IOTM Blog
Posted: Aug 30, 2022
Category: The Musician Business
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**Guest post written by Digby Pearson, founder of Earache Records.
"...every new band or artist needs to get their music online if they want to be heard by as many people as possible...Playlists on platforms like Spotify have the potential to propel a song into the public sphere as much as the charts or radio play. And if your music gets used in a viral TikTok video, you could soon see your fanbase soar. Music distributors help to make that happen...If you’re ready to take the next step in your music career and want your tunes to be heard by more people, here are five things you should know about how digital distribution - and the distributors that make it happen - work."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 29, 2021
Category: The Musician Business
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**Guest post written by Yona Marie, originally featured in her blog.
"Releasing songs as an independent artist is pretty easy thanks to technology. 50 years back, you'd be out of luck for the most part, but now is the best time to thrive as a musician or artist without having to rely on a label! The main thing about being independent is that you want to make sure you're always growing and learning when it comes to music industry knowledge. You are in charge of your career and will not have any big-money company backing you or guiding you."
View Full ArticlePosted: Oct 18, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cyber PR, originally featured on the Cyber PR Blog.
"In this ever-changing landscape, we see the same issue consistently: A vast majority of musicians don’t create long-term marketing plans. Artists skip this vital part of their music careers. Plans used to be the responsibility of the record label when artist development used to be a thing or a great management team but very few artists are lucky enough to have either (or in many cases, they don’t want a label). This leaves a void in today’s new music business...You work so hard on new music, dedicating hours practicing, writing songs, not to mention spending large sums of money recording, mixing, mastering, creating visuals, and album artwork only to rush the release with no marketing plan in place." View Full Article
Posted: Jul 19, 2021
Category: Royalties
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**Guest post written by Cyber PR, originally featured on the Cyber PR Blog.
"Facebook recently released a new tool for indie artists to share their music in a much easier way. The social media giant announced their partnering with TuneCore and Distrokid early this summer. Cyber PR discusses what this means for indie artists and what the new partnership entails." View Full Article
Posted: Feb 1, 2021
Category: The Musician Business
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**Guest post by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan of MakingMoneyWithMusic.com. Originally featured in the Disc Makers Blog. Reprinted with permission.
"While you hear a lot about independent musicians and how you can build a music career with a do-it-yourself mentality, doing it yourself doesn’t mean doing it alone. There isn’t a singular music industry. Instead, there are industries that serve every facet of the foundation upon which you build your career, and you have to master them all to succeed and grow as an artist...Today we’ll tackle another subset of roles to help grow your music career: those associated with merchandise and getting media exposure."
View Full ArticlePosted: Oct 28, 2019
Category: The Musician Business
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**Guest post written by Ari Herstand. This is an excerpt from his book How to Make It in the New Music Business (second edition). This post was originally published on Music Connection.
"Before you release your next single or album, make sure you set it up for the best chance of success. Don’t forget to do these 26 things before the release..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 26, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Alper Tuzcu, a Berklee College of Music and Denison University alumni, a Boston based guitarist, songwriter and producer, and regular contributor to the Adva Mobile Blog.
"A high stream-count on the first day of your song release can be an indicator of success for your newest song or album on various streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Why is this important? Because in order to get placed in large playlists with thousands or millions of followers, you have to boost your first-day stream totals AND also be getting fans to save your song to their queue or library."
Posted: Feb 27, 2017
Category: The Musician Business
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**Guest post written by Nicholas Rubright of Dozmia.
"Releasing music requires a huge amount of work, which makes it easy to miss something important. In addition to promoting your new release – sending it to radio stations, getting bloggers to write about it – there are some important things to take care of on the administrative side. Here’s a checklist of all the boring things you should take care of when releasing new music..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jan 3, 2017
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Nicholas Rubright of Dozmia.
"Succeeding in the music industry is hard work. You're competing with literally millions of people crawling their way to the top. However, most of these people don't know how to effectively market themselves or their music...Instead, set yourself apart from the crowd by learning all you can about different music marketing tactics, and treating your music career as a business. Here's a list of 50 music marketing strategies to get you started..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Feb 22, 2016
Category: Selling Music
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**Guest post written by Corey Koehler, an indie singer-songwriter from Minnesota, as featured in his blog MusicGoat.com.
"For the past 30-40 years musicians have been releasing albums. Many times the time between those albums was a year or more. Many bands and musicians these days still model their own release schedules after this same one. This is a mistake. These days you should be learning how to release a single and doing it often. Here's why..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 30, 2015
Category: The Musician Business
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**Guest Post written by Dave Cool of Bandzoogle.com.
"...it can be difficult as an independent musician to determine the best path to take for long-term growth and success. Ultimately this crossroads is met with three separate avenues: DIY (Do It Yourself), Independent Label, or Major Label. There are pros and cons to each avenue, which should be weighed carefully against what type of musician / band you are and how you expect to see growth." View Full Article
Posted: Jul 29, 2013
Category: Promotion
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**Guest post by Bryan Farrish Radio Promotion as featured in their Song/Album Promotion Articles/Advice/Content.
"It works like this: Radio stations are paid based upon their ratings (the number of listeners they have.) If a record label exposes an artist to many potential fans by way of performances, posters, TV, articles, or film, and these fans then want to hear that artist's song, they will have to tune in to the radio station that plays it. This means that this radio station is going to get all these new listeners, and thus is going to have higher ratings. But new acts can't do any of this for a station, and the station knows this."
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