Tampa Calling » Promotions

Homemade Music Symposium 2009: Conference Wrap-Up

Joran — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:43:46 +0000

Five years ago, any music industry conference would feature hours of discussion about how to get your compact disc into the hands of DJs on FM radio, or tips on how to press and package a CD that wouldn’t get buried on the desk of an A&R executive at some major label. A lot has happened in five years. On Saturday, June 13 and 14, Hillsborough Community College and The Artist and Writers Group hosted the Second Annual Homemade Music Symposium in Ybor City, and in the combined 18-plus hours of discussion, commercial FM radio was not mentioned one time.

Instead, Saturday’s daytime programming included panels and workshops like “Alternative Media Promotion,” “Marketing, Touring and Band Management” and “How to Get the Most Out of a Studio Session.” Panelists included bloggers (Bryan Childs, Ninebullets.net), social networking specialists (Julia Gorzka, Brand Tampa) and local media (Lee Courtney, WMNF; Curtis Ross, Tampa Tribune; Julie Garisto, St. Pete Times as well as Creative Loafing’s Leilani Polk). Mr. Courtney was the only radio personality in attendance. (Tampa’s 88.5 FM is a community station that still allows their DJs to play CDs – they even sometimes play records.).

The Homemade Music Symposium’s goal is to educate nascent and struggling musicians in the ways and means of the music business and industry trends. It also included out-of-town industry folk and special keynote speakers – this year, it was Tunecore’s Peter Wells and Tony Michaelides, a local author from Manchester, UK, who’s colleagues and contemporaries include Factory Records’ Tony Wilson, David Bowie, U2 and The Stone Roses.

Conference attendees were mostly solo singer-songwriter types, with a sprinkling of MCs, publishers and managers as well as other local bloggers and marketers looking to get involved in the music scene or learn about new media. There was a lot of talk (maybe too much) about Twitter and Facebook, and of course the familiar geographical gripe of how Florida is difficult to tour/break out of, because there are no surrounding states (The closest top 10 market is Atlanta). A good portion of the crowd was visibly older, some dressed in flowery shirts and flip flops, and plenty of eyes glazed over when the topics inevitably circled back to “Tweeting” and social networks.

Sorely missing from the panel of experts, especially on the panel labeled “Area Record Labels and Artist Managers,” were representatives from the handful of local Tampa imprints, namely ADD, New Granada and 24 Hour Service Station (Geri X, Win Win Winter and The Beauvilles). 24 Hour owner Marshall Dickson stated that he would definitely be involved next year, but that this time around he just had “too much on his plate.” The only current label owner in attendance was Ivan Pena, who runs Mohawk Bomb Records (Soulfound, Ascending to Avalon and Rise of Saturn). Pena seemed optimistic about the Tampa Bay music scene, and about the fast-changing online industry, but insisted that artists need to tour incessantly and start treating their band like a business or risk failure.

The “Music Critics” panel, unfortunately the last session of the day, seemed to be the most pessimistic. One girl in the crowd asked for suggestions on how to become a music writer. The entire panel discouraged her. It may be in fashion for music writers to be moody and begrudging, but one would think their passion for music could somehow keep their chins up, not to mention grateful that they still have jobs in the age of Rotten Tomatoes and aggregated, user-generated reviews at Amazon.com.

As with any conference, the nighttime showcases are the payoff – a chance for attendees to party and an opportunity for the out of town industry folks to see what musical talent the surrounding area has to offer.

On Saturday night, Tampa’s New World Brewery featured performances from Rebekah Pulley, Lorna Bracewell, The Skull and Bone Band and 10th Concession. Crowbar hosted a Mohawk Bomb showcase and The Roosevelt had planned a “green” concert featuring some area hip-hop favorites like Dynasty and powered by a generator that ran on vegetable oil. Early Saturday, word had gotten out that the generator had broken during a run-through and that the Roosevelt showcase was cancelled.

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Sunday’s activities were mainly centered around The Bunker in Ybor City, which is home to the Tre Amici coffeeshop, REAX Space, a few art galleries and the neighboring Ybor City Museum.

Some of Sunday’s workshops included “DIY Sound Recording Techniques” at REAX Space as well as “Tips on Promotional Photography” (hint: no brick walls or train tracks) and “The State of The Scene” discussion at Tre Amici.

This talk was moderated by event organizer T. Hampton Dohrman and featured Courtney, Joel Cook (REAX) and yours truly. It began as a polite enough re-cap of the weekend and what could be done differently in years to come and escalated into a microphone free-for-all on how Tampa needs to publicize itself to become the next Austin or Seattle.

Singer-songwriter Emily Roff planted herself in front of the microphone and made a case for a large music festival that would draw thousands of people from all over the world. When some crowd members yelled, “What about [Tropical] Heatwave?” (referencing the annual music fest hosted by WMNF that typically features performers from the blues, folk, Americana and world beat genres), Roff shrugged. She’d never heard of it.

Beauvilles frontman Shawn Kyle made a spirited appearance at the discussion, only half-jokingly announcing his 2012 bid for city council and bemoaning the lack of attention the local media and concert promoters give to area college campuses (USF, UT, Eckerd, SPC, etc.).

What did come from the heated discussion was a summation of points that included the following:

1. The internet has replaced FM radio as a highly-coveted media outlet.

2. Musicians must treat their music as a business.

3. Musicians should treat Tampa and St. Petersburg as two separate markets to avoid saturation. (This point was argued)

4. Even though recording and distribution has become decentralized, quality recordings and the packaging and presentation of materials is still very important (maybe even more so).

5. Bands must tour out of market (once they have established themselves regionally).

6. With the decline in the sale of actual recorded music, musicians must learn to diversify their content/revenue streams to include audio, video, performances, merchandise, ringtones et. al. and utilize networks and messaging to stay in touch with fans and followers. (See the content model here).

7. Music criticism is dead. (This point was not argued).

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Here are some photos from the weekend:
Photos by Kelly Hickman | Photos by Denis Baldwin

Record Labels Ignore Supply and Demand and Kill their Profits

Ivan Pena — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:16:56 +0000

Over the last decade, there has been much talk and figures to support the fact that the heyday of the music industry has passed, or at least shrunk.

For example, the Top 10 selling albums of 2008 totaled 19 million units, including digital sales. In 1988, the 5 top-selling album alone sold over 26 million units (George Michael’s Faith, Dirty Dancing Soundtrack, Def Leppard’s Hysteria, INXS’ Kick and Michael Jackson’s Bad).

Did music lose its appeal? Does Lil Weezy not hold a candle to the King of Pop? Do bands today suck more than those of the 80s? What gives? I am sure there has been some kind of “lack of quality” perception from some old timers and music critics, but for the most part I think its about greed and lack of following supply and demand.

Major labels have been handling digital albums with the same basic strategy as their physical albums. Due to the rampant adoption of digital music, there is a different paradigm for the supply and demand for music that they have not adopted yet. Costs structures are different. Operating costs are different. Distribution is different. So why don’t they get this yet?

Their basic strategy has been: blanket the world with as many quick blitz promotions as we can and try to charge as much as we want for it. 20 years ago, CDs and cassettes were expensive to produce. Also, recording technology was expensive and cost-prohibitive for independent artists. In addition, record stores were specialty shops and not part of conglomerate department stores and MTV spoon fed you the images and rockstar lifestyles. It was a solid formula with a high cost of entry for small players.

Now, CDs are cheap to produce, anyone can buy Pro Tools and digital retailers will sell anything you have. Plus, MTV still sells reality TV lifestyles and they don’t play music videos.

It seems music costs less and — based on the RIAA’s figures of music pirates — is demanded just and much or more than in 1988. So why have CD prices barely dropped? Why have digital album prices mimicked physical prices?

Record labels have been trying out different price points on different online retailers to see what the most is people are willing to pay for a digital album. The defacto rate for a single track has been $0.99 almost everywhere, with slight variations on some Websites based on specials, promotions and popularity. Amazon has been offering special $0.79 singles. For digital albums, you can pay as little as $1.50 and as much as $15.

Digital-album sales continued to gain ground on physical CDs, with sales of 65.8 million downloads accounting for about 15.4% of all albums sold during 2008, up significantly from the 50 million digital albums sold in 2007, which comprised 10% of that year’s overall sales total. CDs, meanwhile, represented 84% of all album sales in 2008 with 360.6 million, down from 90% (449.19 million) in 2007.

Of course, digital music’s most notable growth came in the form of individual-song sales, which for the first time crested the 1 billion mark, setting a Nielsen SoundScan record with 1.07 billion digital tracks sold in 2008. That number is up 27% from 2007’s digital-track sales, which totaled 844.2 million.

Also, the 80/20 rule applies to music purchasing. 80% of money comes from about 20% of the music purchasing population. The thing is that the age of the 20% changes depending on music trends, distribution and the current economic state. So instead of blanketing and having a shotgun approach, focus on creating fanbases and grow them individually. Keep artist rosters small and not bloated for tax purposes.

Even though the RIAA has announced that they will stop suing people over illegal downloads due to being a strategy that “isn’t working for them,” according to a Rolling Stone article and a major-label source, I don’t anticipate people to pirate less albums because of it. But I do anticipate the majors using the piracy as a reason to charge more for music, thus ignoring the basic tenets of supply and demand.

Enjoy. Share.
Ivan

About Ivan
Ivan Pena has an Advertising degree from UF, 8+ years in corporate and consumer marketing, 10+ years in graphic design and promotions. Ivan is also the leader of the group Soulfound and runs his own independent record label, Mohawk Bomb. In 2008, Ivan was named one of the Top 30 Under 30 by the Tampa Bay Business Journal. Check Ivan out on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ivanpena

Manchester Orchestra at Orpheum (pictures)

Stephen Hammill — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:50:47 +0000

Last night, Manchester Orchestra sold out the Orpheum (this reporter only made it in thanks to the door work of CL Marketing + Promotions Director Joran Oppelt). Lead singer Andy Hull (looking every bit Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle’s little brother) impressed with his vocal chops, mixing in a good deal of Ben Gibbard-influence to go with the band’s loud/quiet sing-a-long numbers, some which have been featured in the Gossip Girl TV show.

Kevin Devine, Dead Confederate and All Get Out opened. Some grainy pictures of MO below:

Does My Band Need a .com Website?

Ivan Pena — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:34:37 +0000

Yes. Even though you can host your files on a free site like MySpace, I recommend you spend the $40 per year for a domain and hosting for your own dot com Website. Here’s why:

Do you remember a Website called MP3.com? Before MySpace and before Napster brought the industry to their knees, MP3.com was THE website to upload your songs to and many bands used it as a surrogate for a real Website. One day (and abruptly), MP3.com closed down their free service and all the bands were out of luck, many missing out on thousands of fans that they failed to point to their own Website. They have since resurfaced, but it was too late for thousands of bands and music lovers. You never know if MySpace will power down their servers in favor of something else. Be safe.

Here are the basics you need to know and some reasons why:

Basics and Definitions
I will use a house analogy to communicate the basics. All Websites have three basic things in common: hosting, a domain and content. Think of hosting as the lot you purchase from the city upon to where to build your house on. The domain is your physical street address and the content is your constructed dwelling with furniture. Hosting is where your Website is. The domain name (www.domainname.com) is the pointer to your Website and the content are your actual Web pages and downloadable files. Hosting is available by the month and packages will include more storage space (size of lot) and more bandwidth (amount of things downloaded from your site). Start with the most basic package and upgrade if you need to later. Domain names must be purchased through a registrar and cost around $10 per year. GoDaddy.com offers affordable domain names and hosting packages and I use them all the time.

Your Music, Your Brand
The main reason to have your own Website is that your band name is the name for your brand. Protect it by having a .com. That way, at least you will be able to distinguish yourself from bands with similar (or the same) name if need be. I recommend steering away from domain names that are like yourbandrocks.com or yourbandmusic.com, unless you absolutely have to (like you only .net domains are available).

Control Your Content
It’s all about control. It’s like owning your own home, as opposed to renting in a hotel where you can get kicked out for any reason they deem appropriate. Having your own Website will allow you to expand on what Facebook, MySpace, Purevolume and hundreds of other sites have helped you start: nurturing your fans. You can inexpensively create a community portal, share pictures and provide mp3 samples all from a space you can control, customize and manipulate in any way you want.

“I ain’t no Webguy!”
Don’t know how to make a Website? It’s OK. It’s easy and you should learn as it is a skill that will come in handy in the future again (I promise). If not, there are thousands of student graphic designers hungry to help out and build up their portfolio. Also, you can ask your fans if any of them can make Websites. Give them some free swag in exchange or put them on the guest list for every show.

EPK
Having a Website is good because it serves are your electronic press kit (EPK). More and more venues are going paperless with press kits and it will allow you to save some dollars on printing and shipping. Make sure you have a short bio (3-4 paragraphs at most), a few downloadable MP3s and some video clips at the very least.

This is the 21st Century and you need to market yourself via the Web. Having your own Website will make you seem more professional (if done right) and will allow you to maximize access to your fan base. Take the plunge and figure it out!

Enjoy. Share.
Ivan Pena

Win Tickets to see Of Montreal / Les Savy Fav

Joran — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:40:52 +0000

We interrupt your normally scheduled programming for a brief message from Creative Loafing’s Promotions Department.

Don’t forget to visit CL’s Fun and Free Stuff page. This (and next) week, we’re giving away tickets to see Of Montreal, Les Savy Fav, Wanted DVDs and more!

You can also join our music text message group “The Mixtape” for concert updates and other exclusive chances to win tickets, CDs, downloads and more – all you have to do is send the word MIXTAPE to 50618.

You may now resume reading, commenting, blogging, flickring or twittering.