Indie Buzz Bootcamp: Ready to Transform Your Musical Life?

Mark your calendar for June 20-22 in St. Louis, Missouri. That's when I'll present Indie Buzz Bootcamp, a life-changing, one-of-a-kind weekend event with Derek Sivers (of CD Baby), music publicist Ariel Hyatt, and a few other visionary, hand-picked speakers who will inspire you.
Why am I doing my own event when there are already so many others? Good question. Let me explain ...

I've attended a lot of music conferences over the years. Some great, some good, but most not so good. The educational part of most conferences consists of "panels" of music biz people thrown together haphazardly. They're often a rambling side show to live music showcases; not the main event itself.

And many of these panels are attended by musicians who simply want to get their demo into the hands of some industry bigshot who will save them. (Have you ever witnessed the Hail Mary pass into the overflowing demo box?) They're not there to learn and grow, to absorb and transform their lives, to build a bigger and better music career.

I thought there was a better way. So I decided to present my own event in St. Louis. One focused on strategies and inspiration and action steps you can put to use right away in the real world ... and keep using for years to come.

Indie Buzz Bootcamp is that event. If you're ready to learn and grow and transform your musical life, I hope you'll join us there.

For more details, visit www.IndieBuzzBootcamp.com and register to win a pair of FREE tickets.

-Bob

Also on this Indie Buzz Bootcamp page, you can get on a special notification list and be one of the first to know when registration opens.

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What a Difference 7 Years & 285 Million Can Make

Some interesting sales figures from Bob Lefsetz, proving that not all artists are being affected the same way by declining CD sales:

Sales in 2007, including both physical and digital, topped out at 500.5 million albums. The peak year was 2000, when 785 million units were sold. So, you’d expect sales of best sellers to drop by approximately one third, or 36.25%, to be exact.

The best selling albums of 2000 were:

1. "No Strings Attached/'N Sync: 9,936,104
2. "Marshall Mathers LP"/Eminem: 7,921,107
3. "Oops!…I Did It Again"/Britney Spears: 7,893,544
4. "Human Clay"/Creed: 6,587,834
5. "Supernatural"/Santana: 5,857,824
6. "Beatles 1"/Beatles: 5,068,300
7. "Country Grammar"/Nelly: 5,067,529
8. "Black & Blue"/Backstreet Boys: 4,289,865
9. "Dr. Dre 2001"/Dr. Dre: 3,992,311
10. "Writing's on the Wall"/Destiny's Child: 3,802,165

The best selling albums of 2007 were:

1. "Noel"/Josh Groban: 3,699,000
2. "Soundtrack"/ High School Musical 2: 2,957,000
3. "Long Road Out of Eden"/Eagles: 2,608,000
4. "As I Am"/Alicia Keys: 2,543,000
5. "Daughtry"/Daughtry: 2,497,000
6. "Soundtrack"/Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley: 2,489,000
7. "Minutes to Midnight"/Linkin Park: 2,099,000
8. "Dutchess"/Fergie: 2,064,000
9. "Taylor Swift"/Taylor Swift: 1,951,000
10."Graduation"/Kanye West: 1,892,000

So, the drop from number one over the past seven years was a whopping 62.77%! In other words, best sellers ... are outpacing the decline of the industry SIGNIFICANTLY!

The major label scorched earth policy of overexposing an album to ubiquity seems to be less effective than EVER!

Note that the sales of independent music in general and many niche music genres have been GROWING in recent years. Check out these figures from CD Baby.

-Bob


Make the most of the world's biggest social networking web site with this great primer on MySpace Music Marketing. Available in paperback or ebook format. Get more details here.

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Use This to Make a Living With Your Music

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to the blog entry Seth Godin posted today: Music lessons. He lists 15 "things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart)."

If you've been feeling confused or off balance by all the shifts taking place in the music industry, read ALL of this for a fresh perspective.

Here's one of my favorite parts, #4 (see my comments below):

Permission is the asset of the future

For generations, businesses had no idea who their end users were. No ability to reach through the record store and figure out who was buying that Rolling Stones album, no way to know who bought this book or that vase.

Today, of course, permission is an asset to be earned. The ability (not the right, but the privilege) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them. For 10 years, the music business has been steadfastly avoiding this opportunity.

It's interesting though, because many musicians have NOT been avoiding it. Many musicians have understood that all they need to make a (very good) living is to have 10,000 fans. 10,000 people who look forward to the next record, who are willing to trek out to the next concert. Add 7 fans a day and you're done in 5 years. Set for life. A life making music for your fans, not finding fans for your music.

The opportunity of digital distribution is this:

When you can distribute something digitally, for free, it will spread (if it's good). If it spreads, you can use it as a vehicle to allow people to come back to you and register, to sign up, to give you permission to interact and to keep them in the loop.

Many authors (I'm on that list) have managed to build an entire career around this idea. So have management consultants and yes, insurance salespeople. Not by viewing the spread of digital artifacts as an inconvenient tactic, but as the core of their new businesses.

Count me in this camp too. From my earliest days on the Internet (1995), my business model has been to give away free tips in order to spread my ideas and inspire people to get on my email list.

Over the years, I've heard a few references to this 10,000-person threshold. I quit my full-time job (the last one I ever plan on having working for someone else) four years ago when my email list was around 8,000.

Of course, it's not the number of people on your list that allows you to make a living. It's how you use it and deliver benefits and experiences that people are willing to pay for. But building the list is the crucial first step.

These days I offer free subscriptions to my blog, podcast and video clips ... in addition to an email newsletter. But the concept is the same for all of them: inspiring people who are interested in what you do to "sign up" to hear from you directly on a regular basis.

Building your list = building your career and prosperity.

-Bob

Check out Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook, the classic guide to indie music promotion. Now revised and updated, with four new chapters on Internet and Web 2.0 music marketing. Get more details here.

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5 Steps to Setting Music Goals You Will Reach

Last week I published a new resource called Indie Music Confidential, a multimedia package filled with 47 advanced marketing strategies any musician can use to make 2008 their best year ever. Watch this video to learn more about it.

In one part of Indie Music Confidential I share my 30 best tips on goal setting, productivity and motivation. Here are five of them:

1) What's your big WHY? You want to book lots of shows, sell tons of music, and have throngs of fans. That's great. But why do you want those things? What's the bigger reason? What's your grand vision? What's your life's mission and purpose ... and how does being a successful musician fulfill that? Yes, these are deep questions. But having a clear answer will make all the difference in the world.

2) Write them down to make them happen. And write them in ink. Don't keep your goals in your head. Commit them to paper (or at least type them into a computer program and print them out, which is still producing them on paper). The idea is to make your goals tangible, and getting them on paper is the first step.

3) Make your goals specific and measurable. Saying "I want to be a rock star" is admirable, but what is that exactly and how do you know when you've arrived? Instead, make your goals concrete: "I want to play 25 live shows and build my mailing list to 2,000 people by the end of May." That kind of goal is also measurable. By the end of May, you'll know how close you came to reaching (or exceeding) it.

4) Focus on the little chunk at hand. Don't get overwhelmed by the entire scope of a daunting project. For each of your big music career goals, ask yourself, "What's the very first thing I should do on this project?" or "What's the very next thing that needs to be done?" The answer may be as simple as "Call Sue to get the name of the web designer she used for her site." Put that -- and only that -- on your list of next action steps. Don't expend mental energy on the many steps that will follow. Just focus on that one phone call until it's completed. After it's completed, ask, "What next?"

Effective goal setting, then, is simply a matter of taking micro action steps, one at a time.

5) Just do it for 5 minutes. Wanna know the best way to overcome procrastination, hands down? Tell yourself that you'll spend just five minutes working on the thing you know you should be doing ... but don't really feel like doing now. What stops you is the thought of working for hours on end. But anyone, no matter how lethargic, can muster the strength to play around with something for five measly minutes. What you'll find, though, is that once you get started, you'll get into a flow that will carry you well beyond the first five minutes. I've done this for years with my writing projects. It works. The trick is just starting.

To learn more about Indie Music Confidential, pay a quick visit to this page.

-Bob


Ready for a Major Publicity Boost? Check out the new Indie Music Publicity Bootcamp. Ariel Hyatt and I just released an in-depth home study course filled with insider secrets on how to reach the music media and get the exposure you deserve. Get more details here.

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2008: Jump-Start Your Music Career

Happy New Year!

There's something important I want you to watch and read. Monday night, before Pooki and I left for a New Year's Eve party, I recorded a special video clip. I just posted it on this page.

It's all about how you should be taking advantage of the new year. How the slate has been wiped clean -- and you now get a fresh start and a new chance to grow your career and share your music with the world.

The video also reveals one of the most unusual resources I've ever created. I'd love to know what you think. Watch and read it here.

In addition to that, here are a few books and blogs that will help you get focused and on track early in the new year:

Organizing for Your Brain Type: Finding Your Own Solution to Managing Time, Paper, and Stuff by Lanna Nakone and Arlene Taylor. It's scary how well they have me pegged, based on their brain type profile questions. No wonder I stack things. It's part of my DNA!

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Lots of great ideas in this best-selling book.

ZenHabits.net - Leo Babauta's wonderful blog of practical tips.

Lifehack.org - a site filled with tools and tricks to help you get things done.

-Bob

Check out Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook, the classic guide to indie music promotion. Now revised and updated, with four new chapters on Internet and Web 2.0 music marketing. Get more details here.

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Beyond MySpace and Facebook: Octopus Marketing

I must be insane. My plate is already full with enough projects, errands and to-do list items to make anyone's head spin. But I've still found time lately to wade into the deeper waters of social networking online.
Sure, I already have a presence on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Ning and Digg. But after months of putting it off, I finally set up accounts at StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Meebo. You should consider doing the same. Why? I'll explain in a second ...

On top of that, I just set up a Music Marketing Video Showcase page at SquidVids.com -- a sister site to Squidoo, where anyone can create a "lens" on the topic of their choice. My new showcase page offers a bare bones video list to start, but I plan on adding to it in the weeks and months ahead.

Why all this posting to so many different sites? I do it for the same reason you should: to reach people online in as many ways as possible.

My friend Scott Ginsberg encourages people to think of themselves as an octopus. Why an octopus? Because an octopus has tentacles -- and lots of them.

To make an impact on the Web, you must stretch your promotional arms in many directions. You have to show up in the places where lots of people are hanging out online. You must be seen and discovered by people who are looking for the kind of stuff you create.

So, if you play in a Tex-Mex blues band, set up a Tex-Mex Music Video Showcase at SquidVids.com and link to the best YouTube videos in the genre. Set up accounts at StumbleUpon, Digg and Del.icio.us and link to the best Tex-Mex music sites you know of (including your own).

Write your own blog about Tex-Mex blues music and plug your posts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. In other words, spread yourself around so Tex-Mex music fans have many places to find you.

Better yet, fans will eventually see your name popping up on several web sites and think, "I see this band all over the place. They must be something worth listening to."

Now wouldn't that be nice?

Hop into the deeper social networking ocean. The water's fine. Just keep an eye out for the octopuses.

-Bob

P.S. Note that the "squid" of Squidoo and SquidVids is another aquatic animal reference. Coincidence? I think not!

Want to create a music buzz online? Check out my special report 50 Ways to Promote and Sell Your Music on the Internet.

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5 Music Web Site Design Tips

There are millions of music web pages across the Internet. Most are poorly designed (and that's being kind), many are serviceable at best, and a rare handful are truly attractive and effective. How does your site stack up?

Use these five music web site design tips to make your pages more appealing and profitable.

1. Focus on the upper left. Eye tracking research reveals that web users look first at the upper left corner of a web page, then work their way down and to the right. So place your artist name or an eye-catching image in this powerful upper left-hand corner.
   
   
2. Give visitors "eye anchors" lower on the page. People generally scan lower portions of a web page. So don't place lots of long, scrolling text on your pages. Instead, use short paragraphs, bullet points and bold sub headlines to draw attention to the things you want people to read, know about, and click on.
   
   
3. Place navigation links along the top. You probably already know that it's a good idea to place your navigation (links to other sections of your site) in the same place on every page. But where? On the top, right side, left side, or bottom? The verdict is in: Visitors respond best to navigation links placed along the top of the page.
   
   
4. Spell out your "call to action." On each page of your music web site, you should have a goal -- something you want a visitor to DO while on that page. It might be hit the play button, subscribe to your ezine, read your bio, purchase a CD, etc. Whatever it is, make that clear and include a "call to action" -- clear instructions to do that thing now.
   
   
5. Watch someone surf your web site. Corporate types might call this usability research. You can call it whatever you want, but you'll learn a ton by simply watching different people go to your web site for the first time. Don't interrupt or make suggestions. Just observe. Then ask and answer questions. This exercise will prove invaluable when it comes to making your music web site better.

December 2008 Update: Want more music web site design tips? Check out the brand new Killer Music Web Sites special report and audio. On it I critique 19 artist and record label web sites and point out in detail what's working, what isn't working, and what needs to be changed. Don't promote yourself online without these music web site design essentials.

For even more web page design tips, visit

10 Landing Page Optimization Tactics

9 Common Mistakes in Landing Page Design

Creating Effective Landing Pages

10-Point Checklist for Landing Page Design

The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

-Bob


Make the most of the world's biggest social networking web site with this great primer on MySpace Music Marketing. Available in paperback or ebook format. Get more details here.

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