Como Fazer Os Contatos Certos Na Indústria Da Música

How to Make the Right Contacts in the Music Industry

First of all thanks to Tom Hess  for this article.

Many musicians are aware that making the right music industry contacts is highly important for achieving a successful music career. The problem is that, most musicians really don’t know ‘who’ the right music industry contacts are, where to find them, how to actually transform a ‘first contact’ into a meaningful relationship, and what ‘having the right music industry connections’ really means.

If I gave you my complete list of music industry contacts (key industry people I have established relationships with over the last 20 years), do you think it would help you develop a successful music career?… NO! Why? Because a mere ‘contact’ is not worth anything. Music industry contacts need to become meaningful music industry connections. Meaningful connections are developed by building good relationships… More on this later…

However, even if you have good relationships with the right people, this won’t help you until and unless you work on having the right things in place which enables your industry contacts to feel confident enough to work with you.

So, who are the music industry people you should be contacting?… And when you get through to someone, what do you say to him/her? How can you make these important people pay attention to you if you don’t yet have a ‘name’ in the music business?

Let’s explore the first question “Who are the music industry people you should be contacting?” To answer this, you need to ask a series of other questions such as:

• Who are some contacts who have great influence and ability to help your career develop further?

• Who are the contacts who have the greatest number of key relationships with other music industry professionals and companies?

• Among the most important contacts, who are the easiest to find close to where you live?

• What contacts are the most approachable?

• Who are the people who you can help to solve THEIR problems and/or help them to reach their goals (thus starting to build a relationship with them)?

Is there a single “type” of music industry contact person or (company) who fits ALL the above criteria? The answer is ‘Yes’. And if you do not have music industry connections, this ‘type of contact’ may be your best place to begin… So, who is this type of person or company? Record label executives? A&R people? Producers? Publishers? Managers? Entertainment Lawyers? Famous bands? No… The answer may surprise you… it is “Concert Promoters”.

Serious concert promoters have massive power and influence in the music industry. They are the real risk takers of the music business. They deal with thousands of very important music industry people every year such as: well known bands, record labels, artist management, tour managers, entertainment lawyers, production companies, merchandising departments, the venues, booking agents, radio stations, the press, and more.

If you live near an urban area, you won’t have any trouble locating concert promoters who live and work locally (use Google). Unlike most other important music industry contacts, promoters are generally accessible and will be willing to talk to anyone who has ‘something real’ to offer them (that’s where you come in).

Generally speaking, concert promoters take on more risk than any other person or entity in the entire music industry. All promoters lose large sums of money every year (because some concerts lose money for various reasons). The successful promoters make (and keep) more money than they lose throughout the year (because they are able to promote other concerts with bigger bands which make a lot of money).

What every promoter wants is a reliable network of people to help make certain that the concerts/tours they promote make more money! Obviously, it’s expensive to employ a large team of experienced people. However, you can join their team (at least on a part time basis) if you are willing to, intern, earn a small salary or even work for free just to get your foot in the door and get the experience of working with a promoter. You may not yet know anything about promoting tours, but some promotion companies would be eager to train you if it isn’t expensive for them to do so.

Think about it from their perspective. If you were a big time promoter taking on huge risks, wouldn’t you want another person to work for you, for free or for a very low salary? Of course the answer is ‘yes’, even if that person could only work part time. If you can do that, they will remember you and relationships will start to develop.

Many musicians who want a music career are told to intern for a record label. The conventional wisdom is that when you do this, you will learn a lot about the music business. The reality is, most of these interns never get into a position where they can truly learn much at all as an intern. However working for a promoter, your ability to learn how the music industry REALLY works (at least on the touring and promotional side) goes way up because your level of access to what is going on ‘behind the scenes’ goes way up! In addition, the number of music industry contacts you can make are 200 times more than what you would likely make working at a record label. And compared to record labels, there is a lot less competition for internships or jobs with a promoter.

As excited as you may now feel, knowing that you CAN actually do this…. there is a catch… a big one. In order to have any real chance of pursuing this opportunity and using these music industry contacts to help launch your music career, you must work on having the right things in place which enable your music industry connections to feel confident enough to work with you. 

The truth is, nothing in this article will help you until and unless you do take this critical step.

Tom Hess is a music career mentor, guitar teacher and a touring musician. He trains musicians to develop a highly successful music career and writes many music career articles.

To learn more about turning music industry contacts into meaningful relationships, watch this free video about how to build a career in the music business.

Universal: Acordo Sobre Os Direitos Da Música Do Prince Pode Aumentar A Audiência

Universal’s Deal for Prince’s Song Rights May Bring a Wider Audience

Prince performing in 2013. Prince’s songwriting rights are being sold to the Universal Music Publishing Group for an undisclosed sum. Credit

For months, the most closely watched contest in the music industry has been for the songs of Prince, who died in April.

Now, the first major deal for Prince’s music has been reached: The star’s songwriting rights are going to the Universal Music Publishing Group for an undisclosed sum, the company and the Prince estate announced on Wednesday.

The deal gives Universal long-term administration rights for Prince’s hits like “Purple Rain” and “When Doves Cry,” and raises the possibility that the songs — which Prince withheld from many online services — could become more widely available.

“The idea is that we are going to work very closely with the estate on the catalog of about 1,000 Prince songs to make sure that his fans from all over the world will be able to hear it and access it,” Jody Gerson, the chief executive of Universal Music Publishing, said in an interview.

The arrangement is an administration deal, meaning Prince’s estate retains ownership of the songs. It also does not cover Prince’s recorded music rights, which are the subject of aggressive bidding on their own.

The rights to Prince’s publishing catalog — the lyrics, chords and melodies of his songs — are particularly valuable. Prince maintained tight oversight over this, and in 2014 he managed to regain full control of his publishing, an unusual arrangement since most songwriters assign these songwriting copyrights to publishers.

In addition, Prince used his publishing rights to restrict where his music could be heard online. For years, he refused to allow his music on YouTube, and in 2015 he removed his music from all streaming services except Tidal.

In another sign of his unusual control, Prince also withdrew from the major performing-rights societies, which collect money for artists whenever their music is publicly performed; the estate will have to make a new such deal, or radio stations and even streaming outlets may lose the right to play his songs.

Prince died without a will and, apparently, without any instructions for how his music empire should be managed. Estimates of the value of his estate have varied widely, reaching as high as $300 million, with his music presumably making up the largest part of the total.

In June, the estate appointed two seasoned music executives, L. Londell McMillan and Charles Koppelman, to manage Prince’s music catalogs and set up new deals for his songs, which, by the usual measures, were underexploited. Tidal, for example, is available in only 52 countries, according to its website.

In a statement, Mr. McMillan and Mr. Koppelman said, “With this major agreement, the estate maintains ownership of Prince’s music, and now legions of fans from around the world will have even greater opportunities to continue to delight in his incomparable songwriting and musical expression.”

Bremer Trust, a Minnesota bank, acts as the special administrator for the Prince estate, and its actions have been closely watched by the music industry. Last month, a plan to open Paisley Park, Prince’s recording studio, as a public museum, was temporarily snared by a zoning vote by the City Council of Chanhassen, Minn.

Universal Music Publishing, which is a division of the Universal Music Group, had rights to Prince’s music publishing catalog from 2001 to 2014, when he took control of it himself.

Ms. Gerson, who took over at Universal last year, said that as an executive at other publishing companies, it was always her dream to have the Prince catalog in her roster.

“I was always hoping we could get it,” she said. “Now we got it.”

48% Do Reino Unido Não Usam Streaming De Musica Por Que Acham Caro

48% of people in the UK who don't use music streaming sites think they're too expensive

A new YouGov survey published by subscription billing company Zuora found that almost half of people in the UK who don't currently subscribe to a music streaming service think that they're too expensive.

The YouGov survey of 2,115 people in the UK asked people for their thoughts on music streaming services. It found that 90% of consumers don't currently subscribe to a music streaming service.

Out of the people who don't use music streaming services, an average of 48% of people felt that they were too expensive. 66% of people aged 16 to 24 felt they were too expensive, and the average of 48% comes from all age groups combined.

The survey also found that 64% of people who don't use a music streaming service didn't want to have to rely on an internet connection to listen to music.

37% of non-subscribers believe that the sound quality of vinyl records and CDs is superior to streamed music. Technically that's true for most streaming services. Spotify and Apple Music stream at a lower bitrate (a measure of audio quality) than CDs by default. Spotify does let you dial it up to 320Kbps if you're a paying member, though. That's vaguely on par with CDs, but it isn't a lossless format. The best-known lossless streaming service is Tidal, the company owned by Jay Z and a host of other celebrities.

8 Etapas Para Sua Primeira Canção: De Uma Ideia a Uma Produção Profissional

8 Steps to Your First Song: From Idea to Professional Production

It’s always exciting to hit upon a song idea which can be the next big sensation.

But translating that idea into a song or an album can be a daunting task, especially if music production is new for you.

In this article we will demystify the process of creating songs from scratch.

A song starts with either a catchy melody or a set of powerful lyrics. Then music is added to the song, the song is given a structure and then it is recorded and goes for final post production. Let us look at each of these processes in detail.

1. Tune/melody:

The basic starting point is the tune or the melody you have in your mind.

To give an example of melody- think of your favorite song. Now just hum the song, without any words.That’s right- the bare humming, without any music or a word is called the melody of the song.

It might sound very basic, but it is the heart of the song. The melody has to be catchy and something your listeners can connect to.

2. Lyrics:

The melody needs a good set of lyrics which can express your thoughts and ideas.

You can either hire a lyricist or you can write your own. These two steps are interchangeable as well.

Sometimes you might have a few lines of lyrics first and then set them to a particular melody. Either approach is fine and there is no right or wrong way.

3. Arrangement:

Adding background music to the melody and lyrics is called arrangement.

This includes drums, guitars, bass, strings, percussions or even exotic didgeridoo!

If your song falls under the rock, blues, Jazz or similar genre wherein you require live instruments, you need to find some good band mates or session players. (Session players are professional players who will play according to your guidelines, but are not a part of your band. You need to pay them for their services.)

You need to decide what kind of music will best suit your song. Your band mates or session musician will help you compose and give a structure to your song, including lead music, beats etc.

If your song falls under the electronic genre like club, ambient, drum n bass, you need to hire an arranger who will arrange and compose the entire music for your song. Generally arrangers are a one man army and they have huge sound libraries and virtual instrument collections, which they use to compose the entire music for the song.

4. Pre-production:

Once the music of the song is finalized, you need to practice with your band members till you can play the entire song, with proper feel and without making any mistakes.

By now the entire structure of your song is finalized and you pay attention to the vocals, chorus and the entire feel of how the song is being played. You can do improvisations on the tempo or playing to make the song better.

5. Studio Recording:

Once you are confident that your singers and musicians are very well rehearsed, you can book a studio for the final recording.

If you have programmed the entire song, you will just need to record the vocals in the studio. But if your genre is rock etc, you will have to record all the instruments (drums, bass, guitars etc.) as well as the vocals in the studio.

You might have to play the song multiple times to make sure everything sounds on pitch and right on tempo.

6. Editing:

Once you have recorded the final song and are happy with the recording, the sound engineer will edit the tracks.

He will meticulously go over all the recorded tracks and remove errors, mistakes and noises. He might also correct the pitch and adjusts the tempo to make the song more tight.

7. Mixing:

Now the engineer has everything he needs to mix the song.

This is the most critical phase of production which will determine the sonic quality of your song.

All the different tracks, including the instruments and vocals are leveled, balanced, and EQ’d so that the final song sounds crisp and punchy. Each instrument is given its own stereo space. [Editor's note: if you've decided to do everything yourself up to this point and need help with mixing, 

8. Mastering:

Mixing is not enough to bring out the true sonic quality of the song.

Once the track is mixed, it has to be mastered by a mastering engineer. This is the final step in the production chain. Mastering adds the final shine to the song, making it sound, loud, clean and professional. Generally you hire another studio which specializes in mastering and has a dedicated mastering engineer.

Once the song is mastered, your song is ready to be broadcasted! You can use various online marketing services, radios and record companies to market and promote your song. So go on, make some cool songs and you never know you could be the next Beatles!

Amazon Esta Perdendo Dinheiro Com o Seu Novo Serviço De Música

Amazon Is Actually Losing Money From Its New Music Service

First of all thanks to Bobby Owsinski  for this article.

The major record labels are adamant about keeping the price of a music streaming subscription at $9.99 per month, regardless of the platform, so it was a great surprise last week when Amazon announced that its new Amazon Music Unlimited service was priced at $7.99 per month for Amazon Prime members. It turns out that the labels haven’t softened their pricing stance at all, as Music Business Worldwide reported that Amazon will actually end up subsidising the other two bucks when all is said and done.

It turns out that Amazon is expected to be paying out from between $5.50 to $6 each month to record labels and artists for each $7.99 Prime subscriber, and an additional $1.50 a month to publishers and songwriters. When you figure in administration, marketing, staff and infrastructure costs, that means that most if not all of that monthly fee has pretty much been eaten up.

So what’s the company’s end game? Amazon might be pulling an Apple here, losing money on software in order to sell more hardware and make a much higher profit. While Echo and Dot seem to be hits and are the leading products in this new category, there very well may be more hardware devices from the company on the way. Using music streaming as a loss-leader to make it’s hardware more attractive has been tried by many companies though, particularly in the mobile space, and only Apple has been wildly successful with the strategy.

The price subsidy could also be another way to increase Prime memberships. While Amazon doesn’t publish the actual number of subscriptions, insiders have reported it to be around 60 million, and when you consider that each one is paying $99 a year for the privilege, you can see why anything that might increase that number could be valuable. Still, it seems like a stretch to think that the average music user will say to himself, “I really want to subscribe to this music service because of this great price. Let me pay just $99 more so I can buy in.”

In the end, I think Music Unlimited’s pricing structure comes down to a little of column A and a little of column B, with most of the emphasis on selling more hardware. Almost every service looks great at launch when things look their freshest and rosiest. Check back after the first of the year to see what the reality really is.

ENCORE Quer tornar Mais Fácil Agendar Um Músico Ou Um Banda Para O Seu Evento

Encore wants to make it easy to book a musician or band for your event

Encore, a U.K. startup and graduate of Entrepreneur First, is another example of a company attempting to disrupt the traditional agency model. Targeting booking agencies, it lets you find and book a musician or band online for your event. The marketplace has already attracted over 18,000 musicians, and I’m told 30 per cent are active each month.

To further grow the company, Encore is disclosing that it has raised just over £560,000 in Seed funding. It plans to use the new capital to expand its team and begin paid marketing in a bid to increase the demand side of its marketplace.

Noteworthy is that Entrepreneur First itself has participated in the round. The investment is the first made public from the company builder’s new £40 million “Next Stage Fund”, which it set up to back alumni companies with follow-on funding.

“Finding great musicians for your venue or event is a nightmare,” says Encore co-founder James McAulay. “The booking process is clunky and slow, often takes weeks, and once you’ve finally found the right group or musician, confirming the booking involves a minefield of contracts, invoices and old-school payments. After this, the telephone calls and text message begin, along with organising the logistics of the venue and deposit payments… the list is endless”.

In addition to making it easier to book musicians and bands, McAulay says that Encore aims to improve pay and conditions for the musicians themselves by cutting out (and replacing) the traditional agency middle person. “Musicians are tired of being ripped off by traditional agents who take a large cut and often don’t have the musicians’ best interests at heart,” he says. “Encore brings transparency to an industry that desperately needs it”.

The site works as follows: those putting on an event simply submit the type of musician or band they wish to hire, providing details like instrument, genre, and time and place. Encore then takes that information and sends out an alert to matching musicians and bands who are registered on its mobile app.

Musicians that are available and interested then respond with a quote and the booker can check their profile and Soundcloud links etc., and ask any follow up questions before making a booking. Payment is then processed via Encore, which takes a 15 per cent booking fee along the way.

“Instead of forcing customers to browse directories of musicians who may not be available, we ask for one enquiry that is then sent to local performers,” explains McAulay. “Available acts respond with a tailored quote for the event, usually within twenty minutes, giving the client a shortlist of suitable acts to choose from. Quick, simple and efficient”.

Pandora Perdeu 250 Milhões Este Ano - Irá Trocar O Modelo De Negócios Para Salva--la?

Pandora Has Lost $250 Million This Year -- Will Switching Business Models Save It?

HOUSTON, TX – OCTOBER 18: Singer-songwriter Yuna performs onstage during the Life at Pandora Gallery on October 18, 2016 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for Pandora)

While it is still one of the biggest and most influential players in the streaming music industry, not everything is looking up for Pandora, which has been losing huge sums of money all year. According to financial documents just recently filed, the company’s third quarter had some positives and negatives, but it’s by adding up the figures from the first half of 2016 that the real scope of the monetary problem becomes clear.

In its third quarter, Pandora posted a loss of $61 million. Adding that number to the amount lost in the first two quarters of the year brings Pandora’s total losses so far this year to a hefty $253 million, which isn’t safe ground for any business to stand on. With three months to go, its total losses in 2016 could hit the $300 million mark.

There are several factors hurting the company’s bottom line, but it seems like one of the biggest financial burdens for the internet radio behemoth could also wind up being one of its biggest and most important revenue sources soon enough. The company’s CEO, Tim Westergren, admitted to investors while sharing the numbers that part of the reason why losses were so high this time around was because Pandora had to pay advances to content owners for licenses that would allow the company to launch its new streaming tiers with some on-demand-leaning features, which were revealed last month. 

It’s believable that paying for those licenses did hurt Pandora’s financial standing in the past quarter, and that depending on the deals, that could be the case for a time to come, but that doesn’t explain the past few quarters of losses, and it’s an explanation that will only work for so long. Adding on-demand functionality clearly comes with a sizeable cost upfront, but it isn’t the only issue the company faces, and Pandora will need to find money elsewhere if it wants to balance the books.

It certainly hurt the Oakland, CA-based radio giant’s wallet to pay for everything necessary to become something of a “new entrant” to the on-demand streaming market, but it could come with huge payoffs, and it might be just the thing to slow down all of these unfortunate losses. With its newly updated and recently announced Pandora Plus tier, the company is much closer to competing directly with massively popular options like Spotify and Apple Music, which are growing at faster rates when looking at user numbers.

It might be priced at only $5 per month (at least that’s the most attractive option), but if Pandora can convince even just some of its 77.9 million users (down from 78.1 million during the same period last year) to switch to this paid tier, while also recruiting new members, the big bill the company just paid, and which it will continue to pay, could wind up being a solid choice, and there’s a chance that the future is a bright one for Pandora.