In recent months, as I’ve examined all the possibilities for the MyLiszt website, and what it could be, I’ve realized that in my excitement I’ve been planning to create too many different things all at the same time (the sheet music search engine, musician webpages, business cards for musicians, etc), before the website is even established.

I’ve therefore begun to refocus the site (for now) as purely a classical sheet music search engine. I know from Erica’s experience trying to find sheet music for the Piazzolla Grand Tango or music for the Penderecki 2nd violin sonata that finding music can present a very real problem. By searching a bunch of different online stores in one place I think our sheet music search engine can help people.

So for now, we’re going to focus on that. I’ll be gradually expanding the range of stores that we search, gradually improving the search algorithm to give better results, and working to promote the site so that more people use it.

Once we reach a point where the site is well used, then at that point it would make sense to expand into offering additional services. But for now, we’ll focus on searching for classical sheet music.

Tags: Additional Services, Business Cards, Classical Music, Classical Sheet Music, Excitement, Find Music, Finding Music, Grand Tango, Many Different Things, Music Business, Music Search Engine, Musician, Musicians, Possibilities, Search Algorithm, Sheet Music Search, Sonata, Tango Music, Violin Sonata, Would Make Sense
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We attended a wedding last weekend, and I noticed a couple of things that I wanted to share.

Multi-talented DJ

The guy running the sound for the wedding was quite a character. Not only did he handle the microphones, play the songs and compere the evening, he also put on an impressive song and dance routine from Grease at one point, led the guests in their dancing, and somehow persuaded the single guys to perform some very strange feats of skill before they attempted to catch the garter. I didn’t necessarily love everything he did, but he definitely stood out from the crowd and made himself memorable… almost as if he’d been reading my blog.

Business cards

More impressive though was the photographer, who had produced a special run of business cards consisting of an engagement photo of the bridge and groom, with contact information for the photographer on the back. There was a pile of these on the welcome table as you came in, and I thought this was a really neat trick – she had provided something of value to the guests (a free photo of the couple) which demonstrated her skill, and which included contact details when needed. I bet a bunch of people stuck this card to their fridge, and when they need a photographer, that’s who they’ll call.

It’s odd in a way to think that business cards still have value in the internet age, but I have no doubt that they do. So many contacts are established in the real world (at gigs, conferences, etc), and business cards still play a valuable role in providing contact information in that environment. They also say something about you – the picture you want to paint of yourself, the type of career you’re pursuing, and how professional you are. So although they seem anachronistic I think business cards will be with us for a long time to come – at least until we get a button on our phones that sends an electronic business card to the people we meet.

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Most of my posts so far have consisted of my thoughts and ideas on various topics – but this one will be more journal-like.

Erica is putting on a concert next Sunday afternoon here in Cleveland Heights (see her website’s calendar for more details), which includes the world premiere of Jeremy Allen’s string quartet “Mercury Retrograde”, and I spent yesterday afternoon pounding the streets of Cleveland trying to promote it. At this point I’ve no idea whether my efforts will bear any fruit, but I thought I’d share our experiences in trying to publicize this concert, and ask for input on what has worked for other people.

Website

Erica keeps an updated list of upcoming events on www.ericaward.com, so obviously the first thing we did was to add this concert to her calendar – including all the details of the concert, and an embedded Google Map showing the concert location. She also added some more interesting content with a ‘blog-interview’ with Jeremy Allen, where he talked a little about the piece and composing in general.

Email newsletter

Erica has a mailing list of friends, colleagues and supporters who are interested in her music, and so she put together an email newsletter highlighting her upcoming concerts, and sent that out this past week. I think our plan is to send out the initial email a couple of weeks ahead of the concert, and then send a reminder email a couple of days before – to cater both to the planners and the spontaneous folks on the list.

So far people seemed to like the email – which looked very impressive (in my unbiased opinion).

Printed materials

Having done some electronic promotion, Erica then moved into the physical realm, and designed both a poster and a flyer for the concert (which again look pretty snazzy).

• She got 1000 postcard-sized flyers printed at http://www.hotcards.com (who have a Cleveland location).
• For the posters we took a USB drive with the 8.5″x11″ size PDF into Kinko’s, and had a few copies printed on Lazer (LZ) paper for $0.69/sheet. It wasn’t worth using proper commercial printing for the number of posters we wanted.

So far so good (thanks to Erica’s graphic-design skills), but distributing them is the hard part. That’s where I came in…

Distributing the flyers and posters

Given all the work Erica has done so far, I wanted to be a good husband and contribute, so I took on this task. I started with Google Maps, centered on the venue for the concert (Fairmount Presbyterian Church, in this case). I searched for coffee shops in the area, and came up with a few options, and I also searched for music (which gave me one result).

After looking at the results, I realized that there were basically four ‘hot spots’ in the neighborhood of the church – Shaker Square / Larchmere, Cedar-Fairmount, Cedar-Lee, and Coventry Village. I visited each of these areas, with a backpack full of flyers and a few posters – plus some thumb tacs, and magic tape. I knew that there were some venues that would be happy to help, as I’d seen flyers from other events on their noticeboards, but in general I didn’t know what to expect, and found myself practicing my lines as I approached the first couple of stores.

In the end, people were much more willing to help than I’d expected. When I entered a store/cafe/restaurant I would say “My wife’s giving a concert next weekend, and I have some flyers. Do you have somewhere where I could leave them?” In almost every case the answer was positive (although I was rejected by a knitting store, of all places!), and some of the store-keepers wanted to know more about the concert, and some even sounded interested in attending. A couple of people offered to put up a poster in their windows, and many more had noticeboards set-aside for local events, which they were happy for me to use. [Interesting aside: Starbucks will only allow you to advertise events that are free.]

In the end, I distributed a lot of flyers, and was surprised by how willing people were to take them. Admittedly I didn’t enter every single store – but I left flyers at coffee shops, hair salons, restaurants, florists and even a hardware store. Some venues (such as Dewey’s coffee, or Tommy’s restaurant) were overflowing with flyers and posters for different events – so in some ways I’m wondering whether we might actually have more success with those I left in the less likely locations – since they’ll stand out more. However we won’t really know until next weekend whether my efforts were worthwhile – and even then, it’ll be tricky to actually figure out how people came to hear about the concert.

I’d be interested to hear (in the comments) of what techniques other people have used to promote concerts/events, and whether they were successful. I’d be particularly interested to hear of any unusual tactics – even if they didn’t work!

Posted in concert promotion, printed publicity, website |  | 1 Comment »

I had a discussion over breakfast the other day with several musicians bemoaning the local ‘gigging’ market. Many musicians earn part of their income from gigs – playing for weddings, receptions, events etc – and the pay for this work can vary significantly from one engagement to another (and the typical rate varies significantly by location).

They were telling horror stories of people asking for 3 hours of quartet music for a total of $100 (i.e. about $8 per person, per hour), and were lamenting the low value many people put on their skills.

I don’t want to write about why people should pay musicians well for their skills (although they should, and I’m expecting Erica to write about that in due course), what struck me about our conversation is this:

In order for the “going rate” to be very low, someone must be taking these gigs at the low rate… effectively undercutting all those musicians who are holding out for a decent pay-check.

As I ponder this, part of me says: so what?
This is the free market at work. People want a product (in this case a performance), and they have the choice to pay $40 to some kid in high school, $400 for someone with more experience, or $4000+ for someone near the top of their field. I do this when I buy a car. I could spend $500 on the beat-up car down the street with the “for sale” sign scribbled in large letters on the back window, I could spend $10,000 on a used Honda Civic with low mileage and a warranty from the dealer, or I could spend $186,450 on an Aston Martin DB-9. Now, there’s no doubt that the Aston Martin is the nicest car, and there’s no doubt that the beat-up car down the street is the cheapest car, but in this particular (real-life) example, after checking my bank account hopefully (but unsuccessfully) for a “bank error in my favour”, I decided that the Honda was my best bet.

However, when I was looking for a car, I had a lot more information than most people have who are looking for a harpist for their wedding. Since nearly all gigs seem to work on referrals or cold-calls to the performers, the person booking the gig often has no way of knowing the quality of the performer… even assuming it’s important to them. And let’s face it, many people can’t tell the difference between the kid in high school and the better players, so they pick the cheapest option and they’re happy. Or maybe they’re not happy, but they only get married once (hopefully) so they can’t go back and change their mind. And anyway, since they didn’t have a chance to hear the players in advance, how were they supposed to make a good decision anyway?

So what is an enterprising musician to do about this? I see two options:
1. Charge less than other people, and get lots of low-paid work. [An alternative: apply to work at MacDonald’s, and get a dependable supply of low-paid work, and as many burgers as you can eat.]
2. Become unique in some way, so that people don’t see you as interchangeable with another musician. If you have no direct competition then you can’t be beaten on price.

I’m going to assume that you opted for option two.

How to be unique?
First the good news. You already are. Everyone is. You just need to figure out how you want to express that in your performing, and then get the word out. Sounds easy, huh? No… not really.

Perhaps by definition, there are many different ways to be unique. Here are a few that spring to mind:

• By being famous. If your name is Joshua Bell, you can charge quite a lot of money to play the violin for people, and they’ll happily pay it, even if they could get an excellent alternative for half-the-price. Unfortunately for you, your name is not Joshua Bell, and if it is, then chances are you’re not really interested in playing wedding gigs every weekend, and so you’re probably not reading this. Let’s move on.
• Through references. If someone got your name from their friend, and they spoke very highly of you, then that is a small point in your favor. It distinguishes you from all the other musicians out there, and (crucially) you probably get called first. So that’s good – but we can do better.
• Through recordings. It’s not easy to make a good recording, but (as I’ve talked about in another post) it’s a great marketing tool. It allows people to hear you in advance – perhaps even before they contact you – and allows you to make an impression on people; or at least prove to them that you know which end of the trumpet to blow into. So make use of your recordings: put them on your website, or send a CD to prospective clients (or other vendors who might be able to recommend you). You could even make a ‘gig-specific’ recording to help clients choose what music they’d like to hear.
• Through your appearance. Many people who book a musician to perform at their event, won’t actually notice the difference between an average quality and a top quality artist (if you don’t believe me – look at who the public votes for on American Idol). So in order to make a big impression you need to stand out in some non-musical way. So if you’re a small child (or look like a small child), or if you’re incredibly beautiful (or look like you’re incredibly beautiful), or even if you’re incredibly tall – then make the most of that. It will help people remember you. If you don’t have any spectacular gifts in this area, then you can use props – wear a funny hat, wear a costume, paint your face like a leopard… you get the idea. Obviously this might not be appropriate in all situations, but the more memorable your appearance the more people will talk about you to their friends, and the more likely their friends will call you and not someone else, when they need a musician.
• By doing more than just make music. As with your appearance, this depends very much on the circumstances of the performance, but consider what you can do to make your performance unique – to put on a show. I remember attending a private function (Christmas party at work) where we had hired some opera singers who dressed up as waiters. They then created this whole scenario where they wanted to sing happy birthday to the chef (or something), and from there it turned into this huge unexpected performance. It was wonderful, and everyone loved it – even though most of my coworkers wouldn’t be seen dead in an opera. I still remember it now – 6 years later, and it makes me smile. So do something in addition to “just” the music – put on a light-show, include dancers, include comedy, include acrobatics, take requests, swap instruments with your colleagues. Be creative.

Obviously, not all of these techniques are possible for everyone, and certainly they’re not all possible in all situations – but if you can become “the pianist that did magic tricks between pieces”, rather than just “the pianist”, then you’ve instantly made yourself more memorable, and made it very hard for you to be seen as a commodity, who can easily be replaced by a cheaper alternative.

In closing, think of Igudesman and Joo. They’ve become an internet sensation, and I’m confident that if someone wants them to perform, then they’re not going to be happy with “another piano and violin duo” – even if the other duo is charging $8/hour. They’re unique, and hence don’t suffer from price competition.

Now perhaps I’m taking this a bit too far to make my point. I don’t really mean that all musicians should become circus acts to secure better paying gigs – but I do think that if you’re a gigging musician, then you would be wise to think about what makes you unique, and why a client should be interested in hiring you specifically, rather than anyone else.

What do other people think? I have no real experience in this area (although we did hire a musician to play at our wedding reception – and we wanted someone very specific based on a recording we found on the web), so it would be great to hear some comments from people who actually do this regularly.

Tags: Aston Martin, Aston Martin Db 9, Bank Error, Best Bet, Buy A Car, Buy Car, Car Down, Car Lot, Commodity, Favour, Honda, Honda Civic, Horror Stories, Mileage, Musicians, No Doubt, Quartet Music, Typical Rate, Warranty, Weddings Receptions
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It’s still very early days for the MyLiszt website, and as a result you have a great opportunity to shape it to fulfill your needs.Our aim is to create a website that provides the tools and information to help musicians develop their careers, but we need your help!

We’ve created a short survey about your career in music, which should help us to determine what features to include in the website when it launches early next year. We’d be very grateful if you would take the survey, and include any additional ideas (not covered by the survey questions) in the comment boxes (or as comments on this blog). We’d love to hear from you.

Click here to take the survey.

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I just (belatedly) stumbled upon the following post from the Business of Classical Music blog: Classical Music after the CD.

In this interesting and provocative post, Bill Stensrud writes:

Music will still be recorded but it will have to be recorded very inexpensively. Cost considerations will dictate that music will be recorded live and music will be distributed “raw” – without the extensive engineering designed to make it “perfect”. This music will capture the excitement of live performance and the audience will expect character, excitement and imperfection rather than the homogenized perfection of the studio recordings of the past (This is a big issue for many performers – Get over it!).

His basic argument is that economics dictate that the era when successful artists were awarded a recording contract by one of the major record labels, who then distributed and promoted the CD is over. Musicians should not see recordings as a source of income, but rather as a marketing / branding tool. Therefore they should want as many people as possible to listen to their recordings, and hence they should sacrifice quality for ubiquity.

I don’t agree with this whole argument, however I do agree that for many/most musicians recordings are all about marketing. This is a key breakthrough in my understanding of how the industry works. I’ve been reading Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music by Angela Myles Beeching and she indicates that it typically costs in the region of $6-10K to create a professional CD. If that’s for a run of 1000 CDs then the performer would need to sell each CD for $6-10 just to recoup the investment. And of course for many musicians selling 1000 CDs is something of a tall order.

However, once you realize that a recording is all about marketing, then things fall into place. Your aim is not to get your money back through selling the CDs, but to improve your performance opportunities through people hearing the CD or the recording. Therefore, as the original article correctly points out, your goal is for the recording to be heard, not bought.

But how?

• Send the CDs to people – to radio stations, to potential managers, to those running concert series, etc (which is not a new idea).
• Put the recordings on your website, for free download / real-time listening.
• Get your music onto iTunes, Amazon.com, Rhapsody etc for people to download. You can do this cheaply and easily with TuneCore.
• Get your music on YouTube. The easy option is to put it up with some simple images in the background as the video, or more aggressively you could create a cool video to go along with your music (or offer your music to someone else who has a cool video slideshow already).
• If your CD was professionally created (with a UPC code etc) then you can submit it to Pandora, where you have potential to be heard by people who’ve never heard of you, provided they like music that’s similar to yours.
• You can sell your CDs on CDbaby.com.

The way I see it, you can keep most of the physical CDs, for sending to traditional music-world people, and for selling at your own concerts; but online you should be doing anything and everything you can to give your music away for free so that people hear it. Then all you need is something unique about your music or about you which makes people remember you… but that’s an article for another time.

Performance quality

Getting back to the original blog post that I read, I must now disagree with that poster.

• Yes the traditional music industry is in a bad shape
• Yes recordings are now mostly about marketing and not about making money
• BUT that means that it’s even more important for your recordings to be top-notch. If your music’s going to be everywhere, and lots of people are going to hear it, then you need to make it stand-out; you need to make it special; you want everyone to hear the best you can offer. So recording quality still matters – it matters a lot.

I’m not saying there isn’t room for live recordings, or even live performances streamed over the web (U2 are doing it, apparently), but musicians who promote themselves with their records will want a recording that shows them at their best.

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In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new phenomenon sweeping the world called the internet. It’s been around some time now, and has become rather popular among the general public. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that many people use it as their primary means of getting information.

Therefore, if you want people to find out about you (so that they can hire you to perform, teach, play in orchestras, quartets, ensembles etc), then it would probably be a good idea to create a website. Agreed? Good.

I’ll write another post about the process of actually creating the website, but before you do anything else you should decide on your domain name. It’s true that strictly speaking, you don’t actually need a domain name in order to have a website – you can have a website within someone else’s domain for free – however domain names are so cheap these days, and so valuable to your personal brand, that registering a domain name is really a great investment.

How do I choose my domain name?

Choosing a domain name can (if you’re lucky) be very easy, or it can be very hard, if your preferred choices are already taken. Let’s look at the different scenarios.

• Ideally, you want to own myname.com (e.g. andrewward.com in my case). As a musician your name is your brand, and it’s a huge plus if you actually own that domain name. If you have a moderately obscure name, then it may well be free. I suggest you find out right now, and if it’s free, go ahead and register it immediately. See below for more information on checking for availability and registering domains.
• Unfortunately, for many people, someone else will already have registered your name as their domain (since your name is probably not unique). In this case, consider whether there’s a simple variation of your name that you could use… for example, if katherinejenkins.com is already taken, what about katyjenkins.com (assuming you go by Katy).
• If that doesn’t work, you’ll probably need to add some text to the domain that relates to what you do. For example, you could try katyjenkinsmusic.com or katyjenkinsviolin.com. This option certainly isn’t as good as a domain based solely on your name, but you should be able to find a sensible sounding domain that will sound professional.

Other considerations

• If your name is really long or difficult to spell, you might consider choosing a simpler domain name. For example, jeroboamvonrichthofen.com might be better if simplified to JVRmusic.com. It’s very much a judgment call here. Your aim is to be able to say your domain name over the phone, and trust that your caller will be able to correctly type it into their web browser. Ideally they’ll also be able to remember it a week later without prompting.
• I would try to avoid hyphens (e.g. award-photography.com… (which is actually my website)) as they’re something of a cop-out. Very few businesses or major websites use hyphens in their name, and they also make it harder to remember.
• For the same reason, I would avoid endings other than .com. If you’re choosing a domain for a not-for-profit organization, then .org might be appropriate, but again, by sticking with .com you make it easier for people to remember the domain name.

Domain names for ensembles

Obviously in picking a domain name for an ensemble you’re in a slightly different situation compared to choosing a domain for an individual. Most significantly, you may actually be able to choose the name of the ensemble based on what domain names are available. That may seem crazy, but it may eventually be a big help in your marketing to own the domain name that matches your performance name.

How to check what domain names are available?

Go to http://www.godaddy.com and use the domain name search option on the home page to see whether the domain you want is available. Keep trying until you find something you like.

What next?

Don’t register your domain with GoDaddy. If you need to create a website from scratch I would highly recommend weebly.com, and it’ll be easier if you register your domain name within Weebly directly. I’ll be posting another article shortly describing how to get started with Weebly. Erica used it for her website, and it’s really easy to use – no technical expertize required.

Tags: branding, domain, website
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One key aim of networking and building a brand on the web is to make it easy for people to learn more about you and to contact you. An email signature is a short block of text that can be added automatically to the end of every single email you send. This is a great opportunity to make sure that existing contacts can easily reach you, and to tell new contacts something about yourself.

Here’s a sample email signature:

By including this text at the end of every email you send you ensure that:

• people know what you do (in case your plumber wants trumpet lessons)
• people can easily contact you (for when that big break comes)
• people who want to learn more about you can read as much as they want on your website.

Why include my email address in the signature? Surely people already know that?

Usually yes, but if someone forwards your email to someone else, or prints it out and passes it on to someone else, then that information could get lost. By including your email address in your signature you make sure that your address is always available.

Should I include my mailing address too?

There’s certainly an argument for doing so. Occasionally people will want to write you a letter (or maybe send you a check!) in which case your mailing address is useful – however personally I wouldn’t bother. The longer your signature the more risk you’ll annoy people, and in this day and age it’s pretty rare to actually send letters (particularly if you started off communicating by email).

How do I set up a signature?

The process varies depending on the email program or platform that you use, but I’ve included instructions below for some of the most common.

Gmail

• Log-in to your account
• Click on ‘Settings’ at the top right of the screen
• About half-way down the ‘General’ tab there’s a field called ‘Signature’
• Select the radio button next to the text-box, and then type your signature into the text box
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and hit ‘Save Changes’.

Yahoo! Mail

• Log-in to your account
• Click on Options->Mail Options (at the top right, under the Web Search button)
• Click on the Signature field on the left-hand side
• Select the radio button that says ‘Show a signature on all outgoing messages’
• Type your signature in the box
• Hit Save Changes at the top.

Microsoft Outlook

• Go to Tools->Options…
• Select the Mail Format tab
• Click on the Signatures button at the bottom
• Create a new signature in the pop-up window
• OK your way out of the pop-ups.

Mac OS X Mail

• Go to Mail->Preferences…
• Go to the Signatures tab
• Highlight the required email account
• Go to Choose Signature.

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I must admit that I stole the title of this blog (Tune In) from www.ericaward.com – but you can’t argue with genius.

My name’s Andrew Ward, and I’m the founder of MyLiszt, along with my lovely wife Erica. She’s a violinist, and I’m not. I’m a business/tech guy surrounded by musicians, and in seeing her juggle four or five different websites as she tried to keep track of her gigs, her contacts, her to-do list, her calendar, her own website I realized that maybe we could start a single portal that provided musicians with all the tools they need to organize and develop their careers.

MyLiszt is a very long way from achieving that goal right now – but I’m hopeful that one day we’ll get there. In the meantime, this blog won’t be so much about the website or development of the website, but it will be contain hopefully useful advice on how to develop and manage your career better – based on what we’ve learned from experience, what we’ve read, applying business principles to music, and some thoughts that just seem like common sense.

I hope you enjoy it.

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