The Super Secret That Will Make You For Life In Music

I posted a very short version on my site: www.make-your-own-dance-and-techno-songs.com about this topic because I have found that there are loads of marketing books, loads of marketing sites, and...ermm....blogs to do with making money with music.

There is really only one secret to making anything with music.

Get an audience and keep them interested.

Dave from www.schoolofpodcasting.com who left a message in my "are newsletters any good" post states that podcasting is a great way to contact the audience.

I am in 100% agreement in what Dave says, it is a great way to contact your audience. It makes it more personnal. Add voice or even music and get it spread around and make it viral.

It is keeping an audience happy, keeping that audience coming back to you that actually makes or breaks someone. Also making sure that your audience actually knows what RSS and Podcasting is (also what a newsletter is...time and time again I have had to explain the reason behind my newsletter). They have been around for some time now but only to people who are actively searching those fields for new things will know about them and their potential.

I am going to throw RSS and together and say that Blogging is not an easy way to make money...at all. You have to constantly keep things uptodate. You are in competition with people out there that do this as a job/ have more time than you. Also you have to post at least weekly. Coming up with something new or noteworthy.

Many fail, and out of the thousands that get made daily (probably hoping of easy money) a fraction actually keep going.

So when you build your RSS, your Newsletter, make your Podcasts...make sure that you do them regularly with good information. This will keep you in your audiences mind, not just letting them know when a tune comes out every 6 months.

If you build your subscribers up to a good level, say 10,000 which is not hard to do (5-10/day signups is very possible) then go for a few more and keep on building your lists and subscribers (some will drop out, unsubscribe, give you a bad email address etc) give them the information that they want, what they signed up for.

Oversell them information, give them free ebooks, give them tip sheets, give them prizes, give them discounts that they can print off for Gigs that you do.

And that is the key, taking up your own time to do something that your listeners want you to do.

Doing a Gig after work, making tracks in your spare time...regularly is the only reason musicians have succeeded and most haven't.

Anyway, you have your audience of 10,000 then never offer them one track to buy for $2...you may get one buyer but you will lose the credability that you worked so hard for.

Over sell your stuff, bang in there an album for $1...yes an album 10-12 tracks of good music.

Then alot will buy, especially if you have been giving them good music for free. Be consistent and over deliver.

Remember what we wrote in the last posts. $12 albums are dying. Radiohead proved that people will only pay $6 tops for a commercial group.


Remember this one tiny very significant little fact that web site owners have known for years:

In the digital age people can go to another artist in one click.

We are not in the CD age, that was 1990s when connections were so slow (how on earth did we cope with dialup?)

Anyone offering CDs is going to have a huge shock if they are not preparing to go digital.

This is what the record companies can not grasp yet. Also, people want a little bit more nowadays. And why shouldn't they. They have seen the added extras in DVDs, so why can't they download them instead? Car companies have given out huge discounts and specials just to lure in the customers to fight off the competition, and it is about time the music industry did the same.

Then as long as you are building your list and listeners, over delivering on information and stuff that they can have you will be able to make thousands every time you make an album (you also have CafePress merchandice that you can throw in).

Remember this is something you like doing so it shouldn't be hard!

The hard thing to remember is that it is not an easy ride, you can't make thousands with one track, you can not put up a website and make "thousands of dollars in 2 days" without some effort going into it first.

Have a reality check.

If it sounds too good...more than likely it is...(apart from The Open Office...which is really good).