ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

The other day I was asked a question that pops up every now and then. Of course this is also a question that for some reason usually ends up in an argument. It also shows where my personal priorities are in life though few if any can understand me. The question is "How much do I earn from all the music related work you do?" So before going further on this conversation that happened let me answer that for you my readers.

1 - I earn roughly $0.30/mo based on a revenue share of music sales on 30+ albums. I don't just preach fan involvement I practice it too including fan funding music. In no way, shape, or form will I earn back my investment. Though I have at this time received a music cd for every $10 I have helped out with. Thus to me that pittance is profit (for some reason many don't see it that way).

2 - I actually had to crunch some numbers on this one but the banner ads you see, at the top along with other places I advertise affiliates, earns me roughly $1.00/mo. Yep we aren't writing home about that one are we. Now actually if you were to go through those banners (if I have them all in there) you will find a few I don't earn 1 red cent from. As far as I am concerned the only advertising allowed on this blog or anywhere I am online is what I personally feel helps those who are paying attention.

3 - I have done a few consultations at $30/hr but lets look at these 4 individually. The 1st artist I sat down with over a few beers they payed 1 pitcher of beer. 2nd artist (the band) threw a party and it was all the rum I could drink, we'll say a 1/5. In both of those examples the charge was well below $30/hr. The last 2 artists I ended up chatting with over coffee and they ended up paying in cold hard cash.

4 - Amazingly enough my 1 and only E-Course earned roughly $15/mo with very limited marketing (next to nothing to be honest) and only by donation. I am planning to change that model a bit which I expect will decrease my earnings rather then increase. However it is more important to me to offer options that help then line my pockets thank you very much.

Now as you may expect this didn't impress my questioner, it never does. However instead of moving to where I expect all these questions to lead he responded with "I make $400/day doing what I do". I laughed and responded "I enjoy doing what I do, can you say the same?" Instead of answering me he merely repeated himself and used the "$400/day" twice in his response. At which point I merely told him it isn't about the money it is about who I have helped today. I got chided for that as apparently it is "ALL ABOUT THE MONEY!".

This actually applies to your music business in many ways. As time goes by we are constantly seeing and being told that music tracks are not worth money. Brands are saying they have all the answers, I am sorry noone has any answers really. 10 years ago there were many answers to the digital age but the RECORD LABELS believed it was ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. Well we can see what happened to and is happening still to those who believed in the money.

Now I am not going to say give your music away for NOTHING. Instead think about what you can get in exchange rather it be a pitcher of beer or a party thown in your honor. I personally like the idea of giving your fans free music in exchange for membership to your mailing list or network. Something that allows you to keep them informed on how they can support, and help you succeed.

So tell me are you the Mechanic saying it is "ALL ABOUT THE MONEY" or are you me "LOOKING AT WHO YOU HELPED TODAY"? I actually hope you are someplace in between.

3 Music Industry Services Released by Evolution Coop

Now that we have that New Years Eve Post all taken care of. We can get 2010 and the new decade started up. For now this blog will be all about me, or to be more precise the results of the last few months. I spent the last few months doing a lot of talking with people both online and offline. If you read the 1st post of the year you will notice that I like to sit on the sidelines. Actually for the last 4 years I have been fairly active and that is just going to expand. Today though I want to talk about what I already have out and in the next few posts (couple of times a week this year) some of what I am planning. So lets get the ball rolling?

1 - Newsletter: I finally started this out after making several changes and a few more will be happening as time goes by. Though I liked my original plan from last year. My research has shown that a few things need to wait for the world to be ready. 1 of those was the video aspect which you can still see in Issue 1. In fact couple of industry people have said the video section is the most important aspect.

So what then is this Newsletter about? Well just as I believe that "Record Label 2.0" is about community and participation. So then our newsletter is all about ways to get involved. I will be promoting other people more then myself in the newsletter (I hope). Of course as I release new projects and ideas I will do my best to make room in the newsletter. Where there isn't enough room I will send out to subscribers a separate mailing listing them instead. These updates will also include when a report or e-course has been updated.

Each issue will be released 1st via E-Mail either that day or within a few days made available online. So you don't have to subscribe to get all the great information that makes it into an issue. Of course to know when an Issue is made available you will have to subscribe to this blog, the newsletter, or follow me on Twitter. What this means is the true reason to subscribe to the newsletter is to get updates that no one else does.

2 - E-Courses: Now if you have been reading this blog through out 2009 you know I released 1 E-Course "Write Music Reviews". Since I was planning to add a revenue source while keeping the E-Courses free I started off with a donation plan. While spending 2 weeks working out technical details I found people were actually paying. In fact if we don't count December (no one donated) the average was $3/person. That was based on a slightly less then 60% of the people paying and the rest taking the E-Course for free. This also proved to me that the "Pay What You Want" model does in fact work on a smaller scale then Radio Head. Of course 5 day E-Course via E-Mail have been valued at $0.00 longer then music (oh yea music hasn't reached that value yet).

I had planned to have close to 10 E-Courses by now. However from all the conversations on the subject I decided to work on the model a bit more. Basically there are some smart cookies out there becoming musicians and I didn't take that into consideration. Originally I was thinking as artists wanted to share an E-Course with their fans they would send them on over. Yes that is still a basic plan, however for those who have an Auto-responder set-up and don't want to send their fans elsewhere we needed something else. I will be setting this up but for sale with instructions on how to customize each Course for best results. Of course this also means the extended portion (remember I am all about participation) where by anyone could submit an E-Course for addition needs to be adjusted. Lets not forget the fact that US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) put out revised guidelines that I need to work into my E-Courses.

3 - Music Industry Thinkers: Last year I posted my thoughts on why music is not now nor ever will be like water. I started that post talking about mention at Midem how the music industry needs an "Army of Thinkers", this came from Music Ally. Well its been a year and though I have seen the attempt in a couple of places nothing has happened. From my own research (i.e. talking to just about anyone who breathes and has a thought) I think I understand why. People want to participate, they want to know their ideas are important and wanted. However the whole concept of ownership and or having to be a member gets in the way.

I had sort of thought with industry leaders and executives agreeing with this idea that something would happen. Well I decided to step back in time about 6 years to an intriguing event called blog carnivals. Of course that also is part of what I worked on this past few months. The Blog carnival set-up didn't quite feel right as it placed responsibility on participants. I worked out on paper (you know that physical thing that cavemen used in the 20th century) several variations that neither required membership nor placed additional responsibility on participants. I am sure what I have now will go through an evolutionary process through out 2010.


It is 2 above (E-Courses) that at 1st would seem to have no participation involved. However at Music Evolution we have a group set-up for people to give their feedback. This feedback aspect will be extended here to the blog so that people can participate anonymously. And there in lies the true secret of community marketing options from nothing to anonymous to full participation.

Oh and this then brings us to another aspect of 2010 for me to prepare you for. You see in a few months I plan to start another blog. Working title is "Community Marketing" where I will attempt to learn and share what this niche is. Actually the term came from my real world discussions and I like it.

If I Could Start Over in 2000

LOL I am reposting this due to my hmm time lapse. I scheduled this post for New Year midnight, what I didn't do is change the year. So it got buried in 2009 instead of being the 1st post of 2010. That is O.K. though as I now after reading it want to add in a better introduction. There are 3 things that happened at that time, and I can see their influence on my thoughts today.

At the turn of the century I had more fun doing research projects for others. During that time I did look into the music industry and found it changing in what I thought was wonderful ways. If I had known then that I would get myself entangled in the new music industry within the 1st decade I would have done things a bit differently. Of course helping an auto sales company move to digital long before it became a must do. Playing with all the new fangled research tools such as Alta Vista (still my favorite search engine of the decade). And running my own alliance on a game called ArchMage. These were the things that drove me at the turn of the century.

Today's post though is about the research I did on the digital music industry of 1998 - 2002. You see when I did my initial research I had a vision of what the future could be. I wanted to watch this birth occur even if it was from a distance. There were 3 things that happened and caused me to believe that within 10 years a new music industry would arise. The world apparently is slower then I thought. Actually there was little to no follow up on these 3 innovations, and no P2P wasn't one of them. In fact I saw P2P as just another distribution channel boy was I wrong on that. So lets take a look at the 3 things I am talking about, as For 2010 I plan to talk about them from time to time.

1 - Tour Baby: Though CDBaby.com sponsored the event it was operated and created by musicians within the CDBaby community. Started out in 2001 with only 12 cities along the west coast USA. When Derek Sivers sponsored it in 2002 there were 42 cities and over 200 indie artists involved. It looked to be growing by leaps and bounds. The idea was simple really each city had its own people in charge of insuring a great show. The only real group decisions was 1 band moving from previous city to next city to insure the events common theme.

I don't know or remember the reasons behind its dissolution. Though what it showed me of the future in music is easy. It was obvious to me that local music scenes would become ever more important. While those music related companies that looked more into cooperating rather then competing (or in the case of major labels consolidating) would place a global brand on these local scenes. You can see this influence in my thoughts on improving your online presence with shared communities.

One of the things that I should have done then at the turn of the century is contacted the person handling Seattle on the list. I could have offered to help for free basically taking the equivalent of an intern position. Doing this would not have changed what would happen, but I sure would have learned a few things and maybe have duplicated it by now.

2 - New Music Army: In its original form MP3.com started a project called New Music Army. What this basically did was give music fans who wanted to play at being part of the industry the means to do so. In today's world of music widgets that basic idea would flourish In My Opinion. MP3.com took the fledgling ideas of affiliate marketing added in music distribution and offline marketing in an attempt to give fans more power. I still today use the term micro label which I got from NMA. Of course I signed up but that was just so I could research the process. I didn't really get involved just sat on the sidelines watching the entertainment.

This would be the 1st example I would see of putting tools into fans hands to help artists get ahead. The Major Labels sued MP3.com out of existence (the site lives on after a sale) due to its music locker technology. I thought within a few short years the idea of getting your fans more involved would thrive. But today it is thought to be the new direction rather then a continuation of an old idea. Another area this would cause me to look at is project based investments. You can see this idea in action through Fan funded models such as Sellaband.com.

So what should I have done then with this? Rather then just sitting on the sidelines I should have got more involved. I would have found myself at the point I am now say in 2005. Imagine an additional 5 years to get my ideas out to the world and help usher in a evolutionary music industry. Not only that I am fairly sure I would be able to say look I helped get that album out to the public for a few early 2000's.

3 - GarageBand.com: In its initial format the artists who became number 1 for the month were awarded a $250,000 recording contract. This contract was outside of the then label system yet was hoped to be useful for getting a record deal. Much of the selection process is still in use today and Garageband.com has also given us the ILike music discovery tool.

I loved this idea of democratizing music charts and who reaches number 1. In fact you can really see this in action with American Idol. Of course my ideas of full participation can be seen with not only NMA but also Garageband.com. The idea that a album could be funded without a major label was great. It would be this idea that in 2006 would have me fall in love with the fan funding ideals. About the only benefit I would have gotten from participating here is just staying on top of my game. Of course at the time I didn't see myself as getting involved so as with the previous 2. I came, I saw, and I walked away. I actually wouldn't even really pay attention to Garageband.com the same way I did the other 2.

-edit- well that is the post you were supposed to be reading 0:00:00 1/1/2010. I am glad my life turned out the way it did I had fun. However if I had known then where I would be today those are the changes I would make. Today I had planned to start writing about what I have been working on past couple of months but that can wait.