September 10th, 2007
blik surface graphics are oversized, geometric decals (think stickers for grownups) that allow anyone to quickly & easily create custom wallscapes in no time. The decals are self-adhesive & removable, so your blank walls have no excuse to be bare.
I think their products could come in handy for bands and labels alike. Promoting a new record or a big show, get their decals and paste them all over the town. Want to put your band’s van and/or trailer to use to market your album or website, use Blik. Want to make your office or practice space look badass, use Blik. I am absolutely in love with the many possibilities that Blik and your band or label has together.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 1 Comment
June 21st, 2007
I have been meaning to write this post for a while as I have been a very happy user of Music Arsenal. Music Arsenal is a web-based contact management tool with so many more features aimed for use by Bands and Labels. I really hope that everyone who reads IndieHQ considers checking out Music Arsenal as it is capable of being your band or label’s greatest asset.
I will explain briefly some of the many uses that could be of great help for you:
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Written by Virgil Dickerson | 2 Comments
May 31st, 2007
I purchased this book a while ago, but I kind of shelved it in favor of some other books. While waiting for the delivery of my copy of the IndieHQ book club book, The Dip
, I decided to start reading Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day. The book is amazing. I did not want to suggest it for the book club, but I highly recommend everyone get this. Lifehacker is one of my favorite blogs and this book will become my handbook for using technology to simplify my life.
So far, this book has already given me helpful tips on reducing the distractions associated with email (it forced me to change my Thunderbird application from checking email every 5 minutes to every 30 minutes). I have also started to autostart certain applications upon startup and am learning to set my computer to automatically back up and defrag certain parts of my computer. And I have only read the first 3 chapters.
I imagine that many of you are like me where you jump at the opportunity to make your life easier through technology. To read more about the book, click the link, this book has my highest recommend.
Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day
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Written by Virgil Dickerson | 18 Comments
May 23rd, 2007
Back in March, I had announced our little informal book club and had mentioned that I was reading “All You Need to Know About the Music Business” by Donald Passman. I had planned to finish the book sooner, but due to a number of factors, I just recently finished the book. I am not sure if anyone on this site picked up the book and also read it, but if you did, I would love for you to share your thoughts.
I think that the book is a valuable resource for any band or label as it covers a lot of ground in great detail. You should reserve space on your bookshelf for “All You Need to Know…” as I can see needing to refer to it from time to time. The book was written with mostly bands in mind, but whether you plan to run a label, book bands, or manage them, I recommend that you pick up this book. Understanding the information in this book can be helpful no matter what realm you are involved in. I even learned a few things with regards to how majors approach royalties and how acts handle publishing.
Although I consider this book required reading, I do have some criticisms. One, the music industry is always changing and even with this newest edition, there are so many things not covered. No fault to the author, but the book only touches upon digital distribution models and the current state of the music industry. Two, and probably my biggest gripe is that the book primarily deals with major label thinking and most bands are going to get distorted images into their heads about it all works. The many examples in the book involve major label budgets and royalty handling and honestly, this is not how many indies handle things.
I guess in recommending this book, understand that Majors and Indies are like night and day and you are only getting part of the story with this book.
What are your thoughts?
I will be announcing another book soon so if you have some suggestions let me know. I am leaning towards making “The Dip” by Seth Godin my next book club selection. The book is described as, “A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)” which might not be bad reading for those of us running labels, in bands, or involved in the music industry at all.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 5 Comments
May 21st, 2007
I have been asked a handful of times recently about how to handle larger email campaigns. Most email providers limit the number of emails you can send out in a day and when you get to that point, it is time you consider using an outside service. I would like to introduce you to Fanbridge. Fanbridge specializes in Email and Mobile fan management for bands.
With Fanbridge, you can upload your existing email list, add emails manually, and put sign ups up on your website and myspace profiles. Once you have an email list, you can send out html or text emails; schedule your mailouts; and since it is web-based, you can sign on from any computer to send out a newsletter. That can be especially handy if you are on the road. You can target specific sendouts to fans by City or State as well as monitor how many people have signed up or unsubscribed to your email list.
The best part is you can try out Fanbrige for free and as your email list grows, they have many pricing options based on how many subscribers you have.
I highly recommend every band and label have an email newsletter. You cannot count on Myspace bulletins as 5 million other bands are sending out their bulletins at the same time. Having your own email list of fans will help your sales, your tours, and having compelling updates will keep your band/label in the minds of tons of overwhelmed music fans.
Learn more about Fanbridge.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 7 Comments
April 10th, 2007
Have you ever been driving home when you just remembered something you forgot to do at work? Or a really rad idea that you know you will forget if you don’t write it down immediately? Now you can call a phone number, leave a voicemail, and it will be transcribed and sent to you via email or text. Set up contacts and groups on your account and you can also send messages to friends, co-workers, or colleagues by leaving a voicemail. That is how Jott works.
It is free to use (at this point) and although I have only used it over the past weekend, I plan to use it quite a bit. I also think that this has a lot of possibilities for bands and labels. Here are a couple that I can immediately think of:
- Instead of texting my bands guest list requests on the day of the show, I will phone them in.
- You can set up groups so it is possible for bands to set up groups by City and phone in show reminders on tour to their entire phone/email list.
- When giving messages to band(s), you can make one phone call to get a message to everyone at the same time.
- I am an idea man and most of my ideas come to me when I don’t have pen and paper.
- Got a big press release, you can set up a group for press and make the big announcement through Jott.
This is just a small example of the possibilities. Feel free to comment on your experiences and/or plans for using Jott. If you speak clearly, Jott does an incredible job at transcribing the message. Man, I love technology!
Written by Virgil Dickerson | No Comments
March 30th, 2007
I have been hearing a lot about this company, Disc Revolt. I even checked it out a few times, but it wasn’t until my buddy Seth from Negative Progression called me this morning to tell me more about it that I actually gave it some thought. He even mentioned speaking to someone at Disc Revolt. We discussed it quite a bit and when I asked a few questions that Seth could not answer, I decided to call Disc Revolt myself.
I called the number on the site expecting to leave a voice mail. To my surprise I got a live person and not just anyone, but CEO Mike Shamus. He was super courteous and helpful and helped me to get a lot of answers. Here is what I found:
Disc Revolt allows bands to sell digital downloads at their merch table. They give artists/labels plastic cards that they can sell enabling fans to get a one time download of up 15 songs. They offer promotions that give new accounts 100 free cards, but after that, you can buy cards in the following increments:
- 100 cards = $99.00 (99 cents each)
- 250 cards = $187.50 (75 cents each)
- 500 cards = $250.00 (50 cents each)
- 1000 cards = $450.00 (45 cents each)
That is the only money any artist or label has to pay for the opportunity to sell their music digitally. Disc Revolt does the rest; they host the songs; and enable customers to download tracks. The price the cards are sold at are up to you, but it is pretty open. As Mike discussed it, he said that artists have been giving them away as promo and selling them between $5.00 and $10.00 on their merch table. As a label, you could sell them to your bands just like you sell them CDs. I, for example, sell CDs to my bands for $5.00 and they sell them for $10.00. There could be a similar price set up for the cards.
I asked Mike how they make money as I could not believe that they could make enough money on cards alone. He said that their business model is set up much like a CD manufacturer and it is the hope that these cards one day will replace CD manufacturing. If bands and labels in the future switch over to Disc Revolt and they are one day making millions of cards, their business would succeed on card revenue alone.
I seriously think that this can become a great new outlet for artists and I plan to tell everyone I know about it. I will also be doing an interview with Mike shortly so stay tuned. For me, probably the absolute coolest part of all of this is that I will now be able to offer an inexpensive way to bundle downloads with my vinyl sales of Suburban Home artists. I will just put a download card in each record and now people will get both the vinyl and a full album download.
Artists and Labels though could use these cards for all sorts of purposes. You could use these as promotion instead of sending promo CDs. Mike mentioned an artist that had an Album release show, but instead of CDs, they sold the cards. This honestly could be the future of digital sales at your merch table.
Please check out the site now and set up an account. You will be stoked you did.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 13 Comments
March 9th, 2007
My buddy Seth from Negative Progression recommended that I read this book, All You Need to Know About the Music Business by Donald S. Passman. He said that he was recommended the book by a number of people and that he just started reading the book. He said that it was well written and covered quite a bit of information that would be helpful for people in bands, labels, or in any part of the industry. After discussing this, I wrote down the book title and author and the next day, I ordered the book. It showed up yesterday and I just began reading. Upon reading, I thought that this would be a great book for any IndieHQ visitor to read and I thought why not start an informal Book Club. The rule for IndieHQ’s Book Club is pretty simple. From time to time (hopefully once a month), I will recommend a book that I am reading and suggest that everyone else read along. After I am done reading, I will post some thoughts on the book and hope that everyone chimes in with their thoughts. I hope that some of you will consider reading the suggested books as well as suggest books from time to time.
If you decide to pick up this book, make sure you pick up the latest version, the 6th edition which was printed in 2006. As things change so much every year, older editions will have pretty obsolete information.
All You Need to Know About the Music Business by Donald Passman
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Written by Virgil Dickerson | 12 Comments
February 1st, 2007
We have been working with a company called Kelley’s Market for the past year and a half. Kelley’s Market provides retail support for your priority releases. They deal with a vast network of retail stores and it is their mission to inform store buyers of your titles as well as set up Listening stations and Price and Positioning for your releases. I highly recommend working with Kelley’s Market when you have a new release(s) coming out or if you have a band doing a great tour. Kevin at Kelley’s Market used to work for Koch Distribution and Kelley of Kelley’s Market used to work at Initial Records for years. Their combined experience and incredible work ethic has been a great addition to our own efforts. A typical campaign finds them calling a couple hundred indie stores and then giving you a spreadsheet of stores to send promos and posters to. They also set up listening stations both discretionary and for clean product trades. I can’t say enough great things about these guys and if this is something you can use help with, email Kevin or Kelley.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 1 Comment
January 18th, 2007
So you haven’t bought a fax machine yet and have the occasional need to receive a fax? You are sick of running down to Kinkos anytime someone faxes you and need a better solution. It might be time you try Efax. Suburban Home has been using Efax now since 1999 and I could not recommend a better product. With Efax, you get a phone number that becomes your fax number and when faxed, you receive an email with a file attachment. I currently use Efax plus because I get a number of faxes, but Efax Free will work for most people. With the free version of Efax, you get a non-local number, and you get your faxes sent to you as an efax file which will require you download Efax Messenger to open the fax. If you upgrade to other products, you can get the faxes sent as pdfs or tiff files.
Regardless of which option you choose, using efax frees up having to have a dedicated phone line and one of the best perks is that you can choose to print, file, or trash the fax when it shows up in your in box.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 3 Comments
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