I finally met her in person in September 2008.  The same mutual friend introduced us when we met up for drinks (not margaritas this time).  My first impressions of Jayna were that she was a lot of fun, full of energy, knew how to stick up for herself (there was some political debates that night), and she genuinely wanted to get to know you.  What stood out as well was hearing Jayna’s laugh, seeing her wonderful smile, and when we said good night getting one of the best hugs from anyone who I had just hung out with for only a few hours.

Anytime I saw or knew I’d see Jayna after that first time hanging out, I would feel an excitement and anticipation that I was going to have an incredibly fun time.  The first gig of mine she came to a month or so after meeting her, I came off the stage from playing my first set and she grabbed my arm and said, “come here, we’re taking pictures.”  What ensued was a few of us huddled in a booth making faces, being silly, and after taking the photo looking at it and laughing ourselves to pieces at how we looked.  She came to many gigs of mine and was always a wonderful energy in the crowd.

Of course, we became friends in other ways.  Dinners.  Our birthday parties.  Emails.  Texts.  And she even watched my cat a few times when I was away.  It was easy to be friends with Jayna.  She accepted you for who you were, but more importantly could see your best qualities and bring those out in you when she was around.  She made ordinary moments in life more amazing than you expected them to be.  She remembered you, took the time to know you, and shared nothing but love with you.  Most of my friends that met with found her memorable and remarkable.  There was something very special about Jayna.  I can only describe it as an energy that was happy and full of a love for life.

On March 12, 2011 I woke up and headed out to a St Paddy’s day bar crawl.  It was sunny and an early spring day out.  I received a text from a friend asking, “how’s Jayna?”  I knew that he had recently met her and thought he meant what is she like.  But then he responded with a link about a homicide at Lululemon in Bethesda, Maryland where Jayna worked part-time.  I called Jayna immediately.  Straight to voicemail.  I called our mutual friend, her best friend, and got her voicemail, so I left a message asking she call me back.  I probably tried Jayna a couple more times.

When her best friend called me and said, “Brian, Jayna’s dead”, I cannot describe how much the life was taken out of me at that moment.  Standing outside of Fado’s bar in the Chinatown area of DC, people passing by, and my mind in complete shock, I fell to my knees in disbelief.  I got off the phone and collected myself as best I could and went home.  As I came inside, my former girlfriend was home sick and she immediately saw the look on my face asked, “what’s wrong?”  And all I could say was Jayna’s dead before losing it.

I sat that weekend on my couch in silence, numb and getting bits of information from the news and our mutual friend who introduced us on the phone all those years ago.  A group of her friends got together on Sunday and we sat around crying, sharing stories, and being there together.  When I got home that night my former girlfriend said to me, “you need to pick up your guitar and play because that’s what you do.”  And so I did and I wrote the music for ‘A Piece of Happiness’ that night.

I don’t want to go into much detail on the struggles I went through that got in the way of writing this song.  What I can say is that I have never felt the affects of pure evil before in my life and I went through a period of high anxiety, paranoia, and living in complete fear.  At times I doubted the song would shine through any of that and I grew frustrated that I could not find the words for my friend.

Eventually I told myself to keep it simple, to remember the feelings Jayna gave so many of us, and asked myself what was it that Jayna gave us?  Happiness.  That is what bonded her to each of us and us to each other.  We saw her happiness, felt it and heard it.  Any story I heard about her resulted in the feeling of happiness.

I feel very fortunate to have known Jayna and carry the happiness she brought me and many other people inside of me.  Even in her death over the past year, I have met people who either know someone who knew her or know the tragic story and tell me how incredible it must have been to be friends with her.  I’ve even been thanked by some for sharing who she was by bringing her spirit into their lives.  All the credit for that goes to Jayna, her energy is still alive and spreads so easily from person to person.  I truly feel at times that Jayna was a sweet angel and I am forever blessed to call her a friend, an inspiration, and someone I am striving to be more like.

I miss you everyday Jayna.  This is your song ‘A Piece of Happiness’ for you.  Listen to the song here.

How am I supposed to begin
When I’m alone or among friends
There’s a silence in me
It’s you without me

I see I see I see you’re a piece of happiness

Of the times I can recall
You made them better for us all
I remember the smile on your face
And the comfort of your embrace

I feel I feel I feel you’re a piece of happiness

Sweet girl
Sweet girl

I see I see I see you’re a piece of happiness
I hear I hear I hear you’re a piece of happiness
I feel I feel I feel you’re a piece of happiness
I see you
I hear you
I feel you a piece of happiness

Sweet girl

In Part I of this interview, Thinking Aloud asked Kristen Thompson about the purpose of the ARS project.  In Part II here, the interview gets into what will happen once the results are analyzed.

Thinking Aloud: In what ways do you plan on using the results from your survey?

Kristin Thompson: We will likely release the results through a series of short papers that focus on particular findings, and rely heavily on visualizations. We’ll use the FMC website as our primary repository of papers, but I expect we’ll also be releasing findings at events and through journal articles throughout spring 2012.

Thinking Aloud: As you mention, there isn’t a past survey to compare the results from this survey to anything in the past. Do you foresee future surveys on musician revenue sources to see how things are trending?  How often would this happen?

Kristin Thompson: While there has been some great research done on specific musical genres or communities, no organization has ever tried a research project of this scope in the US. We’re keen on hearing from musicians working in any genre, playing any role, from emerging to professional.

We see this as a vital benchmarking effort — a snapshot of what it’s like o be a musician or composer in 2011. It’s our hope that it could repeated
five years from now, but the project would need some institutional support and funding for that to happen.

Thinking Aloud: How can musicians empower themselves with what you find?

Kristin Thompson: We’ve heard from a few participants that simply taking the survey was “enlightening” or “mind-opening”, which is a wonderful ancillary outcome of this work.

Once we get to the point where we’re able to release findings, we’ll make sure to present the information in ways that musicians can learn from it.
We’ll make it interactive, and provide musicians with some tools to compare themselves to others. We’ve also been testing webinars and presentations that can further educate musicians about all the possible revenue streams, and how to access them.  We hope to push ahead with all of these options in 2012.

Thinking Aloud: Looking ahead, are there other music surveys the team may be developing outside of focusing on income derived from music?

Kristin Thompson: We are always thinking about research projects that would benefit musicians and songwriters. That’s why we’ve done research in the past on musicians’ access to commercial airplay, and the barriers to getting health insurance. Artist Revenue Streams is our most ambitious project to date, and one that is likely to generate additional research opportunities.  We’re already talking with colleagues in Canada and the UK about replicating this study in their countries, which would provide an amazing set of comparative data. But for now, we are focused on finishing up ARS here in the United States and releasing findings in 2012. We hope that more musicians take the survey before it closes on Friday, October 28, so their experience can be captured in this important benchmarking effort.

You can take FMC’s Artist Revenue Stream survey HERE until Friday October, 28th when it closes.

Thinking Aloud thanks The Future of Music Coalition and Kristin Thompson for their time in doing this interview.

Whether or not you’re a musician, over the past ten years or so there have been incredible shifts in the music industry.  It wasn’t very long ago that you probably didn’t buy your music over the Internet, or have the ability to listen to any song you wanted to hear with a couple touches of the button, or if you were a musician have an incredible range of tools to promote and record yourself that weren’t ridiculously expensive.  All these changes have been welcomed thus giving greater opportunities to musicians and their fans alike to create and consume music.

While it seems these opportunities are being taken advantage of, how do we know these opportunities are leading musicians to a fruitful life of creating and living off of their art?  In music circles, we often hear about the “middle class musician” and how much easier it is to be a musician today than it was 15 or more years ago.  Yet, most of the evidence backing these claims in anecdotal and does not give a complete picture to the changing landscape in the music industry.

The Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a Washington, DC based non-profit organization, providing information and tools to musicians on issues directly affecting them at the intersection of music, technology, policy and law, just may be able to answer these big questions.  The Artist Revenue Streams (ARS) project at FMC is an ambitious effort to survey individuals who derive the majority of their income from music.  The survey seeks to pinpoint the different types of income different musicians can derive their earnings from (FMC has identified 29 types of music income) as well as how ones income has changed in the last ten years.  The survey was implemented this September and concludes this Friday, October 28th.

Kristin Thompson of The Future of Music Coalition is the Co-Manager of The ARS project and took the time to speak with Thinking Aloud about the survey and why it’s critical musician’s be a part of their effort.

Thinking Aloud: What is the back story on how this survey came into development?

Kristen Thompson: Back in 2009, we published a blog post on the Future of Music Coalition site called The 29 Streams.  It was our first attempt to itemize all the possible revenue streams for US-based musicians and composers.  But this blog post was just the tip of an iceberg.

Since our inception, FMC’s mission has been to ensure that musicians are fairly compensated for their work. With ten years of technological development, 2010 seemed like the right time to ask the question: what percentage of musicians income comes from each possible revenue source? Has the ratio changed over time and, if so, why?

The Money from Music survey is one component of a multi-method research project called Artist Revenue Streams (ARS) that we started in fall 2010 to examine if and how musicians’ revenue streams are changing.  Surveys, in general, are a good way to collect data from a wide range of people but, for our purposes, we knew that just one method wouldn’t be sufficient in addressing the complexity of the question at hand. That’s why we have also been doing in-person interviews with a small but diverse set of musicians and composers, as well as financial case studies.  Through the interview process, we’ve gathered rich information from about 70 different full-time musicians, from Grammy winning Nashville songwriters to hard rock bands that play 200 shows a year.

When we report findings, we will be drawing on all three sources of data to tell the story.

Thinking Aloud: Why do this survey now? What makes it significant for the music industry?

Kristin Thompson: Clearly, there have been profound changes in the music landscape in the past ten years.  There are now a multitude of new platforms and services that make it possible for music fans to discover and purchase music, and it’s increasingly easy for musicians to have a presence in these online outlets.

While I think it’s fair to say that musicians’ access to the marketplace has improved in the past ten years, there has been no systematic attempt to understand if and how artists ability to generate revenue based on their creative work has changed in this new environment.

There are a lot of assumptions made, like “bands don’t sell records any more”, or “bands make all their money touring”.  There are two big problems with this.

First, it lumps all musicians into the “touring band” category.  What about the songwriter who doesn’t tour or play live? What about the
orchestral player who doesn’t compose? They are clearly part of the musical landscape, but they’re completely left out of the conversation. What’s their life like now?

Second, and more obvious, the assumptions are largely based on anecdotes and singular instances. Perhaps this is very true for some segments of the US musician community, but we are sorely lacking empirical evidence to verify or disprove anything.

In order to truly understand how musicians are earning a living based on their compositions, performances, recordings or brand, we needed to really dive in and do this work. Which is why we started the Artist Revenue Streams project.

Another point on the question of “why now?” I think we’ve reached a point of maturation in the marketplace. There’s been just enough time that we’re able to ask questions about money from iTunes sales, or YouTube plays, or SoundExchange royalties and have it make sense for most musicians. It’s been ten years since the iPod arrived. Now that we have some perspective on the changes, we can start to measure the change.

Thinking Aloud: What can you tell a musician about the importance of doing this survey if they are uncomfortable about providing music revenue and other data or don’t feel like filling it out?

Kristin Thompson: We know that answering questions about money is a sensitive topic…for all of us! But we’ve put a number of safeguards in place to make our participants feel comfortable.

First, participation is voluntary and anonymous. We don’t collect names, emails, or any other identifying information in the survey itself. If you
want to be entered to win the iPad 2s or the gift certificates, you’re redirected to a different data set that’s not connected at all with your
survey responses.

Second, the vast majority of the questions on the survey involve percents, ratios and reasons for change, not hard numbers.

Third, all the data will be aggregated with the answers from thousands of other musicians, so we’re not looking at specific submissions to tell the
story.

Thinking Aloud: So, I have taken the survey and noticed after some initial questions, there are actually three separate surveys to complete–long, medium, and short versions.  What is the reason for this and how does it affect the results we will eventually see?

Kristin Thompson: We provide survey takers with three paths — essentially a short, medium, and long path that are about 10, 20 and 30 minutes. We built it this way to make it possible for as many musicians and composers to complete it. We know that musicians have different amounts of time to give, and different levels of knowledge about their revenue streams. By building it this way, the busy musician can spend 10 minutes and provide us with topline data. But the musician or composer who has a complex income picture, or who plays many roles, can spend 30 minutes and really dig into detailed questions about their participation in a range of revenue streams.

Once the survey closes, we plan to develop a demographic snapshot of those who chose particular paths to perhaps understand why they took certain paths, which may be an interesting data point of its own! But the questions on the medium and long path are identical — the only difference is the number of questions a survey taker is presented with. So the data should be compatible.

Part II of Thinking Aloud’s interview with Kristin Thompson of The Future of Music Coalition’s ARS project focuses on what happens after the survey is up here.  You can take FMC’s Artist Revenue Stream survey HERE.

Thinking Aloud thanks The Future of Music Coalition and Kristin Thompson for their time in doing this interview.

I should first set the scene of what my life was 10 years ago.  I had recently turned 22, was fresh out of college, and was about to start my first job in Philadelphia in a couple weeks.  The economy was in a recession as the dot com bubble had burst, and I felt very lucky to have found work.  Since I hadn’t moved yet, I was living at my parents house in Fair Haven, NJ that summer.

I distinctly remember first hearing about the attacks.  My mother came into my room and woke me up.  With fear in her voice she said, “something horrible is happening in New York City,” and her eyes filled up with tears.  I instantly grew concerned and jumped out of bed.  It was around 10am and I recall sitting down to watch the TV in shock and wondering what exactly had happened.  I was quite scared myself because Fair Haven is only about 8 miles south west of New York City across the Raritan Bay.

What I don’t remember is the sequence of events or fine details of the day.  But I remember a few things.  My friend Meredith called me at some point later in the morning asking if we were going to hang out.  She had no idea what was going on.  Part of me didn’t want to tell her, because she had said at one point to me that summer, “if the world is ending, I don’t want to know about it.”.  But I told her she should turn on the TV, which she did while on the phone with me, and she as shocked reaction as one would expect.  Her uncle worked at the Pentagon, and she quickly became very worried about his safety.

I know at some point the phone lines got jammed up.  My friend Steve had recently started working in the Washington, DC for a defense contractor and no one could reach him.  You couldn’t reach neighbors.  I didn’t have a cell phone at the time, so the only alternatives for communicating were email and AOL instant messenger.  Eventually we heard that Meredith’s uncle was safe and Steve sent an email hours later saying he was fine.

In the days that followed, the closeness of what happened and its impacts became more evident.  Several people in my hometown had been killed in the attacks in NYC.  I drove to the beach and could see the smoldering city across the water.  And the worst part was the day I smelled it.  The air must have shifted and sent an electrical smoke type of smell across our area.  I went to a church and prayed.  Our town got together to grieve at a candlelight vigil.  It was the first time I truly felt my neighbors came together for each other.

I moved not too long after September 11th.  I had called my new job to speak with my boss since travel was part of the work and asked how that would be affected.  She of course didn’t know, but said if I was very concerned and wanted to rethink taking the job that was okay, she understood.  On moving day, my movers were Iraeli, and asked about a pin I was wearing.  It was a ribbon I think to remember those who had died.  They said to me, “you Americans are very naiive.  We great up dealing with attacks in Israel almost everyday.”  I didn’t know what to say, but I felt they were right in some respect–for decades we were safe from many harms that other countries and cultures lived with almost everyday.

During my first weekend in my new place Steve came up and we went to Seton Hall University where our friend Mike was going to school.  We had Yankees tickets.  It was our tradition back then to see one Yankee game a year together.  I don’t know why we decided to go–probably along the lines of we should live our lives and not give in–but we made our way up there via train and NYC subway.  I remember they confiscated my umbrella at the Stadium.  I’ve been to many Yankees games and in the similar vain of my hometown community coming together, Yankee fans and New Yorkers created an energy at that game I will never forget.  At some point during the game we were asked to move down, and people around us started cheering and chanting “USA”.  Several NYC Firefighters took seats to the left of us and I soon got on my feet to applaud them.

A month or so later the Yankees were in the World Series for the fifth time in six years.  Of course, people assume the Yankees would win given their streak, but also how much it would mean to NYC after what had happened.  But they didn’t and lost in one of the more dramatic fashions for a World Series.  Buster Onley would call it “The last night of the Yankee dynasty”.

Since that day and time, I look back and realize I entered this world as an adult with far greater uncertainty than recent generations.  For the first time on my own independently in life, I was forced to face a new danger everyday in my life called terrorism.  The first time I got on a plane during my job, an Arab man, was boarding in front of me and they pulled him aside.  That is when I knew certain people’s freedoms were being affected even if in the name of keeping our country safe.

It’s now ten years later, and writing this brings back a lot of these initial feelings I have.  In those ten years I’ve lived and/or worked in major cities: Philadelphia, New York City, and now Washington, DC.  Even when I lived in New York City, I never visited the World Trade Center site.  It didn’t feel right to me to be at a location that had become a tourist attraction of sorts, where thousands of people died so tragically and were not buried properly.

There are many things I remember the last 10 years.  I remember when the Republican National Convention came to New York City in the summer of 2004 and having to get on subways with Military Police and their huge guns and K9 dogs.  I remember listening to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s ‘The Rising’ and feeling inspired by the music.  I remember the U.S. dropping bombs on Afghanastan and then Iraq, the latter of which was numbing.  I remember President Bush bringing us together, and our subsequent divisive politics killing the feelings of unity and community.  I’ve gotten used to airports and the security measures.  It has not surprised me that other terrorists have tried other methods of taking action from shoe bombs to a bomb that did not go off in Time Square as recently as last year.  Things of this nature will continue to happen.

It is difficult to summarize these ten years into a concise statement.  We have adapted to our new surroundings and threats and I will continue to do so since the war on terrorism is far from over.  I know that something could happen, another attack, and I could be impacted far worse than I was 10 years ago.  I don’t think about these things often, but in remembering 9/11, I do.  I am going to continue on living though.  That’s all we can do.

Targeting is a method businesses used to direct products, offers, and specific information about the business to you.  Usually it’s based on what interests you, where you live, and other stuff they collect about you (like your age perhaps).  It’s also used to gather feedback and in the long-run see what kinds of trends appear when they try to sell you something–do you buy it or not?

When you go see a band play and you want to get on their newsletter, usually you’re not asked for much information.  Traditionally a newsletter sign up form is just your name and email.  And therein lay a problem that is being created by the DIY music generation.  You cannot target with just an email address or a name on Facebook.

Let me give an example why not targeting specific groups in your music career is hurting you.  You have a show to promote.  You do everything you should like create a Facebook invitation.  Yet, 85% have not replied.  And you are left wondering why no one is coming to your show.

It may be because your fan living in California keeps getting invited to your shows in New York City.  I see this all the time.  Think about the multiplier effect.  If you target CA fan to every show not in CA, he or she is less likely to check the invitation no matter how many you send or what it may be for.  Add in all the invitations your CA fan gets from all the other bands inviting them to other shows not in CA and DIY musicians are giving themselves a bad name.  And those 50 CA fans you thought you made touring the west coast now look at your invite as another piece of junk mail.  And what is likely to happen when you’re trying to promote your new album or piece of merchandise?  Ignored.  Again and again by your 50 CA fans.  And not just on Facebook, your newsletter too!

Start “Niching Up” Your Niche of Fans

I made up this little motto for you just this moment.  Your fans are your fans because they like you’re particular style of music.  You should note from this that you’ve created a niche of fans that doesn’t exist anywhere else.  In other words, your 1000 fans or whatever the number are not the same 1000 fans of another group perhaps playing a similar genre.  It’s a unique situation you can now leverage.  So do not treat them as if they’re a generic mass of people.  Start “niching up” your niche.  In other words, make your target more targetable.

How many of your fans are female?  Who’s between the age of 25-30?  Who lives in your hometown and who lives in New York City where you’re getting a following?

Why should these mundane things matter?  Your female fans want female style t-shirts and it may be good to know how many to print.  Your fans between 25-30 are not likely to make it to a show on a weekend in the summer because of all the weddings they go to (or plan).  And your NYC fans carry a different energy and reaction to your music than  your hometown fans–so you want to deliver a NYC show to them, not a hometown show.

I made up those reasons, but it’s hard to argue you haven’t heard at least one of them before.  You need to know these details of your niche so you can give the niches within the overall niche what they want.

Where Do You Start?  Re-do your Newsletter Sign-up Form (Online and on Paper)

This doesn’t have to be overwhelming for you or your fans.  Start with what you’ll collect from future fans first.

Start at the point of where you collect data that can be used to target fans.  Here’s what my newsletter form collects.  Yours can be the same or different, the data you collect has to mean something to you when you “niche up” later:

Name

Email

Zip Code

Gender

Year of Birth (don’t ask for date of birth, it’s too personal)

I ASK if I can friend them on Facebook (it’s called permission marketing.  See Seth Godin)

I ASK if I can follow them on Twitter

Make sure that your online form and paper form are as similar as possible otherwise you’ll end up collecting some information on one and not the other.  On the paper form, don’t do the form in your handwriting–create a template that you can easily print over and over again.  Another tip I have is to put check boxes for stuff like gender–no one wants to write out “male”.

For your current fan base, come up with some sort of survey where you can re-collect their information.  You will need to verify whose data is whose by asking for their email address.

The Tedious but Necessary Part

Unless they sign-up online, you won’t have to do this, but you will have to enter all this information every time someone signs-up at your show. Find an email newsletter program that allows you to manually enter your information and allow you to filter your entire list by things like zip code or gender when sending an email.

On Facebook and Twitter, create lists.  I have separated out my fan base by geography, but you can create any number of specific list–it depends how much you want to “niche up”.

Now you’ve created a system and process whereby you can collect and better target your fans instead of sending things to them as one massive whole.

One Downside

If someone moves there’s no way to really know unless you know them personally or they tell you.  I can’t think of a way to correct this other than asking your fans every so often for an update of where they live.

Now you’re ready to start targeting and not abusing your fans with the Facebook invitations you’re sending all over the world.  This may not be the most fun thing to do, but it will help you down the road when people don’t treat you like a mass marketer anymore and start paying attention.

Another good and similar read from Dave Cool: “Stop Wasting Time Sending Facebook Invites”

“Let’s play a show together.”

One thing I notice myself and other musicians saying when you first meet after playing a show has to do with niceties.  You’ll have a short conversation where you eventually say (or they say), “hey let’s do a show together sometime.”  This is sort of like inviting yourself to play a gig.  Most musicians don’t care though, I have never been denied to my face.  Then you’ll exchange contact information and say, “I’ll be in touch soon.”

Only thing is, rarely do I hear back from people that want to play a show with me.  In the opposite situation (where I contact a fellow musician) I either never hear back or get a short response saying they’ll get back to me because they’re busy.

So why do we say this and not do it?  I think it just comes down to not wanting to put someone else down for one.  The other is you’ve already been judged.  If no one came and the other guy brought more people out, they may get the impression you don’t draw well or don’t promote.

If you really want to do a show, take a look at your calendars at the show instead of starting email and phone tag.

As part of continuing to learn and improve my newsletters to my fans I also signed up for newsletters of some regional and even local acts in the Washington, DC area.  I was not surprised to see that many of the same mistakes I made being made by my fellow musicians.

In this post I’d like to share some of the obstacles and common mistakes musicians make in their newsletters that contributes to why no one is reading your newsletter.

• People have too much email:  If you get 20 or more email messages each day, you’re pretty much a typical email user.  I get tons of email and don’t always read everything.  Depending on who you get an email from is a factor in if you will even open the email or perhaps delete it.  So just realize your email, which is asking for someone’s attention, is competing with the hundreds of emails people get each week (both at their job and at home).

• “Come to my show” is too Predictable: When I see an email from a musician, I know they’re a musician.  I’ve grown tired of emails that focus only on a bands shows–because I already know you’re going to play live somewhere.  There is more to your career and to YOU as an artist, so start sharing that.  It’s cool to announce an important show, but I get bored if all you talk about is where you’re playing and how great a show it will be and that you’d love to see me there.  It’s boring.  And I won’t go to your show.

• Newsletter is sent Sporadically or too often: Once I got a newsletter from a band I really enjoyed.  And then I didn’t get another update for a few months, at which point I sorta forgot who they were and actually didn’t know much about who they were as a band since so much time had passed.  Rarely do bands do the opposite in sending emails too often.  In both cases though, folks are likely to unsubscribe or to never read your newsletter because you’re either too in their faces or not in their face enough.

• WAAAAAAAYYYYY Too long: I have a good friend who goes on and on and on in his newsletter.  Time is your enemy in a newsletter–the longer it takes to read, the less one wants to read.  It’s not that your fans don’t care, it’s just that their time is short and they have other life things going on.  And if your newsletter is just all text, it isn’t visually appealing by the way.

• Gain their trust before selling anything: I’ve seen newsletters that read like a commercial every time asking folks to buy stuff.  If that’s all you do in your newsletter, it comes across as selfish or gives the perception that you just want someone’s money.

• Autobot response: I personally use an autobot response when someone joins my mailing list online.  In person I can thank them and get to know them a little better and I aim for my personality to come through in my auto responder.  In it I thank them, explain I send one newsletter a month, try to get them excited with the lure of contests and stuff I do, and then I end it.  Short and sweet.  However, I’ve seen other newsletters asking folks to buy something right away or just point them to the artists website without much engagement.

• You don’t introduce yourself to new fans: If you’re made to feel special for something you have just found an interest in, it’s likely you’ll return to it and look forward to hearing more about it.  Musicians typically forget to say hello again to their new fans.

• The one-sided conversation: The best newsletters are the ones that ask the recipient to get involved.  Ariel Hyatt calls this giving your fans a call to action.  Don’t just send a message, start a conversation!  If you don’t, you won’t know what people think of the newsletter.  I have some ideas at the bottom on what could work.

If you’re exhibiting any of these unhealthy habits STOP.  Here’s some advice I can offer you when you rethink how to do your newsletter:

•  Get thee to a Newsletter Program: There are many.  For musicians you can use ReverbNation’s Fanreach.  There’s also Fan Bridge, iContact, Constant Contact, and others.  These programs allow you to add emails, segment them into groups, and see how often your newsletter is being read.

• Send 1-2 newsletters a month.  And no more.  If you want to send two, spread them out with a week in between.  Better yet, ask your fans how often they prefer the frequency of communication from you.

• Be strategic in the time in which to send it out.  If you email your newsletter on Monday, chances are it won’t be widely read.  Same with Friday.  Research shows the best day of the week is Wednesday.  Also be aware of the time of day.  Your fans with jobs may be busy from 9am to 5pm and not check their email much at night.  So try around the lunch hour when they are most likely free or even around 3pm.  I have also heard emailing early before they start work may help because you’re email will be one of the first they see.  And last remember holidays are a factor.  Like don’t send a newsletter the Wednesday before Thanksgiving day.  Really there is no ideal time, so my advice is to try a variety of times and see what your open rate is based on it.

• Be in and out:  People today want snippets of information–quick, concise and to the point.  They don’t have time to read all the details of your life unless they’re truly invested in that.  Ideally with all the email people receive, the shorter the newsletter the better.

• Start using Photos, Links, and Video:  Your newsletter should try to incorporate other types of media.  Photos are a great visual and videos can be interactive as well.  You may even want to try doing a video newsletter instead of writing it out.  The other bit of advice is to use links.  Perhaps if a fan wants to read something more you can include a link that will send them to your blog or news page on your website.  Treat your newsletter like it’s an online newspaper where fans can pick and choose what to read and interact with.

• Segment Your List:  If you had a message for your fans in a certain city, would you blast the message out to everyone on your list in every city?  The logical answer is no, but this is done.  Whatever email program you go with, make sure to segment your fans geographically (usually with a zip code), but also demographically (gender, age)–and whatever makes sense for your fan base.  The idea behind this is so that you can target your messages in newsletters to specific groups of fans.

• Send a thank you to new fans each month or even after each show: You can make new fans feel welcome not only through an auto responder, but also sending them a welcome newsletter.  Think of this in the sense of a more formal initial greeting or even a thank you for signing up.  Try not to sell anything right away, but you can certainly put links to your online store or iTunes if they’re interested.

• Engage your fans: This is by far the most important piece.  Allow a conversation or some type of action to take place.  I myself have done contests, free song give aways, and even had my fans vote on the album cover for my album.  Create a community where fans have a say.  I know some musicians don’t want to do this, but try it and see how it feels.  I think you’re fans will love you even more.

Over the past few years my producer, Dave Mallen, has come back from Los Angeles around this time brimming with excitement and lots of new knowledge on how to have a career in music.  For him, it’s been a longer number of years than I that he’s considered himself a true professional.  But I took his word for it and decided to see what he was talking about: The ASCAP ‘I Create Music’ Expo 2011.

Going into it, I really didn’t know what to expect other than what Dave told me: lots of people, lots of key music industry people, everyone wanted someone elses attention but yours, and you don’t get to every session.  But on the flip side, I expected quite a bit, because it wasn’t cheap.  I had also heard from someone in passing that it was “very LA”.  Lots of superficial people, no one caring about one another, and just out for their own good.

Well, I’ve gone and come back.  I feel like part of a big family called ASCAP now who has my back and wants me to have a career and get paid to do it.  I could go on and on about the conference, but I want to put down several highlights of what I learned and did, best and worst of at the conference, and some memorable quotes my brain is still knawing on.

Look I Learned Stuff!

• Co-writing is where it is at. Just about every panel with a songwriter, singer, lyricist, people that “do” melody, said that collaborating and co-writing is very key right now for your career.  Apparently since I write everything (music, lyrics, melody), I’m an “100 percenter”–which was a rare breed at ASCAP.  It became obvious why I need to do this.  I’m not the best at all three of those things and maybe I need to get a lyricist or someone who’s good at lyrics to put words to the 40 plus songs of music I have laying around.

• Key tidbits on email and social media. Some studies have been done and they show a few key things.  The best times to send a message (email or social media) is 11am, 3pm or 8pm.  Most eyes are going to see what you have to say then.  Also, if you send out a newsletter, people are more likely to open it on the weekend.  However, they are also more likely to unsubscribe from the newsletter too.

• 60 Minutes of Life. That’s how long a message on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter will live before it’s gone (usually).  Of course, if it’s good enough it will get lots of comments and re-tweeted around.

• Copyright Law is for Lawyers.  I have a book on copyright terms as a reference.  But once entertainment and copyright lawyers start talking they go over everyone’s head.  As I put it on Twitter, they might as well have put a mirror in front of these people.  What I understand is that there’s the law, but it’s not always applied because of contracts.  So if I get a contract, I’ll get a lawyer to look it over so I don’t get screwed.  That’s about all I learned on that one.

• Trading Tracks and Beats.  In the more pop music world (think Katy Perry, Brittany Spears) the singers themselves don’t write the music for the songs.  People like Dr. Luke do.  And really what they do is put a bunch of computer generated sounds together called tracks.  The current #1, “E.T”, has 192 tracks.  A track can be an entire syth part or just a quick second of one sound engrained in a song.  Apparently there are people I met who “do tracks” or “make beats” for the purpose of having a hit producer use their track or beat.  I found this interesting, because some of these folks are making libraries of these tracks and beats.  Sometimes they sell them.  It actually gets around the issue of sampling.  It’s got its own culture and economy.  I’m working on trading chords and riffs.

Highlights for me at ASCAP Expo 2011

- Meeting Kyle Bylin.  Unless you’ve read Hypebot, a blog that sythesizes much of what’s being talked about on music industry blogs, you have no idea who Kyle is.  He’s a young guy who used to edit what Hypebot put out and read thousands of music blogs every week.  And because of that, he’s one of the smartest online music people out there–who actually doesn’t play a lick of music.  But it was a highlight meeting him, because now he’s at Billboard Magazine working on charting independent artist’s online presence using metrics and hard numbers, which is my cup o’tea.  He’s someone to watch in the new music industry.

- Seeing Sinbad.  I never liked Sinbad, but he made an appearance at ASCAP.  At first I thought, “this is a bold and utterly disasterous career move.  Sinbad the singer”, but I quickly found out he was there because of his daughter’s singing career.  Either way, I met the guy briefly and he’s super nice and friendly.

- Hanging with Ariel Hyatt, Melody and Ty, Sharif, Jason Bowen, Brandon Liss, and Marc Cooper. I met a lot of folks, and knew a few already, but knowing people made a conference of several hundred people much smaller.  This list includes a social media guru, four great musicians, and a producer.

Best and Worst of ASCAP 2011

- Best panelist: Matt Nathenson.  This singer/songwriter (who penned “Come on Get Higher”) was 0% bullshit and 100% honest about having a music career.  He put things in a way that had never been said before.  I owe him a beer.  Dan Wilson comes in second.

- Worst panelist: Fergie.  This was the fake LA person who happened to make it to a panel.  She at one point talked in a little girl voice.  It was odd.  She didn’t say anything interesting.

- Best panel: Pop/Rock Song Feedback.  Solid takes on what works in songwriting and feedback from differing perspectives (publishers, songwriters)

- Worst panel: What’s Your Music Worth?  This lost me from the second I walked in.  Too much jargon.  Bad examples.  References to court cases no one has ever studied or heard of.

- Best Showcase: Hearing Tommy Sims play “Streets of Philadelphia” and “Change the World”.  He helped Springsteen and Clapton respectively write those songs and performed them as he wrote them.

Memorable Quotes that Became Food for Thought

Take these quote for what they’re worth:

“Inspiration comes from when you’re not pressuring yourself.” -Dan Wilson, Semisonic

“Forget your success.  The next day the slate is clean and there’s no sound coming out of the speakers.” -Josh Kear, Nashville songwriter

“Rarely are you amazing in isolation.” -Tom Sturges, Music Publisher

“I don’t believe you have just one shot.  You have a thousand shots.” -Matt Nathanson, singer/songwriter

Overall, it was a wonderful conference with wonderful people and I came back inspired with what I learned.  Will I got next year?  I’d really like to, but I’ll see how my wallet looks in a few months.

I went down to Big Shotz late afternoon on Tuesday to see my music friend Jenae Cherry play.  We had originally met there back in December during her 4-6pm gig and she had invited me out the prior night to play a few songs.  This time around she had her guitar player with her, Austin, and they sounded great together.  It was good to see a fellow musician making progress, especially in a town like Nashville.

Later Tuesday night I headed over to The Commodore Lounge, which is a showcase/open mic hosted by Debi Champion.  I had been invited back by Debi from my appearance there in December.  The cool part about Commodore is that they put 3-4 songwriters on the stage at once and you play “in the round”.  Each artist gets a song, you go through, then start from the beginning again.  I ended up playing three songs, including my audience participation song “Restless Times”, which went over well.

There’s something I notice about us musicians after we play showcases like this.  Some musicians leave immediately–perhaps to move on to the next open mic.  Those that stay always say “great job” or offer some other words of encouragement and the conversation ends there.  Musicians are just bad at networking for some reason.  No one likes to brag or trying selling you stuff right away.  Well, the majority of musicians don’t.  In Nashville, you mainly trade CDs, it’s hard to sell anything of yours.  I on the other hand, like to make an attempt at a meaningful conversation.  And never around my music unless they ask a lot about it.  I’m glad I stuck around at the Commodore Lounge because I ended up meeting a rep from Nashville Songwriters Association (NSAI), which offers workshops and other connections.

During this trip I’ve met a lot of people and in our conversations about music, it became apparent to me that some folks (not all) in Nashville are a bit jaded.  I completely get this, because I grew jaded about the work I was doing in Washington, DC before I made music my full-time thing.  It pains me to think that something as wonderful as music can become the bane of your existence.  But if it’s the only thing you know at the end of the day that you know, you stick it out, albeit with much negativity.  Nashville, one of the hubs of music, like Washington, DC, the hub of politics, share many similarities.  Much of the success and continuation of people’s careers in these respective areas comes down to the people and politics.  It’s who you know and if they can benefit from you and if you can benefit from them and how much of each others resources it will take to reach those benefits.  Taylor Swifts parents can pay a label $3 million to cut a record on a major label.  Mine cannot.  It’s still a world of haves and have nots unfortunately.

Wednesday was my last day in Nashville.  I grabbed lunch with new friends, Jeff and Jillene, and headed to a spot called Jackson’s where I met Courtney for cookie dough eggrolls (awesomeness served in a dish with vanilla ice cream).  Courtney had been half jokingly saying I should move to Nashville, and it is something that was tempting considering all the music and cheaper living conditions.  But I’m not 100% convinced.  Aside from those two wonderful factors, it doesn’t have other things I really like to have around me such as skiing, diversity (not the music kind), and decent public transportation.

It’s certainly now a place I’d like to get to as often as I can because I have felt very inspired by Nashville.  Up til now, 2011 hadn’t gone as well as I would have liked.  I was sick often the first two months then have been dealing with the loss of my friend Jayna.  I haven’t felt as motivated as I had in 2010 but now I do.  If Nashville can do that for me, I’ll try to get back every three months.

I spent my final hours in Nashville at a Tweetup–which is basically a Twitter networking event that one person organizes.  The organizer happened to be Ariel Hyatt, who I did an online campaign with this winter for my album, and is someone who has taught me quite a bit about how to use online tools to promote my music career.  It was great to see her and I met many other people from Nashville doing things other than playing music.

My time in Nashville has been the best time I’ve had in 2011.  The question this entire trip was “Why Nashville”, why am I there taking so much time in my life.  I’ve come back home refreshed, inspired, confident, and feeling ready to conquer new projects and the world.  That has answered the question for me.  If Nashville is anything to me right now, it kept my dreams alive of continuing my life as a musician.  I thank Nashville and all the people I met for giving that to me.

After meeting with Mike Proctor on Friday, I was nervously excited all weekend to get into a studio.  My only prior experience with a professional studio was my work on my debut album, and I felt like the expectations were higher in Nashville given Mike’s experience in town.

I arrived with Courtney Monday morning at 11am to Tin Ear Studio.  Tin Ear Studio is on 17th Street in a grayish house.  When you walk in you arrive in the “brains” of the studio–the main soundboard where things are mixed and heard (pictured above).  Mike was there with another guy setting things up for the session.  My voice wasn’t feeling 100% ready yet, so I was chugging down warm coffee to loosen it up.

It’s hard to describe what recording is like to someone that hasn’t done it.  It’s a meticulous process and depending on the artist and engineer/producer, the level of detail and meticulousness varies.  For what I do, which is solo, you record each instrument and vocal in takes.  Mike put me in a separate room to record the guitar part first, then my vocals, and then other parts.  You get the basic foundation of the song down first and then add layers.  Typically, if you don’t have a drummer present, you will play your parts to a “click”–which can be a metronome or a basic drum beat.  It’s best to be in time otherwise the engineer has to clean up and even out the song later on.  Luckily, I am someone who can keep rhythm pretty well, so we were able to record the guitar parts fairly easily.

Singing in a studio is a bit awkward for me because I don’t get to sing and play my guitar at the same time.  So I always feel a bit naked without the guitar strapped to me and not playing the guitar live.  While it allows me to focus on the vocals, I put pressure on myself to get every note right and sometimes end up doing things I wouldn’t typically do if I was singing live.

Either way, Mike was great to work with.  He was flying blindly since he didn’t know my songs at all, but his process was what I was used to.  We were able to talk much of the same recording language and he was encouraging throughout the process.  He worked quickly.  The quality of the sound (and all of this is pre-mixing and mastering, which is too much to get into) in the studio was incredible.  I chose to do a slower folky song and then an upbeat rocking song of mine to see how each would turn out in working with Mike.  I’ll say it looks promising to record with him again in Nashville.  We also had a chance to talk more about our respective careers over lunch as well as other things and we came from much of the same life philosophies, music interests, and even had other things in common.  I’ve always felt the best professional relationships are the ones where you not only work together well, but can connect on other interests too.

During the entire session, which ran from 11am-7pm, the weather in Nashville was very bad.  It poured, there was thunder and lightening, and for a brief time we had to shut the studio down so that the equipment and files were not destroyed.  I heard later that day that three tornadoes touched ground just outside the city.

It was a great experience though and I feel the more I record, the better I will get at my vocal performances and preparation for recording.  Whenever my next project is ready for recording, it’s very likely I’ll go to Nashville to record it.

After getting two songs demoed, I ran out to Pick’s which is a bar at the bottom of a Best Western hotel.  Originally I had planned to play at the Bluebird Cafe’s open mic, but there was no way in hell I was going to cut a recording session short to play one or two songs.  Pick’s had an open mic that I honestly did not enjoy.  Most of the songs people sang were unoriginal country types about whiskey, Ford trucks, women, and those sorts of things.  So I did my three songs and got out of there.

I ran over to Dan McGuiness across the way to see a fellow musician friend, Jenae Cherry play.  The bar is an Irish themed spot, but does not feel like any of the Irish spots I play in DC–maybe because the bartenders are not Irish.  Well, I arrived a bit late and Jenae had already played, but I found her with her band hanging out.  I had met Jenae back in Decemeber, when I was last in Nashville, where she was playing a bar called Big Shotz on 2nd Avenue, and we’d been in touch here and there on Facebook.  She just put out a five song EP, and we traded each others albums and autographed them.  I love what she wrote to me:

Jenae eventually had to leave and I was still riding the high of being in the studio that day, so I ended up with her drummer’s girlfriend at the table talking about everything from jobs, life, music, and what we wanted to become.  It was a great conversation, one that went in depth quite a bit.

When I returned to the Kane’s, Courtney was awake, and we talked about the studio session, my trip so far, and not that I meant to–ended up talking about my friend Jayna.  I find it helps to talk about her memory as a reminder to myself and those who hear who she was that it’s so important to live life as fully as you can.  That’s why I made this trip and have been incredibly grateful to have met so many kind people in Nashville and felt inspired by this city.