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3 Quick Ways to Grow Your Music Career

3 Quick Ways to Grow Your Music Career

It has never been so easy and simultaneously so challenging to be a musician and grow your music career! The good news is that if you are resourceful and make good use of all the great musicians’ tools out there, you are bound to be successful. One of the new services that we think you should check out is called Drooble – an online platform for musicians, offering a unique approach to networking and music promotion. Drooble has been growing quickly and is something we want to make you aware of.  In fact we have partnered with them to give you some special pricing and discounts. Here are some of the innovative services that Drooble offers that we consider worth checking out:

Get Feedback for Your Songs From Other Musicians

Sometimes you spend so much time on a song that you literally stop hearing it properly, and that’s when a pair of fresh ears can be really helpful. Constructive feedback from knowledgable musicians is one of the best ways to evaluate what you need to work on, and can uncover things you may have missed in your mix or emotional issues that are influencing the impact of your song.

A great way to get feedback from other musicians is to use the Drooble Song Reviews service. Drooble is one of the only places where you can have your finished or in-progress song reviewed by other musicians from various backgrounds. What the song review service gives you is a well organized song report including written general impressions and recommendations for improvements, along with various other emotional and analytical responses for the track you submitted. The Song Review service will let you get deeper insights into production, songwriting and audience analytics, and is a great tool to become a better musician and grow your music career.

There are other song review services out there, but none that provide feedback exclusively from other musicians. For that reason, we think this is worth checking out. If you want to give their song review service a try, click here to try your first Drooble Song Reviews package. You’ll get an exclusive 20% discount just for being a part of the New Artist Model community. Use the code DYMAD to unlock your discount.

Drooble Song Review

 

Make a Strong First Impression with Industry Professionals

If you want to grow your music career, you want to present yourself to venuеs, labels, promoters, journalists and other industry representatives in a professional manner. This is extremely important. One way to do this is to have a professional website, but that can often be too much for someone to navigate through when they are first checking you out.

Instead, a great way to present yourself in a focused manner is to use an Electronic Press Kit. Think of an EPK like а professional music resume  containing all your content including discography, photos, videos, bio, upcoming gigs, testimonials, downloadable assets and more. It’s a great tool when you want to quickly present yourself and advance your chances of getting noticed.

When creating your EPK, you want to look for a system that makes it easy to create and edit your material. Drooble’s Professional EPK is a great choice among other similar tools on the market and we encourage you to go ahead and try it out. Again, you’ll get an exclusive 20% discount off their Pro option because you are a part of the New Artist Model community, but there is also a FREE edition as well. Check it out. And remember to use the code DYMAD to unlock your discount.

Drooble EPK

 

Expand Who You Know in the Music Community

Knowing how to network and being part of and participating in different music communities is critical to your success. The moment you choose to stop seeing other musicians as competitors and instead embrace other artists as points of connection for you, the further you will go.

People in your network can often be the first to hear your new songs, answer your technical questions or give you a recommendation for your next gear purchase or someone else that you need to know. Getting useful feedback on your songs, discovering connections with industry professionals and finding loyal supporters for your music are just some of the benefits that a music community provides.

One of the things we like about the community available on Drooble is the support you can get from other music creators. At the time of this writing Drooble has over 65,000 independent artists actively exchanging ideas and sharing experiences.

Drooble also has a very unique “Karma System” which rewards people for collaboration and engagement.  Pretty cool. Musicians on Drooble earn Karma Points by participating in discussions and giving feedback to others. Once earned, the points can be used to “purchase” promotion tools available right on the Drooble platform. Take a look:

Drooble Community

We encourage you to check Drooble out an join their community (for free) and explore the numerous benefits of their system and the “Karma” you can create there.

Music is a craft and therefore an endless journey. If you want to grow your music career, it requires dedication and constant improvement, and if you take the right steps, success will follow. Along with training that you can find on the New Artist Model, platforms like Drooble can give you access to tools and people who can help you pursue your dreams.  Check it out.

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Ridin’ with Hypebot

My buddy Bruce Houghton at Hypebot, caught me last week for a quick interview before Rethink Music.  Here is an except from our discussion:

HYPEBOT: Your new focus is on consulting and investing. Are there any sectors, particularly within music and music tech, that particularly interest you or where you see the most room for growth?

DAVE KUSEK: Online education is one of them. This is an area that is already transforming how people learn and gain job skills and it is only going to grow as time goes on. There are big opportunities here that will effect tens of millions of people around the world. Online training is going to be huge. Job requirements are shifting and people need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances that can benefit them. The traditional model of higher education is already under pressure and there are many people and companies exploring alternative models that are very interesting.

The other area I am bullish on is live music and live events. The live concert experience cannot be digitized, yet can benefit enormously from technology. There really has not been much innovation in live music or in music merchandising beyond ticketing. I think there is a lot more that can be done with mobile technology and am actively working in this area. My investment in Tastemate is one way of digging into this potential in a meaningful way. We will be bringing our service to a venue near you, very soon.

I also think that there is potential to expand the reach of live performance using remote technologies. I am interested in ways to cut the costs out of touring to make it more profitable and to reach broader audiences. It is amazing to me that there has not been more activity in this area either, so I am looking for companies and people to work with that are thinking differently about what live music is all about and how to make it even more lucrative.

HYPEBOT: What are some of the things that Digital Cowboys has done in the past or is looking to do now?

DAVE KUSEK: We are focused on business development, marketing and product development, particularly in online and mobile services. We also do strategy consulting for businesses wanting to expand or enter new markets or make acquisitions. I say we, because while I am the managing partner, I also leverage a network of people around the world and with different specialties that I bring together to form a team to address the issues. For example, with a lot of the product work that we have done I brought together a team of visual designers and user experience people to execute on the product vision and do the testing. With business development projects I sometimes work with friends that have particular contacts or relationships that are beneficial to my clients. Sometimes I put together a couple different investors or strategic partners to provide capital or distribution or some other need. The main thing is to get the work done and show results, while trying to have some fun and work on interesting projects that are pushing the envelope.

HYPEBOT: There’s some talk of another tech bubble. Do you see think we’re approaching one in music and media technology?

DAVE KUSEK: I do think that some of the deals we have seen recently are off the charts, like Instagram – but who knows? That has all the earmarks of “bubble” written all over it. But Facebook is also about to go public and at their level, what’s another billion dollars?

But really I don’t think overall that we are at the point of frivolousness and excess that we witnessed in the earlier dot-com bubble, at least not yet. I believe that people are just beginning to figure out better ways to communicate and interact and learn via technology. That is having massive implications on the future of society around the world. Take a look at the stock market trend over the past 100 years and you will see that things tend to move up and people get smarter and more prosperous. I am an optimist.

There are a lot of music startups getting funded these days and certainly they are not all going to make it. I think we will see some consolidation in the DIY space as there are probably more companies addressing that market than the market really needs. The same is true for music streaming and distribution and music discovery. I think the real breakthrough companies will be formed by trying to do something completely different, rather than mimicking the past with technology. We’ll see.

HYPEBOT: Any plans to write a follow-up to the “Future Of Music” book?

DAVE KUSEK: I plan to spend a lot more time posting things to my blog and on digitalcowboys.com. This is a much better way to continue to update original thinking and way more efficient than writing another book. The music industry has gone digital and online outlets like Hypebot really do work as conduits in this business. That is a real bright spot in the transformation of the music industry. So, look for more at futureofmusicbook.com.

You can get the entire interview here.

More coverage from Hypebot here and from Billboard here.

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Insight in music business & management

The music industry is being reinvented before our very eyes. Learn how it is developing from today’s entrepreneurs including Ian Rogers from TopSpin, Steve Schnur from EA, and Derek Sivers and how you can capitalize on the changing opportunities.

MPN is my latest project and an online service for music business people and music and artist managers creating the future of the industry. MPN provides online music business lessons, exclusive video interviews and advice, career and business planning tools and thousands of specially selected resources designed to help you achieve success in this ever changing industry. MPN gives you the tools, expertise and guidance to help you get organized and take your music career to the next level. Learn from industry experts, set your goals and realize your vision.


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Universal Mobile Device

T H E F U T U R E O F M U S I C

In our (2005) book we wrote about the “Universal Mobile Device”

June 1, 2015. Our Universal Mobile Devices (UMD) are “always-on” at 8 MB/second, and we have anytime-anywhere access to music, films, games, books, news, streaming video, online banking, stock market transactions, instant messaging, e-mail, and chats. It’s a global telephone, a digital communication and data transfer device, a Global Positioning Device (GPS), a personal digital assistant, a music/images/film storage device, a recorder, a personal computer, a gaming platform . . . and much more that we haven’t even gotten around to trying yet. Still, it is only a little bit larger than a cigarette pack, its processor is one hundred times as fast as the good old Intel Centrino chip, and with over 5 terabytes of data storage, there is plenty of room for anything we want. Our UMD can project a fairly large and sharp image onto any white surface, it can set up instant secure wireless connections to other computers, beamers, monitors, screens, and printers, and it can connect to other UMDs to exchange data and files, instantly and securely.

The UMD “off-road” version is so durable that you can drive a truck over it, or leave it out in the rain for a few days. Ten days of battery power lets us forget about hunting for electric outlets everywhere we go. In short, our UMDs are irresistible, and sometimes we even struggle with ourselves to put them away.

And how much do we pay to get this device and the wireless service? Less than what a year of dial-up Internet service used to cost only ten years ago. Speaking of those days, we are so relieved to have lost all the cables, the multiple billing procedures, the restrictions on usage, the endless calls to customer service to figure out how to make it work, the non-compatibility, and all of the other burdens. Now, the pricing—and what you get for your money—is so compelling that everyone considers it a part of their basic expenses, like the phone bill, cable television, or car registrations.

Today, the basic content service comes packaged with the monthly service fee, and a content levy is imposed on the device itself. It took ten years for the device makers, software providers, and entertainment companies to agree on a voluntary compulsory licensing scheme, but now the content providers make much more money than they did before UMDs were around. In addition, their marketing costs have shrunk to one tenth of what they used to be, their delivery costs keep falling, administration and accounting is handled by smart automated software agents, and their legal budgets have been reduced to a fraction of what they used to be because there is nothing left to sue for. Finding cool new stuff rules the day. Get our attention, and let us make a connection.

Music companies, book publishers, game companies, and filmmakers are eager for us to check out their stuff, watch their films, play their games, or try their software. The more of their content we use, the more they get paid, pro rata. We still pay the same flat fee, unless we select some premium content—which we do all too often, we have to admit. It may cost only a dollar to “sit-in” on the latest recording sessions with your favorite artist, to order a copy of an issue of Twilight Zone that is not on the UMD Network, or to watch a special backstage Webcast of the Grammy awards. Our UMDs make media and entertainment content so irresistible that our cash just keeps flowing out on the network—a “dream come true” for any content provider that can get our attention.

The UMD service and its built-in tracking software allows the content providers and their agents to find out how their content is doing on the network—how many people have tried it, how many people have shared it, how many people have rated it, and who is talking about it. If we want to, we can share some, a little, or all of our data and other feedback with the UMD service, our friends, or the content providers themselves. We can also provide detailed feedback on their content and earn free UMD “points” that we can use to get free stuff. This way, some of our friends even make more money on the UMD network than they spend on getting the content! They review new bands, recommend new songs and movies to their peers, test new games, or become part of focus groups that evaluate new UMD services.

No longer are we tethered to our computer, the LAN connection, or the power plug. UMDs have become as commonplace as cell phones were a decade ago. Gone are the days of having to worry about where to get cool ring tones, how to turn the cell phone into a real gaming device, or where to watch our favorite soccer game.
The UMD comes fully licensed, and we can do whatever we want with it because most ways of using it are simply already included in the price of the device and related service fees. “Fair use” rules and, as customers, we really like the sense of empowerment. If we want access to special content, we simply use the various premium billing options that bill our UMD accounts, deduct directly from our electronic bank accounts, or use any of the cyber-cash services that we can subscribe to.

So what about the prices? It’s 2015, and we’re paying $59 a month to get all the basic content on the network for free, plus of course, thousands of minutes of free voice and videophone calls. Stream it, download it, listen to or view it on demand, transfer it, share it—whatever we want, anytime, anywhere. Peer-to-peer has taken on an entirely new meaning, and it smells like roses to the content providers and media companies.

Best of all, the sheer amount of content on the network is more than we could ever consume: more than five million music tracks from almost any record label, producer, or lately, directly from the artist. In addition, there are more than one million books; two hundred thousand movies, television shows, and video clips; twenty thousand games, and thousands of software packages. And we are talking about the good stuff here, not just back catalog and “archives.” These offerings are instantly available, instantly archived, bookmarkable, searchable with our content agents, and cross-referenced with our network buddies and friends. The only thing we are really missing is the time to try it all!

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Sounds an awful lot like an iPhone or Blackberry Bold to me. The only thing really missing is the processor power and storage, and then some agreement about global content licenses and a little clearer thinking on the part of copyright owners and we’ll be there.

2,015 is only 6 years away. You know what, I think we are going to get there way before that.

Forrester predicts the number of MP3-capable phones will grow from around 50 million to 240 million, or 75 percent of the US, by 2013. That pales in comparison to the mobile revolution that is occurring in Europe, Asia, Latin America. Basically the entire rest of the world. This is the future of music.

Sales of digital music in Latin America jumped over 50 percent according to the IFPI, more than twice the global average increase. Most of the sales in the region are dominated by downloads to wireless phones or embedded music on the devices.

The mobile platform will bring huge catalogs of music to our pockets coupled with, tickets, social networking and commerce. This is going to completely change that we interact with music. My iPhone with Shazam, Pandora and Twitter is already amazing. I can’t wait.

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Social Media Map

Here is a comprehensive map of sites driving the future of social media. From Overdrive Interactive, an online marketing services firm that really gets it. Enjoy and proliferate.

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