Using Music Conferences to KickStart your Music Career

Steve Palfreyman is the man behind the Music Launch Summit, the largest online conference in the music industry. It provides 40+ music industry masterclasses to help artists launch their career, and it’s free!

Here, Steve talks about his extensive career in the music industry that led to him creating the Music Launch Summit. From a grassroots music festival to band management and being a musician himself, Steve also provides some valuable advice on pursuing a career in music, and the importance of using tools such as industry conferences in doing so.

 

What inspired you to begin a grassroots music festival?

It was actually a friend I met at Uni that I jumped onboard with. He’d been running it at his property for years and wanted to expand it. Four of us studying together spent twelve months working on building this thing up into what we hoped would become a pretty phenomenal event. It was by most accounts until we had to shut it down last minute. The lesson – get written contracts! It would have been such an epic kick-start to our careers, but the failure in itself was a huge opportunity to make my next project more rock solid.

Following this you began to manage bands yourself. Do you think there were any key aspects of your management or the bands themselves that contributed to your success with these bands?

This was another big learning curve! I’d been managing my own band for years and after finishing my degree thought I’d be ready to jump out into the world helping other artists that I knew that I thought were brilliant. We kicked straight into things and got some good results. But so many things I’d do differently now.

What advice would you give to bands/artists who are thinking of approaching someone for management?

Do it yourself first. It’s far better to mess things up for yourself than have someone else do it! And honestly, the right person who’ll take your career to the next level probably isn’t going to rock up on day one. Learn the craft and wait for the right relationship, otherwise you might accidentally be getting a glorified assistant on board.

You’ve had experiences in many roles within the music industry, most recently with the Music Launch Hub to create the Music Launch Summit. What was the driving force behind this venture?

To bridge a big divide in the industry. We’re all so much closer to each other on our journey than I think we realise. That was my gut feeling after talking to and working with so many different creative people over the past few years in particular. Speaking to all these amazing people who are on the Summit, my idea has been confirmed. There really are a lot of people who want to see others win in the industry, and we can all learn from each other.

At what stage in a musician’s career do you believe they should start attending conferences like this in order for them to get the most out of them?

Day 1. That’s part of the reason I’ve put so much work into making this happen. I got more inspiration & ideas from my first BIGSOUND conference (that’s Australia’s SXSW) than I did in my 3 years studying a Music Business Degree. We can learn so much from our peers and because the industry isn’t one size fits all, I think a lot of what we need is just enough courage to go out there and make something happen, even make something fail. We need peer learning to speed up that process.

As a musician yourself and a successful music business entrepreneur, what do you believe to be the most useful piece of advice and/or the most useful tool for success for up-and-coming artists you have come across?

Be open. The more I’ve spoken to people, the more I’m seeing there isn’t one golden ticket. I think we all need to be open to learning & helping each other win rather than trying to scramble for ourselves. Our openness towards our peers and our industry will define how it plays out in the future for far more people than just you or I. It’s our responsibility to open this industry right up for everyone else.

You can learn more about the Music Launch Summit and how to attend here:

musiclaunchsummit.com/muddypawpr

Read Full Article Here: http://www.helpforbands.co.uk/using-music-conferences-kickstart-career/

Quality Track Production and its Role in Skyrocketing Your Career

The relief that comes from a finished track is mostly felt when an artist completes the lyrics to a song, finalises the recording process and sends it off for the final touches.

The creation process has always been the most exciting part of writing a song as without a good song, there is only so far a track will go publicity wise of course. Although still relevant, the post-production stages, more relatively the mixing and mastering, has played a bigger role in bringing about success for artists and their music.

 

We mention 3 ways a quality track can not only help build you a successful career but even increase your fanbase.

1) Synchronisation  

Synchronisation has played a key part in helping many new or even established artists by creating awareness of their music. Once something has been attached to a product through television or film, it can open doors that’ll evidently expose you to a wider audience and get you, you got it…new fans. Although other opportunities exist,  when Music Supervisors search and listen to music in hopes of finding something that fits their briefs, the better it sounds, the easier the process will be and the more likely your track will stand out amongst other potentials. We blog about the best ways to pitch to Music Supervisors here.

2) Connections and More Jobs

Whether you’re a producer or a vocalist, if you’ve gained a history of previous/recent client testimonials based on the quality of the track production you may have worked/or were featured on, you can use this to open doors to more connections, work opportunities and overall industry attention. For example, you may be approached to be a session singer for a producer looking to record someone for a demo or you may be asked to mix/master a track  all because they’ve heard your work and thought the quality was awesome. It really isn’t about how great your voice is or how good you look, in the first couple of moments of listening to a production all that really matters  is the quality of the production.

3) It can make you look really professional

As the distribution/creation of music changed, so did the way it was listened to. From the phonograph to radio, from the walkman and now streaming. The quality of music has become increasingly compressed, all with the goal of creating easily distributable files. Compression has often been blamed for stripping the listener of experiencing much of the intricate sounds that were meant to be highlighted as part of the entire track.  However, whether you’re the one creating it or you’re the voice featured on it,  having a well mixed/mastered track without removing away the sounds perfected in the studio can make you look quite professional amongst your peers. It shows others you know what you’re doing. It’s not just about getting the frequency of a record so small so it fits in a small file, it’s about creating an experience for the listeners to have without unintentionally failing to enjoy the thought process that went into the work.

4) Major A&R Points

Although it’s not majorly important, an A&R executive will like to see that you know how to finish a track well that embodies the qualities of a good sound. If you consider the amount of tracks they might receive, a badly produced demo may not get the attention it deserves. If your songs sound like demos, it’s best to not pitch them to A&R’s. Aim for professionalism, mix and master well and let the sky be your limit.

We could go on and explain other ways a quality track production is key to success in the industry when it involves gaining new fans and attention. However, you get our drift. It’s always something worth investing in and something you won’t be disappointed in the results of. If you’re looking for someone to work with to mix your track simply click here to login to our platform and create a project today. Better yet, get a track mastered for free by Grammy award winning Metropolis Studios, click here to find out more details and how to get involved.

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Written by: Trudy Kirabo

A&R Marketing Assistant at Music Gateway

Music Gateway is a B2B platform specifically designed to allow music industry professionals to connect and work together in a global capacity through sync opportunities and record label placements, the platform has established itself as the go-to platform for the music business.

Whether this is through hiring music professionals or collaborating with other industry creatives, it is a well-known platform that provides opportunities for international established clients who are looking for songs for television, film, and song placement briefs.

https://www.musicgateway.net

Read Full Article Here: http://www.helpforbands.co.uk/quality-track-production-and-its-role-in-skyrocketing-your-career/

How To Approach A PR Company

When you run a PR company you tend to get a lot of bands asking if you’d like to check out their music and potentially work with them. We can’t really listen to them all so here are 5 pieces of advice for getting our attention and approaching a PR company.

 

Method of Approaching

If you’re going to get in touch then email is probably the simplest and most accepted way you can get in touch with a press company about your band. Up until a few years ago I would have said sending in a CD was a good option too but a lot of computers now don’t come with CD drives anymore so any that turn up in the post to our office get put in box and are left to gather dust. Email also allows you to politely follow up if you’ve not had a response with-in a week or two. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with chasing someone up once or even twice. Any more I’d just take it as a sign that they aren’t interested. Though personally I’ll try and reply when I can if someone has taken the time to send a follow up email so don’t be afraid to it.

When you do send that email, make sure it’s actually tailored and personalised to the individual you are contacting. It’s worrying how many bands will send out a blanket email and bcc or even cc a ton of different PR companies in saying that they are wanting to work with them.

Randomly messaging someone on Facebook or tweeting a link to a track to them out of the blue is probably the most irritating. There’s nothing worse than seeing a band tweet about 100 different people at once asking them to ‘check out’ their track. Please don’t do it I beg of you. It doesn’t work and everyone will hate you.

Research

Make sure you do your research before you get in touch with a PR company about your band and see which other artists and the sort of music they cover. If you’re an indie rock band then contacting a PR company that specialises in heavy metal is just a waste of your time and the person who gets your email will straight away know you’ve not bothered to do your research. When you do find the PR that you think might be right for you then make sure you reference some of the artists they’ve worked with, especially if your band has some things in common with them. We always like to engage with people who are fans of the artists we work with so this will usually get our attention and it also shows you’ve put some thought into things before reaching out.

Planning

There’s a minimum period of time we usually work from on an album campaign. For example there’s normally a 2 to 3 month lead-in for a print campaign and around 6 to 8 weeks for online. So immediately if you get in touch and say your album is out next week then your’e already way too late for us to consider working with you. In some cases we’ve had people get in touch saying their album is already out. Again there’s nothing that can be done for you here.

When it comes to getting in touch try and keep these timeframes in mind and outline a rough plan of when you think your potential single/EP/album is coming out, when you might tour and also any other assets you could have for the campaign and when they’ll be ready, such as a music video. The more of this you can put together the more interesting you become to the person you are approaching.

Music

As obvious as this may sound, often bands will get in touch and not include a link to their music. Please include a link to your music and while you are at it try and make sure it’s a good quality recording. If you’ve done a lot of the hard work and convinced someone to take a listen to your track then you really want to impress them. A low quality demo or live video shot on a camera phone won’t have the same sort of impact as a decent recorded track. It’s our job to send your music to other people so if it doesn’t sound good we’re really not going to want to share it. Try and show us the final version or as close to it as you can.

Feedback 

If the answer is a no then it’s always worth asking for feedback from the PR company you just approached. You won’t necessarily always get it but if you’ve caught them on a good day or maybe you were just really polite over email then they could offer some of their thoughts which you may want to take onboard. It also potentially leaves the door for you to contact them again in the near future.

I’ve had a couple of bands in the past where I suggested that hiring a PR company at this current time wasn’t right as their profile was too small and that they should try and create some initial coverage themselves. A while later the band did just that and came back showing some of the great coverage they’d secured so we’re now working with them on their next single.

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Simon Glacken is the Director at I Like Press.

Since founding in 2009 as enthusiastic champions of the emergent British left-field rock scene, Leeds-based publicists I Like Press have evolved upon their ability to birth new artists into the public consciousness, to create fresh impetus for established musicians worldwide.

http://ilikepress.co.uk

www.facebook.com/ilikepress

twitter.com/ilikepress

Read Full Article Here: http://www.helpforbands.co.uk/how-to-approach-a-pr-company/