R Parker wrote:
OK, I understand what you're saying now. This is
exactly the kind of
hard headed reality I have trouble wrapping my head
around and
subsequently why I'm not earning 2 grand a month
from music.
It doesn't help when we love producing songs more than
we appreciate business.
:)
No, but it does make this conversation all the more worth having.
One of the questions we got asked a lot at the Sounds Expo in London
this year was 'Yeah, but how are you making money out of all this?
what's your business plan?' - Not everyone is as prepared to leap across
the chasm believing that angels will save them as I was. ;)
Do you honestly think that banner ads are the most
effective means of
advertising or was that just as an example?
I don't know the most effective means for selling
music on the internet. We're putting a toe in the
water and during this phase a bobber in every pond.
OK.
The trouble is, if you run on a donations basis,
it's easy to believe
that you can only afford free advertising. It is
hard to make any kind
of business plan when you have no guaranteed income.
I think you can formulate a useful business plan on no
budget but it will have meager beginnings. Imagine
find ing one new fan every day for a year:
* 365 fans
* $10 profit on every CD sale
Cut two albums a year and keep finding a fan every
day. One a day is probably unrealistic until we have
an advertising budget. I imagine. One a week?
Yep, basic principles understood. Chunk it down until you've got
something you understand that is real, like apples and oranges.
My partners and I have a business plan and alot of
product:
*five albums
*a half dozen live multiple camera video productions
*a couple dozen pieces of fine art for album covers,
song posters
*a nice studio that we built and own
*an advertising campaign with two mostly completed
advertisements
Having a range of products in different price brackets seems to be
important. As we're open-sourcers we will have a frontline of free
products. Next there needs to be product which can cost 5/10/20/50
quid/bucks for pocket money, some people may prefer to do the donations
button thing here, which I think also covers the 'tipping economy'
strategy. Then we can offer a layer of paid-for services, which could
include live performances, commissions and studio sessions.
It's the advertising campaign I need to work on. I like the idea of
growing it from a small seed.
I made a rather offhand comment about 'middle-class luxury' a while
back. Now might be a good time to attempt to explain that in better
language for the viewers back at home. ESR explains that as: 'gift
culture behavior arises in situations where survival goods are abundant
enough to male the exchange game no longer very interesting'. For the
majority of musicians survival goods are not terribly abundant. Selling
albums and doing gigs means being able to put the heating back on and
buying something to eat other than rice and beans. My sax player has
been without electricity for a week and she's a jazz vituoso of 20 years
experience. I want to be able to pay her wages so she doesn't have to
think about playing for anyone else or be too cold to practise. I'm
asking for a fair old leap of faith to ask her to give her work away for
free. Already most of the gigs we've done this year have been benefits
and the equation just doesn't resolve. This has been the story of my
life for the last 20 years, I have probably given more away for free
than most of you have had hot businesses and I intend to carry on doing
so, but this time I want to make a profit which I can pass on to those
whose skills I depend upon, like my Sax player, my distro maintainer,
the guy who wrote my MIDI sequencer | drum machine | multitrack recorder
etc.
The same as with other zero-cost goods, the 'Music wants to be free'
myth needs exploding. Music IS free - free to give away AND free to
make a profit on. There are some musicians out there who deserve to be
able to do nothing but practise scales and turn up in time for the
soundcheck. There are some programmers who deserve to be able to spend
all day thinking up new algorithms or even just recording their own
albums. How do we make that possible without invoking magic? I don't
want to try and browbeat the tipping economists into submission, I think
it's a great idea. We have many choices and I'm into considering the
more grounded sounding ones and trying them all out.
I figure a year of executing the plan should be
sufficient to demonstrate the potential for building a
fan base and selling product. If I spend $100.00 a
month that's less than the bands budget for ass wipe.
Well, if the band has a typically poor diet of beer
and chips.
heh.
I'd be very interested to hear how this works out for you. You surely
deserve to succeed.
cheers,
tim hall
