Achtung, baby.

One of the most important topics for any artist that creates and sells their work is sales and marketing, and more pointedly, how to gain the attention of the buying public in a market that is very much oversaturated.  Speaking from experience, the music industry is highly competitive and the advance of technology over the last 10 years has made it increasingly easier and more affordable for musicians to record, produce, manufacture and distribute their own original music.  No longer is it necessary for musicians to have to spend upwards of $3,000 a weekend to record in a high end studio.  With some research, experimentation, technical know-how and decent, affordable recoding equipment, DIY musicians can create a home recording that sounds good enough for commercial release. 

That’s not to say that highly experienced recording engineers and high quality studios are a thing of the past.  Sonically, nothing will ever replace the expertise and knowledge of a seasoned, educated recording engineer using top of the line equipment.  My point is that musicians in the early stages of their careers, or those who can’t afford the services of top-end recording studios now have a viable alternative that will allow them to develop their audience base and release recordings.

As far as music distribution, if you take the physical manufacturing of compact discs out of the equation in favor of MP3 files, then the process becomes even more truncated and almost instantaneous.  It has never before been easier to reach the audience in such an immediate manner.  So, with this glut of new music being created and sold both retail and over the internet, how does one stand out?  Although technology can play a role as a tool with which the artist can make an impression on the listener, in the end it is the musician’s story, personality and musical voice that needs to be communicated, and some old fashioned best practices and techniques often times still produce the best results.

Derek Sivers, a seasoned longtime professional musician, founded CD Baby, the largest online distributor of music.  He has been called a music business folk hero by Esquire Magazine, and largely built up CD Baby with a grass roots and endearing approach.  Although the volume of the company’s business is large, there is little “corporate” about it and in many ways the site levels the playing field for independent musicians.  Derek is also a champion of the independent musician, and does not hesitate to offer his wisdom and experience to help out bands or musicians trying to make a name for themselves.  An example is this 70 page guide written by Derek that covers various approaches to marketing, networking and how to gain attention for your work.

It’s Getting Better All the Time

Anecdotally speaking, support for creative professionals in Cleveland is currently the most robust I have seen in my 17 years of playing music professionally.  When I first started out in my early years as a freelance jazz/rock/roots music bassist and manager of musical acts, support services and funding for artists and small arts groups was limited.  The local foundations did a great job of supporting arts nonprofits and cultural institutions, and they still do to this day.  But in many cases those funding streams rarely reached the hands of the individual working artists, who in many cases needed revenue to support their overhead.

I would say that in the last few years or so the working, creative professional in NE Ohio has been provided with new avenues of support on several different levels.  The local foundations still support important programs of arts organizations, which in turn employ and engage many independent artists.  The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture has for the past decade worked tirelessly to improve the conditions for arts organizations and working artists in our area, namely by affecting public policy, creating and delivering the Artist as Entrepreneur Institute and most recently by operating two rounds of the Creative Workforce Fellowships, a publicly funded program in connection with Cuyahoga Arts and Culture that has delivered over $800,000 in grant money directly to working artists.       

This past week another level of support for the creative workforce was announced by the Noteworthy Federal Credit Union (NFCU), a nonprofit organization that provides musical instrument loans and financial products to the arts community.  NFCU rolled out its Creative Arts Project (CAP) loan recently, which is a loan meant to help artists, musicians, filmmakers and other creative professionals capitalize themselves in order to start or complete an artistic project.  This type of loan is needed by the arts community, as many artists can attest to the difficulty in convincing a bank or other lender to provide a loan with decent interest rates in order to fund a recording session, buy a Hasselblad camera, or purchase an embroidery machine.  While these items are crucial to the artist for the development of their arts project, convincing a lender of this is sometimes an exercise in futility.  NFCU, a member owned part of the arts community, understands this dilemma and works to help capitalize artists so that they are free to create their work.  They are also a humane lender that will work with the borrower to make sure that they keep their instruments, machinery or other arts equipment.  In their 50 year history, NFCU has never once had to repossess a musical instrument for which they were the lender.