Journal

My Interview/Article in March "Overture"

2010-03-13T23:11:00.000-08:00

This month, the Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians did a feature article in Overture magazine on my last project, "Camelot" at the Pasadena Playhouse. It was an honor to be interviewed - check out the band and the pix!

Camelot Pictures:
Top - Bass player Norman Ludwin, Guitarist Justin Smith,
Bottom - King Arthur Shannon Stoeke, Director David Lee

For your info - Composers and Teamsters possible...

2009-10-29T23:58:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,

Thank you for stopping by. Below is an article regarding some very important issues taking place in the composing world. There is also an informational meeting announcement at the bottom of the article, should this be of interest and should you wish to attend. I look forward to hearing your comments, however I know you - as a composer, musician, singer, producer, director...

Christy

Variety Oct. 27 2009

Composers consider unionization

SCL mulling affiliation with Teamsters Local 399

By JON BURLINGAME

For the first time in more than a decade, composers and lyricists working in film, TV and videogames are considering unionization.

The Society of Composers & Lyricists was scheduled to announce at its annual membership meeting Tuesday night that an "informational meeting" about the possibility of affiliating with Teamsters Local 399 will be held Nov. 16 at the Pickwick Gardens Conference Center in Burbank, Calif.

The SCL, a nonprofit group whose estimated 1,200 members include many of the composers who work in pics, TV and vidgames, has not taken a position about union representation, SCL officials said.

Emails alerting members of SCL; performing rights orgs ASCAP, BMI and SESAC; and the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences were expected to go out this morning. A website has also launched at Composersguild.org.

Composers and lyricists are among the few creatives left without a collective bargaining agreement. Services like orchestration, conducting and music performance are covered by American Federation of Musicians (AFM) agreements, but not the act of writing music or lyrics.

They were represented in the late 1950s and 1960s by the Composers & Lyricists Guild of America, but after a 1971 strike and a 1972 lawsuit against the studios and networks over music-ownership rights, producers refused to negotiate with them. A 1984 attempt to restart the union failed when a Reagan-era National Labor Relations Board declared composers and lyricists "independent contractors."

The trouble with that ruling, many composers say, is that almost everyone in the biz is an "independent contractor," agreeing to perform services on a one-off basis for producers -- yet writers, directors, actors, cinematographers, editors and others enjoy protection under WGA, DGA, SAG, IATSE, the Teamsters and other unions.

Composer Alan Elliott, who launched this latest unionization effort, said he hopes that a greater sense of community and attention to the craft of creating music can also be fostered.

Casting directors affiliated with the Teamsters in 2006, achieving benefit and pension rights for more than 400 casting directors and associates in what was one of the largest successful organizing efforts in recent years. The composers spearheading this effort hope they can achieve the same ends. Others hope that minimum wage scales and working-conditions clauses will follow.

Exploratory talks with the Teamsters began about three years ago. Back in the mid-1990s, talks with the WGA and IATSE resulted in debate about possible unionization, but SCL members remained divided.

Steve Dayan, organizer for Local 399 of the Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters, told Daily Variety that efforts to organize the composers and lyricists are a “very preliminary” stage.

“They haven't decided if they want to be Teamsters but we would be very interested in representing them and establishing basic working conditions and benefits,” Dayan added.

Dayan noted that the Teamsters’ organizing effort to unionize about 450 casting directors took over four years to complete.

"There has been a tremendous devaluation of music," said former SCL president James DiPasquale. "Respect for composers has diminished. Technology has marched forward, and our income has plummeted. At the rank-and-file level, it's very hard for anyone to make a living."

Statistics on the website show that in hourlong TV, composers on average must write twice as much music as they did 30 years ago -- hourlongs today require twice as many minutes of music -- but the salary drops are astonishing: According to the site, for each score, they're averaging just 14% of what they did then, adjusted for inflation.

In films, it's even worse, with fees dropping precipitously even as composers must now write more than twice as much music while also absorbing technical costs (engineering, mixing, editing) that were once handled, and paid for, by studio or network personnel.

__________________________

To learn about the possibilities for representation, the individual benefits to be gained, and the potential problems involved in unionizing, please attend the informational meeting.

When: Monday, November 16, 2009

Time: 7:30 pm

Where: Pickwick Gardens Conference Center
1001 West Riverside Drive
Burbank, CA 91506

Please send your email RSVP to: CALLBOARD@HT399.org

In the SUBJECT line please type: RSVP Nov16 Meeting

Gearing up for fall...

2009-09-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

I'm still pinching myself from meeting Alison Krauss in Nashville last week - she came backstage and then sat in the pit for Wicked - WOW! Would love to actually work with her one day.

Next up for October is re-orchestrating "Camelot", and finding some great keyboard and sax players for my new music "partners" Cirque du Soleil. Yes, that's right! I'll be finding the best musicians for Cirque's shows - so keep checking back here (my blog) for current listings. Then I'll hit the road again with Wicked for November/December. Where, do you ask? Let's just say I can say "Hello, Cleveland!" and mean it! Time to buy some winter clothes - BBBRRR!

I'm also performing with my friend Craig Meyer's award-winning act "Almost Elton John"! Can't wait, it's gonna be so much fun!

Of course, there are random projects in the air, but waiting until I know a little more about them. Who knows? Maybe with a little luck my name will be on a pilot this season (which would be just fantastic!).

Peace!

NEW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Cirque du Soleil Musician Casting Call

2009-09-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

CASTING CALL:

Multi-instrumentalists with proficiency in both saxophone and keyboards.

Qualifications:

• Proficiency in playing one or more instruments;

• Excellent ability to play pop, Latin, world and jazz music styles; ability to merge a variety of genres and styles;

• Familiarity with diverse musical cultures and associated styles;

• Good understanding of English or French;

• Experience with in-ear amplifiers or headsets.

NEW SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS and GUIDELINES:

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: October 13, 2009

COMPLETE ARTIST PROFILES should be sent directly to:
Christy Crowl, Talent Scout: cirquemusicians@hotmail.com

A Complete Artist Profile includes:

• A résumé (including date of birth, nationality, complete contact information, years and locations of training and professional experience);

• One or several photo(s);

• An audio or video demo (mandatory). We want to hear three or four pieces, of different styles and rhythms, from the Artist’s favourite repertory. It is important that we hear the Artist clearly. We only accept recent recordings (produced in the last 12 months). You MAY, for VIDEOS, email a URL link to YouTube, etc.

INCOMPLETE PROFILES WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

Further details about submitting a candidacy can be found at

https://cirquedusoleil.taleo.net/careersection/castin_multiinstrumentspool/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=CAS03340

Please contact Christy Crowl, Talent Scout at cirquemusicians@hotmail.com with any questions.

LA Singer Shed #2

2009-09-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

Need to REGISTER? Click here for full info:

REGISTER

Here are the materials you will need to print out and bring to attend the LA Singer Shed on Saturday, September 26, 2009. Special guest: Michael Orland, Assoc. Musical Director of AMERICAN IDOL.

1 LA-Singer-Shed-Promoting-yourself-and-your-music
2 LA-Singer-Shed-Follow That Vocal
3 LA-Singer-Shed-AFTRA-LA-Demo-Agreement

All additional materials and handouts will be provided.

Musician Casting Announcement from Cirque du Soleil/Christy Crowl

2009-09-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to announce that I have currently taken on a new hat with Cirque du Soleil, and will be partnering with them to help find some fantastic musicians for their shows!

I will be posting these notices frequently, so be sure to check back, in the case that this current breakdown does not fit your talents. Also, please feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel may be interested in this position.

In order to apply for this position, you must do so on Cirque du Soleil's website.
**IMPORTANT NOTE:
Please put "Referred by Christy Crowl" on your resume,
AND send a copy of your resume to me at cirquemusicians@hotmail.com.
THIS IS THE ONLY WAY I CAN PERSONALLY FOLLOW UP ON YOUR SUBMISSION.

Here is the breakdown - GOOD LUCK!

Cirque du Soleil is seeking Multi-instrumentalists with proficiency in both saxophone and keyboards
Are you an instrumentalist looking for a new venue for your passion? We are seeking multi-instrumentalists with proficiency in both saxophone and keyboards for live performances in our current shows and upcoming creations.

Qualifications
Proficiency in playing one or more instruments;
Excellent ability to play pop, Latin, world and jazz music styles; ability to merge a variety of genres and styles;

Familiarity with diverse musical cultures and associated styles;

Good understanding of English or French;

Experience with in-ear amplifiers or headsets.

Interested candidates must create their profile online and submit the requested material:
click here <https://cirquedusoleil.taleo.net/careersection/castin_multiinstrumentspool/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=CAS03340>
or visit www.cirquedusoleil.com/cas

ting <http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/casting>
(job opening CAS03340)

**Don't forget to put "Referred by Christy Crowl" on your resume,
and email: cirquemusicians@hotmail.com

Article on American Idol Chaos last night

2009-05-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/05/american-idol-o.html?cnn=yes

YES, that's me shaking hands with Pres. Bush in the Oval Office.

2009-02-20T17:47:00.000-08:00

Part I: 2008 for me was quite a year of "firsts" - conducting my first big "Broadway" show, conducting my first big filmscoring session, working with my first Academy Award Winner (Dame Julie Andrews), having my first vocal solo on a feature film - how else could it end but with my first invitation to the Oval Office to meet and take a picture with the sitting President of the United States?

Now, those that know me well know that I could probably be classified as a bleeding-heart artist type who never would have dreamed, let alone wished for, the opportunity to meet our former Commander in Chief. I remember being quite outspoken as to my opinion of his administration when among friends and colleagues - and I also remember not wanting to get out of bed on the day he was re-elected four years ago. Good grief - I have pink & purple hair! I make music for a living! BUSH? You gotta be kidding - did I mention I sang on Neil Young's "Living With War" album which called for his impeachment? (which, thankfully, didn't prevent my passing the White House background security check!) Why on earth would I fly across the country to be in HIS company?

WELL, having met him, shaken his hand, and even having a brief conversation, I can now say it is one of the most profound experiences I have ever had in my life, and probably will ever have. You cannot meet the President of the United States and not be affected by the power, and responsibility, of the position they hold. How many hands has their hand shaken? And now they're shaking mine. TRULY, I can say even though "Meeting the President of the United States" wasn't on my list of things to do before I die, it now tops the list of "Things I am most grateful to have had the opportunity to do."

So, how did I get there?

As with any great story, it begins with "who you know." In this case, someone very close to me had worked in the White House under President Bush and now were serving in Iraq. On a well-deserved leave they were invited back to the White House, and could invite those very close to them to come as well. Luckily, I was on the list.

The invitation came sometime in the fall, on a long distance call from Iraq - "can you be in DC on December 3 to meet the President?" What? I'll need a minute to process that. I'll also need another minute to decide whether or not I can willingly meet the man I hold responsible for so many negative things my country is now facing. Am I crazy? Selfish? Self-important? I couldn't commit at that time. Needed to think it over...

So I did. And after a while I got over myself - I mean, sometimes our life in the entertainment biz becomes all-consuming. TOO consuming. Does it make the world go round? Does it save lives? Does it solve the world's problems? No. But I think sometimes we believe that it does. That's why we work 24/7 for really not-nice people (sometimes, not all the time) to make a "difference"...no, I mean, make a movie, a show, a score... At the end of the day, we may be proud, but what did we really DO? In my case, someone near and dear to me WAS doing something FOR REAL. In Iraq. For ME and all the people I work with and know. And they were doing it willingly and whole-heartedly, and were asking me to come to the WHITE HOUSE to meet the PRESIDENT with them. What was wrong with me that I didn't jump and say "yes"?! I don't know - but I realized that I had to go. I booked my flight, and wondered what it was going to be like...

OK. We're here.

Walking up to the side-gate of the White House (you can't drive), having your name on the list, and being given your "badge" has GOT to be one of the coolest feelings EVER. Like pulling up to Sony or Fox for a scoring session, times a thousand. I'm sure if you work there the feeling might wear off after a while, but for me it was very exciting. We walked down the driveway to the White House entrance (where you saw the motorcade pick everybody up on Inauguration Day, I think...), and what should we see but the "Presidential Pooches" being walked down the drive. And yes, one of them "stooped" right there in the grass. Just like everyone else's dogs. Suddenly I didn't feel so bad about my dogs waiting until the exact moment someone was passing by to take a stoop. :)

Once we were in the White House, we were directed to a "sitting room" - I was told the official name of it, but it escapes me at the moment. The Christmas decorations were up, elegantly and very "Americana" decorated trees were everywhere, in every corner. There was a huge red sleigh at the end of the hall, right in front of the windows to the Rose Garden, that was a big picture spot for the "special" visitors. Of course, the "Presidential Pooches" were first, but we managed to fit ourselves around it for a "Presidential Sleigh" picture.

After a little while, an aid came to bring us from the room to go to the West Wing. It wasn't until we were in the hallway outside the Roosevelt Room that we (or at least, I) knew that we were going into the Oval Office for our picture. We fell in line behind decorated service men and women, and more appropriately conservative guests, and obviously I started to feel a little self-conscious about my hair choice. In LA, I don't seem to stick out as much... do I dare walk in to meet W with this "do"? Will I be allowed IN the Oval Office once they lay eyes on me? I could feel the stares from the other people waiting, wondering what on earth I was doing there. I was beginning to wonder the same thing...

Part II: Moment of truth

To be continued...

ProSingersAccess.com INTERVIEWS Part I

2009-02-17T17:27:00.000-08:00

ProUsers DENNIS C. BROWN and GRANT GEISSMAN
Composers of the hit CBS sitcom, “Two and a Half Men”

By Christy Crowl

Recently, I had the pleasure of spending the morning with the musical duo that create the music for CBS’s “Two and a Half Men,” starring Charlie Sheen. One of the real stars of the show is the music, as Charlie’s character (also named Charlie) is a jingle writer. From the catchy “Men, Men, Men, Men” that opens the theme song to creating jingles for the popular product “Toezine,” the duo’s musical chops are in a constant state of abnormal. No wonder the multi-talented Grant Geissman and Dennis C. Brown are perfect for the job!

L-R: Composers Grant Geissman, Dennis C. Brown, Co-Creator Lee Aronsohn, (Dennis), actor Charlie Sheen (Grant)

First, a little about the composers
Grant Geissman, a well known artist and guitarist in his own right, has released thirteen albums as a leader, with the latest being Say That! (Futurism Records, 2006). He has recorded with such artists as Quincy Jones, David Benoit, Burt Bacharach, Chuck Mangione, Paula Abdul, Ringo Starr, John Tesh, Keiko Matsui, Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson, Placido Domingo, Luis Miguel, and Julio Iglesias. He has also played on the scores for such TV shows as Monk (playing the Django Reinhardt-style acoustic guitar solo on the theme), “Dawson's Creek,” and “Touched by an Angel.”

Dennis C. Brown has been prolific in television writing since co-writing the theme and providing the score for the original “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” animated series, and has been the man behind the music of the sitcoms “Grace Under Fire,” “Dharma and Greg,” and “Still Standing.” Prior to providing music for television, Dennis arranged music for advertising, traveled with artists such as The Osmonds and Bobby Vinton, and played guitar in the studios, including playing guitar for “Dukes Of Hazzard.”

The interview

C: Do you call your partnership anything?

G & D: Grant & Dennis…or Dennis & Grant.

C: So tell me how your partnership started.

D: Well, I’d been working with a producer, Chuck Lorre, for a long time, and he got a new show that he co-created with a friend of Grant’s, named Lee Aronsohn. And when he got the show together, Lee suggested that Grant also be involved musically in doing the theme. They were trying to think of a theme for it, and Grant, along with Lee, came up with the theme for the show, and then that worked into just doing all the music together.

C: And what were you doing before you guys got together?

D: With Chuck specifically, the last show was “Dharma and Greg.”

C: You were the composer on that?

D: Right. And also the theme. Then Chuck’s next show was “Two and a Half Men,” and when Grant got involved we started co-writing.

C: So how involved does the writing of the theme song get? Do you come up with say, 10 different versions of something, and the producers pick what they like? What is the process?

G: Actually I submitted other themes apart from the ones [we did], and then Dennis submitted other things as well.

D: Chuck came up with the idea he wanted, the “men-men-men” kind of like the Sea Shanty: (sung) “Men, Men, Men, Men.” He also had an idea to do a 3-handed piano theme. I was actually doing more of those instrumental ones, and Grant had come up with the vocal one that was more along the lines of the “men-men-men-men.” That sort of morphed more into a doo-wop thing, rather than just a straight march.

G: Yeah, Chuck sort of re-imagined it as a doo-wop thing with the 3 characters singing it. And he actually wrote the intro that you hear. So it’s actually Chuck Lorre, Lee Aronsohn and me on the theme, but Dennis was heavily involved in the arranging of that.

C: So from concept to recording, how long was that process?

G: Oh man, I don’t know – it was months! It was many months, but they kept coming back to the theme that Lee and I had submitted. But other things were happening and other themes were being submitted.

D: Yeah. Chuck kept trying – he really wanted this piano thing to work, with a certain visual with the hands coming in. And then I think he got to a point where he went, “This sounds good on paper, but I don’t think it’s gonna work.” And since his original thought was doing the “Men, men, men, men,” he kept coming back to that idea, and that’s when he decided to go with the one that Grant had submitted, because that always kind of was stuck in his head.

G: That one kind of survived. But then we had a meeting in Chuck’s office - and I had met Dennis years before, oddly enough, at this guitar shop called Valley Arts Guitar. So we were kind of aware of each other, and we had a meeting at Chuck’s office, and it was proposed that we have a partnership. And I have to say it’s worked out very well, both as a writing partnership, and as a friendship, so it’s been really kind of a great thing.

C: How many seasons has it been now?

D: This is the fifth.

G: Yeah, we’re in season five. We hit a hundred shows not too long ago, so that’s the big milestone.

C: So tell me the story about the theme audition.

G: I love this story. When we finally honed in what the theme was, and that it was going to be the 3 characters singing the theme, Dennis and I had singers that we had worked with, and the producers wanted to hear different singers sort of in the character, in a way. So, I had a couple people in mind, Dennis had some people, and we brought them in for a fifteen-minute audition. We could present that to the producers, and that’s what we did. And so I think we had 3 sets of guys…

D: And I think we honed it down to presenting just 2.

G: Yeah, that’s right.

D: We had one set, and one guy’s son played the younger part. Then we also had a few other kids. We basically knew the adult singers, but then for the kid part, we had several kids, plus – I think it was Chuck the producer who had worked with E.G. Daily before, who was not a kid. And he had suggested her, and then she came in, and even though the kids were kids, we just were kind of bowled over by her singing.

G: Oh, she just nailed it.

D: So of course that survived, and we stuck her with Randy (Crenshaw) and Jon Joyce.

C: Who both happen to be “ProSingers.”

G: Yes. And then actually the high harmony, the “Oos” on the theme…

C: Is you?

G: Yeah, and on the “9th” in the “Men” chord (laughs).

C: So then, when that got approval, how does that translate for the singers?

D: That was it, then.

G: That’s what aired, and that’s the best part of the story. They never had to come back and re-record. It was just so good in the 15 minutes.

D: We just paid for a new session.

G: Yeah, we paid them as if it were a new session.

C: Now on a theme song like that, I’m sure you own the writer’s [share], but do the producers take publishing?

G: Well, yeah. In network TV they always take the publishing, but we have the writer’s. And the singers have been getting residuals all this time, which is a lovely thing.

C: Now, how many times a year do you think you use singers on the show?

D: Maybe about 3 times.

C: How many episodes do you do each year?

G: I think it’s always pretty much been 24.

C: And when you need singers, do you generally go through people you know?

G: Yes. If something comes up, like some specific thing, either Dennis will go, “I have a guy who would just kill it,” or, “I have a woman who would kill it.” Or I will say that I know some female singers that would be perfect for this, basically. But you know, the singer site that you have…

C: Well that’s why we created it – so that you have singers’ demos online.

G: That would be invaluable.

D: Yeah, I’m going to find that helpful.

C: Now, when you guys do the “jingle writing” for the show, is it more one of you than the other, or do you split things up?

D: I think we split it up. Sometimes it’s one person’s idea, and then next time it’s the other person’s idea. We always find some way to collaborate on them, even if it’s one person’s idea that starts it. The other one always gives his opinions. It’s, “Maybe we should make this this way,” or “Let’s poop it up here a little bit,” or, “tone it down here…” “Poop it up” – I think that’s from The Animaniacs, as in “Poop up the script.”

[general laughter]

C: Now before you bring somebody in, do you have to submit a demo and then have that approved before bringing a singer in?

D: There’s never really any time for that, no. If there was time we would certainly try that, ’cause it’s always good. We always want to make sure that the producers don’t come to a final mix and go, “Well gee, this is good, but we don’t like this singer.”

G: We had to do this jingle called “Toezine” – I think that was the “Toezine” one. We found out about it on a Monday, and we had to get the track going, then we had to get the singers in. No, we probably found out Friday, and then just kind of arranged and produced over the weekend.

D: It was very quick.

G: But then, we had to have singers done on Monday, so that they could rehearse with it on Tuesday.

D: So there’s rarely any time, but at least that means they would be rehearsing with it. They have a chance to hear it – if they had a real problem with it, they (the producers) would say, “We don’t like this singer,” or something. But so far, everything we’ve submitted has worked.

G: And sometimes we sing the demos, you know. Many times. But I think on that one, I don’t think we bothered to, because it wouldn’t have sounded right. It had to be like Go-Gos kind of girls, and I think they would have yelled at us if we sang the demo.

D: (laughs) I think so.

C: I think what might be helpful for singers to know too is – say a singer wants you to hear them. The way we’ve set up the site is with 30-second clips of the different styles. Because I find that personally speaking, I don’t really listen to more than that of somebody’s demo, if I’m looking for something. Do you find that a hindrance, or would you like to hear more? Or, what are the biggest mistakes people make when they send you a demo? What have you found in dealing with singers that you could let them know, to help them in a positive way?

D: I want to hear a variety of styles, and I don’t need more than 5 to 10 seconds. Like you said, I know what I’m looking for, and it just has to be as many styles as possible. As much as I can hear a singer that maybe has written a song, and they give me the full 2 1/2 minute song, and it’s beautifully orchestrated, and they’ve really sunk their heart into it. And though that’s great – they’ve worked on it for 6 months, whatever – I’d almost rather hear them singing stuff they don’t know, or aren’t familiar with. If they sing every possible kind of style, I know they’re not just doing their thing. They are able to adapt to my thing, whatever it is. So I’d really want to hear the versatility. Not so much a beautiful production on the thing, as long as he vocal is right there. It really has to hit me right from the start. I’ll know within 10 seconds whether that’s what I’m looking for.

C: Do you like the “montage” idea, or do you like individual tracks in styles that you can sort through?

D: The montage is good, personally. I mean, I’ve always liked those. Maybe you want to go back and hunt one, but I kind of like to get the idea - just let it run and go, “Oh boy, they’re going from country to rock-n-roll to gospel to whatever other. So the montage has worked for me. I wouldn’t mind it the other way too, but it seems funny the other way, because it’s a little odd cutting it off after 10 seconds. With a montage, you feel a little better about just letting it flow in little snippets.

G: I don’t mind clicking around to different things, because if I click on something that isn’t it, I can just go on, as opposed to sitting through these 10 seconds that would be in a montage.

D: Yeah, either way. If they are separate pieces, as long as you get to the good stuff, within 10 seconds or so. I mean, I’m not that critical – I’ll let a little bit of an interim go.

C: There are people that we do know are versatile and can sing anything, but then there are people who are just really good at specific things. You call this person for country, and you call this person for pop. Do you operate that way, or do you kind of have 3 or 4 singers that you know can do everything, and you bring them in?

D: I think both. I know there are certain background singers that I know if I want them to really be an R&B-type thing that they’re better at that or if they’re going to do country. And yet I know some that can do both. But certainly, if somebody is very special at one thing, I would go to that if it’s great.

C: But in a demo situation I think you’d kind of know what they’re really good at.

G & D: Correct.

C: And would you tell people that it’s better to just record what you’re really good at to submit to somebody than trying to be versatile?

G: Well, absolutely. If you’re not particularly good at something I wouldn’t submit it.

D: Yeah – I don’t want to be misleading on that. I think I’d like to have somebody that’s very good at everything, but I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that if they’re good at a couple different styles, they should show me others just to show them to me.

C: Well, sometimes a newer session singer trying to break in thinks they have a better chance of getting hired on things if they have a really wide demo range, so they feel they need to have a wide variety of styles on their demo, even though they may not be experts at all of them. What are your thoughts on that?

D: Well, I don’t know – you’re getting into some gray areas. Sure, the versatility is great, but I guess it could be kind of a pitfall as well. If you have a demo that’s showing your versatility, and you leave one particular style out, and that’s the one I want, then I’d be a little leery. I’d go, “Well, how come they didn’t include that one?” Certainly everybody’s going to have a few different kinds of things, but do what you’re good at. I certainly wouldn’t stress the versatility if it’s not going to show that you’re good at something. I think that’s the challenge for each individual. I mean, I’m not looking for versatility on everything. If we’re going to do a country thing, and we know a good country singer, then that’s all they need to do. But if somebody’s sending you a demo, it’s just kind of nice to be able to think of them in a couple of different ways.

C: Now how does it usually work in your case, where you’re more or less hiring individual singers – is it a contractor situation?

G: We just did this episode that was very elaborate, where Charlie Sheen’s character becomes a children’s songwriter and performer called Charlie Waffles. We had to hire all these kid singers; it was in the script that the kids sang along with him in various ways. And then there were various permutations in the show of what we were achieving – a CD version of the songs, a live concert version of the songs, and then a DVD version of the live concert. So we had to hire kids, and we called Bobbi Page, because I knew that’s one of the things she does – work with kids. And that worked out great. The initial session we did at a studio after we had Charlie Sheen in to do his vocal. So we did the kids at the session, and then they needed even more kids to beef up the audience. And to kind of clarify the stuff they shot live on they stage - they had about 130 kids chanting and singing along, but it was kind of hard to get the microphones right.

D: It was a little muddy.

G: So we needed to bring our kids back and just kind of clarify what was being said, and we actually just did that over here.

D: But that’s what led us again to Bobbi.

G: And Bobbi handled it; it was great. She knew who was good – they were kind of like ages 7 or 8 to 11 – something like that.

D: One time too, we had to do an opera – this was back on “Dharma and Greg.” We had to use 3 opera singers, and of course I had to have the contractor for that – I think it was Sally Stevens. It was at Fox, and they had to be legitimate opera singers. That goes back to the versatility thing – if you do opera, you do opera. If you’re giving me an R&B demo, you don’t need to put any opera on it – I’m going to get opera singers for that.

C: The contractors definitely are helpful also in getting individual singers if they know the right person for a specific situation. And that’s where the ProSingers site is a good tool for them. They can email you and say, “What do you think about these people?”

D: That would be good, because often times they’re not totally sure what we’re looking for. Say, if we really want them to rock, what does that mean? If they are used to the Anita Karr singers, then somebody from Lawrence Welk might rock. So it’s good if they can say, “Well I’ve got these 3 people. Let me know what you think.” And after I’ve heard one I know that that’s not what I mean by rock. So it’s a good idea to have that choice.

C: And as far as the show goes, you guys can make that decision, as opposed to having to run everything by the producers?

G: No, they don’t really want to know that.

D: We’re the translators. They say, “we want it to be more ‘green’,” and we figure out that that means more ‘folk.’ And then the contractor says, “Well, is that Eric Darling, or is that Serendipity Singers?” That’s when they would send us the 3 people, and we go, “That’s what we’re talking about.”

C: What’s your most memorable singer experience? Have you had guest artists on the show? Or a big-name singer?

G: For me, one of the great things writing-wise was when we had to do this thing with Jon Lovitz. And we had to come up with this song – it was supposed to be an “Emmy-nominated” sort of jingle – a public service announcement.

D: A “Save the World,” “Save the Children,” “That’s What Friends Are For” kind of thing.

G: Yeah, something like that.

D: This was a charity-for-third-world-countries type thing called “Save the Orphans.” It was a parody of that type of thing.

G: The initial concept from the writers, actually, was to have a medley of the 3 or 4 “nominated” tunes. So that was going to mean the public service kind of thing, plus kind of a country tune, or this or that. And so we all went in to the office, and I brought a guitar, and Dennis brought a keyboard down, and we were batting ideas around. And Chuck Lorre said, “You know, we can do 4 things kind of half-assed, or we can try to do one thing really well. And I think we should just do one thing really well.” So that was cool; that was a great thing. And then, it was interesting just watching them kind of bat language around and come up with stuff. Somebody threw out this “Save the Orphans” idea, and then we kind of came up with the little musical hook. And I remember thinking, “Man, these guys are good with words,” and they were thinking, “Boy, these guys are good with music.” So for me, that was a really great afternoon. We wrote the whole piece at the office, and I went home and did the track for Jon Lovitz to sing to. And then we had to bring in some background singers, because in the shot they had girls coming out in formal evening gowns, singing with Jon. But that was a really cool afternoon.

C: So on a weekly basis, what’s the routine?

G: Different every week, really.

D: It starts as soon as we get the script. We look and see if there is anything needed musically that week. And if it’s a lot, then we will go Monday to the production meeting, and that’s when we’ll discuss the logistics and get them knocked out. “Are you going to have them lip-syncing?” “Are we going to provide a track that you play?” Or, “Do you need live musicians, this time?” Then we work out, “Well, if they’re singing there, and somebody’s talking here, how are we gonna do yadda da yadda da?” So we get that all figured out, and then we’ll usually go and start working on some music, and start sending that back, usually for rehearsal – it’s what amounts to approval. They’ll play something at rehearsal, and find out whether that works.

G: If it’s in the right key for whoever it is, or fast enough, or whatever.

D: So, that could go on. We’re never really finished with that portion of it until Friday, when it shoots, because up to the very last minute, they can say, “This isn’t working – it needs to be shorter.” In fact, I remember the one when Jake – one of the characters – was singing “The Impossible Dream.” From the very beginning we voiced concern – I don’t know how forceful we were – that “The Impossible Dream” is what it is: “Yaaa, dat-dat-dat Daaa, dat-dat-dat…”

G: It’s long. Loooong.

D: And we kept saying, “How is this going to work?” And they said, “Oh, it’s gonna be fine.” And we finally got to the shoot, and he’s up there on a broomstick-type horse. We did the music as fast as we could go, you know: “Dat, dat-dat-dat Dat, dat-dat-dat”, and Chuck kinda comes up and says, “This is just really plodding, isn’t it?” I mean, you can’t go (singing) “To dream the impossible dream…” without the “Dat, dat-dat-dat Dat” in there. So we stuck with it.

G: We were locked into the track at that tempo, and they were like, “This just isn’t working.” And we are literally shooting – it’s “time is money,” you know.

D: So you scrambled for a guitar.

G: I said, “Is there a guitar here?” And they had a Strat, like this little kid’s prop almost— a cheap Strat.

D: And then – this amazes me – they couldn’t take it direct, for some reason. They didn’t have a direct box. And I had just thought ahead - in case we needed it, I had brought a couple little connectors, and I said, “Would this help?,” as I pulled the connector out. (general laughter) And all of a sudden, they could record the guitar. If I hadn’t brought that little dollar-fifty connector…

C: You did that right on the set?

D: Right on the set, literally right on the set.

G: I played the guitar out front so we could get it moving faster, and kind of go with the vocal. And then we replaced it after with piano, which was what was in the shot. But just so they could shoot it, we had to do it.

D: I think we even raised the key. Yet they had listened all during the week, and rehearsed with it.

G: And that night, it’s just like, “No.”

D: That night, when they finally saw the thing, they said, “This is just a drag.”

C: Are you often at the shoots, then?”

G: Yes, if we’re needed.

D: For something like that, we have to be. But like I said, sometimes it’s all week and changes, and changes and changes. When that’s wrapped up, we’ll have a couple weeks off from that while they’re editing the show. Then they give it back to us. In that particular instance, then we have to replace all that music with piano, and make sure there is no bleed. We might have to mess with their vocals that they’ve sent us if there are some noises in it.

G: Or if it’s out of tune.

C: Now as far as your budgets for musicians and singers, has that been on an “as needed” basis when you request it? Or do they expect that you guys will take care of it out of what you guys are getting?

G: Well, we’re both kind of one-man bands, which is the good news.

D: But singers-wise, they always cover it. Any SAG thing is their responsibility. They’ll ask for a budget, or an estimate before, but it’s always pretty much what the producer needs.

C: Is that helpful for you? Or would you rather have that included in your overall budget?

D: No, it’s very helpful.

G: Yeah, we don’t want to have to deal with the SAG stuff, so that’s wonderful that that’s on them. For example, when we had to bring the kids back to beef up the audience, if that was out of our pocket, we probably would have made nothing that week.

D: Right, everything went overtime on that.

G: With the complexity of that show.

D: Well, it was just complicated. There were probably eight different songs, and they all had to be covered. In other words, we had to make sure to have the kids sing the melody with Charlie on every song, just to have it, because they might ask us for it. And a few times, they did. They said, “Do you have the kids doing this?” And we said, “Yes, we do.”

C: Do they license other songs on the show?

G: Yes, frequently.

C: And does that help you guys out?

D: They usually do it for a joke.

G: Yeah, sometimes it’s just for 3 seconds, so it really doesn’t have any effect on what we do.

C: There’s never an instance where it sets the tone for the rest of the show, so you kind of have to follow it?

D: No. Like I said, usually it’s somebody singing something a capella, just in a line with a joke more than anything. They don’t really want to license stuff for something like a bar scene. If there’s a specialty number they want, like if there’s a montage. One time they wanted “Sharp Dressed Man,” because he was being dressed up. In those cases, I’d really rather have them license a song rather than us put it together, because we’re not making any performance royalties from that song, anyway. And then they go, “Well this still doesn’t sound as good as ZZ Top.” So you have to sound as good as ZZ Top, and you’re never going to quite sound like the record…

G: Even if you got ZZ Top, they might not sound exactly like the record.

D: I remember when we did that kinda Lynard Skynard ripoff, and that worked fine. That was kind of a background thing. But most of the time – those specialty things – it doesn’t really affect us one way or another.

G: In fact, they used a song in a montage earlier this season – they used “The Rose” for something. But actually that little thing doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the show. It’s just a comment on one of the characters.

C: If a singer were to send you a demo, does it matter to you what it looks like? Does it make you think better of them if it looks like they put some effort into it?

G: If someone just sent me a demo cold, and I didn’t even know them, I wouldn’t listen to it even if it looked good. Because…I don’t know.

D: Well, I’m the opposite – I would listen to it. But I might not listen to it if it didn’t look good. This maybe wrong of me, but I’m a neat freak. It doesn’t need to be…I would be a little suspect if they went real overboard with an album-quality kind of thing, with this picture on the front of it, or maybe that one would be ok – no. But I want to see it neat and printed – it can be black-and-white. If they just sent me something with a Marks-A-Lot on it, scribbled with their name, I don’t want to listen to it.

C: What’s the biggest mistake a singer has made in sending you a demo?

D: The track’s too long, and not getting to the vocal in time, probably. And not that much vocal. You know, the vocal is buried. It sounds like a music demo, and I’m not really hearing the singer, and I can’t really get a grasp of how they really can sing. If it’s them doing three-part harmony with themselves, and a lot of that glorious stuff – I want to hear at least some where I can really hear that they can sing without a lot of studio help.

G: I’m deferring; he deals more with this kind of stuff.

D: Yeah – I’ve gotten a lot of demos over the years. I know it’s tough, because I’m not always hiring people. I’d save them and I’d listen, there are some that have really stood out to me, but most of the time, they send me something that just doesn’t grab me right away. It just doesn’t get to it – it takes too long. Start off with a bang-up tune for me. Some have started off with some really laid-back thing that has a 30-second intro, and then a really-mellow something, and it just doesn’t grab me. It’s got to grab me right away.

C: And how long, for you (Grant), should a demo clip be?

G: Probably a little longer. Thirty seconds I’m thinking – I don’t know that in ten seconds I’d be able to hear what I need to.

D: You’re probably right. Thirty seconds – but I want to get right to it.

C: And it is helpful for you to see a resume, or a list of credits, on their demo?

D: You know it really doesn’t. I think that’s another mistake, maybe. I’ve gotten some that have forty little snippets that say “this is from the Ralston Purina Commercial 1989”, and they list all these little credits, especially when they get down to things I don’t know about… again, it’s kinda like they’re playing things up a bit. Of course, if it’s a major McDonald’s commercial, maybe that will say something to me, but again, I don’t really care as long as it sounds good. In the case of the demo with forty things on it, I listened to all forty, but after ten, I said to myself, well, I haven’t heard ANYTHING yet. Meaning, not one of them was a standout to me. Showing variety is good, but I think sending too many things can be a problem too.

C: Now, through ProSingers Access, singers can email you a link to their PSA page or their website – is that something you would look at?

D & G: Yes!

C: Is that preferable to receiving a hard copy?

D & G: Yes.

D: You know, it is easier to do online. I had one guy email me in a very confident way, saying how wonderful he was, and when I went to his website, he was horrible.

G: That’s what makes me a little leery – truth is, most of the singers I hire are people I know, or are people that are highly recommended to me by somebody. Just hiring a singer off a demo, I don’t think I’d do it – you now, it’s too much like buying a pig in a poke. Unless their demo was just SO awesome.

D: Yeah – it REALLY has to jump out! And if they’re good and have good pitch sense, etc. I still don’t know how they work in the studio. And I don’t know how they take direction.

G: The issue now is the “Britney Spears”-ization of everyone, with the whole AutoTune phenomenon; you can take an average singer and make them sound pretty darn good. So how do you know what you’re getting anymore? It makes things a little tricky.

C: Would it be helpful to have a referral or comments section on a ProSingers page so you could contact someone who has worked with a singer you really like, but may not personally know?

G: That would be helpful, because if I just got a demo or just met somebody, I might inquire around. I’d ask somebody “have you ever worked with so and so?” and they could tell me “yeah they’re great” and then I’d feel good about them.

D: I think you’ve actually brought up what we’ve been overlooking up to this point. The most important thing is, I don’t care how good a singer is, and I know some who are great – and musicians too – they are GREAT, but you get them in here and ask them to sing something up a half step and they ask you “What’s a half step?” They can do it in their own studio, but they can’t do it here. A lot of it is how quick they are to do what you ask them to do. Whether someone can do it from reading, or can do any kind of improvisation, is something you just can’t tell from a demo. Being able to ask somebody who’s worked with them would be helpful.

C: So it would be helpful to incorporate some kind of a referral in PSA?

G: I think so, yes. Because it’s a highly specialized area; the “session singer” is not just about being a good singer. There are a lot of special skills that are supposed to come with the session singer.

D: Right. You can’t say that you’re a great singer, except when someone puts a microphone in front of you and puts you in a booth and people behind the board are staring at you. If that’s the case, then we don’t need you.

C: How important is a singer’s reading ability to you?

G: I personally think it’s very important. It takes too long otherwise. I don’t want to have to be singing a melody to somebody to learn. A couple times in the past we’ve had two female singers with harmony parts – I don’t want to have to teach them that. I want to write it out, say here it is, go sing it in the room. Maybe we’ll make a few changes to it, but then let’s do it. I just don’t have the time or patience.

C: Would you say that’s more in the film & TV world than in the record world?

D: Yes. It’s a really different world. In the record world, you may have several days to capture a certain sound from a singer, but in the film & TV world, you just don’t have that kind of time.

C: How many singer demos do you get a year?

G: I don’t get that many.

D: Recently a few a year, in the past about ten a year.

C: What would be the best way for ProSingers Access members to get their demo to you? Could they send you an email link?

G & D: Yes, that would be the best way.

G: We don’t need singers all the time, but when we do, it’s more of a “specialty” thing.

D: And the trouble with having hardcopies is that I may get a great demo, but not need somebody for ten months. Having direct access online is easier than trying to fish out their demo.

C: Thank you! That’s what we’re trying to do, bridge the gap a little between the composer and singer worlds. And thank you for taking this time with me for ProSingers Access.

Looking for world-class singers? Join now (it's free!): http://www.ProSingersAccess.com

Google does something for good, after all...

2009-02-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

My friend Lisa posted info about this service and I thought it was interesting, so I tried it. It works!

Here’s a number worth putting in your cell phone, or your home phone speed dial: 1-800-goog411. This is an awesome service from Google, and it’s free — great when you are on the road.

Don’t waste your money on information calls and don’t waste your time manually dialing the number. I am driving along in my car and I need to call the golf course and I don’t know the number. I hit the speed dial for information that I have programmed.

The voice at the other end says, “City & State.”

I say, “Garland, Texas.”

He says, ”Business, Name or Type of Service.”

I say, Firewheel Golf Course.”

He says, ”Connecting” and Firewheel answers the phone.

How great is that? This is nationwide and it is absolutely FREE!

Click on the link below and watch the short clip for a quick demonstration.

Http://WWW.google.Com/goog411/

Launching www.ChristyCrowl.com

2009-01-07T18:19:00.000-08:00

One does not realize the undertaking it is these days to update one's website. Somewhere after the "menu" gets decided upon, it becomes a battle of wills - you against the internet. "How do I look good online?" and "Where am I online?" and "How do I make this so that I don't have to call you, web designer, every 5 minutes to update something?" It will literally drive you mad. Compiling all your data, especially from the pre-digital age, is like driving up a 90 degree incline. By the time you archive yourself, your work, your friends, your videos, your blogs, your pictures, your press, your awards, YOUR LIFE, who wants to go through with a fine-tooth comb searching for typos?

But alas, in this day and age as any type of artist, you MUST have a website. And then you MUST be on myspace, and should be on facebook, as well as a hundred other sites I don't know about. And then you should be Linked In, and Twiterred, and have all your stuff available for digital downloads - and if you're NOT on itunes, who's gonna take you seriously?

I digress. This is about launching www.ChristyCrowl.com - a feat I am glad to have accomplished and glad to have found the right people to help me. And here it is - anything and everything hanging out for everyone to see. Several months, hundreds of hours...all to assemble one big scrapbook online.

I hope you like it and look forward to hearing your comments. Listen to demos, search my catalog, watch videos - it's ALL there. Have a healthy and prosperous 2009!

I now have to update my website.

Promoting Your Music or Yourself

2008-12-17T12:49:00.000-08:00

A producer friend sent this to me, and I thought I would share. This producer is also the partner of a large music house in Nashville and an educator at a major university, and I think the amount of research and experience they took into putting this together is amazing. Please take the time to read if you're serious about your career in the music business.

PROMOTING YOUR MUSIC OR YOURSELF

A summary of what I’ve learned about promoting and selling music online, which I am documenting for my beloved students!

BEFORE YOU READ THROUGH THIS AND FEEL OVER WHELMED, REMEMBER THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT WILL HAPPEN IN A FEW MONTHS. REALISTICALLY, GIVE YOURSELF 3 TO 5 YEARS TO GET THINGS ESTABLISHED. JUST STAY FOCUSED, MAKE A TASK LIST, AND KEEP CHECKING THINGS OFF.
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YOUR OWN CD

Clearly your songs need to be very strong and your music must sound great. If you can afford to hire a professional producer, you should definitely do so. Trying to make a record without a producer is like trying to shoot a movie without a director. You might end up with a finished product, but having that objective person looking at the big picture and bringing it all together is extremely valuable. You want your songs to sound cohesive so they all belong together on the same record. You also want a producer who will make sure that YOUR VOCAL sounds fantastic. Don’t settle for someone who gives you hot guitar tracks and then just leaves you on your own in front of the mic when it comes time to cut the vocal.

When it comes to music production, there are three factors: FAST. CHEAP. GOOD. You can only have two of those, but you can’t have all three.

If you’re not sure about a producer, just offer to hire them for one song to start with and see if you like working with them. You want a person that you feel comfortable with who will bring out your best in the studio. Depending on the genre of music, you could easily spend at least a couple thousand dollars per song, but that should include paying the musicians, and you should strive to have full ownership of the masters. If a producer gives you a lower rate up front in exchange for partial ownership of the master, that’s also another option. The scenario of a producer “developing an artist” and not charging them for their services is what many people often expect, but producers need to pay the bills too. Plus if you’re on their no-money work roster, you’re going to come last, after their money work. You could find yourself still waiting for them to finish your project two years after you started. And it may not always be easy to find a producer who believes in you enough to work with you for free. So if you want to get something done in a timely manner, just pay them for their services, and walk away owning what you did.

Having a GREAT MIX and MASTERING are of utmost importance. A crappy mix is a huge indicator of amateur work. Your songs must compete sonically with what the major labels are releasing. You cannot forego mastering.

When you meet a person for the first time, what do you notice more, what their face looks like, or how their voice sounds? When you are putting together your CD packaging, do not underestimate the vital importance of having a GREAT CD COVER. Good artwork is essential. Spend some time in the record stores looking at the CD covers of other musicians in your genre, and get some really good references for whomever is designing your cover for you. Something like this, though always subjective, is AS important as having good production and mastering on your tracks.

If you’ve done any cover tunes on your CD, you will need to pay out the mechanical licenses before you can get your CDs duplicated. Hopefully, all of these royalties are processed through the Harry Fox Agency, and if you’re getting less than 2,500 CDs printed, you can pay online at songfile.com. Otherwise, you’ll need to find out from the song’s publisher who processes their mechanicals. Please learn from my mistake and get several hundred ‘FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY’ copies printed up if you have several cover tunes on your CD. We didn’t do that, we got 2,000 CDs pressed with really nice expensive digipak packaging, had to pay mechanicals on all of them, [which really adds up for 8 covers per CD], and then ended up giving away 600 of those CDs. Soooo... we paid hundreds of dollars in mechanicals that we will never get back. We should have gotten 500 CDs in a cardboard sleeve printed for promos. Live and learn.

If it’s looking like your full record might take a few years to complete, [which is entirely possible because life happens] you might want to consider getting the first 5 or 6 songs mixed and mastered, and then print up 100 copies of a “partial release”. This will allow you to at least start getting it out there and get some momentum on it. We did this with our first 6 songs, and shipped the prerelease out to record labels and some radio stations that played our genre of music. [Good thing we did, since we had no idea it would still be TWO YEARS before we’d be finished.] From that we got 10 song licenses for various compilations, we got one song on the Banana Republic playlist, we got airplay on a nationally syndicated radio show, and we made some extremely valuable contacts which later paid off with CD orders when we had our full release finished. I am SO GLAD we did this!!! It’s the best decision we made. It might also give you just a little bit of satisfaction so that you’ll take your time and do the whole record right and not rush just to get it finished. Another option would be to call it an EP. But later after you’ve recorded more, put it ALL together because you can sell a full length CD for more.
PHOTOS

Make sure you’re thinking big picture [meaning of your entire musical presence... not a really large photo...] when you get artists photos taken. [And for the love, please do not stand by a tree trunk and smile at the camera.] You need to make sure everything about the entire package all fits into whatever image you’re going for. It’s good to ask yourself the question: who is my demographic? [Demographic is a fancy word for the group of people who like a certain thing.] Are you appealing to the Clay Aiken, Celine Dion crowd? Or the Snoop Dogg crowd? Make sure you LOOK and DRESS like you SOUND. Then make sure your pictures have that vibe. Don’t dress like a hard core punk rocker if you’re singing adult contemporary love ballads. Your CD is a product, a commodity, which needs to be marketed. And if you’re not well defined and streamlined in your identity as an artist, you will have a hard time finding an audience to which you will stick. And you want to be very sticky! [And heck, if you’ve got money to hire professional hair, makeup, wardrobe, art direction, etc. go for it.]

No one else cares about your music or your career as much as you do. Don’t wait for someone else to come along and do things for you that you think you’re not good at. Just work at getting better and do them for yourself.

DATABASE [It’s all about who you know.]

One of my weakest areas is taking the time to really organize my contacts. Relationships and contacts are vital. Absolutely vital. As you get more of them, you need to keep track of who falls into which category, and when you’ve communicated and what was said. Take the time to enter people’s info into your database, and come up with casual and friendly reasons to get in touch so that you stay on their radar. If you are not on people’s radar, you might as well be invisible. Walk the careful line of staying in touch without being annoying. DO NOT ONLY EMAIL PEOPLE WITH THE ‘Hey got any work for me?’ MESSAGE! That is not only annoying, but makes you look needy and desperate. Perhaps when you have something cool you’re working on, just send out a little email blast letting people know that you were honored to be a part of such and such, and they can check out the project at whatever website. And then, of course you can include all of your contact info in each email, or even attach your vCard, or whatever your address book program calls it. Reaching out like this is totally acceptable, and anyone in the business understands that you’ve GOT to promote yourself.

LOGO

You’ve probably not considered having your own logo, but the reality is that you are in BUSINESS, and businesses have logos. Having a well designed logo that fits your sound and personality can go a long long way. It can tie all of the elements together in how you present yourself. To have a great logo on your website, myspace page, CD, business card, letterhead, etc. makes you seem much more established and professional. Logos are tricky though, so be prepared to spend a long time developing what you want, and don’t settle for the “name swoosh”. [your name with something similar to the Nike swoosh] We spent about 5 months, going through 3 graphic designers and about $5,000 when all was said and done. But for that $5K, we got a professionally designed logo, business cards, address labels, and letterhead. YOU DO NOT NEED TO SPEND THAT MUCH. Give yourself time, but keep this on your to do list. It makes a DIFFERENCE!

DOMAIN NAME & DEDICATED EMAIL ADDRESS

With all of the other options now available, having your own website is becoming less and less necessary. However, if you have not already done so, I would highly recommend reserving your domain name. The cheapest place I’ve found to do this is GoDaddy.com where you can reserve a .com for about $9 a year. Then you can forward that domain name to any site you want, so you could forward yourname.com to your MySpace profile if that’s all you’ve got. Also, get an email address that is whatever@yourname.com, that will be much better when you send a business email than some gmail account. That also gives another subtle indication that you’re here to stay. I believe there are some mail services [like aol?] that offer to give you whatever you want as the last half of your email address if it’s available.

But if you do want to go ahead and set up your own website, then you should also be able to use your domain name as the back half of your email address. YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DO THIS. Imagine someone at a record label gets a package from someone. They’ve got a home printed CD label, a letter on plain white paper, and the person’s email address is “luv2sing87@gmail.com”, and it all came in a plain white envelope. That says amateur. Then contrast that to a professionally duplicated CD mailed with a professionally printed address label, a letter on matching letterhead, and the contact email is something@yourname.com. That will be taken much more seriously. That says you’re taking this seriously.

If you’ve looked into getting yourname.com and it’s not available, it’s quite common to have yournamemusic.com or yournamerocks.com. Or some other variation that still shows you’ve got it going on. I’d go for .com over .net. If and when you do set up your own website, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to order your CD, and make the link to purchase very clear on every single page. Get an account with paypal.com and go to the “merchant tools” section. In there you can generate a “buy now” button with all of the parameters you set for people to buy your CD and pay through paypal. Then once you do make a sale, be sure to ship it in a timely manner, and be sure to thank them for their purchase. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.

BUSINESS CARDS

If you don’t already have business cards, you should get some immediately. This too makes you seem more established, and it’s great to just pull one out quickly if you meet someone, and have them take it with them. It’s best to get a cellphone number and keep it forever. Put a cell phone number, email address, and website where they can hear your tracks on it. Don’t put your land line or street address unless you’re in a location you’ll be staying for a very long time. And don’t change your cell phone number if you can help it. There’ve been several times I’ve needed to track a singer down ASAP for a session the next morning, and the phone number I have for them is no longer current. I end up calling someone else because I need to get it booked.

LETTERHEAD

In this age of digital communication, you won’t be sending out snail mail all of the time. But when you do, putting your correspondence on your own letterhead makes you seem much more established and professional. Sending your press kit out with your logo on the address label, your letterhead, and your CD will give a much better impression than plain white printer paper and a plain white envelope.

DON’T FORGET TO BRUSH... I MEAN BLOG.

It seems that keeping an interesting and regular blog is now a requirement for anyone who’s trying to build a fanbase. Fans now expect to be able to stay posted on events, and even comment back, and yes, even get a response from the artist at times. You’ve got to win people over with your story, your personality, your life. If you’re in the studio, document that process, and even post in the studio video. If you’re doing studio work, tell about your latest session, giving interesting little anecdotes. Or even just give a great cookie recipe or tips on where to get a free meal on your birthday. Anything that might be interesting. So you can write your little blog post, and then copy it from one of your profiles to the next, or do the rss thing which I still haven’t totally gotten down. Put this on your to do list. Just keep in mind that it’s open to the public, so don’t start slamming people openly unless you want to potentially burn that bridge.

ONE SHEET

This is not one sheet. It’s A one sheet. A one sheet is something you’ll need if you want to pitch your CD to any retail store. I’ll print out one of my one sheets and include it in this packet, so you can see how I did it. I learned about this just by reading articles online. It basically includes the following information: a photo of your CD, the title, the track list, the playing time, a paragraph or two about your project, airplay or performances in the area that might drive people to buy it, press quotes, UPC code, wholesale price, suggested retail price. When you approach a store’s buyer about carrying your CD, if you don’t know what a one sheet is, you’ll look like you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’ve got a decent one sheet, they will want it to help make their decision. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.

CDs are quickly becoming more scarce in the retail market, and it’s predicted that this Christmas will be the last Christmas that CDs are sold. I personally don’t believe that. It seems like there are still boutiques that are image oriented that carry music if it fits their image. We got our CDs into a very upscale men’s clothing store in Belgium simply because the owner contacted us on MySpace just to say he liked our tracks. I noticed he had a posh clothing store and responded by asking if he’d like to carry our CD. He decided to order 10 copies and see how they moved. It’s the only title they carry. You just never know!

INVOICES

If a store decides to carry your CD, or if you do session work for someone, you should give them an invoice. [This is a good place for your logo.] A store will expect an invoice. Someone who hires you for a session won’t mind if you give them one. After you’ve done your work, just say “How much should I invoice you for?” This shows that you’re organized, professional, and keeping track. DO NOT get paranoid if someone takes a while to pay. Do not let your first communication with them be tainted by a tone of voice that shows that you think they’re trying to purposely scam you. Showing that you’re suspicious or paranoid about getting scammed makes you seem amateur. If it’s been 60 days and you’re still waiting for the money, either send them an email or a quick call and simply ask when you should be expecting payment. Chances are they’re still waiting for money to come in or maybe they’ve lost track of time. Eventually you will figure out if a client is habitually late or bad about paying. Then you can either refuse to do business with them, or just stay on top of it. But an invoice is tangible documentation. KEEP TRACK OF WHEN YOU’VE BEEN PAID, just so you don’t make the mistake of calling about a check when you actually already received it.

AMAZON.COM/ADVANTAGE

You can sell your CD through Amazon.com through their Amazon Advantage program. You simply create and account, YOU MUST HAVE A UPC CODE ON YOUR CD for this, and then they will order one or two copies of your CD for their warehouse. [BTW - If you ever need a UPC code number, I will gladly give you one for free. I have an account with 10K numbers and I’ll never use them all.] They pay you after your CD sells.

You will want to be on Amazon.com for more reasons than just selling your CD. [See what I wrote for Pandora and Live365.] The down side is they keep over half of the money, and deduct the $35 annual fee from your sales, but the up side is, you’re on Amazon.com which puts you through to all of the other websites that are “powered by Amazon.com”. PLUS you can then create your own Amazon Marketplace account and sell your CD directly through their site. But you can’t do the Marketplace thing if there is no preexisting listing, which is why you need the Amazon Advantage account first. So, Amazon Advantage means THEY fulfill the order, and keep more money. Amazon Marketplace means YOU fulfill the order and get more money.

SOUNDSCAN.COM

If you’ve got a barcode on your CD, you should register it with Soundscan.com so it can be tracked. Who knows? Your project might be a hot seller and it would be a shame if no one was counting. Just because a site like Amazon.com may report your sales to Soundscan doesn’t mean Soundscan is keeping track. If they don’t know what project belongs to that number, they’ll discard the stats. So YOU need to give them the UPC code number and the title of the project. You can either print out your registration and fax it in, or register it via email. And like I said, I’d be glad to give you a UPC code, if you’ll use it. A&R people at record labels sometimes look at the Soundscan reports, and if they see a new artist getting lots of sales, it gets their attention. You just never know.

ALLRECORDLABELS.COM

This website has an enormous list of record labels, grouped by genre, and by city or country. When we got our 100 copies of our partial release printed up, we went through the list of labels in our genre, CREATED A DATABASE, and one by one checked out their websites. Many of them were out of business, but several were still going strong. For the labels that seemed right for us, we emailed them and asked permission to submit our project. In that email we gave them a short description of our record, and a link to where they could listen if they wanted to take the time. For the ones that responded, we then wrote a cover letter, mentioning how we’d communicated in email, and then again gave them a brief description of our project, and depending on what we’d accomplished at that point, we mentioned some of that. Then we mailed them a CD WITHOUT THE SHRINK WRAP. [ALWAYS take off the shrink wrap when you’re giving your CD to someone in the industry, it’s a courtesy to save them time.] For the people who didn’t respond the first time, we emailed them again. If they didn’t respond after that, we left them alone. This is how we got 10 song licenses for various compilations before our CD was even finished. Having that to promote our full release was hugely valuable.

MYSPACE.COM [How to use it effectively]

Duh, everyone knows about MySpace, and hopefully you already have a MySpace music profile set up. What you may not know is how important it is for you to promote this and get your number of friends and plays up. I’ve been told on three different occasions by people at record labels and other companies that they will be checking out my MySpace page to see how many plays and friends I’ve gotten, to gauge how popular my music is. When I heard this, I realized that I needed to devote regular time to promoting my profile.

Here is my advice: Go ahead and buy one of those software programs that help with friend adding, comments, and messages. [If you’re on a Mac computer, you can get Spyder.] These not only save you time, but they help you organize and keep track of your friends and who you’ve already commented etc. As long as you limit your friend requests etc. to about 200 a day, it doesn’t get you into trouble. This system will save you time, but it’s still not hands off. You must sit and enter in captcha codes, so it takes a little while. Do not just randomly add friends. Find people who are friends with bands or artists that are musically similar to you, and also find RADIO STATIONS, RECORD LABELS, AND DJS. [But skip people who are in Russia, the worst music pirating websites are in Russia, and there’s no recourse for them.] DJs are easy to find because they pretty much all put “DJ” [or occasionally deejay] in their name. Add them as friends and leave them comments. [Add me as a friend too! myspace.com/wwgroovecorp ] You don’t need to make spammy comments like “Hey, check out my CD!”, but you can simply say hello and wish them a nice week or whatever. Just something to make them possibly notice you and maybe go to your page and check out your music. And of COURSE from your profile, you will have links to where people can purchase your music, as well as any other relevent link.

HERE’S THE GOOD PART: Create some type of file sharing page, either through a .mac account, or through a site like rapidshare.com, and upload all of the songs you’d be willing to give to DJs or internet radio stations. Then contact the DJs and radio stations that you’ve friended on MySpace, and invite them to check out your tracks*. Tell them that if they like what they hear, they can send you a message requesting the download url, and you’ll give them your music. I’ve done this, and have had 50+ DJs around the world ask me for the url so far, and I’ve only been doing this for a few months. So it’s cool because now they are out playing our tracks on their gigs for people to hear. Of course, we ask them to not share the download url with anyone. This is a FREE way to promote your music, with only the investment of time. And it’s also a good indicator that if no one is asking you to download your tracks, then you might need to step up the production quality of your recordings. [Or maybe your music just isn’t the genre they’re into.] [*This would be a good reason to consider having someone do a dance remix of one of your originals, to appeal to a different audience.]

Another thing you can do with your friend list on MySpace is to get in touch with all of your friends in a certain region and ask them to suggest a venue where your music might fit, to book a potential gig. Then follow through and do a show there. Then come up with some incentive for people to show up, and broadcast it by leaving comments on their pages. Think of what it would take to motivate you to rally your friends for someone else’s show, and see if you can do that for the people who might come to your show.

REVERBNATION.COM - Widgets!! Widgets!! Widgets!!

This site is great because you upload your tracks and they generate lovely little music playing widgets which can be placed on any website that takes html. These widgets not only play music, but they can also show your performance schedule, and allow people to sign up for your mailing list. And anyone who likes your music can place the widget on their site if they want, thus giving you more exposure, while allowing you the power to change the widget if you want. Since my record has cover tunes which are against the MySpace policy, I can’t put them on my MySpace player. To get around this, I have a Reverb Nation widget on my MySpace page so people can listen to my whole record. I also have a widget on my main website, since it’s so much easier than creating a player myself for my site. I also sometimes paste in a widget when I post a bulletin on MySpace, so people can hear the music, or on a blog post. This is a truly great resource, and it’s totally FREE.

GOOGLE.COM/ALERTS

Google lets you set up a google alert for any word or phrase you want. You can set one up for your name and another for the name of your record, and you will be notified when the google robot indexes any new sites with your name. It helps if you’ve got a word you’ve invented as part of your CD name, because then you know it’s definitely about you if it shows up. [I invented the word “chillodesiac” as part of our record name.] THIS IS HOW I FIND PEOPLE WHO’VE UPLOADED MY MUSIC FOR FREE ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS. You will want to be able to stop pirating of your music in its tracks, so be sure to set a google alert up, and it will come right to your email box.

INDIE MUSIC REVIEWS

Do a google search for websites and magazines that are willing to review music by indie artists, and see what their protocol is for sending in your music. For the ones that accept submissions, make sure your music is the right genre for them, and then put together a nice cover letter which gives them a brief description of your project, and TELL THEM WHY YOUR MUSIC IS RIGHT FOR THEIR SITE OR MAGAZINE. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE. This is how we got a review in Electronic Musician Magazine. If you can get some legit reviews either of a live show or a recorded project, that’s material for your press kit, and worthy of a blog post and bulletin. Any good review should be broadcast to your contact list, because it’s all about perception. If your contacts perceive that you’ve got stuff going on, that’ll give you more credibility. But if they never hear from you or about you, they won’t think of you at all. You want people to think about you.

GARAGEBAND.COM - Not affiliated with the Garage Band software.

One appeal of GarageBand.com is that you can create your profile and then enter your songs in their “song contests” to be reviewed and ranked by other members and hopefully climb their charts. [You either need to pay for the song entry or review about 40 songs to earn an entry.] I have found this process to be painfully slow and unrewarding to be totally honest. However, one benefit of being listed on this site is that it automatically puts you through to the iLike.com network. And that means that people on Facebook.com can add your songs to their facebook profiles. So that’s a good thing. Plus having a profile on Garage Band expands your web presence which makes you seem more established.

ILIKE.COM

As a music listener, you can create your profile on iLike.com, and add the iLike sidebar to your iTunes program. Like Last.fm, it will give you the opportunity to be “friends” with people who have similar musical taste as you. But more importantly, it’s a good idea to create your own artist page on iLike.com. This will allow you to have people add themselves as your fans, and for you to send out notes to everyone etc. Your iLike page will also link to your main website, your facebook music profile, your garage band page, and your CD Baby page. And it will allow you to post to your MySpace blog from your iLike page. Nice! Plus you can manage your songs that are available for people to add to their Facebook page, and you can get updates on how many profile adds and dedications have been made on each of your songs. I confess that I personally have barely made use of the Worldwide Groove Corporation profile on iLike, but it’s there for me when I’ve got the time to work it.

FACEBOOK.COM

I’m sure everyone knows about Facebook. It’s always good to just keep your name in people’s heads to stay on their radar, and it’s all about connections, which is what Facebook is for, right? And if you’re on here, and we’re not already friends, look me up as Ellen Tift. You can add your Reverb Nation widget to your Facebook page, and also your iLike songs. AND you can also create a music profile for yourself on Facebook where people can sign up as fans. If you do that, you should broadcast it to your MySpace friends. In some ways this can be risky because if you have only 3 fans, and they all have the same last name as you do, you seem kind of pitiful. But on the other hand, it’s cool when people sign on as fans and you have no idea who they are or how they found you. And even cooler when they post comments to you!

NASHVILLEMUSICPROS.COM - FREE

This is a relatively new site, of the same concept as MySpace, but strictly for Nashville musicians. In fact, you must first get your profile approved by the site administrator to make sure there are only professional musicians on there. So it’s a smaller web of people, and more manageable than MySpace, and so far is spam free. Look me up on here too and be my friend, Ellen Tift.

THESIXTYONE.COM

This site describes itself as a “game” technically, but it’s a platform to get your music heard. Basically, you upload your songs, and the people who have listener accounts “bump” your songs if they like them. If your song gets enough bumps, then it gets posted on the home page. It costs the listener points to bump your song, but then they get points back as other people bump it. The earlier they are in bumping a song, the more points they might earn from it later. You can set whether or not your song can be downloadable, but if your song is available for digital sale on Amazon, the site automatically links to it so people can buy it. BEFORE YOU SET UP YOUR ARTIST ACCOUNT, I’d recommend setting up a listener account and accruing points for a few days until you get up to level 5 at least. [You do that by listening to songs on “the rack”.] Then once you have some points as a listener, create another account [with a different email address] as an artist. The reason you want to do this is that artists cannot bump anything. Then once you upload a song in your artist account, IMMEDIATELY log out, and log back in under your listener account, and be the very first one to bump your song. That way you can earn the most points from it as it gets bumped. I created an account in July 2008, and uploaded our entire record plus some remixes we’ve done. By mid-September, we got an email from a record producer who wanted us to do a remix of a band he’s working with, paying work. Plus we’ve had many people contact us as listeners who said they would buy our record on iTunes from that exposure. So it’s a good site.

LINKEDIN.COM & PLAXO.COM

These are other networking sites, which are more about professional relationships, unlike Facebook which is much more social. It’s good to get profiles on these because you just never know who is on what site, and the more connections you have, the better. This CAN help you connect to friends of your friends who might be of assistance in your career, but another benefit is to simply get your name into people’s heads over and over. So if you’re connecting with someone on Facebook, then on Linkedin, then on Plaxo, and then on MySpace... you’re be more present in their thoughts. And if it’s someone you don’t KNOW personally, but you’d like to know OF you, then this is a good way to get your name to be more familiar to them. And people like what’s familiar. Look me up on these too, Ellen Tift.

Mi2N.COM

This site has some newsletters, two of which are: i2N, INDIE NET NEWS - The Largest, FREE Source of Musician News and B2N, BUSINESS NET NEWS - The Largest Music Business & Technology News Resource. Now if reading that just made your brain shut down, wake back up. This is one great place that YOU can submit YOUR NEWS. You must have a well written press release, but if you submit it and it’s good, they will add it to the newsletter.

I actually got the headline of the newsletter once from a press release I wrote and submitted. There are some good books and articles about how to write an interesting press release. You must do more than say so and so recorded an album and you can buy it now. You can either tie in some random weird connection between one of your songs and something in the news, or have an event that benefits charity at which you will be performing, or something else that makes it interesting. You can CREATE a fund raiser if you want. Get the permission of a charity to use their name in promoting the event, get some of your other friends to perform at it too, and then write a press release about it and submit it to this and your local community calendars and newspapers. [Like if they bring a can of food for the local food bank, they get $5 off your CD purchase, etc.]

CDBABY.COM - Physical and Digital Distribution

Many people know about CD Baby, and from what I’ve experienced, it’s a great and reliable company. You can sell physical CDs for a one time $35 registration fee. They fulfill the orders and ship worldwide, and will even provide you with a credit card swiper for free to sell CDs and merch at your gigs. They keep $4 of each CD sale which seems reasonable, all things considered. They will give you the contact info for the people who purchase your CD. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.

What’s even better than their physical distribution is their digital distribution. It’s a free opt-in service, and it puts you through so many digital websites [including iTunes], you haven’t even heard of them all. The down side is that you do not have any control over the speed at which your music is submitted to these digital outlets, nor of how long it takes for your music to actually show up. The up side is they only take 9% of your digital sales, and they pay every week. So you only pay out if you’re actually selling music, and you’re not paying ongoing fees if your music isn’t selling. I would highly encourage you to avoid anything that will charge you a monthly fee for selling your music, as you can lose money very easily that way.

TUNECORE.COM - Digital Distribution

Tunecore.com is another option for digital distribution, and it works a little differently than CD Baby in that they charge an annual fee [maybe $10?] and then give you 100% of your digital sales proceeds. The up side is, that you actually have a little more control over who your tracks are submitted to, and you only pay for those channels. [Like if you choose iTunes U.S. and Europe, but not iTunes Japan, you only pay accordingly.] Plus you get all of the money from your sales. The down side is you pay an annual fee whether you’re selling music downloads or not, and if you do the math, you might need to sell at least a couple hundred downloads before you’d break even with what CD Baby would take from your sales. So it’s just whatever you feel comfortable with. I’ve not personally used TuneCore.com because you can have ONLY ONE digital distributor, but I’ve never heard anything bad about them.

LIVE365.COM

This site is a hub of hundreds of independent internet radio stations. A long time ago, I contacted several of the DJs of radio stations on this site that played the type of music I make, and offered the file sharing url of my record for them to download. [I found them by searching for which stations played music by specific artists like me.] I had many of them write back and tell me they would be adding our tracks to their playlists. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE. The great thing about this is, when your song gets played on a Live365 radio station, the interface has link buttons so the listener can automatically get connected to your music either on iTunes or Amazon.com for purchase. And any time someone is encouraged to PAY YOU for your music, that’s a good thing. Many DJs enjoy finding new talent, so if you’ve got a good project, you should get some good response. And if you don’t hear back from someone the first time, contact them again. There are hundreds of reasons someone might not get back to you, and most of these reasons have nothing to do with YOU. So be persistent and stay on their radar.

LAST.FM

If anyone who is a Last.fm member has ever listened to one of your tracks on iTunes, or on their ipod, it has been scrobbled [which on their site means “counted” or “tracked”], and you already have a profile on Last.fm. It’s weird to go to this site and find a page about your music that you didn’t know existed, along with fans posting comments etc. And it’s on the wiki principle, so anyone can update the info on the page.

So here’s what you do, you create an account as a label on Last.fm, and claim yourself as an artist. Then you may upload your original tracks to their system for airplay in their radio stations. This site actually creates radio stations according to an artist reference you give them, and they derive who is similar to whom with some type of analysis I have not taken the time to figure out. But it’s cool because you download the Last.fm software which can function either as a stand alone player, for you to listen to music that they send to you based on your “seed” for the station. OR it can work in conjunction with iTunes and scrobble what you’re listening to. So if you have uploaded your music to their playlists, then hopefully when someone starts a radio station of a similar artist, your songs will be played on that custom radio station. So if you connect this to your iTunes, be sure to play your tracks a lot in your iTunes so you get more scrobbled songs, and your count will go up. And you want your count to be up because everyone who goes to your last.fm page can see how many plays you’ve gotten.

PANDORA.COM

This is another site sort of like Last.fm but even cooler!! Pandora.com has a system of analyzing songs based on hundreds of “genomes”, which an actual human being will attribute to your music. You must send them a physical CD, and if they like it, they will analyze it and add it to their playlist. I sent them a CD, and after about a month, when I would type in “Worldwide Groove Corporation” into their interface to start a radio station, they had analyzed our music and knew what style to play. [They gave it characteristics like “latin influences”, “electronica roots”, “slow moving bassline”, “downtempo influences”, and “laid back female vocal”.] Then after about another month, they would actually put our songs in the playlist with the other stuff similar to ours. There’s no guarantee you’ll get added, but if you do, then when other people listen for artists similar to you, they might hear YOUR music, and it’s always accompanied by links to iTunes and Amazon so people can BUY your music.

ALLMUSIC.COM

This site is, among other things, a huge database of who’s in the credits of all label released albums, as well as a number of indie projects. [Except they NEVER list the string arranger! :-( ] Anyway, you need to send them a physical CD, and then hopefully they will catalogue it and you’ll be a part of their database. The practical benefit of this is that Pandora only gets their summary info about artists from allmusic.com. So IF allmusic.com should decide to have a staff member write a review of your CD, and IF Pandora should add you to their playlist, then Pandora will actually have some info about your project for anyone who’s interested. Plus being on allmusic.com makes you seem more legit.

TAXI.COM

If you’re a songwriter and have the money to join Taxi [about $300 a year], you will get semimonthly classified listings of which publishing company or record label is looking for what type of song. If you’ve got a song that you believe would be right for a particular listing, then you pay a $5 fee for each song you submit, they review it, and decide whether or not to forward your song to the company that placed the ad. Then they will send you what the reviewer said about your song, which can be extremely helpful, even if your song didn’t get forwarded. I was fortunate enough to win a year membership to TAXI in a song contest, and I found it to be very educational, as I saw which songs of mine got forwarded the most, and also got the opinions of several different people. In my experience, this is a good and honest organization.

HOWEVER THIS SITE ISN’T ONLY GOOD FOR THAT. They also have several great articles and interviews posted, and Q&A sessions they’ve had with numerous industry professionals about lots of topics. You do NOT need to be a member to access these articles, and I would highly recommend spending some time on this site, I’m sure you’ll learn something.

CAFEPRESS.COM - Merch!

If you have a cool band logo or a snappy slogan that someone might want to have on a T-shirt, mug, mouse pad, magnet, notebook, tote bag, or frisbee, you can design your own merchandise and sell it through this site. There is no start up cost, and they only manufacture the item when someone orders it. The downside is that they charge so much for each item, that even though you can price it however you want over the base price, you don’t dare mark it up too much, so you make very very little off of any sale. The up side is that if people order your merchandise, then it’s free advertising for you. Plus it makes you seem more established to have your own merchandise set up, and you can link to it from all of your profile pages if you want. They have about 50+ different items. [Nice use for your LOGO.]

VIRB.COM

Virb.com is sort of like MySpace, only not as popular. If you’ve got the time, you can copy/paste the info from your MySpace profile and link up to people on this site. It’s free and can’t hurt, and anything that expands your web presence in a positive way is good.

IMEEM.COM

Imeem.com is a site where people can upload music for others to discover. You can copy/paste the code of the player of individual songs and put it on whatever site you want. But I also think you can download it. So I’m not really sure how I feel about this site, and honestly haven’t spent much time on it. I did discover that one person had uploaded my entire record up there, and that hundreds of people had already downloaded it. That, I didn’t like, since I didn’t make any money from this. So I wrote to the person and told them they needed to remove my music from the site, and I also reported them to imeem. Fortunately this person wrote back in very broken English, and said he was a big fan, and that he would take the music down. So, I don’t know what I think about this. If you know more about imeem.com and have an opinion either way, please let me know.

SNOCAP.COM

Snocap.com basically allows you to SELL digital downloads of your music from any website on which you place the code for the store’s interface. For a brief time, everyone on CD Baby was given an account with Snocap, and the store interface automatically showed up on our MySpace profiles. During this time, I repeatedly attempted to communicate with customer service at Snocap because my Snocap store didn’t work, and never heard back from anyone. They had ONLY email contacts on their website [which to me is a red flag. If I am going to PAY for a membership, I want to be able to CALL these people if necessary.] So they totally ignored all my attempts to contact them. It wasn’t long before CD Baby broke ties with Snocap, and removed their clients from Snocap’s roster, saying we could create our Snocap account independently if we wanted. Bottom line, I’m not impressed, but I don’t know of another company which offers what they do. Maybe they’ve gotten their crap together by now, but I’m not signing up any time soon. If you know of another company that does what they do, please let me know. [See the end of this about iSound.com]

MP3.COM

This is yet another type of site like MySpace. From what I’ve experienced, they really don’t offer anything that makes them indispensable, but as I said with Virb.com, if you’ve got the time to copy/paste your info from your MySpace profile, go ahead. It’s free and it will expand your web presence.

CDSTREET.COM - AVOID!

A few years ago, I was selling CDs on this site instead of CD Baby. They sold dozens of my CDs and never paid me anything. The voice mail for customer service was full, and the emails bounced back. After several months, and me reporting them to the Better Business Bureau, they finally responded to ME [but they NEVER responded to the BBB] with an explanation as to WHY they did not and would not pay me. Their reason, they failed to “capture payment” from the customer. So basically they gave away my CDs for free and weren’t going to make good on what they did. If I was going to cancel my account with them, they’d have charged me to ship the remaining inventory to me, so I’d have to PAY to end my ties with them. I basically marked my CD up to $999 on their site, and posted a big note on my page there telling people that CD Street doesn’t pay their artists, and to please order my CD from CD Baby. If you’ve had a good experience with them, please let me know.

THE ORCHARD - AVOID!

This is yet another lesson in always checking a company out BEFORE you pay them lots of money to join. Because of The Orchard and CD Street, I now am SURE to always check with the local Better Business Bureau in their area to see if anyone has filed any complaints against a company, and if so, what the results were. You figure for all of the people who’ve had a bad experience, so few will actually file a formal complaint with the BBB, that there have to be hundreds more bad experiences out there.

This company offers both physical and digital distribution of your music for a $100 fee. They claim they can do lots of great things for you. But when I signed up with them, it was over a year before I got one penny from them, the share of what they paid me was totally crappy, and they kept asking me to ship more and more CDs to them, even though they weren’t giving me any money for them. So I naively shipped them about 200 CDs before I had a clue.

Ultimately I decided to get out of my contract [which is nearly impossible, there’s only once a year you can do it, and it’s tricky.] It took them about 6 months to ship me back my remaining inventory and HALF of it was damaged. I swear the warehouse employees must have played floor hockey with my CDs before they shipped them back. The cases of some were completely destroyed and some of them were even missing the artwork inserts! So I reported them to the BBB, and found out they’d had dozens of complaints already filed against them. They made no reparations for what they did. Stay away!
SONICBIDS.COM

I personally have never had an artist profile on this site, but their purpose is to provide an easy interface for artists to create an EPK [Electronic Press Kit] to which they can refer interested parties. There is a fee, ranging from $5.95 monthly to $49.95 annually for this service. From what I’ve observed, you can do much of this [bio, music layer, photos videos, link to your site where you’ll have contact info etc.] with your MySpace profile which is free. They do offer “exclusive” opportunities, like song contests, to their members. But from what I’ve heard, people who are members feel like sonic bids just costs a lot of money and they don’t really love it. If you’ve had any experience with them either way, please let me know.

DISCMAKERS.COM - CD DUPLICATING

Three strikes and you’re out. Disc Makers is out in my book. I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with this company. They’ve shipped me damaged product, haven’t adequately replaced it, and the artwork looked very different from the files my graphic designer gave them. [The colors were way off.] I will NEVER use them again. Even though in the end I got most of my money back, they took a month out of my time and thus delayed me having my CDs. I know many people have had fine experiences with them, but I have not.

CRT - CD DUPLICATING

This company is here in TN, and if you order your CDs there, you can go pick them up yourself and avoid paying hundreds of dollars in shipping. I have used them twice and though I don’t love love love them, I have yet to find a better alternative.

EXTREMETRACKING.COM

This isn’t the fanciest website, but they offer a free tracking code to put on your site so you can see: how many visitors come to your site, where they’re from, the keywords they searched for, etc. You can pay a little bit to make it invisible on your page, or do the free version which puts a little graphic on your page. Fair warning, though, anyone can click on that graphic and see the stats for your site, if you do the free version. But if you put it waaaaaaay down after the last bit of text on your site, few will ever find it, much less click on it. I’m sure there are other sites out there that offer this same type of thing, and if you know of something better, please let me know. But I’ve used this site for years with no complaints.

Other sites I have not really taken the time to explore:

PUREVOLUME.COM

MUSICCITYUNSIGNED.COM

INDIEHEAVEN.COM - For Christian music by independent artists

USA4REAL.COM

FANBRIDGE.COM

LIVEKITE.COM

MUSICDISH.NET - Affiliated with Mi2N.com

ISOUND.COM - I just recently found this site, here’s what they’re about.
# Artists:Sign up for FREE as an artist to get your music heard by 1,000's of site visitors.
# Instantly create your own professional band/artist web site.
# Upload your mp3s, videos and photos.
# Put your music anywhere on the internet with our portable player.
# Sell your music downloads and keep 100% of the net profits. [This service is $9.99 every 6 months with a Loud Artist™ account or $19.99 every 6 months without.]
# Instantly sell your mp3s as ringtones.
# Get exposure to record labels.

ZOOMINFO.COM

FRIENDSTER.COM

PIPL.COM

MULTIPLY.COM

Can one be a "Creative Addict"? Meandering thoughts...

2008-11-10T20:07:00.000-08:00

I meander through a lot of thoughts everyday. One of them is that sometimes I feel too creative for my life to handle. Is this normal? All day long, thought after thought about new things to figure out, create, make happen, get to work on, go-go-go! And it's not only about music. It's usually about something that has to do with music, though - like a new cool musical internet tool, or how to make something on prosingersaccess.com work better, or another Songs, Shorts & Scores round, or creating something completely new that could help a lot of other creative types...it makes me wonder sometimes if I'm abnormal - on a genetic level. Am I not content? I have a great life - a fabulous, "creative" life - can't I just sit still for a while? And why isn't everyone like this? Or is everyone really like this but has a secret way to control it that I haven't been privy to?

Well, the truth is, I'm a creative addict. I can't help it (boy, that's a weird thing to say, isn't it). Is there a 12 step program I should enroll in? I constantly feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish all I want to do. And I wonder if I'll be able to in my lifetime. Not in a bad way - just in a way I'd like to affect the world in a positive way kind of way. Things take so long. WAY too long. And I can't do everything myself - which is certainly frustrating at times :). I wish there were an uber computer that could figure out for me the path to take for my ideas - you know, you feed in your idea "A", and ask for all the steps to end up at "Z".

Of course, the uber computer wouldn't account for all the personal emotions and politics that would have to be factored in to accomplish "Z". Isn't that a drag? But it seems to be what makes us human. And we're taught from a very early age not to "be too creative", or we won't have any cool friends, be made fun of, or we'll be sent to the principal's office. That part is really hard for someone like me. I only feel excited in my life when I'm working on something, figuring something out, helping someone, creating something, or exchanging creative ideas with someone who has the same addiction as me.

I wish you could be judged in your life on how your creativity affected other people as opposed to how much money you make, who you work for, what you're working on, who your friends are, who likes you, who likes what you do, and what kind of car you drive. What a different world we'd live in if we got "points" for encouraging each other's creativity - like "life" points. How many more good things would be created if that were the case? How much more great music? How many more great artists? And wouldn't it get rid of a lot of the competitiveness and insecurity that prevent us from pursuing our creative ideas? Can you imagine?

Yes, I'm meandering. But I said that in the first place. See what I mean? What's my point? Where am I going with this?

Creativity. For those of us who can't turn our brains off, it's hard to maneuver through life without stepping on a few toes. It's unintentional. But there's something in us that has to bring things forth, get things done, see what's in our brain come to life before our eyes. And most of the time, I believe our intent is to positively affect the world we live in, not take away from it.

So, if you're not a creative addict, have a little heart for those of us who are. Know that the last thing we want to do is take anything away from anyone else - we just have to, need to, reach our "Z".

And if you are a "creative addict" - know you're not alone. I'd love to hear from you! And may the force be with you :)