Be advised: professional artists are business owners. This is a key message of our company, this blog, and everything that we seek to do through the educational side of our business. If you are an artist and you desire to or already do make a living from your art then you must recognize you are in business… you are a business owner.

I read dozens of new business books each year. Very few of them speak to the music business owner, yet most of the lessons of how to run a business apply directly to running a music business. You have fans (customers) who buy your products (music and merchandise) and in order to be successful you need to grow your fan (customer) base and keep your current base happy. True, this isn’t the sexy approach to the music business and it wasn’t the reason you got involved in being a musician. Yet it is possibly the most powerful lesson I could share with you.

This is why I am launching a new service called The Farm Team and will be open to only 20 bands/artists who do not currently have managers but are very serious about growing their business.

As many of you know I am a life/business coach – a service I provide for anyone even if they aren’t in the music business. The difference with The Farm Team is that I will be serving partly as a coach and partly as a mentor and the service is specifically for musicians. My interest is to help these 20 select artists grow their business to their definition of success through weekly one-on-one calls with me. If you feel that this would be appropriate for you or your band, you can read more about it and apply for the program here: http://thefarmteam.com

Regardless of whether you choose to apply for this group, I’d like to leave you with the simple message again. As soon as you choose to make a living performing your art, you have assumed the role of business owner. Embrace and appreciate this role – it will serve you well.

Of course, I don’t know the future of radio… but when asked today I realized I had a few thoughts to share.

1.  The Internet may rule – I imagine that the internet will eventually find it’s way into all of the places where we currently favor terrestrial radio (namely the car being the last hold out).  Once that happens terrestrial radio will face some significant competition, most likely threatening its survival.

2.  Community advantage – The advantage that terrestrial radio has is that it is community-based.  As you may have picked up from previous blog posts, I’m a big fan of strengthening community simply by reaching out and getting involved with what’s going on around you.  Local radio stations can speak to communities in much the same way that local friends can.  They share your home town, they know the nuances and the secrets for the community, they can talk about news pertinent to your town, and be a real contributor to the local experience by playing music for that place.  Think of local radio like the local farmers.  Think of how much you appreciate the local farmer at the farmer’s market vs. the big factory farm.

I grew up outside of Philadelphia in the 80s/90s and the classic rock stations were my favorite.  Those stations and most specifically, the DJs of those stations, were local heros… and famous to me.  There was John Debella on one station and Pierre Robert on another.  I’m not sure it will be like that again, but in Charlottesville we have several stations that are very active in the community and they matter.

3.  Radio as filter – In the case of a DJ in a local community you trust them to “show” you new music.  By listening to them you are implicitly giving them control to introduce you to new music.  The DJ or station become a filter for you.  This is still an important role.

4.  User control – In some cases though, you will find times when you don’t want someone to show you something new.  You want control over your listening experience.  In that case you’ll choose to plug in your iPod and listen to your music.

5.  Reach or Accessibility – There are some places where terrestrial radio just doesn’t reach, or more importantly if it does reach there the options may be limited.  In small town America this can be the case.  I recall going to a hunting cabin in the back woods of Pennsylvania when I was a kid.  There may have been one radio station.  Last year I was on the big island of Hawaii and radio options were limited.  Guess what?  The house had a WiFi connection.  I pulled up Pandora on my iPod and chose what station I wanted to listen to.  It was a defining moment for me in thinking that radio as we know it may be going away.

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Maybe the future of radio is that we’ll have the best of all worlds – community-based internet radio stations, accessible everywhere through WiFi, and free to program any music they wish, thus acting as a true filter for its listeners.

Thoughts?

I read a book called The Talent Code this weekend and I now recommend it to you.  Many of the ideas are directly applicable to the being a musician or a business owner.  Below I will paraphrase some ideas from the book as they apply to our industry:

1.  Talent is nurtured – it takes time and consistent effort.  According to some of the greatest coaches in sports, it is rare that a genius with innate skills and abilities comes along.  Most stars are people who practice consistently and wisely to get where they are.  The book discusses the science of myelin, which is a tissue that wraps around your neurons each time you practice a skill.  It is this insulation that helps you improve a skill and it takes both time and repetition to grow the myelin.  Additionally, myelin is always breaking down and growing anew so if you don’t practice a skill for a while you “get rusty” because your myelin has broken down a bit.  A mantra often repeated in the book is:  Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals.

2.  Surround yourself with other driven people who you admire.  Though the book didn’t say this outright, I’m combining with an idea I talk about in coaching and one I’ve read from other successful people: The people you hang out with are a reflection of you.  In many talent hotbeds (like the Seattle grunge era or the rock scene in 1960s San Francisco) the author found that the athletes or musicians were surrounded by other artists honing and producing their craft.  This served as a positive feedback loop in the person’s mind.  One artist sees another doing great work and thus it makes it much more real for that person.

3.  Playing an instrument requires skill, so does running your business. As you know, it wasn’t easy to start playing an instrument.  It took lots of hard work to get to the point where you are now.  Business is a whole new set of skills.  You’ve got to experience what it means to run a business much like when you first picked up an instrument.  This is a reality.  If you want to succeed as an artist business, you must not shy away from the practice required to build your business myelin.  It may be hard when you first start out but it gets easier with time, just like learning your instrument.

4.  Imagine your future. This isn’t just some empty self-help advice, it’s real advice that has been studied.  The book points out a study of new music students that were asked how long they planned to play their instrument.  The students that imagined playing the instrument forever were the most successful group by far… and the ones who imagined this and practiced the most each day were the best of those students.

For every new coaching client I take on I ask them what their big vision is – where they imagine their career going.  Most artists tell me they can’t see that far into the future, but I think most people have just been trained not to shoot for the stars.  Take a moment to list 30 things you’d like to be or do in your life.  What does the future look like?  If you don’t define it, no one else will.  If you do define it and believe it, you’ll step up to the challenge of making it real.

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There were many other great topics discussed in the book like what makes a great coach, the concept of deep practice, how to ignite someone’s drive to learn, and the different types of neural circuits.  Too much to go into unfortunately, but if you’ve got the time, check it out and let me know what you think: ben@theartistfarm.com

Here is a beautiful 4-minute clip of Bobby McFerrin talking about Yo-Yo Ma going to an African village to experience and learn about their music.  I would have trouble describing these ideas any better so please watch the video.  It will be worth it.

Imagine the world where we always feel the music inside – that feeling that we have at festivals or on stage, that feeling of pure beauty coursing through our veins.  Imagine being able to feel the music in the world, everywhere you look – the hum, playfulness and at times darkness of the natural world.  Imagine everyone intertwining these inspirations into their own song and feeling ok with the changing nature of that song – realizing that stability and consistency isn’t the goal.  Imagine finding the song even under what seems ugly at first – the oil spills, war and violence.  Imagine being able to see the lightness beneath it all.  Imagine that world.

A few days ago I had a “blind business date” with a guy named Rob Douglas co-founder of a video production company called Squid and Beard.   (Interestingly, he has a video project in which he interviews local heros to highlight how these individual threads comprise the fabric of our community).  Rob mentioned the idea of “being part of the conversation” several times.  I had been thinking loosely about this idea recently so I asked him to clarify what that meant for him.

Fusing his words and mine, ‘the conversation’ is happening all around us every day.  The conversation in particular is how to positively push, direct, and affect civilization – this big human experience – while refining what it means to be human.  The conversation happens in both thoughts and actions – in business, in the home, in your community, and online.

There are three things I want to mention about the conversation:

1. Who is in the conversation? If you are reading this then you are engaged in the conversation.  It’s open to all.
2. What’s the best way to contribute to the conversation? As with all conversations I think it is most effective to listen, absorb and digest some ideas, experiment in your own life, analyze the results, and then contribute your findings back into the conversation.  This system helps base the conversation in personal fact/experience rather than conjecture.
3. Where is the conversation happening?  The conversation could take place with your friends, online through a blog, in your workplace, or in your community government… anywhere really.

The conversation is happening.  It’s more interesting with more people involved.   And there is room enough for everyone.  Spread the word!

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P.S – I’d like to read and learn from you how you engage in the conversation.  Drop me a line at ben(at)theartistfarm.com if you’d like to have a conversation about “the conversation.”  I enjoy knowing what you are working on, learning from you, and feeling what we are all creating together.  Thanks!

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It is often proclaimed that networking is a major key to success in business.  I have also read often about the success that coaches and mentors can have on careers.  Coaching implies someone who helps bring out the best in you on a certain area of your life.  Mentoring implies that there is a more senior business person advising someone younger.

What I’d like to recommend is another type of business relationship that I didn’t read much about in books, nor did I see it much in the companies I worked for prior to being a business owner.  I’ll call it the peer-to-peer relationship.  Peer-to-peer implies two people of similar standing getting together to talk about business and life.

I have some friends whose businesses encourage this (record labels, law firms) idea.  Many businesses I have seen don’t.  I suspect this is because it is not seen as a valueable way for an employee to grow.  The common thinking is that you come into the office, spend 8 hours there, and then go home.  But, in the Business of You, you can certainly employ this strategy!

To get some Peer-to-Peer meetings rolling, find people in your community who interest you.  Or you can ask friends to connect you with like-minded people who you may not know.  Then simply drop them an email briefly explaining who you are and how you know of them.  Ask them out to an afternoon tea/coffee at a cafe.   This ‘blind business date’ is a cross between an interview and networking.

Mostly, you are doing this to connect with your community but of course the business implications are there as well – you just may know the perfect employee for their company to hire or you may need their services at some point.  Another good reason to do it is to pull yourself away from the mentality of “I’m so busy, I could never do this.” and get you out of the office to enjoy some fresh air and face time which is always worth while.  Lastly, this is yet another way to share ideas, weave the fabric of your community together, and feel great for meeting more inspiring humans.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, your most effective marketing comes from word of mouth.  As you may also know, it is easier to retain a customer than it is to get a new customer.  Put those two ideas together and you see that it is more cost effective and efficient to keep your current customers happy so that their word of mouth will help you to gain new customers.  On top of this, mix in the benefits of the internet where word of mouth is archived and global and you can see how it is a powerful tool for marketing.

What I’d like to propose is a new form of marketing that I call “Stoking.”  Stoking puts all three of these elements together and combines the idea of “gifting” as well.  (Gifting is the practice of giving away something of value when you expect nothing in return.  The act of the gift and the pleasure it creates is the value).

So, how does ‘stoking’ work:

1.  Search the internet for your band (or business) name.  Try google, twitter, facebook, youtube, and flickr.  You are looking for people who are talking about your band.  Most likely you’ll have fans out there that you didn’t even know about.

2.  When you find some people who have been talking good things about you (archived word of mouth!) then drop them a line to say thank you and offer them a gift.  It could be a ticket to a show, a free t-shirt, a free album, or anything else you can dream up.

This simple act makes you feel great for being the giver of the gift.  It makes the recipient feel great for getting a gift and being appreciated.  And of course, it’s all good for business because you’re taking the time to be awesome and everyone appreciates that.

You can take this deeper if you want by trying to track and analyze all of the responses but I’ve found that the idea of gifting stands in contrast to all of my analytical marketing efforts.  It’s not about analysis and measuring, it’s about perpetuating the giving cycle.

Try it out.  You’ll be surprised how fun and rewarding it is.

The Artist Farm and I have created a gift for our community – a pledge to eliminate litter at concerts.  You can read why you should sign this below, or you can go directly to the pledge here: www.cleanconcert.org

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I think we can all agree that the world would be a better place if we humans could be zero waste. No more trash, and everything used or decomposing in a healthy cycle the way all other animals do it.

The entire ecosystem of packaging, creation, use, disposal, recycling, and all that… it’s big- too big for most of us to comprehend. But there is something simple you can understand. You.

What can you do to affect any change here?

The answer starts with a simple task. When you purchase something, the cycle of disposal is yours with that ownership. In other words, if you consumed it, it is your responsibility to dispose of it properly. For bodily waste, we have toilets. For consumer waste, we have bins. Much like you wouldn’t put your bodily waste all over the ground, you shouldn’t put your trash their either.

Unfortunately, the current thinking goes that if you paid money for a ticket then someone else should clean up after you; that it is your right to litter. There is a better way!

If you want to change the world, you must first change yourself. You can start by not externalizing your responsibility. You can start by embracing sustainable values that apply everywhere (at home or camping in the woods) over situational values (that somehow it is ok to litter at concerts). You can start right now.

I have created a pledge to keep concert grounds clean, to take responsibility for your own trash, and therefore to contribute to a cleaner environment for all.

This Clean Concert Pledge is about more than littering. It is about:

• assuming your personal responsibility.
• recognizing that you are the door to change in the world.
• seeing your connection to all those around you.
• not having to worry about sitting on a paper plate covered in mustard… because grass is so much better.

I hope you’ll agree, that you see the wisdom in this, that you’ll sign the pledge here: www.cleanconcert.org, and spread the word.

Let’s keep changing the world one person at a time.

It could be argued that offering free streaming of your music is a replacement for radio.

Consider that radio played music at no cost to the listener.  In most cases radio had tremendous reach into the community.  If your song happened to get on radio and was successful, your song was heard for free by thousands of people every week.  After getting to know a band’s product (i.e – the song on the radio) a listener may be compelled to become a customer of the band.  But it took that exposure to the free sample to sell the product.

Streaming your music for free isn’t really a new concept then.  The web is just replacing the radio as the broadcast medium.  You stream your music with the hopes that enough people will hear it, get interested in the free sample and like it enough to buy the product.

What’s different is that radio served as a brand, a broadcaster, and a filter.  There was a symbiotic relationship here between bands and stations.  Cool new music strengthened the radio brand and the radio brand strengthened the clout of a band in that market.

By simply streaming your music away on your site, you lack a branded filter.  In other words, each band is like it’s own mini-radio station.  But with hundreds of thousands of them across the web.  Hoping a new consumer finds your band is like a finding needle in a hay stack.  You aren’t identifying with a symbiotic relationship.

The web is wonderful for its ability to distribute content at low cost.  But the power of a branded filter is still real and needed. Look to all of the great blogs as an example – they become filters for content on certain topics.

If you’re reading this and thinking of how you can be involved in music – consider the act of being a filter for a genre or your local market.  The medium of broadcast has been the only definite change.  The need for branded, broadcasting filters is still real indeed.

Update: A reader rightly pointed out to me that I didn’t provide any advice on how to act here.  I reread the post and clearly see their point.  So… there are two action items here.

1.  If you aren’t an artist but you are interested in getting involved in music in some way here’s an idea: become a web-based filter.  The benefit of the web is that it’s less expensive to start a hub there than it is to start a radio station, it’s less regulated, and you can play whatever you want.  This last point is a benefit to bands as well because many great artists aren’t “radio friendly.”  That’s no problem on the web if you become a filter for your specific genre niche or your market.   Artists and managers still have a need for filters to associate with but there aren’t that many out there.  Go start one and drop me a line when you do or drop me a line if you already have one.

2.  If you are an artist or manager – I’d keep your eyes out for the local filters that aren’t radio stations, especially if you aren’t a “radio friendly” band.  When you come into a market, drop a line to your best fans in that area and ask how they find out about shows.  In most major markets I have found underground message boards, blogs, and connectors through communicating with our hard core fans there.  These connections can be more effective than traditional broadcasters for the power of “Word of Mouth” they offer.

Here are a few examples of various size and style:

1. Charlottesville Indie music – http://www.nailgunmedia.com/blog/
2. San Francisco Indie music – http://www.playinginfog.com/
3. Orlando Blues music – http://www.meetup.com/roadblockbluesjam/

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In context of your projects, your life, your business:

Statistics and data offer an analytical view of your actions.  This is the black and white view.  Analysis is important since it provides a factual (not emotional) view of your efforts.

Critics by definition, judge both the merits and the faults of a work.  Approach criticism from your position of power: you are the creator, yet you are balanced enough to learn from someone else if there is something to learn.

“Doing it for you” is the most important aspect of these three.  This should be the core of every iteration.  When you choose to take on a new project, a new line of work, a new exercise – find your reason for doing it for you.  If you are assigned a certain task by your boss that you don’t want to do initially, reframe it in such a way that you can find the opportunity in it.  Make the project yours, take ownership of the reframed perspective so you see your benefit from it.

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If you can successfully frame your work and life so that you are doing things for you, then you’ll see analysis and criticism as teachers leading you down the path of improvement.  This is satisfying.