From: Rick Goetz <[email protected]>
Date: 30 September 2011 15:31:23 GMT+01:00
To: [email protected]
Subject: Musician Coaching Newsletter
Reply-To: [email protected]
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Featured Music Tech
MusicianWages.com is a collection of resources for musicians that want to make a real living in the music industry. Co-founded by Broadway conductor Dave Hahn and freelance guitarist Cameron Mizell, the site regularly answers the important question, “How do you make a living as a musician?”
Being a professional musician is like being an entrepreneur, and those trying to make real, lucrative careers in music come up against many of the same questions that other small business owners ask themselves: “How much should I charge?” “Where can I sell my products?” “How can I better manage my time?” “Am I missing opportunities to expand my business?” MusicianWages.com collects stories and tips from successful professionals in the music industry to help those at all stages in their careers navigate. It offers an ongoing blog, forums and job listings.
Last year I got to talk to each of the co-founders about their experiences as well as how they started the site. You can check out the two interviews here, and here.
Musician Coaching Newsletter
Hello, Welcome to Fall! I hope this message finds you well. I just wanted to touch base and point out some helpful artists’ tools, share some interesting new music I heard and talk about some of the compelling conversations I had during the past month.
Featured Article
Are you interested in becoming a session player, but unsure about where to start? Take some tips from Bob Knight, who has been a succ
essful pro drummer for 16 years and is also the owner of BEK Music Ltd., a company based in the UK that puts together high-quality session musicians for television performances, tours and a variety of other events. Bob has a jazz degree in jazz performance from the Royal Academy of Music in London and has performed, toured, recorded with and directed prominent artists including Charlotte Church, Seal, Eminem, Nik Kershaw, Michael Bolton and Cee-Lo Green.
Earlier this month I talked to Bob about how he has been able to build a successful career as a drummer. He also shared some qualities an artist needs to have in order to get steady work as a session musician and delivered some sound advice to those that really want to make a living playing music. The #1 piece of advice he has for aspiring session musicians is, “Always give a good account of yourself, professionally and musically. Make sure that wherever you are or whatever gig you are on – regardless of how bad or how brilliant (but mostly of how bad) it seems – you are always giving your best.”
You can read the rest of the interview here.
Featured Artist
Mathieu Santos is one of the founding members of and the bassist for the New York City-based orchestral-pop indie band Ra Ra Riot. And in August, he released his debut solo album, Massachusetts 2010 – an album inspired by songs he wrote while spending time in that state – with Barsuk Records. Trained as a painter, Santos helped put together Ra Ra Riot while in the final months of his senior year at Syracuse University.
Santos started writing the 10 songs for his first solo project in 2010, but touring prevented him from returning to finish them until winter and spring of 2011. As the album title states, the songs represent a particular time and place for him, so the result is an album of impressionistic lyrics and an abstract musical landscape. Focusing on simplicity and the essential components of composition, he borrowed a friend’s house in rural New Jersey and recorded and completed the album in a few days. The label’s description of his work suggests that his album provides strong, emotional impressions, a style clearly influenced by his background as a visual artist: “… Phrases emerge regularly to make the album resonate with echoes of warmth, loneliness, love, regret, loss, and joy.”
You can check out the video for the song “I Can Hear The Trains Coming” below. Please also read my recent interview with Mat about building a band and touring
here.
Mathieu Santos “I Can Hear The Trains Coming”
Quotables “Only let people post your music on licensed sites. The individual artist has to take some responsibility for this too. If the purpose of DIY is to start controlling more and more of your world, what goes along with that is enforcing your rights. And when people start enforcing rights on their own, lawmakers need to understand that going up against the power of the Internet mob is really, really hard to do alone. People of good will can never let the mob win.”
“Is it a good time to start your own music company? You have to make sure you are solving a problem. So I would ask: ‘What prob
lems still need to be solved or improved on within the music space?’ I think there are many – promotion, funding and touring, to name a few. It is easier to start companies which do not rely on content licenses these days. The days of starting first and asking later are gone, so this makes it more challenging for music start ups. I think the biggest opportunity lies within marketing, and once this is solved, it will transform the music industry as we know it. Meaning, when there is a platform like radio which can consistently break artists on the web and mobile, the game will change.”
“I think there needs to be that mystique about an artist; that’s what makes them special. And I only say ‘special,’ because musicians are people that are affecting people’s lives. Bands like The Who and artists like Bob Dylan, or bands like The Clash, or Public Enemy on the hip hop side have affected people’s lives. They’ve brought a consciousness to people. And that’s always what’s been special about music to me.”
- Coaching I can be hired to provide a diagnostic of your existing business and make suggestions on how to improve your business and advance your career.
- Marketing Plans I can be hired to create a detailed marketing plan for your upcoming release or tour.
- Product Management I can be hired to act as the head of a “pop up” custom record label for artists who wish to retain control of their rights. This involves not only the creation of marketing plans but the execution of these plans as well as leveraging my relationships to create and close opportunities. Depending on budget and client’s needs this process may also include the hiring of other specialists such as radio promotion and publicity.
- Corporate work SEO, SEM and marketing for businesses of all sizes. Click Here for more information.
Please Contact me for rates.
Sincerely,
-Rick-
Rick GoetzMusician Coaching
Musician Coaching | 134 East 22nd Street | Suite 605 | New York | NY | 10010
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