What's Wrong With This Picture?

Last year I blogged about some cool indie film projects I was involved in. Well, the most ambitious of them is slowly starting to take shape. Check out this page to watch a trailer for Heidi Meets Death. Yes, that's me in the blue shirt, and yes, I play "Death" -- but a kinder, quirkier version than you might think.

It's interesting how Erin, who plays Heidi and whose production company produced the film, created a MySpace page for her character.

MySpace now has separate sections for film, video and music videos. Have a look around and think about how you might tap into the buzz surrounding these visual forms of entertainment.

-Bob

Where in the World Is Bob Baker?

I finally put up a live event schedule web page. It includes all of my public events: music marketing workshops, book publishing-related talks, even my live music performances (yes, I still actively play part-time).

Most of the events are in St. Louis, MO. But some are in Halifax, Nova Scotia and New York City, and I hope to add dates in Chicago and Nashville soon.

So check out the new Where in the World Is Bob Baker? page. Hope to see you at an event soon.

-Bob

Remembering Laurie Z

I just received some sad news -- nearly a year late, unfortunately. But it's not too late to pay tribute to an independent musician who touched a lot of lives during her too-short life.


I never met Laurie Z in person, but we began corresponding with each other back in the late 1990s. She was an indie artist who reached an impressive level of success. We shared a passion for music and independence and empowering other artists to create music on their own terms. I wrote about Laurie in one of my Guerrilla Music Marketing books.

Erin Graffy de Garcia wrote a wonderful article about Laurie Z's life for the Santa Barbara Independent. You can read the whole thing here.

Here's an excerpt:

By the time she was ready to launch her solo career, Laurie had seen many friends get burned by their recording deals, and was determined to put out her albums herself. "My parents absolutely do not support me making music my career," Laurie told me at that time. Her father would have preferred her to go into business. As it turned out, she did -- melding both her musical gifts and business acumen by launching her own record label, Zebra Productions, Inc., Laurie Z. was not afraid of taking on a male-dominated industry to pursue her passion. The epitome of determination and perseverance, Laurie thoroughly researched all aspects of production, including promotion, distribution, radio airplay, and album pressing.

Laurie toured the country, sold more than 20,000 CDs, was featured on the cover of Keyboard magazine, and made a splash on many new age music charts. She started sharing her success tips through live workshops and a video called The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Releasing an Independent CD.

Laurie passed away in February 2006 after a two-year battle with lung cancer. (She was a non-smoker.) I searched my email yesterday and found a message from her from May of 2005, just 9 months before she died. I got chills reading it.

A friend of Laurie's was quoted on the tribute page of her web site. This sums up her life best:

"If asked, Laurie would probably tell you that her gift to the world was her music. If you ask me, her gift was teaching. She taught us that no obstacle is too great. You can be anything you want, if you just don't give up."

MySpace Indie Music Promotion Podcast

MySpace.com. It's one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, and certainly the biggest of the so-called "social networking" sites with about 145 million registered users. MySpace is the site where all your rock star dreams can come true in 7 days or less. Or can they?


Listen to the latest episode of the Artist Empowerment Radio show to find out how to really promote and sell your music on MySpace.

For more details on how to reach more fans and build your career on MySpace, check out my book MySpace Music Marketing.

Cheers!

-Bob

War Stories from the Blind Review Process

This discussion forum is for authors to share quotes or brief excerpts from funny, outrageous, or just plain awful reviews. Did one of your blind referees obviously forget his/her meds the morning of reading your paper?

Let's hear about the blind review process from people who have survived.

The Worst Year for Hit Albums in 23 Years

How can this possibly be? Interest in music in general, legal music downloads, and all the new gadgets people can use to store and transport audio ... is at an all-time high. Yet, the number of blockbuster albums (and the sales figures of the most popular CDs) continues to drop year after year.


As Chris Anderson explains in this Long Tail blog post:

It's January, so it's time to start updating the death-of-the-blockbuster stats. Here's my favorite, the precipitous decline in gold, platinum, multiplatinum albums (that's 500,000, 1,000,000 and 1-10 million units sold). According to the RIAA's database, just 285 albums were awarded one of those certifications in 2006, the lowest figure in 23 years.

The reason: As I wrote about before, we're moving from an economy of hits and misses to one of hits and niches. Consumers are as passionate about music as they've ever been. It's just that now the distribution of money and attention is spreading out. The hits aren't as big as they used to be, and niche markets are fattening up with increased exposure through blogs, podcasts, MySpace, YouTube, and more.

I've said it before and I'll say it again ... It's a great time to be an independent artist or music promoter. The tools of self-empowerment and self-expression are at your fingertips. The only question is ...

What are you going to do with them?

-Bob

How The Beatles Inspire DIY Behavior

This New York Times article is about some Beatlemaniacs and how they focused their passion to self-publish a book. There are lessons here for indie musicians. I've often said there are many similarities between the book publishing world and the music business.


These quotes from the article demonstrate why:

Like indie rock bands rebuffed by major record labels, some of the self-published authors tried getting publishing deals before deciding to go it alone. But a growing number are saying: Why bother? Self-publishing, on top of giving the authors all the profits, gives them editorial and design control too, which they feel outweighs the drawback of having to research on their own dime rather than on a publisher’s advance.

Here's a quote from Recording the Beatles co-author Kevin Ryan:

"Brian [Kehew] and I have both dealt personally with record company contracts in the past, and we could see a correlation between the world of publishing and the music world. In both cases, unless you're going to sell a million copies of your product, you will never make a significant chunk of money. The publisher or record company takes the lion's share and you get scraps."

Question: Why settle for scraps?

-Bob