Connie Lim, rising LA native singer/songwriter collaborates with LA’s best musicians and artists, creating The Hunted, an album that calls attention to current global issues with hope and vulnerability. Lim packed Hotel Café and Hotel Utah to maximum capacity, and continues onward.

Connie Lim’s steadily growing fan-base has dubbed her music to be “retrotronica”, a style that has been personally defined by Lim to be “old-school songwriting backed by electronica sentiment.” Inspired by current artists – namely Imogen Heap, Feist, and Bjork – Lim has been developing her sound for the past two years in the depths of Los Angeles, CA after graduating from UC Berkeley.

After the victorious release of “The Hunted” at Hotel Cafe, Lim is being noted by the music industry, as she has already made her “way to [AMP]‘s shortlist of talents to watch for the second half of 2010. Connie is one of the most brilliant emerging vocalists out there.” -AmpArtists.com. While Audrey Magazine calls Lim’s music “a breath of fresh air in this time of “Bieber Fever” and autotune”, her music continues to be noted by the media, including NBC LA, KPCRadio.com, and popular blogs like a-tunes.net, 8asians.com, and ChannelApa.com.

According to Flavorpill.com, The Hunted unfolds her musings on the fluidity of relationship and social structures through the momentum of moody strings, lush piano and electronic textures…an intimate and unselfconscious performer [whose] songs will literally bloom in front of you.” As she says herself, “We are all the hunted, or the underdog, in some way or another. I sing for that side within each of us.”

Her new EP “The Hunted” is out now on iTunes, Amazong MP3, CD Baby and more!

Take 10 minutes to get to know Connie and her new album, the writing process, what she loves about performing and how she’s connecting with her fans during our interview.

Stay connected with Connie online to get tour updates, enter special contests and see eclusive content

www.connielimmusic.com

Facebook •  Myspace •  Twitter •  YouTube

The Extended Service Package is Eternite Media’s Digital Distribution service. Our Project Managers work directly with our clients to deliver a full service digital distribution experience in a mostly self service industry.

What’s Included

Distribution: Your release will be available for purchase with key digital retailers such as iTunes, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, Spotify and more.

UPC: We can issue you a UPC barcode for your digital release that can also be included on your physical release’s packaging.

ISRC Codes: If you don’t already have them, we will provide you with an ISRC code for each song in your release. These codes will be used to track sales information on your digital and physical release.

Gracenote: Your physical release will be entered into the Gracenote (formally CDDB) database for enhanced album information when your disc is opened in many popular media players such as iTunes.

All Music: We will send a copy of your physical release to the online music encyclopedia, All Music (www.allmusic.com). Many fans, labels, and reporters use All Music as an information source for an artist and their releases. Some media players (Such As Windows Media Player) use this database rather then Gracenote to pull album information.

Soundscan: We will register your physical release with the sales tracking and reporting company, Nielsen Soundscan. Many major labels, marketing groups, and music charting companies use this information on a daily basis. You can contact Nielsen to purchase a report of your physical sales to use as part of your marketing.

How It Works

1. Your Project manager gathers all the meta-data and audio required for your release.
2. Our engineers intake, encode and upload your release to our digital retailers. If we are manufacturing a physical release we will also submit your release to Gracenote, SoundScan, and All Music. Approximately 4-8 weeks later your release we be live in each of our retailer’s stores.
3. At the end of each business quarter, our retailers calculate your net sales and send payment to us. We collect payment from all the retailers and pay you!

What It Costs

We charge a $49 setup fee per release, which covers our time and costs in the delivery process. We keep 5% of your net earnings (royalties), which covers the costs of processing your payments. That’s it. You will never pay any annual or hidden fees!

When You Get Paid

We pay you 45-50 days after a quarter has closed. Due to the volume of payments we make, we require this time to reconcile the data and then distribute the payments to our clients.

Quarter Schedule

Q1: January – March (Payment in May)

Q2: April – June (Payment in August)

Q3: July – September (Payment in November)

Q4: October – December (Payment in February)

Is This An Exclusive Deal?

Nope! We simply ask that the releases you send to us are not re-distributed by you or any of our competitors to our digital retailers and that you do not contact the retailers directly as this will cause you a big headache. Typically the release will be taken down and you will have to choose a single distributor for your release.

For more information or to sign up for our distribution services, please contact your project manager or contact us at info@eternitemedia.com

About

ArtistData is a social networking and event administration tool. At it’s core ArtistData essentially helps you:

-Post your shows to your social networks, a variety of concert databases, and alert local press

-Write Blogs and News updates and post them to your sites

-Update your status on most social networks

What they say about themselves:

“ArtistData tirelessly works to give musicians more time to be creative. We’re building solutions to automate the monotonous updating of artist websites, social network profiles, concert databases, Twitter, official news feeds, iCal, local press, fan newsletters, and even tour books. When an artist updates our site, we update all their sites. Our current users save hundreds of hours, giving them more time to do what they love: create music.”

My 2 cents

We recently started testing out the ArtistData system and have been pretty happy with it so far. I have to say that I think it is much more valuable for managers, labels, and marketing companies then for the individual artist. I found that the setup process is a bit involved and when you add in the additional tools (a ton of widgets and exporting functions- many useful, some not as much) you tend to glaze over for a bit. As an event posting tool this thing ROCKS! I love it. We regularly handle posting our clients events to social networks and being able to do it once is a big stress reliever. They have a simple event widget which can be used on your website which again makes for one less thing to update.

The biggest problem with ArtistData at the moment is that you can not status update to Facebook. For some reason you can post to a personal profile, but not fan pages. This makes the status update tool pretty much useless in my opinion. Another issue is that Myspace (don’t even get me started with this doe doe bird) has changed how apps can access there events which makes ArtistData unable to post your events on that social network. As I mentioned before it does have a bit of a learning curve and setup takes some time, but if you have a manager, label, or marketing company helping you with the setup or even have them doing all of your admin, this isn’t a big deal.

Price

Sonic Bids recently acquired ArtistData and they are offering it free until September 1st. After that apparently the pricing will be integrated into a Sonic Bids package. I will take another look at this product once that all happens and let you know my thoughts.

Find It Here

www.artistdata.com

About

Fan Bridge is an Email Marketing system designed for musicians. They provide tools for your fan relationships through email, mobile, and social networking lists. Still confused? Your fans enter there email info, Fan Bridge stores the email addresses and sends helps you send out updates and newsletters to those email addresses.

What They Say About Themselves

“FanBridge makes it really easy for musicians to build their fan list, manage their fans, and then communicate with their fans across multiple channels.”

Tools for Managing Fans:

- Free import help to get your list from any format into your FanBridge account

- Sort and target campaigns by custom groups or postal code and radius

- Automatic handling of bounces, subscribes, unsubscribes, and other email technicalities

- Store nearly 20 fields of data per fan (ie: name, location, MySpace/Twitter, and notes field)

- Hosted, secure platform accessible from any internet enabled computer

- Weekly account summary reports

Tools for Getting New Fans:

- Flash or html based fan signup forms (for your MySpace/Facebook/website)

- Downloadable fan signup form for use at the merch table at shows

- Free custom subdomain (http://yourname.FanBridge.com) with signup form

Tools for Effectively Communicating with Fans:

- Send plain text and html emails, or text messages to mobile phones

- Analytics tracking for your campaigns (track clicks, opens, bounces, forwards)

- Professional looking templates for great looking campaigns (or provide your own html)

- Relationships with ISPs to make sure your messages get to inboxes, not spam folders

- Custom branded web browser toolbars (keeping your site/buy/tour links in front of fans 24/7)

- Automatic Subject Optimizer to A/B test subject lines and make your campaigns more effective

- Scheduled sending (perfect for setting up emails before going on tour)“

My 2 cents

I was really impressed on the simplicity of getting up and running with Fan Bridge. Everything is simple and straight forward, each regular task is laid out in separate tabs on the screen and it is super easy to build sign-up forms and install them into your website or social network. They give you the ability to trade emails for media (as in ‘give us your email address and we will send you a free song’) which is really the future of music marketing. Building an email campaign is pretty straight forward as they have easy to use, bug-free templates that I would feel confident having one of our clients do on their own. They also give you the option to build your own HTML emails so your graphic designer can make you a slick template to wow your fans with. They also have a tool that lets you update your Myspace, Facebook Fan Page, and Twitter all at once which seems to work better then ArtistData. So far so good on trying it out with our clients, we are even considering moving our email marketing system over to this!

My only real gripes with this system is that if you want detailed analytics you have to upgrade to a paid account.  I am not a big fan of the sign up form layouts. I totally get that they need to be easy to build for the majority of users, but when we are building marketing systems for our clients, we think the forms are pretty boring.

Price

Free for the bare-bones version, pro plans start at $9 month

Find It Here

www.fanbridge.com

About

Simply put, Root Music makes your Facebook Fan Page sparkly. It takes an otherwise white and blue, hard to customize social network into a totally engaging, fun to look at barrel of monkeys. You can connect your Sound Cloud account to stream audio and link your ArtistData account to post your gigs right on the page.

What They Say About Themselves

“So here’s the deal. There are many musicians and bands out there that need a little help. Everything from finding a place to sleep while on tour, selling their own tickets, remembering when they should be touring and keeping in touch with their fans. It’s hard to get all this stuff done and keep it organized, and that’s why managers and labels will take a big cut: because they do a lot of hard work to keep the wheels running for the band.

We are now in an age where technology will take a task that would normally take two days and make it two clicks. And that’s what at the heart of what RootMusic is. RootMusic is a professional technologically advanced bag of tools that gives -you- the control to reach your goals.

Whether you are a local band in Harrisonburg, Virginia or a big time manager, RootMusic can help give guidance and support to your end goal. So now it’s not a matter of if you can, but a matter of if you want to. You’ve got the power now, so what would you like to do? That is our mission and we believe strongly in our statement.“

My 2 cents

Can you tell from the intro that I like this thing? What’s not to like? This Facebook app is really easy to setup and if you pay for the pro version, it allows you to make a lot of cool customizations including the ability to upload your own background. The application was written really solid, so it seems to be pretty bulletproof (no Myspace like template disasters). Root Music lets you customize pretty much every detail of the page down to the color of the text. Facebook seems to be holding pretty solid as the social network of choice and having a tool like this is going to be really important to gain more fans. I highly suggest getting the pro version and updating your background often to keep your fans excited to come look at your page and see what’s new.

The only thing I would change is the ability to embed a FanBridge (or other) email sign up form on the application. At the moment, they have to go to a separate tab to signup and I don’t think that is going to be too effective.

Price

Free or $1.99 a month for the pro version

Find It Here

www.rootmusic.com

Next Time…

In my next post on this topic I will take a look at tools to gain more fans on your social network called Headliner, tell you more about a cool way to accept credit cards for your merch at shows or on the go, and examine the pro’s and con’s of some direct-to-fan sales tools.

]]> http://www.eternitemedia.com/blog/streetpromotion/freeish-tools-to-run-your-brand-easier-part-1/feed/ 0 http://www.eternitemedia.com/blog/peoplelovecds/branding-for-musicians/ http://www.eternitemedia.com/blog/peoplelovecds/branding-for-musicians/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 19:32:38 +0000 admin http://www.eternitemedia.com/blog/?p=247 What is your brand and what is branding? In the case of what I will be talking about today, your brand is your band, act, music or business and all elements that go along with it such as  designs, costumes, websites, social networks, merchandise, albums, etc  that make you marketable as a product to the public. Branding is the process of unifying all of those elements in a way that will give your fans a consistent image of what and who you are. Your core brand is your bands logo and overall identity that lets your fans know who you are and should always stay the same. For example, the band KISS and their tours, albums and merch may have had branding themes but the basic KISS brand still shows through in their logo and costumes, which is recognizable. That is not to say that it would be inappropriate to change colors, or even tweak your logo a bit from release to release but especially while you are building your fan base it would be a good idea to keep the logo and any unique identity (like KISS and their costumes) the same. That said, your branding elements may and should change to fit the relevance of your project, and keep your fans interested in coming back to your sites and your shows.  Remember that we live in a time where we are bombarded by stimulation all day every day and that means your fans need to remember you and not get bored. Keep each album release fresh and with proper presentation. Match your gigs and tours to follow the theme of your latest release. Consistency throughout the life of your “product” is important so that your fans are conditioned to think of you when they see a trigger.

In this post I want to give you a quick outline of a good workflow in creating your brand. If you are managing your project yourself, this should give you a good guideline to stay sane while putting it all together. How we do our project management is just a starting point, so use it as a guideline and not hard rules.
Here’s the flow…

Conception

In the conception phase you should think about what the ultimate goal is. If it is an album or something creative based, it may be appropriate to get the bulk of the recording done so you get an idea of what the theme of the album is going to be. Basically, don’t paint the baby room pink before you know if your having a girl. If you are launching a tour, is it in support of an already released album? If it’s a general promotion or for an event like SXSW, what are we hoping for as the end result? It’s a good idea to sit down with your band, group or yourself and outline all of your concepts and goals. Write everything down, no ideas are wrong and by the end of the meeting funnel everything down into your overall concept.

Building Blocks To An Action Plan

At this point, it is time to get your action plan together. What outlets are you wanting to target like social networks and web, physical promo at events, etc). Work through all the items you will need to fulfill the concept section by section. Are you doing web promotion? If so, on what websites and what creative work will be needed (web banners, bios and press releases, etc)? What design work needs to be done on for physical promotion, and how are you going to do the promotion (street team or yourself)? For tour branding, will you need backdrops, banners, costumes? What is your layout for the merch table? For your products, what are you manufacturing (USB, CD, DVD, Merch) and what design and development needs to be done to complete them? Break down all of these into blocks and create a road map for completion in your action plan. This will help you to determine who you need to bring in to complete all the tasks and help you to stay on schedule throughout the process.

Find The Team

Once you have your action plan ready, then you can find the team to bring it to completion. You may need graphic designers, web monkeys, manufacturers, PR/marketing reps, street teams, and so on. A lot of times a band will do these these functions themselves. That is cool, but remember the importance of staying focused on what your good at and let the pros handle the rest. Picking your team is potentially the most important part of the whole process. If you are going to have anything manufactured it is really important that the people heading up your design work know how to follow the manufacturers specs for production (that sounds really basic, but 9 times out of 10 we kick back artwork because a designer did not follow directions). It would be a good idea to make sure that everyone meets before the project starts so they can discuss any needs and can spare the introductions when its time to get work done.

Set The Timeline

You have assembled the team so now you can put out the action plan to all parties and look at what the reality of production is going to be to accomplish the goal. Obviously you may have a deadline at the very beginning (a tour date, an event, etc) but if at all possible it will be much better to allow your team to give you their opinions on turnaround times for each item, look at what can be done simultaneously, add a little padding and set your date. Remember that for projects that require marketing like a CD release or tour,  it is best to have at least 60-90 days just to promote the finished product. That is not to say that you have to finish everything and then have an additional 60-90 days. You can prioritize the creative that will need to be finished to start marketing first and then task your team to finish up the creative work needed to manufacture and finish up the project.

Creative Production

Now it’s time to hit the ground running. Your team is on board, you have your deadline and now you need to begin the creative aspects of your project. Creative production involves designing of the digital and physical promotional material, writing of content, bios and press releases, and development of your social networks, blogs, website. This is also the time that you will be creating any mock-ups and designs for your album release and/or merchandise. Remember to prioritize your creative to fit the timeline you set so you are ready for marketing and manufacturing. This is also a good time for your recording mixing and mastering to be wrapping up.

Marketing/PR

Depending on your goals, you may have decided to offer a pre-sale on an album or need to start promoting your tour. With that in mind, you will want to start marketing as early as possible, and it never hurts to create your own hype during conception. Once your creative team has put together the elements you need to get started, your marketing team (or you) can take over in promoting your project. If you are doing a CD release, your PR person may need pre-release CD’s in which case you would need that physical production done at this point. You can use this time to handle your physical production, which we will talk about next. If you are doing pre-sales, you can use the marketing phase to gauge how much quantity you need to produce.

Physical production

While you are plugging away at the marketing, your design team should be finishing up everything the manufacturers will need to begin production. This also means that all your audio or video needs to be ready to go to manufacturing as well. This phase is pretty self explanatory, CD’s will start pressing, shirts start printing, and USB drives start loading. Once they are all ready you will need to stage all of your pre-sales to ship on launch day or be ready to walk out the door on tour day.

Launch/Release

The final stage is your launch day! You have worked your butt off up to this point and if all went as planned you are on time, under budget and you have a killer product.
Branding is an important part any band. Hopefully this post gives you a good starting point on how to tackle it on your next release or tour. In future posts we will explore the details of branding, including tools to help you run your brand, examples of good and bad branding, and taking your brand to the next level with fan interactive branding like iPhone apps and private social networks.

FREE 1,000 Business Cards With Any Order!

We would like to hook you up with some sweet premium business cards when you do business with us this weekend. No matter how much you spend, we will print 1000 full color offset printed business cards on thick 16pt recycled stock and sexy matte AQ2 coating just for you.

(offer ends May 31)

June: 25% Off Design Services

Smoking deals on custom graphic design from mild to wild! We are offering 25% off anything from a quick logo or iTunes cover to a full blown branding package. Contact us for ideas on how we can make your product look fly.

July: 10% Off all USB Flash Drive Orders

Get flashy in July and save 10% on your total order of USB Flash Drives including pre-loads and custom molds! The summer should be heating up and your merch table will be smoking when your new custom molded, content exploding, drives sell like hot cakes. 10% saved means 10% more profit and thats hot!

Out of the depths of the over-saturated indie rock scene comes a refreshing addition with just enough spunk to stand out. After a year of searching for the perfect blend of band mates, DanseWolf is ready for action. They’ve already wrote and recorded a few songs which are on their self-titled promo CD and are in the process of  writing songs for their debut album coming later this year. Lucky for you we have a sneak peak of their newest song from their practice.

We’ve got lead singer Julz D, Erin Domina on bass, guitarist Andy Lagomarsino and Melissa Moskow on the drums. A definite indie style- lyrics sang with purpose, catchy tempo changes with a ‘driving rock edge’ as Julz put it. “Stray beats and hummed concepts at inception have matured into a true fusion of indie rock, blues and electronic with a backbone of soul” (Read the rest of their bio HERE). Everyone has a hand in writing and their songs range from shady INsignificant others, addiction (thought not what you may think) and even a romantic ballad. We can’t wait for the new album with a pumped up version of the Dansewolf you hear on their promo CD!

Hopefully you are keen on recognizing their jena se qua’ charisma and catch them at all their upcoming shows, starting June 23 at Dragonfly in Los Angeles. Stay connected with the DanseWolf on Myspace, Facebook & Twitter.

We caught up with the wolf pack in their studio for a video interview!

((click here if you can’t view the player))

Also check out a sneak peak of their new song “Smoke & Mirrors” from the studio:

((click here if you can’t view the player))

www.dansewolfmusic.com

-by Michelle Powell

Our Friends at Symphonic just released an updated version of their awesome streaming music app! Check out the features below.

Symphonic Distribution is proud to announce the upgrade of its popular app “SymSTREAM”. SymSTREAM 2.0 has further enhanced the ability for labels to effectively market and sell their content through a mobile phone or iPod! iPhone / iPod app development is one of the prime goals for Symphonic Distribution and the company will soon feature a dedicated brand to help Labels and Artists effectively promote and even sell their content on millions of iPods and iPhones worldwide. SymSTREAM 2.0 comes with many new updates as described below! This coincides with Apple’s announcement of a new OS for the iPhone but also a very interesting statistic about just how popular the iPhones are!

***** Get It Right Now on the iTunes App Store *****:

New design:
One of the first updates we did to the app was to redesign certain features. We feel the new design is much more user friendly, simpler, and basically, better looking. Everything from the loading screen, to the main skin, to the buttons have all been redesigned to give the user a better experience when browsing through songs, labels, and genres.

Label Selection
As per request of our labels, we have gone forth and enabled the app to select songs PER label! This is a great addition for the app and now every single label can go forth and promote their music to millions of fans worldwide. Each user of the app can browse by clicking the “Labels” button or go forth and search for a label by clicking the “Labels” button. Once they select the label, only that labels’ music will be able to be played via the player!

Genre Selection
In addition to the label selection, we have gone forth and enabled the ability for users to select the genre they wish to hear and ONLY stream those genres. This was a label and user request and we agreed! You should be able to listen to whatever genre you want and this app lets you do that! Want to hear House? Select House and jam out! Want to chill? Select Chill Out and you shall! Select your mood!

Connection to iTunes Music Store
One of the greatest updates to the app is the ability to be able to purchase the music while listening to it! Each song that is able to be purchased online is connected to the iTunes music store. This is an incredibly helpful feature and one that we hope grows revenue for all labels on Symphonic Distribution. Each and every single label now has iPhone / iPod distribution of their music! On the go and want a track? Click Buy!

Noiseporn.com Addition!
Noiseporn.com is an online Blogozine recently acquired by Symphonic Distribution. The goals of the site are to evolve more into an online magazine, launch a record label, and further showcasing new talent in new and exciting ways. To support the brand, SymSTREAM features some of the songs that are featured and blogged on Noiseporn.com! In the future, more and more music that has been featured on the blog will be featured on SymSTREAM and the best thing is yet to come, an official Noiseporn.com app that will let all folks listen and enjoy Noiseporn.com ON THE GO! To listen to content from Noiseporn.com, a user will simply have to click “Labels” and type Noiseporn.com to stream some of the music featured and blogged! (Every song featured on Noiseporn.com will not be able to be purchased, only streamed).

For Immediate Release

March 12, 2010
Eternite Media is very pleased to announce it’s involvement with The Local Celebrity, Los Angeles Singing Competition series. We will Provide The winner of the competition with a promo and sales package valued at $265 or equal credit towards a larger package. This includes CD duplication, Digital Distribution, Business Cards and more! In Addition, Eternite Media will provide the audience members with 10% off any of our services (limit one discount per person) with proof of entry.

—
The Winner’s Promo and Sales Package Includes:

CD Duplication
Eternite Media’s high quality disc duplication provides an excellent way to get your music directly in the hands of fans. We use only top quality equipment including thermal disc printing systems, commercial grade burning units, and digital offset printing systems. Disc duplication is a great alternative to those not in need of the higher quantities involved in our disc manufacturing (replication) services.

Details
-100 Dupilcated CD’s with Full Color Thermal Disc Print
-100 Full Color 2 Panel (2 Sided) Printed Inserts
-100 Slim Jewel Cases

Extended Service Package (E.S.P.)
Through a partnership with Symphonic Distribution, a leader in digital content delivery, the E.S.P. offers clients who order duplicated or replicated discs the option to take that release to the digital retail world by combining our high quality disc manufacturing with Symphonic Distribution’s world class 100% royalties digital distribution. Also included is a UPC barcode, ISRC codes for each of the songs and submission to popular databases like Gracenote and All Music so that all of your release’s information will show up in players like iTunes when put into a computer. We will also submit your release information to Soundscan so that your sales data is recorded. We do all of the prep and encoding work so you can sit back, and enjoy.

Details
-Digital Distribution: 100% royalty distribution of up to 15 songs through our partner Symphonic distribution. Your release will be in digital download stores such as iTunes, Amazon Mp3, E Music and more. No setup fees, no hosting fees, you keep 100% of your royalties.
-Encoding and Prep: We will prepare your audio for submission and work with you to complete all the important Metadata involved.
-UPC: We will issue you a UPC barcode to include on your packaging and will be used for digital release.
-ISRC Codes: If your label does not provide you with ISRC Codes we will create them for you prior to production so they are included on your CD and downloads.
-Submission to Gracenote: Your disc will be entered into the Gracenote (formally the CDDB) database for enhanced album information when your disc is put into a computer or played on a Gracenote enhanced media player. All of your song titles, artist name, album name and all other information will populate so you do not have to worry about iTunes showing your songs as Track 1, Track 2, Track 3.
-Submission to All Music: If your CD is manufactured, we will send a copy with the required information to the All Music database (www.allmusic.com). This is a great way to give you and your release more coverage on the internet. Many people use All Music as a source to get information on an artist and their releases. You can also send us a copy of your press kit for All Music to review and use to create your page. (This service requires the use of one of your CD’s to submit to All Music, it will not be returned.)
-Soundscan: A very important part of physical CD sales is reporting to Nielsen Soundscan. This service will record and track your sales. Many major labels, marketing groups, and music charting companies use this information on a daily basis. You can even contact Nielsen to purchase a report of your disc sales to use as part of your marketing.

Business Cards
Eternite Media provides a full range of printing services to our clients. One printing item that no recording artist should be without is a high quality business card.

Details
- 1000 16pt Recycled Stock business cards with offset printing using vegetable based inks and AQ2 Matte Finish.

—
About Eternite Media, LLC:

Eternite Media, LLC is an artist services company focused on providing independent musicians and labels with operational support of their physical and digital production needs. Our mission is to help artists produce, promote, protect and profit from their art by providing superior customer service and outstanding products. We offer custom solutions for physical and digital album releases, merchandising, and printing as well as online a-la cart self service ordering. We believe in high quality production at affordable prices tailored to meet our client’s budget. Whether it’s on disc, online, on apparel or in print, Eternite Media makes the independent life easier.
Areas of expertise include: Disc manufacturing, Digital distribution, Merchandising, Printing, Project Consultation, Design, Branding, Fulfillment, Engineering, and Digital Archiving.
www.eternitemedia.com

About Symphonic Distribution:
Symphonic Distribution is a digital content distributor and services provider aimed at providing the best in content delivery, customer service, marketing, education, and more for music industry artists, managers, and record labels across the globe. In addition to our services, Symphonic Distribution also has several distinct brands for the intention of expanding the reach of a client. We have a proven track record and currently provide services to hundreds of clients based in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Australia, Sweden, Bosnia & Herzegovina, India, Japan, USA, Canada, Portugal, and countless other countries and cultures around the globe. Symphonic Distribution is run by experienced music producers, label owners, and artists thriving in providing the highest level of service.
www.symphonicdistribution.com

Local Celebrity, Los Angeles. A LIVE Singing Competition where contestants wow the audience and compete for over $1,000 in cash and prizes. The finale is this Sunday, March 21, 2010.  http://localcelebritytv.payperlive.com/
http://facebook.com/LocalCelebrityTV
Watch as Ryan Ray of Wake UP! TV (http://wakeuptv.com) hosts and music industry judges Kris Searle (http://krissearle.com), Fawn (http://fawnmusic.com), and Arnold G (http://arnoldg.com) give their feedback.

Symphonic Distribution is a digital content distributor and services provider aimed at providing the best in content delivery, customer service, marketing, education, distribution, licensing and more for music industry artists, managers, and record labels across the globe. Symphonic Distribution is ran by experienced music producers, label owners, and artists thriving in providing the highest level of service. Their mission is to provide you with the best services to improve brand performance. In addition to their comprehensive service list, they provide individual brands to better help a record label or artist grow. Symphonic is also accredited by the Better Business Bureau to further satisfy their clients and partners.  Below are some new highlights Symphonic has introduced recently that show just how much they have to offer.

SymSTREAM is the brand new iPhone / iPod Touch application created by Symphonic Distribution.  Being one of the only distributors in the world to have an iPhone / iPod Touch application, Symphonic Distribution has further diversified itself with new and evolving technologies aimed.  The tool also will serve as a new marketing initiative for artists and record labels distributed by Symphonic Distribution.  SymSTREAM allows you to preview some of the great music we receive each and every week!  If you are at the gym or simply want to listen to new, creative, and innovative music, download SymSTREAM for FREE at the APP Store today. More details in their BLOG

Rolling out in the first part of 2010, Symphonic is updating their client area with a new royalties portal. A second phase of the portal is coming soon that will add detailed stats and sales figures. This will give you a lot of insight on what is selling and what you need to market more in that quarter. This new content portal will bring a new level of self service and convenience to getting your tracks out to digital stores. You will be able to deliver releases to them and have full control as if YOU are the distributor!  This will also allow you more control at any time of your releases, eliminate errors, expedite release delivery, and just simplify the process in general. These updates will really make Symphonic your go-to site for digital distribution.

Being all about customer service, it should be obvious that they care about their clients. They strive to make every step you need to take as simple as possible, include free marketing plans and education with many different resources to make you shine! For example, they can distribute releases to promo pools worldwide, have many internal labels available to release your unsigned material and even have an Artist Connect- where they send unaffiliated artist’s demos to 600+ labels across the globe for potential licensing.

It’s a worthwhile trip to their website, so don’t hesitate to see what you can get into. Sign up for their newsletter to be in the know of their success and see how you can connect with other artists, labels or engineers. Check out their blog to see the Release, Label and Artist of the week.

http://symphonicdistribution.com/
http://symintranet.com/blog/
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/SYMPHONICDISTRIBUTION
WWW.TWITTER.COM/SYMPHONICDIST
WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SYMPHONICDISTRIBUTION

Your an artist (band/DJ/Producer- whatever) out there on your own, trying to take hold of the sea of potential fans in the world. There is an incredible amount of time, tools, and logistics that go into making an artist successful. What does success mean in this new industry? Success when your an independent artist can really be what you want it to be. Focus on smaller successes that go toward your ultimate success goal. Your small successes should be based on obtainable goals you set on a regular basis. So how do you achieve that? Well that is not an easy question to answer and I don’t think there is really a formula per say, but most importantly you need to build a team.

A large reason the “label” exists (besides the obvious financing side of things) is to be your team in doing everything you are NOT good at. So what do you do if your an independent artist without (or with very little) label support. You can’t, and shouldn’t do everything yourself, but the awesome thing is that we live in a time where we have thousands of people completely capable and hungry to BE YOUR TEAM, without taking a huge cut of your sales. The pay for service age is now, it is reality, and it rocks. You can have a 300 hour work week by simply leveraging other peoples time and resources. If you have 3 people working on different tasks, you effectively created 3 times the man hours at the same time. and you now have 3 times as much free time to work on other aspects of your band. Call it DIY… with help. DIY, keep the rights to your music, and make a lot more in the long run. I know that financing is a huge factor and I will get into that later. Ideally you can end up making more and spending less without a label backing you. Now there is a time and a place for a label to step in and I am not saying that you should spit in their face- but more so saying that you may find more freedom and success by going it alone and growing your band like a brand and a business.

The Advantages of Outsourcing
Your musical act is a business and you need employees to run it. Outsourcing is just a means for you to have freelance employees doing the stuff you are not good at and just don’t have the time for. Again this goes back to what I was saying earlier about leveraging other peoples time and skills to your advantage. for each talented person you bring into your team you open up a whole new network of skills and contacts to further your brand (see how we are already moving away from your band and into your brand). When you sell someone a brand you build loyalty. You want to live the lifestyle of furthering your brand, that is what gives you a chance at success. Build it through squeezing the juices of the talent you have on your team. Once you build your ongoing relationship with the person they should need very little direction to complete the tasks. Just like an entrepreneur, you need to spend your time wisely and leverage everyone else’s. In the end, you still did the core of the design work and you can promote it as such.

Outsourcing Ideas
(Endless, however I included some ideas)
- Graphic Design
- Web/blog/social media development (this is a big one when it comes to branding)
- Email campains
- Press releases
- Press Kits
- Viral Marketing
- Styling and costuming
- Professional Photography and videography (but always have your flip cam ready… it is big right now)
- Music Videos
- Video Flyers
- Social Networking
- Merchandise production (manufacturing of or coordinating with manufacturers)
- Digital Distribution (getting your digital content out in the world and managing it)
- Physical product production (CD/DVD/USB Stick manufacturing)
- Physical marketing production (printing stuff like posters, flyers, etc)
- Online retail fulfillment (shipping stuff sold on your site or keeping online retailers like Amazon stocked up)
- Customer service (dealing with merch returns from your site and dealing filtering fan concerns that don’t need your personal attention)
- Storage (storing all of your goods and keeping track of it)
- Street team management (both paid guerilla marketers and your fan based street team)
- Administration (like scheduling meetings, book keeping, accounting, etc)
- Booking
- Tour Management (either having someone help you plan a tour, or hiring someone to run your tour on the road with you)
- Travel booking (Travel Agents are phenomenal at saving you money and helping you with the logistics of group travel… Expedia, not so much)
- Anything else you think you need help with

What You Shouldn’t Outsource
YOU
You need to personally communicate with your fans, you need to create the music, you need to be the personality and you need to live your brand. Mold your team with your brand, don’t let your team mold you. Because so much of your time is going to be spent face to face (or computer to computer) with your fans. If you don’t totally own your brand your fans will see right through it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a stylist help you with your look or get advice from your team on aspects of your act, but the foundation of what your brand is needs to come from the core beliefs you stem from. Your focus should be on living your life through your artistic persona. Connect with your fans hearts by becoming a part of their lives. You should be out mingling with potential fans even at shows your not playing at. Build that personal relationship with your core fan base and they will fund and nurture your upward success. In most cases it is really best that the updates being written on your social networks like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter should be the members of the band.

The Disadvantages
The main disadvantage to going it alone and doing a lot of outsourcing is you are personally spending the money on overhead to get the work done. But is that totally a disadvantage? When you are tied to a label or using companies that take a large percentage of your retail, you end up making very little. If you keep your day job, be a rock star on a budget, and outsource a lot of the stuff that takes up your time you will hopefully have enough left over to get by until your music is able to sustain you full time. If you are able to pay for a lot of the things a label would, you are going to recoup the costs much quicker then if you were trying to recoup the labels money. Focus on how to make your music make money through your brand (clothing, widgets, CD’s, downloads, etc) and recoup your own expenses with more control over what you spend it on and how you pay yourself back. When you are using your own hard earned cash you really have the burning desire to make things happen and toss out the things that don’t work.

Another disadvantage is the fact that outsourcing a bunch of tasks to a bunch of different people on your team ends up taking a lot of management time. You have to deal with the administration of making sure all of your vendors are paid on time. If you are not rock solid at managing people, time, and money you may need to pass this along to your artist management (usually for a percentage of your earnings) or outsource the outsourcing with a project manager!

The Project Manager
I consider a Project Manager to be different than your typical manager. A Project Manager can work with your personal or business manager to act as the traffic controller for whatever task is at hand. A Project Manager works for a flat or hourly rate rather then a percentage base. This will allow you to only pay someone when you need something done and may actually cost you less then percentage based payment in the long run. If you are a new artist you may not have the ability to hire a manager. A lot of new artists may use a friend or a fan to act as their manager and if this is the case an experienced project manager will help them to make sure you get the best deals and use the right people. If your project manager is part of a multi-service company (A company that provides a grouping of products and services in different areas like our company does) the only you may be paying the person with is giving the company your ongoing business which doesn’t cost you anything because you needed it anyways.

A project manager can be an advocate who makes sure your best interests are always in mind. If you are totally starting from the ground up, you may be able to get consultation from them to make sure the business side of your brand doesn’t lag behind the creative side (ie, do you have a business licence, resale certificate, and business checking account to keep the tax man happy and make sure you are making the most of your profit margins). If you have an artist manager they probably have already done this for you, but if you don’t, be sure to ask your project manager. You can get stuck with a lot of trial and error when trying to build your team off of craigslist or offshore bidding sites. If your using a project manager, they can act as a filter in reviewing who is a good choice for a service or often times, if your using a company for your project manager, they may offer the services in house or have tested and trusted freelancers on hand. When it comes to dealing with designers, developers, manufacturers, etc a client can sometimes feel like they are speaking another language. A good project manager will take what you, the client, wants as an end result and be able to communicate that to the vendors effectively, get feedback and translate that back to something you understand. In the case of using a multi-services company for your project manager may be an added bonus (aka free) to services you were planing on using anyways. In that case a huge time saver is knowing that for all of the different types of products and services you need to run your brand, you only need to cut a check to one vendor. As long as what you are getting is competitively priced (and it should be if you are packaging together groups of tasks) knowing all you have to do is shoot an email to one person and your job is done, is pretty incredible.

No matter who you choose to use as a project manager, it should be someone that has a desire to become part of your artistic family. A good project manager will, after time, know what you want and need without you having to say it. They will be a friend and a sort-of mentor at the same time. A good project manager will maximize all of the advantages of the outsourcing model and minimize any disadvantages.

Using outsourcing as a method to build your band as a brand can help you maximize your creative control by possibly not needing to sign with a label. It can also take the things your not good at and make it look like you are (your fans aren’t going to know or care). Building your brand like a business with a team of people working for you can lead you to greater success. Building that team through freelancers, project managers, and multi-service comapanies allows you to save a lot of time and money, work on other things, and NOT require you to hire a full time staff or sign away huge chunks of your royalties and profits. Making music can be a fun and rewarding business which has never been easier to be independent and still make a mark in the music world.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or criticism I want to hear them. Post on the comments or send me an email to me personally and any feedback I get I will be sure to add into this blog.