The Manager’s Corner April 2012

Jenn Cohen | April 1, 2012 | 0 Comments

by Chris Daniels

I’ve managed my own band since the 1980s, and despite the amazing change in technology, success in the music business is built around four tried and true elements: great music, really hard work and timing (often mistaken for luck). The other key element is getting the help you need to make that luck happen. These days that help is everywhere. The book I wrote for my CU Denver class on artist management is called “DIY: You’re Not in it Alone” and that is exactly what you need to understand. You need to make the most of the tools that are out there.

Unless you are Adele, selling 21 million of her album “21” the chances of you making major bucks on the sale of recordings are limited. That means that DIY artists and managers of young acts need to face two important facts. First, you are going to have to make the most of the revenue you do generate through selling recordings, and second, you are going to have to capitalize on every income stream available to you.

First, making the most of selling your new recording (CD, mp3 etc.) It starts long before the ‘release date,” even before you get the CD (or mp3) in your cyber hand. You have to understand where you are going to sell that recording and to whom you will sell it. The “where” (we call it place in marketing) boils down to three basic outlets: at the gig, on the Internet, and in the independent stores that will stock your music.

The gig is easy, but don’t over estimate your sales. It used to be about 15% of your audience size but these days, because most people are getting their music online, you can cut that in half. If you sell out the Bluebird at 900 seats –a good night might mean you sell 60 CDs ($600 worth, less taxes and a percentage for the venue). That means you better not ‘over-press.’ Use a simple break-even formula, look at the number of summer gigs you have and be realistic about your sales estimates.

In order to reach iTunes (they sell more than any other music outlet at this time), you will need to use an aggregator: CD Baby, The Orchard/IODA, TuneCore or a number of others. In my experience, CD Baby has the best accounting, including the pennies you get from the streaming sites like Spotify and Rhapsody. Others like TuneCore and The Orchard are good, but as I said, CD Baby’s accounting is the best.

There are still a huge number of independent record stores across the country like Albums on The Hill, Twist & Shout and others. In order to get your CD into independent stores across the country, you will need to get a “retail” distributor like Burnside, Red/Koch, AEC, or one of a few others. In order to get to work with those distributors you will need to be able to prove that you are going to appear in the cities where those stores are located via touring or radio or something more than your Facebook page.

Once you line up some sort of distribution, you need to look at your timing. Retail will need to have CDs a minimum of 30 days before the release date, and they will need time for marketing to their outlets, usually 60 days prior to release. This is pretty typical. Even CD Baby used to need between 14 to 30 days, and the Orchard/IODA took around 40 days. TuneCore is faster, but there you need to have your marketing in place. You should also get a UPC code (bar code) so Soundscan can track your sales.

In order to get press for your record (and there are plenty of friendly outlets like the Colorado Music Buzz and local blogs like heyreverb.com that will give you ink), you need at least 21 to 30 days is before your release.

If you have only 300 facebook fans and no actual website, then you have some serious Internet work to do to market and sell your music. Developing an Internet presence is essential to the successful release of a recording. That means more than a Facebook or ReverbNation page…it means owning and using your own website (I will cover this more in future articles). But check out a Billboard article about Emily White, a great Brooklyn label owner, to see how important that aspect of selling recordings will be to you, or an artist you manage. White gives you five essential tips to making money when marketing a recording–they are great, and they involve some serious Internet work.

As stated earlier, ‘hard merch’ or CD sales at gigs used to be the best source, but that revenue is down over 50% so you will have to figure out a way to cope with that reality. The best advice I can give you comes from Terry McBride, manager of Bare Naked Ladies, who explained that they pressed a three-song CD in a paper sleeve that their merch tables gave away. Instead of the band saying something like “please buy our new CD” they were saying “please stop by the merch booth because we have a free sample CD for you.” McBride said it increased their sales by over 30%. The cost of the 100 or so CDs to give away can average about 20 cents apiece, so for around 20 bucks and a little time and effort, you have something to entice folks to your booth. Like the old drug dealers used to say, “the first one’s free.”

Last but not least, YouTube. Now we are into land-mine territory because even “Celebrity Apprentice” is trying to get videos to go viral…so it’s a crowded market. If you have the right song it can be great … but it can also cost you are great deal of money with no possible return. There are good, cheap ways to do it but do not count on your song going viral. No matter how amazing the concept and video are, talking dogs have us all beat.

If you take the time and the energy to make a great recording, then you want to do more than have 15 boxes of unsold CDs in your garage. So plan the number you press carefully, line up good distribution, set up good timing for the release, and allocate time to marketing through the Internet and incentives for the sale of CDs with free music, or a free sticker with every CD, etc. People may love listening to your music but you’ve got to make a real effort these days to get your fans involved in listening to it in order for them to take the all important step of buying it. And yes, lots of people give music away–if that’s your goal, that’s easy and takes no brains or skill. It takes a lot of work to make money with recorded music. We’ll go into other revenue streams next, stay tuned!