Posts belonging to Category 'Career'

Hot Artist & Band Press, Promo Kits!

Who’s been signed this time, was a common question and theme at William Morris Agency while I was there as an agent. While the agency was always on the lookout, of course with the major heavy weight record labels, knowing which artist would ultimately get the deal was not always an “in the bag” known [...]

What To Do And Not Do At A Music Conference

I just returned from the second annual Hyperfest Music Conference & Festival. It was a lot of fun but makes me think of plenty of do’s and not to do’s. It’s interesting how many indie musicians have good intentions but don’t have a game plan in place when attending these conferences. I have some helpful [...]

Why New Musicians (Rappers) Fail: Three Reasons and Solutions

Despite the title of this article, the purpose of it is actually to HELP new emcees AVOID some common traps on their journey to learning how to rap better. You can come up with a million reasons why new rappers fail…or why any artist fails for that matter, but we’ve boiled the list down to [...]

5 Sins of Indie Artists

Indie artists are special people that “keep it real” with the fans and with the music they are creating. In any kind of business, project or situation in life, there are some things that you want to avoid if your want to have longevity in anything that you do. There are some basic angles that [...]

Why Radio Won’t Play Indie Music

And What You Can Do About It
As I clicked on a popular music business forum, I was greeted with a question. “Why won’t commercial radio play music by Indie Artists?”
My reply to this person was as follows:
“As a former Operations Manager and Music Director on both the Comm and Non-Comm sides, Let me break the [...]

Singing Gigs and Session Work

We’ve all made the comment, “How did so and so ever make it as a singer?” As a former talent booking agent with the William Morris Agency, we were also amazed at times. At best it was a guessing game of who we would sign and wouldn’t – it was more of a speculative stock [...]

Music Business Publishing-Song Pitching – 4 Steps to Maximize Your Websites’ Song Pitching Power

Is your website set up to help you pitch your songs or even sell your songs? Sure you probably have the songs listed with the CD cover photo. And, you might even have those songs set up for streaming audio so anyone can get a sample or even the whole song. So how’s that working [...]

The Millionaire Mentality

This past weekend I took my girlfriend to the mall so she could pick out some sophisticated stilettos for the upcoming fall season. I could not help but notice a young black male being escorted out of the store in handcuffs and overheard the police officer saying to the young brother “for socks and a [...]

5 Business Lessons I learned from Hanging out in Hip-Hop Class

I’ve been a dancer my entire life. I started out at the tender age of 4 with my first pair of shinny black tap shoes with little pink bows. I later graduated to jazz, swing, ballroom, a little country line dancing and in my mid 20s returned to my love of tap where I studied [...]

Song Demos – How To Get Them Heard

By now you’ve probably read a myriad of articles with individuals who claim to have all of the answers and secrets to getting your songs heard and cut – for a price of course. I will not claim to have all of the answers and neither will I promise you fame and fortune, but I [...]