main reason for thinking about going digital only with a batch of promo CD’S. I’ll be uploading the tracks from the EP over the next few weeks so check back for some Bluevibe goodness and drop me a mail or leave a comment with your opinion on the prize pack.

Related posts/pages

• Digital promotion strategies for the new Bluevibe studio EP (0)
• Win a Vestax turntable and classic vinyl pack (1)

Finding your fans is something that we all should be doing on a regular basis and one of the simplest ways is through the many social music sites. So here’s a quick outline of my plan for building up my network of fans before I release the EP. This only focuses on the social music sites that I’m currently involved with and doesn’t cover all the aspects of my digital strategy which will also include posting on forums, commenting on blogs etc. If you have any other suggestions for building up my music networks then let me know by adding a comment, any help is always appreciated and I’ll be posting about my experiences with these different strategies as we go along.

So here’s the plan at the moment:

• Myspace – many people think myspace is dead as a way of finding music fans and specifially music buyers but it’s a platform which still needs some attention. I’ve really only been using myspace so far to find collaborators which has been really successful but now I’m going to start building up my network of music fans.
• Last.fm – I have an account but haven’t really been using it so I’m really going to start spending some time getting to know a few of my neighbours and getting involved in the community.
• Facebook – I have my Bluevibe studio page but haven’t really started to push it yet. I need to learn a little more about how to make the most out of the facebook community before getting things going.
• Coopr8 – a great music community out of the UK with some real music lovers on board. This is a niche community site which I’m going to be spending some time on to build up a network for the EP.
• Voeveo – I currently sell my ring tones through Voeveo but they also have a social aspect to the site which I’ll spending more time getting involved with over the coming weeks. I also won a promotion package last month with Voeveo and will be working with the team there to promote the EP.

As you can see focusing on some of the social media sites I’m currently involved with and really making an active contribution to the community is something which I’m hoping will help to build a good level of awareness around the launch of the EP and my music in general. Social music sites should be seen as part of your digital promotion strategy but I actually feel that your music sales should be a secondary consideration behind the huge number of other benefits you will see from being involved in sites like last.fm and Coopr8. Discovering amazing independent artists and supporting the music you love should always be the driving force and not clocking up as many friends as you can find! Call me naive but it’s the real personal interactions which will help the music scene and your career both online and off.

I’ll be posting about the full promotion plan in a few weeks and will be getting a few local experts on board to help me put my plan together. Finding fans for my music in New Zealand will mostly be done through some of the more traditional methods and will consume the larger part of my small budget for this release. I’ll be talking to a few people about how to get really creative with your cash when it comes to promotion and outlining a few of the ideas for you here. If you’d like those posts delivered direct to your inbox then subscribe to my blog and just sit back, relax, listen to some hiphop!

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So it’s actually been a year since I started the tracks for the Bluevibe studio presents EP and they’re finally ready to go off to get mastered. This EP has been a bit of a labour of love for me and while I actually have another 2 EP’s more or less completed I’m really excited to be finally getting these tracks out. It didn’t actually seem like a year until Lisa Preston pointed it out, I guess that’s because I’ve had a baby and started a new job since this project kicked off and the months have just flown by, that’s babies for ya!

In my previous post “Bluevibe studio presents – finishing the tracks for the EP” I outlined 7 stages in the release and I’m now up to stages 3 and 4, funding and mastering. I’m still working on funding options so I’ll run through the mastering this week and get on to funding the EP next time.

My good friend Kerry Adams from The Proof will be taking care of the mastering duties, he’s got a wicked ear and works in quite a few different genres so he seems like the perfect man for the job. The EP consists of 2 main tracks with 2 remixes of each track plus 2 bonus tracks which have previously only been available in demo form. I mix on Genelec monitors and although they are excellent my mixes sometimes don’t translate too well when played on other systems. This makes the mastering stage even more important for me and is the key reason why it’s great to have a a mastering engineer work with each track to make sure they sit together on the EP and translate across different playback systems. I would always recommend you get someone else to master your tracks but if you don’t have any budget and really want to DIY then here’s a list of some great tutorials for you to check out.

Next week funding!!! It’s the big one for me as I’m basically an unknown independent artist doing his first full EP release so I’m going to have to get creative with the cash if I’m going to make the most of it!!

• The secret of the mastering engineer – Bob Katz – mastering manual from the TC electronics finalizer written by Bob Katz, well worth a read.
• Mastering with plugins from Har-bal.com – complete in the box tutorial.
• The elements of home studio audio mastering – nice simple tutorial over at tweakheadz using some of the excellent uad plugins.
• Mastering masters – Mastering article from the excellent Sound on Sound website.

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As part of NZ music month voeveo.com ran a competition to win a $15k promotional package on their website. All you had to do was upload some content to sell on their site and you went in the draw. The good news is (as you probably got from the headline) that I won one of the 5 promotional packages which includes a featured artist page, promotion on the homepage and a google adwords campaign to drive traffic to my page on the voeveo.com website.

Voeveo.com sells content for your mobile phone including audio, video, games and images. I uploaded 4 ring tones to the site which only took me about 20mins to register, complete my profile, and upload and categories the 4 ring tones. You can head over to the Bluevibe studio page on the voeveo website to check out the ring tones. Whats even better is that if you register as a buyer on the site you get $9 prepay on your account which you could use to buy all 4 of the Bluevibe studio ring tones, nice.

Mike from voeveo.com got in touch to let me know I had won the package and has also agreed to hold off on the promotion until the release of the new EP which is now finished and will be out in July. It’ll be great to have the EP available through voeveo.com for all you mobile music consumers and everybody else will be able to grab it through an online music store near you! I’ll keep you informed of the release details in a few weeks time once we’ve got our plan together. This will be the first official Bluevibe studio EP so we’re still working on the best options for the release. I’ll be doing a few posts on independent distribution and promotion over the next few weeks and welcome any thoughts you might have on getting the EP out to the masses.

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