How to Create a Lyric Video

For the past five years lyric videos on YouTube have been a great way to add a little extra to your music.  When the budget does not include a produced classic music video, you may be asking how to create a lyric video like those you see from some of your favorite musicians.

What You will need:

Lyrics
iMovie
and about two hours of your time and patience.

I use to create these videos as part of my job at a record label. I would literally sit there with a dozen photos of the band, a copy of the lyrics and the mp3.  After about two hours of intense listening, and repetitive typing of lyrics and pasting I would have a finished product.  Lyrics that appeared as the vocalist sang them and pictures that would rotate to keep people visually stimulated and interested.  Simple concept.  Some bands take it a step further and do fancy things with the fonts, make them tight to the beat, etc. Just remember these are videos people are going to click on to hear your music, rather than look you up on Spotify, iTunes, Facebook, and all the other players.  Either way you can monetize these videos so that they earn you money. I recommend keeping them slightly simple but use them as a road sign to your other videos and outlets on the internet.  ALWAYS provide a link to where they can buy the song.

You can do some wonderful things with iMovie and simple graphics and a few other programs.  If you don't think you have time or the ambition to do this, which I don't blame you there are plenty of people out there who can do this for you.  This is where I shamelessly promote myself. After several requests and dozens of videos done, I have added this service to my Fiverr gig list. So for $5 I will create a lyric video for you. Let me know you found me via my blog and I'll throw in a an outro that links to Facebook, iTunes, and other outlets in a nice graphic one click option. (need access to your YouTube account to make this happen).  Click Here to go to my Fiverr gig list and we can get started.  Below is a bare bones lyric video I've done for a client, nothing special. If you decide to do it yourself, good luck and don't forget to do them for all your songs otherwise a fan will do them for you and the views will be split between some fans channel and yours, if you are lucky they wont be infringing on your copyright and monetizing the video.

Free ways to promote a band

Bands and solo artists now days have several tools to help expose themselves to the world.  Most however don't utilize them fully.  Here are 7ish things you can do for free to gain fans, generate revenue, and get the word out about your music.

1 RootMusic Player for Facebook:

Rootmusic is the maker behind the nifty and professional music players on almost every popular bands Facebook page.  What you might not know is that this widget is free.  You can upgrade to the premium version for just $1.99 a month but with the recent upgrades, its not even necessary.  The features you get are being able to play all your songs on your profile, you can enter in your show dates, and even provide a nice list of YouTube videos.  Why is this important to use?  It is now the standard in the industry, people look for this tab, its what they land on when they are new to your music, so it is essentially their first impression.  If you don't have this, then you are not playing with the big boys.

2 ArtistData:

ArtistData.com is more than just a tool to use when you're sick of posting events to every social media site you are on.  It actually gives you the option to publish your events to local media outlets.  When you live in a town with very little news and events, this could generate a whole story about your band, I've seen it done.  In bigger cities you'll want to be listed in all the major event calendars and ArtistData will do that for you.

3 NoiseTrade.com:

NoiseTrade is a widget you can use to give away your music in return for an email address.  You can give as many or as few songs as you want and it is open to anyone so people can share the link with their friends.  Other nice feature in this widget is that you can receive "Tips" from fans that go right into your band Paypal Account. The more you offer for songs the more likely someone is to tip you for the gift you've given them.

4 Zazzle.com:

One of the biggest things bands have problems budgeting for is merch.  Ordering tshirts has to be done in bulk, same with just about anything else.  Zazzle has you covered though, through this site you design your tshirt, hoodies, hats, bags, etc., and people buy them one at a time.  The profit margin is lower but pay out is guarenteed. No up front costs, no need to store and organize inventory, and all the billing is taken care of internally.  Sure they costs more than the tshirts you could be selling but think of it as a way to save up money to buy a stock pile of your own, and use the sales information to see what design sells best.  Market research and fundraising at the same time!

4 Broadtexter.com:

Sometimes Facebook events are not enough.  We all have those nights where we felt like there was some place to be that we can't remember.  Well remind fans that its your show via a text message.  Don't let them forget ever again.  This service is free and actually sorts out your phone numbers via geographical locations.  So if you are on tour, and have a show in California, you can send a text from your phone and  use a special "code" and the message will be sent only to those fans in California, or of course you can send it to everyone.  Beware though, despite fans signing up for this, over texting your fans could annoy them.  Use it sparingly but use it.

5 Make Your Own Digital Drop Cards:

I'm sure you've seen or at least heard of the little business cards people can buy at shows that when they get home they can go online and download an album.  If you were to go to a site that offers this service you are generally going to pay about $58 for maybe 100 cards if you are lucky.  Sure its a good deal in comparison to physical copies of CDs but why pay when you can do something similar for free.  Bandzoogle.com offers this technology for free if you have a paid membership (Bandzoogle is a generic webpage builder designed specifically for bands). If you want to do the research and have a little html knowledge you can find free shopping cart templates and embed them into your website and create coupon codes to print on a card.  What I like to do is a little bit more simple.  Create a page on  your website that is password protected, if you don't know how to do this, use wixx.com and create page there, just follow the directions.  Simply put your album cover image on the page and some text saying click here for download.  Create a hyperlink that goes straight to the zip file on your server of the album. It will immediately start downloading to their computer.  They can share the card with friends or reuse it themselves but that just means your music is being exposed.  I recommend printing these out as busienss cards with a Word template and including an expiration date so that you can avoid the password being leaked to too many people.

6 Ditch the Web designer fees, use free Wixx:

Wixx.com is an amazing Flash based point and drop web development site.  You can pay for a premium membership that gets rid of the small "made with Wixx" ad at the very bottom and offers SEO and a direct link, but until you have the money to invest in a "real" site, this is better than nothing.  With this you can create a nice electronic press kit, play your music on the site, offer RSS feeds, a calendar, just about everything and more that you can by paying a web designer.  It doesn't take long, get the most computer savvy member of the band and the most artist one to sit in front of the computer for five hours and I guarentee you'll have a spiffy page all set up.  Then just do some redirect coding on your index page and send all your fans to the Wixx page. However if you do decide to go with a designer I recomment Putz Web Design over at www.putzwd.com They have a graphic designer on staff utilize many common content management systems so that you don't have to keep paying out money to have edits done to your site. Also along with the theme of this, they are cheap and have in the past did back end deals meaning they will take a share of sales/revenue generated by the website if they see potential in that form of payment. When you love what you do its easier to make deals that aren't financially driven.  Check them out. Tell them this blog sent you!

7 YouTube Account:

We all have them, we all watch the videos, so why does your band not have one?  Because you are stupid.  Videos are some of the most shared items on the web, no one got famous over night from a blog post, or a tweet, its all about the videos!  Sick Puppies, heard of them?  Did you know they got their break from a "free hugs video" that some one posted with their music playing?   Free Hugs!  Those stupid videos we all get giddy happy thoughts watching because some dude has a sign saying free hugs and gives people hugs.  Thats what broke Sick Puppies.  Then of course the notorious Ok Go video of them jamming out on treadmills. These videos are made with little to no money and posted on YouTube for free, then went viral.  There are no rules saying a pop punk band from Appleton, Wisconsin can't do the same. Also use YouTube videos for updating fans, video tape your tour, take the camera to the recording studio, or just put lyrics to a song up.  Great way to expose your music, not to mention now all accounts can be monetized.  That means you get paid to have an ad on the video.  Its slow to make money but get enough views and you just paid for tour with five minutes of work uploading videos.  So ask yourself, why not?

Good Luck and let me know of any success stories you have with any of these methods or others.

Booking a Last Minute Gig

It is two weeks out from a show you booked locally with an awesome out of town band and the venue cancels. This is a situation that would leave most bands without a show for that date. If your band is not content with that, there are options.

Things to consider:
Unless the show is in the same city (neighborhood in big cities) the turn out is going to be smaller. For this reason change the forecast of turnout when pitching to a venue.


Change all your marketing, if fliers are distributed go change them or update all Internet advertisements.  Send out a message to all invitees to make sure they know about the change.


One band is easier to book than two, consider splitting the slot or in exchange for getting the out of town band a show, your band can step in on a song or two.

Now, some tips and tricks to getting the show and what not to do. First step in this process is to ask friends bands if they have a show and if there is room for your band. More than likely there isn't but ask them if there are any shows they were offered that they had to turn down for that night.

If that doesn't work, check to see if there are openings at the normal venues you play at. I say check first because it is better to go in saying "I see no one is booked for..." than you just asking if you can perform.  Impress the venues booking agent with the fact that you researched the date first. Same goes with new venues, it may be last minute but there is no excuse for you to go in clueless.

Don't be afraid to ask establishments that normally don't have bands play.  Some bars get requests to play from cover bands and greedy bands only so the owners don't think they can afford to have a band in.   On the topic of money, don't expect to get a paycheck for a last minute gig if your draw is under a 100 people.  In fact I would suggest you add that as incentive to be booked.  Instead negotiate to get a percentage of beer sales, or work on tips.

Check Craigslist, there are plenty of people looking for bands that don't normally book them so they scramble for ways to find quality bands.  Post on Craigslist, offer to play any type of show, be it a graduation party or arena.

Recently I was asked to help a local band book a show less than two weeks out due to a cancellation.  They wanted help trying to get in at a trendy art bar a half hour away.  First thing I did was check to see if they had an opening and if they normally have bands playing on a Saturday (the day the band was looking to book).  What I found was that the bars website and Facebook were not maintained. Nothing was listed in the events. Normally I would call for a last minute booking, but when given opportunities like this, an in person discussion is helpful. In the business world it is all about filling a need and making money.  This company is failing at marketing by not updating their Internet presence.  Being in a band, at least one member knows how to update Social Media sites, so take that in with you to talk with a manager.  Offer in exchange for booking us last minute, you'll get them up to date on their event listings, or create a graphic for them, tweak their website, etc. The barter system is alive and well, sometimes just the gesture will impress the manager and he'll do what he can to book you. That was the outcome in this case, the band was booked, I offered my talents for a month, and in the end I've helped myself to another paying client for marketing services.  If a member of your band can perform a service for a venue than you have a potential monthly gig and a great connection.

My final suggestion would be to create your own venue.  That's right I said make your own venue, I don't mean start a business.  Rent a banquet hall and go from there.  Depending on your audience it is possible to get a hall under a hundred bucks. Some even come with a bar and bartender. Charge a small cover, basically find your breakeven point. If the hall costs you $100 and you expect to draw 5o people, your break even point is going to be a $2 cover charge. I've striked deals before with halls to get a percentage of bar sales, and charged a $5 cover for roughly 4 bands.  Get enough people in the hall and you could find yourself making more money than most venues will pay you.

Just remember to book in a location that your fans exist in or an establishment with a built in crowd.  Just getting a gig does nothing if you are playing to an empty room. Don't count on the out of town band to bring anyone, even if they are huge compared to you doesn't mean anyone locally knows about them. Finally promote ten times harder for last minute gigs. If it is out of town, get there early and hand out fliers and personally invite people you see on the streets to come watch the show. Last minute shows are never easy, if it is worth it to you to book last minute then don't slack on promoting.

When Not to Play

Recently I attended a festival that is completely free for the public.  They bring in bands from all over the state and usually one who is nationally known. This year a big radio sponsor was not involved, they were the ones who brought the big talent so to speak. As I ventured around the festival I noticed a few other things lacking from previous years, and thats when the rumors started popping up about the corrupt festival director who was double dipping and knew she was resigning so she sabotaged the whole festival. Guess what, rumors can be complete lies, in this case they were true so listen to what your fellow bands have to say about a venue, promoter or festival.  They are going to give you some of the best advice, but make sure to ask questions, don't just let your friends vent, they could be venting about an issue they actually caused.

Tip #1:
Never pay to play.  This goes for buying tickets up front and getting reimbursed. Pay for gas, and equipment just never pay a promotor to play a show.  Many nation wide promotions companies make deals with big venues to book their small concert halls during slow days. They charge bands to play or charge them for tickets up front then give them a dollar per ten dollar ticket they sell. You do the math on that, after gas, drinks, food, etc., are you making money or did you just pay to play to a room full of only your fans because the other band couldn't sell any tickets.

Tip #2:
Going back to my intro, some venues and festivals get a reputation for being shady or corrupt or just doing a horrible marketing job.  If last years festival had a bad turn out for a national act, we are talking number one song on the radio and only a hundred people half of who don't know the band standing there and watching. Do you want to play if the same people are doing the marketing for it? What if they offer you a slot at 11am when your band caters to a drinking audience that is still at work at 11am on a Friday.  If you can justify playing to a small audience who statistically will have no interest in your music, go for it, otherwise negotiate with the event coordinator to find a more fitting spot for you.

Tip #3:
Last minute gigs can be great opportunities but if your band is at the level of requiring a paycheck for every gig ask questions first. I always say, take every gig you are offered as long as it is legit but make sure you aren't going to hurt your reputation with a new venue by taking the gig.  Some venues have built in crowds some don't, if the venue expects you to bring a crowd it could be hard for you to rally your fans at the last minute to attend.  Some venue owners only look at the sales numbers and not the situation you were put in.  Be up front a voice any potential concerns you have with attendance, be proactive and book a follow up gig with them for doing them a favor.  That way you can make sure to have an opportunity to show them what you can really do with time on your side.

Be wise with every gig you book, ask questions. There are tons of middle men out there trying to make a dollar off bands. The more you know the less likely you are to work hard for nothing or be put in awkward situations.

Analyzing Your Bands Potential For Profit

Last blog we discussed how to get funding for your band in the form of a business plan.  We discussed little pet peeves investors have with business plans, and what you can do to get yours read.

In season 3 of Shark Tank, a band called Cab 20 and their manager did just what the last blog discussed, they asked the investors for money.

The manager starts out his business plan pitch with a short introduction of the band and then presented the product--the band playing. Unfortunately the manager was not a cut throat aggressive business man and the sharks picked up on that, some dropping out because of him. Kevin O'leary, the shark mentioned in last blog, did step up to the plate and made an offer for 50% of the band for the $200,000 they were asking for despite him describing the music industry as"The crap shoot who the hell knows business".  The band smartly declined.

What we've learned from researching investors and watching countless episodes of Shark Tank is that it is all about the money, especially when pitching to Kevin O'Leary. The manger discussed what the investors would get out of the deal which would be 20% of all revenue streams except publishing for $200,000.   The manager never discussed the sales and financials the band was making. There were no talks about recent tours, number of albums sold, what makes them unique in the industry that would allow them to sell thousands of records. 

The most important piece of your business plan is going to be the financial statements showing how you intend to make money. Had the manager showed that in the six months he had been working with the band, show sizes had doubled, sales were up 80% and their YouTube videos were monetized and getting thousands of hits, Kevin O'Leary may have jumped on this band for a negotiable percentage of the band that they all could of agreed to.  O'Leary thought it would be cool to have a band in his portfolio, had he seen the potential for profit spelled out to him in his language of dollars and cents, he may have offered more money to the band and taken the deal at a lower percentage of control.

One thing you can learn from researching investors is what to change in your own business plans. Prior to doing research on O'Leary, my plan was filled with ideas of money isn't everything and it is all about the music and the community.  Hugs and kisses do not get financial backing, numbers and percentages do. Scatter your mission statement throughout as a binding agent that makes it uniform but discuss profit potential or loss prevention.

A band is a unique business, but you still need to analyze your bands potential for profit.  Keep track of how many people come to your shows, Reverbnation has a tool to keep track of your concert history, how many attended who you played with and an assortment of other details. Always track merch sales, and how much venues are paying you. These numbers help determine bands worth to an investor.  Having this value could just seal the deal with a huge investor like Kevin O'Leary or land you a record deal with one of the big boys.

Side Note to Bands: Do NOT try and replicate Cab20's website, this is a horrible example of how to present your band to the Internet world.  Auto playing music is one of the must annoying widgets a viewer has to endure. An About tab should discuss the band as a whole, not as individuals. There should be more color and pictures than texts that is plain and seemingly goes on and on. Show where your band is from geographically or where you will be right away so viewers know right away if they can make it to a live show, because live music is the money money maker these days. A website sells your band to fans, venues, and investors. With tools discussed in previous blogs you can produce a quality website with little to no web design experience.

Funding Your Music

We all know the saying, it takes money to make money, and sometimes it is true. Every business has start up costs, be it for overhead costs such as rent, insurance, or inventory. A band has the same hurdles to overcome, merchandise, instruments and parts, and travel expenses. For most of it the band pools together money or saves up money from gigs, but what about bigger purchases. What if your band was offered an opening slot on a world tour but pay was not given till after the first show...overseas. Or your band wants to record a ten track album at Ocean Way Studios in Nashville, but you only saved up enough for a bathroom recording by your wanna be engineer friend. These are times when you may want to look for an investor.

Investors come in many types with much small print to understand but when it comes down to it, besides a family or friend, they will require a business plan to even consider loaning you money.  The Music Industry is a very risky business for an investor and a business plan lays out all the elements of your band.  From your mission statement to your sales figures and projections. Before putting in even a few thousand dollars into a project an investor basically wants to know his odds of recouping his money and the potentially return on his investment. Is it a simple loan with interest or is he getting a portion of you business in return for his money. How long is it going to take for the money to be returned and does he have a say in how your business is run after the investment.

Some bands who are established are able to go to a bank and get a loan, these are generally ones who have established a bank account in the bands name, have a good paper trail of income and can prove it can be repaid in a given period of time.  More than likely this will not be the case so you are going to want to turn to professional investor capitalists who will demand a well thought out business plan.

Mark Zwilling is a contributing writer for Forbes. He specializes in content to help entrepreneurs be more successful in a competitive world  In a recent article Top Ten Investor Turnoffs Around Business Plans, Zwilling walks us through the worst things to do or send to an investment firm. As stated, the Music Industry is a hard sell to any investor which is why I believe Zwilling's second tip is the most important for a band.

"Send the plan without a summary. An Executive Summary is a one page elevator pitch of the whole plan (may be separate from the plan), which gives an investor a net perspective on the key business parameters. Too many plans don’t have a summary section, or the summary is all you get. You lose in either case.?" (Forbes, 2011)

Zwilling also talks about how not showing the financials can lead to an immediate no, and how bugging the investor will lead to him probably not reading it. Some investment capitalist are obligated to review your business plan, well maybe on four of them. The show Shark Tank on ABC has a line up of investors who hear your business plan in a verbal and visual pitch. The business owners start out with an executive summary that hooks in the investors with the plans benefits and a summary of the companies sales and value. Then they ask for an investment for a percentage of their company. Kevin O'Leary is one of those investors and is known for being a little bit of a hardball player.

O'Leary sold his software company for billions of dollars and since has invested in hundreds of companies and products. He has no problem putting owners in their place when they have a stupid idea or are over estimating the value of their company. One of his questions always will revolve around the price point and the size of the market. In his blog on his website he listed Five Business Lessons Learned from Steve Jobs, one of the lessons was to know what your audience wants.

"Business is fundamentally about creating things that people want. But to do that, you have to know your customers inside and out. Do they want simplicity? Lower pricing? A better experience? More convenience? The answer is different for every business, but every business has to know the right answer for itself." (O'Leary, 2011)

As a band your product is generally music or merchandise, but you still need to know what they want. In a previous blog I talked about creating the correct merchandise for your audience and knowing how to price it as well. Take those tips when developing a business plan and the words of wisdom O'Leary has to offer.  For someone like O'Leary, funding your music isn't about if it is good or not, its about the money. Can you get your audience to pay ten dollars for a CD rather than just seven, can you make those CDs more cost effective. Do you have the ability to expand to other geographical markets and there for raise your potential for profit. The market analysis portion of your business plan will need to include information like this. Luckily this is not hard to do, Facebook Insights and Google Analytics help track geographic information of who is checking out your band.  Keeping a tour history that includes turn outs at each venue is also helpful.  Back Zwilling's list of things not to do is to say "see attachment" throughout your business plan.  Include the basic info but go ahead say see attachments for the break down of markets.  Again, funding your music is going to be more difficult than any other business, do what is necessary and include the selling points to help make an investor feel confident in what they may be giving a large chunk of money to.

A final comment is to play off an investors likes, research each investor to know these things.  For instance O'Leary calls him self an eco-investor, meaning he loves going green products.  So for him maybe push your ideas to tour eco-friendly, and produce recycled CDs, or how you rigged your equipment to run off a bicycle generator your road hands power. A business plan that has a hook is going to make you unique from other businesses looking for an investor.

References

O'Leary, K. 2011. Huffington Post. Five Business Lessons Learned from Steve Jobs. Retrieved 

      from: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/kevin-oleary/steve-jobs-business-lessons_b_1001669.html

O'Leary, K. 2011. Kevin-Oleary.com. Five Business Lessons Learned from Steve Jobs. Retrieved 

      from: http://kevin-oleary.com/posts/mentor/five-business-lessons-from-steve-jobs/

Zwilling, M. 2012. Forbes. Top Ten Investor Turnoffs Around Business Plans. Retrieved from:     

      http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2011/02/04/ten-top-investor-turnoffs-around-business-   

      plans/ 

How to Get More Likes

Every band, company, and organization out there asks themselves how to get more likes on their Facebook pages, blogs and other social media outlets.  The answer varies from spamming current followers to spread the word, to adding tags and keywords that will attract everyone, despite not having the content they are looking for. Be ethical in your attempts, provide relevant content and push it to an audience you think will truly enjoy it.

For a band you will want all your fans to follow all your outlets and that can be done by giving previews of special content from all your sources. Leave a link and a few lines from a new blog, on your Facebook. Or direct blog followers to a video only hosted on Facebook fans only page. Be creative in pushing people to other sites and then pulling them into a committed relationship such as pressig the like or follow button. Make sure you offer ways for them to share or easy buttons to other sites.  For instance you can use a Twitter button on your blog that will automatically Tweet a link to your blog to that persons followers. It is easy to install just by going to here. You can do the same things with Facebook buttons and other social media sites.  Having these follow buttons available makes it as simple as a click to become a follower on other sites.  It takes five minutes to add to your blog and can result in hundreds of effortless new followers.

As a new band you will have a lot of people searching for you the first time on a site like Google. You want to make sure to use keywords effectively so that all of your sites show up on that first page.  What are Keywords? Good question, without giving a detailed speech that goes into SEO marketing, keywords are simply a phrase people plug into Google to find webpages with relevant information.  So for your band you'll want to use your band name but maybe something extra to draw in people looking for live music in the area which I will go into a little further in a minute.

Everyone has their preferred type of resource site, some use Facebook, others websites, and some like Blogs or profile pages on Reverbnation or videos on YouTube.  Make sure all your sites use keywords that will push them all to the top page of Google.  So if your band is named Magnus Pym, it might be beneficial to add the word band to your keyword phrase.  People searching for the band will initially search for Magnus Pym until they realize they are getting results for a detective show.  Instinctively they will add the word band or music after Magnus Pym. Putting this in the title section of websites, and use it for tags will result in getting the search results you are seeking.

I've discussed this in past blogs but you can also use keyword phrases to attract new fans. Use Googles Adwords tools to discover good keyword phrases to use in things like your bio, blogs, and descriptions. A few years ago I was designing a website and writing a biography for a local band who had great appeal to the general music lover who goes out just to see new live music.  I wanted to capitalize on that, so using the Adwords tools I was able to discover that several thousand people locally searched the keywords 'Milwaukee Music" each month.  At the time few sites were using these keywords together, so it was implemented into the bands biography and website title.  The trick is to make these keywords feel natural in your content, you can't just throw it between sentences, you must work it in.  For example: Band X is a great addition to the Milwaukee Music scene. The band dove right into the competitive and diverse Milwaukee Music scene.

It is important to maintain your keywords, if one big company starts using the same keyword it could easily push you pages away on a search engine.  Prime example, Summerfest finally started to use SEO and yanked the example keyword phrase and now dominates the top search results with it.

The best answer I can give to someone on how to get more likes, is to create a good foundation online. Utilize the one click buttons to share and follow, think outside the box when construction keyword phrases to incorporate into your content and make sure to include discriptions and tags to everything you post.  Don't just supply content that tells fans what you did that day, talk about the lighthouse in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin you visited after playing at Ziggy's Corner Pub. Or take a photo of Loveless Cafe' outside of Nashville Tennessee, and a video of you failing at wake boarding at La Jolla Beach in California.  Tagging these videos and pictures and using the long tail keywords in your blog will attract people who might get side tracked from their original search to check your music out.  Capitalize on things that interest you and your band, you never know who else is searching these things because they sparked interest in them.  It is just like a normal friendship, it usually starts with a common interest.