Head over to Google Alerts and setup an alert monitor for ALL your artists, your label, your song names, or anything else you want to keep a close eye on. It’s great for finding press clippings, event postings, blog postings, rants by crazy fans, or even misinformation. It helps you to maintain a link list, some of which you may want to promote via email lists, MySpace/Facebook/Purevolume/Twitter, your blog, etc. And it’s always nice to know what people are saying about you or your artists before someone walks up to you at a party and says, “Wow, they really ripped you to shreds on iamamusiccriticwithnotaste.com!”
Break up your tasks into 1-2 hour sub-tasks, or you’ll get overwhelmed and burnt out
I often will list out several tasks that need to get done. For example:
Contact college and non-commercial radio spinning the new record
Followup with national blogs about new record
Followup with NYC press about release party
Those looks like tasks that can be easily tackled. The problem is that each one may have more layers than what you see on the surface. If you take the first task to follow up with radio, for instance. I grab my list of stations to followup with; let’s say it’s 120 stations. I don’t have any contact information for any of these radio stations.
So I start out on my task and I begin by searching for the stations online. I find that some of them have web sites, some have contact forms, some have email addresses, some have MySpace pages, some have Facebook profiles, or any combination of those methods of contact. Next, I need to determine what I’m going to keep track of. Do I just email them? Should I add them as a friend? Should I send them a message now? If I start sending messages and friending them right away, it’ll take me an hour to get 10 of them done.
I need to break this task up. I determine that all I’m going to do in this first sub-task is to collect contact information. If they have an email address or contact form, I’ll store that (in a wonderful sortable spreadsheet, which I’ll describe later). If they also have MySpace and/or Facebook, I’ll store that as well. As I get going, I realize that it’s still taking about an hour to get 20-25 sets of contact info. So I set my sights on 50 contacts for the first sub-task. When I get to 50, I feel accomplished and not overwhelmed.
If I hadn’t broken them up, it would’ve taken me 2 days straight to get all the info and to contact the stations. This way, I can complete the contact info collection in 1 or 2 more sub-tasks and then move onto the actual followup (which should also be split up into 2 or 3 tasks).
Another benefit to this approach is sticking with the overall task. If I tried to do it all at once, I’d be doing a LOT of boring work in a row and my mind would wander onto the next big task, and I’d also question if my approach to this task made sense. If I stick with 1-2 hour sub-tasks, I have a goal that keeps me motivated and keeps me on task. Between sub-tasks is a good time to lay out some more big tasks.
Ah, now I’ve finished my sub-task for “write blog on splitting tasks into sub-tasks” and I feel accomplished. Another brick in the wall of the big task of “write blogs to help others manage and market musicians and bands”.
I’ve added a new category on the blog here called “Techniques”. I’m going to start posting here and describing how we get things done here. Right now, THE VITAL MIGHT is the only active band on our roster so most example will revolve around them.
I’m going to start with a fairly straight forward and simple one: email.
Email probably makes up 90% of the tools we use to book, publicize, and promote the band. In the past, it used to be using Microsoft Outlook but I’ve switched to Gmail, in my opinion one of the most powerful tools available.
Here are the reasons we think it’s the best and how we use it:
Searching
Finding emails in folders in Outlook was a pain in the ass. Every time an email came in, I had to make sure I put it in the correct folder to find it in the future. Up until the latest version of Outlook (or without a 3rd party plug-in), it was horribly slow and ineffective and searching for and finding emails. I often times label emails in Gmail, but if I’m moving too fast or I’m too busy, it’s ok. I can find it with a quick phrase, the same way I’d find something on Google. It’s the same algorithm, so it works the same way.
Multiple “from” addresses
My Google account is for my personal email address, but I’ve added the band email address as a “from” address so I can switch to that when sending messages on behalf of the band. It doesn’t require me to have multiple email addresses, so everything is in one place. (Note: you’ll have to setup with your band’s email provider to forward incoming emails to your Gmail address to get this working properly.)
Labels & Filters
I have a Gmail Filter to Label anything that comes to our band email address as “Band”. I can scan my inbox quickly to see what is “Band” and what isn’t.
IMAP
It automatically sync’s with my iPhone (which I’ll get to later). I can be sure that I’ve always read my emails, since when I read a message or Label it on my iPhone, it automatically does the same in Gmail, and vice versa.
Threads
This one was a little hard to get used to but I don’t know what I’d do without it now. Instead of 20 emails back and forth from one contact, like a booking agent, you have 1 thread where you can easily see the history. Even better, if I use the same subject to communicate with many people (i.e. I used the subject line “the vital might - new record” for about 100 contacts this fall when we were doing PR for the new record). When I’m doing followups with all my contacts, I can jump into one huge thread and hit reply, paste my response, change the name I’m sending it to, and Send. WAY better than opening 100 separate emails. I’ll get into more detail about my followup process in another post.
Labs
The new Google Docs and Google Calendar Labs plug-ins for Gmail are quite nice. I haven’t taken full advantage of them yet, but I like getting Calendar reminders in Gmail and be able to jump into one of my band or label documents right from Gmail, rather than the extra click to open Google Docs. (sure you say, “What’s the big deal about an extra click?” Trust me, they add up over time)
Speed
Some of the time, I have things planned out and scheduled. The rest of the time, I get things done based on what is foremost on my mind. I find that if it’s important, it’ll trickle to the front of your brain and get done first. Gmail makes it very easy to find emails, send a quick reply, and move onto the next TO DO in your head (or on Basecamp, which we’ll get to later)
You might be tethered to Outlook or some other contact management system like I used to be, but the searching and speed in my opinion makes it blow away any desktop or web email app out there.
We’re VERY happy to announce that a THE VITAL MIGHT’s second LP, Red Planet, will be released this October. It will be available here on this site as well as iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, and CDBaby.
Songs from the forthcoming record are up on the band’s various social networking pages:
Looks like good friend and former Moodus Noise drummer Springs Wade has resurfaced down in Asheville, NC, playing drums for the Blunder Bolt Chronicles.
The Vital Might’s “Don’t Mind Me” featuring Morphine’s Dana Colley was played on The Young and the Restless (CBS) today, Wed Sept 12th. The intro of the song through to the end of the first chorus was featured, complete with vocals.
According to Wikipedia, The Young and the Restless has been the top rated soap opera for the past 20 years or so. This is big news for The Vital Might and we’d like to thank Barbara Jordan and Heavy Hitters for making it happen.
Jonathan Coulton is a singer-songwriter who has more or less blown up in the past couple years, without a record label, and selling music mostly online and mostly digital. His story was a big inspiration for us getting things started here. He had a big NY Times article recently that has pushed him further into the spotlight.
Some of his ideas that we borrowed/stole/took inspiration from: blog format for a label/band site, using PayLoadz.com for mp3 purchasing, free high-quality flash streaming songs, and his general attitude towards getting his music out there. He wants people to share his music. That’s why we do it. Sure, money is great, but we want people to hear what we’ve put our energies into.
Wow. Looks like around the world, digital sales are crushing CD sales: Declan herald.
This topic is being HIGHLY debated at record labels, coffee shops, and water coolers everywhere. The CD is not going to die anytime soon. It’s going to be the old uncle of digital music, but people are going to dig something to hold for a while.
Magma Music is a small record label and publishing company located in Cambridge, MA founded by Andy Milk. This site showcases the label's artists and approach to producing and promoting records, booking tours, and all sorts of other tasks related to marketing independent music.
Magma Music is a small record label and publishing company located in Cambridge, MA founded by Andy Milk. This site showcases the label's artists and approach to producing and promoting records, booking tours, and all sorts of other tasks related to marketing independent music.