Ya Know something…..

I have been in the music industry for over twenty years now. I have worked in recording studios, booked bands and artists on tours, done a million or so radio calls, set up distribution, managed some great groups and artists, and do a heck of a lot of music marketing consulting for indie labels and artists and it shouldn’t, but it does still amaze me at the one thing that always works in the industry…..

You have to actually take an active roll in the music industry to succeed.

That is all there is to it. You have to wake up everyday and decide what you are going to complete, and then actually complete the task. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering or record breaking – it just has to be a step towards your ultimate goal. I know, it just sounds too simple to work. But it does. It has. And it will continue to be the #1 best course of action, strategy, or marketing campaign ever created.

If you follow the blog or read my articles over at www.IamMusicNetwork.com you know that I lay out a ton of strategies and try to tie them all together into a campaign plan to move your music from your hands and into your potential fans hands. But if you look at each and every article or word I have written over the years you will see one thing over and over…. you have to take action to make it work.

I think we all make the same mistake. We are always looking for the magic bullet or secret weapon that will get us ahead of the pack. The one thing that will finally get us to the top of the charts, booked in the exclusive venues, or get our name on the lips of waiting fans. But as we search and search for that solution – that magic trick – we need to stop and actually look within our own mind. Is the problem really that you don’t know what to do next, or is the problem that you are not actually taking steps, consistently, that will lead to your success?

What have you done today to get your music in front of fans? Did you call someone to see if they gave you the “hook up” or did you actually take the time to reach out to potential fans in your social networks to build relationships? Did you send out your EPK to blogs and online radio stations hoping someone would email you back or did you actively seek out the owners of those blogs and radio stations and start relationships? How about this…. did you simply ask people to join your email/newsletter opt in list or did you send out an email today?

Setting up a great website, having a ton of videos on youtube, creating a dozen or so profiles across social networking sites, and signing up for a newsletter/email subscription service is only the first step towards getting your music in the hands of fans. We have all heard the sad story of “Build it and they will come.” or “Play it and they will hear it.” Meaning, if you simply build a website or create great music then surely fans will find you and buy your music. But this simply is not true. Just because you have a killer website, social networking profile circle, or a ton of videos does not mean anyone knows about you or your music. You can not “build (or play) it” and expect fans to come to you.

You have to get up every day and ask yourself – “where are my fans today and how am I going to reach them?”

But here is the secret – when you don’t find them today, you still have to wake up tomorrow and ask the same question! Then, you have to work again tomorrow at actually finding and reaching those fans. It’s not easy, I didn’t say the #1 easiest method of winning in the music industry – But this is the #1 secret to the music industry. You can not get discouraged and stop looking for fans. You can not expect your manager to find you fans. You can expect your record label is getting you fans. And by all means, you can not count on anyone but yourself to wake up every day and search for fans but yourself.

Are you going to hit road blocks….. everyday! Is it going to be tough to stay motivated…. everyday! Will you want to give up because you have been trying for six months or a year and are not much further along…. everyday! But you know what…. everyday, if you keep on the grind, you will get more fans, sell more music, and create your space within the music industry. It does work, it does pay off, and you can make your living. Don’t get me wrong, you still need luck, information, and acquired skills to hit “the big” time. But in order to acquire the skills you have to be honing your game, and luck – luck is being in the right place at the right time and having the skills in place to take advantage of the situation – how are you going to have any luck if you are not on your grind daily? How are you going to develop skills if you don’t work at them everyday – and sometimes fall flat on your face?  Information comes from doing it over and over to see what works and what doesn’t and by actually being in the game to network and meet more people that have the information.

There is only one fundamental truth to the music industry: You have to be in it to win it!

Counting on others to do for you is not being in the industry. Waiting on something to happen is not being in the industry. Watching fro the sidelines is not being in the industry. And most important – you don’t have to have money to make it in the industry if you are willing to work harder than anyone around you. We are in the internet age now, you can make a living right from your house, with your music and merchandise, if you actually work the industry – and that will fund the rest of what you need to do.

You know, really, there is no excuse to not making it in the industry except you didn’t try.

This has been a motivational minute by Jai. LOL!!

Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, Not Yourself in the MUSIC!”
Buy my new book – The Music Business Bible – and learn EVERYTHING you need to know about the music industry to succeed!

Ok, we are a few days into 2010 and as I sat down at my computer with my cup of coffee and favorite artist playing on the little tiny 2″ laptop speaker thinking about what “gem” of information I could share with you today about how to marketing your music better I realized…. maybe I don’t know! Maybe what I need is not what you need. Maybe where I think you should be in your journey is not at all where you are at! Maybe, just maybe…. I need to actually take the time and ask you….

What do you need in 2010 to help you successfully market your music to the masses?

I’m serious here. I want to know what you need to be successful in the music industry. What is your burning questions, what do you need to understand more, what resources do you find yourself trying to find, or what will make the biggest difference in your career? I am listening, I want your input, and I will do my best to answer all the questions I get over the next year.

I want to make this YOUR BLOG about music marketing, promotion, business… or, well, anything you need for your career in the music industry!

I love to share my knowledge about music marketing… but this morning I really realized something great… I love helping artists, producers, musicians, record labels, managers, agents, and anyone else interested in the music industry SUCCEED better than just sharing my knowledge. In order for me to actually do what I love I realized I needed to know more about what you want… not what I think you want!

So, what are you waiting for…go ahead…. click on the comment button below and let er rip – tell me your needs for marketing your music in 2010. Ask questions, tell me what confuses you the most, ask for resources, and tell me your issues.

If you take the time to ask…. I promise I will take the time to find a solution, answer a question, or guide you to the answer you need to succeed in the music industry in 2010!

I look forward to hearing from you…. and giving you what you need in 2010!
Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, Not Yourself in the MUSIC!”
www.jaihutcherson.com
www.IamMusicNetwork.com

Hey People….

If you live on the East Coast – Or anywhere and feel like a really cool vacation… Don’t miss the 14th Annual Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA – Feb. 18th – 21st, 2010. This is a really cool conference that has been happening long enough that they got it going on. These folks know how to put together a City wide event that spans four days, 25 hot clubs, 250 original artists, music industry pros sharing their knowledge, tips, tricks, and techniques for succeeding in the music industry , and a whole lot more.

This is not just another conference…. this is an event not to be missed. I have been asked to be a speaker and am very excited to be a part of this legendary music conference! I would love to as many of my readers/followers at the event so we can network face to face, swap ideas and experiences, and help each other grow our network of contacts.

Go to my website www.JaiHutcherson.com and click on the link for the Millennium Music Conference to get more information!!!!

Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, Not Yourself in the MUSIC!”

Well, 2009 is almost over. How was the year for you and your music career? Did you reach your goals? Did you even start the year with goals? Did you learn new tips, tricks, and music marketing techniques that took you further than the year before… or did you continue to do the same ol’ same ol’ with the same results as before? Are you looking to 2010 to be a better year where you can reach further, gain more attention, create bigger buzz, and drive more fans to buy your music…. or will you do the same things you did in 2009?

I personally love New Years Eve! Not because I can party it up into the wee hours of the night, rather because it gives me a chance at a “do-over.” Every year on New Years Eve day, before the festivities, I spend the entire day day dreaming about what I want the future to look like, pondering the past years activities, and then creating an action plan to move me away from the previous years mistakes and closer to the new years goals. This is the most exciting time for me in my business. I really dig day dreaming and thinking about the future. These day dreams become my goals for the year.

A goal is no more than a day dream if no action is taken, no plans are created, or no movement towards them is accomplished throughout the year. This was a huge realization for me many years ago. Before I came to this notion that I had to act upon my dreams to make them a reality I would always wonder from year to year why I was no closer to making my living in the music industry. You see, I was always doing the same thing I did last year, no matter the results, and somehow expecting because I had a day dream of everything being different It would be…. no matter the action I took… which in my case, again, was doing the same ol’ same ol’ and expecting different results.

So again, I ask you…. Are you going to change your mindset or continue with the same ol’ same ol’ hoping for something to miraculously to happen?

I want to challenge you this year. I want you to take a leap of faith and consider that what you are currently doing may not be all you can do for yourself and your career. I don’t care how successful you are right now, there is always more you can do. The most successful people in the world know that learning something new everyday is the only way to stay successful and that there is always something they are doing that could be done better. So, with that said, I want to challenge you to reach deeper within yourself and find that little spark of energy that will allow you to sit on New Years Eve day and ponder your past, plan your future, and take the first action step of creating a written plan of how you will move closer to your future and further from your past mistakes.

Here are some steps to get you thinking…

1. Write down all the actions you took last year towards making your living in the music industry.

2. Go through each action you took and and rate the success using the 1-10 method (1 being poor – 10 being excellent) BE HONEST!!!

3. Now again go through the list and next to each action item list why you feel it deserved the rating you gave it.

4. Put your pen down and seriously consider your actions over the past year. How can you do better?

5. Close your eyes…after reading this step… and day dream about your future. Let your mind go as far as it can towards how you want to live your live and what would make you the most happy in the music industry.

6. Start a new piece of paper and write down your day dreams.

7. Now, look at the day dreams and consider what has to happen to get you closer to them. As an example, if your day dream is to perform live in front of 50,000 people all screaming your name… what must you do to get there? First, you must learn who the concert promoters are that put together concerts large enough to attract 50,000 people. So, in this case, you would need to start networking with concert promoters. – very brief explanation, but you get the point.

8. List each day dream as a goal.

9. Under each goal write down as many action steps as you can think of to get you closer to that goal. Money, time, resources do not matter right now, you can figure out all that later. Right now you just want to create an action plan of how you can reach your goals.

10. Look at all your goals and action items and create a step-by-step plan of action to reach your goals. Once you have a plan you will be able to see what you need to do, obtain, learn, possess, etc. to reach your goals. This is valuable. Now you simply have to get your hands or mind on the needed items and act upon your plan to reach your goals!

Sounds too simple to work doesn’t it? That is because it is human nature to over complicate, over think, and over estimate everything we do in life. People, life can be easy in the music industry if you plan for it to be. This ten step plan is the fundamental basis to every successful person you have ever met or heard about in your entire life. In one way or another each successful person follows this path to their success. The difference between those that are not successful, those who are moderately successful, and those that have unbelievable success is how well they follow this ten step program and personalize it to their individual needs.

2010 can be a huge year for you in the music industry. All you have to do is plan for your success. So, again, I challenge you to reach your potential…. oh sorry, i hated hearing that in school, let’s change that…. I challenge you to reach deep inside your soul and find what it is you want to do as an individual, define your desire into words on paper (very important), create an action plan to reach that desire, and then research and learn what you need to so you can reach those desires and have a unbelievable 2010!!!

Need help setting up your music industry action plan?
Step-By-Step Action Plan to Reach Your Goals & Succeed in the MUSIC Industry

Happy New Year!
Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, Not Yourself in the MUSIC!”

I blog a lot about the importance of planning your music marketing and promotions campaign before spending one dime, exerting any energy, or thinking about any one strategy. The planning stage is the most important part of marketing independent music. It is when you determine the how, what, when, where, and how much it is going to cost to get your music in the hands of potential fans. Planning is what separates the “wanna be’s” from the successful artists, musicians, producers, and record labels. Really! I have seen many, many people that have plenty of money fail and waste their money trying idea after idea with no plan in place. I have also seen people with very little money, that follow a plan, become very successful!

The best tool I have found to plan your campaign is called mind mapping software. The tool I want to share with you today is called MindMeister and it is free to use, available as an online application, and really, really helps you look at the big picture as well as drill down to specifics. Let’s take a look at how to use MindMeister to effectively build your successful music marketing and promotions campaign…

(I am not going to go into detail about how to use MindMeister as they have great tutorial videos available on their website and I would only be duplicating their efforts. Check out the videos to get started on your mind map!)

I am currently working with a Christian Artist, Jeremy Ledgewood, and I will use the mind map I created when determining how I would market him to the world:

The first step to planning a total music marketing and promotions campaign is to look at the entire picture and forget about the details. Often times this is called the 30,000 foot view because it’s like being in an airplane and looking down at a city from the window. You can see that there is indeed a city below, that there are roads, and that the city is laid out in a grid. But you can not see individual road signs, cars, business names, etc. As you start to create your campaign you need to stay at the 30,000 view level and simply think about the big picture items of a music marketing and promotions campaign. Examples would be online marketing, offline marketing, publicity, radio, video, and live show/tour marketing. As you start to use the mindmeister software you need to put the artist or campaign name in the center and then add your big picture concepts to the main heading. Here is an example:

As you can see, I have Jeremey Ledgewood as the campaign title in the center and each of the big picture categories coming off as individual marketing and promotion campaigns.

The second step is to “brainstorm” ideas and specific strategies within each campaign category. This is still not the time to get too specific. Let’s take online as an example. This is a huge category in marketing independent music. What you need to do at this point is decide all the available strategies online marketing offers you – opt in email lists, social networking, awareness, etc. Here is what I did with Jeremey during this stage:

Again, I am still looking at the “big picture” or 30,000 foot view of the entire campaign. Let’s look at online marketing again. In this category I have awareness, opt-in email, and social networking. But I have not drilled down intoany type of specifics like what social networking sites I will use, what I will do in specific sites, how often I will work on social networking, etc. This is because I am simply trying to get a full, big picture, idea of what it is I will do to market Jeremy Ledgewood’s music. As you continue with this process you will get down to the finite detail of your entire campaign. Let’s go another step further….

Now you can see that under the online category > Social Networking, I have expanded out specific social networking sites used by potential fans to find new independent music. Again, I still have not gotten into specifics of each of these site. I have only listed them as a tool I will use in my online marketing campaign.

Your next step is to start drilling down each of the sub categories in each category. Here is an example:

Using our “Online” example and expanding upon it, you can see that now myspace, twitter, and ourstage have sub categories. Myspace is going to be used for the 13-21 year old demographic marketing and promotion efforts, uploading music vidoes, fan club communications, and outstage contest promotions. Again, each of these categories are the “big picture.” The actual steps and action items needed for a successful outcome have not been determined yet. Looking at the big picture as a whole allows you to see the entire campaign. It allows you to see where you can promote the ourstage contests across the entire campaign. When you look at only one peice of the puzzle or “strategy” you get lost in the details. Details slow your music marketing and promotion engine down to a crawl. Plus, if you look only at online > myspace for example, and don’t think about the other areas, you might miss that using myspace to promote the ourstage contests would be a great tie-in marketing strategy.

It is always best when creating your campaign to start at the 30,000 foot view and continue drilling that view down for the entire campaign as a whole until you are to the finite details. Meaning, even after you figure out each of the categories off the main headline, don’t get caught up and “run with the ball” to complete one of the categories – in our case an example would be online. If you only drill down online in our example you would totally miss that you need to place links to radio stations on your myspace page so potential fans can listen to your music or better, request your music at the radio stations you have rotation! Or you might miss that you need to place a link to sign-up for your opt-in email list on your myspace page as well. You see, you have to start very broad, then look at each category and only drill down to the next level as you consider all the other categories as well because they each work together to form your entire music marketing and promotions campaign.

I think you are starting to get the point. This blog post really was not intended to be a blue print for creating a music marketing and promotions campaign…. It was to hip you on a cool, free, tool to help you do the work. I will go deeper into detail over the next few weeks here on the blog and in articles at I am Music Network‘s main site. Go check out the software, start working on your campaign’s 30,000 foot view, and if you have a question or get stuck reach out and comment or ask your questions here on this blog posts comment section and I will try my best to keep you moving forward!

Click on this link for detailed instructions and action plans for creating successful music marketing campaigns and promotions!

Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, Not Yourself in the MUSIC!”

So, you want to succeed in the independent music industry! Right on!!! It is a great place to make your living, have a blast, and really love what you are doing. But be warned, it is not all fun or games, a simple job, or something you do every now and then because you like it. It is a life style! No matter if you are an artist, musician, group, record label owner, producer, agent, manager, or a freakin’ janitor for one of the others…. being an independent in the music industry requires a total commitment to the life style if you are going to be successful.

To be truly successful in the independent music industry you have to learn the daily grind and live by it. You have to work everyday towards you set goal… ahhh there it is… you have to have a set goal to work for. You can’t just grind away no knowing where you are going or what you are grinding for. How could you track your efforts to see if what you are doing is working if you don’t know what you are working towards?

You have to look at the time you spend on your grind and determine if you are being productive. A lot of up-and-coming independent artists, musicians, producers, and label owners feel that going out every night of the week and making the rounds in the clubs is grinding. But how much is actually working? Sitting with people you already know is not working. Sitting with the owner, other artists, DJs, promoters, or potential fans is working. Simply going to a club can not put you any closer to your goals!

Getting gas is part of the independent’s life style believe it or not. When you are walking to pay or sitting waiting for your tank to fill you should be on your grind passing out flyers, flats, or promo CDs. I know, it’s hard to be THAT out going, and a lot of independents simply do not do it… but the successful ones, they do. Every moment of the day is a chance to gain a new fan, find a new agent, or work your grind.

Don’t get me wrong, being an independent artists, musician, producer, or label owner does not mean you always have to wark your ass off. As you get more and more successful you can hire people to do the “hard grind” for you. This frees up time to be creative or enjoy your success. But selling 1000 CDs is not total success or the sign that it is time to sit back and let your grind slip. An independent stays on the grind until the music industry comes to him or her. Meaning, when the press, radio, media, major labels, etc. start beating down your door then you know you have done your job and maybe it is time to let your team do a bit of the heavy lifting under your direction.

The life style is the independents best and most successful marketing tool, business tool, and meter to judge success itself upon. To learn more about how to live the life of a successful independent artist, musician, producer, or label owner check out The Music Business Bible!

Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, Not Yourself in the MUSIC!”