Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

Planning Music Industry Goals

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This is part 3 of a four part series on treating your career in the music business or as a professional musician like an entrepreneur.

Click here for Part 1 – Being A Music Industry Entrepreneur

Click here for Part 2 – Goal Setting in the Music Industry

Click here to register for the newsletter to be sure you don’t miss out on the rest of the series…

Crafting a plan for any music industry project is key. It allows you to materialize an action plan, gives you a tangible list of tasks that act as a checklist and can present to potential partners, and allows you to lay out risks and pitfalls in order to nip problems in the bud.

The key element to ANY music business plan starts with your end goal in mind. We talked about setting goals in the last newsletter so if you missed it, click here. Clearly state the specific goal you have and then list a few of the positive outcomes it will create. Your goal can include acquiring new fans, creating a fanbase mailing list, getting in touch with music supervisors about music licensing opportunities, or even your next EP or album project. Let’s use creating a mailing list as an example.

Example: Create a mailing list based on email addresses acquired at live shows of at least 50 fans over the next 4 gigs.

Once you have your goal stated clearly, you can then consider the steps it might take in order to achieve the goal:

  • Register for an email service
  • Research and choose a way to collect emails at gigs (ie: apps, sign-in sheet at door, collect after the show)
  • Outreach to local venues to get more gigs
  • Write, edit, and practice mic banter for asking for emails at gig
  • Create 4 emails to be sent to the list, 1 per week for the next month
  • Promote email list sign-up via social media and website

Your list might look very different than mine for this particular project, but you get the idea. You’ve got a goal, you’ve got action steps. An excellent start to any plan. What’s next? Adding a deadline of course!

We already know we want to populate the list with at least 50 people over the course of 4 gigs. We can take this 1 step further by adding something like “or in 1 month, whichever comes first” (although, without a live gig it might be tough to populate an email list).

Then take a look at your other tasks, and work them into that time frame. Once you’ve got it planned set calendar reminders on your phone or laptop, write it down on a calendar near wherever you work, or just refer to it in the plan anytime you boot-up your computer. I will say here it is DEFINITELY a good idea to have it in front of you physically and having your phone beep at you once in a while so you don’t lose sight of your project.

Great! We’ve got our goal, our plan, our schedule, what could go wrong? Exactly! That’s what’s next. Let’s try and come up with as many things that can go wrong along with at least 1 solution for each. It might look something like this:

  • Band member has to leave town – get a back-up player for each band member lined up for gigs
  • After 1st gig, email collection is poor – consider giving away an EP or band sticker in exchange for an email sign-up
  • Not able to get more than 1 or 2 gigs – ask some other musicians about getting an introduction to a venue booker in order to facilitate getting a gig

Again, your solutions and dilemmas may look different than this, but the key is to find reasons why you CAN achieve the goal despite setbacks. This helps break barriers. Again keep in mind, you won’t find the BEST process for goal-planning immediately. It will take time to learn how long it takes to do things, and what things work best as far as accomplishing certain goals. Once you find some processes that work for you, iterating the process and tweaking it to increase your success rate.

Whatever you do, remember to craft a plan, and get started. You may not hit your mark exactly at first, but like we said in the last email, there really is no such thing as failing. Learning, improving, and tweaking is all part of the process.

Two Terrible Emails To Ensure You Will Not Get Your Music Licensed

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As my mailing list has grown and my twitter following increases, I’ve been getting emails from some of you. The crazy part is despite the writing I do, I still get some of the most ridiculously crappy emails you’ve ever seen in your life.

Today I want to highlight two such emails and encourage the folks that sent them to write down any complaints, put them in a letter, address an envelope, and then crumple it up and throw it away. There’s no helping you if you’re constantly sending garbage to people.

Here is the first email

BadEmail1

Seriously? They haven’t even changed their default mail name from “Yahoo! Mail” – and, oh yeah, they SPELLED MUSIC WRONG. Are you serious? How does this person expect me to respond? Here are a few responses that immediately jump to mind:

  1. NO!
  2. YES, I am able to, but I won’t.
  3. What the hell is “muaic?”
  4. Dear Yahoo Mail, I wasn’t aware that non-living computer entities were even self-aware, much less writing compelling “muaic” that I may or may not be able to listen to! PLEASE tell me more!

Look. If you can’t write a complete sentence, give up now. If you can’t do an inkling of homework BEFORE you reach out to someone, give up now.

People will tell you to follow your dreams – I am telling you to stop immediately following your dreams if you can’t write a complete sentence with properly spelled words – you’re wasting everyone’s time. I’m more compelled to open spam emails than garbage like this.

Moving on to email number two

This person can at least write sentences and has included their name. Big improvement.

However, they COMPLETELY miss the point of one of my FIRST key elements of marketing your music: they make it all about them.

I’ve blurred out the info but take a look:

BadEmail2

Do you see why people aren’t listening to your music? Do you get it?

If I sent you an email that was incredibly verbose and offered nothing but biographical information, would you ever read it? No, you wouldn’t. You’d sigh heavily, throw your sandwich across the room and run to cry under your bed.

Remember, your goal is to get the person to listen to your music, but you want to be relevant to the person you’re writing to.

If you want to jump-start your outreach efforts, subscribe to my email list. You’ll get a free 8-part music licensing how-to course delivered right to your inbox.

3 Must-Know Music Licensing Contract Points

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Many musicians find the legalities of the music industry scary or, according to some research from my blog and newsletter, haven’t even looked at a contract. In fact, the music industry itself has made a point to tout it’s legal strength anytime someone tries to do something inventive and effective in the music space, rather than trying to learn from or emulate the result (zing!).

The fact of the matter is that yes, you do need a lawyer to review your contracts and licenses. However, you don’t need one in order to understand the fundamentals of a license. You see there are three key terms when a television show, film, or ad agency wants to license music. These 3 terms are also the foundation of negotiations and help determine the cost of the copyright to be used. Here they are:

Media: This is essentially the “what” of a music license. Will it be broadcast on TV, streamed on the internet, or will it be used for an in-house presentation? It can be any one, or any combination of, pretty much anything you can think of.

Term: This is the “when” of a music license. Licenses can be as short as a one-time usage or as long as eternity (called perpetuity). While there are few times as an artist you would want to license a song in perpetuity, this is something music libraries do with relative frequency. It also saves a huge headache for the producing company, and keep in mind a license in perpetuity is only for the ONE usage outlined in the media definition.

Territory: This is the “where” of a music license. This will delineate where exactly this particular project is going to show up. Will it show up all over the world? Will it just be in Ohio? Maybe it’s going to be shown at a convention center.

There you have it, the licensing basics. Keep in mind all of the above can be adjusted and negotiated and the cost of the license should reflect such adjustments.

One final point: It comes down to how many people are going to see a project, and how much you value your music, the exposure, and the project itself. If someone wants to license your song for all-media, worldwide in perpetuity (which I would HIGHLY advise against unless you’re running a music library), they’re anticipating a lot of people are going to see it. This means the exposure is high, which is great, but they’re also asking for a lot of rights which means it should be a cost consideration vs. the history of your song.

When it comes to contracts of course consult a lawyer before signing anything. But understanding these basics should help give you a good idea of how to gauge a music license and evaluate a proposed fee to ensure you’re getting a great deal.

If you’re REALLY serious about getting your music licensed, subscribe to my newsletter for a free 8-part how-to course, music publishing 101 audio download, and more!

A Recent Email To An Independent Musician Like You.

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I recently responded to a friend’s email and I realized it has some fantastic tips that every independent musician can use if they’re looking to take control of their music career, get their music licensed, or simply improve their music marketing. Here it is (edited for anonymity’s sake):

It is my personal view that musicians need to know that they are entrepreneurs, and not by choice!, with the industry the way it is currently.

The reality is you can do pretty much everything you need to except for have a lawyer review contracts – and even that you can learn a lot on your own (but seriously, always have a lawyer review). You may have already realized this.

So to get started, you should focus on areas where you think your music will excel – I’d recommend honing in on a specific media (ie: advertising, film, tv, video games). Each of them have their own plusses and minuses, however if you have a particular contact or know someone who works at the following (I just wrote a piece on this to my email newsletter (you can sign up here). It’s free but I try to provide real actionable advice for independent musicians just like you):

Advertising:
– Ad agency: Loads of folks work at these, you need to talk to individual ones. See the newsletter for specific titles, but friends are your BEST inroads.
– Brand: You want someone in the marketing department ultimately. Often times brands let the agency choose the music, however if it’s a music centric brand like Coke or Pepsi, they get more involved.

Film/Tv:
– For TV you’re looking for production companies that are working on particular TV shows – you can find these by watching the credits on any show that you think your music could fit with.
– Films are no trickier, check out Variety – you want the general status of the film to be in post production (where they typically are licensing the music).

Video Games:
– Most major video game companies have music departments that deal with licensing the music they want and hiring composers. For composing custom, you need to be in touch with the “audio” folks. For music, they’ll have separate people of varying titles. Some googling goes a long way

Also, if you have a bunch of scratch tracks that never turned into songs, or songs that were never released, I highly recommend digging them up. It’s nice to have more to offer. You can also mess around with cutting them down into 30 and 60-second versions.

If I were you, I’d start talking to your really good friends and see how many of them know someone at an agency, production company, or work in TV & film. You might be surprised. Then try to arrange a meeting with that person (or if you know someone directly, even better).

More questions? Let me know – and seriously, the newsletter will be useful to you in a lot of ways.

Also, I go into A LOT more detail about building genuine relationships and how to put your best foot forward when pitching yourself. I’ve also covered some great info on what to say when you find a great connection.

Again, you can sign up here.

Who Wants to License Your Music?

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In my last article, I mentioned recent efforts in getting to the bottom of what independent musicians want to know most about getting their music in film, tv, and advertising. By far, the top answer is “who do I contact?”

Who Ya Gonna Call?Today, I’m going to give you some ideas about who might be looking for music and where you can find them. Most of the information you need exists online as far as WHO you need to contact. Here’s a quick rundown of some GREAT resources.

Television & Film – It seems like everyday there’s yet another television show going on air and I would venture to say that 99% of them use music. The easy win here is IMDB. Check out a show you think your music would be appropriate for and bring up the full “Cast & Crew” details. Do a quick find on the page for the word music or music supervisor, and voila. Another idea is to simply check the credits on your favorite show that you DVR, and then Google the person’s name.

Advertising + Music

Advertising – Ad folks are no more difficult to find. Probably the biggest downfall to the ad industry is that the creative decisions might be funneled to a specific music producer but the final say is up to the end-client (the brand) or, at the very least, a group of creatives at the agency. This makes it tough because you can get into the running for a spot, but then at the last minute someone else can come along and veto. It can be a frustrating process if you let it get to you but if you learn to roll with the punches, something will come along. The best place to get contact ideas is AdWeek. It’s a cool publication all around if you have any interest in advertising outside of music, but they often post credits for their “Ad of the Day” where you can get names of specific people working on specific brands across the globe.

Video GamesVideo Games – Video games can be a bit trickier, but you have to remember that the people with the coveted positions as music producers and music supervisors have been interviewed, participated on panels, and generally are bombarded with enough attention that digging them up on Google is easy. Give LinkedIn’s search a shot, or try googling the video game company’s name along with “music supervisor” and see what you come up with.

People You Know – You probably have heard a million times that the best source of pretty much anything is your address book. I can’t emphasize enough that having a connection to someone who can potentially use your music will be the most efficient, least painful way to go about securing a license. Both parties involved will be more comfortable leading to more useful conversations earlier on. Hit up your Rolodex and see if you know anyone that works at an ad agency, in film or TV, or at a video game company. They don’t have to be THE music contact, but they will be able to help you in some small way if you ask.

Finding the right people is really straight-forward and easy to do. If you’re smart about it, you can put it to use TODAY to start building relationships with the proper folks. I’d like to emphasize “building relationships” and not “sending emails all about how great you are.” Keep that in mind before you start dropping emails to folks, they will VERY much appreciate a genuine connection versus yet ANOTHER artist sending them more music they’ve never heard of and don’t care about.