Eternite Media

While reading through the blog ‘Gen Y Rockstars’ I came across their blog about outsourcing. We have been spending a lot of time in the trenches with our clients figuring out where the do-it-yourself music business is going and how we can continue to grow as a multi-service company to fill those needs. I decided to give my own insight into the subject and expand on it a bit.

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.